Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

'Ah,' said Venera. 'But how do we contact the Guard? They stay in the shadows. Antaea is the one and only Guardsman we've ever met, and even she's a pariah to them now. Mr. Prime Minister: Since you've been in power, has the Guard contacted you in any way?'

With obvious reluctance, he shook his head.

The admiral smiled slightly. 'They might sit up and notice if we were to rescue not just Griffin, but their own men from Aethyr.'

'A public handover would humiliate them,' Kestrel pointed out. 'I wouldn't do that--'

'--but we might threaten to,' finished Venera with a smile.

Antaea shook her head. 'They won't respond well to threats. You try to blackmail them and they'll make you disappear. They have the forces to do it and mop up the witnesses afterward. How do you think they've remained a legend all these centuries? Few people who've seen them ever tell.'

'This isn't their problem anyway,' Maspeth burst out. 'The offer I'm carrying isn't for them, it's for the people of Virga!'

Antaea nodded. 'Hear, hear!'

'We need to approach them, so we will,' said Fanning. 'But at the same time it's risky to keep what we've learned secret.

'So I say we don't.'

Kestrel frowned.

Fanning seemed lost in thought; but after swirling his coffee for a moment he shot a rakish grin at his dinner guests.

'If Sarto's cousin Inshiri is doing diplomacy on the sly, and the Guard know no other way of doing it, then what we need to do is turn all this civilized backroom dealing into a public fight--and as nasty a one as we can manage. We hold a grand colloquy, to which we will invite all the heads of state, ambassadors, newspaper reporters, and gossips of Virga. We will accuse the Guard of outrageous things to draw them out. And at this colloquy, we will reveal all that we know.

'Twice in five years, some force within Artificial Nature has tried to gain entrance to Candesce. We're already at war. Let's bring that war to the doorsteps of every man, woman, and child in Virga--or at least, threaten to.'

Kestrel's eyebrows had shot up, and he looked around the table in bemusement. Antaea was grinning openly, but that came as no surprise; but Venera Fanning was also nodding, as was Leal Maspeth. It seemed, for the moment, like Fanning's idea would carry the day.

'There's just one problem,' Kestrel said loudly, 'even assuming we find the proof you claim is out there. The problem is you can't control what people will do when they find out. What you're proposing is to let go completely of any control of the situation we might have had!'

Fanning shrugged. 'And how much is that?' he said. 'Next to none, right now.'

Kestrel growled, but then nodded slowly. 'Your plan has an interesting edge to it, anyway. So as our chief strategist, what do you propose we do next?'

The admiral clearly had a love for ticking things off his fingers, as he did it again now: 'One, we gather our proof, which means recovering Hayden Griffin from Aethyr and establishing better contact with Leal's new friends; two, we gather Slipstream's allies, call in favors, and make outrageous promises.' He turned to Venera. 'Dear, that will be your job. And three, we shake the Guard out of its den and demand a public accounting of what they're up to, to be given at a time and place of our choosing.

'We have two advantages right now,' he went on, 'that we can't afford to go to waste. Firstly, we have a secret door into Aethyr, and contact already made with allies there. And secondly, we have a way to prove that the Guard is lying, if we can return Hayden Griffin. He's a hero to the people, and the story out of Abyss that he's dead has taken all the wind out of the celebrations here.'

Kestrel shrugged. 'The backlash will be so much stronger when they find out they've been lied to.'

Fanning fixed Antaea, Keir, and Leal in turn with a fierce look. 'You've each undergone terrible experiences,' he said, 'in the course of bringing what you know to us on this day, in this place, and for this decision. I want you to understand that everything that's happened prior to tonight--the outage and the battles around it, the betrayals and deaths, our loss of loved ones and the ruin of Spyre and the fall of civilized life in Abyss--all these were just scene- setting. They merely laid the groundwork for what is to follow, and when history looks back on these years they will be footnotes; because what's really important is what's about to happen. --What we are about to do.

'If you're right about the scale of the threat we face, then what we thought were the adventures of our lives have merely been training, if you will, for our real tasks. Therefore, we will go forth from here, each in our own directions, to gather what we need in order to keep our whole world from vanishing the way that our comfortable lives, our illusions, our families and cities have already gone. We've lost so much, but can we even imagine what it will be like if we lose Virga itself?

'We'll go our ways, and gather information, proof, power, allies, and weapons. We will rendezvous back here in two months, and the grand colloquy will be called. And then, everyone who has been conspiring behind the backs of the people of Virga will be exposed. Then, the real history of our time will be made.'

He folded his napkin neatly on the table and stood up. 'I think that's it for dinner, then.'

* * *

THIS CLOSE TO Slipstream's sun, nights were warm and evenings always sultry. As the sun's eight-hour maintenance shift approached, the sky dimmed through purple and mauve to pink and peach, and the vast cloudscapes became a mandala of shifting colors--endless tunnels of hue and sheen receding in any direction you looked.

There were various places around the Fanning estate where one could pause to watch this fabulous display unfold; one was a tall recessed window, half-curtained, at the end of the attic corridor containing the guest apartments. Keir sat in the window box, his arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees. Fireworks were starting now