Aestival Tide (43 page)

No. The sacrifice must take place. The crowd would demand it, and the clergy. Âziz felt distinctly uncomfortable around the latter. She lacked Shiyung's facile enthusiasms for the new and strange, her unabashed delight in the bizarre rituals that made life on the lower levels bearable to those who lived there. To Âziz, the avatars of the city's main religious orders—the castrati of the Daughters of Graves, Blessed Narouz's penitents, even the traditionally stable Church of Christ Cadillac and the Seraphim's own Saints—all were unhappy reminders of the world's dark and superstitious past, before the First Ascension began the long centuries of purgative destruction that not only made the sterile domes of Araboth possible but absolutely necessary. Âziz had no religious feelings whatsoever. For her, Æstival Tide was a practical matter, a means of both controlling and satisfying the crowd's appetite for mayhem; nothing more.

And see where it had brought them. She ticked away a thought, to be mulled over later, in the Gryphon. Wherever she settled next, there would be no festivals.

From across the balcony she saw the Archbishop of Christ Cadillac staring at her expectantly, her lips moving. Next to her the Quir giggled over his hubble-bubble and beckoned several of the Daughters of Graves to join him. Someone had given the dwarf something to drink, and surely that was not permitted? Âziz turned away, annoyed, to gaze down upon the crowd. She wished Shiyung were here. Âziz had never performed the opening ceremonies without her. The balcony shook ominously as she leaned over it, trying to escape the haze of incense. From below a cheer rippled through the throng, and she heard her name chanted.

“Well,” she said hoarsely, turning back and nodding at the Archbishop. “I guess we should begin.”

“Excellent brandy!” Rudyard Planck coughed, as the plump
galli
poured him another glass from a small flask he had hidden within his robes. “Can this possibly be Roseblood 402?”

The
galli
nodded, pleased. Rudyard Planck beamed and raised his glass to him. When he saw the Archbishop descending upon him he gulped the rest and hurriedly returned it to the eunuch.

“You're supposed to be fasting,” scolded the Archbishop. “Where's the hermaphrodite?”

Reive had tried to edge toward the balcony, to see what was beneath them; but the sight of the Aviators there like so many grim statues frightened her. She ended up near the Quir, momentarily forgotten.

“Greetings, little sacrificial sisterling,” lisped the Quir. He pulled the hookah's tube from his mouth with a pop. His aluminum shields had been arranged carefully around him, so that his narrow face grinned at her from every direction. “Have some kef, holiest of hapless children.”

“I don't think it's allowed,” Reive said, eyeing the hookah doubtfully.

The Quir raised one dyed eyebrow and gazed at the Archbishop glaring down at Rudyard Planck. “If you'll forgive what is most certainly an unintentioned slur, you and your companion are both rather
small
to be offered to our most Compassionate Redeemer. Not to mention your stature would seem to have made it a most challenging experience to garrote the unfortunate margravine. How did you do it?” He lowered his voice and leaned toward her conspiratorially.

“We didn't,” Reive replied anxiously. “Is this it? Are they really going to kill us?”

For a moment the Quir sucked noisily at his pipe, his eyes watering. Then he coughed and said, “Literature pertaining to the rites of propitiation for Ucalegon and Baratdaja state that an unworthy sacrifice is not a satisfactory sacrifice. An innocent person convicted of a heinous crime, such as a margravine's murder, would no doubt rouse the storm to fury rather than placate it.”

The Quir paused to readjust one of his aluminum screens, smiling at his reflection and displaying two rows of evenly filed teeth. He arched his eyebrows and tilted his head, so that his reflection stared directly at Reive with an expression of gross complicity.

“The Redeemer has no eyes and so must locate its prey by means of its body heat,” he murmured, as though recalling a favored recipe. “A creature without much body mass might successfully avoid capture long enough for the crowd to demand to be released upon the strand, whereupon the Redeemer would be distracted. I have always disliked the margravines, and felt Shiyung to be a dilettante of the first water. Whoever killed her did a favor to those of us who are true believers. May the Great Mother watch over you and protect you in the hours to come. I believe the Archbishop is here.”

His reflection dipped out of sight in a blur of indigo. He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture, just as the Archbishop appeared behind Reive.

“Come,” she commanded, taking Reive by the hand and leading her to the edge of the balcony. When the flooring trembled she paused, breathing loudly through her nose, but only for a moment. “We are ready to begin.”

Rudyard Planck was waiting at the edge of the balcony, his face a little ruddier than it had been and his eyes brighter.

“I always said that I could die happy if I'd tasted Roseblood 402,” he announced as the Archbishop approached. He sounded rather drunk. “The irony of this would not have been wasted on my dear friend Sajur Panggang, so recently deceased. He would say that a life nobly lived allows no worthy desire to go untasted.”

Reive nodded, wondering at the lack of such savory moments in her own brief career. It had grown uncomfortably hot, and her shift had rubbed her small breasts till they burned. The Archbishop joined Âziz and Nike. The margravine looked distinctly unhappy. She adjusted her mitre and whisked a handkerchief across her cheeks. Then she clapped her hands and the precentor stepped forward, followed by three of the Daughters of Graves. Beside them Âziz shook her head, glaring at Nike. She raised her arms and walked to the end of the balcony. A roar as the crowd saw her.

From where she stood Reive could finally look down upon them. Thousands of people, a tide of green seething back and forth like water sloshing in a tank. When it surged forward, the throng reached almost to the foot of the Lahatiel Gate itself, where a wedge of dour Aviators stood. And now Reive saw that there was a narrow spindly stairway winding down from this balcony to the Gate, a stairway with a worn railing and uneven treads. It began only a few feet from where she stood, and was cordoned off with a heavy velvet rope of deep forest-green, much worn about the middle.

“—when she's finished speaking you may begin the hyperdulia,” the Archbishop instructed the precentor in a loud whisper. They stood directly behind Âziz and the frowning Nike, and the Archbishop gazed coolly down at the crowd. She did not smile.

Abruptly Âziz dropped her arms commandingly. The crowd grew quieter. There were isolated shouts of
“Where is Shiyung!”
and
“Avenge the margravine
—
Bring the Healing Wind!”
When two Aviators stalked menacingly from their posts, the vast chamber grew eerily and abruptly silent. Âziz adjusted the coder at her throat and began to speak.

“We are today, as we have done many times before, opening the Gate of Araboth to the world Outside,” she began, her amplified voice tinny and shrill. It cracked when she said the word
Outside.
“As our founding Saints have advised, we will gaze upon the horrors of that world, and as they did, we will turn our backs upon it, and not look upon it again for another decade.”

Scattered applause and cries. Âziz looked a little more confident.

“We will also perform the rites of propitiation against the howling storms that would destroy us, were it not for the vigilance of the Architects. And our sacrifices this year will be dear ones: they have already cost us the life of our sister, our beloved Shiyung.”

Screams at this, and wailing, and many voices imitating the ululating cries of the Redeemer. And then suddenly, beneath all of this came another noise, low at first, then growing louder until it drowned the other sounds. A deep and mournful wail that grew into a shriek, a moaning aria of loss and bereavement and hunger: the song of the Compassionate Redeemer.

Âziz was silent, listening with the others. Alone in that great empty space the Redeemer sang, and she felt the floor beneath her shiver, not from a distant explosion but from the weight of the Redeemer itself as it pressed against the walls of its prison and begged for release. It was a monstrous thing, so hideous to look upon that its creator had gone mad and then been murdered by his own assistant; but it had a human voice, and its sobbing song made it seem that it had human hungers as well.

Tears filled Âziz's eyes, and she turned to take her sister's hand. Reive and Rudyard Planck huddled together, the dwarf stroking her broken scalp and murmuring gently. And then a high whining sound filled the air, like the endless note of a tuning fork, so piercing that Reive backed away from Rudyard and stared upward, covering her ears.

The ceiling was moving. So far above her that it was nothing but a silver-gray Crosshatch of steel and glass, shimmering through the smoke like a meditation pattern on a ‘filing screen. The Redeemer's song wailed on and on, joining with that other piercing note. As Reive stared, a silvery mote like a splinter moved above her; a moment and it had become a steel beam, twisted loose from its joinings and falling, falling, until she watched breathlessly as it passed within a few feet of the balcony with a deep whistle. It fell so slowly that Reive marked where it sliced through the pall of smoke that had drifted from the balcony to hang above the crowd. A moment later it smashed there. There followed screams so anguished she closed her eyes. Still more agonized shrieks, and howls like those of tortured animals, louder and louder until the gynander realized that this was it, the beginning of the Great Fear—the mob had already given itself over to terror. She stumbled to the balcony and gazed down.

The crowd had broken up. The huge beam lay like a silver arrow across fully a third of the floor. Figures squirmed beneath it, and the bronze floor deepened to ruddy gold beneath them. From the corridors streamed more Aviators, and moujiks in green eager even now to transport the corpses to the medifacs.

Beside her the dwarf whispered to himself, his eyes closed in prayer. Reive looked up to see Âziz staring white-faced down at the carnage. Beside her Nike was yelling, her face crimson, but Âziz turned and slapped her.

“Now!” she shouted at the Archbishop. “Do it
now!
”

The Archbishop turned and called angrily to the precentor, who stepped forward and shakily began to sing the hyperdulia.

Another explosion. Only dust and scattered debris fell this time, but the crowd surged forward to the Gate. On the Narthex the clergy's frightened voices joined the others as they struggled to leave the platform. Âziz bit her lip so that bright blood pocked it, then cried, “Enough!” She shoved her way through
galli
and distracted diplomats until she stood next to Reive and Rudyard.

“Go now,” she ordered, pointing to the rickety stairway. She grabbed the velvet rope and tore it off, then pushed Reive onto the first step. “To the bottom, just go—I don't care what you do next—”

Reive stumbled, looking back terrified at the dwarf. When he nodded she began to walk very slowly down, step by step.

On the platform Rudyard Planck straightened and brushed flecks of dust from his clothes. At Âziz's hysterical prodding he raised his head and looked at her disdainfully.

“There is
no need
for that,” he announced. He took a step, stumbled—the entire balcony was weaving drunkenly from side to side—grabbed the handrail and began to descend a few feet behind the gynander.

As Reive walked the crowd grew quieter, and the sounds of explosions and falling debris seemed to fade. At first the stairway moved so that she clutched the railing, fearful of being pitched from it, but after a few minutes it grew relatively still, only swaying a little from her own weight and that of the dwarf. When she glanced back at the balcony it had also stopped moving. Some of the Orsinate's party seemed to have gotten their courage back. She saw a nervous g
alli
and the precentor and Archbishop peering down at her, and behind them Âziz and Nike arguing. As she paused Rudyard Planck walked carefully until he stood beside her on the narrow stairway.

“Where does it go?” she asked; although she could see quite clearly that it led to the Gate.

“It's for the sacrificial victims.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it quickly; his was freezing cold. “In years past they sometimes had the hecatombs descend it. It's amazing it still stands. It's so they can all see us. The Gate opens, and we go out first, and then they free the Redeemer….”

It did not take very long to reach the end. As they descended the smell of the crowd grew heavier, sweat and perfumes, the odor of petroleum that hung about the Archangels in the refineries, and the metallic scent of blood. Overpowering all of it was the stench of the Redeemer, so intense down here that Reive breathed through her mouth. There was no longer any temptation in the smell: it sickened her, and she almost longed for the Gate to open so that it might disperse.

And then Rudyard was at the bottom, his face very pale, and he turned to help her down the last two steps. As she walked onto the smooth bronze floor before the Gate she felt the silence behind her like a wall, pressing so close that she thought she'd scream. When she looked at the Narthex balcony it was so small and so far away that her nausea grew even stronger. She reached for Rudyard and clung to him, and together they gazed up at the Lahatiel Gate.

It rose, up and up and up, a great bronze wall so smooth and dark it seemed impossible there could be a seam anywhere upon its surface. But then it moved; almost imperceptibly it shuddered as though buffeted from outside by a terrific wind. Reive suddenly thought of Ucalegon, the monstrous storm, and how even now it might be tearing at the outside of the domes. A shaft of pure terror raced through her. The Redeemer at least was something from within the domes, something engineered by the Ascendants and protected for all these years by the Architects. But a storm? She could not even imagine it, only recall the shape of the wards traced upon her breasts and scalp, slender lines coiling in upon themselves, and a wave ringed with teeth. She should have gone with Zalophus, even if it meant being devoured by him; even if it had only been a dream.