City on Fire

SIX

The balcony rail of the Falcon Tower is a huge bronze likeness of a peregrine, gazing fiercely over the Palace and the city below, wings outspread to shelter those who stand on the balcony. Constantine, standing behind the peregrine with no less fierce an expression, looks as if he is riding the falcon’s back, aimed like an arrow at the city. A brisk wind rattles the air around him and he clearly rejoices in it, in its cold perfect vigor.

“Governing,” he murmurs. “All contradictions, all paradox.”

The city spreads out below him: green sea, rooftop gardens, glittering mirrorglass. In the distance, the spikes of Lorkhin Island sit on the horizon like a strange, alien crown.

“Plasm makes everything more intense,” he says. “It fills the world’s political history with turbulence even as it opens realms of political possibility. Plasm is transformative in this as in everything else.”

He gives his cynical demon grin. “How many of our histories—hah! our legends, our chromoplays and operas—how many concern a leader, a Metropolitan or king or general, who is destroyed by some bright spark who gets lucky with a plasm strike? And then this spark becomes the new leader-absolute power leaving a greater vacuum than other sorts—

and our young hero gathers dominion until he has it all, is able to wave a transphysical hand and give foundation to his dreams, and perhaps he achieves wisdom as well as glory… ah, but then, death at the hands of some other political entrepreneur.”

“That tale describes you, except for the ending,” Aiah says. “You survived.”

He looks at her, raises a thoughtful eyebrow. “In a sense, I did not. The man that I was did not survive. All that sustained him died—friends, family, nation, ideals. I had to make a new self afterward.” His look turns inward. “I am wiser now, but it is the kind of wisdom that turns a man bitter. I do not know if I am better for having achieved it.”

He looks down at the city again. The blustery wind paws at the lace at his throat. He throws out a hand, encompassing the world below, and then closes a fist, takes possession. Irony tugs at his lips. “To be the one man is dangerous. When I was Metropolitan of Cheloki, when the whole state rested on my shoulders—what happened to my dreams then? I wanted to change the foundations of everything, but it was all I could do to keep my head safely on my neck. But to give up power—that is dangerous, too, because to surrender power is to surrender the ability to create change…”

He nods, looks out to the southwest, to the distant metropolis where Aiah was born. “That is the solution of the Scope of Jaspeer, to divide the power sufficiently that no one strike can threaten the survival of the state. The assembly, the senate, the powerful intendants, the premier, the president, the council of ministers…” He shakes his head. “But with division of power comes division of responsibility. No one in Jaspeer possesses real power, and no one is really responsible for anything, least of all positive change—a certain discrete flow in the negative direction is permitted, a calcification of the public arteries… But while the decay slowly sets in, it is the boast of Jaspeer that nothing has changed there in hundreds of years.” Amusement sparkles in his eyes, and he gives a low laugh. “Perhaps not boast, perhaps rather a self-satisfied little moan, we are as our grandfathers were, and want nothing more.”

Aiah’s laugh echoes Constantine’s own. She worked in the faspeeri government for years, and her impression of her superiors is no more positive than Constantine’s.

“And so the cycles continue,” Constantine says. “Despots follow despots, bureaucrats follow bureaucrats, each condemned to do the job of his predecessor, sometimes a little better, usually only a little worse. When the decay gets too pronounced there’s revolution or war, but then a new despot or faction takes control and begins the game all over again. Can it be changed, I wonder, without bringing it all down?”

“You’ve changed it,” Aiah says. “You’ve got rid of the Keremaths and replaced them with something better.”

“I’ve done as well as could be expected,” Constantine says. He looks pensive; this self-deprecating mood is not a natural one for him. “One person can change little,” he muses, “but a person’s idea … an idea tested, perfected, demonstrated, shown to be true… that is real power. Ideas—the good ones, anyway—can be immortal.”

His hard raptor eyes gaze down at the city, looking at it as an opponent, a thing to be subdued and brought to heel. “This Caraqui is the testing ground,” he says. “Here, with a little luck, things can be made to happen. Here, the ideas may meet their proof. But the place is poor, desperately poor, the workforce has little education and few skills, and I have little time…” He frowns.

“There is a recipe for creating wealth,” he says. “It is simple enough. Reduce tariffs, reduce state spending, reduce controls on borrowing and lending. Protect the value of the currency while allowing free exchange, permit the citizens free access to foreign currencies. Permit the citizens to keep any wealth they earn—no confiscations or extortions, such as were practiced under the Keremaths—and tax with a light hand, with a tax code renowned for its evenhandedness and a revenue bureau renowned for its incorruptibility…”

He laughs. “Incorruptibility in Caraqui! But it is necessary: one must be seen to do all this, because it works only when it can be seen that you can be trusted, and to build full trust requires at least a generation. There are plenty of other places to put money where one can get a good return, and an investor wants guarantees…

“And in the meantime, to make certain the wealth is not so completely concentrated at the top, one encourages trade unions, one promotes safety standards and discourages child labor… but that is all one can do at this point, for there is no money yet, nothing for good universal education, nothing for housing, and that places the most vulnerable portion of our population in jeopardy, isolated, hopeless, confined to slums or in half-worlds, subject to extortion by the Silver Hand…”

He looks at Aiah. “That is where you come in. You must show the people that the Silver Hand is vulnerable, that they can be broken. It is a way of building trust in the new regime, a way just like all the other methods, only more visible. And like the other ways, it will take a generation or more. Building a nation is slow work, one has to think in long spans of time; but that works against instinct, because in politics one always reaches for a solution, and the only realistic solution in Caraqui is that if you do this now, your grandchildren may be happy.”

Aiah steps forward, touches his arm. “I think you may be underestimating the strength of your argument.”

He looks at her, a glow in his eyes, and puts his hand over hers. “Possibly I am. But still, the problem is wealth, and how to get it. And that is why your Mr. Rohder is important. He can increase the wealth of the nation, and in a short space of time; and then the problem becomes one of conserving the wealth, keeping the government from pissing it all into the canals…”

Constantine laughs, and Aiah laughs with him. And then he shakes his head. “And it is not up to me. I am but a voice in the government. I must persuade, and I must persuade for the next thirty years.”

“You’re doing pretty well so far.”

He shrugs. “I have the PED, yes. I have given it to you, because I can trust you to carry on with it.”

The keys on Aiah’s office commo unit are stainless steel, ranked in a gleaming, efficient array. Here in her bedroom the commo keys are silver, and set amid a polished fruitwood setting, a design of interlocking sigmas that climb into a third dimension through clever use of trompe l’oeil.

Aiah wonders if living amid this type of ornate luxury is changing her, even if the luxury is not precisely hers.

She remembers Rohder’s extension number perfectly well, and punches the number onto the silver keys of her commo array. Through her gold-and-ivory headset she hears the clatter of relays, and then the ringing signal.

“Da. Rohder.” The voice is breathy, distracted, cigaret-harsh. Aiah finds herself smiling at the familiar sound.

“Mr. Rohder? This is Aiah.”

There is a moment’s silence. “I am surprised to hear from you,” Rohder finally says. “Why is that?”

Aiah hears the sound of Rohder pulling on a cigaret, then the exhalation. “The Authority police seem to think you are a criminal,” he says. “They have questioned me repeatedly. Perhaps I am under suspicion myself.”

“They would be pretty foolish to think that.”

“You embarrassed them.” There is a little pause. “And you embarrassed me.”

A pang of conscience burns in Aiah’s throat. “I’m sorry if that’s the case,” she says. “I hunted plasm thieves for you. And I found them, too.”

“Yes, you did. Which makes your other behavior even more surprising.”

Time, Aiah thinks, to change the subject. She is tired of dwelling on her sins.

“Perhaps I can make it up to you,” she says. “I head the Plasm Enforcement Division now, in Caraqui.”

Rohder takes a meditative draw on his cigaret. “Caraqui, yes. People are being shot there, I believe, by foreign mercenaries. I have seen it on video.”

Aiah winces. The executions of the first few Handmen were widely publicized, to demonstrate to the population that the Silver Hand was no longer immune to justice.

But the publicity didn’t stop at the borders. Now all most people knew about Caraqui was that Constantine’s government was employing firing squads.

“I—it wasn’t my idea to shoot them,” she says. “They are gangsters, of course.”

“Were,” Rohder corrects. “And if you ever engage in the sort of activities in Caraqui in which you seem to have engaged here in Jaspeer, you could be shot, too.”

Aiah feels herself harden at the implied accusation. “You don’t know what I did in Jaspeer, Mr. Rohder.”

“True.” After a moment’s thought.

“The fact that I helped you take down some Operation plasm houses should show you what side I’m on.”

“Perhaps.”

“Since my department started its work just a few weeks ago, we’ve put the hammer on ninety-one plasm houses in Caraqui and arrested over three hundred people, many of them high-level Operation types. There are another sixty-odd plasm houses we’ll move on in the next few weeks, once investigations are completed. I wonder, Mr. Rohder—how many plasm houses has the Jaspeeri Plasm Authority taken down since I left?”

There is a long silence, filled only by the meditative drawing on a cigaret.

“Perhaps you have a point, Miss Aiah,” he says.

Aiah plunges ahead. “My boss, the Minister of Resources Constantine, has read your books. Proceedings, I mean. All fourteen volumes. And he thinks they, and you, are brilliant, and wants to meet you.”

There is another silence, then, “He must be a fast reader.”

“He would like to arrange a personal meeting to discuss your work. You would be picked up by aerocar, taken to Caraqui, lodged in the Aerial Palace for the duration of your stay, and returned by aerocar. Your fee would come to two thousand Jaspeeri dalders.”

“That is remarkably attractive.”

Aiah smiles. “Constantine makes attractive offers to those whose work impresses him. Is there a time when the visit will be most convenient?”

There is a hint of humor in Rohder’s reply. “Well, I seem to have little occupying my attention at present. Though I suppose it would be best if I came to Caraqui on a weekend, just for appearances. And also for appearances’ sake I will decline the fee, lest someone conclude that I am being paid for… well, past services rendered, and not a lecture.”

“Perhaps I could arrange for the aerocar to fetch you this Friday? Service shift, after work hours?”

Arrangements are made. A glow of triumph warms Aiah’s heart.

Things are progressing.

She hangs her headset on the hook, leans back on the pillows she’s propped up on her bed, and considers what to do next. Perhaps she could go down to the operations center and see how the shift’s activities are advancing. Several arrests have been scheduled for midway through sleep shift.

But no. Ethemark is in charge this shift. Aiah would just be in the way.

She wonders if there’s anything on video worth watching.

The truth is, outside of her work and the few hours each week she spends with Constantine, she has no life in Caraqui. What she has seen of the metropolis does not attract her, and though she’s grown familiar with parts of the city through telepresent surveillance work, most of her physical knowledge of Caraqui is confined to the carpeted, paneled labyrinth of the Aerial Palace.

It occurs to her that she could use a few friends. Perhaps she should try to recruit a few.

There is an urgent knock on the door, and then the door chime, the soft tone repeating itself over and over again as Aiah’s visitor leans on it.

There is no reason for anyone to behave this way. If there’s a situation in the department, someone can call. It’s certainly faster than running all the way over from the Owl Wing.

Aiah puts her eye to the peephole. She doesn’t see anyone.

Reflexes honed in her old neighborhood remind her not to open the door.

“Who’s there?” she calls. “Ethemark.”

Ethemark, too short to be visible through the peephole. Aiah opens the door, sees herself reflected in her deputy’s goggle eyes.

A cold hand touches Aiah’s neck at the expression on Ethemark’s face.

“What’s happened?” “Great-Uncle Rathmen. He’s gone.” “Gone? How?”

“Teleported out of his cell, apparently. Right out of the secure unit.”

Cold anger clenches Aiah’s fists. “Somebody’s been paid off.”

“Very likely. I’ve got a boat waiting at the northwest water gate.”

So that’s why he’d come in person: Aiah’s apartment was on his way to the northwest gate. “Let me get a jacket,” Aiah says.

The prison dates from the period of the Avians, who liked their official buildings to aspire to a certain magnificence. Shieldlight gleams from its white stone walls and winks off the baroque bronze traceries, functional and ornamental at once, designed to ward off attack. It is as if the building were designed to deny the horrors that went on inside.

As with the Palace, evidence of the Avians is all over the building, stylized reliefs of wings over every entrance, the wing tips curled outward as if to embrace the prisoners as they approach. Transmission homs in the shape of hawks or eagles, statues of raptors in niches, and even the bronze collection web is an abstract design of interlocking wings.

Aiah hasn’t had a reason to be here before. As the boat approaches the prison’s water gate, she looks up at the out-curving wings above her and shivers as the shadow comes between her and the light.

Inside, the place is strangely hygienic and functional, like a hospital, or a modern abattoir. Unstained bright colors, polished metal, bright fluorescent light. The Keremaths had remained true to the Avians’ spirit and kept their dungeons tidy.

The special secure wing is deep in the heart of the building and smells of disinfectant and despair. The triumvir Hilthi had paid for his journalistic dedication with a few years here, and so had many others released by the coup. Now the place was filled with Keremath supporters and gangsters.

Great-Uncle Rathmen had been tried by a military court and condemned to death within a week of his capture. He had been kept alive only because his interrogations were producing valuable information. Because he knew so much, the plasm scanners wanted to be very thorough with him, and the interrogations were many and painstaking. His file in Aiah’s secure room was growing thicker every week, long lists of contacts, payoffs, funds hidden in banks or basements.

To reach through the secure area, Aiah has to pass through two airlocks, sets of double doors screened with bronze mesh, intended to prevent even the smallest probe of plasm from slipping through. No expense or effort was spared to keep the prisoners out of the reach of any mage who might have wished to liberate them.

No expense was spared, that is, except on the guards. They are paid poorly, as are all civil servants here, and Aiah finds that Rathmen has almost certainly been paying them commissions. His cell is filled with homey touches: a piece of colored paper taped over the recessed light to moderate the harsh electric bulb, a thick carpet with a Sycar design, Sycar wall hangings, photographs of Rathmen’s family propped on a little table, cigarette butts in an ashtray. Even a box of sweets and a half-eaten pigeon pie.

Pillows—thick, soft, pleasant-looking pillows—are stuffed under the blanket to give the illusion of a sleeping prisoner.

Anger steams through Aiah’s veins. She turns to the officer on watch, a big, balding man with a nervous gleam of sweat on his forehead.

“Have any of the other prisoners been allowed personal items?”

He shakes his head. “Not to my knowledge.”

She decides to find out for herself and walks up to several cells at random. Just a few glimpses through peepholes show that a great many of them contain nonregulation items: colorful blankets, wall hangings, lamps, videos, even small refrigerators. Many are large enough to contain hidden plasm batteries.

Aiah turns to Ethemark. “Kelban is off this shift. Call him—I want him to create a plasm hound here and see if he can trace where Rathmen went.”

Little creases form at the inner edges of Ethemark’s eyes. His expressions are very subtle, but Aiah is slowly learning them. This is his uncertain look.

“Miss, if Rathmen was teleported out of here, there won’t be a trail for a hound to follow.”

“//he was teleported. He might have walked out, possibly with a bit of plasm-glamour to disguise him, and in that case I want to know where he went.”

Understanding crosses Ethemark’s face. “Right away,” he says.

The watch officer clears his throat. “Beg pardon, miss, but there’s a problem.” Aiah glares at him. “Yes?”

“There are no plasm outlets down here—we don’t want the prisoners ever getting ahold of the goods. So if you want to create a hound here, you’ll have to bring plasm in on a wire, or open enough doors so that a plasm sourceline can be sent into the area.” He adopts a pained expression. “I wouldn’t recommend that. Not if there’s a teleportation mage who’s already found a way in once.”

Aiah sees his point. “Mr. Ethemark, did you hear that?” she calls.

Ethemark turns on his way to the phone. “Yes, Miss Aiah.”

“Have Kelban bring a long wire.” “I’ll do that.”

Aiah turns back to the officer. “I want a list of everyone who’s been on watch within the last twenty-four hours. And the names of whoever carried out Rathmen’s interrogations.”

“I—” The officer looks up, and his eyes go wide for a moment. Aiah turns, and there is Sorya walking through the door. She is dressed casually—baggy slacks and a rollneck sweater and scuffed suede boots, with her worn green military greatcoat thrown over her shoulders. On her, this unlikely ensemble looks superb.

Two bodyguards are with her, Cheloki, big men with black skins and twisted genes, facial features sunk into bony armored plates, knuckles the size of walnuts.

But Sorya doesn’t need bodyguards to make her dangerous. She carries the glamour of authority with her, and it is evident in every step she takes, in the cold fluorescent gleam of her eyes.

She walks past Aiah to stand before the officer, hands propped on her hips, the greatcoat flared out behind her like a cloak. “I have put guards on the doors,” she says. “No one will leave till this is resolved. I will need the names of everyone who has been in this area within the last twenty-four hours, because the ones who aren’t here are all about to be got out of bed. I have other people on the way… specialists.”

The word specialist seems to make the officer even more nervous.

“We are under the Ministry of Justice,” the officer ventures. “The ministry may wish to make its own investigation.” Aiah and Sorya ignore this.

“The gentleman was already getting that information for me,” Aiah says.

Sorya doesn’t spare Aiah a glance. “That is well,” she says. “You can leave now, Miss Aiah. I’ll assume responsibility for the investigation.”

Aiah feels her mouth go dry. She stands erect at Sorya’s shoulder and wills the other woman to face her.

“He was my prisoner,” she says. “My own investigation is far from complete. I would like to—” She stumbles, corrects herself. “I will stay.”

Sorya turns her head, eyes Aiah for a long moment. Then she gives a shrug inside her greatcoat. “As you like,” she says. She stands close to Aiah, and lowers her voice. “Since you are here, I may as well tell you now: there are two Hand-men whom I wish released. They have agreed to serve as informers. Can you contrive to lose the paperwork on them, or free them in some other plausible way?”

Resentment stiffens Aiah’s spine. “I will… consider it. If I may share the intelligence.”

“I will pass it to you.” Her lips turn up in a cold smile. “A personal favor. In exchange for this little kindness to me.”

The next hours are long indeed.

By work shift the next day Great-Uncle Rathmen has surfaced in Gunalaht—“perched like a vulture over his bank accounts,” as Constantine remarks. Constantine is on his way to a cabinet meeting and Aiah walks along beside him, moving fast to keep up with his long strides.

“I’ve received Sorya’s report,” he says, “concerning the duty officer who sabotaged the airlock mechanism and propped the doors open to allow a thread of plasm to enter. And the other guards on watch obeyed his orders to keep the doors open, even though they must have known how dangerous it was.”

“Timing was crucial,” Aiah says. “You can’t leave a plasm sourceline just sitting there in a prison for hours. This must have been prearranged, and in detail.”

“By Rathmen’s lawyer, we presume, as well as the duty officer.” A wry smile touches Constantine’s lips. “The duty officer cannot be found, and is presumably either at the bottom of the Sea of Caraqui or sitting next to Rathmen atop a new bank account in Gunalaht. And the lawyer, we are told, is ‘unavailable’—a good idea, since under martial law we could confine him to Rathmen’s old cell and search his mind for evidence of guilt.” He gives a sigh. “And no one will believe this was not by prearrangement of the government. No one.”

Aiah looks at him. “Was it?”

He stops dead in the corridor, and a thoughtful frown creases his brow. “Who?” he wonders. “Who would do such a thing?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Rathmen’s interrogations were almost complete. We have enough to blackmail him into cooperation fifty times over. Free, he could be of use passing information on to, say, one of our intelligence organizations.”

She does not want to mention Sorya by name, but she found it odd that Sorya should personally want to control the investigation into what after all was merely a prison breakout.

Constantine considers this for a moment, calculation visible behind his eyes. “I do not find your theory entirely persuasive,” he says, “but I will explore the possibilities. And I think…” He pauses for a moment. “Rathmen is condemned to death,” he says finally. His expression turns hard. “Perhaps the sentence should be carried out regardless of his current location. It would do much to correct any erroneous impressions this escape may have created.”

Aiah thinks about this. “Dangerous,” she says.

“Taikoen,” Constantine says. The single word, spoken softly in Constantine’s resonant voice, seems to vibrate in the air for a long time. Aiah feels a palp of cold horror touch her neck.

“No,” she says instantly; and then, because she has to justify this instinct, says “No” again. “Too dangerous,” she adds. “It would be remarked. We don’t want Taikoen known, or even rumored.”

He gives her an equivocal look. “I would not in any case order such an extraordinary sanction on my own authority… Drumbeth, at least, will have to concur, though I will not tell him the means.” He smiles. “I am a good minister,” he says, “a good subordinate.” The smile turns rueful. “A good dog. I will have my allotted biscuit, and nothing more.”

Amusement tickles Aiah’s backbrain.

Constantine probably repeats these words, like a prayer, every day.

THIRD RECORD-BREAKING MONTH! LORDS OF THE NEW CITY TIME TO SEE IT AGAIN.

“We in Caraqui are uniquely suited to test your theories,” Constantine says. “May I light your cigaret?”

“Don’t bother,” Rohder says, and lights his new cigaret off the old.

Constantine is all charm, all attention. His manner suggests that Rohder is the most important, most fascinating thing in the world.

Rohder seems oblivious. A splendid meal has been laid on in the Kestrel Room, not a single thing grown in a vat, and Rohder eats a few bites and pushes it away. Fine wines and brandies are rolled out, and Rohder asks for coffee. By way of showing his familiarity with Rohder’s achievements, Constantine offers endless compliments on Proceedings and Rohder’s other work—a solid record of scholarship stretching back centuries—and Rohder shrugs it off.

Constantine puts his lighter back in his pocket, calculation glowing in his eyes. He hasn’t given up yet.

Aiah sits between them at the table, nibbling her food and watching this contest of champions. She knows Constantine’s charm—she has had this intensity turned on her, and knows how difficult it is to resist.

Indeed, she reflects, she had not resisted it.

Her onetime boss sits in his cloud of smoke, oblivious not only to Constantine’s attentions but to the glorious view from the outcurving windows. Rohder’s gray suit manages somehow to be both expensive and ill-fitting. His lace is dotted with ash and cigaret burns. His three-hundred-year-old skin, though crisscrossed with a network of fine lines, is pink and ruddy with health, and he peers vaguely at the world from watery blue eyes.

“Caraqui’s infrastructure,” Constantine continues, “is suited to constant experimentation with plasm-generating distance relationships. Over eighty-five percent of the metropolis is built over water, on big barges or pontoons. This has formerly been considered a disadvantage as regards plasm generation, because we can’t build as tall as other districts. Less mass, less plasm.”

“I noticed from the aerocar that the buildings seemed small,” Rohder says.

“The barges are strung together with cables, or with bridges that, generally speaking, are to one extent or another engineered with a certain degree of flexibility in their spans.”

A light snaps on in Rohder’s eyes as if someone has just thrown a switch. For the first time he seems aware, his mind focused on his environment.

“You can alter the relationships between the barges?” he asks.

Aiah recognizes the hint of a smile that touches, feather-light, the corner of Constantine’s mouth. The smile that says, at last, at last, he has found his way.

“Yes,” Constantine purrs. “Absolutely. Imagine what you could do in Jaspeer if you could move entire city blocks around to find the proper geomantic relationships. Well,” and the smile rises full, white incisors gleaming, “well, here it is possible.”

Rohder’s look is intent. “What is my part in all this? Can’t you do this yourself?”

“I am Minister of Resources,” Constantine says, “which in our local political cant means plasm. Resources I have, but not all those I would wish, and my greatest need is for minds. Minds such as yours do not come along every day.”

“I do not think,” Rohder says, “that quite answers my question.”

“I will create a new department within Miss Aiah’s division,” Constantine says. “I think I have enough credit with the triumvirate to be able to do that, particularly when I explain how, and to what degree, our nation may be enriched by such an action. You will be the head of it, though unless you have some strange, unfulfilled desire to be involved with personnel matters, funding, and so on, I will make an effort to find some sympathetic deputy, agreeable to you, to take that business off your hands.” He leans forward and looks close into Rohder’s eyes, searching for understanding.

“I want you to devote yourself to working your theories out in practice. I will provide you with all necessary support, with aerial surveys and as much computer time as you deem necessary.”

Rohder draws on his cigaret as he absorbs this, and lets the cigaret dance in the corner of his mouth as he replies.

“And what do you plan to do with this plasm if I can generate it for you?”

“Ah…” A laugh rolls out of Constantine’s massive chest. “That is the critical question, isn’t it?” He leans even closer, lowers his voice in intimacy. “If it’s made available to other departments, then it will simply be diverted into fulfilling the other ministers’ agendas. I wish to preserve any plasm generated by your theories for other work—other transformational work.”

Rohder absorbs the word transformational with a little frown. “What sort of work do you have in mind?”

“Have you read my book Freedom and the New City?” “Sorry. No.”

“Are you familiar with Havilak’s Freestanding Hermetic Transformations?”

“Yes.” Rohder nods. “Improving the plasm-generating efficiency of structures that already exist by altering their internal structures through magework. It’s an old idea, far older than Havilak.”

“Of course.” Conceded with a smile. “That part of my work is just a popularization.”

“But even after the hermetic transformations, all you get is more plasm. What do you plan to do with the surplus?”

“Plasm is wealth,” Constantine says, and then shrugs. “What does one do with wealth? Spend it, if you’re a fool—and most governments are foolish in the long run. Invest it, if you’re conservative, in such a way as to live off the dividends and never disturb the principal. But if you’re very wise, and possess a certain daring in your spirit, you use it to generate more and more wealth. The very existence of such a stockpile of wealth is transformational, especially in a place like Caraqui, which is so poor.”

Rohder leans back and contemplates Constantine from amid a cloud of cigaret smoke.

“You have a habit of not fully answering my questions,” he says. “Assuming all this comes to pass, and assuming you manage to keep your job, you will have an enormous reservoir of plasm, and you will be in charge of it—so what do you intend to do with it?”

Constantine holds out his hands, smiling gently. “Truly, I am not trying to be evasive,” he says. “The fact is that all actions have unforeseen consequences. It will be decades before this pool of plasm even exists, and in that time Caraqui will, I hope, have changed for the better. I can answer your question only in the most general terms.”

Rohder regards him from unblinking blue eyes.

“Very well,” Constantine says. “I will speak generally, then—I would use this fund to accomplish what the political transformation, by that time, had not. Sell plasm to provide education and housing and medicine for our population generally, clean and replenish this abused sea on which we sit, perform other work of…” He smiles. “Of an exploratory nature. Transformation is very difficult in our world—it takes tremendous resources to build anything new, because one must disrupt the life of the metropolis by settling everything and everyone that is displaced, and tear down the old thing and build the new. But with plasm—with enough plasm—all things can be done. And the geography of Caraqui makes it easy—slide an old barge out, a new barge in, and the disruption to life and the economy is all the less.” His face turns stern, like one of the Palace’s bronze eagles sniffing the wind. “I confess that my ambition is such that I will not leave the world in the same condition as I found it. Reading your Proceedings, I sensed a similar scale of thought. Will you not join me in uniting our dreams and bringing them to reality?”

“I will give it consideration,” Rohder says, and reaches in his pocket for another cigaret.

Constantine produces an envelope and slides it across the table. “This is my offer. I hope you will do me the courtesy to consider it.”

Rohder picks up the envelope and looks at it as if he does not know what it is. Then he crumples it absently, and puts the ball of paper in his pocket with one hand while he lights the cigaret with the other.

Constantine watches this, the gold-flecked eyes glittering with amusement. “If you have finished your meal,” he says, “perhaps you would like a tour of the city on my boat? You may see these barges for yourself, observe how you can transform our entire world with a few engineers, some cranes, and a handful of workmen…”

CRIME LORD DENOUNCES “NEW CITY TYRANNY”

Aiah says good-bye to Rohder and then watches as the man shambles to the waiting aerocar. Wind flutters Aiah’s chin-lace. Constantine leans close, speaks over the whine of turbines. “I hope I may be optimistic.”

“I hope so, too.”

She had enjoyed watching the two operate, Constantine seductive and manipulative, Rohder alternating intense interest with total, blank-eyed opacity. Aiah had found herself wondering if Rohder’s detachment, his total withdrawal from the world, was a strategy. A way of not acknowledging the things he didn’t want to deal with.

How would the Cunning People rate this? she wonders. Who is the passu, and who the pascol?

Turbines whine as they rotate in their pods. Suddenly there is the presence of plasm, crackling in the air like ozone, and Aiah’s nape hairs stand erect as the aerocar springs from the Palace’s pad and jets toward the Shield. The aerocar is a wink of silver in the distance before its trajectory begins to arc toward Jaspeer.

“Now,” she says, “we will find out how bored he truly is.”

Constantine looks at her. “Bored?”

“If he is bored enough in Jaspeer—if he is fed up enough with the pointlessness of his life there—he will come.” Her eyes follow the aerocar on its way across the world. “He only chased criminals with me because he was bored,” she says.

Constantine’s eyes narrow as he absorbs this. “I wish you had told me. It would have made it easier to deal with him.”

“I only realized it just now.”

“Ah.” There is an amused glint in his eye, and he puts an arm around her. His laugh comes low in her ear. “That is your gift, I think, to drive away the boredom of old men. Where was I before I met you? Stewing in my penthouse, occupying myself with trivialities—writing my memoirs over and over in my head, as old men do when there is nothing else to occupy them. And then”—he laughs again, a rumble she feels in her toes—“and then here was Miss Aiah, in the expensive new suit she’d bought just to impress me, with her plans to sell me a treasure trove of plasm she’d just happened to acquire, in hopes I would use it to make her rich and myself the master of the world…”

He pushes back the corkscrew ringlets of her hair and kisses her neck. “Thank you,” he murmurs as his arms go around her, “for giving me all this.”

She presses her body to his, hesitant because they are in public, an open landing pad with a dozen people standing by. But his lips find hers, and she shudders with sudden desire, all thought of the onlookers gone.

“Do you have an appointment now?” he asks.

“A thousand.”

“Cancel them.”

She smiles. “Yes, Minister.” With a sudden sweep of his arms he picks her up bodily—she laughs from the thrill of it, her gawky legs dangling—and carries her through the long public corridors of the Aerial Palace, past a hundred staring faces, and does not set her down until he reaches his suite, where he carries her into the bedroom and places her, delicately as if she were a piece of fine porcelain, upon the rose satin spread.