A World Too Near (29 page)

—“Strange Lands Down,” a river song

Q
UINN WALKED ALONG THE BANKS OF THE NIGH, broad as the widest Earth river but deeper than any watercourse, so it was said. The curling waters lapped at the steep bank, a rocky outcropping where his hike had taken him after passing through the army camps.

He had been recuperating for fifteen days, and only in the last two days had he felt strong enough to walk. Benhu fretted about Quinn’s health and pleaded with him to rest in the tent. But Quinn felt sluggish, and walked to get the poison out of his system, not to mention the foul medicinals that Benhu urged on him. With his legs suffering spasms at times, Quinn’s gait was still shaky. Nerve damage. Helice might have killed him with her poison. He wondered what else she carried on her person, and why he hadn’t thoroughly searched her.

Although Quinn had at first been alarmed at Helice’s departure to the Inyx, he felt more secure now, concluding that the Inyx—whatever they knew—wouldn’t turn him in or they would have done so by now. Meanwhile, he waited for Lord Oventroe to contact them. Benhu had managed to find a navitar who would bear a scroll to him. Without betraying his secret affiliation, Benhu couldn’t claim any special precedence with the ship keeper, and thus the message would have to wait until the navitar’s trade took the ship to the Ascendancy.

The day before, Quinn had watched as Zhiya’s dirigible droned away to ply the cross-primacy route, watching, listening, gathering truths on her way. She would minister to her brothers and sisters, and to the diverse sentients of the land, netting intelligence with good conversation, wine, and perhaps sex. If the Entire ever found its champion, Zhiya would be a good ally to have. He’d asked Zhiya how riddled with subversives was the service of the Miserable God.

More so than you might guess
, she had answered.
Less than I might wish.

Walking along the riverbank, Quinn watched the mercurial surface swirl into patchwork eddies, seething quietly and in a muted light, being near the storm wall. Close along the banks the winds died, nor did gusts disturb the heavy waters. Sometimes he sat on the edge, gazing at the river.

Helice’s poison had left his thoughts slow and confused. Helice was gone. He felt relieved, despite the danger of her being loose in a world she hardly knew. It wouldn’t keep her, he felt sure, from interfering in her inimitable way. But her midnight strike had deepened his distrust of the cirque. She had risked much in that attack, cutting herself off from his protection, ostensibly to make sure he never used the nan sequence. His thoughts eddied like river matter.

His eyes were drawn to the place where the storm wall and the river met, a distant fiery line like a fresh weld. The Entire, by rights, shouldn’t cohere. By rights, there should be no sentient beings in this world. Why did the Tarig build this universe and lavish it as they did with civilization, technology, laws, and the comfortable strife of the Long War? Even when he had lived at the Ascendancy, he had seldom drawn them into such subjects.
You
cannot know us
, was one stock answer, always unsatisfactory. Lately he had dreamed of them—odd, lucid dreams of Tarig as automatons. Strange that he would think of that now—years after he had lived with them and come to accept them as natural. Still, they remained puzzling. For instance, he wondered why the Tarig had gone to such length to keep this artificial cosmos, when they might have had worlds in the Rose with less effort. Was the Entire a simple matter to them? Or did they so despise the dark, that alternating of day and night required in the world of suns?

He became more aware of his surroundings. Standing a short distance away, where the bank cut down into a ravine at the river’s level, stood an Inyx mount, pacing on the sand. The beast’s great horned head came up, noting Quinn’s presence and eyeing him nervously, but in a preoccupied way, as it stared at the river. Quinn had never been so close to an Inyx, and watched, fascinated, as the creature trotted back and forth along a short beach. Its black coat shone with sweat, and spittle hung from its great mouth. Although it was enormous and sported a double row of formidable curving horns, this animal wasn’t well. Yet it wasn’t an animal, he reminded himself.

You are no godman.
The thought needled into his mind.

Too late, Quinn saw how effortlessly the mount knew his mind.

“No, I’m not,” Quinn said. “But I mean no harm.”

The Inyx looked at the shimmering river, seeming to forget him.

“You’re sick,” Quinn said. “Can I help you? I have water with me.”

There is water enough.

Could the Inyx drink the exotic waters? Surely not, unless it was a powerful tonic for disease. The creature’s flank shuddered with a convulsion. Sydney rode a being like this. He imagined a twelve-year-old girl on the mount’s back. She was no longer twelve, of course. Too late, he remembered he shouldn’t think of his daughter. But he thought of her constantly; it was a wonder that the whole Inyx sway hadn’t heard him broadcast those refrains by now.

The Inyx slowly turned his head toward Quinn.
Rose. She is an Inyx rider,
but of the Rose.

Quinn’s thoughts were wide open to this creature, as Benhu had warned him from the beginning. Now that it could not be undone, Quinn leapt to a decision. He approached the beast, but only near enough to present neither a threat nor a target. The Inyx turned to face him, swaying on its feet, staring at Quinn with rheumy, green eyes.

It was reckless to reveal himself. Quinn knew that. You can die of too much caution too, he thought. Quinn whispered, “Send her a message. I beg you. I will repay you in any way I can.”

Rose. Man of the Rose.

It was all exposed now. Quinn didn’t know how much the Inyx could take from his mind. The Inyx looked back toward the River Nigh, gazing at it with an unmistakable longing. This Inyx was going to walk into the river.

Speak, then
, came the creature’s thought.

Quinn felt adrenaline hit. “Tell her . . . tell her this: ‘I will come for you. Watch for me. Wait for me.’” It sounded so flat. It fell like a stone in the river, sinking.

The Inyx walked into the river up to the hocks of his sturdy legs.

Quinn followed him to the edge, where the waters lapped against his boots.

The Inyx moved breast-deep into the glinting river. Around him, the heavy waters formed scudding waves in all directions.

In another moment, a word rang like a bell in Quinn’s mind.
No.

It came again:
No. You are dead to me, as I have been dead to you. Come near
me and I will have my mount kill you.

Quinn staggered into the shallow waters. Sydney had spoken to him. Her words hovered in his mind, the terrible words.

The mount swam away, conveying nothing back to him. Quinn splashed after him. The Inyx moved swiftly away from the bank, his back and the crest of his neck buoyed up, but sinking slowly.

Quinn stretched out his hand to stop the creature from sinking away. “Sydney. Stay . . .”

The Inyx fell beneath the coiling surface.

A funnel appeared where he sank, spiraling down.

Quinn backed out of the river. Greasy rivulets fell from his tunic pants and dribbled off his boots. He fell to his knees in a puddle of exotic matter. She had said,
Dead to me.
She had cut him away.

He watched as the silver grease burned into the sand.

The legate Hu Zha sipped a cup of thin oba in Yulin’s tent as old Suzong poured from a blackened pot. To Hu Zha, the tent reeked, and the steaming oba did not much improve matters. As Lady Chiron’s emissary, Hu Zha looked forward to returning soon to the Magisterium, where fine silks and exalted company would replace this tawdry posting.

Given a chance to redeem himself, the fat former master of the sway had failed. Yulin had let Anzi slip away. Both he and his decrepit wife would suffer the garrote for
this lapse. Nor had Hu Zha, he had to admit, covered himself in glory. He had been snoring in his tent when Anzi fled, but who knew the girl would be so brash?

Suzong simpered, “More oba?” She blinked absently, as though she had not a thought in her head.

Hu Zha reached out his cup, and the hag poured. He waited for Yulin to broach the subject. What was there to say? Appeal for mercy? Hu Zha would convey no such request to the Lady Chiron. Rather he would say that Yulin had stupidly tried to force a marriage on Anzi, a match she could not abide, which sent her running from the camp, and now she was no decoy to lure Titus Quinn, and they would see nothing of the man of the Rose, and Yulin would see nothing of the clemency he desired. Hu Zha hoped to be there when Yulin went down at the Tarig lady’s feet. It would be a glorious thing to recount to admiring throngs in the Magisterium, and to his children, how the master of the sway took his death, bravely or otherwise.

Hu Zha cut a glance at Yulin, wondering why the old bear had called him here.

Sitting on his cushions, Yulin felt the sweat pour off his neck and trickle into his jacket collar. The damnable tents at Heart of Day were fit to roast a slab of meat, and yet the meeting could not be postponed, as the miserable Hu Zha was eager to report to Chiron and hasten back to the rarefied comforts of the bright city. Nevertheless, Yulin forced a pleasant expression onto his face.

“Hu Zha, you are welcome to my tent. Now we must discuss matters of the highest import, so that you may tell your lady all that has transpired— despite my earnest efforts.”

The man regarded him with insolent calm, his youthful face belying the high office he held—that of a full legate.

Yulin mustered patience. “Hu Zha, despite appearances, Anzi’s departure does not suggest defeat. Quinn may yet come to our camp.”

“Yes,” Hu Zha replied, “and Gond may fly.”

In the old days, Yulin would have split the man’s tongue for such an insult. Today, he must ignore it. Suzong’s lip quivered, and he hoped she would not drop the hot brew in Hu Zha’s lap. He had seen her fury, and it was building now beneath her powdered face.

Yulin hastened to say, “Listen, Hu Zha, and hear my judgment of our enterprise.” The minion dared to smile as though indulging a child. Yulin’s voice lowered, forcing Hu Zha to lean forward to hear. “The reason that Quinn may come is this: He does not know that Anzi has fled. Of course, there is little chance she will find him. Therefore, he may still come, thinking her to be at her uncle’s side.” Anzi and Quinn had agreed to meet at Ahnenhoon. Yulin’s camp being in the vicinity, Quinn could find it if he persevered.

Yulin sat back, having played his best card. But sweat beaded on his forehead. He slurped the oba, but it only made him hotter. They couldn’t open a tent flap, because Hu Zha, disguised as a cook, could not be seen having oba with the master of the sway.

With silken nonchalance, Hu Zha said, “When do you expect him, then?”

“When?” Yulin drew himself up. “Am I a crazed navitar to predict the future?” The man had gone too far.
When, when.
He thought of strapping the man face up on a beku and letting him watch the bright for a few days.

As Suzong attempted to pour oba, she slopped on Yulin’s hand. “Oh, so clumsy,” she murmured, wiping her husband’s hand with her sleeve. “A thousand pardons, husband.” She turned to the legate. “As we’ve been saying, Quinn will certainly come, and you, Your Excellency, will have the honor of capturing him. So satisfying to all concerned. A fine atonement for those of us who have found ourselves in error, and a success for you, rewarding your patience. A lovely solution, and one the lady will certainly approve. More oba?”

Hu Zha considered her words. Simpering and cowed by Hu Zha’s position, the crone had still stumbled upon a decent point. Suppose Titus Quinn
thought
Anzi was here? There was a chance the darkling could still be lured here. Hu Zha might indeed wait a few days before reporting the setback.

He put his cup forward to let Suzong pour. Certainly Yulin was not going anywhere, so that if the Lady Chiron chose to invoke Tarig justice, she would know where to find him.

He might not be remiss in waiting a few more days.

When Hu Zha left, promising restraint in his judgments, Yulin turned to his wife and took her hands in his own. “You charmed him, my sweet.”

She snorted. “I dominated him, the young fool.”

“For a time. But what will become of us if Quinn never appears in our tent?”

Suzong leaned in closer. “Then we seek refuge.” She brought out a painted fan and whipped a welcome breeze onto his face. “There is one place the Tarig would never find us—the Rose.”

His expression must have shown his astonishment. Whispering, she went on, “I have reason to believe that Titus Quinn was looking for safe passage to and fro.”

“There is no passage to and fro. Not without great danger.”

Suzong sucked her teeth and nodded. “But there is, husband. If one knows how to open the door.”

Why, Yulin thought, would there be ways to open the door? Such things were forbidden. It was the first vow, after all. Did his wife flutter after rumors and superstitions?

Murmuring close to him, her breath was hot on his cheek. “They call them the correlates, so scholars say.”

“Why would Quinn have such a thing, when the master of the sway does not?”

“Because, husband, he was
looking
for them. When he came to our sway, when he sojourned with us for a time, he was looking for them. You remember?”

“But, as to
finding
them . . . the vows forbid it.”

“Some do not care what the vows forbid.”

Yulin pulled at his beard, speculating. Might Quinn be so audacious?

Suzong said, “If Quinn did find them, we could cross over and take refuge with his people. Until they come in numbers. Until they return you to your rightful place.”

Yulin looked at her fondly. She thought of things that most people did not. It made his younger wives seem vain and foolish. Back when he had had younger wives, and the leisure to criticize them. “Crossing over is a garroting offense.”