Anya had thought she knew how to drive these things. And she did...more or less. Flying a swift rider into combat wasn't nearly the same as piloting one down the road.

Peleps Weylan shouted something over the rushing wind. "What?"

"I can pilot a swift rider, Master Anaya, and I cannot easily strike the creature at range!"

"All right! Climb forward then!" That was an unusual skill-she must have connections-but not an unheard of one. Weylan clambered around the front seat and took one side of the steering yoke. Anya climbed out of the seat and wedged her feet into the steprail. That should keep her from falling off.

"Don't you want to get seated?" Anya shook her head. She'd have to aim around Weylan, or else Weylan would have to maneuver in front of the creature. She drew her starmetal powerbow, wishing she felt more confident with the thing. It was steady in her hands, but virtually all her skill was magical and very new.

Up ahead of them, the chimera vanished. It must have gone invisble, or maybe taken a form that was hard to see. Anya narrowed her eyes, and it came into focus; it had fused itself into the ground. She started to wave her hands around, then thought better of it. Instead she fired an arrow into the plot of ground the monster was in,then waved her bow briefly in the air.

Yudani, or perhaps Siaka, got the hint. A moment's pause, and the ground rumbled and shifted, spewing the monster out onto the surface. At once it was in motion again.

Iron Siaka cut across the creature's path, slamming her mace down on what seemed to be its head. It tried to fuse the head into its body, but under the force of that blow its flesh splattered, sending acidic droplets everywhere. Jagged legs slashed into Siaka's chest, as well.

Anya drew back the bow to its limits. It wanted to look like a xenomorph? "Get away from her...you bitch." And she released.

Green-black energy sizzled through the creature for a third time, and it began to melt, sagging all over as its own acids consumed its flesh. Anya leapt from the speeder as Weylan came around, coming to rest inches from Iron Siaka.

"Didn't know you cared so much," Siaka said quietly.

"The 'her' in the story is a kid," Anya said, their lips an inch or so from touching, and she winked and turned away.

Iron Siaka growled deep in her throat, threw up her hands, and climbed back on the speeder.

Chapter 43-Above All Thrones

"Where is it going?"

"Shhh." Fred held up her hand. "I need to focus. Zombie senses are...different." Kolohi nodded and was quiet.

The zombie was walking along a ridge beneath the sea, not so deep as Fred had thought it might go. But of course pressure became an issue if you descended into the true depths of the ocean, even for a walking corpse. It had fallen casually into line with the few other survivors, and now they were filing into a great crack in the hull of an ancient wreck. Just how dead tissue could perceive anything was a mystery to Fred, but it was plain by now that zombies did.

The wreck should have been a reef by now, but only a few hardy, colorless sponges and brown clams had colonized it. Generic silvery fish swam back and forth in small numbers, but there was nothing of obvious importance waiting here for them. The zombies continued forward, though, through what might once have been a cargo hold. Here were some wooden partitions, and then the rotted door of some sort of cabin.

A man waited beyond the door, a man who was as much shark as human, pacing back and forth. "No Lintha," he muttered. "Did they abandon you or...ah. I see. Well, something more powerful next time, I suppose. And you," he said, turning toward Fred's zombie, "you may be more trouble than I expected." A dull grey ring, the dead grey of unpolished iron, flickered on his forehead, surrounding a blood red disc. "Spy on your grandmother next time. You may have better luck."

The connection shattered like glass breaking inside her mind, and Fred fell. "Darn it. Send word to Xander. Then we have to find another site. This one's blown."

Buffy slouched in her seat, bored. She knew all about Gryfa Theed, the plump, sallow-skinned, almond-eyed rich kid from Nexus. She'd known the girl was up and about since the first hint of potential new abilities flickered through her mind. Metagaos' powers had opened themselves up to her and the Green Sun Princes, just as Oramus' and Isidoros' would in a few more days.

This little merchant's daughter was a Scourge, huh? She reminded Buffy of herself, a few years ago. It was easy to see how Metagaos had tempted her; even on her first trip to hell she was wearing silks and gemstones head to toe. Gaudy, by southern California standards, but probably the height of Nexus fashion.

The Orchid-Eater droned on for a few minutes about her background while Buffy thought about recruiting her, but it turned out her orders were to assassinate some Nexan nobility, and probably after that she was meant to take over Nexus. Dragging her down south would make trouble for her and irritate the Yozis. Oh. Wait.

Buffy leaned back in her seat and raised her hand. "I can teach her how to run a successful revolution if she wants."

"Buffy," the Orchid-Eater said tiredly, "you have been directed to begin consolidating our Southern gains. You aren't the only Green Sun Prince qualified to train Gryfa, and you will soon be delivering weapons to the revolutionaries in An-Teng."

"You don't need my full attention on a weapons caravan," Buffy argued. "I'll send a clone and some akuma. I can use Nexus and An-Teng to squeeze the southern coastal provinces-"

"No," Ligier thundered. "You are not taking into account the distances involved or the presence of Thorns in between your targets. Focus on Paragon if you want to squeeze the coast, which is at least strategically legitimate, and please make some effort to control your appetites."

Weirdly, the last got Gryfa's attention; she turned toward Buffy and winked. She must be a giant slut as well as a greedy rich kid. Metagaos again. "May Buffy give me some advice during my stay here?"

Ligier nodded irritably. "Buffy has a couple of days free. Please make appropriate use of them."

There were a few more offers-Gryfa sensibly took them all-and then a dispute between Captain Gyrfalcon and a Slayer who was supposed to be working with him but who was having mental issues because of his programming to assassinate some important Lookshyan leaders. Cyan resolved it with an offer to lure the leaders north for negotiations, and there was no fight. Buffy wasn't the only one to yawn and grumble at that.

Finally the Orchid-Eater dismissed the meeting and Buffy was free to go chat up the new girl-she'd give the kid something to eat!-but immediately Cyan buttonholed her. "Meet me at my townhouse in twenty minutes, please."

Buffy breathed a long sigh. "Business before pleasure, I guess."

Cyan laughed. "What the hell. Bring the girl. We're Exalts; we can manage both at once."

Buffy snickered and went to fetch Gryfa-who, yes, was definitely interested in at least a one-night stand-before collecting some fast food from the new operation she'd convinced some Skilosh to open up in the Conventicle and rushing over to Cyan's place.

Cearr and Cyan and some blue-haired pirate were already lounging about on cushions in the upper floors and drinking wine-no chalcanth, strangely. And there wasn't a single demon to be seen.

Before Buffy could ask what was up, Cyan began with: "Gryfa, I don't fully trust you, but I trust that you're in this for personal gain. No?"

The Scourge licked her lips. Nervously? No. "I am. I have no particular loyalty to Metagaos, nor he to me."

"Well, the same is true of myself toward the Ebon Dragon, and Cearr to Malfeas, and Captain Feasalt to Cecelyne. And Buffy certainly has no loyalty toward the beings she's spent her life opposing-not even with her recent changes, I suspect."

"The Old Ones can kiss my ass," Buffy said flatly. If this place wasn't already heavily warded she'd eat Captain Feasalt's eyepatch.

"There we go." Cyan smiled thinly. "Well, then, when our latest associate arrives we have our own personal gain to discuss. Ah-here he is."

A man shrouded in heavy black cotton hobbled in, his face masked with a fierce horned-owl half-helm. "I am known as Meticulous Owl," he said. "The First and Forsaken Lion believes himself my master. So does He Who Holds in Thrall. And so does the Ebon Dragon. I have one and only one master-my own ambition-and I have reaaon to trust the same of you. I have no interest in destroying Creation nor in handing it to the Yozis. Broken or not, we were created to be the Lords of the World-and that is my aspiration. What say you?"

Buffy grinned. "You've got my attention."

"Mind if I ride with you?" Iron Siaka seemed to be genuinely trying for politeness. She'd been very helpful in taking out the monster.

Anya shrugged. "Climb aboard." Weylan and Yudani might take off with the other swift rider, but that was no great loss, and their best hope of regaining their honor lay in staying and helping out.

"Do you feel anything at all for me?"

Anya gunned the motor. "You're very good in bed. You anger me sometimes-a lot, actually-but I'm used to being on the wrong side of cultural misunderstandings. I'm willing to forgive and not murder you in your sleep. And when you're not making me angry, yes, I honestly do kind of like you. Maybe even in a romantic sort of way."

"Is the main obstacle to having a relationship with me that you don't enjoy sex with women?" Siaka sounded very earnest.

Anya spread her hands. "It looks like I have to share Xander, so he may as well have to share me. And I did say that I'm willing to forgive you if you'll stop screwing up quite so badly. So yes, I suppose. But you don't enjoy having a penis, so we're out of options. Aren't we?"

Iron Siaka shook her head. "I wouldn't do it to a colleague without asking, but one of the things we do is define relationships between people. There are charms for it. If you were willing, I could make you sexually attracted to me even though you wouldn't normally be."

Anya thought about that. "But you won't do it without my permission."

"My word of honor."

Anya thought about it some more. A thousand years of wreaking vengeance on men. A dozen bad relationships with male demons, and five disastrous failures experimenting with women before she gave up on the idea that she could have her vengeance and sex too. Followed by Xander, whom she loved but with whom monogamy was clearly no longer working.

"Let me think about it for a while," she said finally. "It's a big decision."

"No pressure," Siaka said. If only that weren't progress.

"Towers of Azure," Xander asked, "what's our current alert status?"

"We are currently at red alert, Admiral Amyana," the AI reported.

"Okay," Xander acknowledged. "Why are we at red alert?"

"We are under attack by Lintha pirates," Towers said calmly. "Sector 3 deck 1."

"Towers," Anja said, trying to be patient, "that's the bridge. It's currently very high in the air."

"Perhaps they have flight capability?" the AI suggested reasonably.

"What about stealth capability?" Xander asked. "Because they're not onscreen."

"You are correct, Amyana. I can no longer detect any Lintha. Perhaps a malfunction has occurred."

"Sounds like it," Xander agreed. "Cancel alert and run a diagnostic. Sorry for the interruption, Anja."

Anja looked down at herself and sighed. "I'll just undo this and get dressed." She saw that he was about to object. "No, I mean we've lost the moment. It's okay." She spun around, her body wavering and flickering, and was suddenly back in her female shape, clad in a sheer white dress. "I do need to ask, where's the arsenal? I need to be able to arm myself in an emergency. I don't have a lot of combat magic. Yeah, I should learn some, but it'll take a little while."

"This way," Xander said, leading her down the corridor. "The main armories are a bunch of floors down, but we've set up emergency stations on every deck. Hell, I should set you up with a weapon and armor in your quarters...er, my quarters. If that's where you wanna sleep."

"I'd like very much to sleep...um, stay with you." Anja blushed, then grumbled about it to herself. "I'd better not be stuck feeling exactly like this for the rest of this life."

Xander shrugged and laughed. "There are worse ways to feel about someone." He touched an unobtrusive silver panel, and a section of wall slid open. "We have emergency gear in here. It's not much, and most of it is jade if it's anything, but until you find something ideal, here it is."

Anja twirled a short blade berween her fingers for a moment. "I'll keep this in mind. Where's the rest?"

Xander led her out and palmed the door shut. "Down this way. Just wondering...you're not threatened by my relationship with Anya?"

Anja snickered. "We're a thing as long as our Exaltations exist, Roberts. I don't have to worry about losing you. What could threaten that?" The elevator carried them down.

"Fair enough. And I guess, in a way,the same's true of any Exalted I get involved with. Not that we can't break up, but...if Anya were to get eaten by a behemoth tomorrow-"

"Her Exaltation would come round again, memories and all. That's not a bad way to look at it." The doors slid open on a pair of Dragon-Blooded guards. "Which way?"

"Over here. We're still cataloguing and in some cases repairing, but everything to the right is sorted. Moonsilver is third aisle. There's more of it than anything but jade."

Anja picked up a daiklave with a slight curve and a slender blade. "Never seen-"

The alarm blared. "Towers of Azure to Admiral Amyana! Intruders on lowest level!"

"Give me a visual, Towers." Xander sighed as he thumbed on the viewscreen. Sure enough, the images being cycled through clearly showed empty rooms save for the great Essence engines that powered the city. "Tell Fred I'm implementing a series of security sweeps. Dragon-Blood officers will start on the bridge and work their way down through every level one by one, room by room. If this is a malfunction I want it fixed. If someone's spoofing our internal sensors I want them locked up and interrogated on why."

"Yes, Amyana. Passing your orders to Queen Burkle and Commodore Tomazri."

"Ugh. That better not continue much longer. Heads are gonna roll." He banged his forehead against an oversized locker.

"Hey, what've we got here?" The licker popped open, and Anja pulled out a smooth grey helmet. Xander peered inside.

"Towers calls that a suit of Celestial Battle Armor. Fred's got one in her quarters but she hasn't been using it because she's practicing her martial arts. You're welcome to this one, but we'll have to look up the specs. They're all custom-built."

Anja beamed at him and planted a kiss on his nose. "Have you got warstriders down here too?"

Xander shrugged. "Five, but they all need major repairs. Nobody's maintained them in a millennium. If there's more than one moonsilver one, you'll get one when I'm sure it's repaired. Sorry, but the first has got to be the Queen's."

Anja opened another equipment locker, but it was empty. Sized for another suit of powered armor, it was huge. Anja dragged him inside and pulled the door shut. "For that, you get a special reward, Roberts."

"So what we have here is a twofer."

Renjin tugged at his earlobes. "Sorry, I'm not sure I heard that right."

"Twofer. As in 'two for the price of one.' A Shadowland and a Wyld-Tainted land. I didn't know that was possible."

"How is it the price of one if it bought two?" Renjin shook his head. "Never mind. I've heard of places that were both Wyld-tainted and dead, but all I know about this one is that it's on the map."

"Shogunate troops died here by the thousands during the Balorian Crusade," Captain Redfang said over Fred's shoulder, "slaying a fae behemoth that ate water as if it were frozen and sent ships to the bottom under the shockwaves."

"That'd do it," Peleps Kolohi said wryly.

"Okay," Fred said, "now we start from scratch. At least we got some useful geomantic readings last time. Captain, I think we need the ring taken over there by those jet-black trees."

"The ones with the bloody veins in their leaves?" The captain didn't seem afraid, exactly...only reluctant.

"Yeah," Fred said. "Sorry. It's the characteristics of the portal. There are things-"

Captain Redfang shook his head. "Don't try to explain. Just find what you need to find. I don't know geomancy from geometry."

"They're not that different," Fred explained. "Here," she said as the sailors neared the trees with the device. "Set it down and raise the rings. There. Got it? Back up and...qrdmlzf!"

For a moment it seemed that the same nothing as last time would be the result. Then the rings began to spark more regularly as a soft buzzing sound rose, growing louder and louder, becoming a roar. Silver light flared in the ring, center to edge, rippling inward, spinning up into a vortex of light.

Fred clasped her hands together and squealed like a small child as her caste mark flared. Then she let out a whoop. "Houston...the Eagle has landed!" And she began to dance a little jig. Kolohi and Renjin laughed for a moment and then danced with her.

No one saw the translucent creature, like a hand-sized jellyfish, flop through the portal and crawl toward the ship.

Angel got wearily to his feet as Buffy strolled into the room. "Spike," he hissed. "Up!" He hadn't been on great terms with Spike since the second decade of his unlife, but even he deserved better than Buffy was handing out right now. Also, warning Spike might earn Angel a little favor from her. He knew this thought was as close as he'd ever been to being broken and was unable to care.

Spike struggled to his feet. He'd spent the entire time Buffy was gone recovering. She'd been offering him nothing to eat but her political enemies. Most were such scum that even Angel could barely muster the energy to defend them, but that meant nothing to Spike's chip. And of course, she was beginning to run out of scum.

For Angel, there were...other tortures.

"God," Buffy said. "What's she done to you?" A double, then. No help there.

"Not her fault," Angel said wearily. " burst of Wyld energies...I'm not as safe to be around as I was." Hunger made it worse.

Tara and Willow came into view. Willow's condition seemed to be worsening, but slowly, while Tara's reptilian scales appeared stable. Angel couldn't smell anything much with the splints up his nose. Surprising him was easier.

Buffy, if anything, looked more beautiful than before. Paler, maybe. Less flushed from the perpetual heat here... Oh no.

She must have seen his expression. "It's not what you think," she said. "I mean, it kind of is. I'm not like you. I'm like Willow."

"An Abyssal?" Spike laughed harshly. "Oh, now this is rich, Slayer. I might even still be capable of enjoying the irony."

Buffy ran her fingers lightly over Spike's nubbly forehead and the streaks of dried blood on his cheeks. Then, even more gingerly, the fanged maw that had opened in Angel's belly. It didn't try to bite her; it never had so far.

"I'm sorry all this happened to you trying to save me. I'm sorry for being beyond saving. If I can help, I will." She kissed Angel gently on the forehead, then Spike. "First, though, we have a mission. We have to overthrow the Despot...again."