City on Fire

“Every plasm house we’ve found,” Aiah says. Gears click over as she presses keys: there is an electric hum, and the heavy barred secure room door swings open.

“I want the complete list,” she says. “We’re going to have to take all the houses down now, whether we’re got our cases against the users properly prepared or not.”

She goes to the files and unlocks a bronze-sheathed drawer. The drawer opens silently on smooth steel bearings.

“How are we going to take them?” Ethemark asks. “We’ve always used soldiers, and now the soldiers are… busy with other things.”

“We’ll hire new ones if we have to,” Aiah says.

Bring me a budget and I’ll sign it. A company or two, she thinks, could do the job.

Maybe she could wheedle a few troops out of Constantine. Lightly armed military police weren’t going to be much use in storming Lorkhin Island anyway.

“Miss?” One of her assistants, rapping lightly on the thick steel-and-bronze door. “I’ve just got a call from Mr. Rohder.”

Aiah’s heart eases as she realizes Rohder’s alive.

“Is he here?” she asks.

“Not quite,” the assistant says. “He’s in jail.”

CRIME LORD SEEN IN LANBOLA MEETS WITH KEREHORN

Rohder and his entire crew had been arrested by police who’d turned up too late to assist in the attempt on Constantine’s life. After waiting in jail for over a day without being charged, or fed, they’d put all their money together in order to bribe a jailer into letting Rohder make a phone call.

“I can’t say, miss,” the answering officer says when she calls.

“You can’t confirm you’re holding these people?” Aiah asks.

“I can’t say.”

Aiah taps a pencil impatiently on her desk as she strives for clarification. “You can’t say because you don’t know, or because you decline to answer?”

“I…” The officer gropes for a response. “I can’t say,” he says finally.

“We know you’re holding them,” Aiah says. “Please don’t try to deny it.”

“All right.” The officer agrees amiably enough. Aiah restrains the impulse to sigh audibly into the mouthpiece.

“Can you tell me,” keeping a grip on her patience, “if any charges have been filed against them?”

“No. We haven’t received any instructions.”

“Whose instructions do you need?”

“Captain Albreth.”

“Is he available? May I speak to him?” “No. He made the arrest, but he’s been out of touch since then.”

“I suggest you let them go,” Aiah says. “They’ve committed no crime that you know of, you’ve held them for over twenty-four hours without a charge being filed, and your Captain Albreth may be dead or in jail himself for all you know.”

“Well,” the officer says. “I don’t know if I have the authority—”

“Let me speak frankly, sir,” Aiah says. “The coup against the government has failed. Gentri and Radeen and the others are either dead or in hiding. Their forces have fallen apart. The Palace is now in a position either to reward its friends or punish its enemies. Now, sir—which of the two are you?”

“I’ll have to talk to some people about this,” the officer says.

Aiah decides that the time limit on her patience has expired. “If you are a friend of the administration, you will let these people go,” she says. “If you are an enemy, I’ll come down with a company of soldiers, and I’ll free my friends. And if I have to shoot every policeman in the place to do it, that’s what I’ll do.” She pauses to let this sink in, then adds, “The choice, of course, is yours.”

“I…” She can feel the officer struggling. “I’ll have them released,” he finally says.

“I’m happy that reason has prevailed,” Aiah says. “Have Mr. Rohder call me when he’s set free.”

She hangs the headset on its hook and observes Ethemark looking at her meditatively, nictitating membranes half-closed over his eyes. When she returns his gaze, his eyes clear and he turns away.

“You’ve changed,” he says.

“Not just me,” she says. “Everything is different now.” A man died in my arms, she thinks. He died to save me. One death, among so many, that she must not allow to be in vain.

NEW CITY PARTY FORMED

CONSTANTINE PROMISES “VICTORY AND LIBERTY”

Finally. Finally. Finally she will see Constantine alone.

He has moved his office to a part of the building facing away from Lorkhin Island, into a place in the luxurious Swan Wing. In the anteroom, bodyguards, soldiers, and messengers loiter on a priceless Kivira carpet and scatter cigaret ash on sofas glittering with gold and silver thread. All the windows have been polarized against both light and observation, but a chandelier, all chiming teardrop crystal, provides light enough.

Aircraft drone overhead. They are bringing in mercenaries from the Timocracy, just as other aircraft are bringing other troops into Lanbola to reinforce the invaders’ strong point at Lorkhin Island.

Plasm sings in Aiah’s head like a chorus of angels. A few hours ago she was exhausted, both from work and from her inability to get proper rest—during the course of a single shift’s sleep, random bursts of adrenaline would bring her awake at least two or three times. Sometimes the chemical alarm occurred in response to something happening—a crash of shellfire or a fire gong—but often as not she was awakened completely at random, as if something in her mind had concluded it was too dangerous to let her sleep for long.

But the plasm circuits in her department have finally been turned on so that she can now surveil target plasm houses, and the first thing Aiah did was to get her t-grip and bathe in the stuff, burning away fatigue toxins, burnishing her mind, filling her nerves and heart with energy.

The world does not seem as bleak as it had a few hours ago.

Aiah sits in the anteroom among the guards and bustle. She has to beg Constantine for military police to take down the plasm houses, and must wait her turn like the other supplicants.

The door opens and a small woman walks in. Heads turn, and there are double takes. Aiah feels surprise at the sight, then confusion as the woman recognizes her, then walks toward her with an outstretched hand.

“Lady,” she says.

“Lady” was Aiah’s code name during the final stage of Constantine’s coup. The other woman’s was “Wizard One,” but her real name is known to almost everyone in the world, for she is famous.

She is Aldemar, the chromoplay actress, in person a petite figure with delicate wrists and ankles and bobbed dark hair. Across the world, a giant on screens three stories tall, she regularly fights evil in any of a series of third- rate melodramas with titles like Revenge of the Hanged Man and Rise of the Thunderlords. Her publicity has always maintained that her chromoplays are based on fact, hype that Aiah had never believed until she’d met Wizard One and found her competently directing Constantine’s secret plasm house.

Aiah takes Aldemar’s hand. “My name is Aiah,” she says.

The other woman smiles. “I know. Constantine has spoken of you. May I join you?”