The City Guard, Divided

The sight of the pistol drained the vigor and fury from General Winmore. No, it was more than just the pistol, it was the colonel holding it. General Winmore was a man who had never shown fear to even the most powerful of mages, he had never deferred to the council, and he had for decades quashed infighting and betrayal within his ranks. However, he knew he could not face all three threats simultaneously.

For the first time in his adult life, General Winmore felt truly weak. Despite his age, he had maintained a strong body with an impressive frame. He knew that age would one day render him frail, but he had always believed that to be a decade or two away. As his shoulders slumped, he felt as if his muscles were deflating, as if those decades were destroying his body all at once.

He knew there was something more going on than a simple loss of heart. This colonel—a threatening upstart he had promoted in order to keep a closer eye on—there was something different about him today. Although he had control of the situation, he was visibly nervous. The man was neither powerful nor a natural leader, and yet, General Winmore felt a strange compulsion to obey his commands, a compulsion that took everything he had to fight.

“I’ll go peacefully,” he sighed. “I’m no fool. I’ll be safe in the council’s custody. That’s more than I can say for you if you go through with this. Do you even have a plan for maintaining control over those who will resent you for siding with the council? Never mind that, do you even have a plan for getting me out of the building without confrontation?”

“I’ll handle it,” the colonel said, but the frown on his face betrayed his lack of confidence.

“Good.” General Winmore nodded. “I wouldn’t want to get caught in the crossfire.”

“Come on.” The colonel opened the door behind him and gestured with his gun. The two of them nearly made it back to the elevator before they were stopped by two rank-and-file officers.

“Hey colonel,” one of them said. “You tryin’ to turn our general over to those walking computers?”

“Someone has to do it,” the colonel snapped. “They won’t kill him in captivity, but if we disobey, they might not be so merciful with us. You wanna try to fight them with everything else going on?” The two officers looked at each other and then stepped aside.

“Sorry, general,” they mumbled.

“Don’t be,” the general said. “You’re making the right choice, given the situation.”

“Don’t think everything’s going to go your way, colonel,” one of the officers shouted as the elevator doors closed.

The colonel and the general continued to the armory undisturbed. There, a gynoid was waiting for them in a car.

“Good work.” The gynoid rolled down the window as they approached. “I’ll take him from here.”

“I, um, was promised a promotion,” the colonel said.

“Were you? I guess that makes sense. Someone needs to run the guard. Go ahead and take charge.”

“That’s it? Just like that? I’m supposed to go back and declare I’m in charge now?”

“Were you expecting a ceremony? In these circumstances?”

“I’ll need some proof,” the colonel pointed out.

“Very well. Wincent, give him your hat. You won’t be needing it anymore.”
Reluctantly, Wincent removed his hat, which bore his insignia, and handed it over to the colonel. The gynoid reached over and opened the passenger-side door, and Wincent silently climbed into the car and fastened the seat belt. Without another word to the colonel, the gynoid drove off.

“We don’t have much time,” the gynoid said once they were a few blocks from the armory. “There are civilian clothes for you in the back seat. We’re going to pull into a side street and change cars. You’re going to need to hide in the trunk until we’ve safely left the settlement. It won’t be comfortable, but if you make too much noise, we’ll get caught. Think you can manage?”

“Who are you?” Wincent asked, completely stunned by what the gynoid had said.

“R. Ginevra. We met two days ago. I was in the interrogation room with Ashtin.”

“Then you must know what I let slip.”

“Indeed. Ordinarily, I would wish you interrogated, and perhaps executed, but there are more pressing matters.”

“More important than the leaking of classified materials?”

Ginevra swerved the car into an alleyway. “If you were the council, and you came across someone, like yourself, who had somehow gained access to forbidden historical artifacts, how would you deal with them?”

“Like you said. I’d interrogate them to figure out the source of the leak.” As the car came to a stop Wincent contemplated making a run for it, but he doubted he could escape.

“And that is what the council should be doing, but instead, there are orders to kill you on sight. Orders that were signed in my name.”

“And the council would abide by the orders of a single gynoid?”

“I’m on a special investigative assignment. A very special assignment. I am privy to information that the council is not, and it concerns matters far more dangerous than ancient fiction. Whoever signed those orders in my name is aware of this, and they are taking advantage of it to sow chaos and confusion within the council. Both of our lives are at risk. Thus, the logical course of action is for the two of us to disappear for a while.”

“This could be a trick. A ploy to get me to talk.”

Parking the car, Ginevra shot him a side glance. “Do you think yourself a hard enough man to withstand torture? To take your own life to avoid it?”

“No,” Wincent admitted.

“And I am aware of that. If I just wanted information, I wouldn’t need to play these games. Now, can I count on your cooperation, or are you going to make this difficult?”

“Allow me to offer an alternative. I know an easier way out of the city.”

Ginevra knew that she shouldn’t trust anything Wincent said. Despite his cooperation up to this point, he was still a dangerous man. And yet, as she analyzed the tone of his voice, more and more of her processing power was drawn into the analysis, as if it were a siren luring her into the depths of the ocean. When it felt as though the analysis might consume her entire processing power. It completed, and the results indicated that Wincent was trying to tell her something important.

⁂

Basttias waited inside the room with the books after Ashtin and Dr. Shreburn left. Once they were far enough that they wouldn’t hear him, he fell to his knees and wept in relief. He hadn’t wanted to kill Ashtin. He was fond of his young protégé, but that fondness came second to his duty to the council. He knew Ashtin felt the same.

After regaining control of his emotions, his first order of business was to clean the blood from the floor and preserve Ashtin’s discarded arm for study. The council would probably learn nothing from studying it, but he knew they would want it nonetheless. After freezing the arm and sealing it in an airtight container, he grabbed a pulpy looking science-fiction book from one of the bins and lay back on a sofa. It was surprisingly comfortable for having sat in a secret underground labyrinth for years. Magic had been used to preserve it, he could tell.

He found the novel, unsurprisingly, uninteresting. He’d come across ancient science fiction in his historical studies, but it had always failed to capture his imagination. He knew a good historian should be able to put themselves in the shoes of authors and readers of the time, but knowing how space travel and AI actually developed took all the fun out of it.

Of course, he wasn’t reading for pleasure, but to pass the time. He didn’t know if it was the spellbreaker who had interfered with his communication with the dangerous mage, or the tunnels themselves. It was also possible that he was simply being ignored. He intended to wait in the tunnels for a while and see if the dangerous mage contacted him.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Don’t keep me in suspense, Basttias, the voice sounded in his head. Did you kill him, or didn’t you?

He broke your hypnosis, Basttias replied, attempting to convey his bitterness mentally.

Not my hypnosis. The voice laughed. I’m merely an observer.

For entertainment?

No. Well, maybe there is a bit of that. It’s more like… I found a boulder atop a mountain and I pushed it. Now it is rolling down the slope, and I am watching it destroy everything in its path.

In this analogy, the rock hypnotized me? Basttias didn’t like the idea that the dangerous mage had willing pawns, or worse, collaborators.

Something like that. Or perhaps the boulder loosened another boulder, and that boulder hypnotized you. It’s cascading down the mountain so much faster, and more chaotically, than I anticipated. It’s difficult to keep track of it all.

And the reason you want me to explore my magic is because you want to turn me into one of those boulders?

You’re too smart for flattery, so I won’t promise you a place at my side or anything like that, but I treat my pawns well, Basttias. My earlier analogy was too crude. Boulders rolling down a hill have a propensity to destroy themselves. I want to create an environment where the boulders—that is to say, the mages—can flourish.

Once again, Basttias considered the possibility that the dangerous mage was insane. How could an environment rife with violent crime be an environment where anyone, let alone mages, could flourish? And wouldn’t creating a better world for mages just lead to a repeat of the tragedies of old Earth? And yet, he sensed an invitation, one that he knew he must risk.

If I said I wanted to be one of your boulders, would you teach me how to protect myself from that kind of hypnosis?

I thought you’d never ask.