Venera barked a laugh. "You know that's not where I mean. We're coming up on the tourist station! That was your first home when you came to Virga, wasn't it? You should know your way around it pretty well."

"As a matter of fact, I don't. And I don't appreciate being taken back to it without consultation. Unless—" She paled suddenly. "You're not sending me back…"

"Of course not, silly woman. I need you to find someone for me—talk to them, make a deal. That's what this is all about, isn't it? Our deal?"

"Yes," murmured Aubri. To Hayden's astonishment he saw that she wouldn't look Venera in the eye. Venera either didn't notice this, or accepted it as normal. She turned to Hayden, smiling her predatory smile.

"Be ready to fly at eight o'clock sharp. We'll be taking the bike and sidecars, so they'd better be put together."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good." Without another word, Venera left. As soon as the door closed Aubri spun and went to the porthole. She yanked it open and stuck her head outside. Hayden heard muffled cursing coming from beyond the hull. "What's going on?"

She pulled her head back in and grimaced at him, gesturing at the open porthole. He slipped by her and put his own head out into the cold whispering wind.

For a moment he saw nothing but the usual darkness and clouds. Then with a start he realized that what he had taken to be a giant puffball of vapor was made of facets and sweeping curves of glittering ice. They were sailing past a frozen lake: an iceberg as big as any of the cylinders of Rush.

He brought his head back in. "There's an iceberg outside."

Aubri shook her head dejectedly. "Look again." Puzzled, Hayden looked out again. Well, there was the iceberg, and actually there was another one on the other side of it. And another—they were attached tip-to-top, making a kind of chain.

A wreath of cloud slipped over and past the ship, and in the opening that followed he saw what Aubri wanted him to see—and gasped.

The Rook's running lights reflected faintly from shimmering planes of ice, a thousand angles of it receding into blackness. The ship's Cyclopean headlight cast a cone of radiance into the dark and where it lit, Hayden beheld a forest of icebergs. They clung to one another by merest filaments and blades; a dense fog insinuated itself into every hollow and space between them.The Rook wove slowly around the giant spires of ice, each giant receding into the haze as others emerged ahead.

Hayden's eye followed a line of bergs as they passed it, and he realized that they thickened and converged miles away until they were jammed together cheek by jowl. Dark crevasses gaped between them. He was reminded of the forest that carpeted Slipstream's asteroid, only instead of the crowns and cones of trees rising up from darkness, here was endless ice.

"It's like a wall," he said. Just then his chin bumped the edge of the porthole. For some reason he'd started to drift into the ship—probably the air pressure.

"It's not a wall," said Aubri sourly. "It's a ceiling. The ceiling, to be precise."

"The…" He got it men. "This is the world's skin?"

"The skin of the balloon, yes. Everything else in Virga is below us here. That's why we're feeling gravity. I should have realized it from the way the engines were straining."

In the distance a thunderous crack! echoed through the berg forest. Hayden looked out again, and beheld a mountain of ice majestically disengage itself from its neighbors. He watched it as it faded into the ice fog behind them; he was almost sure he could see it moving away from its brothers.

"Candesce drives convection currents in Virga," said Aubri, star-ding Hayden because she was right next to him, just below the porthole. "Rising water vapor condenses into lakes, and if it makes it all the way up here, it freezes. The skin of Virga is very, very cold. But the skin is also the top of Virga's gravity well, slight though that may be. As these bergs grow they become heavy. Eventually they dislodge and fall, melting as they go. The biggest of them make it almost to Candesce before they evaporate."

Hayden contemplated the gargantuan icicles—for that was what they were—for a long time. Then he drew his head into the ship and said, "Why are we here?"

Aubri's face was only inches from his own. He had never been this close to her, and it gave him an uncomfortable pleasure—but she was looking miserable. "What's wrong?"

She pulled herself back to her workstation and fiddled with the lamp for a moment. "If I'd known we were coming here, I wouldn't have joined this expedition."

Hayden crossed his arms and waited. After a few seconds Aubri sighed heavily and said, "Look, I came to Virga to get away from that world." She jabbed a thumb hullward, aiming, he supposed, past the skin at the universe beyond. "I'm a refugee here, and I don't like to be reminded of what I left. Even less do I want to revisit that insipid tourist station."

He descended to sit on the air next to her. After musing for a few moments, he said, "I think I understand. I was born and raised in Aerie. Slipstream conquered it when I was still a boy. But I remember it—and there's reminders of it everywhere you look, from the crafts they sell in the market to the accents of people in the streets. They're… painful. You start avoiding them. And then you feel guilty about it."

She shook her head. "It's not like that. Not quite like that, but yeah, I don't like to be reminded." She smiled suddenly. "I didn't know you were from Aerie."

"Well, neither did anybody else before tonight," he said, clasping his hands in front of him. "Are they going to know by morning?"

Aubri raised an eyebrow. "No—no reason why they should."

They sat in companionable silence for a while. Then a faint shudder went through the ship, and simultaneously the whine of the engines changed tone.

Aubri groaned. "Are we there already?"

The howl of the alarm Klaxons drowned out any reply Hayden might have had, or any thought. He bounded to the window and looked out, in time to see bright streaks converge on one of the other ships from inside a vast cloudbank. Bright flashes lit the side of the ship. He was able to close and dog the porthole before the staccato noise of explosions reached the Rook.

"We're under attack," he said unnecessarily, but there was no reply as Aubri Mahallan had already left the room.

CHAISON FANNING THREW on a jacket while an aide with a hand on his back steered him through the connecting passage to the bridge. Behind him the whole ship was awake and churning with activity. "How many are there?" he shouted ahead at the suddenly alert nightwatch. "What weapons?"

"Admiral, it looks like winter pirates," said the frightened-looking Helm. He was a junior officer on one of his first watches. Probably more afraid of messing up than of the enemy.

Chaison glided to the main periscope and took hold of its handles, slipping his feet into the stirrups below without having to look for them. For a few seconds he blinked, trying to figure out what he was looking at. Then practiced reflexes took over and he began counting and evaluating.

"I see ten enemy craft. It's a whole fucking fleet. I bet there's more maneuvering inside that cloud bank."

"Somebody at Warea must have told them about us," said Captain Sembry from behind him. "We're probably the biggest prize that's ever wandered into their territory."

"It's pure foolishness—they're not a navy, just a ragged flock of crows. What makes them think they can outmaneuver us?… Ah." He laughed humorlessly as he made out more details of the distant ships. "Some of them look like Aerie frigates. I take it back, they're not after booty. At least some of these people are carrying a grudge."

He spun and offered the periscope to Sembry. "Captain, it's a classic night engagement. They've got us trapped in the center of a cylinder of cloud. Their ships have plumbed those clouds, and I don't doubt at all that there's some big icebergs lurking in there if we were foolish enough to follow them. They're going to hit and run out of the fogbanks because they know what's inside them. We have to take away that advantage."