A World Too Near (25 page)

The bright lords were nothing more than conveyances for incorporeal beings. They were not citizens or lords of the world, but interlopers, passing through, afraid to partake of life and death. Cixi had hated them before, as one hates and fears a predator; now the hate was sweetened by disgust. The Tarig were monstrous in nature, nothing like a proper sentient. Not only that, they were controlled from outside the Entire, still tethered to the Heart. A thousand thousand days the Tarig had fostered distrust of the outside, the non-Entire, vilifying and despising the Rose. Today the Tarig were exposed as outsider themselves, continually passing to and from, a part of some uncanny swarm that all sentients would find abhorrent.

A better enemy could not be imagined.

Cixi’s heart lifted, thinking of her dear girl’s success. Sydney, my sweet and suffering girl. Soon to be Sen Ni, when she came to her proper Chalin name, when she would ask the Chalin sway to rise up with her against the river spiders. Sen Ni! Cixi was surprised to find a tear moving down the excellent thick paint of her face. She patted the wetness away. Her attendants must repair that before anyone saw that the high prefect went abroad in careless presentation.

She tapped the stone well to spit out her stone. Receiving it from the ejection cup, she strung it on the thong and placed it around her neck, tucking it in. She descended the stairs of the tower, emerging into the flat glare of the bright.

Her attendant on this outing was Subprefect Mei Ing. The woman bowed placidly, not understanding how the world had changed. Vacant as the Empty Lands, Cixi thought. Mei Ing’s perfect features were framed by upswept hair spiked with decorative pins. As subprefect, she was supposedly in training for the office of high prefect of the Magisterium, the Great Within. That had always been a pretext, but now Mei Ing was surely as useless as legs on an Adda.

Sydney rises. The kingdom rises, Cixi thought. And you, Mei Ing, fall.

Mei Ing bowed once more.

Not even such groveling could tarnish Cixi’s mood. Mei Ing smiled at the pleasant expression on Cixi’s face. The subprefect was devoid of intrigue, ambition, manipulation, and cruelty. She would never have made a good leader.

Cixi managed a tic of a smile in return. Sen Ni would soon hold court in the bright city, and Mei Ing could watch from the gallery.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Hush and sleep, the Nigh flows in place,
Hush and sleep, the city floats in grace,
Rest and ebb, shadow time draws nigh,
Rest and ebb, violet cools the sky.

—Ebb song

I
N THE DIRIGIBLE OF THE MOST VENERABLE GODWOMAN, Benhu and Helice took quarters with the rest of the crew—two Ysli, a Jout, and four Chalin.

Alarmed at first to be accepting a ride from a high-ranking godder, Benhu had listened with amazement as Quinn explained their good fortune. As agreed upon with Zhiya, Quinn claimed that the high godwoman was indulging in her pastime of raiding the pilgrimages to find lovers, and had chosen Quinn. Not as gullible as Benhu, Helice demanded the real story, but didn’t seem surprised when Quinn didn’t oblige her.

“What will happen to our beku?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “I suppose he’ll keep pulling wagons across the veldt until he drops.”

She looked unhappy. “I made the new owner promise to brush him. But the godman looked disreputable.”

“You should have made him promise to shoot the beast. The beku might have thanked you.”

Helice didn’t smile, but waiting at the cabin hatchway, Zhiya broke into a broad grin. Quinn passed through to Zhiya’s quarters, and the godwoman slammed the hatch shut.

“I don’t trust her,” Zhiya said. “She has slippery eyes.”

It was true, Quinn thought. It matched the rest of
her.

“Thank you for preserving our little story about my voracious sexual appetites. I don’t think the Tarig would thank me for giving Titus Quinn a ride.”

“Helice may suspect we’re lying about that.”

“Perhaps we should make it the truth.” Zhiya put up her hands, stopping him from comment. “When you’re ready, not yet. You can have this cabin. I’ll sleep with my mother.”

“We can share this cabin, Zhiya. It’s large enough.”

“Shall I take that as giving me hope?”

Quinn smiled in answer.

Zhiya needled, “You know that the longer we’re together the less alluring we’ll find each other. We’d better share a pillow now, before I start to look like a dwarf.”

He looked at her, thinking how much he liked her. “You have no idea how long it’s been, Zhiya.”

“Oh,” she murmured, “better and better.” She nodded at her mother’s door. “When you make up your mind you know where you can find me.”

Zhiya’s airship, although proceeding no faster than the rest of the caravan, kept Quinn and his party out of sight, a significant advantage. Quinn enjoyed the time apart from Benhu and Helice, but now, in the more leisurely company of the Most Venerable, Quinn found himself perversely aware of the chain around his ankle. It shifted when he moved. Waking in the ebb, he would feel for the cirque, thinking it had fallen off. When he touched it, it seemed colder than it had been. The sooner the dirigible brought them to the River Nigh, the sooner he might have confidence about the thing he bore—if Lord Oventroe could assess its potency. If not, let the damn gracious lord give him something reliable.

Meanwhile, Quinn and Zhiya spent hours by the side of her mother, where he witnessed a daughter’s devotion, including humble tasks of changing the swaddling garments and daily recitations of the day’s gossip and events, punctuated by the navitar’s incoherent utterances. The woman was far gone, and by her nearly black hair, very old.

The days passed as the midlands of the Arm of Heaven Primacy passed below them. One day Zhiya said to Quinn, “You must grow a beard—muss up that nice face for when you get to the Nigh, where smarter sentients than godders will be on the watch.”

Quinn agreed. Like his hair, his beard grew in white. Long ago Su Bei had altered his hair, thinking that one day Quinn would need camouflage. Bei hadn’t realized how soon that would be.

Helice wondered what was up with the dwarf, and if Quinn was really going at her in the next cabin. Not that she wanted any details. She had barely fended him off the day before when he planted his lips on hers, and that had been quite as much of Titus Quinn’s body as Helice cared to encounter.

Now she was relegated to a cramped cabin shared by seven other people—no, not people, sentients; she really had to get used to this. She even had to share the crew’s wastery, no more than a hole in the deck that could enlarge to accommodate a Hirrin and smelled like it already had. It galled her that Quinn would travel in style when she was the one recovering from a painful burn. It was true that the burn was knitting smoothly, and she didn’t really need medicinals to sleep. But still. It was a pattern; she always got the short stick around him. And never the truth.

For example, the business about Zhiya choosing him for a bedmate. It was laughable that he came up with that kind of story. What did he and Zhiya really have in common? Had they met on one of his previous jaunts in the Entire? So if Zhiya was a friend, did that mean she would risk the ire of the nasty Tarig? Helice filed that away for future consideration.

And why did people look at him like he was some kind of lord? Whenever he was in the central cabin, the Jout stared at him. The Ysli creatures, too. It was hard to believe
they
were intelligent. They watched him like a media star. Perhaps they suspected who he really was. And if so, why that mooning look? Because he had once been a prisoner in the Tarig city, and managed to escape? Was there some kind of big legend about that? Or was it about Quinn’s second visit? He never said much about what he did last time. Looked for Sydney. Didn’t find her.
Not
the whole story. This was her maddening disadvantage here. She didn’t have the whole story. She was a fast learner—that was a fact—but she was in an alien realm and functioning at the equivalent level of a dred, for God’s sake.

She settled into her nest of blankets, letting the hum of the dirigible’s engine lull her. She would take some rest while she could, to improve her stamina so that in due time, and with Sydney Quinn’s help, she could improve culturally. The Inyx nation—more likely,
pastures
—would provide a safe haven until she was ready to fry bigger fish than Titus Quinn.

But he was definitely going in the frying pan before anyone else.

Zhiya had a pot of wine by her side and poured liberally for herself and Quinn. Her mother had had a good night’s sleep, and Zhiya was celebrating.

She celebrated a lot, Quinn noticed.

The Most Venerable regarded him with friendly curiosity. “After all these days, you still haven’t said why you’re here. In the All.”

“No.” He smiled to soften his refusal.

“Actually, you don’t need to say. I think I know.” Zhiya plumped the pillows surrounding herself and murmured, “Ahnenhoon. You’ve given out that the battle plains are where you’re headed. But that’s not it, is it?” She went on without waiting for an answer. “Why would you want to go there, after all? Quite a distance. The farthest you
can
go. And full of danger, what with Paion wreaking havoc, and generals with weapons.”

“It’s better you don’t know, Zhiya.”

She sighed. “I know so many things that I wish I didn’t. It’s almost as though I can’t help accumulating bothersome knowledge. Now you’re here, and that’s another thing I’m not supposed to know.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “Still, it gives me some solace knowing why you take your celibacy so seriously. Very admirable. Given
how long
it’s been.” She took a sip of wine, then murmured, “It’s because of the woman of the Rose. Your wife. Am I right?”

After a pause he said, “That was long ago.”

“Yes,” she allowed. “A sad story. I’m sorry.”

“You’ve had your own sorrows.”

“When we heard of her . . . preferences, it surprised us. Rumor had it that she hated them. Perhaps she succumbed to their charms.”

“Succumbed?” Quinn wondered what she was getting at.

There was a long pause, during which Zhiya muttered, “Oh dear, you don’t know.” She put her hands on her knees, thinking. Then she rose, bringing the pot of wine over to him. She poured him a full cup. “Drink.”

At the look on her face, he drank. Then, wiping his mouth, he said, “Stop pacing, Zhiya, and sit down. Just tell me, if there’s something I have to hear.”

She sat by his side, taking his hand in hers. “Did you think your wife was dead?”

The moment stretched out. “Yes.”

“Quinn. She’s not dead.”

The whir of the dirigible engine came faintly to his ears, like a tiny drill into his mind. He pulled away from her, trying to hear her correctly.

Zhiya went on. “She lives at Ahnenhoon, still.”

“Ahnenhoon,” he repeated. Still at Ahnenhoon. His mind had slowed. “Everyone says she died.”

“Of course that’s what they say. That’s all most sentients know. But I’ve known those who have seen her.”

He closed his eyes, trying to absorb it. Johanna. Johanna. Her image came to him, and it overwhelmed
him. “Alive,” he whispered. “How can she be alive?”

Zhiya’s voice was soft. “I know a thousand, thousand things that I’m not supposed to. I collect information, Quinn—haven’t you figured that out yet? Someone has to know the truth in this
radiant place
.”

He put his head in his hands. He saw Johanna, heard her voice. Dead, so long dead. He had thought.

“I thought you knew,” Zhiya said. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”

“To tell me my wife is alive?”

“No.” She took a gulp of wine. “To tell you that she has . . . a partner.”

He nodded at this pronouncement, as though it were logical. Yes, she might find someone else after so many years. But on another level, he could not process what he was being told. His wife was alive.

Zhiya whispered. “Now, this will be hard.”

“It gets harder?”

“You know how, sometimes, one becomes dependent . . . on one’s jailor?”

He stood up. The room was so hot he could barely breathe. Dependent. On one’s jailor. Is that what Zhiya said? He tried to concentrate. Johanna. Finding some peace in the only arms available. Yes, he remembered what that was like.

“With Lord Inweer?”

Zhiya murmured. “So the tale has come to me.”

He went to the viewport and drew back the drapes, staring out. He stood there for a long time. He had made his peace with Johanna’s death; at the time, a terrible peace. Hearing her name now, imagining her alive, loving someone else, brought his mind to a halt. He gazed out the window a long while, trying to absorb what he had heard. Zhiya didn’t interrupt him.

If Johanna willingly stayed at Ahnenhoon, he could imagine why. The Tarig were, at times, fascinating. He knew it all too well. The psychological pressures of being a captive—gratitude for small mercies shown . . . it was easy, as Zhiya said, to become dependent. He pushed aside these thoughts for later. Because she was alive. Incredibly, he hadn’t even suspected. He was so badly stunned that he could only gaze out the viewport, watching the relentless passage of the veldt.

Once, in the background, he heard Zhiya go to the hatchway and ask for a new pot of wine.

Eventually, the lights dimmed in the cabin. Turning back to face Zhiya, he saw that she had removed her clothes. The world presented one bizarre thing after another. Where was his solid base, his certainty?

“Lie down,” she told him as she positioned herself on the pillows. “We can just lie here,” she said. “I think we both need a bit of comfort.”

He stood by the bulkhead, wondering what his life had become, wondering if he
could
find comfort with her.

“Come here, Quinn,” she said. “In a world of misery, this is not wrong.”

She beckoned him, and he walked toward her in a daze. He murmured, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Can I tell you?”

He nodded.

“Take off your clothes.”

He did so, standing for a moment before her, feeling untethered, unreal.