The Stars Askew (12 page)

A waiter offered Armand a plate of delicate rice balls with fish and a yellow paste arranged just so on top of them. Armand took one, placed it into his mouth whole. The burst of flavors was like nothing he'd tasted before, the salty fish melding with a spicy paste that made his eyes water. He couldn't tell if he loved it or hated it—which was exactly how he felt about Varenis.

Valentin passed him a blue drink in a long flute. “Flower-liquor.”

Valentin turned and waved at a woman. She wore a dress with a cleave at its front so deep, it reached almost to her waist. She moved with a studied languor, a mannered sensuality, her hips shifting from side to side, her legs almost crossing over each other with each step. Age had eroded her glamour, so that she stood on the borderline of parody—an aging minx. A touch too much powder on the face, a little too much leg, pendulous breasts heaved up to the sky by a corset. She had the look of a woman whose beauty regime had precisely the opposite effect of what she'd intended.

“Here he is!” said Valentin to the woman. “Armand Lecroisier, grandson of Gerard!”

The woman leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I'm Valentin's wife, Olka. You'll have to forgive me. I've just been to the thaumaturgists—for my skin.”

“Your skin?” She had an odd complexion, as if her face were slightly overripe and sweating.

“Yes, they can help with aging, you know—but it's expensive, of course.” She turned her head coquettishly.

“Ah, there's Controller Randes—I really must speak with him.” Valentin turned and walked away.

Olka pressed her lips together and eyed Armand as if he were a curious object. Her eyes roved over him. “You're a little thin, aren't you? Gangly, really. But your nose gives you a certain character.” She touched him on the arm.

Around him, the world began to shift a little. The stars above them shone a brilliant white, and Olka's eyes were an emerald green he hadn't noticed before.

A waiter took Armand's empty flute and passed him another. “The Controller insists.”

“Flower-liquor!” She smiled at him. “Oh, Valentin is a rascal, isn't he? Be careful with that. It breaks down the barriers in your mind!” Before Armand could mention anything, she said, “Come, let me show you something.”

She led Armand through the throng. He was bustled to-and-fro as the crowd pressed around him, but Olka grabbed his hand, throwing comments left and right. “Hello, my dear” and “Oh, look at you!” and “You're always so delightful!”

She led him into a wing of the house that jutted out over the city. To each side of the corridors sat steaming baths filled with revelers holding flutes of liquor high, away from the water. The angles of the room seemed to be shifting, as if space itself were distorting. The revelers drifted away and yet somehow didn't move as the pools themselves stretched.

She led him farther on, into a circular chamber that was entirely covered by an orange-and-purple carpet of fungi. It was composed of thousands of little stems that quivered at their approach, starting with those closest to them, rippling away like the water of a pond, then rippling back and reaching out toward them. Was the carpet moving, or was it the effect of this strange flower-liquor Valentin had given him?

“Pleasure-fungi, from Taritia! You'd never believe it. Of course, this wing is a terrible luxury—all this space in a city with hardly any room for its inhabitants. But then again, why else have a husband who is a Controller?”

She looked at the circular room. “You don't even need another person. I hate to think how much time I spend in there.…” She looked at him lasciviously, her face leering at him like a lizard's, and then away. “Oh, you're much too young for me.” She looked back at him, assessed his expression, and shook her head with finality. “You must let me introduce you to some of the women here, Armand. Believe me, you'll be exotic to them. You've got that odd little accent. You could bring them in here.…”

“I, really—no, I really don't think I have time.”

“Oh, you're just so delightful, Armand. I could just roll you up in a blanket and carry you around with me.” She touched the side of his face. “So beautiful. So lovely.”

*   *   *

Back in the central room, Armand spied Rainer lying on a chaise longue, surrounded by a group of young and slight women whose hair was more intricately sculpted than any he had seen, and dyed unlikely colors: bright and gaudy emeralds, golds, sapphires.

“Ah, our friend from Caeli-Amur,” said Rainer as Armand approached. “Let me introduce you to Yuki, Siki, Amori, and Kandi. They're Trid-Girls.”

Armand nodded, though he had no idea what Trid-Girls were.

“Delightful, aren't they?” Rainer ran his hand over his bald head.

One of the Trid-Girls gave Armand a sultry look through her eyelids. Another inspected Armand curiously. He realized that despite their different-colored hair and singular intricate tattoos of geometric and fractal shapes, they were identical. The upturned noses, the chiseled cheeks, the perfect skin—they could have been identical siblings.

“Waiter!” Rainer called out. A waiter arrived and passed Armand another glass of flower-liquor. He took it, politely. He wanted to make Rainer comfortable.

“You know,” Rainer said, “I don't understand you. Why haven't you sided with the belligerents? After all, they would prefer to descend on Caeli-Amur with the legions and install a new power immediately, without all these politics Valentin is planning.”

Armand took a sip of the drink. “No city survives such an attack. Not really. Didn't Peroloa resist the legions, only to be burned to the ground?”

Rainer leaned forward. “The Perolese were suicidal, and their city was built of wood. At least this way, you'd have some say in the outcome. The belligerents”—Rainer nodded toward a group of men standing in the corner of the room—“might welcome you, you know. You might be their man in Caeli-Amur. Certainly not independent, but…”

Armand looked over at the group of tall regal suited men, more conservatively dressed than most. He thought of talking to them but interrupted the thought. Valentin was his grandfather's old friend. Loyalty—that was one of the first principles. Anyway, as Rainer admitted, they would never allow a free Caeli-Amur, only an occupied one.

Rainer nodded. “Well, it's all a sideshow anyway.”

Armand looked at the fat man. “How do you mean?”

“Why, the position of Director, dear Armand. That is the main attraction.” Rainer smiled knowingly. There was something unnerving about the smile—it was the smile of a man who was safe in his position.

Armand moved to sip his drink, noticed it was already finished. Then Rainer was handing him another. It would be rude to refuse. He needed Rainer on his side. But how many had he drunk? He could barely make out the revelers' faces, which seemed like floating plates detached from their heads.

But now he was back on the balcony, looking in on the central room, where Valentin was whispering to a dark-suited man, one of the belligerents. Armand staggered back inside, but when he arrived, Valentin was gone.

The world shrank into him, so that there was no past and no future. There is only the present: a hand grasps him, pulls him aside into a narrow alcove. Before him stands the great behemoth Rainer, his cheeks both a rosy red. “Valentin: he's not to be trusted.”

To Armand, it seems as if the man's face is composed of a million flowers, shifting and moving, blooming and shrinking. He tries to pull himself together, but it is no good.

“Self-interest, that's the currency of Varenis.” Rainer's face flashes in prismatic color. “You think there's a central authority, and there is. There are departments. There is a rigid structure. There is a bureaucracy. But how does a bureaucracy work? Politics, that's how. You think this place is different from Caeli-Amur? It is. There is stability here that Caeli-Amur never had. We don't need violence or repression to control our population, because we have them all trapped in our complex web. There
is
no opposition here. There
cannot
be. All rivers are directed through controlled channels. They all lead to the same thing. Absorption.”

“Why do you tell me these things?” To Armand, it's as if they are enclosed in their own little bubble.

The huge man shrugs. “Something you said the other night moved me. You don't fit in here. Don't think I won't stab you in the back like anyone else. I understand chess is a popular game in Caeli-Amur: think of all this as an elaborate chess game, and you'll know where you are.”

“And what piece would you be on the chessboard?”

“Me? Why, a minotaur, of course.” Rainer's laughter is like a cascading waterfall.

“And me?”

“Don't be a fool.” Rainer looks across the room. “I know you'd like to think of yourself as a Gorgon, but you're not.”

An image of a Gorgon flashes into Armand's mind, an image from children's tales: snakes sprouting from a woman's head, roving eyes beneath, long canine teeth like those of a wolf, red with blood. The Gorgons had sided with Alerion, when the gods had warred. They were natives of Varenis, strange creatures of unfathomable motives and alien desires. He looks around and sees them now, Gorgons slipping through the party, laughing, serpents slithering terrifyingly on their heads. Blinks rapidly: no, there are no Gorgons; it is just a flower-liquor image.

“What part do they play here, the Gorgons?” asks Armand.

“They oversee practical affairs on behalf of the Sortileges, who are too busy with their research to take interest in the petty affairs of politics. So the Gorgons perform the ritual of ascension when a new man rises to Director. The Director must stare into one of their faces without trembling to show he is not afraid of the challenges that await him. The trick, they say, is not to picture yourself failing, for then you'll think of the consequences. Once
they
enter your mind … well, you can't help but tremble.”

“What consequences?”

Rainer ignores the question. “If they approve of you, well, they say they go easy on you. Before the test and after it. They're fickle. They have favorites. Some say you can buy their favor, for the right price.”

Armand grabs Rainer by the shoulders. “I have maps. I have lists of seditionists. I have something else, something even I could not imagine possessing. It's not for me, you understand. It's for the greater good. I have Alerion's prism, the prism into which he was bound as he died!”

Rainer stares at him, frozen in disbelief. Armand is filled with an uncertain feeling. He planned to keep these things secret, but some part of him wanted to share them, to say to the world,
Look!
Now, as he gazes at Rainer's face, changing with feverish curiosity, Armand realizes his terrible mistake.

“Let me introduce you to the belligerent leader, Zelik.” Rainer pulls Armand toward a stooped man surrounded by a group. For a moment Armand thinks Zelik is a weeping willow, but then he is again a man, gesticulating as he speaks.

Armand shakes Rainer off, ashamed. “No! I can't. I won't.”

Rainer reaches out again, and Armand slaps his hand away violently. Before Rainer can say anything, Armand rushes away into the party.

Olka presses him up against the wall. The night fragments like shards of glass—he doesn't know which piece fits where. All he knows is her hands are roving over him, touching him on the stomach, the leg,
there
. To his horror, he feels himself harden.

“Oh, you're too much. You're too much,” she says.

In the center of the room, Valentin puts his arm around Armand. “Too much flower-liquor, huh? Well, I wouldn't worry. But why not have another?” He passes Armand another flute.

Later Armand vomits in the street as rain pours down around him. The street is slick with water, which courses over his hands. The rain never seems to stop in Varenis. When he looks up, he fancies he sees a figure looking down at him from an arched walkway several levels above him.

“Who are you? What do you want?” he yells. He looks down at the gray ground beneath the coursing waters. That's what he needs to hold on to, something solid. When he looks back up, the figure is gone.

When he enters his room—the walls shifting with color and light—Armand lifts up the floorboards and takes out the prism. He staggers along the corridor, to a side door that leads into the stables.

Ice, who is resting on the ground, raises his head.

“Ice.” Armand places his hand on the horse's shoulders, rubs his face against the horse's neck. Armand lies down in the hay next to the creature, feeling its warmth beside him, the prism in his hand. Finally he sleeps.

When Armand returns to his room in the morning, he finds the door broken open, the mattress torn apart, the floorboards pulled up. He closes his eyes. The night before he told Rainer about the prism. This is the result. Armand curses himself. What a fool he is.

 

TEN

After the break-in at the Long Rest, Armand slipped through the streets—dodging around corners, rushing up and down stairs and walkways, dashing on and off steam-trams—until he was certain he was lost in the city. He found a second rooming house, though he had kept Ice in Tedde's stable. He carried his valuables with him, including, of course, the prism. If whoever had attempted to steal it—perhaps it was the belligerents, perhaps the philosopher-assassin who had trailed him from Caeli-Amur—tried again, at least he would be prepared.

He sent a note to Valentin that he would be away for several days, but that he could be reached at the Long Rest, though he still did not tell his friend about the prism.

Valentin sent a note back, telling him to stay out of sight for a while. Three days before the ascension, when the Gorgons would confront the Controller's nomination for Director and test him in some strange ritual of nerve and will, he sent a second note. It read:
You must meet me in the Undercity immediately
.