Ceryl’s breath froze in her chest as she recalled her own treacherous dream. “Will they question her?” she asked, trying to hold her hand steady as she placed her empty glass on the table.
“About you, you mean? I daresay they already know everything they want to know about you and your relationship with that unfortunate morph.” He sighed noisily and eased himself onto the floor. He ran a plump finger along one eyebrow and began to pace. “Rather presumptuous of her to read Âziz’s dream like that. Not to mention the Aviator Imperator’s.”
He stopped in front of the window, peering over the sill to watch a fouga nosing down through the blue air toward the sentry hangars.
“Why did they regenerate him?” Ceryl joined Rudyard, watching the dirigible on its long slow pass down this side of Cherubim.
“Our new commander? Surely you’ve heard that old gossip.”
The dwarf shook his finger at her, but his voice was kind. “Margalis Tast’annin was probably the most brilliant Aviator to come from the NASNA Academy in the last century. His mother was Penelope Métanira—you must have heard of her, the greatest mystical poet since Hanna Vollmann. I suppose that’s where he got this odd— way —of his. Rather a melancholy temperament for a military leader,” he mused. “There was a peculiar business at the Academy when he was there, another student’s death under mysterious circumstances. But our Margalis graduated with honors, did his time in the Provinces and the Medaïn Desert—but you must know some of this! He was an extraordinarily handsome young man, that golden hair and blue, blue eyes—I’ve seen the ’files—a hero of the Archipelago Conflict, and oh, what else? Single-handedly wiped out the Commonwealth’s submersible fleet; or that’s what they would have you believe.”
He gazed out the window, across the ultramarine fastnesses that hid the Palace. “After that he became quite enamored of Shiyung—of course you knew that, everyone did—and of course that ended, and he was practically exiled, sent to command the HORUS substations, and then Shiyung had that insane plan to retake the abandoned capital of the old United States, Âziz was the only one with any reason at all about that, and—”
At Ceryl’s raised eyebrow he sniffed, “Oh, of course: how could I possibly be privy to all this? My dear friend, if one must be a dog, then be a rich man’s dog. It helps that my mother was Angelika Panggang’s stepsister. Anyway—”
He stared moodily across the room at the door. “Anyway, his mission to the Capital failed. Failed dreadfully, despite all this fanfare about Triumph and Victory Is Ours. Some horrible mishmash of death-cults and geneslaves and vengeful barbarians. From what I heard, he was tortured; escaped; went mad. Set himself up as some sort of cannibal king presiding over barbaric rites. And then, of course, he died. And then, of course, he was regenerated.
“And for one of his nature… Well, Margalis Tast’annin has a sensitive, one might say almost a visionary, temperament for a military commander. And that makes him a very dangerous man. Made him a very dangerous man. Now I suppose he’s a very dangerous rasa. Mad as a rutting mandrill, crazy as Nasrani and the rest of them, but more, I would say, ascetic. Quite attractive, to a certain kind of person.”
He lowered his voice. “ I heard that when he broke with Shiyung she tried to kill herself. Raced toward the edge of a furnace during a refinery tour. Some moujik grabbed her at the last minute. That was when they sent him to HORUS.”
Ceryl turned her back to the window. “How horrible.”
She stalked to the table and slopped some more brandy into her snifter. “You know, they killed my lover. Giton Arrowsmith. Supposedly it was an accident but I think they wanted him dead. He was always too outspoken in his criticism of them.” She returned to the window, swaying a little as she peered down at Rudyard.
“Is that when you tried timoring? After he died?”
She sipped her drink, her eyes glazing over, and finally replied, “Yes. I wanted—I wanted to know something. About death. What it’s like.”
“And?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. They die, is all. They suffer, we watch.” She tipped her chin toward the door. “Like them. Nike and Shiyung and Âziz. We suffer and they watch.”
The dwarf nodded pensively. After a moment he sighed, and said, “Well, I’m sorry for your friend Reive. Sorry for myself, too,” he added, giving a sharp laugh. “I hoped to spend more time with her. I like morphodites.”
A soft sound at the door. Ceryl jumped, glanced down at the dwarf, her eyes wide and terrified.
“Ah, well,” murmured Rudyard Planck. He raised his glass mockingly as the door opened. A small figure darted into the room.
“Ceryl!”
Not the Reception Committee; not the inquisitors.
Reive.
Ceryl raced across the room, hugging the gynander and then dragging her into the bedchamber. “Reive! I thought they took you—”
“They did,” the gynander gasped. Rudyard Planck tiptoed to shut the front door and hurried after them.
“Âziz can’t have let you out,” he said flatly. “You escaped—?”
“The Aviator.” Reive trembled so that Ceryl held her tight, stroking her thin hair and murmuring wordlessly. “He came and Shiyung, Shiyung— Oh, Ceryl, we didn’t know where to hide, where else to go—”
From the next room came the hushed click of the door opening again, then the pad of feet across the floor.
“Reive Orsina. Ceryl Waxwing.”
Their shadows blotted out the light from the doorway. The Reception Committee, six of them in their dark suits and white linen shirts. Each carried, almost casually in a white-gloved hand, a slender electrified cudgel, and the man who had spoken waved a tiny canister of nervetorque. Reive began to sob.
“You won’t need that,” Rudyard Planck pronounced. He drained his snifter and replaced it fastidiously on a table, then walked up to the man with the nerve gas and gave him a little shove. “If you know who I am, then you know—”
“Shut up, Planck,” one of the others spat. She strode forward and glared down at the dwarf, then at Reive. She held up an allurian scroll, cleared her throat and read, “Reive Orsina, Ceryl Waxwing.” Pausing, she glanced balefully at the dwarf, then added, “Rudyard Planck. Âziz Orsina cordially invites you—”
Rudyard turned to stare at Reive. “Orsina, did she say? Reive Orsina?”
“Damn it, Planck!” The woman pushed him so that he tripped and fell against the granite table. When Ceryl gasped the woman whirled to face her. “You’re Waxwing? You’re wanted with the other one, for—” The woman turned to the man with the canister of nervetorque. “What was it?”
“Collusion,” he said, almost sadly. Ceryl was surprised to see that he had tears in his eyes.
“Collusion on what?” demanded Rudyard Planck breathlessly as he stood, rubbing his chin where blood welled from a gash as long as his finger.
“Murder,” the man said, and now he really did brush a tear from his cheek.
“Murder? But who—”
The woman cut Ceryl off by pushing her toward the door. “The assassination of Shiyung Orsina. Chain the morph while I get this one—”
As she struggled Ceryl twisted to see Reive staring bleakly as the man wrapped metal loops around her hand and neck. At her feet Rudyard Planck gazed at the gynander with an expression of nearly ecstatic disbelief. Then Reive turned to Ceryl and said, quite clearly, “The rasa —he believed me—it is Ucalegon—”