5 - the pinnacle

The station into which the sky carriages arrived was as luxurious as the station they departed from, but Demi wasn't spared much time to admire the details of the architecture, which featured a great deal of wrought iron and bricks that seemed to be inscribed with hundreds and hundreds of names.

There was a small, neatly kept park before the station, one with precisely trimmed topiaries in remarkable shapes, and Demi could hear the songs of several birds that she recognized: robins and cardinals and warblers. It was strange to think of these garden birds flitting about at such a high altitude, far above the alpine tree line, but here they were in a protected environment.

They were all in a protected environment, from the first goldfinch to the last Lord of the Curia.

Nearly all of the Pinnacle was enclosed in an arcology, a massive geodesic dome that rose like an egg over a broad platform. The dome was crissed and crossed by support beams that divided the shell into triangles and diamonds.

Even the weather and the oxygen content were regulated here, and the temperature was pleasant, in keeping with the most temperate areas of the City below. The birds that lived among the beautifully shaped trees of the park were as well cared for and as well monitored as the living statuary on which they perched.

But Demi’s mind didn't linger long on the lives of the birds in the park.

It couldn't.

Because they at last came around a garden wall and into the great square, and she could see all there was to see.

And there was quite a lot to see indeed.

The Pinnacle was the City reproduced in miniature. It was the jewel in the crown.

The first thing she saw were the people. That was because there were so many of them, countless humans rushing here and there, all intent on their own errands. There were hundreds of them. It was the scene at Grand Central multiplied, and she could look down on them just like one of the birds in the garden because she stood at the top of several shallow flights of steps that led to the tiled square below.

The second thing she saw was the Seat of Law, the capitol building itself.

The capitol building was an uncanny sight: gargantuan, rearing high into the sky, so high that the highest reaches pierced the geodesic dome that sheltered the rest of the Pinnacle. It was also sprawling, and it occupied most of the space inside the dome. The Seat of Law looked as if dozens of ornate buildings had been heaped on top of one another in an attempt to make the grandest, most baroque structure possible. Parts of the polylithic building were graceful Greek revival, others were austere Romanesque, other parts still looked as if they were authentic ancient Greek that had been plundered from the ruins of antiquity. There were Georgian symmetries and rococo frills, cyclopean Egyptian monumental stone, and heavily carved Russian wood. The great building was brick and stone and wood and metal and glass and a hundred hundred other things: adobe and plaster, tile and mosaic. It was red, blue, green, white, black, grey, silver, and gold. There were gothic flying buttresses, medieval gargoyles and crenellations, Bavarian towers, and spiral minarets; curved pagoda roofs, Italianate facades, and ornately decorated onion domes. It seemed as if every architectural tradition in the world was represented in some corner, arch, window, or cornice. It was truly a chimera, and impossible to properly classify. There was no other place like it, even in the hulking, cyclopean City of Metropoly.

And it had another quality too, another bit of chimerical alchemy.

The Seat of Law had the immensity and presence of ancient monumental stone, as if it were a building had been reared with the stones at Carnac, or Stonehenge, but it also had the modernity of a steel-supported skyscraper (or several dozen skyscrapers, all piled on top of one another like jenga blocks). It was palatial and luxurious, the meeting place of the aristocratic elite, and it was also industrial and mechanical, a technological marvel for any age, for every age, sheltered comfortably by the huge encompassing dome of the arcology, and yet straining against it, peering out of it, slipping through it.

It was a building that had stood for ages, since time immemorial, and yet was always being renovated, reconstructed, added onto.

The nickname of this structure was Babel, or more simply, the Tower.

It certainly seemed like a tower built to pierce the heavens and challenge an almighty creator. It was surely the grandest building on the entire planet, a monument of excess and maximalism. It was a manic celebration of what could be raised by mortal hands.

And it was a place impossibly tied up in her future, in her present. One day she would have full rights to walk the halls of that place as an aristocrat of the Curia of Lords. Even now she was moving toward an oath that would change the nature of her life for good. She thought back to something that Flash had said with a mild, sweet smile.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

It wasn't as bad as all that, really.

But it would have been a lie to suggest that she was looking forward to seeing her father again, and he was there, somewhere inside the labyrinth of government. So was Lord Lysander, the man she'd been dressed to please, who’d take her as a squire without regard for her own personal feelings.

That was simply the way things were. She had no ability to change the nature and structure of the world. All she could do was live in it, living the best life she could under the circumstances.

Demi might have stood staring at the sprawling building in deep contemplation for an impossible amount of time had Clarance Darby not fallen into conniptions over the time, and how far off the schedule they apparently were, or would be if they didn't hurry along forthwith.

He moved ahead of Demi and said, “Please follow me, Lady Serraffield,” before starting down the stairs at a remarkable clip.

He was apparently not willing to take it on faith that she would follow him like an obedient hound, so he continually looked over his shoulder to verify that she remained at his heels as he led ever onward. She was positive that he'd have driven her before him with a gad if he'd had one.

Demi followed mechanically, but she had no ability to make her heart and mind follow him. Her heart was out among the countless strangers, roving with them, wondering where they were going, where they had been. Her mind was tracing the spires of the Tower, trying to make sense of its mess and majesty.

To put it succinctly, her eyes were not on her feet, nor on the ground underfoot.

And so, as one might imagine, she tripped quite spectacularly and was destined for several surface abrasions and a mild concussion as she tumbled down the stairs like a rag doll.

Only she didn't tumble down the stairs like a rag doll.

This wasn't on account of any remarkable feat of acrobatics, or a latent skill at tumbling suddenly manifesting itself at that particularly opportune moment.

Demi didn't tumble down the stairs toward injury and a very bad evening because someone had caught her by the arm, someone with a powerful grip and a baleful eye.

It was her serious man in the serious suit. He held her by the arm as if she were a very small girl, recently saved from tripping into an active volcano or a storm swelled river.

“Unless you’re absolutely set on cracking your skull open, I suggest you tear your eyes away from the architecture occasionally, if only in the vicinity of stairs,” he said dryly.

“Oh, I’m certain I would have looked at the stairs if I had noticed them,” Demi answered quickly, a giddy smile nervously skirting across her face. “But there really is so much to look at, isn’t there?” Her wide eyes practically swam with the visions of square before her, as if she were a projector at a planetarium, throwing complex patterns of light against a bare wall. This was the world through a glass colored Demeter. “The old stone and the stained glass and the steel and the way the light comes in through the dome in a sort of lattice pattern, and the spires like thorny coral or bone spurs, and the carvings in the peristyles that make you want to climb up and just touch them and touch them, even though you probably shouldn’t since I’m sure they’re historic and priceless and protected by all sorts of rules, besides, I’m sure the guard would come if people just started climbing up the walls of the capitol building just to satisfy a sensory itch — and then it's the people themselves: all the dozens and dozens and dozens of dozens of people, all with their own intentions, all with their own desires, all with their own miseries and triumphs — and that’s only a little of it, only a small, little bit of all this color and interest and activity. I’m sorry sir, but I’m afraid the stairs simply couldn’t compete.”

“That,” he said very heavily, “Was my point.”

“I knew you’d understand, being as we’re both romantics at heart,” she said conspiratorially. Her smile curled mischievously at the corner of her mouth. “Anyway, this seems like an awfully dangerous place to put stairs,” she asserted as he let go of her arm and sat her back on her feet. “Any old person could just go spilling down them without realizing it until they hit the bottom. They could break their crown or their hip or some other part of themselves that really ought not be broken.” She raised one finger adroitly. “That,” she declared officiously, “Is a safety hazard.”

He looked at the stairs for a beat, then looked at her again, then gestured vaguely at the wrought iron railing and painted lines that marked the lip of each step.

“Yes, it looks extremely treacherous,” he said flatly. “I’m surprised people aren’t killed in accidents here daily. One would expect more outcry about such a menace to the public.”

It was at that moment that they were interrupted.

“Ah, Lord Eisenreich,” cried the equerry as he hurried back up, looking pained as he bowed rapidly and deeply. “I’m terribly sorry that we’ve inconvenienced you.” He shot a distressed look at Demi, but she was not particularly concerned. She had a name for her reader. That was a treasure in itself. Besides that, she sensed that she had her footing here, and even if the equerry was intimidated by the authority and presence of this man, she was not. He did not seem to be a person particularly governed by whimsy. If he had caught her, then he had meant to catch her. He had spoken to her and so she had answered him. It was all very natural and ordinary.

She tapped one of her fingers to her lips briefly as she considered the equerry, then turned her attention back to the man called Eisenreich.

“You, sir, are very funny,” she pronounced with fine humor. She looked terribly pleased with herself at that moment, as if she had discovered a great secret. She felt that she had. In this strange place, where she knew no one, they shared a profound secret. He was very funny. “Thank you for delivering me from my dangerous enthusiasm. I appreciate it,” she said, and despite the humor that still lit her eyes, she was very sincere as she laid her fingertips against her chest, over her heart, “Honestly I do. And I’m sorry for troubling you.” She took a careful step backward and gave her own brief bow of deference. Then her smile quirked again. “But I am glad you took the trouble to be troubled by me.”

The brows of the very serious gentleman drew together briefly as he considered her. Then the nervous distress of the equerry caught his attention again and he waved the both of them off. It was a brief move of one of his hands, apparently an act of absolute dismissal.

“It’s fine,” he said shortly, and it was apparently so. It had been decreed. “If you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment.” He moved to go, but then paused, looking back at her once, the space of a slow heartbeat. His eyes were dark and heavy. “It is safer,” he said seriously, “To keep your eyes on the ground rather than the sky. Good day.”

Demi was quite content to watch him as he went, following him with her eyes as he descended the stairs to the square and then began to cut his way through the crowds.

But Clarence Darby had no patience with her interest. In fact, he still seemed alarmed by Eisenreich, even at a distance. It was if he feared that her attention would somehow summon him back.

“Come along, Lady Serraffield,” he said, and then, as if he had at last understood that she would pay him no real attention when there was so much to look at, he led her directly down the stairs, and rather than attempt to lead her across the busy square, went to a portal that was guarded by armed security officers.

After a rapid exhibition of identification, Demi suddenly found herself underground.