Andrea Höst: The Towers, the Moon

France, under the rule of the Court of the Moon, is a country of cyclical change, where the true rulers arrive every night to compete among themselves, and humans are backdrop, witnesses, inessential – and yet inextricably intertwined.

It is the reign of the Gilded Tower, and fashions are daring.

Two Wings: Griff Tenning has suffered too much change in the past year, and wishes everything would quiet down for a while - or, better still, would go back to when his parents were alive. But, even so, it’s useful that his odd aunt can afford airship tickets to France. On such a quick trip, his hated travel sickness won’t be enough to keep him from a chance to stand beneath the impossible Towers of the Moon.

Forfeit: Forfeit is the newest game of the Court of the Moon, and one seemingly designed for humans to lose. But Arianne Seaforth is willing to pay a great deal to help her oldest friend – and she is learning to extract a price of her own.

Death and the Moon: Eluned Tenning can barely remember all the names of the vast network of cousins making her sixteenth birthday party so overwhelming. But she has no problems with would-be actor Milo, who is so calmly quiet and friendly. She’d never step on a stage herself, but she’s happy to help him rehearse.

This book is in Australian English.

These short stories sit between The Pyramids of London and Tangleways in The Trifold Age series. They contain mild spoilers for The Pyramids of London.

Griff Tenning, kneeling on his seat, strained to see through to the windows of the airship’s forward compartment, but there were heads, a potted palm, and a very round man in the way.

"How can these be the best seats for viewing?" he asked. "At the back and on the wrong side?"

"Which is better?" his aunt replied. "A long view at a distance, or a shorter view right up close?"

"Both. They wouldn’t even notice if I went up front."

"They did the last two times," Griff’s sister Ned said. "I think they meant it about putting you up in one of the ballonet seats next time they caught you."

The insistence of the airship staff that passengers keep to their own particular quarter of the main gondola, rather than crowd to the best vantage points, was peculiar and unfair, but Griff had yet to find a way around it. Ever since he’d turned thirteen, opening his eyes wide and asking as politely as possible was no longer consistently effective. Unfair.

Deciding not to risk being stowed up with the second class passengers inside the outer envelope of the airship’s ballonet, where there would be no views at all, Griff turned to his own window. At least they were coming over the city proper now, and there were streets, and rows of houses, all dressed up in tiny wrought iron balconies, too small to even step out on. Griff thrust his head out the window, and when Aunt Arianne quickly grasped the waistband of his shendy, he leaned further, drinking in the courses of the roads, and all the different sorts of chimneys. Lutèce, capital of France, spread out like a little map.

Airships were better than anything. You could see the city’s bones from up above, and all the little secret places usually blocked by high walls. Best of all, Griff didn’t really feel like they were moving, and so long as he didn’t keep focused on any single object on the ground, he hardly felt sick at all.

"We’re about to turn," a passing attendant said. "You’ll see the Sun Palace almost directly below us, and then the Towers."

Griff leaned further, then pulled back a little when Aunt Arianne gave his waistband a warning tug. It was bad design that the airship didn’t have a glass bottom. He wanted to see the palace from above most particularly, because photographs were not the same, and…yes! There it was.

France had a Sun Court and a Moon Court. The Moon Court – the Cour de Lune – was properly in charge, of course, but since they could only come out at night, the French had a human King as well. The yellow stone palace curving along the shore of a dark artificial lake was meant to represent a solar eclipse, to make sure the King never forgot exactly where he stood. This King. They changed kings a lot, in France.

The palace façade was a perfect curve, and there were exactly two hundred and twenty-two columns. Symmetry and repetition, not something that would be interesting if it was everywhere, but…

Stomach churning, Griff sat down. Aunt Arianne handed him a glass of water, and he took a hasty sip, then turned the whole of his attention back to the window, and just in time. One of the world’s greatest wonders heeled into view.

"It’s like a giant dandelion."

Typical Ned, with her head full of plants. "A snowflake," Griff corrected. "If snowflakes formed as domes instead of flat."

Though he saw where Ned had got the idea of dandelions. There was a central core, dimpled much like the round bit at the centre of a puff of dandelion seeds. That was the Hall of Balance, filling the Island of Emergence right in the middle of the River Seine. Out of it rose the Towers of the Moon. The central tower, the Tower of Balance, grew directly up: a single smooth column interrupted three times by horizontal structures, smaller columns spreading out to form interconnecting stars. The stars increased in size so that the largest was at the top, like a faintly curving snowflake suspended on a pole.

Four other major towers grew to the same length as the central column, but projected out at precise forty-five degree angles north, south, east and west. The stars of their three levels met and joined with each other, and with the stars of the central column, to form three filigree domes, each inside the other.

The whole thing was a deep black, though up close the black would have tones of muted, rainbow velvet. And that was just in the daytime. At night, when the Cour de Lune came, it would glow white and then really would look like a dandelion.

But more like a snowflake.

No human could build anything like the Towers of the Moon. The Towers had grown, expanding from the central core, and increased in size every year since the Court had taken France. The entire thing was hollow, filled with floors and walls and furniture, waiting for sunset when the Court would arrive. Griff began calculating just how many square miles it covered, and how long, at the known rate of growth, it would be before it swallowed the Sun Palace – for the third time in the Court’s history – and they would have to build another.

Enormous as it was, Griff’s view of the Towers was irritatingly short, as the airship curved around to the north-west and began to drop toward the ground. Griff continued to stare at the increasingly foreshortened view, but sat back as he did so.

"Le Tour de l'équilibre…" Ned was saying.

"La Tour," Griff put in quickly. "Towers are la , right, Aunt Arianne?"

"That’s right," Aunt Arianne said. "The one nearest us is La Tour de ciel. East is La Tour de neige, west is La Tour Dorée, and north La Tour de tambour."

"The Sky, the Snow, the Gilded, and the Drum," Griff said helpfully, and quickly moved out of reach when Ned leaned forward to tweak his nose. "I’m not showing off, I’m explaining ."

"Good that he can speak a bit of it," Griff’s other sister, Eleri, said. "Even if obnoxious about it."

Griff peeked at her out of the corner of his eye. A little while ago, Eleri had stopped being Eleri, and had become someone who spoke a lot less, and moped over a girl, and was different and strange. Griff didn’t know how to make her go back to being Eleri.