She switches it off.
The Shield had briefly opened, she thinks, a tiny hole, and by chance she had flown through it, giving her a glimpse of what lies beyond; and then it had cruelly shut behind her, snapping off her plasm tether, returning her to her own world, to the war that is Caraqui.
SIXTEEN
The Adrenaline Monster rips Aiah from sleep—she sits up in bed, sucks in air, every sense straining for sign of danger. Her thoughts automatically perform a checklist: no explosions, no shellfire, no alarms.
No danger. The Adrenaline Monster is just keeping in practice.
She gasps for breath, her heart a trip-hammer beating against her ribs. A face with an ambiguous smile floats briefly before her eyes, a remnant of her dream, the Man who is the Sun.
She falls to the mattress, takes the pillow, crushes it to her chest. She tries to calm herself, to recapture the dream, her journey beyond the Shield, the Sun’s self-contemplative smile.
What is she to do? she thinks. Who can she tell?
Come to anyone babbling about the Ascended, she thinks, and she’ll get locked up. Or even worse, taken seriously…
Chosen. Charduq the Hermit insists that she is the redeemer of Barkazi, and even though he’s obviously been on his pillar far too long, there are people desperate enough to believe him.
And now she has apparently made the only visit beyond the Shield in millennia. And the terror of it is not what she saw there, but the thought that perhaps she was meant to see it. That the Ascended… or Someone… wanted her there, and that she has been chosen among all humanity to do… something.
And that doesn’t make sense, because she doesn’t know what she is intended to do, if anything. Any prophet she’s ever heard of knew what his visions meant—how to interpret them and how to act on what he knew. Aiah knows nothing: she saw things and people in the sky, and that’s all. If this is meant to have something to do with Barkazi, the connection eludes her.
But even if she doesn’t understand it, still the experience is hers. She doesn’t dare permit others to interpret it. Charduq would happily conclude that the gods, angels, and immortals all desire that she go forthwith and liberate Barkazi; and Constantine—well, Constantine would put it on video to subvert Landro’s Escaliers, or something.
So she doesn’t dare tell anyone. It must remain her secret until she can work out both what it means, and what it means for her.
A detonation slaps her awake. She was unaware that she’d even closed her eyes, that she’d lulled the Adrenaline Monster into letting her drift toward sleep, but now she’s awake again, counting the explosions as shellfire rains down somewhere close.
Four, five, six. She wipes sweat from the hollow of her throat.
Another series of shells begins to land, and she realizes she will get no more sleep this shift.
She rises from the bed, runs her fingers through her hair. It is another day, and it begins early.
KEREHORN SPEAKS TO PROVISIONAL CONGRESS
RECALLS “ERA OF STABILITY”
“THIEVES AND GANGSTERS,” RETORTS TRIUMVIR HILTHI
The report on the dead cousin lies before Aiah and Ethemark in the meeting room. The mercenary captain who led the raid is there, and so is Kelban, who’d served on the commission when they had last had a catastrophe of this kind.
“I was there myself,” Aiah says, “with an anima configured to be sensitive to plasm. I saw nothing. No obvious attack.”
—You interfere overmuch with my pleasures, lady. Hearing that rumbling in your bones, a terrifying chill voice that whispers in your head, that is not seeing.
“It was Exploding Head Disease,” Kelban mutters. “It’s like the Party Sickness. It’s going around.”
He has been most thorough in his investigation. The mages involved in this case were different from those of the prior case, so there was no single secret assassin working within the PED. Each of the mages involved was interviewed, and background checks performed to make certain none was involved with the dead gangster or could have any reason to want him dead.
“Do we give everyone involved plasm scans?” Kelban says. “I’d hate to—there are potential dangers involved—but if we want to clear our own people of any suspicion, it’s the only way to do it.”
Ethemark and Aiah look at each other. She reads assent in him, considers the matter, finally shakes her head.
“No,” she says. “I have to trust our people. It was a mage from the Hand who outwitted us, some enemy of the suspect perhaps, or possibly some elaborate form of suicide.”
“Remember the time-bomb theory I mentioned before?” Ethemark says. “That somehow they managed to place in themselves a plasm device designed to kill if they are ever apprehended? Perhaps we should take it more seriously.”
“Perhaps we should.” Aiah is content enough that they should chase up this wrong alley.
“One of the witnesses had another idea,” the mercenary lieutenant offers. “I didn’t put it in the report because, well, it was just too wild.”
A warning tone sounds along Aiah’s spine. But Kelban turns to the lieutenant and says, “Which witness?”
“One of the whores. The older one. She said that she’d met the suspect before, when he was using another body, and that she’d probably meet him again.”
Kelban gives an incredulous laugh. “He jumps around from body to body? Had she just seen Bride of the Slaver Mage or something?”
The lieutenant gives an embarrassed smile. “Maybe. But she said that she’d met him twice before, in different, uh, incarnations. All gangsters. He called her agency, I guess. Once he took her to Gunalaht for a weekend. She said that his personality was, ah, repellent in a very distinctive way, so that she recognized him from one incarnation to the next, but that he paid very well and always provided plenty of liquor and food. And she also said she’d heard that at least one of his former incarnations had died, of that Party Sickness we keep hearing about.”
“The girl probably has so many repellent customers they all just seem alike,” Aiah says.
Kelban grins. “She thinks he’s a ghost?”
The lieutenant shrugs. “Something unnatural, anyway. Something that can jump from one body to another and kill it when he’s done. An ice man, maybe. Or even a Slaver Mage.”
There is a moment’s silence. Slaver Mages are a serious matter.
And the idea of an ice man, or hanged man, is not one Aiah wants anyone ever to mention again.
Aiah closes the file before her. “I don’t believe in ice men,” she says. “I’m not sure if I believe in modern Slaver Mages, either, but if there’s a Slaver working among the gangsters, it’s their problem. I propose to accept the report as written unless we have some more real evidence before us.”
There is silence.
The report is accepted, and goes into the files. Aiah thanks Kelban on behalf of the department, then adjourns the meeting.
She goes to her office and sags into her chair.
Perhaps, she thinks, she should find some way of telling Taikoen that he should vary his women a little more.
PARQ ENDORSES PLATFORM OF SPIRITUAL RENEWAL PARTY
The Barkazil troops, flown with their equipment from Sayven into neutral Barchab, come across the border into Caraqui in their own armored vehicles, the column protected by a swarm of telepresent military mages alert for any sign of trouble. The bivouac is already prepared, a parking garage appropriated by the government, concrete walls and floors now covered with bronze mesh to keep out enemy mages. No incidents occur—perhaps security measures have worked for a change.