“I suppose we find out now,” said Jean.

“Did … Patience give you any instructions or hints about what to do once the ballots were counted?” said Sabetha.

“Not a word,” said Locke.

“Then why don’t we all get the hell out of here and let our employers find us in their own time?” Sabetha tossed back the last of her brandy. “I’ve got a safe house just off the Court of Dust. Rented it for a month, had firewood, linens, and wine laid in. I’d say it’s as comfortable a place as any to rest and figure out what we’re going to … do next.” She ran her fingers lightly over Locke’s left arm.

“Any plan to sneak us out of here without getting swept up in a brawl?” said Jean.

“New skins.” Sabetha produced a scalpel-thin dagger from somewhere in a jacket sleeve and used it to slit one of three paper parcels stacked beneath the chamber’s unnerving fresco. “Much as I hate to take this dress off display, I thought we’d find our exit that much easier if we dressed like the enemy.”

4

AT THE tenth hour of the evening, a trio of bluecoats pushed through the curious crowds at the main entrance to the Karthenium; a slender watchman and a sturdy watchman, led by a woman with sergeant’s pins on her lapels. They disposed of the last few people standing in their way with a combination of shoves and ominous mutterings about official business.

Locke and Jean followed Sabetha about fifty yards west, to a branching side court where a carriage waited. The night had darkened considerably, and as he opened the carriage door Locke’s eye was caught by an orange glare somewhere to the south.

“Looks like a fire,” he said. The conflagration rippled, gilding the shadowy buildings of what must have been the Palanta District with its light.

“Damned big one,” said Jean. “I hope it’s nothing to do with the election. Maybe these Karthani play harder than I ever gave them credit for.”

“Come on, you two, let’s not linger long enough to get noticed by anyone who might outrank us,” said Sabetha.

They all clambered into the carriage together. The driver, obedient to whatever orders Sabetha had given her earlier, shook the reins, and they were off, leaving the results of their tampering with Karthain’s electoral process behind them. Genuine bluecoats were still arriving in force, truncheons and shields drawn, as the carriage rattled over the paving stones, away from the Karthenium.

INTERSECT (IV)

IGNITION

“THE FIRST MAGISTRATE has just read the final district report,” says one of the young men, his voice dreamy, his eyes unfocused. Coldmarrow knows from long experience that the more tenuous and subtle mind-to-mind connections are the most demanding to sustain. Any damned fool can blaze their thoughts into the night for magi far and wide to receive like buzzing insects. The intelligence network now flashing thoughts across the city is straining itself to be utterly silent.

“The last district is Black Iris … ,” whispers the young mage.

“Black Iris victory,” says someone else. “By the skin of their teeth.”

“It seems that Patience’s vaunted Camorri were no match for ours,” smirks Archedama Foresight. She wears a leather hood and mantle, a dark linen mask, a mail-reinforced cuirass. Like all the men and women in the second-floor solar of Coldmarrow’s Palanta District house, she is dressed for a fight. “We’ll deal with them last, after all the other satisfactions of the evening have been dispensed with.”

“Necessities, let us rather say,” coughs Coldmarrow, taking deep, steady breaths to help rule his anxiety. The air is close, and it smells of all these magi, their robes and leathers, the wine on their breaths, the oils in their hair, their nervous, excited sweat.

“Why not both?” says the archedama.

“There’s a disturbance at the Karthenium,” whispers the young man who has been reporting on the election. “Someone … Lovaris of the Bursadi District. Some sort of announcement. He may be … ha! He may be switching sides!”

“Damn,” says Archedama Foresight. “But it seems to me that there’s no time like the present. All our targets must be absorbed in the distraction.”

“Oh, they are,” chuckles Coldmarrow. “It couldn’t be working better. Are your people in their proper positions?”

“All of them,” says Foresight.

“Then here’s to necessity,” says Coldmarrow, his mouth suddenly dry. “And to the future of all our kind.”

Coldmarrow speaks a word.

The word becomes fire.

A spark flashes in the dark heart of a jar of fire-oil, one of a hundred, tightly sealed, placed in the space beneath the floor of the room a month before. This jar is half-full, containing just enough air for the flame to breathe the vapors of the oil. The explosion is white-hot, shattering the clay vessels, sucking air and oil into the roaring, all-devouring blast.

Not even magi can move faster than this, or protect themselves with so little warning. The floor moves beneath Coldmarrow’s feet, then comes sharp dark heat, stunning pressure, and sudden silence. Coldmarrow dies taking fourteen magi with him, including Archedama Foresight. He has no time to feel either regret or satisfaction; it will simply have to be enough.

The war lasts nine minutes. It is utterly one-sided, the only possible war magi can wage with any hope of total victory against others trained in the same traditions, to the same standards.

Archedama Foresight’s people discover that their own ambush is stillborn, their positions ready-made traps. They have always been outnumbered by the larger faction of magi they derided as meek, and now those opponents apply their numbers to disproving the slander.

No quarter is given, no fair fight allowed. Strength is brought against weakness. Across rooftops, within lamp-lit gardens, inside the halls of the Isas Scholastica and the private homes of sorcerers, the assault is quick and silent and absolute.

As the tipsy, confused politicians of Karthain clamber over one another in a comical brawl at the heart of the Karthenium, seventy magi die in the dark places of the city, taking only a handful of their killers with them.

Navigator finds Patience alone in the Sky Chamber, staring at the bowl of the artificial heavens, currently mirroring the actual sky over Karthain, the rolling dark clouds summoned to lock the light of moons and stars away. Shadow has been drawn over the city like a cloak, to better hide the evidence.

“It’s over,” says Patience. She speaks real words to the air; the silver threads of thought-speech have unraveled unpleasantly across Karthain; cries of pain and betrayal, cries for help that will never come, and Patience has hardened her mind against most of the noise. “Now we have to live with ourselves.”

“Tell our troubles to the shades of Therim Pel,” says the one-armed woman. She wipes a tear from her cheek.

“We are each one in a thousand thousand,” says Patience. “We have destroyed some of the rarest and most precious things in the world tonight. Our distant inheritors may curse us for what we’ve done.”

“We already deserve their curses, Archedama.”

“So long as there’s still a world leftfor them to curse us in. Come now; help me do it.”

The two women bow their heads, move their hands in perfect concert, and speak words of unweaving that tear at their throats like desert air. The beautiful conjured heavens of the Sky Chamber fade like the memory of a dream, until there is nothing but a dome of plain white stones, grayed with the patina of old smoke.

“Do you wish to see your son now?” says Navigator.

“No,” says Patience, suddenly feeling every one of her years, suddenly wishing for the touch and the laugh of a man who was taken by the Amathel half her lifetime ago. “I’ll speak to Lamora first. But for now I want to be alone for a while.”