This was far more information than most nations ever released about their customers, so the council would have to be content with it.
The return of the ruler of Buridan was a hectic affair, and it took until near dinnertime before Venera was able to escape to her apartment to contemplate her next move. There had been no messages from Sacrus, neither demands nor threats. They thought they had her in their pocket now, she supposed, so they could turn their attention to more important matters for a while. But those more important matters were her concern too.
She had a meal sent up and summoned the chief butler. “I do not wish to be disturbed for any reason,” she told him. “I will be working here until very late.” He bowed impassively, and she closed and locked the door.
In the course of renovations, some workmen had knocked a hole in one of her bedroom walls. She had chastised them roundly for it then discovered that there was an airspace behind it—an old chimney, long disused. “Work in some other room,” she told the men. “I’ll hire more reliable men to fix this.” But she hadn’t fixed it.
Ten minutes after locking the door, she was easing down a rope ladder that hung in the chimney. The huge portrait of Giles Thrace-Guiles that normally covered the hole had been set aside. At the bottom of the shaft, she pried back a pewter fireplace grate decorated with dolphins and naked women and dusted herself off in a former servant’s bedroom that she’d recast as a storage closet.
It was easy to nip across the hall and into the wine cellar and slide aside the rack on its oiled track. Then she was in the rebels’ bolthole and momentarily free of Buridan, Sacrus, and everything else—except, perhaps, the nagging of her new and still unfamiliar conscience.
The insane organ music from Buridan Tower’s broken pipeworks had ceased. Not that it was silent as Venera stepped out of the filigreed elevator; the whole place still hummed to the rush and flap of wind. But at least you could ignore it now.
“Iron lady’s here!” shouted one of the men waiting in the chamber. Venera frowned as she heard the term being relayed away down the halls. There were three guards in the elevator chamber and doubtless more lurking outside. She clasped her hands behind her back and strode for the archway, daring them to stop her. They did not.
The elevator room opened off the highest gallery of the tower’s vast atrium. It was also the smallest, as the space widened as it fell. The effect from here was dizzying: she seemed suspended high above a cavern walled by railings. Venera stood there looking down while Bryce’s followers silently surrounded her. Echoes of hammering and sawing drifted up from below.
After a while there was a chattering of footsteps, and then Bryce himself appeared. He was covered in plaster dust and his hair was disarrayed. “What?” he said. “Are they coming?”
“No,” said Venera with a half smile. “At least not yet. Which is not to say that I won’t need to give a tour at some point. But you’re safe for now.”
He crossed his arms, frowning. “Then why are you here?”
“Because this tower is mine,” she said simply. “I wanted to remind you of the fact.”
Waving away the makeshift honor guard, he strode over to lean on the railing beside her. “You’ve got a nerve,” he said. “I seem to remember the last time we spoke, you were tied to a chair.”
“Maybe next time it’ll be your turn.”
“You think you have us bottled up in here?”
“What would be the use in that?”
“Revenge. Besides, you’re a dust-blood—a noble. You can’t possibly be on our side.”
She examined her nails. “I haven’t got a side.”
“That is the dust-blood side,” said Bryce with a sneer. “There’s those that care for the people; that’s one side. The other side is anybody else.”
“I care for my people,” she said with a shrug, then, to needle him, “I care for my horses too.”
He turned away, balling his hands into fists. “Where’s our printing press?” he asked after a moment.
“On its way. But I have something more important to talk to you about. Only to you. A… job I need done.”
He glanced back at her; behind the disdain, she could see he was intrigued. “Let’s go somewhere better suited to talking,” he said.
“More chairs, less rope?”
He winced. “Something like that.”
“You can see Sacrus from here,” she said. “It’s a big sprawling estate, miles of it. If anybody is your enemy, I’d think it was them.”
“Among others.” The venue was the tower’s library, a high space full of gothic arches and decaying draperies that hung like the forelocks of defeated men from the dust-rimmed window casements. Venera had prowled through it when she and Garth were alone here, and—who knew?—some of those dusty spines settling into the shelves might be priceless. She hadn’t had time to find out, but Bryce’s people had tidied up and there were even a few tomes open on the side tables next to several cracked leather armchairs.
Evening light shone hazily through the diamond-shaped windowpanes. She was reminded of another room, hundreds of miles away in the nation of Gehellen, and a gun battle. She had shot a woman there before Chaison’s favorite staffer shattered the windows and they all jumped out.
Bryce settled himself into an ancient half-collapsed armchair that had long ago adhered to the floor like a barnacle. “Our goals are simple,” he said. “We want to return to the old ways of government, from the days before Virga turned its back on advanced technologies.”
“There was a reason why we did that,” she said. “The outsiders—”
He waved a hand dismissively. “I know the stories, about this ‘artificial nature’ from beyond the skin of the world that threatens us. They’re just a fairy tale to keep the people down.”
Venera shook her head. “I knew an agent from outside. She worked for me, betrayed me. I killed her.”
“Had her killed?”
“Killed her. With my sword.” She allowed her mask to slip for a second, aiming an expression of pure fury at Bryce. “Just who do you think you’re talking to?” she said in a low voice.
Bryce nodded his head. “Take it as read that I know you’re not an ordinary courtier,” he said. “I’m not going to believe any stories you tell without some proof, though. What I was trying to say was that our goal is to reintroduce computation machines into Virga and spread the doctrine of emergent democracy everywhere, so that people can overthrow all their institution-based governments, and emergent utopias can flourish again. We’re prepared to kill anybody who gets in our way.”
“I’m quite happy to help you with that,” she said, “because I know you’ll never be able to do it. If I thought you could do what you say…” She smiled. “But you might accomplish much, and on the way you can be of assistance to me.”
“And what do you want?” he asked. “More power?”
“That would help. But let’s get back to Sacrus. They—”
“They’re your enemies,” he said. “I’m not interested in helping you settle a vendetta.”
“They’re your enemies, too, and I have no vendetta to settle,” she said. “In any case I’m not interested in making a frontal assault on them. I just want to visit for an evening.”
Bryce stared at her for a second, then burst into laughter. “What are you proposing? That we hit Sacrus?”