Free Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams Page A

anyway — but any contacts she’d have would be in the Operation, and that’s unacceptable. Aside from family history, if they found out about her source, they’d own her.
    Landro? He had the contacts once, but so far as she knows he’s been on the safe side of the law since his term in Chonmas. Any of his knowledge might be years out of date.
    Her brother Stonn? He’s been in and out of jail all his life and might know people, but he’s a minor criminal at best and she has no regard for his intelligence or discretion.
    The Warriors Parade passes and the people below surge into the street. The family drifts off the balcony in search of refreshments. Aiah takes a glass of beer, drifts and chats and watches the others carefully.
    Aiah’s grandmother enters, with Aiah’s cousins Esmon and Spano and a woman Aiah doesn’t know. Esmon looks fabulous, with billowy, immaculate lace and a coat glittering with green and gold sequins. His buttons are expensive, polished ivory.
    “You should be in the Warriors Parade,” Aiah says as she kisses his cheek.
    “After the new year I’m joining the Griffins,” he says. He introduces Aiah to the stranger, a small, sturdy woman in a red turban decorated with gemstones in expensive settings. Aiah recognizes the Trigram, the Mirror Twins, and other geomantic foci. She’s Esmon’s girlfriend, and her name is Khorsa.
    It’s pretty clear, Aiah figures, who’s dressing Esmon these days.
    She clasps Khorsa’s many-ringed hand and gazes down into lively, interested eyes rimmed dramatically with kohl. The eyes narrow a bit at Aiah’s touch.
    “ You’ve been somewhere interesting, ne?” she says. Aiah prefers not to pursue this. She moves toward her grandmother and gives the old lady a hug.
    “Would you like a seat out on the scaffold, Nana?” she asks. “I’ll get you one.”
“I’d rather have a glass of wine.”
    Aiah gets her grandmother Galaiah a large tumbler of red and a folding chair overlooking the street. The old woman takes a drink of wine and gazes fiercely out over the revelers. A couple of great-grandchildren venture onto her lap and snatch at her cheap holiday beads. As she dangles the beads in front of them, Galaiah looks at Aiah and cocks an eyebrow.
    “ You have that passu of yours with you?”
    “He’s still in Gerad.”
    Galaiah sniffs. “At least he works.”
    Aiah’s hand strays to the ivory disk on her bracelet. “He works hard, Nana.”
    Galaiah shakes her head. “Pushing paper isn’t work.”
    Nor is going out and getting drunk with Geradi executives, Aiah thinks, though the job seemed to require that as much as anything else.
    “Esmon seems to be doing well,” Aiah says.
    “It’s his woman,” dismissively. “She’s a witch and makes good money.”
    “Does she work for the Operation?” A lot of witches do.
    “She’s on her own. Works with her sister, some kind of priestess.” Galaiah takes another drink and deftly prevents a descendant from toppling off her lap. “If she was working for the Operation, she wouldn't be able to support Esmon like that, eh?”
    “I suppose not.”
    Galaiah grins with coffee-stained false teeth. “Esmon better not step out on her, I’ll tell you that. Witches have ways, ne?”
    Aiah hesitates, casts a glance inward, “Is she reliable?”
    Galaiah gives Aiah a sharp look, one the children on her lap promptly imitate.
    “Why? You need a love conjuring to bring your longnose home?”
    “ Nothing like that. But everyone needs—” Aiah hesitates again. “Needs something from time to time. And I’d rather get it from someone who isn’t a pascol .” Which is a Barkazil term for a confidence player or someone who makes her living by her wits. The word is usually meant to be admiring, and is etymologically related to passu , the person from whom the pascol gains her living.
    Galaiah looks at Aiah as if she were a simpleton. “Khorsa’s a witch. She runs a place called the Wisdom Fortune Temple,