Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 261
guns of the insolent general waiting outside. One shadow
overtaking another.
Fear surged in her, and she closed her eyes. Stop, she
told herself. I am not the reflection. "I am Diadem herself.
All things take their light from me." Even the general who
comes to kill me.
She looked down at the paper, and laughed a little
giddily.
Then she stood to go inside.
The room where she chose to wait was really an old air
shaft constructed to cool the Hart Manor, which was the center
of the palace. Originally several other floors had openings
onto the shaft, but some paranoid ancestor had walled them off.
Galas had discovered the place as a girl, but it had gained new,
symbolic significance for her after the desals placed her on the
throne.
She came here sometimes to pace the three-by-three
meter square floor, or scrawl insults on the walls, or scream at
the clouds framed by tan brickwork far overhead. She had torn
her clothes here, and wept, and done all manner of
unmentionable things. Now she lay on her back, and stared at
the stars.
Her visitor should be approaching the walls now. Its
instructions had been simple: let down a rope at the
centerpoint of the southern battlement, and be ready to pull.
She had wanted to meet it there herself, and even now her
hands pressed against the cool stone underneath her, eager to
push her to her feet. But whatever happened she must not
blunder out like a gauche ingenue. If this was a Wind coming
to see her, she must meet it as an equal. She would wait.
But she wasn’t dressed for this! With a groan she stood