“Do you think Jacoby Sarto brings his gun to council meetings?” she asked off-handedly. Corinne, who was walking beside her, guffawed.
“Here,” she said, handing Venera a large black pistol, “try to take this in and see what happens. No, seriously. If they don’t stop you, then he’s probably got one too. You may need to get the drop on him.”
“I can do that.” She took the pistol and slipped it into her jacket, which promptly dragged down her right collar. She transferred it to the back of her belt.
“Not too obvious,” said Corinne doubtfully.
A preservationist runner puffed to a stop next to her and saluted. “They’re on the move, ma’am. Five groups of a hundred or more each were just seen exiting the grounds of Sacrus. They’re in no-man’s land now, but they have nowhere to go except through their neighbors… Of course, they own most of those estates…”
“What have they got?” she asked. “Artillery?” He nodded.
“We’re moving to secure the elevator cables, but they’re doing the same thing,” he continued. “There’s been no shots fired yet…”
“All right.” She dismissed the details with a wave of her hand. “Let me see what we can do in council. We’ll talk after that.” He nodded and backed off.
The big front doors of the building were for council members only. The ceremonial guards there, with their plumed helmets and giant muskets, raised their palms solemnly to exclude the people following Venera. She turned and gestured with her chin for them to go around the side; she’d been told there was a second, more traveled entrance there for diplomats, attachés, and other functionaries. She strode alone into the frescoed portico that half circled the chamber itself.
The bronze council chamber doors were open, and a small crowd was milling there. She recognized the other members; they were just filing in.
Jacoby Sarto was talking to Pamela Anseratte. He looked relaxed. She looked tense. He spotted Venera and, surprisingly, smiled.
“Ah, there you are,” he said, strolling over to her. Venera glanced around to see what other people—pillars or statues to hide behind—were nearby, and started to reach for the pistol. But Sarto simply took her arm and led her a bit to the side of the group.
“The preservationists and lesser countries are following you right now,” he said. “But I can’t see that continuing, can you? The only leverage you’ve got is the name of Buridan.”
She extricated her arm and smiled back at him. “Well, that depends on the outcome of this meeting, I should think,” she said. He nodded affably.
“I’m here to engineer a crisis,” he said. “How about you?”
“I should have thought we were already in a crisis,” she said cautiously. “Your troops are on the move.”
“…And we’ve seized the docks,” he said. “But that may not be enough to serve either of our interests.” She tried to read his expression, but Sarto was a master politician. He gave no sign that Spyre was balanced on the edge of its greatest change in centuries.
“Our interests aren’t the same,” he continued, “but they’re surprisingly… compatible. You’re after power, but not so much power as you’d have to have if you used the key again. It’s difficult—you possess the ultimate weapon, but no way to use it to get what you want. But the blunt fact is that as long as we hold the docks, the little trinket you stole from us last night is even worse than useless to you,” he said. “It’s an active liability.”
She stared at him.
Apparently oblivious to her expression, Sarto continued as though he were discussing the budget for municipal plumbing contracts. “On the other hand, the polarization of allegiance you’re generating is useful to us. I’ve been impressed, Ms. Fanning, by your abilities—last night’s raid came as a complete surprise, advantageous as it’s turned out to be. You got what you wanted, we get what we want, which is to flush out our enemies. The only matter of dispute between us, privately, is that ivory wand you took.”
“You want it back?”
He nodded.
“Go fuck yourself!” She started to stalk toward the giant doorway but couldn’t resist turning and saying, “You tortured my man Garth! You think this is a game?”
“The only way to win,” he said so quietly that the others couldn’t hear, “is to treat it as one.” Now his expression was serious, his gray eyes cold as a statue’s.
It was suddenly clear to Venera that Sacrus already knew what she had been planning to say and do here today—and they approved. She made an excellent enemy for them to rally their own forces around. If they had needed an excuse to extend martial law over their neighbors, she had provided it. If civil war came, they would have their justification for marshaling the ancient Spyre fleet. The civil war would provide a nice smokescreen behind which they could seize Candesce. It wouldn’t matter then whether they won or lost back home.
She had given them the enemy they needed. Sarto’s candid admission of the fact was a clear overture from him.
Venera hesitated. Then, deliberately clamping down on her anger, she walked back to him. They were now the only council members remaining in the hall. The others had taken their seats, and she saw one or two craning their necks to watch their confrontation.
“What do I get if I return the key?” she asked.
He smiled again. “What you want. Power. For the rest, take your satisfaction by attacking us. We know you’ll be sincere. We’re counting on it. Only return the key, and at the end of the war you’ll get everything you want. You know we can deliver.” He held out his hand, palm up.
She laughed lightly, though she felt sick. “I don’t have it with me,” she said. “And besides, I have no reason to trust you. None at all.”
Now Sarto looked annoyed. “We thought you’d say that. You need a guarantee, a token of our sincerity. My masters have… instructed me… to provide you with one.”
She laughed bitterly. “What could you possibly give me that would convince me you were sincere?”
His expression darkened even further; for the first time he looked genuinely angry. Sarto spoke a single word. Venera gaped at him in undisguised astonishment, then laughed again. It was the bray of disdain she reserved for putting people down, and she was sure Sarto knew it.
However, he merely bowed slightly and turned to indicate that she should precede him into the chamber. The doors were wide, and so they entered side by side. As they did so, Venera caught sight of Sarto’s expression and was amazed. In a few seconds he underwent a gruesome transformation, from the merely dark expression he’d displayed outside to a mask of twisted fury. By the time they split up halfway across the polished marble floor, he looked like he was ready to murder someone. Venera kept her own expression neutral, her eyes straight ahead of her as she climbed the red-carpeted steps to the long-disused seat of Buridan.
The council members had been chatting, but one by one they fell silent and stared. Several of those were gazes of surprise; although they were masked, the ministers from Oxorn and Garatt were poised forward in their seats as if unsure whether to run or dive under their chairs. August Virilio’s usual expression of polite disdain was gone, in its place a brooding anger that seemed transplanted from an entirely different man.