Bright of the Sky (42 page)

“They did not. So I learned to pretend.”

“How?” she asked. But Mo Ti didn’t answer. Perhaps by his very bulk he could shield his true self. Clearly Mo Ti was smarter than he acted, perhaps smarter than them all.

As Sydney struggled to absorb this news, Mo Ti’s singsong voice came to her: “I can take this Hirrin’s leg,” he said. “I did many surgeries in the Long War.”

This was an even more alarming thought. “If you fix her leg, they’ll know you can see.” Then they would perform the blinding that should have been done long ago.

“Mo Ti must remove her leg, or she’ll die, and badly.”

He was asking her advice, and maybe her permission. Sydney wrestled with how to answer. It was Akay-Wat’s life. But it was Mo Ti’s sight at stake—and she’d be complicit in his lies.

Mo Ti said, “We could say that Riod was present, and we did it through his sight.”

“Would they believe it?” she asked.

“Friends would believe. Not enemies.”

She had spent little time making friends, and she would have one fewer if Akay-Wat died. “What shall we do, Mo Ti?”

After a long pause he answered, “How much does Riod love you?”

He had just told her he would risk it, if Riod agreed. She was startled by his courage. Needing a moment to think, she walked outside, inhaling the fresh air, her thoughts crowded with Mo Ti’s revelation.

Mo Ti watched her go. Next to him, Akay-Wat rolled her head from side to side as she fought the infection. The smell of putrefaction filled the room.

So then, young mistress, Mo Ti thought. Now we’ll see what stuff you’re made of.

He rose to stretch his legs, knowing that a long period of crouching and bending lay ahead of him if he was to save the leg below the knee. If he could, then the Hirrin might walk again. Otherwise, best to use the knife on her neck, not her leg.

Akay-Wat, he thought, you stupid beku. The old dragon wouldn’t want me taking risks for a witless Hirrin. And yet. Akay-Wat showed courage confronting her mount, and no act of courage deserves a death as bad as this one.

Cixi, you have to trust me now. Who else do you have who will do your bidding here, in the Long Gaze of Fire? How many times did you try to plant one of your own among the Inyx? How many times did your spies fail to achieve banishment to the Inyx, or fail to reach this encampment? Only Mo Ti found a way to Priov’s herd. Mo Ti, who waited a thousand days in Ulrud’s encampment, and seeing a chance with Riod’s renegade attack, seized it. Yes, and now that Mo Ti is here, Mo Ti must decide whether to be blind or not.

Watching the Hirrin toss in her delirium, he considered how the problem with her surgery could be turned to advantage. It would be dangerous, and must have Riod’s support. Much depended on Riod, who would one day lead the camp. Also, much depended on the young mistress, and whether she was ready for acts of courage. If she wasn’t ready now, maybe she never would be. Soldiers of her same age died at Ahnenhoon every day. She was old enough to prove her worth.

He’d proven his to Cixi at an early age, when the legates brought him before her at the Ascendancy, accused of a treasonous remark. He’d been nothing but a clerk, and an ugly one, reviled and goaded, bitter with the All of his life, and hating the Tarig since birth. He expected a death sentence, standing before Cixi’s throne. Then she had sent her attendants from the room.

“Tell me your heart,” she said. She was so small, she came up to his belt. But he was afraid of her nevertheless. “If you tell me all the truth, you shall live,” she said. “I swear by the bright.”

That high pledge convinced him to say what his heart held. All dark things. How he had cringed at his father’s devotion to the lords; how he was embittered by his father’s lack of advancement despite many thousand days of service; and how he had grieved when his mother, seeing how Mo Ti grew uglier every day, had jumped to her death from the rim of the city. Thereafter his enemies had called him Son of the Falling Stone, and he learned to hate the legates and the fiends they served.

Cixi gave him a new chance. Eventually he learned that he and the old dragon were bound by a hatred of the lords, and that the young girl who languished among the Inyx could be counted on to share this treason. “But hate,” Cixi had told him, “is not enough. There must be a worthy desire. That, Mo Ti, is the kingdom raised.”

The kingdom the young mistress would raise, if she could be brought to see it.

And now Mo Ti was here to help her. Perhaps because of Akay-Wat, raising the kingdom must come sooner rather than later.

The Hirrin’s surgery would cause an uproar. It would shake down the encampment, forcing all to take sides. Then they would know friends from enemies, and the weak from the strong.

Priov was an old beast, and must yield to Riod soon, before mating season. Then they would be set for greater things, once the mistress rode at the front of the herd. Mo Ti had considered hamstringing the old chief himself, but it would be better for Riod to overcome him, if Riod could be inspired to move on Priov before mating season made fighting look fine. The season was still six hundred days off, too long to wait, for Cixi’s purposes.

He took his whetstone from his jacket and began sharpening his small knife. It would need to have a good edge for the small work. For the large, the mistress must find him a saw.

Outside, the yard was empty except for Riod. In the sky, the evening’s deep pewter folds coiled overhead. Riod trotted up to Sydney, eager for comfort as Akay-Wat neared death. Sydney hugged his neck and let her thoughts pour into him.

As Riod absorbed Mo Ti’s secret, his distress flooded back to his rider, completing a loop of shared emotion.

“Beloved,” she whispered to him. “Why should Mo Ti be blind? To be blind makes us need you. So it isn’t a free bond, after all.”

You are free
, Riod asserted.
Choose another mount. Then know, you are free.

He couldn’t help it. He wanted to see the world for her, to strengthen the emotional ties between them. What was the custom, she wondered, for the species the Inyx were copied from? In that other world, who rode the Inyx? She liked to think that they were not blind.

At this moment she didn’t want to challenge Riod’s ideas, but the decision about Akay-Wat couldn’t wait.

“I’ll help Mo Ti save Akay-Wat’s leg,” she told Riod. “And then I’ll fight to protect Mo Ti.”

He paced away, distraught. Sydney let him consider. Riod had to think who he was, and what he was willing to die for. She had never guessed free bond would come to violence and choosing sides. But since it had, she needed Riod with her.

When at last he trotted back to her, she leaned against his flank, feeling his warmth and the beat of his strong heart. He whispered into her mind:
I
will fight for Sydney, who fights for Mo Ti.

It was settled, then. Perhaps it had been settled from the day she and Riod pledged a free bond. Hadn’t she said,
I’d rather die than live like this
?

“Send for Distanir,” she told Riod. “Ask him if he’ll stand with us, or if we need a new mount for Mo Ti.” Riod hesitated, nervous. But finally he acquiesced, moving off to find Distanir.

Late into the ebb, with Sydney assisting, Mo Ti performed the surgery that removed Akay-Wat’s leg. Adikar had left medicinals behind, but refused to be further associated with the whole affair.

Now, the surgery over, Akay-Wat lay sleeping under heavy sedation. By her side sat Sydney and Mo Ti. The door lay wide open, clearing the sick room of vapors and closeted heat. The Hirrin would live, Mo Ti predicted. But Sydney wasn’t sure how a Hirrin could walk or ride with a false leg.

They sat in silence for a time. Sydney felt a little self-conscious that Mo Ti could see her, and she raked her hair back with her hands, trying to arrange it.

At this, Mo Ti laughed, but it was a warm sound, not mocking. He was relaxed, and his assured manner calmed her.

“You aren’t worried, Mo Ti?”

“No, mistress. Only decisions are hard. Now we see what comes to us.” Akay-Wat bleated softly and her eyes fluttered open, but without consciousness. He continued, “It’s good to stand for something, Mo Ti thinks.”

He was right. It did feel good. “We can never be free if we’re blind,” she said.

But Mo Ti’s next words disturbed her: in his deceptively soft voice, he said, “You think too small.”

She sat up, stung by the criticism. “You think it’s small, to defy Inyx custom?”

He turned to the water bucket and ladled a large dipper full to his lips, gulping it down. “Yes, vastly small.”

“Then why,” she blurted in irritation, “are we doing this?”

She heard him shift positions, leaning across Akay-Wat’s prone form. “Who is your enemy, mistress?”

“Priov,” she answered. Then added: “Feng. The Laroos.” When silence greeted these answers, she murmured, “The mantis lords.”

“Yes, the lords,” Mo Ti said in that voice that was no match for either his bulk or his brains. “Because of their cruel hands.”

Sydney paused. She’d never told anyone about how Hadenth had personally taken her sight. “How do you know about cruel hands?”

“That’s a common story. Every grunt has heard it.”

It stung to think her humiliation was a common story. If it
was
common. “Did someone send you here, Mo Ti?”

For a moment she hoped that he might be a messenger from Cixi . . . but now Mo Ti crushed that hope: “Mo Ti is alone,” he said, “but I will help you to overcome your enemy.”

Overcome? That was not a word that made sense, when it came to the mantis lords. But here in this tiny cabin, she strained forward to hear more. She was drawn to Mo Ti, his steady heart and mind, and his vision. It was as though she stood on his broad shoulders, and could see across a far-flung land.

“Tell me how, Mo Ti.”

“Ah, mistress. It begins with the Inyx, and depends on the Inyx.”

“Tell me how,” she whispered, her nerves on fire.

And that ebb they watched over Akay-Wat, and talked, as Mo Ti’s voice droned on, soft and thrilling.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The icons of service are the sole privilege of the officers of the great
Magisterium. Only these high servants may invest their garments
and offices with the emblematic devices. This iconography is a
study in itself, with meanings rooted in the million days. Just as
a clerk wears the icon of the beku, the subprefect wears the river
walker, and the wise will know why. Just as the steward adorns
herself with the golden carp, the legate must have the great spinner,
nor is this a mystery to the iconographer, or the perceptive.

—from
The Book of Ascendant Joys

M
IN FE GLANCED THROUGH HIS SCROLL
, muttering, “Inyx, Inyx.” He shook his bald head, turning pages. “The sway is barely noted in the codex.” He slurped from his cup of oba, not having offered his guest similar refreshment.

After five days of waiting for an interview with Cixi, Quinn had progressed only to the level of Sublegate Min Fe. Perhaps he should feel lucky; the suppliant in the cell next to him had been waiting
five hundred days
for her matter to be heard by a legate.

Quinn breathed deeply and kept his face passive. He was enveloped in an alien maze of bureaucracy. Though it surpassed even Minerva’s corporate tangle, he had to conform. He was, astonishingly, on the threshold of his old prison. He had come so far—across the veil, as Bei had said. Now every move might trigger disaster: if someone recognized him, if the Tarig named Oven-troe turned on him.

Even Min Fe, though a minor legate, could thwart him. Cho had told him when they first arrived that if Dai Shen was assigned to Min Fe, as seemed likely, his mission could falter. “One might wish that you could go directly to Shi Zu,” Cho had said. “Of course, it isn’t possible to bypass Min Fe. No one bypasses anything.” He nodded with a bleak wisdom. “It keeps the order of things.”

Quinn hadn’t seen Cho since that first day, when he’d helped carry the man’s trunks to his office, in the close warren of stewards. Here, it came out that Cho was not a full steward, but an understeward, a post he’d held for most of his life.

Now, Quinn stood before Min Fe, and his annoyance must have been obvious, for the legate said, “You are impatient, I see.” He removed his spectacles— the first that Quinn had seen in this world—and rubbed his eyes. “You are a warrior of the Long War, the Battle of Ahnenhoon, and so forth. Used to impetuous decisions. A minor son of the great Yulin, a man with many sons, perhaps some of them spoiled?” He waved away the response that Quinn was about to make. “Be that as it might be, you have been waiting, as you say,
five days
, and now wish to see the high prefect.”

“Yes.”

“No doubt. But do you know how many people wish to see the high prefect?” He raised his eyebrow, or, rather, the ridge where one of his brows would have been if he’d had any. “Do you know how many suppliants bide their time in the Magisterium with just your same goal? How many, like you, have clarities to propose for the refinement of the Radiant Path? The answer to this interesting question is two thousand one hundred and thirty-one. At last count. You can therefore imagine that it is necessary to prepare briefs and commentaries so that the prefect’s most valuable time is preserved.” He pointed to a spot on the scroll. “Now here is a context for chain of command. However, it is not for armed combat, but for the inspection of vegetable products transported across sways. So it will not suit.”

Quinn summoned the most reasonable comment he could manage. “I have confidence that the sublegate is skilled in overcoming technical obstacles.”

“Technical obstacles,” Min Fe repeated, his face tightening.

“Yes.”

“Not to diminish their importance?”

“Not to let them defeat you.” Quinn felt the room pressing close around him, the lines of power swooping in from all sides, like a spider’s web. The words of Ghoris the navitar haunted him.

Min Fe squinted at him as though trying to decide whether Quinn was impertinent or not. “Still,” he began, “there are approvals needed at each stage, not the least of which is the consent of Consul Shi Zu, which will not be in order until I have fully considered your matter and, if I find it worthy, have passed it along to the full legate himself, in a form of my choosing.” The channels of power were precise: above Min Fe’s position of sublegate were full legates, preconsuls, consuls, and subprefects, before reaching the position of high prefect. Min Fe licked his lips, still poring over the codex on vegetables.