City on Fire

shallow. It’s called the Crown of Caraqui.”

Here on the Palace roof, some of the transmission horns have been blown from their moorings, and others damaged. Engineers are rigging a big tripod of steel beams to hoist the damaged horns in place while repairs are made.

“We tried to take these out at the start, miss,” Delruss says. “We used helicopters with special munitions, but we had only limited success. If these transmission horns had been able to broadcast power to where it was needed, we’d have had a much harder time.”

“But there was no one to give the orders.”

“Correct, miss.”

The cold wind knifes through Aiah’s bones. Somewhere below a ship’s siren whoops three times, like an unanswered call for help. Aiah steps toward the edge, her feet crunching on glass from a rooftop arboretum blown open in the fighting, its rare trees and shrubs already withering in the cold.

Above, between her and the Shield, plasm lines trace across the sky: The Situation Has Returned To Normal. Everything Is Safe. The New Government Asks That All Citizens Return to Work.

“Are we safe?” she asks.

“Against what?”

“An attack.”

Delruss shrugs. “A lot of the collection web has holes blown in it. We’ve got telepresent mages patrolling the perimeter, but they can’t see everything. Twenty percent of the transmission horns are off-line, and a lot of the sabotage inflicted during the coup hasn’t been repaired yet… well, not exactly not repaired.”

He sighs, prepares his long story. “Certain of the sabotage was performed by groups with particular interests, in anticipation of particular rewards. They are making certain they get these rewards before repairing the damage they made.”

“I see,” Aiah says. She believes she now understands how she’s getting one of the twisted as her deputy. “So it’s lucky there’s no fighting going on right now.”

“Yes, miss.”

Aiah steps to the parapet and brushes wind-whipped hair from her eyes. She looks down, sees a statue in a niche below her, hanging from bronze straps. It’s the first time she’s seen one of these up close, and she sees that it’s three times human size, and that the upturned face is set into an expression of agony—eyes staring, lips drawn back in pain. Cold fingers brush her spine as she looks into the featureless metal eyes.

“What are these?” she asks. “They’re all over the building.”

Delruss looks over the parapet and gazes unmoved into the agonized face. He’s probably seen much worse in his time.

“Martyrs,” he said. “The Avians used to hang political and religious criminals from buildings to die of exposure.”

Aiah is appalled. “Hanging off the Palace?” she asks.

“Not the Palace, but other buildings, yes. Originally there were other statues in these niches—gods, immortals, and Avians—but when the Avians fell, they put these here instead. And a lot of the local Dalavites hang themselves off buildings as a kind of ordeal, to commune with the spirits of their martyrs.”

He looks at her, a trace of a smile touching his lips. “There were some tourist brochures in an office downstairs. I read them.”

“I don’t suppose your brochure mentioned the Dreaming Sisters?”

“Sorry, no. That’s new to me.”

The sky shapes into an advertisement for the new Lynxoid Brothers chromoplay, the Lynxoids and the Blue Titan performing a violent dance across the sky. Aiah is freezing, and she’s seen enough for today.

From the roof they descend into the structure, and Aiah inspects some of the local conduits, the electric switches that divert plasm from one place to another, the meters that record consumption for purposes of billing.

She thanks Delruss and returns to her office to see if anyone has called—no message lights on the commo array—and finds that her new office furniture has been delivered. Since there seems little to do, she returns to her living quarters.

The suite smells of fresh paint. The carpet has been cleaned, and a brand-new mattress waits on the bed, still in a clear plastic wrapper.

It occurs to her that the situation is so fluid that she can only discover the limits of her authority by giving orders and seeing who obeys them. That she could so easily get service for her room and office argues for the fact that at least some people are inclined to do what she says.

Get the office window repaired tomorrow, she thinks.

She should make a list of everything she needs. Office supplies, access to the computers, scheduled use of the transmission horns, maybe access to secure files, if she can figure out where the secure files are…

Ask for it all, she thinks. Maybe she’ll get it.

She finds a piece of paper and begins to make lists.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS TALKING ABOUT LORDS OF THE NEW CITY MORE THAN JUST A CHROMOPLAY

A bar. Middle of service shift, after the stores have started to close. The place is a glittering profusion of mirrors, brass ornaments, crystal chandeliers, black sculpted furniture made of a shiny composite. It’s crowded and noisy, with a good cross-section of the local inhabitants—most of whom seem to possess both youth and dinars— but no twisted, which Aiah is relieved to discover.

During the course of this shift’s explorations she’s found that about half the inhabitants of Caraqui feature the stocky build and copper skin that registers as “normal” here, but the rest are every conceivable variety of build and skin tone, a wide enough variety that Aiah, with her brown skin and eyes and black hair, doesn’t feel as out of place as she would on a normal street home in Jaspeer.

Aiah sits in a corner surrounded by packages and waits her turn in the restaurant section.

“A gentleman is buying drinks for the house,” the waitress says. “What would you like?”

The waitress tugs at the hem of her red velvet vest while Aiah considers. The number of customers leads Aiah to conclude that whoever is buying could afford another round of what she’s drinking.

“Markhand white. Two-Cross,” she says, and taps her crystal glass. Not without a twinge of guilt.

Before she’d met Constantine she hadn’t ever realized that wine could be good, or that food could be delicious as a normal thing, without special effort. When Aiah was growing up, assembling a good meal was akin to a treasure hunt: good vegetables traded for, or plucked from roof gardens; favors exchanged for a good grain-fed chicken or squab or, on special occasion, a goat; fruit acquired through a process of barter too complex to be apprehended by the outsider.

But for Constantine good food is simply part of the background—he can afford the best: fruit and vegetables grown in select arboretums, animals and fowl fattened on food that otherwise would have been given to people, wine grown in rooftop vineyards, fermentation and acids balanced by magecraft.

Being around Constantine had left Aiah with expensive tastes, tastes at variance with the thrifty habits of a lifetime, but then Constantine had also left Aiah with money in a bank account in Gunalaht.

She has spent a lot of money this service shift, almost a month’s wages at her old job in Jaspeer. She’d realized that she needed new clothing—she’d fled Jaspeer with only the clothes on her back, and bought only a few items in Gunalaht on her way to Caraqui—and so she’d crossed one of the graceful arched bridges leading from the Palace on a shopping expedition.

It was an expensive part of the city. When she handed over her checktube in order to pay, it required a certain effort of will.