City Without End (11 page)

Too much drink. He wanted to ditch the girl.

“Sorry,” he said. But she was already gone. In her place was an apparition: an indigo blue feather mask hid the eyes and cheekbones, but he was beautiful. He wore plain gray silks, his skin so white, he might have been birthed from the Nigh itself. “You look sad.”

“No time to be sad.”

“Sure there is. It just is what it is. And then we swim.”

Tai looked out the porthole. Swim like a Navitar. Float like a river spider.

Blue feathers had him by the hand, gently leading him up the stairs, past the copulating bodies, past all the dismal ecstasy. They walked down a corridor, dark, heavy with incense. Despite his mood, Tai was stunned by the masked boy. The night turned the corner of possibilities. They entered a room of light. Tai shielded his eyes. The light came from a full wall porthole. The opening shimmered in time waves, waves buttered with light.

“Over here,” blue boy said, his voice deep and direct, saying what he wanted. Over here. Against the porthole. Turn around, lean into the glass. Yes, like that, press your face against the wall, let the sea light kiss you. The pane was cold against Tai’s cheek. Roused, Tai pressed his passion against the cold surface, feeling it like heat. Hands around his waist, pulling his buttocks out. No play time then, just straight to the point. Don’t cling. Want, but don’t want too much. Tai bent, compliant, tears wetting the glass, the side of his face slipping. His silks pulled up in back. Yes, if it will make you happy, blue feathers. Just be flash. With me. With me. Tai pushed back, receiving him.

He could see their reflections in the glass. Gray on orange, bird on boy, flash on flash. Blue boy’s face so exotic in the waters, his perfect mouth filled with the foaming Nigh. Tai turned around, and blue boy finished him off, blue feathers quaking with an exotic urgency.

Breathless, Tai leaned against the sea window, then sank to the floor beside his partner. Tai turned toward him and pulled the mask down. Transfixed, he drank in blue boy’s face, a perfect sculpture. Not only that, blue boy was smiling. And staying.

Mustn’t cling, Tai reminded himself. To break the spell, he forced his eyes away from his face, but blue boy put his hand on Tai’s chin, turning him back.

“Fajan,” blue boy said, giving his name.

“Tai.”

“Talk to me. Let’s watch the sea.”

The two of them moved back to a place where they could view the full wall porthole. Fajan wanted to talk, and the night and the party downstairs stretched on.

Fajan turned to him when they’d had enough river-watching. “Come back tomorrow.”

Oh, yes.

CHAPTER SIX

If you do not know your own mind, ask an Inyx.

—a saying

D
URING QUINN’S AND MO TI’S TRANSIT OF THE BINDS
, the bright had fallen to Shadow Ebb, yielding a violet sky that made the river a spill of wine.

Bearing a full pail, Mo Ti lumbered down the companionway and went through to the outer deck. He pitched the contents over the side of the ship. When he returned, he set the stinking bucket down and turned to Quinn.

“There is food in the galley.”

“No thanks,” Quinn said. “But noted.”

Ghoris lay moaning on her upper deck, having had a bad time of it, attempting the transit in one swoop from the Arm of Heaven primacy, where Jaq had departed, to the Long Gaze of Fire. The evening was calm except for the distant storm wall, that towering companion to the river. Quinn had been on the River Nigh many times, but this time was startlingly different, given their destination. The Inyx Sway was the place that had eluded him for so long, his daughter’s home. Oddly, though, he’d come here not for Sydney, but for Helice.

Mo Ti moved more easily at his tasks, now that Quinn had properly dressed his wounds—wounds that Mo Ti had taken for Quinn at Ahnenhoon. The man was built like a boulder, and injuries that might kill a smaller man had already begun healing. Now Mo Ti had light duty as ship keeper, doing the navitar’s bidding and her personal care. As bad a duty as this might be at the moment, the ship was the best hiding place for both of them. Mo Ti could never hide his distinctive physical aspect, that was certain. For this reason, until Jaq returned from his assignment, this ship would pick up no passengers.

Mo Ti paused by Quinn’s side at the railing, looking out on the river. He had just given Quinn a detailed description of his last hours in the fortress at Ahnenhoon. That report had included an account of Johanna Quinn’s death. The big man said, “It gave me no pleasure to tell you about your wife.”

“I know that. Thank you.”

“She was no soldier, but she died like the best of them.”

Quinn nodded. Died. He’d guessed she had, but now it was confirmed. After all the bad news Mo Ti had delivered to Quinn, this was the final, awful piece.

Though Mo Ti hadn’t seen Johanna die, he said no one could survive the beating Lord Inweer gave her in the great keep of Ahnenhoon. Of course, Lord Inweer could have healed her if he had wished, but why would he? Johanna had betrayed him.

Mo Ti’s news left Quinn feeling strangely cold and remote. A few weeks ago he had seen Johanna after years of separation. Then, within that same hour, she was dead. He couldn’t put it together. How to feel. Except that he should have died with her. But that wasn’t it, either. Hadn’t he learned by now that he wasn’t going to be excused from the fight? The war still enlisted him, preempted his life.

Except that he had remarried. Despite Anzi’s conviction that she was the second wife, she was no such thing. Johanna had freed him of their vows. There was only one woman in Quinn’s life, Ji Anzi. He missed her terribly, and despite all the good reasons for not knowing where she was, he would gladly, at this moment, picture her as safe. When his thoughts drifted to her, he tried not to guess where she had gone; but he did guess, anyway: perhaps back to her nominal uncle and aunt, Yulin and Suzong?

Mo Ti nodded toward the door. “We are coming in to shore. Ghoris says it is the roamlands.”

They went to the starboard rail, looking out. The shore was straight, the plains behind it shadowed and endless. If Sydney wanted to hide here, he could never find her.

This land had for so long been the object of his yearning. Sydney dwelled in the Inyx Sway; said to be a slave; then rumored to have risen to a high position. Speaking through the telepathic mounts, she had told him clearly not to come. Riod, her mount, would kill him. He steeled himself for her hostility, but in his own mind, he’d never abandoned her. Though he’d slept with a Tarig lady, it had given him no power to refute Tarig edicts. Still, he knew how it looked to the outside world. Some days it looked like that to
him
as well.

He had practiced what to say. Forgive me, was a start.

Now he had arrived at her shore, but not with any hope to take her home. The purpose of freeing his daughter was long out of date, superceded by what the war required of him and by her own preferences. Well, she was about to see him again, whether she wanted to or not.

From the bridge came a garbled shout. Ghoris. After a moment Quinn heard his name and began to ascend the companionway. He looked to Mo Ti for permission. He was ship keeper now. Mo Ti nodded and followed him up.

Ghoris slumped in exhaustion on her navitar’s dais, watching the door. She beckoned to Quinn, and he approached. The portals were open, letting in a breeze off the primacy, clove-ridden and welcome in the stinking pilot house.

Ghoris pointed to a stool, and Quinn brought it close, sitting next to her.

The navitar’s hair hung disheveled around her shoulders. Directly over her head was a membrane that gave way when she stood up to command the forces of the exotic river. He had seen her do so once, but could hardly remember what he had seen, and much of that was hallucination, he was sure.

She looked at him with beady eyes tucked into folds of fat. “She’s not here.”

Quinn waited. You could never be quite sure who Ghoris was speaking of. He’d been wrong before.

“She went away. The girl—both girls—passed us in the binds.”

“Sydney? My daughter? And Helice with her?” He took the navitar’s silence for a yes.

Quinn heard Mo Ti utter an oath. The big man wanted Helice disposed of almost as much as Quinn did.

Ghoris tried to shift her considerable bulk in the chair, but gave up on the effort. “Still being the father,” she murmured. “Leave it. Leave it.”

“She’s my daughter. I don’t walk away.”

Her face swelled with anger or pain, he couldn’t tell which. “The good father. You . . . can’t . . . have both.” Her voice became eerily normal. “I told you before.”

It was true, she’d said he had to choose, but he had thought she’d meant choose between the Entire and the Rose. That was when he’d come to the Ascendancy to rescue his daughter and Ghoris had said he had a bigger problem than that. Bigger, it was always going to be bigger than his life, these demands of duty. He waited for her to go on.

“Out there.” Ghoris pointed out the porthole toward the primacy of the Long Gaze of Fire. “Things you need to see. Take a trip. Not by our vessel. See the Paion, yes?”

She didn’t go on. Every word was an effort. She needed to sleep, and for a moment Quinn thought she
was
asleep, as her head slumped forward. Then she jerked awake. “Go and find something useful.” He tried to ask a question, but she waved him off. “Here’s the place where . . . they used to . . .” She frowned in confusion. “They were here, don’t you see? Have you never thought of
them
? You can’t see, can you? I talk to deaf men! Jaq, where is Jaq?”

Mo Ti came forward. “You sent him on a mission to Su Bei’s reach. I’m your ship keeper now.”

Ghoris looked at him as though he’d just eaten Jaq. She pointed at him and growled, “We come to shore. Prepare, ship keeper.” Then she snatched Quinn’s hands in hers, in a grip like a wrestler’s. “The Scar, Titus. It’s here. You can go.”

“Ghoris,” he said, knowing she was trying to tell him things, but fearing he would never understand. “I’ve got to find Helice, or she’ll ruin my world. Where is she?”

The navitar murmured, “Where
is
she or where
will
she be?”

He frowned, trying to step through the land mines of her conversation. “Where is the place where I’ll find her?”

“Under the sea.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Try harder, Titus Quinn.” When he remained silent, she said: “Paion live nearby. Go to them, under-sentient.” She added, rather unhelpfully, “If you must have daughters, have them. Have more daughters if the one does not suit.”

“Paion live here? Are there Paion among the Inyx, is that what you’re saying?”

Ghoris groaned, but whether in discomfort or frustration he didn’t know.

“Paion were here, and
will be
. Attend, can’t you?
Try
, Titus.”

Mo Ti came forward, putting his hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “She must rest. Ask more later.”

Quinn stood, and saw the navitar shake her head wearily. “You were supposed to be so
smart
.” She closed her eyes.

The two men left her, descending to the lower cabin.

Their mission now seemed pointless, but with the navitar vessel heading in to shore, they went out on deck to watch. Along the strand, shadows bulked—perhaps storage buildings. It hardly mattered, if what Ghoris said was true, the two
girls
were gone. Quinn watched the shore approach. Passed them in the binds? So they had been here just hours ago.

They came steadily to land. Now he could see the dark shapes resolve themselves into a welcoming party. Inyx. Some fifteen riders sat their mounts in a stolid line. The riders: various sentients including Ysli, Hirrin, and Chalin. The mounts: massive beasts with a double row of horns down their prodigious necks.

Prow funnel tilted up, the ship slid onto the muddy strand, spreading struts to stabilize it, though its draft was not deep. The ship came up a few feet onto the beach and settled.

Quinn asked Mo Ti, “You know them?”

“Mo Ti does.” He nodded at a Hirrin who was dismounting from an Inyx who folded his front legs to help her accomplish the maneuver. “Akay-Wat.”

Mo Ti let down a ramp secured with ropes. He motioned for Quinn to descend.

“You’ll come?” Quinn asked.

“I’ll attend Ghoris first. Guard your thoughts here. They need not know I have confided so much to you. Do not dwell on the dream forays.”

Quinn nodded his agreement and descended the ramp to the flats, avoiding the meandering slicks of Nigh water. When he stood before the Hirrin, she looked at him directly, but not in the way of a blind person. He knew then that she was sighted. No doubt she had been given the same
gift
as Sydney had. So here would be another friend of Helice.

“I am not a friend,” the Hirrin said by way of greeting.

Quinn was taken aback by the comment that seemed to read his thoughts.

The Hirrin was soft gray, with a long neck and wide nostrils. Her brown eyes gave her a doe-look. He noted her prosthetic leg, one that skewed her stance.