Two primaries were bent out of shape, but Pyke was right. They wouldn't be hard to repair.
She'd been lucky.
«You were very brave,» the lictor said, pulling two chairs away from desks and swinging them around. «I will not make you stay long. Sit down. Do you wish to have something to drink? I can bring you water.»
«That's all right. I'm fine.» She sank into a chair and rubbed her neck. Her muscles twinged like plucked strings. «What's your name?»
«I am Lieutenant Janos Amcathra.» The soldier dropped into the other chair and pulled out a sheet of paper.
A Demican name. From his accent, he had to be a first- or second-generation citizen. Taya switched to Demican and held out a hand.
«Well met in peacetime, Lieutenant Janos Amcathra.»
«Well met in peacetime, Taya Icarus,» he replied in the same language. He took her hand and clasped it, then switched back to Ondinan as he picked up a pen. «This will not take long. Please describe everything that happened.»
Taya recounted the event. It took her longer to tell it than it had to live it. Amcathra took detailed notes, then nodded when she was finished.
«Then it was a coincidence that you were close to the accident scene,» he summarized. «If you had not stopped to rest there — We all got lucky.»
«Yes.» Amcathra handed her a printed form and a pencil. «The last thing I must have is your signature and eyrie number. We will send you a message if we need to talk to you again.»
Taya blinked, surprised.
«That's it? I thought we came in here because it was going to take a long time.»
«We came in here because you needed to be away from the crowd.»
«Oh. Well, thank you.»
«We do not often beat and brainwash Ondinium's citizens,» he said, dryly.
Taya grinned. «Don't mind Pyke. He's harmless.» She picked up the form and skimmed through it.
Amcathra watched as she signed it, and then he added his own signature.
«Your friend may be correct about one matter. The collapse may not have been an accident.»
«What do you mean?» Taya remembered Pyke telling her about stacked contract bids and substandard building materials in one of his anti-government rants.
«Incidents of political violence have been on the rise.»
«Is Octavus… political?» She knew from her studies that Octavus was a technological conservative. That made him popular among the laboring plebeians but alienated many of the cardinal castes who depended on technology for their living. His enemies labeled him an Organicist, a reactionary who wanted to get rid of all technology.
Amcathra shrugged.
«I am only speculating. An icarus flies high and sees much. If you spot anything suspicious among the wires, I hope you will report it to me.»
Typical. It was just like a lictor to drop enough hints of criminal activity to make a person uneasy, and then try to use that uneasiness to his own ends. Suspicion was a way of life for the military. And icarii were always asked to help out their investigations.
Best just to agree and get out.
«Of course. Is that all?»
Amcathra glanced up at her floating armature. «Do you require any assistance with your equipment?»
«No.» She rose to her feet, suppressing a flinch. Her back and arms hurt.
«Fly safely, icarus,» he said, nodding and leaving.
«Thanks.»
Taya set about strapping herself back in, moving more slowly than usual. The metal exoskeleton and leather straps had left bruises all over her body. A hot bath would be nice. With luck, she'd have enough time to take one before the wedding.
Once the armature was strapped on, its buoyant ondium helped support her aching muscles. Taya's legs had stiffened up after sitting, and now they twinged as she walked.
Back out on the street, lictors were keeping the crowd of rubberneckers out of the way as engineers scrambled over the wireferry towers, running more cables back and forth like a giant safety net to keep the wreckage from hitting the street.
Taya stood on the wide station steps a moment, wondering how long it would take to lower the broken girder safely to the ground. She was glad she didn't have to rely on the wireferry to move from sector to sector. The cars would have to be rerouted around the accident site, and a lot of important people were going to find themselves delayed on their way home.
A few members of the crowd began to cheer. She looked around and realized they were waving at her. She lifted a hand, embarrassed. Scattered applause greeted the gesture.
Uncomfortable at being the focus of attention, Taya limped across the street to the base of the wireferry tower. She considered waiting for Pyke, but she had no idea how long it would take him to give his statement. She smiled. With his attitude toward authority, they might decide to hold him for the night.
The lictors allowed her to climb up to the lowest launch dock on the tower, only fifty feet off the ground. It was high enough. She rolled her shoulders one last time and pulled on her cap, goggles, and gloves. Muscles protesting, she slid her arms into the wings, unlocked them with a backward shrug, and ran to the edge of the dock.
The citizens below clapped as if they'd never seen an icarus take off before. Taya made a face and swept her wings out, searching for a thermal to lift her away from the broken girders and the unwanted attention.
Chapter Two
According to the clock she passed as she soared up the mountainside, she was officially off shift. She could land at the eyrie and ask someone else to carry her message from the College of Mathematics to the Oporphyr Council. No one would blame her, after the day's excitement. And she really had to wash and change before Katerin's wedding.
But flying was working the aches out of her muscles, so she decided to push onward and deliver the message. Until she heard back from the examination board about her scores, she didn't want to do anything that might reduce her chances of being accepted into the diplomatic corps. Not all of the examination was pen-and- paper. The board would be looking at her personnel records, and some icarii whispered it had even been known to set up secret tests for prospective envoys, to see how they behaved when they didn't know they were being watched.
Rescuing a decatur's family has got to help my chances
, she thought with a sudden burst of good humor, swooping past the landing docks and heading up the cliffs. Other icarii tilted their wings as they flew past her, running their own messages across Primus and back and forth from Oporphyr Tower.
The «tower» was really a small but ornate palace built on the very peak of Oporphyr Mountain, overlooking the city of Ondinium. A number of slender stone towers pierced the sky, topped by slate roofs that shed the annual rain and snow and ringed by narrow balconies that provided safe docks for the icarii who were constantly coming and going at the Council's orders. The tower's grounds were covered with arched walkways and fountains to make up for their lack of greenery — few plants grew well this high above the mountain's long-since-vanished timberline.
Oporphyr Tower had once housed the king of Ondinium, centuries ago when the realm had still been a monarchy. At that time, the tower's location had been a matter of security. Foreigners often wondered why the
