Moss indicated for her to take the single wooden chair; he managed one of his mangled smiles as he plunked himself down on the bed. “Wh-who says I w-w-won’t?” he said. “H-have to get the sm-smell out first.”

Venera laughed, then winced at the shards of pain that shot through her jaw and skull. “Good for you,” she said past gritted teeth. “I trust you’ve been well since I left?” He shrugged. “And Liris? Made any new sales?”

“W-what do you want?”

Tired and in pain as she was, Venera would have been more than happy to come to the point. But, “First of all, I have to ask you something,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”

“Of c-course. You are V-Venera F-Fanning, from—”

“Oh, but I’m not—at least, not anymore.” She grimaced at his annoyed expression. “I have a new name, Moss. Have you heard of Amandera Thrace-Guiles?”

His reaction was comically perfect. He stared, his eyes wide and his mouth open, for a good five seconds. Then he brayed his difficult laugh. “Odess was r-right! And h-here I thought he was m-mistaking every new face for s-somebody he knew.” He laughed again.

Venera examined her nails coolly. “I’m glad I amuse you,” she said. “But my own adventures hardly seem unique these days.”

The grin left his face. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“Not that you have any obligation to tell me anything,” she said, “but… surely you’ve seen that there are odd things afoot in Greater Spyre. Gangs of soldiers wandering in the dark… backroom alliances being made and broken. Something’s afoot, don’t you agree?”

He sat up straight. “Th-the fair is full of rumors. Some of the l-lesser nations have been losing people.”

“Losing them? What do you mean?”

“When the f-first of our people v-vanished, we assumed M-Margit’s supporters were leaving. I th-thought it was o-only us. But others have also lost people.”

“How many of yours have left?” she asked seriously.

He held up one hand, fingers splayed. Five, then. For a miniature nation like Liris, that was too many.

“Do you have any idea where they went?” she asked.

Moss stood up, walked to the door, and listened at it for a moment. Then he turned and leaned on it. “Sacrus,” he said flatly.

“It can’t be a coincidence,” she said. “I came here to talk to you about them. They… they have one of my people. Moss, you know what they’re capable of. I have to get him back.”

Her words had a powerful effect on Moss. He drew himself up to his full height, and for a moment his face lost its devastated expression; in that moment she glimpsed the determined, intelligent man who hid deep inside his ravaged psyche. Then his features collapsed back to their normal, woebegone state. He raised shaking hands and pressed his palms against his ears.

He said something, almost unintelligibly; after a moment Venera realized he’d said, “Are they toying with th-these recruits?”

“No,” she countered hastily. “My man is a prisoner. The recruits or whatever they are… Moss, Sacrus has a reason to want an army of its own, possibly for the first time. They’ve finally discovered an ambition worth leaving their own doorstep.” She said this with contempt, but in her imagination she saw the vast glowing bubble of nations that made up the principalities of Candesce. “They don’t have the population to support what I think they’re planning. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve been recruiting from the more secretive nations. Maybe they’ve always done it but never needed them all before. Now they’re activating them.”

Puzzlement spread slowly across Moss’ face. “An a-army? What for?”

Venera took a deep breath, then said, “They believe they have the means to conquer the principalities of Candesce.”

He stared at her. “A-and do they?”

“Yes,” she admitted, looking at her hands. “I brought it to them.”

He said nothing; Venera’s mind was already racing ahead. “Their force must be small by my standards,” she said. “Maybe two thousand people. They’d be overwhelmed in any fair fight, but they don’t intend to fight fair. If we could warn the principalities, they could blockade Spyre. But we’d need to get a ship out.”

“Uh-unlikely,” said Moss, with a sour expression. “One thing I d-do know about Sacrus is that they have been buying ships.”

“What else can we do?” she asked tiredly. “Attack them ourselves?”

“Y-you didn’t come to ask me to h-help you do that?”

She laughed humorlessly. “Buridan and Liris against Sacrus? That would be suicidal.”

He nodded, but suddenly had a faraway look in his eye. “No,” Venera continued. “I came to ask you to help me break into Sacrus’s prison and extract my man. I have a plan that I think will work. Margit told me where they keep their ‘acquisitions.’ I believe they view people as objects, too, so he’s likely to be in that place.”

“Th-they guard their lands on the ground and a-above it,” said Moss skeptically. But Venera smiled at that.

“I don’t intend to come in by either route,” she said. “But I need a squad of soldiers, at least a score of them. I have some of the forces I need, or I will,” she half smiled. “But I need others I can trust. Will your people do it?”

Now it was his turn to smile. “S-strike a blow against Sacrus? Of c-course! But once the other nations who’ve l-lost people find out it was S-Sacrus stole them, y-you’ll have more allies. A d-dozen at least.”

Venera hadn’t considered such a possibility. Allies? “I suppose we could count on one or two of the countries whose debts we forgave,” she said slowly. “A couple of others might join us just out of devilment.” She was thinking of Pamela Anseratte as she said this. Then she shook her head. “No—it’s still not enough.”

Moss gave his damaged laugh. “Y-you’ve f-forgotten the most important faction, Venera,” he said. “And they have no l-love for Sacrus.”

Venera rubbed her eyes. She was too tired and her head hurt too much to guess his meaning. “Who?” she asked irritably.

Moss opened the door and bowed slightly as he held it for her. “You c-came in s-secret. You should return before Candesce l-lights. We will assemble a force f-for you.

“And I will't-talk… to the preservationists.”

14

“This is the window she was signaling from,” said Bryce. He had his arms folded tightly to his chest and a muscle jumped in his jaw. Long tonguelike curls of wallpaper trembled over his shoulder in the constantly moving air. “I watched her send the whole message, clicking the little door of her lantern like she’d been doing light codes her whole life. She didn’t even bother to encrypt the message.”

Venera had gotten the story out of him in fits and starts, as memory and anger distracted him in turn. Cassia had been one of Bryce’s first recruits. They had argued with their foreheads together in the dark bars that peppered Lesser Spyre’s red-light district, and defaced buildings and thrown rocks at council parades. It was her urging that had led him down the path to terrorism, he admitted. “And all along, I was a project of hers—some kind of entrance exam to the academy of traitors in Sacrus!” He slammed his fist against the wall.

“Well.” Venera shaded her eyes with her hand and peered through the freshly-installed glass. “In the end, you were the one who fooled her. And she’s the one pent up in a locker downstairs.”

He didn’t look mollified. The false attack plan had been Venera’s idea, after all; all Bryce had done was bring his lieutenants together to reveal the target of their next bombing, a Sacrus warehouse in Lesser Spyre. All three of the lieutenants had expressed enthusiasm, Cassia perhaps most of all. But as soon as the planning meeting broke up she had come down to this disused pantry midway up the side of Buridan Tower—and had started signaling.

Venera could see why she would have favored this room for more than its writhing, peeled wallpaper. From here you had a clear line of sight to the walls of Sacrus, which ran in uneven maze-like lines just past a hedge of trees and a preservationist siding. From the center of the vast estate, a single monolithic building rose hundreds of feet into the afternoon air. Venera imagined a tiny flicker of light appearing somewhere on the side of that edifice—the rapid blink blink of a message or instruction for Cassia. Bryce was having the place watched round the clock, but so far Sacrus had not responded to Cassia’s warning.