City on Fire

TWENTY-FIVE

Aiah returns from her visit to the Dreaming Sisters and finds Alfeg waiting in the corridor near her apartment, standing uneasily beneath a carving of apricots and carnations. He holds a file in his hand, and his eyes are grave.

Aiah signs him not to speak until she opens her door and leaves the surveillance zone outside her apartment. The scent of massed flowers strikes her as she presses the light switch and she sees the surprising floral blaze, flowers everywhere, on every table, chair, or horizontal surface, their combined aromas heavy in the room.

Alfeg gives a tight smile. “It would seem that someone loves you,” he says.

Aiah wanders to a towering spray of gladiolas, yellow and azure with splashes of red, and touches the attached note, inscribed in Constantine’s bold hand.

“Possibly,” she concedes. She does not want to cope with Constantine right now, and turns to Alfeg. “Something happened last shift, didn’t it?”

He nods. “It’s Refiq.” He hesitates, then adds, “What was that thing? What happened to him? It was terrifying.”

Aiah looks at him. “Tell me what you saw.” She had never seen Taikoen in the act of capturing a human.

Alfeg hesitates. “I was telepresent, had my sensorium across the canal from Refiq’s apartment, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. I had configured my sensorium with farvision, to bring his apartment up close. I couldn’t have got into his apartment anyway, because he’d screened it very thoroughly, but I could peek through the windows. At 14:42 precisely I saw a plasm tether descend from the sky and pause outside the apartment as if it contained a sensorium that was doing some surveilling of its own. Whoever it was, he wasn’t trying to be subtle—I had the impression of haste, if anything.”

That would be Constantine, Aiah thinks, trying to locate Taikoen’s next victim while his government waited outside his office.

“And then something moved behind the kitchen window, something…” Alfeg swallows. “Something very disturbing. I only caught a glimpse of it, but it was menacing, as if someone had constructed an anima for a fright party. And then the window just blew out into the street, like an explosion, and the plasm tether shot in.” He licks his lips. “I wondered what to do. If I should try to break the plasm tether, or follow it to its point of origin, but in the end I decided just to keep watching.”

Taikoen, who could pass through plasm screens, had entered the apartment and opened the screen for Constantine to enter. Then, presumably, Constantine had subdued Refiq and performed whatever unholy midwifery was necessary.

“The plasm tether remained in the apartment for twenty minutes or so, and then it dissolved, as if the mage on the other end had simply broken the connection. A few minutes after that, I saw the subject, Refiq, examining the broken window from the inside. He was disheveled, like he had fallen, or maybe was drunk. He didn’t seem to be walking or moving very well. He brushed some broken glass off the win-dowsill, then went back into his apartment.”

“Where is he now?” Aiah asked.

“He put on some clothes—lace, studs; you know the way the cousins dress—and then he went to his bank. Withdrew some dinars, I guess, because next he went to a bar and ordered drinks for everybody. I turned over surveillance to Khorsa, and so far as I know, he’s still at the bar—he’s got himself quite an entourage by now, so I don’t think he’ll leave anytime soon.” “Good.”

A haunted look comes into Alfeg’s face. “Aiah,” he whispers. “What was that?”

Aiah hesitates. “I’ll go into more detail later,” she says. “But what you should know is that Refiq is dead now—he no longer exists. The creature has him. And the creature will take others until we put a stop to it.”

Aiah can see a little muscle jumping in Alfeg’s cheek.

“Tell no one,” Aiah reminds. “I’ll talk to you and Khorsa later.”

After Alfeg leaves, Aiah calls Aratha, the mage-major of Karlo’s Brigade, and sets an appointment for 06:00 next day. Then she heads for the offices of the PED, looks into Dr. Romus’s office, and sees only the man who shares his office.

“Is Doctor Romus in?” she asks. “Do you know if he’s in the Palace?”

“I’m here,” says Romus. His upper body snakes out from behind his desk, gliding with a lithe purposefulness toward Aiah’s ankles, and Aiah takes an involuntary step backward.

“I was sleeping,” Romus says. His body flows into the center of the room, and his face lifts level with hers. “I’m not on duty till second shift tomorrow.”

Aiah tries to calm her startled heart. “Will you join me in my office, please?” she asks.

“Certainly.”

Aiah leads him to her office, trying not to hear the slithering sounds of his body sawing to and fro on the carpet as he follows. She enters the office, holds the door until Romus joins her, and then closes it behind him. She takes her seat, then a breath.

“It is time,” she says, “to move against the creature you saw that first shift in the secure room.”

Romus’s eyes go wide in what looks like fear. His little tongue licks his lips. “I see,” he says.

“We know where it is,” Aiah says, “and we know it’s vulnerable now, for the next few days. I intend to establish a task force—a very secret one—to destroy the creature. My question is, Will you join it?”

Romus hesitates, his head swinging left and right on his long neck. “I have no experience in this,” he says.

“None of us do.”

“Is the triumvir a part of this scheme?”

Aiah hesitates. “He has given me to understand,” she says, “that this action will meet with his approval.”

Romus’s cilia give an uneasy, boneless shiver. “That is, forgive me, an evasive answer.”

It’s also a lie, of course. Aiah reminds herself that she should be more sparing with them.

“The triumvir does not know of this action,” Aiah says finally. “No one does. You do not, and I do not, and the creature does not exist.”

Romus is patient. “That is not quite an answer, either.”

Aiah runs her hands through her ringlets, throws her hair over her shoulders. “If you join this group,” she says finally, “it will be as a favor to me, and at some risk to yourself, and you will be doing immeasurable good to the community. If you choose not to join…” She sighs, shrugs. “Nothing more will be said. I only implore you to keep this a complete secret, both for your sake and mine.”

Romus sways back and forth while the silence builds. Aiah turns away, her nerves crawling with the unnatural motion. Finally, in Romus’s reedy tones, the answer comes.

“I have lived a long while,” he says, “and I am now, long after my first century is past, inclined to wonder for what. I spent years in the half-worlds, hardly ever seeing the Shield, scheming to advance my security, aiding people who have now all been murdered. Even my title of doctor is less than honorary, more a nickname than a real title. Now I have a job, and half an office, and a meal ticket… more than I’ve ever had, I suppose, but it hardly seems worth a century of effort.” Something uncertain flickers in his dark eyes. “If that thing, that demon, kills me now, what will I have lost? Half an office… so why does this half an office seem so precious?”

Having nothing to offer him, no more words of persuasion or consolation, Aiah waits. Eventually Romus pauses in his swaying, looks down at her.

“Very well,” he says. “I will join.” “Thank you, Doctor,” Aiah says.

Rohder blinks at Aiah with his pale blue eyes. “No,” he says.

She looks at him in surprise. Of all those she’d hoped to talk into destroying Taikoen, Rohder was the one she’d felt most sure of.

He lays his cigaret on the edge of the ashtray carefully, as if he were laying an artillery tube on an enemy objective, and gives a meditative frown.

“I have a number of objections,” he says. “What you propose is illegal, even under our current martial law. It is well outside our department’s authorization, and it violates the procedural and security standards which you yourself have established. And this action is highly dangerous for a group of untrained, inexperienced mages… What are you going to do if there are casualties? That creature—if it exists—could burn away the minds of half your people, and you still might not catch it.”

“If we work together,” Aiah says. “If we all know what we are doing…”

“You will not know what you are doing.” Rohder brushes cigaret ash from his shirtfront. “And I am far too old for this sort of thing,” he adds. “The last time I coped with a plasm emergency—the Bursary Street flamer, you remember, back in Jaspeer—I ended up in the hospital. I cannot expose my neurons to plasm of that strength, not any longer.”

“Well. I understand. If it’s a matter of your health…”

“No, it’s not,” says Rohder sharply. “Haven’t you been listening? It is not simply unhealthy—it is dangerous, it’s illegal, and…” He leans forward, a kind of cold anger in his blue eyes. “And this creature has a measure of political protection, does he not?”

Aiah finds herself paralyzed for a moment beneath the certainty of those watery eyes, beneath the intelligence that had just unraveled the secret she had been trying so desperately to preserve with lies she had thought so cunning.

“Yes,” she finally says. “But it’s unwilling protection. The person doesn’t want—”

Rohder nods thoughtfully to himself. “I knew when I read Constantine’s article: It was too outside his usual sphere… far too assured.” He nods as if confirming something to himself. “He found a use for the thing, then. I’d wondered how so many of the Keremaths had died, in the first minutes of the coup, in such a well-shielded building.”

“It’s haunting him,” Aiah says. “It can destroy everything he’s built. We’ve got to get rid of it.”

Rohder takes a meditative draw on his cigaret. “Then why is Constantine not leading the charge?” he says. “Why isn’t he putting a group of mages together—he can find more suitable ones than you can, I’m sure. Why isn’t Constantine solving his own problem?”

“He can’t. He’s too caught up in it. And—” There is an ache in her throat, because she doesn’t want to admit this of him, not this kind of weakness. It’s not, after all, a flaw of greatness; not a crime of excess, like those she’s got used to, a desire for women, or an uncontrollable appetite for conspiracy. A baffling subtlety of policy.

“Constantine is afraid of the thing,” she admits. “He’s known it for years, and—”

“If he’s afraid of it,” reasonably, “then perhaps it is with good reason. Perhaps you should be as afraid as he.”

“The secret is very near to being revealed,” Aiah insists. “There is no one who can follow Constantine, no one capable of continuing his work. If he is linked with this creature, he falls, and all our work, yours and mine, goes for nothing. I haven’t given my life to Caraqui to have it wrecked by something like this.”

Rohder leans back and considers. A spasm, amusement perhaps, crosses his features. “You want to keep your job,” he says. “That is a reason I can respect.”

“That is not what I mean!” Frustration and anger fire her words into the air like bullets. “It’s not just me, it’s the tens of thousands who died, all the people who lost their homes… All they’ve got left is hope, and I can’t let them lose that, too, not when I could have helped…” Her nails bite the metal of the chair arm, leave silver scars in the gray paint.

Rohder regards the matter, nods. “I will offer what advice I can, though I will not confront this thing directly, nor will I play a part in your actual operation.”

Aiah feels her frustration abate somewhat. “Thank you,” she says.

“And in regard to our jobs, our official jobs,” reaching for a file, “I have another report from the Havilak’s Transformation team. They have found another altered office building, the Communications and Telephony Center down on Orange Canal.”

“Altered.” The shift in subject matter bewilders her for a moment. “Oh—you mean—”

“Another building, which we’d scheduled for internal reshaping along the lines of fractionate interval theory, was found to have been altered before we could get there. A complete job this time, not half-finished like the first.”

The Dreaming Sisters, Aiah thinks, a burst of revelation. It’s the sisters who are altering these buildings, giving themselves the plasm for those huge displays. They must have discovered FIT long ago, kept it to themselves, along with their theories of life extension and plasm use…

“As before,” Rohder continues, “the meters have shown the increase, which occurred gradually about a month ago, and there is no evidence that any plasm was stolen.”

They only used the plasm for a brief display, Aiah thinks. Afterward they let it flow into the public supply.

Perhaps she will confront them with this knowledge at some time, or through this matter of Taikoen earn their trust so that they will share their secrets with her.

“If there was no plasm stolen,” Aiah says, “then it’s not the business of our department.”

“I find it difficult to believe,” Rohder says, “in these omnibenevolent mages who creep about in secret to improve the structure of our public buildings. I would like to know what they’re after.”

“Maybe you’ll meet them someday.”

He narrows his eyes, suspicious of her sudden gaiety.

“Maybe,” he says.

Alfeg’s office is filled with Barkazil memorabilia: old Holy League recruiting posters, a frame chromo of the Coffee Factory before the war, pictures of long-dead politicians, and, in a wetsilver frame, the same cheap portrait of Karlo that hangs in Aiah’s flat.

The metal door is locked from the inside. Aiah sits on the desk, Khorsa and Alfeg are in chairs, and Dr. Romus is coiled on the floor. Refiq is back in his apartment, with booze, pills, and a girl he picked up, and will probably be there for a while.

“Destroying the hanged man,” Aiah tells them, “will mean destroying Refiq’s body along with it. Refiq is already dead, but we can’t prove it, and it won’t look that way to an observer. It will look like a violation of the victim’s rights. Even under martial law we’ve had to obtain warrants for our arrests, we’ve presented evidence to military judges, and the sentences passed have been legal under martial-law decree. If we destroy the hanged man, we will be acting in violation of law.”

She looks at the solemn faces of Khorsa, Alfeg, and Dr. Romus. “That’s why I’ve spoken only to you three. Whatever we do here, I want absolute secrecy in this matter, and I want you to understand that this mission will not take place officially, that there will be no files, no casework, no commendations. It’s a job that needs to be done in complete secrecy, so complete that no one else can ever be told.”

Khorsa sits below a framed blowup of the cover of Corona, Aiah smiling from the balcony of the Falcon Tower, her skin tones subtly tinged with gold. Khorsa tilts her head in thought. “This is where the Party Sickness comes from, isn’t it?” she says.

“Yes. It’s the hanged man trying to get the most out of his stolen body before it dies. The Party Sickness is always fatal, remember.”

“Ethemark is forming a task group on the Party Sickness. Does he know about this?”

Aiah looks at her. “No. Ethemark is a talented mage and administrator, but he is a political appointee with his own agenda. I do not wish to bring him into this, because there are political implications which I do not wish to see any party in Caraqui attempt to exploit.”

Alfeg seems surprised. “How is this a political issue?”

Aiah looks at him and unloads the half-truth she has ready. Risky, because she knows that Romus already knows more than she plans to tell the rest of the team.

“I have detected the hanged man in the Palace,” she says. Alfeg and Khorsa stare up at her with horror in their eyes.

“I don’t believe anyone in the Palace has suffered from the Party Sickness,” Aiah continues, “but everyone here is vulnerable not only to having our bodies possessed by this creature, but to physical attack as well.”

Alfeg stammers out a question. “Shouldn’t you tell—I don’t know—the army? The president? Someone?”

Aiah looks at him. “How do I know this isn’t the army’s creature? Or the ally of someone in the Palace? Or maybe spying on behalf of one of our own government departments?” She looks at them each in turn.

“Force of the Interior,” Khorsa murmurs.

Aiah gives Khorsa a look as if to say yes. Aiah has no objection to their all believing the hanged man is something of Sorya’s.

“We keep the existence of this thing entirely in this room,” Aiah emphasizes, “and we tell no one.”

“Not even—?” Khorsa ventures to suggest.

’Wo one,” Aiah says. Khorsa looks uncertain. “Who is the creature likely to be spying on, if it’s here to spy?” Aiah asks. “Exactly the person you’re thinking of, most likely. And we don’t know for certain how many of these creatures there are.” She shakes her head. “The matter stays here. And we handle it ourselves, and with the help of some others we can trust.”

Change the subject now, she thinks, before they have a chance to work up objections. She turns to Alfeg. “We’re going to try to lure Refiq to a place we can control, and then finish him off.”

“Just the four of us?” Khorsa asks.

“No.” A demonic little grin tweaks the corners of Aiah’s mouth. “No. We are going to be assisted by two hundred and fifty-six other mages.”

“Hanged man, eh?” Aratha says. She puts down her coffee mug. “I may have material on how to fight creatures of the sort—mind if I check something?”

Aiah looks at her in wonder. “Please do.”

Mage-Major Aratha is a solid woman, broad-shouldered and powerful, with deep cinnamon skin and surprising green eyes. Aiah had flown to Lanbola to meet her in her small apartment, before normal work hours, and found her in the middle of breakfast.

Aiah, who has not eaten for the last twenty-four hours, is finding the look and scent of Aratha’s toasted muffin very inviting.

Aratha steps into the living alcove, unstraps a military-looking trunk of battered gray metal, and opens the lid. She pulls out a series of plastic-bound volumes, finds the one she is looking for, and returns the others to the trunk. “Phantasm and Plasm Emanation Manual,” she says as she returns to the table. Aiah’s mouth quietly waters as Aratha bites into her muffin while leafing through the index.

“Does the military encounter hanged men often?” Aiah asks.

Aratha chews with gusto, shakes her head in answer, then swallows. “I don’t know anyone who ever has,” she says, “but since we encounter a lot of odd things in the course of our duty, we’re supposed to be prepared for anything. There’s usually a procedure for encountering anything you can imagine. See also vampires,” reading, narrowing her eyes. “I haven’t reviewed this since my academy days, so please forgive my poor memory.”

She flips pages and reads quietly while eating. When she is done, she puts down the book and looks up at Aiah. “You’ve got yourself a problem, all right. You couldn’t pick anything simple, like a flamer or an incarnate demon sword or anything, it had to be a hanged man.”

“The hanged man,” Aiah says, “picked Caraqui.”

“The biggest problem is going to be finding it—configuring your sensorium to detect not just plasm, but a modulation in plasm, which is what this thing is, according to what I read here. And if you can’t see it, you can’t confine it. Fortunately the manual has some ideas.”

“We’re going to lure it into an isolated plasm well, then use up the plasm. The creature will die when the plasm runs out.”

“The manual says that’s possible, but you want to know it’s in the plasm well.”

“I’d like to see the manual, if I may.”

Aratha shoves it across the table to her. Aiah looks with dismay at columns of fine print, a bewildering amount of jargon, and a large dose of acronyms. Configuration of the PMDS should be completed before arrival at the ASoO, she reads.

“You’re going to do this today?” Aratha says. “I’ll get a team together—two of my mages, people who survived the war, which means they’re both good and used to practically everything. And myself, of course.”

Aiah looks at her in surprise. She had not yet asked Aratha for anything. Aratha sees her look, misunderstands it.

“You won’t be wanting us?” she says.

“I will. I’m relieved that you’re so willing.”

“Oh.” Aratha shrugs. “You’re our Ministerial Assistant for Barkazil Liaison, after all. We’re under your orders.”

“This whole operation may be illegal. I can’t give you an order for it.”

Another shrug. “Verbal order will do. Then you class the whole operation as secret and no one will think about it ever again.” She gives Aiah a reassuring look. “Don’t worry. You have no idea how often this sort of thing comes up in wartime. I’ll pick trustworthy people.”

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^ould 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.”

“Refiq?” Alfeg says. “This is Dulat. 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, / wonder if you will be grateful.

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 other 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.

A half-dozen bolts blaze into Taikoen. His scintillating body scatters, loops, reforms. Once free of Refiq he will not be able to survive for long without plasm. He floats away from Refiq, lets the blasts drive him toward the sisters’ building, and then, with a sinuous, purposeful little twist of his form, Taikoen slides through the image on the huge door, Enters the Gateway, enters the maze that waits for him…

Aiah pursues, spreading phantom arms wide as she flies across Cold Canal at the speed of thought, fast as one of her plasm bullets. There is a strange high-pitched drone humming somewhere in her senses, and she realizes it’s Dr. Romus, a kind of buzzing battle-cry he’s uttering unconsciously as he flies to the attack. Aiah dives through the doorway—the sisters’ building is transparent to plasm, completely unshielded—and there is one of the Dreaming Sisters on her couch, not Whore but someone Aiah doesn’t know, lying with eyes closed and plasm contact in her mouth, and the sister has lifted a hand to point down the rightmost of the two corridors… Aiah flies in that direction, catches bits of Taikoen’s form speeding along the floor, as if he is in the process of diving into a plasm main just below the surface of the flags. Aiah gives a yelp of triumph and fires a bolt, sees bits of Taikoen flare up and scatter like sparks. Another of Aiah’s team fires a bolt—and Taikoen submerges completely, like a dolphin diving beneath the surface of the sea.

There are Dreaming Sisters in all the alcoves, and with a shiver at their strange knowing Aiah sees that each has raised a languid arm, fingers pointing down the corridor, directing Aiah and the others to their prey. The corridor loops right and down and then branches, but Aiah follows the sisters’ drowsing fingers, all lazily pointing at one spot in the wall, a carved trompe l’oeil of Rohder.

Aiah gathers herself and punches through the image, briefly feeling the chill of the stone around her—and then there is Taikoen, a figure hunched over one of the Dreaming Sisters, the violence already over, a spray of blood dripping down the alcove wall and the sister’s eyes a staring witness to her final terror. In her last instant, torn from her unearthly dreaming and her inhuman serenity, she had become human again, pain and raw emotion plain on her face.

But more eerie than this are the sisters in the other alcoves, all lying in repose, eyes closed in dream, minds far removed from the grisly scene save for the uplifted arms, the fingers pointing in silent, certain accusation, toward the guilty thief who has stolen their sister’s life.

Taikoen has taken the copper contact from the sister’s slack mouth; he is trying to take plasm. Aiah gathers energy, as if filling her lungs with air, and then flings the power at the hanged man, a ball of destruction. The hanged man shudders—the fury of the bolt splatters stone along the corridor, sets afire the dead sister’s mattress. Other animas fly into the corridor, surround Taikoen with a storm of fire. But he’s using the dead sister’s plasm now, creating a bubble shield that surrounds him. The bolts ricochet off the shield, strike sparks and splinter shards from the stone walls.

“Khorsa!” Aiah barks. “Alfeg! Protect the sisters! The rest of you—keep hitting him!”

The more plasm they fire at the hanged man, Aiah assumes, the faster he’ll use up his available supply. She wonders why he’s making a stand here, why he doesn’t simply dive into the nearest plasm main and run.

Maybe, she thinks, the sisters are making the plasm mains uncomfortable for him.

She fires bolt after bolt. The bubble shield spins, lurches, blazes with strange color. And then frost shivers up her veins at the sound of Taikoen’s insinuating voice.

“You, is it, girl-mage? Do you desire death so absolutely? I will oblige, young one…”

He recognizes me, she thinks in sudden terror; // this doesn’t work I’m dead. But the burning plasm in her veins provides an answer, draws Aiah’s lips back in a snarl. “Your death is overdue, creature. And it is the Golden Lady who brings it.”

She doesn’t know whether he hears her or not, whether she is projecting the words to him or just speaking them aloud in the Operations Room, but he acts as if he hears. Taikoen and the plasm-shield make a lunge, straight for Aiah’s anima, and she feels a sudden shock of contact, the touch of the thing’s cold, immortal mind, its dread intention, and knows its goal is to conquer her, nullify her, drive her mind into mad byways and seize her plasm for his own.

And as his mind presses upon hers she catches a glimpse of the way he sees things, the world bent and distorted, plasm the focus of the whole world, all other reality twisted toward it, leaning inward, strangely curved and warped, the colors shimmering in odd spectra, some strangely alive, imbued with a strange purpose… and what purpose could a color have…?

It is fear that saves her, a pure reflex that sends the plasm blasting from her into Taikoen, driving the ice from her in a spray of burning plasm fire. Molten metal sings in her veins. There is a roar of thwarted anger, a kind of snarl, and then the hanged man’s body twists again, a strange little Mobius shiver, and vanishes into the wall, into the building’s plasm conduits.

Aiah pauses—in the Operations Room she is aware of sweat pouring down her neck, of her heart hammering her ribs—and she turns her focus to the Dreaming Sisters, to the outstretched, pointing arms that seem to bridge the world of dreaming and not-dreaming…

The arms sway like compass needles, pointing up and right, and Aiah flies, penetrating the arched ceiling to the story above; and here the sisters’ arms are level, all pointing deeper into the building, and Aiah follows them, flying through walls and ceilings, through alcoves and images, penetrating as if entering a mirror her own image in The Apprentice, Sorya’s scornful gaze in The Shadow, Rohder’s thoughtful Mage. Contact with Taikoen’s mind seems to have deranged her perception in some way: the corridors and images seem warped, twisted, looming toward her as if threatening. She tries to ignore the effect, the distorted and ominous images, and concentrate only on her blazing pursuit.

She realizes as she flies that she is wearing the Golden Lady anima, the featureless icon of blazing gold… She can’t remember willing this, and wonders how long she has borne this form, whether she automatically slipped into it when she began to fly or perhaps took it on when she invoked the Golden Lady’s name, when she shouted at Taikoen in her plasm-pride.

She passes through a wall and finds herself in the dome room, sees Shieldlight passing through the slits in the dome to illuminate the gleaming plasm accumulator, copper and black ceramic behind its carved screen. A dreaming sister lies dead atop a control panel, blood spattering the dials and switches, the sight all the more horrible in Aiah’s distorted perceptions. Taikoen shimmers toward the accumulator, disappears into it before Aiah can launch a plasm blast. Other animas fly into the room, hover about the accumulator like a swarm of angry insects.

It is Taikoen’s last refuge. Plasm was flowing in the mains, and flowing only in one direction, from the accumulator to the sisters’ contacts. Taikoen fled upstream, as it were, to the source of the plasm. Perhaps he’d expected to find a plasm main that would carry him away, allow him to merge with Caraqui’s vast plasm well and vanish; but instead he’d found only a dead end, trapped himself here. He can still run, but if he does he will have to flee into a plasm conduit with less plasm than he has access to now, and he will find himself weaker and still lost, still caught in the sisters’ maze.

The dreaming sister Order of Eternity lies on a couch on the other side of the circular room. She sits upright, opens her eyes.

“Hit him from all sides,” Aiah says. “Destroy the accumulator and he has nowhere to run. Ready… on my command.”

“No.” Order of Eternity raises a hand. Her words are slurred by the plasm contact still in her mouth. “It is our turn. We will end it.”

Aiah hesitates. And then the dome room, the Sisters’ stony refuge, the world itself, seems to undergo a shift, a transformation. Aiah sees everything as through a pulsing wave, and she feels herself uplifted, as if buoyed up by a surge of the sea. There is a moment in which all seems to hang suspended… Aiah thinks wildly of the “slip” in the Barkazil dance, a hesitation between beats.

The world falls into place again, somehow more intense than before, more real. Aiah gazes at the dead sister, and recognizes the woman she knows as Inaction. The dead woman stares at her, a horrified expression that says, / was not expecting this.

The world shivers again to another pulse of… of what? Reality is changing, Aiah thinks, the pace of her thoughts fervid, they are changing the world.

“What is going on?” Khorsa wonders aloud in the breathless moment that follows, like a pause before the clapper strikes the bell.

Another pulse, another endless moment in which the world changes. Aiah feels herself buoyed up by a wave of gentle power. A cry of wonder parts her lips. The figures on the screen seem to move, shift, engage with one another in a solemn dance, the world-dance that Aiah has seen beyond the Shield, the dance of eternity, the dance of the Woman who is the Moon.

The timeless moment ends, and reality falls into place again, stone by slow stone.

“Wahhh,” Alfeg breathes in awe.

Order of Eternity stands, removes the contact from her mouth, and walks around the screen to where Aiah, the Golden Lady, waits. She seems to move with unnatural lithe movements, and her face is distorted, all eyes and forehead, the mouth and chin tiny. Taikoen’s perceptions have left their imprint on Aiah’s mind.

“The creature is dead,” says the sister. “We have abolished it.”

“How?” The question spills from Aiah’s mind.

“It existed as a modulation in plasm. Once the creature ceased its movement and was contained in one place, and we had the leisure to do so, we modulated the same plasm in a way as to reduce the creature’s modulation to zero—we canceled the creature out, like one wave precisely canceling another and leaving the sea smooth.”

“Ask her if she’s sure.” Aratha’s skeptical voice sounds in Aiah’s ear. “I don’t want to have to go through this again.”

“I didn’t know such a thing could be done,” Aiah tells the sister.

Order of Eternity walks on bare feet to the control panel, reaches out to touch, in a familiar gesture of tenderness, Inaction’s short black hair. “To understand plasm is to control reality,” she says. “Through our understanding, we made the thing unreal.”

And then Aiah feels fingers on her throat and she is torn from the dome room, from the calm gaze of the dreaming sister, and finds herself in the Operations Room, with one of Constantine’s huge hands about her neck. He pulls her from her chair, the t-grip flying from her hand as it reaches the end of its cable. His face is distorted, all anger and teeth. Behind him Aiah sees his guards, Martinus included, yanking t-grip cables from their sockets, disarming Aiah’s team.

“What are you doing?” Constantine cries. “What is this treason?” He bends her backward over the desk, claw on her windpipe. Aiah seizes his thick wrist in both hands, tries to tear him off her, finds him immovable as iron. Tears come to her eyes as she tries to drag air into her lungs. “Have you gone mad?” Constantine roars.

Then plasm sizzles the air and Constantine flies backward with a grunt, as if he’s been hit in the stomach. He tangles with Aiah’s chair and goes down. The world seems to lean in, as if about to crush them all. Aiah clutches her throat. Heat flashes on Aiah’s skin. The bodyguards, with their portable plasm packs, are dueling with the mages they haven’t yet disarmed.

“Stop this!” Aiah shouts. Constantine rises from the floor, murder in his eyes, and lunges for Aiah again. She gets her feet between them, drives at him with her legs, keeps him off. Out of the corner of her eye Aiah sees a guard with a gun, and her cry of warning occurs simultaneously with the gun’s exploding at the touch of plasm, all its ammunition detonating. The guard, face blackened, hand mangled, gives a cry and falls. Constantine lunges again, throws aside Aiah’s legs, and dives atop her. He seizes her hair, beats her head against the desk. “What is the matter with you?” he demands. “What is this spirit of treachery?” Red explosions fill Aiah’s head as he pounds her against the desk.

And then Constantine is torn off her again, and she hears him give a cry of rage, a cry abruptly choked off. Aiah sits up, clutching her throat, blinking furiously as she tries to bring her vision back. The room is filled with an ominous silence.

The red splashes fade, from Aiah’s sight but waves of distortion flood her vision. Dr. Romus has wrapped his thick body about Constantine, has pinned his arms and brought him down, a loop around his throat. Martinus has been thrown against the wall, his arms held there, obviously by plasm. Another guard is unconscious, and the guard whose gun exploded rolls on the floor, clutching his maimed hand. The military mages—Aratha, Kari, and Melko—stand erect in their uniforms, transference grips in their hands, shields buzzing before them. In command. The room seems to bend toward them as if in homage.

Alfeg touches a split lip, a black eye. Khorsa, businesslike, plugs in her t-grip and arms herself.

Alarmed faces—PED employees—blink at the scene from the doorway.

Constantine gives Aiah a stricken look. “What are you doing?” he whispers, using the little air Romus has left him. “What is this madness?”

Aiah massages her throat. “It’s finished,” she says. “The thing is dead.”

A convulsion crosses Constantine’s face. “You had no right!” he says. “He had more than a measure of greatness! My oldest”—he blinks—“oldest friend. Greatest advisor. The one to whom I owe…” His voice fails.

Friend, Constantine had called the monster. Advisor. New words for such a thing.

Aiah carefully puts her feet on the floor, lets her weight rest on them, looks down at Constantine.

“I had every right,” she says. “I finished the job you couldn’t, thirty-odd years ago. The job you ran from.”

An ardent look comes to Constantine’s face. “He was useful. He was necessary. My plans—”

His voice chokes off again as Dr. Romus shifts his coils, shuts his wind. Romus’s reedy voice buzzes in the sudden silence.

“So this is the creature’s protector,” he says. His irony sizzles in the air. “This… great man… permitted so many to die. And he would have handed one of the Dreaming Sisters to such a thing.”

“Gangsters,” Constantine whispers. “I thought they were gangsters.”

Romus’s coils shift again, tightening on chest and throat, and Aiah can see fear enter Constantine’s eyes. Aiah sees death settle onto his face, a smiling skull behind the purpling flesh. Romus turns his little face to Aiah.

“Shall I kill him, miss?” Romus asks. “It would be easy… His usefulness to the world is over.”

A great weariness falls on Aiah. She shakes her head.

“He may try to kill us all,” Romus reminds.

“He can’t,” Aiah says. She looks at her people standing in the doorway, the people she has hired personally, made loyal to her, her PED, intended as an instrument of Constantine’s will, now her own. And through the small crowd hurry members of Aiah’s own guard—she normally does not use guards unless she leaves the building, but here they are now, summoned by calls from people in her division.

She looks down at Constantine. “It’s gone too far,” she says. “Too many people know now, or could put it together if they wished. Enough to destroy you if you press this. PED, Barkazils, the army.” She passes a hand across her forehead, looks at her own guards taking up position in the room. “Your only hope,” Aiah tells Con-stantine, “is if those who know remain silent—no, wrong,” shaking her head. “You are safe only if we deny certain things ever happened at all. And for that, we will need to feel safe.”

Constantine mouths words that cannot be heard. Aiah looks up at Martinus, pinned by plasm against the wall. “You understand this, don’t you?”

In Martinus’s eyes she reads understanding. He gives a little nod, as much as the plasm bonds will let him. Aiah looks at Romus.

“Let him go,” she says.

A touch of petulance enters the reedy voice. “I do not think,” Romus says, “he will feel grateful for his life.” “That’s up to him,” Aiah says.

Dr. Romus loosens his coils. Constantine gasps for air, blinking dumbly at the world. His hand tugs at the lace at his throat.

“I want your resignation,” he says. “I want it tomorrow.”

“As the triumvir wishes,” Aiah says, too tired to care.

Aiah and her team leave the room before Constantine, her guards a wall between her and his party. The crowd, the couple of dozen people working third shift, parts in silence. Aiah’s deranged perception sees them as stick figures with huge, staring eyes. Aiah sees that Rohder is among them, cigaret dangling from his lips, his blue eyes observing with keen interest.

“Kari and I will return directly to the division by aerocar,” Aratha says. “Melko will take a different route. We’re going to stay shielded until we hear from you.”

Aiah nods. “Of course. But we’ll be safe enough, once Constantine has time to think.”

“His right thoughts are best assured by our thorough preparation,” Aratha says.

“Exactly,” Khorsa adds. “I’m going to lock myself in the secure room and write up a full report.”

“And so will I,” Aratha says.

“Make sure you know where those reports are,” Aiah says. “If the wrong people get ahold of them…”

“Not that I particularly give a damn,” Khorsa says, “but if all works out as planned, no one will see my report at all.” Her face turns hard. “The bastard,” she adds.

Alfeg holds a handkerchief to his bleeding lip. “Miss Aiah,” he says, “let me stay with you till tomorrow.”

Aiah shakes her head. “Staying with me won’t make you safer.”

“That wasn’t my point.”

An exhausted smile touches Aiah’s lips. “Yes. I know.” She takes him in her arms, kisses his cheek. “Go to the infirmary. That eye looks nasty. And you might be concussed.”

“So might you.”

Aiah fingers the tender place at the back of her head, winces. “Possibly,” she admits.

In the end it is agreed that Dr. Romus and her guards will accompany Aiah to her apartment.

Which they find filled with Constantine’s flowers, hundreds of them, and a written apology, a model of its kind, still unread on the table.