They drank the nutriments, grimacing at the strong fishy taste. A few minutes after they were finished the empty globes collapsed and melted into small puddles, and eventually evaporated. Reive tried to get Ceryl to drink as well but the woman only moaned and twisted her head. She would not open her eyes. The swelling on her head had turned nearly black, and Reive trembled as she held Ceryl’s head in her arms.
“I would be very surprised if she lived until dawn.” The nutriment had revived Rudyard Planck. He leaned on the wall across from Reive and tilted his head at Ceryl. “Though she’ll be the lucky one if that’s the case.”
“Yes.” The gynander sighed, blinking back tears. Gently she lay Ceryl back upon the floor, after carefully wiping the sweat from her face. She glanced down at the still-full globe in her hands. Impulsively held it out to the dwarf.
“Here—we are not thirsty anymore.”
Rudyard Planck blinked, startled. “What? Oh, no—please—” He waved his small hands, his face turning an even brighter red. “I’m much smaller than you. Please—drink it, Reive.”
“Please—”
The dwarf saw the pleading in her eyes, the need to do this one small good thing. He took the globe and drained it.
Reive crossed the room and leaned against the warm wall. She closed her eyes, trying to recall something pleasant: the smell of sandalwood in Ceryl’s chambers, the taste of krill paste, the sight of her mysid floating in its glass jar. If only she could be free again, she would make offerings to all the gods; she would join Blessed Narouz’s Refinery and never venture to the upper levels again.
The dwarf watched her, one hand shading his brow to keep the sweat from running into his eyes.
“I think you really are their child,” he said after some time. Reive made no move to show she’d heard him. “Shiyung and Nasrani’s. When I first met you, by the Karvo sculptures—do you remember?”
Reive’s eyes opened, two alarming stabs of green in the opalescent light.
“Even then it seemed to me you looked familiar, although of course I didn’t piece it together. Who even knew, who would remember, after all these years—how long is it?” He stared at her intently. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen years,” she finally pronounced. The dwarf nodded.
“That would be exactly right. The same year the Archipelago Conflict began. Shiyung and Nasrani opposed it; that’s how they found themselves together, I imagine, siding against Nike and Âziz. The year they sent Margalis Tast’annin to Kutaraja on his first command, the year the first HORUS installation failed.”
He began to chew his thumb. “That was a bad year.” He sounded depressed.
Reive stared at him impassively. “We are their only child,” she said. “They should be happy to have found us.”
Rudyard snorted. “Not likely! Âziz thinks she will live forever—she will live forever, unless someone poisons her, or Margalis strangles her as well. In three hundred years there has not been a single peaceful succession by an Orsina. Too many bastards, too many feeble-minded children. A true heir by brother and sister—even a hermaphrodite—that would be too dangerous. Better to have Nike stupefied with morpha and Shiyung as a rasa and Nasrani exiled; or better yet, Nasrani brought back into the fold now that Shiyung’s been clipped. Âziz would never let you live. She would never let anyone live who knew about you.”
The thought seemed to depress him further. He sank to the floor and stared at his feet. A bad smell hung about the cell, as of pork left uncooked for several days. Ceryl lay stretched upon the floor now. Her breathing had grown so soft that Reive could no longer hear her. She crept to Ceryl’s side and cocked her head, listening.
“She’s dead.”
The dwarf nodded without looking up. The gynander prodded the woman gently. The body felt rigid. When she picked up one of Ceryl’s arms and then dropped it, it thumped loudly against the floor.
“We should call someone—she was kind to us, and we never thanked her—”
Reive began to cry, crouching back and staring at the glass wall where the aurible monitors undulated through their viscous element. Rudyard Planck gazed at the corpse and then at Reive, wide-eyed, an expression that might have been gratitude as much as despair.
“She alone has escaped,” he said softly. “Be grateful, little Reive, she has escaped—perhaps she will bless us, wherever she is—”
He shut his eyes and began to recite the Orison Acherontic of Christ Cadillac, pausing for good measure to invoke Blessed Narouz as well as the Prophets Rayburn and Mudhowi Sirrúk. When he finished they sat in silence, the only sounds their labored breathing and the nearly inaudible tick of the monitors outside the cell.
Reive slept and dreamed. At least, she thought it must be a dream. She knew that the uncomfortable parameters of their cell were designed to make sleep impossible; but how else to explain that she was once more hurrying down the corridor to the oceanic vivarium, her bare feet stinging where they slapped the cool floor?
“Zalophus!”
Even as she called out she knew that it made no sound. There was no ripple in her throat to form the name, the white-clad Children of Mercy did not turn to see who it was that shouted by the zeuglodon’s tank.
But Zalophus heard. The enormous head reared from the dark water and gazed at her, plankton streaming from his teeth.
“Little thing,” he roared. Reive marveled that the Children of Mercy didn’t hear him, either. “You have returned! Come with me now, quickly! The gates are opening at last!”
Water sluiced across her feet as he rolled onto his back, flippers waving. Reive shook her head.
“We can’t go with you, Zalophus. We would drown.”
The whale moaned and dived beneath the surface. A minute later he reappeared, spray frothing from his blowhole. “Come with me, human child,” he sang, and shivering, Reive felt the sound within her bones. “Come with me, or else you will die— Ucalegon the Prince of Storms flies across the seas, he is coming to ravish his bride, even now the city quakes to think of him! Come with me, we will join my sisters and witness the holy act!”
Reive looked away to stare at the watergates hung with shining banners, the gaudy flags and pennons of Æstival Tide. Already the offertory pyres had been lit. The air was thick with the scent of myrrh and the scorched smell of the gilt papers covered with the names of the recently dead, long narrow scrolls tossed onto the pyres by the followers of Christ Cadillac. Beyond a narrow gap at the top of one of the huge barricades she glimpsed something shining, a sliver of light the color of Rudyard Planck’s eyes. That is the sky, she thought. When we next wake they will open the Lahatiel Gate for the Redeemer, and then we will see the sky for the last time.
“We cannot go,” she said, turning back to him. “We are to be given to the Compassionate Redeemer. Besides, you would only eat us.”
Zalophus groaned, shaking his great head. “The Redeemer! So cruel, a thing without a mind, without a thought, nothing but teeth and bowels! It has no heart and so no true hunger! Ah, Reive, it is a sin, to treat you thus!” And Zalophus raced about his prison, churning the water into green froth and roaring so that Reive clapped her hands over her ears.