Aestival Tide (38 page)

“She will die if she is not treated,” the dwarf said, looking up at Reive. Ceryl's head dropped back onto her chest. From the other side of the cell, a few feet away, the gynander stared at him dumbly. “Her brain is swelling and that bump has gotten infected.”

He crossed the room to a glass door facing a bank of tall cylinders filled with dark fluid, within which swam the prison's aurible monitors, hand-sized, flat yellowish forms like paramecia or spermatozoa.

“She is dying!” he shouted at them, his hands leaving a smear on the thick glass as he pounded it. “Damn it, call someone, a healer, for god's sake—”

One of the cylinders blinked dull red, warningly; but nothing else happened. Abruptly the dwarf turned away, and began to hop across the cell again as though nothing had happened.

“She's going to die,” whispered Reive. Her pale face was flushed. The mullah who had shriven them had also shaved her head, in deference to her being a hermaphrodite, and with cauterizing needles had drawn an intricate ward upon her scalp, an open hand with a mouth gaping in its palm. The mullah's excitement over shriving a morphodite had been too much: his hands shook and he climaxed while tattooing her. Now the assassin's ward bled steadily, the gaping mouth oozing a watery discharge that steamed when it dripped onto the floor. “She will be fortunate if she dies before Ucalegon devours us all.” Then she bowed her head and wept.

The dwarf stopped hopping long enough to give her a shrewd look. His red hair stuck up in damp tufts like a basilisk's cockscomb. But before he could agree with her Ceryl moaned again. The dwarf turned to stare at her pityingly.

“It would be better if she died now,” he murmured. He moved his hand in a gentle gesture above Ceryl's head, reluctant to touch her and cause her further pain. Reive nodded, clasping her arms about her chest. The mullah had taken her clothes, her scarf and jewelry, and she had been given a linen shift to wear, grass-green and of coarse weave. It itched terribly in the heat. “But I can't kill her. Could you?”

The gynander shook her head and looked away. Rudyard Planck bowed, tears filling his eyes. “This is terrible—to leave her in such pain like this until tomorrow….”

“Better that than be given to the Redeemer.”

The dwarf said nothing. Since they had been taken from the Four Hundredth Room neither he nor Reive had mentioned the Compassionate Redeemer, although the mullah who had shriven them spoke of little else. After his impulsive ejaculation he had left the shriving chamber for several minutes. He returned wearing a fresh robe and carrying a polemnoscope that he unfolded and directed toward the wall.

“This was during the Tenth Dynasty,” he announced. Ceryl lay unconscious on a gurney by the door. The subdued Rudyard Planck sat next to her, his wrists chafing in their chains. From where she was strapped onto a cold steel table Reive craned her neck to watch great blobby images dance across the wall, obscuring a mosaic that showed Mudhowi Sirrúk wearing an Aviator's leathers and extrasolar enhancer. The mullah went on, “If you look closely you can see Nasrani Orsina in the corner there, waving, beneath the Redeemer's hind legs.”

The polemnoscope hummed loudly. Suddenly the images came into sharp focus. Reive tried to turn away. Cursing, Rudyard Planck threatened to have the mullah castigated by the Architect Imperator.

“The Architect Imperator would not object,” the mullah remarked blandly. “We met in a
bhang-parlor
once, and he confided to me that he had always been fond of that year's gala. Now, this was just ten years ago. There—where the Redeemer is crouching, you can just make out that face—well, it
was
a face—that was Grishkin Matamora. You know, the arsonist—”

And so on. Afterward neither Rudyard Planck nor Reive had referred to the mullah's diversion. In earlier years each had glimpsed the Compassionate Redeemer during Æstival Tide—Planck from one of the Orsinate's formal viewing gondolas, four-year-old Reive from a great distance, where she huddled on the strand barely two feet from the Lahatiel Gate, afraid to venture farther Outside. Neither cared to discuss the fact that along with the failing Ceryl, they were to be given to the Redeemer as a special sacrifice.

The cell's white walls did not dim as evening approached. They only knew it
was
evening when a human guard appeared, bearing a tray set with three globes of nutriment. Finally exhausted by her pacing, Reive leaned against one wall, wiping the sweat from her face and watching it steam from her palm. In her corner Ceryl lay, silent and unmoving. Reive could not bear to look at her; the thought of her dying filled her with a terrible sadness, but also with a rage so intense she thought she might go mad, or harm her surviving cellmate in her fury. When the guard arrived only Rudyard hurried to the glass wall, waving frantically as she slid the tray into their cell. But the guard tipped her head so that he could see where her ears had been sliced off and replaced with flat blue auricular disks, and opened her mouth to display a gray tongue split neatly in two like an eel's belly. The dwarf turned away, discouraged.

They drank the nutriments, grimacing at the strong fishy taste. A few minutes after they were finished the empty globes collapsed and melted into small puddles, and eventually evaporated. Reive tried to get Ceryl to drink as well but the woman only moaned and twisted her head. She would not open her eyes. The swelling on her head had turned nearly black, and Reive trembled as she held Ceryl's head in her arms.

“I would be very surprised if she lived until dawn.” The nutriment had revived Rudyard Planck. He leaned on the wall across from Reive and tilted his head at Ceryl. “Though she'll be the lucky one if that's the case.”

“Yes.” The gynander sighed, blinking back tears. Gently she lay Ceryl back upon the floor, after carefully wiping the sweat from her face. She glanced down at the still-f globe in her hands. Impulsively held it out to the dwarf.

“Here—we are not thirsty anymore.”

Rudyard Planck blinked, startled. “What? Oh, no—please—” He waved his small hands, his face turning an even brighter red. “I'm much smaller than you. Please—drink it, Reive.”

“Please—”

The dwarf saw the pleading in her eyes, the need to do this one small good thing. He took the globe and drained it.

Reive crossed the room and leaned against the warm wall. She closed her eyes, trying to recall something pleasant: the smell of sandalwood in Ceryl's chambers, the taste of krill paste, the sight of her mysid floating in its glass jar. If only she could be free again, she would make offerings to all the gods; she would join Blessed Narouz's Refinery and never venture to the upper levels again.

The dwarf watched her, one hand shading his brow to keep the sweat from running into his eyes.

“I think you really are their child,” he said after some time. Reive made no move to show she'd heard him. “Shiyung and Nasrani's. When I first met you, by the Karvo sculptures—do you remember?”

Reive's eyes opened, two alarming stabs of green in the opalescent light.

“Even then it seemed to me you looked familiar, although of course I didn't piece it together. Who even knew, who would remember, after all these years—how long is it?” He stared at her intently. “How old
are
you?”

“Fourteen years,” she finally pronounced. The dwarf nodded.

“That would be exactly right. The same year the Archipelago Conflict began. Shiyung and Nasrani opposed it; that's how they found themselves together, I imagine, siding against Nike and Âziz. The year they sent Margalis Tast'annin to Kutaraja on his first command, the year the first HORUS installation failed.”

He began to chew his thumb. “That was a bad year.” He sounded depressed.

Reive stared at him impassively. “We are their only child,” she said. “They should be happy to have found us.”

Rudyard snorted. “Not likely! Âziz thinks she will live forever—she
will
live forever, unless someone poisons her, or Margalis strangles her as well. In three hundred years there has not been a single peaceful succession by an Orsina. Too many bastards, too many feeble-minded children. A true heir by brother and sister—even a hermaphrodite—that would be too dangerous. Better to have Nike stupefied with morpha and Shiyung as a
rasa
and Nasrani exiled; or better yet, Nasrani brought back into the fold now that Shiyung's been clipped. Âziz would never let you live. She would never let anyone live who knew about you.”

The thought seemed to depress him further. He sank to the floor and stared at his feet. A bad smell hung about the cell, as of pork left uncooked for several days. Ceryl lay stretched upon the floor now. Her breathing had grown so soft that Reive could no longer hear her. She crept to Ceryl's side and cocked her head, listening.

“She's dead.”

The dwarf nodded without looking up. The gynander prodded the woman gently. The body felt rigid. When she picked up one of Ceryl's arms and then dropped it, it thumped loudly against the floor.

“We should call someone—she was kind to us, and we never thanked her—”

Reive began to cry, crouching back and staring at the glass wall where the aurible monitors undulated through their viscous element. Rudyard Planck gazed at the corpse and then at Reive, wide-eyed, an expression that might have been gratitude as much as despair.

“She alone has escaped,” he said softly. “Be grateful, little Reive, she has escaped—perhaps she will bless us, wherever she is—”

He shut his eyes and began to recite the
Orison Acherontic
of Christ Cadillac, pausing for good measure to invoke Blessed Narouz as well as the Prophets Rayburn and Mudhowi Sirrúk. When he finished they sat in silence, the only sounds their labored breathing and the nearly inaudible
tick
of the monitors outside the cell.

Reive slept and dreamed. At least, she thought it must be a dream. She knew that the uncomfortable parameters of their cell were designed to make sleep impossible; but how else to explain that she was once more hurrying down the corridor to the oceanic vivarium, her bare feet stinging where they slapped the cool floor?

“Zalophus!”

Even as she called out she knew that it made no sound. There was no ripple in her throat to form the name, the white-clad Children of Mercy did not turn to see who it was that shouted by the zeuglodon's tank.

But Zalophus heard. The enormous head reared from the dark water and gazed at her, plankton streaming from his teeth.

“Little thing,” he roared. Reive marveled that the Children of Mercy didn't hear him, either. “You have returned! Come with me now, quickly! The gates are opening at last!”

Water sluiced across her feet as he rolled onto his back, flippers waving. Reive shook her head.

“We can't go with you, Zalophus. We would drown.”

The whale moaned and dived beneath the surface. A minute later he reappeared, spray frothing from his blowhole. “Come with me, human child,” he sang, and shivering, Reive felt the sound within her bones. “Come with me, or else you will die— Ucalegon the Prince of Storms flies across the seas, he is coming to ravish his bride, even now the city quakes to think of him! Come with me, we will join my sisters and witness the holy act!”

Reive looked away to stare at the watergates hung with shining banners, the gaudy flags and pennons of Æstival Tide. Already the offertory pyres had been lit. The air was thick with the scent of myrrh and the scorched smell of the gilt papers covered with the names of the recently dead, long narrow scrolls tossed onto the pyres by the followers of Christ Cadillac. Beyond a narrow gap at the top of one of the huge barricades she glimpsed something shining, a sliver of light the color of Rudyard Planck's eyes.
That is the sky,
she thought.
When we next wake they will open the Lahatiel Gate for the Redeemer, and then we will see the sky for the last time.

“We cannot go,” she said, turning back to him. “We are to be given to the Compassionate Redeemer. Besides, you would only eat us.”

Zalophus groaned, shaking his great head. “The Redeemer! So cruel, a thing without a mind, without a thought, nothing but teeth and bowels! It has no heart and so no true hunger! Ah, Reive, it is a sin, to treat you thus!” And Zalophus raced about his prison, churning the water into green froth and roaring so that Reive clapped her hands over her ears.

But at last the whale grew still. The waves lapping against the tank's lip subsided. “I must go now, little thing,” he crooned, rolling to gaze at her with one enormous liquid eye. “Reive, Reive Orsina. I was alone and you spoke to me. I was hungry and you fed me, Reive.”

The gynander shrugged, laughing in spite of herself. “You are always hungry, Zalophus!”

He drew up and back into the air until he smashed down into the water, then twisted and leaped once more, higher and higher, until his huge body blotted out the light and Reive stumbled backward.

“I will not forget!” he bellowed, and for the last time dived beneath the tank's surface. Reive huddled against a wall, shaking, waiting for the water to grow still again. But Zalophus did not return, then or ever, to his prison beneath the Quincunx Domes.

“Reive.”

The dwarf had been repeating her name for some time now. Two guards in the Orsinate's violet livery stood waiting behind the thick glass door, idly tapping slender cudgels against their palms. One of them stared at the gynander's pale form with no less surprise than did the dwarf himself—Rudyard was suddenly petrified that Reive had died too. But finally she stirred and blinked, gazing blearily at the ruddy face hanging a few inches above hers.

“Reive, it's time.”

“Time?” She sat up and looked around. The walls had changed color, from white to a glowering red. Ceryl's corpse still lay sprawled in the corner. She turned quickly back to Rudyard. “
Time?
”