“Strong stuff, eh?” he remarked, and began walking once more.
“Ye-es,” Reive replied, trying not to look back at the gruesome scene. They strolled for a few minutes in silence, Reive relaxing when they came to a fountain that smelled strongly of lime blossom.
“You’re new here,” the dwarf said a few minutes later. Reive was splashing water on her face. She glanced at the dwarf, then wiping her cheeks she nodded.
“Interesting eyes,” he said. He pressed his fingers to his forehead and bowed. “Rudyard Planck, always a pleasure.”
Reive stared at him, suddenly recalling Ceryl’s warnings. But the dwarf only stared at her with a slightly amused expression. Finally she said, “We are Reive.”
“Reive,” the dwarf repeated. He had hair of a dark reddish hue, like brick dust, and wore beautifully cut trousers of azure velvet and a vest trimmed with brilliant green piping. Around his neck dangled a heavy gold chain hung with the heraldic eye and letter 
of the pleasure cabinet. Something about him—perhaps the way he walked, with a hint of a swagger, or maybe it was that lurid green trim about his vest—struck Reive as being not so much the mark of a dandy as of a potentially dangerous individual playing at being one.
“Well, Reive, it is always a pleasure to talk with a fellow art lover.”
His voice dropped ironically. He bowed again and for a moment held her hand. His grasp was surprisingly solid for one so small. “I have to go now—some tedious business about our new Military Commandant Imperator—but I hope to see you again soon.”
Reive nodded dumbly, waving after him. She waited several minutes, until the little figure was lost to sight among the crowd gathering in the distance. Then she followed him down the boulevard, until at last she stood on the promenade that fanned in front of the Orsinate’s palace.
Beneath her feet the pale marble glistened, still damp from having been hosed earlier. Blue lightning whipped about the twin statues atop the palace, sending shivers of light across the dome. The air crackled, the scent of ozone nearly overpowering the scents of frangipani and lemon, ginger blossom and expensive cologne. Most of the vendors seemed to have moved here, and Reive was surprised to see many other commoners as well. The inevitable ’filers, of course, they would be at any public ceremony of note. But gynanders too, and biotechnicians still in their yolk-yellow smocks; somber women from the Chambers of Mercy and a small knot of moujiks glaring suspiciously at the splendor around them. She even glimpsed a solitary rasa, shuffling past in a faded set of clothes that no longer fit, its face set in that horrible rictus all rasas had, its sunken eyes flecked with luminous phosphorescence. Everyone looked uneasy, as though they had been plucked from their own levels and whisked up here, which was close to the truth of it. The Orsinate never wasted a major ceremony on their own staff. A few gaping moujiks and socially ambitious gynanders, the usual complement of eager ’filers—by the time they all returned to the tedium of their own levels, even the dullest execution or promotion would seem extravagant.
But this looked to be an extraordinary ceremony, even for the Orsinate. Anticipation shimmered in the air like heat. Reive could hear it in the whispered gossip of the galli, see it in the wide eyes of the courtesans and vavasours calling to each other eagerly from the palace steps. To keep the peace, members of the Reception Committee roamed about in their pinstriped suits. The entire Urban Cohort had been deployed. Reive ducked behind a column as a watchman rolled past, huge and shining as one of the Aviator’s aerocraft. Its immense metal head swiveled back and forth as it surveyed the promenade with its seven glittering eyes, and the pavement groaned beneath its weight.
When it was gone Reive stepped back onto the boulevard, subdued. The air had grown uncomfortably warm, the reek of the unseen ocean so thick she tasted it in the back of her throat. She thought of Ceryl, and looked around, foolishly hoping she might see her in the mob. But she saw nothing but seething faces and the occasional banner with Ucalegon’s fangéd wave thrust above the crowd. Her head thrummed; her eyes watered from the smoke drifting up from the vents. From the palace steps she could hear nervous laughter. Snatches of song trilled from a wireless.
“Welcome the Healing Wind!”
Someone jounced into her. A young coenbite, one of the novitiates who performed the ritual vivisections and other research functions in the Chambers of Mercy. Her eyes were wild, her hand stippled with blood where she clutched a jagged piece of plastic. A crude version of the Orsinate’s heraldic emblem had been painted on it, but with a lurid red line streaked across the eye. Beneath it swirled the gaudy whorls that symbolized Baratdaja the Healing Wind. “Death from Outside!” she shrieked.
Reive shoved her way past, ducking as the coenbite swung the sheet of plastic like a scythe. Behind her a man screamed and someone else laughed; but Reive was gone, forcing her way toward where the promenade ended in a cul-de-sac in front of the palace.
The crowd here was marginally more subdued. There were more priests—lesser functionaries from the Church of Christ Cadillac, wearing the chromium skullcaps of their faith; a number of indigo-clad galli from the Daughters of Graves, whistling and bowing before three huge cutout images of the margravines dangling from the front of the palace; several dozen Disciples of Blessed Narouz, their pale skirts cutting a wide white swath through the jumble of blue robes and silver chrome. Near the front of the crowd was a small group of coenbites, their yolk-yellow robes bloodstained and torn from their ecstasies. Reive hastily retreated behind the galli, who seemed more intent upon a large hubble-bubble that they circled, giggling and smoking earnestly.
“Will you join us, holy child?” a galli called out to her. He made two circles with his fingers and brought them to his face like spectacles, then indicated Reive’s eyes. His laughter was not unkind.
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.