what we use, the very top most layer, forming part of the energy of the lines themselves into the shield that protects us. The rest goes into the phase that keeps us out of alignment with real space, and able to live without having to hide what we are. And the remainder, a relatively small amount—”
“You skim off for yourself,” Louis-Cesare said, looking like something had finally made sense.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Dory, Hong Kong
I tensed up, afraid that comment was likely to piss Zheng off again, not because it had been belligerent, but because it was true. No way was a city founded by pirates and gangsters going to miss a chance like that. But he merely shrugged.
“Of course. The gals back at Lily’s, for instance, that’s how we fuel them. That’s also why they get a little aggressive, from time to time. Smaller bits of power get flung off that thing,” he gestured with his glass at the wall of ominous whiteness, “that are too thin to see, but when they impact one of the girls . . .”
“But why do they get hostile?” I asked. “You designed them, right?”
“Lily designed the bodies,” he corrected. “But the personalities were those of her friends, and some of those ladies have a temper. But mostly, they just get a little willful or catty or whatever. They’re not a problem.
“Those are the problem.”
I realized that we’d started moving again, and were now approaching some kind of stadium. I couldn’t see it too well, as it was on the opposite side of the car, but it looked pretty big. Although not compared to what was floating in cages beside it.
“What is that?” I asked, staring at the nearest one.
“What we came to see.”
The car swung around, getting into a queue for admission, I guessed. A bunch of guys on bright red rickshaws were patrolling the airspace around the main event, probably to discourage freeloaders. The new position gave me a better view and answered a few questions, although not all of them.
The “stadium” wasn’t actually floating, as I’d first thought. Even for a city with magic to burn, that would have been excessive. The base was five skyscrapers built around a small park, and the still functioning bridges connecting them. The roofs of the skyscrapers and the entire length of the bridges were crowded with spectators, but far more people had brought their own seats. Thousands upon thousands were crammed into vehicles of all descriptions, which filled the spaces between the buildings as well as the skies all around.
Some of the flying stadium seats were small, including a ton of two or four-seater rickshaws. At the opposite end of the spectrum were levitating platforms holding hundreds of spectators in nicely slanting rows so that everybody got a view. And in between was every kind of vehicle imaginable.
There were buses with twenty or more people on top, yelling and cheering. There were stretch limos serving as stadium boxes for the rich and well connected. There were people on things that weren’t technically vehicles at all, with the sofa I’d almost collided with earlier suddenly making more sense as I spotted dozens more just like it. Some people had even had their makeshift sky houses towed over to the event, so that they could watch in comfort from their balconies.
And then there were the cages, given plenty of space by the crowd, maybe because they were rocking from side to side while the contents screeched and cawed and howled. Even with the limo’s obvious soundproofing, the ruckus could be clearly heard. As could the low-level roar of the crowd, the whir of hundreds of fan blades, and some Cantonese being broadcast either through a spell or a hell of a lot of loud speakers.
It must be deafening outside, I thought, wondering how anybody stood it. And then I noticed a guy in a rickshaw with some Chinese writing on it, and a picture of earplugs underneath. Ray would like this place, I thought with a pang. They really knew how to merchandise.
“When the Circle started to pull their people out of here for the war, it left us with a problem,” Zheng said. “Local mages and some reinforcements from the mainland had to take over patrolling the dead zones, but most didn’t know how. They were wardsmiths and spellbinders, not war mages, and this was not their skill set.
“But there wasn’t anybody else, so the Circle started bringing some of the nastier things they captured over here,