The doctor knocked, put his head around the door, then came in to apply his little monitor to her swelling belly and another to her head. He read the results and recommended a bath and a good sleep immediately.
The tub had been set up in a stone-floored room below, which Genevieve managed to get to without encountering Rongor, the Prince, or her father. The quiet room reminded her of the bathroom at Fentwig’s House, and she lay a long time in the tepid water, luxuriating in the feeling of weightlessness. That night she slept in a real bed, one wide enough to turn over in, one wide enough for Aufors to slip in beside her, and when morning came, she began finding her way about the place.
The building was in the form of an E with the open side jammed against the city wall to make two unequal courtyards joined by a passageway. From the desert, they had entered the larger courtyard where stairs ascended along the inside of the city wall to the surrounding balconies. At the top of the stairs a narrow slit through the city wall gave a view of the airship and the sun-blasted lands around it. No window looked out upon the city street, the only access to the city was a heavy door at the end of a hallway from the small courtyard, through the top of the E.
The house was large. Genevieve counted over twenty rooms on the ground floors alone. From the smaller courtyard, stairs descended into the kitchens, one level underground, where it was discernably cooler. Off the kitchens were several stone-walled cellars that had perforated pipes running along the walls. Sometime during their first night these seepers came alive with water, and morning found the rooms moist and cool. From these rooms, air ducts extended upward through the walls of the house, opening through grilles along the floors of the upper rooms. Opposite the grilles, holes in the ceilings opened into hollow T-shaped pots suspended with a wire from U-shaped brackets and resting in smooth saucers. Wind-fins rotated the pots, turning them into the constant breeze, and as the wind went through the top of the T, hot air from the house was drawn out as well, allowing cooler air to flow in from below. In a few hours the ground floor was quite comfortable and even the upper floor was more bearable.
Genevieve found two men working in the moist cellars, filling pots with soil into which they set dormant plants that had been brought on the ship.
“Who thought of that?” asked Genevieve, wonderingly.
“Ah . . . your father,” said Aufors. “Or, he made me think of it. He remarked to me one evening that you had enjoyed the gardens of Wantresse. The plants will not take long to leaf out. When they begin to do so, we’ll move them up into the courtyard.”
She put on a smile and thanked her father, at which he showed obvious discomfort. As he recalled his remark to Aufors, one that equated women’s weakness with their fondness for flowers, it was not one she would have thanked him for.
Genevieve and Aufors had been given the rooms at the end of the balcony upstairs. “You won’t be wakened by people tramping by in the night,” said Aufors. “Those of us on night duty will use the other courtyard, to keep the noise down.”
“Night duty?” Genevieve faltered. “What night duty?”
“Your father considers this a military operation,” he smiled. “The Prince and the Invigilator evidently agree with him. The guards will work three four-hour shifts a day so at least one of them will be alert all the time. I have to agree that it’s best in situations like this to keep an eye open always.”
The other upper rooms over the larger courtyard were occupied by the Marshal and various of the other personnel, while Delganor’s suite occupied most of the space below, along with rooms for general use and several apartments tucked away in cooler, sky-lighted areas behind the better-lit rooms. The smaller courtyard was occupied by the household servants and support staff, including the communications man who maintained the link to the ship and slept next to his equipment.