"--but we might threaten to," finished Venera with a smile.
Antaea shook her head. "They won't respond well to threats. You try to blackmail them and they'll make you disappear. They have the forces to do it and mop up the witnesses afterward. How do you think they've remained a legend all these centuries? Few people who've seen them ever tell."
"This isn't their problem anyway," Maspeth burst out. "The offer I'm carrying isn't for them, it's for the people of Virga!"
Antaea nodded. "Hear, hear!"
"We need to approach them, so we will," said Fanning. "But at the same time it's risky to keep what we've learned secret.
"So I say we don't."
Kestrel frowned.
Fanning seemed lost in thought; but after swirling his coffee for a moment he shot a rakish grin at his dinner guests.
"If Sarto's cousin Inshiri is doing diplomacy on the sly, and the Guard know no other way of doing it, then what we need to do is turn all this civilized backroom dealing into a public fight--and as nasty a one as we can manage. We hold a grand colloquy, to which we will invite all the heads of state, ambassadors, newspaper reporters, and gossips of Virga. We will accuse the Guard of outrageous things to draw them out. And at this colloquy, we will reveal all that we know.
"Twice in five years, some force within Artificial Nature has tried to gain entrance to Candesce. We're already at war. Let's bring that war to the doorsteps of every man, woman, and child in Virga--or at least, threaten to."
Kestrel's eyebrows had shot up, and he looked around the table in bemusement. Antaea was grinning openly, but that came as no surprise; but Venera Fanning was also nodding, as was Leal Maspeth. It seemed, for the moment, like Fanning's idea would carry the day.
"There's just one problem," Kestrel said loudly, "even assuming we find the proof you claim is out there. The problem is you can't control what people will do when they find out. What you're proposing is to let go completely of any control of the situation we might have had!"
Fanning shrugged. "And how much is that?" he said. "Next to none, right now."
Kestrel growled, but then nodded slowly. "Your plan has an interesting edge to it, anyway. So as our chief strategist, what do you propose we do next?"
The admiral clearly had a love for ticking things off his fingers, as he did it again now: "One, we gather our proof, which means recovering Hayden Griffin from Aethyr and establishing better contact with Leal's new friends; two, we gather Slipstream's allies, call in favors, and make outrageous promises." He turned to Venera. "Dear, that will be your job. And three, we shake the Guard out of its den and demand a public accounting of what they're up to, to be given at a time and place of our choosing.
"We have two advantages right now," he went on, "that we can't afford to go to waste. Firstly, we have a secret door into Aethyr, and contact already made with allies there. And secondly, we have a way to prove that the Guard is lying, if we can return Hayden Griffin. He's a hero to the people, and the story out of Abyss that he's dead has taken all the wind out of the celebrations here."
Kestrel shrugged. "The backlash will be so much stronger when they find out they've been lied to."
Fanning fixed Antaea, Keir, and Leal in turn with a fierce look. "You've each undergone terrible experiences," he said, "in the course of bringing what you know to us on this day, in this place, and for this decision. I want you to understand that everything that's happened prior to tonight--the outage and the battles around it, the betrayals and deaths, our loss of loved ones and the ruin of Spyre and the fall of civilized life in Abyss--all these were just scene-setting. They merely laid the groundwork for what is to follow, and when history looks back on these years they will be footnotes; because what's really important is what's about to happen. --What we are about to do.
"If you're right about the scale of the threat we face, then what we thought were the adventures of our lives have merely been training, if you will, for our real tasks. Therefore, we will go forth from here, each in our own directions, to gather what we need in order to keep our whole world from vanishing the way that our comfortable lives, our illusions, our families and cities have already gone. We've lost so much, but can we even imagine what it will be like if we lose Virga itself?
"We'll go our ways, and gather information, proof, power, allies, and weapons. We will rendezvous back here in two months, and the grand colloquy will be called. And then, everyone who has been conspiring behind the backs of the people of Virga will be exposed. Then, the real history of our time will be made."
He folded his napkin neatly on the table and stood up. "I think that's it for dinner, then."
* * *
THIS CLOSE TO Slipstream's sun, nights were warm and evenings always sultry. As the sun's eight-hour maintenance shift approached, the sky dimmed through purple and mauve to pink and peach, and the vast cloudscapes became a mandala of shifting colors--endless tunnels of hue and sheen receding in any direction you looked.
There were various places around the Fanning estate where one could pause to watch this fabulous display unfold; one was a tall recessed window, half-curtained, at the end of the attic corridor containing the guest apartments. Keir sat in the window box, his arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees. Fireworks were starting now that the light was dim enough. The crowds--thousands of black dots on the air--had not lessened, and in fact as night came they were turning into stars: each person or family group had brought its lantern and they were now lighting them.
Keir had sat down here because it was a private spot and the view was pretty (he had no comparable view from his guest apartment). As he watched the festivities, however, he caught himself musing that Slipstream's government had somehow managed to turn the return of freedom to an unjustly conquered vassal state into some sort of national triumph. The thought was intrusive--alien--and somehow disturbing. He shifted uncomfortably, as if his own body was a puppet, and he'd suddenly felt someone else tug on the strings. That thought about the cunning of Slipstream's government ... it was as if somebody else had thought it, using his own brain to do so.
He buried his face in his knees for a moment. It must be some effect of the de-indexing, or just shock from losing his dragonflies and his scry. Ever since he'd entered Virga he'd been having these strange flashes--thoughts that were somehow louder than his own thoughts; memories that felt like his but could not be. For instance, these skies felt familiar, as if he'd been in Virga before.
Maybe he had been.
It was hard to remember things without the help of scry, but he clearly recalled Maerta, at the door to Virga, telling him that he'd de-indexed himself. The term had a familiar ring to it, and normally he would simply query scry and the answer would pop into his head, as naturally as if it were his own thought. Scry was gone; so what did his primitive biological memory tell him about de-indexing?
He was racking his mind for clues when he heard voices. Cautiously, he drew himself farther into the window well. The sounds came from down the short flight of stairs that led off the attic; it was Chaison and Venera Fanning speaking.
He: "With all the excitement today I neglected to sign the papers commissioning some new officers. It's important for them, so I'm just going to walk up to the office and do it."
She: "All right, dear. I need to brief my agents on their new assignments, so I'll be in the lounge if you need me."
He: "Bye!"
She: "Bye."
There was a very long pause, during which Keir's thoughts drifted. The clouds outside reminded him of other sunset skies, mauve and pale green, of streaked clouds and a band of orange spanning half the horizon ... some planet's dusk sometime.