Aestival Tide (15 page)

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 sigils 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 Âziz 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.

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 Âziz 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. Âziz 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. Âziz looked startled and glanced at Shiyung. But her sister only smiled. Nike remained standing by herself, nodding thoughtfully.

“A triumph over death itself,” Âziz repeated. For an instant Reive thought she glowered at Shiyung; but then Âziz 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 Âziz 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. Âziz'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—”

Âziz's voice dropped, and she drew a shaking hand to her cheek—

“—there, he was slain by an assassin's bullet.”

Âziz 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 Âziz 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!”