City on Fire m-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  What kind of magecraft is necessary for that? Absurd.

  Aiah tries, sketching idly on paper, to make plans. It’s usually easy enough to find out who the big thieves are, but discovering where they keep the goods is another matter.

  You have always exceeded my expectations.

  After a few hours, she wants to spit the words back in Constantine’s face.

  She throws down her pen, stands, paces the carpet while the plastic rattles in the wind.

  Welcome to Free Caraq—she thinks. Why is it up to her to fill in the missing letters?

  And then Sorya is standing in the door, and Aiah’s heart leaps.

  “Hello, missy.” Sorya walks into the room and holds out Aiah’s bag. “This was brought from your hotel.”

  “Thank you.” Aiah takes the offering. The cinders in the back of her throat make her cough.

  Deliberately, Sorya’s green eyes rove the room. There is a languid smile on her lips. She is balanced like a dancer, hips cocked forward, blond-streaked hair framing her face. She usually clothes her panther body in brilliant colors, apricot or green silk, the coiled muscle and curve of breast and hip garbed brightly as a flower… but at the moment she wears a green uniform with no insignia, a faded military greatcoat with brass buttons thrown over her shoulders, a peaked cap set with deliberate nonchalance on the side of her head. Not a flower, but something else.

  A mage, a potent one. A warrior, a general. Powerful and intent on growing more so.

  “We paid you well for your services in Jaspeer,” she says. “I was under the impression we had said good-bye.”

  “The cops were after me.”

  “That was careless of you.” She arches an eyebrow.

  Sorya turns, walks to the door, pauses deliberately, and looks at Aiah over her shoulder. “Let me take you to your suite in the Crane Wing.”

  Aiah clears her throat, finds her voice. “Don’t you have a more important job to do?”

  Sorya gives a lilting laugh. “I am providing orientation to a valued colleague. Please come.”

  Aiah follows. Sorya leads Aiah down a corridor with a shallow outward curve, a design feature presumably intended to enhance plasm creation.

  “I’ve been appointed head of the Intelligence Section,” Sorya says.

  “Drumbeth’s old job?”

  “Colonel Drumbeth was military intelligence. I’m civilian, under the Ministry of State.”

  Aiah feels a tightness in her chest. “Head of the Specials, then.” The old political police, infamous for their torture and brutality.

  “We are going to be renamed the Force of the Interior, I believe.” Sorya throws the words carelessly over her shoulder.

  “The commanders of the Specials will be debriefed—they are valuable only for their information, and once that is extracted, I expect they will be tried and shot.” She flashes a cold smile over her shoulder. “Their crimes were real enough, and the population expects no less.”

  Sorya comes to an elevator, presses a button. The elevator door is polished copper, and Aiah can see her distorted reflection looming over Sorya’s shoulder—tall skinny body, brown skin, corkscrew hair pulled back in a practical knot. A gangling, hovering, uncertain form, quite the opposite of Sorya, with her perfect body, her exotic dress, her dancer’s poise and ruthless assurance.

  “Your principal duty will consist of intelligence gathering,” Sorya says. “I trust you will share any intelligence with my department.”

  Aiah gropes for an answer. “I will if my minister consents,” she says.

  Her minister is Constantine, or so she presumes. Let him take the heat, one way or another.

  The elevator doors scroll open, revealing an interior of mirrors and velvet plush. Aiah and Sorya step inside. The elevator control handle is brass and wrought in the shape of an eagle’s claw closed about a glittering crystal egg. Sorya sets the handle to the desired floor and the elevator begins to move. Then she leans one shoulder against the mirrored wall as she regards Aiah from beneath the brim of her cap.

  “You have put yourself in a dangerous position,” she says.

  A cold river floods Aiah’s spine. The elevator, moving unevenly along its shaft, causes little flutters in Aiah’s inner ear.

  “Are you a danger to me, madame?” she asks.

  Sorya’s mouth lights with a cold, cynical little smile. “Why should I concern myself with your destruction? I have repeatedly told you that I have never borne you any animosity—whether you care to believe this is scarcely my concern. Besides”—she gives a lazy shrug—“I reserve my power for dealings with the great and for enhancing my own scope of action—it would be a contemptibly small exercise to destroy you, and I have no inclination to think myself either small or contemptible. Give me credit for pride at least, Miss Aiah.”

  There is a delicate chiming chord that hangs in the air for a moment. The elevator comes to a stop and the doors open. Sorya reaches out a hand, twists the brass knob that locks the doors open, and turns to Aiah again. Her brows are lightly furrowed, as if she were contemplating a minor problem.

  “I mean only that Constantine’s friends, speaking generally, do not live long. Those who do not have their own share of greatness do not survive for long in the company of the great.”

  Aiah steels herself, holds Sorya’s gaze. The elevator seems very small. “You have told me this before,” she says.

  “And you had the sense to follow my advice,” Sorya says. “You took our money and went your way. But now…” She shrugs again. “You are in the line of fire. Do not claim you were not warned.”

  “Line of fire?” Aiah says. “The fighting is over.”

  Sorya slits her eyes. “The fighting is never over,” she says. “All truces are temporary. All wars are the same war, with occasional pauses for readjustment. War and politics are different facets of the same phenomenon, which is the conflict of human will, the will for power, for greatness, for enlarged scope… The rest, the medium through which one will challenges another—war or peace, law or politics-—that is mere mechanics.” Her green eyes glitter. “Learn that if you wish to survive.”

  Aiah takes a breath, clears her throat against the smell of cinders. “Do you think there will be a war?”

  “There will be conflict. I cannot say what form it will take.” She cocks her head, her look going abstract with thought. “Consider: Constantine knows what he wants, but this new government does not—not surprising, with all the factions it represents—the triumvirate is divided and does not speak with one voice, or act with one will. There is a Keremath party still, though there are precious few Keremaths left to lead it. The Caraqui army is being supplemented by mercenaries long loyal to Constantine. That is opportunity… for someone.”

  “You think Constantine will take power himself?”

  “Only if he must. Only if the triumvirate fails. Constantine is a foreigner and cannot hope to seize a metropolis that is not his own, not unless…” Sorya shows white teeth in a smile. “Unless the metropolis asks, from lack of any other palatable alternative.” Her eyes flicker to Aiah. “So build your department, find your plasm. It will increase Constantine’s power… and opportunity.”

  Thoughts scurry from place to place in Aiah’s mind, alarmed but with no place to run. Sorya seems amused. With an unconcerned roll of her shoulders, she pushes herself from her leaning posture against the elevator wall and steps into the hall outside. Aiah follows. The wood paneling here is beautifully, intricately carved with patterns of fruit and flowers. They pass through two sets of the bronze-strapped airlock doors, which open automatically at their approach and close behind them.

  “We’re in Crane Wing now,” Sorya says. “Some of the junior Keremaths lived here, with their dependents and loyalists. All chucked out now, or sent to the Shield.” Her hand dips into one of the greatcoat pockets, comes out with a key on a silver chain. She puts it in a door, pushes the door open.

  “Your suite,” she says. “
Have a pleasant sleep shift.”

  “Thank you,” Aiah says. Sorya drops the key in her hand, tips her cap mockingly, as if in imitation of a uniformed doorman, and strides away.

  Aiah stands for a moment looking into the dark room, then reaches in to find a light switch. Her fingers touch cool metal. She turns the knob and the lights come on.

  The room glows, all polished woods and gleaming metal and soft, sumptuous fabric. Aiah steps in and her feet sink into deep carpet. The room is three times the size of the apartment in Jaspeer she shared with Gil. Wonderment tingles in her nerves. This place is hers? Hers alone?

  She puts her bag down and closes the door behind her: it moves in silence on brass hinges, with a push of the finger. Aiah explores the suite in wonder—the gleaming kitchen, the luxurious lounge, the bar with its shining crystal decanters. There is food in the refrigerator, stores in the cabinets, fruit trees blossoming on the terrace. Her fingertips brush over the smooth, polished surface of wood tables, and she wonders if she will ever get used to so much wood around her.

  There had been a revolution, a complete readjustment of power; but it had not touched this room.

  There are plasm connections everywhere, as available as electric power outlets. Aiah checks the communications array, the headset with its priceless ivory earpieces and gleaming silver keys, and finds it doesn’t work.

  Not everything, she reflects, can be perfect. She opens the door into the bedroom—

  —and smothers a scream with her fist.

  She slams the door and staggers away on a wave of nausea. The room swims around her, and she sinks into a chair. Soft leather receives her.

  The suite’s previous occupant had died in bed, and he had not died well.

  Clearly magecraft had killed him. The sheets and mattress were crusted in dried blood, and there were sprays of red on the walls, floor, even the ceiling. The body had been removed, but the mess had not.

  Sorya, Aiah thinks. Sorya chose this room for her.

  All truces are temporary. The words echo in her mind.

  Aiah jumps up from the chair, walks to the door, puts her hand on its bronze handle. And then wonders where she’s going to go.

  Beneath a lovely carving of grapes, outside in the hall, Aiah finally catches a few hours’ rest, sleeping on the carpet with her jacket for a pillow.

  TWO

  “Hello, little bird.”

  Aiah looks up and sees Charduq the Hermit gazing down at her. He has been there all her life, on his pillar at the Barkazi Savings Institute, with rain and Shieldlight falling alike on his head, and the wind blowing his long beard up in his eyes.

  “Hello, old crow,” says Aiah.

  Charduq smooths his beard with a gnarled hand. “A little bird should have more respect for the older birds of this world,” Charduq says.

  Aiah is only eleven years old, but she knows better than to let some mangy holy man get the better of her. “If the old crow wants more respect,” she says, “he should fly down off his perch and get some for himself.”

  The hermit giggles. “The little bird’s claws are sharp,” he observes. “And she has got herself some new feathers. What is that uniform?”

  “For my new school.” Aiah’s new skirt, vest, and blouse are all too large, to allow room for growth, and the long sleeves of the blouse are rolled up to her elbows. She is not proud of her appearance, swathed in acres of cloth, and wishes Charduq had not mentioned it.

  “What new school? I haven’t seen that uniform.”

  “Miss Turmak got me a scholarship. I have to take the trackline to Redstone District.” She holds up her plastic trackline pass.

  “The little bird flies far.” Charduq raises his eyebrows. “Miss Turmak is a longnose, ne?” he says. “It’s a longnose education they’ll give you in Redstone.”

  Aiah shrugs. “It’s a longnose education they have in the state school, too. It’s just not as good an education.”

  “But if you don’t go to school in Old Shorings, you’ll be away from the Children of Karlo.”

  Aiah has heard this argument before, mostly from her own family. “You’ll forget who you are,” they tell her. “You’ll grow up a longnose and lose all your cunning.”

  She looks around the bustle of Old Shorings—the crazy old buildings propped up by metal scaffolds, the street stalls and liquor stores, the jobless young men lounging on street corners and the Operation bagman making his collections—and wonders what is so great about this place that she should have to stay here for the rest of her life.

  “I’ll still live here,” she tells Charduq. “How can I forget who I live with?”

  Charduq smiles down at her benignly. “The little bird will not forget her nest.” He cocks his head. “You’re an Old Oel-phil family, aren’t you?”

  Charduq, Aiah figures, is the sort who would care about this kind of silly superstition. The Old Oelphil families are supposed to be the guardians of the Barkazil people, reincarnating from generation to generation rather than continuing on to paradise.

  They seem not to have done the Barkazil much good the last few generations, though, Aiah muses. Where were the Oelphil, she wonders, at the Battle of the Plastic Factory?

  “I’m supposed to be Oelphil on my mother’s side,” Aiah says. “I don’t know about my dad.”

  “I remember your father,” Charduq says. “He looked Oelphil to me.”

  Charduq has been on his pillar so long that he knows practically everybody in Old Shorings. And he’s a relentless gossip as well, always happy to retail the latest scandals.

  “When you’re in Redstone,” Charduq says, “you remember that you’re one of our people’s guardians. You learn that longnose education now, but remember that it’s for our benefit, so we can grow in our cunning.”

  “I’ll remember,” Aiah promises, becoming restless. “I need to catch the trackline now.”

  She opens her satchel and drops her lunch into Charduq’s plastic collection bucket—she knows that once she is in her new school she will be too excited to eat—and Charduq hauls the bucket to his perch with his rope. “You’re generous, little bird,” he says. “A blessing on you, and a curse on your enemies.”

  “Thank you.” Politely.

  Her thoughts are already on the trackline, away from Old Shorings, toward her new life.

  Item #1: Get commo array fixed.

  Item #2: Arrange for cleaning re living quarters. New mattresses, new linen.

  Item #3: New office furniture.

  Item #4: Resign from Plasm Authority.

  Item #5: Gil?

  Item #6: Family?

  Items 1 through 3 are the easy tasks, though they take almost until midbreak. Item 4 proves more difficult than she expected—she had been raised on the dole, in apartments provided by the Jaspeeri government in a shambles of a district called Old Shorings. Aiah’s grandparents were refugees from the war that had destroyed the Metropolis of Barkazi, and Aiah had been raised among a people that had lost almost everything: family, tradition, culture, security, hope.

  The Plasm Control Authority had been a route out of Old Shorings and all that it represented. Despite its sloth and ineptitude and pointlessness, the civil service provided security, which was of prime importance to a Barkazil girl who had no stability in her young life.

  Resigning from the Authority was saying farewell to all the security she had ever known. And in exchange for a job in what is perhaps the least secure civil service in the world—the last inhabitant of this office had probably been pitched out of his job at the point of a bayonet.

  But of course it is foolish to think she can ever go back to the Scope of Jaspeer. Not with the police after her for what the statutes quaintly called “crimes against the public interest,” in this case stealing millions of dalders’ worth of plasm and giving it to a political adventurer who promptly used it to overthrow a friendly government.

  She sends the wiregram and feels a moment of loss as a part of her form
er life falls away.

  Item #5. Item #6. Her lover, her family.

  Two more parts of her former life. By now she doesn’t want to contemplate losing either.

  Aiah looks at her watch. 11:41. Almost midbreak, and she suddenly realizes she’s very hungry.

  She hasn’t eaten since yesterday’s sandwiches.

  She stands, stretches, wonders where in this giant place she can get something to eat. Aiah walks through her empty receptionist’s office into the hallway, and her nerves give a little jump as she sees Constantine bearing down on her at his usual earth-devouring pace—elemental energy, balanced and directed and walking on two long legs.

  His black velvet suit, trimmed with lace, makes him look like a pirate at a bankers’ convention. He carries a black leather briefcase with a combination lock.

  A smile breaks across his face. “Miss Aiah,” he says. “Are you comfortable in your new quarters?”

  Aiah’s answering smile freezes to her face. “As soon as they scrape the former occupant off the walls, yes.”

  Constantine looks surprised.

  “My apologies. No doubt a mistake was made in all the confusion.”

  “No doubt.” Aiah’s tone is meant to indicate that there is a story here if Constantine wants to hear it.

  There is an awkward pause. Apparently it is not the time for stories.

  “Are you engaged?” he asks finally.

  Aiah suppresses a bitter laugh. “Not until I have a budget and personnel, no.”

  Tigerish pleasure glows in his eyes. “I am now in a position to give you both. I have just come from a meeting of the cabinet, and your department is approved. You will be pleased to know you are the Director of the Plasm Enforcement Division. Gentri, the Minister of Public Security, objected loudly to your endowment, because you’re in competition with the plasm squads of the police, and therefore in a position to make him look bad—but the rest understand the necessity.” He bows, absurdly formal, and holds out the briefcase. “Your commission, madame. And some documents for your files. The lock combination is on a plastic flimsy inside. Read, memorize, destroy.”