Ventus by Karl Schroeder (leveled readers .txt) 📕

surely, but safe. He had feared she would be dead. But that she should be free! And had spared his life! He could not come to terms with it.

She must be riding now, somewhere in the darkness. Would she end that ride by bedding down in the arms of General Armiger? Lavin hugged himself and closed his eyes. He must not think of that. All that mattered was that, as dawn rose tomorrow, she would be alive.

And yet… she would not be safe. In some ways this was the worst outcome. He could pray that she would flee to another nation, and retire in anonymity in some town. Knowing Galas as he did, Lavin knew she would never do that.

No, there were only two possibilities now. Either she would run afoul of his outriders or pickets in the desert towns—and be killed—or she would find some pocket of supporters and try to rebuild her army. And then there would be another siege, this one much shorter and sharper—and she would probably be killed. Lavin knew she would die rather than surrender.

So far, no one knew she had escaped. That was his only card, and he would have to play it carefully.

“Sir!” He turned his head to find a battered-looking soldier puffing his way through the sands. “Commander Hesty has found the woman you were after.”

“Ah. Very good.” Lavin nodded sharply.

And fell down.

*

He was propped up in his camp chair, feeling pale and sure he looked it, when they brought her in. This was the woman he had seen attacking Armiger. She had used some sort of weapon that tore holes in the walls and ceiling. Rumor had it that she had killed a roomful of his men with it. He wasn’t sure he believed that, but the doctors who examined her said she had been shot at close range by a musket, but that the ball had not penetrated her skin. Indeed, nothing could, if you read the evidence of the numerous holes in her armor.

She had been found, heavily bound but alive, in a closet in the tower. The queen’s men thought she was one of Lavin’s invaders, and were surprised when she was not untied, but dragged out into the courtyard with them.

“Your name.” She had not looked at him until he spoke. Now she did, and her gaze was level and calm. It was like matching eyes with another general across the conference table.

“My name is Calandria May.” Her voice was rich and melodious.

“You are dressed in my colors.”

“I am with your army.”

“You are a woman.”

“Some women enlist. That has always happened.”

“Don’t be coy with me. You are not one of my people. You broke through the defenses of a castle under siege, slaughtered everyone in your path, and attempted to kill General Armiger using a weapon that could not have been made on this world.”

She cocked her head, as though he were the one under examination. Battered and scorched though she was, she was still in control of herself. Obviously of noble birth, he thought.

“General Armiger is a threat to your world,” she said.

Lavin barked a laugh. “He’s not that good, madam.”

“I don’t think you take my meaning—”

“I don’t care what you mean. It seems to me that you are the problem at this moment. We have a common enemy in Armiger, it’s true. You may or may not have done my men injury. That’s all beside the point. The Diadem swans are pacing my camp right now, turning over every rock looking for something. I think the thing they are looking for is you.”

Her composure cracked at last. “It’s him! Armiger’s the one they want.”

“In that case, if I offer you to them they will simply return you, and then there’s no harm done. Yes?” He leaned forward (dizziness soared and crashed) and smiled at her.

“You don’t understand! You can’t give me to them. It’s him they want. If they take me they stop searching, and they mustn’t!”

“Gag her.”

She fought. Lavin turned away in distaste, and gestured to Hesty, who waited in the shadows. “Call the swans. Tell them I may have something for them.”

The prisoner was on her knees now, gagged, and glaring at him. Not the first to do that, but the first woman.

He had felt this way the first few times he had ordered men killed. If giving this Lady May to the Winds guaranteed the safety of his men, then he had to do it. Lavin knew nonetheless that he would be thinking about this moment for weeks.

Light welled outside, converging from several directions. The camp fell silent. Seeing those swathes of light through the canvas of the tent made the hairs on Lavin’s neck rise. He clutched the arms of his chair, though he knew he was safe. The soldiers guarding May stood stock-still, their eyes wide. The prisoner had shut her eyes tightly.

Lavin swallowed. He suddenly regretted doing this. Better to have killed her than to hand her over to something so divine and hellish as this thing.

“Put her behind that screen,” he snapped. The soldiers blinked at him. “Hurry!” They quickly complied.

A figure appeared at the doorway. Flame-light washed through the tent from its skin. Though it stood right next to the canvas entrance flap, the cloth did not catch fire. The humans in the tent all stood still, breathing shallowly.

“What have you found?” asked the swan.

“I thought we had found something for you, lord. I was… mistaken.”

The swan turned its head to look directly at the screen behind which he’d hidden the prisoner.

“What is that? It is a pathology. There is pathology in its skin, and in its skull. This may be what we seek.” The swan stepped inside. A bright spot appeared on the tent’s roof directly above its head.

Lavin’s heart sank. He gestured to the soldiers. “Bring her out.” As they dragged her around the screen, the swan reached out and grabbed Calandria May’s arm. She shrieked around the gag.

The swan walked out of the tent, dragging the woman as though she weighed nothing. The light receded, but for a long while no one moved.

“Help me up,” Lavin whispered after a time. Leaning on Hesty, he went to the flap of the tent and looked out.

From horizon to horizon, the familiar, delicate stars blazed in a sky so cleanly black he might have wept, had he not outgrown tears on the battlefield.

*

Near dawn, Lavin decided he could finally afford to snatch some sleep. The world was spinning, and everything had that speckly quality that came to him in states of extreme exhaustion. He kept losing track of his words in mid-sentence. But everything had to be organized to his satisfaction before he could rest.

“…Ten squads only? Are you sure?” Hesty looked as tired as Lavin felt, and was a damn sight more irritable.

“We can’t let anyone know that she’s escaped. It might encourage more rebellion. We have it crushed now, Hesty, you know that! As long as they believe the queen is dead, they’ve no focus.”

Hesty bowed and took his leave. Lavin lay down, knitting his hands behind his head, and smiled at the dark canvas overhead.

Ten groups of men would fan out in the morning, to look for the queen. The leaders of each had been told the truth; the others would know only that they sought a noble woman and her consort, who had to be returned alive. Lavin was confident he would be able to conduct the search unobtrusively; hundreds of people had seen the swans cluster around his tent last night, then rise into the sky carrying with them a dark-haired woman. Lavin had not had to invent the story that this was Galas—it was all through the valley almost before he knew it. Depending on which side you were on, the Winds had either summoned her to divine retribution, or snatched her from the jaws of Lavin’s executioners. It was dangerous to play with this myth, but when he had her in his custody again he intended to say that he had given her to the Winds for judgement, and that they had granted her an amnesty, and returned her to Ventus on condition that she abdicate and retire completely from political life. It was a deliciously simple plan. Galas would continue to be revered as a darling of the Winds; she would be safe, yet no one would follow her commands.

Things might still work out perfectly.

He turned on his side to sleep. The last thing he did was run a finger around the rough rim of the ring he had taken from the ancient warrior.

Tradition would be upheld, and Galas would not die.

He slept.

36

It was winter in Hamburg. A thousand years of history surrounded Marya Mounce, all of it blanketed by white. The air smelled fresh, clean like Ventus. Had she not walked on that other world for some weeks, she would have been overwhelmed by Earth. As it was, she walked the streets of the tourist-oriented Old Town with nothing but a pair of infrared emitters bobbing along behind her, conspicuously naked save for a school of fish that swirled around her. She had only been here for two days, but that was long enough to learn that if the locals saw you as an offworlder, they would take every advantage they could.

Obviously used to the cold, unfazed by patches of snow and ice in the streets, she passed for a local until she opened her mouth. Her offworld accent betrayed her, but so far today that had not been a problem.

She had picked her route carefully. After breakfast at the quaint 27th-century inn where she and Axel lodged, she had walked to the center of the Old Town, to view the crumbling concrete memorial erected a thousand years ago, after the failed insurrection of the thalience cult. It was strange and magical for her to walk up to it and touch the rough old surface, and know that while this spire was being built, the first Winds were being born on far distant Ventus.

Even a year ago she wouldn’t have bothered to come here. She would have visited in inscape, because there she could have a full sensory impression of the place, and flip through night and day, summer and winter, and even different eras of the city. She would have said it was better than really being here.

It was her hand that touched the stone today. It was real Earth air she breathed. Maybe the experience was no more detailed than an inscape visit would have been. She was deeply moved anyway.

Too bad Axel wasn’t here to share the moment; for sure he would have some ironic perspective on this chunk of living history. There were gods older than this spire, he’d say. The Government of Archipelago was almost as old, and it was always available to talk. If you wanted to talk history, why not just ask it?

Because, she knew now, there was a piece missing from the records—something even the gods didn’t know. If the Government knew, it wasn’t sharing.

Anyway, Axel had his own mission, no less important than hers. This morning he had left the inn with the head of Turcaret under his arm. By tonight the dead nobleman’s DNA would be dissected and analyzed segment by segment. Over supper Axel might be able to tell her in what way, if any, Turcaret differed from his fellow Ventusians.

With luck she’d have something equally interesting to tell him.

They had left the demigod they now called the Voice in a Government