City Without End (44 page)

The detonation, when it happened, shook the plaza, sending shudders radiating out to all points of the Ascendancy.

One who saw the unthinkable event was Yinhe of the Long War. He had been crossing a canal, and thus from the center of the arched bridge he had an unobstructed view to Lord Ghinamid’s Tower. First, the piercing squeal, a sound that disrupted the peace of the Bright City like a dragon in a sitting room. Whipping around to face the noise, Yinhe saw a spray of fire and smoke jetting out from the tower. An incandescent glow coursed up the side of the edifice as though reaching for the bright.

He rushed off the bridge, drawing his sword, ready to act the part of the loyal soldier.

A breeze lifted the smoke away, and the Tower of the Sleeping Lord slept again. Yinhe was relieved to see that it yet stood.

As he ran toward the tower, he wondered if the ancient tower was protesting the massacre of a lord. Was the tower sparking in anger that he, Yinhe of the Long War, had raised a military hand against one of the Five?

Unconsciously, he felt for his scroll of pardon. It still resided in his belt, but doubtless the High Prefect Cixi had no rule over the tower and its stony judgment.

He’d had no peace since the murder. Over and again he played it in his mind. The lord’s missing arm. Yinhe had taken it at the shoulder. The high prefect scrambling on the blood-slicked floor. The lord kicking toward Yinhe, the blade on his boot nearly taking his face off. He had never been in a worse fight. He had killed a Tarig. The high prefect had ordered it for reasons he only dimly understood. The lords bled a crimson hue. Since that day, his dreams—despite sharing the universal dreams against the high lords— tended toward blood.

Taking his place at the entrance to the tower, he stood poised if something should exit from inside. He waited long minutes. He expected to see masses of Tarig descend into the plaza. But none did. Taking his attention away from the tower door, he saw some lords standing on the mansion rooftops, looking down. No,
hundreds
of lords stood on the rooftops, and also on the balconies, avenues, and lookouts. Their dark forms were still, like trees in a sentient forest. He wished they would come forward or show some sign of disarray.

They watched but did not come down.

In the plaza, emptiness. Everyone had fled the public spaces; they hid where they could, hid from Paion attack. Or was it an assault from Titus Quinn once again?

The tower was silent. It loomed over him, intact. There was damage just at eye level, where the projectile had pierced. If that was what had happened.

It was very quiet in the heart of the palatine hill. It had always been quiet, Quinn remembered, but not like this. In the time before, brightships had come and gone, their thrusts and breaking a dull but familiar cadence to the day. Voices had arisen in the mansion, the low rumble of Tarig conversation, punctuating the silence like the occasional barking of dogs. But now. So calm and blank.

The lights came up suddenly. A Tarig female swept through a door, charging for him. A net over her close-cropped hair, sparkling. A slit metal skirt, a jeweled vest. She grabbed him by the upper arm, yanking him savagely to his feet. She dragged him from the cell. Now in a corridor, she rushed forward with him in tow, his arm nearly pulled from its socket. He scrambled to keep his feet under him. She must have cut the binds off his ankles, but it happened so suddenly: the lights, the lady rushing toward him, he couldn’t remember. Demat, he guessed.

She hauled him to a place where the corridor widened into a rotunda.

The place was full of Tarig. When they saw him, they muttered deeply, a basso profundo of derision.

The lady dropped him, making sure he fell to his knees.

“This—” the lady said, “—this is the darkling who would take the Entire and all our joy.” The crowd surged toward him. From the floor, he looked up at them. A lord kicked at him, slicing open his cheek. Bleeding now, he put his hands to his cut face, but Demat grabbed him again before others could join in the savaging. She pulled him to his feet; his face was streaming blood.

“No one kills him but the Five,” she said. She stopped in midstride, and held him still for a moment, her nostrils flaring. “No one kills him but me.

Would that be just, Titus-een?”

Oh, it was Chiron.

“Justice looks different where I come from.” Blood came to his tongue.

He spit it out, and inadvertently hit Demat’s vest. It pearled away. No soiling from crimes. The Tarig imperative.

She drove him down corridors and ramps, all downward. The Tarig lords followed, and their rumbling voices sounded like a rock slide behind him.

His thoughts were catching up, thoughts of Anzi. Had she convinced them she had the cirque, and had they put her to the question of its location, and had she refused? What else could enrage them so? If they showed him her body, he would kill Chiron again. It was too much, to always save the Earth, and never grieve, and never care who was lost to him. He was no
hsien
. Just don’t kill her, he thought, and I’ll be what you want. Even a prince again, and my soul gone then.

A door flew open and Demat pushed him through it into the shattering day. A narrow street deep in glarish light. Along its length, Tarig, in numbers he had never seen before. Solitary creatures, they did not care for congregations, not even of themselves. And why should they? They were all one thing, or almost. It would be like versions of yourself populating your life, mirroring and mocking. They drove him through the narrow street then, with masses of Tarig raising their arms, making them taller yet, creating a canyon of hate.

He smelled smoke in the air. Something large had happened. And he was going to pay for it.

The lords crowded into the street, leaving only a narrow passage for Demat and him. The shock of a cut to his side. Then one to his back. They were clawing him. Pain burst from all his nerves. He felt the cold slap of blood-soaked fabric against his skin. Maybe they would have killed him by now, but Lady Demat moved swiftly through the gauntlet.

A searing gash to his free arm; it dropped to his side, useless.

By the other arm, Demat yanked him close, whispering, “Where is this gondling, your wife? Have you a voice left?”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“Tell us.”

Filled with relief, his eyes clouded. They didn’t have her. They didn’t have her.

“I don’t know. She left on a navitar vessel. I didn’t want to know.”

Hissing with rage, she pulled him onward, down the street. The cousins were dashing out to strike at him. Little cuts. To make him last. Weak and in shock, he let himself be dragged. At his side, his arm hung uselessly. He looked up at the bright, wondering why it had seemed so right at Ahnenhoon to save it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

One is welcome in all sways, but in two be watchful: the forests
of the Gond, the mansions of the lords.

—a saying

B
ELOW HELICE THE ENTIRE LAY FLAT AND SILVER.
Thousands of feet down was the sea. Pillars of frazzled light fell from the city, and she could see—in the nearest one—things riding up and down in it. It took an hour to reach the bottom, as nearly as she could judge. It was very difficult not to watch. Forcing her gaze to the perimeter of her view, she caught glimpses of the storm walls, mere smudges at this distance. The city was at the center of everything, as though she could forget, as though anyone could.

Tai, did you do what I asked? Did you bring the nan cell to its proper place, or did you disappoint me, losing your resolve here in the Tarig city?

At times, lying on her back for relief from the view, she stared up at the ceiling. She forced herself to think of other things. Guinevere, her pet Macaw.

The good beku that had pulled the cart carrying herself, Quinn, and Benhu across the midlands of the Entire. The cart was bright green and decorated with the face of the Woeful God. She thought of Titus Quinn, and wondered if she had killed him that day on the street of Rim City. Soon after that came the riots; maybe his murder would have gone unnoticed.

Tai, have you kept faith with me? Tai, you must understand: The Rose was once great—the Earth, that is, was great. But the world grew timid and gluttonous, breeding indignities great and mundane. You wouldn’t like it, Tai. They would give you a wall screen and feed you stories of happier people.

A sound at the door.

Only one Tarig entered the room. This one was imposing: his long garment looked like poured mercury. He wore a black choker around his throat that shimmered more than his skirt. His hair was formed into little knots on his head. He had long nails. No, his claws were out.

She rose, standing in the center of the dimple. Now it begins, she thought.

“Lie down,” the being said.

She knelt and was beginning to lie on her back, when he strode forward, coming into the dimple. With a powerful grip, he flipped her onto her stomach. He held her there on the concave floor, with her back arched in the wrong direction. Pressure on her neck kept her motionless.

His voice was low and eerily gentle. “This is the Dragon’s Eye, darkling. Look, or I will take your eyelids off.” He murmured: “It blinks, this Dragon’s Eye.”

She tried to speak, but the hand around the back of her neck pushed down, silencing her.

“It opens.”

His meaning registered in her stomach, and though she tried mightily to prevent her gorge from rising, bile rushed up her throat. He let her spit it out, a small kindness.

“If you hurt me . . .”

The voice came, more menacing. “You will not speak, hnn?” His voice droned above her. “We created the Dragon’s Eye and all that it sees. You have created nothing. Your world builds with stone; we build with forces. You languish in darkness, stumbling with weapons. We have the bright forever. You are nothing. But you come against us, ah?”

“I don’t . . .”

The hand on her neck pressed harder.

“The Radiant Land existed from the dawn of all things. Your land was an accident of cosmologics. The Radiant Land grew as the many universes grew. We are a
universe
”—he said it as though it was a word he seldom used—“but your world is a node of matter in a universe. Against the Entire, the Earth does not signify. Yet you come against us.”

Tai! The demonstration had taken place. She had come against them, he said. Well, yes. Take a good, unblinking look, you gangling freak. Tai had done it. Oh Tai, I will give you anything now.

Outrageously, she felt pulled to sleep. Maybe it was her brain turning off so that she didn’t have to think about the dimple beneath her opening.

“Eyes are open?” he asked as though reading her mind.

“Yes.”

“Now, darkling, tell us of the door.”

Forced to speak with her face pushed up against the glass, she whispered, “You go home through a brane interface. You go home frequently, some of you. At home, you exchange information and come back.”

Savagely, he pressed her face down. She could hardly breathe “The door,” he hissed. The hand relented, giving her room to suck in a breath.