1
She stood on the piazza of the landing tower, looking west towards the heights of the structure.
The curtain-walls — easily two kilometres high and punctuated by the tall half-cylinders of the mural towers — curved away to either side, rising and falling over the gentle undulations in the landscape to diminish and disappear into the misted distance. Within the vegetation-strung cliffs of the walls lay a broad rolling landscape of wooded hills, sparkling lakes, manicured parkland and broad fields, all dotted with the spires and towers of small villages and towns.
Beyond, still slightly blued with the distance, the fastness itself reared forever into the sky. She stared, slack-jawed.
Serehfa was a frozen turbulence of architecture beyond the merely monumentaclass="underline" revetments rose like cliffs topped by broad, wooded scarps, stout bastions stood like jutting bluffs, serrated ridges of parapet lay stretched hazily like squared-off mountain ranges themselves, cloud-lined walls ascended sheer or stood pierced by the vast caves of dark windows, whole forested slopes of steep-pitched roofs lay serried green beneath the warmth of the high summer sun, and soaring arches of gables and buttresses climbed to higher and higher levels piled one on top of another, all swathed in whorling patterns of colour and climbing stacked, packed, placed and lifted to where the sparkling whiteness of snow and ice sat in a broad band of collected light thrown dazzlingly against the shining sky.
Everywhere about the panoramic, sight-saturating expanse of the central structure gigantic towers of mountainous diameter forced their way into the atmosphere, piercing the few, drifting, scale-diminished clouds which left their barely moving shadows aslant along the soaring walls and were themselves thrown into shade by still higher reaches of further towers casting their own stone shadows across both the clouds and the monstrous upheaval of the edifice itself; a crescendo of form and colour filling the horizon and culminating in the stark shining column of the central tower, drawing the gaze upward like some anchored moon.
'Well, there it is, in all its glory,' Pieter Velteseri said, joining her at the balustrade. He waved his walking stick at the castle.
Asura looked at him, eyes wide. 'Big,' she said.
Pieter smiled and took in the view of the fastness. 'Indeed. The single largest artefact on Earth. The capital of the world, I suppose. And the last city, in a sense.'
She frowned. 'There are no more cities?'
'Well, yes, most of them survive, but someone from the Age of Cities would regard them more as large towns in terms of their populations.'
She turned to stare at it again.
'Do you know yet why you had to come here?' Pieter asked her softly.
She shook her head slowly, gaze fixed upon the fastness.
'Well, I dare say you'll remember when you have to.' Pieter took a fob watch from his waistcoat, frowned, closed one eye for a second, then reset the watch. He sighed and looked around the broad piazza, where umbrellas and sun shades flapped over tables and cafe bars. The airship rode at anchor above them in the breeze, nose connected to the landing tower. There were still a few lingering groups of castilians greeting those who had arrived on the craft, but most of the people now were either about to embark or bidding passengers farewell.
'Cousin Ucubulaire reports she is on her way,' Pieter told her. He nodded towards the countryside of the bailey. 'She's under there somewhere, in a slow-running tube train.'
'Tube train,' she repeated.
'My dear, I think you ought to have this.' He fished in one pocket of his dress coat and handed her a small wallet containing a thin card with writing and numbers on it. She studied it. 'It makes you an honorary member of our clan,' Pieter explained. 'Ucubulaire will look after you, but in case you feel you have to move on elsewhere from Serehfa, that ought to make sure you don't have to rely on hostels for a bed or public kitchens for food; can't have you hanging onto the outside of airships or trains, now can we?'
She looked at him, uncomprehending.
'Ah well,' he said. He closed her hands over the small wallet and patted them. 'You ought not to need it, but if anybody asks you what clan you're from, just show them this.'
She nodded. 'Phremylagists and Incliometricists.'
'Not one of the more active clans, I'll grant you, but ancient, and honourable. I hope we have been of some service.'
She smiled. 'You have made me welcome, and brought me here. Thank you.'
Pieter nodded to a wooden bench behind them. 'Let's sit, shall we?'
They sat, and for a while simply contemplated the castle.
She jumped when the airship sounded its horn. Pieter looked at his watch again. 'Well, I must go. Cousin Ucubulaire ought to arrive presently. Will you be all right waiting here?'
'Yes, thank you.' She stood with him, and he took her hand and kissed it. She returned the gesture and he laughed gently.
'I don't know what your business is here, my dear, or what lies in store for you, but I do hope you will come and visit us again, when you know what all this has been about.' Pieter hesitated and a troubled expression crossed his face for a moment, then he shook his head. 'I'm sure it will all sort itself out happily. But do come back and see us.'
'I shall.'
'I'm very glad to hear it. Goodbye, Asura.'
'Goodbye, Pieter Velteseri.'
He returned to the airship. A little later he appeared on the observation deck. He waved and she waved back, flourishing the wallet he'd given her before placing it carefully in a pocket. The airship's engines hummed into life; it lifted, turned across the breeze and started back east across the hills of Xtremadur.
She watched the vessel grow slowly smaller in the sky, then turned back to feast her sight upon the castle.
'Ah, Asura?' the woman said.
She looked up. There was a tall lady standing by the bench. She wore cool blue clothes the same colour as her eyes. Her skin was pale.
'Yes, I am Asura. Are you Ucubulaire?'
'Yes.' The woman put her hand out. 'Yes, I am.' Her grip was scratchy; her hands were covered with thin net gloves made from some fine but hard filaments. 'Pleased to meet you.' She indicated a tall, square-set, powerful looking man with deep-set eyes standing a little way off. 'This is a friend; Lunce.'
The man nodded. Asura smiled. He smiled, briefly.
'Shall we go?' the woman said.
'To there, to the fastness, yes?'
The woman smiled thinly. 'Oh yes.'
She stood up and went with them.
2
Consistory member Quolier Oncaterius VI sat in the single ice-scull, pulling hard on the oars while the seat slid under him, the breath whistled out of his lungs and the claw-blades bit and chipped into the smoothly glistening surface on either side. The scull was an A-shaped tracery of carbon tubing a child could lift with one hand; it skittered across the ice on its three hair-thin blades with a nervous, rumbling, hissing noise.
The chill blast of air slid round his body-suit and licked up over the seat harness towards his face.
He pulled, slid, pulled, slid, pulled, slid, settling into a steady rhythm of heart, lung and muscle, flicking the oars back and hauling them forward, the hooked claws at the shafts' ends embedding in the ice and providing the leverage to snap himself forward on each explosive haul.
The trick with ice-rowing was to judge precisely the weight and angle of attack of the stramazon — or downward cut — of the claws, while balancing the vertical and horizontal components of the stroke, thus ensuring both that one always had a sufficiently embedded grip on the ice's skin to provide purchase while wasting as little effort as possible lifting the claw-tips out of the ice again, and that one was always just on the edge of lifting oneself and the scull partially off the ice, but never quite doing so. It was a delicate double-balance to maintain and required both finely tuned judgment and great concentration. There were many aspects of a politician's — indeed a ruler's — life which demanded exactly such equipoise.