Ceison nods, awkwardly pleased, and brushes his mustache with a knuckle.
“Miss Aiah,” Galagas says, “I’d like to raise the matter of replacing our losses. That last battle cost us almost half our men, killed or wounded, with particularly heavy losses among junior officers and NCOs. Not all the wounded will be able to return to the ranks. Since we are staying here rather than returning to the Timocracy to recruit, I’d like to send a recruiting party home… while the Timocracy will still permit it.”
The Timocratic government had announced an investigation of Landro’s Escaliers to discover whether deliberate treachery on their part had provoked the Provisionals into attacking them. Galagas, after consulting with Aiah, had decided the simplest option was to deny everything—there were no meetings in Aground, or if there were, then Holson, conveniently dead, had been there on his own. Aiah would keep silent—the Timocracy had no way of compelling her testimony—and the recordings of the meetings had been destroyed. Eventually, it was hoped, the investigation would die.
But the Escaliers’ contacts in the Timocracy were keeping a close eye on the investigation. The investigation might at some point reveal just who had betrayed them.
And Aiah wanted very much to know who that was.
“Send your party back, by all means,” she says, “and let me know what you hear.”
“I’d like to address the problem of recruiting, if I may,” Alfeg says. “I have contacts in the Barkazil community both in Jaspeer and in the Barkazi Sectors. Thanks to the Mystery chromoplay, there is great interest in Miss Aiah and Caraqui, and I think, General Galagas, I could fill your ranks for you, but I need your permission, ne?”
Galagas raises a brow in surprise. “Do you think you could find so many?”
“Oh, certainly. And if you sent recruiting parties to Jaspeer and wherever in Barkazi they were permitted, the job could be done all that much sooner.”
Galagas seems skeptical, but is willing to consider it.
“Your mention of recruiting in the Barkazi Sectors reminds me,” Ceison said. “I just heard—The Mystery of Aiah has been banned in the Jabzi Sector. And in the rest of Jabzi, for that matter.”
Aiah looks at him. “Banned? Me? In Jabzi?”
“Jabzi is particularly insistent that the Barkazil Sectors will never unite again,” Ceison says. “They seemed to find the chromo a threat. As a result, thousands of people who never heard of you are now clamoring for bootleg copies of the video.”
Amusement tugs at the corners of Aiah’s lips. “They aren’t very intelligent in Jabzi, are they?”
“No one is likely to mistake them for Cunning People, no.”
Aiah glances at her notes and finds the most urgent item on her agenda. The reason she is here, now, instead of paying this visit another time.
“I want to let you know,” Aiah says, “that there may be some disorder in the near future. I want you to be ready for it, and I want you ready to move.”
Sudden alertness crackles in the soldiers’ eyes. Their attention is firmly on her.
“Here?” Ceison asks. “In Lanbola?”
Aiah shakes her head. “In Caraqui.”
“Another coup attempt?” Aratha suggests.
“No. I don’t think so, though I suppose it may come to that if the government does not… react sensibly.”
Because if Parq isn’t stopped… somehow, by someone … he may find himself in power by default.
There is a moment of silence. Ceison gives an uncertain look. “May I have a clarification, please?” he asks. “Does this warning come from you or from the ministry?”
“It didn’t come from either one. In fact, you didn’t hear it.”
Ceison slowly nods, then rubs his long jaw. “I believe I understand,” he says.
The notion of a military force in peacetime, Aiah considers, is no longer quite so absurd.
PEACE AND PROGRESS FOREVER A HOPEFUL WISH FROM SNAP! THE WORLD DRINK
It is a party. Impudent music from Barkazi rocks the dignified walls of the Popular Democrats’ former headquarters. A buffet spices the air, a piquant mix of cilantro, garlic, and fierce little Barkazi chiles. White-jacketed military stewards offer chilled glasses of kill-the-baby on silver trays embossed with the symbol of the Popular Democrats, and Aiah finds that the liquor’s ferocity grows more agreeable from the second drink onward.
Ceison proves, to Aiah’s surprise, a fine dancer. His lean body is unexpectedly adaptable to slippery Barkazil rhythms, the koola and the veitrento. And he pays attention to her, which is nice; she does not have the impression that she and Ceison are a pair of solo acts, but that they are actually dancing together, achieving some level of communication.Not that she dances with Ceison alone. The room is full of soldiers, most of them fit and healthy and happy to find a woman in their arms. The men outnumber the women, and Aiah finds herself pleasantly in demand. Breathless, she sits out for a moment, touches a handkerchief to the sweat on her brow. The dance is a joyous alternative to her activities during the previous shift, first the meeting with the Barkazil Division command and then, because of her insistent, dreaded sense of duty, her visit to its field hospitals. The Escaliers’ thousands of casualties were piled up in two hospitals in Lanbola, since the hospitals in Caraqui had long ago been filled, and the medical staffs, though doing their best, were clearly overtaxed. There hadn’t even been enough beds, not until thousands were liberated from nearby hotels.
Aiah hated hospitals, and she’d blanched at the scents of disinfectant, polish, old blood, and sickness. She hadn’t known what to say to these total strangers whose bodies had been torn apart on her behalf {your fault, an inner voice insisted), and entering the first ward, she’d hesitated.
Fortunately Galagas and Aratha talked her through it—they had been through this many times. “Ask their names and where they’re from,” Aratha said. “Ask what unit they’re in. Ask if there’s anything you can do for them.”
After the first few halting questions, Aiah relaxed, and it went well enough. Many of the wounded were well into their recovery, were lively and full of complaint against their condition. They were robust young men for the most part, they had volunteered for this unit, and they were not inclined to self-pity. Half of them were lying on big soft hotel beds, mingling absurdity with the tragedy of their wounds.
Her people. It was far less an ordeal than she’d anticipated. She admired the fashion in which, with such limited aid available, they helped each other, changing dressings and administering medication. She understood the tough faces they displayed, their lack of sentimentality, their denial of the pain that so often glittered in their eyes. It was sad, but in its odd way it was home…
For the people in Aground, she thought, there is none of this—no ambulances, no care, no medicine, no homes to receive them at recovery’s end. (Your fault.) She wondered what she could do for them, and concluded there was nothing. Aground had vanished, its survivors scattered into the darkness beneath the city…
There is a pause as the music fades. A polite warrant officer asks Aiah to dance, and she assents; he takes her hand and leads her onto the dance floor as the music booms out again. Aiah sees newcomers at the door, stiffens, whispers to her escort, “I’m sorry, I will have to postpone our dance, forgive me,” and slips away from his hand.
Sorya is dressed in silks, green and orange, and her chin bobs in time to the music. Her guards, attired more soberly, bulk large behind her: two huge twisted men with glittering, suspicious eyes. When she sees Aiah walking toward her, Sorya smiles brightly and advances to meet her. She embraces Aiah, kisses her on both cheeks. Aiah smiles in return, kisses in return—she is a politician now, after all—but wariness tingles up her spine at this unexpected display of sorority.