And on the dark empty roof, cold fresh air blew in from the abandoned lofts of Winter.

She threw back the trapdoor and stalked to the roof's edge. These were the final steps of her old life, she felt. Venera was about to mourn, something she had never done and did not know how to do. She stepped onto a swaying platform and began winching it down, feeling the uncoiling certainty of her husband's death in her gut. It was like a monster shaking itself awake; any moment now it would devour her, and who knew what would happen then? Her only defense was to keep turning the wheel to winch herself down. She focused her eyes on the tall grass that swayed at the foot of Liris, willing it closer.

In the dim light cast by Lesser Spyre, Venera Fanning walked into the wild acres of the disputed territories. She moved aimlessly at first, admiring the glittering lights overhead and the vast arcs of land and forest that swept up and past them.

When she lowered her eyes it was to see the black silhouette of a man separate itself from a grove of trees ahead of her. Venera didn't pause, but turned slightly towards the figure. He came out to meet her, and she nodded to him when he offered his arm for her to lean on.

"I've been waiting for you,” said Garth Diamandis.

They walked into the darkness under the trees.

7

Venera didn’t really notice the passage of the next few days. She stayed with Diamandis in a clapboard hut near the edge of the world and did little but eat and sleep. He came and went, discreet as always; his forays were usually nocturnal and he slept when she was awake.

Periodically she stepped to the doorway of the flimsy hideout and listened to the wind. It tore and gabbled, moaned and hissed incessantly, and in it she learned to hear voices. They were of people she’d known—her father, her sisters, sometimes random members of the crew of the Rook, whom she had not really gotten to know but had heard all about her during her adventures with that ship.

She strained to hear her husband’s voice in the rush, but his was the only voice she could not summon.

One dawn she was fixing breakfast (with little success, having never learned to cook) when Garth poked his head around the doorjamb and said, “You’ve disturbed a whole nest of hornets, did you know that?” He strolled in, looking pleased with himself. “More like a nest of whales—or capital bugs, even. There’s covert patrols crawling all over the place.”

She glared at him. “What makes you think they’re after me?”

“You’re the only piece out of place on this particular board,” said Diamandis. He let gravity settle him into one of the hut’s two chairs. “A queen in motion, judging by the furor. I’m just a pawn, so they don’t see me—and as long as they don’t, they can’t catch you either.”

“Try this.” She slammed a plate down in front of him. He eyed it dubiously.

“Mind telling me what you did?”

“Did?” She gnawed her lip, ignoring the stabbing pain in her jaw. “Not very much. I may have assassinated someone.”

“Mayhave?” He chortled. “You’re not sure?” She simply shrugged. Diamandis’s expression softened. “Why am I not surprised,” he said under his breath.

They ate in silence. If this day were to follow the pattern of the last few, Diamandis would now have fallen onto the cot Venera had just vacated, and would immediately commence to snore in competition with the wind. Instead, he looked at her seriously and said, “It’s time for you to make a decision.”

“Oh?” She folded her hands in her lap listlessly. “About what?”

He scowled. “Venera, I utterly adore you. Were I twenty years younger you wouldn’t be safe around me. As it is, you’re eating me out of house and home and having an extra mouth to feed is, well, tiring.”

“Ah.” Venera brightened just a little. “The conversation my father and I never had.”

Hiding his grin, Diamandis ticked points off on his fingers. “One: you can give yourself up to the men in armor who are looking for you. Two: you can make yourself useful by going with me on my nightly sorties. Three: you can leave Spyre. Or, four—”

“I thought you said I could never leave,” she said, frowning.

“I lied.” Seeing her expression, he rubbed at his chin and looked away. “Well, I had a beautiful young woman in my bed, even if I wasn’t in there with her, so why would I let her go so easily? Yes, there is a way out of Spyre—potentially. But it would be dangerous.”

“I don’t care. Show me.” She stood up.

“Sit down, sit down. It’s daytime, and I’m tired. I need to sleep first. It’s a long trek to the bomb bays. And anyway… don’t you want to hear about the fourth option?”

“There is no other option.”

He sighed in obvious disappointment. “All right. Let me sleep, then. We’ll visit the site tonight and you can decide whether it’s truly what you want to do.”

They picked their way through a field of weeds. Lesser Spyre twirled far above. The dark houses of the great families surrounded them, curving upward in two directions to form a blotted sky. Venera had examined those estates as they walked; she’d hardly had the leisure time to do so on her disastrous run to the edge of the world. Now, as the rust-eaten iron gates and crumbling battlements eased by, she had time to realize just how strange a place Spyre was.

On the steep roof of a building half-hidden by century oaks, she had seen a golden boy singing. At first she had taken him for some automaton, but then he slipped and caught himself. The boy was centered in bright spotlights and he held a golden olive branch over his head. Whether there was an audience for his performance in the gardens or balconies below; whether he did this every night or if it were some rare ceremony she had chanced to see—these things she would never know. She had touched Garth’s shoulder and pointed. He merely shrugged.

Other estates were resolutely dark, their buildings choked in vines and their grounds overgrown with brambles. She had walked up to the gate of one such to peer between the leaves. Garth had pulled her back. “They’ll shoot you,” he’d said.

In some places the very architecture had turned inward, becoming incomprehensible, even impossible for humans to inhabit. Strange cancerous additions were flocked onto the sides of stately manors, mazes drawn in stone over entire grounds. Strange piping echoed from one dark entranceway, the rushing sound of wings from another. At one point Venera and Garth crossed a line of strange footprints, all the toes pointed inward and the indentations heavy on the outside as if the dozens of people who had made them were all terribly bow-legged.

It did no good to look away from these sights. Venera occasionally glanced at the sky, but the sky was paved with yet more estates. After each glance she would hunch unconsciously away, and each time, a pulse of anger would shoot through her and she would straighten her shoulders and scowl.

Venera couldn’t hide her nervousness. “Is it much further?”

“You whine like a child. This way. Mind the nails.”

“Garth, you remind me of someone but I can’t figure out who.”

“Ah! A treasured lover, no doubt. The one that got away, perhaps?—Wait, don’t tell me, I prefer to wallow in my fantasies.”

“…A particularly annoying footman my mother had?”

“Madam, you wound me. Besides, I don’t believe you.”

“If there really is a way off of Spyre, why haven’t you ever taken it?”

He stopped and looked back at her. Little more than a silhouette in the dim light, Diamandis still conveyed disappointment in the tilt of his shoulders and head. “Are you deliberately provoking me?”

Venera caught up to him. “No,” she said, putting her fists on her hips. “If this exit is so dangerous that you chose not to use it, I want to know.”