"You need better spies,” said Venera. Nobody laughed, but the thought intrigued her. Spyre, it seemed, was an investigator's playground. She would love to develop a network here, the way she had in secret in her adopted home of Slipstream.
They moved from the locker cylinder to the axle of the town-wheel. Here, dozens of yin-yang stairs and elevator shafts ran down to the copper-shingled roofs of the vast buildings lining the wheel. Odess showed their letters of transit to a succession of inspectors and gradually they worked their way over to one of the elevators.
"Stay alert, everyone,” Odess said as the wrought-iron doors grumbled shut behind them, and they began to move down. “Watch for any signs of change. In particular, our new interpreter,” he nodded at Venera, “is going to cause a stir. We need to stick to our agreed story. You,” he said to Venera, “must only speak to the customers, and then only when we ask you to. We don't want to give our rivals any clues about our capabilities or what's been going on inside Liris."
This paranoia reminded Venera of Hale and the darkened corridors of her father's palace. “But why?” she asked in irritation. “Why this skulking?"
"Questions might be asked,” said Odess darkly. “About where you came from. About why our people might have ventured outside our walls. Where we might have gone, what we might have seen. What you might have seen.” He shook his head. “Your story is that you were born and raised in Liris."
"But my accent—"
"Is why you will only speak to the customers."
There was silence for the rest of the ride. Venera adjusted her veil, glanced around, and noted the tightening of shoulders, straightening of stances as gravity rose until it neared the level she was used to. And then the elevator clunked to a halt, and the doors opened.
The trade delegation of Liris edged cautiously into the Great Fair of Spyre.
Fabulous beasts swept across the dance floor, their skirts wheeling in time to the deep drumbeat of Spyre's music. The beasts had the faces of monsters, of animals, of gods. They danced in pairs, sometimes pausing in midpose as the music paused. It was during those pauses that business was transacted.
One slender figure with a hawk's face stood at the foot of a gold-chased pillar, her backdrop a blue trompe l'oeil vista of wheeling towns. She watched the dancers alertly, aware of the deep strains of paranoia and deceit that must run through Spyre for it to have developed this custom. For this filigreed and gleaming ballroom and its whirling dancers was the Great Fair itself.
True, there were display rooms. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Odess emerging from the doorway that led to Liris's. He was alone, and doubtless his errand had been to check on the disposition of the glass cases and lights there. No customers had passed that door since she had been here.
Venera had spent some hours in the display room, helping the others set up. A solitary cherry tree dominated the marbled parlor; it sat in a broad stone bowl, the glow of its pink blossoms the first sight that greeted a visitor. It was a fake, made of silk and common woods.
While Liris's soldiers played cards behind a screen in the display rooms, the rest of the delegation danced. The music was loud, the dances fast and close; so conversation consisted of quick whispers in your partner's ear, quips at arm's length, or brief nose to nose exchanges. Eavesdropping was impossible in these circumstances—and the soldiers of Spyre watched carefully for any sign of it. Venera had been told that visitors were carefully screened, and the penalty for revealing secrets here was death. Ironically, the whole setup seemed designed for cheating, for who could tell what any two dancers were telling one another?
She had heard that the dances were occasionally interrupted by spontaneous duels.
The denizens of Spyre took their masque very seriously. Not all the visitors did; most eschewed disguises, and so Venera was able to tell how many principalities were represented here. She even recognized one or two of the national costumes they wore.
A gavotte ended and the dancers broke up. Gorgon-headed Eilen headed Venera's way. A waiting footman handed her a drink as she paused, panting. “Is it always like this?” Venera asked her. “Interested customers seem a bit thin on the ground."
"We have our regulars,” said Eilen. “It's not the season for any of them. Oh, this gravity! It pulls at my stomach."
Venera sighed. These people were so immersed in their traditions that they couldn't see the insanity of it all. In the brief pause between dances, some of the customers had drifted off with outlandishly masked delegates—salesmen, really. Venera had been keeping track of who went through which doorways. Many of the portals around the vast chamber had never opened. They might be locked or even bricked up on the other side, for all she knew.
She couldn't figure out the architecture of the fair. It seemed that the sprawling, multi-winged building had been renovated, rebuilt, and reimagined so many times over the centuries that it had lost any sense of its original logic. Corridors ran into blank walls; stairwells led nowhere; elevator shafts opened onto roaring air where lower floors had once been. Behind the public walls countless narrow passages twisted their ways to the offices, storage lockers, and panic rooms of the trade delegations. Liris's domain extended several floors above and below their public showroom; Venera had glimpsed in passing a huge chamber, like a collapsing ballroom, its dripping casements lost in gloomy shadows. Eilen had told her that this was where they met customers back when their cherries were a state secret. The ballroom was on one of the high-security levels of the fair; Liris still owned title to it, but had no use for it now.
Venera had scoffed at this. “Has no one had the courage to drill spy holes in the walls to find out what your neighbors are up to?” Odess had sent her one of his disapproving, frightened looks, but nobody had said anything.
Oh, something was happening—Capri, Eilen's apprentice, was leading four people in rich clothes toward the Liris door. The little surge of excitement was absurd, and Venera nearly laughed at herself. Now Odess was bowing to them. He was opening the door. Venera imagined cheering.
"Who are they?” she asked Eilen.
"Oh! Success! That's… let's see… the delegates from Tracoune."
Venera ransacked her memory; why was that word familiar? Ah, that was it. It was only a couple of weeks ago that Venera and her husband had attended a soiree in the capital of Gehellen. The event had been unremarkable up until the shooting started, but she did remember a long conversation with a red-faced admiral of the local navy. He had mentioned Tracoune.
"Excuse me, I'd like to watch this,” she said to Eilen. The woman shrugged and turned back to the dance. Venera threaded her way around the outskirts of the ball and pushed open the door to the Liris showroom. It was at the end of a long hallway, seventy feet at least in length. Random words echoed back at her as Venera walked down it.
Odess was showing them the tree. Now he was opening a lacquered box to reveal the cherries. Capri hovered nervously in the background.
The visitors didn't seem too impressed. One of the four—a woman—wandered away from the others to stare idly at the paintings on the walls. They seemed to be marking time here, perhaps taking a break from dancing. Even Venera, with no experience in sales, could tell that.
She approached the woman. “Excuse me…” said Venera. She deliberately did not stand or move the way Odess and Capri were—clasping their hands in front of them, darting hesitantly like servants. Instead, Venera bowed like an equal.
"Yes?” The customer looked surprised, but not displeased at being approached in this way.