He paused dramatically to clear his throat and eye the guards with disdain. “ That is where we will meet with the margravines.”
Reive nodded, anxious to seem as though she understood any of this. Rudyard’s words were unfamiliar to her—perron? narthex?—but the thought of seeing the Orsinate again was somewhat stimulating. She knew she should be terrified, at the very least more than apprehensive about her part in the upcoming ritual. But the truth was that everything about the Seraphim fascinated Reive, and horrible as the Orsinate were the margravines held her spellbound. The Compassionate Redeemer was another matter, of course; but then she knew little enough about it. Perhaps it would turn out not to be so horrible. Perhaps Âziz would have a change of heart, and adopt her as the Orsinate’s proper heir….
Such dreamy thoughts—abetted by the narcotic fumes rising from vents in the floor, and intended to calm sacrificial victims traveling to the Narthex—made the gynander lose track of time. More than once Rudyard stopped, staring wearily at his feet; once Reive distinctly heard him mutter something about the inferiority of ostrich leather when wet. The attendant group of Aviators who had preceded them had long since disappeared in the sloping corridors. Reive found herself admiring the artwork covering the high curved walls, scenes painted in metallic colors showing penitents in dark suits and white shirts bowed before tall figures wearing the conical crowns of the Orsinate.
“We really didn’t kill Shiyung,” she said as to herself. She paused to examine a lapis-crowned figure at the end of one panel. It gesticulated frantically at the Redeemer with one hand and made the ward against Ucalegon with the other. She sought vainly for some familial resemblance to the present Orsinate, but found nothing remarkable. “We saw him do it—the rasa. ”
“I know.” Rudyard Planck’s tone was weary, but as he stopped to wait for Reive to catch up with him his eyes were kind. “You don’t seem capable of that sort of thing. Which makes it all the stranger that you’re a pure Orsina. Assuming, of course, that you are.”
Reive shrugged. Their guards had stopped a few yards ahead, beneath a great archway that led into an open area where several brightly clad people were milling about, occasionally peeking expectantly down the Path of Atonement as though waiting for guests. Reive turned, craning her neck to determine who else was following them. She saw nobody. It was not until she and Rudyard stood within the arch, and she could see the excited expressions on the other faces, that Reive realized the anticipated guests were themselves.
“Well!” A tall woman strode toward them, hands clasped, her wrists tinkling with bracelets of tiny glass and silver bells. She had an aquiline nose and cheeks scarified with exquisitely delicate wards against the Healing Wind. “We were afraid something had happened to you!”
She wore long white robes trimmed with gold and green, and a tall chromium mitre that marked her as Archbishop of the Church of Christ Cadillac.
“I will be performing the ceremony this morning,” she explained, waving her hands in a manner suggesting she was blessing them. “Others will assist me—the mullah Alfreize Neybah and High Sister Katherine Mullany—but I’ll be reading your last rites and so on and assisting at the autopsy afterward. If there is one,” she ended with an apologetic smile.
Behind her stalked another, very tall woman in a pale fern-colored jumpsuit, faded and spotted with age but of very fine cut. She looked embarrassed to be wearing green. Reive recognized her as one of the members of the Committee for Ecclesiastical Freedom and Punitive Delight, often to be seen on the ’files.
“The margravines will be glad to know you’re here—the ceremony can begin now, we haven’t found Nasrani but he’ll just be sorry he was late, that’s all,” the second woman said breathlessly. She frowned a little as she looked down at Rudyard’s soiled clothes, then shaking her head turned to Reive.
“This is an immense honor, young person,” she said. She smiled approvingly at the gynander’s shaven skull. “For you, for all of us—there hasn’t been a morphodite offering since Sylvia Orsina’s time. We are all so grateful that we’ve lived to see it—not that any of us wanted to lose Shiyung,” she added hastily as the Archbishop’s long nose began to twitch.
“I think the margravines are growing impatient,” she said, coughing gently. The floor shook again and a fine rain of dust and debris fell from the steel rafters. The Archbishop grimaced and readjusted her mitre, revealing a red line where it pressed cruelly into her skin. “This way, please.”
Reive straightened herself, brushing grit from her scalp, and tried not to look pleased by the Archbishop’s deference. Glancing at Rudyard she saw he was staring sullenly at the Archbishop’s back, but when he saw her looking he gave her a brave smile.
They followed the Archbishop and the other woman, who turned out to be a precentor and quite beside herself at the honor she was to be accorded in chanting the Redeemer’s hyperdulia prior to its release. There were other ecclesiastical types roaming about—several mullahs in moss-green turbans, more representatives of the Church of Christ Cadillac, a number of galli from the Daughters of Graves, even a few of the Orsinate’s own Saints, parading about on stilts and wearing bright green masks of the Redeemer, as well as the entire membership of the Chambers of Mercy. But despite the crowd the space seemed empty and hushed, the stilts making even tick-ticks upon the floor, the other participants whispering as they looked over at Reive and Rudyard and the Archbishop. As they entered the Narthex, with its bronze arches and golden fanlights glowing high overhead and the stench of burnt roses ineffectually masked by clouds of frankincense and steaming bowls of galingale, Reive glimpsed the Quir, the leader of the Daughters of Graves, peering from behind the portable aluminum screens that protected him from impious eyes. When Reive turned to stare he winked at her and waved.
“We’ve never been here before,” she admitted, whispering to the dwarf beside her. The Archbishop had stopped to confer with one of the Orsinate’s personal hagiographers, who waved a vocoder in an agitated fashion.
Rudyard Planck looked up, his blue eyes sad. “I’m sorry you’ve lived to see it now, Reive. It’s not a very happy place, at least not from our perspective.”
“You’ve been here before?”
He nodded, patting an unruly auburn tuft of hair back into place and then straightening his cuffs. “Oh, yes. Once every ten years, and then of course there was the year their parents died—”
He flicked his fingers toward another doorway that Reive assumed must lead to where the margravines waited. “There were two major sacrifices that year. Of course we’re seldom so fortunate that a successful assassination falls upon the eve of Æstival Tide.”
“No,” Reive agreed wistfully. The word sacrifice made her feel unhappy again. She rubbed her bare scalp gingerly, wincing. “They won’t change their minds?” There was not much hope in her voice.
“God, no.” Rudyard smiled at the Archbishop staring back at them. To Reive it looked like he was baring his teeth. “That would mean they were capable of mercy, and there has not been an Orsina capable of that since Simon ez-Zeyma had his twin sons smothered rather than watch them die of the plague.”
“But Shiyung—”
“Shiyung was capricious and anxious to be disassociated from her sisters,” Rudyard said sternly. “Not always a bad thing but certainly not admirable in itself, and certainly not to be confused with mercy. For example, I observed once when she had the eyeteeth yanked from—”