embarrassment, present or future.”
“That’s brigandage!” Hilthi says, outraged. Faltheg gives the ceiling an abstracted look—Aiah suspects he may be adding up sums in his head.
“Miss Aiah?” he says, and Aiah starts. His eyes wander in Aiah’s general direction. “Our plasm reserves,” he says, “are sufficient for this action?”
“We can support a campaign of a few days,” Aiah admits with reluctance.
“It is not possible from a military point of view,” Constantine says.
Aiah’s heart rejoices. The others look at Constantine.
“All our forces are in the line,” Constantine says. “We hold exterior lines, and therefore we use more troops to hold the same line than our enemies do. We would have to pull out large numbers of soldiers, and our opponents would of course observe this. Prepositioning two corps for an invasion of Lanbola would not go unnoticed. We will have to build our forces to a greater strength before we can even consider this option.”
“Well,” Faltheg says flatly, “that’s that.” He seems relieved.
No disappointment shows on Sorya’s face. She removes her boot from the table and reaches a languid hand to one of the crystal vases. She takes a carnation, sniffs it briefly, unbuttons one of the fire-gilt buttons of her uniform tunic, and puts the flower in the buttonhole.
“In that case,” she says, “we can hope only for a military stalemate, which is what our enemies most desire. We will have to consider what we will offer to Lanbola, and to the other powers who support the Provisionals. Because we will have to outbid our rivals, and that will be difficult—Kere-horn and his friends may promise that which they do not possess, whereas we must give away that which we have worked so hard to win.”
Belckon and Hilthi look down at the table. No one, it seems, has an answer to her argument.
FOURTEEN
While the armies settle into stalemate, terror is unleashed anew in Caraqui. Once again bombs begin detonating in crowded streets, and unknown mages fill entire districts with fear. Huge tenements are burned down, unshielded pumping stations or utility mains are destroyed, bridges are smashed or burnt. Much of the sabotage seems to come from within the city itself, and a new phrase enters the vocabulary, floating through the populace on the winds of war.
And therefore it is all the more important that Aiah go on with her job, taking down every plasm house she can find, along with the Handmen who have unleashed terror against the people.
CONSTANTINE DENOUNCES ATROCITIES IN BRILLIANT SPEECH
SAVAGES LANBOLA REGIME
“THEIR ARMS ARE BLOODY TO THE ELBOW”
LANBOLI GOVERNMENT PROTESTS “UNDIPLOMATIC USAGE”
It is early second shift, and Aiah plays plasm angel for her military cops. The plasm house she watches has been on her list for some time, but hasn’t been surveilled since before the war began. Military police are on their way to bust into the place, but Aiah wants to make certain the Handmen inside aren’t going to be delivering any nasty surprises.
The plasm house is in an aging apartment building, once handsome but now failing the test of time, with stained hallway carpet and flaking walls. Although it seems to be producing a large amount of illegal product, Aiah can’t be sure from where the plasm house is drawing its plasm—perhaps, she thinks, it’s being hijacked from a food factory on a huge pontoon moored alongside. The Handmen have learned a few things about shielding since the PED began its work, and Aiah can’t slip her anima into the room, not even on the thinnest pipette of plasm. But there are no lookouts, no signs of anyone prepared to offer resistance, and the door looks as if it will go down easily enough before the assault of her troops.
“Building’s in sight.” A message from her approaching military cops, whispered into her ear by one of her assistants.
Aiah nods her understanding and concentrates on keeping her anima and sensorium intact.
Sensations from the apartment building wash over her, and her nose wrinkles to the mildewed smell of the stained carpet. She alters her sensorium to lower the intensity of her olfactory sense.
In the apartment building a door bangs open, and back in the Palace Aiah’s body gives a start.
A group of people have entered the scene, maybe a dozen. They are all young men, dressed casually but with purpose—they all wear thick-soled black boots laced up to the calf and a red strip of cloth tied around their brows, and many wear plastic jackets made in imitation of leather or vests that rattle with chains and silver studs. They openly carry an assortment of weapons: pistols, shotguns, a rifle. Two carry a crude battering ram, a length of steel with handles welded to it.
Back in the ops room, Aiah shouts, “Armed men in the corridor!” Her body shudders to a surge of adrenaline as if to a rumble of kettledrums.
In the apartment building the leader, a young sturdy man in plastic leathers and a mustache, cocks his pistol and places himself carefully to one side of the door. He booms on it with fist and forearm both, and the door rattles on its hinges.
The others stand to either side of the door, grinning and readying their weapons.
“Wait! Stop!” Aiah tries to broadcast the words to the group, but in her alarm she fails to focus her mind properly and no one hears her.
“Go,” the leader says, a bright white grin on his face, and stands back.
The sound of all the guns going off together staggers Aiah’s senses. The shooters are enjoying themselves, laughing and yipping as they empty their guns through the door and into the apartment. Shotguns blow chunks out of the wall, revealing tattered bronze mesh behind.
Aiah’s anima dashes among the group, knocking up gun barrels, slapping down the men with invisible plasm hands. But the realization that there is a mage among them galvanizes the shooters, and Aiah realizes that the only way to stop them will be to kill them all. The door crashes down before the ram, and the shooters swarm into the apartment.
Three Handmen are huddled inside, and two are splashed with blood. Laughing in triumph, the gunmen drag the Handmen out into the corridor, kicking them along with their shiny black boots. Gunpowder stench hangs heavy in the corridor.
The leader looks through a sheaf of papers. “Which one’s Ragdath?” he asks.
“The police are hurrying,” Aiah is told, an ops-room voice whispering in her ear.
Aiah tries to calm her beating heart. She concentrates, builds her anima into the sleek, featureless golden form she’s used before. Power pulses through her, and her anima shimmers into existence in the corridor. The others fall back before the apparition, and she sees sudden fear in their eyes. Guns are hesitantly raised.
Aiah concentrates, lets her anima speak the words.
“I am Aiah, Director of the Plasm Enforcement Division,” she says. “I have had this place under surveillance. What are you doing here?”
The leader hands the papers to one of his fellows, shuffles forward, and digs into his jacket pocket for a thin plastic card. “Dalavan Militia,” he says. “My name is Raymo. We’re here to find Ragdath.”
“Here he is!” one of his friends says, and prods a wounded man with the barrel of his shotgun. The man moans in pain.
“I have police on the way here,” Aiah says. “We’ll need those prisoners.”
