Aiah hears more and more reports of Handmen and their associates who have decided to leave Caraqui and seek a life elsewhere. The knowledge gives her nothing but satisfaction.
Other Handmen turn up with growing frequency in byways and canals, all dead by violence. Aiah follows these cases in hopes that they may turn out to be a sign that the Hand has turned on itself, is warring over the remains of its power in the absence of its leadership, but the available evidence suggests this is not so. The members of the Hand are too terrified of the government to spend time fighting each other. These bodies are the result of private vengeance, citizens no longer afraid of the Handmen and considering themselves free to act without fear.
Aiah supposes that she can’t approve. But neither, she decides, can she much blame the citizens for turning on their persecutors.
She spends a certain amount of time compiling a dossier on Gentri. There is little to discover beyond what is in the public record. She spends some time surveilling him through telepresence, but it’s impossible to monitor him when he’s at work in the heavily shielded Palace, and otherwise his life seems unexceptional—he works long hours, returns to his family on his off shifts, and if he spends time skulking with Handmen and Keremaths it’s when she’s not looking. She doesn’t feel comfortable peering in at him this way, and is wary of the consequences should she be discovered.
This is Sorya’s sort of work, anyway.
Rohder arrives in Caraqui, and there is a party to welcome him, but afterward Aiah sees him only rarely, at weekly meetings in which he reports to her and Constantine. He spends his time closeted with engineers and plasm theorists from the university.
Eventually Aiah and her entire division hit the wall. Everyone is exhausted, arrests fall off, mistakes are made that result in the wrong doors being bashed in, the wrong people arrested, military police wandering down the wrong corridors, the wrong canals. Aiah prevails upon Constantine to declare a ten-day amnesty in which people are encouraged to report to the government any stolen plasm they may possess without fear of retaliation, and during which she and her department can catch up on their sleep.
Unlike the first amnesty, this one produces results. Aiah has the impression that people are relieved to give their stolen plasm back. “Apparently the guilty knowledge of all that plasm has been weighing heavily upon the thieves’ consciences,” Constantine remarks. Then a devil’s smile dances along his lips, and he adds: “That or the weekly lists of the defunct.”
It is the fifth day of the amnesty, and Aiah is beginning to regain an interest in things other than surveillance, arrests, and stolen moments with Constantine. Early second shift she’d actually phoned her mother—voluntarily!—and spent an hour talking with her.
“There’s some dirty hermit saying things about you,” her mother reports.
“I’m not interested,” Aiah says. “I want to talk about Henley.”
Henley is Aiah’s sister, and Aiah has a plan for her. Ten years ago Henley had been crippled by an Operation street lieutenant who had broken her hands—just for the fun of it—and afterward arthritis set in, and Henley’s budding career as a graphic artist had come to an end.
“I want to buy her some plasm treatments,” Aiah says. “Straighten the bones, erase the arthritis. I can afford it now.”
Arrangements are discussed, and Aiah hangs up with an unusual feeling of righteousness. Then the com unit chimes, with Constantine calling to invite her to a picnic of sorts.
“Rohder has finished his calculations and has called in some engineers, and is going to be shifting some buildings about. Would you like to attend? Food and drink will be available on my launch should you desire refreshment.”
Refreshment, Aiah suspects, means choice wines and ten or twelve courses: that is Constantine’s style.
The day is blustery, with deep gray clouds scudding low and threatening possible rain, so Aiah wears a blue wool suit with red piping, a red scarf to add extra color, and boots with modest heels, and clips her hair back so it won’t blow in the wind. She takes a hooded windbreaker along in case it rains, and shieldglasses in the event the clouds clear.
Constantine meets her at the water gate and smiles as he hands her into his boat. He is dressed casually, cords and a leather jacket—much more the rogue than the minister, and the more attractive for it.
“You look lovely, Miss Aiah. Would you care for a glass?”
The wine bottle is already uncorked and waits in a silver bucket. Constantine pours her a glass, hands it to her with a flourish, and then takes the helm of the launch himself. The turbines purr under his command as the black composite prow rises and cuts the water. His big hands handle the wheel with a fine delicacy, fingertips transmitting the boat’s vibration up his arms. He handles the boat with supreme skilclass="underline" the liquid in Aiah’s wineglass trembles only slightly as he accelerates onto the Khola Canal and cuts a neat path through the traffic.
Martinus the bodyguard is on board, his black, bone-plated face expressionless as he looks out for any possible attackers. Two other guards also keep a silent watch, and a guard boat follows, with a half-dozen others on board. Telepresent mages are probably on hand as well.
Aiah looks at the guards and considers how one is never allowed to forget power, either its reality or its consequences.
Another power launch whips past on an opposite course, providing a blast of wind and the sight of laughing, copper-skinned young men; Constantine’s boat vaults up the other boat’s wake, finds itself airborne for a moment as the sound of the turbines climbs to a shriek, then slaps to a landing in a fine burst of spray. Constantine laughs as wipers scrape saltwater from the windscreen.
Aiah looks at Constantine’s joy and wonders how it is possible for him to experience such pleasure, surrounded as he is by guards and constant care. It is astonishing, she muses, how he is able to live so thoroughly in the moment, as vital as the plasm that keeps him young.
Office buildings loom up on either side, granite and steel and glass reflecting the scowling clouds overhead, tall as anyone dares to build atop the Sea of Caraqui. One of them has a tower constructed as a giant golden glass lotus, and in it a beacon that gives the glass a fine amber glow. Rohder is conducting his experiments in a business district because, manipulating these giant buildings in accordance with his theories of geomancy, he expects to gain results more conclusive than if he uses less mass.
“The Lotus District,” Constantine remarks.
The launch passes beneath a glittering gold bridge, all white enamel and gilt gingerbread, each upright topped with the brushy golden image of a lotus; and then the dark cranes are seen ahead, with hawsers drooping low over the canal.
Weathered Keremaths smile from the side of one of the pontoons: Our family is your family. Constantine slows, cuts the power, and the launch settles onto its bow wave as it drifts up to a rusty floating jetty. Crewmen throw hawsers, which are made fast; Constantine leaps from the boat to the jetty, then helps Aiah out of the boat and onto the mesh-steel surface. The jetty rocks under their weight.
The guard boat doesn’t come to a mooring, just waits in the canal with its engines idling, and in the relative silence Aiah can hear the ominous throb of helicopters echoing off the tall buildings, and looks up to find them, with no success—all she can find is a shaggy hermit hanging in a canvas sling fifteen stories up. He sways in the wind. Aiah glances at Constantine to see him gazing up as well, a thoughtful frown on his upturned face.