A World Too Near (35 page)

The lord said, “You ask for much, but what do you give us in return?”

“My life. It should have been your job to stop the engine. Now it’s mine. It’s a job I may not survive.”

“You will survive.”

“Depends, doesn’t it?”

Oventroe paced, while Anzi watched him with round eyes.

From the pilothouse above came Jesid’s cry, “Poor under-sentients. Knowing nothing!” The ship keeper’s voice followed, calming, cajoling.

The navitar’s voice rose: “Dumb as piglets, blind as centipedes!”

Oventroe stalked to the foot of the companionway and thundered, “Quiet him! Feed him!” He turned back to Quinn. “At least he is quiet when he eats.”

Quinn and Oventroe faced off until at last the Tarig said, “Are your people ready to have such a gift?”

It was an unexpected question. Quinn thought of Stefan Polich and Helice Maki, and he wasn’t sure. Then, remembering Caitlin and Rob, he thought that decent people could make it work. In any case, humanity wouldn’t be in charge. The Tarig would be. That wasn’t particularly reassuring, but it did go some way toward the promise he had made, that humanity wouldn’t overrun the Entire. “We’re ready,” Quinn said.

“It would have come to you in time, Titus.”

“Time is the one thing I don’t have.”

The lord stood very still. Quinn remembered that flinty self-possession. The Tarig had few unconscious gestures; no pulling at garments, no bunching of hands. “We must first encode the correlates for use in your computational machines.”

“Permit me, Lord Oventroe, to have the program in a redstone for use in a stone well—such as a scholar of the veil might use.”

Oventroe looked at him as though incredulous that he could demand even one thing more.

Quinn went on, “There is a scholar of your acquaintance. The man who gave me your name so that I could find you at the Ascendancy.”

“Su Bei.”

“Yes. I want him to have the correlates. He has a lifetime work, a cosmography of the Rose universe. He has small bits of knowledge, a few data points. Give him the correlates and let him complete his cosmography.”

A cold pause. “A rich gift for an old man puttering with maps.” Quinn held his ground. “You test us,” the lord said darkly.

Quinn let the accusation stand. It might give Oventroe pause, to know that Bei would verify the data.

“Send the correlates by the fastest way you have. Tell Su Bei that if I don’t survive, he should send them to Caitlin Quinn. Into her hands, no other.”

“As a redstone?”

“She’ll figure it out.”

Quinn knew he was pushing hard. He was desperate. He might never walk out of Ahnenhoon. Someone had to get the correlates to the Rose.

Oventroe was gazing out the porthole at the storm wall. “The correlates to Su Bei, then.” Turning around, he held out his hand, waiting for the cirque.

Under the creature’s skin, Quinn could see ridges under which his claws rested. Although this Tarig was no more alien than other sentients he had known here—the Hirrin, the Jout—those long hands were testimony to a species that killed with its hands. Quinn knew to be wary of this lord, ally or not.

From above, the navitar groaned in a mighty exhalation: “Oh pray, travelers, pray. . . .”

Quinn crouched down. Hands trembling, he touched the cirque.
Four,
five, one. A total of ten.
He touched the depressions in the chain, in order, the right number of pinches at each node. The chain fell open. It lay heavy and cold in his hand. He delivered it to Lord Oventroe.

“It’s military nan,” Quinn said. “If it gets out . . .”

“Hnn. Molecular deconstruction.”

It seemed a bland summation of the dangers. Quinn reminded him that if the sequence was pressed in reverse order, the nan would fly.

As a wave of nausea passed through Quinn, Anzi helped him to sit back down.

“You are not ready for the binds,” Oventroe said. “But we must go in.” He nodded to the ship keeper, who had once again come down the companionway.

Receiving the silent order, the Ysli hurried back up the stairs to his master.

From the bottom of the companionway, Oventroe called to the navitar, “Go gently into the binds, Jesid. Our passenger is ill.”

From above, Jesid’s voice came in a mewling cry: “We will tiptoe in, my king.”

But in the next instant, the bow of the vessel pitched steeply down, flinging Quinn onto the deck. The ship plunged headlong into the river.

Depta stood in the tent of Captain Dekisher, the Jout officer who believed the skirmish his soldiers fought in might have involved Titus Quinn. Already shaken by her ride in the brightship, both disorienting and nauseating, Depta summoned her courage to look on the injured soldier lying on a table before her and the Lady Chiron. His name, according to Dekisher, was Chang.

Two others who had fought were dead, their throats slit. This one was dying of a gut wound.

The frontal bone of the man’s skull had been removed, and a delicate mesh laid over, touching the organ beneath. Depta felt her gorge rise to see the results of Chiron’s dreadful, yet necessary, surgery. The patient was awake, but lay still, not in pain, so Depta hoped.

“Since he does not know what he saw, Depta,” the lady said, “we must help him remember, and quickly.” Even now, the man of the Rose—or whoever it was who had run from the soldiers—was no doubt fleeing as far and as fast as a navitar’s vessel could bear him.

Earlier, under questioning, the badly wounded soldier had told them everything he could remember:
We ran into the marshlands. The ship came up
fast, trying to cut us off. There were two fugitives: one woman, one man. From the
ship’s deck a man with a beard jumped on me. Above him, I saw a Tarig lord
. As to which man, which woman, which lord, the soldier couldn’t say. Now, his memory would say. His visual memory.

Lady Chiron unfolded the scroll and lay it next to the comatose man. Between his forehead and the scroll she draped a long braid of sparkling filaments. The rolled-out scroll swam with colors, then formed into an image of Depta herself. The soldier, lying wounded, had seen her enter the room; he remembered her. She felt slightly ill to be called forth like this from the man’s dying mind.

Chiron bent close to the man’s ear. “Chang,” she said, “think about the chase along the Nigh. You remember the chase. The girl. The man. Your captain bid you apprehend them.”

The soldier remembered. As evidence that he did, an image appeared on the scroll,
of a young Chalin woman thrusting her knife forward. A jolt of colors appeared as the weapon pierced flesh. Chang seemed to be caught in a web of rigging along the hull of the ship. In a moment the scroll showed a shocking image: a Tarig standing on the deck of the ship. But what lord would have been on that ship, and why?

“Hnn,” Chiron murmured. Then bending close once more: “Remember the man you chased.”

Memory flickered. The scroll showed a man and woman fleeing down the strand, jumping the tide pools. They pointed to something in the distance. One of them—the man—turned, exposing his face.

Chiron leaned closer. “Ah yes,” she whispered. “His face is altered. But we have seen likenesses of his changed face. It is Titus-een.”

The scroll went to swirls, then resolved into an image of Lady Chiron. The soldier remembered the moment when the lady tucked the painkillers between his lower teeth and gums.

Chiron stood up straight, bundling the scroll away, along with the braided tubes. “How strange,” she murmured. “Titus Quinn has a friend among us.”

Depta didn’t recognize the Tarig she saw on the scroll. “It must be a minor lord whom I have not met,” she said.

“In fact, Depta, this is no minor lord. Among the ruling five, Lord Oventroe now holds a place.”

Depta’s ears flattened in dismay.
Lord Oventroe?
“He who hates the Rose?”

“Who the lord hates is no longer clear,” Chiron murmured. “How did my Titus come to have such a friend?”

Depta knew that the lady was no longer speaking to her. As she so frequently did, Chiron found her own company good enough.

Still, Depta offered, “Perhaps Lord Oventroe is not a friend of the fugitive, but has captured him.”

“And withheld the triumph from general knowledge?”

Depta had never before considered that the lady’s plans might not be the only secret designs under way.
We are all of one mind on these matters
, Chiron had once said. The Tarig were united in all purposes—so Depta had thought until the day that Chiron had bid Cixi not share with others that Titus Quinn knew the purpose of the great engine.

“If Titus has an exalted friend,” Chiron murmured, “then Titus has a brightship.” She cut a glance at Depta. “We must hurry, indeed.”

Calmly, the lady placed her hand on the patient’s open forehead. One of her claws snapped out.

Depta clamped her mouth shut. Must not vomit, must not. For a Hirrin to become sick in this manner was unthinkable—especially in front of the lady. Depta tucked her front legs down for a moment, resting her long neck along the tent’s dirt floor.

After a moment, the lady came to Depta’s side, saying, “This sentient would have died in any case, Depta. Now his death is worth something.”

Numbly, Depta nodded. She rose to her feet, averting her eyes from the table.

At the flap of the tent door, Chiron stopped. She turned back to Depta, eyeing her steadily. “Do you love us, Depta?”

She breathed, “Yes, Bright Lady.” For a moment her mind darkened, and she thought she might fall. Surely it was the nausea, from the brightship, from the soldier Chang’s death. . . . But she held firm on her four legs.

The tent flap fell behind Chiron as she left.

Depta managed a ragged breath. Surely she
did
love the lady. The ungrateful fugitive running amok, the darklings of the Rose poised to infest the bright realm . . . the gracious lady, so serene and powerful . . . and the soldier, already dying, giving crucial intelligence. Yes, it was all proper and worthwhile. How could it be otherwise? If otherwise, Depta was preying upon the wounded; she was also hounding a man who merely wished to hold converse between universes.

On her uncertain legs, she managed to push the tent flap aside and follow Chiron outside. The lady spoke to Captain Dekisher, bending over the short Jout as though she were dipping down to peck at his eyes. As Depta approached, Chiron was saying that the deceased soldier must have a fine grave flag. A proper subject, even a noble one.

As the Hirrin approached, Chiron said, “Give us a grave saying, Depta.”

Depta puffed air through her lips, thinking. “In death, served a Tarig lady.”

“That will suit,” Chiron said as the captain made note of the saying. Clustered nearby, soldiers bowed to the lady, their faces betraying their awe at seeing one of the Five. Chiron had already liberally distributed coins among them and promoted Captain Dekisher one rung, making clear her pleasure in their efforts, though their quarry had escaped.

As Chiron strode toward the brightship, she easily outpaced the Hirrin, forcing Depta to amble. The gangway was already retracting into the vessel as Depta made the leap onto the moving plate.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The pulse of the bright is thus: four of high phase, four of low. In
the high phase of day are Early, Prime, Heart, and Last. In the
low phase are Twilight, Shadow, Deep, and Between. In this
manner the gracious lords keep back the dark, in grand progression
from light to light.

—from
The Book of Ascendant Joys

S
YDNEY OPENED HER EYES. Her head throbbed with pain and the world was a blur.

Helice’s voice came to her from close by: “Your sight will improve as you heal. The Tarig are gone, my friend. Of that I am sure.”

Riod was nearby. She sensed that he had been with her every moment of the last hours.

Through the haze of pain-suppressing medicinals, Sydney received his heart words:
Best rider, we will ride again, free of the Tarig.

The previous ebb, Helice had brought her small machine into the pavilion, making a tent over Sydney’s face as she lay on the cot. Two cups had descended over her eyes. The chemicals Helice had brought dragged Sydney down to a sweet blackness. When the room lightened again, the thing was done. Helice pronounced that free sight had been achieved. Sydney couldn’t verify Helice’s judgment, but she felt the truth of it. The mantis lords were gone.

Sydney gripped Helice’s arm. “Let me see you.” She pulled Helice closer and gazed at her face for the first time. She was young, but already an engineer of nanotechnology and quantum things. She was educated, sophisticated, well traveled, and experienced—things that Sydney admired and envied. And Helice had defeated the Tarig, in this small thing at least.

Sydney clasped her hand. “Thank you,” she said in English.

Helice made a nice smile. “You’re welcome. You were very brave.”

As Sydney fell into sleep again, Helice looked at her, searching for the likeness of the father. It helped that Sydney looked nothing like Titus Quinn. Brown eyed and sweet looking, Sydney must look like Johanna. Not much of a visage for a queen, but then maybe Sydney wouldn’t be queen. The world was an uncertain place, and while one could wish the girl well, there might be other contenders. She smiled at Riod, who was no doubt trying to read her thoughts. Mostly she tried to think good, boring things so he wouldn’t be interested. She could almost feel him pushing up against her resolve to remain blank to him. He might catch tendrils of things, but the creature couldn’t possibly understand her purposes. If she couldn’t outthink a
horse.
. . .

Riod sent,
Mo Ti wishes to enter to give respects.

“Tell him Sydney can’t have visitors.”

She sleeps
, Riod said, voicing the self-evident.

I am surrounded by simple creatures, Helice thought. To some extent, that was good. Folks hereabouts weren’t prepared to play rough, and that would give Helice some leeway until they realized who they were dealing with.