Resolution by John Meaney

just could be right.’
     
    At the bar counter, the native NYers talked differently but the sentiment was the same.
     
    ‘—Riker’s Island, and lose the key.’
     
    ‘Dowse da doity little bastards wit’ gas, and light ‘em up.’
     
    Ro used her strand to transfer payment for the untouched coffee. Slipping from the booth, she passed the midwestern couple without a word and headed for the door.
     
    ‘Hey now, miss. Is there a problem at all?’
     
    Her aikido-trained mother had striven for the way of peace. But for Ro, blending with an enemy’s attack was just a way of getting close enough to reach their eyeballs.
     
    ‘If the coffee’s not warm enough, I can—’
     
    Golden sparks glimmered, half-visible through her grey contacts.
     
    ‘Devil spawn? Is that what you think?’
     
    Potential building.
     
    Now.
     
    There was a flat bang, and a cloud of dense, yellow-tinged grey smoke billowed from above the bar.
     
    ‘The HV set just—’
     
    Then Ro was on the street and the bar’s door was shut behind her.
     
    Stars were visible in the sky, even with Manhattan’s bright lights, and the air felt fresh after the storm. Sidewalks, washed clean, glistened with clear puddles.
     
    I’ll show you a storm, if that’s what you want.
     
    Her boots splashed through puddles as she walked.
     
    <>
     
    ~ * ~
     
    12

    NULAPEIRON AD 3423

     
     
    In the antechamber, servitors stood in ranks on the polished floor at solemn attention, in stone-cold silence. The doorshimmer leading to Corduven’s chamber sparkled at Tom’s approach but did not evaporate. He stood there, story crystal clenched in fist, hard enough to hurt.
     
    Corduven —
     
    Inside, his friend lay dying, not yet dead.
     
    Tom stared at nothing, seeing Corduven as he had been last night, sunken and emaciated. It was like Father: wasting away, becoming a wizened skeletal figure that wheezed and breathed fitfully, with those long quiet gaps that made you ask Was that the final one? and then the painful surprise of another indrawn, ragged breath ... until the last, and silence.
     
    For a long time Tom stood there, until frosty brilliance slid down the doorshimmer and Sylvana stepped through. She looked regal, incredibly beautiful, and for a moment Tom felt unworthy even to be in her presence. Her shining blue gaze fastened on him; then she gathered up her ivory robe and walked past him without a word.
     
    The priestess, in her purple death-cape, strode into the chamber. Tom followed her as far as the archway, then stopped, regarding the grey-white corpse-thing in the bed. The dead body was no longer Corduven, but a composite of minerals whose structure was already breaking down, a decaying organic sculpture that bore little relation to the man who had been Tom’s friend.
     
    Jay, too stunned to weep, knelt at the bedside, clasping Corduven’s dead hand. Behind Jay, Lady V’Delikona stood, straight and unbowed even in the presence of death.
     
    Tom remembered, as a new Palace servitor, walking into Corduven’s suite to pick up a faulty smartsatin garment, and the astounded joy on Corduven’s face when he revealed a tricon cast in white metal, a joke intended for Sylvana, and found that a common-born servitor like Tom understood the pun: an antinomy cast in antimony. They had laughed together, friends from the first.
     
    Why didn‘t I stay until the end?
     
    Was it because Jay deserved his private grief, or because Tom had been afraid to stay? There would never be another opportunity to talk to Corduven.
     
    ‘Tom?’ It was Lady V’Delikona. ‘Walk with me.’
     
    She leaned more heavily on his arm than he expected; a show of frailty and therefore of trust: she would never publicly reveal a weakness. They walked through ebon corridors in grieving silence, then came to a halt at the edge of the Great Courts.
     
    A low moaning passed through the Courts, and the hairs rose on Tom’s neck.
     
    ‘What...