Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

His expression softened; his shoulders slumped. He looked away from the crowd, and gave a great sigh. Then he said, 'We couldn't do it anymore.'

Leal had retaken her seat. She was boiling with rage at this interruption, and the stagy flamboyance of Ferance and her pet Guardsmen. Most of all, she was furious at Loll. There was that pistol on the podium ...

'We of the First Line defend the walls of Virga,' said Remoran. 'Because we do that, we move in and out of the world. That confers advantages to us--unfair advantages. We see what humanity could be like, if only it were freed of the disease, infirmity, and ignorance that rule inside Virga. For centuries now, we've held our tongues because of our ancient pact with the founding nations of the world. Leave us alone, they'd commanded when they founded our order. Let nothing from beyond the world touch us.

'We do our job very well. If, in the past several years, you've heard rumors of attempts to pierce the world's walls--well, just think of all the attacks you never heard of, because we foiled them.'

He shrugged and started to pace again. 'We get compensated for our work. We suffer no disease and we live to fantastic ages, because we can go outside to treat these things. And yet, you cannot.

'This umbrella of protection has always been extended to our immediate families. That's been the benefit that Guardsmen treasured the most. It's selfish, I know, that we can enjoy these benefits and you can't--but that was the pact, we always thought. Our pact with the people of Virga. Except, it's not, is it?'

He spread his arms to encompass the crowd. 'Who here signed that pact? Who even knew of it?' Nobody said anything. 'Our pact was made with your ancestors, hundreds of years ago. They chose-- not you.'

Now he put his hand to his face, looking pained. It was, Leal thought, an extraordinary performance, because it was exactly not what she'd expected from this huge, intimidating man.

'I have to make you understand,' he said with apparent reluctance, 'so I'm going to confess to you. This will be my legacy, I suspect--just this one story, and it's not a story I ever wanted anyone to know.'

He grimaced at the crowd. 'I betrayed my wife. --You see, she had a cousin, and after ten years of marriage, I fell in love with that cousin. I'll spare you the details. The point is that, in the midst of all of that, I was called to the walls, and while I was away a plague hit our town.

'My family lived in the principalities, the safest, most civilized, richest place in Virga--but days from the walls. Still vulnerable to disease, and war, and all the insanities of our backward world. Some miasma of air, a cloud whose water droplets contained a pathogen easily cured at the walls, had drifted through the principalities and left vomiting, diarrhea, and death in its wake. When I heard about the outbreak I took the fastest ship home, and when I got there discovered that my wife, Miranda, was ill--and so was my beloved Elize, her cousin.

'Our rules were clear,' he said heavily. 'The immediate family of Guardsmen can be taken to the walls and cured--if there's time, because days can make a difference. I could certainly save my wife, but...' He fell silent, and when he began again, his voice cracked, 'she wasn't the one I wanted to save.'

The chamber had fallen into hushed silence. Leal was astonished, and she could tell that everyone else was, too.

Remoran pulled himself together. 'I didn't know what to do. Could I be such a villain as to divorce my wife and marry Elize just so I could bring her to be healed instead? I did everything I could to treat them both, but the medicines I'd brought from the walls didn't work--didn't work--in Virga!

'I dithered for days, and then, heartbroken, I made my decision. I gathered Miranda from her sickbed and we set out for the walls. But I'd waited too long. She died on the way.' He closed his eyes.

'I turned the ship around. I raced home. But again, I was too late. Elize died in her sleep just hours before I reached her side. I lost them both...'

Again, he struggled to compose himself. Then he seemed to expand, shoulders no longer slumped, face clear and determined. 'Who here wants their loved ones to die? Who here wants to die themselves? That is the pact our ancestors made. Leal Maspeth admits that they traded away immortality, in favor of pain, disease, and death, all for some illusion of meaning? Well, forget meaning. Give me love. Give me back my love ...

'There is another way. Our brothers from beyond the walls have always been troubled by our tragic lives, and they've made us an offer. Let's dial down Candesce's suppressive field, and for God's sake, let some aid and respite into this suffering world. Miranda didn't have to die. Elize didn't have to die; neither do any of us, ever again.

'Keep hiding in ignorance and misery, and condemn your own children to death--or open the doors and let choice into their lives. Decide which you want. May you decide ... more wisely than I did.'

He hung his head, turned, and left the stage.

* * *

IT TOOK A while for Fanning to regain control of the crowd and move the colloquy back onto its original program, but Keir didn't pay much attention; he was watching Leal. He was proud to see her recover quickly from having her passionate confession derailed by Remoran's dramatism. She was obviously upset, but it seemed that she had little sympathy for her own feelings. Fear, doubt, any sort of helplessness--they just made her angry at herself, and then she used the anger to prop up her indomitable sense of purpose. Soon, she was leading a breakout session on Virgan history, corralling and guiding a small mob of generals, high priests, and cabinet ministers as if they were recalcitrant schoolboys. Keir watched for a little while, but there was little he could do to help and he soon wandered away.

His role would be to help describe what the world outside Virga was like, but Remoran had set up multiple roadblocks to doing that effectively. So, while Fanning's strategists talked about how to proceed, he had nothing to do. The funny thing was that for the first while it was like being back in Brink, a child wandering through an awesome forest of adults. But then, gradually, a quiet voice somewhere inside him began to comment on those adults--not as a child, but as one of them.

They were so flawed, so obvious in their obsessions and willful blindness. Worst of all, they lacked scry, which could have so easily coordinated this fractious, chaotic tumble of disputes and paranoia. It was a miracle they were here at all, a miracle they were getting anything done. Keir began watching for patterns of interaction. Half- consciously, he was building a model of the meeting's social dynamics in his head.

'Keir Chen?' A page bowed to him. The boy was little older than Keir had recently thought he himself was.