Some of the ships hiding in Candesce's light would be funeral vessels. But some had another purpose.
"What are you doing?" Aubri looped an arm around his waist "You'll burn your eyes out doing that. Come inside."
Hayden had been thinking about the ships that ventured close to Candesce during darkness. They were the harvesters—boats that scrounged the garbage cast out of the Sun of Suns. That garbage was Virga's chief source of sun components. His parents had used fusion-core pieces bought from the principalities to build Aerie's secret sun.
For now, Hayden would not let his speculations run away with him. He let Aubri draw him inside the charcoal-harvester's hut they had found on the outskirts of Leaf's Choir. It perched like an angular bug on the black branch of a tree whose roots lay miles away in darkness. Venera Fanning and Carrier had taken up residence in another harvester's hut some distance away; the bike was hidden there in a ball of sticks. Carrier would not trust Hayden to be its keeper.
He didn't care. It had been strange and wonderful this morning to wake to the first glow of Candesce coming through the one shuttered window of the hut, and find himself wrapped in Aubri's arms and in silence. He had slept with women before; he had never awoken the next morning to find one still with him. So he dwelt in this moment for a long time, breaming slowly and contentedly with her beside him.
The now-familiar hum of the Rook's engines was gone, and not even birdsong signaled dawn here. When Hayden pulled himself over to the window (sleeping Aubri coming along like she was tied to him) he looked out on an astonishing vista. It was as if he were a mite clinging to a giant's hair; for miles in every direction thin black trunks reached toward Candesce from a place of shadow and blackness. The giant's hairs twisted and intertwined as they strained toward the light; many still had branches though the harvesters were systematically stripping them. None had leaves, but life was not completely absent here. Wildflowers nestled in the crooked elbows of branches, and bright green bushes dotted many trunks. Aubri had discovered wild raspberries on this very tree, which might explain why the hut had been positioned here. It was too hot for fish, but a few birds cruised in the distance.
After an hour or two Hayden had started to wonder if there might be a beehive or wasps' nest hidden somewhere nearby, because he'd realized that it wasn't completely silent here. A deep basso thrum filled the air, faint but unwavering. He hadn't heard it last night.
When he mentioned it to Aubri she just shrugged and said, "It's Candesce. Up close it must be like a god singing."
He was in awe of Aubri's knowledge and said so. "You truly know how to control Candesce? You could make it your toy, like a bike?"
She shook her head. "Ride it like a rocket, more like. But Hayden, Candesce was designed before Virga existed. Those designs are still available to anyone willing to leave Virga to find them. I had them with me when I first came here."
That conversation had happened a few hours ago, and had trailed off into kissing and more personal intimations. But her words had stuck with Hayden, growing stranger and stranger the more he thought about them. Now, as they settled in the cooler shadow of the hut, he said, "Why would you have the plans for Candesce with you? Did you already know you were going to visit it?"
She frowned, just slightly, and looked around at the wicker walls. But when she met his gaze again she wore a carefree smile.
"I came here with every piece of information we'd ever collected on Virga," she said. She held up two fingers and pinched them close together. "All that data could be contained in something much smaller than a grain of sand, so why not carry all of it? Of course, when I got here, the memory store was disabled by Candesce's emissions. So I'll have to go on what little I remember when we get there. But I remember enough."
He nodded, still thinking about it. Suddenly Aubri grabbed his arm. "Look!"
Buzzing in the doorway was one of those odd little chrome insects that one saw sometimes. Tankers, Aubri had called them. Hayden reached out a hand. "Should I catch it?"
She shook her head. "I don't have my instruments with me, I couldn't study it now."The little tanker spun around and zipped off. A sudden cloud of similar bugs flicked past the window.
"You were right," Hayden said. "They're headed for Candesce."
"Carrying fuel," she said with a nod. "For the Farnsworth Fusors."
THEY FLOATED TOGETHER inside the hut, exhausted after making love, and were silent together. He was acutely aware drat much had gone unspoken between him and Aubri.
At last he turned and laid his hand, gently, on her breastbone. "Does it listen?" he asked her. He had no need to say what it was.
She shrugged. "I need to be careful. But… it doesn't care. Not really. It's just a dumb mechanism."
He thought about that. Then he nodded to the window. "Was this your mission?To visit Candesce?"
She looked him in the eye and said, "No. In fact… it's the opposite. If there's anywhere in Virga where I might find a way to free myself from this…" She tapped her throat. "Then it would be there."
Hayden shook his head in confusion. "You don't need to be careful about telling me that?"
"No. The assassin-bug only cares whether I tell people what my real mission is. It's not able to care about anything else."
"Not even its own life?"
"It's not alive. So, no." She quirked a smile. "Look at it this way: some things trigger it, some don't. That's all."
"So…" He mused. "You think we might find a way to kill it in Candesce?"
"It's why I pushed the Fannings to do this. A selfish reason, maybe." She shrugged, grinning. "But it worked."
He laughed. "Can I help?"
She kissed him. "Just keep guard. I'll do the rest."
"You can help me too," he said seriously. Aubri cocked one eyebrow. "both of us, really," he added. "Aubri… have you actually thought about what you'd do if you got free of that thing? Would you stay, or would you go?"
She hesitated. "Stay," she said finally. "I would stay."
Hayden sighed. He took a moment to compose his thoughts. "I have a reason for going into Candesce too," he told her. He felt his heart lifting as he described his plan to locate sun components in Candesce and return them to Aerie. "I want to finish my parents' work. Light a new sun on the edge of winter, that the people of Aerie can gather around. Let them leave Slipstream and the rest of Merithan behind. Save my people."
It would have sounded like an arrogant, impossible dream to Hayden—had not his mother and father confidently pursued that same dream.
"I'll need an engineer," he said. "You could be invaluable."
"Oh." She looked away. "Is that all you want me for? My engineering skills?"
"No!" He laughed and pulled her to him. "More. I want much more. We could found a new nation together, Aubri. Is that something you could want?"
She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder.
"More than anything," she murmured, "I would want that."
THEY BOTH AWOKE with a start. It was the middle of the night, and absolutely black inside the hut. Somewhere, far in the distance, something had screamed.