Shiyung Orsina. Not the ruler in name of Araboth, but the beloved of the people, the idol of the Aviators and the Children of Mercy, the lover of all those princes and women and soldiers whose ashes now mingled with the fine sandalwood powder she brushed upon her shoulders each evening, before she took into her bed the next of her countless lovers. She stood before them with her arms upheld triumphantly and let the lightning play in the air above her head, laughing as the crowd cheered her and the Aviators shouted “Shiyung!” until finally ziz stepped forward and with a tight little smile took her sister’s hand. Nike remained a few feet away from them, gazing distractedly up at the domes. ziz cleared her throat. Then,
“Greetings, Seraphim! Cherubim and Thrones and Dominations, Virtues and Powers and Principalities!”
Her heavily amplified voice rang out, and the cheering subsided.
“We are here today to celebrate a triumph—to celebrate two triumphs. One of them a military conquest, and the other a scientific victory, no less than a triumph over death itself.”
Her words were swallowed by a tremendous roar from the Aviators. ziz looked startled and glanced at Shiyung. But her sister only smiled. Nike remained standing by herself, nodding thoughtfully.
“A triumph over death itself,” ziz repeated. For an instant Reive thought she glowered at Shiyung; but then ziz continued, “You will recall that, nearly a year ago, our military forces set out to retake the ancient capital from those barbarians who have held it from us for nearly four hundred years…”
Reive recalled no such thing. She had thought the last military expedition was to the Archipelago—or was it the desert?—but then janissary forces went out on maneuvers so often that she had lost count. As for the ancient capital, she could remember only vague rumors. A great weapons storehouse had been there once, but the entire city was guarded by monsters, feral mutated creatures far worse than anything the Ascendants had created in their laboratories.
But these, of course, were rumors. Now it seemed that ziz was telling them the truth of the matter.
“… have always known the Capital City to be of unparalleled strategic importance, in addition to the ancient weapons holdings there. Now those weapons are ours: thanks, in large part to the bravery and cunning employed by someone who is well known to all of you.
“Single-handedly, this brilliant military hero entered that ghastly place, after his accompanying battalion was slain by traitors within the City itself.”
The gynander stood on tiptoe, striving vainly to see this military paragon. ziz’s voice rang out like a clarion, so full of pride and wonder that Reive’s scalp prickled.
“There, in the ruins of the ancients, he feigned madness and battled hordes of ghouls—”
ziz’s voice dropped, and she drew a shaking hand to her cheek—
“—there, he was slain by an assassin’s bullet.”
ziz lowered her gaze. Behind her the other two margravines stood soberly, Nike staring blankly at the mob, Shiyung so pale beneath her conical crown that it seemed she might faint. In the long silence that followed, the Aviators stirred, their heads moving restively as though seeking the assassin within the crowd, and Reive cowered beneath their probing eyes.
At last ziz raised her head again. “But we were not defeated. By sheerest fortune, a janissary troop and Aviator battalion had been dispatched from Araboth, and arrived just hours after our hero’s death. Our troops found no resistance from the cowards and monsters within the City. Those troops are there now, having found and restored the ancient armories and reclaimed the Capital as part of the Ascendant Empire.
“As for the man who made all of this possible— his tragedy has been turned into the greater victory. As you well know, my sister, the margravine Shiyung, has long toiled in the Chambers of Mercy, where she has made it her duty to learn all that our Sciences can teach her of the mysteries of life and death. As a new Capital will be born under the Ascendants’ rule, so from Shiyung’s hands a still greater hero has emerged, our new Aviator Imperator!”
At this a terrible wailing cry raked the air, as the Aviators shrieked and raised their black-clad hands, fingers curling and uncurling in their raptor’s salute while lightning flickered in the domes. For a full minute their outcry drowned all other sounds, until Reive felt deafened by it and covered her ears, staring at the ground and trying to keep from weeping with fright.
Then abruptly the Aviators were silenced. Reive looked up warily and saw that ziz had stepped back on the platform, a helpless expression on her face. Shiyung paced forward, making calming motions toward the Aviators. She stopped and stood with her hands at her sides, her beautiful face lifted so that indigo shadows edged the planes of her cheeks and her eyes were lit by the lightning playing overhead. Behind her Nike and ziz were silent.
It had grown so quiet that Reive could hear the breathing of everyone around her, the woman with her wheezing puppet, the nervous whispers of the galli. On the colonnade the Aviators slowly raised their fists. As though moving in a dream, one by one the margravines returned their salute, and turned to face the main gate.
In the great doorway behind them something appeared, a shadow that resolved into cadaverous figures framed by the gold and lapis columns. The figures paused in the doorway: six aardmen stooping beneath the burden of a long palanquin of jet and steel. About their necks gleamed the monitors that all the Orsinate’s personal geneslaves wore, thorns of steel and glittering ampules forming a corona about their anguished faces. Saliva fell from their muzzles in long streams. Even from the boulevard Reive could smell them, carrion and the acrid scent of chemicals draining from their sedative ampules, the cloying smell of the jasmine oil that had been laved onto their flanks. As they waited they tossed their heads, and one howled as the long barbs on its collar tore its neck. Then they stalked onto the plaza, their sloping shoulders raw beneath the palanquin’s weight. Reive could feel the woman next to her whispering an imprecation to Blessed Narouz, and somewhere in the crowd a man cried out as the aardmen staggered to the very edge of the raised colonnade.
The palanquin that they carried was tall, set with columns of metal wrapped with shining spikes that branched up like the limbs of a stricken tree. In the center of the litter stood a man. He held two of the columns for balance, and swayed as they bore him forward. Reive shook her head—was this a prisoner? Then she saw that he was not bound. What she had thought were cuffs about his wrists and ankles were actually some sort of enhancers. His face too was covered by a sensory enhancer, its blank black surface whipped with reflecting light. A tunic of crimson leather hung to his knees. One hand was sheathed in crimson leather, but the other was not. It was at that second hand that Reive stared, a hand so pale it had a greenish cast. It was large, with tapering fingers, the skin shiny as though it had been burned and the grafts had not taken well. Blue light winked from a ring as the man raised his hand to adjust his enhancer. He was a very tall man, but somewhat stooped, as though he had for a long time been trapped in some enclosed space. It was an Aviator’s enhancer that covered his face, and on his breast shone the Aviators’ blighted moon.
When they had reached the end of the plaza the aardmen halted. They lowered the palanquin clumsily, their huge-knuckled paws fumbling over its narrow struts and spars. The margravines watched in silence, though Shiyung’s eyes glittered and she smiled rapturously. Several children in the Orsinate’s cortege began to cry.
The aardmen crouched beside the litter and glared up at the man, their vestigial tails switching. He turned to face them, but it was impossible to see what he looked like, because of the enhancer covering his face. After a long moment he stepped to the ground. His legs moved stiffly, as though he were unaccustomed to walking. Reive wanted to look away but could not. A sibilant rush came from beneath her feet. The heady incense of pangloss faded; the ventricles began pumping a chill mist that smelled of ozone and adrenoleen. Reive’s heart pumped as well, louder and louder until she realized that she was shout
ing in time to its beat. When she looked around, her head ringing, everyone else was shouting as well.
Slowly the man paced the length of the plaza, until he stood before Shiyung Orsina. The crowd erupted into roars and cheers, and the Aviators began chanting a name.
Reive shivered. Every atom of her being pulsed and her mouth had opened to cry out, but now no sound came. She felt horrible, and deathly cold, as though she had been imprisoned within one of the cells where the rasas were regenerated. The adrenoleen made her eyes water. On the colonnade Shiyung cried aloud, her hands sweeping through the air. Reive could not hear her words but the margravine’s tone was exultant. As Shiyung laughed the light bounced from her crown in waves of gold and blue.
With short, jerky motions the Aviator greeted her, his fingers curling and opening in the Aviator’s salute. The cheers subsided as Shiyung straightened, her face suddenly composed into an austere mask. Clumsy as the aardmen, the Aviator fell to one knee, then rose, took her extended hand, and bent his masked head to mime kissing it.
At that Shiyung smiled—a radiant smile, a smile of utter triumph. She waited until he got to his feet again, then turned, presenting him first to her sisters, then to the other Aviators, and finally to the crowd. Through all the cheering, Reive still could not make out his name. Her head throbbed as though she had been bludgeoned. The woman beside her was weeping.
Shiyung turned to the Aviator, stood on tiptoe as though she were going to kiss him. Instead her white hands grasped the enhancer covering his face. With a swift motion she removed it and held it up for the crowd to see. Then she smashed the enhancer upon her knee. Eddies of blue sparks fell about her legs. Behind her the man’s head remained lowered as Shiyung dropped the shards of the broken mask and raised her white arms. She cried out again, her voice so thin and cruel that the gynander trembled.
An awful dread filled Reive, a sense of such horror and foreboding that not even the rush of adrenoleen could quell it. As the Aviator stepped forward, the remains of his enhancer crunched beneath his boots. Reive could hear the woman beside her whispering a name. When he reached the edge of the plaza the Aviator slowly raised his head.
His face was gone. In its place was a curved plate of red metal. Across its smooth surface reflected lightning streamed like blood. No mouth, no nose, earless, hairless; an unbroken plane of crimson metal, like the face of the most primitive kind of replicant. Only from within this mask two eyes glowed. Human eyes, so pale they were nearly transparent, as though every earthly thought and hope had been flushed from them. The mask was horrifying in its utter impassiveness, all the more so because of the dreadful orbs that stared out from it, like the eyes of a cadaver animated and made to look upon its image in a mirror. Beside Reive the woman babbled, and she heard other horrified voices—
“… a rasa! She made him a rasa!…”
“… died but rehabilitated him. In her labs—a game, just like a game to—”
“… revenge, she never forgave him for breaking with her and now look at him…”
Reive turned wild-eyed to the woman beside her—
“But who is he? Who did she do this to?”
—and the puppet shrieked a name,
“ Tast’annin, the Aviator Imperator Tast’annin! ”
Everywhere Reive heard the name taken up, the Aviators pounding their feet in unison and shouting until the very columns of the palace shuddered. Reive clutched the woman beside her to keep from being trampled in the crush of people seething forward to glimpse him—
Tast’annin: the Aviator Imperator Margalis Tast’annin.
The madman who had once been their greatest military commander; the Academy student who had been Shiyung’s lover and the victor of the Archipelago Conflict.
But his own recent history was a lie. He had been no hero in the Capital. Captured and tortured by that City’s keepers, he had been released, insane, and then had sought to betray his Ascendant masters by seizing the City for himself. He had died ignobly; but the rest at least was true—the Ascendant janissaries arrived to conquer a city already in flames, and had borne him back to Araboth as a prize for their mistress.
It was all a joke to her. Seeing the corpse of her lover brought to her on a stinking pallet—his head blackened with his own blood, brain tissue a gray lace across his shattered scalp—had she felt any sorrow, any remorse for him at all?
“Margalis,” she had whispered, and bent to touch the pulp of gray and white beneath his eye. “My dear Margalis.”
And she had laughed, softly at first, and then more loudly, until her serving girl had fled at the note, of venomous triumph in her voice.
Her vengeance had been carefully worked out. She had made him a rasa, a living corpse subject to her command—the ideal creature, she had thought, to be Military Imperator. Now Shiyung stepped back so that the Aviator Imperator could bow. His voice, heavily amplified and bloodless as a stone, echoed across the boulevard as he greeted the crowd. Beside him Shiyung stood straight and shining as a young girl, her sisters impassive behind her.
The crowd grew momentarily quiet, listening to the rasa’s hollow tones. Then, his brief salutation complete, the Aviator Imperator raised his empty face and gave Shiyung a final salute. His hand glowed white as a corpse-candle as it formed a raptor’s claws, while all of Seraphim roared.
Only Reive remained silent, staring frightened and confused at the figures on the colonnade.
Because she knew that it was impossible for any rasa to feel or express a human emotion, or retain anything but a fleeting memory of its former self.
But—somehow, impossibly—the eyes that stared at Shiyung from within this Aviator’s shining metal mask radiated an unmistakable and terrifying hatred.
Chapter 4
A DREAM IN THE WRONG CHAMBER
NASRANI ORSINA HAD DISAPPEARED . After Hobi stumbled from the gravator he’d turned to say something to his guide. But he saw only the gravator dropping, and a large pale hand waving from behind its sliver of amethyst window. In an instant that too fell from sight. The boy stared open-mouthed, his face reflected in the chromium awning above the gravator entrance. When the machine did not return, he shoved his hands in his pockets and dispiritedly walked home.
The dank air from the Undercity had saturated his clothes with the smells of mud and mildew. After the darkness of Angels the lights of Cherubim hurt his eyes, too bright and too many of them. He kept his head down and his eyes half-shut, ignoring the hissing of the ventricles at his feet, the distant booming sound of cheers from the level above. He was trying to remember everything about the nemosyne—her face; the feel of cool glass beneath his cheek; her faint ozone smell.
He did not notice the new posters tacked to the wall near his home. EMBRACE UCALEGON: WELCOME THE HEALING WIND! one said; and another DEATH TO THE HERETICAL TYRANTS! He did not notice where a glass brick had fallen from the base of one of the neighboring houses, or where a stream of water like a silvery filament trickled from the gap left in the wall.
Inside, the replicant Khum greeted him in a hollow voice, reminding him that he was supposed to attend an investiture on Seraphim. Hobi shook his head impatiently, waving the replicant away from him, and headed for his room. When he glanced back he saw that he’d tracked some black stuff across the chamber’s white-tiled floor. He stooped to touch it, raised his fingers and sniffed.
Earth. In the hallway’s glaring night-lights it looked very black and foul. He grimaced and wiped his fingers on his trousers.
“Clean this up, Khum,” he ordered, and went into the main room.
His father was not there. Sajur must have gone directly from the ceremony to whatever celebrations followed. In the hall behind Hobi, Khum stood obediently, his bronze muzzle raised as he intoned in his harsh voice, “Sajur Panggang has requested that you join him immediately in the Four Hundredth Room. ziz Orsina has called an inquisition to celebrate the Investiture of the new Aviator Imperator.”
Hobi made a face.
“Fine.” He hurried down the hall.
But as he passed his father’s study he paused. For the first time in months, the door was ajar. Not only that, it had been propped open with a chunk of malachite. Hobi stared at the polished green stone, trying to figure out what obscure message it might hold for him. Then he entered the room.
It was as always; the Architects buzzing and clicking as glowing scrolls of numbers and architectural renderings moved across their screens. Beneath the mercury lamp on his father’s desk several spent ampules of amphaze were scattered. Hobi picked one up and sniffed it, then glanced at the monitor on the desk.
There was a message on the screen. The violet letters flickered the way they did when an urgent missive from the margravines was displayed; but there was no sign of the Orsinate’s emblem, no flowing script or crabbed hand to indicate Shiyung or ziz’s signature. Only this, spelled out in capitals—
ONE TREMBLES TO THINK OF THAT MYSTERIOUS THING IN THE SOUL, WHICH SEEMS TO ACKNOWLEDGE NO HUMAN JURISDICTION BUT, IN SPITE OF THE INDIVIDUAL’S OWN INNOCENT SELF, WILL STILL DREAM HORRID DREAMS, AND MUTTER UNMENTIONABLE THOUGHTS.
“ Huh? ”
Hobi frowned, leaning forward until the letters blurred in front of him. He read it again, then a third time. He was reaching for the handles of the imprimatur to record it when the message disappeared, replaced by a violet string of numerals.
He swore, switched the imprimatur on anyway, but of course the message was lost. He tried to recall what it had said—something about dreams, horrible thoughts—and felt cold.
A warning—for his father? But there had been that open door.
From his father?
He cursed again, more loudly, and glanced at the other screens. He thought of what Nasrani had said of his own education—“ I had the finest tutors ”—and wished that he had learned to understand the meaningless figures and renderings that the Architects produced without end as they maintained the city.
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