FOUR

FOUR YEARS LATER, not quite eight years after their nearly disastrous “adventure” to Fifth Tier, Alania sat with Lissa and Sandi at a table at the front of the Quarters Beruthi dining room, supposedly celebrating her twentieth birthday while really suffering the torments of the damned with a fake smile plastered on her face.

The Amazing Belgrani’s Hour of Magic and Mystery was finally—finally!—drawing to a close. The titular magician climbed a spindly plaster column. Teetering on tiptoe, he spun three times, then vanished with a sound like tinkling wind chimes in a puff of purple smoke. A collective gasp followed by applause dispersed the smoke into the general haze of the candlelit and overly warm room.

Alania applauded far more out of relief than appreciation. She looked down at her plate. Half of her honeyberry sorbet, a palate cleanser served after the initial overly complicated salad, remained uneaten. It no longer looked the least bit appetizing, having puddled into muddy-gold syrup in the glassy pink bottom of her silver-trimmed bowl.

She turned to speak to Sala, hovering as always just over her left shoulder. “The main course now, please.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sala, far more deferential in public than she ever was in private, curtsied, removed Alania’s bowl, turned, and vanished into the kitchen, moving upstream against the outflowing tide of robots coming to clear away the sorbet dishes. Each wheeled, multiarmed machine rolled out of her way so she never had to sidestep at all. Alania watched her go and wished she could go with her, and then maybe sneak out a side door into the street . . .

Of course, if she did, she would immediately be fetched by the same watchbot she had pretend-disabled all those years ago, which had saved her and Lissa and Sandi from the gang on Fifth Tier. A terrifying experience at the time, and she didn’t really want a repeat of it . . . and yet, on a day like today, she kind of did.

But of course it was impossible for her to sneak off anywhere, since she was putatively the guest of honor and the center of attention for this whole odious, tedious affair.

Stagehands in black began removing the magician’s props and setting up for the next bit of “entertainment,” the Seventh-Tier Acrobats’ Association (whose act was enjoyable enough but whom Alania had seen so many times at other girls’ birthday parties that she almost thought she could fill in for an injured acrobat should the need arise). Alania stared gloomily down from the head table’s dais at the elaborately coiffed heads of twenty-three young women more or less her own age. Clad in long formal gowns of red and green and silver and gold, they chatted and gossiped animatedly amongst themselves, because that was what one did at these affairs; that was the real entertainment, after all.

Overhead, projected stars twinkled among scudding, holographic clouds, designed to give the room the appearance of a walled outdoor patio at night. Alania looked up at them and wished they were real and that she could fly away into them. When she was a little girl, these obligatory parties had at least included games. Now they were tediously adult affairs.

Some of the other young women were fortunate only children, which meant they would inherit their fathers’ or mothers’ ranks and take over their families’ Quarters, Estates, and for the wealthiest, like her own guardian, Retreats. They were the only ones who could truly hope to enjoy themselves at parties like this. Others had older siblings and could only remain on Eleventh or Twelfth if they married into other Officer families. For those girls, marriage prospects were everything, and they understandably resented being stuck at a party where there were no young men. If they failed to marry into other Officer families, they would be shipped off to their families’ Estates to help manage farms or mines that supplied the City: a social fate worse than death.

Alania, on the other hand, was in the very strange position of being the ward of Lieutenant Beruthi, not his daughter. He had never so much as hinted that she would inherit his business, Quarters, Estate, or Retreat. She had no idea what her future held . . . except for that overheard snatch of conversation between Beruthi and First Officer Kranz in the entrance hall all those years ago. She’d half convinced herself she’d misunderstood and that they couldn’t really have been talking about her . . . but what if they had?

The four years were up. Would something happen?

Captain, I hope so, she thought, staring at the sea of simpering socialites. Otherwise, what would become of her? It appeared she couldn’t inherit, and yet she could not marry into an Officer family either—her status as a ward rather than daughter ensured that no Officers would allow their precious sons to waste time on her. The only boys she’d ever seen had been at the Lieutenant’s midwinter balls, and they’d studiously ignored her. She saw no possibility that she would be shipped off to Beruthi’s Estate, since she’d never been formally allowed to leave Twelfth Tier. And anyway, as she understood it, the Estate was even more automated than the household, without any living people there at all unless the Lieutenant was in residence and had invited guests. Perhaps that was to be expected of the Officer whose family made almost all the City’s robots.

Which left . . . what?

She thought back again to that long-ago escape with Lissa and Sandi and the strange conversation she’d had with the Lieutenant afterward. He’d been as good as his word. She’d learned so much since then, things she knew, from talking to her two friends, that other girls were not learning. She knew the structure of the City inside and out from detailed plans she’d been made to memorize; its history—or what there was of it, since it had simply begun, without explanation of what had come before, with the awakening of the First Citizens; the organization, recruitment methods, training, and weaponry of the Provosts; the hierarchy of the Officers, and who was responsible for what. She knew it all, but she didn’t know why she knew it. It was all useless trivia. She couldn’t change any of it. She had no say in how the City was run. She didn’t even have anyone she could talk to about what she knew. Lissa and Sandi, much as she loved them, simply stared at her, uncomprehending, while the Lieutenant . . .

. . . well, if she’d hoped that that moment of communication after the watchbot had rescued the three of them on Fifth Tier was a sign of a greater rapport to come—and she had—it had proved a fool’s hope. He’d remained as distant and cold as ever.

She still didn’t understand exactly what had happened that day. Certainly no similar opportunity to escape the Tier—or even the Quarters—had ever presented itself again. While she had indeed disabled the watchbot’s sensors when she’d disconnected the wires inside its metal skull, it had repaired them itself the moment she was out of sight; she’d learned that, too, when her education had suddenly accelerated. She knew now that the watchbot’s tumble down the stairs had been nothing but stage dressing for the theater of her supposed escape. She even suspected the Lieutenant had hired the young gangsters on Fifth to threaten them; they had been so suspiciously close at hand and the courtyard otherwise so utterly deserted . . .

Alania shook her head. One of the hazards of spending so much time in her own mind was a tendency to overthink.

In any event, the restrictions on her movement were as tight as ever. Whereas all the girls in the dining room were also forced to hold formal parties like this one for their birthdays, afterward they traveled to their families’ Estates in the country for more celebrations with their closest friends, young men included. Or they received gifts like water-breathing lessons in Lake Glass or balloon trips to the Green Plateau.

She held her formal party and then returned alone to her room to bury herself in books or music or video plays. She had never been water-breathing or ballooning. The closest she had come to leaving the City was standing on a balcony cut into the City’s curving side and staring down at the mysterious white Cubes, five meters on a side, which lay in massive geometric piles to the east and west of the City. She had looked past them at the checkerboard of fields and plantations and workers’ villages in the Heartland and finally at the distant, glittering glimmer of the ice-capped Iron Ring, wondering if she would ever be allowed to travel those open spaces herself.

For twenty years, she had been caged like a pet animal. A pampered pet, she had to admit—Quarters Beruthi was hardly Tenth-Tier Prison—but however lavish it might be, a cage was still a cage. The holographic stars overhead were the only stars she had ever seen.

Lissa and Sandi, seated together on her right, had been engrossed in whispered conversation since the Amazing Belgrani had finished his act. Now they glanced her way. Then they gave each other what Alania instantly recognized as a Significant Look.

Oh, no. They’re going to try to make me feel better.

Sure enough, Lissa, closest to her, leaned in. “Millicred for your thoughts. You look like you’re a thousand kilometers away.”

Alania didn’t want to feel better. She wanted to brood—having practiced brooding her whole life, she was very, very good at it—but she didn’t want to hurt her friends’ feelings, either, so she did her best to imitate the smile on Lissa’s round brown face. “Just thinking. Sorry.”

“You can’t blame her for looking like she’s at a funeral,” Sandi put in. With her golden hair and snow-white complexion, made up to the hilt like every other young woman in the room, she looked more like a porcelain doll than a real person. “After all, a funeral would be more fun. Why our mothers put us through this . . .”

Her voice trailed off as Lissa lasered her with a look. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

Alania sighed. “It’s hardly news to me that I don’t have a mother, Sandi,” she said. “Or a father. I have noticed their absence from time to time over the past twenty years.” She managed to dredge up another smile to take the sting out of her words. “I’m living proof that these horrible traditions exist independently of parents. Maybe they’re Captain’s Orders.”

“May she live forever,” Lissa and Sandi said in unison. Although in private they used the Captain’s name in vain often enough, as Alania well knew, in public they were circumspect and careful to provide the properly-brought-up girl’s automatic response to any reference to the Captain. Considering the Captain had supposedly ruled the City for some five centuries, Alania wondered why She needed benedictions from the beneficiaries of her beneficence.

Her unspoken alliteration pleased her enough to turn her smile genuine. She took her amusement where she could find it.

“There,” Lissa said triumphantly. “You can enjoy yourself.”

“If you could do whatever you wanted for your birthday instead of hosting these stupid parties, what would it be?” Sandi asked.

“I’d go horseback riding,” Lissa said instantly. “I only got to go that once, last summer out at our Retreat, and it was incandescent.”

“Incandescent” was the current word of choice for something wonderful. Alania thought it a silly choice, but no one had asked her.

“I’d go paragliding off the Silver Cliffs,” Sandi said dreamily. “What about you, Alania?”

“Me?” Her mouth quirked. “I don’t know. Maybe a quick trip to Fifth?”

“Urgh,” Sandi said. “No.”

“Definitely no,” Lissa added.

Alania laughed and felt better for it. “Well, since we’re all stuck here instead, I guess we’ll just have to make the best of it.” Plates and platters were entering the room, borne by robots. Sala, in the vanguard, carried a silver tray covered with an opalescent dome, reminiscent of the dome atop Thirteenth Tier, beneath which the Captain supposedly lived. “I programmed our Master Chef to make my favorite: candied vatham with mashed sweebers and red gravy.”

“Incandescent!” Sandi and Lissa said together, and Alania laughed again.

But the laugh died on her lips as a deep gong sounded, announcing a new arrival and interrupting the spangle-clad Seventh Tier Acrobats in the act of rushing into the room. The one in front pulled up short, and the others piled into her, knocking her to her hands and knees. She scrambled to her bare feet just as the dining room’s main door slid silently open, its gold-trimmed black lacquer disappearing inside the matching walls.

Two men stood in the foyer beyond, both in the crisp white dress uniforms of Officers. Alania had been expecting Lieutenant Beruthi—more with resignation than the excitement she had felt when she was little and hadn’t yet realized her childish affection for him was sadly misplaced. But the second man . . . !

The second man was First Officer Kranz.

Conversation around the tables died when the gong sounded. Everyone turned to look as the two men entered. Now, with a collective intake of breath, all the girls rose to their feet, the movement starting in those nearest the door and rippling through the ranks. The acrobats backed out of the room in even greater disarray than that in which they had entered.

The ripple reached Sandi and Lissa, who jumped up. Alania stood last, much more slowly, the overheard words of the Lieutenant suddenly echoing in her mind: You just have to wait and keep yourself safe for four more years, sir. Just four more years.

Kranz, an easy smile on his face, flicked his left hand. “Please, ladies, be seated, be seated.” Though he was not a large man, his deep, resonant voice effortlessly filled the big room. “Go on with your festivities.”

The girls exchanged glances, then sat rather hesitantly. A few excited whispers broke out, and jewels glittered as tiara-bound heads tilted toward each other, but most of the guests watched wide-eyed as Kranz and Beruthi picked their way through the tables toward the dais, the robots deferentially rolling out of their way. Alania remained standing, watching them, and stepped back from the table to face them as they came up onto the dais to her right. Sala and Lissa quickly removed themselves to the far-left end of the table, hands folded and heads bowed.

“Guardian. First Officer,” Alania heard herself say, years of drilling in protocol and politeness somehow carrying her through her astonishment. “So kind of you to come.”

“Happy birthday, Alania,” Beruthi said. He didn’t offer a hug or even a handshake; he never had, that she could remember.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Yes, happy birthday,” Kranz said. He was several centimeters shorter than Beruthi and much slimmer, and had an ordinary face framed by steel-gray hair, only a hint of brown remaining in it. He smiled, but it was a mere flexing of muscles; his ice-blue eyes did not warm. He held out his hand as he spoke, and Alania took it hesitantly. His palm was smooth and dry, his grip firm.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, because she didn’t have anything else to say.

Just four more years . . .

“I’m sorry to take you away from your dinner,” Kranz went on as a robot lifted the dome covering the platter it had just set on the table in front of Alania. A savory-sweet smell rose from the pink mound of vatham, surrounded by scarlet mounds of mashed roots. “It looks delicious.” He glanced toward the door through which the performers had retreated. “And the entertainment. The Seventh-Tier Acrobats are excellent.”

“Lieutenant Beruthi hired them,” Alania said.

“I know,” Kranz said. “I recommended them to him.” He turned back to Alania. “Unfortunately, however, I have another meeting this evening and can only stay a few moments, and I’d very much like to have a word with you, if I may?”

He made it sound like a request, but Alania knew it was nothing of the sort. “Of course, sir.” She glanced at her guardian.

“The music room, Alania,” he said. “I will fulfill your duties as host until you return.”

Alania had a sudden incongruous image of Beruthi attempting to make small talk with Sandi and Lissa, and despite her bewilderment, her mouth twitched with amusement. She turned to Kranz. “If you’ll follow me, sir?” Fierce curiosity had replaced her initial alarm, and she had to admit that she enjoyed leading the First Officer—the First Officer!—past her wide-eyed guests, especially the ones she couldn’t stand, like Bacrivia Jonquille, who looked like she’d just bitten into a puckerberry.

The music room contained a glittering white concert knabe, which Alania was spectacularly mediocre at playing; the instrument’s three keyboards—plus foot pedals!—had defeated her. There were also enough string, brass, woodwind, and synth instruments to outfit an orchestra. None of them, so far as Alania knew, had ever been taken from the ceiling-high glass cabinets for dusting, much less playing. Apparently one of the previous Lieutenant Beruthis (or his or her spouse or offspring) had been musically inclined; the current one had no interest.

A rather spindly gold-colored couch and a matching chair huddled beside a low glass-topped table in the center of the black-and-white checkerboard-tiled floor. “Please have a seat,” Kranz said, indicating the couch, and Alania settled herself primly on the very edge of the cushions. To her relief, Kranz remained standing; she’d been afraid he’d sit beside her and found the idea rather horrifying. He looked down at her, hands behind his back. “I won’t keep you long. I know how anxious you must be to return to your party.”

I doubt it, thought Alania. “I am entirely at your service, First Officer,” she said demurely.

His gaze never wavered; she found it uncomfortable. “I remember when you were born,” he said after a moment.

This, Alania thought, is beyond weird. He remembered when she was born? Why?

“You’re too kind,” she murmured, because she had to say something.

Kranz’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t much, but it was closer to a real smile than the one he’d pasted onto his face back in the dining room. “And you’ve been very well brought up. Because I know perfectly well that what you really want to know is what in the Captain’s Name I’m talking about.”

Alania had been well brought up. It was one thing for her friends to take the Captain’s name in vain in private, but to hear the First Officer do it so casually startled her despite herself. Something must have showed on her face, because Kranz’s almost-smile broadened by perhaps a millimeter. “Pardon my language. I’m not used to the company of young ladies.” He shrugged. “But that’s about to change.”

Alania took a giant mental step away from bemused and toward alarmed. “Sir?”

Kranz shook his head, the almost-smile melting into an irritated frown. “I’m not making inappropriate advances, Alania. I’m here to tell you that your circumstances are about to change for the better.”

Alania said nothing. Eventually he had to tell her what he was talking about.

She hoped.

He looked toward the door. “Have you been happy as the ward of Lieutenant Beruthi?”

Alania blinked. “He . . . has taken very good care of me,” she said carefully.

“He has done his duty well,” Kranz said. He looked down at her again. “But you are twenty now. It is time for your new life to begin.”

Here it comes, Alania thought, heart suddenly pounding. “Sir?”

“You’re going to have a new guardian, Alania.” Kranz spread his hands. “Me.”

Alania stared at him. He might as well have said she was going to sprout wings and fly over the Iron Ring and out of the Homeland forever. Ward of the First Officer? Leave Quarters Beruthi, the only home she’d ever known? Yes, five minutes ago she’d been dreaming of just that, but she’d had in mind a trip into the country, or maybe shopping on Eighth or Ninth, not moving into Quarters Kranz. The idea was . . . ludicrous.

No, not ludicrous. Terrifying. Quarters Kranz, twice the size of Quarters Beruthi, was a fortress guarded by Provosts. She already felt like a prisoner in Quarters Beruthi. How much worse would it be there? She only had two friends. Would Lissa and Sandi even be able to visit her? And what about Sala?

She wanted to ask, but . . . this was the First Officer. You didn’t question him that way. It would be impudent, improper, and very likely imprudent. If the whispered stories were true, some people who questioned Kranz’s decisions had simply . . . vanished.

And looking at the unsmiling man in front of her, with blue eyes as cold and hard as cobalt steel, it was very difficult to discount those rumors.

“Sir, I . . . I don’t know what to say,” she murmured at last. “Why me? Who . . .” Her voice trailed off. Who am I? was another question she’d learned long ago would not be answered beyond the barest of facts: her parents were dead, and Beruthi had taken her in. How her parents had died, no one would tell her. Nor would they tell her why Beruthi, of all people, had become her guardian. Sala either did not know or would not say. Lissa and Sandi didn’t have a clue. At parties, she’d overheard other girls speculating about it, some of them in ways that made her coldly furious and hotly embarrassed at the same time, but none of them knew.

Sometimes Alania thought her parents must have died bravely defending the Captain from assassins. Sometimes she thought instead that her parents must have been criminals and that her imprisonment was punishment for her poor choice of ancestors.

Sometimes she even toyed with the idea that her parents still lived somewhere, perhaps in exile far from the City, and she was a hostage to their continued good behavior. It would explain why she was never allowed to travel into the countryside.

For a time when she was quite little, she’d believed that Beruthi felt guilty concerning her parents’ deaths and had taken her in because he was a man of deep compassion. However, considering he’d shown no inkling of compassion, deep or shallow, in all the years since, she hadn’t thought that in a very long time.

In any event, none of those explanations explained this. But she felt certain of one thing: this had something to do with that overheard conversation when she was sixteen and quite probably with her adventure to Fifth Tier, the one Beruthi had clearly arranged, and the subsequent change in her education.

“I can’t tell you why,” Kranz said. “Not yet. I promise I will as soon as I can, but for reasons of City security . . . not yet.” His gaze sharpened still further, as if he were looking at a fascinating specimen through a microscope. “I have long been observing you, Alania Beruthi. You are important and special. Unique, in fact.”

Unique? Me? How?

He stared at her intently a moment longer, then cleared his throat and glanced at his watch, breaking his intense focus on her, as though afraid he had betrayed more than he had intended . . . which he hadn’t, since nothing he’d said made the slightest bit of sense to Alania. “Duty calls,” he said. He lifted his eyes to her again. “Go back and enjoy your birthday party and final evening here, Alania. I will send an escort for you tomorrow—it will have to be rather early, I’m afraid—to bring you to Quarters Kranz. Everything from your rooms will be packed and moved for you; don’t worry about that.” He held out his right hand. She took it and let him help her to her feet.

She tried to pull free, but his grip tightened. “Just one more thing,” he said. “A . . . precaution.” He reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out a short metal tube, open at one end. “Hold out your hand.”

Alania recognized the device. Every six months, a doctor came to examine her. She poked and prodded Alania from head to toe and then bundled her into the full-body docbot (kept in a room near the swimming pool) for an even more detailed examination. Alania was put to sleep for an hour during these exams, so she never knew exactly what was done to her. When she woke, the doctor helped her out of the docbot, then performed one final test: this one. Neither Beruthi nor the doctor would tell her what it was for, but at least she knew it wouldn’t hurt. She held still as Kranz turned her hand over, then placed the open end of tube against her palm. He pressed a small switch on the tube’s side. The light on the closed end of the tube flashed green, as it always did.

“Good.” The tube vanished into Kranz’s pocket. “Well then, I’ll leave you to your celebrations, Alania. Once again, congratulations. I’ll welcome you to your new home tomorrow.” He strode to the door and out.

The moment he was gone, Alania’s knees buckled, and she collapsed back onto the couch, feeling as if her whole world had not only been turned upside down but dropped on its head. She didn’t want to return to the party, but she knew her guardian—her former guardian—must be tiring of Sandi and Lissa, whom she was even more certain must be tiring of him. Still, she had to sit another three or four minutes before she could gather wits and strength enough to rise.

Tomorrow I’m leaving this house forever, she thought as she walked to the music room door.

Twenty minutes ago, that would have seemed a dream come true.

Now it felt more like the start of a nightmare.

Kranz was not a frivolous man, but he was willing to admit—to himself, if no one else—that he was somewhat vain about his position as de facto ruler of the City. And so, though it was not strictly necessary, he exited Quarters Beruthi as he had entered: right through the middle of Alania’s birthday celebration, although this time without endangering the acrobats, who would not resume their act until Alania returned. Along the way he rescued Lieutenant Beruthi from the attentions of Alania’s two young friends. He pasted one of his bright-but-utterly-fake smiles onto his face and waved to the rest of the girls as he passed them. Unusually, despite the enormous, pressing sense of urgency and approaching calamity that darkened every hour of his days, he felt the smile turn genuine as he and the Lieutenant made their way to the main entrance. “You’ve done good work, looking after her all these years,” he said to Beruthi.

“Thank you, sir,” said the Lieutenant.

“I’m sorry to have to take her away. I’m sure you’ve grown very fond of her.”

Beruthi opened one side of the double front door. “No, sir. I have been very careful not to.”

Kranz stepped through the door onto a broad portico overlooking a small garden-courtyard, one of many scattered through Twelfth Tier. Other Officer’s Quarters bordered the other three sides. Six Provosts stood at attention on the broad stairs leading up to Beruthi’s front door, three to a side: Kranz’s bodyguards. He turned to Beruthi. “Very wise, Lieutenant Commander.”

Beruthi froze in the act of closing the door, then turned toward Kranz somewhat jerkily, as though he were one of his robots with a motor-function fault. “Sir?”

“You heard me,” Kranz said. He held out his hand. Beruthi took it, and he shook it firmly. “Congratulations on your promotion. Considering everything the Beruthi clan has done for the City, the First Officers, and of course, the Captain . . . it’s long overdue.” He released the new Lieutenant Commander’s hand and looked up at the house’s imposing greenstone façade. “Although considering how Beruthi Robotics has prospered in its long service to the City, I don’t believe there’ll be any need to find you quarters more befitting your rank.”

“No, sir,” Beruthi said. “But the honor to the Beruthi name . . . I’m very appreciative.”

You should be, Kranz thought. Promotions were few and far between; the last one had raised Sub-Lieutenant Praterus, father of Alania’s friend Sandi, to the rank of Lieutenant fifteen years ago, after Lieutenant Sparrow had carelessly drowned while water-breathing before fathering an heir or even freezing sperm. Since Beruthi had never married, remained childless, had likewise failed to bank his genetic material, and was already in his fifties, Kranz thought it likely the promotion and the Beruthi name would end with this generation. He didn’t understand why Beruthi had chosen that course of action. Perhaps it was due to a misguided desire for revenge—he knew the current Beruthi had hated his own father. Whatever the reason, it was of no real concern to Kranz or the City; if the Beruthi line failed, there were many others eager to take over his rank, Beruthi Robotics, and especially his luxurious Quarters, Estate, and Retreat. Science Officer Prentis came to mind . . .

“No need to accompany me further; I’ll make my own way from here,” Kranz said. He nodded to the Provost Captain who commanded his bodyguards and started down the steps, the Provosts falling in behind him and to either side.

The unnatural lightening of his mood faded as he crossed the garden-courtyard. One of the few green indicators on the Captain’s status panel had slipped to yellow just that morning, something to do with liver function; a week before, a yellow indicator had turned red as she entered the last stages of heart failure. The medical machinery had been pushed to the limit, and so had her ancient, frail body, which was aswarm with nanobots. As for her mind . . . well, that had been overwritten so many times it barely connected with reality anymore.

The City had been declining for decades, but the rate of decline had increased during Kranz’s lifetime, as the Captain slowly failed. Living in a world of delusion, the Captain did not give the orders that would have sent out the maintenance robots to fix failing systems; she believed all systems were operating normally. The cursed Builders had insured that only the Captain could give those orders, and despite everything else he had accomplished, First Officer Thomas Kranz, Kranz’s original, had not been able to change that.

Of course, there were some things humans could fix on their own, but there were many more they couldn’t, because they didn’t have access to the necessary details of the City’s construction, which were locked within databases only the Captain could access. All repairs were jury-rigged at best, and some attempts at repair only made things worse. From the smoothly functioning, integrated machine it had been at its founding, the City had deteriorated to little more than an extremely large and ugly building housing far more people than it had been designed to hold.

Kranz’s hands clenched at his sides. Four years ago, he had almost despaired. The suicide of his clone, Falkin, meant that he would be the last First Officer Kranz. He had wanted to advance to the endgame of the Cityborn Project then, afraid that something would happen to him and that all the knowledge—the dark, secret knowledge—that had been passed through the Kranz line since its beginning would be lost. Without that knowledge, the City would fail finally and utterly, and everyone in and around it would eventually die.

But as Beruthi had reminded him then, there had been no way to hurry things along. Alania had not been ready, her brain not yet developed enough. And so, for the four years since Falkin’s death, the fate of the City had dragged on Kranz ever more heavily. The fear that he might die by accident or assassination despite every precaution or that the Captain would die too soon filled his days with dread and his nights with nightmares

Kranz shook his head, furious all over again at the raid twenty years ago that had forced him to put all his eggs in one Alania-sized basket. Seven candidate children had been produced. Genetics dictated a fifty-fifty chance any particular child would be suitable. Sure enough, of the seven, only three had been. Of those three, one boy, Danyl, had been stolen away by Erlkin Orillia. The second, a girl, had been murdered. No doubt Alania would have been murdered as well if she had not been fortuitously ill that evening and held in a different part of the hospital. The unsuitable children had been left unharmed by the kidnapper, though of course Kranz himself had ordered their elimination, just a few months later, once he was certain they were of no use to the project.

As for the kidnapped boy . . .

Nobody knew why Orillia had stolen Danyl, but there was no doubt he was behind the kidnapping and the murder. He had made no effort to conceal his meddling with the environmental and security controls, to cause convenient blackouts to cover his entrance into the hospital, and he had left an equally clear trail afterward. Not fifteen minutes after the boy was taken, Orillia’s personal aircar had launched from the same hangar from which Falkin had flown to his death sixteen years later. Orillia had also disabled the City’s air traffic control systems, so his flight had not been tracked. It had taken the Provosts a week to locate the aircar, abandoned in the foothills of the eastern reaches of the Iron Ring. Any trail that might have led from it had vanished beneath fresh snow, the first freezing onslaught of a particularly vicious winter.

Neither Orillia nor the boy had been seen since. Whatever his plans, it seemed clear that the Ensign and the baby must have perished in the Iron Ring, as had many other people foolishly seeking freedom there from the rule of the Captain. Neither the vegetation nor the wildlife could be safely eaten—the wildlife couldn’t safely eat humans, either, but that didn’t stop it from trying—so all food had to be stolen from the farmlands. Such thefts were always discovered sooner or later, and the Provosts inevitably arrested the thieves shortly after that, if they even bothered taking them alive, which they usually didn’t. Some bandits had survived for a year or two, but never longer.

Kranz had spent several fruitless days hoping Orillia would be found so he could thoroughly, painfully, fatally interrogate him. The man had almost destroyed everything.

But not quite, because Alania had escaped. Beruthi, who knew more about the true scope of Kranz’s plans than anyone else—the Beruthis had been loyal supporters of the Kranzes since the beginning—had raised her as his ward. Carefully watched her whole life, carefully educated, she was the only one who could save the City.

Tomorrow she would be safely ensconced in Quarters Kranz, though not for long. Within a week, she would fulfill her destiny, and the City would be reborn.

Today, though . . .

He sighed. Today he still had mounds of reports to get through and dozens of decisions to make. Not to mention an execution to attend on Tenth. As Kranz and his bodyguards exited the courtyard, he glanced over his shoulder at Quarters Beruthi, sheltering Alania, the Cityborn, behind its tall stone-covered walls, as it had for twenty years. This had better work. It’s our last chance.

It will work, he reassured himself, facing forward again. She’ll be in my Quarters tomorrow, and she won’t be out of my sight again after that. When the time comes, she’ll be ready.

And so will I.