The Stars Askew (53 page)

Elise and the others grumbled and led away the prisoners, whose shocked faces were softened with relief.

Elsewhere there were more massacres. Kata came too late, finding only bodies piled up, seditionists loitering around or gone to pursue more enemies. At other times the seditionists had already lined up the exhausted enemies and were leading them slowly to the Arbor dungeons. Kata followed the devastation to the great metal structure of Collegium Caelian.

There she found her veteran captain Terris looking up at Caelian's huge building. In another time, Terris might have been an architect or a teacher. His lack of personal ambition made him a perfect captain. In fact, Terris was one of those seditionists who just wanted it all to be over so he could return to real life.

Seeing her approach, he said, “They're not answering. They're deciding what to do, I guess.”

Kata approached the door, looked for some kind of opening above.

A panel slipped open, and a head poked out. “If we give you Dumas, will you allow the rest of us to go free?”

“We should send them all to the dungeons,” said Terris. “They all deserve the Bolt.”

Even Terris wanted a reckoning. Many of the seditionists grumbled their agreement. Others waited to see what Kata had to say.

If she accepted the deal, she would have Dumas. There would be no more bloodshed, here at least. But then the rest of the Collegia hierarchy would escape justice. How could they continue to build a new Caeli-Amur when they had enemies in their midst, saboteurs who could strike at any moment? How could they build a new world, when justice had not been served?

“I don't think you're in any position to make demands,” she said.

The man said, “These walls are impregnable. In any case, the Collegium is a network, not an organization. Most of us had no idea about Dumas's plans. We were as surprised as you.”

What he said may well have been true, but Dumas was still the Collegia's leader.

Kata agonized before finally saying, “Give us Dumas. The rest of you are free for the moment. But we will require your identities before you may leave. You may yet face recriminations.”

There was a grumble of discord among the seditionists and she sensed Terris's dissatisfaction as he shifted on his feet nearby.

The doors slid open, just enough to allow Dumas's heavy figure to be shoved out. Dumas's bloodhound cheeks seemed even more saggy, the reds of his eyelids clear for all to see. He looked exhausted, broken. Kata felt a flush of power run through her. The man was in her hands, and she could do what she wished with him. The feeling was seductive, overwhelming. She liked it and was disturbed that she did.

Kata strode toward Dumas, who raised his arm to protect himself. But she was already behind him. One hand grasped his forehead, pulling it back, as the other pressed her knife to his neck.

But she couldn't do it. She tried to think of something fitting to say, something that would make the new relationship clear, make sense of the situation, capture the moment, but words were not enough. Finally all she said was, “To the dungeons.”

She pushed Dumas forward, and he fell to his knees. Two seditionists took him by the arms and led him toward House Arbor.

 

FORTY-FOUR

Armand would never become used to the feeling of being watched. Through the Director's windows, the Sortileges' Towers loomed around their building, like cruel adults encircling a child. The Sortileges had emerged from their researches and looked outward. A cowering consul had come scuttling across to the Director's office, face pale, voice quavering, to explain that the Sortileges were very unhappy. They were set to intervene themselves, he squeaked, if the situation in Caeli-Amur wasn't resolved.

From where Armand stood in the center of the office, each of the Department buildings' ninth-floor windows could be seen clearly. Armand thought he could see Controller Dominik looking down on them from the Department of Benevolence.

Behind his desk, Rainer shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Giselle stood before the sphere and looked at Armand. It was time. The seditionists had contacted them a day before and agreed upon this meeting.

Giselle ran her hands over the ball. A small point of light emerged, grew to engulf the sphere, transcended its boundaries, and a second three-dimensional room was superimposed on the material one.

A group of figures sat before them. At the front sat the Northerner Ejan and the thaumaturgist Max. Lounging beside them, her face steely, was the former spy Kata. News had come that she was now one of the leaders, which was typical of the seditionists: their leader was a murderer and a liar, and a woman to boot. A magnificent minotaur sprawled over two seats at the very rear. What a motley bunch they were, a ragtag group of scum.

“The Caeli-Amur Insurgent Authority,” said Rainer. “We will give you one chance for unconditional surrender. We have everything now: the Prism of Alerion and the book,
The Alerium Calix
. The legions are mobilizing. Five battle-hardened legions are returning from the west, where they've been pacifying barbarians.”

Kata ignored Rainer. “Armand, we know about your plans. You might not have heard, but your allies in Caeli-Amur have been … disarmed.”

“What allies?” said Armand.

“Alfadi and Dumas,” said Kata. “I saw Alfadi go down, crushed into nothingness. Dumas will not survive the justice we are meting out either.”

“Well, that makes you a bloodthirsty ogre, doesn't it?” Armand spat back. But he knew this was the world he was in for: the world of Realpolitik, as Rainer called it, the world of cold calculations and maneuvers, of the will to power. There was no room for sentiment.

“What does it matter, now that the legions are mobilizing?” said Rainer. “You don't stand a chance, so it would be better if you negotiated now. We can bring this little adventure to a peaceful end.”

But Kata seemed intent on pressing her advantage. There was a cruelty to her, apparently. She gestured to the figure hiding in the darkness nearby.

Irik strode into view. The handsome cheekbones, the way he leaned forward slightly as he walked, the calmness, as if no event overwhelmed him—all this was like a dagger in Armand's gut. The pressure was too much. Armand's face cracked, like that of glass under too much pressure. “Irik?”

“I'm sorry, Armand,” said Irik.

“You see,” said Kata. “We know all about your plans. You intended to use the tunnels beneath the city as a secret entranceway, didn't you? While our troops concentrated on the walls, you hoped to storm the city easily. That's what you told Irik, isn't it?. But your armies won't surprise us. Not now.”

Armand stood up and strode toward the ethereal figures until he was almost on top of them. “There is no loyalty in this life. Know this, Kata: you will not be spared. I have visited the Augurers, and I have seen the future. You will end your life, crawling away on the dirt like a dog! Your minotaur will have his horns cut off. Your friends will be strapped on our machines and broken, driven into half-life by our thaumaturgists. They will live in the zone between us and the Other Side, become our perished slaves, dead yet not dead, living endlessly in torment.”

Kata looked at him coldly. “The future is not something set, Armand. We make it every instant. We change it every step we take. The future is fluid. Surely, the Augurers taught you that.”

“And yet,” said Armand, “everything I've seen has come true.”

“There's still a chance to stop this, Armand,” said Irik.

Armand turned to Irik. “And you. You will not be spared either.”

Irik drew a deep harried breath and looked away in pain.

Armand felt the bloodstone in his arm, burning with unnatural fire. He knew what he needed to do to save himself, and to keep the future on track. He was determined now to ensure he became ruler of Caeli-Amur, whatever the cost. If that meant he ended up carrying a dead Irik through empty halls, then so be it.

*   *   *

The Department of Devotions was housed in a gargantuan building, like the rest of the Departments. Unlike the others, it was filled with comforts of every kind. The air was warmed to a perfect temperature. In every corner sat long couches and cushions, fountains sprouting fresh water.

The surgeries were upstairs: a small select place where the officials of Varenis might reconstruct themselves, rebuild their faces, straighten their noses, hitch up their skin so it was tight as a drum over their bones.

Armand followed one of the surgeons down a wide corridor. It was lit a comfortable red, as if the place were a womb.

A door opened not far along the corridor, and a long thin woman shuffled out. She seemed to have some kind of plastic wrapped around her face, and bloody scars could be seen beneath it, half healed through some grim thaumaturgical science. Her skin shone with a sickly, unnatural glow.

“Armand! Armand, my dear, look at you. Oh, how lovely to see you.” Olka Valentin reached out to him. “What are you doing here? You're already so beautiful! Oh, you will come and see me, won't you? I'm all alone now, you know.”

Armand nodded stupidly, though Olka did not seem at all upset that he had betrayed her husband.

She leaned toward him, lecherously. “I want you to come and
visit me
.”

Armand nodded and backed away with horror. “Of course. Of course.”

As quickly as he could, he followed the surgeon into the operating room and sat on a long reclining chair. The walls, the fittings, the light globes—everything was curved and smooth and sleek, designed to relax the mind.

The surgeon looked down at him. “Show me your arm, Controller Lecroisier.”

Armand pulled up his shirt and revealed the red spider's web creeping up his forearm. “The only way to save me is to cut it off.”

“Yes, yes, I've seen this before. Rare, though. Only thaumaturgists suffer from this, really. I can't imagine how you contracted it. Anyway, lie back and relax. It's all going to be fine.” Armand felt a sharp prick in his elbow and a soft warmth spread through him. As he started feeling groggy, he began to panic.

“There will be a lot of blood,” said the surgeon to someone beside him. “Prepare for that.”

Armand tried to sit up, but something held him down.

“It's all right. It's going to be all right,” said the surgeon.

“Nnn. Nnnn.” Armand tried to speak, but the roof blurred and he lost all strength. The last thing he heard was the sickening sound of an engine starting, and a saw whirring and whining in the background.

And so it was done. Armand awoke and looked down at the stump of his arm. The pain was terrible, but he refused the opium they offered him. He wanted to endure it, to cleanse himself. He wanted to feel the consequences of his decisions. He wanted to face up to the pain.

After a few days recovering in the Department, he made his way back to the Director's office, where Rainer had already arranged himself. On the balcony surrounding the building, two Trid-Girls stood, arm in arm, looking out over the plaza. Both wore bright dresses that moved and shifted over them, here showing off the fractal tattoo on one girl's back, there curling around the other girl's neck. One dress was orange, the other green—each of them the same as the girls' hair.

Rainer glanced at the soft white bandages wrapped around his stump. “We all cut things off. It hurts, but it's necessary.”

Armand thought of Irik. “We do. We do.”

“It won't be long before the legions will be ready to march south,” said Rainer. “Don't make a mess of it, or we'll both be sent after Valentin. I can't imagine you want to end up back at Camp X, do you?”

Armand looked out at the magnificent plaza and the towering Department buildings. He looked at the Sortileges' Towers, black and omnipresent. He looked further out between the buildings, to the Kinarian pocket and beyond. He hated this city. He could not wait to go home. He could not wait to return to Caeli-Amur.

 

FORTY-FIVE

Kata stood beside Max at the Standing Stones. Around them waited hundreds of people, now quiet. The composition of the crowd had changed. Fewer now came from the Lavere. More men and women from the factory district and students from the Quaedian circled the ancient monument. This mass stood silent, quieted, even as the cart rattled along the road from the Arbor Palace. Seven haggard-looking men clung to the bars, stared out into the multitude bitterly.

“How could we have sanctioned this?” said Max.

“What can we do, otherwise?” said Kata. “The citizens control their lives for the first time. There is an Assembly. There are open debates and discussions. People make their own choices, free from an oppressive power. But our power hangs by a thread. We must have deterrence, to stop the next group of Dumases and Alfadis.”

“Deterrence never works,” said Max. “There will always be opponents.”

Dumas was led from the cart, his great bulldog head staring at the very machine he had designed.

A new guard called out. “Guillam Dumas of Collegium Calian, sentenced to death for conspiracy to overthrow the Insurgent Assembly.”

Still the crowd was silent. Max was right: if the liberation had brought joy across the city, in the bars or the alleyways, in the avant-garde plays held in the Quaedian, in the agitprop on the street corners and the never-ending parties in the universities, that joy did not make it here.

“The legions have already begun mobilizing,” said Kata.

“So that is the end of opposition,” said Max. “That is the end of discussion. That is the end of debate. You think you're allowing the citizens to choose their lives, but how can that be when they can't speak their minds?”

The guard turned to Dumas. “Any words, Dumas?”

Dumas looked up. His voice came roughly and angrily. “Are you any different from the Houses? You have your Bolt. You have your dungeons. Where is this new world of yours?”