Smoke rose from hundreds of spots stretching to the horizon, but Dorsin only had eyes for Candice's demolished homestead.

Candice Tutela Nethress Ortus Verdantia was a Tutela of Gens Nethress, even if she would rather have gone unknown and unrecognized after her husband's noble sacrifice and her daughter Aoife's brave stand against Ilhicamina. Whatever she would have preferred, she was Dorsin's responsibility.

Where had he been when the Chimeras had broken through and torn her house to ribbons? Her homestead was still smoking. Torn defense turrets hung from leafy sacks in the trees of the forests, their bone legs shattered or broken. Poisoned discolorations blotched the fields, and the wheat and corn were more trampled than upright.

Dorsin leaned his head on the glass of the bridge, letting the light of the setting sun warm his forehead, and closed his eyes. The Chimeras had already come, and he had failed to protect his own.

He could feel Captain Sylvie's eyes on him, but she knew better than to interrupt him.

Dorsin had given her Candice's coordinates. Whatever had happened, this was his port of call.

"Excuse me, Captain," said the newly promoted comms officer, a young greenhorn who hadn't been on the bridge when Dorsin had come in the night before. "I'm picking up some shortsphere chatter."

Dorsin exhaled. That meant there were survivors.

"Put it on," Greta said.

The chordal units crackled. "This is Highkirk Town Center. It's now 15 Rising Withering.

"We've got word of Chimeras coming in from all sides. A lot of them, apparently." There was some chatter in the background; then the voice continued, "It doesn't sound like there's any hope of holding the fields. This is like a Chimera army.

"We're gathering at the town motte. Please bring it in. We need every gun hand. I know you're probably reluctant to abandon your homesteads. We all are, but we can't eat if we're dead. We'll make it through this. Please, for the sake of your kids and Adon and Yesh, come join us. Remember old Amricia. This message will repeat until we're safe."

"Captain Sylvie," Dorsin said, "how far to Highkirk Town Center?"

She checked the charts on the table in the center of the room. "Only about ten kilometers. Would you like us to head there?"

"Can you point it out?"

"Officer Riles, please bring us about sixty-eight degrees starboard." The navigator complied, and the skywhale sighed as it creaked into a turn. Greta joined Dorsin at the window. "There," she said, pointing past the burning fields.

A STIGMOS strengthened Dorsin's vision. He saw at least a hundred white-painted buildings grouped together where Greta was pointing. The low outer ones were arranged in a circle around the taller interior buildings. At the very center was a spire several stories high. That was probably an Adonist synakirk, and it likely held the antenna and tech for the shortsphere transmitter.

The buildings of the town center stood tall despite the devastation all around. Dorsin could make out shooters with long-barreled rifles in the windows of some of the outlying buildings, but they didn't seem to be doing much. Movement in the forest surrounding the town center attested to the presence of Chimeras. So did the flying Chimeras harrying the town, but those dropped steadily, one at a time, as sharpshooters trained and drilled by the harsh frontier picked them off.

That was all Dorsin could make out from this distance. "They're still alive, captain. Let's make haste."

Fifteen minutes later, they were above Highkirk.

Though the shooters weren't doing much, the perimeter defenses were working hard. Highkirk, like any other frontier town, was a small target, and apparently hadn't drawn much attention from whatever army of Chimeras had moved through this area. As an established homestead site, it had decades of defense developments working on its behalf.

Turrets hanging in sacs from the tree limbs like bone-spitting bats worked overtime. Splashes of color came from deeper within the woods every few seconds: mines of poison or flesh-flaying acid, grown from hibernating spores that had awoken upon sensing the Chimeras' presence.

"This will do," Dorsin said. "Drop me here."

"Are you sure?" Captain Sylvie watched the scene impassively. "I wouldn't blame you for wanting to find a safer place."

"There is no safer place," Dorsin said, thinking of the Princeps Nxtlu's words and the Synapsis messages Rosabella had shared with him in sleepy murmurs the night before. The cities of Tellus were under attack. Honestly, Highkirk and similar frontier towns might be the safest places on the face of the planet right now, too small for the Chimeras to notice easily and too dense with hard frontier fighters for assaults to be worth the cost.

Sylvie rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "All right. I'll send you down in a lungboat." She strode to the nerve console and sent the message to the boat bay. "You'd better watch for the flyers."

"I know."

"I don't want them killing my pilot. You'll keep an eye on him on the way back up, too?"

"Of course."

"All right. Head on down." She gestured toward the door of the bridge. "We'll have one ready to fly in a few minutes. I won't say it's been a pleasure having you on my skywhale, Princeps, but all the same." She thrust out a hand.

Dorsin took it. "Captain Sylvie. Thank you. Please stay safe."

She smiled grimly. "You first."

Dorsin left the bridge, stopped in his room to get his few effects, and then made his way to the flight bay at the bottom of the skywhale's belly.

He took two steps inside, then stopped at the sight of Rosabella standing upright, chatting amiably with a pilot sitting in the open cabin of a lungboat several rows down.

Her smile burst like sunlight at the sight of him, and she curtsied flawlessly. A single scarlet braid hung forward over her shoulder and down her breast to the height of her knee. "Princeps," she said, "how delightful to see you."

Dorsin strode forward, threw his effects into the back of the lungboat, and hissed, "What are you doing down here?"

"I thought I ought to come and make the acquaintance of Mister Halston." She gestured to the pilot. "As our lives shall be in his hands when he takes us down."

"How do you do, Mister Halston," Dorsin said. The pilot nodded to him. In a lower tone, Dorsin added, "Ambassatrix, there is no us."

Her smile quirked as if to taunt him: Would you have said so last night?

"You're staying here, Rosabella. That's final."

"No." Rosabella touched Dorsin's arm. "I come with you, for how can I separate myself from my own heart?"

She was no warrior. Yet would she be any more of a liability than the hundreds of children who would be gathered with their parents in the motte? Plus, from what Dorsin had seen, the frontiersmen had little need of additional fighters.

Beyond all that, as an Ambassatrix, Rosabella was well trained in the arts of negotiations. If he needed her smooth ability with words to negotiate with the malcontents, heretics, and Amricians who populated the frontier, she would certainly be able to help.

Dorsin sighed and gestured toward the lungboat. "Climb in."

***

Rosabella sat apart from Dorsin the whole way down. Back upright, eyes forward, she hardly even moved when the wind whipped her braid at her neck or her face. She was the very model of propriety, an Ambassatrix chastely escorting a Princeps.

A masque. A lie. Dorsin kept his eyes on the sky and the flying Chimeras.

He needn't have worried. As the lungboat gasped its way to the ground, only a single Chimera even got close, and a sniper's bone bullet took it through the eye before it got within a hundred meters.

The boat hove onto the ground before the synakirk with a sigh, and Dorsin hopped out. He offered a hand to Rosabella, helping her down. The high wedged heels of her shoes didn't waver on the grass and dirt; the toe-walk was a part of her ancient pedigree, as natural to her as the long heel-toe stride of a more typical breed of human.

"I thought I recognized you, Princeps Dorsin," came a voice in the direction of the synakirk. Candice, a short, well-muscled blonde with graying temples, strode from the doorway. She wore the same style of single braid as her daughter Aoife preferred, and her utilitarian garments were similar to Aoife's mission clothes: simple pants, neither too tight nor too loose but with many pockets, several layers of thick long-armed blouses that allowed for mobility, and bandoliers across her chest. She had a long-barreled rifle in one hand. "Now I'm reconsidering whether I should have shot down that Chimera after all."

Dorsin waited a moment for her to curtsy before realizing she wouldn't; her family might be Tutelae by Nethress decree, but she was Amrician through and through. Instead he offered her his hand. "Thank you, Candice."

She gripped his hand tightly and nodded. "Of course. Princeps." She let go and put her hands on her hips. "Well, what brings you to our shooting gallery? Forgive us our inhospitality, but we're a mite busy."

"Not as busy as you could be. Your traps are impressive."

"Aye. Three years' worth of werefund went into the spurt-mines. Could have had twice as many, except we had to buy them on the black market. General embargoes on us Amrician blackguards, you understand."

Dorsin kept his face neutral. He didn't understand werefunding very well--it was an odd Amrician idea almost identical to taxation, but Amricians got terribly upset if you compared the two. He did understand the subtext of her comment, though: if you Gentes hadn't boycotted us so harshly, we could have bought a lot more defenses.

"Going to arrest us for illegal weapons possession?" Candice asked.

Dorsin shook his head. "I might kiss you for it."

"Thought you were a married man, Princeps." She glanced at Rosabella and clucked her tongue. Dorsin waited for an Adonist recrimination, but none came. "Anyhow, I'm still a woman bereaved, you see."

Then she whipped the rifle up.

Dorsin dodged aside.

The rifle cracked.

A cry sounded in the sky toward the outskirts of town. The distant echo of turrets' bullets drowned out the sound of the Chimera's fall to earth.

"Sorry," Candice said, lowering the weapon. "This is a delightful chat, but I still need to take my shots where I can get them. You understand."

"I do," Dorsin admitted. "Candice, I have a favor to ask."

"Oh?"

"I need to make use of your shortsphere transmitter. There's a skywhale not fifty miles north of us, and I need to have it turn around."

Candice nodded up toward the massive skywhale drifting above their heads. "Why not use the one you came in on?"

"It's a long story. I need to get a message to that skywhale before it gets out of range."

"Why do--"

"My wife is on it."

To her credit, Rosabella didn't blink, but Candice took a deep breath. "Well, we'd better get on that, Princeps. I can try to convince the Highkirk Council to give you some bandwidth, but we still need someone to watch this sector of the skies. You know how to use a rifle?"

Dorsin smiled and reached for the weapon. "Intimately."

Candice jerked her head upward. "I'll be back in fifteen. Clock tower's up there. Stairs are just inside the entryway, before the sanctuary."

"I shall accompany you," Rosabella said. "We understand the importance of your repeating shortsphere message; it is how we discovered you, after all. A member of our expedition should be present to plead our case for preempting it."

"Don't know as the council will be interested in hearing from a Sodalitatis." Candice shrugged, then waved a hand toward the synakirk. "But it's up to you. Come on."

The interior of the synakirk was beautiful in dark oaks and stained glass, but Dorsin didn't see much of it. As Rosabella and Candice headed into a sanctuary packed with murmuring people, he took the winding stairs up the clocktower.

He'd help clear the skies for Greta's lungboat to get back to her skywhale. Then he'd help keep them clear for his wife's arrival.

His wife. Without Rosabella present to distract his thoughts and assuage his guilt, Dorsin shivered.

How would he ever look Oralie in the eye?

***

"You should see the sanctuary," Rosabella said idly. "Even packed with Adonist heathens, it is beautiful beyond description."

The lavender perfume of her persistent pheromones muddled Dorsin's mind, but it was not the first time he had made war in the presence of that intoxicating bouquet. He sighted in on the nearest flying Chimera and pressed the trigger. There was a bony crack as the rifle's mantis-shrimp striker launched the bullet, and the Chimera fell. There were more of them now that night had fallen, since the Adonists of Highkirk had few residual Last Era mutations for night vision and no infrared technology or Magi.

"On the altar there is a lamp of gold, designed to burn oil," Rosabella said. "It is almost as large as a man, my heart. How did they find such wealth?"

And why would they melt it all down just to make a lamp, when lumins were cheaper and more effective? Dorsin brought down a pteranopanther gliding above the buildings near the edge of the town. "It's probably just gold-plated."

"Mmm. They are thick in the quadrant to your right, my heart."

Dorsin rose with the rifle and settled down facing the belfry's open face to his right. As he moved, he caught a glimpse of Rosabella seated on an oaken bench.

A regina upon her throne. Her head was turned in the direction she'd indicated, and her chin was high and noble in the gloom. The white of her idly kicking leg was visible in the slit of her scarlet skirt. It moved between the fabric, a slow, steady, sliding motion, flesh among scarlet--

Dorsin tore his thoughts away and sighted down the scope. There were at least a dozen Chimeras over that area of town. They swooped down toward the buildings, where the lumins revealed them, lumpy misshapen monsters. As the snipers below shot at them, they would fly back up into the darkness.

"You spoke true." Dorsin picked his first victim, an oversized soft-shelled crab with five wings, and lanced a bullet of bone into the thing's brain. It fell and hit a distant roof with a thump and the creak of wood.

"Whenever have I not, my heart? But the lamp. It stands with arms outstretched, like a man with open arms, and seven cups, each with a wick, sit upon the crossbeam." Rosabella sighed as Dorsin brought another soaring Chimera down. "Adonists are a strange people, but beautiful."

A glint in the darkness above the tree line outside of town caught Dorsin's eye. He pointed the rifle in that direction and looked down the scope just in time for his view to be blocked by an enormous Chimera.

No, it wasn't enormous; it was simply nearby. As it swooped on feathered wings down toward the clocktower, it opened a serpent's mouth and uttered a goat's scream.

Dorsin dropped the rifle on its sling, drew his pistol in a swift motion, and sent six shots into its body and its head. It went limp instantly and impacted the clocktower just below the belfry. The wood rumbled in distress as the monster fell to the earth.

Rosabella caught her breath. Apparently she hadn't noticed the danger until it was already dead.

Dorsin grasped the rifle and again sought the glint through the scope. "There's something out there."

"Of course, my heart. There are many somethings."

He shook his head. "A skywhale." He scanned the horizon, looking for the telltale slick gleam of a gigantic flight bladder. Then he saw it. The vessel was coming from the north, heading straight toward the town. "That's it."

Rosabella's soft touch fell on his shoulder, light so as not to distract him. "Of course. Your family would not abandon you, my heart."

His family. That meant his subjects, of course, but it also meant his wife. To his delight and guilt, it included Rosabella as well. She had come with him. She had spoken to the town council. Somehow, she had convinced them to interrupt their repeating signal to send the message, and she had spoken it herself so that Dorsin need not interrupt his sniping.

His lover had spent two hours searching the shortsphere bands in order to bring his wife back to him. Ought he to be proud or devastated?

He could be either or both later. For now, he would keep the Chimeras off the skywhale's approach.

The bioluminescence of the vessel's flight bladder was weak, but it was sufficient to illuminate the Chimeras drawn to its approach. As the skywhale approached the town, Dorsin's gunshots were joined by those of the townsfolk, who finally had reliable light by which to shoot. The bullets wouldn't hurt the bladder very much, but even so, the people of Highkirk picked their targets judiciously, avoiding shots that might impact the ship.

They knew how to handle their weapons. Dangerous people, these Amricians, these Adonists.

The skywhale drifted in, then descended when it was straight overhead. The gentle illumination from its bladder lit the space between it and the ground, revealing scores of Chimeras that until a moment before had been in darkness. They fell quickly.

The handheld shortsphere emitter/receiver next to Dorsin squawked. "GNS Bloodfang to Papa Wolf." Dorsin reached for it, but Rosabella beat him to it.

"Maga Ambassatrix Rosabella Sodalitatis speaks. I am with Papa Wolf, but he is busy slaughtering our foes. Thank you for returning."

"Duty before life, Ambassatrix."

"How is the uxor principis?"

"No change in her condition."

Neither better nor worse, then. Oralie had been away from Acerbia and not received a dose of the cure for weeks now. Shouldn't the novel genophage, of which Oralie had received a targeted dose a year before, have attacked her again? Dorsin frowned. Perhaps whatever had happened to her in the depths of the Nameless City had granted her immunity.

The implications of that were troubling.

"We'll send down a lungboat to pick you up," the ship announced.

Dorsin peered through narrow eyes at the still swarming Chimeras. The town would be hard-pressed to defend itself in the night without his enhanced vision. "Belay that. Rosabella, tell them to hold position until sunrise, then send Oralie down to us instead."

He would not abandon these people to the monsters.