Centuries earlier, the tenth Orsinate dynasty had designed the Howarth Reception Area as quarters for political prisoners, men and women of considerable rank who surrendered or were captured during the unsettled months after the Third Shining.
None of the hostages ever returned to the Balkhash steppes or the jeweled shores of the Archipelago. A few of them eventually married into the Orsinate. Others became tutors, and a few even escaped to the lower levels. But most spent their lives and died in the Reception Area so that now, despite the quite-comfortable accommodations and the attentions of the Reception Committee, it was rumored to be haunted. Several guards claimed to have heard the click of mah-jongg tiles interspersed with soft laughter and the sound of something being poured onto the floor. Reive had only been there a few hours, but already she had seen the blue-tinged silhouette of a young man cross her room and pass through the wall, enter and cross again, as though pacing the outlines of a chamber that had long since been walled off from this one.
The Reception Committee treated her well, since she was a guest of ziz Orsina. The margravine disdained vulgar privations—they weakened her guests, most of whom were destined for the private torture of timoring. And for successful timoring, one must have some reserve of strength to call upon. So the Reception Committee brought Reive yoghurt and brandied loquats, and a tiny roasted quail, and watched politely while she ate on her bed.
“You can go. We won’t kill ourself,” the gynander sniffed.
The two guards shrugged and smiled, opening their mouths to show where their tongues had been removed, then tugging amiably at the long yellow sashes that hung from their waists.
“Fine,” said Reive, and turning back to her quail ignored them.
A minute later the steel door opened and a tall hooded figure strode in, followed by another figure in a black silk robe.
“Thank you, but we’ll see to her now,” the first announced. At sight of the rasa, the guards nearly fell down in astonishment. When they heard Shiyung’s voice they bowed, grunting and pounding the floor with their palms, then fled. The figure in the silk robe closed the door after them, staring out through the metal grate into the hallway. Reive gazed up silently, her mouth full. She choked when she recognized Shiyung Orsina and the rasa Imperator.
“Aghh—” The remains of her quail fell onto the mattress. The margravine shook her head and put a finger to her lips. Then, smiling conspiratorially, she carefully removed the empty plates from the bed and sat beside Reive.
“We’re your friends, Reive,” said Shiyung. She turned to the rasa and beamed, but Tast’annin only stared at Reive with cold blue eyes. Shiyung shrugged and continued, “I understand there was some—confusion—at a dream inquisition this evening. But you can tell us what really happened.”
Reive swallowed, stammering, “We can?” She tried not to wince as the margravine put her arm around her and shook her gently. She smelled of nucleic starter and amber. Reive thought she looked less beautiful than she did on the ’files.
“You can,” the Aviator intoned.
Reive’s voice quivered as she gazed at the rasa. “You—we saw you this morning. The Investiture—and your dream—”
Tast’annin stared down at the morphodite. The Reception Committee had removed the smudged makeup from her face. With her blank, sharp features and her long legs swinging from the edge of the bed, she looked like an effeminate young boy. He had never understood the vogue for hermaphrodites, found them slightly repellant in fact, with their soft round faces and vapid eyes. But this one seemed more alert than most—flippant even, despite her obvious fear. He spoke to her gently enough.
“I am—I was—Margalis Tast’annin. A NASNA Aviator First Class, now Aviator Imperator to the Orsinate.”
Nodding, Reive turned to the margravine. “And you’re Shiyung.”
The margravine smiled, tossing her hair back so that Reive could see her earrings, solid gold and so heavy that her lobes had distended a full inch from wearing them. The letter O and the Eye of Horus: the Orsinate’s insignia. “That’s right.”
The young one, Reive thought. She wondered if those earrings hurt. The crazy one.
Shiyung looked at her expectantly, “We’d like to help you, Reive. Is there anything we can do to help you?” She put her finger to the gynander’s chin and tilted Reive’s face toward her.
“Is there more to eat?”
Surprised, Shiyung drew back. Tast’annin made a small noise that might be laughter. “Those quail aren’t very big,” Reive said defensively.
“Ye-es,” said Shiyung. She frowned. “But—well, I was thinking more along the lines of, Could we perhaps make you more comfortable? Somewhere else?” Her voice rose suggestively.
“The margravine would like to rescue you,” explained the rasa. “If you remain here her sister is likely to have you executed in the morning.”
“Oh!” Reive sat up very straight. “We didn’t know. We thought—” She gestured at the neatly appointed room with its comfortable chairs and oil paintings and elegant china. “We thought she had forgiven us.”
Shiyung narrowed her eyes. “You haven’t been among us for very long, have you, Reive?”
“N-no.” She flushed and toyed with her hair.
“But you’re a pantomancer, surely you are aware of the significance of a dream of the Green Country?”
The gynander nodded slowly.
“We’ve known that dream,” she said. She glanced at the rasa staring at her sideways, like the cormorant in Zalophus’s tank, his eyes glittering feverishly. She turned to Shiyung. “We have scryed it twice now.”
“ Twice? ”
Reive cowered on the bed. “Yes.” It was as Ceryl had warned her, she would be executed at once, or used as one of ziz’s timorata —or, worst of all, given to the Compassionate Redeemer in the festival’s propitiary rites.
Shiyung turned to the rasa. “She says she’s scryed it twice.”
“So I heard.”
Shiyung clasped her elegant white hands, looking around the small room as though she expected it to disappear in a mist. “But—this is incredible! The same dream, that dream, twice? Margalis, this could—what does this mean? ”
Tast’annin shrugged, his kimono sliding to reveal the ribbed metal cage of his chest. “It could mean nothing. Or it could mean this morphodite is lying. Or it could be a harbinger of evil things not predicated by your Architects. What do you think it means?”
Shiyung bit her lip. “The ’file of Fasidin the Depraved says that to dream of the Green Country is to dream of the el-bajdia, the engulfing wilderness. It is a terrible omen.” She reached for the gynander and pulled her toward her and for the first time Reive clearly saw the margravine’s eyes: wide and childlike and an alarming shade of emerald. “Come, Reive—we’ll talk someplace safer.”
The gynander cast a final, longing look at her empty plate. “If anyone passes us you’re to keep your head down and say nothing,” whispered the margravine. The three of them left the Howarth Reception Area and hurried down the private gravator that would bring them to Shiyung’s chambers.
Shiyung’s quarters were larger than any Reive had ever seen, larger and hotter and filled with animals, great soft-bellied cats that skulked about the corners and seemed as intent as Reive upon finding something to eat. On the walls hung antique tapestries in somber shades of brownish-red, like dried blood or dung. The room smelled of sandalwood and damp fur, and a faint breeze blew down from vents in the ceiling.
“But why would you say these things about my sister?” Shiyung asked softly. She sat very close to the gynander and stroked her thigh absently as she spoke, tracing the imprint of a bruise on Reive’s white skin.
“Because it’s true,” Reive said sullenly for the tenth time. “We saw the Green Country in her dream. It is in her eyes as well, you have only to look to see it. Please, can we please have something to drink?”
Shiyung pursed her lips in annoyance, then clicked her fi
ngers. Her server listed into the room, and the caracal moaned softly. “Me-suh, bring us some of that aquavit and whatever else there is—fruit or something.”
Frowning, the margravine stood and paced. Behind Reive stood the rasa, so silent that the gynander held her breath, to see if she could hear him breathing; but she heard nothing. His pale eyes glittered as he watched her, and it seemed that his irises bloomed a deeper blue as Shiyung grew more agitated.
The margravine stopped and gazed sharply at Reive.
“Now I can tell you, morphodite, that my sister ziz would be the last person in Araboth to have that dream. Unlike me she has no interest whatsoever in theological matters, and she is not—shall we say—superstitious. Now I would have thought this was a more commonplace dream, an omen perhaps of unrest during the upcoming holiday. But I find it very interesting that you interpreted it so differently, especially on the eve of Æstival Tide. There are many interesting things about you. For instance, how is it that you came to this level without a sponsor? You were not on the guest list for that inquisition—”
“We were invited—” Reive tugged at the small mesh purse hanging about her waist and pulled out Tatsun Frizer’s allurian calling card. “See?”
Shiyung took the card and read it, then tossed it aside. “Frizer. She’s in Blessed Narouz’s Refinery. How do you know her?”
Reive started to explain about that morning: the walk along the boulevard, the Investiture, and the woman with the puppet who had given her the card. But as she started to speak Tast’annin’s face trapped her, like the black mirrors set by moujiks to capture the souls of the dead. “We—we don’t know,” she stammered.
“She will not harm you, Reive,” the rasa said softly. He moved closer to her and placed one gloved hand upon her knee. He stroked her leg gently, as Shiyung toyed with her caracal. “If what you said was true—if ziz really did have a prophetic dream—why that is quite an unusual circumstance, and you must understand better than we do what that portends. Don’t you, Reive?”
His voice had grown soft, its monotone and the scent of sandalwood lulling her so that her eyelids drooped and she let herself sink backward into the pillows. She said nothing, her mouth shaping a silent O as the rasa continued.
“You read my dream without any difficulty—perhaps a rasa’s dreams are not so challenging as those others—and so now I will tell you something, Reive. I think you were right. I think ziz did have the dream of the Green Country.”
Shiyung made a small noise, whether of disapproval or restrained excitement the gynander couldn’t tell. Tast’annin’s hand upon her thigh tightened, squeezing more and more forcefully until Reive cried out. But he did not seem to notice, only went on. speaking in his calm toneless voice.
“You must understand, I have seen before what happens when people do not pay attention to their dreams. ziz and her clever siblings have been supporting research in distant places, facilities in the wilderness where it was thought safe to perform some rather cruel acts—upon children, among others. I daresay Shiyung has forgotten all about that little project of hers—”
Shiyung blinked her calm green eyes and shook her head. “Children? Which one was that?”
“The Human Engineering Laboratory, The Harrow Effect, that was what they called it. A method of inducing multiple personalities and then using the subjects in emotive engram therapy. Psychic vampires, capable of reading the emotions and memories of others. They would make ideal spies and terrorists for the Orsinate, perhaps even help them to escape their servitude to the Ascendant Autocracy. Only the subjects were so unstable that they often went mad and killed themselves, or induced suicide and madness in others.”
Shiyung furrowed her brow, her little mouth pursed into a frown. The rasa’s voice rose slightly.
“See, Reive! She doesn’t even remember. But I recall when Shiyung was so excited about the Harrow Effect that she couldn’t—well, she couldn’t do much of anything. She and her sisters had great plans—the Human Engineering Laboratory would be a testing ground, they would go on to have child farms where they would raise entire armies of disassociated terrorists, ready to kill and be killed without a single thought. Certainly without a single thought from the Orsinate. They would seize control once more of the ancient capital—ah, see, Reive, she remembers that part—and install a new Governor there, someone chosen expressly for that purpose from the highest ranks of the NASNA Academy. And of course, eventually the Orsinate would move there, at least one of them would—the youngest, perhaps, she was known for a certain recklessness that sometimes passed as foresight. She would not be afraid to go into the wilderness and live in the ruins, once the ruins had been cleaned up a bit—she may be feckless, but she is also a fastidious young woman.”
The rasa’s voice had grown quite loud. When he fell silent its echo filled the room like a bell clanging. Beneath his fingers dark welts had sprung up on Reive’s leg. She covered her face with her hands, biting her lip to keep from crying out again. Abruptly he let go of her. With a cry she backed away from him until she bumped into the wall.
From where she reclined against a stack of pillows, Shiyung stared at Tast’annin, her needle-thin eyebrows raised above guileless eyes. “I had forgotten about that project,” she said. “Whatever happened to those people?”
“They are all dead,” the rasa replied. Reive huddled against the wall, shivering. How could the margravine stand it, listening to it— him —talk like this? The sound of his voice was enough to drive Reive mad; and the way he looked at Shiyung… Reive crossed her hands across her chest and prayed the rasa would forget about her, forget she had ever come here.
The rasa crossed the room to stand above Shiyung. With one gloved hand he reached to caress her hair, letting it slide between his fingers in a long black stream. “Or most of them are, at any rate. A few escaped; at least one that I know of. It’s ironic, isn’t it? That little diversion of yours caused so much misery and destruction; and yet you don’t even remember it…”
Shiyung closed her eyes, arching her neck against the rasa’s hand. “I remember it now,” she said, her voice thick with a dreamy petulance. “I got the idea from the dream inquisitions, it all seemed to tie in somehow….”
The rasa stared at her with his bloodless gaze. “It does tie in,” he agreed. Shiyung’s hair gleamed within the fingers of his leather glove, jet against ebony. “I like it when things connect like that: I have a rather Jesuitical predilection for order. The Academy does that to one,” he added.
Shiyung gave a small sharp gasp. Not, as Reive first thought, because of what he had said, but because the rasa’s hand had moved slowly, almost lovingly, from her hair to her neck. His fingers lay across her throat, dull black against her moon-white skin.
“Margalis,” Shiyung choked. At first Reive thought she was teasing, but then she saw that one of the rasa’s hands had tightened around her throat; the other was pulling her up by her hair, until she staggered to her feet.
“Mar-ga-lis —” she said again, thickly, swallowing the name so that Reive could barely hear her.
“Wait—” the gynander said hoarsely, clutching her hands in her lap. “No—we—please, no —”
The rasa stood beside Shiyung now, like a shadowy figure manipulating a life-size puppet. With his gloved hand he tugged her head back, her hair flowing through his fingers like dark water. His other hand clenched her throat until a rivulet of blood sprang from between two metal fingers, sending a fine red spray upon his robes. The margravine’s eyes bulged, her mouth twisted as she stared at Reive, hands slapping frantically at the air. Reive fell back against the floor, gasping, and still it went on, the rasa tightening his grip upon Shiyung’s throat as he tugged slowly and steadily at her scalp.
And then, with a sound like shears cutting through very heavy cloth, he yanked sharply at her head. Reive shrieked and covered her mouth. The rasa let go of that cascade of ebony hair, pushed the head forward until it lolled crookedly upon one s
houlder so that she stared dully at the gynander. The emerald irises were swallowed by watery red. A fine line of spit ran from the corner of her mouth to her chin, joined the thin stream of blood that trickled from between dark bruises upon her throat. Gently the rasa shook her by the shoulders; a sudden gout of blood poured from her mouth to splash his boots.
“There,” said the rasa. He pulled the corpse heavily across the room and propped it against some pillows. He moved Shiyung’s hands to her breast, then crouched to spread her hair in a jet fan across her shoulders. “You could almost imagine she is a real woman.”
The gynander clutched her stomach, Shiyung’s name catching in her throat. Shiyung’s caracal crossed the room, nosed at the corpse and growled plaintively. It grew unbearably hot. Sweat pooled beneath Reive’s breasts and trickled onto her stomach. There was a faint sound, like a far-off explosion. The tapestries on the wall shivered as though a figure moved behind them.
The rasa stood, his limbs creaking, and let one hand linger upon Shiyung’s cheek. Finally he said, “I must go now.”
Reive choked back a scream. “ Go? But where will you take us, what—”
“You must stay here.” As he stared down at her Reive saw her own face reflected in that horrible blank mask. “If you try to flee they will only find you that much sooner. Here you might have time to get something to eat.”
Reive’s teeth chattered so that she could barely speak. At her feet the caracal licked Shiyung’s eyes. “B-but if we stay they will blame us, they will think we killed her—”
The rasa shook his head. “You must admit, it does seem rather strange—your apocalyptic reading of ziz’s dream and then your escape from the Reception Area, and whatever are you doing here in Shiyung’s chambers?”
Reive began to weep, as the rasa went on, “But they would not blame me, even if I stayed. Because, you see, a rasa has no volition of its own: no will to love, or hope, or seek vengeance. It would be impossible for me to kill the margravine, or anyone else.”
“But then how…?”
Æstival Tide w-2 Page 18