Ventus

As he lay curled around himself, shuddering from cold, he'd imagined he heard music coming from the sky. E

Now, as he came to himself and knew he had survived the night, he felt no emotion. So he'd lived through the night—it hardly mattered, because the freezing drizzle descending now was bound to do him in anyway.

Although... E

The rain was falling, all right, steady and almost musical in its soft sound. Yet E

Or as though the raindrops themselves were parting around him.

Heart pounding, E

He stuck a tentative hand out from under the cloth, and felt heat as from a summer sun on his palm. It was as though he sat in his own private, invisible beam of sunlight.

His hand trembled as he drew it back under the coat. This was impossible. That the whole world was quickened with life, invisible owlish eyes staring from every object, he had no doubt. But what did E

And yet... the warmth remained, and the dryness.

Something moved out among the scrub_grass and scattered stones. E

A bedraggled head poked up from behind a rock, and he let out a sigh of relief. It was only a fox. The little fellow emerged from hiding; the soaking rain had reduced his coat to a tangled mat, making him appear impossibly ski

The fox reached his head down and lifted something. Carrying the speckled brownish object in his jaws, he trotted a few meters towards E

He was carrying a dead quail, E

The fox jumped in surprise and ran back a ways. Then it stopped, cocked its head as though listening to something, and returned. It picked up the quail and came a little closer. Then it paused, watching again.

E

The fox cocked its head again. Then, very slowly, it walked up to E

He watched it go, mouth open. When it was ten meters away, the fox paused, and looked back. It met E

And it seemed then to E

hello.

He couldn't breathe. For a moment E

E

Hello.

45

"The Winds say she's alive, Axel." Marya touched his shoulder. "You'll just have to accept that she doesn't want to contact us."

He shook his head. "I just wish I knew."

They stood on the ramp of a military transport that was grounded outside the ruins of Rhiene. Above them the once-green escarpment was smothered in grey mud, and where a city had once been now there were only the jagged stumps of buildings. The lake had moved in to claim much of the lower valley. Long lines of refugees stood waiting for medical assistance and food; military doctors from the fleet moved up and down the line, supplemented by morphs. Rhiene had been the first city the swans visited their wrath upon when they began to attack Mediation. Luckily it was also the last.

Jordan Mason had told the two factions of the Winds, Mediation and Thalience, that their world would be destroyed by the Archipelagic fleet if they did not reconcile. Axel didn't understand all the details—he knew pure thalience was a mode of thought alien to humanity, and that Mediation had been the bridge Jordan used to finally permit the swans and the other greatest Winds to communicate with humanity. In the long minutes while Jordan, Armiger and the Desert Voice had huddled silently on the mountainside, the Winds had met, reached some treaty, then opened communications directly to the fleet. 3340 was dead, they told the admirals. The Flaw was finally understood, and would be healed. But Ventus was not now, nor would it ever be an Archipelagic world.

Axel had spent his last week on Ventus searching for Calandria May. The Winds had been happy to let him sleep in any Manse he came across, but they refused to help him find her. They insisted that Calandria was free and able to make her own decisions about her life; but they would not put Axel in touch with her.

It was frustrating, but he could not bring himself to hate the Winds. He was sure they were not being malicious. The part that hurt, to which he could not reconcile himself, was the idea that Calandria did not want to speak to him. After all they had been through, it was a painful parting.

"We have to go," said Marya. The crowd that had been watching the ship for days was backing away as the engines whined into life. Some morphs shambled past the bottom of the ship's ramp, slobbering happily to one another. They had itched to tend humans for centuries, and now they were finally getting their chance. Those touched by them rarely died, no matter how advanced their illness or injuries. It was ironic that the gibbering, misshapen Winds most used by mothers to frighten children were now being treated like royalty everywhere they went.

He sighed, and turned away from the sight. As the doors closed, Marya said, "Is it back to the mercenary's life for you now?"

He shook his head. "I wanted to talk to you about that. I hear you've got a new job."

She smiled. Marya had been invited to become a member of the new diplomatic staff the Archipelago wanted to send to Ventus. He knew she must have leaped at the opportunity.

"The Diadem Winds are making delegates for us," she said as they walked into the warm, softly lit passenger area of the ship. "They'll be humanoid, apparently. Some will be going to Earth, and I might accompany them. On the other hand, there's a post here on Ventus... I can't decide."

"I know how I'd decide," he said. The thought of going back to Earth—or anywhere in the Archipelago—left him cold. Surrounded as he might be there by artificial intelligences, humanity and ancient culture, Axel knew he would feel alone. The air he breathed there, and the ground he touched, would feel dead and valueless compared to this place. Even though only those humans with the archaic Ventus DNA could command the mecha and speak to the Winds, Axel had felt their presence all around him in the past days. It made all the difference to know they were watching over him.