A World Too Near (49 page)

She noted his glance toward the wall. “There you would die. The rooms form, and you die slowly, of thirst, of terror, of the dark.”

“Remember, my lady, I’m not afraid of the dark.”

“Afraid of so few things. But then unable to live without that small girl you brought here. She was only a pitiful, immature being. We could have been persuaded to give her to you.”

“No, Chiron. For that, I
did
beg.”

She didn’t argue the point. The pause lengthened. What did she want?

“We know why you came here,” she said finally. “Not for the Rose wife.

She lies, you must know, in the lord’s bed and takes her pleasure. Therefore you come for the engine, ah?” Chiron looked up at the huge wall. “The great Lord Inweer will not be pleased to learn that the Rose wife summoned you. It will go poorly for her. We may take you to observe this.”

“She only did what you would do, Chiron, if in prison in the Rose. That should count for something.”

“We are not in prison in the Rose.”

Winner take all.
She wouldn’t soften. He still had his knife. If he was quick . . . but his knife lay tucked in his jacket, and she was paying strict attention.

Chiron brought her hand up as though to caress his face. Instead, he felt an indentation down his neck, and a warm trickle into his collar. Methodical and shallow, the cut was just for play.

“Titus-een,” she said, using a name she had once called him, “why did you rush from our chambers? We gave you our trust. One’s standing diminished. One has been alone.”

Her words took him by surprise. Chiron had always kept to herself. Aloof from the others, she had wanted his company. Eventually, he had wanted hers, as well. He hadn’t thought of those times much. Initially he couldn’t remember them. Later, he didn’t want to remember them.

“I went a little mad,” he said, to answer her, and to keep her talking. “I tried to kill Hadenth, because of what he did to my daughter. Her eyes, you remember?”

“We remember. We remember, too, the tunnel you escaped from.”

No point in denying any of it. “I worked it for thousands of days. To find Sydney again, and Johanna. You stole them from me. You also offered me kindness. I thought I could forgive you. I was wrong.”

Chiron watched him with rapt attention. Almost as an unconscious gesture, she cut him again, on the other side of the neck. With her claw slightly extended, she controlled the incision with delicacy.

“You will come home again,” Chiron said. “The tunnel will be your home until you grow lonely.” She cut a line along his hairline. Blood spilled down his cheek. She rose, gripping his jacket and pulling him up. “To Lord Inweer, then.”

Something flickered in his peripheral vision. A Hirrin stood some hundred yards away.

Frowning, Chiron saw the creature too. Still keeping a grip on Quinn, she turned to face the Hirrin. “Depta, ah?”

The Hirrin didn’t respond.

Chiron’s voice took on a note of alarm. “Depta, do you love us?”

Beside the Hirrin was a cylindrical instrument. The creature sat on her back haunches, bringing the tubular device to the front.

Chiron leapt forward.

Out of the tube came a stream of black fire. It hit the grass to one side of Quinn, turning it to brittle ice. Chiron’s great strides began closing the gap between her and the Hirrin.

Using her prehensile lip, the Hirrin fired again. Missed. And again. Smells of deformed grasses hung in a low cloud.

As Chiron approached the assailant, she jumped into the air and extended a wicked boot that struck the creature in the neck with a powerful, felling blow. But as the Hirrin sprawled, the tube coughed a point-blank volley into Chiron’s face.

Chiron staggered backward, twirling in the grass, wiping at her face and chest. Whatever the black fire was, it didn’t burn, but froze. It slowed her to a standstill. She stood amid the grasses as her vest and skirt disintegrated, taking hanks of skin, falling off in frozen slabs. She tottered for a moment, then collapsed.

Rushing toward her and pulling out his knife, Quinn found Chiron lying dead among the grasses, her body ravaged. Left behind were strips of muscle clinging to bone. Shards of frozen blood sparkled in the grass. He stared at the mangled body, still unsure if, even in this condition, she might rise to fight again. Quinn paused, trying to comprehend that he was still alive, and Chiron wasn’t.

Turning away from Chiron’s body, he walked over to the Hirrin, finding her collapsed in the grass. The Hirrin’s neck was pumping out her blood in a wound that would kill her within moments.

He knelt down beside the creature. “Go in peace,” he said.

The creature whispered, “Titus Quinn?”

“Yes.”

She sighed raggedly. “Today I look upon a
hsien
.”

“No. I’m nothing like that.”

Blood trickled from the Hirrin’s mouth. “Oh yes, a
hsien
,” she whispered. “An immortal hero.”

“No. Just a man, but I thank you.”

Her eyelids fluttered, then closed. He put a hand on her long neck to let her know that someone was still with her.

She whispered something. He bent closer. Her voice was barely audible.

“I didn’t love her,” she said. “The Tarig lady. I didn’t. Love her.”

It was the last thing she said. Kneeling by the Hirrin in the grass, Quinn wondered who she had been, and what had transpired between this Hirrin and the Tarig lady.

I didn’t love her, either
, he thought.

Then he rose and, quickly scanning for other pursuers, took what cover the grasses could provide and made for the wall of the Repel.

A burning airship appeared in the sky just beyond the fortress. SuMing saw it too, pointing.

It was a reasonable approximation of a dirigible igniting. Instead of falling from the sky, the burning craft hovered in place, its image wavering. Johanna staggered to her feet. The appearance of Lord Oventroe’s signal stunned her for a moment as she watched it gradually fade from view.

The waiting was over. Johanna clasped SuMing’s hands. “Take no more chances for my sake, SuMing. We come to the end, now. Thank you forever.”

SuMing nodded, and Johanna hurried from the roof, starting the descent down the stairs to the next level. Halfway down, she stopped her headlong rush. Calming herself, she resumed a more deliberate pace. She thought of those who had already died for this cause. Today would give Gao’s death meaning. May God have mercy on you, she prayed for him. And for Pai and Morhab, too. She thought of Titus as well, and what she might say to him. She couldn’t imagine what either of them would say. It doesn’t matter, she told herself. Nothing matters now, but the Rose.

Gathering her poise, she continued down the steps, emerging into a corridor at the bottom. She smoothed her blue gown around her, wiping the perspiration off her palms. Then she headed in the direction of Inweer’s apartment.

Quinn’s eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the murky light of the terminus. In the shadows, he squinted down at the palm of his hand, where the small device lay that Oventroe had given him. He closed his fingers around it to activate the bud as Oventroe had directed. He felt something move within the casing.

When he opened his hand, he found that a wasp had broken out of the case. It looked like a wasp. Winged and golden it sprang from his hand. If anyone saw it they would think it an insect. He followed it down a narrow corridor made of rough adobe. The empty budding case was now tucked away in Quinn’s pocket, for later use. As the wasp flew, the corridor ahead of it brightened to a nearly blinding white light.

Side corridors emerged into view. Some of these the wasp chose, little wings a blur of industry. Behind Quinn, the corridor darkened. The guiding sprite carried its daylight with it, or enlivened the walls, but when it passed, the shadows returned.

The wasp set a stately pace, as though it needed time to figure out the route. Some corridors broke off at angles, and some were ramps, up or down. Quinn felt a moment of apprehension as the wasp chose one of the downward sloping ramps. No, forward, forward, Quinn urged. But he followed the wasp.
Do not follow your intuition or sense of direction
, Oventroe had said.
We have
created the maze to ensnare.
Quinn was now in the midst of it, the place he had been heading since he came to the Entire. It would all play out now, but he found himself strangely free of worry. So few choices were left, and they were all simple ones. Follow the path in. Destroy the furnace that burned such precious fuel. Get out if you can.

He heard a sound behind him. Stopping, he listened for a moment while keeping his eyes on the wasp. He thought of Chiron following him. But he’d seen her dead, very dead. Silence pressed in around him, and he went on. The corridor ended in a small well from which stairs rose in three directions. The wasp chose one staircase, and Quinn followed.

As he climbed the steps, Quinn couldn’t help but notice that his ankle chain pulsed at times with a fiery warmth. It was day four of the life of the chain. Was it already dissolving? He bent down to check the cirque. The carbon nitride links were fused to his skin.

Johanna stopped before Inweer’s chamber door. He wouldn’t be here at this phase of the bright.
He
must
not be here. She put her hand on the door, and it opened to her command, as Inweer had long ago arranged. Sometimes he liked her to be here first, waiting for him. . . .

She entered the chamber, closing the door behind her. No occupant. There, just past the sleeping platform in a wall alcove, was a small metal vase that Inweer favored. At this location she could enliven the needles she brought. She hurried past the platform.

Someone was sitting in the corner.

A Tarig.

Her heart shouted, and she whipped around to stare.

Lord Inweer sat in a chair, watching her. Oh God. She went to her knees, weak with terror. When she dared look into his face, she saw that he wasn’t looking directly at her, but rather over her shoulder. Johanna looked behind her, but no one was there. Turning to confront that black, quiet gaze, she saw that Inweer hadn’t moved.

“My lord?” she whispered.

He didn’t respond.

She stayed kneeling, looking at this specter. Was this some form of ultimate fury? Did he know why she came? “My lord,” she managed to say again.

The longer she remained kneeling and watching, the more convinced she became that he couldn’t move. She rose and backed up toward the alcove, keeping her eyes on Inweer. He remained immobile. The thought struck that perhaps Inweer was dead. Was this how Tarig died, stiff and vigilant?

No matter, she had work to do. Hands shaking, she removed the vase—heavy enough to contain something. Setting it on the floor, she removed the five needles from her pocket, sliding them out of their sleeves, each one as long as her ring finger. She carefully stuck them into the ledge of the alcove.

An instant later she had removed the needles and replaced the urn.

Tucking the needles into a pocket of her gown, she walked swiftly across the chamber. Lord Inweer hadn’t moved, but she felt that at any moment he would spring up. She fled from the room.

Anzi followed the light. She crept carefully, her footfalls light as silk.

When she’d first entered the fortress, she had a moment’s panic that she had arrived too late to follow Titus. But a brilliant radiance burned ahead of her, and once she saw Titus in the middle of it. She didn’t know how he created the light, but she knew that light guided him through this tangle of halls. She held back as much as she dared. But not too far back.

Everyone had heard the stories of how Paion died who entered here. Riding on their four-limbed simulacra, sometimes they would venture in, or so the stories said, armed with an algorithm as a key to the endlessly repeating maze. Steering their simulacra down the byways, they would soon lose confidence in their calculations. Far into the path, disappointment decayed into alarm, and then to terror. There would be one, innocuous room.

When they turned to leave, there would be no door.

At times she thought she heard footsteps behind her. But those were likely the echoes of Titus, in front.

On the roof of the centrum, SuMing sat in a chair watching the domains of the fortress, expecting to see something terrible, but all was quiet. She had nothing to do but wait. Her mistress had gone to accomplish some ultimate task. SuMing expected that whatever it was, her servant would share the blame.

She looked out over the roofs of the Repel to the battle plains and the great storm wall. All these sights held mysteries: how the storm walls held; why the Paion attacked; what the Engine of Ahnenhoon was for. SuMing had never deeply pondered these mysteries, and now there wouldn’t likely be time. Her hand strayed into a slit in her gown from time to time to reassure herself that the small poison stone was still there.

She remembered her decision, a thousand days ago, to take up service at Ahnenhoon. Her mother had grieved that she wouldn’t see her again, but SuMing thought it a fair trade: her family for the grandeur of Ahnenhoon, with the great lord, one of the Five. Perhaps she would even see a battle with the Paion. She smiled at that long-ago innocence. Some of her service had indeed been grand. Mistress Johanna had been grand, of that she was sure. . . .

She spotted a shape against the bright. Standing up, she watched a speck approach from far up primacy, racing along the bright.

In a short while, it became clear: a brightship was coming.

SuMing would have been surprised to learn that in that moment she repeated a gesture she had seen Johanna use: She crossed herself.

Johanna made her way across the gathering yard adjacent to the centrum. Hindering her stride were the extra garments pinned under her gown. Once across the sere, Titus would need a disguise. In their favor was the fact that the fortress, even the watch, was sparsely garrisoned. The Tarig didn’t think it would come to a battle within the fortress, and they might be right about a clash of forces. But a lone human could wage battle. They’d find that out soon enough.