Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

This was fascinating. Was the younger actress getting cold feet? Was she about to drop the facade and confess in the hope that Jacoby would let her go? Or was her fear part of the performance?

Up ahead, young Dorion had put away his sword, although he still looked unhappy as he entered the tent with the matron.

'So it seems the rumors were right,' faux Thavia said to Jacoby. 'You've been accumulating hostages.'

'And yet, you still came here,' he said, shaking his head.

The fake Thavia looked grim. Her friends, stricken and furious by turns, were herded up to the tent where smiling pageboys in dark livery put them into single file. Jacoby watched in bemusement as they were surrounded by the rest of his team, who had not drawn but prominently displayed their holstered guns. They were frisked efficiently but quickly.

Jacoby had to figure out what they were doing. So far, he'd anticipated Venera perfectly. The problem was, if he was right, things were about to spiral dangerously close to out of control. He'd anticipated that, too--and ultimately decided that there was no easier way to get what he wanted.

Since none of the three imposters had any weapons on them, Jacoby waved them through the flap into the larger area. There they found the young nobleman angrily talking to the older woman, who was in tears.

'I had to, I had to,' she burst out. 'They were going to shoot you if you continued.'

'Then at least someone else might have seen, and gotten the word out that this was a trap,' he said contemptuously.

'Dorion, I--'

'Enough!'

Jacoby didn't really care what went on between them; he had a decision to make. He stood for a long moment, gazing at the partitions at the far end of the tent. His mouth was a thin, compressed line. Finally he turned to faux Thavia and said, 'Make yourselves small.' Then he shoved his way through the crowd of distraught nobility that filled the place.

The tent was about thirty feet wide, and twice that long. Jacoby's men had tightly tied down its green canvas sides, and the exits at each end were heavily guarded. Conspicuously, sticks of high explosives hung at regular intervals about ten feet above the heads of the people gathered here.

Jacoby had processed about a hundred hostages over the past several weeks, and none had left this tent once they arrived. A veritable who's who of social standing and ancient nobility sat on low benches, or on the floor, or stood talking in disconsolate groups. There were privies and showers behind a set of curtains, but otherwise, there was nothing for them to do but wait. To them, this deprivation must seem like Hell; but it was a lot better than Sacrus's holding pens had been in Jacoby's day. He had no time for their whining.

He quickly paced to the other end of the space, where a series of low tables and better-quality screens demarcated the administration area. 'That's the last of them,' he announced as he rounded one of the screens.

The local Fracas boys glanced at one another indifferently, then looked to the other man who waited with them.

'Let's move on to the next phase,' said Derance of Arena.

Jacoby had told the men that 'Arena' was a distant nation in Virga--but he himself knew the man was from the arena, that mysterious place surrounding Virga that Leal Maspeth had talked of. It was clear he was different. He had amazing presence, even more than Jacoby himself. In a tight space like this, all eyes instinctively went to him. His face was chiseled and his eyes intense blue, and just a touch of gray had started to leaven the black hair at his temples. His voice was low and resonant, as instantly commanding as his appearance.

None of that impressed Jacoby. The sheer workmanship of him, though--to an expert in power like Jacoby Sarto of Sacrus, that was impressive. Inshiri had put him here as Jacoby's minder.

Jacoby despised him.

Derance walked over to a bronze bell on a stand, and began tapping it with a hammer. As the long notes rolled through the tent, Jacoby could hear the murmur of conversation diminish, then cease.

A low podium stood near the tables. Derance walked over to it, and held up his hands for silence. He'd already had it, but at his gesture a low angry hiss came from the crowd.

'I know you're all upset,' he called out. 'And I apologize for how long this is taking. Some of you have been here for weeks, I know. We've had some trouble coordinating with the transfer ship. But rest assured, everything's on schedule now--'

'What schedule?' somebody shouted. 'Who're you?' somebody else demanded, and 'What transfer?' came from someone else. Jacoby scanned the crowd for any sign of real trouble, but these members of the vaunted ruling class all looked properly cowed--except ... The faux Thavia had her hand on the arm of the young hothead, Dorion, and now she had a half-smile on her face that might have alarmed Jacoby if hadn't already figured out what was coming. He signaled his own men to alert the pickets he'd set up several blocks away.

After he got a confirmatory wave of reply he quickly looked for the other imposters, who weren't near faux Thavia. He spotted them circulating through the crowd, asking something of each hostage in turn. They looked for all the world like they were taking attendance.

Derance raised his hands for quiet again, and said, 'You were all told you had an important role to play in coming here. That wasn't a lie. Your masters have awarded you the honor of becoming ambassadors to your brothers and sisters from beyond the walls of Virga--' He didn't get to finish as pandemonium broke out.

Jacoby heard one young lady say something about 'taking us to the realm of the dead.' He'd expected this; superstitious fools. Other hostages were trading stories they'd heard about what lay beyond Virga: rumors, legends, even plotlines to a lurid novel or two, now spouted as fact. What interested Jacoby, though, was that the imposter servants had finished whatever it was there were doing. Both raised their arms to signal to their mistress, and she nodded.

As he'd suspected, these three had already known what they were getting into when they arrived here. 'I think