The bedsheets are fine soft percale, lightly scented with lavender. Constantine makes love with the same intensity he displays in everything else. Being the focus of all this fierce concentration makes Aiah self-conscious at first — she doesn’t want her skinny body the subject of those powerful, all-encompassing eyes — but finally she realizes that the only way to deal with such intensity is to match it. She opens her eyes, looks at him, wordlessly dares him to please her. He seems perfectly willing to oblige.
He refrains from using his physical strength; he meets her with careful delicacy, as if he’s fearful she might shatter. She appreciates the consideration but in the end wants more, wants the power of his body against hers, and so she draws him down to her, to where she can feel his weight on her, where she can inhale his scent, taste it tingling on the back of her tongue . . . she is building a sensorium, she thinks, just as she does with plasm, invoking each sense, every possible square inch of flesh, every single impulse of pleasure.
She licks his skin, wanting the flavor of him, and he tastes as rich as the sea.
*
“I do not wish Parq to see you,” Constantine says. “For all the reasons I mentioned yesterday. Geymard would not sell you, though he might let something slip to one who would; but Parq would sell you and me and the whole world.” He gives a little smile.
Constantine stands before one of the diamond-shaped mirrors in Aiah’s room, adjusting his jacket, his cuffs. One of his functionaries has just called to say that Parq is in the building. Aiah is sitting up in bed, blanket drawn to her chin against the room’s machine-chilled air.
“If he’s so treacherous,” Aiah says, “why are you dealing with him?”
“Because he’s high priest of the Dalavite sect — that’s why he’s corrupt, of course, they wouldn’t give an honest man that job — and therefore, on that account, he controls the only independent broadcasting facilities in Caraqui.” He adjusts his chin-lace and looks at Aiah over his shoulder. “The people of Caraqui will require someone to tell them they have a new government, will they not?”
He crosses the room to the bed, sits by Aiah’s side. He touches Aiah’s cheek gently, with the back of his hand, and then arranges one of her ringlets more to his liking. “Would you like to go out later this shift?” he asks. “We can slip you out once Parq and I are in conference. I can give you a driver and a checktube.”
Chromoplay fantasy flashes through Aiah’s mind: a succession of clubs, stage shows, boutiques, jewelers, a limousine filled with wrapped packages, a compliant driver ... all that was lacking, she realized, was a pug dog on a diamond-studded leash, and why not add one of those to the picture as well?
And Telia thought she was a kept woman before.
Aiah pushes her chin into the blanket and gives a little shake of the head. “I’d rather wait here for you.”
“This meeting may go on for hours,” Constantine warns. “And yesterday you spent all second shift confined to this room.”
“I’ll wait. There’s a nice view from the terrace.”
Constantine leans forward, brushes his lips against hers. “Beautiful Miss Aiah,” he says, “I hope I will make your wait worthwhile.”
“The flattery is appreciated,” she says.
“Flattery?” He seems surprised. “Not at all.”
“I’m skinny. You can count my ribs.”
Constantine makes a dismissive sound. “You have all the muscle you need where it most matters,” he says, and puts a finger to her forehead. “And remember this — you are at your most beautiful when you take flight. Please don’t forget that.”
Surprised, Aiah finds herself without a reply. She watches Constantine leave for his appointment, then wraps herself in the terry robe again and goes out on the terrace. Looks for the avian again, soaring against the sky, but doesn’t find it.
*
In the next twenty-four hours, Aiah discovers some unanticipated functions of beds. Planning to overthrow governments, for one. There are more details to a coup than she had ever thought possible, and Constantine lists them all, from the best way to approach high-ranking officers to the subversion of communications through false messages.
“Caraqui has had hundreds of years of bad government,” he says, “from the oligarchs who, after altering themselves to an avian form, built the Aerial Palace, to the Keremath family who overthrew them with the help of the Delavites and who have now run the place for three generations. Power is concentrated in so few hands now that, these hands lopped off, the body of the state will fall to the first who claims it.”
“And this claimant is you.”
“No,” Constantine says. “Would it diminish me in your eyes were I to tell you it is not?”
Constantine lies on his back on Aiah’s bed. She is half-sprawled across him, arms folded across his broad chest to provide a cushion for her chin.
Constantine explains, to Aiah’s surprise, that he is not the prime mover of the conspiracy. “It was Colonel Drumbeth who first approached me, through some intermediaries he was inclined to trust, members of his own family. Many people so approach me, with some half-brained scheme for violence or conquest or plunder, and I was inclined to put this one off as I had most of the others, but then you arrived, young Miss Aiah with your plasm and your demand for a million dalders.” There is a sly, knowing look in his eyes. “I was inclined to regard you as an omen - and was right to do so, I believe.” He kisses her, suddenly, on the nose. She smiles.
“Who is Colonel Drumbeth?”
A smile twitches across Constantine’s lips. “An admirer of the New City Movement, or so his emissaries tell me. He wants my assistance to set his metropolis to rights. I look forward to meeting him.”
“You haven’t?” Surprised again.
“Too dangerous. He is head of military counterintelligence, and cannot move freely. But—” he holds up a hand, “if anyone in their army suspects a revolt, to whom will they report? Drumbeth. It is a convenience, to be sure.”
He tucks in his chin to look at her. “We’re waiting for him here. He will come when he can.”
Aiah smiles. Blood rises warm in her flesh. She digs her sharp chin into the broad muscles of Constantine’s chest, making him wince. “And what shall we do in the meantime?”
He reaches down with his big hands, clasps her shoulders, draws her up to press her mouth with his. “I have some notions,” he says, “if you do not.”
*
Drumbeth arrives late and alone. He’s a short man, made taller by erect military posture and bushy gray hair. His face is carefully expressionless, his eyes slits. With Constantine’s assent, Aiah silently watches through the connecting door as Drumbeth and Constantine drink tea, eat cold chicken and plan their strike.
Through Constantine, Aiah knows the army’s junior officers will generally favor a coup, or at least not actively oppose it. They’re eager to get rid of their corrupt superiors, and if they can give themselves promotions along the way, so much the better. If the generals can’t get anyone to obey their orders, they’re out of the picture whichever side they ultimately join. The navy is uncertain, but there’s little they can do to oppose a coup anyway, with every waterway dominated by buildings that the army can occupy. The police force is large, but they’re scattered across the metropolis and their weaponry is light. The Specials — the political police, feared throughout the metropolis for their all-encompassing powers of arrest, their efficient network of informers and the dire tortures they inflict on their victims — are loyal to the Keremaths, but their numbers are relatively few and their weaponry is militarily negligible. The Specials will be most dangerous before the coup, in that they might detect its preparations, but once the revolt is under way can safely be ignored.
It’s the Metropolitan Guard that will cause the most trouble. An oversized mercenary brigade recruited by the Keremaths and officered by cadet members of the family, they are loyal to their paymasters and have first call on equipment
and supplies. The Metropolitan Guard are a third as large as the army, their barracks are adjacent to military headquarters and within a short distance of the Aerial Palace and the main government buildings, their complement of mages is sizeable, and they and their Keremath masters have unlimited access to plasm.
The plotters’ voices get loud when discussing the Guard. The mercenaries can’t be subverted safely, and they’re too centrally located to ignore. Any battles fought in the city are bound to cause heavy casualties. Constantine concludes a battle is inevitable, but Drumbeth keeps expressing the hope it can be avoided.
“If we kill enough Keremaths,” Constantine says, “perhaps. But we must keep the Guard confined to their compound whatever happens.”
Drumbeth looks uncertain.
“I tell you,” Constantine says, “it will save trouble later.”
Drumbeth shakes his head, but says, “Very well.”
Another disagreement arises over the dolphins. Constantine sees them as another resource, but Drumbeth doesn’t want to arm them. Aiah can’t make out how that argument is resolved.
“Remember,” Constantine reminds, “tell your people to build roadblocks everywhere about the government center. The psychological fact of roadblocks is more important than their military value. It is a place where one spirit will confront another. Our people will be standing behind barricades. All they have to do is remain there. Their people will have to nerve themselves to attack people already in position, of unknown strength, wearing the same uniform as themselves, to overwhelm them, drive forward and displace them . . . with luck, they will lack the necessary will.”
Drumbeth nods. “I worry,” he says, “that I don’t have your military experience. That none of us does, all coming from a nation that has fought no wars in five hundred years.”
“Our enemies suffer the same handicaps,” Constantine says. “And we have Geymard and his brigade from the Timocracy.”
An unreadable expression crosses Drumbeth’s face. “Yes,” he says. “So we do.”
The planning session takes only two hours; plans are that well advanced. Constantine shakes Drumbeth’s hand, his huge grip engulfing the small man’s frail-seeming fingers, and then the colonel leaves. Constantine breezes into Aiah’s room.
“Pack,” he says. “We should return to Jaspeer.”
The aerocar leaps from the Volcano’s pad, vaulting over the countless populations below, the billions that cover the surface of the world. It’s early in the third shift, Aiah thinks, and most of them are asleep. Aiah holds Constantine’s hand and looks out past the clear plastic canopy, watches the world below, at this altitude all undifferentiated gray-brown concrete and brick and the occasional bright flash of reflective glass. A weather system moves beneath them, a dark line of somber cloud dancing with internal electric light, one flash after another that stretch for hundreds of radii.
Aiah turns to Constantine, sees him watching her, amusement in his eyes. “Thank you for showing me the world,” she says, and kisses him. As the kiss continues, as she inhales the scent of Constantine, Aiah wonders if this is all mere fantasy, a bubble that will burst as soon as they return to the cold reality of Jaspeer.
The turbine pods rotate, and there is a shift in the sound of the engines, from the steady whine to a more earthy growl. Aiah looks out and sees an expanse of cloud that covers everything below like a pall of black velvet. The huge electric display has been left far behind, but lightning can still be seen below, a trembling neon glow. The aerocar drops through the cloud, its lights carving out a bright tunnel ahead like the lights of Constantine’s speedboat in the darkness beneath Caraqui; and then suddenly they are through the cloud and Jaspeer is below them. Beneath the black cloud the stormlights glow, bright radial patterns that make the city look like interlocking spider webs, every jewel of light a brilliant drop of dew.
The landing pad is fresh with the scent of recent rain. Sodium stormlights reflect in pools of standing water. Martinus welcomes them, bulking huge beside the big car. The usual fruit and wine wait inside. Aiah powers the window down so she can scent the air. It’s deep in third shift and the streets are almost deserted. Her heart grudges the sight of Loeno Towers rising on the horizon.
“I haven’t seen where you live,” Constantine says, as if he’s read her thoughts. “May I come up?”
“Of course.” Here in the car with Martinus and the other bodyguard, Aiah’s been trying to behave and hasn’t given in to the impulse to touch Constantine, or even to rest her head on the big shoulder. Her apartment should be the perfect place to say farewell.
And then Constantine, catching Martinus’s look in the mirror, adds, “We won’t be seen at this hour. I won’t be gone for long.”
The Elton smoothly glides up to Aiah’s tower, and then a guard leaps to open the rear door. Constantine kindly carries her small bag. No one sees Aiah and Constantine on their walk past the potted chrysanthemums, through the locked lobby doors — the doorman is asleep in his office, waiting for the sound of a bell. In the elevator, reflected by the mirrored walls, they are free to embrace in a moment of flight as the mirrored box soars upward in the tall tower.
“I have a gift for you,” Constantine says, presenting a flat box.
It’s an ivory necklace, with matching earrings. The fabulously rare substance is smoothed into gracefully rounded knucklebone shapes, with a central pendant carved into the Trigram. Aiah is too awed to do much other than stammer thanks. The doors open, Aiah steps out, and Constantine fastens the priceless ivory around her neck. He kisses her nape and the shiver of pleasure tingles to Aiah’s fingertips. He must have had Martinus acquire the necklace, she realizes; he hadn’t had time to do it himself.
Aiah detects an air of faint curiosity in Constantine as she walks with him down the corridor. He is traveling in Loeno as a visitor, she realizes. No doubt he’s been in places like this before, but always with the assurance that he’ll be back in his own world before the end of the next shift. He’s never lived in this bourgeois world, let alone in a dubious tenderloin like Old Shorings. He’s as alien to this kind of life as she is to a penthouse suite in the Volcano Hotel.
“Try to ignore the pile of laundry on the bed,” she says, laughs, and turns her key.
She steps inside, turns on the lights, and a cold certainty floods her nerves that she’s made a mistake, a catastrophic one, even if she can’t, at this appalling moment, understand just how.
Gil blinks at them from the bed, hand raised to shield his eyes from the light. “Hello?” he says.
Aiah finds herself walking into the room, trying to respond normally. “I wasn’t expecting you back.”
Gil blinks, pushes yellow-blond hair out of his eyes, “I called and left a message, over a week ago. I said I’d be back for the weekend.”
And it’s early Sunday now. Aiah bethinks herself of the grinding play head that she keeps forgetting to lubricate, and which seems on this occasion to have let her down.
“I called the Authority,” Gil says, “and they said you’d taken some days off. And your sister hadn’t heard from you, either.”
Which means, of course, that the whole family knows by now.
“And your brother Stonn wants to talk to you. He didn’t say why. I didn’t know he was out of jail.”
Gil’s eyes, slowly becoming accustomed to the light, turn slowly toward Constantine. He is too fatigued to know quite what to make of the large black man, carrying Aiah’s bag, who stands silent in the doorway.
Aiah puts her hand to her throat and encounters the ivory necklace. She remembers Gil’s pride at being able to afford the bracelet with the single ivory bangle he’d given her, the bracelet Fredho had stolen.
It occurs to her that she has some explaining to do.
“Gil,” she says, “this is the Metropolitan Constantine. Constantine, this is Gil.” She takes a breath, gives Constantine an imploring look, “I believe you’ve heard me mention him.”
Cons
tantine puts down Aiah’s bag inside the door and glides into the room with his usual perfect assurance. “How do you do, sir,” he rumbles. “Miss Aiah has spoken well of you.”
Gil is still too groggy to quite know what to make of one of the world’s most celebrated and controversial figures appearing in his apartment at this desperate hour.
Aiah figures he’ll start asking soon enough, though.
CHAPTER 15
Constantine takes his leave. Gil stares at the door. “Was that really—?” he asks.
“Oh yes.” She looks at the door, wondering what, exactly, has been shut off here. “I’ll explain later,” she says. “I’m too tired right now,” and turns off the light.
The explanation, she reflects as she takes off her clothes, had better be pretty good.
She kisses Gil and curls into a ball on the bed, her back to him. Calculations flood her mind, all ponderous, unnatural-seeming, implausible, probably destined to fade at the first touch of Shieldlight. Her nerves are like an array of tight-strung wires, tautly aware of Gil’s every breath, vibrating in sympathy to every sigh, every movement, every casual touch.
Hours later, after the turn of the shift, Aiah falls into a kind of wary sleep, intent and restless, from which Gil’s arms, enfolding her from behind, wake her with a start. He gently kisses her nape. Sensation shrieks along her nerves.
“Sorry to wake you,” he says, “but it’s late, and this is our only day together . . . and we’ve been away from each other for a long, long time.”
Aiah turns slightly toward him and he burrows along her collarbone, his jaw-bristle scratching her clavicle. She brushes hair from her face and, out of force of habit more than anything, absently strokes the back of his neck with her hand. “You smell good,” he says, but she can’t think why this would be the case.
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