Aestival Tide (13 page)

Best of all, there was a gravator that went up to Cherubim and Seraphim, the highest levels of Araboth. She removed the wards she had drawn upon her breasts and painstakingly outlined the Orsinate's heraldic eye and Prophet Rayburn's crucifix.

Ceryl watched her, smiling. She too felt better today. The gynander seemed genuinely happy; betrayal seemed as unlikely as the sudden destruction of the city. Her sleep had been untroubled for the first time in weeks. Maybe her luck had finally changed. Maybe she had just needed to share her fears with another person.

Still, before she left to go back down to her workchambers she warned Reive against going out alone.

“You don't know your way around here yet.” She felt a slight twinge, knowing that the real reason was her doubts as to the gynander's loyalty. “And sentries can be aggressive about checking newcomers.”

“We want to go see the palace.”

Ceryl sighed in exasperation. “The palace! But surely you've seen it on the 'files—”

Reive tossed a kohl wand into her cosmetics case. “It's not the same.” She took a mango from a basket and peeled it sullenly. “We've never been to the upper levels before, why should we stay cooped up in here all day?”

“But if you're not registered for this level, the gravator won't let you in. They could do a trace on you, which means you'll be detained by the Reception Committee—”

“We're registered under the Orsinate,” Reive said. “We're allowed free commerce on all levels, as long as we're somebody's guest.” Her tone turned pleading but her eyes held a trace of belligerence.

Ceryl turned, defeated, and went to gather her things. “If they detain you I can't do much to help….”

Reive shrugged and took another bite of mango. At the door Ceryl paused and said, “I'll be back—I don't know when. This evening, probably.
Please
don't go out alone—”

As soon as she was gone the gynander dressed, sprinkled a few flecks of rice cracker into the mysid's bowl, and headed for the gravator.

Ceryl's chambers were in a block of affluent residential buildings, pagoda-shaped and shining with blue and red lacquer. The air smelled of lemons, and banners proclaiming an Ascendant triumph over the Commonwealth hung limply from the corners of the pagodas. Between each block ran spacious avenues, crowded with rickshaws bearing members of the pleasure cabinet to and from the gravators. Everyone seemed short-tempered, even more so than one might expect bored aristocrats to be. This close to Æstival Tide, the competition for invitations to purification ceremonies and the more elite parties grew intense. In a day or two the scroll listing those who would join the Orsinate on their private viewing platform would be released. Until then, cabinet members and advisers, lesser relatives of the ruling family and even a few ambitious interlopers from the lower levels would all be scrambling for the opportunity to gain access to the margravines and Imperators.

Some members of the pleasure cabinet already wore the slender fillets of brass and malachite that were one of the first heralds of the Feast of Fear. They elbowed their way past the others disdainfully. Reive recognized a high-ranking diplomat who had been briefly famous during the Archipelago Conflict, and a woman who was lead soprano in the sadist opera
Fasa.
No one seemed to find it curious that a gynander wandered about unchaperoned. Once Reive saw another hermaphrodite, bouncing around in the back of a rickshaw with an austere-looking man whose black gowns marked him as a vicar in the Church of Christ Cadillac. Reive waved discreetly, but the other hermaphrodite looked through her with slanted agate eyes. After that Reive cultivated a cool expression, following the traffic and trying not to stare.

There was a bottleneck at the gravator that serviced Seraphim, the uppermost level where the palace stood. Diplomats clambered from their rickshaws, waving invitations at each other as they argued over who had seniority and their drivers demanded payment. When a scuffle broke out between the vicar and one of the eunuch followers of the Daughters of Graves, Reive slipped toward the front of the queue unnoticed.

The line moved quickly as the gravator's sentry processed each person. When her turn came Reive approached it nervously. Sentries were unknown on the lower levels, since gravators there did not ordinarily service the rarefied reaches of the Orsinate and their cabinet. An awning of faux bamboo hung above the entrance, yolk-yellow military banners stirring in a breath of breeze emerging from the chamber's vents. The sentry was a smooth cylinder of yellow metal, faceless. It beckoned Reive, with a long metal arm containing a tiny optic that glittered as it made a pass across her face. A long moment while she heard it whirring as it accessed her retina print. Then it sighed, “Reive Orsina. Pass.”

Inside, the gravator was opulent, but so crowded that all Reive glimpsed of it was a marble floor, scuffed and rather dirty, and overhead a chandelier made up of myriad holograms that showed the margravines' faces shimmering and smiling down upon their disgruntled staff. Reive squeezed in between a member of the Toxins Cabal, a plump woman whose sweat smelled of fenugreek and bleach, and a Disciple of Blessed Narouz, the Orsinate's heraldic eye dangling conspicuously from his neck. When the gravator began its smooth ascent he leaned against Reive, leaving a smear of petroleum along her arm.

In a few minutes they had reached their destination. Reive was expecting something—music, an announcement—but the doors only slid open and everybody walked out, with a little less shoving than on the lower levels but a few more sidelong glances. The Disciple of Blessed Narouz tried to push a flyer into her hand as he left, Blessed Narouz's swarthy face scowling and gesturing from its surface, but Reive hurried past him.

At the apex of Araboth's ziggurat, Seraphim was the smallest of the city's levels—though still vast—and more wonderful than Reive could ever have imagined. She blinked, stumbling as she tried to find a place to stand and gape. Brilliant light filled the air, a light that was truly golden. Looking up she saw huge curved banks of lamps set within the domes, so near that the reflections of things on Seraphim could be seen faintly, like flaws in glass. A faint tinkling sound filled the air, ambient music commissioned from one of the countless artists the Orsinate retained as permanent guests of the Reception Committee. A heady, complex smell wafted up from vents in the walkway—lavender essence and amber musk, an underlying note of oranges and the faintest wisp of opium smoke. Reive stood a few feet from the gravator, trying to catch her breath. After several minutes she felt even more dazed, and happier than she had ever been in her life.

“Are you engaged, holy child?” A soft voice crooned beside her. Reive started, looking up into the violet eyes of the
galli,
the eunuch who had been in the gravator a few minutes before. His hair was dyed the same shade of deep blue as his robes, his palms stained red.

“Oh! Ye-es, yes, we are meeting someone—” She rubbed her eyes as though she had just awakened, then stared perturbed at the kohl smudged on her hand.

“Ah.” The
galli
nodded, his high voice betraying a giggle. “I understand. You are here for purely social reasons.”

He smiled kindly, then taking Reive's arm pointed to where a path of stones and glass laid in an intricate mosaic twisted into the distance. He lowered his voice to a shrill whisper and said, “Many people find the Walk of Memorable Incidents to be an instructive way to begin their visit here.”

Reive stammered her thanks, but the
galli
only placed a finger to his rouged lips, murmuring, “Keep your eyes lowered here, holy child. Remember our margravines are sensitive to eyes like yours—”

He drew up his blue robes and raised one hand, exposing a scarlet palm. “May you come safely through the Feast of Fear,” he said, and walked off.

Reive waved at him limply. Her exhilaration began to fade. She yawned. A heavy tiredness seeped into her, like smoking kef or inhaling fine incense at one of the better sort of dream inquisitions. She started in the direction the
galli
had pointed and began to wander along the Walk of Memorable Incidents. Apart from several scenes depicting carnage from the Commonwealth and the Håbilis Emirate, the most memorable image on the mosaic path showed Roland Orsina embracing Melissa Sirrúk, his wife and partner in founding the Orsinate dynasty. Reive kept her head down, absorbed in the bright pictures. After a few yards the mosaic depicted another scene, this one of Sirrúk's funeral pyre, the masses mourning her bizarre and untimely death by choking on a whole pear. A few feet farther on Melissa's first successor appeared, her face picked out in chips of chalcedony and tourmaline, but by then Reive had lost interest in the path.

There was so much more to see. All of Seraphim was laid out atop a pavement of smooth marble, with pathways like brightly colored channels sweeping through it. Here and there were grids of intricate geometric shapes, blue and yellow and purple tiles, or expanses of highly polished stone, agate and obsidian and tiger's eye, white jade and rounded steps of soft cinnabar. Sculptures from the Orsinate's famed collection were everywhere, and fountains spewing jets of scented water into pools where pop-eyed koi swam languidly, waiting to be fed. In the distance Reive saw men and women in beautifully tailored cutaway suits and robes of silk jacquard. They seemed to stalk about purposefully, like figures in a puppet opera. Compared to the rancid air and garish neon of Virtues Level it was all quite stunning, miraculous in fact. She marveled that Ceryl ever returned to Dominations.

But after a little while Reive slowed her walking. The daylights hurt her eyes. Brilliant reflections bounced from the polished walkways, too bright and too hot. When she stopped to admire one of the fountains, its scent seemed harsh, the smell of jasmine cut with an unpleasant chemical odor. The ambient music grew annoying as well. Reive found herself missing the sudden shrieks and whistles that greeted her when she visited Dominations, the brackish smell of the oceanic tanks and Zalophus's bellowing. Even the koi, with their golden scales and extravagantly furbelowed fins, seemed demanding, rushing to nibble at her fingers dangling in the water.

She was thinking that perhaps she might return to the gravator, when a long electrified wail drowned out the plashing fountains. It was a sound Reive recognized from the evening 'files: the signal for the arrival of new prisoners. She looked around and saw that most of the other strollers were pointing in the direction of the siren. They gathered in small excited groups, then began walking more quickly, all heading for what seemed to be a broad white avenue. Reive flicked one of the greedy koi from her hand and hurried after the crowd.

At first she kept her eyes downcast, remembering the
galli's
advice. But it soon became apparent that no one was paying Reive the slightest attention, and so she looked around.

The boulevard was wide, nearly as wide as whole residential blocks on some of the lower levels, and made of a false marble cool and smooth and golden-veined as the real thing. Vents in the pavement released the scents of lemon and frangipani. But beneath the strong citrusy tang was another odor—the smell of the sea, stronger here than it ever was below, even in the vivariums. For a moment Reive shut her eyes, trying to imagine herself back on Dominations. When she opened them again she stopped in amazement.

Once Reive had met a poet from the pleasure cabinet who carried with him a beautiful piece of ephemera, a pagoda of brass and bamboo that housed a copper-jointed cricket that sang like a lark. That cricket-house had been a model of the building that loomed before her now. Gates of gold and vermillion and lapis rose behind snowy arches. Huge winged telamons upheld each of the palace's nine levels. From every corner spun glittering spires of blue and gold, so long and fine and shining it was a wonder they did not dissolve into mist. At its very peak, seemingly, inches from the central of the Quincunx Domes, two statues soared. The first was of gold, a winged figure holding a trumpet. It had been salvaged from the Orsinate's ancestral city after the Long Night. Beside it reared a second statue, the golden crucifix upon which Prophet Rayburn hung, smiling beatifically. Reive had always been confused by this symbol, since it was well known that Prophet Rayburn had been garroted by his own daughter Livia, and it was
she
who had actually been crucified, by her cousin-german Sejanus Orsina, nicknamed The Unruly. The twin statues made a stirring site, seeming to impale the very roof of Araboth, so near that Reive's head pounded to look at it. By means of the Architects' arcane machinery, spectral lightning lanced down from the domes to strike the winged figure and the smiling Prophet, sending waves of blue and violet rippling across the boulevard.

For the next hour Reive did nothing but watch the lightning play about the palace. She was afraid to go any nearer; afraid that some of the calm-looking men and women walking up and down the palace steps might actually be members of the Reception Committee alert to the presence of an uninvited guest. When she grew tired of standing she found a bench of hammered copper and sat there by herself, wishing that she had brought some mangoes with her.

That was Reive's first day on Seraphim.

“No one questioned you?” Ceryl asked, astonished, when she returned that evening.

Reive shook her head. “No one paid any attention to us.”

“No sentries?”

“Only in the gravator, and it let us pass. They have fish there that will eat from your hands. But it is too bright, it gave us a headache.”

In spite of that she returned the next day. This time she remembered to bring mangoes, and a small bottle of aqua vitae she found in Ceryl's liquor cabinet. Again the gravator sentry whispered, “Reive Orsina. Pass.” Again she was ignored by everyone, save a small girl walking with her replicant guardian. The child spat at Reive and made the sign against Ucalegon when she passed.