Bright of the Sky Page 14

  Some days his teacher was Cl Dehai, Yulin's general of battle. Cl Dehai and Yulin had been friends since their early days on the fields of Ahnenhoon, and Yulin trusted him completely, even with this act of treason, the training of a man of the Rose. The general, in advanced middle age, was hardened in muscle and outlook, with a face to intimidate the enemy. One side of his face was horribly disfigured, with an eye gone, the gap hidden amid folds of sagging skin. The other side looked mean.

  Being taught by a top officer of battle was a great privilege, Anzi had told him, but Quinn thought that Yulin had little choice. The master's fear of betrayal extended even to his own family, leaving his inner circle composed of three good wives, his niece, and Ci Dehai-none of whom could logically succeed him, and all of whom would suffer any defeat at his side.

  Cl Dehai took him through the hall of weapons, asking which ones Quinn could use. Quinn admired one short knife with a carved handle. Pleased to have that blade remarked upon, Ci Dehai held it out, letting Quinn balance it in his hand. The weapon was a favorite of Cl Dehai's, one he'd named Going Over. Quinn had never fought with knives, or any weapon; in his youthful sparring days, his big fists had been enough. A knife, though; that would take skill.

  Mornings were for physical training, and afternoons for language, both of which Anzi pursued with a relentless zeal, leaving him little time to savor his victory over Yulin, or to worry about next steps. They would travel by train. This would bring close inspection by a multitude of sentients, and Dal Shen must arouse no notice. He was glad to think that Anzi would accompany him. It was a promise of sorts. Yulin wouldn't betray him with Anzi along, and, in addition, Quinn was coming to like her.

  By ebb-time, his fighting lessons usually brought him a pleasant weariness, and he slept deeply during the night phase of the Entire. Because of this, he'd been startled one night when a touch on his arm awakened him. At first he thought the girl at his side was Anzi, but Anzi slept in Yulin's house, and this person was younger, with long hair pulled back and hanging to her waist. Making a sign for silence, the girl led him through the garden, avoiding the cages of animals lest their screams alert the animal stewards. He followed her, ready for trouble, remembering the ambush in the village, when he'd first arrived. Although Anzi said that the woman who'd brought him to the village, Wen An, had done him a favor, he couldn't thank her for the misery of the jar.

  The girl led him to a wall-less hut like a gazebo near a short door that was called the Door of Eight Serenities, being Yulin's entrance to his garden. There, Suzong was waiting for him. Nearby, the girl kept watch just out of hearing.

  Suzong had shed her usual red garments for a suit of gray, helping her blend into the hushed tones of the garden. Her black upswept hair was anchored in place by a sour paste that hit his Jacobson's organ strongly at such close range.

  "I am not here," Yulin's wife began. "It is your imagination."

  He bowed, receiving her nod in return. "I have a vivid imagination, Mistress."

  "Yes. You do." Suzong gestured for him to sit, and she did so herself, kneeling on the bare wood floor. "One that I favor."

  Insect noises from the garden lay a net over their conversation, but still, they whispered. He wondered why she had come here, and concluded it was to avoid Yulin's notice. So if he spoke to her, he was colluding. But it would be worthwhile to see what she offered. For someone with as little as he had, every offer was interesting.

  "First," she began, "without imagination, tell me why your masters wish routes through our land. Is this true, or a ruse?" Her face in the semidark of the gazebo looked decades younger, but her voice was cracked with age.

  "True, Mistress Suzong. My people have a strong drive, to voyage, to explore...."

  "To conquer?" Said sweetly.

  "Yes, sometimes. Not always. Not where trade is a better option."

  "You believe there are routes through our land because, when you went home once before, you were in a far reach of your universe?"

  "Yes, and because when I came home, I was not much older than when I left. But I was sure I'd been here ... a thousand days," he said, using the vernacular term for a moderately long time. "If time passes differently here, we reasoned, then space might be twisted as well. We hoped. My masters hoped. There was little to lose, sending me to find out."

  Suzong smirked. "Only your life. Are you held in low regard, to be thus expendable?"

  "No. It was a privilege to come. Others fought me for the chance."

  She let that lie. "And will soon follow, as you say." She sighed. "The Entire is riven with holes. We watch you through the holes."

  He knew this. The reaches were places where the barrier between universes was thin, and the Rose could be seen.

  She continued, "You and I live side by side, yes? You had only to stretch a little in our direction to find us. We did marvel that you remained in darkness."

  Despite the twilight of the ebb he could see her smile, not a pretty sight when she meant, as now, to put him in his place. "To us," Suzong said, "you are the dark. Dark space, dark night, dark thoughts. You are a gloomy people, riddled with death. We pity you."

  "No need, excuse me, mistress."

  She shrugged. "To the mole without eyes there is no dark." She held up a finger. "There will be no agreeing between us on this. But there will be time enough to discuss philosophy when your people come in numbers, yes?"

  "I look forward to that, Red Mistress," he said, daring one of her more intimate titles.

  The name seemed to please her, because she smiled, more easily this time. "So you do claim that your wish is to pass through?"

  "But first, my wish is to take my daughter home."

  Suzong sucked on her teeth as she regarded him. "Yes the small daughter who is not small anymore, of course."

  "Yes." He must remember that.

  "But once you have summoned the daughter to the Rose, you still wish to ... come and go. To pass through." She nodded. "Perhaps I will prove to you that we are more than a temporary ally."

  She had his attention. All of it.

  She murmured, "You will bring home, if you can, a prize past all reckoning." She cut a glance at him, and her mouth curled in a voiceless laugh. "Not the daughter. The passages. Such power you will have among your former masters. You could demand your own sway, and many consorts. They will bow low indeed, if you find the passages you require." Talking almost to herself, she examined the palm of her hand. "Oh to be young once more and hold such power." Her fingers closed.

  Watching Suzong with a startled intensity, Quinn thought about that prize past all reckoning. The prize Stefan Polich desired more than anything. In Quinn's long-standing contempt of Stefan, he had not much cared about routes to the stars, except as it would affect Sydney's escape. But now he sank into a new realization. You could demand your own sway.... They will how low. ... He couldn't imagine Stefan or Helice bowing in any way-but wouldn't they do just that? Because of this power, wouldn't they give him anything he wanted? They couldn't threaten his family ever again. Rob would be safeif he wanted the desk job-and Mateo ... no one would dare touch the nephew of the man who had knowledge of the passages, as Suzong called them. Minerva couldn't ride him any longer. He would be free.

  He looked up at the old consort, riveted by her insight.

  At that moment she turned her head to listen for something. In the back of her lacquered hair, sticks protruded in a prickly array, some with tassels. Turning back to him, she continued in more haste: "You will learn soon enough if you don't already know, that our world is shaped by the Three Vows. The First Vow is to withhold the knowledge of the Entire from the non-Entire."

  He thought that this cat was well out of the bag, but refrained from saying so. Suzong watched him carefully, and her voice lowered so that he had to bend forward to hear her. "So now I give you this power over me, that I break the vow and say that, as to routes between, there is one who may know a direction."

  The girl standin
g watch had come to the foot of the steps. Suzong waved her away. He thought for a moment that Suzong would have to postpone her secret, the one she'd come here to tell, and he almost placed a hand on her arm to restrain her.

  "Bei," she whispered, bending close to him. "Su Bei. You remember your translator from long ago?" When Quinn nodded, she went on, "Find a purpose to go to him. You have proven by your presence here that it is possible to forge passage. Even a Chalin wife knows this much. But when can one pass? Ah, that is the question. Twice you have been lucky. Twice you came into the Entire, and survived. But the real problem is how to go in the other direction, of course. Because the Rose is inhospitable. Dark, and full of death. We must ask, When does a reach connect with a place you would wish to go? You might wait until your hair turned black with age and never find safe passage. But Su Bei told me once that there may be someone with profound knowledge of the timing of these routes."

  Quinn whispered, "Bel knows?"

  "He knows where the knowledge lies. With one who resides in the bright city."

  "The Ascendancy."

  She nodded. "It is said. I'm glad I know no more." She held up a finger. "But, you will soon be in that high city. You can now go there with a double purpose, yes?"

  He saw a movement in the garden, and Suzong's servant appeared again at the bottom of the stairs, looking concerned. Urgently, he whispered, "How can I find Bel to question him further?"

  "Anzi can find him." With surprising agility, Suzong stood up, and smoothed her jacket.

  Quinn rose too. His good fortune made him suspicious for a moment. "Why, mistress? Why are you telling me this?"

  "When humans come"-she looked up at the bright as though envisioning the ships that would bear the invaders-"they will grind the bones of the Tarig under their boots." She smiled. "Oh yes, I have seen your wars. Very good ones."

  She turned away and walked to the stairway. Before she descended, she said, "I have never come here."

  "I never saw you," he said, bowing. When he straightened again, she was gone.

  He left the gazebo, feeling dazed. The passages. It wasn't just about Stefan's routes, saving his star fleet from disaster. It was about feeding the dragon, satisfying Stefan at last, with the prize past all reckoning. It would put Quinn on an equal footing with Minerva. Earning hint a suay of his own. Suzong had said.

  He looked at the palm of his hand, silver in the gloaming light of the sky's embers.

  Oh yes, Sydney, he thought. We're going home. And when we do, we'll have a safe haven where no one will ever own us again.

  CIIJPTEIt TEN

  To keep the harmony of the Entire, the gracious lords set forth the Radiant Path. By keeping to the Radiant Path, all beings may rise to a station of happiness.

  The path is comprised of the vows, the bonds, and the clarities. Each child must learn the Three Vows and the Thousand Bonds. The legates keep the great pandect of the laws at the bright city, within the Magisterium.

  This is the Radiant Path. When all walk together, no sentient being is without hope. All may become masters, magistrates, prefects, soldiers of the Long War, legates, consuls, factors, and stewards, according to ability. No master may deny the least sentient his hope to do and be as he wishes, within the Path. No sentient, crossing from one sway to another, becomes a servant by reason of being a stranger. There are no strangers on the Radiant Path, not even the Inyx, who cannot speak.

  All may be legates and scholars, according to their gifts. This is decreed by the gracious lords, that no sway bring violence to another sway. Thus is the Peace of the Entire assured.

  -from The Book of the Thousand Gifts

  JUST BOILING, HOOVES CRASHING, the two of them sped over the flat land, exulting in the noise and speed.

  Sydney rode the thundering beast, whipping his sides with her crop, because he enjoyed the blows and liked his rider to like it. She'd pay for the pain she'd inflicted when they got back to the encampment. This was their twisted relationship, but it, or something like it, was all a prisoner of the Inyx could hope for. They wanted no equals. The Inyx wanted to run, and be ridden. Sydney was a good match for them in one crucial way: She loved to ride.

  Glovid's hooves spit stones as he galloped, his ears flattened against the wind, his eyes mere slits against the glint of the bright. They had been running a long while, and still the hard-packed dunes were as distant as ever, so Glovid's eyes told his rider.

  Blind since childhood, Sydney saw through the beast's eyes a flickering version of the world-fragmentary, yet vivid. Assimilating those volatile projections was a skill all riders learned from necessity. By this means she saw the far-flung steppe, roamlands of the Inyx. No one came to this sway unless they were bonded to an Inyx, and all came blind, because the stinking beasts wanted their riders dependent on them.

  She held tight to the rear horn on Glovid's spine. It had been whittled down, or her hands would be red meat by now. His row of forward-curving horns would serve Glovid well when he fought for a mate. Next time perhaps a female Inyx would cull him permanently from the herd with her even longer horns.

  Her knees tucked into the creature's sides as they entered a pockmarked terrain where, if she fell, she could break her head open on the rocks. A saddle would have helped stability, but Glovid disliked the feel of them.

  "Haagh!" she cried, lashing the beast's flank, and he galloped mightily, excited by her excitement, pleased by her lust for speed.

  She felt his exultation. She would have denied him the pleasure of knowing her mind. But there was no way to hide her thoughts from Glovid, or any other Inyx who cared to take a peek. Though, in truth, the beasts didn't pay much attention to the thoughts of their riders, any more than, once, Sydney had cared what her pet hamster was thinking ... in that other life, lived far away.

  Glovid stumbled. In the next second she was flying over Glovid's head, crashing to the ground. She landed hard, but rolled out of it, stunned. The wind flattened her hair, blowing grit into her eyes.

  Her mount trumpeted in pain. Following this sound, she found him collapsed, with one leg shattered at the fetlock. Bone protruded, Glovid's terri fled vision told her. So. He would never join the herd again. His burial mound would be here.

  Kneeling next to him, she imagined his horsey face, the liquid green eyes, his long neck with its curving horns, a being once powerful, now cringing. A dozen taunts came to mind, but they lost their flavor as Glovid grew nauseated with pain. She felt some of it as her own, bringing her the sudden insight that the herd's solidarity sprang from shared pain as well as shared thoughts.

  Kill me, Glovid said.

  She'd known he would ask that, but she hesitated. He could possibly be mended. The sway would have to send for a Tarig physician, because this break was beyond the surgeons in the roamlands. The camp's healer, Adikar, would never try to set an Inyx compound fracture.

  At the thought of a Tarig doctor, Glovid sent, Kill me, I said.

  No one would blame her. They knew Glovid commanded it. Stepping forward, she unsheathed the knife at her belt. "Lay your head on the ground." She would have to press down with both hands to sever the thick tendons in his neck.

  Glovid obeyed. Many days to you, small rose, he thought to her.

  He knew she hated that nickname. Small rose. Somehow, in his twisted mind, he thought she was proud of her sway. He was wrong. But now her mind was on the thing she had to do.

  "Good-bye, Glovid," she said. "That last ride was very good."

  Placing her hands first on his neck to feel the throb of the large artery, she carefully lifted the knife straight up and then she plunged it down, ripping through his hide. Twisting the blade, she sawed at the throat until the blade hit the artery.

  He bled swiftly, losing consciousness. In a few moments he was beyond his days.

  She wiped the blade and her reeking hands on Glovid's hide. Kneeling on the hard pan, she gathered her thoughts. Soon another mount would lay claim to her. He might be better or
worse than Glovid, but what did that matter? Nothing was truly bad, except the lords of this world. She had hated them from her first glimpse of their stretched bodies, their skin like polished copper, and faces as cruel as their hands. Their hands. One hand could hold a small child immobile, while the other hand was free to be cruel ... with great precision, taking her sight, cradling her in an elbow joint like a vise.

  No, the Inyx were nothing compared to the mantis lords.

  After the day of her blinding, she had longed to die. Her parents were dead, she thought, leaving her alone in a hated world. She hadn't seen them since the Tarig captured them in the underground place where they were hiding and where they had pierced the Entire. A good way to die would be to throw herself from the outer deck of the Ascendancy.

  The old woman had been summoned the day that Sydney stood on the edge of the balcony, having crossed the barrier, and held on fiercely as the winds yanked at her. The woman spoke a halting English, and promised her that no Tarig would approach her. She said that if Sydney came away from the rim, she could have a pet to keep; and then, if she still wished to jump, she could do so tomorrow. So Sydney went with her and learned that the woman, who was barely taller than herself, was named Cixi, and that she was important. It was Cixi who taught her of her father's betrayal, and her mother's, when it came, and that they weren't worth dying for. She also taught her never to call the bright lords bad names, although when Sydney was sent to the Inyx, Cixi broke down and called them fiends.

  Now, sitting next to Glovid's body, she tilted her head to the sky, to judge the time of day by the heat of the bright. It was Heart of Day, she guessed. The system of time was based on eighths. Eight phases of the bright, each with a name: Early, Prime, Heart, and Last. And then of ebb-time, Twilight, Shadow, Deep, and Between. And each of the phases was four hours long. All sentients could judge the time of day, and the time of ebb, by internal design. All except Sydney.