"Bikes," whispered the spy. "See the contrails?"
Now she did, and with that the picture seemed to open out for a second, like a window. Venera glimpsed a vast chamber of air, walled by cloud and full of dock complexes, towns, and ships. Lurking at its edge was a monstrous whale, a ship so big that it could swallow the pinwheels of Rush.
But it must be a trick of the light. "How big is this thing? Did you get a good look at it? How long were you there?"
"Not long" The spy waved his hand indifferently. "Took another shot"
"He's not going to last if I don't get him to the doctor," said the man who was tending the spy's leg. "He needs blood."
Venera found the other photo and held it up beside the first. They were almost identical, evidently taken seconds apart. The only difference was in the length of some of the contrails.
"It's not enough." Frustration made hot waves of pain radiate up from her jaw and she unconsciously snarled. Venera turned to find only Carrier looking at her; his face expressed nothing, as always. l The leather-suited spy was unconscious and his attendant was looking worried.
"Get him out of here," she said, gesturing to the servants' door at the back of the lounge. "We'll need to get a full deposition from i him later." Capper was roused enough to lean on the shoulder of his attendant and they staggered out of the room. Venera perched j on one of the benches and scowled at Carrier.
"This dispute with the pilot of Mavery is a distraction," she said. "It's intended to draw the bulk of our navy away from Rush. Then, these cruisers and that thing, whatever it is, will invade from Falcon Formation. The Formation must have made a pact of some kind with Mavery."
Carrier nodded. "It seems likely. That isit seems likely to my lady. The difficulty is going to be convincing your husband and the pilot that the threat is real."
"I'll worry about my husband," she said. "But the pilot could be a problem."
"I will of course do whatever is in the best interest of the nation," said Carrier. Venera almost laughed.
"It won't come to that," she said. "All right. Go. I need to take these to my husband."
Carrier raised an eyebrow. "You're going to tell him about the organization?"
"It's time he knew we have extra resources," she said with-a shrug. "But I have no intention of revealing our extent just yet or that it's my organization. Nor will I be telling him about you."
Carrier bowed, and retreated to the servants' door. Venera remained standing in the center of the room for a long time after he left.
A thousand miles away, it would be night right now around her father's sun. Doubtless the pilot of Hale would be sleeping uneasily, as he always did under the wrought-iron canopy of his heavily guarded bed. His royal intuition told him that the governing principle of the world was conspiracyhis subjects were conspiring against him, their farm animals conspired against them, and even the very atoms of the air must have some plan or other. It was inconceivable to him that anyone should act from motives of true loyalty or love and he ran the country accordingly. He had raised his three daughters by this theory. Venera had fully expected that she would be disposed of by being married off to some inbred lout; at sixteen she had taken matters into her own hands and extorted a better match from her father. Her first attempt at blackmail had been wildly successful, and had netted her the man of her choice, a young admiral of powerful Slipstream. Of course, Slipstream was moving away from Hale, rapidly enough that by the time she consolidated her position here she would be no threat
to the old man.
She hated it here in Rush, Slipstream's capital. The people were friendly, cordial, and blandly superior. Scheming was not in fashion. The young nobles insulted one another directly by pulling hat-feathers or making outrageous accusations in public. They fought their duels immediately, letting no insult fester for more than a day. Everything political was done in bright halls or council chambers and if there were darker entanglements in the shadows, she couldn't find them. Even now, with war approaching, the Pilot of Slipstream refused to beef up the secret service in any way.
It was intolerable. So Venera had taken it upon herself to correct the situation. These photos were the first concrete validation of her own deliberately cultivated paranoia.
She resolutely jammed the pictures into her belt pursethey stuck out conspicuously but who would look?and left by the front door.
Her servant waited innocently a good yard from the door. Venera was instantly suspicious that he'd been peering through the keyhole. She shot him a nasty look. "I don't believe I've used you before."
"No, ma'am. I'm new."
"You've had a background check, I trust?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well, you're going to have another." She stalked back to the admiralty with him following silently.
Bedlam continued in the admiralty antechamber, but it all seemed a bit silly to her nowthey were in a fever of anticipation over a tiny border dispute with Mavery, while farther out a much bigger threat loomed. Nobody liked migratory nations, least of all Slipstream. They should be ready for this sort of tiling. They should be more professional.