House of Reeds

A Sub-Basement The District of Poisoners, Parus

Lachlan scowled, black hair falling into his eyes, and thumbed up a system status display on his primary v-pane. He itched, his stomach was cramped from hunger, and the entire room smelled very sharply of sweat, fatigue and half-heated threesquares. Dozens of tiny rectangles appeared on the v-pane, showing the status of his surveillance network in the cities of the Phison valley. Two-thirds or more of the v-feeds were blank or showing a skull-glyph indicating the spyeye or stationary relay camera was dead or unreachable.

A truly enormous headache was being held at bay by his medband, but the Йirishman could still feel the pressure behind a thin drug-induced veil.

"Sir?"

He looked up and saw one of the surveillance technicians, her shirt stained with sweat, standing up at her console, an old-fashioned landline phone in her hands. "What is it?"

"I've…I've got a call for you, sir." The technician held out the ancient-looking, enameled plastic device. "From a long-distance office in Gandaris. It's the Resident's wife, Mrs. Petrel. She says…she says the city has risen up against the Imperial presence, Prince Tezozуmoc has disappeared, there's rioting in the streets and she needs immediate extraction for herself and her ladies-in-waiting."

Lachlan rubbed his eyes. This just gets better and better, doesn't it? He cleared away the spyeye diagnostic with a sweep of his hand and tapped up a map of the northern city. "We've no way to pick her up by air. She'll have to make her way out on the ground. Where exactly are they?"

The technician mumbled into her phone – the Йirishman stifled a brittle laugh, amused to see her using such an antiquated device. But here? It's the very latest in native-tech! When the Old Woman had pressed him to use the ancient native telecom network linking Parus and some of the larger cities, he'd balked – arguing their work crews and technicians would be better employed ramping up the comm relay network – but she'd insisted on having a backup for the backup. Now six-hundred-year-old cables are carrying nearly a third of our data traffic…

Until the arrival of the Imperials, the old Arthavan-period fiber-optic network buried beneath Takshila, Parus and the other cities had gone unused and apparently forgotten. The sealed cables and their conduits were still in place – the lack of tectonic activity in the land of the Five Rivers had allowed them to remain mostly untouched as the centuries passed – but the new Jehanan civilization struggling up from the ruins had lost the equipment to access the physical network. Rigging adapters to allow Imperial comm to use the outmoded multiplexed fiber had been a bit tricky, but Mirror technicians were nothing if not resourceful.

"She says they're hiding in one of our safe houses downtown. Number sixteen, on Quelling Tongue street." The technician rubbed her ear, waiting for Lachlan to consider the alternatives displayed on the map.

"I see. They're four blocks from the railway terminal." He tapped up a timetable, nodded to himself and tabbed through a series of native agent biographies the comp had on hand. "Tell her to get to the station and find a ticket clerk named Hundun Pao – he's one of ours – there should be an express train to Parus leaving in about…three hours." The Йirishman smiled grimly. "Assuming the trains are still running, and Petrel and her girls aren't killed or captured on the way."

The technician swallowed and began speaking rapidly into the phone.

I'm a travel service, Lachlan thought, rather bitterly. What a disaster… Fetching and carrying for the Anglish of all people!