Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

hostages, 'contemplate where in the world they would rather be these days. Unless, that is, you have a better idea...?'

As she'd spoken, she had been backing away, leaving Derance standing with his detonator in the center of the cowering nobles. Jacoby's men began lowering their pistols, glancing to him for permission. He flicked his hand at them, and the guns went down.

Derance sighed heavily. 'You just don't understand who you're up against,' he said. Then he pushed the detonator button.

Nothing happened.

After a moment a faint voice from the edge of the crowd said, 'Ah, y-yes, h-here it is. I, um, it took me a minute longer than, you know--but I found the right fuse line, and well...' A gangly man with thick glasses (and wearing the Slipstream uniform) held up two halves of a cut wire.

'Take that one,' Venera said, pointing to Derance. Jacoby raised his pistol and shot Derance in the head. Dozens of rifles were suddenly aimed at him, as the agent of Artificial Nature crumpled to the plank floor.

'Okay, leave that one,' said Venera. 'But take him.' With a quite unpleasant smile, she aimed her own pistol at Jacoby.

16

'THIS IS REALLY quite nostalgic,' said Jacoby as soldiers bound his hands behind him. He smiled at Venera, then winced as one of the men brushed against his wound.

'Why'd you shoot that man?' she snapped.

'So that we'd be free to talk.'

'I'm not in the mood.' Her expression told him she really would be happy to shoot him if he said another word. He shrugged and focused his attention on his nervous men, making eye contact with each in turn and nodding or otherwise indicating his confidence that they would survive this.

Meanwhile, Venera had swung about to face the hostages. 'You lot can do what you will!' she told them. 'I think it should be clear to you now that your own people don't give a damn about you.'

'Commander!' A soldier ran up and saluted hastily. 'We're cut off!'

For the first time, Venera looked surprised. 'What do you mean cut off? We brought two cruisers!'

'Apparently they've had to retreat!' Now Jacoby could hear it: the unsteady pop-pop of small-arms fire echoing through the dangling buildings.

Venera hauled Jacoby to his feet and marched him away from his companions. 'Our reunion may be briefer than I'd hoped,' she said. 'First of all, thank you for not harming my actors. The fact that you treated them well will stand you in good stead when I decide whether to kill you or not.'

'Oh, come now, Venera, we've been down this road before,' he said. 'You're spiteful and impulsive, but you never drop a trinket if it might end up being valuable to you.'

'And you're a trinket?' She'd brought them out of the tent and to the edge of the street span. The shifting rooftops of Fracas made a bewildering kaleidoscope below. Fanning put the barrel of her pistol to Jacoby's ear and said, 'We need to get out of here. You'll survive if you help. What's it to be?'

The gunfire was coming from above them. Jacoby couldn't turn his head, but caught a glimpse of uniformed figures on nearby rooftops. 'Well, it depends,' he said. 'Where is it you want to get to?'

'First of all: Why are my ships retreating?'

He thought about how little he could get away with telling her. 'There's guns mounted in some of the outside buildings. They can hit anything to either side of the city's disk. Your ships would have to put themselves in the plane of the city's rotation to avoid them, and even then, we can drop bombs on them from the lower towers...'

'But not very accurately. And they could obliterate Fracas from there.'

'But you wouldn't. The people here are innocent.'

'So were the people of Spyre.'

He scoffed. 'You hold too high an opinion of yourself. It wasn't you who destroyed Spyre. It was the generals. They weakened it--'

'Whatever,' she said, but the pistol left his temple. 'The point is,' she went on, 'if we go out we'll be shot.' She nodded past the verticals of cable and chain. 'The only way is to go down.' She meant toward the outer rim of the spinning ring of buildings. -- And she was right, in a way: from the rim one could simply let go and fall away in the plane of the city's rotation--safe from the guns mounted on either side of the disk of spokes.

'You could do that, but...' By now, and according to plan, her people were trapped. She had to surrender. 'There are no ships or bikes in the lower mobiles,' he pointed out. 'They're only at the docks, at the center of the spokes, and to get from the axle to the rim you'd have to fly past all the guns. You'd be blown to pieces.'

She peered over the railing. 'Only if we fly outside the city.'

While he tried to make sense of that comment, she turned decisively. 'Back to the docks!' she commanded her men; but one of her lieutenants shook his head.

'They've taken out the staircase, and stationed themselves on the rooftops above us,' he said. 'We have no way to climb.' He was one of the baroquely armored men, and he'd spoken in an accent Jacoby recognized.

'We'll see about that.' She turned to the bespectacled bomb expert. 'Guesses on how much tension these are under?' She slapped one of the thick ropes that held up the street.