City on Fire (Metropolitan 2) (76 page)

Aratha’s war, Aiah thinks, was probably very bad, all madness and terror and reflex. Practically all a military mage did involved the deliberate murder of the enemy, or alternatively, frantic attempts to keep her own people or herself from being killed. But Aratha had survived it, and survival had given her a kind of serene, uncomplicated confidence— she felt she could view anything, deal with anything, engage with any kind of enemy, and on short notice.

Aiah’s war, probably less perilous, had left her feeling isolated, with only the Adrenaline Monster for company. But then Aratha had all the other officers to support her, the entire military culture. Aiah had little support in her life, only crushing responsibilities that did not permit her any weakness.

“Thank you,” Aiah says simply.

“It will do us good,” Aratha judges, “to get away from routine for a while.”

NECESSITY IS THE WATCHWORD OF THE GODS
.

A THOUGHT-MESSAGE FROM HIS PERFECTION,

THE PROPHET OF AJAS

“Refiq?” Alfeg says. “This is Ducat. I wanted to remind you about the party. Third shift today, 21:00.”

He holds the heavy plastic headset to his ears as he listens, looks up at Aiah, mouths the words, “He’s drunk.”

“Everything’s laid on,” Alfeg says, when he gets a chance to speak. “The best liquor, the best pills, entertainment, and more girls than you can imagine. Do you have the address?”

Alfeg waits again, presumably for Refiq to find something to write with, then says, “100 Cold Canal. It’s a really strange building, all carved stone, off the Seahorse Waterway. Do you need directions, or will you just take a water taxi?”

Sweat is gleaming on his forehead by the time Alfeg finishes the call. “He believed me, I think.” He looks up at Aiah. “He— it— doesn’t have Refiq’s memories, right? He doesn’t know that Dulat is just someone we made up?”

“
Refiq’s
gone
,” Aiah assures him. “There’s only that thing in there.”

Alfeg wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “I was terrified,” he says, “just knowing what was on the other end of the line.”

“If he was drunk,” Khorsa says, “do you think he’ll remember about the party?”

“We’ll have someone call later and remind him,” Aiah says. “Melko.”

She looks up at Melko, one of the two mages that Aratha has brought with her from Lanbola. He is tall, gangly, and wears black plastic-rimmed glasses tied around his ears with loops of elastic. He looks far too young to be the captain his collar tabs proclaim him to be.

Aratha’s other mage looks too young to be anywhere but in school. A silent, spotty girl, painfully thin, Kari sits atop a file cabinet with her legs drawn up and plays nervously with the dangling geomantic charms on her bracelet.

Combat mages tend to be young, Aiah has discovered. The young have a sense of invulnerability that is useful in that line of work.

“In the meantime,” Aiah says, “Khorsa needs to continue our surveillance to make sure Refiq doesn’t get away. I have reserved the small Operations Room for all third shift today and first shift tomorrow. And—”

There’s a knock on the door. Aiah goes to the door, unlocks it, cracks it open, and sees her receptionist, Anstine.

“The president’s on the phone for you,” he says. “I told him I’d see if you’re available.”

“I suppose I must be,” Aiah decides.

She walks to her office, where she picks up the delicate headset and places it over her ears.

“Yes?” she says.

Constantine’s deep voice rumbles in her ears. “Did you get the flowers?”

Aiah is suddenly weary. She folds into her chair. “You know I did.”

“And did you read the note?”

“No. I haven’t had the time.”

There is a moment’s awkward silence, then, “What’s so urgent? I thought you were taking these days off?”

“An investigation coming to a head. I won’t bore you with detail.” She’s too weary to make them up anyway.

“The note,” Constantine says, “contained, I thought, a very well-phrased apology, eloquent yet humble, a model of its kind.”

“I’ll read it,” Aiah says, “when I have the time to appreciate such a piece of art.”

“I hope you will take its sentiments to heart.”

“I hope,” Aiah says, “that I may be able to.”

There is another moment’s pause, and then Constantine says, “Sorya is going to Charna. Tomorrow. I am dining with her late third shift to say good-bye. These things must be done properly— farewells gracefully said, closures correctly made.”

Aiah pictures the ransacking of files that must be going on in Sorya’s department now, information plundered to be carried off to Charna, or destroyed to keep from the hands of her successor. And then, she thinks, the gracious dinner in Constantine’s apartment while minions stuff secret after secret into Sorya’s trunks.

“Tomorrow, and after,” Constantine says, “I am available to you. I hope to see you as soon as you can find the time.”

Tomorrow, Aiah thinks, if this all goes wrong, she may be dead or hiding from Taikoen. If she is hiding, Constantine will have to decide between Aiah and Taikoen, could not keep them both, might decide that he loved her and turn against his monster.

For a wild, irrational minute she hopes that the attempt will fail, that this affirmation will come to pass.

The moment fades. She knows what Constantine is, what truly moves his heart.... It is not tender affections that are important to him, but his dreams, realizing in stone and steel the glorious phantasm city that, all his life, he has constructed in his mind.

“I hope I will see you as well,” she says. If she is still alive.

“Remember,” Constantine says, voice kind and confident now, certain that he has won her, “remember that in less than four months’ time we have an appointment beyond the Shield. We will change the world together.”

“I hope so,” Aiah says.

“I know we will.” Smoothly. Anger flares darkly in Aiah, anger at the cream in Constantine’s voice, at his confidence, his assumptions that she will remain his instrument forever.

She will show him otherwise, she thinks. He has made her a power, but she will not be the Apprentice for all time; the Golden Lady lives by other rules, she must have new arrangements, a new disposition.

“I have to go,” she says. “I’ll talk to you when I can.”

“I hope it will be soon,” Constantine says.

Soon
, Aiah thinks.
Soon I will have solved your greatest problem for you
.

And then, as she returns the headset to its hook, she thinks,
I wonder if you will be grateful
.

“GOLDEN LADY SOCIETY” BANNED IN JABZI

“SUBVERSIVE THOUGHT” CONDEMNED BY SECURITY CHIEF

The sanctuary of the Dreaming Sisters stands gray beneath its gleaming copper dome, a maze within a maze. Aiah waits telepresent across Cold Canal, her PMDS, which turns out to be the plasm-modulation detecting sensorium, prepared to venture into the ASoO, the assumed site of operations. Aratha had called plasm into the small PED operations room, had a ball of bright reality dancing on her fingertips; she pulsed modulations through it, complex and shimmering patterns, and let the others tune their perceptions to it, distinguish it from a ball of undifferentiated plasm she was holding on the palm of her other hand.

Thus they hope to detect Taikoen once he is free of his mortal mask. If, of course, Taikoen is not some different modulation altogether, if he is not something entirely other than what they have been led to believe.

Ministry workers have cut the plasm mains around the sisters’ building, and once their little plasm accumulator is empty, there will be nothing more. It is hoped that Taikoen, battered by his pursuers, will be trapped in the plasm well as it drains, and die.

“The aerial tram is coming into Seahorse Station.” Alfeg’s voice, echoing through Aiah’s mind from the operations center. Alfeg has been following Refiq all day. Refiq had picked the fastest mode of transportation available for crossing the city, the swift-flying trams.

Aiah’s sensorium can see the swaying tram car sliding into its bay atop the silver tower, sees through windows the tiny figures crowding the exits.

Soon
.

Aiah shifts her weight in her chair, t-grip held lightly in a damp palm. The song of plasm in her veins is louder than the snarl of the Adrenaline Monster, than her own doubts. She is the Golden Lady again, invincible, a perfect warrior, all reality at her call.

“Refiq’s taking a water taxi from the station,” Alfeg reports.

“
Who’s
that
?” Khorsa’s voice, a little excited. “Over the temple— look!”

Aiah looks with ectomorphic eyes configured to see plasm, and beneath a sky flaming with adverts sees someone’s anima just hanging above the sisters’ copper dome. As if someone telepresent is gazing down at the neighborhood, or perhaps trying to work out the nature of the complex carvings on the Dreaming Sisters’ refuge.

“Is that one of ours?” Aiah asks, and receives only negatives from the people around her.

“Khorsa,” she orders, “backtrack the sourceline. See if it’s local.”

Khorsa flies off from her perch over Cold Canal, a silver track across the sky. “Not from the district,” she reports. “The sourceline tracks a good many radii to the southeast. Do you want me to follow it all the way to its origin?”

“No.” Aiah considers. She doesn’t want a bystander hovering nearby, no matter who he might be. Taikoen might well attack him, thinking him an enemy or simply not caring, and then the stranger could end up in some padded room, mind scorched to madness by the encounter.

“No,” she repeats, “I want you to wait where you are and cut the stranger’s sourceline as soon as the operation commences. Then return to the operations site and join the rest of us, ne?”

“Da.”

“Taxi turning into Cold Canal,” reports Alfeg.

Aiah can see it, a dingy white motorboat with a cracked windscreen.

“Stand by,” she says.

The taxi motors to the sisters’ rusting pier. Refiq, Aiah thinks, looks like hell: he leans heavily on the gunwale, one hand swaying over the bright green water. His powerful body rolls listlessly with the waves, and the face beneath the shock of black hair is pale and slack, eyes wide and staring at nothing. For a moment Aiah wonders if he is already dead.

The little gray embryo cabman hops over Refiq’s outstretched legs to tie up the cab, and then Refiq rises slowly to his feet, takes several shuffling steps toward the cabman, pays him, and accepts the little fellow’s help getting to the pier.

Taikoen has nearly worn this body out. Refiq crosses the pier with quick tottering steps, like a man recovering from a stroke, and then takes his time climbing the metal stair to the paved area in front of the Dreaming Sisters’ retreat.

The cabman casts off and motors away. He moves fast, not bothering to look for customers in this battered neighborhood.

Refiq reaches the top of the stair and takes a few steps into the plaza. Once there he pauses and looks with a strange resignation at the mass of carved stone.

And then Aiah’s heart leaps into her throat as the stranger, the telepresent stranger hovering over the copper dome, descends on his plasm tether toward Refiq.

“
What’s he
doing
?” Alfeg’s startled voice.

Refiq raises his ravaged face, as if he senses the approach of the stranger, and then the telepresent stranger touches him, coming into contact as if for communication.

Constantine, Aiah realizes. He is here to help Refiq leave this wrecked body and claim another one.

No time to lose.

“
Clever Karlo
!” Aiah shouts, the signal agreed upon.

And Aratha, from her hiding place across the canal, fires a silver arrow of plasm-energy straight through Refiq’s heart. It’s the kind of work she is used to. Aiah wanted to do it herself, wanted to take the responsibility of killing Refiq’s empty shell, but she was afraid that she’d hesitate, or do it wrong, and finally gave in to Aratha’s calm insistence.

Refiq gives a cry and flings out his arms, shot in the back by a blast of pure reality. Other shots are already on their way, propelled by the readier reflexes of the military mages. Aiah forms and flings her own bolt, blasting a body already dead, the force of her angry fire lifting the corpse from the stone pathway where it had crumpled. But something is already rising from Refiq’s shattered shell, a kind of buzzing silver madness, insubstantial but infused with dire purpose, like a swarm of scintillating bees, and the next bolt, fired by one of Aratha’s military mages, hits it dead on, spraying bits of silver chaff, Taikoen’s strange essence, through the air.... Another bolt strikes, fired from another quarter. Some bits of the hanged man spark off into nowhere, and others, still under his command, loop back to rejoin his form.

But Constantine is reacting, moving with his usual uncommon swiftness and readiness. His anima grows, forms a great amorphous shield that flies across the canal toward the attackers, trying to scoop up the plasm bolts....Aiah ducks around the shield, preparing another attack, but the shield suddenly extends itself in her direction and she contacts it, striking it with a kind of mental concussion that, back in the Palace, sends her bolt upright in her padded ops-room chair. In a brief instant of mental contact she can feel Constantine’s recognition of her, his profound surprise....

And then he’s gone, vanished completely— Khorsa has cut his sourceline.

Aiah looks to the hanged man, finds him unmoved, launches her bolt of fire. Taikoen is either stunned or is having difficulty disentangling his essence from Refiq’s remains.
Hit him! Hit him! Hit him!
Aiah can’t tell whether she’s shouting the words out loud or not.

It is safer to attack this way, Aratha’s manual suggests. Blast Taikoen from a distance, fire discrete bolts and not a steady stream of plasm that he could turn against its user.