“You told me this,” Aiah says.
“It isn’t a part of my life that fills me with pride. I was debased and desperate, and I sought company as debased as I… and there was Herome, in charge of my grandfather’s prisons, feeding prisoners to this thing, and playing at worshipping it. But strangely, it was seeing Taikoen so degraded that brought back my own pride—I had no great opinion of myself, princeling of a bandit regime, but I knew that I was better than this. And when I came to know him, I managed to remind him of his own greatness, and managed to instill in him a memory of his own pride…” An image of that pride broods in Constantine’s eyes, along with bright defiance.
“And that,” he says, “was the end of Herome and his worshippers—Taikoen engulfed them all. It was my first strike against my family, for all they never knew it.” He looks down at Aiah, his glance uneasy. “And Taikoen has followed me ever since. And I have made use of him from time to time, and paid the price.”
She reaches up a hand, touches his cheek. He looks down at her, a kind of need plain on his face. “I hope I may have your understanding in this,” he says. “And better, your compassion.”
Aiah kisses him, driving her lips up into his. The only comfort she can offer, she thinks, is the comfort of her body. For a moment Constantine absorbs the kiss, inhales it as if it’s a consolation, an absolution, and then the kiss awakens in him a tigerish spirit, a fierceness, and his answering kiss is like a kiss of fire.
He carries her bodily to the bedroom, then lays her on the bed and takes off his clothes. She presses the button that polarizes the windows, and in the resulting shadow she looks at the half-light gleaming off his huge shoulders, his massive arms, the powerful muscles of his thighs and buttocks……
Either he is your passu, or you are his. Her grandmother’s voice floats through her mind, and she puts the treacherous thought away.
Aiah welcomes Constantine into the circle of her arms, the circle of her legs. Outside the circle all is dubious, in flux, but the weight of Constantine’s body on hers assures her of her own certainty in the world, of her own consequence, at least until all identity, all thought, is obliterated by climatic fire.
They lie together only a short while before Constantine has to leave. “A meeting,” he sighs, “cocktails. Would you believe it? But he is the Polar League’s ambassador, and we need League funds if we are to accomplish anything at all.”
She touches his shoulder, her fingers following the sheen of light on his black skin. “I wish you would stay.”
He bends over her, kisses her gravely on the forehead. “I cannot treat you as you deserve,” he says. “And for that, as much as anything else, I require your understanding.”
“Sorya—,” she begins, then cuts short at his frown.
“Don’t ask me to choose between you,” he says. “It is not simple. Sorya is what she is, and for a variety of reasons, I need her—her mind and skills more than anything.”
“I was not asking for a choice,” Aiah says. “I was wondering if she would kill me. She and I had… a side-agreement… concerning you. I may have violated it by coming here. And she has already sent me a message.”
All truces are temporary, Sorya said.
Constantine’s brows knit. Aiah can see muscles working on the side of his neck, as if he is chewing the news over before he makes his calm answer.
“If she harms you,” he says (his eyes are stone, cold as the breath of Taikoen), “then it will be the end of her.”
“I hope you will tell her that.”
“I will see that she knows.”
He kisses her forehead again, sealing the promise, then rises and begins to dress.
Aiah lies still for a moment, her nerves humming with the strangeness, the peculiar uncanny intensity, of this life-and-death bargain, and then she remembers she has carried something with her to give to him. She rises from the bed, looks for a moment for a dressing gown before remembering she hasn’t as yet acquired one, and then goes to her baggage to find her treasure.
She approaches him naked, the book offered on her upturned palms. “Yes?” he says, and cocks an eye at the gift.
“I brought this for you. You can judge it better than I can—but I think it will help our work.”
He picks up the book, looks at the gold lettering on the red plastic binding. “Proceedings of the Research Division of the faspeeri Plasm Authority. Volume Fourteen, no less.” He sighs. “An attractive title. You don’t want me to start at the beginning?”
“The first thirteen volumes are all formulae and proofs,” Aiah says. “I don’t understand them. This volume has the recommendations, and they involve a way to increase plasm by about twenty percent through use of something called ‘fractionate intervals.’ ”
Constantine looks skeptical.
“The Authority spent eight years producing the data,” Aiah says, “but then the Research Division got flushed. I think the decision was political, but I don’t know the details. The man in charge was Rohder—he’s brilliant, a real wizard, but I don’t think he’s very practical. Now he’s in charge of a whole suite of empty offices back in the Plasm Authority Building.”
Constantine frowns, runs his thumb along the spine. “I will give it my attention when I can,” he says.
Aiah puts her arms around him and holds him close, hoping to carry some last imprint of Constantine on her flesh. He kisses her—and for a moment she feels him softening, as if he might throw off his clothes and join her on the bed again, but the moment passes, and he says good-bye and returns to the Polar League’s ambassador and his duty.
Aiah decides she might as well follow his example, and begins to make a list for the next day.
FOUR
In the end, Aiah’s heart fails her where Gil is concerned. She writes him a letter and sends it surface mail instead of using a wiregram or making a phone call. Her written explanations and excuses are awkward, unconvincing even to herself. She knows that he will have a hard time paying for the apartment they’d shared, and so she wires him ten thousand dalders out of her account in Gunalaht.
Conscience money. And sure proof to the Jaspeeri authorities of her profitable, and to them criminal, activities.
She and Ethemark march through the Owl Wing, putting plastic slips on the doors of empty offices that announce they are now part of the Plasm Enforcement Division. She then informs the Palace Property Department, in charge of room allocations, that the offices are now theirs. Theirs, by right of conquest and the fact that no one, in the confusion, disputes them.
The interviewing and hiring begins. Drumbeth announces publicly that plasm thieves have a thirty-day amnesty in which to inform the authorities of their illegal plasm taps, meters, and connections. Public response is tepid, but the deadline provides Aiah with a firm date by which she has to be ready.
She promises herself that the first arrests will be made at 24:01 on the day following the deadline. One minute after the amnesty ends.
During the next two weeks, Constantine visits her twice more in her suite, spending his rare moments of spare time in her company. She is working double shifts, but his schedule is worse. Depending on the state of his elusive progress through the complexities of coalition politics, his moods swing between booming elation and fretful anxiety. But when he touches her, when he kisses her or moves with her in bed, his mood shifts: he is entirely there, intent eyes holding her as if she were pinned in the radiance of searchlights, a kind of scrutiny that would be frightening if it weren’t for the fact that, apparently, he approves of what he sees.