Andrea Höst: The Towers, the Moon

"Tired yourself out yet?"

Aunt Arianne, walking in short, effortless bounces, came bounding up to where they had paused for a rest.

"You make that look so easy," Ned told her. "I somehow keep forgetting where the ground is."

"Some people, they can never adjust to it," Aunt Arianne said. "They lose their sense of what is up and what is down, and fall over at all times. But a couple of days' practice and you’ll find it no longer so hard."

They were a long way from the restaurant, and Griff thought it odd that no-one had joined in, and only Aunt Arianne had come after them. He could understand that maybe Tante Sabet would find throwing each other into the air boring, but–

"Is Josette one of the people who can’t adjust?"

"Josette is far too grown up a young lady to be bouncing about," Aunt Arianne said, sitting down cross-legged. "She is very nearly fifteen, and knows better than to act like a tourist, particularly in front of Tante Sabet."

"You mean that the people who live here don’t – they have this wonderful thing and they don’t play with it?" Griff did not know whether to be angry or sorry for the French.

"The Gilded Reign is all about play. But Tante Sabet grew up during the reign of the Snow Tower, when everyone was expected to act very restrained. She didn’t have to adjust too much during the Sky Reign, but she is out of step with the Gilded Reign."

The four Towers of the Cour de Lune that took turns ruling France were very different. Father had said it was a mistake to simplify them into martial, spiritual, intellectual, and sensual, but that’s how Griff’s teachers had always talked about them. The things people were expected to value shifted along with the Towers, but Griff knew he would not want to change what he thought important just because someone else was in charge.

"Poor Josette," he said. "Living in the Reign that’s all about having fun, and stuck not enjoying it."

"There’s nothing poor about Josette," Aunt Arianne said. "And I suspect you would have preferred the Sky Reign. It’s a pity that they won only a short portion of rule this cycle."

The competition between the Towers was judged once a century by the Tower of Balance, which played umpire but never joined in. Griff was going to ask why he’d enjoy Sky Reign particularly, but Ned had a different question.

"You said that drinking vampire blood hadn’t made you as strong as a vampire, Aunt Arianne, but it had made you stronger, right?"

"A little. Nothing spectacular, I’m afraid."

"Does it matter to you if you behave like a tourist?"

Ned was like that: not nearly so interested in politics as things that made her heart race – and drawing her precious plants. But Griff didn’t mind, since adding Aunt Arianne to the launching team made an enormous difference. She even let them throw her up a couple of times, before they started back to the restaurant, and was definitely overall in a much lighter mood than she had been since…since they’d met her at the beginning of the year. Not just acting like nothing bothered her.

Perhaps she was simply glad to be back in France. She had, after all, dropped everything to come to Prytennia after Mother and Father had died…

Griff didn’t want to think about that right now, not on such a good night. There were other questions to answer.

"Aunt, why do people-people’s ears and noses and eyebrows get bigger when they get old, but vampires' don’t?"

"The vampiric symbionts try to maintain their hosts at an ideal state." Aunt Arianne lifted her hands to her ears, as if checking their size, and then laughed. "I am now picturing my most-irritating vampire master with enormous ears and a nose twice the size of his face. That would go well with his eternal bad mood."

“And what about the Cour de Lune? They can live longer than most vampires – do their ears and noses keep getting bigger?"

"Yes, but the rest of them grows as well, to match. That’s the main reason they don’t usually go outside the Towers in our world – the older ones are too tall to even stand at a normal weight, let alone fly."

"Have you met many? What are they like?"

Aunt Arianne looked up as a swirl of la clochettes passed overhead, like a shower of tiny bells falling sideways. "I’ve never been inside the Towers – far too expensive an indulgence. I’ve seen a few of the Court at the theatres, but I don’t have entrée to their circles."

Aunt Arianne always acted like having money was a bigger adjustment than all the other things that had happened to her. Griff started to ask whether she would like to be reborn in a different body in the Cour de Lune’s Otherworld, a thing Griff found mildly horrifying, but Aunt Arianne was covering her mouth, yawning.

"Time to go back to the hotel, I think – it’s been a long day. We can come back here again another night, if you wish."

Griff did. The Towers were even better than he’d hoped, and it had been a grand day, worth the risk of coming into a territory where you turned into something else when you died. And luckily Tante Sabet didn’t really seem all that sniffy about what they’d been doing, instead teasing Aunt Arianne in a grand way about acting even younger than she looked. He still felt sorry for Josette, though, for having to sit with her family instead of seeing how high she could leap.

They had to take a special chain-drawn tram out from beneath the triple domes, and the transition left him heavy and tired, like he weighed twice as much as normal. He was glad they were only one flight up, and trailed everyone else up, clumping his lead-lined feet.

"Tell your sisters, be ready an hour before dawn," Josette whispered, passing him.

Before he could even turn toward her, she had trotted up the stair and was gone, and of course Ned asked: "Ready for what?" when he told her and Eleri.

"How would I know? I’m just saying what Josette said."

"Better set an alarm for an hour and a half before, Ned, if we expect to get Himself here up in time."

"I’ll be up before either of you," Griff told them firmly, but ended up being dragged out of bed by Ned, as usual. He never could understand how it worked out that way.

They were eating some of the fruit that had been in a basket in their room when there was a scratch at the door, and Ned opened it to reveal Josette, dressed in trousers.

"They’re old ones of Milo’s," Josette explained, when Griff pointed them out. "He’s waiting downstairs."

"What we doing?" Ned asked, labouring over her pronunciation.

"You’ve seen the Towers at sunset – you need to watch the dawn come in as well, or you haven’t properly seen them."

"You just want to bounce around when your grandmother’s not nearby," Griff said.

Josette ignored this, saying: "We had best hurry."

He repeated what she had said so Ned and Eleri could understand, talking in whispers as they followed Josette down a narrow back stair and out a rear entrance. It had rained, even though the sky had been clear before and was clear again, and the rain had brought a chill that made it properly feel like autumn.

A shadow shifted, but it was only Milo. "Remember to wedge the door," he said, with a resigned note to his voice, and Josette hastily turned back to collect a folded newspaper and used it to stop the door from closing all the way.

"Now we must hurry," she said, shooing Ned and Eleri toward the main street, and keeping them moving at a brisk pace – not heading direct to the Towers, but at an angle that took them to the bank of the Seine, which was wide and paved and handily passed directly beneath a low point of the outermost dome, giving Griff a good opportunity to observe it as they marched steadily into wobbly footing and enormous bounces. They reached a small park not too far from the outer edge, with a good straight view of the south-west Tower and the two inner domes.