The Stars Askew (32 page)

The guards dragged the first man—head bowed, hair lank and greasy—to the killing machine.

A black-suited guard gestured dramatically to the man. “Subofficiate Lakartis, you have been caught conspiring against the citizenry, committing sabotage, and resisting the new order. Before you face the ultimate judgment of the people, what have you to say?”

The man looked up, his grief-stricken face taking on a vicious aspect. He spat at the masses, who hooted and catcalled back at him, waving fists in the air.

The guards pulled the man back into the contraption, locked him into the exoskeleton. The structure held him tight, a deadly wooden embrace.

“I want to speak with Detis and the other thaumaturgists,” said Kata. “Before they're put to death.”

“The trial was yesterday,” said Ejan. “They've confessed.”

That fact apparently closed the door on the affair. Dumas was under surveillance, and the Collegia would have to prostrate itself before the Insurgent Assembly. Yet something still felt wrong to Kata. She looked around for support. “Rikard?”

Rikard shrugged, pressed his lips together. “Justice must be served. We're too late for the interrogation.”

“But we weren't even told they were caught!” Kata hated the pleading tone of her voice.

“It's not all about us, Kata,” said Rikard. “Everyone's doing the best they can.”

Alfadi touched her arm again. When he spoke, his voice was powerful, resonant, and cultured. She noticed a slight accent of the Teeming Cities for the first time. “That was my fault. I'm sorry. They confessed so quickly once we caught them, I didn't think it important to involve you. Then they went off to the Criminal Tribunal, where Georges made quick work of them. I thought it was case closed, clear enough. Don't blame Ejan—if anyone, blame me.”

But she did blame Ejan, because this turn of affairs suited him perfectly. He was getting everything he wanted, while the moderates were irrelevant, useless.

Below, the guard stepped closer to the crowd and looked up at the onlookers on the theater stairs. “Subofficiate Lakartis, I hereby pronounce your unworthy life at its end.”

In one horrible instant the cylindrical beam burst through the man's chest. Blood and shattered remnants of organs and bone sprayed out over the ground in front of the platform. The subofficiate's eyes rolled around in his head, as if he were trying to make sense of events. Then, as he lost strength, his head reeled to one side. Several men lifted up their children so they could see better.

Kata closed her eyes for a moment. The cheers and cries of the crowd washed over her. She turned to Ejan. “This is wrong. If anyone should be up there, Dumas should.”

“Do you have actual evidence against Dumas? The thaumaturgists weren't handing the money to the Collegia's leadership, but to others lower down. It was simple theft, from what we know. Anyway, the Collegia follow whoever is strongest. And we're about to crush the final resistance. They'll be on our side when we move on the southern villas shortly.”

“More meat for your Bolt?” said Kata.

The body of Lakartis was dragged from the platform and thrown into a second cart, already filled with broken bodies. Then they dragged Detis toward the platform, still gagged so he couldn't invoke any conjurations. He struggled and moaned, but on they carried him. As they fastened him into the machine, he looked up at Kata. His eyes widened, and she sensed he was trying to say something: Was he hoping for her to save him, or was it something else? A dark patch of discoloration pulsed beneath one cheek, as if the effects of thaumaturgy were intensifying in his dire situation.

The guard spoke again. “Thaumaturgist Detis Adirno, you have been condemned for stealing from the Marin treasury. House assets now belong to the citizens. Let all who watch know this: we will not tolerate saboteurs or parasites. Your sentence?”

“Death!” called the crowd.

“Death!” said the guard.

The Bolt fired. An explosion of blood and guts. Kata watched as the man's eyes, still fixed on her, lost their light. His strength gave way, and his head fell to one side.

Unable to watch, Kata pushed through the leering crowd. Again Dumas smiled at her from his place on the steps. There he stood, happy and free. What kind of justice was this? She couldn't help the thought it prompted: Ejan and Dumas must be working together. She was surrounded by men in power. There was a cover-up happening here and there was nothing she could do.

Something snapped in Kata. She was a woman of action who had held herself back.
Enough is enough
, she thought.

Rikard took her by the arm. “Kata, come on.”

“Your leader must be stopped,” Kata said.

“It's the will of the people. The Authority was elected. They're simply representing what the citizens want. What they
need
.”

Kata turned to Rikard. “The will of the people is something shaped by people like you.”

“And by you, also.” Signs of strain were visible on Rikard's youthful face.

Kata crossed her arms, glared at him. “Yes, and by me, also.”

Rikard frowned; he seemed to sense some change in Kata. “What do you mean, Kata?”

“We're not going to work together anymore, Rikard. I won't work with any vigilant.”

Rikard looked stunned, as if she had shoved him physically away. “But the search for Aceline's killer?”

“We'll never find them because of you vigilants. You've forced me to choose between that search and continuing Aceline's work. You disgust me, Rikard.”

“We're friends.”

“We weren't ever friends.” Kata pushed through the crowd. She had spent enough time in the shadows. It was time for her to take a stand, whatever the personal consequences. Would Rikard tell Ejan about her past? Would it destroy her, or bring the moderates into disrepute? She would have to take the risk.

When she strode into the Opera, Kata's eyes were fixed forward. She found Olivier and a group of moderate militants working in the
Dawn
's editorial offices.

Olivier looked up. “Kata, we're almost finished typeset— What is it?”

Kata examined the little group for a moment as they stared, wide-eyed, at her. “We must call a meeting for tomorrow and gather as many supporters as we can. If we don't act soon, the city will be in Ejan's hands. We must also reorganize our guards. We need a professional force to defend us.”

“What do you mean, defend us?” said Olivier.

Kata widened her stance, as if she were ready for any kind of conflict. “We have to be prepared for the moment the vigilants declare us to be enemies. Soon they'll make no distinction between those who oppose them and those who oppose seditionism.”

“If we build up our own guard force, that will risk civil war,” said Olivier. “You know Ejan. He will see us as a threat.”

“No, this is what will
prevent
a civil war,” said Kata. “Ejan only understands force.”

“Who will train these guards?” said Olivier.

“I will,” said Kata, but she knew she couldn't do it alone. She needed the help of an expert. She needed her mentor Sarrat.

 

TWENTY-SIX

Once again Kata found herself standing in the alleyway near Via Gracchia and looking at the delicate stone garden, its hardy desert flowers unconcerned about the world. Kata stared at the apartment and calmed herself. She strode forward and slid open the door. Sarrat was not in the room, but she heard a voice call out, “Who's that?”

Kata walked to the center of the room, sat down, and waited. This time she would be calm when he entered.

Kata was pleased to see the mild surprise on Sarrat's face. “I thought you were never coming back.”

“I never said that,” said Kata.

“No, but I know you,” said Sarrat. “Explosive emotions all bottled up. When they blow—”

“Not anymore,” said Kata.

Sarrat sat down in front of her. Not a muscle moved on his smooth face. He breathed calmly through his crooked nose. His heavy-lidded eyes drooped so that he looked like he was half asleep.

“I have found my philosophy.” Kata hesitated, decided to leave it at that.

A slight smile rose on Sarrat's mouth, and Kata quieted the touch of anger that rose in her.

“I am developing it, I guess,” she added, then cursed herself for explaining. “That's why I need your help. I need you to help me train an army.”

“An army?”

“Your tendency to answer in questions is as annoying as ever.”

“Is it?”

“History is being made,” said Kata. “It's not clear who—or which ideas—will triumph. It's time we attached ourselves to these ideas, bring them into being.”

“I only train specialists. You know that.” Sarrat was a typical Cajiun philosopher: trained in the desert monasteries of Caji, deep in Numeria. Ascetics and elitists, the Cajiun philosophers believed only a select few could learn their practices and their style of fighting. Kata had done the latter well but had failed at the former.

“I have come to convince you to change your mind,” she said. “Philosophy is not only for the elite. That is the truth of seditionism.”

“That is not Cajiunism. Patience, simplicity—we are aloof from the material world, where most live their lives. Look at this room.” Sarrat made a circular gesture with his hand at their surroundings.

“Compassion: that's the beginning of Cajiun philosophy, but you divorce it from society,” said Kata. “You think compassion is an individual thing, one person to another, but what about the fact that some people stand on mountains and others are on the plain? Some are born into the Lavere, others in the Arantine. Shouldn't your compassion distinguish between those who ruin others and those who try to stop that ruination?”

“You have left Cajiunism behind, then?” Sarrat sounded disappointingly calm.

“This brings Cajiunism down from the air and back to the ground. I stand for something now. What do you stand for, separation from real life?”

Sarrat's eyes closed ever so slowly, until he seemed to be asleep. Then, in an instant, he dove at her, his fingers aimed at her eyes. The move took her by surprise, but she fell back in time, rolled to her right along the floor, and leaped to her feet.

Sarrat stood in fighting stance before her. He meant to test her, to see if she still fought without anger or fear. The realization drove fear into her, for she doubted her ability to control her emotions.

“Is this a form of penance, for the innocents you killed?” Sarrat circled calmly.

He spun his leg at her head in a graceful, deadly curve. She raised her arm to block it, but a second later Sarrat had deftly changed its course and it crashed into her already damaged ribs. Kata staggered back, the pain searing through her. She collapsed to one knee, drew a ragged breath. “In a way.”

“So you are aligned to these seditionists out of guilt.” Sarrat lunged forward, but Kata was already up. She raised her foot and pushed him back with it. He danced to one side, spun backward, his straight leg moving in a second delicate and deadly crescent, aimed again at her head.

Kata ducked underneath it, and her low kick swept Sarrat's leg from beneath him. She knew she could not defeat him: she'd never been able to. But she leaped at him anyway, hoping to hold him down, trap him in a lock or a choke. He pushed her off, rose to his feet, backed up a few steps, and regained his balance.

“I seek to give and not to take. That is the difference between how I feel and how you think I feel,” said Kata. “A guilty person wants acceptance, penance, something that will absolve them of their sins. I seek no such absolution. I regret many of my actions. But that is not what drives me. This is no personal thing. This is for others, not for me.”

Kata skipped forward, throwing straight punches one after the other, which Sarrat dodged with a series of rapid side-to-side movements.

With blinding speed, he threw his fist in a vicious overhand punch at her cheek. As Kata ducked, she felt it glance off the top of her head. Still, she lunged forward and took Sarrat crashing to the ground. For a second she was on top of him, but then he swept her beneath him, spun around so that he lay in the opposite direction as her, caught her leg between his, and clasped her foot in a cruel footlock. The pain was immediate. He would tear her tendons.

Kata looked down at her leg, and at Sarrat. “You've beaten me again.”

Sarrat nodded and twisted her foot in an even more unnatural angle.

Kata grimaced, but she had fought without anger or fear. “That's why I need you. I need you to help me train my guards.”

Sarrat let go, stood up. For the first time since she met him, he broke into a broad smile. He was missing some teeth toward the back of his mouth that she'd never noticed. The smile creased his face. For a moment he seemed both older and younger than he did before.

“I thought I'd failed with you,” said Sarrat, “But it seems I was wrong.”

*   *   *

The Arena in the Technis Complex was small and dusty. Kata had been there once before, when the Technis officiates had put on a grubby spectacle for their agents, pitting defeated strikers against wild animals. With a shudder, she recalled the sad death of an elephant, stabbed with the surviving workers' spears.

Now lines of moderates wandered in. Once assembled, they were a motley group of about four hundred, some of whom had been guards for a while. Only confirmed moderates could sign up at the registration table at the Arena entry. Kata did not want the social climbers and crawlers who would try to slip their way in.

“Not much to look at,” said Sarrat.

“I've ordered new uniforms that will make them look less scruffy.”

“What color?”

“Silver,” said Kata. “The color of Cajiun priests.”