City on Fire

She knows what it is before she opens the box. She fastens the ivory necklace around her neck. “Do you know Aldemar’s number in Chemra?” she asks. “I would like to wire her my thanks.”

“I will give it to you.”

His large hand reaches for the necklace, picks up the dangling Trigram, and lets the smooth ivory rest in his palm. He shares with her a smile of remembrance. “This is the best investment I have made,” he says. “You have exceeded all expectations.”

“I will thank you to remember it,” she says.

“You want rewards?” He lifts a brow. “Ask, and I will give it, if I can.”

She considers. “I will keep them as IOUs, for now.”

“Perhaps you trust overmuch in the generosity of the powerful, to trust that I will remember, in weeks or months, how much I owe you.”

“Had I ever known you petty,” Aiah says, “you would already have the list of what I want, each item numbered, on a sheet of paper.”

He smiles, lips drawn with a touch of cruelty, then closes his fist on the Trigram and brings it gently toward him, pulling her to him by the priceless collar. They kiss, and Aiah feels the little flutter in her belly that tells her that this is not entirely about power, about abstract desire for knowledge of political strategy.

“We have won a peace,” Constantine murmurs. “Our lives are changed, and we may have as much time for one another as we desire. It is a luxury I intend to savor.”

“I hope you will,” Aiah says, “but I should warn you that my capacity for luxury is very large indeed.”

He gives a knowing smile and draws her to him again. “Let us discover,” he says, “just how large it is.”

POLAR LEAGUE DEMANDS CARAQUI LEAVE LANBOLA

“I had suspected this,” says Adaveth. “We knew that Parq would make a move once there was a peace and the triumvirate didn’t need us.”

The twisted Minister of Waterways’ fingers drum angrily on the tabletop. “But none of the important things are talked about in the cabinet,” he says. “All we discuss is what to do with Lanbola, and that’s pointless, because we’re going to have to give it back sooner or later. The Polar League is up in arms, wailing about sovereignty—not that they cared about ours, when we were invaded.”

“Constantine says—implies, anyway—it will not last,” Aiah says. “That eventually he will be able to act to change things.”

Adaveth and Ethemark exchange scornful looks. “Constantine is keeping the War and Resources portfolios,” Adaveth says. “It was expected he would have to give up at least one now the war is ended. But in exchange for selling the twisted to Parq, he will keep both.”

Aiah feels a cold certainty, a draft of ice along her bones, that this is exactly the bargain that has been struck.

It is early service shift, and across the world people are sitting down to supper. Aiah, instead, hosts a meeting of her working group on the problem of Parq and the twisted, and serves soft drinks and krill wafers because she has not had a chance to cook in all the time she’s been here.

Ethemark looks at her. “Do you know what Togthan is up to?”

Alfeg still shares an office with the Excellent Togthan, but has had little to report.

“Togthan is spending a lot of time with personnel files,” Aiah says.

“Not surprising,” says Adaveth.

Ethemark’s eyes narrow as he gazes at Aiah. “If we are dismissed,” he asks, “you will resign?”

Aiah hesitates. “Perhaps not,” she says.

Adaveth and Ethemark exchange another look, and in it Aiah reads their scorn. “Resignation is your only weapon in matters of principle,” Adaveth says.

“We had assumed,” says Ethemark, “you would resign. The people of Aground died for you, and you will not give up your job for them?”

Aiah feels her insides twist. “I have thought about it,” she says. “And who would my resignation help? Not you or your people. Not the people in Aground. Who would my resignation harm? Only the department, because Parq would have a hand in the appointment of my successor. Would you like a captain in the Dalavan Militia to have my post?”

They exchange another look, and Aiah knows, heart sinking, that she’s lost them. She’s become one of those they can no longer trust, another bureaucrat who will not risk her precious position to help them.

How to win them back? she wonders.

And then she wonders whether it is necessary. They are not her natural constituency, nor necessarily Constantine’s: they are their own. In the future she should not depend on them—because she is sympathetic to them, it does not follow automatically that they will wholeheartedly endorse her…

It is the thought, she realizes, of a politician.

HIGHWAY SCANDAL UNCOVERED IN LANBOLA! MINISTER POCKETED MILLIONS, SOURCE REPORTS

Aiah watches as her driver—pilot, rather—jacks wires in and out of sockets to reconfigure the aerocar’s computer. He glances at his checklist, gimbals the turbines, works the control surfaces. Then, after adjusting his headset, he puts a hand on the yoke and rolls up the throttles. Plasm snarls in the air. The turbines shriek, the nose pitches up, and the aerocar leaps for the Shield, punches Aiah back in her seat.

Aiah turns her head and watches Caraqui, flat on its sea, as it falls away. She has had much the same view while traveling telepresent on a thread of plasm, but the sensation here has a greater solidity than plasm’s hyperreality, a weightiness that places the journey into the realm of sensation: the tug of gravity, the scent of fuel, of lubricant and leather seats, and the cry of the turbines.

The aerocar pitches forward until its flight is level. The sensation of plasm fades—magic is used only during take-offs. Yellow dials glow on the car’s computer.

Alfeg, in one of the seats behind with Aiah’s guards, clears his throat.

Below, jagged buildings reach high for the aerocar like taloned fingers, but they fall far short: the car has left flat Caraqui and its low buildings and entered Lanbolan airspace. The aerocar glides lower, losing altitude: Aiah watches needles spin on instrument dials. The turbines sing at a more urgent pitch: tremors run through the car’s frame. Aiah feels webbing bite her flesh as whining hydraulics shove dive brakes into place. The aerocar slows, hovers, descends. For a moment all is fire as the car drops through a plasm display. The tall buildings rise on either side, and the car finds a rooftop nest between them.

The turbines cycle down and the aerocar taxies to a stop. Aiah sees her reception committee awaiting her: Ceison and Aratha in the deep blue uniforms of Karlo’s Brigade, Galagas in the gray of Landro’s Escaliers. Galagas commands the Escaliers these days: Holson was killed in the fighting.

The cockpit rolls open to the right, and the passengers exit to the left. Guards fan out over the landing zone, and Aiah descends more leisurely: General Ceison hands her down the last step.

“Welcome to Lanbola,” Ceison says, and gives a salute.

Aiah returns it. She has no military rank, but these troops are hers—in some as-yet-unclarified fashion—and so she might as well perform the appropriate rituals.

As she returns the salute, however, Aiah feels a faint sense of absurdity. She does not quite understand what one does with an army in peacetime. A peacetime army seems something of a contradiction in terms.

She introduces Alfeg to Galagas, then walks briskly across the windswept landing area. “How are things here?” Aiah asks.

“Lanbola is quiet,” Ceison judges. “People go to work, do their jobs, get paid. Money still circulates. The stock market is down, but not disastrously so. The army is disarmed but still in its barracks.” He shrugs his gangly shoulders. “The Popular Democrats were so authoritarian that once we swept their top echelon off the board, they