Aestival Tide (32 page)

She turned back to Nike. “The morph's a political enemy. She murdered Shiyung. I don't know how she escaped from her cell, or how she did it, but she did. And the other one's a collaborator. We'll 'file the sentencing and have it broadcast constantly until tomorrow: Shiyung's murderers, political collaborators. If we can't have Shiyung there when we open the Gate, we'll have those two instead, as a designated sacrifice. And Nasrani—we'll reinstate him. We'll give them to the Compassionate Redeemer, have Nasrani perform the honors. If the crowd gets unruly we open the Gate before the appointed hour.
That
should satisfy the lower levels.” She bit her lip thoughtfully. “Maybe we won't have to regenerate Shiyung after all.”

Nike ran a finger along the edge of the window. “But these rumors of structural damage—you don't think we'll be setting our own pyres if we go through with the festival, opening the Gate to Ucalegon?”

Âziz leaned against her sister. “It was only a dream Nike,” she whispered, stroking her hair. “And the Architects are guarding us. Nothing will happen, because it was just a dream.”

Nike sighed and nodded, her eyes heavy-lidded from the morpha. As the distress lights glowed beneath the central Quincunx Dome, she let her sister take her in her arms, and waited for the Reception Committee to arrive with their guests.

Ceryl Waxwing tapped her foot and stared anxiously out the window as Rudyard Planck poured himself another glass of brandy.

“There's no point fretting about Reive, my friend,” the dwarf announced. He held his snifter up to the light and sipped from it, making admiring noises. “This is very fine, I believe this is one of the vats I had drawn myself, after the success of my Generation Twelve puppets. They're probably going to send us
all
to the Reception Area—Âziz won't stand for this business about her dream getting out—so you might as well have another glass of this wonderful stuff and enjoy it while you can. Though last time I visited the Reception Area they had some quite fine Amity—”

Ceryl had drawn her breath in sharply at the words
Reception Area
and now whirled furiously, as though to knock the snifter from Planck's hand. But for some reason the sight of the red-haired dwarf perched atop the granite table, sipping brandy, stopped her.

“You're probably right,” she sighed, defeated. She strode to the table and poured herself a glass. Her eyes watered as she swallowed it, and Rudyard Planck reached up to pat her thigh.

“There—have a bit more, don't gulp it this time, and try to relax. There's worse things than prison,” he added, eyeing his brandy doubtfully.

“What?” demanded Ceryl. Her hand shook as she unstoppered the decanter and filled her snifter again. “Dying? That might be worse.”

The dwarf shook his head, pursing his lips. In the confusion after Reive's detention he had urged Ceryl to leave the Four Hundredth Room with him and return to her chambers. He glanced down at the table, where a polyfile showing a young boy pierced by myriad steel spikes hovered an inch above the granite surface.

“I see you indulge in timoring.” With a little moue of distaste he turned the dial at the base of the polyfile stand, so that the image flickered into random darts of light.

“Not really.” Ceryl shook her head wearily. “I tried once. It—it made me sick.”

The dwarf looked up at her and nodded approvingly.
“I
never could see the charm in it myself. A disgusting practice. This vogue for resurrecting ancient torments, pleasures of insane Roman emperors—madness, pure madness. Proof positive of the decadence of our times. Crimes against nature. I find them abhorrent. That's why I'm rather unpopular around the pleasure cabinet.” He smiled wryly and turned back to Ceryl. “At least with dying one can always hope for rehabilitation, if you're important enough to
them.
But once you're in the Reception Area: well, usually you just stay there. Or else—”

His voice trailed off and he finished his brandy in thoughtful silence.

Or else they give you to the Compassionate Redeemer.
That was what he was going to say, Ceryl knew that. She swallowed her brandy defiantly and poured herself a third glass. Rudyard Planck raised a small gingery eyebrow.

“That will make you sick, my friend. It's a shame to waste good brandy—”

“I'm not wasting it,” Ceryl replied hotly. “You said to enjoy it. Well, I'm enjoying it. I'm having the time of my goddamn life. Reive's been drinking it like—”

She stopped and drew her snifter under her chin. On the table beside a holograph Reive's mysid drifted in its globe. Somehow they had never gotten around to finding a suitable hiding place for it. The sight of the tiny creature brought tears to her eyes.

“They'll kill her, won't they?” she said, almost in a whisper. “They won't even try her probably, just—just execute her. She's just a child, really. No more sense than—well, than that thing.”

She pointed at the mysid and wiped her eyes. “A gynander, there'll be no reason to rehabilitate her. Not like—” She grimaced, gesturing at the door. “That one. You know. The new commander.”

“Tast'annin? The
rasa?
” Rudyard frowned. “I hope not. I wouldn't want one of my
puppets
to be rehabilitated if it meant that. No,” and he took a last sip. “I'm afraid our friend may soon be enjoying the most sublime timoring of all: with the Compassionate Redeemer.”

Ceryl's breath froze in her chest as she recalled her own treacherous dream. “Will they question her?” she asked, trying to hold her hand steady as she placed her empty glass on the table.

“About you, you mean? I daresay they already know everything they want to know about you and your relationship with that unfortunate morph.” He sighed noisily and eased himself onto the floor. He ran a plump finger along one eyebrow and began to pace. “Rather presumptuous of her to read Âziz's dream like that. Not to mention the Aviator Imperator's.”

He stopped in front of the window, peering over the sill to watch a fouga nosing down through the blue air toward the sentry hangars.

“Why did they regenerate him?” Ceryl joined Rudyard, watching the dirigible on its long slow pass down this side of Cherubim.

“Our new commander? Surely you've heard that old gossip.”

The dwarf shook his finger at her, but his voice was kind. “Margalis Tast'annin was probably the most brilliant Aviator to come from the NASNA Academy in the last century. His mother was Penelope Métanira—you must have heard of her, the greatest mystical poet since Hanna Vollmann. I suppose that's where he got this odd—
way
—of his. Rather a melancholy temperament for a military leader,” he mused. “There was a peculiar business at the Academy when he was there, another student's death under mysterious circumstances. But our Margalis graduated with honors, did his time in the Provinces and the Medaïn Desert—but you
must
know some of this! He was an extraordinarily handsome young man, that golden hair and blue, blue eyes—I've seen the 'files—a hero of the Archipelago Conflict, and oh, what else? Single-handedly wiped out the Commonwealth's submersible fleet; or that's what
they
would have you believe.”

He gazed out the window, across the ultramarine fastnesses that hid the Palace. “After that he became quite enamored of Shiyung—of course you knew that, everyone did—and of course
that
ended, and he was practically exiled, sent to command the HORUS substations, and then Shiyung had that insane plan to retake the abandoned capital of the old United States, Âziz was the only one with any reason at all about that, and—”

At Ceryl's raised eyebrow he sniffed, “Oh, of course: how could
I
possibly be privy to all this? My dear friend, if one must be a dog, then be a rich man's dog. It helps that my mother was Angelika Panggang's stepsister. Anyway—”

He stared moodily across the room at the door. “Anyway, his mission to the Capital failed. Failed dreadfully, despite all this fanfare about Triumph and Victory Is Ours. Some horrible mishmash of death-cults and geneslaves and vengeful barbarians. From what I heard, he was tortured; escaped; went mad. Set himself up as some sort of cannibal king presiding over barbaric rites. And then, of course, he died. And
then,
of course, he was regenerated.

“And for one of his nature… Well, Margalis Tast'annin has a sensitive, one might say almost a
visionary,
temperament for a military commander. And that makes him a very dangerous man.
Made
him a very dangerous man. Now I suppose he's a very dangerous
rasa.
Mad as a rutting mandrill, crazy as Nasrani and the rest of them, but more, I would say,
ascetic.
Quite attractive, to a certain kind of person.”

He lowered his voice. “
I
heard that when he broke with Shiyung she tried to kill herself. Raced toward the edge of a furnace during a refinery tour. Some moujik grabbed her at the last minute. That was when they sent him to HORUS.”

Ceryl turned her back to the window. “How horrible.”

She stalked to the table and slopped some more brandy into her snifter. “You know, they killed my lover. Giton Arrowsmith. Supposedly it was an accident but I think they wanted him dead. He was always too outspoken in his criticism of them.” She returned to the window, swaying a little as she peered down at Rudyard.

“Is that when you tried timoring? After he died?”

She sipped her drink, her eyes glazing over, and finally replied, “Yes. I wanted—I wanted to know something. About death. What it's like.”

“And?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. They die, is all. They suffer, we watch.” She tipped her chin toward the door. “Like them. Nike and Shiyung and Âziz. We suffer and
they
watch.”

The dwarf nodded pensively. After a moment he sighed, and said, “Well, I'm sorry for your friend Reive. Sorry for myself, too,” he added, giving a sharp laugh. “I hoped to spend more time with her. I like morphodites.”

A soft sound at the door. Ceryl jumped, glanced down at the dwarf, her eyes wide and terrified.

“Ah, well,” murmured Rudyard Planck. He raised his glass mockingly as the door opened. A small figure darted into the room.

“Ceryl!”

Not the Reception Committee; not the inquisitors.

Reive.

Ceryl raced across the room, hugging the gynander and then dragging her into the bedchamber. “Reive! I thought they took you—”

“They did,” the gynander gasped. Rudyard Planck tiptoed to shut the front door and hurried after them.

“Âziz
can't
have let you out,” he said flatly. “You escaped—?”

“The Aviator.” Reive trembled so that Ceryl held her tight, stroking her thin hair and murmuring wordlessly. “He came and Shiyung, Shiyung— Oh, Ceryl, we didn't know where to hide, where else to go—”

From the next room came the hushed
click
of the door opening again, then the pad of feet across the floor.

“Reive Orsina. Ceryl Waxwing.”

Their shadows blotted out the light from the doorway. The Reception Committee, six of them in their dark suits and white linen shirts. Each carried, almost casually in a white-gloved hand, a slender electrified cudgel, and the man who had spoken waved a tiny canister of nervetorque. Reive began to sob.

“You won't need
that,”
Rudyard Planck pronounced. He drained his snifter and replaced it fastidiously on a table, then walked up to the man with the nerve gas and gave him a little shove. “If you know who I am, then you know—”

“Shut up, Planck,” one of the others spat. She strode forward and glared down at the dwarf, then at Reive. She held up an allurian scroll, cleared her throat and read, “Reive Orsina, Ceryl Waxwing.” Pausing, she glanced balefully at the dwarf, then added, “Rudyard Planck. Âziz Orsina cordially invites you—”

Rudyard turned to stare at Reive. “Orsina, did she say? Reive
Orsina?”

“Damn it, Planck!” The woman pushed him so that he tripped and fell against the granite table. When Ceryl gasped the woman whirled to face her. “You're Waxwing? You're wanted with the other one, for—” The woman turned to the man with the canister of nervetorque. “What was it?”

“Collusion,” he said, almost sadly. Ceryl was surprised to see that he had tears in his eyes.

“Collusion on what?” demanded Rudyard Planck breathlessly as he stood, rubbing his chin where blood welled from a gash as long as his finger.

“Murder,” the man said, and now he really did brush a tear from his cheek.

“Murder? But who—”

The woman cut Ceryl off by pushing her toward the door. “The assassination of Shiyung Orsina. Chain the morph while I get this one—”

As she struggled Ceryl twisted to see Reive staring bleakly as the man wrapped metal loops around her hand and neck. At her feet Rudyard Planck gazed at the gynander with an expression of nearly ecstatic disbelief. Then Reive turned to Ceryl and said, quite clearly, “The
rasa
—he believed me—it is Ucalegon—”

“But that's impossible—how could she—” She turned to see the first guard with her cudgel poised above the mysid's globe. “No! Leave that, it's—”

As Ceryl flung herself at her the guard turned, her cudgel smashing through the air onto Ceryl's head, again and again and again. Ceryl heard screaming, felt something snap inside her neck, like a bit of plastic cracked between the fingers. Then she felt nothing, only that same dreamy sense she had had in her dream, of the world falling endlessly away beneath her like tarmac beneath a rickshaw's wheel, and before her a plain of exultant green.

It was late evening in Araboth. The Architects had finally switched off the distress lights. Faint music drifted down from Seraphim, snatches of songs popular during Æstival Tide in earlier decades. Fougas cruised through the periwinkle air towing pennons with the arcane sigils of the Feast of Fear—waves with ravening teeth, a bleeding sun. The Orsinate's guard could already be seen, resplendent in their festival garb as they paraded around the palace, night-lights glinting off suits of shining yellow plasteel and leather face-masks. Pyres flickered around the rim of the upper levels, sending eddies of white smoke into the perfumed air as the Seraphim and Cherubim tossed intricately folded paper encised with prayers for the dead into the flames. On the lower levels a festival air prevailed as moujiks and morphodites, biotechs and 'filers, began preparing the feastday meals of sugared pumpkin seeds and cardamom custard, tripe soup and jellied krill and unripe peaches rolled in cayenne, and the nine-layered
pilau
known as Breath of the Redeemer, with its confits of tamarind and prickly pear, and the crisp-fried tentacles of sea-nettles. And on Archangels the enslaved
rasas
began their own somber rites, carrying the mummified remains of Blessed Narouz to a balustrade overlooking the Lahatiel Gate.