S. Farrell - A Magic of Twilight

With that, he turned to go. His gaze swept momentarily to Ana with the movement, and he smiled and nodded faintly to her before he began to walk away.

“Ah, Ana,” Archigos Dhosti said. “I’m glad you’re here. I’d like to introduce you formally to A’Tenis ca’Sevini, ca’Fountaine, and ca’Cille.”

Ana tore her gaze from the envoy, walking briskly down the corridor away from Kenne’s desk. Kenne was smiling at her; she ignored him. “Certainly, Archigos,” she said.

“Look!” Ana pointed and laughed with delight.

Outside the Grande Palais, the shrubbery had been placed upside down, their greenery half-buried in the earth and bare roots curling like gnarled fingers toward the cloudless night sky. Teni-lighted globes were set inside the nest of roots, surrounded by colored glass so that mul-ticolored root-shadows crisscrossed the grounds. The grass had been painted a white that gleamed eerily, as if the moonlight illuminating the city had been poured out on the land, while the fountains set between the wings of the Grande Palais bubbled water that was jet black and opaque. Ornate, brightly-colored birds from the jungles of Namarro and South Hellin, their wings clipped and bound, strutted and preened over the skeletal grass while several well-groomed and jeweled-collared dogs, looking rather startled and uncertain of their fate, were suspended by ebon strings from cables strung between the palace roofs, so it appeared that they were treading air.

It was the festival of Gschnas, when reality was set topsy-turvy and nothing was as it seemed to be.

The Archigos nodded and grinned at Ana’s excitement. “This is the Kraljica’s favorite celebration,” he said. He was seated across from her, but instead of the usual green robes of the teni, he wore the shrouds of a corpse, and his face was hidden behind a porcelain skull mask. The eyes behind the open sockets of the face startled Ana every time she glimpsed them in the dim carriage.

Ana, with the help of Beida and Watha, was dressed as a young male chevaritt, her breasts bound tightly (and rather uncomfortably, she had to admit) under a frilled bashta decorated with medallions, a wooden sword girt to a wide leather belt, and leather boots that reached her knees. Her hair was pulled severely back and braided like one of the Garde Civile, and a floppy cap with a long feather teetered jauntily on her head. “You look quite the handsome creature,” Beida had said, stepping back after they were finished dressing her. “Why, you may have to fend off some of the ca’-and-cu’ women who are looking for a husband.” She’d giggled at the thought.

The carriage stopped, and a footman-dressed, Ana recognized with a start, in the very outfit that the A’Kralj Justi had worn for his official portrait, and with a golden crown encircling his head-opened the door for them. Ana peered around at the fantasy landscape, at the dark fountains and bright grass, at the spidery cracks and fissures that had been painted in the walls of the palais, so that it appeared the building had been shaken and broken in an earthquake and the Grande Palais was a ruin in a lost land.

As she stepped from the carriage, Ana heard sudden discordant and strange music, and saw a trio next to the main doors. The dulcimer player was striking her instrument with the hammer held in her bare feet while she reclined on the ground; the tambour player had set his drum on a stand in front of him and was bouncing three metal balls onto the stretched goatskin while juggling them-and keeping surprisingly good time, Ana had to admit. The man with the sacbut seemed to be playing with the mouthpiece of his device lodged in his nether regions; Ana decided she didn’t want to know how he was producing a sound. She grimaced at the distressing blat of his instrument.

“They’re not very good,” Ana said to the Archigos. His skull face peered up at her.

“The marvel,” he said, “is that they can play at all, isn’t it?” She heard muffled laughter behind his mask.

They handed their invitations to the attendant-wearing a goat’s head and mittens that looked like a goat’s feet-who promptly announced them by reading their names backward-“Callim’ac Itsohd

Sogihcra dna Atnares’uc Ana Inet’o”-impressing Ana with his facility. Inside the ballroom, the ca’-and-cu’ milled in interweaving knots of conversation. For a moment, Ana was overwhelmed at the sight of the upper society of Nessantico in all their grand finery and elaborate costumes. At the far end of the hall, an orchestra was playing-properly this time, though they were seated high above the crowd in the frame of a gigantic crystalline figure, his massive outstretched hands the seats for the musicians, his flesh a carapace of colored glasses, his bones white stone. A thousand candles blazed everywhere in the statue’s frame, and twin fires blazed in the sockets of his skull. Red liquid poured from his open mouth and splashed into a pool in which the giant knelt, as if praying.

Before the strange figure, the crowd swayed and glittered and preened, their intermingled conversations nearly overwhelming the musicians. They danced in pairs and circles and lines; they gathered around the periphery of the dance floor to talk-and many of them were staring at Ana and the Archigos standing by the door. Ana began to feel intimidated and a bit frightened, sweat beading on her forehead under the powder she wore, but the Archigos took her arm. “Remember,” he whispered to her, “most of them are just as uncertain as you are, maybe more so. They’ve just had more practice hiding it. You are O’Teni cu’Seranta, and you arrived with the Archigos. That puts you above nearly everyone you see.”

“I’m not used to that.” Her voice cracked, barely above a whisper as she leaned toward him, his head only level with her elbows.

“ Get used to it,” he whispered. “And learn to use it to your advantage. Come. Let’s go down. .”

She linked her hand to his arm. They went down the stairs together, into the whispering sea of faces and costumes.

“O’Teni. .” she heard from a dozen directions as they reached the floor, and she nodded politely to the greetings. A waiter dressed as an ape offered her a glass; she took it and sipped sweetened, chilled wine.

She stayed close to the Archigos, following him as he made his way through the crowds, away from the dancers and into the relative quiet of one of the alcoves.

“Archigos,” she heard a voice call. “I must say that it takes a certain bravery to wear grave shrouds. I would be too afraid to dress that way, thinking that I was tempting fate.”

A trio of shadows detached themselves from near a fireplace along the wall, where cold green flames leaped up from a pool of water set in the hearth-most likely created by another teni-spell. Ana’s eyes widened: in the uncertain light of the water-flames, one of them appeared to be a muscular and bare-breasted woman walking on her hands, but as they approached, she realized that what she’d thought was skin was not flesh at all, but cloth bound tightly to a frame and painted to look realistic, that the “woman’s” head was bewigged and waxen, and that a man’s features peered from just above the frozen skirt, his hands encased in shoes and his feet clad in hosiery that looked like hands. Ana shivered: the sight was not pleasant.

A genuine woman stood next to the man, dressed all in colorful feathers that frothed around her attractive face and accentuated her figure, with equally flamboyant wings sprouting from her back. The third person was an older man, heavier and double-chinned, and wearing a simple peasant’s costume, with his face artfully streaked with black paint that must have been intended to represent dirt.