This was why Treble found himself clutching a rounded chunk of stone that might once have been a gargoyle, and why he was staring in fascination at the streets that lay below and wrapped up and around the ring of the town wheel. He hardly knew where to look. Little puffs of smoke were appearing around the Spyre docks directly overhead. The buildings there hovered in midair like child’s toys floating in a bathtub and seldom moved; now several were gliding slowly—and ominously—in collision courses. Several ships had cast off. Meanwhile, halfway up the curve of the wheel, some other commotion had sprung up around the Buridan Estate. Barnacled as it was by other buildings, he could never have identified the place had he not been familiar with the layout, but it was clearly the source of that tall pillar of smoke that stood up two hundred feet before bending over and wrapping itself in a fading spiral around and around the inner space of the wheel.
People were running in the avenue below. Ever the conscientious spy, Treble shifted his position so that he straddled the gargoyle. He checked his watch, then pulled out a frayed notebook and a stub pencil. He dabbed the pencil on the tip of his tongue then squinted around.
Item One: At four-fourteen o’clock, the preservationists broke our agreement by attempting to prevent Sacrus from occupying the docks. At least, that was what Treble assumed was happening. The hastily scrawled note from Bryce that had mobilized the resistance told of arguments during the Sacrus raid last night, hasty plans made and discarded in the heat of the moment. Thrace-Guiles wanted to rally the nations of Greater Spyre that had lost people to Sacrus. The preservationists had their own agenda, which involved cowing Sacrus into letting them run a railway line through the middle of the great nation’s lands. Sacrus itself was moving and activating its allies. So much was clear; but in the background of this fairly straightforward political situation, a greater upheaval was taking place.
Bryce had said on more than one occasion that Spyre was like the mainspring of a watch wound too tight. A single tap in the right place might cause a vicious uncoiling—a snap. Many in Spyre had read about the Pantry War with envy; over centuries a thousand resentments and grudges had built up between the pocket nations, and it was glorious to watch someone else finally try to settle a score. Everyone kept ledgers accounting who had slighted whom and when. Nothing was forgotten and behind their ivy- and moss-softened walls, the monarchs and presidents of nations little bigger than swimming pools spent their lives plotting their revenges.
The well-planned atrocities of the resistance were little trip-hammer blows on the watch’s case, each one an attempt to break the mechanism. Tap the watch, shake it, and listen. Tap it again. That had been Bryce’s strategy.
Sacrus and Buridan had hit the sweet spot. Shop-fronts were slamming all over the place, like air-clams caught in a beam of sunlight, while gangs of men carrying truncheons and knives seemed to materialize like smoke out of the alleys. It was time for a settling of scores.
Item Two: chaos in the streets. Maybe time to distribute currency?
Treble peered at the line of smoke coiling inside the wheel. Item Three: Sacrus seems to have had more agents in place in the city than we thought. They appear to be moving against Buridan without council approval. So… Item Four: council no longer effective?
He underlined the last sentence, then thought better and crossed it out. Obviously the council was no longer in control.
He leaned over and examined the flagstoned street a hundred feet below. Some of those running figures were recognizable. In fact…
Was that Amandera Thrace-Guiles? He shaded his eyes against Candesce’s fire and looked again. Yes, he recognized the shock of bleached hair that surmounted her head. She was hurrying along the avenue with one arm raised to shoulder height. Apparently she was aiming a pistol at the man walking ahead of her. Oh, that was definitely her then.
Around her a mob swirled. Treble recognized some of his compatriots; there were others, assorted preservationists, soldiers of minor nations, even one or two council guards. Were they escorting Thrace-Guiles, or protecting someone else Treble hadn’t spotted?
Item Five: council meeting ended around four o’clock.
He sighted in the direction Thrace-Guiles’s party was taking. They were headed for Buridan Estate. From ground level they probably couldn’t tell that the place was besieged. At this rate they might walk right into a crowd of Sacrus soldiers.
Treble could still hear voices in the room behind him. He tapped the file folder in his coat pocket and frowned. Then with a shrug he swung off his masonry perch and through the opened window.
The three bureaucrats stared at him in shock. Treble felt the way he did when he dropped a note in performance; he grinned apologetically, said, “Here, file this,” and tossed his now-redundant folder to one of the men. Then he ran out the door and made for the stairs.
Garth Diamandis staggered and reached out to steady himself against the wall of a building. He had to keep up; Venera Fanning was striding in great steps along the avenue, her pistol held unwaveringly to Jacoby Sarto’s head. But Garth was confused; people were running and shouting while overhead even lines of smoke divided the sky. This was Lesser Spyre, he was sure of that. The granite voice of his interrogator still echoed in Garth’s mind, though, and his arms and legs bellowed pain from the many burns and cuts that ribbed them.
He had insisted on coming today and now he regretted it. Once upon a time he’d been a young man and able to bounce back from anything. Not so anymore. The gravity here weighed heavily on him and for the first time he wished he was back on Greater Spyre where he could still climb trees like a boy. Alone all those years, he had reached an accommodation with himself and his past; there’d been days when he enjoyed himself as if he really were a youth again. And then the woman who now stalked down the center of the avenue ahead of him had appeared, like a burning cross in the sky, and proceeded to turn his solitary life upside down.
He’d thought about abandoning Venera dozens of times. She was self-reliance personified, after all. She wouldn’t miss him. Once or twice he had gotten as far as stepping out the door of the Buridan estate. Looking down those half-familiar, secretive streets, he had realized that he had nowhere to go—nowhere, that is, unless he could find Selene, the daughter of the woman whose love had caused Garth’s exile.
Logic told him that now was the time. Venera was bound to lose this foolish war she’d started with Sacrus. The prudent course for Garth would be to run and hide, lick his wounds in secret and then…
Ah. It was this and then that was the problem. He had found Selene, and she had turned him over to Sacrus. She was theirs—a recruit, like the ones Moss claimed had left many of Spyre’s sovereign lands. Sacrus had promised Selene something, had lied to her; they must have. But Garth was too old to fight them and too old to think of all the clever and true words that might win his daughter’s heart.
Selene, his kin, had betrayed him. And Venera Fanning, who owed him nothing, had risked her life to save his.
He pushed himself off from the wall and struggled to catch up to her.