A World Too Near (33 page)

A Tarig stood on the strand. “Hold,” the lord repeated.

Anzi’s opponent backed away from her, his knife lowering.

The Tarig strode forward, his slit metallic skirt clinging to muscular legs.

“Lord, Bright Lord,” Anzi’s opponent said.

Quinn’s man still held his weapon, looking confused as to whether or not Quinn was a threat to the lord.

“No knives,” the lord said.

All weapons were now on the sand, including Quinn’s.

In the distance, shouts came from a growing number of pursuers. The ship lay between the lord and the converging men, preventing anyone in that group from seeing what befell on this side. The lord stalked toward the two soldiers.

“Side by side,” the lord commanded the soldiers. They huddled together, kneeling.

Quinn went to Anzi’s side. She was panting, spattered with blood and fearfully beautiful. Benhu lay huddled on the ground, but alive. Benhu, that excellent fellow, had brought Lord Oventroe.

“Look up,” the lord told the kneeling soldiers. “At the bright.”

As they did so, the lord extruded a long claw from his hand and drew it over two throats in one long swipe. Blood spurted onto the sand, onto the lord’s vest and silver garment. The men fell, their blood darkening a tide pool.

Quinn and Anzi helped Benhu to his feet. Another figure appeared on the ship’s deck: the ship keeper. He leaned far over the bow to extend a hand to Benhu. Then, with Quinn pushing from below, Benhu managed to sprawl over the rail and onto the deck. Anzi scrambled up the rigging after him.

Lord Oventroe stood beside Quinn, making a gesture for Quinn to precede him. Quinn nodded, hauling himself up the rope net, still heavy with its catch of a dead soldier. He saw the lord leap a twelve-foot height to grasp the rail. From there Oventroe swung himself over, landing lightly on the deck, then took a knife from Anzi and severed the rigging, letting it fall away.

In the next instant, sand flew up as the struts retracted, and the ship lurched forward with a powerful surge.

Behind the departing ship, a swarm of soldiers ran up to their fallen comrades.

A scowling Jout stepped from the group, watching the ship depart and following it a few paces into the tide pools.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

There are three tests of a good life: a peaceful household, a contented
heart, a fine enemy.

—a saying

C
IXI PAUSED AT THE GREAT DOOR. Around her legates and consuls were bowing and smiling, offering to hold the door, trying to decipher her mood from clues in her expression, makeup, and hair. The boldest had scrolls under their arms, ready, should the chance occur, to present the high prefect with a petition.

It was the middle of ebb, and Cixi, as usual, was well awake, preferring as she did the twilight intervals to the glare of the bright. Now she wished nothing more than to take a walk along the canals of the Ascendancy—alone. No attendants, no legates, no sycophants. But of course the high prefect could hardly go abroad unaccompanied, so she chose Mei Ing with a flick of a long-nailed finger. Mei Ing bowed, accepting as her due the right to attend Cixi.

Legates bowed, smiling, holding the door. Fools and lackeys. “Go to bed,” Cixi muttered at them.

She fled the Magisterium, down the stairs into the sunken gardens and up the further flight onto the plaza and thence to the great canal. Mei Ing hurried behind her, steps shuffling in her ridiculously tight gown. One pin in the woman’s hair was askew in back, Cixi noted with satisfaction. The sub-prefect’s servants must have wakened her in a hurry, in order that she might hasten to accompany the high prefect for an unannounced walk.

The plaza was deserted at this ebb-time. The sky simmered, the deep folds tinged with red, as though if you scratched the sky you could draw blood. Well, blood was never very far from the surface of things, particularly in this evil city.

She and Mei Ing walked along the canal in silence. The channel waters carried carp, and the occasional black vine strewn by the wind. In the quiet, the city seemed artificial—a stage set for the Tarig to act out their drama of happy sentients mixing in the city of princes. Somewhere here, Cixi had no doubt, the Tarig composed their bodies and entered them. But where? She knew the bright city as she knew her own face. Her glance went to Ghinamid’s Tower, the monument to the Sleeping Lord, who having come here as the first lord, became homesick and lay down to rest, never waking again. A pretty tale, and a false one. The lord slept, it was true, but not from a broken heart. They had no hearts. Or rather, the Heart controlled each one, creating the same five individuals over and over again. Where did that occur? Cixi had been to the tower many times, carefully touching the stone walls, looking for secrets. But then there were the mansions of the five lords, and these too could hold secrets.

“. . . nightmares, so vexing of course,” Mei Ing was babbling.

Cixi slowed her walk, tossing a morsel to a carp that came to the surface, begging. “You are vexed, Mei Ing?” She had to look up at the subprefect— so annoying. But being unusually short, Cixi was accustomed to that.

“Some are vexed, it is said. By nightmares. That is the symptom of an undisciplined mind, of course.”

What was she prattling about? Ah. Nightmares. Now here was a subject that commanded Cixi’s attention. Sydney and her captain of mounts flooded the land with nightmare dreams of the lords. Mo Ti hadn’t said so directly, warning only,
Sleep brings the truth to many.
It was obvious that Sydney was spreading rumors through dreams. The dear girl, so audacious! However,
open discussion of such dreams would not do, not at all.

“Nightmares are for children, Subprefect.”

Mei Ing’s face tightened at the rebuke. “Of course.” She simpered, “And it is better to be awake in the ebb, when Your Brilliance prefers to conduct affairs.”

“Her Brilliance does not dally with nightmares even in Prime of Day, Subprefect.”

Best to quash discussion of nightmares. It would not do to have the legates freely discussing dreams when one might conclude that they were unnaturally shared among so many. It had only been an arc of days since the dreams began—only ten small days since Mo Ti’s great message—but rumors could travel faster than a navitar on the Nigh, at least here in the Magisterium. Once stories began, an attendant to a lord might well mention troubled sleep, and thus bring a lord’s attention to the matter.

They crossed the canal at a small covered bridge. Vines formed a bower and afforded a sweet shade, welcome even in the ebb.

“Mei Ing,” Cixi whispered. “You understand that dreams hold our hidden wishes. The ones we can never express.”

Mei Ing breathed, “Surely not, High Prefect. Surely not all the dark things that come when one’s mind loses connection to veracity . . .”

“Oh yes. That is precisely what I mean. The dark thoughts come then, Mei Ing. The lover one cannot have, the bloody deed that the vows forbid . . . the treason against the lords.”

“Treason?” came the whisper. “Lord of Heaven forbid.”

Cixi shrugged. “If one dreams what one cannot tell a lord, then that must be a high crime. For would the gracious lords punish a sweet dream?”

“Punish? Can dreams be punished?” Mei Ing held perfectly still, struck by the new thought.

“Would you tell a lord that he appeared in a dream”—here Cixi paused, not wishing to convey that she had such dreams, too—“in an unattractive guise?”

“Never, Your Brilliance. It cannot be imagined.”

“And it must never be imagined. Not in the Great Within, not under my regency.” Cixi let it sink in, that she had just given a command. “Should any legate suffer from such weakness of thought, let that legate know to remain silent and take medicinals to cool his mind.”

The silence in the bower deepened as Mei Ing settled into what must be the unhappy conclusion that she was committing treason every night in her sleep. Or every night that the Inyx ghosts came knocking.

Cixi relaxed her voice to send Mei Ing to her duties, not as one terrified, but as one timely warned. “I depend upon you to school the legates, Subprefect. One must do so discreetly, as one would not wish to accuse high legates of treacherous dreams.”

“Of course, Your Brilliance. Legates afflicted with such dreams will have my warning.”

“Sweet sleep to you, then, Mei Ing.”

It took a moment before Mei Ing figured out that she had been dismissed. She retreated in haste back across the bridge and toward the Magisterium.

As vacant as the Empty Lands, Cixi thought, watching the woman flee. Mei Ing would be a worried sentient from now on. Let them all worry. Let them indeed wonder why they hated the lords in their dreams when waking, they adored them. Let them begin to doubt their loyalty.

It was a good beginning.

When Cixi emerged from the covered bridge there stood before her a knot of Tarig lords gathered near the canal.
By my grave flag
, she thought. Why had her legates not told her of this gathering? She glanced down at her long index fingernail, seeing that it scrolled with messages—all unseen in the darkness of the covered bridge.

Lord Nehoov himself stood foremost among the Tarig. One of the ruling five, his presence augured some high matter.
By heaven, let it not be nightmares
, she prayed.

Nehoov regarded her as she bowed low. “Talking in darkness, ah?” His glance went to the roofed bridge.

“Bright Lord, my life in your service, and shall we share the rest of my walk?” She gathered herself up and glided toward the lords, keeping her composure, but barely. How much had they heard?

He didn’t respond to the suggestion, but whispered to Lord Toth, who stood nearby—a lord whom Cixi knew well, and whom she knew not at all. All the lords were versions of each other. It utterly changed how she thought of them. But it didn’t change their power, their absolute control over her and all others.

When Lord Nehoov turned back to her, he said, “Mei Ing is distressed, this lord believes. She dreams?”

Cixi’s heart fluttered, but nothing reached her face. Through long practice, her face was placid. “She is afraid of dreams. Like a child. One despairs of training her for high office, Bright Lord.”

“Do you dream, Prefect?”

“Yes,” Cixi answered.

“Of what?”

“Of the murder of my enemies.”

Lord Nehoov narrowed his eyes, but not dangerously. “Against the vows, ah?”

“The act, not the dream.” She wasn’t used to cowering before the fiends. The bolder her comments, the more natural she would seem.

His attention turned from her, and he looked up toward the palatine hill. The lords followed his gaze, talking among themselves. One of them pointed, and Cixi saw that a brightship streaked away from the city, having launched from the hangar just out of sight at the summit.

Lord Nehoov murmured to her, “Lady Chiron’s ship. We have come to find you, High Prefect, to instruct the Magisterium on necessary new cautions. These are needed, since it seems that Titus Quinn has returned.”

Ah, Cixi thought. So they knew.

She had already heard the report from Mo Ti, that a woman of the Rose claimed to have journeyed with the man. She put on an expression of surprise. “Titus, is it? May the lady’s brightship find good speed.”

“We do hope it is he. Events have transpired such that he may have been seen on the Nigh. The man—of Chalin form—has taken a navitar’s ship.”

“Mmm. Still stealing ships, then.” But this time, if it was true he was on the Nigh, he couldn’t be the pilot. He couldn’t steal a ship—not to pilot it. For that, he would have had to subvert a navitar. Was it possible? Was it even thinkable?

Lord Nehoov’s face was stony. “Lady Chiron will apprehend this individual on the river.”

Cixi watched as the brightship—sleeker and more evil-looking than the old ones—climbed into the sky and, glinting against the bright, dove into its depths.

She hoped this time Chiron would draw a claw across the man’s throat— although she had to admit that it was useful to have the lords looking for a villain of the Rose rather than focusing on their own kingdom. Quite useful indeed.

Cixi looked into Lord Nehoov’s dark eyes, wondering what it was like to have been deposited in a form rather than to have grown up. She contained a shudder. “Lord, let us discuss all safety cautions that my small dominion can impose.”

“No one believes, High Prefect, that your dominion is small.”

Cixi allowed herself a smirk. “Compared to you, Bright Lord . . .”

In an offhand manner he responded, “One does not compare.”

Except in dreams, she thought. She set out down the promenade with the cluster of lords walking in slow motion in consideration of her small stature and frailty of age.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

When in power: inspire, reward, speak truth. When in
weakness:
divide, subvert, sow doubt. In the harmonious sway one force cancels
the other.

—from
The Hundred Harmonies

Q
UINN DRIFTED IN AND OUT OF A CRUSHING SLEEP as the navitar’s vessel plunged and tossed. For the first time in his life Titus Quinn was seasick. He fought to contain his nausea.

Someone cried out, “Turn back!” It was Anzi’s voice.

Opening his eyes, Quinn saw a smoky light bleeding through the portholes. Outside, figures moved—one a Tarig. Then, appearing at his side, a Ysli ship keeper peered down at him, frowning and muttering. The vision shoved Quinn under again.

When he opened his eyes again, the light had brightened, and his stomach had stopped lurching.

Anzi bent over him. “We came back.” With her white face and hair, she seemed a creature of the exotic river—the undine of the Nigh.

“Where did we go?”

“We ran to the binds, but you can’t bear the journey yet. You’re sick.” She wrung out a cloth in a bowl of water and dabbed at his forehead.

Outside the porthole, Quinn saw Benhu peering in. Still in his grimy godman’s robes, the man bowed and smiled, showing where he had lost teeth in the fight on the beach.