Ante Lucem — Before Light

Casicaa, a city south and east of Soliara's capital, and to the opposite extreme of Invernali's snow storm, sweltered in heat all night.

At ante lucem, the twilight half hour before sunrise, what business still existed crawled. Early birds took advantage of the darkness's relative cool — mostly assistants picking up groceries and laundry for Constellation managers, and running a few business-related errands.

The city operated like a ship with a skeleton crew. A year ago, there had been bustle, industry, small businesses, big businesses, manufacturing, construction, transportation; there had been farmers and markets. Now Casicaa was a ghost city, a big city turned down, as if operating on low power.

Every industry disrupted all at once. Now there were no more jobs in food production, mining, on factory floors — few stores, few cafes, few diners. The workers remaining moved on to bigger cities with more forgiving climates. Fields were left to bake, unharvested, under a white sun. The last remaining residents of Casicaa — aside from their assistants — were affluent and could sleep in rather than wake up and face the heat.

Hollow windswept multi-story estates bordered the central plaza, skeletons of houses with windows that never closed and might not even have glass panes. Curtains made better walls, anything to let a breeze cross a bedroom. Staircases outside and exposed balcony hallways formed a perimeter of rooms concealed only by the barely opaque sheets that billowed out, breathing air, like lungs, in the wind.

Cooling magic was yet to become widespread.

The ghost city almost made Cristo feel alone. As if there would be no witnesses, despite the professionals he had passed lining up for coffee, monochrome suit silhouettes shadowing the pale pre-dawn sidewalks.

He stopped to watch the park. In this residential quarter bordering it, the sidewalks were empty, the plaza frozen still. Trees and topiary cast motionless penumbras, though the shadows of wildlife flickered across the pond in the mirror image of flight, critters occasionally swiftly scuttering. Absent was the slow, predictable movement of human pedestrians.

He felt like the only person in the city as he approached the stairs climbing the outside of Exequi Benito Fortunato's urban estate. There was time to watch the park and wait to see whether anyone would go for an early morning stroll, because it would be best if no witnesses saw Cristo's shadow creeping outside the exequi's curtains.

The absolute transformations of people's behavior caused by teleportation was striking. Now everyone always linked straight to where they were going. They skipped right over the park that otherwise might have been a pleasant highlight of their commute. Not a single soul tramped down the pebbled path to pass by the magically embellished fountains flashing true blue to orange and yellow, or the augmented artwork that cast changing colors and light across famous old Casicaan sculptures.

They would get over it. The novelty of teleporting would wear off, and they would realize how many literal walks in the park they had missed out on, course correcting from the immediate instinct to link right from one's home to one's office sixty seconds before one was expected to show up for work (or sixty seconds after). Instead, they would eventually come to make use of the time saved by instant teleportation to enjoy public facilities like Nestor Plaza.

No one would see Cristo climb up Fortunato's estate to rooms protected only by translucent curtains and magical security systems that were long obsolete for him. With link portals not yet used for surveillance, Cristo had only to dodge real time patrols.

The real time security force still expected infiltration from the ground up — licensed magicians with connections to Fortunato's router had been vetted. They didn't expect Cristo to link to the second floor, but from the plaza he had picked up the rhythm of the patrol. One moment his boots pushed against cement, or rather cement pushed up against his boots as gravity pulled him against the ground, and his field of vision was taken up by the purple pre-dawn-lit edifice — the next, he closed his eyes because he didn't like to see how the location displacement of a totally new place would flick like a slide before his eyes, confusing his brain. For that second he felt weightless, touching nothing, no force of gravity pulling him, no surface against which his feet could exert pressure. When he opened his eyes, he crashed (quietly) up the stairs by foot before the patrol on the second story circled back. Linking the whole way, without line of sight, could lead to unexpected crashes. It wasn't as if he had Constellation designated coordinates within Exequi Fortunato's sleeping chambers.

At the top of the third story staircase, the rhythm of the patrol changed, yet luckily that patrol, her gold sand colored uniform flaring inward at the waist to reveal hips, had her back to Cristo. Eyes closed, he linked himself halfway up the next flight of stairs — just in case the woman were to look back. He climbed by foot the rest of the way.

There was no rush. So long as no one saw him; that was the important thing. He had until hora prima before he needed to be anywhere.

He had to be careful entering that room — by foot. There was a high likelihood of even a small observation link displacing matter within the room, exploding particles out of its way and sending shards of a bedpost or a shelving unit like shrapnel. Perhaps even hitting the skull of a Fortunato sitting up in bed, despite all the long odds that of all the three dimensional space available he had opened a teensy portal inside a man's head. Definitely fatal.

And Cristo did have a few questions to ask before he put anything fatal in Fortunato's head.

The hallway outside the curtain walls of Fortunato's bedroom was clear. Cristo hid long enough to watch a patrol circle twice before he was confident of the timing, then he slunk along in their wake.

Satisfied in the morning quiet, Cristo slipped between the sheets, into the darkened sleeping quarters, and did not hesitate to set his gnomon dimly alight. It was withdrawn from a narrow pocket slit tailored to form a perfect holster. Holding the gnomon up like a wand, or a dart he was about to throw, the angular metallic rod was more like the former as described in stories. He held it for Fortunato to see should he wake.

Indeed, the figure in the massive bed with thin burgundy sheets slept deeply. Alone. Inconveniently alone, because had there been someone else present, someone other than Fortunato's wife, that person would have made a convenient murder suspect.

One thing Cristo had known; Exequi Fortunato's wife had not been in Casicaa this night. She was away on business, and if she had been in this bed, the informant who had told Cristo how to get this far — close enough to harm a helpless unarmed man in his sleep — would not have been so forthcoming. The one thing Fortunato Junior cared about, had cared about for all these years, was his mother. With a thought to Junior like a prayer for forgiveness, Cristo cut off Senior's air supply with a carotid artery hold — with his own hand, the gnomon still held aloft, as no more than a light. Ironically, the restraint called the sleeper hold caused the man to rouse when Cristo released it, allowing the oxygen to rush back into his lungs.

A gasp, unintentional, uncontrollable, Cristo allowed, even as it broke the morning open, but a finger to his lips warned against further noise. The pants that followed were quiet as could be.

The question Cristo had come to ask, the only one he needed, was asked and answered nonverbally. One look at the gnomon and Senior's eyes went wide. Fear. More fear even at the wand than at a stranger in his sleeping chambers choking him — a man's words could lie but his eyes so newly roused from slumber registered only natural, unfiltered truth.

He knew what it was.

He knew what the gnomon was.

He shouldn't have known what it was.

That was the only question, and Cristo had his answer . . . but he was asking anyway before he knew it. He cast a mental link, sending his words directly into the man's mind, like a thought: Do you know what this is? Shake or nod.

For a second, Senior did neither, and Cristo should have acted anyways, but he did have time to ask. Did you see a wand like this? Was it presented as a reward, an early prototype? Was it a deal, should you promise to never, for all eternity, ever cast a vote for anyone but . . . well, you know who, and I know who. That's not what's important here.

The man whispered, "If I say yes, won't you kill me?"

"If you say yes," whispered Cristo, "I will let Aurelian Novus live. If you say yes, I will need your son."

Threat made, he returned to silent mental link messaging. I want to know it really happened first, because I have never done this before. Nothing like this. I never expected to be a revolutionary, or to kill or it. I never thought I'd become a soldier, never thought I would murder anyone.

But you, if you were to live another century, are going to kill millions. You would be responsible for the deaths of countless Soliari. Actually, not countless. A census of the losses of life should be easy to collect from star dial data.

I wish you could say no. I wish Junior had been wrong. If you hadn't been bound, if you could change your vote, I wouldn't have to do this, Senior. With this wand, I could have taken your will and be done with the Fortunato family. Now, I have to take your life, and deal with your son, a young man, a man so different from the ancient one I know, who is yet to be given the gift of hindsight, the gift of regret — of seeing through his father, the man who raised him and brought him up in his own footsteps, in his image. It is so much messier this way than if you could just give your will to me. Cristo twirled the gnomon around his fingers, the habit transforming into something more threatening. Angrier.

"Yes," whispered Fortunato. With the admission, it was as if the gift of foresight had been ignited within Fortunato's mind. And then with a thought, nothing more, Cristo ignited a spark inside Fortunato's cranium, a miniscule orb or starfire that burned through the brain stem in two to three seconds, humanely, painlessly. The body on the bed convulsed, spasming until it fell into the eerie, seemingly impossible stillness of the dead. The immense heat needed to be carefully controlled at a level below what would burn Benito's head from the inside out. Cristo didn't look away.

He observed carefully the quick flare and its desired result, controlling the fire. When the man was definitely expired, Cristo asked the stars to extinguish it, and it went out.

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