Aestival Tide (18 page)

She disappeared into her bedroom, reappeared a moment later holding a long sleeveless tunic of brilliant jade-green satin. Reive's mouth hung open in surprise, but Ceryl only shrugged and started across the room.

“Well, it's the damn Feast of Fear, right? Might as well wear green.” She stopped abruptly and looked at the gynander. Her voice dropped.

“You won't say anything, about—about my dream? Reive?”

Reive shook her head slowly. “We had forgotten about it,” she admitted. Ceryl smiled wryly.

“Well. That's just as well.” She gazed with distaste at the tunic in her hands. “I guess if we're going to make it by twenty-seven o'clock we'd better get dressed.” At Reive's expression she added, “I can't let you go alone. Whether or not Tatsun Frizer invited you. It would be like throwing a baby to the Redeemer.”

Reive nodded, tipping her head so that Ceryl wouldn't see her smile, and reached for her cosmetics box.

By the time they reached Seraphim Level, Ceryl's mood had shifted from aggrieved resignation to barely concealed anxiety. A dream inquisition in the Four Hundredth Room! That would mean all three margravines, and most of the pleasure cabinet, and she, Ceryl, having to convince them of the innocence and beauty and originality of some dream she'd never had. Not to mention carefully worded praise for the afternoon's Investiture, and feigned delight at the pleasures of Æstival Tide still to come. Twice she had stopped, breathing deeply while reciting a calming verse a
galli
had taught her. She wondered what would happen if she just didn't show up for the inquisition.

But then, of course, Reive would go on alone; and at
that
thought Ceryl's breathing became a tortured gasp and she hurried after her companion.

Fortunately the gynander seemed subdued. Ceryl had watched, intrigued, as Reive carefully removed mascara and rouge and powder. She had never seen a hermaphrodite's face unpainted; the effect was unsettling. Like most people, Ceryl thought of the hermaphrodites as
she
or
her
or sometimes
it.
But, as Reive blotted off the last traces of rouge, for the first time Ceryl noticed how strong her jaw was; how her mouth without its carmine pout was in fact thin, and might even seem cruel were it not for a certain perplexed twist of the lip. And her eyes, with no penciled brows arching above them, were, despite their color, quite gentle. She no longer had the childish mien associated with the hermaphrodites. Except for the lack of eyebrows and her rounded shoulders, she looked like a young man or thoughtful boy. In fact, she resembled one of the unsmiling busts of Orsina ancestors that lined the corridors of the Seraphim's palace. Ceryl had nearly commented on this peculiar resemblance, but decided it would only make the gynander conceited. Instead she sat in silence while Reive painted her face chalk-white, with only a small green whorl upon each cheek as a token of Æstival Tide.

Now Ceryl wished she
had
said something. With her face dead-white save for those green spirals and her eyes and mouth unrouged, the gynander looked disturbingly corpselike. There was little foot traffic headed for the palace, and only a few rickshaws. In one of these another hermaphrodite sat giggling on the lap of a drunken diplomat, and stared back amazed as they passed. Ceryl glanced at Reive, but the gynander didn't even look up as the rickshaw rattled by; only stared straight ahead with her cool emerald eyes.

The truth was, Reive was nervous, even frightened. Everything looked different than it had that afternoon. Servers had spent the last few hours adorning the boulevards for the upcoming festival. The water frothing in the fountains was now green, lit by hidden lanterns. Some of the sculptures had been replaced with bizarre representations of the world Outside—trees of steel and iron, grotesquely twisted and covered with thorns; huge skeletal figures of winged creatures with gaping mouths and dripping talons; naked figures of men and women cowering before the holographic image of an immense wave, its curling edge flecked with blood. There was the inevitable holo of the Compassionate Redeemer, its lamprey's mouth opening and closing in eerie silence while the ventricles at its feet pumped out the choking scent of charred roses. And seeping into everything the smell of the sea, thick and rank and warm, growing heavier as the air pressure dropped Outside. Some of the other guests wore linen masks over their mouths. Reive regretted not having bought one for herself—the briny smell nearly choked her, like having viscous water poured into her nostrils. Silently she wandered along the boulevard, twisting her head to stare at the marvels the Orsinate had arranged for the festival.

But as they approached the palace Reive stopped, shaking her head in disbelief. Turning to Ceryl she cried, “What have they done?”

It seemed that all of Dominations Level had been moved up here. Scores of biotechnicians and aardmen were still at work, dragging huge cages from the freight gravators, swearing and shouting and snarling beneath the dim violet lights of Seraphim's false evening. Trees—real trees, live trees engineered in the laboratories of Dominations—had been set in concrete tubs to form a sort of forest, palms and oaks and conifers lined up neatly in rows, but so close their limbs had tangled or, in some cases, broken off to fall in heaps on the pavement. Reive and Ceryl passed through them slowly, and drew closer to each other as they walked.

Because it was one thing to view these things in the brightly lit corridors and workrooms of Dominations, or shoved into the background of one of the dioramas where exhausted jackals and dire wolves panted on the cement floor. But to see them here, beneath the dim purple lamps in the domes above, with the humid breath of the unseen ocean thick in your lungs, the smell of the sea mingling with the ticklish scent of firs and the acrid musk of frightened animals—it suddenly made Seraphim Level seem endless.

Because, vast as it was, wherever you were inside of Araboth you knew that there was an end to it—that the Domes were there, hidden behind heat fences or murals or refinery smoke, but
there,
protecting you from the world Outside.

But the effect of these shrubs and trees and vines crowding the boulevard and the very steps of the Orsinate's palace was perverse. Rather than make the place appear smaller, the shadows and rustlings and myriad smells made it all seem
huge.
Ceryl could no longer tell where the domes were, hidden behind tangled branches and leaves. Even the constant undercurrent of hisses from the ventricles, of the whir of servers out on errands, was drowned by a ceaseless soft stirring, as though some errant wind moved among the stolen forest.

Only the smell of the sea remained the same; and Reive shuddered, imagining it somewhere just out of sight, lapping against the gravator entrance or smashing through the bulwarks surrounding the refineries.

“This must be what timoring feels like,” she murmured. “If you do it right. Or what it's
really
like, Outside…”

In the shadows they could glimpse other visitors, silent and subdued as Reive and Ceryl themselves, gazing at the eerie menagerie, the black trees shot with gold and violet where the faint light from the domes trickled through their branches. Once Reive stumbled, flailing as she grabbed at Ceryl's hand—

“What—!”

The gynander's eyes widened and Ceryl steadied herself against a tree. They could hear other voices crying out, and croaks and screams from the imprisoned animals, then ripples of nervous laughter.

Reive caught her breath, then said, “The ground! Did you feel it—it shook, it all
shook
—”

Ceryl bit her lip, waited until her breathing slowed. “It was the gravators,” she said at last. “Bringing all these cages up here—they're so heavy—”

Reive stared at her as though she were mad. “The
gravators?
No, it is the Wind Outside—”

Ceryl grabbed the gynander and covered her mouth with her hand. “Stop it!” she hissed. “Do you want to cause a panic? Get us
killed?
”

Reive glared at her, pulling at Ceryl's hand. “We
felt
it! The storm, what Zalophus warned us of—”

“Reive,” pleaded Ceryl. She tipped her head to indicate where several members of the Toxins Cabal were talking animatedly and glancing at them. “Please—at least until we get back home this evening—”

Reive gave her a sulky look, but then she nodded. Ceryl took her hand and they walked more quickly toward the palace.

They stopped in front of a betulamia, a sentient tree whose slender branches plied the air gently, as though underwater. At its base squatted a square metal tub of mauve Catherine Wheel poppies. When Reive touched one, its gold-tipped petals contracted, then spat out a number of tiny bright red seeds that crackled and fizzed as they flew through the air. From within their cages gibbons howled and mandrills boomed, and somewhere out of sight one of the Children of Mercy shrieked with laughter as a dire wolf howled, a long anguished sound.

“Have they—have they brought them
all
here?” wondered Reive. She looked around, too embarrassed to admit what she was afraid of finding—Zalophus caged within one of those steel tanks, the Children of Mercy prodding him with their electrified lances.

“No,” Ceryl said. She plucked one of the spent poppy blossoms and gazed at it sadly. “Not everything—just some of them, who knows how they choose them—for the festival. I wasn't up here for the last one, of course, but I've heard of things like this. It's a—like one of the dioramas brought to life. For the Orsinate's pleasure, and their guests. So they can pretend to cheat Death, and play at being Outside.”

Reive plucked a bit of tamarack and brushed her cheek with it, its bristles surprisingly soft and pungent. “Outside,” she whispered, and let the tamarack fall through her fingers to the ground. From behind them echoed a recording of the Compassionate Redeemer's ululating cry.

“We'd better hurry,” Ceryl said without enthusiasm. As she walked, poppy seeds exploded beneath her feet, releasing their sulfurous smell. Reive followed, gazing wistfully behind them. The noise and scents from the menagerie faded as they approached the palace.

“What's that?”

The gynander pointed to where a smear of white shimmered overhead, like a lantern reflected upon the convex surface of the domes.

Ceryl glanced up, then shrugged. “I don't know. The moon?”

The moon. Reive tried to recall what the moon was: something to do with light. They were quite near the palace now, closer even than she had been at the Investiture. She smoothed her pantaloons, then rubbed her scalp anxiously. She wished she had brought some of her amber pomade when she'd left her own level. Ceryl's clothes were so drab; but Reive had found a scarf of russet gossamer and tied it around her coiled hair, and dusted herself with silver ash until her skin had a dull gleam like pewter. Beside her Ceryl looked quite splendid. The jade-green tunic set off her pale skin, the brass-and-malachite fillet glinted from beneath her short glossy hair. Despite her fair hair and skin, her plebeian blue eyes, Ceryl was striking-looking. Reive could even imagine that someone might think her beautiful—not the Orsinate, however, whose tastes ran more toward the deliberately bizarre, even deformed. For a moment the gynander regretted not having worn more outlandish makeup, the better to impress the margravines; but now they had reached the very steps of the palace itself, and Ceryl was whispering nervously beside her.

“The sentries—”

Overhead several fougas circled lazily, their spotlights lancing the violet air with adamant. Glass bowls lit with rose-scented oil lined the entrance to the palace. The vicar of the Church of Christ Cadillac, resplendent in azure robes and chromium mitre, stood on the lowest step of the palace, a ritual urceole in her hands. As Reive and Ceryl passed she spattered them with seawater from the silver pitcher and murmured a ward against the world Outside. When Reive turned to stare at her she was jerked forward by Ceryl.

As they walked up the steps they were greeted by several guards in knee-length blousons of yolk-yellow linen, jade-green sashes across their breasts in honor of the festival. “Brave the Healing Wind,” one called out to Ceryl, and another smiled and winked at Reive. All the guards were human save the last, a forbidding scholiast with many-jointed arms and an eyeless face guarding the arch that led into the palace. Ceryl held up the Orsinate's heraldic eye; the scholiast scanned it, then, “Ceryl Waxwing,” it whispered, and Ceryl passed through the high-arched doorway. Once on the other side she gazed back anxiously at Reive.

On the steps other guests paused to receive the vicar's blessing. The fougas' watchlights swept the boulevard. The gynander hesitated in front of the scholiast, then held out Tatsun Frizer's card. The scholiast ignored it. Instead it took her hand and stretched out her palm, pricked it with a tiny needle that shot from its metal claw, humming as one of its optics scanned her face. A moment while it read her retinaprint and biogene.

“Reive Orsina,” it intoned, dropping her hand. She took one final look at the silent plaza and hurried inside.

Ceryl waited a few feet down the hall. She looked relieved as Reive ran up to her. “It didn't question you?”

“No: it said our name, and then ‘Orsina'—”

“It must think you're a special guest—which you are, I suppose. Well, we'll see. It's down this way….”

Inside, the palace was less imposing. The halls they hurried down were simple in appearance, almost utilitarian: faux marble floors and walls of a creamy white, with white arches and columns leading to this wing or another. Busts and holoimages of long-dead Orsinas gleamed or flickered in odd corners, but otherwise the hall was empty. Unseen scholiasts whispered the names of the different chambers—Toxins Cabal Salon, the Uropan Ambassador's Suite, the Architect Imperator's Drafting Room. As they passed this last door it opened, and a tall man and a dwarf emerged and followed them down the hall, whispering urgently. Ceryl's hands went numb as she recognized Sajur Panggang, the Architect Imperator, and the puppeteer Rudyard Planck. Sajur walked slowly, his long legs slicing through the white hallways like well-oiled shears. Beside him Planck bounded like some macabre toy, brick-colored hair tossing, his tiny feet patting against the marble floor. Ceryl started walking faster, but behind her Reive paced oblivious, staring at the smooth arched ceiling and humming tunelessly to herself. When they reached the glass atrium with its garden of crystal orchids Ceryl hurried up the stairs, turning down this corridor and the next. Still Sajur and his grotesque companion followed them, until they all reached a dead end where a tall red-lacquered door stood open.