A World Too Near (22 page)

Mind racing, he sat cross-legged, trying to guess what she wanted, what she knew. He took in the surroundings: on the deck, a litter of scrolls and boxes, plates with scraps of food, and stone well devices; on the bulkheads, faded draperies, pulled back from the viewports. A smell came to him, of some pungent herb or cosmetic, perhaps.

Uneasy under her scrutiny, Quinn said, “We had a falling-out that night. It’s over now.”

She smirked. “We heard. So difficult to keep secrets among such as we. If you hoped to keep secrets . . . well, you have a lot to learn about us.”

“I am new,” he admitted.

“Yes.” She smiled an awful crimson smile. “For example, you’re a handsome man to have chosen life as a godman.”

“No sentient is without hope,” he intoned.

Her amusement increased. “Look around you, Ren Kai. Do you see handsome godmen?” She paused, grinning. “Or women?”

“Venerable . . . ,” he said, with no idea how to finish his sentence. She didn’t help him, but raised an eyebrow, still mirthful. “Venerable, I have long given up judging beauty.”

Her face fell. “Oh. And I fussed with my hair.”

He looked at her, his confusion mounting. “Very nice,” he said.

Her smile became less playful. “Do you think so?” She ran one hand through her hair, caressing it. “It’s my one indulgence.”

The room was hot, and the smell of food or ointments or whatever it was had become nauseating.

She gestured at the cabin. “The sky bulb is a luxury, I suppose. But my brothers and sisters expect it, the ones who scurry after god and handouts.
They expect a certain amount of
grandeur
, you know. They’re content to be poor as beggars—well, they
are
beggars—as long as a few of us sit on pillows and travel in style. The way of things, isn’t it?” She regarded him with an unsettling vigor. She put her hands on her knees. “So.”

The way she said it signaled a change of topic, and he suspected he wasn’t going to like the new one.

“Perhaps I should stop playing with you.” She cocked her head. “Are you ready for business, Ren Kai?”

“If you please, Venerable.”

“My name’s Zhiya. You can drop the Venerable stuff.”

“Zhiya, then,” he murmured.

She rose, revealing her diminutive size, a height of perhaps four and a half feet. She walked across the small cabin, ambling slightly, and kneeled by a stone well computational device. Having second thoughts about activating it, she turned around and looked at him, her face losing its laughter. “I don’t mean to be overly dramatic. But what you see may shock you.” She thumbed a nodule on the stone well and dropped a redstone into the master cup.

The walls enlivened, filling the room with harsh light.

On every wall, his face appeared. Different views, different dress. But it was him.

He stood up, turning in a circle, looking at the images. They were from a time when his hair had been shorter. In one of the images, in the background, was a person he recognized from the back. It was Anzi. Otherwise, only him. All were images from his stay in the Tarig bright city last time. When he had been incognito.

She knew who he was. A hot stone lay in his gut. He looked at the pictures, some of them from the dock in the Sea of Arising, others of him walking along the canals of the bright city. One was an image of him walking with the steward Cho.

“Seen enough?”

He nodded, and the walls went dark.

“I know you carry a knife,” Zhiya said. “My people could have disarmed you before you came in. So you won’t run at me with the thing, will you? You’d never get out of the ship. And you’d be sorry, later.” She swept a hand through her hair. “At least I hope you’d be sorry.”

She found a cup and poured an amber liquid into it.

He didn’t care what it was, he drank. It was fermented and strong.

Zhiya watched him drink. “People say you’re unpredictable. Personally, I like that in a man. But I wouldn’t want to die if I’m wrong.”

He returned a bleak smile. Now that it was all out in the open, he felt oddly light-headed.

As though reading his mind she said, with some compassion, “Pretending is such hard work. I know. It makes you dark and a little mad. That’s why I like to laugh.”

“What gave me away?”

She poured herself a drink from a jar by her pillows “Curious about that rather than your fate?”

“Sometimes it helps to fix blame.”

“I know what you mean. Keeps regrets at bay.” She settled herself comfortably in her nest, tucking her stubby legs under her. “You make a good Chalin, Titus.” She blinked. “Can I call you that? You prefer Ren Kai? Dai Shen? Venerable?”

“I go by Quinn.”

“Ah. Well, your Lucent is very good, Quinn—no distinction from a native, I assure you. But the female you’re traveling with . . .” Zhiya shook her head. “The throat. Any Tarig who began a garroting would not stop halfway. We all discussed it.”

He thought of how naïve he had been, and wished to holy hell he could begin over again. “All of you?”

“Yes, my fellow thieves and miscreants. You’ve been the subject of discussion for days. Anyway, I take no special credit for figuring it out. You knew your picture was spread around?” She shook her head wonderingly. “Oh yes, the lords sent it by navitar down the five primacies. So once we were watching—what do you call her?—Oh yes, Li. Once we began watching Li, we saw you, and eventually matched you with the visuals.” She grinned, half evil, half sweet. “I must say your vanity got the best of you. You made your new face too handsome. You’ve changed your face before, the second time you came here. Why, coming back here this time, didn’t you alter yourself again? That’s one thing we couldn’t figure out.”

“There wasn’t time.”

Her eyes narrowed. “In a hurry then. You shouldn’t have been.”

“More true than you know.”

She twisted her long hair around one finger, forcing it into a curl over her shoulder. “I feel so selfish. I promised you I’d get to business, and here I’m just enjoying our little chat.” She watched him with an almost feral intensity. “You understand that you’re famous? I never thought I’d be overimpressed with celebrity. I’m almost one myself. A dwarf, a Most Venerable. Draws attention. But you. Prince of the city, voyager from the dark, slayer of Tarig.” Her face lit up. “My, that’s good, isn’t it?”

He had hoped that his exploits hadn’t had time to travel. The Entire being so vast, and communications limited to light speed, there was a chance no one would have heard, outside of the Ascendancy. It was one reason that a quick return to the Entire had advantages. But the Tarig themselves had spread the word. And they, he knew, weren’t limited to light speeds.

“Anyway,” Zhiya went on, “most sentients are aware that you had a Tarig at your feet. Took away their toys. The big ships. How did you destroy all their ships? Dying to know.”

He murmured. “They were conscious beings. I released them.”

Zhiya sat in silence for a moment. “Released them.”

“They were interdimensional beings. Framed tightly to take on a ship aspect. Prisoners.”

“You empathized.”

“Maybe. And I didn’t want to be followed in the one ship I flew.”

She smiled, but the humor was more sober. “Compassion tinged with practicality.”

“I wanted to live.” He had had reason to want to live. To bring home the discovery of the threat to the Rose. But by then, he had also wanted to live in general. He wanted his life—a far cry from the years when he hadn’t.

“The lords have new ships,” Zhiya said.

“Not made of flesh, I hope.”

“One could hope.” She stood. “Forgive me. I always love good company, especially someone new. But you’re wondering what comes next, and I’m remiss in dragging this out.”

As she stood in front of him, they came eye-to-eye. Her skin was pockmarked, but his attention went to her startling eyes, so deep an amber that they looked like melted gold.

He said, “The man Benhu. And Li. Can you let them go? I dragged them into this. They don’t know anything. Let them escape. If I get one wish, that would be it.” If Quinn’s companions weren’t put to torture, maybe Lord Oventroe’s cover could be preserved.

After a pause, Zhiya said, “There’s something I want to show you.” She turned, beckoning him to follow.

She led him to a hatchway in the far bulkhead, which she opened to reveal a dimly lit cabin, narrowing into the nose of the airship. The smell as she opened the door revealed that the stench he’d been aware of had come from this room.

On a bunk in the center, a form lay. This was a sickroom, and one long occupied. The drapes covering the bulkheads reeked of medicinals and illness. They approached the bed, and Quinn looked down on a face that seemed to spread onto the pillow. Beginning at the line of the nose and forehead,
the skin sagged away to either side, as though the bones of the face had given up. One arm lay outside the covers, and it too had a deflated look. Looking up at Quinn were two elongated eyes that no longer looked human—or Chalin. A miasma rose from the bed. The flesh wasn’t rotting, but changing, flowing onto the pallet.

“My God,” Quinn whispered.

The patient moaned, saying something like,
Gaaaaaa
. It was a pitiful sound, from a throat that could no longer enunciate.

“She’s been like this for ten thousand days,” Zhiya said. “It’s one reason I keep this big ship. She likes to float in the sky.”

Zhiya bent down and whispered in the woman’s ear. “Mother, would you like the drapes open?”

The eyes looked frightened, tense.

Zhiya glanced at Quinn. “That means yes.” She moved to the bulkhead and pulled aside a length of silk to reveal a viewport. A circle of molten silver appeared there as the bright shone in. The room filled with light, revealing more details of the woman’s condition. Her mouth was elongated, but it had knitted together, forming a half moon on the lower part of her face. In the center a small hole allowed her to breathe, since she had no nose.

“Mother,” Zhiya said, holding the woman’s hand. “This is a new venerable, come to pay respects.”

The hand was a cup of flesh, with fingers melted together. Zhiya held it tenderly.

The mother’s eyes fixed on Quinn. “Gaaad,” she said. Then, with great effort, “My God.”

Quinn made a startled reaction.

“I should have warned you,” Zhiya said. “When you spoke just now, was that in the dark language?”

He hadn’t realized he had spoken in English.

Zhiya continued, “Her mind is very vivid.”

He asked Zhiya’s mother in English, “Do you speak my language?”

The woman struggled to push words out. They came in a warble, in his language: “God speaks.” At this effort, the woman closed her eyes, her eyelids operating perfectly, even over such eyes as these.

Zhiya said, “I don’t know how she knows your tongue. I never knew how she knew things.” After a pause she added, “She is a navitar.”

Quinn bowed. He didn’t know why he did. But a sense of profound respect induced him to bow low. The navitar had traveled in the paths of knowing, where the worlds mixed, where dimensions blurred. Where futures were probabilities. Mere under-sentients slept on the River Nigh, their minds too exhausted to make sense of the exotic matrix. But navitars were transformed to bear it.

“Did you ever think,” Zhiya said, “what happens to navitars when they burn out?”

Quinn hadn’t wondered. And now he wished he didn’t know.

Seated once more in Zhiya’s cabin, they shared a meal brought in by a Chalin godman. Quinn began to hope that the Most Venerable wasn’t his enemy.

As they partook of the meat-filled dumplings, Zhiya was silent. Only when a godman came in to pour steaming mugs of oba did Zhiya speak.

“Most of them kill themselves. It’s not so bad. They do what they love for a long time, and then they can’t imagine living as under-sentients. The traditional death is to weigh themselves down and sink into the River. My mother came home, instead.”

“Is there nothing to be done for her? With all the medical knowledge of the Tarig?”

Zhiya’s eyes snapped up at him. “But then we’d have to ask them, wouldn’t we?” The bitterness in her voice wasn’t hard to miss. “Mother and I would rather not. But I didn’t introduce you to her for you to fret about her condition. Only to show you why the lords aren’t . . . gracious, in my view.”

She noted his inquiring look. “Yes, Mother chose her vocation. The lords are careful that way. It all looks so consensual. But it’s how they’ve set things up, isn’t it? One can’t travel anywhere worth going without using the Nigh. But the Nigh needs special navigators. Sentients are drawn to the service, drawn to esoteric knowledge, but must submit to morphing in order to survive it. God’s beku, why don’t the lords just inscroll the knowledge, tell all the secrets? More to the point, why don’t they just devise a better way to travel?” She waved away his arguments, although he wasn’t going to make any. He’d had the same thought many times. The Tarig hoarded their knowledge. “They play with us, you see. I don’t like to be played with.” Glancing up at him, she said, “Neither do you, I think.”

“No. Not by the lords of my universe, either.”

“The same everywhere, eh?” She laughed soundlessly. “I should have guessed. Anyway, my mother went for a navitar, and I went for a godwoman, and begged and cheated my way to wealth, and now I travel about and spread misery. That is, I take on the miseries of the world, or whatever you want to believe about the Woeful God. It’s been a good life, if a cynical one.”

After a period of silence she murmured, “Not everyone is happy on the Radiant Path, Quinn. People would follow you. They think you are a
hsien
. One who has become immortal. It’s a term of the Rose. Chinese, I believe. Anyway, you are dragging a big reputation around. And didn’t know it, did you?”

“Immortal?”

“Well, we’re a bit loose on theology, you know. The Tarig fill the awe-and-power slot. So god gets the leavings, bits and pieces of things. Some folks think you’re a hero. Killing Hadenth, that ugly fiend. Killing one of the little lordlings.”

Quinn must have visibly winced, because Zhiya said, “Don’t ever waste time about that. It only added to your mythos.” She smiled. “That and the brightships. You have no idea the terror of watching those ships skim down the bright, falling on the land, dispensing what they call justice.”