City on Fire (Metropolitan 2) (6 page)

The control room is as vast as everything else, one bank after another of controls, levers, switches, glowing dials. In one corner is an icon to Tangid, the two-faced god of power, with a few candles burning in front of it, and in another corner is another icon to a figure Aiah doesn’t recognize, with no candles at all. Looming overhead, video monitors show unblinking views of the outside of the building, of the entrance areas, of Government Harbor several radii away, and of other points deemed important to Caraqui’s security.

Mages, some civilian and some not, sit before consoles, eyes closed, bodies swaying as power pours through them. Captain Delruss’s comrades, the uniformed personnel operating the system, seem dwarfed by the enormity of it all.

“During the fighting all this could have given us a lot of trouble,” Delruss says, “but afterward we discovered there were very few calls for plasm made during the coup.”

“
Why was that?” Aiah asks, gazing up at glowing monitor screens. She can’t imagine anyone
forgetting
to use the colossal power of this place.

“There was sabotage of the communications system and of the plasm delivery network,” Delruss says. “But nothing that couldn’t have been overcome by competent people in the control room. What really won the coup for our side was that the enemy leadership was completely decapitated. There was no one left alive with the authority to make big plasm calls.”

Aiah’s mouth goes dry as she remembers the splashes of red-brown on her bedroom walls. “Do you know how our side managed it?” she asks.

Delruss has clearly been giving this issue a lot of thought. “Very good intelligence, for one thing. It looked as if we knew where almost every last one of the enemy leaders were, and were able to target them. And there were probably holes in the security screen here that our side had discovered, so mages could slip an attack through. . . .” Delruss frowns, shakes his head. “But what sort of attack was used, miss, I can’t say. There are a large number of possibilities. But it was done very well, however it was done.”

Aiah remembers a moment of choking terror in a deep underground tunnel, the appearance of a thing that seemed made of purest black and silver, the chill waves of ice that flooded her nerves. . . .

Ice man. Hanged man.
The damned
. . . an evil thing, whatever label you chose to give it. Its personal name was Taikoen, for that was its name when it was a man— a hero, Taikoen the Great, the leader who saved Atavir from the Slaver Mages. Now debased, beyond humanity, a creature that Constantine could summon out of the depths of the plasm well, a thing deadly to everything that lived. . . .

The enemy leadership was completely decapitated.
Perhaps literally. And Aiah has the feeling she knows how it was done. A large part of it, anyway.

From the deep underwater plasma fortress, Delruss takes Aiah to the highest point of the Aerial Palace, where the huge bronze transmission horns are set in clusters like the outgrowths of a strange, intricate forest of gleaming metal. The horns are ornamented with ornate baroque swirls and scallops and, at each end, the sculptured figure of a hawk about to take flight. A cold wind buffets Aiah as she gazes out at the city— pontoons, buildings, roof gardens, long gray-green canals packed with ship and barge traffic— an endless procession stretching all the way to the distant volcanoes of the Metropolis of Barchab. Several of the aerial tramcars are visible in the distance, dancing on invisible wires. The volcanoes, Aiah realizes, are the only object in sight that, on account of altitude and danger of eruption, were not inhabited by the swarms of humanity that otherwise covered the globe.

She looks in the other direction, toward the North Pole only three or four hundred radii away. She sees giant buildings looming up out of the sea, one group twenty or so radii away and another dimly visible in the distance behind a cluster of spires. The Shield glows on their gleaming windows and burnished metal. Jagged transmission horns top almost every building.

“Lorkhin Island, and Little Lorkhin,” Delruss says. “Extinct volcanoes. They build tall here, when they can find bedrock.” He peers out into the distance. “The whole metropolis is ringed by tall buildings where the sea turns shallow. It’s called the Crown of Caraqui.”

Here on the Palace roof, some of the transmission horns have been blown from their moorings, and others damaged. Engineers are rigging a big tripod of steel beams to hoist the damaged horns in place while repairs are made.

“We tried to take these out at the start, miss,” Delruss says. “We used helicopters with special munitions, but we had only limited success. If these transmission horns had been able to broadcast power to where it was needed, we’d have had a much harder time.”

“But there was no one to give the orders.”

“Correct, miss.”

The cold wind knifes through Aiah’s bones. Somewhere below a ship’s siren whoops three times, like an unanswered call for help. Aiah steps toward the edge, her feet crunching on glass from a rooftop arboretum blown open in the fighting, its rare trees and shrubs already withering in the cold.

Above, between her and the Shield, plasm lines trace across the sky:
The Situation Has Returned To Normal. Everything Is Safe. The New Government Asks That All Citizens Return to Work.

“
Are
we safe?” she asks.

“Against what?”

“An attack.”

Delruss shrugs. “A lot of the collection web has holes blown in it. We’ve got telepresent mages patrolling the perimeter, but they can’t see everything. Twenty percent of the transmission horns are off-line, and a lot of the sabotage inflicted during the coup hasn’t been repaired yet. . . well, not exactly
not repaired.”

He sighs, prepares his long story. “Certain of the sabotage was performed by groups with particular interests, in anticipation of particular rewards. They are making certain they get these rewards before repairing the damage they made.”

“I see,” Aiah says. She believes she now understands how she’s getting one of the twisted as her deputy. “So it’s lucky there’s no fighting going on right now.”

“Yes, miss.”

Aiah steps to the parapet and brushes wind-whipped hair from her eyes. She looks down, sees a statue in a niche below her, hanging from bronze straps. It’s the first time she’s seen one of these up close, and she sees that it’s three times human size, and that the upturned face is set into an expression of agony— eyes staring, lips drawn back in pain. Cold fingers brush her spine as she looks into the featureless metal eyes.

“
What
are
these?” she asks. “They’re all over the building.”

Delruss looks over the parapet and gazes unmoved into the agonized face. He’s probably seen much worse in his time.

“Martyrs,” he said. “The Avians used to hang political and religious criminals from buildings to die of exposure.”

Aiah is appalled. “Hanging off the
Palace?”
she asks.

“
Not the Palace, but other buildings, yes. Originally there were other statues in these niches— gods, immortals, and Avians— but when the Avians fell, they put
these
here instead. And a lot of the local Dalavites hang themselves off buildings as a kind of ordeal, to commune with the spirits of their martyrs.”

He looks at her, a trace of a smile touching his lips. “There were some tourist brochures in an office downstairs. I read them.”

“I don’t suppose your brochure mentioned the Dreaming Sisters?”

“Sorry, no. That’s new to me.”

The sky shapes into an advertisement for the new Lynxoid Brothers chromoplay, the Lynxoids and the Blue Titan performing a violent dance across the sky. Aiah is freezing, and she’s seen enough for today.

From the roof they descend into the structure, and Aiah inspects some of the local conduits, the electric switches that divert plasm from one place to another, the meters that record consumption for purposes of billing.

She thanks Delruss and returns to her office to see if anyone has called— no message lights on the commo array— and finds that her new office furniture has been delivered. Since there seems little to do, she returns to her living quarters.

The suite smells of fresh paint. The carpet has been cleaned, and a brand-new mattress waits on the bed, still in a clear plastic wrapper.

It occurs to her that the situation is so fluid that she can only discover the limits of her authority by giving orders and seeing who obeys them. That she could so easily get service for her room and office argues for the fact that at least some people are inclined to do what she says.

Get the office window repaired tomorrow, she thinks.

She should make a list of everything she needs. Office supplies, access to the computers, scheduled use of the transmission horns, maybe access to secure files, if she can figure out where the secure files
are
....

Ask for it all, she thinks. Maybe she’ll get it.

She finds a piece of paper and begins to make lists.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS TALKING ABOUT

LORDS OF THE NEW CITY

MORE THAN JUST A CHROMOPLAY

A bar. Middle of service shift, after the stores have started to close. The place is a glittering profusion of mirrors, brass ornaments, crystal chandeliers, black sculpted furniture made of a shiny composite. It’s crowded and noisy, with a good cross-section of the local inhabitants— most of whom seem to possess both youth and dinars— but no twisted, which Aiah is relieved to discover.

During the course of this shift’s explorations she’s found that about half the inhabitants of Caraqui feature the stocky build and copper skin that registers as “normal” here, but the rest are every conceivable variety of build and skin tone, a wide enough variety that Aiah, with her brown skin and eyes and black hair, doesn’t feel as out of place as she would on a normal street at home in Jaspeer.

Aiah sits in a corner surrounded by packages and waits her turn in the restaurant section.

“A gentleman is buying drinks for the house,” the waitress says. “What would you like?”

The waitress tugs at the hem of her red velvet vest while Aiah considers. The number of customers leads Aiah to conclude that whoever is buying could afford another round of what she’s drinking.

“Markhand white. Two-Cross,” she says, and taps her crystal glass. Not without a twinge of guilt.

Before she’d met Constantine she hadn’t ever realized that wine could be good, or that food could be delicious
as a normal thing,
without special effort. When Aiah was growing up, assembling a good meal was akin to a treasure hunt: good vegetables traded for, or plucked from roof gardens; favors exchanged for a good grain-fed chicken or squab or, on special occasion, a goat; fruit acquired through a process of barter too complex to be apprehended by the outsider.

But for Constantine good food is simply part of the background— he can afford the best: fruit and vegetables grown in select arboretums, animals and fowl fattened on food that otherwise would have been given to people, wine grown in rooftop vineyards, fermentation and acids balanced by magecraft.

Being around Constantine had left Aiah with expensive tastes, tastes at variance with the thrifty habits of a lifetime, but then Constantine had also left Aiah with money in a bank account in Gunalaht.

She has spent a lot of money this service shift, almost a month’s wages at her old job in Jaspeer. She’d realized that she needed new clothing— she’d fled Jaspeer with only the clothes on her back, and bought only a few items in Gunalaht on her way to Caraqui—and so she’d crossed one of the graceful arched bridges leading from the Palace on a shopping expedition.

It was an expensive part of the city. When she handed over her checktube in order to pay, it required a certain effort of will.

But at least she will be able to dress as befits her station, whatever that turns out to be.

The waitress brings Aiah the complimentary glass of wine and takes her empty glass. “Another round!” someone shouts. The voice is loud and male, and followed by cheers.

“Another round?” the waitress asks.

“Not yet.”

Aiah sips the wine, and a tingling taste of apples and ambrosia explodes across her palate. A young couple— both in subdued lace and velvet, the man in black, the woman in violet— struggle through the crowd and dump a pair of heavy briefcases under the bench next to Aiah’s table.

“I can’t believe they let him go,” the man says. “After all the people he disappeared.”

“He probably knows something,” the woman says. “Something about Drumbeth or Parq or someone else in the new government.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me.”

The woman smiles thinly. "Are you growing cynical about our new government already?”

“I am a good citizen,” the man says, “and will be pleased to support the revolution if it will support me to a promotion.”

“
Plenty more where that came from!”
roars the man buying drinks. More cheers. He comes into sight, dancing clumsily in hobnailed military boots. He’s wearing a uniform that Aiah doesn’t recognize, but she gathers from its ostentation that he ranks high. The tunic is unbuttoned, revealing a broad stomach and a shirt stained with wine, and he hasn’t shaved in days. He waves a bottle of wine in one hand and a checktube in the other.

“
Let’s dance!”
he bellows, and makes a bearlike pirouette. The couple next to Aiah watch with clear distaste.

Aiah half-raises her glass to her lips. The officer staggers, recovers, looks up at Aiah with pale blue eyes...

The hair on Aiah’s neck rises. Ice floods her veins. The blue eyes stare back at her in a terrifying moment of mutual recognition.

The man staggers again, recovers, then turns abruptly and heads for the door. The crowd gives a good-natured groan of disappointment as he stalks out. He wanted to be anonymous, and Aiah has somehow spoiled his fun.