Metropolitan (39 page)

Since he’s there, Aiah takes the opportunity to kiss him. “I haven’t,” she says. “I won’t.” And adds, for his benefit, “I’m a Barkazil, you know.”

“And, when confronted, admit nothing,” Constantine says. “Make them prove every point. Give them as little as possible, because the longer a story you give them, the more rope they have to trip you up and hang you.”

“I absorbed all this with my mother’s milk,” Aiah says. “But thank you for the advice.”

He gives her a half-amused, narrow-eyed look. “When it began to look as if it would matter,” he says, “I inquired into the relationship between Barkazils and Jaspeeris. Jaspeeris, I discovered, are inclined to the belief that Barkazils are a treacherous, conspiratorial, thieving lot.”

“We’re only taking what already belongs to us.”

Constantine looks skeptical.

“It’s true. My grandma says so.” Aiah offers an assured smile. “Let me tell you a grandma story. Do you know about Karlo?”

“Karlo’s Day is the big Barkazil festival, yes?”

“He’s our immortal. We always take Karlo’s Day off work, and the longnoses are annoyed. But for the story of Karlo, we have to go all the way back, before the Malakas raised the Shield, and there was a Sun and Moon, to when Senko had invented weapons of iron and steel in the war against the Lord of the Trees.”

“That far back, hey,” Constantine murmurs. His eyes half-close as he prepares to be bored.

“
The Barkazils says that it was Karlo who showed Senko the iron deposits, and also that he was Senko’s cleverest general, leading the Barkazil people in battle. There are all sorts of stories about him outsmarting the enemy. Now, I’ve heard Senkoists say that Karlo was an avatar of Senko, but that doesn’t make sense, because how can Senko have two avatars at once, even if he
was
an immortal?”

“Good point. Theologically sound.”

“Anyway, after Senko defeated the Trees and commanded them to stay in one place, he began preparing his war against the Malakas. Karlo didn’t think a war against the Ascended Ones was a very bright idea, so he approached the Malakas and offered to help them if they would permit the Barkazils to Ascend.”

“Karlo informed on his friend, you mean.”

Aiah slaps him lightly on the biceps. “Hush! We’re getting to the important part. The Malakas offered Karlo the Ascendancy, along with his family, but they refused to allow his people to accompany him, so he declined their offer and gave his armies to Senko instead. But it was too late, and the Ascended Ones destroyed Senko before Karlo could aid him. Still, the Malakas were sufficiently impressed with Karlo’s cleverness and his loyalty to the Barkazil people that, when they raised the Shield, they refrained from harming Karlo and gave him regency over the whole world.”

“Metropolitan of the entire planet?” Constantine considers this. “I’ve not heard this version before.”

“The other versions are wrong, and my grandma is right,” Aiah says simply. “According to her, Karlo created an age of greatness. When he became Metropolitan, he discovered how to use plasm, but he kept it a secret he shared only with the Barkazils — we’re a special, magical people, as I believe I’ve told you. Other people were jealous, so they conspired to steal the secret.”

“Most histories name Mala of the Firebird as the person who discovered plasm.”

“She stole it from Karlo. There’s a complicated story concerning how there were three attempts in all, but I won’t go into it. Anyway, after the secret got out there was a big war, with everybody against the Barkazils, and Karlo was killed and the Barkazils were defeated. Ever since then, the world has been divided up into thousands of independent cities instead of being ruled by the Barkazils as is proper, and anything that Barkazils take by way of compensation is only a way of retrieving our own.”

A laugh begins rumbling deep in Constantine’s chest, then bursts from his throat to ring from the ceiling. “Brilliant!” he cries. “A license, confirmed in religion, to take whatever you can get your hands on!”

Aiah looks at him. “I’d look out, if I were you.”

Delight dances in his brown eyes, and he kisses her. “Dear one, you have already stolen my most perfect admiration.”

Warmth rises in Aiah’s cheeks. “Thank you,” she says.

He kisses her again. The kiss lingers. Aiah’s arms coil around him. “If there is anything you want of me,” he says, “take it now, while there’s time.”

Her flesh prickles at the invitation. She clasps herself to him, feels the imprint of the ivory Trigram pressed between them. One of his large hands encompasses her hip. The kiss ends, and he looks at her smoky-eyed. “I have a notion,” he says, and leaves her arms briefly. When he returns he carries a t-grip in his hand, a wire trailing from his fist to the desk.

When Constantine touches her again, the touch has the warmth, the warning prickle of plasm. Aiah closes her eyes and lets the plasm flow over her like the wavelets of a warm, shallow sea. Breath eases from her lungs. A thousand plasm tongues lick her nerves and she laughs softly at the sensation.

The nerve-pleasure brightens, grows in urgency. Aiah bites her lip, gasps for breath. When Constantine enters her, she has to open her eyes to make certain this isn't some supplementary tactile illusion sprung to life between her legs. Constantine’s face is impassive, a little frown at the corners of his mouth, his mind flown elsewhere, in some concentrated part of him that’s reaching out to her with tendrils of plasm. Aiah presses her lips to his chest, tastes him, inhales his scent.

The plasm flows over her — not a gentle warm lake any longer, but an urgent, turbulent swell, harbinger of a storm. Aiah clutches at Constantine’s triceps, nails digging in for dear life. She is vaguely aware of her body thrashing like a torn awning in a high wind, but the pleasure transcends any mere fact of the body, transcends everything but the pure fire of the plasm itself, a flaming mass of molten metal that sits on her chest and inexorably burns its relentless way to her heart...

When the plasm ebbs she finds herself lying at an angle, her head lying partly off the bed at one of its lower corners. She has no recollection of how she came to be in this attitude. Constantine is propped up on one elbow near her, the t-grip still in one hand. Of his own pleasures, motions and climax she remembers nothing, though she deduces the latter’s existence from its sticky residue.

“An interesting way to spend four or five thousand dalders, isn’t it?” Constantine observes. “The lives of the rich are full indeed.”

Aiah reaches for breath and, somewhat to her surprise, finds it.
“What. . . ?”
she demands, and then begins again.
“I have never ...”

“I thought you should experience it once at least,” Constantine says. He leaps off the bed, coiling the wire around his fist as he prowls toward the desk. His movement is economical, balanced, somehow restless, as if the world depended on every step. The relaxed, joyful Constantine she had seen after the premiere has gone; the plasm, perhaps, has focused him, reminded him of the trial to come.

Constantine puts the t-grip in a drawer. He pads back to the bed, sits on the edge of the mattress, and bends to kiss her. “That was the fifth of the Nine Levels of Harmonious and Refined Balance,” he says. “I imagine they felt it in the next ward.”

Aiah looks at him in amazement. “What are the sixth through ninth levels like?” she demands.

“I don’t know through personal experience.” He frowns. “The others seemed rather lonely. The philosophers who developed these techniques hold that only plasm and bodily fluids are divine, and that actual physical contact is inferior to the orgasm of the mind; and their conclusion therefore was that the finest and most refined sexual acts are performed solo. In the sixth and seventh level there’s someone else in the room, though one isn’t allowed to touch her. In the rest, one is supposed to be alone except, well, with the Godhead or something.”

Aiah rolls onto her belly, draws fingers through her hair. “They have this sort of thing in — oh — romances and chromos. I never believed it.”

“There are teachers,” Constantine says offhandedly, “though one should choose them well. There is some small possibility of nerve damage, and therefore a partner with some measure of maturity and training is desirable.”

She looks up at him. “I could have been injured?”

“Not with me, you couldn’t.”

He frowns off into the middle distance, eyes intent, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. He strokes her back and shakes his head.

Aiah looks at him, at the distant calculation in his eyes, and a shiver goes through her as she realizes that, in twenty-four hours or so, he will be at war, a combat in which physical reality, his included, is only an element, and apt, at the intervention of plasm, to be annihilated at any instant.

“Are you already in Caraqui?” she asks. He looks at her and smiles a little.

“I’m sorry.” He rolls his long legs up onto the bed and takes her in his arms. “We have some time left, you and I, and though problems have arisen, I should keep them off my mind. No amount of thought can anticipate everything, in any case.”

“What problems?” Aiah presses herself to him, kisses his neck.

“Do you recall Parq? That clergyman?”

“Yes. Sorya said he was treacherous.”

“He’s utterly faithless. I knew that when I approached him. Well, he’s betrayed us, as I thought he would, and so my name is now spoken in the councils of the Keremaths, and I suspect it would be most unwise to be seen in any of my usual haunts for the next day or so.”

Aiah looks at him in cold alarm. “Why did you trust him at all?”

“I never did.” A smile touches Constantine’s lips. “I lied to him throughout — gave him any number of names, claiming they were part of the conspiracy, and now in good faith he’s gone to the Keremaths and handed the names over — or some, anyway, as he’s playing a double game. So the Specials are now busy arresting and interrogating people who know nothing, and soon they will conclude that Parq’s information is useless, or part of some larger conspiracy of his own. But Parq is maintaining contact with my side as well, and he’s got the Keremaths’ permission to post his own militia around his transmitters, which of course means that once the action begins, he can jump to whichever side seems to be winning. No,” Constantine shakes his head. “Parq is not the main problem.”

“What is?”

“There were spreading rumors of the coup — that was inevitable, given the number of people involved, though we took care to spread disinformation whenever possible. The Specials have made inconvenient arrests, and certain preparatory military maneuvers are inevitable and have been seen, and the Keremaths have become alarmed. So they have contacted mercenaries — mages and a brigade of soldiers both — and are moving them into Caraqui. Their deployment won’t be at all complete when our strike is launched — it will be inconvenient, I hope, and nothing more — and perhaps Drumbeth is now taking my words concerning the aerodrome to heart.”

“
A
brigade
?” Thoroughly anxious, Aiah sits up, coils her legs under her.

Constantine, stretched out beside her, smiles lazily, eyes half-lidded.

“Mondray’s Regulars, flying in from the Timocracy just ahead of our own people. Mondray’s good, but Geymard’s better. And the Regulars don’t know the city, and when we strike they won’t have deployed their full strength or moved in all their equipment, and they have no real loyalty to the Keremaths anyway. It’s Mondray’s mages that are my concern. If they’re deployed in the Palace or with the Metropolitan Guard, then they’ll have no more plasm than the loyalist mages would have already — and we’re taking steps to limit that. Possibly they will increase the efficiency of the defense, possibly not. But if the mages are deployed throughout the city, at plasm stations say, or at the offices of the Specials, then they can cause all sorts of mischief, as we won’t know where they are or of what damage they’re capable until they strike us.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Aiah demands.

“Do?” He stretches out along the bed, rolling his shoulders luxuriously against the satin sheet. “I will do nothing,” he says. “There’s nothing I can do. We can only wait on events.”

Aiah gnaws her lip. “You were less patient last night, when you rushed off with Geymard.”

“The news had just come. I was afraid the whole business would have to be called off. But now that I’ve looked at the matter I’m confident that we can still pull it off — the odds were nine to one in our favor, but they’re still six to four.” He looks at her under his lids, and reaches up to stroke her arm with the back of one large hand. “Besides, last night I was not in bed with a beautiful woman.”

A tendril of flame licks at Aiah’s heart. “Be careful,” she says.

Constantine reaches up, cups the back of her neck, draws her down to his lips. His kiss feasts delicately on her. The touch of his breath on her neck makes her shiver. “There is a thing you can do for me, if you would,” he says.

“Yes?”

“
We have mages and soldiers and various kinds of political men,” Constantine says, “but it disturbs me that we have not enough
engineers
. So much of our plasm will be coming from that factory in Terminal, and there the whole apparatus is cobbled together. I worry that there could be a failure in the equipment, or some unforeseen emergency.”

Aiah looks down into his gold-flecked eyes, and her decision comes at once, an impulse from the heart. “I’m not an engineer, but I’ll do what I can.”

“It will increase your risk,” Constantine says. “At this moment, mages are going over every inch of that factory, removing all traces of all of us, every fingerprint, every flake of skin, leaving nothing for a plasm hound to trace. They will treat this room likewise after we’re gone. There will be another cleansing of the factory at the end of the operation, but very likely we will not be able to make it as thorough.”

“I will do what I can,” Aiah says.

Is
this
, she wonders, what she absorbed with her mother’s milk? Returning to the scene after everything’s been brought to a conclusion, after payment has been made and safely disposed of ?