Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand

argalæ had been bred for their beauty: limbs so long and slender they snapped during lovemaking, breasts that were never meant to suckle, feeble wings that would never take flight. They had a mad witless gaze, shallow rib cages that barely contained their lungs, tiny white teeth useless for anything but lovebites. Once Reive had accidently killed one, during an orgy in Âziz’s private chambers. She had wept, because the argalæ were beautiful: the Ascendants’ opium dream of the ideal partner, slender and childlike and utterly dispensable. And the rasas were simply a solution to the problem of Araboth’s dwindling population. Too many centuries of inbreeding on the upper levels; too many genetic mutations among the slaves brought back from the wars. So within their cruel alembics the Orsinate distilled a life essence, and with it infused the corpses carried daily into the Chambers of Mercy by yellow-robed coenobites. Thus the Orsinate could continue to vent their murderous caprices upon Araboth’s human population, and still be certain of a stable work force.
    But Zalophus? Zalophus was the folly of those who had hoped to create the ultimate affront to the hated world Outside. Using human cranial matter and cellular tissue from the preserved carcass of a zeuglodon, an Eocene whale found in the channels of the Empire’s northernmost reach, they had engineered Zalophus. A sentient carnivorous whale, his fellows extinct for æons, kept alive for these hundreds of years by the ministrations of the Architects and their human disciples. Among all the creations of the Ascendants, he was the most grotesque and feared; save only for the Compassionate Redeemer, which lay mired in its decade-long sleep until awakened for Æstival Tide.
    Like the rest of the Orsinate’s menagerie, Zalophus languished forgotten until Nike or Âziz or—more likely—Shiyung recalled him. Then the margravines might troop down to Dominations, party entourage in tow and stoned on negus or lucifer, to toy with the great sad-eyed monster. They would command him to call forth his memories of the First Days, the flames of the Biblioclasm, the silent holocaust of the Third Shining. Or Shiyung might ask his advice on some difficult piece of gene-splicing, or beg him to tell her of the chilly Eocene seas where he had preyed on eels the size of fougas.
    Reive had been at one of these reckless gatherings. Alone among the drunken guests, she had been touched by the plight of the captive monster. Since then she came here often. Zalophus terrified her. She knew he was half-mad from the ages of his incarceration and would devour her as easily as speak to her. But still she came.
    â€œZalophus,” she called softly to the still water. A whale louse lay on its back at her feet, twitching its scorpion head. Reive kicked it into the pool. “Zalophus!”
    His head erupted so near to her that she screamed and tripped as she scurried away. “Zalophus—”
    â€œShe was sad,” he repeated. The tolling voice was immeasurably sorrowful. “So sad.”
    Reive stared at him warily. “We are bored, Zalophus. Do you have any news? Do you have a dream for us?”
    Zalophus rolled onto his side so that one eye glared up at her. Water poured smooth as oil across his gray flank. “You are the one brought me the bird girl.”
    â€œReive. That’s right.”
    â€œReive.” One immense flipper slapped the surface, sent up a fountain high as her head. “Bring me another one. I had not tasted that before.”
    Reive shrugged. “We will try. Can you tell us a dream?”
    The bloated body righted itself, the huge head turned to regard her with what might have been construed as longing, or even sorrow, in a less horrible form. “A dream? I have nothing but dreams now, in my sleep I hear the icelands moving, I hear my sisters calling and the winds gathering for the great storm, I