Walter Williams: The Sundering

A new administrator had been put in charge of the Records Office, someone fresh from Naxas. Everyone in the office, and the government generally, was made to swear allegiance to the Committee to Save the Praxis. Hotels and warehouses were requisitioned, including—as Sula had anticipated—the Great Destiny Hotel.

Contact was not made.

On the fourth morning Macnamara came with a message. “You didn’t pick it up yourself?” Sula asked, with a glance toward the window and the street below. If Macnamara had been followed…

“I did like you told me,” Macnamara said. “When I saw the signal that there was a message at the drop, I paid a vagrant to pick up the message for me. I told him to bring it to the far end of an alley so that I could see if he was followed, and then I performed a series of evasions on the two-wheeler before returning here.”

“Did you see anyone at all?” Sula, nerves humming, still couldn’t resist a glance into the street.

“No. No one.”

Artemus has a new posting.The message was printed on the inexpensive thin plastic used for newssheets and other disposable forms of communication, and called for a meeting with Hong at the Grandview apartment the following morning at 11:01.

Hong had never called for a meeting at Sula’s apartment before—he had always preferred a meeting in a public place, usually outside a café, where it might be possible to spot any observers.

Sula touched the plastic sheet to her upper lip. It was perhaps unreasonable to think so, but neither the plastic nor the message smelled like Hong.

She gave Macnamara instructions concerning which piece of equipment he’d need for the next day. Sula’s own preparations had been made when she’d last visited the Grandview apartment. She left Riverside and took a taxi past Greyjean’s window, where the rectangle of white newssheet stood plain to see, confirming Sula’s suspicions that the Naxids had been to visit.

The next morning Spence remained in the Riverside apartment on the theory that a limping engineer would only make the team more conspicuous. Sula and Macnamara took cabs past the Grandview apartment separately on their way to a meeting three streets away. The white newssheet was still in the window. There were some large unmarked vehicles that looked innocent enough, but which might contain police.

Certainly Lord Octavius Hong was not observed lurking on a street corner, or arguing with the concierge.

Sula and Macnamara met at precisely 11:01, then walked toward the Grandview apartment on opposite sides of the street. They could see no light through the apartment windows, and no squads of Naxids in yellow-and-black uniforms lurked in alleyways.

Once the apartment was in sight, both hesitated. Sudden doubt swam in Sula’s mind. Her heart throbbed in her chest. She could be misjudging the whole situation.

A sonic boom rattled windows, and Sula almost jumped out of her skin. But the sound had clarified the situation somehow, and she raised a hand to her head and deliberately combed her fingers through her short, black-dyed hair.

Across the street, Macnamara pressed the switch on the detonator in his jacket pocket.

In the Grandview apartment, the explosive that Macnamara’s carpentry had concealed in the furniture went off, blasting ahead of it a storm of steel ball bearings and roofing nails. To minimize casualties in nearby apartments the explosive force had been deliberately directed in a swath from the interior of each room toward the outer wall. The windows blew out in a red blaze of heat and horror, and Sula heard screams as debris rained onto the street below.

Ramps slammed down from two large gray vehicles nearby, and Naxid police charged out, racing for the apartment where flames were now lapping from the windows.

“Ah. Hah,” Sula said.

She turned and walked away. Her feet seemed to sink deep into the pavement, as if it were made of soft rubber.

Hong had been captured, then, in the wake of the Axtattle fiasco, and had been forced or persuaded to give up the procedures by which he contacted his teams. Others teams besides Sula’s would be betrayed. She had to assume that she and her team were now the only members of Action Group Blanche now at large.

She and her team were alone in the city, inhabiting false identities, without allies, few resources, and with no way to contact her superiors.

Caroline, Lady Sula, had limited resources to cope with this situation. What was needed was another person, with a different set of skills.

It’s my war now, Gredel thought, and kept walking.