Aestival Tide (4 page)

From high overhead came the clashing of immense hidden gears. The skygate began to close. Ceryl watched as the sky was skinned to a violet sliver, until the gate clanged shut and the brief vision of the heavens disappeared in the pulsing lavender light of the domes. She turned and, gently, stroked the dank white cheek of the dead girl behind her. Then she bent until her head touched her knees and silently began to cry.

The gynander Reive sat on the bed in her little room on Virtues, the hermaphrodites' level, smoking kef and eating her last tin of krill paste. She dug the paste out with her fingers and sucked them pensively, wishing it were already evening, when at a dream inquisition she would be fed delicacies, fresh shark and sea urchin roe and prickly pears. But that thought only made her more hungry.

“Never mind, never mind,” she whispered. Like most hermaphrodites, Reive lived alone, and had grown into the habit of talking to herself. But then she remembered that she wasn't really alone anymore. She smiled. Her face—rather too sharp, almost wizened—looked deceptively sweet and childlike, despite her fifteen years. “Wait!” she said softly, and pushed the krill tin away.

The empty canister rolled beneath the bed. Reive reached for her kef pipe, sucked at it vainly, and tapped the ashes onto the floor. The place was a mess, krill tins and broken morpha tubes everywhere, old kohl wands strewn beside clothes she'd received in payment for her readings, everything covered with a coat of kef ash like whitish fur. It all smelled of smoke and soiled clothing and shrimp paste, and from her bed Reive regarded it with a fastidious distaste that belied her grubby fingers and the broken rubber bands tied around the long black plaits of her hair. A room so small and narrow that if she lay on the floor she could practically touch each wall with her outstretched hands.

She sighed. If she hadn't given that diplomat a bad reading last week, he might have taken her up to Thrones with him. There she might have found a wealthy patron, some dream-buggered politician eager to have his own mantic. Instead, Reive had scryed the diplomat's dream quite bluntly, advising a change of métier, and he'd left the inquisition in a panic. Since then she was considered bad luck. She'd be lucky if she could get work scrying for some 'filer on Powers, the next level down.

“All right,” she announced, replacing the kef pipe in its little sandalwood box and shoving it onto a shelf. She wiped her hands on the worn spread and stretched across the bed, reaching down the side facing the wall. A moment later and she had withdrawn something, a small glass globe that fit easily within her cupped hands. Water splashed over its lip as she set the globe carefully in her lap and stared down into it.

In the periwinkle light that glowed from the tiny room's ceiling the globe seemed to float, a softly gleaming turquoise. Within it something else floated, a shrimplike creature the length of Reive's finger. Its segmented body was a translucent coral, so that she could see the violet bead of its heart pumping, the gold and red filigree that formed its organs. Its feathery legs were a brilliant acid green, its slender tail a yellow that was nearly luminous in the ethereal light. It had long whiplike antennae that moved slowly through the water and large round eyes that were an unexpectedly brilliant azure. Beneath its thorax was a tiny pouch holding what appeared to be myriad pearls of a nacreous pink. It was a mysid, a kind of shrimp that carried its young in a brood pouch until they were several months old. The eggs of this one were supposed to hatch very soon.

Reive gazed transfixed at the tiny creature, murmuring. It was not a
wild
creature, of course, but stolen from a vivarium on Dominations Level, where the mysids were raised to feed larger animals like fish and certain aquatic birds. A patron of Reive's, a biotech who had befriended the gynander on one of her solitary visits to the vivarium level, had given it to her in exchange for a dream reading. A completely illicit transaction—if a sentry from the Reception Committee were to find it here, Reive would be executed. Animals and plants still carried all the ominous weight of their origins Outside, despite the fact that every creature now living within Araboth had by this point been so genetically altered as to bear little resemblance to its forebears. The mysid, for instance, was descended from creatures only an inch long. When the Håbilis Emirate took control of the Archipelago and its hydrofarms, the Ascendants engineered the mysids as an alternative to reliance on the Archipelago's krill shrimp. But Reive didn't know that; Reive just knew that the mysid was beautiful, and it was hers, a secret from the prying eyes of the other gynanders on Virtues.

“Don't be afraid, we are here, we will protect you,” the gynander whispered, tracing the curved glass with a grimy finger. Within its turquoise globe the mysid swam lazily, its feathery legs sending phosphorescent ripples through the water. Reive reached one hand behind her, pulping the bedclothes until she found a box of papery rice crackers. She crumbled the corner of one into the globe and watched entranced as the mysid fed, the bits of cracker disappearing between the transparent mandibles and its inner organs deepening to royal purple as it digested its food.

Without warning a soft, bell-like tone echoed through the room. Reive sat up in alarm, spilling a little precious water onto her lap. She clutched the globe, looking back and forth. The room seemed to be trembling—she could not be sure at first. It was all so quick, a tremor so slight that it was only when she focused on her kimono on its brass hook, its faded sleeves swaying ever so slightly, that she was certain of what was happening. She took the globe and hid it behind her bed, bracing it with a mismatched pair of slippers. By the time she stood in the center of the little chamber all was still again.

“Damn,” Reive breathed. She crossed her hands in the ward against Ucalegon and flopped against the bed, her heart thudding. Maybe the storms were beginning early this year. It was only a week until Æstival Tide; perhaps the winds were rising in anticipation of the great festival. Or the Commonwealth might have struck against the city; but even Reive, untutored as she was, knew that was unlikely. She took a deep breath and stood, crossed the room and opened the door and stuck her head into the corridor.

Outside, the long, curved hallway seemed undisturbed, except that one panel in the ceiling lights was flickering deep violet instead of its accustomed pale blue. After the fishy must of her chamber Reive breathed deeply, grateful for the modestly fresher air out here. Virtues Level was not considered important enough to benefit from the more advanced filtration systems of the upper levels. A complex perfume filled the corridors connecting the warren of little chambers where the hermaphrodites lived. Opium sugar and krill paste; the lemony scent of the cheap cologne the gynanders favored this season, a perfume called
Arielle;
the muskier odor of the myrrh and sandalwood chips the hermaphrodites burned during their dream-trances; and beneath all of it the harsh acrid note of the periwinkle-blue lead powder that they used as the base for all their cosmetics. The powder was poisonous, of course, and after constant use many gynanders died quite young. This was not inadvertent, population control being a constant concern of the Orsinate. The hermaphrodites were sterile, but they still ate and took up space. And then of course they aged, and older hermaphrodites were ugly and therefore useless. The toxic lead powder was a fortuitous solution to this problem. Most gynanders knew the cosmetics were poisonous, but they were a vain lot and used them anyway. There was much competition for the business of dream-readings, and patrons were often influenced by an unusual face.

Several of these faces turned to stare at Reive as she entered the hall.

“You heard that?” one called, her voice high and childish.

“We heard it,” Reive admitted. “You did too?”

“We all did,” Drusilla, the other gynander replied. She stood in a small knot of six or seven, some in kimonos, one half-dressed in scarves and thin gold-colored chains. Two of them, like Reive herself, were naked except for filmy pantaloons and wore no cosmetics. She stepped gingerly from her doorway and tiptoed down the hall to join them.

“What was it?”

“We don't know, Numatina said a bomb—”

“!”

“—but Charlless said it is the storms—”

“That's what
we
thought,” Reive murmured triumphantly.

“There was another last night on Cherubim! The domes moved, we saw the walls shake—”

“Well,
we
think it is Ucalegon,” Drusilla finished, her lips tight. The others whispered urgently, crossing their hands across their small bud-breasts. The ones who wore no makeup looked alike: white, heart-shaped faces with almond eyes, thin mouths and high rounded cheekbones. All had the same spare build, the same black hair, the same fluting voices; the same tiny breasts and the same small bulge between their legs where they hid their twin sexes. If you were to scrub their faces clean and line them up in a room, it would be difficult to tell any difference between them at all. That was the curse of their common origins within the crucibles of Dominations.

But the hermaphrodites were too vain to spend their short lives being mistaken for each other. Thus their reliance on colored kohl wands and pots of red and silver rouge, their pride in a finely drawn mouth or eye, and also their dislike of Reive.

The first gynander gazed at Reive through slitted eyes. Drusilla had already painted herself, the periwinkle powder deepening to lavender where she had highlighted her cheekbones, her eyes drawn into elaborate wings with a stippling of scarlet dots beneath them, a full scarlet mouth pouting over her narrow lips.

“We heard you were dead, Reive,” she pronounced.

“We heard that too,” another gynander chimed in. Over her pale blue mask she had drawn a series of stark curves in black, outlining her eyes and mouth. “We heard your patron killed you.”

Reive drew herself up stiffly. She was taller than the other gynanders, and without makeup she looked different from them too—her face sharper, almost copper-colored where theirs were milk-white; her hair black but thin where the others had thick curling plaits; her eyes round and, worst of all, the forbidden color, where the others' were black. She stared coldly at Drusilla.

“We are alive. We have a new patron,” she lied, “an aristocrat troubled by nightmares. A member of the Reception Committee,” she added grandly, and glanced to see if the others looked frightened.

“Oooh, Reive,” whispered a pallid creature shivering in a thin kimono. “Really, Reive?”

“You liar,” Drusilla spat; but Reive only tossed her hair.

“We must go to meet her now,” she said airily, and turned and walked back to her chambers, ignoring the whispers behind her.

“Ucalegon will take you,” Drusilla hissed, and as Reive slammed her door she heard the others giggling.

“Damn,” she muttered. She kicked her cosmetic box, sending it spinning across the floor. When she heard it crack against the wall she swore again, more loudly, then got onto her knees and gathered up the kohl wands and little tubes of rouge and mascara and powder. She settled on the floor, balancing a small broken triangle of mirror on her knees, and began to paint her face.

When she was finished a simple mask peered at her from the shard of mirror, her cheeks a pale copper, her mouth demurely small and golden, her eyebrows raised to give her a look of innocent surprise. Reive drew the mirror up to her face and tilted her head so that her eyes caught the dim blue light. For years she had planned to get tinted lenses to disguise the true color of her eyes. But there was always something else to buy with her meager earnings, decent food for one thing,
anything
besides krill paste; and of course she always needed more kohl and opium sugar, though fortunately she wasn't as dependent on that as some. And, she had to admit, green
was
an unusual color, forbidden or not; and sometimes patrons liked that. Although now it seemed they wouldn't like anything to do with Reive.

The gynander sighed and shook her head, her long uneven black plaits flying. She stood and rummaged under the bedcovers until she found a new pair of orange pantaloons of pleated false silk. She pulled them out, smoothing the fabric through which the outline of her penis could barely be seen, a small shadow against one pale thigh. Three thin rings of steel and rubicore pierced each of her nipples, and she wore a tiny pouch slung around her narrow waist. Last of all, she sat cross-legged on the floor and carefully drew two wards, one upon each tiny breast: the ward against Ucalegon, the Prince of Storms, and the one against Baratdaja, the Healing Wind.

Before she left she flopped onto her bed and leaned down to peer at the glass globe. The mysid floated tranquilly, hardly moving even when she gently prodded it with a finger.

“Goodbye, Gato,” she whispered. “We're leaving now.”

She went out shirtless, shivering a little in the hallway. She was relieved to see that the others had gone, no doubt to gossip about her in Drusilla's chambers. For a minute she leaned against the wall, deciding where to go. It was too early to look for inquisitors. She didn't want to seem desperate. Fortunes changed with mercurial speed in Araboth, especially among hermaphrodites and the Orsinate's pleasure cabinet. By evening she might find herself with a new patron, a new chamber on a higher level. Abruptly she turned and headed down the corridor toward the Virtues Level gravator. It was two hours at least until patrons would start filling the corridors, looking for dream-mantics. For now she would slip up to the vivarium and visit Zalophus.

“Ceryl! Is that you?”

Ceryl started, hastily wiped the tears from her face. From around the curve of the avenue an aardman stalked toward the rickshaw, carrying a small woman in a long, pleated white skirt, a fez perched unsteadily on her head. Tatsun Frizer, a taster in the Toxins Cabal and like Ceryl a member of the Orsinate's pleasure cabinet. She wore absurdly ornamented yellow vinyl shoes that curled under so that she could not walk in them. In her arms she cradled a puppet, one of the newly fashionable and more odious geneslaves designed by the legendary puppeteer, Rudyard Planck. It licked its thin gray lips and glared at Ceryl with swinish red-rimmed eyes.