Metropolitan (30 page)

The argument, if that’s what it is, fades away through sheer weariness. Aiah is exhausted, and Gil had slept badly on the train from Gerad and is tired from overwork. They spend the day at home, leaving only once for a walk.

Gil doesn’t ask about Constantine or her job. Perhaps he’s wary of starting another disagreement, but Aiah is beginning to think he’s genuinely incurious. Constantine is something so remote from the practical realities of his life that he can’t manage to raise any interest.

Nor does he recall noticing the ivory necklace that Aiah has by now carefully hidden, but if he had, he probably would have assumed the fabulously valuable thing was an imitation.

Aiah had thought that her relationship with Constantine was so huge that hiding it would have been like trying to hide Prince Aranax in the bathtub. To her increasing amazement, Gil seems to have noticed nothing at all. She wonders about her life and how it relates to other lives, like a circle intersecting with other circles. The common area shared by Aiah and Gil is only a fraction of their whole existence — perhaps, given all this, a smaller fraction than Aiah had ever realized. And Constantine has been edging his wider circle into her own, almost encompassing it, but has only now begun to encroach on the part of Aiah’s life that Gil has inscribed as his own.

But that’s not what Constantine has done. Constantine has uncovered a part of Aiah’s existence that even Aiah didn’t know existed.

You are at your most beautiful when you take flight.

But still it’s possible for Aiah to enjoy the part of her life that still overlaps with Gil’s. They spend the day together, doing pleasant things, among them the repair of the commo board; they make love again, very pleasantly, and then Aiah puts him on the train back to Gerad, and is pleased to find that he’s out of her way.

And then she wonders if, the next time she sees him, it will be through the bars of a jail cell.

*

“This is Miss Quelger. Please tell Dr. Chandros that my guest has left, and I’m available for work if he requires me.”

Aiah waits for a moment, wondering if anyone’s going to answer, and then takes her thumb off the transmit button. She leaves the phone booth and glances up at the huge bulk of the Authority building, the huge statues that scowl down from their niches, the twisted forest of antennae crowned against the Shield. Plasm messages write themselves across the sky, but none is addressed to her.

The phone number was one Constantine had made her memorize, to leave messages if it was important. She was always to call from a public phone, and not expect a reply.

There’s a wreck in front of the Authority building, two cars and an overturned cattle truck. Terrified miniature beeves, scarcely larger than sheep, run frantically beneath the wheels of oncoming traffic. Bemused Authority cops mill about in hope of being helpful. Aiah finds herself wondering if such a wreck could prove a useful distraction during Constantine’s coup, draw security out of their positions to a place where they could be attacked.

This train of thought doesn’t seem at all strange to her.

Once Aiah arrives in her office, she finds Telia eager to hear about her weekend with the boss. Aiah has long ago worked out what to tell her.

“Bobo made his move,” Aiah says, sitting down to her desk. Telia’s eyes gleam. “But I said no,” Aiah continues, and Telia’s expectations crumble.

“Why?” she demands. “Everything was so promising!”

Aiah turns on her computer and gives it a few minutes to warm up. “Would you have said yes?” she inquires.

“We’re not talking about me!” Telia says. “Why did you tell him no?”

Aiah puts her headset on, smiles, and dispenses a bit of her grandmother’s wisdom. “Because if he’s serious,” she says, “one
no
won’t stop him.”

Telia considers this thought and reluctantly concedes its merit. “Well,” she says, “you’ll have to tell me what happens next.”

“Of course,” Aiah says, and thoroughly enjoys the taste of the lie as it crosses her tongue.

*

Aiah’s heart lifts as she sees the Elton at the end of her shift. Constantine waits inside, sealed from his driver and guard by the raised glass screen. There is a chilled bottle of wine, fruit, flowers in cut-glass vases.

Constantine is slouched in the far corner, huddled in his black leather jacket, and only nods as Aiah enters the car. The unreadable look on his face sends little pulses of anxiety through her nerves. “Did yesterday go well with your friend?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. “No problems.”

“That’s good. I wouldn’t want to come between you,” he says, and then, realizing how commonplace and flat untruthful the words sound, he gives a little smile and says, “Not without an invitation, anyway.”

She answers the secret glow in his eyes, reaches to the seat between them, puts her hand over his. He sighs, shifts on the seat, and stares restlessly forward. “Sorya is back,” he says, “and at Mage Towers.”

The impact of the words actually takes Aiah’s breath away. Gradually, with effort, she finds it again.

“Ah. More commonplaces, I see.”

Crumpled in his seat, Constantine looks the picture of misery, “I can’t afford to continue in the Caraqui business without her. She’s too valuable. I need . . .” He licks his lips, looks at her. “Everyone.”

Aiah finds words flying in the roaring tempest of her thoughts. “And what is it you ... need ... from me?”

There is a moment of thought before he speaks. “I don’t believe I can ask you for anything more than patience.”

“Well ... ” she begins, uncertain.

“But nevertheless,” amusement kindles in his glance, and his hand encloses hers, “I have had Khoriak reserve a suite at the Landmark Hotel, if you are inclined, after all this, to spend a little time with me. And if not, I certainly understand.”

For a second Aiah is tempted to laugh out loud. So it is to be
her
decision.

“Ah,” she says finally, “why not?”

*

There are some preliminary security maneuvers designed to guarantee Constantine anonymity, but after that things are all right. The walls are white, the carpet thick and soft, and the sheets are blue satin. Refreshment is available in the form of sections of blood-orange, grown in the hotel’s rooftop gardens, arranged artfully on a silver tray and drizzled with chocolate.

Aiah licks juice off her fingers. “Things have improved,” she says, “since the days of sex in stairwells.”

Constantine appears startled by this idea. “Why?” he asks.

“There was no privacy in the sorts of places where I grew up,” Aiah says. “Stairwells were as far away from people as we could get.”

“What about the roof ?”

“Filled with fenced-off private gardens — we didn’t have a key. The only open place was an altar where a local witch burned candles and sacrificed pigeons. Some of the kids used it, but we didn’t want to.”

He looks at her with a frown. “Was it pleasurable, sex in stairwells?”

Aiah is tempted to laugh — Constantine is naive in some matters. “Not particularly,” she says. “You had to do it fast, because people might interrupt, and the rail put a groove in the buttocks. Some of the local good-time girls were called ‘groovers’ on that account.” She smiles at the memory. “I’d forgotten that.”

“Then why do it at all?”

Aiah laughs, not at the question, but at Constantine’s seriousness. “Because there was a boy I wanted, and it was the only way to get him. And of course there was an itch that needed scratching, even if it wasn’t scratched particularly well.” She shrugs. “But hey — poor people are used to their pleasures being compromised. They take what they can, when it’s available. And sex is something you can do whether you’ve got money or not.”

“What happened to the boy?”

“He found another girl, one with a job, so she could spend her money on him. She let him do it without protection, which he preferred, and of course she got pregnant. They were married for, oh, six months or so, and after that life went on.”

Constantine strokes her cheek with a hand that smells of sex and oranges, “I feel sad for that little girl, that Aiah,” he says. “Was she heartbroken?”

“No. I’d got what I wanted.”

“And what was that?”

“A few life lessons. And status — he was a very popular boy. I was an odd child, I should add, and the other kids didn’t know whether to accept me or not. I’d won this scholarship to this fancy private school, which made me suspect, and getting this boy made me one of the regulars.” She smiles. “But I didn’t take him to the Secret Place, so I couldn’t have loved him.”

“The Secret Place?” Constantine’s wistful smile is a mirror of her own. “Do we find it through anatomy or geography?”

Aiah laughs and picks up an orange slice. “Geography,” she says, and licks the chocolate off the top. “The Secret Place was an old temple in Old Shorings, a smallish place, on a tiny lot, surrounded by huge apartments. It was closed when the neighborhood turned Barkazil. I don’t even know which immortal was worshiped there. But the place was amazing — gray stone, carved with trees and leaves, birds, flowers, monsters, angels, the most intricate carvings imaginable — and when it was closed it was shut up behind these intimidating steel doors and shutters. But when I was little I knew that there were still things going on in there, and that someone, or something, still lived inside. Ghosts, vampires, the twisted, hanged men . . . I knew someone had to be in there, because local people still left offerings in front of those big steel doors, rice or beans or coins. And they’d write their wishes on slips of paper and slide them under the doors, and whoever lived in there would grant them.”

Aiah looks at Constantine, her mind warming to the memory, “It was my idea of what magic was, when I was little. And I always thought that when I really loved someone, I’d take him to the temple, and we’d sprinkle some rice and push our wish under the door, and it would be granted.”

“What was your wish?”

“The wish varied, but mostly it was to have the temple to ourselves, for one shift. It was the most extravagant wish I could think of, to have some kind of privacy.” Aiah eats the orange slice, feels the flavor of memory burst on her tongue.

“Did you ever take anyone there?” Constantine asks.

Aiah, mouth filled with pulp, shakes her head.

“Not even your Gil?”

Aiah shakes her head again. Constantine touches her cheek again.

“Then I am still sad for that little girl.”

“Don’t be,” Aiah says. “She’s done all right so far.”

He nods, but she can still see the tint of sorrow in his eyes. She nudges his biceps with a knuckle. “And you?” she asks. “I take it you’ve never had sex in a stairwell?”

“No. I thought my education had been fairly comprehensive, but apparently that area was overlooked.” He frowns, dismembers an orange slice. “My uncle gave me one of his girls, one of the younger ones. There was a whole class of them, and they tended to rotate through the family. A number rotated through my bed on a kind of informal schedule.” He chews a bit of orange thoughtfully. “There’s a practical political aspect to it I only appreciated later: if you’ve already experienced every conceivable combination by the time you’re fifteen, when you finally grow into a position of power it’s unlikely anyone will be able to manipulate you through sex.”

“I’ll have to remember not to try, then.”

He gives her a sly look and pops another bit of orange into his mouth. “How unfortunate. It would have been fun.”

She smiles, one hand stroking the blue satin between them. “What next?” she asks.

“Now? I’ll take you home when you’re ready. Though I hope it’s not yet, because I’m just getting comfortable.”

“And then? What after that? Do we keep meeting in hotels?”

Constantine puts down his remaining bit of orange, towels his fingers dry, sits up straighter in bed. “What happens next,” he says, “depends on what it is that Miss Aiah wants.”

Frustration hums in Aiah’s nerves. “Why must
I
decide everything?” she says.

For a moment Constantine seems ancient, looking at her with the distant, knowing eyes of an old man. “Because you are the one who is most likely to be hurt,” he says.

Aiah’s mouth is dry. “I’m not very easy to damage,” she says.

“What is it that you desire?” Constantine asks. “To spend time with me for the present, then to return to your life in your black tower? This I can grant you. Or do you wish to hazard everything and follow me to Caraqui? I can’t decide this for you, and the decision must be made in, well, in a matter of days.”

Aiah is surprised. She hasn’t realized Constantine’s timetable is so advanced. “Say I come with you to Caraqui,” Aiah says cautiously. “Would I have a place there?”

“A place in the New City? Of course. A place with me?” He frowns, his fierce gaze focused on the ceiling. “Too much depends on chance.”

“What sort of chance? Will you need Sorya after the coup?”

“Perhaps.” He slumps into the bed and seems unhappy enough that Aiah wants to reach out to comfort him. “And in any case I would have little time for her, or for you.” He looks at her, a kind of pain in his eyes, “I can’t promise you anything in Caraqui, other than a job in some government office. I am using you most damnably, and one day you will see that and hate me.”

“I can’t see that you’re using me any more than I’m using you.”

Constantine’s gaze burns into hers. “You’re young,” he says.

Aiah can feel herself flush.
I am not your
passu she thinks violently, and turns away. The orange tastes bitter on her tongue.

“I don’t know what I want,” she admits. “I wanted security — money in the bank, not to have to fight all the time — and I never thought beyond that. But now you’ve given me security, and so much else that I’m afraid I’ve turned greedy.”

He leans close to her, kisses her bare shoulder. “You are welcome to what you can take from me, in such time as we have left,” he says.

She looks at him. “I just told you I’m greedy,” she reminds.