Aiah approves of the Silver Hand’s having a routine day. They’re much more likely to relax their security and give their operations away.
Except when there are visitors, the Slug stays on the phone the whole time, alternating business and romantic interests. Aiah keeps careful tabs on when each call is made, and the subject matter of the conversation, and plans to requisition a copy of the phone records in order to discover to whom the Slug’s been talking. Eventually the Slug takes his headphones off and goes off to a midbreak rendezvous with one of his girlfriends. Now that the phone is free, the Ferret fastidiously cleans the earphones and the mouthpiece with his handkerchief, then makes a few calls of his own.
Until there’s a visitor. He’s a stranger, an older man with gray hair and the unnaturally healthy flesh of someone on life extension. He is thin and dapper, a mixture of characteristics—youthful stride, hatchet face, a grizzled mustache. He hammers angrily on the door, and is annoyed when he finds the Slug is gone.
“He didn’t know you were coming,” the Ferret apologizes.
“I told that stupid whore of his,” the thin man says, showing yellow teeth.
“Which one?” the Ferret asks, but the stranger is una-mused.
“I need access to the tap, third shift. My boys are hijacking a barge down at the Navy Yard.”
The Ferret is interested. “I used to pick stuff from the Yard sometimes, when I was nephew with Daddy Cathobert’s crew. But we’d have to take care of Commodore Grophadh first.”
The stranger scowls. “Grophadh’s gone—got his ass retired after the coup. But his lad Armaki’s still there, and I make sure he’s taken care of.”
(Aiah, back in her office, carefully detaches a fragment of her consciousness from her anima and scrawls notes to herself across a pad of paper.
The thin man marches off to rouse the Slug from his girlfriend’s bed. Aiah continues her surveillance for another hour, then turns the business over to one of her mages and writes a formal report of what she’s overheard, which goes into a file in the secure room. There, she looks through books of known Handmen the department had got from the central police headquarters—armed with one of Constantine’s warrants, she and some assistants had just marched in and
The plasm house where she’s made these observations is one of those given her by Sergeant Lamarath. Every single one of them has proved genuine. Lamarath is holding by his agreement.
And now that word of her arrangement with Lamarath is leaking out into other half-worlds, more tips are coming in through Ethemark, arriving faster than the department’s limited resources can process them. She is beginning to realize that the half-worlds are some of the best intelligence sources she’ll ever have.
She looks at the file, then closes it and returns it to the shelves. Aiah will probably have to let the hijacking take place. She doesn’t know anyone in the police structure or the Navy she can alert, not without a chance of it getting back to Under-uncle Gurfith.
Unless, she thinks, some of Constantine’s mercenaries decide to hold some unscheduled maneuvers in the area of the Navy Yard.
She’ll have to think about that.
TWELVE YEARS OF MISMANAGEMENT
WASTE DISPOSAL SCANDAL “CRIME OF A LIFETIME”
Constantine’s level eyes gaze out over the tips of his tented fingers; he looks somberly out the oval windows of his Owl Wing office while Aiah sits before him and makes her report. “We’re trying to set up a proper operations center,” she says, “but because the technicians and engineers spend most of their time repairing damage, the job isn’t getting done, and so we’re doing our mage ops from our offices. It’s inefficient and any surveillance requiring more than one mage is difficult to coordinate.”
Constantine continues to direct his gaze out the window—it is as if his mind were worrying over another problem entirely—but his answer shows he had been paying attention. “Will you have your ops room completed by the time you commence active operations?”
“That is hard to say.”
He turns to Aiah and places his hands on the surface of his desk. It is a beautiful piece of furniture, ebony, inlaid with gilt and mother-of-pearl.
“Let me know when the deadline approaches, and if necessary I will assign more people to you. The repairs to the Palace are crucial to the physical safety of the government and its workers, and should take precedence.”
There is a gentle knock at the door, followed by the appearance of Constantine’s secretary, a Cheloki named Drusus. “President Drumbeth wishes to see you, sir,” he says, and Drumbeth is in the room before Aiah and Constantine have more than half-risen from their chairs.
The president of the triumvirate is a small man, but he is made taller by erect military posture and bushy gray hair. Though he resigned from his colonelcy after the coup, he wears his blue suit as if it were a uniform. The coup that overthrew the Keremaths was his creation, and he had been intelligent enough to make Constantine a part of it, and of the government he formed afterward.
He shakes Constantine’s hand briskly. “I was passing by your office,” he says, “and thought I would take the opportunity to speak with you.”
Drumbeth’s impassive copper face and slit eyes are impossible to read, and Aiah concludes that his unresponsive face must have served him well in his previous post as director of military intelligence.
Constantine introduces Aiah. “Miss Aiah was giving a report on her progress in establishing her department,” he says.
“I would be interested to hear it,” says Drumbeth. He takes a chair without being invited, and nods at Aiah. “Please continue, miss.”
Aiah is near the end of her presentation, but for the triumvir’s benefit she begins again from the start. His narrow eyes watch her impassively as she speaks. Occasionally he interrupts to ask a pertinent question.
“Very good, Miss Aiah,” he concludes. “You seem to have done well for someone”—his slit eyes flicker for a moment—“for someone so young.”
Aiah is conscious of heat rising to her face. “Thank you, sir.”
Drumbeth turns to Constantine, then seems to remember something. “Ah—it occurs to me to ask you,” he says, “about some prisoners you have ordered released from our jails.”
Constantine gives him an expectant look. “Prisoners?”
“A commissioner of the Special Police—Anacheth. One of his subordinates, Commander Coapli, and a general of the former regime’s army, Brandig. The worst kind of men the old regime had to offer, torturers and killers. After you interviewed them, you ordered them all released from the Metropolitan Prison.”
A cold finger touches Aiah’s spine. These are Taikoen’s victims, the men Constantine was feeding to his creature.
“Ah,” Constantine says. “I recall now. I released them after I received their medical reports. They were all in the last stages of a fatal illness, and it seemed needless cruelty to keep them confined. In fact, I believe Anacheth and Coapli have already died.”
Drumbeth nods. “So I have been told. It was Coapli’s death, reported on the news, that made me wonder how he had come to be released from prison.”
“I hoped,” Constantine says, “to be able to set a better example of humanity than our predecessors.”
“That was good of you, I suppose.” Drumbeth’s tone implies indifference to the fate of Anacheth and his minions.
