Nathalie’s swollen eyes filled with tears, and she began to cry again, in floods. Ned somehow got herself in the way, so the girl could clutch her around the waist, though there didn’t look to be any non-painful way for Ned to hug her in return. The sobbing finally caused the left lump to burst, and unpleasant liquid gooshed down the girl’s back.
This was properly revolting, but Griff hoped it would at least make it a little less sore. He didn’t know if he’d helped at all, or just made things worse, and joined Milo in looking awkward and peering up at the curving filigree arching over them, marking the progress of the sky lightening beyond the distinctly faded domes.
"Nathalie!"
Swarms of people, quite far away, shouting. They should look funny, trying to run-swim as quickly as possible across the park, but they were too frantic, and too upset. Nathalie looked up, then shuddered into Ned’s lap again, but Milo uncurled her.
"Not enough time," he said. "Come. Let them say goodbye."
He and Ned each took one of the girl’s hands, and bounced toward the swarm. Griff, following behind, could already see a difference, a strange greyness and lack of definition to the figure in the middle.
Then the leading edge of the trail of people met them, and there were hugs and kisses and an awful lot of crying. Nathalie was already markedly less there, but still, there was enough remaining for her to hear, to look up, when a man – too far behind to hope to reach them – bellowed across the park:
"Nathalieeeee! Papa will always be Papa. Papa will always love you!"
Then the last of the glow faded from the Towers, and left the park with just a lot of weighted-down wingless people, crying.
Milo, solemn-faced but practical, located Eleri and Josette, red-faced and panting in the trailing pack. "One drama is enough for the morning," he said, and diverted them back in the direction of the hotel.
There were an unexpected number of people out and about, looking tired and worn as they, too, headed back to their hotels. People who had been up all night, bouncing or watching the fliers or the special acrobatic performances, or just being light. Griff watched faces, and noticed that hardly anyone was smiling.
The Towers were magical and wonderful, and yet even when you weren’t losing one of your family to them you would feel this flatness, this disappointment every morning, when the normal world pressed down on you.
"She won’t know anyone there," Griff said, as they passed beneath the outer dome.
"They say the chrysalides are cared for most kindly, at least until their wings have developed enough to determine what Tower they belong to. Then…" Josette shrugged eloquently. "Then it would depend on how well you match your Tower, I suppose." She sighed. "I own, I am glad, after all, that my wings never came."
When Griff stared at her, she laughed, though not particularly cheerfully. "It is supposed to be a wondrous gift, after all, to discover yourself part of the Court. You live for centuries, you stay young, and you can fly. Everyone checks for the start of their wings, and twice as often if they happen to be angry at their parents."
The newspaper wedge was gone from the back entrance of the hotel, but Milo simply strolled around to the front and came through to let them in. They slipped upstairs, Josette vanishing with a wave. Griff, hungry once again, sat by the window picking over their fruit basket until Ned came and rubbed his shoulder.
"Buck up," she said. "We made things a little better for her. I’m sure we did."
"There needs to be a way to stop things changing all the time," he muttered.
"Things stopped changing, you’d never get any new buildings," Eleri said.
"Might be worth it," Griff said, since there were plenty of buildings already that he had yet to see.
France made change obvious and inevitable. Every day the Towers glowed and the Court came and went. Four times each century the Towers swapped control, and supposedly all the people started caring about different things, and if their king wasn’t good at the new things, they got a new king, and… It made Griff tired just thinking about French kings, let alone girls who grew up and sprouted wings and stopped being part of their families.
He glanced at Eleri, and saw she was staring out of the window again with that expression she’d never worn until a few weeks ago. And they were all supposed to just get used to the new Eleri, like the French were supposed to swap from debating competitions, to the things that the Gilded Court did that people spoke about in hushed whispers.
Was Eleri still Eleri? She at least was right in front of him, and not faded into an Otherworld. If he could change anything back, it would be his parents, not his sister, and a whole summer spent wanting to do that hadn’t made any difference.
Griff sighed, and opened the window, and then started planning the places Aunt Arianne could take them all, now that he knew airships wouldn’t make him sick. If everything was going to inevitably be different, he’d best grab at the different things he liked, in case they too faded out of reach.
Forfeit
(i)
Arianne Seaforth had spent her summer acquiring wealth, responsibilities, and secrets. Not least of these was an ability to catch flashes of emotion from those around her, and so when her oldest friend and sometimes lover, Martine Lourien, suddenly flared with shock, hurt and dismay, Rian naturally looked about for a reason.
They were visiting the crammed and labyrinthine workrooms of the Sourné, Lutèce’s premier museum, and although the basement halls were badly lit, Rian knew there was no-one nearby. At least, not anyone with a heartbeat to betray them to Rian’s new senses.
"Martine? Something wrong?" She saw no obvious explanation among the racks of costumes, and the work tables festooned with pieces from the Sourné's Theatre Collection, all in various states of restoration.
"Ah, no – my mind is off in the…I was thinking of Milo."
Rian studied her friend’s angular profile, but Martine bent to open the drawers of the desk that belonged in particular to her, and the dark wings of her straight black hair fell forward to hide her face.
"Since he’s still hauling bags at the Hotel, I take it Milo did not win the part in Bonheur’s company?"
Martine straightened, smiling as she always did at mention of her son, but then blowing out her breath in disgust. "No, and I was so sure that they wanted him! It seemed certain! But I have hopes of his latest audition, for he is perfect for Tesaire! It is not mere partiality that makes me say so."
"Death and the Moon is in production?"
"Yes, at the Voltari. Milo reads Tesaire so well. They simply cannot overlook him."
Rian could feel Martine’s frustration, but also a good deal of confidence. The problem was not Milo, then. From the way Martine was checking and re-checking every drawer, it looked like something was missing from among the pieces she was restoring.
"Isn’t something like the Moon desperately unfashionable now that the Gilded Tower is ascendant?" Rian asked, eyeing the contents of the desk. A wooden mannequin head, a pair of embroidered gloves, and an elaborate waistcoat. A line of typewritten cards identified them as pieces from the Léon Bonnaire exhibition.
"Bah. Why? It is romance, and tragedy, and skewers Rome. That does not go out of fashion. The actors, they will perhaps wear less clothing than they would have under the Sky Court, but Milo, he looks good without his shirt."