Elizabeth Hand - Æstival Tide

Nasrani nodded. “Do you miss her?” He sipped his liqueur, gazing at Hobi through slitted eyes. He was not unaware that the two of them were related: it was the eyes, mostly, that showed it. Tiger’s eyes, like Shiyung’s. She was the beauty of the family, and Nasrani had always thought it a pity that she had no living heirs. There had been a child, once. His child, he was certain; but the baby had been monstrous—a morphodite, Shiyung whispered to him months afterward. But that had been a long time ago. If the child had lived it would be nearly as old as Hobi now. Nasrani sighed and finished his Amity. The boy looked younger than the last time he’d seen him. He supposed the scrabbly beard did that. Nasrani smiled and said gently, “Your mother was a fascinating woman, Hobi.”

With a clumsy shrug Hobi reached for the decanter. “Yes. My father misses her horribly, I know.”

Nasrani nodded. Angelika Panggang had been poisoned last spring by a woman in the Toxins Cabal. A tiny venomous frog, sleekly orange as its innocent brethren and served with flaming raisins to Angelika after her morning sauna. The taster had looked on bemused as Angelika had a seizure. Later she claimed she thought her mistress was exercising, and was acquitted by the Orsinate. Because of her husband’s prominence, and her own relation to the Orsinate, Angelika was given a pyre with full funeral honors, including the sacrifice of her entire personal staff. The rumor was that her death had been a warning to her husband, whose predilection for very young girls had embroiled him in an affair with Âziz Orsina’s favorite bedmaid. The bedmaid, too, ended up in a fiery eclipse, but that was some months later.

Since his wife’s death the Architect Imperator had grown introspective. His attention had turned to arcane matters: divination by means of broken glass; a penchant for the nearly unlistenable form of sadist opera known as Fasa; an inexplicable fondness for the company of Rudyard Plank, the dwarf whose legendary bad taste had made him a favorite of the margravine Nike. Sajur had also developed a burning hatred for the Orsinate, and a taste for flouting it—for example, in his weekly tanka games with Nasrani Orsina, the infamous margravin now exiled (for a failed assassination attempt upon his sister Âziz) from the Orsinate’s Level.

Several more minutes passed. Nasrani fiddled with the glass buttons of his crimson greatcoat and drank another tumbler of Amity in thoughtful silence. Hobi was surprised the exile did not yet appear drunk, but experience had taught him that Amity caught up with everyone, sooner or later. The thought troubled the boy and he gnawed at a fingernail.

The decanter was nearly empty. Nasrani stared at it with bemused affection, as though regarding a beloved but naughty child. Hobi leaned forward to press a button beneath the table. A moment later a replicant appeared, ram-headed and wearing the same long linen shift and trousers that Hobi did.

“Khum.” The boy indicated the decanter, now empty. “Bring us more of that, please.”

Nasrani watched the server, amused, as it gathered the tray and glasses and retired to the pantry. “That is a very old one,” he said after a moment.

Hobi nodded, somewhat embarrassed. “I know. It was—well, it was a gift, I think, or something, I think we inherited them, my mother always said we should get some new ones—”

Nasrani shook his head. “No—it’s a very good one, they don’t make them like that anymore. Third Ascension: a vogue for things Egyptienne. And animals, of course, the fashion cabinet says that animals will be very popular this season. So your father’s old replicants will actually be quite stylish.” He smiled. The boy looked relieved. “Are you interested in such things?”

Hobi shrugged, started to say no when he recalled that Nasrani Orsina was an Orsina, even if an exile, and he was being kept waiting by his father. “Yes, I am.”

“Would you like to see some others?”

Hobi looked startled. He glanced around the room suspiciously, as though these others might be lurking behind the priceless oak paneling. The ram-headed Khum returned bearing a new tray and several full glasses gleaming with emerald liquid.

“Very good, then,” Nasrani announced. He stood, the tails of his greatcoat swirling, and swept up one of the glasses. “Khum, tell the Architect Imperator that as punishment for his tardiness I am not only drinking all of his Amity but stealing his son. Come on, Hobi.”

Hobi started to stammer something by way of protest— oh, no you needn’t trouble, he’ll be right back, help! —but Nasrani was already out the door. It seemed rude to remain. And since rudeness was often punishable by death within the Orsinate’s cabal, Hobi hastily decided to follow.

On the promenade outside, the pagoda-shaped houses of Araboth’s Imperators shimmered in the perpetual twilight, mauve and pink and faintest gold. Here on Cherubim Level the air smelled of some warm spice, cinnamon or galingale perhaps, piped in to counteract the briny scent of the heavily filtered breezes. Only a few yards away the heat fence crackled, and Hobi could glimpse the tops of buildings on the next level down.

“Should have thought of this sooner,” Nasrani was muttering to himself. “Inadequate education these days, never see anything outside their own homes. Good idea.”

Hobi hurried after him. In the middle of the next block the boy stopped, for a moment losing sight of the exile’s crimson coat as the older man strode on. At Hobi’s feet fluttered several paper billets. He stooped and slowly brought one to his face.

10,000 PRAYERS TO UCALEGON! he read, and PRAY FOR THE HEALING WIND! When he looked up he saw Nasrani waiting impatiently.

“Look at this,” Hobi said as he caught up with the exile. He held up one of the flyers. “Isn’t this treason?”

Nasrani glanced at it and sniffed. “But there is rebellion everywhere, my dear,” he said. He turned the corner near the Cherubim Level gravator. “That is why you Imperators have all those replicants with horses’ heads and rubber feet. But my sisters can afford the luxury of treachery, and so they employ human help. And humans won’t put up with this sort of thing forever. Public executions, children kidnapped for torture parties, people killed to be made into rasas, houses torn down while one sleeps. You can see how it would wear one down after a while.”

“But it’s religion,” said Hobi. From one of the lower levels he heard watchmen hoarsely chanting the midmorning call to prayer. He looked up; the nuclear CLOCK said nineteen. “I mean, Prophet Rayburn said that only the children of the chosen should be allowed to—”

Nasrani rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, Hobi! I’m an exile, you don’t think you need to talk like that to me? ” Then, in a singsong voice, “ Here we are—”

Ahead of them was the gravator. Nasrani made a grand gesture and held the door open for Hobi. “Now!” The exile beamed as the doors folded shut and the ancient machine shuddered. “I think you will find this very interesting, Hobi.”

The gravator, while not as elegant as the one that served the Orsinate’s Level, was still quite ornate. Elaborately carven benches ran along the walls, heaped with pillows, and small round lanterns cast a rosy light on the faces of the two passengers. In the center of the moving chamber the Architects had installed a small perfumed fountain shaped like an argala, a popular motif several seasons ago. As the gravator descended, minty-smelling water spewed from her mouth onto the boy’s feet. He hastily moved to the other side of the room.

Nasrani sank heavily onto a bench. The gravator gave a horrible lurch and plummeted a thousand feet, then slowed as it passed through Thrones Level. Another sickening plunge. The chamber filled with the musky scent of the vivariums as they passed Dominations. Then Virtues, where the dream-mantics lived; and down to Powers, with its faint background hiss of electrical equipment.