Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

'I do believe we're having a ball,' said Hayden dryly. 'I hate these things.'

'You just haven't attended one with the right partner,' she countered.

'Speaking of which, where's your young man? Keir?'

'He's not as young as he looks. And I don't know. I haven't seen him since this afternoon.' She frowned. 'He's probably inspecting the wheel's buttresses or something. He's as much an engineer as you are.'

'You say that as if it were a bad thing.' He cocked his arm for her to hold and they began to stroll down the steps.

'You're both boys when you do that. Be a man for the evening.'

His brows wrinkled with worry. 'Is that going to involve dancing?'

'I fear it may.' She smiled at Eustace Loll's goons as they passed them.

'I'll dance if you'll wear a gown.'

'Cheeky! --Oh, all right.'

They entered the swirl of color and waistcoats and jewelery as, unnoticed, Hayden's sun faded into nightly slumber overhead.

* * *

DINNER HAD BEEN served. Jugglers and acrobats had flown and tossed one another across the dance floor. As they pranced away Antaea saw the delegates looking askance at one another. Despite the best efforts of their hosts, they had not come to form any sort of community during the day. They were here because they agreed there might be a threat to Virga that the Home Guard couldn't deal with alone. Beyond that, they were suspicious.

The orchestra had begun to play, but nobody ventured onto the dance floor.

Antaea was neither dressed nor inclined to dance, but nonetheless she cursed under her breath and glanced around for a partner. Somebody would have to start things--but there stood Chaison, forlorn without his wife by his side. Should she...? No, no, that would be disastrous in so many ways.

Suddenly the crowd parted and two lines of people filed onto the floor: the female acrobats, smiling, perfumed and dressed in sparkles and crinoline; and a column of extremely tall, extremely handsome Aerie naval officers. The lines dissolved in the center of the floor and the acrobats and officers walked up to hesitant men and women in the crowd, and curtsied and bowed.

Gray-haired men paired off with the young acrobats; matrons and ingenues stepped out with the officers; and suddenly it was a ball. Antaea blew out a breath and rolled her shoulders. Yet another reminder of a world that she would never feel a part of.

She took a seat at an empty table. Hayden and his men, as well as Travis, Lacerta, and Sayrea Airsigh's Last Liners were all sitting nearby, but she had no desire to join them. The rest of the guests were milling in strategic ways, all very political; but no one came near Antaea.

--That is, until Lady Inshiri strolled over and gathered her skirts to sit opposite her. 'Ah, the author!' When Antaea didn't reply, the lady nodded to the Home Guard contingent and said, 'They don't seem to like you,' in a confiding tone.

Antaea eyed her. 'What's to like?'

'Why, whatever do you mean? You're the one who saved their collective asses, if I've heard the story correctly. If not for you, Candesce would now be in the hands of--' Inshiri paused. 'Whose hands, exactly?'

'Your friends over there,' Antaea nodded at the handsome outsiders, 'would say it was the emissary's people. Or some such.'

'And I'll bet,' said Inshiri ironically, 'that this emissary would say it was these very people'--and here she waved brightly at them--'who tricked your leader Gonlin into going after the key to Candesce, thence to open the sun of suns, switch off Virga's defensive field, and hand them our whole world on a platter.'

'That is the argument,' Antaea said neutrally.

'A bit of a 'my fault/your fault' tiff, don't you think? Though why anyone should want this dreary little world I don't know. Yet, I do remain puzzled by one thing.' When Antaea didn't prompt her, Inshiri went on. 'You were there. You met the creature that they--whoever 'they' are--sent to penetrate Candesce. I understand it took the form of your sister. So you must have looked it in the eye--you must have seen what kind of being it was.'

Antaea turned away. She had seen. After she'd delivered Chaison Fanning to him, Gonlin had told Antaea that she was free to go, and that her sister was waiting for her in a nearby building. Antaea had put her hand on the door latch to that hut, then hesitated, and gone around the side to look in a grimy window. It had looked like Telen standing there--yet she didn't move, didn't even blink, just stood gazing at the door Antaea was supposed to come through. Her uncanny stillness had had the air of an automaton to it--of something without a mind.

She couldn't deny to herself that Leal's description of the emissary had sounded a lot like what she'd seen in Telen. But she would never admit that to Inshiri, whom Jacoby Sarto had painted as the vilest of political criminals.

'I've learned not to trust my own judgment in some things,' she said finally, and turned a quick and formal smile on Inshiri. 'It's not my place to judge who's lying unless I can catch them in the lie. That's why I brought Hayden Griffin here: because Eustace Loll, at least, is lying.'

'Let me put it another way,' said Inshiri in a musing tone. 'If you had to give something up--power, rights, or, say, secrets--who would you rather give them up to: a human being, however different in culture and morality they may be from you; or something that doesn't even think, but claims to have your best interests in mind?'

'Is one of my options 'whichever side you're not on'?'

Inshiri laughed lightly. 'You have heard of me. Fair enough--but I think that most people would choose the worst possible human tyranny over any tyranny by the nonhuman, for the simple reason