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Earlier:
Alexander Stone stood in the Reflectory, the Family Book open before him on the dais. It was turned to a page of the Stone line tree some three iterations before Alexander's own. New generations were added to the Book as they gained primacy, their individual cross-sections scattered through the pages at random intervals. The full Trees, for the Stone line as well as other four Family lines, were painted on floor-to-ceiling tapestries hung against the far wall. These too would have to be replaced soon, and re-drawn in a more condensed form; the Stone and Vandeventer trees were nearing the floor.
Soft baby spotlights picked out each tapestry in the cool dark of the Reflectory. Alexander could see them, reflected in the windows behind his ghostly figure. Central Weather claimed it was just after sunset, but these windows looked outward from the station, toward the darkness between the third and fourth Rings.
A smaller spotlight fell from above him onto the Book, picking out the pages, but bathing his face in pools of shadow. He watched his reflection watching him. The dim figure looked haunted, or possibly haunting, a ghost in itself. The room felt cold.
Alexander stood still enough to hear his heartbeat, and thought about the future. The Family lineage hung before him, a clear and crystalline structure built of time. It was a thing of beauty, a plan enacted with cold and perfect logic, the dim ancestors of the five lines at its tail and Alexander Stone at its head. And it was now, if 'now' still meant anything, and suddenly the rules had changed.
And Father was dead, and Mother was packed away to a convent on the far side of nowhere, and the same cataclysm that had given him his chance to wrest control of the Stone line was throwing the world's engine into chaos. It was so slow, he couldn't see it happening. He could only see the evidence of its passage: The altered shapes, the compasses bent out of true north, the whisper of madness in the waiting void.
The door opened behind him, the light from the hallway throwing him into glaring relief in the windows. The silhouette that filled the doorway said: "Sir?"
"Hello, Damien."
"Am I disturbing you?"
"You're fine." Alexander turned around. "If I'm disturbed, it happened before you got here. What's news?"
"Lady Maria Vliet requests your presence at the party."
"And by 'requests', you mean-"
"Demands. In a nice voice."
Alexander stepped out into the hall. "That's what I like about you, Damien. You always give me the truth."
"Hardly see the point of having an advisor who doesn't, sir."
"Me neither." He scrubbed both hands through his hair. "How long do you think we have before she starts showing teeth?"
Damien considered. "Fifteen minutes. Twenty, maybe."
"Shall we take the scenic route down-station, then?"
Damien gave a thin smile. "Very good, sir."
They followed the hallway down to the Group Five mezzanine, where the corridor looked out onto a vast forested atrium. Massive, vertically-engineered trees reached up past the higher levels, toward the Central Weather sunlight, evergreen and deciduous growing one amidst the other. The sunlight fell in the bright, dappled golds of mid-morning, casting patterns of shadow on the marble balustrade. A light breeze blew from no particular direction.
"Anything in particular on your mind, sir?" Damien said.
"Mm?" Alexander looked over at him. "Does it show?"
"To me? Yes. And to the rest of your brothers and sisters." Damien stuck his hands in his pockets. "Most everyone else just wonders why you've been scarce."
Alexander shrugged. "Conversations we've had a thousand times. And now this business with Mellow..."
"Mm. For the record," Damien said. "I don't trust your contact in Knightsbridge."
"Good. I don't either. He fancies himself a ground-level version of the Family model, and he thinks he's running a game on all of us. Which tends to indicate a lack of perspective, really."
A small ornamental bird landed on the balustrade. Its wings shone white in the artificial sun. It turned its head and looked at them with one black, fathomless eye.
"But the information is accurate?"
"I sent a team down with Constantine last night," Alexander said. "They ran the corpse through the usual checks. It's him."
"Does the rest of the Family know?"
"No. I hope they won't have to. I don't want anyone else's ambitions wrapped up with us."
"What about your family?"
"Bethany already knows. It's her husband, after all."
They crossed a wide bridge that spanned a chasm over the atrium. Far below, an ornamental stream flowed through a corridor of flat rocks.
"And the others?" Damien put an inflection on the question that left it open to being refused.
"I'll tell them. Probably. If we need to satisfy honor and take care of the problem, I want to keep everything within my line. I might need to use a sibling or three. Speaking of which-" Alexander turned to look at him. "Is Devianora in attendance at this little party?"
"Ye-es..." Damien looked uncomfortable.
"That good?"
"That good."
Alexander sighed. "Nothing changes. We're still all kids clumping around in our parents' shoes."
"With all due respect- and without sucking up, I might add- I don't think that's true, sir. You may not be your father, but I don't know if your father's touch is what the Ring needs right now. He saw things with old emperor's eyes. I don't think he would have dealt well with the aftermath of the Happening."
"And, of course, he wouldn't have hired you."
Damien grinned. "That too."
"Maybe. Would help if the rest of the Family lines thought so, too."
"True. They still think Old World thoughts. On the other hand, you're still alive despite them."
"How very bright-side of you, Damien."
"I can see the warm and fuzzy in anything, sir."
"Even Maria Vliet?"
"You're cheating."
"After all, you looked so warm and fuzzy when she dropped her drink down your-"
"All right."
Alexander laughed.
They followed the concourse as it dipped down under the Pierport Market, the buzz of traffic and voices drifting in from above as the walls opened out several levels above them. Up there, beyond the canyon-cut of their private walk, the inner city hummed with activity. The walls dampened some of the noise, but neither of them spoke until they had passed under the bridge, and the walls closed in around them again. Alexander prefered his private walkways to the honeycombed streets and multi-tiered paths of the city proper, even if they belied the essentially spaceport nature of the Stone family station. The Third Ring was still a sort of transition point in the Arcanelle, lying between the megalopolis of the Second Ring and the undeveloped frontier of the Fourth. High society liked to pretend it existed in the same condensed, baroque precision as the rest of the Empire, but the void was still waiting for them beyond the edges of the station. There were still places, in the Third Ring, where someone could be thrown out into hard vacuum.
Then they passed through a set of double-doors into the central foyer, and the myriad voices of the party washed over him. These spaces, like so many of the stations in the Ring, were decorated in the prevailing baroque style of the age. Gilt and scrollwork lay on everything, the gold glimmering on the wainscotting, tracing intricate lines through the marble floors, gleaming in the polished doorknobs and railings. Massive crystal chandeliers hung between the first and second floor mezzanine, giving off opium-dim light that softened angles and obscured flaws. Music floated through the room like a high society ghost. In every corner, people ate, drank, smoked, talked over and through one another. Many wore the elaborate gowns and fancy-dress masks that were, for some reason, very popular at the moment.
Alexander spotted Devi on the far side of the sitting room, hunched in a wing-backed chair with her arms wrapped around her knees. He started in that direction, but Talia Curson intercepted him, her black dress sparkling with rendered starlight, and drew him into a discussion between herself and the archbishop of Port Silence.
By the time he was able to pry himself free, she was gone.
------
"Quit this world, quit the next world, quit quitting!" -Sufi proverb.
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Take Me Back to the Garden of Love - 14
