Empire Dreams (4 page)

OH, BUT THE
Infanta Serenade is graceful and the Infanta Serenade is fair and when Dom Perellen sees her descending the grand staircase on the arm of the host, his ex-patron, the night of the pageant at the House Merreveth, he knows someone will have to die. For but two weeks previously his had been the arm she had taken descending his grand staircase to greet his guests, his the halls which had rung to her gay golden laughter, his the divan she had graced with her long, languid huntress’s limbs. Fury rising in his gorge like bitter bile, Dom Perellen departs from the ball as early as propriety permits and orders his gondola to return him home without delay or detour. He sits like a dull cold stone, wrapped in his mantle and street mask as the boat steals down dark canals lined with yellow-windowed walls and low bridges. Deafened by the imagined laughter of Dom Merreveth and all the Gracious Castes of the city, he cannot hear the desperate playing of the ensemble of mechanicals in the bow (a selection of his own most celebrated quintets, no less), nor the terrible distant cries of the Ragers as the night’s madness claims them again, nor the erosive slop of dark water against the stones of the City of Man. Without his knowing, the chill of autumn rises like fog from Elder Sea and steals through his street gown into his soul. Upon arrival at the House Perellen he locks himself in the music room and meets his servitors’ well-intentioned inquiries with a tantrum of temper that sends both human and mechanical scurrying for their quarters.

From the walls of the music room portraits of the Doms and Infantas of the House Perellen, separated forever by a long, narrow strip of parquet floor, gaze upward into the tinkling chandelier, or wistfully toward the great oriel window with its commanding views of the Grand Canal and the Lagoon beyond. On a dais beneath this window stands the current Dom Perellen, thirty-fifth of his line, looking out toward the unseen sea. For a long time he stands thus and the retinue of the House hush each other in their duties and wait. Then as the uncounted campaniles and carillons of the City Imperishable ring out the Third Hour he turns to the device beside him. This is the Instrument, the wonderful contrivance of keys and stops, tabs and levers (capable of the faithful mimicry of any sound animate or inanimate) upon which he creates his compositions. Seating himself before the complex manuals, he touches a key here, a tab there, and swells the long room with music. He plays for many hours, filling the House with towering toccatas of dizzying virtuosity, intricate fugues, and moody sonatas until at dawn he emerges, his fury spent, and announces to his household that all is well, he will retire to his rooms for a short rest. As the doors close behind him the servitors all notice that the portraits of the Exalted Ancestors Beneath the Sea seem to be smiling the same smile.

* * * *

Now we see a strange thing, for, since those of the Gracious Castes seldom visit those older parts of the city given over to the commonalty and the artisiers, there is a certain unseemliness in Dom Perellen’s stealthy passage down branching waterways which grow out of each other, increasingly narrow and overshadowed by crumbling mansions. Slipping past sludge-boats and fishing-cogs, between the baroque barges of the transtellar merchants and the vigilant dark launches of the St. Charl Guards, he comes upon a quiet, deserted water alley enclosed by sheer walls of rusting iron balconies and peeling wooden shutters, overhung by the pale banners of fresh laundry. At the water-steps of St. Audeon’s Place, he leaves his gondola and proceeds with two wardens (one fleshly, one mechanical) into the labyrinth of lanes and entries where he finds a place he knows well but has never seen.

Brothers Ho
, says the sign above the door,
Importers and Purveyors of Exotic Creatures: Taxidermists
. Behind the latticed window a patchy stuffed padishant bows and curtsies to the passersby. Kittens in pinafores caper about a table in parody of a nursery tea-party, birds sing and display, gorgodrills rise up upon their hind legs and open their ruffs, fritillaries flitter and fret, and the imported exotics lurk within their protective glass environments.

“Lo, Brothers Ho,” whispers Dom Perellen, “a moment of your time for a dear sibling, a favor given, a favor taken?” The door pays no heed. There are no sounds of motion from within. “Lo, siblings, if you will not open the door to your dear brother, will you open it to good custom?” After a long time oiled bolts are drawn back and the door opens. Quick as thought, Dom Perellen is through it. He finds himself in a well-appointed parlor, low-ceilinged and lit by warm yellow gaslight. Every available inch of wall space is taken by some stuffed and mounted creature, every part of the room subjected to the scrutiny of their black glass eyeballs. Behind him the window displays perform their mechanical pantomimes for the amusement of the lanes and alleys. Before him stand two men, tall for the artisan castes, dissimilar in age but in every other way as alike as two peas in a pod.

“Which are you?” asks Dom Perellen. Both men answer together, “We are Adam Beth and Adam He,” which is no answer at all. “So few?” asks Dom Perellen. One of the brothers shrugs, the other replies, “Brother Adam Zayin is in the workship, patron; the other four brothers are out among the Known Worlds procuring stock, thanks entirely to your continued patronage, Grace, in obtaining visas for us.”

“It was the least I could do. We look after our own, even the discredited sons of our father. But I have some business for you; a matter of some delicacy which demands your particular skills and customary discretion. Now, if I may make myself comfortable?” Chagrined by their lapse of common etiquette, one of the brothers hurries to prepare tea while the other takes Dom Perellen’s mantle and street mask. It is then that we see that the faces of Dom Perellen and Adam Ho are like one face reflected in a mirror. After tea has been served Dom Perellen leans forward confidentially across the low table. The swiveling glass eyes of the stuffed animals follow every motion from their high perches.

“I want someone killed.”

The Brothers Ho smile politely.

“Go to the assassins, patron. Employ them. Our business is not in death of that manner.”

“Where is the artistry in employing assassins? Where is the personal sense of triumph? It is like paying to hear another composer’s sonatas; there is no satisfaction in the dry notification of a contract fulfilled. I must orchestrate it myself. It must be my own work, my own composition, my own personal vengeance.”

“Ah, so it is the Dom Merreveth, then, patron.”

“You pay close attention to the gossip of the Gracious.”

“All the city has heard of your discomfiture, patron. Alas, but woman is as fickle and independent as—”

“It is nothing to do with you. Nothing.”

“Apologies, apologies, patron. We presume too much on our kinship.”

“This ‘kinship’ is too slender a thing by far to support your right to gossip about your superiors. Consider this: you have a business and a respected name among all castes of the city, although you have had to relinquish your gracious name and take a common appellation. How many other disinherited clones can claim such favorable treatment? Nobler families than the Perellens have sold their engineered sons and daughters to the licensed mendicants and seraglios.”

“Nobler families than the Perellens would not perhaps have required seven attempts.”

“Enough. I am not responsible for our father’s whims. He wished his heir to be a composer, he cloned new sons until he had his composer, and that is it. Need I remind you that under the new law there may be only one legal claimant to any genotype? You live under sufferance and my good favor. Now, my dealings with the House Merreveth. I want to hear your suggestions for a fine present for the Gracious Dom as an apology for my behavior at his pageant.”

From a high shelf the Brothers Ho (who we now see to be more than brothers, yet less) bring leather-bound volumes of sample books and a small imager which they employ to display their wares to Dom Perellen. They show him the wheeled gyropeds from the lava plains of Fafenny, helicoptera from the crystal forests of Chrios, fire-dwelling pyrogenes that seem mere lumps of dull stone until the moment they unfold in a blossom of flame; elegant, priceless agapanthas from Hannad, monstrous panjas from the mountains of Ninn; gooseberry-green vegemorphs that derive their motive power from sunlight and water; singing choirs of angels no larger than the palm of his hand; flocks of fritillaries on chains of silver filigree: he sees grampus, oliphaunt, kraken and werwulf; fur and feather, fang and fire. The imported exotica of a dozen worlds do not impress Dom Perellen.

“Something more homely,” he says, “the gentle Dom is a home-loving fatherly man.” So again the books open and the imager displays: hunting trophies of every conceivable species that can be followed with fowling-piece, crossbow, or light-lance; strange near-human creatures from the forgotten quarters of the city; diorama cases of prehistorical beasts from remote epochs; dumb-waiters and mechanical tray-boys in the shapes of gallimaufs and padishants; humorous novelty collages assembled from diverse pieces of reptiles, birds, fishes, and mammals; mounted grotesques, like the two-headed kitten and the pair of Siamese-twin calves; collections of insects, birds, and small mammals; amusing novelty automata … Here Dom Perellen stops them and exclaims, “The very thing!”

“What, patron, the House Mouse Family?”

“Precisely, citizen. The Dom Merreveth may be doubtful of a gift to himself from me, and rightly so, for I’ll grant him a certain shrewdness, but a gift to his dear children could not possibly be suspect. And what could be more innocent, what better to delight a child’s eye, than our little family of mice? How quickly can you have a set prepared?”

“Four days, patron?”

“Three?”

“It could be done, but not easily. The minutiae of detail, patron; we pride ourselves that our automata are indistinguishable from life.”

“Your import licenses are due to expire shortly. I can arrange for another half-year’s extension.”

“Thank you, patron, but we live in difficult and trying times. Despite the quarantine and the best efforts of the St. Charl Guard, not a night passes without the shrieks of the Ragers, the carniphages, crying from our rooftops, nor morning break without some new poor victim having fallen to them.”

“You are vulnerable, I understand. I shall have one of my personal wardens remain to guard your workshop by night.”

“Thank you, Grace, but for the books …”

“Ah, the books; the books must balance, the gentlemen of the exchequer never sleep. You will be paid fairly for your work, never fear. It is the least I can do for my unfortunate siblings. Now: the automata; there are a few minor changes I wish you to make.”

* * * *

Now it is noon, for the carillons of St. Maikannen’s Chantry have rung out the Thirteenth Hour, and in the plaza beneath the bell-keep Dom Perellen takes wine with a few intimate friends from his circle of artists and aesthetes. They drink and laugh and stretch their elegant limbs in the weak autumn sunshine and exchange morsels of malicious gossip. But there is little pleasure in raillery for Dom Perellen for he knows that at other tables in other plazas beneath other bell-keeps other young bucks are lampooning and laughing at him.

Later they visit the Govannon Academy and fall in with a group of five young Gracious ladies, come like them to view the paintings. Dom Perellen drops a two-forent tip to the human chaperon, and his friends distract the mechanical conscience for the few moments necessary for him to slip aside with the Infanta Phaedra on pretext of showing her the exhibition. Later, at the House Perellen, he will entertain her with some short sonatas of his own composing. On their return from the Academy, with the campaniles sounding Nineteen o’Clock and the starlings flocking and swooping about the spire of St. Severyn’s Cathedral, they are diverted from their course by the St. Charl Guards who have cordoned off an area surrounding a disused trading factor’s warehouse.

“Ragers, Graces,” says the fat perimeter sergeant. “Carniphages. Traced a chapter of ‘em to this ‘ere warehouse. Soon have ‘em smoked out, rest assured. What you’ve got to do, Graces, bum out the Plague.”

The Infanta Phaedra presses closer for reassurance and Dom Perellen commands his mechanical quintet to play and quench the sound of the screams. The little boat moves on. Behind, the sun-forged blades of the laser-lances cauterize the alien infection. Soon the cries are lost and all that can be heard is the gentle lilting of the music and the lap of dark water under the bow as the ebbing tide draws them down the confluence of conduits and channels toward Elder Sea.

* * * *

Dawn finds Dom Perellen gazing into the ceiling. Confusing ripple-reflections move across plasterwork cherubs and peacocks. The Infanta Phaedra stirs contentedly in her sleep but Dom Perellen does not hear her, for he is far away in the passages of his mind. Dawn is the hour when the death-white corpse-boats slip from their moorings behind the Hall of Weeping and steal away into the sunrise to the funeral grounds. Only the gravely smiling boatmen who crew the water-hearses know the latitude and longitude of the funeral grounds, but in his imagination Dom Perellen can see them slipping the weighted coffins over the stem into fog-shrouded Elder Sea. For this is the vision that haunts him, a corpse-boat making its slow cold passage across the bar into Elder Sea. Between the somber upright figures of the boatmen is a white coffin bearing the crest of a Gracious Family unfamiliar to him. He sees the coffin sinking into the clean cold water without even a ripple, sinking with today’s company of bakers and butchers and lawyers and priests, merchants and traders and lowly playactors, poets and painters and wise men and fools. The citizens of the City of Man fall through the water to stand side by side in serried ranks of Grace and groveler, a submarine army waiting at attention on the silt and sediment of centuries for the fanfares of the Pantochrist on the Dawn of Resurrection when all will be summoned to the rising Land of Gold. The coffin rests in the blessed company of the Ancestors Beneath the Sea, those ancestors whose faces line the walls of the music room. It disturbs Dom Perellen that he cannot identify the armorial crest upon the sunken coffin.