The sisters became expressionless. 'He also was our master,' said Left-Quentha, smoothing the leggings over his thigh.
'We prefer the Lord Nephron,' said her sister.
Left-Quentha swung round. 'Hush! You will ruin us.'
'Nonsense! This Seraph is son to the Regent who supports our Lord.'
Left-Quentha turned her face away from her sister as if her stone eyes were searching the silk on his leg for wrinkles.
Carnelian grinned behind his mask. He liked these syblings. 'And what of their mother, the Empress?'
The girls' faces froze together. His hand made a fist. He congratulated himself on his subtlety. They moved away to the chest and came back holding either end of an elaborate belt from which dangled bony hooks and loops. There was a hardness in their faces that did not invite any more of his questions. They asked him to raise his arms, and when he did they wrapped the belt round his waist, let it slip down to his hips and secured it.
'Does the Seraph find that comfortable?' asked Left-Quentha.
Carnelian looked down at his body, puzzled. He ran his finger round inside the belt. 'I suppose so.'
They brought straps and rods of brass and attached these to his belt. They returned to the chest and each pair of arms pulled out something looking like a leg, with many straps and hollows and human articulation. The girls carried them like logs and, kneeling, placed them carefully on end, a little apart, on the floor before Carnelian. He watched their long fingers fiddling with them.
'If the Seraph would please climb onto the ranga?' Carnelian could see no shoes.
Left-Quentha pointed at the wooden contraptions. The court ranga, Seraph.'
Carnelian stepped forward and lifted his foot. Two of their hands fed his toes into a gap halfway up the shoe. The smooth, comfortable hollow swallowed his foot. Then the girls rose and braced his arms to allow him to step up. His other foot was guided into the hollow in the second shoe. Putting his weight onto it he found that he was standing, well balanced. The syblings knelt below him and began clicking levers, tightening ivory screws. At first there was slack in the hollows but soon they fitted his feet as tighdy as gloves.
'I feel ridiculous.'
Left-Quentha's stone eyes looked up at him. 'If the Seraph would please try walking.'
Right-Quentha gave him a wink. Carnelian laughed aloud, surprising her sister. He lifted a leg, expecting the shoe to be heavy, but it was so light his knee came up too fast and he overbalanced. The syblings managed to catch him and prop him back up. He took another more careful step. The shoe put down first a ridge of toes then a heel as it settled to the ground. Soon he was walking comfortably around the chamber. He stopped and beamed down at them. 'What next?'
'Would the Seraph please kneel.'
Carnelian looked at Right-Quentha. She nodded. Gingerly, he bent his knees. The shoes folded in half and for a moment he felt he was falling, but they locked, leaving him kneeling, his shins supported in long ivory grooves. He tried to straighten his knees and found the shoes slid him back to standing.
Carnelian turned to the syblings. 'Why…?'
Left-Quentha looked startled. 'Surely, Seraph-'
Her sister turned to her. 'He has been away in exile all his life. How do you expect him to-'
'Sister!' Left-Quentha stared, appalled. Her sister's hand flew to her mouth.
'No harm done,' said Carnelian and he held up his fingers in a smiling sign.
Still frowning, Left-Quentha turned to him. 'Kneeling on the ranga allows the Seraph to make the robe support its own weight.'
'What robe?'
Right-Quentha gave him a sheepish grin. 'We shall have it brought in, Seraph.'
The syblings walked to the doors and drew them open.
At first Carnelian thought it was a Master who was coming glittering in to fill the chamber, but then he saw the figure had no head and that several syblings, half hidden in its skirts, were carrying it. As the suit came into the light it seemed to ignite. It was a column of brocade densely woven from gold in which a tall and narrow panel running from neck to floor was set like a window into some heavenly realm. A verdant garden blossomed, each leaf a cut peridot or emerald. Roses petalled with spinel rubies. Orchids, opals. Creatures ran among the foliage, the mottle of their hides blemished bloodstone. Sapphire rivers foamed diamond spray. Jade trees filtered the light from iolitic skies. Rainbows brighter than parrots formed ladders up to a storm among black coral and moonstone clouds in which fire topaz lightning flashed. As the robe came closer he put his hand out to touch the miraculous mosaic.
'But this looks like Earth and Sky, the heraldry of the Masks.'
The Regent petitioned the House to have his son adorned thus,' said Right-Quentha.
The robe has been adjusted for the lower ranga the Seraph is entitled to,' said her sister.
The suit began to spin slowly round until his fingertips were grazing metallic threads. He was surprised they did not give sound off like a harp. The suit opened like a fist. Its innards were filled with scaffolding.
'Please, Seraph, would you walk into the robe and then kneel,' said Left-Quentha.
Carnelian did so. Its hinged ivory collar was at his throat. He fumbled blindly at the scaffolding.
The bones of birds and the smaller saurians, for lightness,' said Right-Quentha, who must have seen his fingers move. She coaxed his arms down into the sleeves. He felt the robe closing behind him.
'With care, would the Seraph please slowly stand to carry the burden of the robe?'
Carnelian tried to straighten his knees and at first met so much resistance he could not. More adjustments were made and at last he found he could stand, supporting the robe, which felt like a shell of bronze.
He knelt again and they began to build a crown upon his head. First a diadem of misty jade from which fell tresses of beaded tourmalines. Over this they set a helmet of jewel-ribbed leather that flared from his neck like the hood of a cobra. Above this they placed a final coronet that spread a jewelled halo behind his head, upon whose summit sat side by side a face of jade and one of obsidian.
They produced two Great-Rings. 'My own?' he asked, surprised.
'Come from the Three Gates,' they answered and urged him to rise again.
When he did so he felt as if he were wearing a house. He took a few tentative steps and was amazed that the whole mass moved with him. The syblings scurried around below, clearing obstacles from his path. Before Carnelian left, Right-Quentha bullied her sister into setting up a mirror, angling it so that the Seraph might see how he had been transformed into a towering, glimmering apparition.
The syblings formed a ring at whose centre Carnelian paced slowly along the curving corridor, pumping his knees open and closed in slow rhythm. His breathing roared inside his mask. The court robe swung languidly like a huge bell in which he was the clapper. He felt mountainously tall. A precipice of gold fell away towards the floor, casting glimmers on the faces of the syblings so that it seemed as if an open furnace were being carried in their midst.
The corridor opened into a sun blaze. Carnelian narrowed his eyes and walked into the glare. He tried to rotate his head but the crown's neck flares resisted him. He discovered it was easier to turn his whole frame to look. A sky of flame was pulsing in time to the Gods' heartbeat. Against this, the syblings seemed to be made from charred sticks. It took Carnelian a while to realize that he stood before a mosaic of amber rising to such heights it made the window appear narrow. 'Is that the sun?' he gasped.
'Does the Seraph refer to the door?' asked Right-Quentha.
The door? What door?' He followed her eyes and saw to the right of the window, smouldering in its lurid glow, a door in whose gold the sun's rayed eye was wrought.