“Your accent,” she said. “It’s Slipstream.”
He nodded. “I was part of the expedition, ma’am—aboard the Arrest. I was there for the big battle, when we defeated Falcon Formation. When your husband defeated them. I saw him plunge the Rook into the enemy’s dreadnought like a knife into another man’s heart. Had time to watch the bastard blow up, before they netted me out of the air and threw me into prison.” He grimaced in anger.
Venera’s heart was in her throat. “You saw… Chaison die?”
“Die?” The ex-airman looked at her incredulously. “Die? He’s not dead. I spent two weeks in the same cell with him before Falcon traded me to Sacrus like a sack of grain.”
Venera’s vision grayed and she would have fallen over had she been under gravity. Oblivious, the other continued: “I might’a wished he were dead a couple times over those weeks. It’s hard sharing your space with another man, particularly one you’ve respected. You come to see all his faults.”
Venera recovered enough to croak, “Yes, I know how he can be.” Then she turned away to hide her tears.
The giant metal wing shuddered as it knifed through the air. Past the opened doorway, where Bryce and Sarto were silhouetted, the sky seemed to be boiling. Cloud and air were being torn by the shattering of a world. The sound of it finally caught up with Fin, a cacophony like a belfry being blown up that went on and on. It was a knell that should warn the principalities in time for them to mount some sort of emergency response. Nothing could be done, though, if square miles of metal skin were to plow into a town-wheel somewhere.
To Venera, the churning air and the noise of it all seemed to originate in her own heart. He was alive! Absurdly, the image came to her of how she would tell him this story—tell him about Garth rescuing her, about her first impressions of Spyre as seen from a roofless crumbling cube of stone, about Lesser Spyre and Sacrus and Buridan tower. Moments ago they had been mere facts, memories of a confused and drifting time. With the possibility that she could tell him about them, they suddenly became episodes of a great drama, a rousing tale she would laugh and cry to tell.
She turned to Garth, grinning wildly. “Did you hear that? He’s alive!”
Garth smiled weakly.
Venera shook him by the shoulders. “Don’t you understand? There is a place for you, for all of you, if you’ve the courage to get there. Come with me. Come to Slipstream, and on to Falcon, where he’s imprisoned. We’ll free him and then you’ll have a home again. I swear it.”
He didn’t move, just kept his grip on his daughter while the wind whistled through Fin and the rest of the refugees looked from him to Venera and back again.
“Well, what are you scared of?” she demanded. “Are you afraid I can’t do what I say?”
Now Garth smiled ruefully and shook his head. “No, Venera,” he said. “I’m afraid that you can.”
She laughed and went to the door. Bracing her hands and feet on the cold metal she looked out. The gray turbulence of Spyre’s destruction was fading with the distance. In its place was endless blue.
“You’ll see,” she said into the rushing air. “It’ll all work out.
“I’ll make sure of it.”