“Whatever.” He turned to confer with the others. The conference was brief. “So be it.” He stepped close to her and looked down at her, the way her father used to do when she was young. Despite herself, Venera quailed inside—but she didn’t blink, just as she had never reacted to her father’s threats. “No games,” he said very quietly. “Your life is at stake here.” Then he gestured sharply to the others and they followed him away.

Garth leaned in and muttered, “What obligations? You have nothing planned that day.”

“We do now,” she said as she watched Sarto and his companions walk away. She told Garth what she had in mind, and his eyes widened in shock.

“In a week? The place is a shambles!”

“Then you know what you’re going to be doing the rest of the day,” she said tartly. “Hire as many people as you need—cash a few of my gems. And Garth,” she said as he turned to go, “I apologize for earlier.”

He snorted. “I’ve had worse reactions first thing in the morning. But I expected better from you.”

For some reason those parting words stung far more than any of the things she’d imagined he might say.

“You haven’t talked about the horses,” he said late that evening. Garth was pushing the far end of a hugely heavy wine rack while Venera hauled on the near side. Slowly, the wooden behemoth grated another few inches across the cellar floor. “How—oof!—what did you think of them?”

“I’m still sorting it out in my own mind,” she said, pausing to set her feet better against the riveted iron decking that underlay her estate. “They were beautiful, and grotesque. Dali horses the handlers called them. Apparently, a Dali is any four-legged beast raised under lower gravity than it was evolved to like.”

Garth nodded and they pushed and pulled for a while. The rack was approaching the wall where the little cell of rebels had made their entrance—a hole pounded in the brickwork that led to an abandoned airshaft. Garth had explored a few yards of the tunnel beyond; Venera was afraid the rebels might have left traps behind.

“It was the smell I noticed first,” she said as they took another break. “Not like any fish or bird I’d ever encountered. Foul but you could get used to it, I suppose. They had the horses in a place called a paddock—a kind of slave pen for animals. But the beasts… they were huge!”

Voices and loud thuds filtered in from the estate’s central hallway. Two of the work gangs Garth had hired that day were arguing over who should start work in the kitchens first.

Shadows flickered past the cellar door. The estate was crawling with people now. Lanterns were lit everywhere and shouted conversations echoed down, along with hammering, sawing, and the rumble of rolling carts. Venera hoped the racket would keep the neighbors up. She had a week to make this place fit for guests and that meant working kitchens, a ballroom with no crumbling plasterwork and free of the smell of decay—and of course, a fully stocked wine cellar. The rebel gang had removed all evidence of themselves when they retreated, but had left behind the hole by which they’d gained entrance. Because the mansion only had one entrance—the back doors had not yet been uncovered—Venera had decided it prudent to keep this bolthole. But if she was going to have a secret exit, it had to be secret; hence the wine rack.

“Okay,” she said when they had it about three feet from the wall. “I’m going to grease the floor under the hole, so we can slide the rack to one side if we need to get out in a hurry.” She plonked down the can she’d taken from one of the workmen and rolled up her sleeves.

“We’ll have to survey for traps some time,” he said reasonably.

Venera squinted up at him. “Maybe, but not tonight. You look like you’re about to collapse, Garth. Is it the gravity?”

He nodded, wincing. “That, and simple age. This is more activity than I’ve had in a long while, when you factor in the new weight. I thought I was in good shape, but…”

“Well, I hereby order you to take two days off. I’ll manage the workmen. Take one day to rest up, and maybe on the second you tend to the… uh, that matter that you won’t talk to me about.”

“What matter?” he said innocently.

“It’s all right.” She smiled. “I understand. You’ve been in exile for a long time. Plenty of time to think about the men who put you there. Given that much time, I’d bet you’ve worked out your revenge in exquisite detail.”

Garth looked shocked. “Revenge? No, that’s not—oh, I suppose in the first few months I thought about it a lot. But you get over anger, you know. After a few years, perspective sets in.”

“Yes, and that’s the danger, isn’t it? In my family, we were taught to nurture our grudges lest we forget.”

“But why?” He looked genuinely distressed for some reason.

“Because once you forgive,” she said, as if explaining something to a small child, “you set yourself up for another betrayal.”

“That’s what you were taught?”

“Never let an insult pass,” she said, half-conscious that she was reciting lines her father and sisters had spoken to her many times. She ticked the points off on her fingers. “Never let a slight pass, never forget, build realistic plans for your revenges. You’re either up or down from other people and you want always to be up. If they hurt you, you must knock them down.”

Now he looked sad. “Is that why you’re doing all this?” He gestured at the walls. “To get back at someone?”

“To get back, at all,” she said earnestly, “I must have my revenge. Else I am brought low forever and can never go home. For otherwise—” Her voice caught.

For otherwise, I have no reason to return.

His expression, of compassion, would have maddened her on anyone else. “You were telling me about the horses,” he said quietly.

“Ah. Yes.” Grateful of the distraction, she said, “Well, they have these huge barrel-shaped bodies and elegant long necks. Long heads like on my ring.” She held it up, splaying her fingers. “But their legs! Garth, their legs are twice the length of their bodies—like spider’s legs, impossibly long and thin. They stalked around the paddock like… well, like spiders! I don’t know how else to describe it. They were like a dream that’s just tipping over to become a nightmare. I’m not sure I want to see them again.”

He nodded. “There are cattle loose between some of the estates. I’ve seen them, they look similar. You have to understand, there’s no room on the city wheels to raise livestock.”

Venera pried open the lid of the grease can and picked up a brush. “But now that the nation of Buridan has returned, the horses are our responsibility. There are costs… it seems a dozen or more great nations have acted as caretakers for one or another part of the Buridan estate. Some are tenants of ours who haven’t paid rent in centuries. Others are like Guinevera, who’ve been tending the horses. There’s an immense web of relationships and dependencies here, and we have a little under a week to figure it all out.”

Garth thought about it for a while. “First of all,” he said eventually, “you need to bring a foal or two up here and raise it in the estate.” He grimaced at her expression. “I know what I just said, but it’s an important symbol. Besides, these rooms will just fill up with people if you give them a chance. Why not set some aside for the horses now?”

“I’ll think about that.”

They cleared out the space behind the rack, and slid it against the wall. It fit comfortably over the exit hole. As they stood back to admire their work, Garth said, “It’s a funny thing about time, you know. It sweeps away anger and hate. But it leaves love untouched.”

She threaded her hand through his arm. “Ah, Garth, you’re so sentimental. Did it ever occur to you that’s why you ended up scrabbling about on Greater Spyre for the past twenty years?”