She was of marriageable age now—and had recently come to realize that in Hale, marriageable also meant murderable. Venera had three sisters and had once had three brothers. Now she had two of those, and the once-close girls of the family were starting to actively plot against one another. With the boys, it was all about succession; with the girls, marriage.

Someone had used a marvelous word at a dinner party just a few days before: leverage. Leverage was what she needed, Venera had decided. And so her thoughts had turned to old family tragedies, and the mysteries that had consumed her as a girl.

Today she was dressed in the brown blouse and pantaloons of a servant-girl, and the wings on her back were not butterfly orange or feathered pink, but beige canvas. Her hair was tied down with a drab cloth, and she soared the air of the city barefoot. In her waist bag she carried some money, a pistol, and a porcelain-headed doll. She knew where she was going.

The bad neighborhoods started remarkably close to the palace. This fact might have had something to do with the royal habit of simply dumping waste off the palace-wheel without regard to trajectory or velocity. The upper classes couldn't be entirely blamed for the stench that wafted at Venera as she flapped toward her destination, however. She wasn't disgusted; on the contrary, the smell and the sound of arguing, shouting people made her heart pound with excitement. Since she was little she'd sat for hours with her eye glued to a telescope, watching these citizens and this neighborhood roll by as the palace turned past it. She knew the place—she had simply never been here.

What Venera approached looked like nothing so much as an explosion frozen in time. Even the smoke (of which there was plenty) was motionless or rather, it moved only as quickly as the air that oozed slowly between the hundreds of cubes, balls, and disheveled shapes that counted as buildings here. Anything not tied down hung in the air and drifted gradually, and that meant trash, animal hair, balls of dirty water, splinters, and scraps of cloth all contributed to the cloud. When the doldrums of summer broke and a stiff wind finally did snake through the place, half the mass of the neighborhood was going to simply blow away, like chaff. For now it roiled around Venera as she ducked and dove toward the gray blockhouse that was her destination.

Her business in the building was brief, but every detail of the transaction seemed etched in extraordinary detail—for here were people who didn't know who she was. It was marvelous to be treated as servants and ordinary folk treated one another, for a change—marvelous and eye opening. Nobody opened the door to the place for her; she had to do it herself. Nobody announced her presence, she had to clear her throat and ask the man behind the counter to help her. And she had to pay, with her own money!

"The contents of locker six sixty-four,” she said, holding out the sheet of paper she'd written the information on. The paper was for his benefit, not hers, for she'd memorized the brief string of letters and numbers years ago. Deciphering the letters Uncle Albard had penned on her doll's forehead had been one of her primary motivations to learn to read.

The keeper of the storage lockers merely grunted and said, “Get ‘em yourself. If you've got the combination, you get in, that's the rule.” He pointed to a doorway at the end of the counter.

She made to go that way, and he said, “Back pay's owing on that one. Six hundred.” He grinned like a shark. “We were about to clear it out."

Venera opened her bag, letting him see the pistol as she rummaged for the cash. He took it without comment and waved her through the door.

The only thing in the dingy locker was a water-stained file folder. As she stood in the half light, flipping through it, Venera decided it was all she needed. The documents were from the College of Succession at the University of Candesce, two thousand miles away. They included DNA analyses that proved her father was not of the royal line.

She barely saw the tumbled buildings as she left the blockhouse; maybe that's why she got turned around. But suddenly Venera snapped to attention and realized she was in a narrow chute formed by five clapboard structures, on her way down, not up toward the palace. Frowning, she grabbed a handy rope to steady herself and turned to go back the way she'd come.

"Don't.” The voice was quiet, and came from above and to the left. Venera flipped over to orient herself to the speaker. In the gray reflected light from shingle and tar paper, she saw a youth—perhaps no older than herself—with tangled red hair and the long bones of someone raised in too little gravity. He smiled toothily at her and said, “Bad men coming behind you. Keep going and take your first hard right, and you'll be safe."

She hesitated, and he scowled. “Not shittin’ ya. Get going if you know what's good for you."

Venera flipped again, planted her feet on the rope, and kicked off down the chute. As she reached the corner the boy had indicated, she heard voices coming from the far end of the chute—opposite the way he'd said the bad men were coming from.

This side way led quickly to well-traveled airspace and had no niches or doors out of which someone could spring. Feeling momentarily safe, Venera peeked around the corner of the chute. Three men were flying slowly up from the left.

"I really think you've gotten us lost this time,” said the one in the lead. He was in his late twenties and obviously noble or rich from his dress and demeanor. One of his companions was similarly dressed, but the third man looked like a commoner. She couldn't see much more in the dim light. “The palace is definitely not this way,” continued the leader. “My appointment is at two o'clock, I can't afford to be late."

Two o'clock? She remembered one of the courtiers telling her that an admiral from some neighboring country would be calling on her father in the early afternoon. Was this the man?

Suddenly one of the other men shouted, “Hey!” He had barely writhed out of the way of a sword that had suddenly appeared in the third one's hand. “Chaison, it's a trap!"

Four men shot down the chute from the right. They were rough-looking, the sort of thug Venera had watched roaming the neighborhood through her spyglass and sometimes fantasized about. All had drawn swords and none spoke as they set upon their two victims.

The one named Chaison whirled his cloak into the air between himself and the attackers and drew his sword as his friend parried a thrust from their erstwhile guide. After the initial warning from Chaison's friend, nobody spoke.

In a free-fall swordfight, the blade was as much propulsion as weapon. Each of the men found purchase in wall or rope or opponent with hand, foot, shoulder, or blade as they could. Each impact sent them in a new direction, and they tumbled and spun as they slashed at one another. Venera had watched men practice with swords and had even witnessed duels, but this was totally different. There was nothing mannered about it; the fight was swift and brutal. The men's movements were beautiful, viscerally thrilling and almost too fast to take in.

One of the attackers was hanging back. As his face intersected a shaft of light, she realized it was the boy who had warned her. He held his sword up, wavering, in front of his face and ducked away from the embattled older men.

It took Venera a few seconds to realize that two of the men bouncing from wall to wall were now dead. There were black beads dotting the air—blood—and more was trailing the bodies, which continued to move, but only languidly, from momentum. One was the guide who had brought the two noblemen here; another was one of the attackers.

"Stand down!” Chaison's voice startled Venera so much that she nearly lost her grip on the wall. The remaining three attackers paused, holding onto ropes and bent shingles, and stared at their dead compatriots. The boy looked sick. Then one of his companions roared in anger and jumped.