A World Too Near (45 page)

Yulin leaned forward, saying, “We must protect ourselves. Anzi’s marriage offered stability, showed our loyalty. What do you offer us?”

“Nothing yet. But when my people come, then—”

Yulin waved this away. “Yes, yes. When they come. But again, you come alone, meddling with small matters. Is this the path of a prince?”

“Be glad I don’t tell you everything, if you have spies in camp.”

Quinn played his games, but Yulin didn’t mean to be a piece in it, to be sacrificed at will. “So then, it would seem that you offer nothing new. Here is my judgment: Anzi—while of fond regard—owes help to our position, and will marry Ling Xiao Sheng. She has no other suitor, and high time she took a wife’s place.”

“She has another suitor,” Quinn said.

Yulin growled, “Who?”

“Me.”

At Quinn’s side, Anzi looked carved in stone. Quinn turned to her. “Do you accept, Anzi?”

Staring at the floor, she uttered a barely audible yes.

Suzong and Yulin exchanged glances. This wasn’t the response of a woman in love. Perhaps they had been wrong about that. In any case, Yulin was astonished that Quinn would make the offer when he would offer her so little.

Quinn snapped a glance back at Yulin. “Release her from Ling Xiao Sheng. I will repay the cost of the marriage stone.”

Yulin grumbled. “You have coin?”

“Not at the moment. I lost everything in a sinking on the Nigh.”

No time to hear
that
story. The time of choice was upon him. If he denied Quinn’s suit, the man would know that their alliance was broken. Then Yulin must awaken the legate and align himself once and for all with Chiron.

Suzong’s eyes beseeched him as though to say,
Choose rightly.

Yulin let out a profound sigh. By the Miserable God, if Suzong wanted him to choose the Rose, he would. Anzi would marry Quinn; there would be no hiding of alliances after that. His despicable half brother would take his sway, and Yulin would be on the run again. By the mucking bright, how had he come to this? He well remembered the day that Quinn had arrived at his palace sealed in a jar and carrying the pictures of his wife and daughter. Yulin had known at the time that he should have sunk him to the bottom of the palace lake. Had he ordered it so, he would still be sitting on silk pillows and enjoying his gardens.

He nodded at Suzong. So be it, then. Turning to Quinn, he said, “Our camp is not a secret to some at the Ascendancy. There is nowhere to hide; if we form this marriage alliance with you, there will be no mercy for us.”

“Hide for a while longer, Master Yulin. Then my people will come.”

“I tire of waiting.”

Suzong leaned forward, addressing Quinn. “The correlates. Did you find them?” When Quinn hesitated, she went on. “If you did, give them into our hands that we may flee to the world of your sun. The lords will never find us there.”

Quinn hesitated. “Yes. I have them.”

But Yulin wasn’t as eager as his wife to fling himself into the darkness of the Rose. It might be no safer—and there, one could not rule a sway.

“A marriage like this,” Yulin said, “binds your world and mine. You understand?”

“Yes.”

Yulin drew himself up. “Then Anzi is yours. If you accept, Niece?”

She nodded, no more.

“Yes, then,” Yulin said. “Anzi is yours.”

Quinn bowed in thanks. “She’ll stay here for a time. Protect her, no matter what you hear of me.” He pinned Yulin and then Suzong with a stark gaze. “It will all be lies.”

Mo Ti and Distanir followed the trail of Titus Quinn’s thoughts to the outskirts of Yulin’s camp. There they waited, picking up threads of conversation and trying to pinpoint Quinn’s location.

Distanir could barely stand on his injured leg. The fetlock cut wasn’t deep, but in walking so far, Distanir had gone lame. Dismayed at this turn of events, Mo Ti hardly noticed his own wound, nonlethal but burning.

Distanir turned his head, suddenly alert.
Yulin arrives
, the mount sent.
They have been outside the camp. With him, the one called Suzong.

Titus Quinn also?

They are alone.

Where was Titus Quinn? The four of them had been together until a moment ago. Mo Ti’s best chance was to turn Yulin against Quinn, and he thought he knew how this might be done.

Leaving Distanir in a small gully, Mo Ti crept toward Yulin’s tent. Drawing close, he saw two soldiers standing guard. He walked forward, hands outstretched. “Peace,” he said.

Weapons were at his throat in an instant.

“Tell your master that one named Sydney has a message for him.”

In a moment the guard had returned, leading him into a spacious but humble tent where a heavy Chalin personage and an old woman sat on stools as though giving an audience. Mo Ti knew who this man was, and who he used to be. He also knew that the man’s loyalties had been with Titus Quinn—and might still be. But Mo Ti thought that after hearing what Quinn carried around his ankle, no sane being of the Entire could fail to sever ties with the outlaw.

For all the Rose spider’s faults, she had painted an expressive picture of the fate of the world once the plague was unloosed. When the woman said that she wished to prevent that calamity, Mo Ti believed her. Because she had admitted her base motive: that she might live for one hundred thousand days. To achieve this goal, she must live in the embrace of the Entire, the embrace that Titus Quinn intended to shatter.

Mo Ti bowed low to Master Yulin and his wife. When they gave him leave to give his message, he told them the story of the chain, and the one who carried it into their land.

Yulin’s alarm at hearing his story was all that Mo Ti could have hoped for. The former master of the Chalin sway loved his land—how could he not?

Any mewling godman, any mincing legate would feel the same.

The lady Suzong cast out objections,
clearly skeptical. But Yulin, glowering and muttering, was convinced.

He murmured to his lady, “Now we know why he came to Ahnenhoon, eh?”

Mo Ti was sure that Yulin had not been any more aware of the engine and its purpose than Mo Ti had been. But once past that, it made sense to him that the Rose would strike.

“He must suffer final justice,” Mo Ti said. When they hesitated, he went on, “If you have no stomach for the act, Mo Ti does.”

“Be it so, then,” Yulin murmured. “But spare the girl.”

Suzong, the old crone, slumped down off her stool, putting her head in Yulin’s lap. Why she should weep, he could not imagine.

Yulin patted her old head. “We kept what faith we could,” he said. “It is over now.”

Quinn and Anzi had said their good-byes. With recent rest, Quinn needed no sleep this ebb, and would set out immediately for Ahnenhoon.

“May God not look on you,” Anzi said with fervor.

There were things Quinn wanted to say. If circumstances had been different, he would have loved her. No, that wasn’t it. If he scraped aside all the things he
should
do and feel, he found that in fact he
did
love her. It wasn’t fair to say. He couldn’t act on it.

Prior to the audience with Yulin, at his suggestion, they had agreed to say they would marry. Yulin didn’t know Johanna was alive, and more than one wife would seem natural to him, in any case. The pretense of a betrothal would give Anzi room to negotiate. In the days to come, they might never be able to prove that Titus was dead at Ahnenhoon. Or, if he escaped with Johanna, they could never say with certainty that he would not be back for Anzi. So she could use that excuse as long as she wished. Unless they found his body. But he didn’t think that likely after what he had seen on Jesid’s doomed vessel.

She held out her hand to him. He took it. “I could still come with you,” she said.

It would all be so easy if she just went with him. Somewhere. But Ahnenhoon couldn’t be put aside. It governed everything.

“I’m sorry, Anzi.” More sorry than she knew.

She nodded. She would stay. It was perhaps the first time in their acquaintance that she had given in on something she had her heart set on. He was grateful.

Behind them, they heard a smattering of small rocks.

To Quinn’s surprise, old Suzong came scurrying up the gully, waving her arms at them. Rushing up to them breathlessly, she rasped, “Run, run.” Then, having spent her energy on the race from the camp, she sat down on a rock. “Go,” she urged. “The big man comes.”

“What is it, Lady Suzong?” Quinn asked.

She waved her hands at him. “The giant comes from your own daughter, bearing word of the chain as a disaster for our world. With a command to kill you. He is lying. It cannot be. So go, go, both of you.”

“But Yulin—,” Quinn protested.

Wildly, she interrupted. “Has chosen against you. Run.”

He looked down the gully in the direction she had come. Still empty. But she need say no more.

Quinn and Anzi ran.

The camp crackled to life, with shouts and sounds of running and beku bleating in protest at the commotion. Hu Zha stumbled from his cot and grabbed his boots. He had been sleeping soundly after exhausting himself several ebbs trying to play the proper spy, listening at Yulin’s tent. Now he scrambled to reach the tent flap to find out what had happened.

A great bulk blocked the way as a figure threw open the tent flap and closed it again.

“What . . . ?” Hu Zha growled. The stranger was enormous, with a misshapen head and beefy arms ending in fists like beku’s hooves.

“You are Chiron’s,” the giant said.

Hu Zha sputtered into silence at the mention of the lady’s name. How did this ugly stranger know of his duties to Lady Chiron? “I am a cook, no more.”

“My mount says otherwise.”

“Your mount?” Hu Zha wondered if the man were a lunatic, thinking his beku could talk.

The giant strode forward and grabbed him by the neck, squeezing. “Do you serve Chiron? Answer me. Does she wish to have Titus Quinn?” The stranglehold tightened.

“Yes,” rasped Hu Zha, sinking to his knees as strength left his legs.

“I do not kill easily,” he heard the monster say, not loosening his grip. “But Chiron may not have him.”

As the man’s hand tightened around his neck, Hu Zha had a split second to understand that he was going to die. The last thing he felt was a profound surprise that his end could be at the hands of such a beast. A jerk on his head, and Hu Zha’s thoughts settled like dust.

Mo Ti snapped his neck. He looked down unhappily on the courtier, having little stomach for killing, even this Hu Zha, a miserable courtier from the Tarig queen. But it was necessary. Chiron might kill Quinn, but on the other hand, she might not. The Tarig lady, as all sentients knew, had taken the man of the Rose as a favored plaything. She might wish to do so again, and then the man would survive to torment Sydney without end. That would not be.

Mo Ti checked the vicinity of the tent for observers, and finding none, slipped from Hu Zha’s tent.

Making a stop at Distanir’s billeting, he quickly checked the leg wound. It was clean, but the tendons were badly damaged, and Distanir now lay on the ground, attended by a groomer of beku, who had supplied fresh water, but kept well away from Distanir’s horns.

“Leave us,” Mo Ti snapped at him.

When they were alone, Mo Ti knelt by Distanir’s side. “I must leave you for a few days, my friend.”

You must leave me
, Distanir agreed in tones so final that Mo Ti lowered his head.

“You can heal. Stay here and heal.”

Yes, heal, but never run again.

Mo Ti caught the picture of Distanir isolated in camp while others rode the steppe, a vision that came to him with a heavy mood of despair. Distanir did not wish a life without good, strong legs. In the next pulse of thought, Distanir showed him how Mo Ti, in loyalty to Distanir, would take no new mount, making both their lives darker.

Distanir’s large eyes seemed as deep as a water well.
Release me, my rider. I
have a tundra to roam in lands far from here. I will wait for you there.

Mo Ti looked up at the bright, gone gray-blue in this Deep Ebb, with purple stitching in the folds of light. “Best mount. My heart,” Mo Ti whispered. His vision blurred. He pushed this duty away, but it came back. Pushed it away once more.

Distanir’s shadow voice came to him again:
My rider forever. I am ready.

Mo Ti prepared himself, closing his heart into a tight corral.
Now a quick
stroke, and I will run with my forebears.

Mo Ti’s blade was swift, severing the main artery in Distanir’s neck. The blood pulsed onto the ground, and Distanir’s eyes went glazed, then dark. By his mount’s side, Mo Ti felt his own eyes darken. He knelt there beside Distanir until he could bear to move once more.

Rising, Mo Ti left, tossing a full sack of coin to the camp servant. “Dig a deep grave, and pay for help to lay out my mount properly. I will hear of your diligence and return to thank you.”

Then, gathering his mission to himself once more, Mo Ti ran in the direction of the distant shouts.

Yulin stood in the gully by the cave, watching Mo Ti lead a small force into the hills.

Mo Ti had asked for and received fifteen servants to help him pursue
Quinn, but the retainers had begun badly, trampling the area where they hoped to pick up Quinn’s tracks and causing Mo Ti a prolonged delay.

Anzi had fled with Quinn, of course. But Yulin couldn’t spare a thought for her. His thoughts were on what he would say to Hu Zha, and how to explain that Quinn had come, but escaped. He would think of something.

He motioned to a servant. “Rush to the cook’s tent and bring him to me.”

Then Yulin turned to Suzong, who stood waiting for his judgment, not trying to hide that she had been the one to warn them. With great dignity, she sat on a rock, gathering her knees into her arms. Her mouth twitched with things she would like to say.

“Say nothing,” he warned her. They faced off, as Yulin’s followers watched them askance. “Go back to camp,” he told them, waving them all away. “Go back, I say.”

When they had left, he slumped into a cross-legged position on the ground, facing Suzong.