Æstival Tide w-2

by Elizabeth Hand

  “No,” Reive agreed wistfully. The word sacrifice made her feel unhappy again. She rubbed her bare scalp gingerly, wincing. “They won’t change their minds?” There was not much hope in her voice.

  “God, no.” Rudyard smiled at the Archbishop staring back at them. To Reive it looked like he was baring his teeth. “That would mean they were capable of mercy, and there has not been an Orsina capable of that since Simon ez-Zeyma had his twin sons smothered rather than watch them die of the plague.”

  “But Shiyung—”

  “Shiyung was capricious and anxious to be disassociated from her sisters,” Rudyard said sternly. “Not always a bad thing but certainly not admirable in itself, and certainly not to be confused with mercy. For example, I observed once when she had the eyeteeth yanked from—”

  But the Archbishop had turned and was now quite openly frowning at them.

  “— must go, discuss this further at the moon viewing tonight on the Fourteenth Promenade,” Reive heard her say to the hagiographer. “Forgive me,” she announced loudly to Reive and Rudyard in tones that made it clear who she thought should be apologizing. At her side the precentor nodded anxiously. “The scribe was inquiring after your lineage. I told him it was immaterial and any genetic anomalies, apart of course from the obvious ones, would no doubt turn up in the autopsy, if of course they’re able to perform one.”

  Rudyard bared his teeth again, this time in a manner less suggestive of goodwill. “I still believe that if you contacted Sajur Panggang—”

  “Oh!” The precentor looked startled, then smoothed the folds of her jumpsuit and gazed at the floor. “The Architect Imperator is dead. Didn’t you hear? A suicide. He died right in front of the margravines.”

  Rudyard Planck’s mouth drooped open and he blinked. “Sajur? But he would never—I can’t imagine—”

  Another tremor shook the level. Reive gasped and Rudyard took her arm. The Archbishop and the precentor stared at each other, the Archbishop’s eyebrows raised in concern but not alarm.

  “Now that may have something to do with Panggang’s departure,” she announced, turning and heading for a doorway clustered with softly chattering people. “Something else that will come out in an autopsy, no doubt. Now!”

  She clapped her hands, the sound echoing like a crash through the Narthex. Several people gathered by the door jumped and looked around nervously. At sight of the Archbishop and her companions they turned and, whispering, walked into the next chamber.

  “Good morning!” the Archbishop boomed. “Sister Katherine—”

  A plump figure wearing the dark spectacles and green mourning dress of the Daughters of Graves stepped forward, pressing fist to chin in greeting. He was heavily scented with attar-of-roses. “Your Eminence,” he said in a soft high voice, raising his hood to show a round face whitened with maquillage. “We have been waiting.”

  The Archbishop returned his greeting respectfully, then swept her arm out to indicate Reive. “The prisoners are here. You may report to the margravines and tell them we are on our way in.”

  The galli turned to Reive. He raised his dark spectacles to reveal a pair of bright black eyes, and gazed at her with a near-worshipful expression.

  “A true hermaphrodite,” he murmured, shaking his head. “We are so blessed, this offering will no doubt subdue the tumult in the earth….”

  His voice trailed off as the walls around them trembled, and he raised his eyes to the Archbishop. “There is talk among the lower levels of fleeing the city when the Gate opens,” he confided. “A residential neighborhood on Powers collapsed two hours ago. They say two hundred died, and more would have been killed had they not already left for the Lahatiel Gate.”

  “Mmm.” The Archbishop looked about distractedly. At her feet Rudyard Planck stared up at the galli, and suddenly asked, “Do you think I could have a drink? Some brandy or Amity?”

  The galli looked surprised, glancing down at Rudyard for the first time. “Oh! The other prisoner, of course. Yes, I think I could get you a drink. I’ll go tell them you’ve arrived.”

  He walked off in a haze of scent. After conferring for a moment with the precentor, the Archbishop turned to the prisoners and gestured toward the door. “Please,” she suggested, and waited for them to pass.

  As she stumbled through the door Reive blinked at the sudden brightness and turned to Rudyard. “Is this—?”

  He nodded, stepped close enough to take her hand. Behind them the Archbishop and precentor walked slowly, talking in quiet tones. “This is the Narthex proper,” the dwarf explained, waving his plump hand to indicate the rows of bronze columns, chalked with dust and verdigris, leading to a sort of balcony where a small crowd waited. “We’re almost directly above the Redeemer’s pen here, and that viewing balcony overlooks the Gate. When it opens you’ll get quite an impressive view of the sea.”

  Reive gazed openmouthed at the ceiling, so high overhead that it hurt to crane her neck. Huge skylights of some tawny glass let in golden light that flowed in glossy waves down the columns and across the copper floor. It was by far the most beautiful place she had ever seen, more beautiful even than the most elaborate vivarium dioramas. Rudyard looked at her rapt expression and smiled gently.

  “It is an honor, in a way,” he said, and sighed. “I’ve only been here a few times before—twice in that one year—and so I never had the chance to grow tired of it. And you don’t see the same faces here, either. Mostly religious types that the Orsinate can’t be bothered with more than once a decade. Like them—” He hooked a thumb in the direction of the two walking behind them, the Archbishop’s robes rustling against the floor. “If it wasn’t for the circumstances you might enjoy it.”

  Reive nodded. As they grew nearer to the balcony a wind rose, warm and strong enough to send Reive’s linen shift flapping. The dwarf explained, “They’ll be starting to depressurize the area around the Gate. I heard that one year they forgot, and when they opened it hundreds of people were sucked down the steps. Quite a happy occasion for the Redeemer.”

  “ Now —”

  The Archbishop’s voice sounded unnaturally loud. The prisoners stopped, and Rudyard squeezed the gynander’s hand. “I’m sorry we didn’t have more time to talk about pleasant things,” he said sadly.

  Reive gazed at him, her own sorrow suddenly so great she didn’t think she could bear it. She wanted to give him something, something to thank him for being her friend, however briefly.

  “Our own dreams,” she said of a sudden. She drew him to her face, close enough that she could whisper in his small pink ear. “We have dreamed of this thing, of the Green Country, and Zalophus told us that the city is falling. But there is something else—”

  She barely had time to finish before the Archbishop was there behind them, motioning for them to hurry through the portal.

  “—this thing, Rudyard Planck, and it is very strange: in all of this we did not dream of our own death.”

  On the balcony that was the Narthex of the Redeemer stood the surviving female members of the Orsinate, surrounded by high-ranking members of the clergy and one or two diplomats. A score of Aviators ranged silently along the balcony rail, their dark masks winking in the golden light. Alone among those gathered here they wore no green, only their same somber uniforms of shining black and crimson leather. There were fewer guests than usual—Shiyung’s murder had cast a pall over the festivities—and the destructive tremors that had racked the city for the last thirty-six hours had quelled some long-planned parties, though others were just getting under way on the upper levels. ziz wore full Æstival regalia—lapis crown, emerald robes encrusted with metal pointelles and star-shaped cutouts, high collar spiked with stiff hollow skewers of gold and green and sapphire-blue. Stunning raiment, created for the margravines of the Fifth Dynasty, when tailoring briefly eclipsed all other interests in the palace. The vestments were all but un-wearable, and indeed Nike had refused to garb herself in anything more striking than a plain blac
k suit, which admittedly set off her pallor and her crown to good effect. For the last Feast of Fear Shiyung had also forsworn the traditional garb, but ziz felt that this was a mistake: the populace set great store by appearances and ritual. So after leaving the Gryphons she had spent the best part of an hour being fitted by her handmaid. She had also been careful to wear beneath it all a sturdy catsuit and boots. Since there had never been any need to travel outside the palace she had no traveling bags, but assumed the Gryphon would quickly enough bring her to the safety of one of the nearer Aviator command posts, where she could better equip herself and make plans for outfitting the Orsinate in exile.

  Beside her, Nike stared out over the balcony at the throng gathering below. She was unusually silent. ziz attributed this to morpha, and in fact Nike had swallowed so many vials that her tongue was blue and she had difficulty speaking. But the truth was she had not recovered from freeing Shiyung’s corpse from the regeneration tank. For hours now all she had been able to see, floating between her inner eye and the ghostly shapes of things in the real world around her, was that bloated face and its ghastly staring eyes. And she was unable to stop brooding about the gynander. She was certain it was a thing of ill omen, but whether it would be worse to kill it or let it live, she couldn’t decide. Probably ziz was right, and the ritual sacrifice to the Redeemer would both propitiate the storm and rid Araboth of an unlucky heteroclite. But still, the gynander was a true Orsina, with as much pure blood as Nike herself; and there were no other heirs. With the entire city shaking all around them like a jelly, it was hard to believe that anything good would come of whatever was to be enacted.

  From below came a long wailing cry like that of the muzzein, taken up by the thousands of people gathered at the foot of the Lahatiel Gate. The Redeemer had stirred to full wakefulness. Braziers and incense burners circled the perimeter of the Narthex, sending up spirals of blue and white smoke, and the air was so thick with the smell of joss that Nike breathed through a handkerchief. The Quir had seated himself with two retainers and all three of them hunched over a hubble-bubble, inhaling through long transparent tubes and growing red-faced and giddy in the process. In spite of these precautions the Redeemer’s scent perfumed the air, stronger now and with overtones of ylang-ylang and that civet rumored to drive pregnant women mad. The guards patrolling the crowd were having difficulty keeping people from storming the entry to the Redeemer’s cage. Nike was terrified that one of the nearly continuous shocks battering the levels would send the walls toppling, and free the Redeemer to run amok.

  “We should begin,” she said anxiously, raising her handkerchief to talk.

  ziz nodded crossly, grimacing as one of the spikes on her collar poked her neck. “Well, we can’t very well start without the sacrifice, and they’ve only just arrived—”

  She pointed to the door. The gynander and the dwarf stood there. With her head shaven and her green shift flapping loosely about her legs, Reive looked like some bizarre overgrown infant. From here the wards tattooed upon her scalp stood out boldly, although the blood made them look crude. A sudden chill swept ziz. She recalled her dream, the gynander’s high voice as she scryed it and her wide clear eyes, green as shallow water. Perhaps this was not a good thing.

  Of course she knew that Reive had not really murdered Shiyung. Even now, ziz could grant her a reprieve, and condemn the dwarf as sole perpetuator of the crime. But that still left the matter of the gynander’s lineage—a true Orsina, even the less sophisticated scanners had been able to deduct that from her genotype. If Nasrani had been here, ziz might have conferred with him. But god only knew where her brother had gone—to a party with his crude friends, no doubt. But she didn’t need to consult with Nasrani to know that it was too dangerous to introduce a new, unknown heir to the palace. There would be fawning admirers, and clever cabal members, and ambitious courtesans, all eager to educate a young morphodite and explain to her the many reasons it would be necessary to eliminate her aunts. Especially once word of ziz’s disastrous dream got out; especially now that the Architect Imperator was dead, and the city falling to bits without him.

  No. The sacrifice must take place. The crowd would demand it, and the clergy. ziz felt distinctly uncomfortable around the latter. She lacked Shiyung’s facile enthusiasms for the new and strange, her unabashed delight in the bizarre rituals that made life on the lower levels bearable to those who lived there. To ziz, the avatars of the city’s main religious orders—the castrati of the Daughters of Graves, Blessed Narouz’s penitents, even the traditionally stable Church of Christ Cadillac and the Seraphim’s own Saints—all were unhappy reminders of the world’s dark and superstitious past, before the First Ascension began the long centuries of purgative destruction that not only made the sterile domes of Araboth possible but absolutely necessary. ziz had no religious feelings whatsoever. For her, Æstival Tide was a practical matter, a means of both controlling and satisfying the crowd’s appetite for mayhem; nothing more.

  And see where it had brought them. She ticked away a thought, to be mulled over later, in the Gryphon. Wherever she settled next, there would be no festivals.

  From across the balcony she saw the Archbishop of Christ Cadillac staring at her expectantly, her lips moving. Next to her the Quir giggled over his hubble-bubble and beckoned several of the Daughters of Graves to join him. Someone had given the dwarf something to drink, and surely that was not permitted? ziz turned away, annoyed, to gaze down upon the crowd. She wished Shiyung were here. ziz had never performed the opening ceremonies without her. The balcony shook ominously as she leaned over it, trying to escape the haze of incense. From below a cheer rippled through the throng, and she heard her name chanted.

  “Well,” she said hoarsely, turning back and nodding at the Archbishop. “I guess we should begin.”

  “Excellent brandy!” Rudyard Planck coughed, as the plump galli poured him another glass from a small flask he had hidden within his robes. “Can this possibly be Roseblood 402?”

  The galli nodded, pleased. Rudyard Planck beamed and raised his glass to him. When he saw the Archbishop descending upon him he gulped the rest and hurriedly returned it to the eunuch.

  “You’re supposed to be fasting,” scolded the Archbishop. “Where’s the hermaphrodite?”

  Reive had tried to edge toward the balcony, to see what was beneath them; but the sight of the Aviators there like so many grim statues frightened her. She ended up near the Quir, momentarily forgotten.

  “Greetings, little sacrificial sisterling,” lisped the Quir. He pulled the hookah’s tube from his mouth with a pop. His aluminum shields had been arranged carefully around him, so that his narrow face grinned at her from every direction. “Have some kef, holiest of hapless children.”

  “I don’t think it’s allowed,” Reive said, eyeing the hookah doubtfully.

  The Quir raised one dyed eyebrow and gazed at the Archbishop glaring down at Rudyard Planck. “If you’ll forgive what is most certainly an unintentioned slur, you and your companion are both rather small to be offered to our most Compassionate Redeemer. Not to mention your stature would seem to have made it a most challenging experience to garrote the unfortunate margravine. How did you do it?” He lowered his voice and leaned toward her conspiratorially.

  “We didn’t,” Reive replied anxiously. “Is this it? Are they really going to kill us?”

  For a moment the Quir sucked noisily at his pipe, his eyes watering. Then he coughed and said, “Literature pertaining to the rites of propitiation for Ucalegon and Baratdaja state that an unworthy sacrifice is not a satisfactory sacrifice. An innocent person convicted of a heinous crime, such as a margravine’s murder, would no doubt rouse the storm to fury rather than placate it.”

  The Quir paused to readjust one of his aluminum screens, smiling at his reflection and displaying two rows of evenly filed teeth. He arched his eyebrows and tilted his head, so that his reflection stared directly at Reive with an expression of gross complicity.


  “The Redeemer has no eyes and so must locate its prey by means of its body heat,” he murmured, as though recalling a favored recipe. “A creature without much body mass might successfully avoid capture long enough for the crowd to demand to be released upon the strand, whereupon the Redeemer would be distracted. I have always disliked the margravines, and felt Shiyung to be a dilettante of the first water. Whoever killed her did a favor to those of us who are true believers. May the Great Mother watch over you and protect you in the hours to come. I believe the Archbishop is here.”

  His reflection dipped out of sight in a blur of indigo. He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture, just as the Archbishop appeared behind Reive.

  “Come,” she commanded, taking Reive by the hand and leading her to the edge of the balcony. When the flooring trembled she paused, breathing loudly through her nose, but only for a moment. “We are ready to begin.”

  Rudyard Planck was waiting at the edge of the balcony, his face a little ruddier than it had been and his eyes brighter.

  “I always said that I could die happy if I’d tasted Roseblood 402,” he announced as the Archbishop approached. He sounded rather drunk. “The irony of this would not have been wasted on my dear friend Sajur Panggang, so recently deceased. He would say that a life nobly lived allows no worthy desire to go untasted.”

  Reive nodded, wondering at the lack of such savory moments in her own brief career. It had grown uncomfortably hot, and her shift had rubbed her small breasts till they burned. The Archbishop joined ziz and Nike. The margravine looked distinctly unhappy. She adjusted her mitre and whisked a handkerchief across her cheeks. Then she clapped her hands and the precentor stepped forward, followed by three of the Daughters of Graves. Beside them ziz shook her head, glaring at Nike. She raised her arms and walked to the end of the balcony. A roar as the crowd saw her.

  From where she stood Reive could finally look down upon them. Thousands of people, a tide of green seething back and forth like water sloshing in a tank. When it surged forward, the throng reached almost to the foot of the Lahatiel Gate itself, where a wedge of dour Aviators stood. And now Reive saw that there was a narrow spindly stairway winding down from this balcony to the Gate, a stairway with a worn railing and uneven treads. It began only a few feet from where she stood, and was cordoned off with a heavy velvet rope of deep forest-green, much worn about the middle.