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important, the only person in Araboth who truly understood the workings of the Architects. Even the Orsinate’s murder of the Architect Imperator’s wife had been carefully scheduled to coincide with one of Sajur’s interminable love affairs, so as not to unduly disturb his work. Hobi thought that perhaps the Orsinate had misjudged his father. Certainly Hobi himself had been surprised by the intensity of Sajur’s grief, which had taken the form of a nearly monkish solitude. As for Hobi, Angelika Panggang had always been a somewhat mythic figure to him. He identified her more with figures from poetry—Medea, Anne Sexton, Quisa Helmut—than with flesh-and-blood women or even certain replicants. So Hobi could only assume that his father’s arcane doings in his study were somehow tangled up with his grief.
    Now, gazing at the flickering screen in front of him, Hobi still could not imagine what the Architects were doing. Perhaps the Orsinate had commanded a new wing be added to the palace. Perhaps the Undercity had flooded—people were always predicting that; it was a favorite sport in Araboth, along with timoring and guessing who would be the next of Shiyung Orsina’s lovers to die a horrible death. The boy nibbled his thumbnail thoughtfully. His father only stared at the screen in silence, tapping one finger against his porcelain cup.
    â€œThere is a breach in the fundus of Angels,” the Architects replied at last. “The rift at Pier Forty-three is spreading.”
    â€œThank you. Indoctrinate Pier Forty-four.”
    Hobi glanced sideways at his father. In profile Sajur Panggang resembled his dead wife, the same fine features and sharp nose. They had been first cousins. Like nearly everyone else on the upper levels of Araboth, they were distant relatives of the Orsinate.
    â€œA breach?” Hobi asked, a little uneasily. “What’s that mean?”
    Sajur Panggang started, looked at his son as though noticing him for the first time. He shook his head. “Nothing. Routine maintenance. Aren’t you up a little early?”
    Considering how late you were out last night, Hobi thought. He grinned and shrugged. His father frowned and flicked at one corner of the screen. The monitor went blank. Sajur leaned back in his chair, the long ornamented sleeves of his kimono brushing the floor. “Would you please ask Khum to bring some more kehveh? Or no—I’ll go with you.”
    The Architect Imperator stood and stretched. The brocaded sleeves slid from thin wrists to show the emerald mourning bands he still wore. Hobi noticed how his father’s hand shook as he picked up his porcelain cup, and how Sajur looked back at the empty screen, the banks of ancient monitors like the walls of a tomb. On one of them the image of the Undercity still lingered, its web of ruined roadways and empty channels glowing faintly. The Architect Imperator stared at it for a long moment while his son waited, puzzled. Then he carefully closed the door and turned down the hall.
    Behind them in the empty chamber the other screens slowly started to glow, blue and gold and violet. The Architects began to click and whisper, doing their master’s work.

Chapter 2
THE GREEN COUNTRY
    I N A RICKSHAW ON Thrones Level, Ceryl Waxwing watched a moujik girl die. The child’s arms had been pinned to the seat, the skin folded back and neatly pierced with slender spikes as long as Ceryl’s finger. As the girl moaned the exposed veins and muscles quivered like taut yarn, and blood seeped onto the seat’s verdigris leather. For nearly an hour now Ceryl had stared expectantly at her face, waiting for the look Âziz Orsina had told her would come—“When the timoring is successful and they know they’re dying,” the margravine had said. Every word she uttered always sounded as though she were somehow managing to suck it from the air. Ceryl hated her voice, her face (the same