City on Fire

threatens us at present, I wish to direct some of Sorya’s specialists against them.”

A protest bursts from Aiah’s lips. “There was torture in the Specials’ prisons,” she says. “Those people were—”

A fierce light burns in Constantine’s eyes. “The torturers are gone,” he says firmly. “Or in prison themselves. Torture is a pointless and stupid exercise—there are more sanitary methods, and far more effective.”

“Plasm scans.” Grimly.

“Everyone in your department has already had one. You have had one yourself, when I first met you. Are they so inhumane?”

Aiah struggles to form another protest. She couldn’t remember her own scan—Constantine had gone into her head on a ruthless probe of plasm in order to discover if she was a police informer, but if he had found anything else he had kept it to himself.

“I want it understood,” Aiah says, “that civilized methods will be observed.”

“Of course. There is no conceivable reason to behave otherwise.” Warmth kindles in his eyes as he looks at her. “This concern does you credit.”

She looks away. “I still don’t like it.”

“I will arrange the protocols with Sorya’s office, so they will have access to the prisoners and you will have copies of all the interrogations.”

“Yes. Of course.”

Some of Aiah’s people raise a cheer: someone has made a particularly stylish arrest. Constantine looks up at the monitors. “Arrests in future may not be so peaceful, not once surprise is lost,” he says, and turns to Aiah again.

The monitors’ reflection kindles a cold flickering in his eyes. “The government passed a new decree last shift, making it a capital crime to belong to a criminal organization.”

Aiah’s heart gives a lurch. She looks at Constantine in surprise. “Which means what? Some of these people will be executed?”

Constantine makes a dismissive, growling sound. “All of them, if I have anything to say about it. Great-Uncle Rathmen particularly—he was one of the first in my office with his bribes, only a few days after the coup. Smiled, brought me a new jacket of expensive goatskin lined with silk and, for all I know, a fortune in jewels in the pockets… offered me the locations of a couple of his plasm houses under the amnesty program, said it was an oversight. I turned down the jacket, but sent ministry crews to wire the plasm into the circuit—didn’t keep it for myself, as he probably expected.” He straightens, lips curling in distaste. “A plausible, bloody-handed bastard. It never occurred to him that I wouldn’t accept his payoffs. He had probably never met a civil servant who wasn’t on the take.”

Aiah turns to the monitors, sees the jumpy camera feed, half-dressed sleepy-eyed handcuffed men, pompadours hanging in their eyes, being marched onto trucks or into boats.

All condemned, she thinks. She shivers at the thought that she is watching men who soon will die.

“I wish there was another way,” she says.

“Mercy is a privilege of the powerful,” Constantine says. “Our power is uncertain, and theirs is great, and we cannot afford to show them any lenience. If our situation were improved, if we were secure in our power, perhaps then a degree of forbearance would be possible.” He shakes his head. “Besides, the only way to defeat the Handmen is to enlist the population, and these executions are the only way to show the people that the Hand is vulnerable now.” A cold laugh rumbles from his throat. “And for what it’s worth, each of the Handmen will have his fair trial—all your evidence will be considered by the military courts in the next week, and then sentences carried out.”

“They are all guilty,” Aiah says. “We know that.” And therefore will all die, because of her. After Sorya’s specialists rummage through their brains for useful information.

He raises a hand to touch her shoulder. She wants comfort, wants to rest her cheek against his rough knuckles, but is too conscious of the presence of the people surrounding them.

“Save sympathy for their victims,” he says, voice low in her ear.

“I will.” She looks at the video images again, looks for familiar images—the Slug, the Ferret. The images are all those of strangers. Strangers soon to die.

A cold wind seems to blow through her bones. She turns to Constantine again.

“These Handmen,” she says, “they’re like your family, aren’t they? You were raised with people like this. And…” Her tongue stumbles on the words. “You destroyed them.”

Constantine’s face is a mask. The reversed video images of condemned men float through his eyes.

“My family deserved what happened to them,” he says, “and so, Miss Aiah, do these.”

With that, he turns and prowls away.

Somewhere, audio feed from one of her teams, there comes the sound of cheering.

CRIME LORD PROTESTS INNOCENCE

“GOVERNMENT ILL-ADVISED,” SAYS ATTORNEY.

CRACKDOWN ON GANGSTERS CONTINUES UNDER MARTIAL LAW

“Well,” Ethemark says, “the suspect just exploded. He was under arrest; our soldiers had him handcuffed and were marching him out of the room—and then…” His mouth twists with distaste. “We had a camera on him at the time. You can watch the video, if you like, but unless you want to see your lunch again I wouldn’t recommend it.”

It is an inquiry on the PED’s only complete disaster: suspect dead while under arrest, the dead man’s wife and children witnesses to everything, everyone involved under suspension pending the outcome of the investigation.

Aiah looks down the table at the three members of the commission she’d appointed when the incident occurred. “The plasm angels saw nothing?”

“Three mages were telepresent in the room,” says Kelban, one of her team supervisors. “They maintain they had configured their sensoriums so as to be aware of plasm, and they saw nothing… not till after it was over.”

“They saw something then,” Ethemark says. “They were all aware of a powerful… presence. It hovered over the body for a moment, then disappeared. No one saw a source-line. And they all say…” He hesitates. “They were all terrified. Not just the mages, but the soldiers, too. The soldiers couldn’t even see it, whatever it was, but they could somehow feel it, and it spooked them.”

“If you ask me,” Kelban says, “a man exploding right in front of them is enough to scare any number of soldiers.”

Aiah’s mouth goes dry. Taikoen, she thinks, or another creature like him. Constantine had put him in the Handman’s body, and when the soldiers came, Taikoen had seen no point in staying.

“Do we have any conclusions?” she ventures.

“I think it’s down to the inexperience of our personnel,” says Kelban. “They got careless, or overexcited, and weren’t paying proper attention. The suspect was killed by some enemy, or by other Handmen who were afraid he would turn informer.”

“I have another theory,” Ethemark ventures, “though I admit it’s very tenuous.”

Aiah looks at him warily. She must protect Constantine, she thinks, and discourage even the notion of a hanged man.

“Go on,” she says.

“It may be some kind of time bomb,” Ethemark says, to Aiah’s relief. “A plasm bomb planted inside him, with the instruction to kill him if he were ever arrested.”

“That kind of time bomb would be very difficult,” Kelban says. “And time bombs have a temporal limit—you can’t confine plasm in a human body for more than a few hours. And who would have done such a thing… to him? And why? He was only a cousin.”