City on Fire

uncivil, and distracted, and Aiah doesn’t know how to help, how to resolve the forces that are driving him.

Daily the mercenary teams continue their work, the anonymous powerboats slipping out at odd hours, returning with cargoes of Handmen for the prisons. The Silver Hand grows smarter and begins to fortify their plasm houses with bronze mesh and massive armored doors, but it doesn’t help them—the locations were betrayed before the Handmen ever began taking precautions, and thoroughly scouted in the days since. Arrests continue.

Fear of the firing squads makes the Handmen desperate, and when the storming parties arrive they try to defend themselves with the plasm available to them—but Constantine’s mercenaries, and their supporting mages, are professional enough to evade these hasty attacks.

Interrogation reports continue to arrive on Aiah’s desk, along with the occasional request to release Handmen for use as informers.

The soldiers continue drawing lots to discover who will make up the firing squads. Aiah finds grim satisfaction in hearing that the Handmen’s insurance companies have long since canceled their policies.

Six weeks after his escape, Aiah sees a video report of a failed assassination attempt on Great-Uncle Rathmen. The three shooters, Silver Hand types, are all dead. Two of the names are familiar: Aiah’s group had arrested them, and Sorya had asked them to be released as informers.

Deniability has been maintained—no one could connect the Caraqui government to this action. Pity, however, that Sorya had not chosen better instruments.

Aiah takes some comfort, though, in the fact that Constantine has not made use of Taikoen. Though she finds evidence of the creature’s activities elsewhere.

I committed the crime with Luking, but he died. He got the Party Disease, and I hope he didn’t give it to me.

There it is in one of her prisoners’ transcripts, a strange remark in the course of the narrative. The interrogator apparently found this avenue worth pursuing, but the interrogator’s questions are never provided, and the narrative simply continues.

The Party Disease must be new. It’s where you just go mad trying to have fun. You drink and pop pills and chase women and go to the clubs, you do it nonstop till you’re dead. Luking died of it, and I know three other people who died.

Apparently the interrogator found this too bizarre to be worthy of any further questioning, because the narrative then returns to more conventional paths, a list of crimes and accomplices and where the accomplices might be found.

The Party Disease. Enough Handmen had died of it for them to start talking.

Aiah pushes the matter out of her mind. She doesn’t want to know where Taikoen has left his footprints.

And then, after her department has been in existence for three months, Aiah is asked to make a report to the cabinet.

TRAMCAR SCANDAL WIDENS

EX-KEREMATH MINISTER BROUGHT IN FOR QUESTIONING

She hates talking before an audience.

Aiah marshals her statistics, her facts, her anecdotes. She memorizes the faces and biographies of cabinet members. Charts and handouts are prepared. She barely sleeps the shift before her presentation, and she takes a jolt of plasm beforehand, burns off the fatigue toxins and gives herself a dose of courage, a fervid high that sings through her veins. She hopes it will last the day.

Constantine fetches her from her office, along with Ethemark and two assistants to carry the charts. The polished-copper elevator doors open, and Aiah’s heart leaps as, inside the mirror-and-red-plush birdcage, she sees a twisted man, a cripple—no, not a twisted man; a dolphin—a dolphin sitting in a kind of mobile couch on wheels, pushed by a pair of human assistants. The couch is beautifully constructed, a polished frame of brass, and the cushions are upholstered with a colorful pattern of bright orchids.

“Most precious and gemlike greetings to you, illuminous Prince Aranax,” Constantine says.

Aiah has met Aranax once before, when she and Constantine slipped into Caraqui on a scouting mission. Since then Aranax had been named Minister of Oceanautics, a reward for dolphin cooperation in the coup.

Aranax’s beaklike face is fixed in a permanent grin, and his voice is a strange nasal drone. His skin is pinkish-white and covered with scars and open sores. He wears a streamlined vest with many pockets. There is a strange scent in the air, a mineral-laden salt-sea tang.

“Salutations to the godlike and immortal Constantine,” Aranax says. The first consonant of Constantine’s name is pronounced as an inhaled click.

The elevator doors threaten to close, and one of Aranax’s human assistants jumps to turn the brass knob that locks them open.

“Desolate though I shall be without your presence,” Constantine says, “I would not trouble your wisdom nor interrupt your sagacious meditations. Melancholy though I shall be in my desperate isolation, I shall with hope and fortitude await another elevator.”

Aranax snorts through the nostrils atop his bald head. “Truly would I chide myself for inconveniencing such a glorious one as the ever-brilliant Constantine. I hope you will condescend to share this conveyance with me, you and your perfect assistant, the sublime Miss Aiah.”

Constantine and Aiah step into the elevator, their knees up against Aranax’s couch, and Aranax’s assistant turns the knob to allow the doors to close, then sets to the top floor the eagle-claw control lever. There is no room for Ethemark or the others, and they will have to catch up later.

Aiah, her heart throbbing as she tries to frame a properly formal response to Aranax’s invitation, casts a longing glance over her shoulder as the polished-copper doors close behind her.

“Your illumination gives me great honor,” she manages, “in remembering our brief acquaintance.” All-too-brief, she thinks, the more extravagant the adjective the better, but too late to say it.

“Who would not remember even the briefest acquaintance with the exalted Miss Aiah?” Aranax replies effortlessly. “Warrior mage, and conqueror of the Silver Hand?”

Aiah blinks. “Your illumination does me far too much credit,” she says.

The flowery language is customary among dolphins, as are the old-fashioned titles, echoes out of some ancient romance. A human prince—assuming you could even find such a thing in the post-Metropolitan world— would be a rare thing indeed, but all dolphins seem to be titled: somehow they manage a society with all nobility and no commoners.

With Aranax in it, the elevator has become a glittering miniature palace, complete with ministers, functionaries, and royalty on his divan. Aiah wonders if all dolphins sat in such state once, before the wars that subdued them, and before human civilization expanded over the Sea of Caraqui and the world’s other bodies of water.

The passengers swoop upward along the slight arcs dictated by the Palace’s geomantic relationships. Constantine and Aranax engage in an ornate conversation about monetary supply and the Bank of Caraqui, and between them the elaborate language and abstruse subject matter combine to make the discussion completely unintelligible.

Being a high official, Aiah thinks, means having these sort of conversations all the time.

The elevator doors open into a circular room, and the party makes its way past deferent guards up stairs to the glittering Crystal Dome, where the cabinet meets. The dome is set atop the Palace like an insect eye gazing out at the sky, a sparkling webwork of bronze and crystal that slowly rotates above the world-city, providing the cabinet with spectacular views of the metropolis they govern. The long table, the chairs, and the tables are marvels of gleaming cantilevered tubes and faceted jewel surfaces. How it all survived the fighting is a mystery to Aiah.

Drumbeth sits at the head of the long crystal table, first among the triumvirate’s equals, looking down the table with his slitlike, impassive eyes. Before him, on the surface of the table, is set a small pyramid of crystal a