City on Fire (Metropolitan 2) (14 page)

“
Educated
,” Drumbeth says. “Not
manipulated
. Forcing the government’s hand this way will not be tolerated, and if I can discover the offender he may find that some of his most cherished projects—” His slitted eyes glance for a deliberate moment in Aiah’s direction. “His most cherished projects,” he continues, “will be vetoed, or given to someone else.”

“I’ve been a neglectful host,” Constantine says. “May I offer you coffee? Tea? A glass of brandy perhaps?”

“Some other time,” Drumbeth says, rising. “I have a full shift ahead of me.”

“
Damn
the man!” Constantine cries after Drumbeth leaves. He hammers a heavy fist into his palm. “He is—" The words jam in his throat, and instead he waves the fist at the door. “This is unsupportable! Dressing me down in front of a subordinate!”

Aiah shrinks from the storm of anger. “I wouldn’t call it
dressing down
. . .” she says.

Constantine is not consoled. “How
dare
he check me!” he roars. “After everything I have done! After I set him in power!” He paces behind his desk, marching back and forth as fury sparks from his eyes. “An
arms company!”
he says. “Badly managed, fat with overpaid Keremath sycophants, their product inferior and overpriced...” He laughs. “And
this
shambles is so vital to the security of Caraqui? Our ex-colonel Drumbeth of all people should know how common arms companies are, how easy their product is to come by—”

“What are you going to do about Taikoen?” Aiah interrupts.

Constantine stops dead, looks at her with the anger still blazing from his eyes, but the rage is gone from his voice, and his tone is thoughtful.

“Taikoen?” he says. “He has General Brandig now— he’s an old man, in bad condition, but still should last him another day or two. I will not owe him another for two weeks or so...” He straightens, fingers his chin in thought. “I must look at your files,” he says. “Taikoen can feed on the Silver Hand for months ... may even do us some good.”

Aiah swallows. She has observed the Handmen closely and hates them all, but she wouldn’t wish Taikoen on any of them, can’t imagine desiring that the cold, vicious intelligence of that deadly monster should dwell in the heart of the worst imaginable villain.

“I don’t want anyone going through my files in that way,” she says. “Not to give people to ... that creature.”

“
Miss Aiah.” A dangerous growl. “It is
necessary
.”

“
No!”
Aiah cries. “It is
mad
to feed that thing!”

In less than a moment Constantine has crossed the room to stand before her, his big hands crushing her shoulders, fiery eyes burning into hers. She shrinks back, afraid of sudden violence, but Constantine’s voice is low, without anger. “Without Taikoen we would not have Caraqui,” he says. “Feeding him is the price we pay for the good we are able to do now. And if I should break the agreement I have with him...” His tongue licks dry lips, and there is a haunted look in his eyes. “My life would not be worth a half-dinar.”

A shadow of Constantine’s fear shivers through Aiah, and she locks her arms around him, holding him close, pressing her cheek to his velvet shoulder.

“There must be another way. Destroy him. It is possible to kill a hanged man, isn’t it?”

“Do you think we live in a chromoplay?” Scorn burns in his eyes. “We find the monster, then kill it with a magic dagger, or by using an obscure geomantic focus found in some old book?” There is a moment’s hesitation before Constantine says, “Taikoen may yet be useful. I will choose the people carefully. There will be no accidents, and I will make his subjects the most deserving imaginable.”

His big hands caress her, but nevertheless a chill runs up her spine. She has become a
part
of this now, a part of the apparatus that feeds people to Taikoen.

She is a party to this atrocity. But that’s what she
must
be, if that is what it takes to preserve her lover, and to create the New City.

“I don’t want to know when it happens,” she says. “I don’t want to know who, and when, and why it is being done.”

Constantine gives a bitter laugh. “I would not burden you with that. Taikoen is my poison alone. You will never see him or hear of him after this.” His arms tighten around her, threaten to drive the wind from her body. “Taikoen is the greatest burden I bear, the greatest evil I know. Yet I
must
deal with him. And though it is unjust of me even to ask, I find I need to share this burden a little— I wish your understanding and support. I
need
you to believe that what I am doing is right.”

Aiah’s mind whirls. She has never seen Constantine like this, never seen him in a situation where he did not possess absolute confidence and mastery. He needs her support, her trust. What can she do but give it? He is, she realizes, almost as isolated in this country as she. For all his talents, when Constantine faces Taikoen, he faces the creature alone.

“Yes,” she says numbly, “of course. I understand.”

She will do what she can.

TRIUMVIR HILTHI SPEAKS

“THE MORAL WEALTH OF THE NATION”

THIRD SHIFT TODAY!

“If some of the family want to apply,” Aiah says, “I can give them some jobs. But I need particular skills.”

“
Skills?”
Aiah’s grandmother sounds suspicious, as if Aiah is speaking a foreign language. “What kind of skills?”

“
The department is hiring only two kinds of staff: mages and clerical. And a few supervisors who will
also
be mages and clerks.”

“Your brother Stonn needs a job.”

“Stonn has a criminal record,” Aiah says. “He’d never pass the security check.”

Galaiah is unperturbed. “You’re in charge, ne?
Fix
the security check. Stonn needs to get out of Jaspeer, away from friends who get him in trouble.”

Galaiah is an optimist where Stonn’s character is concerned. He is a petty criminal, with a petty criminal’s mind: impulsive, feckless, unpredictable, short-tempered. He would be a disaster as a member of the PED.

“Nana,” Aiah says. “I can’t fix the security check. It’s not done in my department— we contract it out to the political police.”

Sorya’s Force of the Interior. The last thing Aiah wants is for Sorya to get access to the minds of her relatives.

“It’s a bad day when you won’t give your brother a job!” Galaiah says. “You got to help out your family!”

Aiah changes tack. “Let me tell you what the department pays,” Aiah says. “I’ve checked on Worldwide News and put the figures in Jaspeeri dalders.”

Galaiah listens to the figures, and when Aiah finishes there is a dubious silence on the other end of the line. “That’s not much,” she says. “Your niece Qismah is getting more on the dole.”

“That’s because she’s got kids,” Aiah says. Raised on the dole herself, she absorbed the intricacies of its regulations with her mother’s milk.

“But no,” she goes on, “we can’t pay much. If the department does a good job, I’ll get a bigger budget.”

“How about your longnose lover?” Galaiah asks. “Can he get one of your kin a job?”

“Constantine’s not a longnose, he’s a Cheloki.” Aiah can’t quite resist the correction.

The old lady is firm. “If he’s not one of the Cunning People, then he’s a longnose.”

“Clerks and mages,” Aiah says. “That’s what I can hire. Without criminal records, without knowledge of crime. Because anything shady would come out in the plasm scans, and then they’d use it against me, ne?”

“Got no mages in the family,” Galaiah says, thinking out loud. “Well, there’s Esmon’s Khorsa.”

“Khorsa I would hire.” She is a witch, engaged to Aiah’s cousin Esmon. She had also helped Aiah on her flight from Jaspeer.

“I think she probably makes more money at the Wisdom Fortune Temple.”

“Probably,” Aiah agrees.

“And clerks,” Galaiah says. “You need clerks.”

“Tell everyone,” Aiah says, “what I need. But I can’t promise I’ll hire anyone.”

“If someone wants to try for one of these jobs,” Galaiah says, “can you send them some money for the trip?”

Aiah sighs. “Yes,” she says. “I’ll do that.”

And hopes, as she ends the call, that she isn’t subsidizing her family’s vacations.

QERWAN ARMS TO RECEIVE NEW MANAGEMENT

POLITICAL APPOINTEES SACKED!

Anstine, Aiah’s newly hired receptionist, makes his way out of Aiah’s office, and then the door fills with Constantine. Observing office protocol, he very properly closes the door behind him before he folds her in his arms and kisses her.

“Can you stay long?” she asks.

His head gives a brief shake. “I came only to warn you,” he says.

“Yes?”

“You are to receive a visit tomorrow, 13:00 or thereabouts. The triumvirate, plus any cabinet ministers who feel an interest. They want to see what you’ve accomplished.”

Alarm sings through Aiah’s veins. “But we’ve barely
started
. . . . They’re not going to see
anything
.”

He slips from her embrace, moves to stand by the window. “That’s as may be,” he says, “but they already have plans for you.”

“What plans?” Promptly. “And who?”

“Colonel Drumbeth is considering placing a military officer in your department to advise on matters that cross into his department. I suspect it’s to make certain that the military gets its share of what you find.”

Aiah bites back annoyance. She has no inclination to be the military’s personal plasm diver.

“Can’t you head him off?" she asks.

Constantine shrugs. Below, Shieldlight winks silver off glass, glows green off rooftop gardens. “I can argue against it, to be sure, but— as we have observed— I can’t stop Drumbeth from doing anything he really desires to do. He and the military are in
charge
, after all. But ...” He makes a little sideways gesture with his hand, indicating room for maneuver. “We may have to do a little trading. It may be best to accept Drumbeth’s officer in exchange for keeping out Parq’s priest.”

“Priest?” The notion seems too absurd for Aiah to even take alarm.

Constantine flashes his teeth as he speaks. “The Keremaths took power with the backing of the Dalavans, remember. The Keremaths gave the Dalavans special privileges afterward, and various sumptuary and moral laws were passed obliging the population to conform to rigorous Dalavan standards of conduct and morality.”

Pigeons bob about on the window ledge, red button eyes all without a hint of life. “I can’t say I’ve observed any stringent moral codes in force since I’ve been here,” Aiah observes.

“The laws, as with all Keremath laws, have been loosely enforced, or not enforced at all. But now that Parq is a third of the government, he wishes to enforce the laws that give his faith its special privileges. He wants to create a Dalavan police force to enforce the moral strictures, and he wishes to put an ombudsman in every department to make certain that department guidelines are not in conflict with the Dalavan faith.”

“Great Senko!”

He looks at her sidelong, irony curling his lips. “I would avoid any promiscuous mention of the immortals when Parq is around,” he says.

“Drumbeth and Hilthi won’t permit this, will they?”

“I assume not. Hilthi is a moralist, but he’s not a Dalavan moralist. And Drumbeth no more wants one of Parq’s spies in every office than we do.” He frowns, and his fingers tap lightly on the window glass in thought. “Parq may have brought up the issue only in hope of heading off the activist wing of his own party, which has denounced his personal version of the faith as halfhearted, indulgent, and temporizing— which is true— and which has as well denounced Parq himself as tyrannous, corrupt, and venal— which is also true.”

“Perhaps Parq has made the demand only to trade them for something else he really wants,” Aiah says.

Constantine looks at her, approving eyes gleaming in reflected Shieldlight. “I see you have learned somewhat of politics since you have been in Caraqui.”

“I have a good teacher.”

He gives a low, immodest laugh, then turns back to the window. An airship lies on the far horizon, Shieldlight flashing silver off its skin, off its propeller disks. Behind it, the sky suddenly flashes with the profile of Gargelius Enchuk, plasm hype for his new recording.

“We shall see what Parq truly wants in time,” Constantine says. “It may be that he has no true plan at all other than to seek advantage wherever he can find it. But we must give him a victory sooner or later, or he may realize that he is better off in opposition. And as he is the spiritual leader of rather more than a third of our population, we cannot afford to have him oppose us.”

Aiah’s thoughts churn uneasily. “What can you give such a man that will content him?”

“He is so corrupt that he may settle for money, or an hour of video time every week to preach to the citizens, or a beautiful woman. We shall see.”

Aiah turns, puts her arms around Constantine’s waist. “And what will content
you
?” she asks.

Constantine affects to give this his consideration. “Dominion of the habited world,” he says, “and the ordering of it; the piercing of the Shield and the discovering of the glories that lie beyond; the captaincy of the great outflowing of humanity into the worlds there discovered, or built entire if there are none to be found; the creation of the nations into which humanity settles; the assurance that all patterns and powers are in order. . . and then, perhaps, I may retire and write my memoirs.”

There is a languid smile on Constantine’s face as he speaks, and irony puts an edge on his voice; but there is a chill glow in his eyes as he speaks the words, and Aiah feels an answering shiver along her spine as she realizes that he is at least partially sincere.