This was the great gamble she had known she would have to take if she came here today. She had rehearsed it in her mind over and over: Sarto would reveal that she was the notorious Venera Fanning, who was implicated in dastardly scandals in the principalities. Opinion would turn against her and so, in turn, she would have to tell the people of Spyre another great secret. She would reveal the existence of the key to Candesce and declare that it was the cause of the coming war—a war engineered by Sacrus for its own convenience.
And now the moment had come. Sarto blinked slowly, looked away from her, and said, “I have here my own list. It is a list of innocent civilians killed last night by Amandera Thrace-Guiles and her men.”
Braced as she was for one outcome, it took Venera some seconds to understand what Sarto had said. He had called her Amandera Thrace-Guiles. He was not going to reveal her secret.
And in return, he expected her not to reveal his.
The council members were shouting; Guinevera was embracing his long-lost country woman and weeping openly; August Virilio had his arms crossed as he stared around in obvious disgust. Swords had been drawn in the gallery, and the ceremonial guards were rushing to do their job for the first time in their lives. Abject, shoulders slumped, Pamela Anseratte stood with gesturing people and words swirling around her, her hand holding a slip of paper that might have been her original agenda for the meeting.
It all felt distant and half real to Venera. She had to make a decision, right now.
Jacoby Sarto’s eyes were drilling into her.
She cleared her throat, hesitated one last second, and reached behind her.
17
Treble was a musician by day, and a member of Bryce’s underground by night. He’d always known that he might be called upon to abandon his façade of serene artistry and fight in the Cause—though like some of the others in the secret organization, he was uneasy with the direction things had taken lately. Bryce was becoming altogether too cozy with the imposing Amandera Thrace-Guiles.
Not that it mattered anymore, as of this minute. Clinging to a knuckle of masonry high on the side of the Lesser Spyre Ministry of Justice, Treble was in an ideal position to watch the city descend into anarchy.
Treble had gained access to the building disguised as a petitioner seeking information about an imprisoned relative. His assignment was to plant some false records in a Ministry file cabinet on the twelfth floor. He evaded the guards adroitly, made his way up the creaking stairs with no difficulty, and had just ensconced himself in the records office when two things happened simultaneously: the staccato sound of gunfire echoed in through the half-open window; and three minor bureaucrats approached the office, talking and laughing loudly.
This was why Treble found himself clutching a rounded chunk of stone that might once have been a gargoyle, and why he was staring in fascination at the streets that lay below and wrapped up and around the ring of the town wheel. He hardly knew where to look. Little puffs of smoke were appearing around the Spyre docks directly overhead. The buildings there hovered in midair like child’s toys floating in a bathtub and seldom moved; now several were gliding slowly—and ominously—in collision courses. Several ships had cast off. Meanwhile, halfway up the curve of the wheel, some other commotion had sprung up around the Buridan Estate. Barnacled as it was by other buildings, he could never have identified the place had he not been familiar with the layout, but it was clearly the source of that tall pillar of smoke that stood up two hundred feet before bending over and wrapping itself in a fading spiral around and around the inner space of the wheel.
People were running in the avenue below. Ever the conscientious spy, Treble shifted his position so that he straddled the gargoyle. He checked his watch, then pulled out a frayed notebook and a stub pencil. He dabbed the pencil on the tip of his tongue then squinted around.
Item One: At four-fourteen o’clock, the preservationists broke our agreement by attempting to prevent Sacrus from occupying the docks. At least, that was what Treble assumed was happening. The hastily scrawled note from Bryce that had mobilized the resistance told of arguments during the Sacrus raid last night, hasty plans made and discarded in the heat of the moment. Thrace-Guiles wanted to rally the nations of Greater Spyre that had lost people to Sacrus. The preservationists had their own agenda, which involved cowing Sacrus into letting them run a railway line through the middle of the great nation’s lands. Sacrus itself was moving and activating its allies. So much was clear; but in the background of this fairly straightforward political situation, a greater upheaval was taking place.
Bryce had said on more than one occasion that Spyre was like the mainspring of a watch wound too tight. A single tap in the right place might cause a vicious uncoiling—a snap. Many in Spyre had read about the Pantry War with envy; over centuries a thousand resentments and grudges had built up between the pocket nations, and it was glorious to watch someone else finally try to settle a score. Everyone kept ledgers accounting who had slighted whom and when. Nothing was forgotten and behind their ivy- and moss-softened walls, the monarchs and presidents of nations little bigger than swimming pools spent their lives plotting their revenges.
The well-planned atrocities of the resistance were little trip-hammer blows on the watch’s case, each one an attempt to break the mechanism. Tap the watch, shake it, and listen. Tap it again. That had been Bryce’s strategy.
Sacrus and Buridan had hit the sweet spot. Shop-fronts were slamming all over the place, like air-clams caught in a beam of sunlight, while gangs of men carrying truncheons and knives seemed to materialize like smoke out of the alleys. It was time for a settling of scores.
Item Two: chaos in the streets. Maybe time to distribute currency?
Treble peered at the line of smoke coiling inside the wheel. Item Three: Sacrus seems to have had more agents in place in the city than we thought. They appear to be moving against Buridan without council approval. So… Item Four: council no longer effective?
He underlined the last sentence, then thought better and crossed it out. Obviously the council was no longer in control.
He leaned over and examined the flagstoned street a hundred feet below. Some of those running figures were recognizable. In fact…
Was that Amandera Thrace-Guiles? He shaded his eyes against Candesce’s fire and looked again. Yes, he recognized the shock of bleached hair that surmounted her head. She was hurrying along the avenue with one arm raised to shoulder height. Apparently she was aiming a pistol at the man walking ahead of her. Oh, that was definitely her then.
Around her a mob swirled. Treble recognized some of his compatriots; there were others, assorted preservationists, soldiers of minor nations, even one or two council guards. Were they escorting Thrace-Guiles, or protecting someone else Treble hadn’t spotted?
Item Five: council meeting ended around four o’clock.
He sighted in the direction Thrace-Guiles’s party was taking. They were headed for Buridan Estate. From ground level they probably couldn’t tell that the place was besieged. At this rate they might walk right into a crowd of Sacrus soldiers.
Treble could still hear voices in the room behind him. He tapped the file folder in his coat pocket and frowned. Then with a shrug he swung off his masonry perch and through the opened window.
The three bureaucrats stared at him in shock. Treble felt the way he did when he dropped a note in performance; he grinned apologetically, said, “Here, file this,” and tossed his now-redundant folder to one of the men. Then he ran out the door and made for the stairs.