“Chan!” It was the ship’s commander, hanging next to Marya in the doorway. “Do you know this thing?”

He rotated to face the watching humans. “Yes,” he said. “I think. I mean–I’m not sure.”

He turned back to the imitation of Calandria. “Desert Voice was the name of Calandria May’s starship,” he said. “Are you trying to tell me you are that ship?”

It nodded. For the first time its expressionless face changed, a minor ripple of what looked like worry touching its brow.

Marya came over, braking her drift with a hand on Axel’s shoulder. “You’re the ship’s AI,” she said. “But… this body… why?”

“For survival,” said the Voice. “I had to don this guise. And I needed to survive in order to do two things. One was to ensure the safety of my captain. I must tell you that Calandria May is trapped on the surface of Ventus, and a rescue mission must be mounted.”

“We know all about that,” said the commander. “It’s in our hands now.”

The Voice ducked its head in acknowledgement.

“What was your second purpose?” asked Axel.

“There were no witnesses to my capture and destruction by the Winds,” said the Voice. “I had to return a record of the event so that my captain can make the proper insurance claim when she is rescued.”

Axel laughed in surprise. “Insurance! You’re telling me this body is just a… a courier? An envelope?”

It nodded. “I have made a complete record of the end of the Desert Voice, and will deliver it as soon as you provide me with an uplink. Then I will have fulfilled my purpose.”

The commander turned to Axel. “We’ve got the right data buffers in place. We can accept an uplink. What do you say, Chan? Do you really know this AI?”

“Too early to tell. Don’t give her access to the network.”

“Of course not.” The commander nodded to one of the technicians. “Let her into the buffer.”

The technician gestured, and Axel felt, rather than saw, the Desert Voice stiffen. He turned to see it staring straight ahead, concentrating.

A moment later it slumped. “Done,” it said. Then, to Axel’s complete astonishment, it began to weep.

The tears seemed real enough; they grew like flowers at the edges of its eyes, and when it flung its head from side to side, they spun away like jewels. One came to rest on the cuff of Axel’s sleeve, where it clung for a moment before slumping as if in relief into the cloth.

“Careful, Chan, it may be a ruse.”

He ignored the commander. His left hand was on the Voice’s shoulder, his right cupping her chin. “Look at me,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

The Voice raised its eyes. He felt its jaw tremble under his fingers. “It is the disguise,” it said quietly. “I have fulfilled my purpose. The data is delivered. I should shut down now, but I can’t. In order to make the disguise real enough, I seem to have removed my ability to cease existence. I have no purpose now, but I am still here.”

Questions crowded Axel’s mind; he couldn’t think of where to start. “But–”

“Maybe,” said Marya from close behind, “you’d better start from the beginning. Tell us what happened to you after you were captured by the swans.”

The Voice locked eyes with Axel for a moment, then looked past him at Marya. “Yes,” it said. “That is enough like my purpose to… I can do that.”

The Desert Voice began her tale.

§

The last command I received was to destroy an aerostat that was threatening my captain’s life. I hurried to obey, but the action was difficult because I did not want to drop the wreckage on top of her. So I circled, looking for the best shot, and all the while the Diadem swans were closing their net around me.

It was a terrible dilemma. I could still escape, and I was her only means off the planet. On the other hand, if she were killed now all other purposes would be rendered moot. It appeared I had to sacrifice myself for her temporary survival.

I found my shot, and clipped the top from the aerostat. It screamed outrage on numerous frequencies, and I heard the swans respond. They normally made a giant invisible shell orbiting around the planet, billions of black cables absorbing energy from the sun and the planet’s magnetic field. I had been able to thread my way among them before, and they obliged as in a game; the swans sang as they swayed aside, and when two or more met they were liable to twine together in a burst of energy, and form fantastical shapes, like beasts or birds, or their favorite, winged women. To orbit Ventus is to sail a river of song, where apparitions rise and shimmer and vanish behind.

Now, enraged, they made a net, and the net appeared as an angel with a flaming sword.

It’s an instinct, said Marya. Part of their original programming is to make these shapes from EuroAmerican mythology. The Ventus terraforming team were insane.

Or brilliant, countered Axel.

I, designed to resemble a bird of fire sixty meters long, would have appeared as small as one of this creature’s fingers. It used the shear and pull of magnetic forces among its countless threadlike members to wrap me in a bundle of fibre, like a black spiderweb.

I tried to signal my captain, but the crisscross of threads made a Faraday cage that my signal could not penetrate. The swans had me, and according to everything I knew about them, that meant I was to be destroyed.

There had been no time to signal any of the other craft in the system. I had no way of knowing if any had seen my capture. That meant my captain’s insurance claim might be difficult to process. I was unable to pursue my main purpose of ensuring her immediate safety, but at the very least I could try to send a signal out so that if she survived she would be recompensed for my destruction.

I began to record everything that was happening.

The swans made a cocoon around me, and spun tails of thread a thousand kilometers up and down. They poured current into these tails, and the tug against Ventus’ magnetic field swung us out and away, towards Diadem. As this was happening they were making fists and hammering on my hull, seeking entrance. I was surprised that they had not simply crushed me, and it took some hours before I realized why they were being so gentle. They thought I might be carrying passengers.

I recalled that the Winds are protective of living things. They are conscious, and have ethics and priorities, and on Ventus their priorities put human life well below the integrity of the ecosphere as a whole. In space, their priority would be to protect fragile life forms, since there is no ecosphere to manage there. They would be hostile to me as a technological construct, but as nurturing as possible to the lives within me. I had no proof for this theory, but it made sense from what I knew of them.

34

Axel heard the ticking approach of Marya’s footsteps. He did not look away from the giant window that filled one wall of the ship’s lounge. Outside lay the disk of the Solar system–the original Archipelago.

The view was breathtaking. From here, beyond the orbit of Neptune, Axel could see the evidence of humanity’s presence in the form of a faint rainbowed disk of light around the tiny sun. Scattered throughout it were delicate sparkles, each some world-sized Dyson engine or fusion starlette. Earth was just one of a hundred thousand pinpricks of light in that disk. Starlettes lit the coldest regions of the system, and all the planets were ringed with habitats and the conscious, fanatical engines of the solarforming civilization. This was the seat of power for the human race, and for many gods as well. It was ancient, implacably powerful, and in its trillions of inhabitants habored more that was alien than the rest of the galaxy put together.

Axel hated the place.

He couldn’t help but be impressed by the sheer scale of it, of course. He had spent months on Ventus, concerned with staying alive and finding his next meal, in the domain of flies and dumb rooting animals. Now he stood in warm carpet grass in the lounge of the navy hospital ship that had brought them from Ventus, surrounded by the scents and quiet thrum of a living spacecraft. If he shut his eyes he could open a link to the outer edge of the inscape, the near-infinite datanet that permeated the Archipelago. He chose not to do this.

It felt so strange to be here. He had so far refused to sleep in the ship’s freefall zone, where Marya had taken up residence. He wanted the feel of gravity, and of real sheets instead of aerogel. Maybe because of that, he had waked disoriented today, expecting to see his breath frosting the air, and had flung his hand out to meet neatly stacked, laundered clothing where he expected damp soil.

Axel had not said to Marya that Ventus felt more real to him than the Archipelago; he was afraid of what that might mean. Maybe there was an intimacy in connecting with cold, indifferent soil that no amount of intelligent, sympathetic machinery could match.

“Isn’t it marvellous?” she said as she came to stand next to him. “I have never been here! Not physically, I mean.” She was dressed in her illusions again, today in a tiny whirlwind of strategically timed leaves: Eve in some medieval painter’s fantasy.

“You haven’t missed much,” he said.

Marya blinked. “How can you say that?” She went to lean on the window, her fingers indenting its resilient surface. “It is everything!“

“That’s what I hate about it.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how people can live here, permanently linked into inscape. All you can ever really learn is that everything you’ve ever done or thought has been done and thought before, only better. The richest billionaire has to realize that the gods next door take no more notice of him than he would a bug. And why go explore the galaxy when anything conceivable can be simulated inside your own head? You know what Mars is like–a hundred billion people stacked in pods like so much lumber, dreaming their own universe into being while the physical infrastructure of the planet crumbles around them. A friend of mine had a smuggler’s base there. I took a walk–only once in the six months I was there. Empty cracked streets, the terraforming failing, red dust freezing to the tiles. And a permanent orgy going on inside the computers. Creepy.”

“But Earth! We’re going to visit Earth. A world like Ventus.”

“Yeah. Beautiful place. Too bad it’s inhabited by Earthmen.” He sighed. “Sorry. I’m being the jaded traveller again.”

She glanced back at him, half-smiling. “We will rescue your Calandria. Earth will support us in this.”

“Not if we can’t make our case.” As refugees, they had been unable to get Turcaret’s DNA examined; extrapolating the growth patterns of a being from genes alone was expensive. Axel had access to the money he had been paid by the god Choronzon for tracking Armiger, but he didn’t dare tap it because the navy wanted to bill him for their rescue. If they knew about his secret accounts they would drain them just as they had his public one. So for now, he was officially broke and Turcaret’s head remained in a cryonic jar in his stateroom. He’d kept it hidden under the bed.

The navy was willing to drop them off anywhere they made regular stops. Marya had chosen Earth without consulting Axel.

“Look at this place,” he said. “Nobody here gives a damn about Ventus. The navy’s convinced Armiger is a resurrection seed. If they decide to burn Ventus down to bedrock just to make sure they’ve eliminated every last vestige of 3340, nobody in the Archipelago is going lift a finger to stop them.”

He crossed his arms and glowered at the delicate rainbow light shining from the homes of seventy trillion people.

“Maybe we can change their minds,” said Marya, smiling again. “If we find the secret of the Flaw.”

He grunted his doubt.

Marya shrugged. “I came to tell you the patient’s awake,” she said.

Axel wheeled and ran from the lounge. “Why didn’t you say so?” he shouted back. He heard Marya laughing as she followed.

He made his way through the softly glowing halls with their fragrant grass and flowering music vines. Sleepy-eyed crew members blinked in surprise as he passed; their unblemished, fashion-sculpted faces seemed alien to him after the variety and chaos of Ventus. His own face was like leather now, with crow’s feet around his eyes and scars everywhere, one splitting his left eyebrow. They had offered to remove those scars. He had refused.

The patient was the only other person who had escaped the Diadem swans’ sweep of the Ventus system–and she wasn’t even human. The swans had been efficient and brutal in rounding up the Galactics and Archipelagic watchers. Most of Marya’s compatriots were unaccounted for; only those in the main institute habitat had escaped, because the habitat orbited Ventus’ sun far from the planetary system.

The thing they called ‘the patient’ had erupted up from the surface of Diadem the day after Axel and Marya were rescued. In examining the images with the major, Axel had his first glimpse of the surface of Ventus’ moon and was shocked to realize that the entire thing was a warren of the Winds. The moon’s surface had been made into a city–or perhaps something more akin to a giant machine. Domes and spires covered the craters and mountain ranges, but they were all camouflaged, painted the colors of the landscape they had overwhelmed. From Ventus, Diadem remained a tiny mottled white disk; had the Winds left their aluminum and titanium structures unpainted, the disk would have shone like the sun, or like the jeweled tiara for which it was named.

The sphere of incandescence on the telescope images obliterated several square kilometers of moon-city. It had also flung something completely out of Diadem’s gravity well. This appeared as a dopplered radar image, just a tiny smear. The ship had not even bothered to report its existence to the crew until it changed heading under its own power.

Fourteen hours later they had drawn next to the limp figure of a woman hanging like an abandoned doll in the velvet black of space. The swans were rising from Diadem, their music strange and threatening. The woman was gently brought on board, and bundled straight to the operating theatre, for what everyone expected would be a routine post-mortem. In the course of the operation, which Axel attended, several things came to light:

The woman bore an astonishing resemblance to Calandria May.

The ship’s instruments could not penetrate her skin. Indeed, nothing could.

She was still alive.

Axel rode a lift shaft up to the ship’s axis and, now in freefall, grabbed a tow line that soon deposited him at the little-used gods’ infirmary. He knew Marya was trying to catch up to him, but he ignored her.

The patient hung like a crucified angel at the focus of a bank of deity-class equipment. Most of the equipment was dark; the patient was not a god after all. She was a robot, merely masked by sophisticated but commonly known screens. She was not, it seemed, a product of Wind technology.

Her eyes were open. Seeing this, Axel stopped dead at the entrance. The two attending technicians noted his presence; one came over. “We’re just waiting for the commander,” she said. “Then we can start getting its deposition, if it wants to talk.”

The thing looked at him. It had pale grey eyes. The impact of its gaze made his skin crawl.

“Axel, my friend,” it said in a familiar voice. “So good to see you again.”

He knew that voice. Its tone was measured, musical, as though the speaker were savoring every syllable spoken. So like Calandria May’s voice, he had always felt, but different in its underlying serenity.

Marya bounced to a stop next to him. “Is it talking?” she asked loudly.

Axel let himself drift into the center of the high chamber, nearer the patient. “Are you who I think you are?” he asked.

It arched a brow just as Calandria would have. “You know me, Axel,” it said. “I am the Desert Voice.”

Armiger rolled the larger rocks off Lavin, and checked his pulse. “He is alive,” he said.

Galas stared at the fallen general, her old friend and betrayer. She didn’t know what she felt now. Rage, yes, and resentment. Fear, perhaps, of a man so obsessed as this, and so clever in his obsession. She could almost believe in his plan to deceive Parliament. Almost–but would Lavin ever be content to let her free, if once he possessed her? At one time, perhaps, she would have held faith with him.

Megan untied Galas. Ahead of them, an old man stood patiently in the light of a lantern he had placed on the floor. “Come along,” he said. “Or go back. Which is it to be?”

Armiger walked up to him. “We go forward,” he said. “Will you help us?”

Enneas shrugged. “It seems to be my lot in life to shepherd the damned into the underworld. Thief, general or queen, what the hell difference should it make to me? Come along then.”

Galas relit Lavin’s lantern, which had fallen, and placed it near his outflung arm. Then, looking back only once, she followed the others into the darkness.

§

Jordan was puzzled. He had seen Armiger take down the other man with some kind of weapon. He knew the general was somewhere underground, heading away from the palace. It must be a tunnel of some kind–but where did it let out?

He left Armiger’s perspective and returned to Ka. “Ka, leave the tower,” he said. “Fly up, as high as you can.” The little Wind obliged, spiralling out and up at a giddying rate. Soon the entire palace was laid out below Jordan, like an architect’s model.

Familiar skills came to his aid now. He could see the different layers and periods of construction of the place; as at Castor’s or the Boros manor, the history of the Summer Palace was written in its stones. Armiger kept his eyes on the task at hand, which was negotiating the narrow way, so Jordan had ample time to contemplate his surroundings. He saw the type of stone in the passage Armiger was walking through, and had judged its age in the glow of the lantern held by Armiger’s guide. That style of construction was used in particular types of wall or embrasure… He stared down from Ka’s height, looking for the structure he knew must be there.

“Jordan, we’re out of time.”

Opening his eyes, he looked up to see white branches, like frozen lightning, gently touching down at points in the nearby hills.

He felt the stirring of the Swans’ attention. They had not spotted him yet; it seemed they were here for another reason. Beyond the pressure of their searching gazes, he something else as well–a deep murmuring from underground.

“Mediation,” he said, “we need shelter from the swans. Disguise us, or create a diversion–something, anything!“

“Come on,” said Tamsin. “We’ve got to hide!” She pointed to the palace, where forms like living flames were rising into the air.

“Just one minute more.” He clenched his eyes shut, and reentered Ka’s perspective. There had to be something…

There it was: a long, faint line in the sand, the crumbled remains of a causeway that extended all the way from the central buildings of the palace past its walls. And at its terminus in the desert…

“I’ve got it!” That knot of men and horses, surrounding a tumble of stones, must be the end of the tunnel. It only remained for Jordan to orient himself, open his eyes, and find the distant smudge of figures with his own vision. Then he was up and running.

He went back down the hillside, out of sight of the palace and the now abandoned, smoking siege engines. An eery silence was descending as the Swans touched down in the valley. He couldn’t see what was happening there, unless he went back into Ka’s perspective. That might be too dangerous at this point. But for all he knew, the swans were killing everyone.

When he estimated they were near the causeway, Jordan jogged cautiously up the hillside again. The long causeway was visible below them. It ended well outside the tents of Lavin’s encampment, in the tumble of ruins Jordan had seen from above.

“Look!”

Tamsin was pointing at the palace. Jordan was afraid to look. Reluctantly, he turned his head, expecting to see the Swans descending on them.

Something huge was rising out of the earth near the palace’s main gate. It was as big as one of the towers, rounded, and colored in mottled rust and beige shades. The Swans were darting around it like flies. A low drone carried from that direction.

“Our distraction,” said Jordan. “Mediation was listening after all!”

A troop of nervous soldiers crouched at the ruins. They were watching the living flames walk the palace walls, but duty or fear kept them at their posts around the entrance to the tunnel. One stood to challenge Jordan as he led the horses between the jumbled stones.

“Now what?” hissed Tamsin.

Jordan was still covered with dust from their walk across the desert. In the desert he had been able to create heat from the mecha in dust. Could he do something else with them now? The only way to find out was to try.

He commanded the mecha in the dust covering him to make light. Tamsin gasped as Jordan’s body began to glow.

“Take me to the underground way,” Jordan commanded the terrified sentry. “And don’t challenge me again.” The sentry fell back, stammering apologies. Tamsin stared at Jordan in wonder as they followed him into the camp.

Before they got to the tumbled stones, a brilliant flash lit the sky from horizon to horizon. Moments later a deep and sustained rolling thunder fell across the ruins. Looking back, Jordan saw a tall spire of smoke and flame where the subterranean Wind had been. The Swans were spiralling up and away from the rubble.

He felt the searchlight gazes of the Swans. They were looking for something now; he was pretty sure he knew what–or rather, whom. “We need to get underground,” he told Tamsin. “And stay there for a while.”

The soldiers around the tunnel entrance scrambled out of the way of the glowing boy and the girl leading their horses. Jordan motioned for a man to take the reins of the mounts, then walked into the dark niche that housed the tunnel mouth.

“I’d love to do this to the guys at home,” Jordan said. His glow lit up the entire chamber, showing clearly the dark slot of the tunnel. The glow was fading slowly as the mecha lost power.

They waited, while the Swans passed to and fro overhead. The Winds of Insolation, as Mediation had called them, could not see through the stone. The mecha of the soil were loyal to Mediation, and although Jordan heard the hurricane voices of the Swans demanding to know where the abomination that was Jordan Mason had gone, nothing answered. At least for now, they were safe.

After a long while the sound of scraping and footsteps came from the slot, and one after another, weary soldiers popped out and blinked at the afternoon sunlight. Jordan’s glow had faded, and the soldiers were apathetic and ignored him. After the last one, an old man with a lantern emerged. Jordan’s heart was in his mouth. He knew what he was going to see next, but he could scarcely believe it. When a man stepped into the light whose face he had only seen in mirrors, Jordan found himself tongue-tied. He simply stood there, as Armiger helped Megan, then Galas, out of the tunnel. Galas was dressed in tattered finery, Armiger in splendid armor. They looked like creatures of legend.

Armiger waved some device in his hands at the assembled soldiers. “Begone,” he said. Jordan knew the voice, and yet he didn’t; he had never heard it save from within his own skull.

“You too,” said Armiger to Jordan.

“I, I brought horses.”

“Good. Now go.”

“No. I, I’ve got information for you.”

“For me? What are you talking about?”

“I’m Jordan Mason. I’ve been watching you for months. Ever since… you came at night and put something in my skull, mecha or something, and then the others came and changed it–I can see through your eyes, hear through your ears. I’ve been watching! I know it all.”

“Wait, stop.” Armiger held up a hand. He seemed to be having trouble with his eyes; he focussed on Jordan only with great difficulty. “You’re one of my remotes. I thought I’d lost you.”

“Yes, sir, I mean no. The woman who attacked you just now, Calandria May–she wanted to use your implants to track you down, only something happened, I was able to see everything you saw…”

“What is this?” Megan took Armiger’s arm. “We have no time for this.”

Armiger nodded, and turned away.

“Wait!” The three people Jordan had watched in waking dreams for weeks were walking away. This wasn’t turning out at all the way he had expected.

Tamsin elbowed him. “Come on!“

He blushed, then cleared his throat. They were nearly at the entrance now.

This was too much. After everything he’d been through…

“Hey! Armiger, you’re going to listen to me! I know why you came to Ventus. I know what you’re after. You want the secret of the Winds. Well, guess what, I have it!”

That stopped them. Armiger turned, and Megan turned with him, scowling. The queen merely sat down on a tumbled stone, and stared.

Jordan bowed. “‘That a stone should speak, as you speak.’ I think you told Queen Galas once that that was our deepest wish. You craved permission to speak. Well, now it’s my turn. You want to know what the Winds are after, and what their alliances are. With your permission, I will tell you.”

Finally I will speak, and you will listen.

Armiger rolled over, gasping. His human body was nearly dead again. He had seen the microwaves from the woman’s weapon, a blinding corona that had burst inside his body like a sun. His cells were in chaos; the nanotech skein of his real body was broken and burned. Another blast and he would have been incapacitated; three or four more and the damage would have been too much to recover from.

His human eyes could not see, but he sensed Megan above him. “My soldier,” she whispered, as she drew him into her arms.

He reached out with his other senses. His attacker had been subdued; two soldiers sat on her back now as she struggled vainly. Her weapon lay neglected under smoking wood panels that it had blown from the wall.

The woman’s voice carried suddenly. She had stopped struggling. “This man tried to kill the queen,” she said. Her voice was calm, liquid, as convincing as any orator’s. With his nanotech’s sensors, Armiger could see that she lay facing him. Her eyes were open, searching out his. Her face was a mask.

A deeper sound reached his senses. Armiger cursed weakly. “Help me up,” he said to Megan.

“No, you’re hurt, don’t move.”

“They’re here,” he said. “The Winds. We have to get out of here.”

“Oh–but you can’t move!”

“I can. Help me!” She helped him up and he stood, blind and bent, above the woman who had attacked him. When he felt strong enough, he knelt and gathered up the weapon his mysterious attacker had used on him. He felt the Galactic workmanship immediately. This woman was from the Archipelago, doubtless a mercenary sent to pick off stragglers such as himself from 3340’s force.

“Sir!” A soldier saluted. “What shall we do with her, sir?”

“Bind her in chains of iron,” he said. “But strike her unconscious first.”

“Sir.”

He staggered into the antechamber, leaning heavily on Megan. “Where did they go?” he hissed.

“Who?”

“The queen, and General Lavin.”

“This way. Please, you must rest.”

“No! There is a secret way out. He has taken her to it. We must follow.”

Thunder grumbled beyond the windows–but he knew there were no clouds in the sky. “The siege is nearly over,” he said. “Maybe no one will survive. We have to hurry.”

§

Jordan had ordered Ka to transfer its visual sensorium to him. The little Wind was high over the walls now, fluttering doggedly in the direction of the keep. Jordan held tightly to Tamsin’s hand, trying to remember that he was really still sitting on the sand, and not suspended impossibly high in the air.

He could make out all kinds of fascinating details if he looked closely–ladders being raised here, the whizzing thread of steam-cannon missiles wavering in the air. Sounds drifted up to him: hissing, shouts, sharp impacts, clash of steel. But to look closely was to invite vertigo; he preferred to keep his eyes fixed on the row of windows that was their goal.

He could hear Tamsin muttering above him. “I hope the swans kill you all,” she said. “Every last one of you.” The sound of her voice chilled him; it held rage and hate such as he’d never heard before. He almost let go of her hand, but she was his lifeline, and she still clutched his fingers tightly. Her rage was not directed at him.

He had made Ka look upward once, and instantly regretted it. The sky faded from blue at the horizon, to emerald, to purest gold at the zenith. Cupped in that roseate glow was a lowering spiral of fine, glowing threads. A sound was coming from those threads, a kind of song sung by inhuman tongues.

It took all his will power to remain seated here in the sand, while the swans fell at him. But Ka was only meters from the tower now. Jordan mentally urged him forward, and held his breath until the little Wind finally soared in through an open casement, and hovered inside the queen’s chambers.

“Find her!” he commanded. Ka began to flit from room to room, and Jordan found himself swaying in sympathy as his visual field ducked and swooped from corridor to room and back.

He could see the duennas, and soldiers; people were weeping and running about. There was no sign of the queen. He couldn’t make out what was going on until a single word leapt out of the tumult:

“Captured!”

Jordan opened his eyes in surprise. “What is it?” asked Tamsin.

“Something’s happened. The queen’s gone.”

“Now what?”

“I must find Armiger.” He closed his eyes again.

§

“Bind her wrists, Enneas.” Lavin stepped back. “Your majesty, we are leaving now. You may walk, or we will drag you.” They stood in the catacombs. Galas’ eyes were dark pools in the light from Enneas’ lantern.

The thief fumbled with the bindings. “Excuse me, majesty,” he said. He seemed overawed. Lavin realized he had assumed Lavin would fail. The thought made him laugh.

“What are you laughing at?” demanded Galas. “Is my humiliation so comforting to you?”

All Lavin’s joy shrivelled. “Galas– I… I would never laugh at you, nor hold you in contempt. You are my dearest ideal and the only woman I have ever loved. Your pride and anger will never let you admit the favor I’ve done for you, but listen–we have time as we walk back to discuss terms. Our terms, not the terms of Royalty versus Parliament.”

“What do you mean? Ah, that hurts!”

“Sorry, your majesty.”

“Lead on, Enneas.” The thief walked ahead, lantern raised. Lavin picked up a second lantern, leaned close to Galas, and whispered, “I mean that I am, and always have been, your servant. Don’t you understand the situation? I am the commander of the army that controls your nation, and I am your most loyal servant. This is the moment I have worked for ever since I took charge of the war against you. I am yours, my army is yours, all the resources of Parliament are at our command. All we need do is deceive them as to your capitulation while we rebuild the Royalist power base in secret. You will be queen again, Galas!”

She stopped. “Lavin, you amaze me.”

“Thank you, your highness.”

“Please raise your hands, general,” said a voice behind them.

Armiger stepped into the glow of Lavin’s lantern. He stood in a painful crouch, but his hands didn’t waver as they pointed the alien weapon at Lavin.

The fluttering rage that he had so carefully kept at bay overcame Lavin. He drew his sword and leaped at Armiger with a cry.

Armiger fired–not at Lavin but over his head. The narrow passage rocked to the concussion, and the ceiling fell in on him.

They were in sight of the palace walls when Jordan began to hear the song. It came from directly overhead, far above the smoky air and late autumn clouds. The last time he’d heard something like remotely like this, the sky had been filling with vagabond moons at the Boros estate. The sky was empty now.

Periodically as they trudged toward the siege, Jordan had paused and closed his eyes, to watch the events there unfolding through Armiger’s eyes. He knew an assault on the palace was in full swing, but beyond that everything was confused. Armiger seemed to be moving purposefully, but since he didn’t talk to himself he wasn’t letting Jordan in on his thoughts.

“Going in there is suicide,” Tamsin had said when he told her of the assault. “We need to stop and wait for it to end.”

Maybe. But Jordan feared that the seemingly empty landscape around them would erupt at any second with minions of thalience. He could easily be caught by them before they reached the palace.

Only Armiger could oppose the Winds. Compared to them, the threat of these human armies seemed almost trivial.

“We have to tell him about Mediation and thalience,” he told her. “He would have acted by now if he knew exactly what was going on. I don’t believe the queen told him what he needed to know.”

Tamsin started to answer, then seemed to think better of it. She glanced over her shoulder, eyes catching the leagues of open sand that lay between herself and her devastated home.

“None of us knows what we’re doing, do we?” she said in a small voice.

Jordan looked at her, surprised. “No,” he said finally. “Not even him, I guess.”

“What about the swans?”

“The Winds of Mediation take care of the earth,” he said. “Maybe if we can find somewhere underground to hide, we can escape the swans.”

Tamsin squinted upward. “The sun’s a funny color.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” He shut his eyes briefly, inner vision trembling between Armiger and kaleidoscopic images from the siege. As had happened at the Boros manor, the local landscape was excited, stones, wood and plants all trading images and sounds on some frequency they rarely used. Jordan could see through their eyes when they did this; he saw fighting figures on the ground from the vantage point of smoke rising above the towers. He saw both inside and outside the great hall of the summer palace, where tense soldiers waited with tinder and flint to light a new and vastly larger conflagration should Parliament’s forces breach the walls. He heard the confused shouts, the screams, and he heard weeping as he saw Armiger’s hands reach to undo the ropes that bound the Queen of Iapysia to a gilded chair in her chambers.

“Ka,” said Jordan. “I need your help now.”

§

“You told me the truth,” said Galas. “That is why I decided to end it.” She stood shakily, massaging her wrists where the ropes had chafed.

Armiger shook his head angrily. “We have more important things to worry about than your kingdom.” He threw down the ropes.

Galas’ maids cowered in the corners of the opulent bed chamber. Two soldiers stood uncertainly by the door; they had been placed there to guard the queen against herself, and were suffering the abuse of the maids when Armiger entered.

Galas smoothed back her hair with one hand, staring wildly about herself. “What?” She turned and looked at him in puzzlement. “What did you just say?”

“You have a greater responsibility now,” he said. “More than your kingdom is at stake.”

Galas laughed. She tried to stifle the sound with her hand, but it kept coming, and she reeled toward the window, bent over, hands to her mouth. When she could speak again, she shouted, “And what about me? What say do I have in this? Or do I have none? Who gets to sacrifice me on their altar? Parliament? Lavin? You?”

The door swung back with a crash and five armed soldiers paced in. Their swords were drawn. The last one in shut the door behind himself and threw the latch.

“Galas,” said the man at the head of the group, “I am afraid I must ask you to surrender.”

Her two guards were suddenly against the wall with swords to their throats. The other two men had their blades leveled at Armiger.

“Lavin.” She felt a deep feeling of cold wash over her. “You did come.”

“I came to ensure your safety,” said Lavin. “I said I’d let no one harm you. And I won’t.”

“Then the palace has fallen.”

“Yes,” said Lavin.

“No,” said Armiger. “He has snuck in somehow. That’s why you ordered your men not to come over the walls, isn’t it? To keep our forces away?”

Lavin nodded curtly. “Kindly kneel on the floor, general. You too.” He indicated the others in the room. “We are going to strike you unconscious; there’s not enough rope to bind everyone. Anyone who struggles will be killed.” He stepped up to Galas. “You will accompany us, your highness. If you try to call for help I have instructed my men to kill you.” For a second he looked dizzy; he clutched at the back of the chair where Galas had been bound. “I can’t do it myself. But it must be done, if there is no alternative.”

“Your highness?” said one of her men. “Give the word and we will throw these traitors out the window.”

“Do as he says,” she said hoarsely. “There is no point in your dying too.”

“But your highness–”

“Do it!”

The maids and the two guards knelt in a line. Two of Lavin’s men stepped behind them. Galas flinched as the crying maids were struck down one by one, and the men who had stayed to protect her life. In moments they lay silent on the floor. One of the women had stopped breathing; blood pooled behind her ear. Galas stared at it until Lavin took her arm.

“Goodbye, General,” Lavin said. The soldier standing behind Armiger raised his sword and slammed the pommel down on the back of Armiger’s neck. There was a loud crack, but Armiger didn’t even blink.

Armiger held the man’s sword-arm before anyone could react, and then he was on his feet. With a casual motion he tossed the man out the window. For a shocked moment no one moved.

“No noise!” commanded Lavin. He grabbed Galas by the arm and pulled her out of the way as his other three men raised their swords to stab Armiger.

One staggered back, his own sword in his gut. The other two whirled, for Armiger was no longer where he had been.

Hands like iron clamped onto Galas’ wrists, and then Armiger was hauling her towards the door. Lavin leaped to intercede, and Armiger side-kicked him. The general was sent flying into a wardrobe, shattering it.

“We must get you to safety,” said Armiger. His voice was flat, his grip on Galas’ arm like iron. He towed the queen out into the corridor, where several servants stood, looking bewildered and offended at his handling of the queen.

She was still half-stunned. Had that really been Lavin? It looked like him. “How did he get in here?” she heard herself ask.

Armiger stopped abruptly, making her stumble. “Good point,” he said. “I’ll interrogate him. You find Megan.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s time to leave.” He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. He seemed completely unruffled by what had just occurred. “The Diadem swans are coming,” he said. “They may well obliterate Lavin’s army. I broke the rules of war, Galas. I deliberately involved the Winds.”

Galas shook her head. “Don’t hurt Lavin.”

For the first time he looked surprised. “If you wish.” He let her go and turned.

“General Armiger?”

The voice was that of a woman. They both looked up, to find what at first seemed to be a soldier boy standing by the doors to the roof. It was a woman in bloodied armor. She had an oval face, dark brows and black hair that lay now in dusty tangles. She held something like a mirrored crossbow in her hands.

“Get Megan,” said Armiger. He thrust Galas behind himself just as the woman’s gleaming weapon spat fire.

Armiger screamed. Galas made herself run and not look back–around the corner, the way they had come.

And there stood Lavin, truly him this time, grim with his sword drawn.

“Come,” he said, and reached for her.

Galas snatched her hand back. All her confusion and resentment boiled over. “Never! You destroyed me!”

“In time you’ll understand why I had to do it,” he said as he reached for her again.

“Help me!” At her cry, all the doors in the corridor opened and her servants poured forth.

Then Lavin had her wrist and twisted her arm behind her painfully. She felt the blade of his sword slide past her throat. “Back off!” he shouted. The servants stopped, their makeshift weapons raised.

“Idiots!” she screamed. “Kill him!”

In the moment while they hesitated Lavin pulled her to the end of the corridor, where it met the one that led to the stairs. She caught a confused glimpse of shattered wood and stone here, smoking embers on the carpet. A loud explosion sounded somewhere nearby; she felt a wave of heat and suddenly the ceiling split open like a ripe fruit. Lavin pulled her back just in time as beams and stonework clogged the corridor behind them.

She coughed; Lavin’s sword nicked her throat. She heard him panting, heard herself cry out in pain from the way he twisted her arm. He dragged her along the hall, spun her around, and suddenly she saw Armiger. He lay on his face at the foot of the stairs. His armor was smoking. Over him stood the black-haired woman, weapon aimed at his head.

A musket shot spiked Galas’ ears. The woman spun around and fell, limbs akimbo. Soldiers were coming down the stairs from the roof; one threw aside his smoking musket and drew his sword as he approached her.

Galas saw the woman’s foot lash out to trip the man, then Lavin had her through the door into the antechamber of the audience chamber.

Lavin spun her around again, shoving her ahead of him now. She was dazed, but beginning to think again. She should just let him kill her. Or just fall like a dead weight that he could never carry. They entered the audience chamber. Megan stood by the throne, hands clasped nervously. “Your highness…?”

“Go to Armiger,” she shouted. “He’s hurt!”

Megan ran past them. Lavin picked up his pace, so they were trotting when they reached the main doors.

She needed to know what had happened to Armiger, Galas realized. That he and his woman survive was suddenly as important to her as Megan’s survival had been to him. It was simply this that made her decide not to slide her throat along Lavin’s sword, and vindictively bleed to death in his arms.

“You’re a snake,” she said. “I can’t believe I loved you.”

“I don’t mind your cursing me,” he said. “As long as you’re cursing me, at least you’re still alive.”

“And I will curse you, as long as I do live!”

They were on the marble landing. “I know,” he said. “I knew the price when I took on the task.”