“‘Target is Coaver Street warehouse in two days,’ she told them.” Bryce shook his head in disgust. “‘Urge evac of assets unless I can change target.’”
“You’ve done well,” said Venera. She turned and sat hip-wise on the window casement. “Listen, I know you’re upset—you feel unmanned. Fair enough, it’s a humiliation. No more so than this, though.” She held out a sheet of paper—a letter that had arrived for her this morning. She watched Bryce unfold it sullenly.
“‘Vote for Proposition forty-four at Council tomorrow,’” he read. “What’s that mean?”
She grimaced. “Proposition forty-four gives Sacrus control of the docks at Upper Spyre. Supposedly it’s a demotion, since the docks aren’t used much. Sacrus has modestly agreed to take that job and give up a plum post in the exchequer that they’ve held for decades. Nobody’s likely to object.”
Bryce managed a grim smile. “So they’re ordering you around like a lackey now?”
“At least they respected you enough to manipulate you instead,” she said. “And don’t forget, Bryce: your people follow you. Cassia recognized the leader in you, otherwise she wouldn’t have singled you out for her attention. She may have been manipulating you all this time—but she was also training you.”
He grumbled, but she could see her words had pleased him. At that moment, though, they heard rapid footsteps in the hall outside. Gray-haired Pasternak, one of Bryce’s remaining two lieutenants, stuck his head in the doorway and said, “They’re here.”
Venera spared a last glance out the window. From up here the airfall was an insubstantial mesh of fabric where ground should be. Rushing clouds spun by beneath that faint skein, which she knew was really a gridwork of I-beams and stout cable—the tough inner skeleton of Spyre, visible now that the skin was stripped away. A small jumble of gantries and cranes perched timidly at the edge of the ruined land. The official story was that Amandera Thrace-Guiles was trying to build a bridge across the airfall to rejoin Buridan Tower to the rest of Spyre.
She followed Bryce out of the room. The truth was that the bridge site was a ruse, a distraction to cover up the real link between Buridan and the rest of the world. In the few days that had passed since Venera’s conversation with Moss, a great deal of activity had taken place in the pipeworks that Venera and Garth had used to reach Buridan Tower the first time. A camouflaged entrance had been built near the railway siding a few hundred yards back from the airfall’s edge. A man, or even a large group of men, could jump off a slow-moving train and after a sprint under some trees be in a hidden tunnel that led all the way to the tower. True, there were still long sections where men had to walk separated by thirty feet or more lest the pipe give way… but that would be fixed.
As she and Bryce strode down the long ramp that coiled from the tower’s top to its bottom, they passed numerous work sites, each comprising half a dozen or more men and women. It was much like the controlled chaos of her estate’s renovation, except that these people weren’t fixing the plaster. They were assembling weapons, inventorying armor and supplies, and fencing in the ballrooms. Bryce’s entire organization was here, as well as gray-eyed soldiers from Liris and exotics from allies of that country. They had started arriving last night, after Bryce gave the all-clear that he’d found his traitor.
Bryce’s people were still in shock. They watched the newcomers with mixed loathing and suspicion; but the trauma of Cassia’s betrayal had been effective, and their loyalty to him still held. Venera knew they would need something to do—and soon—or their natural hatred of the status quo would assert itself. They were born agitators, cutthroats and bomb-builders, but that was why they would be useful.
A new group was just tromping up from the stairs to the pipeworks as Venera and Bryce reached the main hall. They wore oil-stained leathers and outlandish fur hats. Venera had seen these uniforms at a distance, usually wreathed in steam from some engine they were working on. These burly men were from the Preservation Society of Spyre, and they were sworn enemies of Sacrus.
For the moment they were acting more like overawed boys, though, staring around at the inside of Buridan Tower like they’d been transported into a storybook. In a sense, they had; the preservationists were indoctrinated in the history of the airfall, which remained the greatest threat to Spyre’s structural integrity and which all now knew had been caused partly by Sacrus. Buridan Tower had probably been a symbol to them for centuries of defiance against decay and treachery. To stand inside it now was clearly a shock.
Good. She could use that fact.
“Gentlemen.” She curtsied to the group. “I am Amandera Thrace-Guiles. If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you where you can freshen up, and then we can get started.”
They murmured amongst themselves as they walked behind her. Venera exchanged a glance with Bryce, who seemed amused at her formality.
The preservationists headed off to the washrooms and Venera and Bryce turned the other way, entering the tower’s now familiar library. Venera had ordered some of the emptied armor of the tower’s long-ago attackers mounted here. The holed and burned crests of Sacrus and its allies were quite visible on breastplate and shoulder. As a pointed message, Venera’d had the suits posed like sentries around the long map table in the middle of the room. One even held a lantern.
Bryce’s lieutenants were already at the table, pointing to things and talking in low tones with the commander of the Liris detachment. As the preservationists trouped back in, the other generals and colonels entered from a door opposite. Moss had exceeded Venera’s wildest expectations: at the head of this group were generals from Carasthant and Scoman, old allies of Liris in its war with Vatoris—and they had brought friends of their own. Most prominent was the towering, frizzy-haired Corinne, Princess of Fin. Normally, Venera didn’t like women who were social equals—in Hale they always represented a threat—but she’d taken an instant liking to Corinne.
Venera nodded around at them all. “Welcome,” she said. “This is an extraordinary meeting. Circumstances are dire. I’m sure you all know by now that Sacrus has recruited an army, plundering its neighbors of manpower in the process. So far the council at Lesser Spyre is acting like it never happened. I think they’re in a tailspin. Does anyone here believe that the council should be the ones to deal with the situation?”
There were grins round the table. One of the preservationists held up a hand. He would have been handsome were it not for the beard—Venera hated beards—that obscured the lower half of his face. “You’re on the council,” he said. “Can’t you bring a motion for them to act?”
“I can, but the next morning I’ll receive the head of my man Flance in the mail,” she said. “Sacrus has him. So I’m highly motivated, though not in the ways that Sacrus probably expect. Still… I won’t act through the council.”
“Sacrus blocked one of our main lines,” said the preservationist. “All of Spyre is in danger unless we can get a counterbalance running through their land. Beyond that, we don’t give a damn who they conquer.”
It was Venera’s turn to nod. The preservationists were dedicated to keeping the giant wheel together. Most of their decisions were therefore pragmatic and dealt with engineering issues.
“Are you saying they could buy your loyalty by just giving you a siding?” she asked.
“They could,” said the bearded man. There were protests up and down the table, but Venera smiled.
“I applaud your honesty,” she said. “Your problem is that you’d need to give them a reason before they did that. They’ve never had any use for you and you’ve never been a threat to them. So you’ve come here to buy that leverage?”