City on Fire (Metropolitan 2) (54 page)

Licinias gives a cold nod. “I hope that is the case.” There is a moment of silence, and then he looks at her with a kind of calculating glance that Aiah finds reminiscent of Constantine. “I have been giving thought to the subject of our last conversation,” he begins.

“I’m flattered that you remember,” Aiah says.

“It is difficult to forget. You remain singularly prominent on video, Miss Aiah.”

She smiles. “I don’t watch much video, I’m afraid.”

“Still, your prominence remains a fact. And then, in combination with this fact, I consider another fact— that the government is clearly preparing an offensive with both its mercenaries and its rebuilt army. And I further consider that when the military situation threatens stalemate, a natural reaction is to attempt subversion of the other side’s forces. And then lastly, when I consider the peculiar mix of troops on both sides, a reason for your sudden prominence begins to suggest itself....”

A cold fist closes on Aiah’s insides. She tries to keep her smile stuck to her face. “I wonder, Mr. Licinias,” she asks, “if you have shared this insight with anyone?”

Mild brown eyes gaze levelly from his lined copper face. “It is not my job to share insights with people at random. I am a listener, rather, and a conveyor of other people’s messages.”

She considers this— her smile is aching— and says, “That is not quite an answer, Mr. Licinias.”

“True.” He pauses for a thoughtful moment, then speaks. “Let us consider, therefore, what the future implies. If the war drags on, certain things, hitherto obscure, shall become more apparent. The Provisionals have sponsors whose naked interest becomes more and more obvious the longer the war continues. The more obvious their interest, the more their prestige becomes involved, and the more difficult it is to negotiate a retreat from their support of the Provisionals. Any attempt to resolve peace becomes multisided, counting all the Provisionals’ sponsors, and I assure you that it’s hard enough to stop a war when only two sides are involved. The more complex the matter, the more work for me, and in all probability the less desirable the outcome....” He gives another courtly bow. “And so I wish your video appearances all the success they so clearly deserve.”

She returns his bow. “Thank you, sir.”

He drifts away, an enigmatic smile on his lips, and Aiah stands for a moment watching him. A thrill sings along her nerves at the thought of playing this game at such a high level; though another, more anxious, level of her mind is carefully replaying the conversation to make certain it meant what she thinks it did.

She looks over her shoulder for Constantine, possibly to enlist his aid as interpreter, but finds he is talking to Sorya. Though she hadn’t appeared at any of the negotiations, she is nevertheless present, like some carrion bird, at their demise. She is dressed in her green uniform, polished boots light as slippers on her feet. She tosses her head with a swirl of blonde-streaked hair, and Aiah hears her tinkling laugh. Aiah scowls.

“Excuse me, miss.” She starts and discovers two men maneuvering a video camera into position. She makes way for it.

The negotiations weren’t shown on video, but their termination will be. If Licinias’s theory holds, there should be a great many long and uninteresting speeches.

Licinias is right. Aiah drowses through the lengthy platitudes, her mind elsewhere, in the faraway ruined landscape where Landro’s Escaliers, her distant kinsmen, hold ajar the gate to Constantine’s victory.

PROVISIONALS DENOUNCE DIRECTOR OF PED

“AIAH IS CONSTANTINE’S ASSASSIN,” SAYS KEREHORN

“MURDER CLIQUE” CONDEMNED

After the speeches are over, Aiah walks to the offices of the PED— they are on her way, and she might as well check on the next shift’s operations. When she goes to fetch a file she finds Constantine in the secure room, a stack of files on the desk in front of him. His skin is drawn taut over his face, and there is a haunted look in his eyes, as if he is gazing into an agony from which there is no escape.

Aiah’s mouth goes dry as she sees him, but his attention snaps to her as soon as she steps within his sight, and there is no way to withdraw... so she presses the day’s code into the pad, opens the barred gate, enters, closes it behind her.

Constantine does not speak, but watches her as she walks to the file drawer she wants, unlocks it, slides open the bronze-fronted door on its silent bearings, and finds the folder she needs. She takes the file, closes the drawer, and makes her way out. Her nape hair crawls beneath his steady gaze.

There was hatred in the twist of his lip, she saw. Hatred and contempt.

Though whether for her, or himself, or the world itself she cannot tell.

FEARS OF RENEWED FIGHTING

BOTH SIDES STOCKPILE MUNITIONS

Constantine embraces her, a fierce hug that drives the breath from her lungs. Then Aldemar, the copper transference grip already in her hand, gives her a gentler embrace. The briefest sensation of plasm tingles on Aiah’s skin. Aldemar seats herself, closes her eyes, focuses.

Constantine’s eyes burn into hers. “Come back,” he says, voice low, an earthquake rumble in Aiah’s bones. Aldemar tilts her head back, stiffens, throws out an arm. A surge of plasm startles Aiah, and she takes in a breath....

And expels it in another place. Warm, humid darkness surrounds her, strangely strung with holiday lights. The air smells of decay, brackish water, fecal matter. A generator’s hum is oppressively loud in the enclosed space.

A little gray man approaches, strung lights glowing in his huge eyes. He takes a cigar out of his mouth and speaks in a rasping voice. “I’m Sergeant Lamarath,” he says. “Remember me? Welcome back to Aground.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Many of the twisted in Aground, Aiah observes, are carrying guns— part of the payment, she suspects, for the risk Lamarath is taking here. The ominous half-human figures, shadows coiled around oiled weapons, are visible here and there as she takes a brief tour around the floating half-world.

Constantine has sent loyal Cheloki soldiers, Statius and Cornelius, to secure the place ahead of time, though they admit there isn’t much to be done. “If we’re attacked by the Escaliers or anyone else,” Statius says, “this place won’t hold out two minutes. Mages could set it alight or just smash it to pieces. And if anyone gets a heavy weapon down here and starts pumping shells into this junkyard, it’ll come apart.”

Aldemar is standing by, Aiah knows, to teleport her away in case things go wrong, but the problem is how to let Aldemar know when it’s necessary. The protocols of the negotiation state that neither side is to send mages into the area, and that any signs of telepresence are to be taken as hostile. Statius and Cornelius have been provided with a radio, but it hasn’t been tested— they daren’t broadcast for fear the Provisionals would pick up the signal.

There is, as it happens, a telephone. The Agrounders have hijacked some phone lines, and Aiah, because a call to unoccupied Caraqui would almost certainly not go through, has been given a number in Gunalaht she can call if an emergency threatens.

Aiah appreciates all the effort on her behalf, but suspects that in a genuine emergency none of them would be worth a half-dinar.

Aiah is again taken on a tour of Lamarath’s arcane headquarters, marine superstructure mated with surface vehicles and stray bits of portable housing, then strung with red holiday lights. The meetings themselves will be conducted where Aiah first met Lamarath, in his shielded office with its locked metal cabinets and massive desk. Aiah’s nerves chill at the sight of the serpentine Dr. Romus still hanging from his hook. Romus smiles at Aiah from his brown homunculus face, his wreath of tentacles waving hello; Aiah stammers through a greeting.

“You’ll be staying in the next room.” Statius opens an oval hatch to reveal a small room set up with a bed and a bedside stand. Bronze mesh is tacked to the walls, floor, and ceiling, reinforcing whatever shielding may already be present under the plaster. “This here,” opening another hatch from the office, “leads to a shielded back passage,” more bronze mesh, “which leads to an exterior hatch.”

The hatch is scaled to Lamarath’s size, and Aiah and her guards have to bend low to exit into the darkness outside. “We’ve clamped a pipe here,” Cornelius says, revealing a vertical pipe whose lower end disappears into the black water below. “We’ve put a tank of air and a regulator down there, about three paces down,” Cornelius says, then looks up in sudden uncertainty. “We were told you know how to use them, yes?”

Aiah bites her lip. “I’ve been underwater once or twice,” she says. And hadn’t enjoyed herself.

“There’s a mask tied down there, a buoyancy harness, and a pair of fins,” Cornelius adds. “If you need to hide, you’ll have air enough for two hours if you don’t go any deeper and don’t expend any air swimming around.”

“I’ll freeze,” Aiah says.

“Well”— Cornelius shrugs— “it’s for emergencies only. If things really deteriorate, it’s better to risk hypothermia than to get shot.”

“Hi, Miss Aiah!” says a cheerful voice. “Do you remember me?”

Statius gives a little start, and curses under his breath: he hadn’t seen the boy sitting, a shadow in a deeper shadow, on the rusting deck plates.

Aiah’s own nerves are in little better shape. “Hello, Craftig,” she manages.

The boy stands, massive frame lurching upward, and Statius mutters something again and takes a step back. “The Sergeant said you were coming back,” Craftig says. “Are you going to be staying long?”

Aiah considers this. “I’m just here to do some business,” she says. “When it’s over, I’ll go.”

“If you get bored,” the boy says, “we can play checkers. I’m good at checkers.”

“I’ll let you know if I have some time,” Aiah says, and then adds, remembering her last visit, “How’s the family?”

Craftig tells her at length, not caring that she hasn’t met a single one of his kin. A few minutes into the narrative, Aiah hears Statius discreetly clear his throat.

“Sorry about your uncle,” Aiah says, interrupting the chronology in midflow. “I’d like to stay and chat, but I have an important meeting coming up.”

“With those Escalier guys?” Craftig says. “See you later, hey? Have a nice time while you’re here.”

Aiah hears Cornelius sigh. “So much for security.”

Aiah turns to him. “Better finish this in a hurry, then.”

The delegation from the Escaliers are due in an hour or so. Aiah changes from the coveralls she’d worn during her tour into a gray wool suit, combs her hair, fluffs her lace. She puts on the priceless ivory necklace she’d received from Constantine, with its dangling Trigram. She wishes the room included a mirror so that she could make certain of the effect, then decides that a mirror would only make her insecure and she was better off without it.

Instead of a mirror, she’d like a plasm connection. A jolt of artificial confidence is just what she needs right now.

She steps into Lamarath’s office and reviews her files on Brigadier Holson and Colonel Galagas, the two officers she’ll be speaking with.

Landro’s Escaliers were formed out of elements of the Fastani army when Barkazi fell. Now, fifty years later, they seem not to be as attached to the Fastani cause as Karlo’s Brigade are to the Holy League; otherwise, looking down the road, there might be trouble between the two. Landro, the original brigadier, was killed in fighting in Morveg thirty years ago, though the brigade retains his name, out of both sentiment and convention.

Holson, the current commander, was actually born in Barkazi, in the Jabzi Sector, the part of Barkazi first invaded by a neighbor intent on restoring order and civilizing, or recivilizing, the natives. Aiah thinks it is probably significant that, though Holson received a military education in Jabzi, he hadn’t joined its army or those of any of the other occupying powers. He had wanted to serve in a Barkazil force, and that was what he did, traveling thousands of radii to do it.

Galagas was the fifth generation of his family to follow the military life. Aiah’s dossier was uncertain as to whether his grandfather had fought with the Fastani out of conviction or because it was the Fastani who happened to command most of the Barkazi army at the start of the civil wars.

But Galagas, also, had not joined any regular army, and had instead stayed with this band of Barkazil mercenaries.

That, Aiah thought, was important. Holson and Galagas, both talented officers, preferred serving with ethnic Barkazil mercenaries than with a regular army that would probably pay better and offer better security. Both were married to ethnic Barkazil women. Being Barkazil was important to them.

They thought of themselves as Barkazil before they thought of themselves as Jabzil or Garshabis or whatever. And that, Aiah thought, was the key.

They were willing to follow Aiah the Queen of Barkazi, or at least to
think
about following her.

It wasn’t just that they were exploring their options. If they wanted to involve themselves in a bidding war between the factions, they could do it openly, negotiate through their agents in Garshab.

No, it was
treachery
they were meditating— the deliberate betrayal of their current employers. The mercenaries supposedly had a professional code that prevented such things. They were betraying not only their employers but their profession.

They were meeting with her because they wanted to. They were
already
convinced they wanted to switch sides— otherwise they wouldn’t be here at all.

What Aiah should strive to do was, in essence, passive— she should not change their minds, but rather allow their preconceptions to model her behavior. She had to be whatever they wanted her to be, whether it was the Sorceress-Queen of Barkazi or the Dreaming Sisters’ Apprentice or a superheroine out of one of Aldemar’s films.

“I don’t suppose I will be allowed to remain,” says a voice in Aiah’s ear. She jumps, puts a hand to her heart.