City on Fire

Aiah wonders if she has somehow managed it all.

The meeting ends. As they head back to the command center, Constantine takes Aiah’s arm. “I would like to use Karlo’s Brigade in the assault on Lanbola. They are near the border, ideally placed, and they are not yet committed to the bridgehead.”

It is, Aiah thinks, the only way to save Landro’s Escaliers and the others in the bridgeheads.

“Yes,” she says. “But I want to talk to Ceison personally.” “I will arrange it.”

And so, a half hour later, she finds herself talking to Brigadier Ceison, and giving him her personal assent to the invasion, along with her best wishes for its success.

Within another two hours, Karlo’s Brigade spearheads the assault into Lanbola, moving deep inland without opposition while assault troops are landed by helicopter on enemy buildings to seize control of the seat of government. Other airborne units engage and capture the Lanbolan artillery.

Within twenty-four hours, its political leadership dispersed or under arrest, the army of Lanbola surrenders without ever having left the vicinity of its barracks.

A day later, the Provisionals have collapsed and the war is over, and Constantine—because there was no one else, no one at all—has taken Hilthi’s place in the triumvirate.

TWENTY-TWO

Sea Mage Motor Craft—Take a Voyage to Victory!

The golden letters burn for a moment in the sky, a garish display, complete with a Marine striking a heroic pose in a motorboat. The sight makes Aiah want to cheer. Not because the Sea Mage company had contributed to the last, triumphant campaign, though they had, but because the plasm advert is there at all.

Peace. The price of plasm has fallen, and the sky is filled with the reassuring fires of commerce.

Another blaze floats up into the sky, happy people dancing with bottles of Snap! in their hands.

“Has the advertising improved in the last months, that you are so entranced?”

Constantine’s question turns Aiah away from her terrace window. “I would rather see that ad every minute for the next week,” she says, “than have the sky filled with artillery rounds.”

Constantine concedes the point. “Yes. I quite agree.” He pats the sofa cushion next to him. “Would you join me?”

She does so, leaning back against the warmth of his massive body. His puts an arm around her shoulder.

Outside, the sky blazes with the lights of peace.

On the table before them are the recordings of Aiah’s meeting with Holson and Galagas. The plastic casings are broken open, and the cellulose tape cut into coiled shreds by Aiah’s scissors. Tomorrow Aiah will throw the fragments out with the rubbish.

It will not be quite as simple to dispose of the memories of how those recordings were made. She is not as easy, leaning against Constantine’s strength, as once she had been.

/ shall guard my own back in future. Aiah had made that promise in anger; but now, soberly, she was keeping it. Sixteen bodyguards had been put on the payroll at the PED, and were now undergoing training in the Timocracy: in the meantime, when she left the Palace, she was accompanied by soldiers from Karlo’s Brigade.

“Are you pleased to find yourself a triumvir?” Aiah asks.

Constantine pauses a moment to consider. “There is less interference in my work,” he says, “but the company is not as congenial. In truth, I would prefer to take the place either of Faltheg or Parq, and to leave Hilthi in place.” His voice deepens as it grows thoughtful. “In the past it was others who made the compromises, while I resisted and spoke of principle; but now I must compromise my own beliefs, and make certain my people follow my lead…” A kind of self-disgust enters his words. “A particularly nasty compromise has just been made.” His arms fold around her, and he murmurs urgently into her ear. “I beg you, do not go outside without guards for the next week or ten days. The city may not be safe.”

The warning tingles along Aiah’s nerves. She pulls free of his embrace and glances over her shoulder, sees him looking at her somberly. “The war is over,” she says. “Why should there be danger now?”

Constantine’s gaze is directed toward the terrace window, where the sky blazes with one bright advertisement after another. “The war is over,” he says, “but the shape of the peace is uncertain.”

“You are a triumvir, one third of the government. Minister of War and of Resources. You can’t enforce order in the streets?”

His eyes shift away, and he rubs his jaw with one uneasy hand. “Not when I am opposed from within the government.”

“Parq, then,” Aiah judges. “Because I can’t see Faltheg behind any sort of violence.”

Constantine looks at her, eyes narrowing. “I cannot confirm your suppositions. But guard yourself—and if you are given an order, follow it.”

“There is no one who can give me an order but you.”

Again he looks uneasy. “That is not quite the case,” he says.

She will have to talk to Ethemark, she thinks. And if the orders are unacceptable, she can resign.

But what kind of threat, she wonders, is that resignation? Who, besides Constantine, would care? Who, besides herself, would lose? No one gives a damn, she learned long ago, about the high and noble principles of a girl from Old Shorings. She will just be replaced by one of Parq’s people, and that would deliver the PED right into the hands of his organization.

Constantine’s burning eyes hold her. “Do as your orders bid you,” he says. “I will do what I can for you, but it will take time. Remember our time in Achanos, and give me your trust.”

She looks at him narrowly, and—she must decide this now; it has come to that— she makes up her mind, for the moment, to trust him. It has nothing to do with any sentimental memories of their stolen hours in Achanos, either—very odd of Constantine to mention them—but everything to do with calculation.

He uses her—he has always freely admitted it, a disarming element of his charm—and he loves her, she supposes, insofar as she is useful to him. But what he really loves is something else, power perhaps, or stated even more grandly, his Destiny. One must keep one’s true end in view… She is not, she concludes, a part of that vision, whatever it is.

But Constantine has given her power. She did not want it particularly, nor had she asked for it—she had not considered it hers, had considered herself an extension of Constantine, and her power his on loan.

Now she is not so certain. The PED is hers—she built it, shaped it, hired every single member herself. Constantine wanted it to be loyal to her personally, and it is as loyal as she can make it. Rohder’s division of engineers and architecture students, madly making plasm, is hers. The Barkazil mercenary units are hers, at least informally—and she can attempt to make the arrangement more personal, if she desires.

Power. She can learn to use it, to acquire more, to impose her will on the world like an alchemist working with plasm-fired metal.

Or she can quit. Become Constantine’s mistress, an appendage of which he would soon grow weary; and then—or now, for that matter—become nothing at all, a private person with a little dirty money put away.

But if she chooses the road of power, she must learn how to use it.

And for that, she reasons, Constantine is necessary. As she once learned the ways of magic from him, so she must now learn the ways of command.

She must learn from him; and in order to do that, she must stay close to Constantine. Closer than she already has been, if possible.

“Very well,” she says. “I will do as you wish.”

The fiery intensity in his look is banked behind the lids of his eyes. “Thank you,” he says. He seems to recollect something, then reaches in his jacket pocket. “Aldemar gave me this for you before she left to finish her chromoplay.” He takes out an oblong box and hands it to her. “She said you left it in her room.”