She ended up on an unfamiliar spur of the main boulevard. There were no strollers here, not even any of the omnipresent replicants walking the countless Orsina bastards. But the boulevard did not seem empty. Sculptures lined the broad avenue, stasis anaglyphs executed by the adolescent prodigy Karvo Solicitas. Their subject matter was uniformly morbid, scenes of executions and torment, the sort of thing made popular during the current regime. Reive stared at them bemused and walked on. In the distance the palace glowed white and gold in the simulated sunlight. She squinted, trying to see if the ceremony had started yet.
“You find Karvo’s work dull?” a voice croaked beside her.
Reive jumped and looked around nervously, seeing nobody. Finally she glanced down. A very small man, a dwarf actually, stood gazing up at her with mild round eyes of a vivid, childlike blue.
“Um—yes, we, uh—” she said, glancing back uneasily at the sculptures. “Very dull!”
“I’ve always found him insipid myself,” the dwarf confided. He gazed up at her as though she had said something quite insightful. “This whole mania for torture: idiotic, don’t you think? The banality of evil and all that.” He began to walk with a peculiar rolling gait toward the next little square, looking back at her expectantly.
“Yes, of course,” she said, and followed him.
“Now this at least demonstrates a more mature grasp of the sculptor’s art,” the dwarf said thoughtfully. He pointed to three monolithic pandoramas, multidimensional images of men and women illuminated in ghastly greens and blues. As they watched the huge shapes moved with painful slowness, contorting themselves in baroque and tormented poses.
At the last image the dwarf halted. The moving figures froze, then one groaned the name of the piece.
“ Mormo ,” it said, and resumed its posturing.
“ Mormo ,” the dwarf repeated, as though Reive might not have heard. “Late Kendall Browning—one of his last, as a matter of fact, before that tragedy with the poisoned apples. Always unwise to eat fruit with the Orsinate. Now I think that Mormo approaches the truly horrifying, not just the horrible. Don’t you agree?”
Reive grimaced. The pandorama showed the gigantic figure of a man devouring another, smaller man whose piteous screams were blunted by the sound of the giant’s teeth cracking his ribs. Time had caused the pandorama to suffer some fallout, so that the image fizzed and popped and every few moments the sound faded. Reive quickly looked away, and caught the dwarf staring at her with an intense expression shaded with something like approval.
“Strong stuff, eh?” he remarked, and began walking once more.
“Ye-es,” Reive replied, trying not to look back at the gruesome scene. They strolled for a few minutes in silence, Reive relaxing when they came to a fountain that smelled strongly of lime blossom.
“You’re new here,” the dwarf said a few minutes later. Reive was splashing water on her face. She glanced at the dwarf, then wiping her cheeks she nodded.
“Interesting eyes,” he said. He pressed his fingers to his forehead and bowed. “Rudyard Planck, always a pleasure.”
Reive stared at him, suddenly recalling Ceryl’s warnings. But the dwarf only stared at her with a slightly amused expression. Finally she said, “We are Reive.”
“Reive,” the dwarf repeated. He had hair of a dark reddish hue, like brick dust, and wore beautifully cut trousers of azure velvet and a vest trimmed with brilliant green piping. Around his neck dangled a heavy gold chain hung with the heraldic eye and letter of the pleasure cabinet. Something about him—perhaps the way he walked, with a hint of a swagger, or maybe it was that lurid green trim about his vest—struck Reive as being not so much the mark of a dandy as of a potentially dangerous individual playing at being one.
“Well, Reive, it is always a pleasure to talk with a fellow art lover.”
His voice dropped ironically. He bowed again and for a moment held her hand. His grasp was surprisingly solid for one so small. “I have to go now—some tedious business about our new Military Commandant Imperator—but I hope to see you again soon.”
Reive nodded dumbly, waving after him. She waited several minutes, until the little figure was lost to sight among the crowd gathering in the distance. Then she followed him down the boulevard, until at last she stood on the promenade that fanned in front of the Orsinate’s palace.
Beneath her feet the pale marble glistened, still damp from having been hosed earlier. Blue lightning whipped about the twin statues atop the palace, sending shivers of light across the dome. The air crackled, the scent of ozone nearly overpowering the scents of frangipani and lemon, ginger blossom and expensive cologne. Most of the vendors seemed to have moved here, and Reive was surprised to see many other commoners as well. The inevitable ’filers, of course, they would be at any public ceremony of note. But gynanders too, and biotechnicians still in their yolk-yellow smocks; somber women from the Chambers of Mercy and a small knot of moujiks glaring suspiciously at the splendor around them. She even glimpsed a solitary rasa, shuffling past in a faded set of clothes that no longer fit, its face set in that horrible rictus all rasas had, its sunken eyes flecked with luminous phosphorescence. Everyone looked uneasy, as though they had been plucked from their own levels and whisked up here, which was close to the truth of it. The Orsinate never wasted a major ceremony on their own staff. A few gaping moujiks and socially ambitious gynanders, the usual complement of eager ’filers—by the time they all returned to the tedium of their own levels, even the dullest execution or promotion would seem extravagant.
But this looked to be an extraordinary ceremony, even for the Orsinate. Anticipation shimmered in the air like heat. Reive could hear it in the whispered gossip of the galli, see it in the wide eyes of the courtesans and vavasours calling to each other eagerly from the palace steps. To keep the peace, members of the Reception Committee roamed about in their pinstriped suits. The entire Urban Cohort had been deployed. Reive ducked behind a column as a watchman rolled past, huge and shining as one of the Aviator’s aerocraft. Its immense metal head swiveled back and forth as it surveyed the promenade with its seven glittering eyes, and the pavement groaned beneath its weight.
When it was gone Reive stepped back onto the boulevard, subdued. The air had grown uncomfortably warm, the reek of the unseen ocean so thick she tasted it in the back of her throat. She thought of Ceryl, and looked around, foolishly hoping she might see her in the mob. But she saw nothing but seething faces and the occasional banner with Ucalegon’s fangéd wave thrust above the crowd. Her head thrummed; her eyes watered from the smoke drifting up from the vents. From the palace steps she could hear nervous laughter. Snatches of song trilled from a wireless.
“Welcome the Healing Wind!”
Someone jounced into her. A young coenbite, one of the novitiates who performed the ritual vivisections and other research functions in the Chambers of Mercy. Her eyes were wild, her hand stippled with blood where she clutched a jagged piece of plastic. A crude version of the Orsinate’s heraldic emblem had been painted on it, but with a lurid red line streaked across the eye. Beneath it swirled the gaudy whorls that symbolized Baratdaja the Healing Wind. “Death from Outside!” she shrieked.
Reive shoved her way past, ducking as the coenbite swung the sheet of plastic like a scythe. Behind her a man screamed and someone else laughed; but Reive was gone, forcing her way toward where the promenade ended in a cul-de-sac in front of the palace.
The crowd here was marginally more subdued. There were more priests—lesser functionaries from the Church of Christ Cadillac, wearing the chromium skullcaps of their faith; a number of indigo-clad galli from the Daughters of Graves, whistling and bowing before three huge cutout images of the margravines dangling from the front of the palace; several dozen Disciples of Blessed Narouz, their pale skirts cutting a wide white swath through the jumble of blue robes and silver chrome. Near the front of the crowd was a small group of coenbites, their yolk-yellow robes bloodstained and torn from
their ecstasies. Reive hastily retreated behind the galli, who seemed more intent upon a large hubble-bubble that they circled, giggling and smoking earnestly.
“Will you join us, holy child?” a galli called out to her. He made two circles with his fingers and brought them to his face like spectacles, then indicated Reive’s eyes. His laughter was not unkind.
Reive smiled shyly and shook her head. The galli shrugged and turned back to the waterpipe. The gynander felt a pang that they had not been more insistent—she could have been persuaded to join them. She wished she had been able to find Ceryl in the crowd. She wished she had stayed to talk with that other hermaphrodite, back by the gravator.
Everything here was overwhelming, almost frightening. She had been so young during last Æstival Tide, only four years old and still in the hermaphrodites’ creche on Virtues. All this clamor brought back her fear—the sight of the margravines, more beautiful and terrifying than she could imagine; the anticipation at the Lahatiel Gate, waiting for the huge doors to open onto the strand Outside; the charnel-house stench of the Compassionate Redeemer, masked by the smell of burning roses. She hugged her arms close to her chest and walked off by herself, staring at the palace gates.
From here she could pick out figures on the steps. Diplomats nodding coolly to each other. Emirate delators wringing their hands. Beside the lower entrances the Hierophantic Guard stood at attention, incense braziers burning at their feet. On an open colonnade near the main entrance, the Toxins Cabal had gathered to drink kehveh from tiny egg-shaped cups, pompous with their vocoders and lingua francas bleating and blinking. The pleasure cabinet spilled onto the patio, and Reive tried to spot Ceryl’s drab suit among the luminous gowns and greatcoats. Over all of it the eerie blue lightning flickered with the faintest crackling sound, as though someone tapped softly but insistently upon the domes arching overhead.
More and more people arrived. Diplomats and counselors and the entire Linguistics Cabal, myriad Orsinate bastards with their replicant guardians and court favorites in yellow mufti. Reive saw the dwarf Rudyard Planck at the very edge of the colonnade, shaking his head as a tall woman bent to whisper in his ear. Then suddenly a tinny fanfare blasted from the wireless speakers. Reive stood on tiptoe to see the Imperators parading from the palace gates. All seven of them, their yolk-yellow formal robes and scarlet sashes swaying about their legs. The last one, Sajur Panggang the Architect Imperator, wore a malachite band around his neck and emerald mourning bands on his wrists. They walked slowly to the front of the colonnade and stood there, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd with restrained nods.
It grew very quiet. The Toxins Cabal put down their little porcelain cups and stood in attentive silence. The members of the pleasure cabinet grew still, and turned their heads toward the main gate. Reive glanced back at the huge crowd gathered on the promenade. Banners hung limply above them, and thin streamers of dark smoke. Directly behind her the galli and Disciples and pontifices of Christ Cadillac seemed unusually alert, considering the abandoned hubble-bubbles and splintered remnants of candicaine pipettes that surrounded them.
Suddenly the air throbbed with a hollow wailing siren, as though the monstrous sculpture Mormo had been given voice. The echo died, then blared again. On the steps the diplomats and cabal members turned to the main gate, their faces taut. The crowd around Reive moved forward, but only a little; as though afraid to get too close to the palace. One of Blessed Narouz’s Disciples jostled the gynander. When she protested he looked down at her, then with a low cry moved away, making the ward against Ucalegon. As the siren wailed a third and final time, Reive hugged her arms close to her and wished she was back in her little room on Virtues.
Beneath the lapis-crowned arches of the main gate a woman stepped forward. She wore the dress leathers of an Aviator, crimson and black. Her sensory enhancer was pushed back onto her forehead like a crown. From her black-gloved hands rose a black standard, a huge triangular pennon emblazoned with a luminous silver moon. Across the moon was flung a pointed shape, like a spear or javelin, and flickering silver letters spelled out the motto of the defenders of the Ascendant Autocracy:
Oderint dum metuant
Let them hate, so long as they fear.
A moment later the Aviators marched through the gate.
Against the palace’s pale walls their gleaming leather jackets glowed deep crimson, like the inside of a beast’s mouth. The creak of their leathers echoed in the silence, a raw wind from the stars, and their metal-soled boots clashed like hail against the marble. From their brows their sensory enhancers rose like crowns of black glass and steel and sent darts of reflected lightning slashing through the air. The crowd gathered on the colonnade shrank from their approach, and Reive could hear all around her murmured imprecations to Blessed Narouz.
She shuddered. Without the enhancers to cover them, she could see what usually was hidden in those faces, something dreadful that the Aviators had glimpsed and now carried behind their eyes. Many of them were horribly scarred; but they refused surgery to correct their deformities, preferring to bear them into the fastnesses of space as grim reminders of their human origin. The bottom half of one woman’s face had been blown away. Steel and raw bone gaped beneath her upper jaw, and livid red tubes coiled about her neck. Her eyes as they gazed up at the NASNA standard were cold and dead as the dome’s false sky.
There were not many of the Aviators—Reive counted forty—but they seemed to fill the entire colonnade. The air that drifted down from them smelled of smoke and burning metal, and, very faintly, of charred meat.
Reive felt sick. She looked around to see if there was a way out of the crowd. Beside her two women from the Toxins Cabal whispered to each other. One of them caught Reive’s eye and stared back at her, the vocoder in her throat blinking yellow. She wore thigh-high boots of sullen yellow plasteen and a soiled fez. A grub-white puppet clung to her shoulder. It glared at the gynander, then very slowly opened its mouth to display a hideous pulpy throat.
Reive swallowed. But when the woman with the puppet continued to stare she took a deep breath, then asked, “What is it? What’s happening?”
“Don’t tell her, don’t tell her,” the puppet hissed.
“A promotion ceremony,” the woman replied. She gazed at Reive curiously, as though trying to recall where they might have met. The vocoder in her throat pulsed deep crimson as she slapped the puppet’s muzzle. “The new Aviator Imperator has been named by the Autocracy. The margravines are going to invest him.”
“A promotion,” Reive repeated, and looked away.
On the colonnade, the Aviator’s standard-bearer turned to face the main gate. Above the huge doorway graven letters began to glow, gold and then brilliant adamant, until the Ascendants’ motto shone out over the crowd like a fouga’s watchlights:
Let Us Raise A Somewhat Loftier Strain!
From the ground at Reive’s feet came a loud hiss. She gasped and stepped backward, then felt the chilly mist rising from enhancement ventricles in the pavement. A heavy sweet incense, like that used in the rites at Church Cadillac—myrrh, she thought at first, or pangloss. Laughter and curses as the narcotic fumes enveloped the crowd. Reive tried to hold her breath but gave up, gasping. The sweet scent burned the back of her throat, the chemicals flooding her system so quickly that her fingers felt numb and her eyes teared. But after a few breaths she felt amazingly elated; it was pangloss. All around her people beamed and nodded. The galli laughed and hugged each other. Even the dour Disciples of Blessed Narouz grinned and removed their fezes. Reive found herself beaming at the woman with the puppet, the puppet itself silenced by the euphoric incense but still glowering. When the gynander looked up again the crowd on the palace steps was cheering wildly.
Three figures strode across the plaza, tall and thin and wearing identical suits of video-gray sharkskin, severely cut. Conical crowns upon their foreheads made them seem even taller, crowns of gold bound with chrome and steel and embossed with the twin si
gils of the Prophets Rayburn and Mudhowi Sirrúk. Reive screamed along with the rest of the mob, pumping her fists in the air. The scent of pangloss grew thicker as the crowd shouted three names, the voices of the Aviators ringing above the others until the domes thundered with the sound—
Shiyung and Nike and ziz Orsina.
The Seraphim of Araboth: the Orsinate.
One by one the three sisters bowed, their crowns winking in the harsh light.
“Which one is—” Reive choked, grabbing the woman next to her; but then one of the figures on the plaza stepped forward, arms upraised. Sapphire lightning danced above her as she smiled.
“Shiyung!” the woman beside Reive screamed, the puppet whickering on her shoulder. “Shiyung!”
Reive nodded mutely. Of course. She should have recognized her from the nightly broadcasts—the ghee-yellow skin, the enormous slanted eyes, the mouth so thin and delicate that a particularly intricate form of calligraphy bore her name. Gazing upon her now, the gynander’s eyes filled with tears. She was so exquisitely beautiful, so good.
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