Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand Page B

supposed the scrabbly beard did that. Nasrani smiled and said gently, “Your mother was a fascinating woman, Hobi.”
    With a clumsy shrug Hobi reached for the decanter. “Yes. My father misses her horribly, I know.”
    Nasrani nodded. Angelika Panggang had been poisoned last spring by a woman in the Toxins Cabal. A tiny venomous frog, sleekly orange as its innocent brethren and served with flaming raisins to Angelika after her morning sauna. The taster had looked on bemused as Angelika had a seizure. Later she claimed she thought her mistress was exercising, and was acquitted by the Orsinate. Because of her husband’s prominence, and her own relation to the Orsinate, Angelika was given a pyre with full funeral honors, including the sacrifice of her entire personal staff. The rumor was that her death had been a warning to her husband, whose predilection for very young girls had embroiled him in an affair with Âziz Orsina’s favorite bedmaid. The bedmaid, too, ended up in a fiery eclipse, but that was some months later.
    Since his wife’s death the Architect Imperator had grown introspective. His attention had turned to arcane matters: divination by means of broken glass; a penchant for the nearly unlistenable form of sadist opera known as Fasa; an inexplicable fondness for the company of Rudyard Plank, the dwarf whose legendary bad taste had made him a favorite of the margravine Nike. Sajur had also developed a burning hatred for the Orsinate, and a taste for flouting it—for example, in his weekly tanka games with Nasrani Orsina, the infamous margravin now exiled (for a failed assassination attempt upon his sister Âziz) from the Orsinate’s Level.
    Several more minutes passed. Nasrani fiddled with the glass buttons of his crimson greatcoat and drank another tumbler of Amity in thoughtful silence. Hobi was surprised the exile did not yet appear drunk, but experience had taught him that Amity caught up with everyone, sooner or later. The thought troubled the boy and he gnawed at a fingernail.
    The decanter was nearly empty. Nasrani stared at it with bemused affection, as though regarding a beloved but naughty child. Hobi leaned forward to press a button beneath the table. A moment later a replicant appeared, ram-headed and wearing the same long linen shift and trousers that Hobi did.
    â€œKhum.” The boy indicated the decanter, now empty. “Bring us more of that, please.”
    Nasrani watched the server, amused, as it gathered the tray and glasses and retired to the pantry. “That is a very old one,” he said after a moment.
    Hobi nodded, somewhat embarrassed. “I know. It was—well, it was a gift, I think, or something, I think we inherited them, my mother always said we should get some new ones—”
    Nasrani shook his head. “No—it’s a very good one, they don’t make them like that anymore. Third Ascension: a vogue for things Egyptienne. And animals, of course, the fashion cabinet says that animals will be very popular this season. So your father’s old replicants will actually be quite stylish.” He smiled. The boy looked relieved. “Are you interested in such things?”
    Hobi shrugged, started to say no when he recalled that Nasrani Orsina was an Orsina, even if an exile, and he was being kept waiting by his father. “Yes, I am.”
    â€œWould you like to see some others?”
    Hobi looked startled. He glanced around the room suspiciously, as though these others might be lurking behind the priceless oak paneling. The ram-headed Khum returned bearing a new tray and several full glasses gleaming with emerald liquid.
    â€œVery good, then,” Nasrani announced. He stood, the tails of his greatcoat swirling, and swept up one of the glasses. “Khum, tell the Architect Imperator that as punishment for his tardiness I am not only drinking all of his Amity but stealing his son. Come on, Hobi.”
    Hobi