A World Too Near (42 page)

“Yes, Preconsul, that is more accurate, of course.”

But surely they weren’t at war in any sense. She cut a glance at this general, wondering if he would say more. He remained quiet—assigned to show her the sights, but not to trouble her preconceptions.

The Paion had been attacking for so long they had become a comfortable enemy, even while mysterious and feared. No one knew what manner of creature they were. They fought in short metallic simulacra—two-legged, two-armed torsos that lacked heads. Although only four feet tall, these Paion-driven machines were the images that children feared, the staggering robotic mechanisms armed with weapons that emerged from their armor in deadly sproutings. The Paion themselves rode in small humps on the backs of the simulacra, directing, controlling, or so it was presumed. No one had ever seen a Paion crawl out of that hump. When Entire soldiers felled a Paion simulacra and opened the housing, nothing remained but rotting biomass.

Depta wondered what would they do with the Entire should they ever conquer. If they came from another dimension, as legend had it, how could they hope to live in this one?

“Why do the Paion attack only here, General?”

He turned the good half of his face toward her, regarding her. “If they attacked elsewhere, Preconsul, do you think the Tarig would tolerate it? No. The Paion can dare just so much before the bright lords erase them from the universe.” He noted the confusion on her face. “Does not the third vow say we must extend the reach of the Entire? Surely the lords show great forbearance in not conquering the Paion homeland. Wherever it may be.”

What he was saying implied that the war was at the sufferance of the Tarig. All the conscriptions, all the deaths . . . She felt an intolerable weight bearing down on her. “I have seen enough death,” she said, surprised in spite of herself to say anything of the sort to this general.

“Of course, Lady.” He gestured her to precede him back to the camp. As a last impression, in the center of the plain a large clot of fire erupted, leaving behind a black pall that thinned out on the breeze. Ci Dehai led her away to a tent where she might take refreshment and rest. They walked away from the summit and down a short drop to a quartering area. A line of soldiers had formed to one side, snaking up from the other side of the hill and ending in a small clearing where a reviewing stand had been set up. Depta and Ci Dehai walked past this line. Soldiers must wait in line for food, for rest, for orders. The way of camp life. Depta wished that she could be so content with order, and doubted she ever could again.

“The lady has a grim duty here,” Ci Dehai said, nodding at this line. “Perhaps she will consent to dispatch these individuals after dinner.”

“Dispatch?”

“They have all committed treason.”

“Surely not all,” Depta blurted. She looked with dread at this line of ordinary soldiers: Chalin, Jout, Ysli, even Gond. Here and there a Hirrin.

“They deserve to die,” the general said. He turned away from the line, murmuring, “For the peace of the Entire.”

“How could all these soldiers have committed a capital crime?” she managed to ask the general, failing now to keep her voice neutral.

“Oh, they engaged in traitorous talk,” he answered. “They spoke of Titus Quinn, and his escape from the bright city. Some claimed he killed a Tarig lord, and destroyed property. All preposterous, for how could a single human do so much? It doesn’t do to make a hero out of a criminal. The dark can never become light. The Rose can never coexist with the Entire.” He gazed at her directly as they walked side by side, and his voice fell low. “To think otherwise is treason. With the resulting penalty, as you will see.”

Depta passed a Chalin boy who might have been conscripted yesterday.
Her gaze fell on a Hirrin, staring at the ground, having given up already. The line went on and on. Each one would watch the ones in front die by the garrote. Depending on how tight Chiron strapped it, some would die sooner, some later.

“Certainly not all these,” Depta protested. “There are a hundred of them.”

“One hundred and eleven,” Ci Dehai said. “It’s too bad. Conscripts are fewer these days.”

“Surely not all these,” Depta repeated in a whisper.

The general turned to Depta, bowing. “A light meal is ready, if you will follow me.”

“Please excuse me, General. I cannot eat.”

His expression softened. “Do not trouble yourself, Preconsul, on behalf of these mere soldiers.”

“Perhaps you should trouble
yourself
, General, on their behalf.”

He turned his good eye on her, muttering softly, “Perhaps I already have.”

Quinn and Anzi had been walking for two days, subsisting on catnaps. They wound their way through the hot, folded hills, traversing a gully, one of hundreds. With the Nigh far behind, golden hills surrounded them, an undulating geography so typical of the lands near the storm walls. Further into the primacy midlands, the veldt swept across ten thousand miles to the matching wall. But here at the tip of the primacy, the terrain buckled under the colossal forces of the Great Reach, where the storm walls met.

“Wrong direction,” Anzi said again.

“Maybe.” Quinn didn’t want to argue about it. They had to keep going in order for him to have enough time to make a stop at Yulin’s camp.

Anzi was dead set against it. “We have three days left.”

“Four days,” he said.

“No. Oventroe said five or six days of life left in the chain. If it was five, then we have three days left.”

“I’m counting, Anzi, believe me. The camp is on the way.” They had said all this before.

Still, she argued. “Imagine the chain falling apart here, or on the plains of Ahnenhoon. All the soldiers, gone—like Benhu. And the engine still standing.”

He
had
imagined. The cirque clutched his ankle with a heavier grip— one that seemed to have grown brittle. Stepping in the Nigh to pursue the Inyx mount, Quinn had compromised the hollow loop.
Let’s not chance getting
it wet
, Stefan had said. The Nigh wasn’t water, but something worse. He remembered Benhu standing on the sagging bridge between the vessel’s bow and stern—his arms deforming, and his puzzled look as he sank into the river. It saddened him. Although their acquaintance had started badly, Benhu had won Quinn’s begrudging respect. Quinn thought it was mutual. He knew others of his helpers had suffered for his sake as well: Yulin, certainly. And Cho, his guide at the Ascendancy. He could only hope that some had escaped notice: Ghoris, the navitar who’d set his search for Johanna’s message in motion. Bei, who had restored his memories. When Quinn learned from Oventroe about Cho’s imprisonment, he had asked the lord to intervene. But Oventroe had demurred, saying it risked revealing too much of his sympathies. At least he’d been honest about it, not that it helped poor Cho.

Quinn watched his steps. In this undulating landscape, the ground sprouted knife-sharp rocks. One slip could mean injury. Neither he nor Anzi could afford a further handicap.

He heard her scrambling to catch up. “Titus. You shouldn’t interfere between my uncle and me.”

Such brave words. As always, she was focused on one thing at a time, whereas he believed there was time and the need to do everything. He was aware that his life had become a stack of desires that clamored for settling. He had always believed it was because he loved things fiercely; any man would love his family; any man would love his world. In Anzi’s case, she appeared to love the wrong world: his. Most of the time, he was grateful that she was on his side in that regard.

She continued. “My trouble with my uncle is not your business, pardon me.”

But it was. Yulin had decreed a marriage for Anzi because of him. He could see the workings of the old bear’s mind: Show the Tarig that Anzi was well occupied with a Chalin husband, and no longer embroiled in misdemeanors. Another proof of Yulin’s change of heart for the gracious lords. Quinn wondered which side of the game Yulin was on these days. He hoped Suzong, at least, was on his side. She hated the lords for the terrible death of her own mother long ago. Her loyalties would never be with the Tarig. In any case, he wouldn’t cut a destructive path through Anzi’s life and leave her behind with hell to pay.

Quinn sat on a rock ledge and rested for a moment. Anzi pursued her topic relentlessly. “What if our estimates are wrong? What if it takes longer to reach the Repel?”

They had been through the calculations, drawing the route on the hard ground, planning the legs of the journey: three days to Yulin’s camp. Another day to the battle plains, there to breach the Repel.

Anzi handed Quinn a strip of cooked meat, and he took it gratefully, counting on it to power another five hours of walking.

Anzi’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Why go back where Ling Xiao Sheng is waiting? He can’t marry me if he can’t find me.”

Quinn had a further logic to going to Yulin’s camp, and perhaps now was the time to say it. “You’ll stay in camp, Anzi.”

She greeted this pronouncement with a stony silence. Tendrils of hair clung to her forehead as the day grew hot.

He knew she must want to be at his side. From the beginning, Anzi had felt responsible for everything: for his imprisonment in the Entire, for what happened to his family. She was determined about many things. So was he.

He softened his voice. “It’ll be hard enough for one person to get through. Oventroe gave me what he knows of the Repel’s defenses. It may not be enough.” The fortification was enormous and sprawling, but not porous. Oventroe said the defenses were impregnable. There was the terminus, the sere, the watch and the gathering yard, the centrum, and the maze of the containment chamber. All these barriers could be crossed, but only by the Tarig. Last ebb, the lord had given Quinn the means to penetrate the place. Still, it would be like running a gauntlet.

“I can help you,” Anzi said, looking at him with that amber gaze that seemed sun-struck, and a little fey.

“I don’t want you with me.” Harsh to say. Far harsher in the reality, when she attempted to enter the terminus and cross the sere.

She stared across the seemingly endless ravines and saddles. In the distance, the blue-black escarpment of the storm wall marched out of sight to the end of the primacy. Without speaking, Anzi stood, brushing off her tunic pants, and headed down the other side of the hill.

Mo Ti watched them from the peak of a nearby ridge. Neither of them was especially good in the wilds, whereas Mo Ti was a master of tracking and stealth. At his side, Distanir snatched the thoughts of the two fugitives, telling Mo Ti that Titus Quinn was ill, and that they were headed into Master Yulin’s hidden camp.

They made one mistake after the next. How had Titus Quinn done the great things claimed for him? Here was the man himself, sick and stumbling. Best of all, he created a beacon on his position. His message to Sydney had been relayed to Distanir. Insisting that the ship keeper allow an unscheduled stop along the banks of the Nigh, Mo Ti had sped into the hills on Distanir’s strong back, close behind them. Then the two fools had slept. While they had, Mo Ti and Distanir had crept within striking distance.

Still, there were two of them, and he wasn’t sure of their weaponry. He didn’t discount the woman, who was young and strong, with the muscular arms of a fighter. He would wait until the journey exhausted them; it couldn’t be long now.

He watched as Titus Quinn picked his way up the next rise. Mo Ti couldn’t see the chain around the man’s ankle,
but he knew from Quinn’s thoughts that it was there: the machine filled with the seeds of ruin.

Mo Ti would take pleasure in severing the man from his string of days. Then, if Quinn’s thoughts rang true as to the degraded state of the chain, Mo Ti would return to the Nigh and cast the infernal device into it. Three days.

Plenty of time.

Later that day Quinn found his strength returning. Perhaps the walking had finally purged his body, or perhaps it was just adrenaline. They set a better pace, traversing hill and gully without end. The bright was a boiling lid over the land, yet its rays were gentle in the ebb when they walked the fastest.

Quinn had forgotten already what a blue sky looked like, and clouds. Despite his setbacks here, he didn’t miss the blue; the silver seemed right.

Anzi was adept at catching the slithers that hid under rocks; and they developed a taste for the insectivores, even raw. He took a drink from their water bag that Anzi had replenished at wells she ferreted out. Accepting the water from her, he once called her Johanna. A slip of the tongue. His mind was on his wife. The closer they came to Ahnenhoon, the more his thoughts turned to her. If he did make it out of the fortress alive, Johanna might be with him.

He had asked Oventroe if the Tarig lord at Ahnenhoon treated Johanna well. “Yes,” Oventroe had said. “He favors her.” Quinn was glad of that, considering what the alternatives might be. Still, he wondered what was in her heart.

That day when Quinn and his family had been captured, when Johanna had first seen a Tarig, she was stunned by their towering stature, their predatory aspect. Sydney wasn’t intimidated, perhaps because she was a child and didn’t know how impossible they were. Within hours, the Tarig were speaking a halting English, and this encouraged Johanna. Yes, he remembered that she tried to talk to them.

Sydney had watched every move of the Tarig. She had said, “They smell burned.” Johanna had said, “Be careful, Sydney. That’s not polite.” So even then Johanna had begun to make peace with them. So early.

That was unfair. No one had made greater peace with them than he had. It had begun, innocuously enough, with the Tarig lady. Once Quinn and his family arrived at the Ascendancy, the creature had come to him in the ebb, crouching by his bed. He had awakened with a start.

“They are gone,” the Tarig being had said. This Tarig was smaller than others he had seen, wearing a jeweled net over cropped hair. He thought it might be a female.

They had told him nothing about his family, now separated from him. “Where are they?” Quinn had demanded.