City Without End (26 page)

After a time, Quinn decided he was too exposed in the Way. He managed to walk, very slowly, to a side street. Within a few steps the crowd thinned.

Leaning against a wall, he slid down into a sitting position.

By the time Zhiya came, a pink froth was collecting at his lips. A hit to his lung, then. Helice had proven herself a terrible shot.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

He who rides a Gond is afraid to dismount.

—a saying

ASMALL AND INCONSEQUENTIAL SCHOLAR knelt before the high prefect in her audience chamber. Alone with the man, Cixi had heard his report with growing astonishment and distress. Now, leaving the scholar with his head pressed to the floor, she moved to her veranda, staring at the lords’ hill of mansions.

She made sure her expression betrayed nothing of her inner turmoil.

When Cixi stood on her balcony, a hundred functionaries watched from their own balconies and windows of the Magisterium. Her heart racing, she calmed herself by taking in the superb view of the fiends’ elaborate city.

While complex, the layout of the Ascendancy could be reduced to a simple rule: The lords dwelled above, all others below. The floating city was a sphere cut in half, with the rounded bowl oriented down. In this bowl resided the seven levels of the Magisterium. In the upper realm, the Tarig had created a hill on one side. There, the lords’ greater and lesser mansions clustered, looking down on the great plaza.

There was a chasm in the Bright City from which offices of the Magisterium could look up to the top structures of the city. Of course, the lower one’s rank, the lower a functionary’s level in the Magisterium, and the worse the view.

An enormous plaza footed the palatine hill, a space adorned with canals and small bridges. Punctuating its expanse were enormous uninhabited towers reaching almost to the bright itself. These columns were said to have a defensive function; one could not help but think they related to the bright itself. Among them was the tower of Ghinamid, named for the Sleeping Lord, the one who never woke in all the archons since early time.

Perhaps, given what Cixi had just learned, the lord would consider getting out of bed.

Out of the mouth of this man named Zhou had come a tale to stagger even the high prefect, who had heard one hundred thousand days of shocking things.

Zhou, it seemed, had been banished from the minoral where the scholar Su Bei lived. To be dismissed after such long service, when the two scholars had grown old together, was too much for him. His revenge was to bring intelligence to Cixi that would destroy his master. Zhou’s story was that a lord of the city— one of the ruling Five, no less—had given away the key to the doors between the realms of light and dark. A messenger had come to Bei and put into his hands this great secret, one that Cixi had heard of but did not herself possess.

Su Bei obviously thought that the nature of the gift was secret. But the messenger had taken a cup or three of wine with Zhou and implied he’d come from a high lord. In fact, and by the fourth cup,
Lord Oventroe
.

It could hardly be believed. Was Lord Oventroe, then, a traitor to his own kind?

Zhou had found himself motivated to look at the redstones, and with great stealth used them, concluding that they were the fabled mathematical keys that could be used for going
to and from
. The correlates. Cixi had always assumed that they were myth. Perhaps they were not.

As she questioned the scholar, it became clear that Su Bei was in league with Titus Quinn. She learned how Quinn had hidden at Bei’s reach when he had returned to the Entire the first time. Thus it might be concluded that Su Bei was holding the correlates for Titus Quinn. From there, it was a simple leap to understand that Lord Oventroe had allied with the man of the Rose.

Her mind wound in a tight skein around this shocking conjecture. If it was true, using this information would require her most delicate machinations. It was a story that should be brought to Lord Nehoov. But Cixi hesitated. Once Oventroe knew that she had moved against him, Cixi herself would be at risk. This would take a great deal of thought. She turned from her balcony’s view and walked slowly back into the hall, her high-platformed shoes echoing off the smooth stone walls and floor.

Zhou was whimpering from the strain of the position of obeisance. She left him in that position while she considered.

If his accusation was true, what did the lord’s support of Titus Quinn portend? What could possibly be Lord Oventroe’s intention? If he was aligned with Quinn, he must secretly be aiding the Rose against the Entire, though how this could be was beyond Cixi’s imagination.

“You may rise, Zhou.”

With great effort he wobbled to a standing position. He had scarcely any hair left, and he was as thin as a dragon’s whisker.

She should hurl him from one of the thousand balconies of the Magisterium. He was privy to things he shouldn’t know, and now he could reveal to others that Cixi knew them. But murder was forbidden in the realm. She, least of all, could break the vows, laws, bonds, and clarities. Those of low status always got that piece wrong, thinking that the powerful could do what they liked.

“Zhou. I have a dilemma. Help me to resolve it, and I will thank you.”

“Yes, Your Brilliance,” he stammered.

“On the one hand, you are a repugnant traitor, helping the most virulent enemies of the bright realm. On the other, you have brought to the lords’ attention a most foul crime that without you might never have been discovered.” She leaned toward him. “What should the high prefect do with you, in all justice?”

“Advance me to legate. And punish Su Bei.”

Yes, you want that faithless master to fall, don’t you? She could empathize with such thoughts after all these thousands of days staring out at the palatine hill.

She sucked on her teeth, drawing the moment out. “I think I cannot trust you here in the Great Within after you gave refuge to Titus Quinn. The punishment for treason is the garrote. This you know, scholar.”

“Great Cixi! Please. If it hadn’t been for me, you would never have known.” He fell on his knees. “I throw myself on your powers, your brilliance, your mercy, your—”

Cixi waved him to silence. “But such a late confession, after how many arcs? No, I think you will fall at the Tarig’s feet. Yes, this seems fair.”

“I am old to die such a way, Your Brilliance. By the Woeful God, I beg you.”

“Mmm.” She let him wait. Looking down at her index fingernail, she tapped it twice, blanking the scrolling words, her functionaries clamoring to talk to her. She tapped again, summoning her most trusted legate.

At the sound of the gentle hooves of her Hirrin attendant’s approach, Zhou winced, as though hearing his executioners.

Cixi whispered to the Hirrin, “Give him a weight of primals and send him from the Ascendancy. He is never to repeat what he told me here. Make him understand that he is fortunate to have escaped my wrath. Make him love me, in other words.” One needed a friend now and then, both the high and the low.

The Hirrin bobbed her head in obedience. Then she walked up to the cowering Zhou and kicked him with a hoof. The scholar was persuaded to rise and follow the legate from the room, leaving behind a puddle of sweat.

Cixi took her place on her chair of office, shifting her feet on top of the stool that kept her jeweled shoes off the floor.

Before all else she must have her spies bring Su Bei to stand before her and tell what he knew. Zhou also had said that Bei was harboring Titus Quinn’s helper, Ji Anzi—a girl who styled herself a niece of Yulin, the disgraced former master of the Chalin Sway. A minor fugitive, this one, but perhaps a fount of knowledge about Quinn and his plans.

Likely both she and Bei were dead, however.

Bei’s minoral had just been culled from the All. As had all the minorals of the Arm of Heaven primacy.

Reports were already flooding in to her of the collapse of the minorals. It was a tragedy of the highest proportions, naturally, and one the lords undertook with reluctance. It would take a long while for the news to travel, for the extent of the holocaust to be known. Cixi would declare herself as shocked as anyone, but in fact she had had advance warning from the Five.

They had now closed all doors to the Rose. More to the point, they had closed all doors
to the Entire from the Rose
. To make sure of this, they had severed the minorals in the Arm of Heaven primacy. Minorals in other primacies were spared, since they did not access the Rose.

Maiming the primacy was an act of desperation. But the lords were alarmed. Ahnenhoon had barely averted a Rose attack; the evil dreams were now open knowledge; all sentients knew—or thought they knew—that the lords were not normal creatures of birth and death. These were anxious times.

While the Tarig were her enemies, Cixi certainly wished for them to succeed in securing the Rose as fuel. If Lord Oventroe was thwarting this worthy cause—as he must be if he thought the Rose had a future—then she must report him. All in good time. Meanwhile she must investigate whether Su Bei and Ji Anzi, against all likelihood, yet lived. She would dispatch her operatives to the city of Na Jing, near the minoral in question. A little quiet probing might quickly set the matter to rest. If the correlates were burned to cinders along with Su Bei and the girl, then it was all to the good

Sydney curled by Riod’s side as he lay crumpled on the straw. She had decided to spend her ebbs with him in his stable at the far side of the crystal mansion. He was worse than two days ago when she had last seen him, and her anxiety mounted by the increment. She would have sent him home to the sway if he had been well enough; but it would be dangerous for him to travel in this condition.

He had been sleeping for several hours. When Deng came to bring him fresh water, Sydney motioned the steward away. Whenever anyone except Sydney came into the stable, Riod thrashed and sent chaotic thoughts to her.

Best mount
, she thought fiercely, trying to soothe him.

Deng put the bucket down and backed away.

People had to obey her now. She was Mistress of the Sway in truth. She’d tested this a few times, once even going into the city without a Tarig escort. She’d bought a delicacy of goldweed thistles for Riod to eat, and he did nibble at them.

Her hand caressed the broad plane between his eyes and down to his nose.
What can I do for you, my heart?

Riod’s eyes came open.
No water
, he sent.

He really must drink, but he sent the message with such force, she sat up, alert.

The Tarig lady pours.

“She’s in the house. I’ll pour for you.”

His head sank back onto the straw, trailing the thought,
Tarig lady pours
bad water. No water.

Sydney’s mind began racing. Slowly, she came to her feet and walked over to the bucket Deng had left. “Is this bad water?”

Riod lay immobile. She waited, knowing he was awake but too weak to think straight. Then it came into her mind, that clear, familiar touch of his voice:
Water has poisons. Deng brings bad water.

The bucket occupied the floor in the middle of the doorway. Sydney stared at it with growing fury. With a violent kick, she toppled the bucket, dumping the water out on the pavement. Then she hurled the bucket away, smashing it into a nearby tool shed.

A servant came running, looking at the spilled water and then at the expression on her mistress’s face.

Sydney wanted to scream at her, wanted to raise the whole house, bringing them here to see the bad water. She wanted to force Deng to drink from the pavement. But it was not the fault of the servant standing before her.

“Bring me a clean bucket,” Sydney asked in as even a voice as she could muster.

While the servant hurried off, Sydney went to Riod’s side and knelt by him.
Oh, Riod. I will bring your water. No one will hurt you now
. Her hand trembled as she stroked his hide.
Beloved, I didn’t know.
She hoped that he could pick up her thoughts, and in fact, he stirred.