Quintessence Sky (48 page)

Ramos went first, and once he had gone,
Matthew could hardly fail to follow. He took a deep breath and
plunged into the darkness.

He fell out of the void onto a stretch of
country road under a blue sky. Ramos had just stepped out of the
way, avoiding a collision. The destroyed carriage had been dragged
off the road, where it lay rusting and forgotten, but apparently
the chicken bone Ramos had used to anchor to the thread had fallen
out here. Ramos kicked around in the dirt and found it. He bent and
picked it up, then put it in his pocket.

It felt strange to be in England again.
Everything looked both familiar and foreign. The sun seemed remote
and cool, the air dry, the trees exotic with their broad green
leaves. It was everything Matthew had grown up with, but after more
than a year living on Horizon, it was surprising how different it
all looked.

There was no one in sight. Their task was
simple: to make sure the connection was still working, and to find
a safe place to put the bone so that when the larger group came
through with Elizabeth in a few days, they could be reasonably
certain they would arrive safe and unnoticed. There was no
guarantee, of course, but Matthew and Ramos wanted to minimize the
chance of surprises.

They turned east, away from London, and began
walking down the road. They hoped to find a village of some kind,
perhaps an inn with a room they could rent for several days.
Matthew darted glances at Ramos while they walked. He had hardly
known the man before the battle, but it was disconcerting to see
his flawless skin and newly-youthful face. Ramos had explained what
had happened from his perspective, but Matthew barely understood
it. He got the impression that Ramos barely understood it
himself.

They each had several shekinahs with them,
keeping them alive, as well as giving them all the quintessence
abilities they had enjoyed back on the island. They broke into a
run, easily covering as much ground as a horse might, and without
feeling tired. They passed small farm after small farm, each
scratching out a subsistence in the muddy earth. In the distance,
Matthew saw a stone barn with weathered edges and a half-collapsed
roof.

"How about that?"

Ramos skidded to a stop, kicking up a cloud
of road dust. "The barn?"

"It's large enough for a group, and it looks
abandoned."

They jogged across the field and examined the
building more closely. The door hung askew on broken hinges.
Inside, moldy straw and spider webs were all that was left of what
must have once held a large number of animals. Matthew suspected a
large number of rats now lived there, but that no humans had been
here in some time.

"It will suffice," Ramos said. "It's large,
and remote enough to cause little comment. We can clean it out, and
with your building methods, it should be a simple matter to repair
the roof. For a few days, at least, while Elizabeth contacts her
supporters, we should be safe enough."

"Why did you convert?" Matthew said.

Ramos frowned. "I beg your pardon?"

"You're Spanish, but you support Elizabeth. I
never asked you, and I wondered what made you convert to
Protestantism."

"I'm no Protestant," Ramos said. He spoke
sternly, but he didn't seem to mind the question. "Any problems the
Church has—and she does have them, I admit freely—should be
resolved inside the Church. It does no good to splinter the Holy
Faith into a thousand pieces, each of them free to pursue their own
heresies."

Matthew was taken aback. "But . . ."

"But why do I support the Protestant
princess?" Ramos shrugged. "She convinced me."

He dropped the chicken bone on the floor and
kicked some straw over it. It seemed strange to leave something so
precious lying around on the floor of a barn, but then, it had most
recently been lying in the middle of the road. It was the sort of
the thing that was safer if no attention was drawn to it.

A drop of vitriol opened up a void. It had
taken all of Matthew's courage to step into it the first time,
having seen and experimented with its destructive power, even
though he knew that Ramos and Elizabeth had successfully made the
trip before. This time he hesitated less, but it still made him
nervous. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and stepped through. He
fell and fell, no less terrifying for having done it before, but
after what seemed like only moments, he crashed hard onto the stone
floor of the caves. He was back on Horizon.

Strong hands pulled him to his feet. Parris
brushed the dirt off of Matthew's front. "I thought you were only
going to be gone a moment," he said. "Are you trying to miss your
own wedding?"

THEY were married at the edge of the world.
Bishop Marcheford stood with his back to the precipice, while the
guests—both human and manticore—gathered closer to the tree line.
Catherine didn't care about the color of her dress or the kind of
flowers in her bouquet. Standing here, the sky almost close enough
to touch and the breeze caressing her face and hair, she felt
beautiful. Matthew clearly thought so, too, the way he couldn't
tear his eyes away from her. His hair was askew, testament to his
hasty preparations, but she didn't mind. He was back safely, and
all was well for their return.

Blanca stood next to Catherine, and Elizabeth
beyond her. On Matthew's side were her father and Tanalabrinu. The
manticore looked awkward; the rite of marriage was completely alien
to him, and Catherine couldn't guess what he felt about it. He had
agreed to participate, however, and accepted it as the honor it was
meant to be.

"Dearly beloved friends . . ." Bishop
Marcheford began.

The sky was clear and blue for the first time
in what seemed like months. Now that the quintessence cycle was
restored, the novas had faded from the sky. The violent storms that
had wracked the island were gone, and the soil, though not yet
returned to its former levels, was increasing in salt content. Even
the miasma was gone, the blighted hollows in the ground restored to
quintessence life.

Catherine knew that all this had been Maasha
Kaatra's doing. It had been he who had caused the novas in the
first place, but by walking into that fire, he had set it right
again. He had concluded the cycle that should have been completed
by the leviathans whose power he had usurped. She hoped he hadn't
suffered.

". . . and forsaking all others keep thee
only to her, so long as you both shall live?" Marcheford said.

Matthew gazed at her face, his eyes alight.
"I will," he said.

Catherine responded in kind, flashing him a
quick grin. Matthew struggled to keep his expression solemn, as
fitted such a holy occasion. She winked at him on the western side,
where no one could see it but him, making him bite his lip to keep
from smiling. They were giddy with excitement and love.

"I, Matthew, take thee, Catherine, to my
wedded wife," he said seriously, glaring playfully at her, "to have
and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for
richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love and to
cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance,
and thereto I plight thee my troth."

The wedding vows were the new ones, taken
from a copy of The Book of Common Prayer that Bishop Marcheford had
smuggled out of England. They had been written by Thomas Cranmer
less than ten years earlier, back when Edward VI was still alive
and it was still safe to be a Protestant in England. Catherine
repeated the words, hastily memorized and unfamiliar on her tongue.
". . . and thereto I plight thee my troth."

There was a lot more for Bishop Marcheford to
read from the book, prayers and blessings and psalms. She and
Matthew knelt and recited the Lord's Prayer, and there were more
prayers and liturgical readings, which seemed to include a great
deal about a wife submitting to and reverencing her husband,
obeying him and calling him lord, and being mild and quiet in the
home. Catherine wanted to pinch Matthew to make sure he wasn't
taking it all too seriously, but she restrained herself. Enough
time for that later.

The wedding concluded with the signing of the
marriage contract between Catherine's father and Matthew's father.
Matthew had objected to that bit of tradition, arguing that it was
not their fathers who were getting married, but it was such an
established part of custom and legal practice that he hadn't been
able to make the objection stick. Their fathers both signed with a
flourish, and the deed was done. They were married. Catherine put
the wedding garland on her head, whooped, and threw her arms around
her new husband.

The celebration afterwards was raucous and
merry. In England, they would have had sweetmeats, baked peacock,
and large quantities of wine, but none of those things were
available here. They had sand pastries sweetened with honey
instead, and roast diki, and some strong ale that one of the
colonists brewed in the salvaged remains of Sinclair's alchemy
laboratory. There was singing and dancing, both in the English
style and in the manticore style, which none of the humans could
come close to imitating.

It was the first day of pure joy there had
been in months. The time since the battle had been a time of grief,
burying the dead, becoming reconciled to the destruction of their
home, and trying to make plans for the future. The dead were not
forgotten, but for this brief moment, they were able to set their
sadness aside and enjoy this new beginning. It wasn't just
Catherine who felt that way; she looked around at the survivors and
saw real smiles on their faces. She was glad her wedding could
provide such a badly needed respite from sorrow and regret.

Matthew left her side only for one brief
moment, when he approached his father, tentatively at first, then
with determination, and wrapped him in an awkward hug. They didn't
say much, but Bishop Marcheford's hands were strong against his
son's back. Tomorrow, Matthew would be leaving for England, and his
father would be staying here. The two of them might never agree,
but she was glad to see this reconciliation before they parted.

Matthew came back to her, and she took his
hands. She gestured with her eyes, and they slipped away, not even
saying goodbye to their guests. No one tried to stop them. After
all, they only had this one night together before they returned to
England. She longed for a month or a year with him, living
peacefully in some secluded spot, getting to know each other as man
and wife. But it was not to be. Tomorrow was a new day, and a new
life.

THE NEXT day, before they left, another
ceremony was held, just as well attended if more solemn.
Catherine's father and Tanalabrinu had together drafted a letter
declaring Horizon to be an independent nation. They had outlined a
rough policy allowing limited human immigration, but not
colonization, and a desire to build alliances and open trade. All
the tribes were at least loosely unified now, under Tanalabrinu as
a kind of king, and all the chiefs had agreed to the main points of
the letter.

The ceremony was for Elizabeth, having
declared herself the rightful queen of England, to sign and ratify
the letter, the first European monarch to officially recognize
Horizon's status as a nation and Tanalabrinu's title as king.
Catherine smiled and clapped as Elizabeth signed. It was a bit of a
sham, perhaps, since Elizabeth was not really a queen, and had no
real authority to recognize anyone. But it was an important moment
nonetheless, as it represented her promise to honor the alliance if
she did manage to take the throne.

After signing, Elizabeth stood with
Tanalabrinu on the raised dais built for the occasion and looked
out over those who had come to witness it. There was clapping from
the human contingent and that eerie rhythmic clacking from the much
larger crowd of manticores.