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bioengineered urangutangs that strutted about imperiously and, when asked their names, grunted “Âziz,” or “Nike” or “Shiyung” in reply. Then there had been an argala, a sexslave with Shiyung’s delicate features that bellowed like a man during coition. And now these hideous puppets, all of them possessing Âziz Orsina’s nasal voice. It was one of the imponderables of Araboth that Planck’s escalating burlesques of the ruling family had only earned him their favor.
    â€œGo on, baggage. Eat spit. Faaugh.” The puppet drooled and gibbered at Ceryl until she had to look away. Tatsun gently cuffed the puppet’s hairless skull and commanded the aardman to halt.
    â€œWe missed you at Nike’s inquisition last night,” she said. As she spoke the coder in her throat pulsed violet and orange—last season’s accessory, still affected by members of the Toxins Cabal who claimed the coders helped them focus on the subtleties of the poisons they designed. The lurid colors made Ceryl’s head ache. She rubbed her temples distractedly and glanced over her shoulder at the body in the rickshaw. Tatsun ignored her pained expression and added, “It was lovely, there was a new morph there who obviously had never scryed for the margravines before—she was so awful it was funny, Âziz and I laughed and laughed! And that awful Rudyard Planck was there with one of his new generation of puppets, aren’t they just awful ? He gave me this one,” she added with a smug grin. The puppet continued to stare at Ceryl, working its mouth so that its long white tongue slid lewdly in and out between evil little teeth.
    Ceryl sighed loudly. This was the second inquisition she’d missed this week. Soon there would be talk. But she couldn’t tell the others about her nightmare, the vision night after night of the dome cracked like a limpet’s shell and the sea burrowing into it like a huge green tongue. She looked up to see Tatsun gazing disapprovingly at the dead moujik girl, her aardman carrier staring into space.
    â€œYou’re timoring,” Tatsun said, a little primly. She had recently joined the Disciples of Blessed Narouz’s Refinery, a sect that, unlike many others—the First Church of Christ Cadillac the Daughters of Graves—frowned upon timoring and its attendant horrors. “Is that why you weren’t at the dream inquisition?”
    Flushing, Ceryl shrugged. The puppet cackled gleefully, slunk to Tatsun’s other shoulder, and raising one leg squirted some acrid-smelling liquid into the air. The aardman snarled. Tatsun scolded the puppet and looked again down at Ceryl, frowning.
    â€œNice shoes,” Ceryl said at last. She started to ask about the dream inquisition, but the puppet’s leering eyes stopped her. She put her hand on the edge of the rickshaw door. “I’d better go—I just needed some air, that’s all.”
    Tatsun shook her head. The puppet hissed, “Let her rot! Go, let’s go —” Tatsun whispered something to the aardman, who tightened his grip about her, turned, and began to stride off. As they disappeared around the curving avenue Tatsun called back to Ceryl, “Âziz is hosting a reception after the Investiture. Next week. In the Four Hundredth Room.”
    â€œI’ll be there,” Ceryl sighed.
    â€œYou’d better be,” the puppet said, giggling wildly. In a moment they were gone.
    Ceryl rubbed her forehead. It ached again, as it usually did after she had been to a timoring, or after a . night full of bad dreams. She was uneasy now: it had been a bad idea to skip the inquisition.
    From the front of the rickshaw the driver cleared his throat. Ceryl looked up. “Sorry.” She clambered in beside the girl’s corpse, grimacing. “Bring me back down to Principalities—”
    The rickshaw driver nodded and headed for the gravator.