huge rooftops for the horses to live on—that alone costs a fortune.”
“I’ve seen horses in zoos.”
“Polo was the only thing my father was good at. Polo and women.”
Aiah skates fingernails along the rim of her glass. Outside, a plasm advert, an image of a platinum Forlong necklace glittering with diamonds, winds like a ribbon between the granite towers. How long has it been since she’s seen a plasm advert? she wonders, one that wasn’t a government announcement or propaganda. She never thought she’d miss them…
“Do you know what?” she says. “None of these people sound like
“I would deny my ancestors if I could. I cannot admire a one of them, though perhaps I am more like my grandfather than you suspect.” He looks out at the bright city below, face thoughtful. “Possibly I am my mother’s child. She was supposed to be brilliant when she was young—beautiful, witty, played half a dozen instruments. She used to give concerts. But by the time my sisters and I grew up she had already… withdrawn.”
Aiah frowns. “If your father was only good at polo and women, that must have been hard on her.”
“The men in my family did not value women. Just bought them, and when they were tired of the first lot, they’d buy more. My father needed an ornament to cheer him at polo matches, and so he got one—and the fact she was very good at music was just a bonus, something else to brag about to his friends.”
“Why didn’t she leave?”
He tilts his head, considers. “She had a comfortable life. Lots of money, and nobody really cared what she did. She spent a great deal of time with me and my sisters—they were pleasant hours—and she drank, and had dozens of lovers, and over time the music she played got sadder and sadder. Toward the end she became very fond of morphine. Eventually she rode one of my father’s ponies right off a building and fell eighteen stories to her death. She was drunk. I was nine years old.”
Aiah looks at him in concern. “Suicide?” she asks.
He purses his lips in thought. “Probably not a deliberate one. But there are indirect ways of killing oneself, not with a knife or a gun. One of these is alcohol and morphine together, and that was her choice.”
“What about your sisters? How many were there?”
“Five, if you count the two cousins who came to live with us when they were young and were brought up as part of the family. We spent all our time together, were even schooled together, by a tutor.”
Aiah thinks of the young Constantine brought up as the adored only son amid this household of women. She sees sadness cross his face. “Two of my sisters are dead now. The others do not speak to me, not after my betrayal of the family.”
Who are his family now? she wonders. Martinus, Sorya, herself… and Taikoen.
Sadness drifts through Aiah’s heart, and she impulsively kisses his cheek. She had not wanted to provoke these memories, this sadness. She puts her arms around his neck and kisses him again. “I forgive you,” she says.
He looks at her, intelligence burning in his glance, and his lips twist in a mocking smile. “For everything?” he asks.
She kisses his smile. “Of course.”
“For I am using you, lady, and everyone else, and sometimes I confess I no longer know why.”
“I forgive you,” she repeats, and he smiles again, sadly this time, and returns the kiss with a ferocity that takes her momentarily aback, but then she returns it, nerves answering to his need.
They kiss and caress, and the fiery hunger grows and kindles into flame while the Metropolis of Achanos goes about its life on the other side of the bronze-sheathed window. Eventually they move to the bedroom, and Aiah takes off her red dress, flirting with Constantine as he watches, using little tricks that she’s seen on video, pirouettes while half-undraped, showing him glimpses of her body, giving him little pouting kisses over a bared shoulder, flashing him every provoking look in her repertoire… Eventually she turns down the bed and reclines on pearly satin, forearm beneath her head, wearing only the Trigram necklace, and looks at him. Constantine turns and searches in a drawer, smiles, raises his hand with a copper t-grip. “Oh no,” she says.
He looks at her with a predator smile. “It has been too long, lady, since I had the leisure to truly pleasure you. And since through Aldemar’s kindness we have this opportunity, I wished to make it as memorable as possible.”
Aiah has experienced this once before, the Fifth of the Nine Levels of Harmonious and Refined Balance, and reckons she would just as soon never experience the Sixth through Ninth. The Fifth is intense enough.
“Well,” she says, and laughs, “perhaps just this one time…”
Constantine sits on the bed and touches her cheek with his free hand, plasm-warmth tingling along the tracks of his fingers. Aiah looks up into his glittering eyes, sees the power there, the intensity, the plasm coiled in him, all of it focused on
He kneels over her, hand and lips browsing along her body. The plasm pours over her skin like a sheet of fire, a burning that makes her cry out; she feels his kisses between her breasts, and seizes his head with both hands, pressing him to her heart. Her body shudders at the plasm onslaught, and she drives her legs up around him, heels digging into his back, demanding pleasure. She feels as if her lungs are filled with molten fire, and fire burns in her throat. The fire fills her, and she feels it scorch her bones, consume her organs, blacken her nerves; she can feel her skin split open, molten metal bursting from her, turning the room to flame.
After it is over she lies with Constantine, her lanky body, curled into a fetal shape, fitting spoonlike within the compass-arc of his larger frame, her head resting on his biceps. “Sometime,” she gasps, “I am going to do that to
“I will look forward to it,” he says, and kisses her sweat-moist nape.
His arm circles her from behind, and she takes his hand and places it on her breast, feeling herself filling his palm, wanting the intimate touch of him there.
“I’m glad we don’t do that every time,” she says.
His chuckle comes in her ear. “A pity. We could do it again now.”
A startled laugh bolts from her throat. “Vida’s mercy!” she says. “Give me time to catch my breath!”
“All right,” he says, amiable enough.
She gives him a look over her shoulder. “Are you serious? You must have just burned ten thousand dinars of plasm.”
His look is serious. “What I can give you in the next few hours I will give you.”
“Who’s paying for it?”
“Aldemar and I will settle between the two of us.” He kisses her neck again. “You are worth the expense, lady.”
Pleasure tweaks the corners of her mouth. “I hope Aldemar agrees,” she says, and pillows her head on his arm again.
His body steals closer to hers, stretching flesh against flesh. “Have you caught your breath yet?” he asks.
She laughs. “No,” she says.
“A pity. We have only a few hours left.”
“It isn’t,” Constantine says. “It’s just intense in a different way.”
“Well,” she says, “as long as we’re
AN EMPTY SOUL OFTEN SCORNS WISDOM
A THOUGHT-MESSAGE FROM HIS PERFECTION, THE PROPHET OF AJAS.
Before they leave the apartment they bathe together, fitting their tall bodies with a certain deliberation into a
