Air. Sweet air. She feels a moment of indescribable bliss as the dry pressurized air touches her palate.
Aiah floats in the frigid, buoyant darkness. High-speed screws sing in her ears. Detonations slap at the water.
Red light seeps down, touches her eyelids. She opens her eyes, looks up at flame. The barge is on fire and has become very bright. She wonders if Dr. Romus is trapped inside, if Statius and Cornelius will manage an escape. She looks around her, sees the diving gear hanging on a hook. Had Cornelius said there was a mask here?
Aiah reaches out and finds the mask, pushes floating hair back from her face, and puts the mask over her face. She tries to remember her brief lessons months ago, then presses the mask hard to her forehead and exhales through her nose. The water in the mask bubbles away and suddenly she can see quite clearly.
The water is very bright, almost as bright as day. The barge is a huge shadow above her, and she can sense other shadows nearby.
There is a splash, a rush of bubbles. It is one of the half-world’s inhabitants, a little goggle-eyed man. He swims with apparent ease beneath the surface, his big eyes like a pair of headlamps. He swims past her strongly, a line of little bubbles trailing from his mouth, and his eyes roll toward her. He watches her expressionlessly as he swims past, his adaptation to the aquatic environment much greater than hers, then kicks on into the darkness.
A line of bullets rips the water over her head. Aiah watches the bullets hit the water in a fury of bubbles, then lose their momentum and spiral harmlessly past her. The fighting, she thinks, is getting very close.
There is another splash overhead, another figure striking the water in a burst of bubbles. It is one of the stonefaces, mouth open, eyes agape. He drifts downward in a cruciform shape, arms wide as if to embrace the water. A thread of blood trails from his mouth.
Dead, Aiah thinks, and then, Davath!
She bottles up a scream at the bottom of her throat. She flails as she drags on the buoyancy harness, fighting the tangle of straps. A whole family of goggle-eyed twisted swim by, mom and pop and two curious children. The lead weights in the harness pockets try to drag her to the bottom, so she inflates the air pockets in the harness until her buoyancy neutralizes. Then she kicks off her boots and puts on her fins.
As she handles these routine tasks, her breath returns to normal, her heartbeat slows. But then the barge gives a huge lurch. The pipe kicks up and hits her in the face. An explosion batters at her ears. A surge of bubbles blinds her, and suddenly the pipe is tilting up, bringing her close to the surface.
Fear makes her relinquish the pipe and drop back into the sheltering sea. The barge has been holed, she realizes, and it is filling with water and rolling away from her as it does so.
It’s going to sink, and she needs to get away before it drags her down. She backpedals, kicking away from the barge. Bullets rip up the water above her head and she pulls the release valve on the buoyancy harness, allowing herself to sink deeper into the water… She tries to orient herself, tries to think which way is out. There is a horrid metallic rending sound from the barge, some internal bulkhead caving in.
Another twisted man swims by, big eyes bulging. He must know a safe place, she thinks, and decides to follow him.
She kicks out and has no trouble keeping up with him. The cold is making her shiver. Her body wants to curl up to conserve heat and she has to make an effort to keep her legs kicking.
It’s a hideous failure, she thinks. Statius and Cornelius are probably dead, the half-world is being destroyed, hundreds of people are going to die.
And the war will go on.
An uncontrollable shudder runs through her frame.
And I, Aiah thinks, am going to die of cold, and very soon.
Then she feels plasm prickling her skin, warm like a blanket, and she is sprawling, amid a gurgling, splashing lake of seawater, on Aldemar’s carpet…
Powerful arms pick her up, strip the mask from her face, the regulator, begin unclipping the harness.
“A hot bath,” Constantine says. “Draw it. Now.” He kisses her cold lips. Aiah looks at him from heavy-lidded eyes.
The diving gear tumbles to the floor, lead weights thudding.
Constantine picks her up and carries her to warmth, to life.
TWENTY-ONE
Aiah lies in the scented bath and tries to let the warm water ease the cold in her bones, the numb and numbing sense of dread and sadness and hopeless failure. She stares at the ceiling, at a bright pattern of blue and yellow Avernach tiles; and her eye keeps following the pattern, up and left and down and then to the right across three tiles, then beginning again, the pattern repeating over and over and over without escaping the inevitability of its own design.
Her eyes keep following the pattern. She dares not close them. If she allows her eyes to close, all she can see is a shimmering surface, like water, aglow with angry fire.
And then all the guns around the Palace open fire at once, a rolling thunder that rattles the window for a half-minute at a time, deep concussions that drive up through her spine, releasing memories of explosions in the half-world, the flashes of blinding light, the acrid scent of used munitions. The dead man, arms splayed, drifting toward her on a red tether.
The war is on again.
There is a knock on the door, and without waiting for an answer Aldemar walks in. She kicks aside Aiah’s ruined, soggy clothing, then sits on a little gilt-legged stool and dangles her hands off her knees. The expression below the dark bangs is grave.
“I was unable to bring back the two guards who went out with you,” she says. “It doesn’t mean they’re not all right, it just means that I couldn’t find them in all that mess.”
Aiah sighs and tilts her head back, despair like a bitter drop on her tongue. Gunfire concussions thud in her ears.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Aldemar says. “The mission was betrayed somehow—probably on the other end.”
Aiah tries to say something and fails. Words do not seem adequate to the appalling scope of the tragedy.
“Those two had followed Constantine from the beginning,” Aldemar says. “For twenty years, beginning in Cheloki. He chose to risk them in this, because he thought it was important. He wanted the best to protect you.”
“They did,” Aiah says. Her tongue is thick, and a pain deep in her throat makes it hard to speak. “They kept me alive.” They, she thinks, and Dr. Romus.
Maybe, Aiah thinks absurdly, she will get them medals. Like Davath.
Aldemar leans back on the stool, looks down at her. “I would like to stay with you,” she says, “but I can’t. Now that fighting has started again, I’ll be needed.” She begins to stand, hesitates, then sits again. “Stay here as long as you want. I’d offer you my clothes, but they wouldn’t fit. I’ll try to find someone to fetch some clothes from your apartment.”
“Thank you,” Aiah says. She sits up in the tub, hair pouring down her back like rain, and looks up at Aldemar. “Thank you for getting me out,” she says.
“You’re welcome.” Aldemar reaches for Aiah’s hand, squeezes it briefly, then makes her way out. The window rattles to the sound of guns.
She’d thought she’d done it, she thinks. She’d won, she’d got the Cunning People on her side, had the contract worked out. She would be the hero who’d won the war. Even Barkazi had seemed within reach—She had half-seen the liberated metropolis, the homeland she’d never seen living free under her maternal care……