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  The radiance reflecting off the brick pillars fades to a dull orange. Even though her original sourceline to Mage Towers is still alive, Aiah feels diminished. To avoid disorientation she prepares herself mentally to return to Mage Towers, then slowly turns the other tap, the Mage Towers sourceline, and allows her anima to shrivel, her plasm-senses, so brilliant and alive, to fade away, to be replaced by the diminished reality and shrunken perceptions of a young woman sitting in someone else’s apartment many radii away.

  CHAPTER 13

  LOTTERY SCANDAL ALLEGED!

  DETAILS ON THE WIRE!

  Work has ended for the day. Aside from a pair of guards, Aiah is alone with Sorya in the big building. Their heels clack loudly in the narrow spaces between the looming accumulators.

  “A flaming woman,” Sorya says. Her long forest-green dress swirls about her ankles; ruby earrings and necklace glow in the shadows with a smoky light. “You astounded our crew,” she says. “I must say, Miss Aiah, that you have a greater dramatic sense than I’d given you credit for.”

  Surprise tingles ominously along Aiah’s nerves as she walks with Sorya along the factory floor.

  “A burning woman?” Aiah says. “Is that what I looked like?”

  Amusement glitters in Sorya’s green eyes. “Didn’t you know?”

  “I wanted my anima to fluoresce. I didn’t know what I really looked like.”

  Sorya gives a tigerish grin. “You nearly scorched the eyebrows off a couple of them.”

  “Ah.” Aiah is absorbed by thoughts of the burning woman. Is this how it starts? she wonders. If she hadn’t turned the tap when she did, perhaps she would have become a flaming giant stalking the streets of Jaspeer.

  Sorya pauses, lips tilted in a smile. “Not that the crew would look away,” she adds, “since you forgot to give your anima any hint of clothing.”

  “Ah.” Aiah glances down at her gangly body and is embarrassed to consider its defects magnified by plasm, skinny legs and pointed elbows and every rib visible — more humiliating, really, than the mere fact of nudity. Now, she thinks enviously, if she’d really wanted to give the workmen an eyeful, she should have thought to clothe her anima in Sorya’s body, with its abundant curve of hip and breast, narrow waist and legs of whipcord muscle.

  Sorya reaches out, touches the black ceramic surface of an accumulator. It’s so polished that Aiah can see the blue eddies of the other woman’s reflection in its surface. “At least we’re tapping the stuff now,” Sorya says. “No more monsters, no more strange effects to call attention to what we possess. Since we won’t be needing it, we’ll want you to lead a work party down into the pneuma station to seal off that old toilet.”

  Entombing the plasm diver’s mummy, Aiah thinks. If only remembrance was buried as easily, memories of the empty eye-sockets, the mouth with its silent scream . . .

  “Get Authority jumpsuits and hardhats for your party,” Aiah says, “and let me know when you want it done.”

  Sorya’s fingers leave smudge marks on the immaculate black ceramic as her hand drifts away. She glances up at the bronze collection web that protects the plasm batteries. As if in response to her glance, one of the factory’s pigeons flaps upward from its new resting place.

  Sorya’s glance narrows. “Will the cage work?” she says.

  Aiah is amused. Sorya is used to the elaborate collection webs built into the architecture of structures like Mage Towers and the Plasm Authority Building; this improvised apparatus looks suspicious to her.

  “If the web’s extended into the basement,” Aiah says, “and also covers the tap, yes. But it’s hard to make specific judgments without knowing what the web is intended to protect the accumulators from.”

  Sorya gives Aiah a sidelong look out of her eyes, then looks up to the web again.

  “We’ll need some way to project our power more efficiently,” she says. “Transmission horns or something like them, but they’ll have to be hidden. We can have a fixed horn pointed straight at Mage Towers to give us power there, but there will need to be other horns with multidirectional capability.”

  Aiah gives this some thought. “Billboards,” she says. “Put billboards on top of the factory. The scaffolding can disguise your apparatus, ne?”

  Sorya looks at her in surprise. “Very good,” she said.

  Aiah grins. “Warriors of Thunderworld,” she says. “With Khore and Semlin. They used that trick in the chromoplay.”

  Sorya laughs. “Obviously I’m not sufficiently in tune with popular culture.” She walks toward the little office, bright silk skirt outlining her legs at each stride. Aiah follows.

  “What’s it in aid of?” she asks.

  “Say again?”

  Aiah waves an arm. “All this. What’s it for? What’s the web supposed to be protecting you from? Why is everything being done in such a rush?”

  Sorya looks over her shoulder, frowns a bit. She opens the door to the office, steps inside, closes the door after Aiah. The office is a mess, metal furniture stacked in a corner, the floor used as a storage area for a propane torch, bits of bronze rod, cushioned boxes of control equipment that haven’t been installed yet. Aiah looks for a place to sit and fails to find one.

  Sorya leans her back against the door, folds her arms, looks at Aiah.

  “What is plasm but power?” she says. “And what are plasm and power but reflections of the human will? It’s will that controls plasm, and power, and — ultimately — people.”

  “What about access?” Aiah asks. “If you don’t have access to plasm, what good is will?”

  “The will finds its own access,” Sorya says. “It did for you, did it not?”

  Surprise touches Aiah’s nerves. “I suppose it did,” she says slowly.

  “Constantine told you once,” Sorya says, “that he and I were not little people. It is not our wealth that makes us giants in this world, but the force of our wills. And the strong will, ultimately, makes its own rules.” Her green eyes glitter as they gaze at Aiah, and Aiah seems to sense the formidable power of Sorya’s will, a constant pressure like that of wind funneling between two buildings. Aiah feels almost as if she needs to lean into it to keep from toppling backwards.

  “You and I,” Sorya says, “are breaking a hundred laws simply by standing here. But laws mean nothing in this place, because laws are made by little people — which I, at least, am not — and the laws are made to guard the small against the powerful. Futile, firstly because the truly powerful find their own opportunities; and secondly, because when the small suppress the great, they suppress as well the greatness of their own commonwealth.”

  Sorya smiles, sharp teeth gleaming white in the small room. “Given this, given that the strong find their own place, and do so as inevitably as the water that seeks its own level, then what we intend here becomes clear enough. Specific details are inconsequential, but” Sorya takes a breath. “We seek to enlarge our scope. Our power. To project our will into the world. And this, inevitably, will bring us into conflict with others that possess the power we intend to make our own. And so, in this conflict of will, we must guard ourselves against those who may seek to attack us.”

  Some kind of war, Aiah thinks, and Sorya’s no administrative assistant, she’s a general.

  But war on who? An individual? The Operation? Or a whole metropolis?

  Her mind chills at the thought that Constantine had, in one sense or another, warred on all three at one time or another.

  “You’re guarding against a plasm attack, obviously,” Aiah says, “or you wouldn’t need a collection web.”

  Sorya nods.

  “If,” Aiah reasons carefully, “you were preparing to defend against, say, the police or military of Jaspeer, they would have to assault this place very carefully so as not to cause casualties among the population here. There must be ten thousand people living within a radius of this building.”

  “Yes.” Sorya’s glittering eyes watch her with interest.

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sp; “But if, say, your . . . opponents .. . have no reason to care about casualties in the neighborhood, they could do great damage to you and your apparatus as things stand now.”

  “Ah.” Sorya’s terse monosyllable gives her no clue as to whether Aiah’s speculations are the least bit relevant. Aiah bites back on her growing frustration and continues.

  “They can’t hurt your equipment through the collection web,” Aiah says. “But they can damage its environment.” She glances through the office windows at the tented ceiling, the high arched windows. “Hit those windows hard enough and the glass flies in like a thousand knives. Knock the roof hard enough and it falls down on the collection web. It might break the web, and even if it doesn’t your personnel are going to take a bad hit.”

  Sorya gives a thin, knowing smile, the briefest nod. “Warriors of Thunderworld?” she says.

  “Common sense,” Aiah retorts. “A lot of the casualties of the Bursary Street flamer came from flying glass.”

  “Indeed,” Sorya says, “your reasoning is impeccable. Given, of course, your premises.”

  And if this place starts getting sandbagged, Aiah thinks, with shields put up over the delicate equipment and work spaces, then I’ll know a thing or two.

  “Of course,” Sorya says, “Constantine and many of his people are trained warriors, who would already have considered these matters. Should,” she adds, again with that thin, ambiguous smile, “they be relevant to our goals.”

  “Are you a warrior, Madam Sorya?” Aiah asks.

  “My battles,” she says briefly, “have been on a less grand scale.” She turns, opens the office door, then looks at Aiah over her shoulder. “But on the whole,” she adds, “mine have been more successful than his. Perhaps I am less distracted by unrealities.”

  Aiah follows Sorya onto the factory floor. From above comes the flap of pigeon wings.

  “You may as well tell me, you know,” Aiah says, “I may be able to help you.”

  “It’s not my decision,” Sorya says. She tosses her streaky hair and offers her trilling laugh. “Besides,” she says, “it’s amusing watching you try to guess.”

  “Thank you,” Aiah says flatly.

  Sorya, she thinks, seeks power, and enjoys such power as she has, even if some of it is petty.

  But the power of knowledge is a temporary thing, Aiah suspects. She has her own little data points, and sooner or later they’ll point to something.

  Fire tests precious metal, and grief tests men.

  — a thought-message from His Perfection, the Prophet of Ajas

  District Hospital Twelve is of gray stone, centuries old, with sagging floors, windows fixed in their frames by a hundred layers of paint, cobwebs in the high-cornered ceilings, cracked plaster, peeling paint. The building is covered with ornamental stonework, leaf-traceries and statues of the Messengers of Vida flying on membranous wings to the aid of the sick. As a child Aiah had always been afraid of the stern-faced statues with their bat wings, rain-pitted hair, blank eyes and gaping, wordless mouths. Inside, the smell of disinfectant cannot entirely conceal the sad scent of age and despair: too much sickness, too much pain, over too many years.

  Aiah catches a heel on a broken tile, stumbles, recovers. She makes a turn into a room, and here is her family standing round one of the room’s four occupied beds, and a situation she needs to deal with.

  “Hi there.” From the bed her cousin Esmon waves listlessly, hand bulky with wrapped finger splints. His face is badly cut, his eyes masked by swollen tissue.

  Aiah remembers the rain of boots and fists in the trackline station, the blast of plasm fire that brought an end to the beating. Esmon hadn’t any plasm batteries to protect him. It looks as if his attackers went at him very thoroughly.

  Aiah approaches Esmon and bends over to carefully kiss each cheek. She looks to clasp a hand, but one is splinted, and the other, and with it the entire forearm, is strapped into some kind of tape-swathed box. She runs her hand over the top of his head, and her nerves flare as she sees him wince. Even there, he’s sensitive.

  She remembers Esmon at the Senko’s Day celebration, proud in his green-and-gold sequined coat, his plans to join the Griffins for next year’s parade . . .

  Aiah looks up at the rest, sees her mother, her grandmother Galaiah, Esmon’s witch-lover Khorsa. “He was attacked?” Aiah says. “What happened exactly?”

  A call from Esmon’s brother Spano had come late in her work shift, and she’d taken the rest of the shift off and rushed to the hospital, but the summons had been short on details.

  “Don’t want to go into it again,” Esmon says in a thick voice.

  “Gangsters,” says Galaiah in a fierce voice. “Gangsters did this to him.”

  Surprise stiffens Aiah’s frame. She looks from Esmon to Galaiah and back again. “You’ve got mixed up with the Operation? Or who? The Holy League?”

  “Longnose gangsters,” Galaiah says.

  “Don’t know it was them,” Esmon insists.

  “Let’s talk outside,” Khorsa says. “I’ll tell you the story.”

  Doubtfully Aiah lets the witch take her arm and lead her from the room. Another woman follows, a stranger in a red turban. As Aiah passes into the hallway she notices that the door has gone from the hospital room, that the doorframe holds only empty hinges. Who would steal a door? she wonders.

  “This is my sister Dhival,” Khorsa says, nodding at the other woman.

  Dhival, Aiah remembers, is a priestess, whereas Khorsa is a witch. She does not know the practical difference between the two, if any.

  Tiny Khorsa looks up at Aiah, bites her lip. “It all has to do with us,” she says.

  Aiah is not surprised. Her contact with mages of the caliber of Constantine and Sorya has made her less impressed with back-alley witches than ever.

  “Before anything else,” Aiah says, “how is Esmon?”

  Khorsa nods. “The two men who attacked him gave him a very thorough working over. He’s sedated right now, so he’s not in much pain.”

  “What are the doctors doing for him?”

  “We —” Khorsa corrects herself. “I — I can afford plasm treatments, so he’ll get them starting tomorrow. The only reason they’re waiting is they want to make sure he’s perfectly stable before they begin.”

  There’s a bitter taste in Aiah’s mouth. She remembers Khorsa at the Senko’s Day party, the witch’s suspicious reaction to Aiah’s question about the Operation . .. anger burns hot in Aiah’s heart.

  “So how have you two got involved with the Operation?” she asks.

  Khorsa’s eyes widen. “We haven’t,” she says.

  “They’ve got involved with us,” Dhival says. Her tone is bitter. “There’s this street captain, Guvag, he’s been trying to push his plasm on us, and we won’t take it. So he’s had some of his thugs attack Esmon.”

  Aiah isn’t sure she believes this. “You’re not in debt to them? You don’t gamble?”

  “No,” Khorsa says. “And Esmon doesn’t, either.”

  “You’ve never bought the goods from this man? Or sold them? Or walked the streets for him? Or anything that would give him a foot in your door?”

  “No!” Khorsa insists. “Absolutely not! That’s why we wanted to talk to you — you work for the Plasm Authority. Is there someone you know in the Authority police that we can talk to?”

  Aiah thinks for a moment. The Authority creepers, the Investigative Division, are a separate jurisdiction that report only to the Intendant.

  “No, I don’t know anyone specifically,” she says. “But I can make some inquiries.”

  “If you could?” Khorsa says. “And soon?”

  Aiah reaches for her notebook. “What’s the man’s name again? And do you have an address for him or anything that would help me track him?”

  “I don’t have an address, no. But he hangs at the Shade Club on Elbar Avenue with his soldiers.”

  Aiah writes this down. “I’ll see what I ca
n do. But the question is: will you testify?”

  Khorsa and Dhival look at each other. Dhival licks her lips.

  “People don’t testify against the Operation,” she says.

  “What if I could get you protection?”

  “We’d still lose everything, wouldn’t we? You couldn’t protect us forever. We couldn’t keep the Temple going with the Operation after us. We’d be in hiding for the rest of our lives.”

  Aiah looks at the two. She knows what their choice will be: testify and lose everything at once, or submit to the Operation’s demands and lose everything slowly, beginning with pride and independence and eventually everything else, the Operation slicing off one bit after another, their money, their possessions, eventually the Wisdom Fortune Temple itself.

  “We were hoping,” Khorsa says slowly, “that we could get Guvag arrested for something else other than threatening us. He deals illegal plasm — maybe if we alert the authorities to his activities he can get arrested for selling it to someone else.”

  Faint hope, Aiah thinks. She puts away her notebook. “I’ll see what I can do,” she says. “In the meantime, I want to see Esmon get the treatments he needs.”

  Khorsa looks up at her, eyes wide. “Of course.”

  “And you might also talk to a lawyer. Find out what your options are.”

  The two sisters look at each other again. Lawyers, Aiah knows, are not a part of their world. The impersonal mechanism of the law is not something that would ever enter their life unless they’d either been arrested or maybe evicted. Lawyers are the enemy, as are the police and the judges, and the thought of having one on your side is something that is perfectly alien.

  Aiah puts away her notebook, “I need to make a call,” she says. “Do you know where I can find a phone?”

  Khorsa points down the hall, and Aiah follows the pointing finger. She has to tell Constantine that he needn’t send a car to pick her up for her plasm lesson. Family emergencies, unfortunately, come first.