Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

begin.

Keir usually watched that game from a distance.

'What is she telling them?' Leal Maspeth hissed now; she was craning her neck to see the head table at tonight's banquet. The nation was Unduvine, the city Greydrop. More than that, Keir didn't know, except that they built their town wheels of iron and asteroidal stone, and that this great hall whose corner he and Leal sat in was ancient.

He glanced over his shoulder. Venera Fanning had leaned forward, across the table, and was putting most of her weight on the dinner knife she'd plunged into the oak tabletop. The ambassadors, admirals, nobles, and members of parliament seated with her were to a man cringing back in their own chairs, for all the world as if Venera were radiating some force field.

Suddenly Venera put her hand next to her temple and splayed open her fingers, said something short, and brayed with laughter. The entire table broke into howls of mirth and, as she sat down again, they leaned forward, even more relaxed than they'd been before her tirade.

'I believe,' Keir said somberly, 'that Venera Fanning just told a joke.'

'Well, at least they're having a good time,' muttered Leal. She and Keir had been introduced as minor members of Venera's ambassadorial staff, which meant they had to sit in waiting rooms, or stand in the hall, or, as now, eat at what Leal insisted on calling 'the kid's table' far to one side of the real action.

'I told you to bring your notebook,' he said as he tucked into the dinner. 'You could have been writing your book all this time.'

'They'd think I was spying,' she countered; then she frowned at his plate. 'And what exactly are you doing?'

Keir looked down and realized he had, once again, dismembered and dissected his dinner in such a way as to lay out his main course's bone structure for examination. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I've just never seen birds like these. I keep trying to figure out how they fly.'

'Birds don't fly,' she said with an air of great patience. 'Flying is something you do under gravity. Virgan birds swim. Like fish. Or people.'

'Ah. I suppose.' He grinned at the little skeleton.

Leal eyed him. 'You're having the time of your life, aren't you?'

He shrugged. 'I really don't know, I haven't had a moment to think about it.' It was true; he was starting to feel safe again here in Virga--if not feel at home--and Venera kept him too busy to brood about the past. 'I just...' Now he did frown.

'What?'

'I hope I remember all of this later, that's all.'

'And why wouldn't you?'

Because scry used to be my memory, and now it's gone. But he didn't say that, firstly because she wouldn't understand; and secondly because increasingly, he was realizing that he could remember things without using the neural implant system.

This whole whirlwind diplomatic mission, for instance: it seemed every instant was indelibly printed in his mind. The curling mists that enwrapped the frozen city of Seasory were as vivid to him now as when they had arrived there. Mostly what he remembered about Seasory was Leal--Leal emerging from her cabin to breathe deep the brisk air of one of her own country's major trading partners; her craning her neck at the city's sights--its tenements made of ice that loomed over cleated iron streets, the men and women like feathered pillars in their coats, gliding to and fro in the mist. Throughout their visit she had seemed under some spell caused by the permanent darkness and cold; once, Keir had seen her dance a few steps to an inaudible tune when she stood in shadow and thought no one could see her.

He remembered the mechanical back-and-forth of Venera's hips as she stalked straight to the palace of Seasory's satrap to bow here, bow there, give gifts, kiss barons on the cheeks and baronesses on the hand, and then, swaying tick tick tick, leave just as quickly. 'Next stop, Aeolia,' was all she said as Keir and Leal (confusedly looking back at the bright palace where they'd only been for ten minutes) followed.

And he remembered Aeolia. In Aeolia, the skies sang. Rather than single big town wheels, the Aeolians spun thousands of small ones, each boasting a dozen or so buildings. They begrudged their ancient genes that required they spend some time in gravity, so everything of value that they built soared in the weightless spaces between their wheels. Most important of all these creations were the symphonicads: gigantic assemblages that filtered wind through thousands of pipes and horns and across the strings of countless harps and dulcimers. The symphonicads sang, but it was no random clitter-clatter such as a wind chime might make. Their design was so cunning that they improvised melodies and harmonies of entrancing beauty and complexity. The Aeolians staged plays and built brilliantly lit tableaux around them. They hooped wires to catch water, touching a single drop of oil to the stretched surfaces, and built vast intricate cities of quivering rainbow transparency, disguising their town wheels behind bouquets of silvered color.

They feted Venera on a single giant spinning hoop of golden silk. It undulated in the air, turning only as quickly as necessary to keep the tables and chairs in contact with its inner surface. Keir bounced, delighted on this pliant surface whose outer edges rippled in the wind; jugglers and tumblers rolled onto and off the ribbon, the symphonicads chorused like angels, and Venera earnestly declared Slipstream's eternal pledge to defend Aeolia.

The Aeolians laughed. No one attacked them. They were too beautiful.

'No one has ever yet attacked you,' replied Venera. 'But they will. And soon.'

The Aeolians laughed again, but, when they left the next morning, Venera carried with her a sheaf of gilded documents bearing the Aeolian seal. Keir hadn't seen who had given them to her--but then, he'd not had the stamina to stay up half the night talking and drinking as she had.

'Next stop, Emperaza,' Venera had said. And in the Judgment's lounge, she added a green dot to the giant chart that half-filled one wall.

'Memory...' Keir said now. Leal raised an eyebrow expectantly. 'Where I come from, all our experiences are recorded by devices like my dragonflies. Stored in perfect faithful detail. We only use our biological memories to find