His big hands caress her, but nevertheless a chill runs up her spine. She has become a part of this now, a part of the apparatus that feeds people to Taikoen.
She is a party to this atrocity. But that’s what she must be, if that is what it takes to preserve her lover, and to create the New City.
“I don’t want to know when it happens,” she says. “I don’t want to know who, and when, and why it is being done.”
Constantine gives a bitter laugh. “I would not burden you with that. Ta;koen is my poison alone. You will never see him or hear of him after this.” His arms tighten around her, threaten to drive the wind from her body. “Taikoen is the greatest burden I bear, the greatest evil I know. Yet I must deal with him. And though it is unjust of me even to ask, I find I need to share this burden a little—I wish your understanding and support. 1 need you to believe that what I am doing is right.”
Aiah’s mind whirls. She has never seen Constantine like this, never seen him in a situation where he did not possess absolute confidence and mastery. He needs her support, her trust. What can she do but give it?
He is, she realizes, almost as isolated in this country as she. For all his talents, when Constantine faces Taikoen, he faces the creature alone.
“Yes,” she says numbly, “of course. I understand.”
She will do what she can.
TRIUMVIR HILTHI SPEAKS “THE MORAL WEALTH OF THE NATION” THIRD SHIFT TODAY!
“If some of the family want to apply,” Aiah says, “I can give them some jobs. But I need particular skills.”
“Skills?” Aiah’s grandmother sounds suspicious, as if Aiah is speaking a foreign language. “What kind of skills?”
“The department is hiring only two kinds of staff: mages and clerical. And a few supervisors who will also be mages and clerks.”
“Your brother Stonn needs a job.”
“Stonn has a criminal record,” Aiah says. “He’d never pass the security check.”
Galaiah is unperturbed. “You’re in charge, ne? Fix the security check. Stonn needs to get out of Jaspeer, away from friends who get him in trouble.”
Galaiah is an optimist where Stonn’s character is concerned. He is a petty criminal, with a petty criminal’s mind: impulsive, feckless, unpredictable, short-tempered. He would be a disaster as a member of the PED.
“Nana,” Aiah says. “I can’t fix the security check. It’s not done in my department—we contract it out to the political police.”
Sorya’s Force of the Interior. The last thing Aiah wants is for Sorya to get access to the minds of her relatives.
“It’s a bad day when you won’t give your brother a job!” Galaiah says. “You got to help out your family!”
Aiah changes tack. “Let me tell you what the department pays,” Aiah says. “I’ve checked on Worldwide News and put the figures in Jaspeeri dalders.”
Galaiah listens to the figures, and when Aiah finishes there is a dubious silence on the other end of the line. “That’s not much,” she says. “Your niece Qismah is getting more on the dole.”
“That’s because she’s got kids,” Aiah says. Raised on the dole herself, she absorbed the intricacies of its regulations with her mother’s milk.
“But no,” she goes on, “we can’t pay much. If the department does a good job, I’ll get a bigger budget.”
“How about your longnose lover?” Galaiah asks. “Can he get one of your kin a job?”
“Constantine’s not a longnose, he’s a Cheloki.” Aiah can’t quite resist the correction.
The old lady is firm. “If he’s not one of the Cunning People, then he’s a longnose.”
“Clerks and mages,” Aiah says. “That’s what I can hire. Without criminal records, without knowledge of crime. Because anything shady would come out in the plasm scans, and then they’d use it against me, ne?”
“Got no mages in the family,” Galaiah says, thinking out loud. “Well, there’s Esmon’s Khorsa.”
“Khorsa I would hire.” She is a witch, engaged to Aiah’s cousin Esmon. She had also helped Aiah on her flight from Jaspeer.
“I think she probably makes more money at the Wisdom Fortune Temple.”
“Probably,” Aiah agrees.
“And clerks,” Galaiah says. “You need clerks.”
“Tell everyone,” Aiah says, “what I need. But I can’t promise I’ll hire anyone.”
“If someone wants to try for one of these jobs,” Galaiah says, “can you send them some money for the trip?”
Aiah sighs. “Yes,” she says. “I’ll do that.”
And hopes, as she ends the call, that she isn’t subsidizing her family’s vacations.
QERWAN ARMS TO RECEIVE NEW MANAGEMENT
POLITICAL APPOINTEES SACKED!
Anstine, Aiah’s newly hired receptionist, makes his way out of Aiah’s office, and then the door fills with Constantine. Observing office protocol, he very properly closes the door behind him before he folds her in his arms and kisses her.
“Can you stay long?” she asks.
His head gives a brief shake. “I came only to warn you,” he says. “Yes?”
“You are to receive a visit tomorrow, 13:00 or thereabouts. The triumvirate, plus any cabinet ministers who feel an interest. They want to see what you’ve accomplished.”
Alarm sings through Aiah’s veins. “But we’ve barely started… They’re not going to see anything.”
He slips from her embrace, moves to stand by the window. “That’s as may be,” he says, “but they already have plans for you.”
“What plans?” Promptly. “And who?”
“Colonel Drumbeth is considering placing a military officer in your department to advise on matters that cross into his department. I suspect it’s to make certain that the military gets its share of what you find.”
Aiah bites back annoyance. She has no inclination to be the military’s personal plasm diver.
“Can’t you head him off?” she asks.
Constantine shrugs. Below, Shieldlight winks silver off glass, glows green off rooftop gardens. “I can argue against it, to be sure, but—as we have observed—I can’t stop Drumbeth from doing anything he really desires to do. He and the military are in charge, after all. But…” He makes a little sideways gesture with his hand, indicating room for maneuver. “We may have to do a little trading. It may be best to accept Drumbeth’s officer in exchange for keeping out Parq’s priest.”
“Priest?” The notion seems too absurd for Aiah to even take alarm.
Constantine flashes his teeth as he speaks. “The Keremaths took power with the backing of the Dalavans, remember. The Keremaths gave the Dalavans special privileges afterward, and various sumptuary and moral laws were passed obliging the population to conform to rigorous Dala-van standards of conduct and morality.”
Pigeons bob about on the window ledge, red button eyes all without a hint of life. “I can’t say I’ve observed any stringent moral codes in force since I’ve been here,” Aiah observes.
“The laws, as with all Keremath laws, have been loosely enforced, or not enforced at all. But now that Parq is a third of the government, he wishes to enforce the laws that give his faith its special privileges. He wants to create a Dalavan police force to enforce the moral strictures, and he wishes to put an ombudsman in every department to make certain that department guidelines are not in conflict with the Dalavan faith.”
“Great Senko!”
He looks at her sidelong, irony curling his lips. “I would avoid any promiscuous mention of the immortals when Parq is around,” he says.
“Drumbeth and Hilthi won’t permit this, will they?”
“I assume not. Hilthi is a moralist, but he’s not a Dala-van moralist. And Drumbeth no more wants one of Parq’s spies in every office than we do.” He frowns, and his fingers tap lightly on the window glass in thought. “Parq may have brought up the issue only in hope of heading off the activist wing of his own party, which has denounced his
personal version of the faith as halfhearted, indulgent, and temporizing—which is true—and which has denounced Parq himself as tyrannous, corrupt, and venal—which is also true.”
“Perhaps Parq has made the demand only to trade them for something else he really wants,” Aiah says.
Constantine looks at her, approving eyes gleaming in reflected Shieldlight. “I see you have learned somewhat of politics since you have been in Caraqui.”
“I have a good teacher.”
He gives a low, immodest laugh, then turns back to the window. An airship lies on the far horizon, Shieldlight flashing silver off its skin, off its propeller disks. Behind it, the sky suddenly flashes with the profile of Gargelius Enchuk, plasm hype for his new recording.
“We shall see what Parq truly wants in time,” Constantine says. “It may be that he has no true plan at all other than to seek advantage wherever he can find it. But we must give him a victory sooner or later, or he may realize that he is better off in opposition. And as he is the spiritual leader of rather more than a third of our population, we cannot afford to have him oppose us.”
Aiah’s thoughts churn uneasily. “What can you give such a man that will content him?”
“He is so corrupt that he may settle for money, or an hour of video time every week to preach to the citizens, or a beautiful woman. We shall see.”
Aiah turns, puts her arms around Constantine’s waist. “And what will content you?” she asks.
Constantine affects to give this his consideration. “Dominion of the habited world,” he says, “and the ordering of it; the piercing of the Shield and the discovering of the glories that lie beyond; the captaincy of the great outflowing of humanity into the worlds there discovered, or built entire if there are none to be found; the creation of the nations into which humanity settles; the assurance that all patterns and powers are in order… and then, perhaps, I may retire and write my memoirs.”
There is a languid smile on Constantine’s face as he speaks, and irony puts an edge on his voice; but there is a chill glow in his eyes as he speaks the words, and Aiah feels an answering shiver along her spine as she realizes that he is at least partially sincere.
And then he laughs, a sudden surprising boom that shatters her awestruck mood, and his arms cinch her below her ribs; he picks her up and she is flying, spinning in circles, her feet sweeping papers from her desk…
He sets her down lightly, kisses her before she can catch her breath. “Perhaps I will forfeit it all,” he said, “for a few hours in your company, after our business is concluded today.”
“I wouldn’t want you to give up so much.”
He laughs again, spins round on his heel, thrusts out an arm at the scene beyond the window, the long cluttered view of the city built out over its sea. “Foolish to speak of ordering the world,” he says, “when I am confined to the role of a minor minister in a chronically misruled and impoverished metropolis…” He laughs again. “You would not believe the absurdities to which I am subjected. Yesterday’s cabinet meeting spent hours discussing a problem having to do with capital spending. It was a thousand radii beyond trivial, with no remedy besides, and it occupied a full day.”
“I believe you volunteered for the job,” Aiah reminds.
He gives her a sly look. “Miss Aiah, I believe you will keep me honest.”
She walks up to him and straightens a fold in his lapel. “We must both learn to be good subordinates.” He gives a dry little laugh. “I will do what I can.” “Will I see you third shift?” “Ah. 21:00, perhaps?”
“And no cocktail parties later? No receptions? Cabinet meetings? Duty calls on the dolphins? Visits from the winner of the Junior New City League’s essay contest?”
“I believe not.” He gives a lazy smile. “But I will have to consult my calendar in regard to that last point.”
She stands on tiptoe and kisses his cheek. “Till later, then.”
His brows rise in mock offense. “Such a slight good-bye? I would have a better memory of you than that.”
His arms coil around her again—the pigeons on the window ledge see the swift movement and fly in panic—and Aiah laughs as Constantine bends her over backward, like a swooning girl in a chromoplay, and dines for a long moment on her arched throat.
1.5 MILLION FOR CHARITY!
ALLEGED GANGSTER GIVES TO CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
HOSPITAL HEAD RECEIVES “GREAT-UNCLE” RATHMEN
21:00. Aiah’s veins tingle with the plasm she’s just fed herself to keep weariness at bay. Constantine is on time, with a bottle of fine brandy and a crystal bowl of fruit plundered from one of the Keremaths’ rooftop arboretums.
Aiah feasts greedily on grapes, red-skinned and with a cool taste, their tiny seeds sweet like crystal-sugar, as if the fruit were stuffed with candy. Constantine pours brandy, swirls it in the glass, and sniffs it delicately, nostrils high, like a haughty bronze figure standing on some ancient wall gazing down at some conquered city. It is made, Aiah knows, from actual grapes, grown in actual gardens, not in vats with chemicals and hermetics.
“You have done admirably with your department,” Constantine says. “Two weeks, and it is actually functioning.”
“Not well,” Aiah grudges. She sighs, looks at her brandy, then puts the glass down. “When I worked for the Plasm Authority in Jaspeer I discovered that no one there ever talked to anyone else—our suggestions and complaints were transmitted off into the void, and were never acted on or even acknowledged, and orders came down from the hundred-fiftieth floor as if from beyond the Shield, with no consultation, no notion of how things actually stood, no concept of how to make it work.”
“Institutionalized dysfunction,” Constantine says.
“Oh yes. And institutionalized frustration as well. So now I am trying to set up the PED in order to facilitate lines of communication, to make certain that everyone has access to authority when needed…” She sighs again and picks up her brandy glass. “But that authority is me, and that means I am consulted on everything. I have never worked so hard in my life, and still the department only lurches along.”
“It will dance and skip, given time.”
“The Ascended willing,” Aiah says, conceding somewhat to superstition as she sketches the Sign of the Ascended in the air with her brandy glass.
“But you have a department,” Constantine says, “and you have not gone mad, or had a fit of the vapors, or checked yourself into the hospital for a long course of sedation.”
“Give me time,” Aiah says, and smiles into her glass as she takes a sip.
“You deal well with Ethemark?”
She shrugs, feels a little insect-twitch of distaste crawl cross her face. “As I must. He is gifted, even if he isn’t my choice.”
“But you have hired other twisted people.”
“They’re applying in swarms!” Aiah says. “Ethemark or his kin must have put the word out. I’m hiring only the most qualified.”
“As you should.” He cocks his head, regards her. “But you don’t like them?”
She sighs, puts down her glass. “Is it bad of me to wish the twisted people well, but not to wish them in my vicinity?”
He purses his lips as he chooses words. “Bad, I will not say. Inconsistent, perhaps?”
Aiah sighs and throws up her hands. “Then I am inconsistent. But it is what I feel.”
“You are honest with yourself, at least. You do not lie to yourself about your feelings. But despite your distaste you hire them, if you think they’re qualified, and that is admirable of you.”
She looks at him. “They never make you uneasy? Or even afraid?” She thinks of Dr. Romus, the snake-mage, and represses a shudder.
Constantine considers this for a moment. “I must admit,” he says finally, “that I find myself comfortable amid all manner of unlikely people.”
Aiah reaches for her brandy. “That is your gift. It isn’t mine.”
“People born with money and position, I find
, often possess this talent. I was raised a prince, and even considering that I was a prince of pirates, still it makes for a level of security in dealing with others.”
“And I’m a poor kid raised on the dole,” Aiah says. “But I don’t see what that has to do with consistency, or the lack of it. The rich seem to be as inconsistent as anyone else.”
He smiles. “Conceded absolutely,” he says. “But we were speaking of security, not hypocrisy. The Barkazil were refugees in Jaspeer, poor, confined to low-status jobs. Perhaps they competed with the twisted for work or for living quarters.”
“So far as I can tell,” Aiah mumbles into her drink, “we competed with poor longnose Jaspeeris, who hated us. I hardly ever saw a twisted person when I was growing up.”
“A theory only.” Constantine shrugs, and then his eyes turn to her. She sees in them a glow as mellow as that in the brandy that swirls in his glass. “Since you put such store in communication between members of the department,” he says, “let me communicate to you what I perceive in your PED. I am utterly gratified that you came to Caraqui. I was right to choose you for this work. You confirm my judgment every day, and I thank you.”
Heat rises in Aiah’s cheeks. She touches her glass to his, the crystal chime singing in the air for a long moment before she drinks. Constantine’s lips, tasted next, are afire with brandy.
Desire has its way. Neither is in a hurry, and both in a mood to prolong this banquet of pleasure as long as possible: there are hors d’oeuvres on the sofa, soups and salads sampled on the bed, and then the main course, served with a full range of tangy condiments.
Aiah pushes Constantine onto his back and captures him between her legs, gazing down at his supine body, the broad cords of muscle that cross his massive shoulders and barrel chest. Her breath hisses between her teeth as she rides him. He regards her with a lazy, catlike smile, indolent eyes half-closed. His big hands set her skin afire where he touches her. She bends to lick his scent from him, covering his chest with a waterfall of her dark hair.
“I adore you utterly, Miss Aiah,” he says, baritone voice a resonant murmur in her ear, like the deep bedrock far below whispering a secret to her; and the words set her plasm-charged nerves alight, firing her flesh, melting her groin, and suddenly she finds herself peaking, the climax coming all unexpected, and from the words alone…
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