City Without End (67 page)

“I said I would give her the Ascendancy.”

Zhiya had to close her eyes to steady herself. By the Miserable God, the
Ascendancy
?

Quinn was about to make the biggest mistake of his short stay in the Entire. Fortunately, his daughter had been instructed to wait at the edge of the plaza, and did. Since Quinn was sitting, Zhiya didn’t need to lean in far to whisper in his ear. “She’d make a bad queen. The one in red is her navitar counselor, Geng De. As a child, he fell in the Nigh and came up evil.”

“Evil? I doubt that. Don’t you?”

“Put it this way, then: Mother said this navitar has broken the code of the Nigh. He has gone beyond seeing the possibilities to changing them.

That’s why mother said that he
weaves
. Navitars swear never to weave—not that they could—but it’s talked about, and they swear never to try. This one has already done so.”

“Weave what?”

“The future.” She fixed him with a look. “Evil isn’t the wrong word.”

“Your mother is sometimes confused.”

“My spies say he sees Sen Ni every day. My advice is to wait a few arcs before you embrace her.”

Quinn was looking the man in red over carefully. “What does your mother think the navitar wants?”

“Control, dominion. The usual villainy.”

“If he weaves the future, why didn’t he weave me out of it? He’s no friend to me.”

Was she supposed to argue every point? Yes, she supposed she was. He was half dead from his wounds and in shock from too much bright on his head. “He may well have bent the future. Anzi is gone. You’re bluffing with the little machine. Who knows? But one thing I’m sure of: he made Sydney the Mistress of Rim Sway. Not only did the Tarig give her that as a ruse, they changed their minds and gave it to her in truth. If I were a fiend, I’d have had her head off.”

He hadn’t taken his eyes off Sen Ni’s delegation. “She’s waiting for me, Zhiya.”

“First you’ll have something to fortify yourself, then we’ll ask her to come forward.” She looked around her. “Can’t a great leader get a dumpling around here?”

Li Yun Tai was taking command of a stacked basket of food, brought on the run by one of the guards. But when he brought it forward, Quinn shook his head. Either he was impatient to see his daughter, or impatient to be done with it.

Quinn looked at Zhiya, murmuring, “Do I look a fool? Sitting here on a bench with a jewel-studded sword?”

“You look as you should. But you’d look better with an ebb’s rest.” Zhiya mightily wished Quinn would postpone this interview, but since he would not, she reluctantly sent one of her Chalin guards to summon the girl.

Sen Ni came forward. Her yellow tunic and pants bore a brocade down the sides, and her hair was pulled high, set with tasseled combs. Zhiya thought she looked young, but not weak. She walked like one who had ridden beasts and walked home when thrown off. Her eyes, Zhiya noted as Sen Ni drew closer, were dark as a Tarig’s. She’d forgotten about that troubling feature.

Quinn made to rise, but Zhiya put a hand on his shoulder and pushed hard. “You sit, or I’ll kick you in your bad arm.” He obeyed.

Despite instructions, the bad navitar had followed Sen Ni. The Ysli guards looked to Quinn for direction, but he waved them back. The murmur of the crowds on the perimeter ceased, as every pair of eyes in the Ascendancy watched the small group in the middle of the plaza.

“You are master of the bright city,” Sen Ni said without preamble.

“Sen Ni,” he said, using the name she preferred. “Who is this with you?”

“Geng De, a navitar and a friend.”

“Ask him to give us privacy.”

She turned to Geng De. The navitar murmured, but Zhiya heard him say, “In this strand, I am with you.”

Sen Ni did not dismiss him, and it cooled Zhiya’s heart to hear him talk of
strands
. He meant strands of reality. Oh, her mother was right.

Quinn regarded Sen Ni for a long moment. “I can’t trust him. He’s against me.”

“You mistake him.”

“He suggested that my Tarig captors kill me when I turned myself in at your door.”

Sen Ni frowned, turning again to Geng De.

“I made a suggestion,” the navitar said, his voice as high as a boy’s. “That is true. But it is too late to kill him now.” The young navitar looked at Quinn with an even, placid face that galled Zhiya more than a sneer.

Sen Ni bit her lip. “He’s my ally, and has been since I walked into Rim City. I’ve lost every advisor. Even you have a mort and godder.” She snapped her eyes to take in Tai and Zhiya. Zhiya held her gaze, refusing to be intimidated by this girl of legend.

Quinn responded, “You have Mo Ti.”

“No, I don’t.”

Zhiya watched this down-spiraling conversation, fearing that Sen Ni would win by virtue of the ties she had on Quinn’s heart. The time had passed when Geng De might have left without loss of face for Sen Ni. Now he was staying, and Zhiya would have liked to dispel his satisfied look.

Quinn’s daughter turned the conversation. “I’ve come because of our bargain. Helice is dead. I helped you as much as I could. Didn’t I?”

“Yes.” Quinn sat still as stone.

The silence turned Sen Ni’s face dark. “I was to have the Ascendancy. You were to give me the Tarig.
On a platter
, did you say?” She nodded. “You don’t want all this. Leave it to those who’ve worked for it.”

“I never wanted the Ascendancy,” Quinn said. “But I mean to keep the Rose safe. Would you do that?”

Zhiya knew that Sen Ni couldn’t answer this truthfully. The Entire’s life depended on the death of the Rose. If not with the engine at Ahnenhoon, then with another. Sen Ni would not let her world vanish.

Daughter and father gazed at each other. Finally the daughter said, “The engine at Ahnenhoon has gone silent. Isn’t that what you wanted? And we had a bargain. You gave your word.”

Again, Quinn was silent. Zhiya had just advised him that vows didn’t matter when you ruled. She hoped he’d take it to heart.

Sen Ni glanced at the palatine hill. “Lord Inweer came, I was told. What did he offer you?”

“The engine gone. What else could he?”

She shook her head in obvious contempt. “You are becoming one of them again.”

He barely restrained a wince. “I love you with all my heart, but I can’t let you have power that you’d turn against the Earth.”

“You believe I would—or even could—hurt something a universe away?”

“I think your navitar might.” Perhaps only Zhiya saw him trembling.

“Dismiss him, Sen Ni. Do this thing for me. Let me advise you. Bring me to your side.”

“To my side?” She almost laughed. “Was that our bargain? I don’t remember that part.” She paused, regarding her father. “I’m no longer a child. I choose my own counselors, people who’ve proven true to me. To survive, everyone needs someone strong at their side. I’ve had Riod, I’ve had Mo Ti. Now I have Geng De. You will need to trust us.”

Quinn shook his head. “He fell in the Nigh, Sen Ni. He came up broken.

A broken man can’t rule or advise the one who rules.”

They gazed at each other, locked in a dreadful silence.

Finally Sen Ni whispered, “Say it.” She looked up at the bright. “Say your answer.”

Zhiya couldn’t move or breathe.

But it was as though Sen Ni’s looking away gave Quinn the courage to speak: “No. My answer must be no.”

Sen Ni settled her gaze back on her father. When she spoke, her voice fell into a harsh whisper.

“Prince of the Ascendancy again, then.”

She shook her head. “My navitar says that won’t last long.” Then, turning away, and accompanied by Geng De, she walked back toward the plaza’s edge.

As she did so, a small figure ran out from the crowd of functionaries. She was very short and dressed in elaborate brocade, gleaming under the bright.

Her shoes came off as she ran. It was Cixi. The Ysli guards ran forward to restrain her, but Quinn called out to them. “Let her greet Cixi. A minute only.”

Sen Ni fell to her knees before the high prefect, and the two of them fiercely embraced. It was a spectacle that held those assembled at the edges of the plaza transfixed. Flinging decorum aside, Cixi clung to Sen Ni, rocking her, patting her head. It was as though they were mother and daughter, Zhiya marveled. Another story. All to be told in its time.

When Zhiya looked at Quinn again, she saw tears streaming down his face.

When the reunion had gone on long enough, the Ysli guards took Cixi by the arms and pulled her back. The red navitar, in turn, pulled Sen Ni away toward the waiting lift.

Zhiya stood by Quinn’s side, seeing Sen Ni enter the lift and then watching as Cixi, shaking off her the guards and her legates, walked with great dignity back to the Magisterium.

Titus Quinn sat in front of his pavilion. Sentients had been streaming in for several hours, paying their respects, boldly or slyly asking for preference or favors; some—those who weren’t too terrified to do so in full view of the palatine hill—bent the knee in front of Quinn and Zhiya. The king and the dwarf, as she liked to say.

Set in the middle of the plaza, the large tent, supported on poles, served as Quinn’s quarters. He had thought of places easier to defend—such as Cixi’s audience chamber in the Magisterium—but, in the end, he chose something open and away from spy tunnels.

He had spent many hours seated on this bench, and he sat more easily now that Helice’s mSap had been found. Zhiya’s attendants found it in Rim City hidden beneath a trash heap.

The God’s Needle was seldom visited in Rim City, a place that favored the Religion of the Red Throne. Thus neglected, even by its alcoholic godder attendant, the mSap had been safe on the Miserable God’s altar beneath a small mountain of trinkets, handmade crafts, and food offerings. Zhiya removed the machine to a warehouse she owned under another name, it being too precious to risk bringing to the Ascendancy.

Nevertheless, the machine sapient was operating splendidly, according to John Hastings. He was the only one from the Rose who’d survived the crossing, having arrived following Ghinamid’s death. It was also John Hastings who had traced the mSap using the controller and who had optimized the communication between the controller and the mSap. Now Quinn had immediate access to the mSap’s dedicated function: to shatter the door to the Heart.

Once John and Quinn had spoken, it had taken only a few minutes for them to come to an understanding. John Hastings would either pledge an oath of support to Quinn or be thrown off the edge of the city. Zhiya had suggested the bargain, and Quinn had agreed. He was surrounded by enemies and needed none in his own midst.

John had also told him the sweet news that Anzi was alive, and had, by God, slowed the renaissance people down, made them doubt themselves. She was alive, but a universe away. He let himself bask in the relief of her safety, pushing away worries of what came next for them.

Quinn heard with grim silence how Lamar had been a part of it all, but had redeemed himself at the last. It was a long story of how renaissance had come apart at the end; how Booth Waller had broken at the last, forcing John to program the great engine. It made Quinn trust John the more that he admitted to that. As to forgiving him—Quinn set all such considerations aside for the sake of having a quantum engineer in the Entire. Whether the man was rehabilitated or merely terrified of falling did not greatly matter at the moment.

Anzi had survived, and had done what Quinn had meant to do, but in point of fact, probably never could have accomplished. He was contaminated with the past, and Anzi was fresh to the game and had played her part well, for an act she must have made up on the spot. He thought if she returned, he would give her the Magisterium. She was the most capable of anyone who had helped him.

But first they would by God have a wedding night.

The pavilion he’d set up in the plaza faced the place where she would return. No one had come through since John Hastings, however. Somehow, Lamar must have brought things at Hanford to a halt, but whether aided by the marines or the police, neither Quinn nor John could know. Eventually, he’d learn the outcome. Because he’d go home. But it couldn’t be soon. Thus he was left to worry that the passage between worlds might decay enough to jeopardize the needed lock on the respective passage of time.

Zhiya had marshaled a force of fifty guards from her force of trusted god-ders, spies, and thieves, who had been arriving by threes and fours for the last hours. Inweer wanted no army in the Ascendancy, and Quinn respected that wish for now. His hold on the Tarig was tenuous, even if he no longer needed to bluff.

The dilemma was that he didn’t know what he wanted or should want.

It seemed that, to secure the Rose, he had to control the Entire. The Tarig might be hamstrung, but there were other parties in the dispute. The Magisterium. The population of the land. Sen Ni.

He thought on these things as he sat outside on his bench, Zhiya and Tai nearby.

Tai stood behind him, having taken on the role of seneschal, valet, and bodyguard. Wearing the jeweled sword that Quinn scarcely thought he knew how to wield, Tai had become a tireless organizer as well as Quinn’s personal assistant.