Adrenaline Monster into letting her drift toward sleep, but now she’s awake again, counting the explosions as shellfire rains down somewhere close.
Another series of shells begins to land, and she realizes she will get no more sleep this shift.
She rises from the bed, runs her fingers through her hair. It is another day, and it begins early.
KEREHORN SPEAKS TO PROVISIONAL CONGRESS
RECALLS “ERA OF STABILITY”
“THIEVES AND GANGSTERS,” RETORTS TRIUMVIR HILTHI
The report on the dead cousin lies before Aiah and Ethemark in the meeting room. The mercenary captain who led the raid is there, and so is Kelban, who’d served on the commission when they had last had a catastrophe of this kind.
“I was there myself,” Aiah says, “with an anima configured to be sensitive to plasm. I saw nothing. No obvious attack.”
“It was Exploding Head Disease,” Kelban mutters. “It’s like the Party Sickness. It’s going around.”
He has been most thorough in his investigation. The mages involved in this case were different from those of the prior case, so there was no single secret assassin working within the PED. Each of the mages involved was interviewed, and background checks performed to make certain none was involved with the dead gangster or could have any reason to want him dead.
“Do we give everyone involved plasm scans?” Kelban says. “I’d hate to—there are potential dangers involved—but if we want to clear our own people of any suspicion, it’s the only way to do it.”
Ethemark and Aiah look at each other. She reads assent in him, considers the matter, finally shakes her head.
“No,” she says. “I have to trust our people. It was a mage from the Hand who outwitted us, some enemy of the suspect perhaps, or possibly some elaborate form of suicide.”
“Remember the time-bomb theory I mentioned before?” Ethemark says. “That somehow they managed to place in themselves a plasm device designed to kill if they are ever apprehended? Perhaps we should take it more seriously.”
“Perhaps we should.” Aiah is content enough that they should chase up this wrong alley.
“One of the witnesses had another idea,” the mercenary lieutenant offers. “I didn’t put it in the report because, well, it was just too wild.”
A warning tone sounds along Aiah’s spine. But Kelban turns to the lieutenant and says, “Which witness?”
“One of the whores. The older one. She said that she’d met the suspect before, when he was using another body, and that she’d probably meet him again.”
Kelban gives an incredulous laugh. “He jumps around from body to body? Had she just seen
The lieutenant gives an embarrassed smile. “Maybe. But she said that she’d met him twice before, in different, uh, incarnations. All gangsters. He called her agency, I guess. Once he took her to Gunalaht for a weekend. She said that his personality was, ah, repellent in a very distinctive way, so that she recognized him from one incarnation to the next, but that he paid very well and always provided plenty of liquor and food. And she also said she’d heard that at least one of his former incarnations had died, of that Party Sickness we keep hearing about.”
“The girl probably has so many repellent customers they all just seem alike,” Aiah says.
Kelban grins. “She thinks he’s a ghost?”
The lieutenant shrugs. “Something unnatural, anyway. Something that can jump from one body to another and kill it when he’s done. An ice man, maybe. Or even a Slaver Mage.”
There is a moment’s silence. Slaver Mages are a serious matter.
And the idea of an ice man, or hanged man, is not one Aiah wants anyone ever to mention again.
Aiah closes the file before her. “I don’t believe in ice men,” she says. “I’m not sure if I believe in modern Slaver Mages, either, but if there’s a Slaver working among the gangsters, it’s
There is silence.
The report is accepted, and goes into the files. Aiah thanks Kelban on behalf of the department, then adjourns the meeting.
She goes to her office and sags into her chair.
Perhaps, she thinks, she should find some way of telling Taikoen that he should vary his women a little more.
PARQ ENDORSES PLATFORM OF SPIRITUAL RENEWAL PARTY
The Barkazil troops, flown with their equipment from Sayven into neutral Barchab, come across the border into Caraqui in their own armored vehicles, the column protected by a swarm of telepresent military mages alert for any sign of trouble. The bivouac is already prepared, a parking garage appropriated by the government, concrete walls and floors now covered with bronze mesh to keep out enemy mages. No incidents occur—perhaps security measures have worked for a change.
Aiah is sent as official government greeter, and she takes Khorsa and Alfeg, the only two Barkazils she knows of within three thousand radii. She wears her medal pinned to her lapel, in hopes it might establish another degree of com-monship. The War Ministry provides a full set of commissary specialists with a buffet meal for an entire brigade, and also a camera and soundman to record the event for posterity. Aiah also brings an amplifier, some speakers, and a platform to speak from, so when the first armored car rolls into the empty concrete parking bay, it is to the familiar sound of Arno’s “Barkazi Monday.”
Aiah has never been much of an Arno fan, but he’s the entertainer all Barkazils recognize—even in the oddly distorted version caused by the government music player’s ill-tuned tweaking of the celluloid etching belt—and so Aiah stands between the speakers, waving and smiling as the vehicles roar past and the soldiers, most of them sitting casually on the hatches, recognize the music and break into smiles and laughter.
The soldiers are mostly young, with a few older hands among them, and most of them show at least some Barkazil ancestry: the smooth brown skin, the brown eyes, the thick curls, or some diluted variation of these. But the three generations since the Barkazi Wars have left their mark, and there are many signs of the pale, light-eyed Sayvenese mixed with the Barkazil, mostly visible in cast of feature: longer heads, sturdier bodies, lantern jaws.
The armored cars and personnel carriers are not burning hydrogen, but a less dangerous, less explosive, hermetically created hydrocarbon fuel, and the stuff doesn’t burn cleanly: the garage fills with fumes and Aiah, half-deafened by the speakers on either side, tries not to shrink from the stench.
Khorsa is wearing her full witch regalia—red dress, starched petticoats, and gem-encrusted geomantic foci gleaming on her turban—and the soldiers recognize the costume, flashing magic finger-signs at her as they roar past. Many of them have good-luck foci worn as charms on caps or helmets, and weapons strapped with cult fetishes are waved benignly in Khorsa’s direction. The vehicles each bear a discreet yellow Holy League badge somewhere on the armor. Alfeg’s dress is more conservative—he’s still wearing his Jaspeeri wardrobe, with its heavy lace—and he smiles and waves with the assurance of a young politician shaking hands at a factory gate.
“I have done as you asked,” he says in an aside, voice barely audible over the booming music. “I’m trying to
