"Pleased to meet you," Sula said.
The shop was a three-level fantasy filled with sumptuous fabrics in brilliant colors, all set against neutral-colored walls of a translucent resinous substance that let in the fading light of the sun. Gossamer Cree music floated tastefully in the air.
A Daimong who designed clothes for Terrans was something new in Sula's experience. The shop must have had excellent air circulation, or Chesko wore something that suppressed the odor of her rotting flesh, because Sula didn't scent her even once.
Casimir's mood changed the instant he entered the shop. He walked from one rack to the next and heaved out clothing for Sula or Veronika to try on. He held garments critically to the light and ran his hands over the glossy, rich fabrics. Veronika's were soft and bright and shimmered; Sula's were satiny and tended to the darker shades, with light accents in the form of a scarf, lapel, or collar.
_He's dressing me as a woman of mystery,_ Sula thought.
His antennae were really rather acute.
His tastes were fairly good as well, Sula thought as she looked at herself in the full-length video display. She found that she enjoyed herself playing model, displaying one rich garment after another. Casimir offered informed comment as Sula changed outfits, twitched the clothing to a better drape, and sorted the clothing into piles of yeses, maybes, rejects. Chesko made respectful suggestions in her bell-like tones. Shop assistants ran back and forth with mountains of clothing in their arms.
It hadn't been like this with Lamey, Sula remembered. When he walked into a shop with Gredel, the assistants knew to bring out their flashiest, most expensive clothing, and he'd buy them with a wave of his hand and a pocket of cash.
Casimir wasn't doing this to impress anyone, or at least not in the way Lamey had. He was demonstrating his taste, not his power and money.
"You should have Chesko's job," she told him.
"Maybe. I seem to have got the wrong training, though."
"Your mama didn't give you enough dolls to play with when you were growing up," Julien said. He sat in a chair in a corner, out of everyone's way. He had a tolerant smile on his pointed face and a glass of mig brandy, brought by the staff, in one hand.
"I'm hungry," Julien said after an hour and a half.
Casimir looked a little put out, but he shrugged and then looked again through the piles of clothing, making a final sorting. Julien rose from his chair, put down his glass, and addressed one of the assistants.
"That pile," he said. "Total it up."
Veronika gave a whoop of joy and ran to embrace him. "Better add this," Casimir said, adding a vest to the yes pile. He picked up an embroidered jacket from another heap and held it out to Sula. "What do you think of this?" he said. "Should I add it to your pile?"
Sula considered the jacket. "I think you should pick out the single very nicest thing out of the stack and give it to me."
His dark eyes flashed, and his gravel voice was suddenly full of anger. "You don't want my presents?" he asked.
Sula was aware that Veronika was staring at her as if she were insane.
"I'll take a present," Sula said. "You don't know me well enough to buy me a whole wardrobe."
For a moment she sensed thwarted rage boiling off of him, and then after a moment he thought about it and decided to be amused. His mouth twisted in a tight-lipped smile. "Very well," he said. He considered the pile for a moment, then reached in and pulled out a suit, velvet black, with satin braid and silver beadwork on the lapels and down the sides of the loose trousers.
"Will this do?" he said.
"It's very nice. Thank you." Sula noted that it wasn't the most expensive item in the pile, and that fact pleased her. If he wasn't buying her expensive trash, it probably meant he didn't think she was trash, either.
"Will you wear it tonight?" He hesitated, then looked at Chesko. "It didn't need fitting, did it?"
"No, sir." Her pale, expressionless Daimong face, set in a permanent caricature of wide-eyed alarm, gave no sign of disappointment in losing sales worth hundreds of zeniths.
"Happy to," Sula said. She took the suit to the changing room, changed, and looked at herself in the old-fashioned silver-backed mirrors. The suit probably was the nicest thing in the pile.
Her old clothes were wrapped in a package, and she stepped out to a look of appreciation from Julien, and the more critical gaze of Casimir. He gestured with a finger as if stirring a pot.
"Turn around," he said.
She made a pirouette, and he nodded, more to himself than to anyone else. "That works," he said. The deep voice sounded pleased.
"Can we eat now?" Julien asked.
Outside, the white marble of the Couch of Eternity glowed in twilight. The streets exhaled summer heat into the sky like an overtaxed athlete panting at the end of his run.
They ate in a cafe, a place of bright red-and-white tiles and shiny chrome. The cafe was crowded and noisy, as if people wanted to pack in as much food and good times as possible before rationing began. Casimir and Julien were in a lighthearted mood, chattering and laughing, but every so often Sula caught Casimir looking at her with a thoughtful expression, as if he was approving his choice of outfit.
He had made her into something he admired.
Afterward they went to a bar, equally crowded, with a live band and dancing. The other night Casimir had danced with a kind of gravity, but now he was exuberant, laughing as he led her into athletic kicks, spins, and twirls. Before, he had been pleasing himself with a show of his power and control, but now it was as if he wanted all Zanshaa to share his joy.
_He was taking me for granted the other night,_ Sula thought. _Now he's not._
It was well past midnight when they left the bar. Outside, in the starlit darkness, a pair of strange colossi moved in the night. Leather creaked. A strange barnyard smell floated to Sula's nostrils.
Casimir gave a laugh. "Right," he said. "Get in."
He launched himself into some kind of box that, dimly perceived, seemed to float above the street. There was a creak, a shuffle, more barnyard smell. His long pale hand appeared out of the night.
"Come on," he said.
Sula took the hand and let him draw her forward. A step, a box, a seat. She seated herself next to him before she understood where she was, and amazement flooded her.
"Is this a pai-car carriage?" she asked.
"That's right!" Casimir let a laugh float off into the night. "We hired a pair for tonight." He thumped the leather-padded rim of the cockpit and called to the driver. "Let's go!"
There was a hiss from the driver, a flap of reins, and the carriage lurched into movement. The vehicle was pulled by a pai-car, a tall flightless bird, a carnivorous, unintelligent cousin to the Lai-own driver that perched on the front of the carriage. There were two big silver alloy wheels, ornamented with cutouts, and a boat-shaped car made out of leather, boiled, treated, sculpted, and ornamented with bright metal badges. Mounted on either side were some cell-powered lamps, not very powerful, which the driver now switched on.
The car swayed down off the Petty Mount and into the flat cityscape below. Sula relaxed against Casimir's shoulder. Darkened buildings loomed up on either side like valley walls. The slap of the pai-car's feet and its huffing breath echoed off the structures on either side. There seemed to be no other traffic at all, nothing but the limousine, with its Torminel guards, that followed them at a distance, the driver's huge nocturnal eyes able to navigate perfectly well by starlight.
"Is this legal?" Sula wondered.
Casimir's bright white teeth flashed in the starlight. "Of course not. These carriages aren't permitted outside the parks."
"You don't expect police?"
Casimir's grin broadened. "The police are bogged down processing millions of ration card applications. The streets are ours for the next month."
Veronika's laughter tinkled through the night. Sula heard the slap of another pair of feet, and saw the savage saw-toothed face of another pai-car loom up on the left, followed soon by the driver and Julien and Veronika. Julien leaned out of the carriage, hands waving drunkenly in the air. "A hundred says I beat you to Medicine Street!"