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  The Towers, the Moon

  Andrea K Höst

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The Towers, the Moon

  © 2016 Andrea K Höst. All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-925188-12-7

  Published by Andrea K Hösth at Smashwords

  www.andreakhost.com

  Cover art: Likhain

  Table of Contents

  Description

  Two Wings

  Forfeit

  Death and the Moon

  Description

  France, under the rule of the Court of the Moon, is a country of cyclical change, where the true rulers arrive every night to compete among themselves, and humans are backdrop, witnesses, inessential – and yet inextricably intertwined.

  It is the reign of the Gilded Tower, and fashions are daring.

  Two Wings: Griff Tenning has suffered too much change in the past year, and wishes everything would quiet down for a while - or, better still, would go back to when his parents were alive. But, even so, it's useful that his odd aunt can afford airship tickets to France. On such a quick trip, his hated travel sickness won't be enough to keep him from a chance to stand beneath the impossible Towers of the Moon.

  Forfeit: Forfeit is the newest game of the Court of the Moon, and one seemingly designed for humans to lose. But Arianne Seaforth is willing to pay a great deal to help her oldest friend – and she is learning to extract a price of her own.

  Death and the Moon: Eluned Tenning can barely remember all the names of the vast network of cousins making her sixteenth birthday party so overwhelming. But she has no problems with would-be actor Milo, who is so calmly quiet and friendly. She'd never step on a stage herself, but she's happy to help him rehearse.

  Acknowledgements

  With deep thanks to Judith Tarr,

  Antoine, and KA, for much-needed assistance.

  Author's Note

  This book is in Australian English.

  These short stories sit between The Pyramids of London and Tangleways in The Trifold Age series. They contain mild spoilers for The Pyramids of London.

  Two Wings

  Griff Tenning, kneeling on his seat, strained to see through to the windows of the airship's forward compartment, but there were heads, a potted palm, and a very round man in the way.

  "How can these be the best seats for viewing?" he asked. "At the back and on the wrong side?"

  "Which is better?" his aunt replied. "A long view at a distance, or a shorter view right up close?"

  "Both. They wouldn't even notice if I went up front."

  "They did the last two times," Griff's sister Ned said. "I think they meant it about putting you up in one of the ballonet seats next time they caught you."

  The insistence of the airship staff that passengers keep to their own particular quarter of the main gondola, rather than crowd to the best vantage points, was peculiar and unfair, but Griff had yet to find a way around it. Ever since he'd turned thirteen, opening his eyes wide and asking as politely as possible was no longer consistently effective. Unfair.

  Deciding not to risk being stowed up with the second class passengers inside the outer envelope of the airship's ballonet, where there would be no views at all, Griff turned to his own window. At least they were coming over the city proper now, and there were streets, and rows of houses, all dressed up in tiny wrought iron balconies, too small to even step out on. Griff thrust his head out the window, and when Aunt Arianne quickly grasped the waistband of his shendy, he leaned further, drinking in the courses of the roads, and all the different sorts of chimneys. Lutèce, capital of France, spread out like a little map.

  Airships were better than anything. You could see the city's bones from up above, and all the little secret places usually blocked by high walls. Best of all, Griff didn't really feel like they were moving, and so long as he didn't keep focused on any single object on the ground, he hardly felt sick at all.

  "We're about to turn," a passing attendant said. "You'll see the Sun Palace almost directly below us, and then the Towers."

  Griff leaned further, then pulled back a little when Aunt Arianne gave his waistband a warning tug. It was bad design that the airship didn't have a glass bottom. He wanted to see the palace from above most particularly, because photographs were not the same, and…yes! There it was.

  France had a Sun Court and a Moon Court. The Moon Court – the Cour de Lune – was properly in charge, of course, but since they could only come out at night, the French had a human King as well. The yellow stone palace curving along the shore of a dark artificial lake was meant to represent a solar eclipse, to make sure the King never forgot exactly where he stood. This King. They changed kings a lot, in France.

  The palace façade was a perfect curve, and there were exactly two hundred and twenty-two columns. Symmetry and repetition, not something that would be interesting if it was everywhere, but...

  Stomach churning, Griff sat down. Aunt Arianne handed him a glass of water, and he took a hasty sip, then turned the whole of his attention back to the window, and just in time. One of the world's greatest wonders heeled into view.

  "It's like a giant dandelion."

  Typical Ned, with her head full of plants. "A snowflake," Griff corrected. "If snowflakes formed as domes instead of flat."

  Though he saw where Ned had got the idea of dandelions. There was a central core, dimpled much like the round bit at the centre of a puff of dandelion seeds. That was the Hall of Balance, filling the Island of Emergence right in the middle of the River Seine. Out of it rose the Towers of the Moon. The central tower, the Tower of Balance, grew directly up: a single smooth column interrupted three times by horizontal structures, smaller columns spreading out to form interconnecting stars. The stars increased in size so that the largest was at the top, like a faintly curving snowflake suspended on a pole.

  Four other major towers grew to the same length as the central column, but projected out at precise forty-five degree angles north, south, east and west. The stars of their three levels met and joined with each other, and with the stars of the central column, to form three filigree domes, each inside the other.

  The whole thing was a deep black, though up close the black would have tones of muted, rainbow velvet. And that was just in the daytime. At night, when the Cour de Lune came, it would glow white and then really would look like a dandelion.

  But more like a snowflake.

  No human could build anything like the Towers of the Moon. The Towers had grown, expanding from the central core, and increased in size every year since the Court had taken France. The entire thing was hollow, filled with floors and walls and furniture, waiting for sunset when the Court would arrive. Griff began calculating just how many square miles it covered, and how long, at the known rate of growth, it would be before it swallowed the Sun Palace – for the third time in the Court's history – and they would have to build another.

  Enormous as it was, Griff's view of the Towers was irritatingly short, as the airship curved around to the north-west and began to drop toward the ground. Griff continued to stare at the increasingly foreshortened view, but sat back as he did so.

  "Le Tour de l'équilibre…" Ned was saying.

  "La Tour," Griff put in quickly. "Towers are 'la', right, Aunt Arianne?"

  "That's right," Aunt Arianne said. "The one nearest us is La Tour de ciel. East is La Tour de neige, west is La Tour Dorée, and north La Tour de tambour."

  "The Sky, the Snow, the Gilded, and the Drum," Griff said helpfully, and quickly moved out of reach when Ned leaned forward to tweak his nose. "I'm not showing off, I'm explaining."
/>   "Good that he can speak a bit of it," Griff's other sister, Eleri, said. "Even if obnoxious about it."

  Griff peeked at her out of the corner of his eye. A little while ago, Eleri had stopped being Eleri, and had become someone who spoke a lot less, and moped over a girl, and was different and strange. Griff didn't know how to make her go back to being Eleri.

  "You two will be able to get by on your Latin," Aunt Arianne said. "Tante Sabet is fluent – most people who have to deal frequently with travellers have some Latin, if grudgingly so, and the constant exchange of rule in Aquitania gives Latin a particularly strong presence in France."

  Aquitania was the country south of France – or Southern France, whenever the French won it back from the Republic. It was Roman at the moment, because the Gilded Tower was in charge of France, and they weren't very interested in armies.

  French politics was interesting, but not nearly so much as their buildings, and Griff turned his attention wholly to looking about as Aunt Arianne got them from the north-west airfield to Tante Sabet's hotel in the city's south-west quarter, which was not, sadly, within the bounds of the Towers, but at least sat quite close to the nearest outer edge.

  The hotel had particularly excellent little balconies, taking a theme of flowers with four petals and doing clever things with the negative space. Otherwise, it was nothing special as a building, just a lot of levels piled on top of each other, looking across at other balconies over a narrow street.

  "Hotel Lourien," Ned said, reading the small sign beside the closed glass doors.

  "Established by Father's father's father's…" Griff began, but then hesitated, and was annoyed, because Father had told him this, but it had gotten mixed up somehow.

  "Your great-great-grandfather, Guillaume Lourien, married Aude Beaumont, and together they took over the running of the Hotel Beaumont," Aunt Arianne said, as she paid for their taxicab. "They had seven children and your grandfather was the son of their third oldest child, Honorine. Tante Sabet married the oldest son of the oldest Lourien son, which means she is, strictly speaking, our cousin by marriage, not our aunt or great-aunt, but the whole extended family and a great many people who are not in any way related call her Tante Sabet. We all come battening on Tante Sabet when we're short of a place to stay."

  Aunt Arianne paid off the driver and checked to see they had their suitcases, then added with a conspiratorial smile: "Brace yourselves," before pulling open the door.

  This interesting warning fell flat, since the inside of the hotel seemed all very quiet and restrained. Bigger than Griff had expected, with a nice ceiling and sweeping staircase, and an arch to their right leading to a space that looked like it was someone's sitting room, multiplied many times over. Lots of low, comfortable chairs, tossed in with some small tables. A big shiny bar took up one corner, reminding Griff of a public house, although the people inside seemed to be drinking coffee.

  Behind the foyer counter, a lady dressed in crisp black and white said: "Bonjour Mesdemoiselles, jeune homme," and glanced past them at the door. This had become normal. People kept thinking Aunt Arianne was their sister, and looked around for their parents.

  Then a woman coming down the stair said, in a disbelieving voice, "Rian?!", and that was like a magic spell, bringing people out of nowhere to exclaim as well, and to kiss Aunt Arianne on either cheek and tell her, as everyone who had met her before did, that she looked so young. Griff watched the kissing with interest, picking out the people who kissed his aunt on the mouth instead, and one who tried, but Aunt Arianne turned her head just in time, and then, Griff thought, it seemed she might have stood on that man's foot when he tried again.

  Unfortunately, Aunt Arianne remembered them after that, and introduced them to the lady called Tante Sabet, who was very small and fluffy, though her eyes were as sharp and dark as her hair was soft and white. She told them welcome, and to stand up straight, and then she kissed each of them on both cheeks as well, and it seemed the whole room tried to follow her lead.

  Griff squirmed out of the onslaught as best he could, though one of those who descended was a red-headed girl maybe a year older than him. Her name was Josette, and she was Tante Sabet's granddaughter, and Griff did not duck his head so much when she took him by the shoulders and bussed each cheek. Someone his own age had never done that before, and he was surprised to find it only half as revolting as the rest.

  Watching Ned glow pink after an older boy did the same to her was worth the fuss, anyway.

  Eventually all the kissing and introductions stopped, and they got to go up the stair – Griff eyeing the wide curving railing with interest – and into rooms just one level up. The older boy, called Milo, carried the heaviest bags. He had an interesting face, narrow and all angles.

  "Devant les escaliers," Milo said, as he put the bags down in a sitting room that opened out into two different bedrooms. That meant 'front of stairs', which didn't make sense to Griff, but Aunt Arianne smiled and told the boy that she'd always wanted to try it.

  "My room's next door," Aunt Arianne went on, switching to Prytennian. "Once you're settled in, we'll go to dinner under the Towers."

  She gave Milo money before he went, overriding his motion to refuse it. Griff had heard of tipping, though he didn't know it applied to relatives, and waited until the French boy was gone to ask what front of stairs meant.

  "I've never stayed here as a guest before," Aunt Arianne said. "Only behind stairs, working for Tante Sabet." She turned a considering glance on them, then added: "Wash and change out of those shendies into your semi-formal wear. Skirts are challenging under the Towers."

  She left them to go to her own room, and Griff paused briefly to explore the suite and debate over who got which bed, and then made short work of washing and changing. The tunic and long pants were new, a bit stiff, and Griff much preferred his casual wrap shendy. With winter coming he'd be stuck in trousers for months now.

  Tante Sabet was waiting in the foyer as they came downstairs, leaning on a gnarled black cane. Her expression didn't change, but she watched them every step of the way, and though Griff didn't know all the words of what she said to Aunt Arianne, even Eleri and Ned would understand 'trois garçons'.

  France was one of the countries where boys didn't wear summer shendies at all, and only foreign girls would think to wear trousers. Since Aunt Arianne was wearing Prytennian daywear – long pants with a knee-length skirt over them – she wasn't really dressed that differently from Ned and Eleri, but it was true enough that, with their short blond hair and up and down sorts of figures, Ned and Eleri did look a lot more like boys.

  They were also pretending to have not understood, and Aunt Arianne was very good at sweeping on around interesting ructions, simply saying: "They'll have all the girls after them, then," and asking about the taxi that was to take them to dinner.

  It ended up being two taxis, since Tante Sabet and her son and his family were coming with them. Griff rode in the second, with Josette and her mother, and the woman who had been on the stair, who was some other sort of cousin called Martine. All of them were inclined to pet him, which Griff was willing to put up with. He suspected Tante Sabet, in the other taxi, would likely tell him to sit properly rather than hang his head out the window.

  It wasn't very far to the edge of the Towers at all, but the drive inward took longer, giving Griff plenty of time to verify some of the things he'd read about the Towers. The domes really didn't touch the ground at all. Only the central building on the Island of Balance did that. The stresses on the five towers that grew out of it, supporting all of the interconnected filigree, had to be immense, though of course that interconnectedness would also provide support.

  The river and the Island of Balance were at the very centre of the three domes, but the taxis stopped short of it, not far inside the innermost dome. A great, circular parkland took up most of the space around the island, interrupted only by a scattering of buildings and a few bridges crossing the Seine to the Hall o
f Balance. Everything else at the very centre had been cleared away long ago.

  Hopping out of the taxi at the very edge of the park, Griff craned his head back to consider the sky, very pale and crossed and criss-crossed by three layers of velvety black.

  The structure wasn't even narrow: the filigree only looked delicate because of the enormous space it covered. Every arm and twist and loop of the 'snowflakes' was at least as thick around as a house, and the five central towers much wider still. Why it didn't all come crashing down under its own weight was one of the greatest puzzles of engineering.

  Absorbed in looking, Griff allowed himself to be chivvied over to one particular spot in the enormous ring of buildings that surrounded the park. These were almost all hotels and restaurants with outdoor tables. Some of these had façades worth looking at, and so Griff divided his time between domes and towers and hotels until a plate was put in front of him.

  His stomach was quite settled by then, so he dug in, gleefully listening to Tante Sabet refusing to respond to Ned and Eleri's Latin, talking to them only in French, and correcting their pronunciation. He was lucky to be sitting further down the table.

  "What time of the day should I switch from saying 'bonjour' to saying 'bonsoir'?" he asked Josette eventually. "Does it change between winter and summer?"

  "When the sun is no longer above, whatever the season," Josette said. "Why is it that you speak French when your sisters do not?"

  "My father had a book of maps of cities all over the world. I took French at school so I could read it. Aunt Arianne has been talking to us a lot in French the last few days as well, trying to catch Ned and Eleri up."

  "Ar-ent?"

  He'd used the Prytennian word. "Tante. Tante Arianne feels strange to say."