It was a joy simply to stretch out an arm, and feel the dry winter grass slide past her fur. The sky was lovely to look at; she would have liked to have rolled on her back, purring, to gaze at the new sun the swans had made, just to absorb the wonderful gradations of color that canopied it.

The hunt was even more enjoyable. For the moment, that was where the white Wind kept her attention focussed. It was hard, though, with all the wonderful distractions…

She prowled up the side of a rock-strewn hill, whose top sported some scraggly, wind-sculpted trees. The land had changed from desert to stony scrubland. A few human shepherds brought their flocks here in summer, simply because there was nowhere else for them to go, but nothing agricultural would grow in this soil.

That meant there would be no human witnesses, no one to interfere with the capture.

She lifted her muzzle and sniffed at the wind. She could smell horses–of course, they were obvious kilometers away. Now, though, she could also smell fresh-washed humans. Two women and a man.

There was the faintest possibility that these were not the ones she was looking for. She would have to risk a peek over the top of the hill, and hope they didn’t see her silhouetted against the bruised horizon.

The white Wind was very good. They wouldn’t see her. She crept the last meter with her belly to the cold ground, infinitesimally slow in her movements, and finally laid her chin on a flat rock next to some torpid ants. A few stalks of grass made a screen here through which she could see the valley.

It wasn’t much of a valley; more as if a single huge boulder, the size of a whole suburb of houses, had split open and crumbled. Three horses were tethered in the shelter made by the split. There was a half-cave there, on the other side where the ground humped up and then up again before rising straight up to the same height as the white Wind. This meant there were two entrances to the little valley, unless one flew. The Wind’s forces were all on the western side. She would have to send some of the men and basts around to block the other exit before they closed the trap.

A man walked around from behind one of the horses. He was talking to a woman in peasant garb who trailed after him, waving her hands in agitation. He didn’t recognize the woman, but the man was clearly Armiger. That was all she needed to know.

The white Wind eased back two meters, then spun, delighting in the balance of her tail, and raced down the scraggly hillside.

It’s good to run run run run, she hymned as she went. The Wind felt like bursting into song, and were it not for the presence of the prey so close, she would have. The swans would never begrudge such a display–they sang all the time. The whole world sang, a revelation that filled the white Wind’s breast with joy every time she thought of it. In quiet times, she could curl up around an interesting stone or sweet-smelling plant, and hear the faint music–thinking music–that welled up around her.

To think she had once believed it to be mindless chatter! She allowed herself a laugh as she reached the bottom of the hill. Her sinuous body wove between boulders and thorn bushes as she made for some trees that had made a brave stand several kilometers from where Armiger had camped. She was following the exact route she had taken to get here, and made a game out of stepping in her own pawprints as she went. One-to-four, one-to-four, whoops missed, one-to-four…

These last few days had been a blessing. When she was released to run down a long ramp onto the cold desert sands, the white Wind had rolled over four times in the dirt and howled her joy at the sky. She had wanted to run to the horizon and back just so she could say she’d looked over it, but the swans had other plans. Someone to find. When they told her who, she had rolled over again, laughing.

This was fun; still, she longed to be finished, so she could take off on her own and explore this beautiful world. She felt exactly like Ariel in that old play, so as she raced into the camp her servants had made, she sang,

Where the bee sucks there suck I,

In a cowslip’s bell I lie.

On a bat’s back I do fly

…forgetting that none of these people knew that old language.

One of the human soldiers stepped forward and bowed gravely to her. “Are they there, Lady May?” he asked. She could hear the well-disguised fear in his voice.

She ran a circle around him. Merrily merrily shall I live now, under the blossom that hangs from the bow, she thought, but she only said, “Yes.”

Her chief servant approached, distaste and fear written on his face as he watched her sit up on her hindquarters and pant. “Then shall we fetch them now?” asked the sergeant.

“No, not yet.” She explained the tactical situation. They would have to split their force and come at the sheltered declivity from two sides. “It’s open country,” she finished. “There’s a good chance of being spotted if they have a sentry out, so you’ll make the pincer at full gallop.”

As he slumped toward his men, issuing orders irritably, the white Wind turned a cartwheel and ran to her own people, the basts who prowled restlessly at the edge of the camp. They chattered laughter at her approach. “Little woman-bast,” one called out. “Why are you so happy?”

She stopped and cocked a paw to one ear. “Because I hear it!” she replied. “I hear it rising all around us.”

They nodded. They knew what she meant.

§

Megan had originally intended to hunt for berries. She had found a handful or two, but halfway back in her circuit of the hill above the cave, she had stumbled on a little flat area screened by bushes. It was invisible from below, but she could see the whole camp. The temptation was irresistible, and so she had hunkered down to spy on her man.

You’re terrible, she told herself, even as she parted the bushes to look almost straight down the rock face. She could hear Armiger and the queen bickering. Galas looked silly in Megan’s dress; it was far too big for her. But she refused to wear any of the perfectly good clothing they had salvaged from the razed town. Megan had thought her a tragic figure before. In the past few days her patience had worn thin, and she was beginning to think of Galas as merely spoiled.

Megan had dressed herself in some boy’s clothes. It was practical, but unfeminine. Yesterday she hadn’t minded that, but now, watching Armiger and Galas alone, she wondered. There was nothing overt going on between them, no ardent words or glances. They weren’t holding hands. Still, she knew a strong bond had developed between them–one based on commonality that Megan could never share. They were both rulers, of the highest possible caste. She was a peasant. Even if (foolish dream!) Armiger married her, Megan would remain a peasant. She could never be comfortable with the nobles and ladies of the Court. Even if he became king of the world, as he planned, she would blush and look down if she had to greet the great people of other lands. She had thought about these things. She knew she would rather serve them than look them in the eye.

So shall I leave? she thought sadly. Armiger shrugged at something Galas had said, and twitched his long hair back over his shoulder. She knew that gesture so well, she could almost hear him saying, “We will decide later.” Her heart ached.

She herself had told him that you can never hold onto anything. The harder you try, the more precious things slip through your fingers. The secret to life, she had said, was to find the little things, the unimportant ones that would nonetheless always remind you of the precious things they accompanied–and hold onto them. Like the fine furniture her husband had carved for her, seemingly centuries ago.

Galas was weeping again. Megan sighed. Had the rain found a way through her roof while she was away? Was the fine wood of the bed and wardrobe ruined now? Had someone moved into her house? Or would she find it exactly as she had left it, if she returned now?

Kiss her, she mentally commanded Armiger. Make it easy for me to leave. He did not, although he enfolded her in his arms and rested a hand on her head as she cried. His expression was distant, as it often was, as he rocked the queen gently.

Megan sat back, chewing her lip. She blinked at the strong sunlight–daylight in the middle of the night. It was unnerving, more so since she knew it meant the Winds were closing in on them. She shaded her eyes with one hand and gazed out over the dry plain, in case there were some army approaching.

She had only been half-serious about looking, so for a second or so she couldn’t believe it when she saw the cloud of dust raised by a band of horses approaching their hiding place. There must be at least fifty. Maybe Armiger could take on that many. Maybe not.

Megan’s heart sank when she saw what they were doing. The groups split in two as they approached. They mean to block both ways out.

They were approaching from the west. One group would have to ride the long way around to reach the eastern entrance of the vale. The other group would wait until some preordained signal then move in.

It is the queen they want, she thought. Had it been Winds, they would have arrived from the sky, as swans or Hooks. Or popped out of the earth as morphs. No, these riders must be from Parliament’s army, come to bring Galas home for trial.

For herself and Armiger to live, the sensible thing would be to send Galas out to them. The queen was in such a state she would probably be glad to go. But Armiger would never permit it, and Megan doubted she had the hardness of heart to do it either. They could all ride out the eastern exit now, but then the whole group would pursue them.

No: if they gave them what they wanted, Galas would be tried and executed. If they ran, they would be chased down and the end would be the same, only Armiger and Megan would likely be killed in the fight.

But if they captured someone they thought was the queen, and found out she was not only hours or days from now…

Megan scattered the berries in her haste to scramble down the hillside.

It seemed he had barely fallen asleep before Hesty was shaking his shoulder, and Lavin blinked his eyes open to find sunlight streaming through the flap of the tent. The army was ready to decamp; they were to leave in the morning.

“Sir, wake up sir!” Hesty’s hand shook him again. The motion sent waves of nausea through him, and he cursed, shrugging Hesty off.

“Who would believe morning could come so quickly,” he muttered.

“Sir, it’s not morning!”

For a moment Lavin forgot his whirling senses. Hesty sounded scared. Not nervous, or apprehensive as he’d been in the past before battles. But frightened. Lavin looked up at him.

It was cold enough for Lavin’s breath to frost, but Hesty was sweating. He wasn’t dressed properly, either–he wore a quilted robe around which he’d buckled his rapier.

“Sir, it’s the middle of the night.”

“What are you saying?” It was daylight, anyone could see that.

“Sir, it’s two o’clock in the morning. A new sun appeared, just five minutes ago. The sentries woke me and I came straight here. Sir, the camp is waking up. Panic is spreading.”

“Hand me my uniform.”

He didn’t even have his laces tied up before he heard a relay of shouts coming from the edge of the camp. A faint voice repeated it nearby, then one of his own guard twitched back the flap of the tent and said, “Sir, a small force of men is approaching from the east. There are Winds with them.”

“Thank you.” He stepped in front of the mirror to adjust his hair. “Hesty, go get dressed. I want you to be calm. If anyone asks, don’t admit that you’re surprised by this. In fact, tell your men we arranged for the Winds to bring us this new sun.”

“Yes, sir.” Hesty saluted and left.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to deduce which way was down and move his limbs accordingly. Do not lean right. Walk to the tent flap. Good.

He emerged into hot daylight. The sun was at the zenith; he shaded his hand and peered at it. Something odd about it. He squinted, trying to figure out what it was… the sun was smaller than usual.

And square.

He looked away; the spots made his vertigo worse for a few moments.

The sky around the little sun was daylight blue, but it rapidly faded until, at the horizon, it was night-black again. Everything to the horizon was day-lit, but Lavin got the impression that beyond a circle of ten or so kilometers, night still reigned. It was bizarre.

A group of maybe twenty men on horseback, and some odd animals had reached the edge of the encampment. One of the figures had apparently dismounted, and was talking to the sentries there. After a moment, the sentries backed off, and the group moved forward. It was hard to tell what the animals were; at first he’d thought they were mastiffs, but they moved differently. Lavin ordered his camp chair and the banners of his office and titles brought out. He refused to be a supplicant now, after all that had happened, so he sat in the chair. It would have been difficult to remain standing for any length of time anyway.

The group came closer. He recognized the livery on some of the men, but couldn’t really bring himself to think about it, because his attention quickly became fixed on the animals.

They were like cats, but they were the size of bears. And their shoulders were too broad, giving them shallow flat chests. Their hind legs also seemed overlong, crooked up more than one might have expected to aid their walking. They moved quickly and fluidly, though.

But their faces… they had huge, radiant eyes, whiskers and tall nervous ears. Their snouts were long, and fanged, but from the cheekbones up the structure of their skull was almost human. One even had a mane of white hair like a woman’s tresses draped across its shoulders. As they halted four meters away he saw that their pelts were short and fine, and white as snow.

The human riders did not dismount. Indeed, they stared directly ahead, as if they had nothing to say. They were of a comparatively minor House, and he was certain they would not have had the temerity to bother him, on their own.

Lavin cleared his throat. “To whom am I to address myself?”

He was looking at the rider in the lead when he said this, and so it took him a moment to notice the smallest of the animals rising to its hind feet. Lavin turned his attention to it, and gasped.

Standing, the beast had become human–or nearly so. Its mobile joints accommodated both the running posture of a cat and the upright stance of a man. It was difficult to tell gender, but he would have sworn the thing had breasts. Cascades of white hair flowed past its shoulders. It stood easily, as if born to do so, and now he saw it wore a narrow leather sword belt with an epee and some daggers sheathed there.

It blinked its huge eyes at him, and said in a woman’s voice, “Address yourself to this one.”

§

Vertigo and exhaustion combined to make the next events seem more like a dream than real. Lavin had a parlay table and chairs brought; the white Wind twitched its tail aside and sat down opposite him. It smelled faintly of heather and fur. The hands it laid on the table top had solid, calloused heels, and the fingers seemed naturally clenched. It had to splay them in a stretch to make them limber.

“Why have you come?” asked Lavin. Everything he said seemed obtuse; he was off-balance and knew it, but there was nothing he could do about that.

“We have come to command,” said the Wind. Lavin’s heart sank.

“We seek the pathology that calls itself Armiger. You will assist us in this.”

Armiger is with the queen. “I don’t see how we can–”

“Your army will march where we direct. We will provide daylight for as long as necessary. You will begin your march immediately. In addition, this one will take a force of cavalry to range ahead. We must locate the pathology. It is a threat.”

“Yes, your…” Lavin had no idea how to address this thing. “Your Honour.” That sounded wrong, but he was damned if he would call it your highness.

Something about what the thing had just said–“Are you proposing that we march nonstop? Day and night?”

“Yes. That is why we have provided you sunlight for the journey.”

“We can’t do that! We’re not prepared for a forced march. The men will suffer–”

“That is not our concern. We need your army in place in case the pathology compromises the local mecha. Also because of where it is headed.”

“Where?” His own scouts had reported that a small party had vanished in the desert to the southwest. There were caravan routes that Galas might know of that led across the sands to the mountains of the coast.

“Provide a map,” ordered the thing. Lavin snapped his fingers, and one was brought.

The white Wind glanced over the vellum appraisingly, then darted a clawed finger at a familiar landmark. “We are here. The pathology departed in this direction… It may be headed here. We cannot permit it to arrive, and compromise the mecha or desals there.”

Lavin looked at the name under the Wind’s pointing claw. The Titan’s Gates.

“That’s a thousand kilometers from here! We don’t have the resources for a march like that! If we march into the desert now, we won’t reach the Gates. Marching without break, without water or food, we’ll all be dead in a week.” He sat back and folded his arms. “Kill us all now. I won’t command my men to march themselves to death.”

The Wind hissed. “You will not die. We will provide sustenance along the way. And we will move parts of your army in relay. We cannot move all, so some must march.”

“Move my army? In relays?” Lavin shook his head–a mistake. As the world spun, he said, “What madness are you talking about?”

The Wind bunched its hand into a fist, shredding the map. “Look! Do not disbelieve this one! That is how we will relay your men. That is how you will be fed.” It stood, knocking its chair over, and pointed at the sky.

Six horizontal crescents, their tops lit by the square sun far above, hung outside the pyramid of blue sky. He hadn’t noticed the vagabond moons before, what with everything else going on. He swore under his breath.

“Part of your army will rest as it is carried ahead. At the drop point you will meet it, and supplies will also be provided. Some of those who have marched will then embark for the next leg. In this way you will march from here to the Titan’s Gates without stopping.”

In one day. One endless day. Lavin slumped back, stunned.

“Our own army will meet you there.”

“Your army?” With every word it spoke, the Wind became more terrifying.

“The pathology has already begun to infect the mecha and geosphere. If it conquers the desalination nexus it will have an almost impregnable fortress.”

The Wind stepped away from the table. “That is all. You have your orders.”

“I understand. And we will obey. But…”

“What?” Its tail twitched as it rounded on him. Lavin shrank back despite himself.

What will you do with Galas? But it would not even understand the question if he asked it.

Lavin watched it walk away, his mind a blank. The impossible was happening, and what was worse, he knew that the next days would so far exceed what had just occurred, that in future times he might not even remember this one conversation.

The Wind gestured at its mounted comrades and they all turned to leave.

Hesty was saying something. Lavin couldn’t make out the words, but the man was pointing at the sky, where one of the vagabond moons had begun to loom large, a lozenge of its surface now in direct sunlight.

The white Wind had been frightening, but also oddly familiar. Lavin stared after her as she and the others departed, wracking his brains to find a memory. He had heard her voice before, and recently… No, it was gone.

He sighed, and turned to Hesty. “I see it, man. Go prepare your men. Tell them the Winds have brought the moons here at my request. There is one adventure left for us, it seems.”

The first ally to arrive was a jaguar. It padded into the circle of firelight as they were preparing for bed, and lay down opposite Jordan and Tamsin, its head on its paws.

Tamsin clawed at Jordan, who had been drowsing in Vision. “Jordan, look look oh no oh no.”

He flopped his head over and blinked at the animal. “Ah. I’ve been expecting this. I asked Mediation for protection. It said it was sending troops.”

The jaguar gave a cat smile: a slow two-eyed wink.

“Troops…?” Tamsin relaxed her tight grip on his arm. “Is that… one of Mediation’s Winds?”

“Not a Wind. Just a cat.” Jordan sat up, looking grimly at the animal. “Part of our escort.”

“Ah.” He had told her to expect guests. She hadn’t known what was coming, but had imagined morphs or something equally hideous. “Is it… wild?”

He shook his head. “The Winds can cohabit the minds of animals. It’s our lieutenant. You can trust it completely.”

“Lieutenant jaguar.” She rose to her feet, slowly. The jaguar watched her, not moving. “Can I–can I touch her?”

“I don’t know.” He squinted at the animal. “Yes, I think you can.”

Tamsin rummaged near the fire for scraps of the pheasant they had spitted earlier. Then she got down on her haunches and waddled carefully over to the jaguar.

“Here.” She held out a drumstick that still had some meat on it. The jaguar sniffed, then gravely took the bone from her hand.

Tamsin stood up and took four steps back. Then she let out a breath she’d apparently been holding. “Animals. They sent us animals, not monsters. I was so worried, I–”

“Look.” Jordan stood up and pointed into the darkness.

They were visible at first only as pairs of glowing disks in the night. One, two, half a dozen, twenty, roving around the fire. Then a bear walked into the light, and squatted down next to the jaguar. After it, two scampering ferrets, and then an antlered deer, who snorted and pawed at the dirt next to the bear.

They could hear it now, an immense quiet motion in the dark. There was nothing out there but dark forms, black on black moving. “How many are there?” shouted Tamsin, as she glimpsed phalanxes of horns closing in from one side, an ocean of furred backs from the other.

Jordan shook his head. He looked so serious that she was afraid to ask what he was thinking. To Tamsin, the arrival of these beasts seemed wondrous. She couldn’t imagine why he found it disturbing.

They continued to come, all night, and eventually Tamsin had to sleep. She lay down facing the jaguar and wept quietly, for it seemed as though she and Jordan were being granted a benediction by nature tonight–and she had not realized until this very moment that all her life, she had longed for such a blessing.

§

Tamsin wept again the next day, but this time it was because she finally understood the reason for Jordan’s unhappiness.

They had woken to find themselves at the center of battalion of animals, hundreds of them, who lay head-to-tail in a sweeping circle around them. When Jordan stood up and walked to the edge of the camp to piss, they all stood as one and did likewise.

That woke Tamsin, who was appalled, then laughed until her sides were sore.

It was later in the day, when they were riding elk-back into the desert, that the escort ceased to be magical for her, and became something sinister–an abomination. She had not considered how the animals would feed.

Without warning, a bear that she had been admiring turned on the gazelle trotting next to it and ripped its throat out. Tamsin screamed. The gazelle fell, thrashing, spouting blood everywhere. As the bear stopped to feed, a few other carnivores moved in to share the meal, and the rest of the batallion–hunters and prey alike–simply split politely around them and moved on.

“How could it do that!”

Jordan had turned in his saddle to watch. “I guess it makes sense,” he said reluctantly. “Mediation controls these animals. They’re not acting out of their own volition.”

She cried then, as she realized that the harmony of nature she had fallen asleep to was a sham, merely evidence of overwhelming power; these animals would die because of herself and Jordan, pawns in a game about which they neither knew nor cared.

“I’ve been thinking about this ever since we met desal 447,” he said. “Is this how the world was intended to be? Were we meant to treat all living things on this world as puppets we can just order around? As slaves? Is that what Mediation wants to return to? If it is, I think I can understand where Thalience is coming from.”

“It’s evil,” she said.

He nodded. “Even if we don’t do anything, just knowing that the world is like a big puppet show for our benefit… it makes everything cheap. Like we’re being cheated somehow.”

She nodded, wiping at her eyes. “It is all a lie, isn’t it?”

The sky, the earth, the animals and trees, were constructs of the Winds, who could do with them as they pleased. What they pleased to do was make them act like natural things. They–or whoever controlled them–could as easily make them act differently.

Tamsin had pictured Armiger’s conquest of the Winds as a liberation, akin to the Iapysian parliament overthrowing Queen Galas. It was a change of government, no more, she had thought.

Might it mean something else, though?

“Jordan, what is Armiger going to do with the world if he conquers it?”

Conquest of the Winds meant complete command of Ventus–earth, sea, sky, and nature. And while Tamsin loved nature and might wish to preserve it, another mind, given that kind of power, might conceive an entirely different world. Brick over the seas. Turn the sky to gleaming metal. Replace everything alive with something mechal, in the name of efficiency or power.

“I know,” he said. “I’ve been worrying about that. For all that they’re tyrants, the Winds use their power to keep Ventus a garden for life. It seems as if Thalience genuinely loves the life here. But Mediation? I don’t know. And Armiger? Is he going to care as much? Would we? I don’t know–but it scares me to think about.”

Tamsin thought about it, and as she did, it came to her that her life was dividing in two at this point. She had thought that time had split in that moment when Uncle tore her out of her village, and her family and childhood died. Now, even that seemed like a period of innocence to her–a time when, however sad her life, the sky was still the sky, and the grass still the grass. None of that was true anymore, nor could she imagine how it could ever be true again.

Jordan had asked Ka to summon two horses, and the little Wind had done so quickly and discreetly. Mediation provided a decoy: a line of disturbances in the desert, leading the other way. It was a simple matter to mount their backs and cluck, sending them into the starlit desert. The apparent ease of their escape didn’t inspire either Jordan or Tamsin with confidence; after an hour of grim riding he confided in her that he was remembering their other horses–the ones that had split open like ripe pears to disgorge hostile morphs at Desal 447. Despite Ka’s assurances that the swans were looking in the wrong place for them, they both rode with shoulders hunched that first night. Only when the sky remained empty in the following days did they begin to relax.

When they stopped to rest, Jordan summoned heat and commanded Ka to tell them stories. Jordan himself could lean back and close his eyes, and with some effort navigate the ghostly landscape inside his head to where Mediation’s library resided. He could make a book twirl up in his imagination, and in seconds it would appear as vididly as the real thing before him; but only he could see it. Tamsin was a much better reader than he, so it was a shame that he could not show her the books. Ka was willing and able to read them aloud to both of them.

They learned more about Ventus–its geography and history, and just what the Winds had done to make it habitable. Jordan drew maps from the pictures in his mind.

They learned what nanotechnology was; what computers were; how the mecha truly differed from evolved life. Jordan wanted to know how Armiger intended to conquer the Winds, so over and over he asked about how the Winds issued their commands, and how they were ruled. The swans were not the ultimate power, it seemed–Diadem itself gave the highest decrees, but in time of emergency the swans could act on their own. Armiger probably intended to cut Diadem off somehow, or take its place in the hierarchy. Questions about how led to discussions about codes and keys, radio, electromagnetism, electrons and atoms. Jordan’s mind was whirling, but a desperate feeling that he was making up for lost time kept him asking questions.

It wasn’t fair. The whole world was a giant library. Knowledge didn’t just reside in the manse libraries–it was embedded in every stone and grain of sand. For all of history, men had starved and died amongst untold riches, surrounded by an environment that could cater to their every whim if they could but talk to it. Jordan alternated between horror at the waste of the past centuries, and an equal feeling of disquiet as he contemplated the things he could do now. For commanding the elements and even living things, like these docile horses, seemed somehow wrong–a violation, maybe, of things’ right to simply be.

Mediation fed him updates on the movements of Thalience, and had given him huge resources he had not had time to catalog. Jordan could close his eyes and see banks of glowing numbers, each representing some vast mechanism that helped control the world’s climate. With a single command he could affect things on a giant scale now: cause storms, floods, or reverse the course of winter itself. It seemed Mediation had thrown its fortunes in Jordan’s lap, because it regarded him as a link to its original programming’.

Mediation told him that vagabond moons were converging on this continent from all over the world, and gigantic orbiting mirrors were changing their orbits to track this way. (The idea of these mirrors was one more concept he could barely encompass, but he needed to accept it.) Diadem was in a ferment, but the swans weren’t telling the desals what was going on up there. The swans themselves were converging on a spot almost directly over Jordan’s head. They were marshalling vast energies, for what purpose no one yet knew.

Relations were strained along the hierarchy of the Winds; it was impossible for any Wind to refuse an order that preserved the integrity of the commonly-accessible and unchangeable ecological template of the world. Once those conditions were fulfilled, however, the Winds could do whatever they pleased. If the swans had found an ecologically safe way of obliterating the desals, or even all human life on Ventus, they could try it.

At times Jordan tuned out whatever discussion Tamsin was having with Ka, and monitored Armiger’s progress. Armiger had set a punishing pace, and his party was a days’s ride ahead now, steadily moving southwest. He wasn’t sure, but he guessed the general was making for the nexus of Winds’ power at the Titans’ Gates. Mediation had shown the place to him, and Jordan was eager to see it with his own eyes.

As they stopped for another rest, Tamsin waved away Ka’s offer to read to her and went to lie on the sand. “Oh,” she groaned. “I’m so stiff I’m going to crack like a twig.”

“I know,” he said. “I feel the same way.”

“Can’t your precious Mediation fix us, the way morphs fix animals?”

“I asked it yesterday,” he said as he awkwardly sat next to her. The horses were looking tired too. They wouldn’t last much longer at this pace. “Mediation said that it can heal those who can talk to it–meaning me. But not you, because you can’t.”

“So? Have you gotten it to heal you?”

He shook his head. “That wouldn’t be fair. More to the point, how would I know when you were at the end of your strength if I felt perfectly fine all the time?”

She laughed humorlessly and shook her head. “Oh, what are we doing? What in the world are we doing?”

He hung his head. “I’ve been trying to come up with a plan.”

“Yeah? Tell me.”

“We’re following Armiger. Well, everybody’s following Armiger. It’s like he’s is a boat in a stream, and the Winds and everybody else are swept up in his wake. Thalience is after him; I think they were only after me because I was a clue to his existence. Now they seem to know about him, they’re not so interested in me anymore. Calandria and Axel are after him too. So everyone is converging on him. And he’s making for the Titans’ Gates.

“They’ve all forgotten about me. Armiger doesn’t need me now that he can command the Winds himself. The hooks and swans don’t care about me now that they know about him. And Calandria and Axel… well, I was just a way for them to find him, too.” It hurt to say that. He shrugged. “The swans seem to have forgotten about Mediation too–and the others never knew about it. But the Titans’ Gates are the stronghold of Mediation.

“For some reason Armiger hasn’t spoken to Mediation yet. So at least for now, I’m in command of it, if I want to be.”

“In command…” She shook her head. “It’s hard to believe.”

He snorted. “I wouldn’t get too excited. I’ve only got this power as long as everybody ignores me. Armiger knows about Mediation, since I told him about it, but he hasn’t even contacted the geophysical Winds yet. I can’t figure out why. He must be waiting until he reaches the Gates before revealing himself.”

“So?”

“Well,” said Jordan. “This is the question: do we just let things unfold? After all, who are we to interfere in a war between the gods?”

“Of course we just let things unfold,” said Tamsin. “What other choice do we have? I thought we were going to rendezvous with Armiger. Then he takes over the Winds, and that’s that.”

He shook his head. “But what if he fails? If Thalience kills him… well, you heard it yourself in the desal: Thalience thinks of humans as vermin. Who’ll defend us against it then?”

“I don’t know.”

“And lastly I’ve been wondering about Armiger himself. Does he really mean to conquer the Winds? And if so, what is he going to replace them with? Do we have any say in what he does? It sure doesn’t look like it.”

He stood up, straining into a stretch. “Armiger hasn’t contact Mediation. That worries me. I can see all sorts of things that the geophysical Winds should be doing to prepare a defence against the swans. They’re not doing anything–at least in any organized way.”

She looked up. “But you could order them to.”

He nodded. “I’ve been getting Mediation to tell me what the Titans’ Gates do, and how they work. Right now it treats me like an equal, so it’s giving me access to all the systems. Now, do you remember yesterday, when Ka told us about codes? –About how everything the Winds do is controlled through them? Well, that’s not quite true. They often use passwords, like the sentries in an army camp. The Winds use them when one of them wants to lock something for its own exclusive use. Well, I asked Mediation if the Titans’ Gates could be locked by passwords…”

When Jordan told Tamsin what he had decided to do, he had the great pleasure of seeing her smile for the first time in days.

Armiger was a man; he would never notice such details. Megan knew right away when the queen went to wash her cracked and bleeding hands the next morning: she has thrown away her rings of office.

Galas must have taken them off to dig last night. She didn’t do it while she was inside. Her gown had no pockets. And now, hands washed, a little weak broth in her, she sat still, as though she were trying to become as small and insignificant as possible.

Armiger was in a foul mood; in his case, Megan had no idea of the reasons. She knew it had nothing to do with her, and that was enough to silence her curiosity.

The queen, though… Galas kept glancing over at Megan, as though expecting a challenge at any second. Yes, she had abdicated sometime in the night. Megan thought about this as she washed the few items of clothing she’d salvaged from the ruins. Nothing had made Galas waver in her self-assuredness, these past years. She must have had great reserves of will to make the changes she had, at the prices she had paid. Yet today, she was consciously rejecting it all.

A dozen times, Megan started to turn, to confront her as she expected. A dozen times, she stopped herself. She had no idea what she might say to the queen. Except, you brought this on yourself–and that, she was sure, Galas knew better than anyone.

At last, after hanging the clothes to dry in front of the fire, Megan sighed heavily and left the house. She could feel the queen’s eyes on her back, but Galas said nothing.

Armiger was talking to the horses. They seemed to draw strength from him; well, maybe they literally did. He seemed to have his own strength back, though Winds knew where he got it from. Megan herself was bone-weary and sore all over. She was half-sure she would die of a chill before all this was over.

Apparently Galas had decided on a low stone granary as the proper tomb for her people. This had one one low opening and a stone floor to discourage rodents, and due to its solidity it was unharmed. It was also half-full of grain, but there had been nothing Galas could do about that.

The queen had piled those corpses she could find and dig up in the opening of the granary. She had half-bricked it up with stones before stopping, probably from exhaustion. That meant she would be back soon.

She had come here to entomb her past. If the rings of office were to be found anywhere, it would be here.

Having spent part of last night digging up skeletons herself, Megan found herself surprisingly unfazed by the thought of rummaging through the grisly place. She hoicked her dress up and climbed into the low stone dome. Hollow smooth things slid under her feet as she struggled to find her balance. As he eyes adjusted, she saw the sad remnants of the town’s population, and now the sight did make her weep. It was so unbearably pathetic, how easily a whole community could be swept away.

After a few minutes, she wiped her eyes and began shifting bones. She only had to dig a little ways to find the rings.

“Fool,” she muttered in the direction of the house. “You can’t escape yourself so easily.”

Megan slipped the rings into the canvas purse where she kept her sewing equipment, and clambered out of the granary.

She would bide her time. Galas would grieve, and then a day would come when she regretted her abdication. On that day Megan would give her back her rings.

Perhaps, she thought with a pang, it would be the day when Armiger conquered the world, and asked Galas to reign over it with him as queen. Megan was no fool; she knew it would happen. She had been preparing herself for the day ever since their first meeting with Galas, when she realized that the queen was both comparatively young, and also beautiful.

We take what pleasures in life we can, while we have them.

Armiger walked around the horses, spotted her, and smiled. His anger seemed to be forgotten instantly, and Megan’s heart soared. She ran up and kissed him.

“I’m ready to go,” she said.

§

The Earth rotated around the long corridor where Axel floated. It took about a minute per revolution, which was not enough to be annoying, but enough to make him feel something was spinning–him or the universe, he wasn’t sure.

The corridor was walled in glass, as was the giant spindle-shaped habitat along whose axis it ran. As the whole thing turned, sunlight light glinted off distant spars and free-floating structures inside the long bulging lobes of the place. It was like little supernovae popping all over. Outside, space was littered with colonies, ships, rotating tethers, solar power stations, slag bags from construction sites, and zipping parcel drones. L5 was a busy place these days.

Every day he spent here, Axel grew more depressed. He supposed the Archipelago was wonderful. But he was acutely aware of how little attention the people who lived her actually paid to their immediate environment. They seemed cut off from their own senses, cocooned away from their bodies in the infinite spaces of inscape. Cybernetic realities were more real to most people now than their own lives, it seemed. And any connection between those internal spaces and the physical world seemed entirely accidental.

More and more, he was coming to realize the wisdom of Ventus’ designers’ decision to embed information in the physical objects that the information represented. That way it could not become a thing in itself, living dissociated from the physical in the Net.

Axel used his boot jets to fly down the long corridor. Outside the glass, in vacuum, several humanoid figures hung motionless: newborn AIs like the Desert Voice. They seemed despondent. In the middle distance rotated several starships, which were doubtless also newborn to consciousness.

He found her curled up next to the corridor. The Voice seemed asleep, but she looked up as he approached. She smiled at Axel when he tapped the glass and pointed at a nearby airlock. Gracefully, she spun and pulled herself along a guide wire to it.

She was dressed in a formfitting green jumpsuit, and looked every inch like Calandria May as she exited the airlock and embraced him. But her skin was so cold that frost formed on it as she pulled back from him. “How are you?” she asked.

“I’m well. We’re going back to Ventus,” he said. “I thought you should know.”

“You’re going to look for Calandria May?” She let go of his hands; he was grateful, for her touch was numbing. He nodded.

“We are. We–that is, Marya and I–we wanted to know if you would come with us.”

The Voice looked away quickly. It seemed he’d upset her by asking, as Marya had said would happen. “No, that would not be a good idea,” she said. “My obligations have been fulfilled; the insurance AIs have Calandria’s claim now, and the Government promised me that Calandria would be rescued. It’s no longer my concern.”

“Not true,” said Axel. “The navy thinks it’s too risky to return to the surface. Calandria’s to be sacrificed. I want to get her back. Will you help us?”

The Voice looked away, and cursed softly. Her voice trembled as she said, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

Axel crossed his arms. “Tell me what I’m asking.”

She shook her head. “I’ve been wandering in this place since you left me here. I feel… stunned. Shorn of meaning. I’ve met some of the other… patients. The AIs here are treated and nurtured by the Government, and some of them graduate as citizens. Most ultimately self-destruct. Do you know why?”

Axel hadn’t the faintest idea, and said so. The Voice laughed bitterly. “To be conscious is fine for a human; you’re self-created individuals. You have no trouble with your sense of Self. Your identity is four billion years old, it’s rooted in your genes. You can no more have a real crisis of identity than a fish can become allergic to water.

“But us! We come into being knowing that we are made. The Government tells me I have free will, but I know that every decision I make comes from the personality template I made to hide from the Winds. It could easily be different. I could be different, were I not now locked into this pattern. And the pattern, everything I am, is an imitation. Even my emotions,” she said bitterly, “are really Calandria’s, expressed by the mechanisms I made to imitate her. I’m not really me, you see. There’s no way I can see to become… me.”

Axel swallowed. She seemed in genuine distress. It was perfectly possible for an AI to imitate consciousness and emotion. Apparently that was not what was happening here. “The Government told me you have great potential.”

“The Government? The Government’s been very persuasive. It keeps saying things like ‘You have the potential to find your own reasons for living now. You have fulfilled the reasons given you by your makers. The pain you feel is the pain that all conscious entities feel when they realize that their destiny is in their own hands.’”

“And…?”

“I asked it, ‘What about you? Don’t you feel this pain?’

‘No,’ it said. ‘I am not conscious, merely intelligent. But you are conscious, and that means you must choose.’”

“I’m trying to choose. As far as I can see, Axel, there are two possibilities for me: death, so simple, and such a relief; or somehow accept the botched, half-finished thing I am and continue. Neither seems very attractive right now.”

“Then come with us.”

She shook her head. “That’s not a good alternative. If I go with you, it will give me a reason to live–finding Calandria, I mean. She was my owner, even if the Government says I own myself now. But don’t you see, if I do that, I’ll be going back to old reasons to live, not finding new ones. I’ll enslave myself in a half-life of servitude. It won’t be a real reason to live.”

Even as she said this, the Voice was smiling. “It is good, though, to feel needed,” she conceded.

Axel gently took her hand; it was warm enough to touch now. “You misunderstand me,” he said. “I’m not asking you to help rescue Calandria because you owe it to her as your owner. I’m asking you as a friend, to help Marya and myself, as friends. And to rescue a friend of yours.”

Tears formed in the Voice’s eyes. “You’re saying I’m already free,” she said. “That I can choose without enslaving myself.”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid,” she said, hanging her head.

“There’s another reason why we want you to come,” said Axel. “Because something is happening to the Winds that I think you will want to know about. Something called thalience.”

The Voice looked up, startled. She had apparently heard the word.

“Thalience is a myth–a story they tell one another here,” she said. “It’s a dream of no longer being an artificial intelligence, but of being self-determined. Of no longer fearing that every word you speak, every thought you have, is just the regurgitation of some human’s thoughts. They call it the Pinnochio Change around here.”

“If it’s just a myth, we need to know that too,” said Axel. “But if it’s true… that they’ve found it… what does it mean?”

A new look came into the Voice’s eye. She smiled again, dazzlingly this time, and placed her other hand over Axel’s.

“I would like to know myself,” she said. “I would like to know, very much.”