City on Fire

“There has been a coup in Charna,” Ethemark says, “one group of soldiers overthrowing another. The new government has declared its allegiance to the New City, and everyone seems to think it’s our fault. Koroneia and Barchab are making threats, and Nesca’s parliament has gone into executive session. The chairman of the Polar League has called the Emergency Committee into session.”

“Great Senko.” Aiah closes her eyes while a long throb of sorrow rolls through her. Everything was finally going well—an architecture for peace being hammered into place, the new regime safely established at last, principles for demobilization created. And now the whole fragile structure was in danger of being kicked over.

Ethemark continues. “I’ve been ordered to present a report on our plasm reserves to the triumvirate in just a few hours—23:30.”

Aiah rubs her forehead and looks at her watch. Almost 22:00. “I’ll try to get there,” she says, “though I don’t think I’ll make it by 23:30. Can you have someone on duty charter an aerocar here, and leave a message at my hotel concerning how to meet it?”

“What’s your hotel? Does it have a landing pad?”

“The Plum. And I don’t know.”

“I will find out and leave a message there.”

Aiah peers through the stained glass, sees the crowd outside through shifting pastel colors. Her bodyguards and driver are outside the banquet room, and she’s going to need to say good-bye to Olli and Aldemar on her way out. Perhaps from the hotel she can call Constantine and find out what really happened, and who was behind the coup.

But Aiah suspects she already knows.

TWENTY-FOUR

“Well, honestly,” Sorya says, “what was I to do?” She shrugs her slim shoulders inside her uniform jacket. “Charna supported the Provisionals against us, and so, logically enough, we contacted people inside Charna who were opposed to the government—idealistic officers, as it happens, disgusted with their leaders’ corruption—and we encouraged them to, ah, do their utmost to alter the policy of their superiors. We provided them with a certain amount of cash and logistical support—they already had guns, being soldiers—but their plans took longer than anticipated to mature. Our war was over by the time they were ready.”

She takes a breath, folds her manicured hands in her lap. “They’d risked their lives for us, and we encouraged them. Could I tell them, ‘Stop, we don’t need you anymore’? Or even worse, betray the people who trusted us, sell their names to their government?” She shrugs again. “So we limited our contacts and tried to keep informed. Any assistance we gave to them is deniable, and we now have a friendly government on our northern border. I can’t do other than consider this a positive development.”

Faltheg gives Constantine a cynical look. “The fact that their junta is proclaiming the birth of a New City regime tends to cast something of a shadow on our claims of deniability,” says the late candidate of the Liberal Coalition.

Aiah, still in her gold gown, kicks off her high-heeled pumps and flexes her toes in the soft carpet of the lounge. Despite crossing half the world in the fastest aerocar she could hire, she arrived too late for the cabinet meeting; but she was in time for an informal meeting afterward, a kind of postmortem on the Charna situation, in one of the private lounges in the Swan Wing.

A curved bar, all dark exotic wood banded with brushed aluminum, sits in the corner beneath mirror and ranked crystal; plush burnt-orange furniture is grouped around a low glass-topped table. The Swan Wing’s solid-gold ashtrays wait on tables. The air is scented by the coffee that has been set brewing behind the bar, a fragrance that does not quite eliminate the. sour sweat of men who have been awake too long.

The aged Minister of State adjusts his spectacles and looks at notes he’d made during the earlier meeting. “This has damaged us badly,” Belckon says. “Our neighbors know how to count. The Keremaths overthrown, Lanbola invaded and occupied, the government of Adabil fallen, however constitutionally, and now a violent coup in Charna. They can’t help but wonder who will be next.”

Sorya sips mineral water from her crystal goblet. “Of the four chief supporters of the Provisionals,” she says, “three have been replaced by regimes hostile to the Provisionals and favorable to us. We have firmly established that other governments interfere with us at their peril. It will not hurt us in the long run to have our neighbors wary of us.” She gives her lilting laugh. “I wonder what Nesca’s premier is thinking right now.”

Constantine gives Sorya a heavy-lidded glance. “What should Nesca’s premier be thinking?” he asks. “Are we engaged in anything deniable over there?”

Disdain curls Sorya’s lip. “Nesca’s military, such as it is, remains loyal to its government. But both Nesca and its military are negligible and in matters involving real power may be discounted.”

Belckon runs his hands through his hair, stifles a sleep-shift yawn. “I am disturbed,” he says, “that this convulsion should occur in a neighboring metropolis—apparently with our help, however deniable—and the triumvirate simply not know of it until it happens.” He glances across the table at Constantine and Adaveth. “Unless I am wrong in this assumption, and I was not informed while others were?”

Translucent membranes slide over Adaveth’s goggle eyes. “It came as a surprise to me,” he says.

“And to me,” Constantine echoes.

A delicate smile touches Sorya’s lips. “I apologize, truly,” she says. “The fact is, contact with the Charni officers had been curtailed after war’s end, a single case officer was assigned, here in Caraqui because there was surveillance on our embassy, and he had other work… If I’d had detailed information or a definite date, I would have passed it on. It was a failure, I admit, but insofar as the result was favorable to us, hardly a catastrophic one.”

There is a moment of silence. Sorya reaches for a cigaret, lights it with her diamond-and-platinum lighter, languorously breathes in smoke.

“It would seem,” Faltheg says finally, “that however this happened, we must decide how to react. Denial is possible, so we must deny.”

Sorya tosses her head, exhales smoke over her shoulder, picks a bit of tobacco off her lip. “Others may try to dislodge our friends in Charna, as they tried to dislodge us,” she points out. “We must make it clear that the new government has our support.”

“I would phrase it more diplomatically,” Belckon says. “To the effect, perhaps, that we support the right of any metropolis to change its government unhindered.”

“That should make our point well enough,” Sorya says, and gives her lilting laugh. “That,” she adds, “and all the guns in all the hands of all our soldiers.”

Later, Aiah walks barefoot down the silent, carpeted hall of the Swan Wing, her shoes dangling by their straps in one hand, the other hand in Constantine’s.

“I can tell you what will happen,” Aiah says. “Once Sorya has got us to announce support for the new government in Charna, she will stage-manage a confrontation—or perhaps she’s confident it will occur without her intervention. A countercoup, a threat of invasion from another metropolis, a wave of terror and assassination… some threat to Charna that will force us to respond. And once we respond, the confrontations will escalate, and those fine soldiers and all their fine guns, as Sorya calls them, will get used again, all for her purposes and not our own.”

Constantine looks down at her. “You know this?”

“I know Sorya’s style.” She answers his look with one of her own. “And so should you.”

His brooding eyes look inward. “Yes. Her pattern is there.”

They approach one of the bronze-and-glass compartment doors, and it slides open on silent ball bearings. They pass the door and it rolls shut: Aiah finds herself glancing behind, making sure they are secure from any snooping trail of plasm.

“The last time she had her way,” she says, “she started a war.” She holds his hand more tightly, looks up at him. “You said, once it began, that you needed her to help us win it.”

“Yes.” He nods. “And her service was invaluable, brilliant.”

“The war is won,” Aiah reminds. “She is a danger as long as she remains with the Force of the Interior. You