On-campus defenders had been kept far busier. From the front of the dormitory Evan looked between an administration wing and one of the lecture halls, out toward the western gate. An M1 Marksman had forced its way through, deciding that the unrest in Yiling was especially brutal because of the Conservatory’s closeness. Calling on other Republic loyalists to rally, it made the first attempt to penetrate the grounds.
Its corpse continued to smoke, even now. The taste of burnt fuel oil hung heavy in the air, and left a slick grime coating Evan’s teeth and tongue. Two sharp reports made him glance into the sky, thinking of artillery fire. Colorful red and blue chrysanthemums blossomed and melted over Yiling.
New Year’s fireworks. That was all.
Evan took the inside stairwell three steps at a time, pushing his tired muscles as he forced his way up to the fourth floor. Jenna had a north-facing room at the end of the building, the better to accommodate a late sleeper. Other female cadets sat outside their rooms, talking about the riots, the resistance. Most wore infantry and tank crew fatigues. Evan traded sketchy salutes with Tori Yngstram, another MechWarrior cadet.
Tori glanced down the hall and nodded at an open door. “She’s there.”
Evan slowed his pace, a load of worries dropping away. One of the reports he’d picked up was that Jen Lynn Tang had not appeared for her patrol, and her backup had been called in to take her place in the Locust. With sporadic fighting on the grounds, the chance that she’d gotten caught off-campus by the riots, or the very real possibility that, like Mark Lo, she had finally opted out of the fight, Evan had not known what to believe. But she was here. She was safe.
She was standing at her window, drapes ripped away and left in a pile against the wall. Jenna wore regular fatigue pants and a sports bra. A padded jacket lay draped over the chair at her desk, stained and grimy and crusted along one sleeve with dried blood. She heard Evan enter the room, but did not look back.
“Franklin Delaray,” she said, catching Evan rubbing flakes of dried blood between his fingers. He had picked it off the jacket sleeve. “I was coming back inside the walls—went out to check our forward posts—and a pair of Condors hit the main entrance right behind me. Franklin was in a Regulator II. It took a savage beating, but he refused to back off. A Pack Hunter showed up, then a Jessie. They drove the Condors off.”
Evan said nothing. Waiting her out.
“Franklin was hurt,” Jenna continued. Finally, she turned away from the window, stepped to one side of the glass and leaned against the wall. “Missile shrapnel penetrated the Regulator’s hatch. We pulled him out and sent him to the infirmary. They needed a gunner, so I pulled on his jacket and helped out.”
“That’s where you were needed,” Evan said. He rubbed a hand up over his head, pushing back tangles of sweat-matted hair. “So you saw the main push?”
“Wasn’t much of one.” Jenna brushed it off with a shrug. “Condor. Couple of Double-V Rangers. One Koshi. Our hoverbikes pinned the armor against the wall, and we drove the Koshi back out with the Pack Hunter supported by armor and some late-arriving Infiltrators. After the Condor went up in flames, the Rangers surrendered.”
She rocked herself forward, stepped back to the window. She left enough room for Evan to join her, which he did. “He’s out there, isn’t he?”
From her room, Evan stared out over the lower buildings and the north grounds. Salvage crews were busy removing the burned-out shells of ruined vehicles and loading up anything worth saving on JI 100 recovery vehicles. “Yeah, Mark is out there somewhere.”
“Mark? Mark is back on campus. He brought in about a hundred displaced residents from Chang-an.” She must have sensed his surprise. “They headed our way only because they didn’t know where else to go. Mark told them we’d get them food and a place to sleep. I was talking about Mai Uhn Wa. I heard that he’s been gone since early this morning.”
Ah, Mai. “Mai is out there somewhere, yes.” Evan stared at the distant rooftops and higher buildings in the YiCha suburbs. A three-story building burned about two kilometers away, but it looked like it might be under control. No heavy fires had been set locally, for which he was thankful. Distant Chang-an was not quite so fortunate by all reports, suffering widespread damage in several commercial and industrial districts. Was that where Mai had disappeared to? Taking some of the Ijori Dè Guāng cells to join in the madness? Testing, and training, his future Warrior House.
“I’m glad Mark’s all right,” he offered her. And he was. Above all else, Mark was still Evan’s friend. It would have been much easier if Evan could hate him.
Jenna nodded. “Me, too. And I’m glad you made it back in. But now David and Hahn are out there, and who knows what will happen?”
She stepped into him then, resting her head back against his shoulder. Her braided hair smelled of sweat and smoke. The heat of her skin burned against his arm. It was nothing meaningful, Evan told himself, just a friend needing someone to lean against, but suddenly the room seemed a whole lot smaller. He drew an arm around her, offering her comfort.
“Evan, when we began this… when you began this… did you expect this? All of this?”
He looked at the orange flames licking up into a dusky gray sky, smoke feeding the haze. Another skyrocket burst over Yiling—green sparks that glittered like emeralds. He saw their Pack Hunter jog across the open grounds to the north, chewing up turf and cracking walks as it passed near the Guardian. A pair of Saxon APCs followed. A new patrol.
“No,” he said truthfully. “I didn’t.” In fact, Evan still expected much worse.
As if reading his unspoken thoughts, Jenna nodded. “How much longer?”
“A couple of days,” he said automatically. “After their attempts today, they’ll wait until some kind of order is restored.”
Which gave him enough time, he hoped, to work something of his own out with Mai Uhn Wa. There was still so much between them, good and bad. One of them had to bend. After hearing Mai’s plans for the resurrection of House Ijori, Evan had known who that must be. And maybe he had what Mai needed to bring it off.
Or, more to the point, the Cult of Liao did.
At another window, across Yiling and the sprawling suburbs of Chang-an, two others also stood at a window. They looked out over the desperation and anger that had seized the capital city and, to a lesser extent, the entire world of Liao.
Anna Lu Pohl’s private residence took up the entire third floor in the east wing of the Governor’s Palace. She had rooms for all occasions, from solitary meals and casual meetings to banquets and balls. Her private office had hardwood floors covered in Persian-style rugs, a golden teak desk, and a wall-size curio-filled with a jade collection owned by the Liao people, but conveniently displayed for their Governor when not on tour. A gas fire glowed behind ceramic logs in the fireplace, warming the room.
Having retired from twenty straight hours on her feet, the Governor had long since kicked her shoes into the corner and loosened the robes that hung down from her mantle. Underneath she wore a smart but comfortable dress suit, rumpled and dark with sweat stains under the arms.
“One hell of a way to start the New Year,” she said to Gerald Tsung as more fireworks bled across the night sky. She toasted the display, downed the last of her plum wine and set the glass on the windowsill.
Tsung continued to look over the two-story-high walls and into some distant streets of Chang-an. Governor Pohl left him there, having seen enough. The riots showed no sign of burning themselves out. Riots. Plural. Chang-an was not a homogenous city. Chang-an was a walled-off palace and several forums buildings. Chang-an was the rural stretch to the east, where single-family farms competed with larger combines, and then the suburb of Erisa beyond that. Chang-an was Yiling and Sua and the industrial sector of Gahn where the fires were under control now, though sixty percent of the factories were little better than gutted husks and charred grounds. Chang-an was the military reserve near Lianyungang, it was the gem of Beilù, and it was the voice of Liao.