Outside the distress lights still slashed the domes with white and blue. Three fougas rose from their hangars, trailing the long incantatory pennons advertising the start of Æstival Tide. Âziz raised her cup and smiled, but her eyes were bitter.
“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “A dream, it was only a dream.”
“ The dream—the morph said it was the dream of the Green Country! The Architects are failing us! What if—”
“Listen to you, Nike! You’re talking about Mrs. Bingham and listening to a hermaphrodite! I can’t believe this—you sound as crazy as Shiyung. There’ll be no need to regenerate her at all, just pop her crown on your soft little head!”
Nike bit her lip and stared at the floor. Her voice was whining. “But why, Âziz? Why would a morph kill her? How could she kill her? It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense. The Architects have blinked off, there’ve been reports of cracks in some of the vivariums, a tremor on Principalities. Malva Circutus from the Toxins Cabal told me that on every level below Thrones there’s been some kind of tremor, and now they’re saying it’s the storms coming. If the lower levels hear about your dream…”
Âziz glared at her, stood and walked to the window. For several minutes she watched the fougas drifting up and down, their turquoise banners rippling and snapping in the air rising from the refineries. Her mouth grew tight.
“They should be towing funerary pennons,” she said at last. Her head snapped up and her eyes blazed angrily. “I don’t know how or why that unfortunate morph did it, and I don’t care. Shiyung is dead, and we can’t let these other rumors go any further. We have to find the right way to deal with this before the Gate opens, or we’ll have a revolt on our hands. I want to see that morph now. And the one she’s been living with. Shiyung’s healer, Ceryl Waxwing.”
She pressed a button on the windowsill and summoned the yellow-haired serving girl. “Tell the Head of the Reception Committee to bring the gynander Reive here, and the biotech Ceryl Waxwing. And get some ’filers: I want ’filers here for the sentencing.”
She turned back to Nike. “The morph’s a political enemy. She murdered Shiyung. I don’t know how she escaped from her cell, or how she did it, but she did. And the other one’s a collaborator. We’ll ’file the sentencing and have it broadcast constantly until tomorrow: Shiyung’s murderers, political collaborators. If we can’t have Shiyung there when we open the Gate, we’ll have those two instead, as a designated sacrifice. And Nasrani—we’ll reinstate him. We’ll give them to the Compassionate Redeemer, have Nasrani perform the honors. If the crowd gets unruly we open the Gate before the appointed hour. That should satisfy the lower levels.” She bit her lip thoughtfully. “Maybe we won’t have to regenerate Shiyung after all.”
Nike ran a finger along the edge of the window. “But these rumors of structural damage—you don’t think we’ll be setting our own pyres if we go through with the festival, opening the Gate to Ucalegon?”
Âziz leaned against her sister. “It was only a dream Nike,” she whispered, stroking her hair. “And the Architects are guarding us. Nothing will happen, because it was just a dream.”
Nike sighed and nodded, her eyes heavy-lidded from the morpha. As the distress lights glowed beneath the central Quincunx Dome, she let her sister take her in her arms, and waited for the Reception Committee to arrive with their guests.
Ceryl Waxwing tapped her foot and stared anxiously out the window as Rudyard Planck poured himself another glass of brandy.
“There’s no point fretting about Reive, my friend,” the dwarf announced. He held his snifter up to the light and sipped from it, making admiring noises. “This is very fine, I believe this is one of the vats I had drawn myself, after the success of my Generation Twelve puppets. They’re probably going to send us all to the Reception Area—Âziz won’t stand for this business about her dream getting out—so you might as well have another glass of this wonderful stuff and enjoy it while you can. Though last time I visited the Reception Area they had some quite fine Amity—”
Ceryl had drawn her breath in sharply at the words Reception Area and now whirled furiously, as though to knock the snifter from Planck’s hand. But for some reason the sight of the red-haired dwarf perched atop the granite table, sipping brandy, stopped her.
“You’re probably right,” she sighed, defeated. She strode to the table and poured herself a glass. Her eyes watered as she swallowed it, and Rudyard Planck reached up to pat her thigh.
“There—have a bit more, don’t gulp it this time, and try to relax. There’s worse things than prison,” he added, eyeing his brandy doubtfully.
“What?” demanded Ceryl. Her hand shook as she unstoppered the decanter and filled her snifter again. “Dying? That might be worse.”
The dwarf shook his head, pursing his lips. In the confusion after Reive’s detention he had urged Ceryl to leave the Four Hundredth Room with him and return to her chambers. He glanced down at the table, where a polyfile showing a young boy pierced by myriad steel spikes hovered an inch above the granite surface.
“I see you indulge in timoring.” With a little moue of distaste he turned the dial at the base of the polyfile stand, so that the image flickered into random darts of light.
“Not really.” Ceryl shook her head wearily. “I tried once. It—it made me sick.”
The dwarf looked up at her and nodded approvingly. “I never could see the charm in it myself. A disgusting practice. This vogue for resurrecting ancient torments, pleasures of insane Roman emperors—madness, pure madness. Proof positive of the decadence of our times. Crimes against nature. I find them abhorrent. That’s why I’m rather unpopular around the pleasure cabinet.” He smiled wryly and turned back to Ceryl. “At least with dying one can always hope for rehabilitation, if you’re important enough to them. But once you’re in the Reception Area: well, usually you just stay there. Or else—”
His voice trailed off and he finished his brandy in thoughtful silence.
Or else they give you to the Compassionate Redeemer. That was what he was going to say, Ceryl knew that. She swallowed her brandy defiantly and poured herself a third glass. Rudyard Planck raised a small gingery eyebrow.
“That will make you sick, my friend. It’s a shame to waste good brandy—”
“I’m not wasting it,” Ceryl replied hotly. “You said to enjoy it. Well, I’m enjoying it. I’m having the time of my goddamn life. Reive’s been drinking it like—”
She stopped and drew her snifter under her chin. On the table beside a holograph Reive’s mysid drifted in its globe. Somehow they had never gotten around to finding a suitable hiding place for it. The sight of the tiny creature brought tears to her eyes.
“They’ll kill her, won’t they?” she said, almost in a whisper. “They won’t even try her probably, just—just execute her. She’s just a child, really. No more sense than—well, than that thing.”
She pointed at the mysid and wiped her eyes. “A gynander, there’ll be no reason to rehabilitate her. Not like—” She grimaced, gesturing at the door. “That one. You know. The new commander.”
“Tast’annin? The rasa? ” Rudyard frowned. “I hope not. I wouldn’t want one of my puppets to be rehabilitated if it meant that. No,” and he took a last sip. “I’m afraid our friend may soon be enjoying the most sublime timoring of alclass="underline" with the Compassionate Redeemer.”