The Waking Engine (20 page)

NiNi and NoNo Leibowitz looked at Purity, then turned their heads to look at each other, shrugged, and looked to Purity again. They slithered into the morning light.

“Oh, hello dears!” Purity squeaked, wiggling her fingers in a vain attempt at nonchalance. She stepped in front of the fallen helm, hoping the girls wouldn’t see it. Matching sets of eyes blinked, looked to each other again, then returned to Purity.

“Did you get lost on your way to the seamstresses, too?” NiNi asked. She wore a silver tunic and leggings encrusted with bits of mirrored glass. NoNo seemed dressed more sensibly for this time of the morning, wrapped in white linen that matched the spotless walls of the Petite Malaison. For some reason she kept scrubbing her nose with her fingers as though she smelled something foul.

“Seamstresses?” Purity repeated, scrambling for excuses. “The seamstresses are on the first floor. Of another building entirely.” NiNi was lugging a heavy-looking sack, no doubt filled with lovely clothes in need of minor, pointless alterations.

“So they are.” NoNo nodded, still frowning at some stink Purity couldn’t detect. “Which explains our trouble locating the workrooms. Whatever are you doing up here, Purity?”

“And why do you have your stockings wrapped around your head?” NiNi added.

“My head was cold,” Purity answered before she could think.

“Oh, alright,” NiNi said, “but what about your feet?”

“What about them, NiNi?” Purity’s voice came out shrill; she moved on quickly. “I often enjoy watching the sunrise from a vantage with a little altitude.” Nevermind how hard it was to actually see the sunrise past a forest and a wall of thick glass.

NoNo narrowed her eyes. “They say we aren’t allowed up here. They say we ought not risk upsetting the praetors.”

“They say,” NiNi added in a stage whisper, trying to open wide her heavy-lidded eyes, “that there’s a Killer on the loose!”

Purity tried so hard to force her voice into a trill of laughter that she almost sang an arpeggio. “Well, they also say that the world is a mermaid who sings the skies to sleep each night, so I don’t rightly know what we’re supposed to believe when it comes to they and saying, do I? But I tell you what, a little aerial promenade is an absolute tonic for the spirit, and that’s my heartiest possible endorsement, as I’m certain you two know. Isn’t the view from up here just lovely? I think it so, I really do.” Purity ran out of breath and gave silent thanks for it.

“Um. What?” NoNo cocked her head and looked at Purity as if she’d gone batty.

“There are mermaids up here?” NiNi asked with the first bit of enthusiasm Purity had seen her show for weeks. “I want one!” She waved her arm in the air, in case the mermaid people were watching.

NoNo sighed, and for a moment Purity could almost believe she wasn’t as empty-headed as her twin. “It’s too early in the morning for mermaids, NiNi. They sleep late.”

“Oh.” NiNi sounded disappointed for a moment, but then yawned and tugged at her sack. “Can we find the building with the seamstresses now, NoNo? I want to go back to bed, like the mermaids, and you have your dance lessons.”

NoNo takes lessons? Purity found the mental space to marvel.

“Of course, let’s.” NoNo made no move. The twins looked at each other again, at a loss.

“You’ll want to go downstairs,” Purity instructed them, trying to keep her urgency from showing. “All the way to the ground floor. And then to the Maidens’ Keep, you sillies, that’s the other big white building facing the Groveheart. Perfectly understandable error, my darlings!” We live there, you clowns.

“Of course,” NiNi nodded, taking NoNo’s hand and turning away, “Let’s!”

“Won’t you show us the way?” NoNo asked Purity, the faintest hint of a pout coloring her expression.

“Oh I would, NoNo, you know that I absolutely would. But I love my sunrises so, you will forgive me for lingering here a few moments more, won’t you? My favorite part is watching the sun—or suns—rise above the canopy of the Groveheart. Or, um, trying to. Sometimes that big central column supporting the Dome just gleams, I tell you. I’m always atwitter to see what flavor sky the world will grace us with; each day is such a delight! Don’t you think? Thank you ever so much for your understanding, girls; I’m such a daft thing, aren’t I, to be so moved by the dawn!”

NiNi laughed. “You sure are silly, Purity.”

NoNo gave a little clap and agreed. “We’ll find our way together, won’t we, NiNi? And then you’ll sleep a few more hours, while I nip off to dance a while. We will see you at Bitzy’s breakfast, won’t we?”

Purity threw up her hands in a pantomime of delight. “Why of course you will, NoNo! I wouldn’t miss one of Bitzy’s breakfasts for all the sunrises in all the worlds! And please do enjoy your dancing lesson!”

NoNo acceded, but spared a word of warning: “You watch out for that Killer, Purity Kloo.”

“I will, I absolutely will do just that.” Purity nodded fiercely. “And you two do precisely the same. I absolutely forbid anyone from Dying before breakfast!” She trilled a laugh again, this one more successfully lighthearted.

Purity tried not to grimace as the twins tottered away, NiNi dragging her laundry bag behind her. Bitzy designed her breakfasts to keep the girls’ figures dainty, which meant that there was no breakfast allowed, only tea. An empty stomach was the least of Purity’s problems.

Purity waited until she was certain that she was alone in the forbidden corridor. She’d come this far, and survived an unlikely encounter with the sisters Leibowitz, which lent her courage now that she thought about it—after all, if NiNi and NoNo could wander through the halls of the Petite Malaison unmolested, then she would have no problems. Although it did worry her that her stolen helm had opened the doors so thoroughly; the girls must not have been very far behind her, surely, or the doors would have sealed themselves shut again. Purity didn’t know exactly how the helm interacted with the doorways of the Malaison, but the enchantment couldn’t leave the doors unlocked for very long or it wouldn’t be a very effective security system, would it?

The door to the prince’s apartments opened like all the others: Purity, helm-on-head, raised her hand to the stone branches that decorated the round portal and a little bird, a lark of white billionstone, hopped up from within the carved foliage and nodded its head in her direction. The doors swung inward on silent hinges, and Purity stepped into a room that only the prince and the members of the Circle Unsung, like her father, had ever visited before.

Shielding her face from the light, Purity had to admit that, vanished or not, Fflaen knew how to impress: he’d left the rooms within unadorned, allowing the astounding architecture to impress his visitors without the impediment of too much design. Here, the stonework was obviously much, much older than what she’d seen in the corridors of the Petite Malaison. Like the doorway, the stone itself was different—billionstone shone like the sun in the presence of the prince, but even without Fflaen it was bright enough to dazzle Purity’s eyes.

As her vision adjusted, she saw that the once-exactingly-carved clerestories and crenellations of the blindingly white mineral were designed to withstand eternity and were doing so admirably; time had melted the billionstone like radiant wax, but the craftsmanship retained the soul of their artistry. Figures that might have been the original inhabitants of the city stared down from the walls like rows of eroded angels, their faces and fingers not so much weathered by age as liquescent, elongated. Eye sockets gaped, mouths hung open, fingers dripped into the shapes of long icicles. The filigreed billionstone above and below the carvings had undergone a similar transformation, and now it imprisoned the statues in a lace of wintery stone.

The ceiling itself dripped with age, dressing the molding in a ribbed palate of deformed stonework that transformed the suite into the maw of a snow-white behemoth. She half expected to see teeth rimming the floor, but of course there were none—the floors, for that matter, must have been replaced every few thousand years or so as a matter of practicality, simple white tiles that matched the mood of the architecture, scattered about with whorls of the only color visible: mosaic spirals of red, green, and blue. The trails of color made for an odd choice until Purity realized that only the guiding lines of mosaic gave the apartments any sense of scale—they were footpaths to be followed from room to room in the glow of billionstone. Thank goodness the floor tiles were more ordinary, or the radiance might have overwhelmed her; she shuddered to think how bright the walls would glow should the prince return.

Fflaen didn’t need a throne, Purity thought, and realized that she had been half-expecting to see one. All he had to do was exist, and the billionstone spine of his palace would shine like a sun. He wore his age and shining inhuman skin as crown and mantle, and here in the Petite Malaison age itself presented itself as a separate entity—no lord, no lady, no matter how many lives they might have lived, could face this reminder of the colossus of time unchastened. Lords and ladies come and go, the walls and their friezes announced, and in time even princes may pass away. But the City Unspoken remains. Long after the even the dust of your memory has faded, the City Unspoken remains.

Then she noticed something off.

When her father had visited these apartments, Purity wondered with a mixture of delight and trepidation, had he seen the hatch that opened beneath a rosette of inlaid stones—mostly malachite, lapis, and textured hematite? Three-quarters of the tiled circumference had collapsed to expose a flight of frosted glass steps leading down into a well of incandescent, ancient mineral.

The crisp modern lines of the cantilevered glass stairs stood out in contrast to the funnel of dripping billionstone through which she descended, and Purity realized she’d been distracting herself from her infiltration by musing on the design choices of her burgled surroundings. Of course she had, it was what they were taught to do, all the children of the ruling class—to distract themselves from anything real with frippery. To flit about like moths between lamps, never resting too long upon one thought lest they spoil their fun with serious thought. I’m no better than Bitzy, Purity admonished herself, knowing as she did so that it wasn’t true.

She followed the stairs down, and after a few turns they opened into a chamber the same size and luminosity as the greatroom above, but spangled with colored light. . . . Purity let out a squeak. She thought for a moment that she’d entered an art gallery—she stared at a row of varicolored glass panels, each piece taller than a man, suspended by high-tension wires from the ceiling and supported from beneath by sturdy calipers. The light radiating from the wall illuminated the preserved slabs of stained glass, casting projections of the images therein onto the white tiled floor.

Her mouth slack with wonder, Purity wandered between the panes of colored glass and realized what she witnessed—these were the Dawn Stains, artifacts of legend from the long-forgotten, half-mythic original seat of government, of a palace and a people that hadn’t existed for over half a million years, save for remnants like Fflaen, who was the last of his people. Fflaen and the Dawn Stains. The histories Purity studied had referred to the vanished palace alternatively as Anvit’s Lament and the Manifold Remnant, neither of which was anything but some historian’s fancy, since even the ruins of the first palace had been lost since before memory. Yet here it was, or slices of it, held in place by steel calipers and taut wire.

Said to have lit the palace of the City Unspoken’s first rulers—of which these billionstone walls were remnants—the glass windows called the Dawn Stains told the story of the city’s founding. These were the First People who laid the first cornerstones of the city and cleared away the vastness of Anvit’s Glade, the primordial forest that held the original deed to the land their city now occupied. The name of their race was aesr, and the name of their last descendent was Fflaen, her prince.

Purity stumbled from the weight of the age and majesty around her, catching herself against one of the priceless fragments of glass. In a moment, all her bravado seemed to evaporate. What had she done? What was she doing here? She was just a bored girl with a grudge, and she’d almost fallen through one of the tolling Dawn Stains, bells in their belfries!

The glass panes of the Dawn Stains had run together like honey over the eons, but the scenes depicted were still recognizable after an impressionist fashion—the largest showed a pair of gleaming white figures, brother/sister and husband/wife. A father with an eyeless, fin-crested face and a body that shone like a gold sun. A similar figure, female, placing a red crown on her own brow. A tortoise with a forest growing from its shell, swimming through a stylized sea. Brilliant lights danced up the side of each of the siblings, mirrored by rays of light from beneath their father’s ribs.

Another fragment portrayed a group of women, blue- skinned and yellow-haired, bearing flowers the color of glacial ice. They bowed their heads at the foot of a great barrow—that would be Anvit’s funeral, and his daughters the ice maidens from whence the neighboring Maidens’ Keep earned its name. The lure of history overwrote Purity’s shame, and soon she was stalking from pane to pane, committing every possible detail of the Dawn Stains to memory.

Further down Purity saw different images, each becoming successively more abstract—was that part of the Dawn Stains’ design, or were the more abstract fragments older than the rest, more primitive in their devising and more heavily blurred by time? She saw a shape like a golden whale, pierced by holes or spears— she could not tell—in a similar pattern to the lights along the flanks of the figures from the largest stain. A pocket watch dangling over a muddy bowl. The unmistakable curve of a pregnant belly, bright red. Virgin forest; a shard of what looked like rock tied round with a red bow; an odd triangle colored pink and brown and turquoise, above seven setting suns; three turtles against a starlit sky; a row of fists; a bloody field of battle; a sad child. Bars of color comprising some patterned, rhythmic code that ran along the bottom of each pane. So much more than Purity could absorb.