“In the Capital?” Nasrani breathed. The gravator jerked, throwing him against the wall, then dropped another level. “You saw this in the Capital?”
The rasa nodded. “Yes: the place they called the City of Trees. Those two children were stronger even than I was, at the end: else they would have died, and I would not.”
“Where are they now?”
“I do not know.” The rasa stared out the window, to where violet lights bored through the murk of Principalities. “When your sisters did not hear from me for many months they feared—rightly—their plans had gone wrong, and sent their own janissaries to seize the City. Their troops arrived mere hours after my death. All I have learned since my— recovery —has been chaos and lies. But I do not believe those children are dead.”
His pale eyes flickered and he looked out the window, as though seeing something besides the grim substrata of Araboth. “I know she at least is not,” he murmured a moment later. “That girl is bound to me now, somehow, through my death perhaps. She is alive still, I know she is. I do not sleep now, it is all like a constant dreaming and I see her, she is out there, somewhere, and I must find her.”
He leaned forward and placed his hands conspiratorially upon Nasrani’s knee. The slashed remnant of one black glove fell to the floor as the rasa gazed into the exile’s eyes and Nasrani gasped.
Because now it was no trick of the light that made him imagine features upon that sleek black mask. Somehow—whether by some perversion of the biotechnician’s rehabilitative work or through the will of the Aviator Imperator himself—through some macabre machination the cold smooth metal had begun to form itself back into the semblance of a man. Like hot tar that bubbles and can be stretched and pulled about, the crimson mask rippled, seethed, was still. As Nasrani watched in horror a mouth appeared, the metal seeming to ooze as it outlined thin lips and shining black teeth that clashed as the rasa stared at him, grinning.
“What is it, Nasrani? ‘Bad Science’?”
“N-no—” the exile stammered. On his knees the rasa ’s fingers twitched. He glanced down to see that its steel fingers had cut through the fabric of his trousers as though it had been paper. He looked up to see the smooth planes of the rasa’s mask protrude and sink as cheekbones appeared, a jaw, a pointed chin—the perfect simulacrum of the face of Margalis Tast’annin, cast in liquid flame. Eyes bulged beneath sharp metal brows; a metal blade protruded and shaped itself into a nose like a kite’s bill.
“Do you think your sister would love me now, Orsina?” the rasa whispered. “Or—I forgot, she is a corpse too, of course she would love the dead—”
Crying out, Nasrani pushed him away and scrambled to his feet, his crown rolling across the floor.
“Sentry!” he shouted, yanking at the gold cord by the gravator door. But before he could touch it the r asa had sheared the cord in two, and grabbed him by the throat with his other, human hand.
“No, Nasrani,” he said, and drew the man back down beside him. Nasrani whimpered. The Aviator dabbed at his bleeding hand, then with a smile withdrew his finger and traced the outline of Nasrani’s babbling mouth in blood. “I still need you. To find the nemosyne. And then—and then I think I will need you to help me leave Araboth for good.”
Nasrani cried out. “Leave the domes! I can’t—we could never—”
The Aviator grinned. Blood trickled from his lip, and a silvery tongue like a steel serpent darted out to flick it away. “But we must. I was too hasty up there; they will realize soon that the gynander did not kill her. I should have brought her with me. She knows things. When I told her my dream, she recognized in it the germ of a memory that haunts me. There is much I could learn from her, I think.” He fell silent and stared broodingly out the window.
“From a morph?” Nasrani’s voice was shrill. “They’re all quacks, those pantomancers, quacks or half mad—”
“Not this one. She has the Sight. Âziz was frightened enough by what she said to have her imprisoned. I freed her, but then I lost my head….”
The rasa’s voice faded. In the silence Nasrani could hear faint wails and the roar of the Architects’ Conciliatory Engines grinding through the dim avenues of Archangels. The gravator slowed, then picked up speed again.
Nasrani licked his lips and said, “My sisters don’t believe in the predictions of pantomancers. At least Âziz does not. She fears treason, that’s all. She is a fool. They are all fools.” He bent to pick up the Orsinate’s crown. His bleeding hand left sullen streaks across its lapis sides. “The gynander is right: Ucalegon will destroy us.”
“Then you believe her.”
“I know that on my brief forays Outside I saw things that my sisters would deny were possible.” His voice rose angrily. “I could have helped them, and their precious Architects: but they didn’t believe me. It should have been enough, that I went Out, and made it back inside—”
“We are here.” The gravator lurched to a stop. As the door jerked open the rasa turned to Nasrani. “If you try to betray me I will kill you here, and do such things to you afterward that you will beg to be recast as a rasa.” Without a word Nasrani nodded and followed him outside.
The Architect Imperator sat watching the fougas outside his window, the bright banners with their weeping sun and devouring wave. He had returned from his encounter with the Compassionate Redeemer, his raucous laughter rousing his idle replicant; and then spoken with the Architects. The breach had spread to the intake valves beneath the Gate on Archangels; the sump pumps on Angels had been crushed beneath the weight of the ocean as it flooded the first tier of the filtration system. One of the Architects had run a meteorological survey and it was as he had hoped, one of the scores of storms that battered the coast each summer was building to the east. By the following day, Æstival Tide, the winds Outside would be strong enough to rip the hair from a man’s head. When they opened the gate to free the Compassionate Redeemer and loose the throngs upon the beach to watch, the change in pressure would be enough to send fault lines rippling through the domes like fire through straw.
The Architect Imperator turned from the window and walked to the wall. He pressed a switch hidden beneath an oil portrait of his dead wife. A sweet smell filled the room, a smell of orange-flower and jasmine. There was the sound of soft laughter.
In the middle of the room darts of light flickered, red and green and gold, then slowly coalesced into the image of a woman sitting on a white high-backed chair. She was laughing, her gray eyes flashed mockingly, and though no sound came from her mouth as she spoke, he could still hear her saying, “By the time you need this you’ll be so old you won’t be able to see it clearly.”
Of course he was not that old at all, and she had been only a few months older than the polyfiled image when they’d murdered her. Without taking his eyes from the image he reached and switched it off.
He would go and tell them now, he decided. It would be the final commission of his duties. As he gathered his things he thought, briefly, of his son, and wondered where he had been these last few days. From his pocket he withdrew a small piece of paper neatly lettered with green ink, and with a tiny silver butane lighter he set it aflame and watched it turn to white ash. Then he walked down the hall to where the cylinders and monitors hummed contentedly to themselves. His last words to the Architects were a series of commands, and a final order to destroy all records of Araboth’s construction.