City on Fire

FOURTEEN

While the armies settle into stalemate, terror is unleashed anew in Caraqui. Once again bombs begin detonating in crowded streets, and unknown mages fill entire districts with fear. Huge tenements are burned down, unshielded pumping stations or utility mains are destroyed, bridges are smashed or burnt. Much of the sabotage seems to come from within the city itself, and a new phrase enters the vocabulary, floating through the populace on the winds of war. Silver Terror. Enemy forces throw artillery rounds into the city at random. Hospitals and public buildings fill with refugees, and it is clear that the enemy is trying to make the city ungovernable.

And therefore it is all the more important that Aiah go on with her job, taking down every plasm house she can find, along with the Handmen who have unleashed terror against the people.

It is early second shift, and Aiah plays plasm angel for her military cops. The plasm house she watches has been on her list for some time, but hasn’t been surveilled since before the war began. Military police are on their way to bust into the place, but Aiah wants to make certain the Handmen inside aren’t going to be delivering any nasty surprises.

The plasm house is in an aging apartment building, once handsome but now failing the test of time, with stained hallway carpet and flaking walls. Although it seems to be producing a large amount of illegal product, Aiah can’t be sure from where the plasm house is drawing its plasm—perhaps, she thinks, it’s being hijacked from a food factory on a huge pontoon moored alongside. The Handmen have learned a few things about shielding since the PED began its work, and Aiah can’t slip her anima into the room, not even on the thinnest pipette of plasm. But there are no lookouts, no signs of anyone prepared to offer resistance, and the door looks as if it will go down easily enough before the assault of her troops.

“Building’s in sight.” A message from her approaching military cops, whispered into her ear by one of her assistants.

Aiah nods her understanding and concentrates on keeping her anima and sensorium intact.

Sensations from the apartment building wash over her, and her nose wrinkles to the mildewed smell of the stained carpet. She alters her sensorium to lower the intensity of her olfactory sense.

In the apartment building a door bangs open, and back in the Palace Aiah’s body gives a start.

A group of people have entered the scene, maybe a dozen. They are all young men, dressed casually but with purpose—they all wear thick-soled black boots laced up to the calf and a red strip of cloth tied around their brows, and many wear plastic jackets made in imitation of leather or vests that rattle with chains and silver studs. They openly carry an assortment of weapons: pistols, shotguns, a rifle. Two carry a crude battering ram, a length of steel with handles welded to it.

Back in the ops room, Aiah shouts, “Armed men in the corridor!” Her body shudders to a surge of adrenaline as if to a rumble of kettledrums.

In the apartment building the leader, a young sturdy man in plastic leathers and a mustache, cocks his pistol and places himself carefully to one side of the door. He booms on it with fist and forearm both, and the door rattles on its hinges.

“Ragdath! Open up!”

The others stand to either side of the door, grinning and readying their weapons.

“Wait! Stop!” Aiah tries to broadcast the words to the group, but in her alarm she fails to focus her mind properly and no one hears her.

“Go,” the leader says, a bright white grin on his face, and stands back.

“No!” Aiah tries to tell them.

The sound of all the guns going off together staggers Aiah’s senses. The shooters are enjoying themselves, laughing and yipping as they empty their guns through the door and into the apartment. Shotguns blow chunks out of the wall, revealing tattered bronze mesh behind.

Aiah’s anima dashes among the group, knocking up gun barrels, slapping down the men with invisible plasm hands. But the realization that there is a mage among them galvanizes the shooters, and Aiah realizes that the only way to stop them will be to kill them all. The door crashes down before the ram, and the shooters swarm into the apartment.

Three Handmen are huddled inside, and two are splashed with blood. Laughing in triumph, the gunmen drag the Handmen out into the corridor, kicking them along with their shiny black boots. Gunpowder stench hangs heavy in the corridor.

The leader looks through a sheaf of papers. “Which one’s Ragdath?” he asks.

“The police are hurrying,” Aiah is told, an ops-room voice whispering in her ear.

Aiah tries to calm her beating heart. She concentrates, builds her anima into the sleek, featureless golden form she’s used before. Power pulses through her, and her anima shimmers into existence in the corridor. The others fall back before the apparition, and she sees sudden fear in their eyes. Guns are hesitantly raised.

Aiah concentrates, lets her anima speak the words.

“I am Aiah, Director of the Plasm Enforcement Division,” she says. “I have had this place under surveillance. What are you doing here?”

The leader hands the papers to one of his fellows, shuffles forward, and digs into his jacket pocket for a thin plastic card. “Dalavan Militia,” he says. “My name is Raymo. We’re here to find Ragdath.”

“Here he is!” one of his friends says, and prods a wounded man with the barrel of his shotgun. The man moans in pain.

“I have police on the way here,” Aiah says. “We’ll need those prisoners.”

“You can have the other two,” Raymo says. “But Rag-dath’s on the proscription lists, and he’s worth five thousand dinars to us.”

“He’s on the what?”

Raymo turns to his friend, pulls out a sheet of paper. “Here,” he says. “Five thousand. Dead or alive.”

Aiah looks at the sheet in stunned surprise. The face of Ragdath gazes back at her from the plastic flimsy, a face perfectly familiar from chromographs in her own files.

She realizes that this is one of the chromographs from her files.

“Who issued this?” she says. “The triumvir Parq.”

The tromp of Aiah’s police is heard in the stairwalls. The Dalavan Militia glance nervously over their shoulders.

“Tell the police the situation is over,” Aiah says to her assistant, back in the Palace. “It’s the Dalavan Militia.”

In the corridor, Aiah asks, “Do you have the rest of the list?”

“Part of it.”

As her police step wonderingly into the corridor, Aiah takes the pages in her ectomorphic hands and leafs through them. Many of the names and faces are familiar.

“The whole thing’s going to be available on Interfact in the next day or so,” the militiaman says. “Anyone can get a copy.”

This list is hers, she realizes. It was the list of Handmen she gave to Constantine weeks ago, after the first series of bombings.

Five thousand dinars for each name. Dead or alive. Her list.

“Shield above,” Constantine says, eyes aflame, “would you have this Silver Terror continue?”

“I gave you this list,” Aiah says. “Now Parq is using it to kill people.”

Constantine gives a snarl. “Then Parq will take the blame, won’t he?”

“This list—,” Aiah protests. “It’s not error-free. We acquired it in the first place from the police, and we know how efficient they were. We haven’t had a chance to check more than a fraction of it. Much of it is out of date, and people with similar names can be victimized. And the Dalavan Militia look like they were recruited out of the slums—they’ve all got guns and they’re enjoying themselves far too much.”

Constantine gives an uneasy glance toward the polarized windows—he is in another suite today, with his files and papers, and moves to a new one each day, carrying his portable ministry, his papers and boxes, with him from place to place.

His leather chair creaks as he leans forward over his desk. “It was not my decision,” Constantine says. “Parq is triumvir—I work for him.”

“Couldn’t you point out—”

“Aiah.” His rumbling voice is cold, and there is a dangerous glint in his eye. “I supported the decision.”

“I—” Aiah’s voice fails. Despair rains down her spine. “We cannot afford to fight a war against an army and a war against the terrorists simultaneously,” Constantine says. “Five thousand dinars for each Handman—that’s cheap, cheaper than hiring mercenaries and mages.” He glances to the window again, his face uneasy. “If I had won the Battle of the Corridor…,” he growls. “If I had won… things would be different.”

“Then why—” Aiah’s head whirls, and she wants to lean on something for support. “Why are you bothering with my department at all? If you can just offer a bounty for anyone you suspect, why bother with me, with the forms of legality…”

He gazes at her, smouldering resentment in his eyes. “Emergency measures are for times of emergency only. After the war, there must be a structure we can build on. The Dalavan Militia are amateurs—they will do well enough for keeping a rude sort of order, but they aren’t investigators, and if they’re not kept on a short leash they’ll turn as bad as the Silver Hand. So after the war is over, I will be able to argue that the Militia are no longer needed, because the PED is sufficient for peacetime.”

Aiah glowers at him. “And will you win that fight?”

“It’s too early to say. I have a war to win first.” His eyes soften, and he leans forward across his desk. “If you want to keep some of these Handmen from being abused by the Militia, you will have every opportunity simply by arresting them through your department.”

Aiah takes a breath. “Yes,” she says. “Yes. Very well.”

“And then the reward will belong to your people.”

Anger simmers in her veins. “Keep the money,” she says. “I don’t want my people working for rewards.”

Constantine looks at her. “I remind you that your military police are mercenaries,” he says. “Rewards will keep them loyal. And you can use part of the reward to fund your own department, perhaps give your people a bonus or two.”

Aiah reconsiders, backpedals a bit, shifts her ground. “I don’t want my people taking heads.”

Constantine is curt. “See that they don’t, then.”

Everything has become my responsibility again, she thinks. Even whether or not the Handmen receive decent treatment.

How does he do it? she wonders.

There is a whir and thump as an artillery shell lands nearby, and then the sound is repeated. Aiah finds herself counting the rounds: there are six guns in an enemy battery, and once six shells have landed, there is a little respite.

Four, five, six. Silence.

Constantine looks up at her. He, too, has been counting. “Is that all?” he asks. Aiah supposes that it is.

The amateurs of the Dalavan Militia are as bad as Aiah expects. Lists of the proscribed in hand, they knock down doors, or simply shoot through them; they arrest the wrong people, and sometimes kill them; and it’s only a matter of days before the first complaints of extortion are heard.

Enthusiastic citizens make the situation worse. The rewards are available to anyone who brings in one of the proscribed, and Caraqui is full of desperate people, many of them left homeless and rash by the war, willing to risk their own lives by finding a Handman or two and dragging them before a magistrate. Cases of misidentification are legion, and though it’s bad enough when the wrong man gets hauled before a magistrate, it’s far worse when the victim is dead before he—or anyway his head—appears in court.

And since these enthusiasts charge into the fray without proper intelligence, without support, and usually without mages to cover their backs, the hardened criminals of the Silver Hand are not inclined to go quietly, and they do not always prove to be the victims. By now their plasm houses are shielded and fortified: sometimes plasm attacks leave the attackers dead or injured, and sometimes there are gun battles that put a dozen people in the morgue or in hospital.

Aiah directs her department’s efforts toward the most hardened targets she can find, hoping by the efforts of her own professionals to keep the casualties to a minimum. She divides the rewards between her mercenaries and her department’s own treasury, with occasional handouts to informants.

And the Silver Terror fades. Scores of Handmen are captured trying to leave Caraqui, and thousands of others join Great-Uncle Rathmen in exile. The number of bomb and plasm attacks declines remarkably.

Progress, Aiah concedes, of a sort.

She does not see Constantine in person, but only as a presence in video or memoranda or news reports. He floats in a circle far above hers: his fight is in the clouds, and hers in the bog below.

She tries not to think of him, not to judge him. The endless worry and activity make it easier.

Her department grows. For once she has her pick of candidates—the war has disrupted enough lives that plenty of qualified people are willing to take a secure government job, even an underpaid one, and even a job in a building that is regularly the subject of enemy attack. Because many of the Handmen are now in hiding, Aiah hires squads of detectives, many former police, people familiar with Caraqui and the ways of the Hand, investigators who can interview witnesses properly and track down the Handmen in their hiding places. She is surprised to discover that many of the ex-police pass their plasm scans: apparently there were honest cops out there, trying to do their best but compromised by the corrupt system in which they worked.

She is interviewing a candidate for a clerical position when her receptionist tells her that Constantine is on the line. She finishes making an appointment for the young man’s plasm scan, sees him out of the office, then picks up the headset.

“Yes, Minister.”

“I’m sorry,” he says at once.

“For what?”

“For handing you a thousand impossible tasks. For showing you the worst of my character. For neglecting you for weeks in an unforgivable fashion.”

There is a moment’s silence.

“Miss Aiah?” Constantine prompts. “What are you thinking?”

Aiah feels a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I’m thinking it’s a start.”

“I am willing to apologize at greater length, midbreak third shift, if you can clear your schedule.”

“I’m supposed to be plasm angel for my troops.”

“Get someone else.”

She sighs. “I’ll try.”

“20:00.1 will give you dinner. And, if I can beg a favor of you, may I ask you not to dress as you would at the office? I see nothing but suits and uniforms all day, and something soft would be a pleasure.”

“I’ll make an effort.”

“And I will try to make your effort worth your while.”

Aiah puts the headset on its hook and scrubs her fingers through her hair. Constantine clearly has a romantic interlude on his mind, and she is not certain if she has any romance left in her.

Not without a month’s vacation in some resort, anyway.

She throws the switch on her communications array and tells her receptionist to send in the next candidate.

When he walks in there is a flash of recognition, and Aiah’s heart lifts. Perhaps one of her family…? But no: the new candidate is a stranger.

And, she thinks, she knows much about him, even if she’s never met him before.

He is Barkazil, almost certainly. Smooth brown skin, brown eyes, curly black hair, a home-district smile. He’s dressed Jaspeeri-fashion—shiny gray polymer suit and big swatches of lace dripping from wrists and throat—and he carries himself with a self-confidence almost impudent in someone this young.

He shakes her hand. “Alfeg,” he says, then adds, “of the Cunning People,” before she can ask.

“Aiah,” she says. “The same.”

“I know.” His white, confiding smile suggests that he and Aiah share a great many secrets.

Guns thunder outside, and Aiah’s window, divided for safety’s sake into diamonds by a crosshatching of masking tape, gives a sympathetic rattle.

She sits behind her desk and pulls his file off the stack. Citizen of the Scope of Jaspeer, sure enough. Degrees in chemistry and plasm use from Margai University. Age: twenty-three. Single. Current employer: United Polymer, Arsenide City Complex, Jaspeer. Current salary: 38,000 dalders per annum.

He wants to become one of her mages. Aiah looks up.

“I don’t think we can afford you,” she says.

“Money isn’t of the first importance,” Alfeg says. “Do you know the Gar-Chavan Bakeries in Old Shorings?”

“Yes. I grew up in Old Shorings.”

“My father is Mr. Chavan. Money is not so much a necessity as a way of keeping score.”

“Ah.” A rich boy: so that’s where he got his self-confidence. “Well, if it’s your only way of keeping score, you’re not going to get a lot of points in Caraqui.”

He looks at her with a composed, sincere expression, though there is still a degree of amusement dancing behind his eyes. “I want to do something meaningful before I die,” he says. “If that’s not a foolish thing to admit.”

Perhaps it is, Aiah thinks, in the circles he’s used to.

The guns boom again, and again the windows rattle.

“Your search for meaning could get you killed,” Aiah points out. “We’re fighting a war.”

“That makes it more interesting, from my point of view.”

“You’re not experienced in police work, I take it?”

“No.”

“And though you work with plasm, your experience is in chemistry, which would not seem to be of great relevance.”

He nods. “But I have considerable experience in telepresence. Dangerous hermetics are always initiated at a distance.”

“I see. You haven’t ever created or worked with a plasm hound?”

“I’m afraid not.” He smiles apologetically. “I never had a reason to track anything.”

She frowns, looks at the file again while the guns boom out. Young, rich person seeks meaning. And once he’s had his little adventure in relevance, he can always return to his social niche.

An option, Aiah reminds herself, not available to herself.

But even so, she finds herself aching to hire him. He is of the Cunning People, and possibly the only Barkazil in all the Metropolis of Caraqui other than herself. The only thing she finds herself missing about Jaspeer is the ability to bathe in her Barkazil identity.

In fact, she thinks, being a Barkazil here might have its advantages. In Old Shorings, she’d have to cope with her family. Here, she does not.

“When can you start work?” she asks.

“Right away. Within the hour, if you like. I can wire my resignation back to United Polymer before they know I’m gone from my desk.”

The ease with which he proposes to dispose of an extremely lucrative job seems improbable. And, to someone brought up on legends of Chonah, the immortal so successful at confidence games that she had given her name to a whole species of dubious endeavor, it seems more than a little suspicious.

She puts down the file and regards him. “You’re not an agent of the Jaspeeri government, by any chance?”

The question seems to startle him. His eyebrows lift. “No,” Alfeg says. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Or any other government? Or institution? Or criminal enterprise?”

“Immortal Karlo, no!”

There is a bang, a lurch, a rumble. The other side of the Palace, facing Lorkhin Island, has taken a hit from something big.

“You will have to undergo a plasm scan to verify you’re telling the truth,” Aiah says. “It will be very thorough, and is certain to discover any secret allegiances. Do you have a problem with this?”

He looks uncomfortable for a moment. “I suppose not,” he says.

“We look for absolute commitment,” Aiah says, “absolute honesty, and absolute discretion.”

“I suppose my romantic, futile attachment to the lost cause of the Holy League of Karlo will prove no impediment?” Alfeg says. “My grandfather fought for them.”

The Holy League was one of the many factions that finished off the Metropolis of Barkazi, one of a disheartening, endless list of lost causes from the Barkazi Wars.

Aiah finds a smile tugging at her lips. “My granddad fought for the Holy League as well,” she says. “I don’t imagine there will be a problem unless you try to resurrect the Holy League here.”

Alfeg nods graciously, and playfully sketches the Sign of Karlo in the air. “I was rather hoping you would, actually,” he says.

A peculiar sensation hums along Aiah’s nerves. She looks at him sharply to see if he’s joking or not, but she can’t be certain.

“I’m here to build the New City,” she says, “not to bring back the Metropolis of Barkazi. Which in any case is thousands of radii away.”

“Of course.”

“If you still want the job, I can slot you into a plasm scan early tomorrow. Second shift, first quarterbreak.”

“Yes. I can manage that, though I’ll have to wire United Polymer and tell them I need another day off.”

“That’s up to you. You can make an appointment with my secretary.”

He seems a bit puzzled for a moment, as if he had been expecting something more, and then rises and takes Aiah’s hand.

“Thank you, Miss Aiah,” he says.

“Thank you for applying. I appreciate your coming all this distance.” Even, she thinks, if it was in the Rande aerocar your daddy bought you.

Buoyed perhaps by the meeting with Alfeg, perhaps by the thought of having Constantine to herself for at least a few hours, Aiah almost overdoes it. She arranges for someone to cover her shift, makes an appointment with one of the Palace hairdressers, gets a manicure while her ringlets are attended to, and then turns up at Constantine’s door promptly at 20:00, wearing heels and a very short dress of blazing scarlet that she’d bought during her first day’s shopping in Caraqui and never found an occasion to wear. She also wears the priceless ivory necklace, with its dangling Tri-gram, that Constantine had given her.

Judging from their smiles and glowing eyes, Constantine’s guards, at least, appreciate her efforts.

She is taken through the layers of security that surround Constantine’s apartment-for-a-day, and finds him lounging casually on the couch, hands clasped behind his head. He wears a soft gray chambray shirt with ruffles on the front and wide sleeves, and his long legs, propped up before him, are clad in pleated slacks of a darker gray.

Aiah is surprised to find Aldemar here. The petite actress sits at a desk, eyes closed, with a copper t-grip in her hand, a little frown on her perfect face.

Constantine bounds to his feet on Aiah’s entrance, smile spreading over his face. “Welcome!” he cries. Takes her hands, kisses her cheek. “You look lovely!”

“Thank you.”

“Did you buy the dress just for me?”

She gives him a sidelong look. “Perhaps,” she says, and then looks toward the actress.

“Aldemar has offered to give us a gift,” Constantine says. “I must say it is an inspired one.”

Aiah considers Aldemar’s intent concentration on her magework. “Shall I thank her now,” she says, “or is she busy?”

“Perhaps tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? Aiah wonders. Is Aldemar going to be with them for the rest of the shift?

But then Aldemar’s eyes flutter open and after a moment’s vague search focus on Aiah and Constantine. “I’ve established the sourceline,” she says. “Are the two of you ready?”

Constantine steps close to Aiah, puts an arm around her waist. “At your convenience,” he says.

Aldemar gives a knowing smile, then closes her eyes again. She reaches out, her free hand unfolding as if offering something on her palm, and Aiah’s skin warms to the touch of plasm, and she opens her mouth in surprise at the sheer power she feels surging toward her…

And blinks at the sight of another place, a room with plush furniture, a glass table set atop a silver metal spiral, place settings for two, a bottle of golden wine waiting in a silver bucket, candles glittering off the gold rims of fine porcelain and the mirror surfaces of silver chafing dishes…

Aiah gapes in astonishment. Constantine’s voice purrs in her ear.

“Aldemar has given us a little vacation. Another place, quite secure, far from Caraqui, far from duty and war.”

“Great Senko,” Aiah murmurs, and touches the Trigram at her throat.

Constantine steps to the sliding glass balcony door, with its bronze frame and Crosshatch of bronze wire, and closes it—that was the pathway, Aiah realizes, that Aldemar used to teleport them into the apartment.

Laughing plasm-warmth tingles in Aiah’s bones as her astonishment fades. She bounds forward to the buffet, lifts the lid of a chafing dish at random, sees cutlets of some sort in a brown sauce, with melted cheese; and then she replaces the silver lid and almost dances through the room, runs her fingertips along the plush cushion of a couch, feels the scalloped gilt edge of a mirror, plucks sprigs of jasmine from cloisonne vases to inhale the scent…

Far from duty and war… Her heart lifts. She had not been away from the Metropolis of Caraqui for a single hour since her arrival.

She feels drunk with freedom. She turns to look at Constantine, sees the candles glowing gold in his eyes.

“Where are we?” she asks.

“Achanos.”

On the other side of the world, eight or ten thousand radii away. A stable, civilized metropolis, filled with prosperous bankers and healthy industries and glowing with economic health.

“No guards?” she asks. “No telephones?”

“There are guards, yes,” Constantine concedes, “but they do not know who it is they guard, nor will they disturb us. Aldemar arranged it so that we might seem to be a group of chromoplay producers meeting to arrange financing.”

“I’d wish we could stay a month.”

He looks at her, and the candlelight dances in his eyes. He takes the sprig of jasmine from her hand and places it behind her ear. “We will try to compress the best parts of that month into the few hours we have.”

They do their best, opening with wine, fruit, and little layered pastry curled around bits of spiced squab; then on to dinner, a choice of squab, a noodle dish, beef tenderloin, and the cutlet, all in their appropriate sauces, along with fresh vegetables, long crusty loaves of bread, and fruit.

“Have you heard from your family?” Constantine asks.

“I’m usually out when they call. My grandmother is the most insistent—she calls every so often to urge me to stock up on disaster supplies, and I’d like to be able to oblige her, but this is the first time I’ve been out of the Palace since I got back from Xurcal Station.”

Constantine tilts his head, curious. “Your grandmother survived the Barkazi Wars, yes?”

“Yes. My grandfather fought for the Holy League and ended up a prisoner of the Fastani, and Nana got her whole family out to a refugee center, then to Jaspeer. She raised all the children by herself. She’s tough.”

“I would like to hear her stories,” Constantine says. “I’ve spent years of my life at war, but I’ve always been a commander, relatively safe and comfortable. I try to visit the real victims, the refugees and the wounded, but it’s usually not safe to go out in public, unsafe not just for me but for the people I’m visiting, and now I share your situation—confined to the Palace—and move from one room to the next.”

Aiah remembers Constantine in her little apartment back in Jaspeer, the way he looked with such evident curiosity at the life of an ordinary person, and amusement tugs at her lips.

“And apropos of things Barkazil,” Constantine continues, “we have a brigade of Barkazil troops arriving at the aerodrome next week, and I’d be obliged if you will meet them and say a few words of welcome.”

Curiosity overcomes Aiah’s fear of speaking in public. “Barkazils? From Barkazi?”

“No. The Timocracy is running out of troops to send us, and so I have contracted with an agent in Sayven—another metropolis famous for exporting its soldiers. They are called Karlo’s Brigade—and Karlo, I recollect, is the Barkazil immortal.”

“Barkazils in Sayven?” Aiah frowns. “That’s nowhere near Barkazi. And Karlo’s Brigade—I wonder if that means they’re Holy League people.”

“Do those old factions still exist?”

“In Jaspeer the Holy League and the Fastani have become gangsters in Barkazil neighborhoods—they extort money from businessmen in the name of their old causes—but any actual veterans, unless they could afford life extension, would be ancient by now. They were always sitting in cafes when I was growing up, discussing the bad old days……”

“There are Barkazils on the Provisional Government’s side, too. Landro’s Escaliers, specialists in urban vertical assault and sniper work, from the Timocracy.”

Aiah gives a grimace. “I’m sorry to hear they’re on the wrong side. But whoever they are, I’ve never heard of them.”

Constantine shrugs. “I will send you to Karlo’s Brigade, and perhaps you can find out.”

“I will ask.” She considers. “I had a Barkazil apply to me today for a mage’s post. Came all the way from Jaspeer.”

“Will you give him the job?”

“He’s a young man—well, my age, actually. Wealthy family. He’s flying the nest in search of, oh, real meaning, or anyway the real something.” She shrugs. “I don’t know. Perhaps I won’t hire him. He’s getting scanned tomorrow; I’ll wait for the report.”

Constantine gives her a meaningful look. “I should think that any Barkazil in your division would be grateful to you for the job. Personal loyalty is not a small consideration, things being what they are.”

“He’s too rich and good-looking to have loyalties to a bureaucrat like me.”

Constantine’s laugh barks out. “He’s good-looking? You hadn’t mentioned that. Send him home!”

Aiah offers him an ambiguous smile. “Well. Perhaps I’ll hire him, then. If he makes you nervous, he may have his uses.”

Constantine gives a mock scowl. “I think I may learn to dislike this young gentleman.”

She takes her wineglass, rises, and walks to the apartment’s floor-to-ceiling window. “Do you think it would be unsafe,” she says, “if we looked out? You must be tired of blacked-out windows, and so am I.”

Constantine follows her, sweeps aside the deep blue drape at one side to look at the window mechanism, and nods. “It’s silvered on the outside,” he says. “I wish I could say the same for windows in the Palace.” He presses buttons, and with a stately electric purr the drapes pull back, revealing the window in its brushed-bronze frame. Aiah looks out through the almost-invisible bronze grid set into the glass, and a sudden singing pleasure makes her smile.

They are high in a granite tower, one of a cluster of white spears pointing at the Shield, each tipped with bright bronze transmission horns and ornamented with extravagant carved arabesques gilded with shining bronze. Shieldlight glows from tall columns of mirrored windows, and far below avenues stretch off into infinity, shadowed by tall brown-stone buildings crowned by roof gardens. A bright red aero-car, turbines rotating in their shrouds, descends slowly toward a pad below. Traffic fills the streets even at this late hour, Shieldlight winking from glass and chrome, and the walkways are full of people walking, browsing, shopping.

No gunfire, she thinks; no one hiding from shellfire or rockets. No plasm glow on the horizon to mark where mages are wrestling in midair.

And no water, either. The view is all brick and concrete and stone, like the vistas Aiah had known in Jaspeer.

How many of these people, Aiah wonders, have ever heard of Caraqui or its struggles? How many dream of the New City?

Practically none, she imagines. Everything she does, everything she fights for, is less than a dream to the people here, more unreal than the people in a chromo.

Constantine’s arms circle her from behind. She tilts her head back against his shoulder.

“I wish I could give you that month here,” he says. “Perhaps after the war. It’s something you deserve.”

She sips wine from her gold-rimmed glass. “After the war you’ll just give me another twenty jobs, and I won’t have time.”

“Am I that demanding a boss?”

A low chuckle invades her throat. “Oh yes, Minister. You are.”

“You must learn to delegate, as I do. After all, I trust you with some of the most important tasks.”

“And that’s precisely why I must do them all myself. If something goes badly wrong, would you accept my explanation that I delegated the job to someone else and he failed?”

He considers this a moment. “I would hope the situation did not arise.”

“So would I. That’s why I do everything myself.”

“And I appreciate your dedication.” He kisses her at the juncture of neck and shoulder, and pleasure shimmers along her nerves.

“I think I would like to sit and watch the world for a while,” Aiah says.

They drag a sofa to the window, and Aiah reclines against Constantine as she gazes at the city below. She looks at him from the slant of her eye.

“I’ve talked to you about my family,” she says, “but I don’t really know anything about yours. Who was your grandmother?”

He considers for a moment. “She was the mistress of my grandfather. She lasted a few years, but in the end he lost interest in her, so she had a child in hopes of getting a hold on him.”

“Did it work?”

“Of course not. He was a politician who won a rigged election with the help of the military, then betrayed his allies and seized sole power for himself. He would never have let a matter of sentiment get in the way of what he really wanted. But he was decent enough by his lights, acknowledged my father and brought him up well.” She turns, takes one of his big hands in both her own, looks up at him.

“Did you know your grandfather?”

“Oh yes. He was a complete political animal, all hunger and corruption, no humanity at all. Tall and thin, lived very modestly—he wanted all the power and wealth in the world, but wouldn’t have known how to enjoy it once he got it.” A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “Let me tell you a story. After he had been Metropolitan for twelve or fifteen years it seemed everyone had finally had enough of him, and there were strikes and unrest. He could see people maneuvering to replace him and thought it possible he might not win… so he gave up!” He laughs. “He announced he would step down and arrange for an orderly succession. He entered into a power-sharing arrangement with the people who wanted to replace him, allowing for the most inept of them to have the most power. They failed miserably, of course—he still had enough power to insure that they would—and their infighting paralyzed the country. So then, with the blessings of the people who had once wanted him gone, he stepped in to ‘save’ his beloved Cheloki, and ruled absolutely from that point on.”

Aiah turns to the view, gazes out at the granite towers, the countless people. “And your grandmother?” she asks.

“Very grand, very beautiful, very mercenary. I do not believe I ever saw her on the arm of any man who wasn’t worth fifty million dalders at least. But I didn’t know her very well—once she saw that having my father was a tactical error, she lost interest in him and left him to be raised by his father’s tutors.”

She frowns. “I am almost sorry I asked. They sound like a dreadful bunch.”

He smiles at her. “My father was more sympathetic. He was a complete mediocrity, but he tried to do well—he worked very hard at the government departments he was given, but the harder he worked, the worse the departments got. So he settled for being a sportsman—he played polo, if you know what that is.”

“I’ve seen it on video. It’s played on horseback.”

“It’s the most posh sport in the world. Horses cost millions, and my father had the best. You’ve got to rent huge rooftops for the horses to live on—that alone costs a fortune.”

“I’ve seen horses in zoos.”

“Polo was the only thing my father was good at. Polo and women.”

Aiah skates fingernails along the rim of her glass. Outside, a plasm advert, an image of a platinum Forlong necklace glittering with diamonds, winds like a ribbon between the granite towers. How long has it been since she’s seen a plasm advert? she wonders, one that wasn’t a government announcement or propaganda. She never thought she’d miss them…

“Do you know what?” she says. “None of these people sound like you. You don’t seem like any of your ancestors at all.” She turns, looks at him. “So where did you come from? Your genetics?”

“I would deny my ancestors if I could. I cannot admire a one of them, though perhaps I am more like my grandfather than you suspect.” He looks out at the bright city below, face thoughtful. “Possibly I am my mother’s child. She was supposed to be brilliant when she was young—beautiful, witty, played half a dozen instruments. She used to give concerts. But by the time my sisters and I grew up she had already… withdrawn.”

Aiah frowns. “If your father was only good at polo and women, that must have been hard on her.”

“The men in my family did not value women. Just bought them, and when they were tired of the first lot, they’d buy more. My father needed an ornament to cheer him at polo matches, and so he got one—and the fact she was very good at music was just a bonus, something else to brag about to his friends.”

“Why didn’t she leave?”

He tilts his head, considers. “She had a comfortable life. Lots of money, and nobody really cared what she did. She spent a great deal of time with me and my sisters—they were pleasant hours—and she drank, and had dozens of lovers, and over time the music she played got sadder and sadder. Toward the end she became very fond of morphine. Eventually she rode one of my father’s ponies right off a building and fell eighteen stories to her death. She was drunk. I was nine years old.”

Aiah looks at him in concern. “Suicide?” she asks.

He purses his lips in thought. “Probably not a deliberate one. But there are indirect ways of killing oneself, not with a knife or a gun. One of these is alcohol and morphine together, and that was her choice.”

“What about your sisters? How many were there?”

“Five, if you count the two cousins who came to live with us when they were young and were brought up as part of the family. We spent all our time together, were even schooled together, by a tutor.”

Aiah thinks of the young Constantine brought up as the adored only son amid this household of women. She sees sadness cross his face. “Two of my sisters are dead now. The others do not speak to me, not after my betrayal of the family.”

Who are his family now? she wonders. Martinus, Sorya, herself… and Taikoen.

Sadness drifts through Aiah’s heart, and she impulsively kisses his cheek. She had not wanted to provoke these memories, this sadness. She puts her arms around his neck and kisses him again. “I forgive you,” she says.

He looks at her, intelligence burning in his glance, and his lips twist in a mocking smile. “For everything?” he asks.

She kisses his smile. “Of course.”

“For I am using you, lady, and everyone else, and sometimes I confess I no longer know why.”

“I forgive you,” she repeats, and he smiles again, sadly this time, and returns the kiss with a ferocity that takes her momentarily aback, but then she returns it, nerves answering to his need.

They kiss and caress, and the fiery hunger grows and kindles into flame while the Metropolis of Achanos goes about its life on the other side of the bronze-sheathed window. Eventually they move to the bedroom, and Aiah takes off her red dress, flirting with Constantine as he watches, using little tricks that she’s seen on video, pirouettes while half-undraped, showing him glimpses of her body, giving him little pouting kisses over a bared shoulder, flashing him every provoking look in her repertoire… Eventually she turns down the bed and reclines on pearly satin, forearm beneath her head, wearing only the Trigram necklace, and looks at him. Constantine turns and searches in a drawer, smiles, raises his hand with a copper t-grip. “Oh no,” she says.

He looks at her with a predator smile. “It has been too long, lady, since I had the leisure to truly pleasure you. And since through Aldemar’s kindness we have this opportunity, I wished to make it as memorable as possible.”

Aiah has experienced this once before, the Fifth of the Nine Levels of Harmonious and Refined Balance, and reckons she would just as soon never experience the Sixth through Ninth. The Fifth is intense enough.

“Well,” she says, and laughs, “perhaps just this one time…”

Constantine sits on the bed and touches her cheek with his free hand, plasm-warmth tingling along the tracks of his fingers. Aiah looks up into his glittering eyes, sees the power there, the intensity, the plasm coiled in him, all of it focused on her… and the warmth spreads, touching her nerves, the sensation making her give a nervous gasp.

He kneels over her, hand and lips browsing along her body. The plasm pours over her skin like a sheet of fire, a burning that makes her cry out; she feels his kisses between her breasts, and seizes his head with both hands, pressing him to her heart. Her body shudders at the plasm onslaught, and she drives her legs up around him, heels digging into his back, demanding pleasure. She feels as if her lungs are filled with molten fire, and fire burns in her throat. The fire fills her, and she feels it scorch her bones, consume her organs, blacken her nerves; she can feel her skin split open, molten metal bursting from her, turning the room to flame.

After it is over she lies with Constantine, her lanky body, curled into a fetal shape, fitting spoonlike within the compass-arc of his larger frame, her head resting on his biceps. “Sometime,” she gasps, “I am going to do that to you.”

“I will look forward to it,” he says, and kisses her sweat-moist nape.

His arm circles her from behind, and she takes his hand and places it on her breast, feeling herself filling his palm, wanting the intimate touch of him there.

“I’m glad we don’t do that every time,” she says.

His chuckle comes in her ear. “A pity. We could do it again now.”

A startled laugh bolts from her throat. “Vida’s mercy!” she says. “Give me time to catch my breath!”

“All right,” he says, amiable enough.

She gives him a look over her shoulder. “Are you serious? You must have just burned ten thousand dinars of plasm.”

His look is serious. “What I can give you in the next few hours I will give you.”

“Who’s paying for it?”

“Aldemar and I will settle between the two of us.” He kisses her neck again. “You are worth the expense, lady.”

Pleasure tweaks the corners of her mouth. “I hope Aldemar agrees,” she says, and pillows her head on his arm again.

His body steals closer to hers, stretching flesh against flesh. “Have you caught your breath yet?” he asks.

She laughs. “No,” she says.

“A pity. We have only a few hours left.”

“Hours.” She laughs again, then looks back at him. “Perhaps we could try the Fourth level,” she says, “if it’s less intense.”

“It isn’t,” Constantine says. “It’s just intense in a different way.”

“Well,” she says, “as long as we’re here…”

Before they leave the apartment they bathe together, fitting their tall bodies with a certain deliberation into a long, oval tub that would have been ample for one. The scented water floats over Aiah like a milder version of the plasm fire that Constantine has called to aid her pleasure. The stress knots in her neck and shoulders, which had already begun to loosen their grip over the last few hours, are dissolved entirely by soap, scent, and Constantine’s powerful hands. Aiah dries her hair, then puts on her little red dress while in the other room Constantine calls Aldemar on the phone.

“She is the only person who knows we’re here,” he says as he hangs up the headset. “If something happened to her, I would be embarrassed to find a way back to Caraqui.”

He gives Aldemar a few minutes, and then slides open the patio door to let her plasm sourceline enter. A cool breeze floats in, along with the sound of traffic. He and Aiah fall into one another’s arms, Aiah pressing herself to his massive chest, his ruffled shirt against her cheek. She closes her eyes, wanting to prolong the moment, and keeps them shut as the power snarls around her.

“I brought you back to my apartment,” Aldemar says as Aiah blinks at the surroundings. She sits on a sofa with her feet up, elegant as possible considering she is dressed in a bathrobe with her hair wrapped in a kind of turban.

Aiah turns to her. “Thank you,” she says. “That was wonderful of you.”

“These days I seem to be using my talents mostly to move spies and munitions about,” she says. “I’m pleased to use my abilities in the service of love. And I would be happy to do so again.” She casts a skeptical look at Constantine. “//the two of you ever have another free moment.”

Constantine bends to kiss Aldemar’s hand, then her cheek. “Thank you,” he says.

Aldemar looks at Aiah. “We’ll have lunch soon, yes?”

“Of course.”

Constantine straightens, sighs. A kind of weight seems to settle onto his shoulders, and a distant crash of artillery rattles the windows. “And now,” he says, “we must return to our lives.” A kind of resentment enters his face. “Our military, militarized lives.”

Aiah’s heart sinks. She had not wanted a reminder.

Criminals and war and refugees and horror.

The windows rattle again.

Time to go back to work.

Aiah and Constantine hold hands as they walk down the corridors of the Swan Wing. There is a thoughtful look on Constantine’s face.

“Karlo’s Brigade…,” he says, and his voice trails off.

“Yes?” She is mildly surprised at this choice of subject.

“Do you suppose, being Barkazils, that they have a relationship with Landro’s Escaliers on the other side?”

“I don’t know.”

“It occurs to me that we might make use of it somehow. Landro’s Escaliers are in the line, holding the Corridor between Lorkhin Island and Lanbola. And if they could be persuaded to switch sides…”

“Constantine,” Aiah points out, “they’re from the Timocracy!”

“Yes, I know. Garshab’s mercenaries pride themselves on honoring their contracts, and up till now they’ve been fighting very well for both sides, against people they know and have trained alongside.”

“Exactly.”

“But there are ways to slip contracts with a clear conscience—that’s what small print is for—and perhaps we can find Landro’s Escaliers an exit.”

“Good luck.” Skeptically.

“And to that end, I think it is time you became more prominent.”

Alarm brings warmth to Aiah’s cheeks. “Minister?” she says.

“You have succeeded very well in avoiding celebrity till now. Perhaps it is time people became aware of you.” “No!” Aiah is appalled.

“Celebrity is a weapon,” Constantine says. “You should learn to use it.” “I don’t want it.”

“The likes of Parq will find it much harder to remove you from the PED once you are well-known and appreciated here in Caraqui.”

She looks at him. “Why don’t we find someone else to be famous?”

Constantine continues as if he had not heard. “We will make you the most prominent Barkazil in the world.”

“I don’t want it. And besides, it’s ridiculous. Who’d be interested in me?”

Constantine smiles. “You underestimate the power of modern media, video in particular.” His heavy hand pats her shoulder in a gesture meant to be reassuring. “Don’t worry,” he says with a white smile. “I will handle it all.”

That’s just what I’m afraid of, Aiah thinks.