City on Fire

THIRTEEN

An endless round of exhausted labor follows, dreary days that leave Aiah feeling as if she has spent weeks slogging through a mud storm. Any restful sleep is impossible: it seems as if she has only to close her eyes for the Adrenaline Monster to jerk her awake and leave her staring wide-eyed into the darkness, nerves alert to any sign of danger, pulse beating in her ears, sweat moist on her nape. The endless hours and infinite frustrations of work are made possible only by periodic injections of plasm, jolts of fiery energy straight to the heart.

But perhaps the entire government is running on plasm-energy, because things are moving quickly. Due to an unusual spirit of unity among the triumvirs, Rohder’s problems are solved with remarkable speed: Parq’s fledgling Dalavan Militia performs traffic control duties around Rohder’s crews—a task well within the inexperienced militia’s capabilities—and his teams of estimators are provided by engineering and architecture students, two entire senior classes of whom are simply conscripted for the duration.

Aiah presents Constantine with a budget, and he signs it without even a glance.

She gives everyone in her department, excepting herself, a raise of 25 percent—a nagging scruple prevents her from raising her own salary. Her deputy Ethemark now earns more than she does. She hopes the raises will do morale some good.

While the Plasm Enforcement Division grows under emergency pressures, the war continues. The northeast horizon glows around the clock as more plasm becomes available to the contending mages. Droning fills the air as reinforcements shuttle through the aerodrome. Shellfire lessens as both sides begin to conserve ammunition for the battle they know is about to take place.

As soon as he has his military units positioned, Constantine launches the Battle of the Corridor, designed not to attack the enemy strongpoint at Lorkhin Island, but instead to cut the Provisionals off from their support in Lanbola.

It fails.

Aiah finds Constantine in his emergency suite, a place he stays when battle threatens, an old storeroom deep in the con-crete-and-steel caverns beneath the Palace. It is near the command center and Plasm Control, so that he might appear in either place on short notice, but it is a dismal place, airless and cold, with moisture beading the scarred metal walls. Light comes from battered overhead fluorescents. The furniture is ornate and comfortable, scavenged from state apartments in the Swan Wing, but it is out of place in this tall, narrow, oppressively lit room.

Constantine is sunk into a winged armchair, head bowed over his chest. His jacket is thrown on the bed, and great blooms of sweat darken the fabric beneath his arms. He glances up as Aiah enters. The expression of sullen anger on his face makes her hesitate, and her words dry up on her tongue.

“Betrayed,” he says, and lets the word hang in the cold air for a moment; then he throws his head back, runs his hands over his face. “I should have anticipated it,” he says. “Lanbola has violated its own neutrality repeatedly to aid the Provisionals, but this… this last outrage!” His hands clench into massive fists; the cords on his neck threaten to burst his collar. “The Corridor was won, it was hard fighting but the Provisionals were beaten!” He stands, unable to keep his seat, the anger marching him up and down the narrow metal-walled room.

Aiah bites her lip. She remembers Constantine being in this violent, reckless mood once before, when Drumbeth had checked him over Qerwan Arms. She doesn’t know how to curb this kind of rage, not when her every instinct is to leave now, or hide, until it is all over.

“For Lanbola to permit the Provisionals’ mercenaries to make such an attack!” he roars. “Upon our flank, and out of their own territory! Such a prodigious violation of all law, all decency, all honor…!” He walks up to the metal wall and smashes at it with a gigantic fist.

Aiah holds her breath as the room seems to give a leap. She is waiting for the cry of pain—her brother Stonn broke his hand in just this fashion, enraged over losing a bet on his favorite football team—but Constantine has judged the force of his blow well, and he merely draws back the hand, examines the bruised knuckles, and scowls as if he were angry that something had not shattered.

“These wretched petty treacheries have followed me all my life,” he murmurs. “Checked me at every point, hindered every action, fettered every reform, compromised every victory. The gods trifle with me for their debased amusement, and the froward perversity of humanity is without limit. Enough!” He makes as if to strike the wall again, thinks better of it, lowers his hand. He looks at Aiah from under his brows.

“What I wish to do seems so very simple,” he says. “Must I wade thigh-deep in blood to accomplish it? And is it worth the cost?”

Aiah gropes for words. She had come to offer comfort, not to answer questions. “You didn’t start this war,” she says.

Constantine gives a low laugh. “Of course I did,” he says. “You helped me—you gave me the plasm for Drumbeth’s coup, and everything since, all this tragedy, has followed. And so…”

He glides toward her, eyes glittering beneath his brow, like a great cat stalking its prey. Aiah feels a thrill of fear run up her neck. He moves close to her; she can smell sour sweat, feel the heat of his body.

“What do you think of your gift now, Miss Aiah, that great well of plasm whose power you gave me?” There is a mocking tone in his voice. “Are you pleased with the result?”

Aiah straightens her spine, looks at him coldly. “I think this is Sorya’s reasoning,” Aiah says. “She is the one who says that all wars are one war, that there are no truces, that it’s all one grand struggle for power, back to Senko’s day I suppose. I gave you the plasm, and I will take responsibility for that, but this war is not something I created. It is not mine. I decline to be answerable for it, and I don’t think you should try to make it my fault.”

He looks at her for a long moment with that dangerous light still in his eyes, then takes a step back, and then another. He turns away and faces the far wall, head high, as if he were contemplating a view. His voice is a soft, penetrating rumble echoing from the metal walls. “You humble me,” he says, “and you are right. I was finding the blame for this failure hard to bear,” he says, “and looking for someone to help me shoulder it.”

“I will help you,” Aiah says, “but not by taking blame that isn’t mine.” She licks her lips. “And the blame isn’t all yours either. There are still Gentri and Radeen.”

“No, there are not.” Constantine’s voice is cold. “They died, four days ago, as the offensive began, along with all their staff. And I am responsible for that as well, though it is a burden I can bear more lightly than many another.”

“Taikoen,” Aiah says. In the metal room the name echoes louder than she would have wished.

“Yes,” Constantine says. “My greatest weapon. But the purpose for which I used him came to nothing, and the use of such a weapon comes with a cost…” He looks at Aiah over his shoulder, and his face is a mask of self-loathing. “I will be giving him lives, month after month, for years, and all for nothing, for worse than nothing: a military offensive that killed thousands and ended in stalemate.”

He breathes deep, shoulders lifting as he fills his lungs, and then lets the air out. “I must report to the cabinet,” he says. “They have given me their trust, their resources. What can I tell them?”

Aiah takes a step toward him. “Tell them that you couldn’t anticipate everything. Tell them you had the battle won, but Lanbola intervened. Tell them that you have learned, and that the next battle, you will win.”

Constantine listens, his head cocked, and then he turns. The dangerous brilliance is gone from his eyes, replaced by mere exhaustion. “Yes,” he says, “I will tell them exactly that. What can I tell them but that?” He sighs again. “I will bring you to the meeting, and you can report on Rohder’s progress. I may as well season the bad news with a little good.”

He walks toward her, wraps his arms around her, holds her against his barrel chest. Aiah closes her eyes, inhales the scent of him, flesh and hair oil and sweat, the scent of a man who has worked for days at a frenzied pitch and now is close to the end of his endurance.

“I need you now, and desperately,” he says. There is a kind of mourning in his voice. “I can trust you, and there is no one else, no one to help me stand against the nightmares… all the dead of Cheloki who haunt me, and now the dead here, too, in their thousands…”

Aiah presses herself against his weight. The need in his voice frightens her. She must be strong, it seems, even for him, even for the strongest thing she knows…

And then cold terror floods her spine. She can feel her nape hairs spring erect and gooseflesh prickle her arms. Constantine stiffens, suddenly alert, and she hears his heart crash in his chest. There is suddenly a presence in the room, a terror, and the lights seem to go dim, as if viewed through a thickening fog.

“Metropolitan,” says a voice, “I have done the thing you bade me.” The voice is deep and resonant, as if from out of the earth, as if it were calling through rock and magma and clay.

Aiah’s knees go weak. Constantine supports her with his arms, shielding her protectively from the terror, from Taikoen the Great. There is a strange shimmering on the metal walls, swift and indistinct sensations of prismatic color, and Aiah doesn’t know if it is something Taikoen is somehow projecting, or his body, his being, somehow expanding through the room.

“This is not a good time,” Constantine says firmly. “We are not alone.”

“I have met the lady before,” says the creature—ice man, hanged man, the damned—and from around Constantine’s shoulder Aiah catches a glimpse of the heart of him, a deep shadow in the room’s corner, a shadow strobing with lines of silver and of color, as if plasm itself had taken on both form and evil intent… This place is well shielded, but not against a creature of plasm like Taikoen, who can creep through plasm mains at will, who can appear anywhere that plasm can be found.

“I have come for my reward at the time appointed,” Taikoen says. “I have killed as you desired, Metropolitan, and now I desire my delight.” His voice turns silky. “I have delayed my reward to do this thing, and I would not delay any longer.”

“I can’t help you now,” Constantine says. “I do not have the means at present. Give me some few hours to prepare, and I will give you what you need.”

“Do you think, Metropolitan, that I enjoy killing?” The creature’s voice is petulant. “I do your bidding for one thing only—I wish to clothe myself in flesh. I wish the joys and pleasures of matter. I wish to have on my tongue the gladness of a feast, to sense in my mind the delirium of liquor, to feel in my loins the ecstasies of love.”

Aiah shivers uncontrollably in the cold that the creature seems to project, and she expects to see her breath blossom out in frost; but she can see sweat standing out on Constantine’s forehead as he faces his ally.

“So you shall,” Constantine says firmly. “But I must have some time to prepare. I do not have a subject ready for you.”

“This is the time appointed,” Taikoen insists. “Give me this girl, if you have no other.”

Aiah gives a cry, her mind quailing, a shudder quaking through every limb. Constantine holds her upright through main strength.

“I will not,” Constantine says. “I will give you someone, and in a short time, but this lady is vital to my purpose, and you cannot have her.”

“It is the time appointed,” the creature insists.

“Come back in three hours!” Anger snaps in Constantine’s voice. “Come to my apartment then. I will have someone for you—but not now!”

Taikoen hovers for a moment and seems to swell, as if threatening to engulf them, and then he subsides, seems to slip away like mist, fleeing as if from reality itself.

“As you wish,” the creature says finally, and adds, with a touch of disappointment, and perhaps even sorrow, “It was the time appointed, Metropolitan.”

Then Taikoen is gone, and Aiah can hear nothing but the uncontrollable chattering of her own teeth. Constantine walks her to the winged armchair, lowers her gently into it. She draws up her legs into a fetal posture, still shuddering. Constantine caresses her cheek, her forehead.

“I am sorry,” he says. “I had lost track of time; I had forgot he would be seeking me.”

“You must get free of him.” The words shivering out of her.

Constantine looks at her sorrowfully. “It is not possible.” He touches her cheek again. “Besides, he may be useful yet.”

She turns her head away, unable to bear his touch. He looks down at her pensively, teeth worrying at his lower lip, and then turns and walks to the door.

“I must find Taikoen a villain to live in,” he says. “While I satisfy him, prepare a presentation for the cabinet meeting—as optimistic as you can make it.” He looks over his shoulder. “Optimism is in short supply, and therefore valuable. Make what fortune you can.”

He walks away on his—on Taikoen’s—errand, and leaves Aiah in his armchair with only her terror for company.

The War Cabinet meets in the Crystal Dome two days later. The delicate glass structure has withdrawn for the duration into an armored vault, lowered on huge hydraulics into the depths of the Palace. Now Aiah knows how the room survived the violence of Constantine’s original coup.

Smooth polished steel surrounds the cabinet room, forms a roof overhead. Fresh flowers in cut-crystal vases, placed at intervals along the table, serve only to make the room even more bleak by contrast. The War Cabinet is a reduced version of the entire cabinet, and consists of the three triumvirs as well as Constantine, Sorya, and Belckon, the aged Minister of State, all of whom cluster at the head of the long glass table. The effect is a sense of isolation, a cluster of defeated people, hiding behind slabs of armor in a room designed for three times their number.

Aiah reports that Rohder’s teams are making good progress with their untested theories, that she expects they will pay for themselves and much else, and that if the teams were enlarged, the plasm supply would be as well.

Aiah is told to increase Rohder’s division as fast as she can, after which Constantine makes his report on the failure at the Corridor. He describes how his soldiers had the Provisionals on the verge of cracking until Lanbola had permitted a force of mercenaries to cross the border and attack his flank, and sent his troops reeling back.

“And then the Provisionals halted,” Constantine says. “Our units were in disorder—there was some panic—but the enemy didn’t press their attack home.”

“Could that be because of the disorganization of enemy command?” Hilthi asks.

This being the current euphemism for the mysterious way that Radeen, Gentri, and their entire staff were killed in their headquarters.

“It is clear by now that the Provisionals are taking direction from Lanbola,” Constantine says. “Their forces halted when they didn’t have to, and that shows us Lanbola’s strategy. Lanbola doesn’t want the Provisional Government to win; Lanbola wants—by squeezing first one side, then the other—to dictate the peace. They can attack our flank at any point, and that makes us vulnerable. And the Provisionals are dependent on them for supplies and political support.”

Faltheg, the new president and triumvir, is a spare, balding man with the eyes of someone drowning. He looks hopelessly down the table and murmurs in a voice almost too low to hear, “What is the status of the army now?”

Reports from the military commanders are bleak, Constantine informs him. Since the failure at the Corridor, enemy mages have been unleashed on Caraqui, plasm raging through the disputed no-man’s-land between the two forces, setting unquenchable fires, tearing the bottoms out of barges and pontoons, creating a watery, ruined desolation between the contending armies. It is a brand-new atrocity, unknown within living memory. Tens of thousands of refugees, dispossessed of everything they own, flee from twin threats of fire and water, and the world’s compassionate statesmen bleat in sympathy but do nothing.

If Constantine is to attack again, his forces will have to make their way across open water or masses of rubble, all within the scope of pre-sited artillery.

Belckon the diplomat reports that he filed a vigorous protest to the Lanbolan government, which simply denied everything—denied the mercenaries, denied the invasion, denied the atrocities, denied its support for the Provisionals—after which Belckon also lodged a protest with the Polar League, which will place the matter on the agenda for its scheduled meeting next month. The World Council has expressed its concern, and is considering sending humanitarian aid, but has otherwise deferred to the Polar League.

Sorya tilts her head back, her eyes narrowing as a satisfied smile plays across her features. Languidly she places one polished boot on the crystal table. Among all the people here, she alone seems satisfied with the situation outside this steel shell.

“They strive for stalemate,” she says. “We fight to win. Despite appearances, the advantage still lies with us.”

She reports on the enemy army, the makeup of its new leadership and command staff. She also produces some neat figures showing who is paying for the enemy’s efforts, Lanbola principally, money siphoned through its Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Trade, with more money coming from Nesca and Charna and Adabil, all people who got along well with the Keremaths in their heydey.

Hilthi’s gold pen hovers over his pad. “Great-Uncle Rathmen?” he asks.

“He produces a little money now and again, to demonstrate his sincerity,” Sorya says. “Why should he pay for his war, when others are so willing?”

“Willing to feed with Rathmen off our corpse,” Hilthi mutters.

“All these people—the Lanbolans, the Nescans, and so on—are also pouring money here, into free Caraqui. They have each started their own political party and are recruiting as many adherents as they can buy.”

“Good,” Constantine says.

The others look at him. Constantine smiles back.

“It’s so much easier to keep track of foreign agents when they print newspapers and attend conventions,” he says. “And at any point we can bring them down, just by revealing they work for a foreign power.”

The others nod sagely. The new president and triumvir Faltheg gazes grayly down the long crystal table. Aiah has never seen him actually meet anyone’s eyes. “What can we do?” he mutters. “I need recommendations. I need…” Dull light gleams off his bald scalp. “I need something.”

Sorya gives a superior smile. “Lanbola has signed its own death warrant,” she says. “Their own army is insignificant, a couple divisions of ill-trained militia, badly emplaced. Their border with us is largely unguarded except for police—they are confident that their neutrality, which they themselves violate daily, will protect them. They may invade us, but to them the opposite is unthinkable. Two corps swung round our right flank, with sufficient air and mage support, can take Lanbola in a matter of hours. Not only will it rid us of a vexatious neighbor, but it will cut the Provisionals off from their source of supply and their biggest provider of cash. And it will give our other neighbors a lesson they would do well to heed.”

“No,” says Hilthi. His voice is loud, echoes harshly from surrounding steel. “Invading another metropolis can only make matters worse. Our other neighbors will learn a lesson indeed, but the wrong one. The only thing the Polar League ever accomplished was demilitarizing the region a couple centuries ago—if we invade and conquer a neighbor, that’s the end of stability for the whole region.”

Sorya’s ambiguous smile does not fade: destabilizing the region is not a problem for her, but rather a solution. “Wars, once begun, generate their own logic,” she says. “The opportunity exists now. At some point—soon, I imagine—Lanbola will awaken to the fact they are in danger, and act to correct the situation.”

“But neutrality…,” Faltheg murmurs.

“All neutralities are imaginary,” Sorya says. “When a third party to a war chooses neutrality as a policy, in reality the neutrality always favors one side or another. Our neighbors’ neutrality in the present conflict favors our enemies—it demonstrates that neighboring states have already taken sides against us. We should show our neighbors that such a neutrality is more dangerous for them than they believe.”

Sorya’s genius, Aiah realizes, consists in doing just what she always says she will do. She wants to enlarge her scope, increase her power. All neutralities are imaginary… All truces are temporary. It is all of a piece, a perfectly consistent view of the world.

It’s other people, she thinks, who see something else in Sorya, who think she is something other than what she has always said she is.

“I agree with Miss Sorya’s premises,” Hilthi says, “but not her conclusions. Wars do have their own logic, and the logic of war is to grow ever larger and more destructive, and for war’s energies to engulf entire nations, entire economies. Occupation of Lanbola would create a cascade of events that would soon run outside our control—the entire region could be endangered.”

“I support the idea,” Parq says. His normally silky voice is forceful, angry. “The Lanbolans have caused enormous harm to our people, and our people demand justice and punishment for the criminals. If our neighbors object, we can point out that they initially invaded us, albeit by proxy.”

“The Polar League can put the Lanbolans’ protest on their agenda for next month,” Sorya mocks. Parq laughs, and there is a rumble of amusement from Constantine.

Belckon gazes uneasily at the room from beneath his shock of white hair. “I must say that, diplomatically, this action would create insuperable difficulties for us. Our perpetual difficulty is in convincing our neighbors that our regime has any legitimacy, and if we prove ourselves not only illegitimate but hegemonist, we can expect only hostility from people who were formerly our friends.”

“Have we any friends?” Sorya wonders aloud.

Belckon looks at her. “Sympathizers, yes.”

Faltheg looks in Belckon’s direction—not at Belckon directly—and ventures to ask a question. “Our neighbors considered the Keremaths legitimate, but not us?”

Belckon considers his words before answering. “They were used to the Keremaths. It is not a characteristic of diplomacy to enjoy change for its own sake.”

A deep laugh rolls out of Constantine. “Seize power, and it makes you a bandit,” he says. “Hang on for twenty years, and you become a statesman.”

A perplexed look crosses Faltheg’s face. “What would we do with Lanbola?” he mutters.

“Civilize them, of course,” says Parq, head of the Dalavan Militia.

“Make them pay.” For once Sorya is not smiling. “They supported the countercoup—one understands their motives, I suppose, but once their little adventure was defeated, they didn’t quit the field like gentlemen, they started a war. And I think the Lanbolans should not cease to pay until every damaged building is rebuilt better than before, every orphan is guaranteed an education, and our treasury has overcome any embarrassment, present or future.”

“That’s brigandage!” Hilthi says, outraged. Faltheg gives the ceiling an abstracted look—Aiah suspects he may be adding up sums in his head.

“Miss Aiah?” he says, and Aiah starts. His eyes wander in Aiah’s general direction. “Our plasm reserves,” he says, “are sufficient for this action?”

“We can support a campaign of a few days,” Aiah admits with reluctance.

“It is not possible from a military point of view,” Constantine says.

Aiah’s heart rejoices. The others look at Constantine.

“All our forces are in the line,” Constantine says. “We hold exterior lines, and therefore we use more troops to hold the same line than our enemies do. We would have to pull out large numbers of soldiers, and our opponents would of course observe this. Prepositioning two corps for an invasion of Lanbola would not go unnoticed. We will have to build our forces to a greater strength before we can even consider this option.”

“Well,” Faltheg says flatly, “that’s that.” He seems relieved.

No disappointment shows on Sorya’s face. She removes her boot from the table and reaches a languid hand to one of the crystal vases. She takes a carnation, sniffs it briefly, unbuttons one of the fire-gilt buttons of her uniform tunic, and puts the flower in the buttonhole.

“In that case,” she says, “we can hope only for a military stalemate, which is what our enemies most desire. We will have to consider what we will offer to Lanbola, and to the other powers who support the Provisionals. Because we will have to outbid our rivals, and that will be difficult—Kere-horn and his friends may promise that which they do not possess, whereas we must give away that which we have worked so hard to win.”

Belckon and Hilthi look down at the table. No one, it seems, has an answer to her argument.