A World Too Near (43 page)

“It would be difficult to explain,” she said. “But far away. They are gone. Reconcile yourself.”

She wouldn’t say more, and soon departed. But now he had an ally of sorts. He knew something he wasn’t supposed to know. He would learn to collect such pieces of intelligence, piecing it all together—eventually, and to his chagrin. Johanna and Sydney were a world away, a universe away.

Anzi set a brisk pace in the jagged terrain. He kept up, but barely.

“Anzi,” he said. They were at the bottom of a slope leading to a rock saddle, some hundred meters above. They paused before the climb. Quinn said, “I’m going to take her home.”

Scattering stone shards under her boots, Anzi went straight up the flank. At the top, Quinn joined her. Far in the distance the Nigh-ward storm wall met the anti-Nigh-ward storm wall at an acute angle, crushing the light from the basin between them.

“I’m going to ask her to come home,” he said again.

“Yes. Of course.”

“She may not come with me.”

“Perhaps she won’t.”

The air was still and hot as the Heart of Day cast its fierce light on Anzi, making her seem struck from alabaster. She was quiet with her emotions, and always had been. So unlike Johanna.

Finally Anzi said, “I think she should go home. If she wishes to.”

“She’s the companion of Lord Inweer.” He’d told Anzi this before. Why bring it up now?

“Then she may not choose to come with you, Titus.”

“No. She may not.”

Anzi plunged down the other side of the saddle. He followed. For months now he’d thought that Johanna was dead, until Zhiya had revealed the truth. So the past was not as over as he had thought. He had brought Johanna into danger in the Entire in the first place. And he would take her out.

He had recently loved her. How much of the old life was left? He found the answers skittering away into the ravines.

They ate the rest of their provisions and traveled a mile or two on the energy of the fatty meat.

During the trek, Anzi asked, “How will you persuade my uncle?”

“The same way I persuaded him to help me in the first place.”

She murmured, “Humans will come. He must choose a side.”

“Yes.” He wondered if that argument would still hold. “We’ll see if he agrees to give up the marriage. If he doesn’t, you can come with me if you still want to.”

He won a smile from her. But Yulin
would
agree. He didn’t think he’d lose his way with the old bear on such a point.

Eventually they decided to allow themselves two hours’ sleep. By Anzi’s calculation, they wouldn’t reach Yulin’s camp until the third hour of Between Ebb. She knew, because she had come this way on her way out from Yulin’s camp. Finding a rock ledge overhang they nestled in what shade the bright allowed, and dozed.

Mo Ti crept up the gully, having left Distanir behind to be sure his approach was soundless. Quinn and Anzi slept, so Distanir said. Now he could catch them unawares.

Mo Ti unsheathed the blade he carried at his side. As long as his forearm, it would cleave through such bone and muscle as these two possessed.

Behind him, Mo Ti felt Distanir’s distress at being left out of the fight. Distanir’s bulk and hooves were not made for stealth, and in a skirmish, surprise was a precious advantage. Distanir was sending his emotions rather too strongly.
Quiet, my Distanir
, he sent.

Once in the shallow basin, he spied someone lying in a small crevasse. Sleep eluded Quinn, as his thoughts returned to Johanna and the decisions they would soon face. He rose after a few minutes, leaving Anzi in their snug retreat. But it wasn’t Johanna who disturbed his thoughts. It was something else, a slipstream of distress, that edged into his consciousness. A familiar thing, but why?

It was very like an Inyx sending. Having experienced that strange sensation twice before, he now recognized it with certainty. If Inyx were nearby, why hadn’t he heard their hooves and the cries of their riders? Hoping for a wider view, he climbed to the crest of the low hill, lying down at the top to be sure the ravines on either side were deserted.

They weren’t. Down the next gully came a dark shape like a boulder moving. It was the largest Chalin man that Quinn had ever seen. His hair was gathered into a white topknot, in the military style, and sword drawn, the creature advanced on Anzi’s sleeping form.

Quinn sprinted down the hill, making noise to distract the man from Anzi, who was sleeping and unarmed. Quinn carried their only weapon, a short knife, no match for the giant, who now turned his attention to the assault coming at him from above.

Quinn slid to a stop at the bottom, scattering loose rock. The giant turned to engage him, rushing forward to pin Quinn against the jagged slope. Guessing the man’s strategy, Quinn moved to the center of the gully. Into his mind came the shriek of an Inyx mount, sending alarms.

The giant’s shoulders loomed over a chest broad as a turbine, while his crumpled face sat athwart, looking itself like a dangerous weapon. The man charged, feinting left,
and moving with a grace impossible to imagine in one so large. Drawing back his sword arm, he heaved the blade with a fierce slice into the air where Quinn had been standing.

Anzi emerged from the cranny, a rock in hand, ready to fight. She circled behind the man, creating two attack fronts.

The odds were against Quinn. His reach couldn’t match the giant’s arm. He shouted to Anzi in English: “Climb the slope; get above him.”

Anzi continued to circle the giant, just out of reach. She removed her jacket, taunting the man, “Afraid to kill a woman, then?”

Quinn danced forward, then retreated, staying well away from the prodigious reach of the attacker, watching with half his mind for any fellow thieves to come down the ridges. Above him, he saw a massive shape on the crest of the hill. The Inyx mount came pounding down the hillside sending outrage in pulses of emotion.

At that moment, Anzi flung her jacket with expert aim, covering the giant’s head to his shoulders. The man pawed it away, but not before Quinn charged.

Quinn aimed his knife into the giant’s groin, the only vulnerable place he could reach as the man flung the jacket away. The blade slipped in, releasing a bellow as it drove home. Quinn yanked his knife back, determined to keep it. The giant went to his knees as the mount pounded into their midst, head bent down, horns to the fore.

Anzi raised her arm as though to finish the giant off. She bore no weapon, but her feint worked. The Inyx rounded, and came at her instead. This left time for Quinn to grab the giant’s sword. He swooped down and took a firm grasp, but the monster held fast, looking into Quinn’s face with the single-minded intensity of a starving bear. He hauled back on the blade, wrenching it free from Quinn’s hold.

Lashing out with his booted foot, Quinn hammered the man in the chest, upsetting his balance just enough to send the sword blow awry.

But he wasn’t hurt as much as Quinn hoped. He staggered to his feet and advanced. Behind him, Quinn saw the Inyx mount crash his forehorns into the rock overhang where Anzi had plunged.

To Quinn’s astonishment, she was thrusting out a long knife blade that she could only have retrieved from the Inyx saddle sheath. The mount registered pain, sending out a wave of rage. She had sliced his fetlock.

Quinn circled around to Anzi’s position, pulled her from the shallow crevasse, and hauled her up slope with him as the Chalin giant and his mount took stock of their wounds. Scrambling over rock scree, Quinn and Anzi climbed to the crest of the hill. They were breathless, dusty, and light-headed from the heat. But they were unscathed. To his surprise, their pursuer was kneeling to examine the mount’s leg. Blood stained the ground where the massive Inyx stood, immobilized.

The Chalin man looked up at them, his face as impassive as it had been during the fight. He raised his sword and pointed it at Quinn.

“Soon,” he said, in a chilling, soft voice.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as the storm wall, and
when you move, fall like a Tarig’s fist.

—from Tun Mu’s
Annals of War

T
HEY TOOK A MEAL TOGETHER, Johanna and Inweer. She wore her best blue gown, and forced herself to show an appetite.

“You are beautiful, Johanna,” Inweer said.

“We have learned to see each other in kind terms, my lord.” He might interpret that as an insult, but she was merely fending off his compliment, as she used to do, back when she parried words with him for his amusement.

It wasn’t a Tarig custom to eat in company, and Inweer only did so now to honor her ways. Around them in the hall, the metal floor spread out like a skating rink to the distant walls. The drafty chamber didn’t foster conversation, but Inweer still probed her about Morhab’s death. After the soldiers had dragged the charred bodies from the sere, Johanna had wasted no time in suggesting to Inweer that Morhab had committed suicide for love of her. No point to deny a connection between her and the Gond; they had been seen together, no doubt. Perhaps it was settled. However, Inweer had his mind on other things, and might not give priority to the death of an engineer.

As a Chalin servant cleared their plates, Johanna poured skeel for him, wine for herself. Her hand was steady. She didn’t think he would kill her tonight.

“You set store in kindness,” he said, watching her rather too closely.

“It is my Savior’s commandment, Bright Lord.”

“Ah. The God who confers eternal life. After one loses one’s body.”

They had been over these things before. Though to the long-lived Tarig, the assurances of religion didn’t compel, she and Inweer had an easy repartee about her faith. Once, such topics eased loneliness, in the days when she didn’t have an impossible obligation on her shoulders. Oh Titus, come well armed, she prayed. Blow everything at once. There is no blame.

She adjusted the long pins in her hair, where they bound her hair into a simple twist. They would make good weapons, if driven into the eye. She smiled at Inweer. To kill him, it would be necessary to drive a pin into the edge of his eye. The orb itself was hard as glass.

Inweer’s voice came to her, sliding to the topic she least wished to pursue: “We find it curious that Morhab had hope of you.”

She managed a wry face. “Yes, strange, isn’t it? I was determined to overcome my repugnance for his physical aspect, and I set myself a duty of talking to him from time to time. He made too much of that. He must have been troubled to be so mistaken.”

“Talked of what?”

“Oh. My home world. He did seem interested. My family, little things I did as a child. It comforted me to speak of former things. Now I regret it.” She sipped her wine. “Poor creature, to die so.”

“And your serving lady, Pai. She was with Morhab. Why, hnn?”

Because she betrayed me, Johanna thought. She took no pleasure in that death. She didn’t doubt for a moment that Morhab had held some terrible threat over Pai.

“I don’t know, my lord. Perhaps, in death, he wanted to hurt me, after all. And knowing that I had no strong feelings for him, he took the one lady who I did love.” She sipped her wine, hoping her flushed skin didn’t mark her as an elegant liar.

Inweer hadn’t touched his drink, but regarded her with icy stillness. “Have you told one all that pertains to the matter?”

“Yes, my lord. Morhab was deluded, and now I’m quite cross with him. I’ll have to settle for SuMing as a companion.” She put an edge to her voice, as though annoyed with the subject, but her heart was hammering.

They sat in silence for a time. Just get it over with, my lord, she thought. Whatever you’re going to do.

“Johanna, we are dissatisfied with one thing: the image of yourself, that likeness you so earnestly requested.”

Her tongue stuck in her dry throat. “My picture?”

“Did you wish the image sent to the small girl not for her sake, but for your husband’s?”

“My husband’s? Why would I care if he sees a likeness?”

“To prove that you are still alive.”

“Well, a picture proves nothing.”

“Unless it is a clue that you still live. That you wish to see him. Here, in my stronghold.”

“He would hardly come here, to certain death.”

“He is known to be bold.”

What were they talking about? Titus coming for Johanna? Or coming for the engine? She pretended it was the former. “I don’t want to see him here. If he tries to rescue my daughter, then I hope
he succeeds, and never comes here. I’m a mother first of all, my lord.”

“And second? A wife?”

She looked at the lord in some bafflement. If she didn’t know better, she would have said that he cared whom she loved. It stopped her breath for an instant.

She said simply, “You think I still love him.”

He rose, drawing himself up to his impressive height. “Perhaps.”

“I will never go home, my lord. Not with my husband. And not without him.”

He nodded. It was how everything had begun. That he, wishing her to give up longing for home, had told her that home would not last. But the conversation was over. Someone had arrived.

At the far edge of the hall, a Tarig waited under the gallery. It wasn’t Lady Enwepe, because the lady hadn’t been in residence for a week. Johanna hid her dismay. Too much was happening. She could barely control one Tarig. Two was not good news.

Inweer turned to the new arrival, nodding for him to come forward. “Leave us, Johanna,” he said.

As the Tarig stranger strode toward them, his boots clanged on the tympanum of the great floor. His bearing suggested that he came as an equal.

Rising from her seat, Johanna murmured, “Who honors us with a visit, my lord?”

“One’s cousin, Lord Oventroe.”

“One of the Five.” Her curiosity by now fully aroused, she had no choice but to give them the privacy Inweer demanded. “I leave you to important matters, then.”

Inweer cut a sharp glance at her. “These
were
important matters, Johanna.”

Chastened, she said, “Of course.” Bowing low, she murmured, “My life in your service, Bright Lord.” As she swept past Lord Oventroe he cut a glance at her that cooled her heart.