Many leagues away, Jordan Mason paused in his whittling and closed his eyes. He had been basking in the wan autumn sunlight and listening to Armiger and Megan with half an ear. He sat on a log by the remains of last night’s fire; he faced away from the wagon, where the girl Tamsin was hiding again.

Jordan had told a carefully edited version of the story of the Boros catastrophe yesterday. Both Suneil and his niece had listened intently. He had excluded any mention of Axel and Calandria, and said nothing about August’s duel or the attack by Turcaret’s men. Apparently the word was out that Yuri and Turcaret had been killed; Jordan simply shrugged and said he hadn’t seen that. His story was that he had panicked and run. Since he was visiting the household on his own anyway, he had just kept walking when daybreak came. Suneil seemed to accept this. It wasn’t at all implausible that he should want to get as far away from the place as possible, after all.

Suneil had arisen early this morning, but had said little. Jordan walked the boundaries of the small encampment, kicking the dirt and wondering whether his presence here was endangering these two.

When he heard Galas ask Armiger about the heavens, he forgot all about his problems. Megan had never asked about that, and Jordan was intensely curious. When he closed his eyes he could see what Armiger saw, and if he stayed still the voices became clearer and clearer, until he seemed to be there with them.

The words seemed to emerge from his own mouth. Whenever that happened, Jordan felt almost as though they were his own thoughts he was speaking, and he invariably remembered them with perfect clarity later. Just now he was saying, “The stars in the night sky have their retinue of planets. Millions are inhabited, but if you gaze up at them tonight, know that only one in every thousand you see has people living by it, there are that many. Millions have been visited and explored, but for every one of them a million more are still mysteries.

“Humans like yourself moved into the galaxy a thousand years ago. Your ancient homeworld is now a park, where few can go except by special permission. All the other worlds in the home system were settled centuries ago, and are overflowing now. The’ve even dismantled the minor planets and smaller moons and built new habitats with them. The population of that star system is now over seventy trillion.

“Many other stars have similarly huge civilizations. Add to that the dozens of alien species, genetically altered humans, cyborgs, demigods and gods, and the peace you see in the sky seems more and more like an illusion.”

“What are these things?” asked the queen. “Cyborgs? Demigods?”

“Mecha,” said Armiger curtly. “But designed by people for the most part. Some people have had themselves transformed into mechal beings, so that they can live in hostile environments, like open space, or the crushing depths of giant planets’ atmospheres. The boundary between human and nonhuman began to blur centuries ago, and now it’s completely gone.”

“And you? What are you?”

Jordan felt Armiger’s hands form fists in his lap. “Demigod. Human once, I think–but I no longer remember. I’m ancient, your highness, but mortal. Even the gods are mortal. And I will die, unless I can find a secret known only to the Winds of Ventus.”

Armiger was lying, according to what Calandria had told Jordan when they travelled together. She had told him the demigod had come to Ventus to subvert the Winds, and take control of the entire world. He knew Armiger was weakening, though, and Jordan didn’t know if he could trust Calandria May.

“What is this secret?”

“It is the secret of why the Winds ignore or abuse humanity,” said Armiger.

Galas laughed. “Countless generations have wondered that. I do too. Do you believe I have the secret?”

“I think you may know more than you realize.”

“You came to see me because of the legends,” she accused. “They say the Winds placed me on the throne, so I am assumed to know their secrets. For a god, you are rather naive, Maut.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “The legends brought you to my attention, but even if they’re wrong, I made the right choice in coming to you. I am sure of it.”

“Now you speak like a courtier.”

“My apologies.”

Galas returned to her seat. Jordan admired her through Armiger’s eyes; she was not so old as she had appeared in the throne room–perhaps in her late thirties. This war was aging her prematurely, he thought. He wanted to touch her, but had never learned the trick of making Armiger’s limbs move at his own urging.

“Why not just ask the Winds of another world?” asked the queen.

“There are no other Winds. There is no other place like Ventus.”

Jordan watched Galas’ eyes widen. He remembered sympathetically how he had reacted when Calandria told him the same thing. “But,” she started, “you just spoke of millions of worlds–trillions of people–”

“There are a million organizing principles in human space. None resemble Ventus. Your world is unique, and the records of the design of the Winds were lost in a war centuries ago. Most of humanity lives in something known as the Archipelago–an immense region whose boundaries are so vague that much of its citizenry doesn’t even know of its existence.”

“Now you’re talking madness,” smiled the queen. “Not that anything you’ve said so far would survive debate in the House.”

“Archipelago is the only answer to ruling a population of trillions, who own a million different cultures, mores and histories.” He shrugged. “It is simple: an artificial intelligence–a mechal brain, if you will–exists that mediates things. It knows each and every citizen personally, and orchestrates their meetings with others, communications and so on so as to avoid irreconcilable conflict. Beyond that, it stays out of sight, for it has no values, no desires of its own. It is as if every person had their own guardian spirit, and these spirits never warred, but acted in concert to improve people’s lives.”

“A tyranny of condescension,” said Galas.

“Yes. You worried earlier that everything was known. Well, yes and no. The government of the Archipelago has the sum of human knowledge and can speak it directly into people’s minds. But it’s only the sum of human knowledge. It is only one perspective. Here on Ventus, something quite different has come to exist. A new wisdom, you might say. The sum of the knowledge of an entire conscious world, unsullied by human perspective. Ventus, you see, is infinitely precious.”

“Then why aren’t they here? A trillion tourists from the sky?”

“The Winds don’t permit visitors. Though there are a few, I suppose–researchers vainly trying to crack the cyphers of the Diadem Swans. Hiding from the Winds, of course.”

“But you slipped in.”

“I did. The Winds know something I must learn if I am to survive. I cannot speak to them. So I must ask you, as the one person on Ventus who knows them best, to help me.”

“And why should I help?”

Armiger stood and walked to one of the tall windows. “Outside your gates is an army. That army did not need to come here. You need never have embarked on the path that led you here. And you knew things would end this way, didn’t you? It was inevitable from the moment you began to try to change the fundamental beliefs of your people.”

Below this high window he could see a crowded, hectic courtyard. Beyond that, walls, then the hazy, unbelievable crush of the besieging army.

“They had to kill you in the end,” he said.

“Yes,” said the queen in a small voice. “But I had to try… to end this long night that has swallowed the whole world.”

He turned, and Jordan felt his eyes narrow, his mouth set hard. “Then help me. If I survive, I may well be able to do what you could not.”

Megan had never seen so many books. They crowded on high shelves around all the walls of a large room on the third floor of the palace. All the shelves had diamond-patterned glass doors. She watched as Armiger walked from cabinet to cabinet, opening them in turn and gazing at their contents. This was their second day here, but as yet the queen had not found the time to speak to them. Armiger was getting restless.

The books didn’t interest Megan, but the room itself was sumptuous. It contained a number of couches and leather-bound armchairs, with side-tables and many tall oil lamps. The entire floor was covered with overlapping carpets that glowed in the shafts of morning light falling from tall windows along one wall. She curled up in one of the armchairs, feet under her, to watch as Armiger prowled.

This room and the others in the queen’s apartments provided a shocking contrast to the other parts of the palace she had seen. Below this tower, the palace grounds were crowded with the tents of refugees; children and the wounded cried everywhere, there was talk of cholera. The lower corridors and outbuildings bristled with armed men, and conversation there was strained and infrequent. Here, though, it was like another world–luxurious and calm.

Megan knew she would always remember their entry into these walls. Her first glimpse of the interior of the Summer Palace had been of torchlight gleaming off the helmets of a sea of men. Ragged banners hung from the facades of buildings half-ruined by Parliament’s steam-cannon. The place reeked of fear and human waste. She had shrunk back on Armiger’s arm as they were led along cordoned avenues between the tents, and into the vast tower that held Galas’ audience chambers. And the moment they were inside its walls, they were in a minor paradise.

This contrast had disturbed her more than the misery itself. It still disturbed her, the more so since she found herself responding to the comfort of this armchair, the warmth of the nearby fire.

“Amazing,” said Armiger.

She smiled. “You? Amazed? I doubt it.”

He reached up to take down a very large, heavy and scrofulous looking volume. “I’ve been looking for this one since I arrived,” he said. He waggled it at her as he went to perch on the edge of a desk. “Early histories relating some of the events immediately post-landing.”

“Really?” She didn’t know what he was talking about, but it was good to see him enthusiastic about something–something other than this queen Galas, anyway.

Armiger flipped through the pages quickly. “Hmm. Ah. There are major distortions, as one would expect from such a large passage of time.”

“How large?”

“A thousand years. Not really very long; living memory for me, most of it. And on Earth there are complete daily records of practically everything that went on there from before that time… but Earth never Fell the way Ventus did. Miraculous.” He shut the book; it made a satisfying thud and a waft of dust rose before his face.

“I take it you are glad we came,” she said. “Despite the army outside?”

He waved his hand, dismissing either the dust or the besieging force. “Yes. I’m most likely to find out what I want to know here. In case they burn this library down, I’m going to read it.”

“Read it? The whole thing? Tonight?” She didn’t hide her disbelief.

“Well… maybe not all. Most, anyway.” He smiled, an increasingly common thing lately.

“But why? This queen, she is important to you for what she can tell you. I see that now. But why is she so special? You want to talk to her. Her people want to kill her. What has she done?”

Armiger inspected another shelf. “Of course you wouldn’t get much news living alone in the country as you did. Where to start, though? Galas has always been different, apparently.

“She was installed on the throne at a young age by the Winds. No one knows why. Whatever they wanted, she apparently didn’t provide it, because they haven’t lifted a finger to stop Parliament marching on her. But she’s done extraordinary things.”

He came to sit on the arm of a couch near her. “Galas is the sort of philosopher-monarch who arises once in a millenium,” he said. “She may rank with Earthly rulers like Mao in terms of the scope of her accomplishments. People like her aren’t content to merely rule a nation–they want to reinvent both it and the people who live in it.”

Megan was puzzled, but interested now. “What do you mean, reinvent?”

“New beliefs. New religions. New economics, new science. And not just as a process of reform or nation-building. Rather as a single artistic whole. During her reign Galas has viewed her nation as an artistic medium to be shaped.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “That’s… horrible.”

Armiger seemed surprised. “Why? Her impulse has been to improve things. And she’s almost never used force, certainly not against the common people. Her actions are reminiscent of those of the Amarna rulers of ancient Egypt… sorry, I keep referring to things you can’t know.

“Anyway, what she did was give her people a completely new, and all-encompassing, vision of the world. Nothing has been left unchanged–art, commerce, she has even tried to reform the language itself.”

Megan laughed. “That’s silly.”

Armiger shrugged. “She’s failed at a lot of things. In terms of language, she tried to ban the use of possessives when speaking of emotional states, motives and people. So that you could not say, ‘he is my husband’ for instance.”

She glowered. “That is evil.”

“But you could also not say that something is his fault, or her fault. She wanted to remove assignments of blame from speech and writing, and refocus expression on contexts of behavior. To eliminate victimless crimes, crimes of ostracization, for instance the ‘crime’ of being a homosexual. Also to move the emphasis of Justice away from blame and punishment to behavior management. Far too ambitious for a single generation. So it didn’t work.

“But no one on Ventus has ever thought of these things before. Galas is entirely original in her thinking.”

“So why are they out there?” She pointed to the windows.

“Oh, the usual reasons. She started threatening the stability of the ruling classes, at least in their own eyes. No ruler who does that ever stands for long. She’d built experimental towns recently, out in the desert. Each operated on some one of the new principles she espoused. Naturally most of them flew in the face of orthodox mores. Of course the salt barons will revolt if you display an interest in eliminating money from commerce!”

“You make me sound like a fool.“

Galas stood in the doorway, in a blue morning-dress, her hair bound up by golden pins. Megan hurried to her feet and curtsied. Armiger languidly bowed, shaking his head.

“It is merely the voice of experience, your majesty. Humans become violent when they feel their interests are threatened.”

Galas scowled. “They were never threatened! Parliament is a rumor-mill staffed by trough-fed clods who abuse the tongue of their birth every time they open their mouths. They all gabble at once and confuse one another mightily, and when this confusion is committed to paper they refer to it as ‘policy’.”

“I won’t dispute that, having never attended,” Armiger said.

The queen swept into the room. Two members of the royal guard followed, to take positions on either side of the doorway. “I had to try,” Galas said bitterly. “For centuries no one has tried anything new! So what would be one more life in dumb service to tradition? Where would it get us, except back where we started when the wheel of this life had come around again? Someone had to ask questions men have been afraid to ask all that time. It has always been obvious to me that no one else would do it, either now or in the future. I had to do it all, even the things you call foolish. Else how could we know anything? Anything at all?”

Armiger said nothing, but he nodded in acquiescence.

“Sometimes one’s responsibility goes beyond one’s own generation,” Galas said. She sat in the chair next to Megan’s, and smiled at her warmly. “I trust you slept well, lady?”

“Yes, thank you, your highness.”

“And you, Sir Maut? Do you even sleep?” Her voice held a teasing note.

He inclined his head. “When it suits me.” Then he frowned. “I hope you don’t view us a pair of jesters, here to distract you from what’s waiting outside your gates. My purpose is quite serious–as serious as your own situation.”

Galas’ eyes flashed, but she only said, “I remain to be convinced. That is all.”

“Fair enough.” Armiger moved from his perch on the arm of the couch, to sit down properly. “So, who am I, and what do I want of you? That is what you would like to know.”

Galas nodded. Megan saw that the moth-note Armiger had written her was stuck, folded, through the belt of her dress. Perhaps she had been rereading it over breakfast. For reassurance?

Megan couldn’t begin to imagine what it must be like for her, with those men camped outside, waiting permission to brutalize and destroy everything. Servants killed, treasured possessions robbed… but Galas was outwardly cool.

She must be crying inside. It’s cruel of Armiger to give her any hope now.

“Ask me anything,” said Armiger. “Ask me something to test my knowledge, if you wish.”

“Were all my mistakes obvious?” blurted the queen. “Is what I’ve fought for all my life trivially simple anywhere else? Am I a primitive, next to the people who live on other stars?”

“They might think so,” said Armiger. “I do not.”

“If you are what you say you are, then it makes all the pain I’ve suffered–and inflicted–pointless.” Galas was not looking at them, but off into the middle distance. “I’ve been so busy since you arrived, making final preparations… the assault will come soon. But there hasn’t been an instant when I didn’t wonder why I was bothering. If everything I’ve tried to discover was learned millenia ago… I feel like the gods are laughing at me. I feel like an ant all puffed up with pride over having laboriously mapped out the boundaries of a garden. I don’t think you can tell me anything to change that impression.”

Armiger smiled. “I must be the fool, then, to waste my time talking to an ant.”

“Don’t make light of this!” She rose and went to stand over him. Megan was amazed at how Galas seemed to tower over Armiger, though the difference in their heights was such that even with him sitting, they were almost eye to eye.

Armiger was unfazed. “I was not. It is you who are belittling yourself.”

Galas whirled and walked to the windows. “Then tell me I’m wrong! Tell me about the heavens–who lives there, what are they like? Have you walked on other planets? Talked to their people? Are they all-knowing, all-wise–or are they fools like us?”

Armiger’s smiled grew wider. “They are all-knowing, but no wiser than anyone else. In fact, since they know everything they believe they possess the wisdom of the ages. Hence, I’d have to say, they are bigger fools than you.”

“But I don’t want to hear that either,” said the queen. “Because it means there is no progress. If I educate my people and yet they remain fools, why have I bothered?”

Armiger crossed his arms, shrugged at Megan, but said nothing.

“All right,” said Galas. She turned around and leaned on the windowsill. “Tell me about the heavens, please. I do want to know.”

Tamsin cowered back into the wagon. Uncle must be insane! He was picking up strange men on the highway–they were sure to be robbed and raped by this crazy person who talked to himself and had gold cloth stuffed in his shirt.

She felt the wagon dip deeply as the man stepped up onto the front seat. Then it commenced rolling forward. She sat down on a bale of cloth, disconsolately picking at her embroidery. Finally she threw it on the floor.

Some days were fine. Today had started out that way. Some days, she could wake up in the morning, and clouds would be just clouds, water just water. She could actually smell breakfast as she cooked it, and feel hungry. Some days she could listen to Uncle’s plans, and tease into life a small spark of enthusiasm that he seemed to know she had. She could look forward to being an ingenue at Rhiene or one of the other great cities of Iapysia. So there were days when she practised her curtsies, her embroidery, and recited the epic poems Uncle had coached her in.

And then there were days… Her hands trembled again as she reached down to massage her leg. She couldn’t remember why she had been running–all she remembered was the overwhelming bleakness of the landscape. Bare trees, yellow grass. Cold air. Her own thoughts and feelings were inaccessible to her. One thing was sure, she was certainly not looking where she was going that morning. No wonder she’d sprained her leg.

Sometimes the tiniest little annoyance would set her off in a fit of temper that made her Uncle’s eyes widen in disbelief. Once it was because she had dropped a stitch! He did nothing to calm her down, but let her play it out. Afterward, she was always listless and ashamed.

I will not explode, she told herself. Even if Uncle is trying to get us killed.

They were talking up there–chatting like old friends. Of course, he did that with strangers all the time, but it was normally when they stopped at roadside markets or near towns. Uncle was an insatiable vessel for news, and these last two days he had been stopping everyone for information about the horrible incident at the Boros estate. It just wasn’t like him to pick people up off the road to talk.

Tamsin gritted her teeth and glared at the canvas flap. It was true an extra set of hands would be good right now. Rationally, she understood it. It didn’t stop her seething.

She sat in the dimness for a while, arms crossed, trying not to think. Thinking was bad. It led to things worse than anger.

This will all end soon, she told herself. When we get to Rhiene everything will be different. Meanwhile, she would have to make adjustments, and test her patience. So, after a little while, she adjusted her hair, planted a smile on her face, and opened the front flap of the cart’s canopy.

“Hello,” she said brightly to the startled young man who was in her seat. She held out her hand. “My name’s Tamsin. What’s yours?”

§

Calandria May slung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder, and made her way out of the market. The place was still buzzing with talk of the Boros catastrophe; the consensus was that the Winds had finally gotten around to punishing the family for unspecified past excesses. Attendance at church here in the town of Geldon was decidedly up.

There was some confused discussion of Yuri’s assassination. It was laid at the feet of Brendan Sheia, and two spies from Ravenon were named as accomplices. That explained why Calandria was currently disguised as a boy. She had cropped her hair and changed her voice and mannerisms. Right now she used the bag of potatoes to add swing to her shoulders as she walked, since otherwise her lower center of balance was harder to disguise.

People were also talking about Jordan Mason. No one knew his name, but some people had witnessed a confrontation between Turcaret and a young man. The controller had accused the youth of bringing the Heaven hooks down on the household.

Her shoulders itched as she walked–a familiar feeling that she was being watched, or followed. It had nothing to do with any townspeople who might glance at her on the way by. This was an older, and more fundamental, fear.

If she closed her eyes, Calandria could invoke her inscape senses: infrared sight and the galvanic radar that told of the presence of mecha or Winds. She couldn’t help herself–every few minutes, she paused, closed her eyes, and looked around using these senses.

Ever since the night that the Heaven hooks came down, Calandria had refused to let herself be lulled back into thinking that Ventus was a natural place. She was trapped in the gears of a giant, globe-spanning machine–a nanotech terraforming system that barely tolerated her kind. This appeared to be ordinary dirt she walked on, but it had been manufactured; it took more than the thousand years that Ventus had been habitable for soil like this to form naturally. The air seemed fresh and clean, but that too was moderated by unseen forces.

Those unseen forces were a threat. They might yet kill her. So she remained vigilant.

Calandria turned into a narrow alley and went through a roughhewn door that had a latch but no lock. Up a flight of stairs, through another door, and she was home.

This was the safe room where they had intended to hide August Ostler. The room was about four by six meters. It had one window which let out on the street–not an advantage, because mostly it just let in the smell of the open sewer that ran down the center of the lane. The place was built of plaster and lath. Calandria could hear the landlady snoring in the room next door. But it was out of the elements, and warm at night. That was all that mattered.

Currently everything she had was in this room, or on her person. Their horses had been killed in the destruction of the Boros stables, and she never had recovered her pack with its supplies of offworld technology. That had complicated matters, over the past couple of days.

Axel Chan grunted something and shifted in his sleep. His face was still flushed from the fever that had gripped him since Turcaret’s attack. His diagnostic nano were supposed to be able to handle routine infections. They didn’t seem to be working. Without the proper equipment, Calandria couldn’t determine why, though she suspected the local mecha were suppressing the offworld technology.

Would the same mecha contact the Winds and warn them of the presence of aliens here? Each night as she lay down, Calandria found herself imagining the harsh armatures of the Heaven hooks reaching down to pluck this small room apart.

It wasn’t like her to be afraid. But then, she was never afraid of merely physical threats. This was something else.

She put the potatoes down on the room’s one table. Axel coughed, and sat up.

“How are you feeling?” Calandria ladled some cold soup out and put it next to Axel. He drank it eagerly.

“As the good people of Memnonis like to say, I feel like a toad in a pisspot. Is this brackish swill best you could do?”

She sighed. “Axel, have you ever been truly ill in your life?”

“No.”

She nodded. “Why?” asked Axel after a moment.

“Because your nurses would surely have strangled you in your bed, the way you carry on.”

“Oh, ho,” he said. “Leave then. I’ll be fine on my own.” He coughed weakly. “I’ll manage somehow… I’ll feed on the rats and bugs, and be sure to die somewhere out of the way, where no one will trip over my shrivelling corpse.”

She laughed. “You do sound much better.”

“Well…” He raised his arms and examined them. “I no longer feel like I’ll leak all over if I just stand up. I should be able to ride in a day or two.”

She shook her head. “It’s going to take longer than that. We need you in top form when we go after Armiger.”

He nodded, and sank back on the straw bed. “Any word on Jordan?”

“No one knows what happened to him, and I have no way to track him now. We used the Desert Voice’s sensors to locate Armiger’s remotes the first time. With the Voice missing, we don’t have that option. Anyway, Jordan’s probably on his way home. No reason he shouldn’t be.”

Axel shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t like it. I still feel responsible.”

“I know,” she said. “But our first responsibility is to find Armiger and destroy him. If we don’t do that, then Jordan won’t be safe, no matter where he is.”

Axel appeared to accept this logic. “I assume,” he said, “that we’re not going to take Armiger on ourselves at this point. Just track him down.”

She nodded, coming to sit next to him. With the loss of the Desert Voice, they no longer had the firepower to destroy Armiger themselves. They would need help. At the same time, having the firepower wasn’t enough: they had to find Armiger, run him to ground. Calandria wanted to be sure of where he was before they left Ventus for reinforcements.

Axel looked better, but was still pale. He’d lost weight. “As soon as we get a ping from a passing ship we’ll try to get offworld,” she promised. “Meanwhile, we can’t afford to lose track of him.”

“We may have already.” He closed his eyes, wincing as he tried to turn on his side. “We don’t know for sure that he’s going after the queen.”

“Yes. Well, it’s all we’ve got.” Axel didn’t reply, and after a moment she stood and went to the window. His breathing deepened with sleep behind her, as Calandria looked out and up at a blue sky full of rolling white clouds. She fought the urge to look behind that facade at the alien machinery that maintained it.

Losing the Desert Voice was a catastrophe. She loved her ship, but more than that, they would have needed its power in order to destroy Armiger. Somewhere out there, beyond the rooftops and the clear air, he was hatching his schemes. She should be able to see him, like a stain on the landscape, she thought. It was horrifying that he should be invisible to the people he was setting out to enslave.

Calandria hugged herself, remembering what it had been like on the one world of 3340’s she had visited. The people of Hsing had been traumatized to the point of madness; their only goal in life–more an obsession–was to win the attention and favor of 3340 by any means possible, so as to avoid destruction and win immortality as one of its demigod slaves. People would do anything, up to and including mass murder, to gain its attention. And once enslaved, they became embodiments of their most base instincts, in turn enslaving hundreds or thousands of innocents; or simply slaughtering them as unwanted potential competition.

And all the while, 3340 had eaten away at the skies and earth, rendering the planet progressively more toxic for the few unchanged humans who struggled to survive in the ruins.

Armiger might find the key he was looking for at any moment. Irrevocable change would come sweeping from over the horizon like a tsunami, and this time Calandria would not be able to stop it.

She sat down by the window, and forced her hands to stay still in her lap. There was nothing to do but wait. Wait–and watch the skies for a sign that the world was ending.

Despite his private miseries and loneliness, Jordan had not forgotten for a moment that Armiger’s was not the only voice he could hear. On the evening when the Heaven hooks descended, Jordan had learned he could hear the voices of the Winds too. Until this morning he had deliberately tuned them out, because he’d been afraid that at any moment the Heaven hooks would rear out of the empty sky and grab him up.

He had bundled Calandria May’s golden gauze into a kind of poncho, then awkwardly buttoned his jacket over that. The gold stuff stuck out behind him like a bird’s tail, and up around his neck like a dandy’s ruff. But he was pretty sure it was still doing its duty. The Winds did not know where he was.

As the Heaven hooks descended on the Boros estate, Jordan had learned that he could hear the little voices of inanimate and animate things. Each object within his sight had a voice, he now knew. Each thing proclaimed its identity, over and over, the way a bird calls its name all day for no reason but the joy in its own voice. Now that he knew they were there, Jordan could attune himself to the sound of that endless murmur. Last night and this morning, he had worked at tuning into and out of that listening stance as he walked.

If he closed his eyes, he could see a ghostly landscape, mostly made up of words hovering over indistinct objects. He could make little sense of that, so he left that avenue alone.

It seemed that he could focus his inner hearing on individual objects, if he concentrated hard enough.

He held up the knife he had been whittling with, and concentrated on it. After a few minutes he began to hear its voice. “Steel,” it said. “A steel blade. Carbon steel, a knife.“

At the Boros estate, Jordan had spoken to a little soul like this, and it had answered. I am stone, a doorway arch had said to him. This ability to speak to things didn’t surprise him as much as it might have, considering everything that had happened. According to the priest Allegri, some people had visions of the Winds, and the Winds didn’t punish them for this. Allegri had told Jordan that he might be one of those with such a talent. He had been wrong at the time; what Jordan had been experiencing then was visions of Armiger–and those, the Winds surely disliked.

But this? This communion with a simple object seemed to have nothing to do with Armiger. Maybe it had been enabled by whatever Calandria May had done to Jordan’s head. But was it forbidden by the Winds?

Well, he had Calandria’s protective gauze. Jordan was confident he could hear the approach of the greater Winds in time to don it and escape.

It came down, then, to a matter of courage.

“What are you?” he asked the knife.

“I am knife,” said the knife.

Even though he was expecting it, Jordan was so startled he dropped the thing.

He picked it up, and began nervously walking. “Knife, what are you made of?”

The voice in his head was clear, neutral, neither male nor female: “I am a combination of iron and carbon. The carbon is a hardening agent.“

He nodded, wondering what else to ask it. The obvious question was, “How is that you can speak?”

“I am broadcasting a combined fractal signal on visible frequencies of radiation.“

The answer had made no sense. “Why can’t other people hear you?”

“They are not equipped to receive.“

That was kind of a restatement of the question, he thought. How will I get anywhere if I don’t know what to ask?

He thought for a moment, shrugged, and said, “Who made you?”

“Ho, traveller! Well met on the road to Iapysia!”

For just a split second he thought the knife had said that. Then Jordan looked behind him. A large covered wagon drawn by two horses was coming up the road. Two people sat at the front. The driver was waving to him.

Suddenly very self-conscious, he slipped the knife into his belt. He knew the gold gauze was sticking out at his collar and waist, but there was no time to do anything about that.

“Uh, hello.” The man’s accent had been foreign. He was middle aged, almost elderly, with a fringe of white hair around his sunburnt skull. He was dressed in new-looking townsman’s clothes.

The other passenger was a woman. She looked to be about Jordan’s age. She was dressed in frills and wore a sun hat, but her face under it was tanned, the one whisp of stray hair sunbleached. She held a embroidery ring in strong, calloused hands. She was scowling at Jordan.

“Where are you bound, son?” asked the man.

Jordan gestured. “South. Iapysia.”

“Ah. So are we. Returning home?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“But your accent is Memnonian,” said the old man.

“Um, uh. We have houses in both countries,” he said, mindful of the Boros example. He was itching to listen in to the voices again; he had to know if his dialogue with the knife had alerted the Winds. At the Boros manor, the whole landscape had come alert, almost overwhelming his senses. That wasn’t happening now. But he couldn’t be sure without checking.

“My name’s Milo Suneil,” said the man. “And this is–”

“Excuse me,” gritted the young woman. She stood abruptly and climbed into the covered back of the wagon.

“…My niece, Tamsin,” finished Suneil. “Who is not herself today. And you are?”

“Jordan Mason.” He affected the half-bow that the highborn Boros had used on one another. It was harder to perform while walking, though.

“Pleased to meet you.” There was a momentary silence. The cart was moving at just the pace Jordan was walking, so he remained abreast of Suneil. From the back of the wagon came the sound of things being tossed about.

“Calm weather, for autumn,” said Suneil. Jordan agreed that it was. “Clouds moving in, though. Not good–clouds could hide things in the sky, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“News travels slowly, I see!” Suneil laughed. “You’re dressed like a highborn lad, surely you’ve heard the news about the destruction of the Boros household!”

“Ah, that. Yes. I did hear about it,” he said uncomfortably.

“I’m itching to find out what really happened,” said Suneil. “We’ve had ten versions of the story from ten different people. When I saw you walking by the road, coming from the direction of the estate, I thought, could it be? A refugee from our little disaster?”

Jordan, unsure of himself in this situation, merely shrugged.

Suneil was silent for a while, staring ahead. “The fact is,” he said at last, “that my curiosity has gotten the best of me. If we were to run into someone who actually knew what had happened at the estate–or Winds forbid, someone who was actually there!–then I might be inclined to give that person a ride with us, provided they told their story.”

“I see,” said Jordan neutrally.

“My niece has sprained her leg,” added Suneil. “And I’m not as young as I used to be. We’ll need someone to gather firewood, the next day or so.”

Jordan was very surprised. People didn’t trust strangers on the open road. Then again, one never travelled alone, either.

Do I look that harmless? he wondered.

“It’s all right,” said Suneil reasonably. “I’m not a Heaven hook, nor am I in league with them. I just deduced that you were at the Boros place, because you’re walking from that direction, and you’re dressed well, except for the mud stains and wild hair. Actually, you look like you fled somewhere in a hurry. We’ve passed a couple of people who looked like that–only none would talk to us.”

Jordan eyed the cart greedily. He was very tired. A few days ride in return for some carefully edited storytelling couldn’t hurt anything. In fact, it might be the only way he’d get to Iapysia.

“All right,” he said. “I’m your man.”

And yet, the irony was not lost on Armiger that on this world, stones did speak; that the very air sighed its voices in his ear. It was the humans who were deaf to the language of the Winds. Armiger, though he heard that language, did not understand it. The sound of his own words was quickly absorbed into the stone of the walls, the ancient tapestries, the lacquered wood cabinets. And in all these things the Winds resided.

Armiger knew they could listen if they chose; he suspected they did not care what he said. The masters of Ventus went on about their incomprehensible tasks, whispering and muttering all around him.

He had spoken half for their benefit, but they ignored him, as they had since he had arrived on Ventus. So, he thought, his words dissolved into the stone, into the carpets, into the wood. Save for the two women who stood with him, none heard his brave boast.

Yet, though none in the palace heard, still his voice went out. It penetrated the chambers and halls of the ancient building, and passed through the sand and stone of the earth as if they were an inch of air. In the high clouds from which the raindrop-dwelling Precip Winds gazed down, Armiger’s voice flickered as unread heat-lightning on a frequency they did not attend. Even the Diadem swans, swirling in a millenial dance among the van Allen belts, could have heard had they known to listen.

No swan heard, nor any stone-devouring mountain Wind, or any of the elemental and immortal spirits of the world. But a solitary youth, lonely and sad by a lonely campfire mouthed Armiger’s words, and sat up straight to listen.

16

Tamsin Germaix spotted the man by the road first. Her uncle was busy talking about some grand ball he’d been to in the capital. Her eyes and hands had been busy all morning on a new piece of embroidery, much more difficult than the last one Uncle had her do. But every now and then (and she hid this from him) she had to stop because her hands began to shake. Now was such a time: she frowned at them, betraying as they were, and looked up to see the man.

The figure was sitting on a rock by the road, hunched over. It would take them a few minutes to pass him, since uncle was more interested in his story than in speed, and anyway every jolt of the cart sent spikes of pain up Tamsin’s sprained ankle. She had the splinted shin encased in pillows, and wore a blanket over her lap against the chill morning air; still, she was far from comfortable.

Certainly they had passed farmers and other lowborn persons walking by the road. This track was what passed for a main road in this forsaken part of backward Memnonis. Why, in the past day alone, they’d met three cows and a whole flock of sheep!

“…hold your knife properly, not the way you did at dinner last night,” her uncle was saying. “Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, uncle.”

“There’ll be feasts like that again, once we’re back home. It’ll only be a few days now.” He scratched at the stubble on his chin uncertainly. “Things can’t have changed that much.”

She watched the seated figure over the rounded rump of one of their horses. He looked odd. Not like a farmer at all. First of all, he seemed to be dressed in red, a rare color for the lowborn. Secondly, she could see a fluff of gold around his collar, and at his waist.

“Uncle, there’s a strange man on the road ahead.”

“Huh?” He came instantly alert. “Only one? Is he waving to us? Ah, I see him.”

Uncle Suneil had told her about bandits, and how to identify them. This apparition certainly didn’t fit that mould.

As they drew closer Tamsin levered herself to her feet and looked down at the man. He seemed young, with black hair and dressed nattily. His clothes, though, were mud-spattered and torn, and he had a large leather knapsack over one shoulder. He held a knife in one hand and a piece of half-carved stick in the other. He was whittling.

He stood up suddenly as if in alarm, but he wasn’t look in their direction. He had dropped his knife, and now he picked it up again, and started walking away up the road. He seemed to be talking to himself.

“I still think he’s a bandit. Or crazy! He must have taken those clothes off of a victim.”

Her uncle shook his head. “A proper young lady knows fine tailoring. Look, you’ll see his clothes have been made to fit him nicely. Now sit down, before you fall off the wagon.”

She sat down. He certainly looked mysterious, but after all, they didn’t know who he was. She knew the mature thing to do would be pass him by; she knit her hands in her lap and waited for her uncle to prod the horses into a faster walk.

Uncle Suneil raised a hand. “Ho, traveller! Well met on the road to Iapysia!”

§

All he had done for two days was walk. Jordan was exhausted now and was beginning to think his journey to meet with Armiger might be impossible. Calandria had bundled food for several people into her saddle bags, but it weighed a lot. He rested when he needed, and carefully lit a fire before bedding down each night. Despite that, his feet hurt and his shoulders were strained from carrying the heavy bags. So, as midmorning burned away the cold of last night, he sat down on a stone by the side of the road to rest.

He would have given up walking, were it not that whenever he paused to rest, he saw visions of far-off places, and knew they were real. Knowing that fed his determination to keep going.

He needed an activity to keep the visions at bay. He had taken to whittling, and now he pulled out a stick he’d begun this morning, and began carving away at it, lips pursed.

Last night Jordan had sat rapt at his meagre fire as Armiger spoke to Queen Galas. “You wish to hear human speech issue from the inhuman, from the rocks and trees,” the general had said. “Could a stone speak, what would it say?” It was almost as though the general knew he was listening.

Armiger had not gone on to tell his story. It was late, and the queen had deferred the audience until some time today. Jordan was not disappointed; he had lain awake for hours, thinking about Armiger’s words. He had pushed aside his self-pity and exhaustion, and made himself come to a decision. It was time to take the step he had been avoiding.

Despite his private miseries and loneliness, Jordan had not forgotten for a moment that Armiger’s was not the only voice he could hear. On the evening when the Heaven hooks descended, Jordan had learned he could hear the voices of the Winds too. Until this morning he had deliberately tuned them out, because he’d been afraid that at any moment the Heaven hooks would rear out of the empty sky and grab him up.