Aestival Tide (35 page)

The margravine stepped forward until she stood in front of Reive. She bent to take the gynander's face in her hands.

“You are a fool, whoever you are.” What little color was left in Reive's face bled away and her gaze faltered; she looked like a child being punished. “There will be no storms, hermaphrodite, because
we
control the weather. We control everything in Araboth.”

She let go of the gynander and turned to stride across the room. She stopped in front of a tall column and gazed back at her sister. Nike looked confused, then raised a triumphant finger and pulled up the hood of her cape.

In the doorway several tall figures appeared, gleaming in their crimson leather uniforms. “Enter,” Âziz called out to them. She glanced at her prisoners, then back at the Aviators. “I was just telling them that there is nothing to fear from the weather—what's a little rain?”

The margravine pressed a switch hidden behind the column and flicked her own hood over her head. A sound like flames licking at the walls; then a brackish scent filled the room. A moment later fine mist began to fall from tiny jets in the ceiling.

“See!” Âziz crowed. Nike adjusted her cape, holding out her hands to catch the moisture. “Nothing to fear from the weather, nothing at all!”

One of the Aviators stepped forward and raised her hands in salute. Rain caught in her silver hair and glittered like sun on steel. “Margravine—”

Âziz turned to her. “I want them in the holding area on Archangels. The prison by the Lahatiel Gate. They're to speak to no one.”

“Yes, Margravine.” The Aviator gestured; the others followed her. But before they could reach the prisoners a tremor shook the room. Nike cried out and grabbed a chair. Glass tapers rattled in their sconces and one shattered as it struck the wall. For an instant the rain ceased; then there was a gurgling from overhead and it poured down heavier than before. Âziz's mouth was set in a grim line as she pulled her cape about her shoulders. Only the Aviators seemed not to notice, their booted feet steady upon the marble floor, their eyes fixed on the margravines.

“Take them,” whispered Âziz.

Ceryl whimpered. Rudyard Planck's ruddy face went white, and he struggled as the first Aviator lifted him in her arms like a child.

“No! Margravine, please, Sajur Panggang will tell you—”

Only Reive remained impassive, her smile gone, her dark lashes trembling above pale green eyes. “It is coming,” she whispered. She lifted her head to stare at Nike. The margravine clutched the edges of her cape and shivered in the chilly artificial rain. “There is nothing you can do now to stop it, it is—”

“
Now!
” shouted Âziz. “Have them shriven in preparation for their meeting with the Compassionate. Redeemer.”

“As you wish, Margravine.”

The leader of the Aviators stared at the dwarf still struggling in her arms, then with her head motioned to her followers. They stepped forward and not ungently took hold of Ceryl and Reive. “Please don't fight,” one said. Ceryl collapsed against his chest. In her captor's arms Reive turned to gaze at Âziz. The rain glistened against her breasts, where the ward against Ucalegon gleamed brilliant yellow and blue against her white skin.

“The Wave will take you all,” she said. Then they bore her from the Four Hundredth Room.

Silence for several minutes. “That's it, then,” Âziz said at last. The door remained open; rain pattered against the walls and ran down through the little diamond-shaped grates set into the floor. Nike nodded, still steaming in her cape. Her sister began to pace, finally paused and tripped another hidden switch. The ocean-smelling rain tapped against the floor, then stopped. Warm air blew up through the grates. Sandalwood essence oozed down through ventricles in the ceiling. “There: all done.”

“What did she mean, ‘She's one of them'?” Nike's voice was still husky with morpha, but her eyes were brooding. She crossed the room to her sister and took her arm. “Âziz? What did she mean?”

Âziz turned away. “Nothing. They're desperate, they were just talking.”

Nike shook her head. “No. I heard them. That morphodite—she looks like Shiyung. And Nasrani—she looks like both of them. She's their child, isn't she, the morphodite they were supposed to have killed—”

“What would you have done?” Âziz shook her arm free and glared at her sister. “I didn't know, I had no more idea than you did, until today. She's a bastard, and a monster—you saw her, a hermaphrodite! They would say it was an evil thing—
if
they knew. It's best we do this, Nike, she should die before anyone else has a chance to learn about her.”

Nike hissed softly. “It
is
an evil thing, Âziz! That was a tremor just now, it's as she said… She has the Sight, she scryed your dream—even if she
did
kill Shiyung—”

“She's a scheming little morph, that's all! How could
she
kill Shiyung?” Âziz laughed coldly. “You saw her, a skinny thing like that—”

Nike's eyes widened. “Then who did?” Her cape squeaked as she hugged it close to her and suddenly her eyes widened. “Margalis!
He
did it—you knew it and—”

“
I
will take care of Margalis. Shiyung was spending far too much time on the lower levels, Nike, you saw that. They were starting to think she belonged to them, and she was starting to believe it. It was time for a change, Nike. She'd been turning us against Nasrani. We need to speak with him now, it's been too long. We can't have these squabbles go on forever.” Âziz tossed her head, the black hood of her cape falling back onto her shoulders. “And Sajur, I want to see him as well, I think we should ask him about—”

“About what, Margravine?”

The two sisters whirled. In the doorway stood the Architect Imperator. He wore a morning suit of striped gray wool with a high white collar. The black turban of his office drooped over his forehead, but the Orsinate's heraldic eye had been ripped away. In its place gleamed a brooch of Angelika's, a glittering piece of ancient computer circuitry in clear plastic, set with zircons and emerald glass.

“Greetings, Nike.” He stumbled as he walked into the room. There was a small gash at the corner of his mouth where he had cut himself shaving, and blood spotted his white collar.

“Sajur!” Âziz frowned. Then she composed herself and walked to meet him. Behind her Nike stepped gingerly. A cloying steam rose about their feet, where the cold rain had pooled and was now heated by the vents. “I was going to call you—we need to discuss a few things. Tomorrow's opening ceremony, for one—”

Sajur waved her away. Nike gasped: his white shirt-cuffs were soaked with blood, and blood dripped from his wrists to the slick floor. “No need, Margravine, no need at all. It doesn't hurt, Nike, I drank quite a bit first, did a bit of morpha—”

He grinned, straightened himself unsteadily to face them. When he raised his hand to straighten his turban a long red smear marred the soft fine cotton. “I am performing my final duty to you, Âziz.” He covered his mouth as he coughed. There was more blood. “I have sabotaged the Architects. There is a chasm beneath us now, on Angels—a fissure the length of the Undercity. The domes are already starting to buckle under the stress. Tomorrow, when the Lahatiel Gate opens—”

He smiled and flicked his fingers,
ffffttt!
A fine spray of blood spattered the margravines' black rubber capes. “You shouldn't have killed Angelika, Âziz. It was ungrateful of you, after all I've done.”

His voice almost sounded pleading. “And she won't let me sleep, Âziz, I see her at night, she comes to me…”

He choked. Blood splattered his trousers. “Don't bother calling your damn Aviator watchdogs, I—” Shuddering, he crumpled to his knees. “—dying anyway.”

“The domes! The domes!” Nike shrieked. Âziz slapped her and turned back to the man slumped on the floor.

“How do we stop them, Sajur?” she shouted. “Dammit, tell me! The program, how do we revert the program?”

The Architect Imperator smiled and gazed at the ceiling. “Nothing to be done,” he murmured. “Set them and left them… strange things, uncontrollable—ideas of their own, now.”

His voice faded to a soft gurgle. The bloodstained turban slid from his forehead to the marble floor, and he rested his cheek upon it. For one last instant he stared up at them, his dark eyes glazing over. He whispered, “But you'll see
lots
of weather, Âziz… bring an umbrella.” He closed his eyes and was still.

The two margravines stood staring at the corpse of the Architect Imperator. Then, “We'll die! I told you, she was right, it's all going to come down!” Nike screamed and whirled to run from the room. Before she reached the door her sister grabbed her.

“Don't be an idiot! He's lying, he was drunk and half-mad, Nike, listen to me,
there is nothing to worry about!
”

There was a dull grinding overhead. The hissing of incense from the ventricles abruptly stopped. The smell of burning petroleum filled the air, and a sound like crackling paper. As the margravines slowly raised their heads, hail began to fall in the Four Hundredth Room.

T
HE DOORS OPENED ONTO
the Undercity. “I've forgotten my lumiere,” Nasrani said. He leaned against the wall of the gravator, cradling his bleeding hand, and looked as if he were about to faint.

“There will be no need,” the Aviator replied. “Give me your hand.”

Nasrani shook his head and started for the door. “No, please—” he stammered. “I'm all right, I can see fine—”

The Aviator stepped beside him. His hand when it enveloped Nasrani's was warm, then hot, so hot that the exile cried aloud. There was a small hissing sound, like a fly caught in flame, and the stink of burning cloth. The exile choked, reeling backward, but the Aviator caught him. When Nasrani looked down at his hand, the bleeding had stopped and the skin glowed a translucent red.

“We will have no need of light,” said the Aviator. As the doors began to slide shut again he grabbed them and pushed them apart. The wood and metal buckled and bulged outward. Nasrani covered his face as splinters of glass and wood flew everywhere.

“Don't!—you're destroying it, we won't be able to return—”

Metal gears shrieked and ground futilely against each other; then there was silence. Tast'annin stepped into the darkness. When he turned to face Nasrani the exile caught his breath. The
rasa
glowed softly, a dull crimson glow like the Flames of the Eternal in Blessed Narouz's Refinery.

“Do not be afraid,” he said, his voice echoing in the void of Angels. “Come, Nasrani.”

The exile stumbled after him, stammering, “You ruined it—the other gravators—wait—”

“There will be no need,” the
rasa
repeated. Above him reared the immense shadows of the Undercity, the faint and distant glimmerings of blue and gold and crimson where the refineries and medifacs burned far overhead. From beneath their feet rose a heavy smell, an odor as of things newly exhumed from the earth. Nasrani gagged and covered his mouth with his sleeve. The
rasa
waited for him, a ruby taper burning in the endless night.

“Where is she?” he asked after a little while. “I will go before you if you tell me the way.”

Nasrani coughed, nodding. “Augh—that smell! I will show you, this way—”

He began to feel his way very slowly, the
rasa
beside him silent, his feet making almost no sound upon the broken earth. The labyrinth of walls and buildings the exile had used before to guide him had changed. Smooth surfaces crumbled beneath his outstretched hands, great blocks of metal and concrete sheared away at his touch, plummeting into unseen chasms just a few feet from where they walked. Nasrani trembled and chattered to himself, stopping to stare about him in wonder, as though he'd forgotten where he was. More than once the
rasa's
hand roused him, so hot that it singed his torn shirt.

“Something has happened—something terrible has happened,” Nasrani said again and again. The ground felt different than it had on his earlier visits—soft and friable, as though it had been churned by the passage of an immense nematode. Into this raw earth the remains of familiar buildings had been swallowed, and other things disgorged. A huge smooth dome of glass, miraculously unbroken. Beneath it rows of emaciated human figures embraced blocks of steel, their empty eyesockets staring up at Nasrani and Tast'annin as they passed. Wrecked autovehicles and boats bulged from the ground, their hulls scorched and fused together to form one great misshapen machine. Where before there had been only a smooth expanse of dead earth and concrete now erupted a heap of broken forms of wood and metal. From them spilled bones, bones and skulls and sleeves of deep blue and scarlet, trimmed with metal brocade. The
rasa
paused to stare at them. Where his hand brushed the edge of one uniform a tiny spiral of smoke rose, and a crackling sound.

Nasrani stopped and gazed overhead. An eerie red glow suffused the darkness. In the distance clouds of black smoke seemed to billow and rise, obscuring the silhouette of the monstrous ziggurat looming above them. An uneven but ceaseless current of sound swelled beneath it all, a rush like running water, punctuated by soft retort's and sudden explosive roars, as of huge buildings being pried apart and thrown to the ground. Beneath his heavy clothes the exile sweated and shivered; his wounded shoulder ached and his hand throbbed almost unbearably. He wiped his face, squinting as he struggled to see something of the rest of Araboth—flames leaping from the refineries on Archangels, and a white pulse that might have been distress lights from Seraphim. And closer he saw other flames, and pallid greenish globes that bobbed in the distance but never seemed to grow any nearer. Another smell choked him, along with the fetid reek of decay; a smell of burning, of acrid chemicals and gas. He coughed and stumbled, and nearly fell into a narrow crevasse that slit the earth at his feet like a razor tearing through skin. When the
rasa's
hand touched his shoulder he jerked back. It was burning hot, as though it had been cast into a furnace.