Fear makes her relinquish the pipe and drop back into the sheltering sea. The barge has been holed, she realizes, and it is filling with water and rolling away from her as it does so.
It’s going to sink, and she needs to get away before it drags her down. She backpedals, kicking away from the barge. Bullets rip up the water above her head and she pulls the release valve on the buoyancy harness, allowing herself to sink deeper into the water… She tries to orient herself, tries to think which way is
Another twisted man swims by, big eyes bulging. He must know a safe place, she thinks, and decides to follow him.
She kicks out and has no trouble keeping up with him. The cold is making her shiver. Her body wants to curl up to conserve heat and she has to make an effort to keep her legs kicking.
It’s a hideous failure, she thinks. Statius and Cornelius are probably dead, the half-world is being destroyed, hundreds of people are going to die.
And the war will go on.
An uncontrollable shudder runs through her frame.
And I, Aiah thinks, am going to die of cold, and very soon.
Then she feels plasm prickling her skin, warm like a blanket, and she is sprawling, amid a gurgling, splashing lake of seawater, on Aldemar’s carpet…
Powerful arms pick her up, strip the mask from her face, the regulator, begin unclipping the harness.
“A hot bath,” Constantine says. “Draw it. Now.” He kisses her cold lips. Aiah looks at him from heavy-lidded eyes.
The diving gear tumbles to the floor, lead weights thudding.
Constantine picks her up and carries her to warmth, to life.
TWENTY-ONE
Aiah lies in the scented bath and tries to let the warm water ease the cold in her bones, the numb and numbing sense of dread and sadness and hopeless failure. She stares at the ceiling, at a bright pattern of blue and yellow Avernach tiles; and her eye keeps following the pattern, up and left and down and then to the right across three tiles, then beginning again, the pattern repeating over and over and over without escaping the inevitability of its own design.
Her eyes keep following the pattern. She dares not close them. If she allows her eyes to close, all she can see is a shimmering surface, like water, aglow with angry fire.
And then all the guns around the Palace open fire at once, a rolling thunder that rattles the window for a half-minute at a time, deep concussions that drive up through her spine, releasing memories of explosions in the half-world, the flashes of blinding light, the acrid scent of used munitions. The dead man, arms splayed, drifting toward her on a red tether.
The war is on again.
There is a knock on the door, and without waiting for an answer Aldemar walks in. She kicks aside Aiah’s ruined, soggy clothing, then sits on a little gilt-legged stool and dangles her hands off her knees. The expression below the dark bangs is grave.
“I was unable to bring back the two guards who went out with you,” she says. “It doesn’t mean they’re not all right, it just means that I couldn’t find them in all that mess.”
Aiah sighs and tilts her head back, despair like a bitter drop on her tongue. Gunfire concussions thud in her ears.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Aldemar says. “The mission was betrayed somehow—probably on the other end.”
Aiah tries to say something and fails. Words do not seem adequate to the appalling scope of the tragedy.
“Those two had followed Constantine from the beginning,” Aldemar says. “For twenty years, beginning in Cheloki. He chose to risk them in this, because he thought it was important. He wanted the best to protect you.”
“They did,” Aiah says. Her tongue is thick, and a pain deep in her throat makes it hard to speak. “They kept me alive.” They, she thinks, and Dr. Romus.
Maybe, Aiah thinks absurdly, she will get them medals. Like Davath.
Aldemar leans back on the stool, looks down at her. “I would like to stay with you,” she says, “but I can’t. Now that fighting has started again, I’ll be needed.” She begins to stand, hesitates, then sits again. “Stay here as long as you want. I’d offer you my clothes, but they wouldn’t fit. I’ll try to find someone to fetch some clothes from your apartment.”
“Thank you,” Aiah says. She sits up in the tub, hair pouring down her back like rain, and looks up at Aldemar. “Thank you for getting me out,” she says.
“You’re welcome.” Aldemar reaches for Aiah’s hand, squeezes it briefly, then makes her way out. The window rattles to the sound of guns.
She’d thought she’d done it, she thinks. She’d won, she’d got the Cunning People on her side, had the contract worked out. She would be the hero who’d won the war. Even Barkazi had seemed within reach—She had half-seen the liberated metropolis, the homeland she’d never seen living free under her maternal care……
All dreams, she thought, had come aground in Aground. All gone, all betrayed, in that horrid burst of fire.
WAR RENEWED IN CARAQUI! GOVERNMENT FORCES ON ATTACK!
One of Aldemar’s people, a young bespectacled man, brings her a case of clothes he’d got from her apartment. She receives him wrapped in a towel, and he blushes becomingly.
The contents of the bag makes her smile even through her despair. Aldemar’s naive young man seems not to know what women actually wear, and for what occasions, and even in what quantity. He’d emptied out Aiah’s lingerie drawer and filled the bag with every item of silk, satin, and lace that Aiah possessed, as if she were off for a romantic weekend in Gunalaht rather than a war. There are also bright flowered skirts, scarves, and lace-ruffled blouses.
Well. At least she can wear some of this as far as her apartment, and then she can change into something more appropriate.
She hesitates for a moment as she leaves, seeing her ivory necklace lying on a tabletop, then decides she may as well leave it here. Aldemar is unlikely to run off with it.
A short while later, more conservatively clothed, she walks into the Palace’s command center, the cavernous room beneath the huge illuminated map. The place is full, and half a hundred uniformed communications techs sit with gold-and-ivory headsets clamped to their ears, relaying information back and forth. The overhead rows of video monitors all show views of skylines, smoke, silent flashes.
Here in the shielded silence, the sound of the guns cannot be heard.
Constantine stands near the front of the room, his casual civilian clothes—cords and a shirt open at the neck—a contrast to the uniformed officers standing around him. He spies Aiah the instant she enters, and though he continues speaking casually with his officers one eye remains fixed on Aiah as she walks down the aisle. The officers around Constantine fall silent as she approaches—respectfully, she thinks, while a comrade makes her report. Among them Aiah recognizes the former Captain Arviro of the Marine Brigade, the hero of the countercoup, who is now General Arviro of the Marine Corps.
“Statius and Cornelius weren’t brought back,” Aiah says.
There is a grim narrowing of Constantine’s eyes, then he shakes his head. “I am losing the old ones, one by one,” he says. “Statius was with me for thirty years, stood by me in everything I ever attempted.”
This is
Constantine’s look softens, and he takes her arm. “But he and Cornelius succeeded in their final mission, which was to preserve your life. If I had sent people I did not know as well, we might not have brought you back.”
