Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

corridor was some kind of road connecting the metropoloid to another location, one that lay well outside Aethyr's walls. The road crossed a kind of cavity between the curving shells of Aethyr and Virga--and though she'd never thought about it, she realized she'd assumed that the space between the two worlds would be empty. Yet in the distance, starlight gave ghostly outlines to complicated silvery shapes, some of which must be miles long. Dozens of widely separated objects, like pieces of a shattered city, seemed to be swooping down and under her with grand, almost imperceptible slowness. This was an illusion: It was Aethyr, and of course her corridor and Leal herself, that was turning. Those glittering mountains were fixed perfectly still in space, apparently attached to neither world and so sovereign in some way.

The glass tube Chen was leading her through hung from almost invisible cables that were suspended from somewhere overhead. Leal could see other mechanisms way up there, where the worlds converged to finally touch.

She was so distracted by these sights that it took her a few seconds to notice the dragonfly that was buzzing a foot from her nose.

Should she run? She didn't think Chen or his people were any threat--but if he were dangerous, there was no way she could have evaded his dragonflies here. His physical body stood fifty feet away, a black-on-black figure now turned toward her.

'I was curious,' she said. The dragonfly didn't reply, and Chen didn't move, so Leal swept her arm to indicate the wonders encircling them. 'It's so strange. There's all this stuff out here! And we were taught that the space beyond Virga's walls was just empty. What are all these things?'

The dragonfly began drifting away in the direction of Chen. That was an obvious invitation, so Leal followed it. 'No idea what they are,' said Chen. 'An armada, I suspect, awaiting its orders to invade Virga.'

'Oh!' After everything she'd recently seen, Leal should have come to that conclusion herself. She knew there were things outside her world struggling to get in. But to actually see them was suddenly, profoundly upsetting. 'Do they know we're here?'

'I hope not.'

'And this road...' He hadn't resumed walking, now that she was standing beside him. She looked ahead to where the glass angles of floor and wall converged, miles away. Something was there, a vague hulk hinted at by starlight.

Keir said, 'What if I told you that it runs to Virga?'

'What?' She stared at him. He appeared completely serious.

'I'd say you're lying,' she said after a moment's thought. 'This world rotates. Virga doesn't. The only place you could make a door between the two would be, well, where the door we're trying to get to is--at the axle, where the two worlds are attached.'

Even as she said this she realized it wasn't necessarily true. Her city, Sere, was composed of a dozen giant iron-and-brass wheels, each one a mile or more across. You could board a flea car on the rim of one and be tossed to the rim of the next in line--handed off by the giants, one by one, until you reached the farthest wheel. Maybe some similar mechanism joined Virga and Aethyr.

'But then why didn't you tell us?' She was raising her voice. 'Why let us languish here while you build us an airship to reach the axle door, when we could have just walked home?'

He looked away. 'If leaving were that easy, I wouldn't be here now.'

This was no answer, so she waited. After a moment he shrugged and said, 'Yes, this way does lead to Virga. No, you can't take it. The way is blocked.'

'By what?'

'By them.' He nodded at the indistinct shapes he'd called an armada. 'Or their cousins, at any rate. Things live in the walls of Virga. They would eat you or incorporate you before you got ten meters.'

'Then why were you going there?'

He looked up the long glass hall, appearing to weigh what he should tell her. 'I come here sometimes,' he said, still not looking at her, 'and think about leaving Brink.'

'For Virga?' She was careful not to sound too surprised; she wanted to encourage him to say more.

'Virga would be safer than ... back there.' He nodded the other way, past Brink, at the many worlds of the arena and beyond. Well, that made sense, she thought; the emissary had told her much about the strange alien worlds of the arena--that volume of space that included Aethyr and Virga and, apparently, many other artificial worlds--and she wouldn't have wanted to visit them alone.

Here, though, was an apparent door to home, tantalizingly within reach. 'The Edisonians build anything for you,' she pointed out. 'Couldn't they make something to get you past that door?'

'Maerta has forbidden them to make me anything more complicated than my experiments.'

'Experiments?'

He shrugged. 'Toys, I guess. I ask questions about the world. I make things to find out the answers.'

Now he began walking, but back the way they'd come. Leal stared ahead at the hint of escape in the distance, and fell into step with Keir Chen. 'So you're a prisoner here? Or do you just feel like you are?' She indicated the dragonflies hovering around him. 'Are those your jailers?'

He laughed. 'No, they're just eyes.' He raised his hand and one of the little bugs came to land on his fingertip. 'I evolved them and I guess I ... grew used to them. I'd feel blind without them now.'

Then he frowned at her. 'No, Maerta and the others aren't keeping me prisoner. They're just watching over me.'

'Why do you need watching over?'

He seemed to struggle for an answer, then shrugged. 'Because I'm a kid.'

'You look like you'd be a man where I come from.'