QUINN FELL HARD, smacking his shoulder into the ground, having taken a savage kick from his combat teacher. He rolled to his feet and faced the man.
Ci Dehai beckoned him, with a flick of his fingers from his open palm. But Quinn didn't need that gesture to come at his opponent. Ci Dehai was leading with his right, and might not expect an assault from the left. He began his lunge, but before he had gotten far, his mouth was full of dust.
So it had gone for the last few days, as Ci Dehai had beaten and berated Quinn into his version of a Chalin warrior. One who might have been away at the Long War, to account for Dai Shen suddenly appearing in the sway. Before long he would be transformed in another way: they planned to alter his face—surgeries they seemed more confident about than he was—which was necessary since at the Ascendancy, if not in the Inyx sway, he would be among those who would recognize his old face.
His Chalin teacher said, “You have too much passion. Find the river, Dai Shen, and it will carry you.” He summoned Quinn, palms up, fingers beckoning.
Quinn circled, breathing, imagining a river. Imagining punching Ci Dehai senseless. Ci Dehai was as big as Quinn, but faster.
Anzi stood at the edge of the circle, her arms folded over her chest, clearly hoping her student would make a better showing than he was.
A heavy dew had moved in early in the morning, dumping moisture on the outbuildings and drenching the combatants. Quinn rubbed his hands dry on his tunic pants and closed with Ci Dehai, forcing his teacher to step back, leaving an opening for him to punch with the side of his hand. Delivering the blow to empty space sent him falling once again. The breath left him. Ci Dehai should be vulnerable on his blind side, but so far he wasn't.
Ci Dehai looked down at him, unimpressed. “Let go of winning. Use your reflexive mind. Your body knows what to do.”
Quinn stood, slapping himself off, squinting at his opponent, a man who'd taken terrible blows, most likely from the Paion themselves, since the Entire had no other wars. Evidently the Paion hadn't let go of winning.
Standing in the dusty yard, Ci Dehai scowled. “Master Yulin will have a story that you fought at Ahnenhoon. So far, it's hard to credit.” He looked over his shoulder at the high wall forming Yulin's personal training courtyard. Beyond it lay the barracks where, no doubt, Ci Dehai preferred to be, presiding over the battle training of ten thousand men and women. Anzi had said their numbers were ten thousand, but by now Quinn knew that was just their way of saying many. Or their way of not disclosing real numbers.
The general beckoned Quinn to close with him.
Moving in on his opponent, Quinn delivered a short punch to the jaw, careful not to expose himself too much.
Ci Dehai easily deflected him, striking Quinn a glancing blow with his elbow as Quinn's momentum carried him by. “Clumsy and obvious,” he pronounced. “Since you are overmatched, you must conserve energy, watch for my openings.”
“Do you have any?”
“So you are blind as well as clumsy?”
Quinn lunged, receiving a painful chop to his neck.
Ci Dehai's lecture continued. “Induce fear by striking at the three: eyes, neck, and groin.”
Quinn blocked a punch and followed up with a near miss to his opponent's eyes.
“Good,” his teacher said. “But you are dead. Behind you is the post where I will fling you, smashing open your head.” Sweeping his foot, he took Quinn down within inches of the training ground's center post.
Looking down at Quinn, he said, “You care too much.” He shrugged. “A human failing.”
Still sitting in the dust, Quinn caught his breath. “How do you stop caring?”
“By accepting. By releasing. By forgetting.”
“I can't forget.” He hadn't intended to discuss personal feelings with a Chalin general, but the general had seen into the core of him and called him on what he saw.
With a careless tone Ci Dehai murmured, “An immortal must forget, or carry a heavy load.” He looked at Quinn, well aware that his student was not of the Entire. For these practices Quinn had been told to take out his eye lenses since their imperfections hampered his training. But Ci Dehai was calling him to be of the Entire, at least in combat.
Quinn got up, slapping the dust from his pants. “Maybe forgetting is a Chalin failing.” If you forgot who you were, how could you care enough to go on?
The single eye glinted in the bright. “There is a river in you, Dai Shen. But it should run forward, not backward.” He walked to a covered gallery that bounded the practice field, where he took a drink.
Anzi came forward with a damp towel for Quinn. “How am I doing?” Quinn asked. She caught his ironic smile and allowed herself a smile in return as he accepted the towel, wiping down the sweat from his bare arms and chest.
“Ci Dehai is teaching you how little you know. So that is good.”
A movement on the rooftop caught his eye. Two people stood on the palace roof, watching the courtyard—one stout and short, the other slight and dressed in red. Over them, the bright cast a blurry light, obscured as it was this morning by a haze of moisture.
Quinn bowed in that direction. Yulin nodded to him.
The dew that had been heavy when the lesson began was now thinning to a mere gauze, and Suzong's red silks caught stabs of light. He hoped that he had read her correctly: that she craved autonomy from the Tarig. And that the reason she had come to him in secret that night was to break the First Vow without Yulin's complicity, in case the treason should be discovered. He felt a fierce gratitude for her willingness to commit that treason.
He bowed again, in Suzong's direction, and she returned it.
Ci Dehai took a long drink of water, then placed the empty cup next to his discarded shirt and the tangle of his necklaces. Quinn had seen that style of ornament before, on Wen An the scholar.
Ci Dehai beckoned Anzi into the yard, saying, “Now watch, Dai Shen.”
The two of them faced off. Anzi circled the general, diving close to slap his lower arms, retreating, advancing, and slapping. Quinn noted that the forays allowed her to keep her balance while punishing her opponent's arms. Ci Dehai began blocking her slaps, finally catching one, and in a swift move, twisted her to her knees.
“Here, I break her arm,” Ci Dehai said. He held her immobile, then released her.
“Again.”
Anzi began her slapping advances as before, this time sweetening her approach with a side kick that sent Ci Dehai to one side to evade the foot. Before he could face her squarely, she'd punched a slicing thrust at his elbow.
“Good. When fighting someone better, ruin his arms and hands.” Quinn saw that this was Anzi's tactic. The only part of Ci Dehai she could get near were his arms. At her first chance she attacked an elbow, even more vulnerable.
“When overmatched, be content with small harms. Small adds up to large.”
She came again, then was up in the air and crashing to the ground. It was too swift to know what had happened. Rolling away, she used her momentum to rise to her feet.
“Spend little time on the ground,” Ci Dehai said with only a hint of sarcasm.
Their session over, Quinn joined the master at the gallery, taking the proffered cup of water and looking more closely at the ravaged face. It had healed well, from the looks of the depth of the wound.
Anzi came up, adjusting her fighting tunic, unfazed by her fall. She smiled at Quinn.
“Ci Dehai has fought the Paion at Ahnenhoon and suffered his terrible wound at their hands. I'm not ashamed to lose a match with him.”
There was something of propaganda in her statement, but he needed to know more about the Paion, not least because they were enemy to the Tarig. “Who are the Paion, Anzi?”
Ci Dehai answered, drinking a long draft of water. “No one ever knows.” He looked off, beyond the palace within which their deserted square lay. “Nor has any living sentient ever seen one. They ride on the backs of mechanical simulacra, under carapaces of battle, and if we split one open, they dissolve, confounding our desire to see their forms and faces. They are foreigners under the bright—not of the Entire, neither are they of the Rose. So our scholars have it.” He paused. “Perhaps it is well for a military man to have a fine enemy, for there are none in the bright realm.”
“What are they fighting about?” The books had not been clear.
He scrunched up the movable side of his face. “No one ever knows.”
Ci Dehai wiped down with a wet towel and then took his necklaces from the bench, dropping them in place over his head. The redstones rested on his broad chest like a jeweled collar on a boar.
“Tomorrow then,” Ci Dehai said, and turned to leave, but Quinn stopped him.
“General.” As Ci Dehai turned back, Quinn said, “I'm privileged to have such a teacher. You have larger concerns than me, yes?”
Ci Dehai nodded. “I do. But perhaps a general rides too often, when he should walk.” He patted his ample belly, and he gave the half-smile his face was capable of, one that was large, even so.
Quinn bowed. “Nahil, Ci Dehai.”
Anzi bowed as well, and then they were alone in the courtyard, with Yulin and Suzong departing from the roof. Anzi waved happily to her uncle. In that unguarded moment, when her face was relaxed and free of serious duty, Quinn thought that he knew her from another time and place. The unwelcome thought came to him that there was no particular reason to trust Anzi.
Twilight had dimmed the bright, and Quinn was in the gardens once more, sharing a meal with Anzi by the lake. He liked to stare at the flat sheen of the pond, where occasionally he conjured memories. But, like the out-of-body experiences he'd once had, these visions were hard to follow—and believe in. It was as though someone else lived inside his skin. At times he resented that person, the one who remembered.
In the lake's smooth surface, he saw Johanna, her black hair disheveled, her eyes distant. Without the young girl. Haunted by a world that never had a night.
I'll bring her home, Johanna, he thought. He had come here to bring Johanna home, too, but that was not to be.
Twilight deepened into Shadow time, and the pool lost its faces.
Anzi stood. “I've brought you something. In the hut.” She led the way and entered his one-room living quarters, then knelt beside a box that she had left in the middle of the floor. “This is something you remember, Dai Shen?”
It was an adobe-colored flat-sided container, about as long as her forearm.
“A stone well,” he said, bringing forth the term from that reservoir within him. But until he'd seen this box, he'd forgotten that the sways had computing devices. Very odd ones.
“Yes. A well of keeping and releasing.” She reached into her tunic pocket and brought out a thong on which hung a small, irregular redstone. Untying the end knot, she pulled the redstone off the string and thumbed a nodule on the top.
A hole opened. She dropped the stone into the hole, which closed up.
Anzi cradled the box in her arms to bring it closer to Quinn's view. They waited. These things took time. The data rock must dissolve, and the molecular material must dock onto the locking sites, recognizing other molecules by shape. Computing work would result. It was pattern recognition based on shape-fitting. A uniquely Tarig twist to computer processing.
A picture formed on the forward face of the box. It was a wide plain, with an army massing. There were thousands of warriors, wearing armored suits in colors that may have signified branch of service. Great transport beasts stomped the ground, horselike animals with curved horns down their necks. Creatures rode them, creatures even stranger than their mounts.
“The Inyx,” Anzi said, pointing to the horse-creatures.
Quinn peered more closely. He had heard descriptions of these beasts. So, here were the native beings that ruled the Inyx sway. Incredible to think that Sydney lived among such creatures. Sentient creatures, he had to remind himself.
On the stone well screen, he noted a boiling black mass sliding down the flanks of distant, low hills. “Paion?” he asked, and Anzi nodded.
Quinn saw Ci Dehai standing on a platform with his lieutenants, pointing and directing. Behind him lay a dark and enormous keep.
“The Repel of Ahnenhoon,” Anzi whispered.
The stone well emitted a salty smell, bringing a flood of memory, of larger wells, and a labyrinth of rooms, where legates hunched over their labors. The Magisterium, he realized.
“Where did you get the redstone, Anzi?”
She watched as a contingent of tall Inyx mounts formed up next to the reviewing stand. But she didn't answer.
“Is this from Ci Dehai? He gave you the redstone?”
She shook her head, still watching the scene, and pointing at things Quinn should notice, like a Tarig lord who stood well back, watching, wrapped in a long cloak.
“Anzi?”
She looked into his eyes with her trademark calm. “For you, Dai Shen,” she said. “I borrowed it for you.”
Quinn thought that Ci Dehai had not given it willingly. “You'll get in trouble.”
“If he notices it gone, only then,” she said. “He has many stones.”
They watched the scene change as the bright dimmed over the battlefield, and the fight continued somewhere in the distance, where a clash of arms could be heard. But Quinn could only stare at the fortress. “Ahnenhoon,” he said.
“Yes. The fortress of the Long War. The Paion have come for many archons, beating on its doors. So far, our armies have kept them out.”
“Who lives at Ahnenhoon?” Besides—once—my wife, he thought.
“It's the station of Lord Inweer.” She glanced in the direction of the figure on the well screen.
He remembered that name. The Lord Inweer. His wife's jailer. Lord Inweer who looked so much like Lord Hadenth. It had taken Quinn years to figure out the difference between them. By temperament was the surest way. Hadenth was half-mad, for one thing.
The scene faded, and the stone budded out at the bottom of the box, falling into a small cup. It was still wet, but it looked exactly as it had before, despite having been dissolved. Anzi began threading it back on the thong.
“You stole it,” Quinn said.
“Yes.” She smiled as she threaded the stone on its string. “But I wanted you to see the battlefield. So you can almost have been there, which is the lie that must persuade others.”
Yes. So it would seem probable that Yulin had a son whom no one in the palace household had ever seen.
Anzi had grown still, and now her head turned slowly to face the open doorway. She rose, moving to the opening.
“Listen,” she said.
There was nothing. Then he realized the animals were silent. The treetops rustled in a breeze, but no bird cried from the aviary. No animal screamed or chittered. Even the lake was unnaturally placid. He and Anzi made eye contact, and he rose swiftly, joining her at the door. Tugging at his arm, Anzi led the way across the clearing, looking back as she hurried.
Then, in the shelter of the forest brush, they crouched down, watching. On the other side of the clearing, he spied a movement. A gardener moved among the bushes there, stealthily, and with the lurching gate of one whom Quinn recognized. The gardener, come to warn them of something?
As though in answer, Anzi looked at Quinn, shaking her head and frowning. She pulled his sleeve, urging him to follow her. “Quiet,” she whispered. They slowly moved out of their hiding place, retreating farther into the brush. They had barely spoken during these few minutes of flight, but by Anzi's alarm, he understood they were in peril. She led him to a cage where a door lay ajar, and nothing lay within but overgrown vines.
Quinn checked behind them. A line of sight gave him a clear view of the top of the great aviary. There on the cage summit, against the dimming bright, an impossibly tall figure stood watch, its skin glinting bronze.
Anzi hissed at him. He followed her, helping her lift a heavy plate from the ground. The two of them managed to raise it, though it was covered with soil and plants. She motioned for him to crawl in, and she came close behind, lowering the trap door.
They were in a tunnel, in complete blackness.
“Made for Master Yulin to escape,” Anzi explained. “Hurry.”
Quinn followed her, heart pounding. She had said the Tarig come and go, looking...But why now? Had the gardeners betrayed him after all? Or Yulin himself?
“It's the Tarig, Anzi. I saw one.”
“Yes,” she answered. “We are betrayed.”
The blackness of the underground passage was absolute. After so many days in a world where it never darkened, he was startled by the blackness, and the blind dash through the earthen tunnel. Yet, in that perfect blankness came a memory, keen and whole:
The escape capsule, heavily buffeted. Johanna at the controls, the ship breaking up, Sydney hunkering under a control panel while Quinn lurched forward, taking control of the navigation that didn't respond. Dead controls, screens breaking up, the capsule thrashing. He reached for Johanna, thinking it would be their last moment. As he reached out she took his hand, pulling herself toward him; and as he looked into her face, it stretched and twisted. He saw her face slide sideways. Sydney, he called, but no answer, until, as he lost consciousness, he heard her voice, far away, saying, Father. Father. Growing more faint. After hours or days or moments, he awoke to a patch of light. He saw a woman with startlingly white hair. It had been Anzi, he now realized. She stepped back, retreating so far she was pressed against the wall of a strange alcove. She looked like she'd just seen the face of God.
Quinn stopped cold in the tunnel. “I know you.”
After a pause, came a small voice from up ahead. “Yes.”
“Who are you?”
“No time, Dai Shen. The Tarig—”
“The hell with the Tarig. Who are you?”
“Please, Dai Shen. I'll tell you everything. First, run.”
But should he put himself in her hands? Where was she leading him? To more captors, as the other Chalin woman had? A sound close by. She had crept back to him, and he latched onto her, pressing her against the dirt wall. “Not until you tell me who you are.”
Her voice quavered. “Dai Shen, forgive me.” He waited to learn what for. She continued: “I took you here, into the All. It was my error, all my error. I am sorry.” She grew limp under his hands, sinking to the floor.
He crouched next to her. “You took me?”
“Yes, at the reach. Everything that befell you was my fault, because I saw you in your peril, and brought you into a worse one.”
“How? How did you bring me here?” He gripped her arm.
“The reach. At the veil. A forbidden thing, a terrible thing.”
He released her. “So that's what Yulin meant, that he hid me for your sake. Because you owed me a debt.”
“Yes, forgive me. I could never be happy since, knowing your sorrow.”
Sounds of footfalls came from above their heads. He pushed her away. “Why should I trust you now?”
After a pause, her whisper came: “I don't know.”
He leaned against the tunnel, trying to control his anger. “I don't either.” Muffled, guttural voices came to them. He whispered, “Get us away from here, then.”
They rushed down the tunnel, finally coming to a bright patch where the air freshened. They peered through a tangle of hanging moss at a cityscape of glinting black buildings.
Anzi reached into her tunic and took something out. A knife. “Take this,” she said.
It was the knife from the armory. The Going Over blade.
He took the weapon and climbed through the opening after her, wondering what else she'd stolen, besides the redstone, the knife, and his family.
Yulin was sweating, but then, the day was warm. The pot of oba sat on a tray, steaming, adding to the suffocation of the surprise visit from Lord Echnon, a Tarig they had never met, but one whom Yulin knew was loose in the city, watching and wandering, as they increasingly did these days.
“May I offer refreshment, Bright Lord?” Suzong asked in a sweet voice, very steady.
The Tarig lord sat opposite them, his vest and long slit skirt of fine-spun metal—a tasteless display of wealth and weaving skill. With slicked-back hair, the elongated face seemed too thin to contain a fine mind, or a kind one.
When the servants had first arrived, stammering about a lone Tarig at the door, Suzong had spat at Yulin, “Mention Zai Gan, and that he does not love you. Let us discredit him as a jealous heir.” She cursed Zai Gan in awful terms, always quick to blame Yulin's half brother for setbacks, and then, as the Tarig lord approached, she charged her face with a radiant smile, bowing low. It made Yulin wince inwardly to see her so frightened, and it set him more on edge than he was already.
“Oba?” Suzong asked the Tarig again. “Sorry, or I can send to the marketplace for skeel, which our kitchens lack, not expecting the honor of your visit.”
Lord Echnon looked out beyond the terrace where they sat, gazing at the garden treetops. “A very pretty garden. Yes, and its wild creatures in cages. Well fed?” Yulin winced inwardly, remembering how, earlier, the lord had climbed the aviary for a better view, his long arms grabbing for the crossbars, drawing the birds to peck at him, which had caused Yulin to nearly lose his bowels with dismay. But the birds soon lost interest in Tarig meat, and the lord climbed rapidly, like a river spider.
Well fed? the lord had asked.
Yulin had been breathlessly waiting for the conversation to get under way, and now that it had, he was speechless. At Suzong's pointed stare, he replied. “Oh certainly. The gardeners take excellent care of one's collection. Thank you for your concern, Bright Lord.”
He fervently hoped that by now Anzi and Quinn were well away, melted into the teeming city, or fleeing beyond it. But why had Lord Echnon come? Yulin had known that the lord was in the city, but prowling, as was their custom, not paying social calls, just watching, unnerving all who came near.
Suzong still hovered with the oba pot, not having permission to pour or not pour.
As they waited for the lord to direct the conversation, Yulin loosened his sash belt, feeling too warm. Suzong warned him with her eyes, as though to say, Stop fidgeting. God's beku, was he doing everything wrong?
Lord Echnon went on, “We have heard of the Chalin master's park with cages. It is even larger than our own grounds.” He took pity on Suzong and nodded for her to pour.
She did so, with remarkable steadiness, spilling not a drop. Then she poured for Yulin, who gratefully slurped, wetting his throat. “Lord, it is my refuge,” he said. “I have many enemies who wait for me to walk among them, so it is wiser to do my walking at home.”
Echnon picked up his cup of oba, holding it with surprising delicacy for one with only four fingers, and all of them too long. He drank, slurping with polite appreciation, though it was well known that Tarig did not favor oba.
The lord turned his tar-black eyes on Yulin. The worst part of a Tarig visit was that they did not blink, so the impression of a fixed gaze was unnerving, even if one was innocent. “Terrible when enemies lie so close to one's nest, ah?”
Yulin put on a face of gloom. “Yet more terrible when they are one's own...relatives, Lord. As sometimes happens, of course, despite all the overtures one can make.” There. He had blamed his brother, indirectly. It was all he dared to do, lest he look too obvious.
The main question was, did the lord know that a man named Dai Shen was here? If so, then better to mention Dai Shen first, to appear forthcoming. But if the lord didn't know, then no reason to mention a bastard son by a minor concubine. So Yulin dithered, wishing with all his heart that he and Suzong had had warning so they might have prepared a strategy. Now he was on his own.
“Excellent oba, Chalin wife,” the lord said to Suzong.
Chalin wife was not her favorite appellation, but she sweetened her smile even further. “No, certainly not, Bright Lord, not up to the standard, nor what you deserve, but thank you.” She poured again, saying, “If Zai Gan were here, we could all enjoy oba together.” She sighed. “Now he will hear that we had honored company, but he was not invited. Please, if you see him, say we were distressed to not have time to summon him.”
Yulin was impressed that she had managed to turn the conversation from refreshment to his brother, while suggesting that the brother was testy and jealous, and that they were sorrowful at his absence. She was adroit, and he began to breathe easier. His cup refilled, he drank to cover his lack of a follow-on remark.
“We will tell him,” the lord said, implying he would be seeing Zai Gan, the poxy fat schemer. So perhaps Suzong was right, and Zai Gan was behind this visit. Meaning that Zai Gan had a spy in Yulin's house. Meaning also that it was likely the lord knew there was a man in the garden. Or did he?
“Send for cakes, Suzong,” Yulin said. “Lord, may I offer food?” He hoped that this would force Echnon to come to the point.
The Tarig held up a hand. “Send for nothing. Sitting and discussing is enough, ah?”
Suzong said, “Certainly, Lord Echnon. Then, what news of the Ascendancy, if it pleases you to say? We live so far from great proceedings.” She leaned closer like an old gossip with nothing on her mind but Tarig glamour and the bureaucracy of the bright city. Yulin admired her more than ever.
Echnon turned his gaze back to Suzong. “Hnnn. News of the bright city. What would it please you to know?”
“Oh, anything,” Suzong chirped as though witless to be wasting the lord's time. “Lady Chiron, is she in residence? And does Cixi fare well? She is old by now, even older than this Chalin wife.”
The lord put down his oba and unwrapped his long fingers from the cup. “The Chalin high prefect does not tire us with her duties, which she handles that we may be spared them. But she lives. Still. As to Lady Chiron, she is sometimes there. You cannot know where we are.”
“Lord, my life in your service, I meant no disrespect. I am an old woman, too long on the margins to know fine manners.”
Suzong looked at the pot of steaming oba, cursing her stupidity. She had gone too far, but the fiend would not come to the point, and she was desperate for him to be gone, or to accuse her and be done with it. If they could just keep the lord talking, perhaps Dai Shen could escape with Anzi's help.
Lord Echnon sipped his oba, and the conversation lapsed.
Suzong glanced at his handsome face, so flawless, except too long. Everything about the Tarig was long and narrow, yet she knew they were fearfully strong. It would take little for him to snap her neck, as perhaps he was considering at this moment. May he take me first, she thought passionately, so I will not see my husband go down at his feet.
The lord said, “Ji Anzi has returned to this house, hnnn? Have we been misinformed?”
Suzong was startled, but Yulin controlled himself nicely, saying, “Yes, Lord, the least of my nieces has been visiting. Thank you for your interest in so small a girl.”
Suzong's blood cooled. So, Zai Gan did have a spy in their house, and had informed the lord. The spy must also have revealed their other guest. A suspicious patient in the garden was one matter, but if he were known to have blue eyes, that was quite another. But no one knew of the blue eyes except herself, Yulin, Anzi, and Ci Dehai.
Recovering, Suzong blurted, “Of course Anzi is nursing the bastard son Dai Shen, and so it is well that she happened to come home at this time. She has been useful to us.”
Yulin was looking at her as though she were demented to mention Dai Shen, but in this, he was wrong. Better to tell the lord first, before being asked or accused.
“Hnnn. Dai Shen. Your son, you say?”
“A worthless progeny, Lord,” Yulin said. “He hardly merits your interest.”
“Now husband,” Suzong said, “Dai Shen made a good soldier, since by all accounts he showed himself well at Ahnenhoon.”
“No, I fear he was average,” Yulin said pointedly. “Nothing whatever to brag about or dwell upon.”
Suzong shook her head. “Oh, that you could say such things of your own son! True, he has not the brains of a veldt mouse, but he is loyal, and a soldier. For shame, husband.”
Yulin began to catch on, saying, “Ci Dehai has been in battle a hundred times, and of all that time, only one wound. Dai Shen fights once and comes home with a dent in his head and loses what little common sense he ever had—can't even remember his own name, and now he'll be a hanger-on at court and I'll be forced to bear his presence.” He turned to Echnon. “Your pardon, Bright Lord, but my son is worthless, an embarrassment, and now I have him in my garden, disturbing my peace. The only place where I had privacy. Yet we do our best even for wayward progeny, do we not, even if he's one of a hundred sons?
With growing distaste, Echnon watched Yulin prattle on. Finally he said, “We would see Anzi, to greet her.” He unfolded himself from the chair and stood, towering over them.
Suzong nearly fainted. Then, recovering, she stood along with Yulin, saying, “Oh, Bright Lord, of course. She is bathing just now, but we shall send for her. It will take a few moments for her to prepare herself to see the bright lord. No trouble at all. In that case, we have ample time for a meal, and I will order it immediately.”
Looking down at her, the lord remained silent, as though considering her offer. If he accepted it, their ruin would be upon them. A rivulet of sweat fell down her neck into the silk collar of her jacket.
Then, brushing the matter aside with a sweep of his hand, the lord said, “Do not disrupt the Chalin girl's bath. We have duties that await us, ah?”
Yulin bowed as though the breath had left his body. “Of course, Lord. Duties. I sympathize.”
Echnon walked toward the door of the meeting chamber and paused at the threshold. “You should mend the rift with Zai Gan, Chalin master.”
“Yes, Lord,” Yulin said. “Immediately.”
Still gazing at them from the door, the Tarig said, “He was not in the garden, this Dai Shen. Bathing also?”
Suzong simpered. “Oh, he wanders, being addled from the wound. Wanders here and there, Lord.”
“Ah.” Echnon nodded, and then turned, receding from them, allowing them to breathe once again.
Suzong and Yulin waited stiffly until they could no longer hear his footfalls. One did not see a Tarig to the door, since they disliked being directed and came and went as they pleased.
A sheen of perspiration gleamed on Yulin's forehead. Suzong dabbed at it with the sleeve of her jacket. “My master of the sway,” she murmured with affection, glad she had not had to witness his garroting, rejoicing that Zai Gan had wasted the lord's time. But now, of course, Anzi and her patient could not return here, and Dai Shen was far from ready to walk freely among them. But at this moment it was enough that the bright lord was gone.
Still watching the door where the lord had departed, Yulin stroked his beard. When he spoke, his voice was a soft rumble, “Now, kill the gardeners.”
Suzong nodded. They should have been drowned in the lake days ago, of course.
She departed to order this done, her tread wobbly now that the crisis had passed. Finding her favorite eunuch, she whispered to him, “Feed my carp a special meal from the garden this ebb.” The servant's eyes narrowed, and he paused to make sure he'd understood her.
He had.
Arranged in terraces, black-and-gold dwellings descended the hill on which Yulin's mansion stood. The city enveloped Quinn, sprouting mazes at every turn. Now outside Yulin's compound, he was completely dependent on Anzi to know her way, and she led him swiftly through the tangle of streets. He suppressed the urge to keep looking behind them for the tall bronze lord, the one who might still be gazing from that high perch in the garden or striding close behind, searching the city for them.
In short order Anzi had stolen servant's clothing for him, and he followed a few steps behind her, adopting the demeanor of a servant for a lady of means.
The dark adobe buildings pressed in, rounded, mottled, unnatural. Complex smells assaulted him, from cooking and the press of bodies and the small produce gardens on the rooftops of most of the dwellings. In the center of such things, and in his rush through the town, he felt disoriented, hardly registering what he saw. He had to be wary of making assumptions in this strange place. Anzi, for instance. Not just a simple niece of Yulin. And where was she taking him?
They passed through a neighborhood where every house sold something, especially food, cooked on braziers on small covered porches. At one of these porches Anzi traded a stolen trinket for two drinks of water.
Out of earshot of the householder, Quinn said in a low voice, “Where are we going?”
“Do not talk, Dai Shen,” she urged. “I know a place.”
As they drank their water, Quinn noticed a small boy inside the dwelling, at his studies by the window. It was the first child he'd had a clear glimpse of in this land. In fact, so far in the city he'd seen only a few children. When you lived a long time, infrequent breeding made sense. The child stared, and Quinn turned away, thinking that perhaps his eye lenses were not as convincing as he wished.
Anzi returned the drinking cups, bowing her thanks, and led Quinn onward, down the hillside. The sky was more visible here, away from the tall trees of Yulin's preserve, and its silver expanse glittered in the Heart of Day. Spreading forever onto the plains, at times it almost looked like the sky on Earth with endless high cirrus clouds. Boiling.
Anzi stopped momentarily to pilfer another item. He thought her stealing went beyond what she needed to do, and that she enjoyed it, palming trinkets with one hand while making a show of picking one up with the other hand. It was hard to trust her. But if she and Yulin wanted to betray him, they could have easily done so earlier. Anzi's glance cut in the direction of Yulin's palace. It looked silent and quiet. Sometimes she looked at the sky, where, Quinn knew, the Tarig flew their aircraft. He had a faded memory of those exotic craft—brightships, they were called. Only the Tarig rode them. Oddly, when Quinn thought of the ships, his memory conjured a muffled, distant scream.
The vision clung to him, of the bronze-skinned creature on top of the aviary. He must flee those lords. But he must also close with them. To finish things, came the thought. Especially to finish things with Lord Hadenth, whose memory flickered just out of reach. He wasn't here for revenge, though, despite his hunger for justice. There was too much at stake to let personal enmity cloud his judgment.
“Where are we going, Anzi?” he said again.
As she walked, she murmured to him, “To hide. And while we do, to proceed with the changes to your appearance. I know a safe place; don't worry.”
“Trust you, then? All will be well?”
Her face was grim as she increased their pace. “Yes. But hurry, please.”
He stopped, and when she noticed he no longer followed her, she motioned him to a side street, out of the stream of foot traffic. Before she could complain, he said, “What is the plan, Anzi? I'm glad you've got one, but now I'd like to hear if it matches mine.”
She looked around fretfully, then relented. “There is a friend, Jia Wa, who will help us. He must alter your face. But first we must travel to his city.”
Quinn nodded. He'd been prepared for alterations to his face. “But where is this Jia Wa?” And, cautiously, he added, “And where is the scholar Su Bei?”
She told him that both men resided far away, entailing long journeys by train in opposite directions. She was beginning to gather that he would not follow passively, and she grew agitated. “We must find another way for your face surgery to happen. Since Yulin's physician is no longer available to us.”
“I don't have time to go to Jia Wa, Anzi. I'm going to Su Bei instead.”
“But why?”
Suzong had said he should find his own excuse for going, and he had prepared one: “I need what he has. My history of what I did when I was here before. I'll need those memories if I meet people I used to know.” But most of all he needed Bei to reveal who at the Ascendancy knew of travel between the realms.
“First to Jia Wa, then to Bei.” She glanced at him hopefully.
Not if they were in opposite directions. It could mean weeks of delay. “No,” he said.
They stood without speaking for a while. Anzi's face was unreadable, but she held her mouth firm, and he knew she was angry. She refused to look at him.
At length she started down the street again, leaving him. When he caught up to her, he said, “Well?”
She pointed to a turret rising high about the low-slung buildings. “I must stop there.” Coldly she added, “You can come or not.”
So, she was playing the game too. He needed her as much as she needed him.
Without a glance backward, Anzi headed toward the turret. Finally they came upon the spire standing in the middle of a commons, deserted and fallen into weeds. The spire rose some five stories. At its foot stood a man dressed in tattered white silks.
“Wait here for me,” Anzi said. “I must go into the needle.”
“I'll come with you.”
“No. It is a God's needle, not a good place.”
“What do you need to do there?”
“The trains, Dai Shen. We need one.” She added, “It would draw attention for two people to wish to approach God.” She cocked her head in the direction of the man wearing white, who now was watching them. “This is a godman. He worships the god so we don't have to. Stay here.”
She walked toward the needle, and despite her admonition, he followed her.
At the doorway, the godman examined the trinkets she showed him, wrinkling his prominent nose. He looked up dubiously at Quinn.
“My servant will ascend for me,” Anzi said. “And I will make sure he does.”
The godman looked unhappy at this proposal, but was mollified by receiving the best trinket from her assortment. He stood aside, and Anzi ducked inside the pillar, where a winding staircase ascended into the darkness. Mold and filth assailed Quinn from stairs badly in need of sweeping.
“Dai Shen,” her voice came to him. “The pillar is the altar of the god. It isn't good to come here, so I wish you had not brought attention to us. Of course, you don't trust me. I've given you good reason not to. But don't doubt Master Yulin, since he will fall with you if you fall.”
“What's in here, Anzi?”
“Nothing. At the top we'll look to see if a train approaches. We must take such a train, Dai Shen, to leave quickly. And yes, to Su Bei, if you demand it.” Now she had stopped on the stairs, waiting for him to come abreast of her. In this shadowy place he couldn't see more than her vivid white hair.
He wanted to trust her, but it was difficult after she had misled him about herself. “Anzi, you've been lying to me. Stop lying now.”
She expelled a long breath. “Yes, lying—by all that I didn't say. Forgive me, Dai Shen.”
No forgiveness was in the air. He waited for her to tell the truth.
She sighed, leaning against the rounded sides of the needle. “Once I studied to be a scholar. I was a small apprentice, to my teacher Vingde, who was the Eye of Knowledge. Vingde broke the Vow of no connections to the Rose. He found a way of seizing objects in the Rose, something never done before.”
Vingde had discovered a way to convey objects from the Rose to the Entire. To steal things. No wonder it appealed to Anzi.
“For approaching forbidden things, the Tarig gave him the slow death, their favorite death, garroting. After Vingde's death I went back. I wanted to see a being of the Rose. I wanted this with all my heart, but why, I don't truly know. When the Rose tunnel faltered, I brought your conveyance in.”
He held up a hand, stopping her. “How did you find me? How did you happen to seize my capsule to bring it here?” Did Anzi, then, have the secret of to and from?
“It was a game of chance. I knew just enough from my studies with Vingde. I would have taken anybody, and they might have been anywhere. After waiting a long time—fifty days—I saw your craft. Afterward, I tried to hide you, but the Tarig took you, and they never found me, nor could you tell them, since you knew nothing.” She averted her eyes. “I did this terrible thing, to bring you here.”
Quinn most likely could have taken the escape pod safely out of the K-tunnel. No doubt she'd told herself that she was trying to save his life. Instead, she'd nearly destroyed it. He had to turn away. When he faced her again, his chest felt crushed by the column of thick air in the pillar. “And here you are again, showing up, pretending to help me.”
“Not pretending…. ”
“Are you real this time, Anzi?” He stepped back from her, controlling his temper. “Or just curious again?”
“Oh, not curious. Dai Shen, please don't say such a thing.”
“Is it hard to hear, Anzi. Is it?”
Their voices had risen, especially his.
The white-garbed figure of the godman appeared on the steps below them. “Mistress?”
“Leave us. My servant is afraid to ascend. He will do so, though.”
The godman retreated down the stairs.
Anzi's voice took up the thread of her story. “Master Yulin was very angry. He regretted that he gave me all the advantages, so that I learned no restraint in my life. I abased myself before Caiji of the hundred thousand days, and she persuaded my uncle to help me, which I didn't deserve. Then we heard stories of you, and stories of your wife and child. All bad. So, as you suffered, I also suffered, but all in my own mind, imagining your horror, and knowing what I had done.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you, Anzi? I can't.” He wanted to. But for Sydney's sake, he couldn't let it pass. For Johanna's sake.
She knelt before him. “Dai Shen, you have the knife. Now you can use it to free yourself.”
“Free myself?”
“From the hate you carry, and from the sadness. Then, as Ci Dehai said, you can find that river to carry you forward. To a new life.” She paused. “God hates you, but it's no use to hate back. I've learned this.”
She reached up, fumbling at his tunic, to free the knife. But he slapped her hand away. “Stop it. I know I have the knife. What do you think, that I'm going to kill you in a church?”
“That would be a good place, if you only knew, Dai Shen.”
“Get up, Anzi.” She remained kneeling. He took her arm, pulling her to her feet. “Just stop lying to me.” He was tired of her voice. “Find us a train, Anzi.” He pushed her ahead of him.
At the top, they emerged onto a small platform heaped with rotting fruit and offerings, including coins and jewelry. From this vantage point, Quinn surveyed the near territory, looking for the glint of bronze skin, or any hurried activity, but the city appeared untroubled.
Bowing before the offerings, Anzi placed her handful of trinkets among the rest. She intoned, “Do not look at me, do not see me, do not note my small life. Do not look at this man beside me, poor and small as he is. These gifts make us poorer by far than others more worthy of your great notice.”
Here was an ominous god, one who was so malevolent even worshiping it was inadvisable. Thus the godman, to do it for them. “Do you hope He hears your prayer, or that He doesn't?”
“That is truly a scholar's question, Dai Shen.” But she didn't answer. Maybe she didn't think about such things. Everyone had their self-delusions—including Titus Quinn, he thought, although he wasn't sure what those might be.
Without further ceremony, Anzi turned and scanned the plains beyond the city. Squinting, Quinn looked as well, but saw nothing. More than any other feature, the bright commanded his attention. How could this river of sky exist? It was a colossal stream of energy, without a natural explanation. It had a Tarig explanation, though, as did the Entire as a whole, a place that could not exist, and yet did. A place, if not created by the Tarig, then at least exploited by them, and enhanced to sustain living creatures. Despite such powers, they were only copiers of what the Rose had evolved. So then, their one glaring inadequacy was lack of creativity. Perhaps they had other inadequacies, as well.
“Will the sky ever burn out?” Quinn murmured.
Anzi looked up at the bright as though considering this for the first time. “Surely not, Dai Shen. How could we live?”
Well, that is never guaranteed, he thought.
Just then Anzi pointed, and he saw a crinkle in the yellow plains that she convinced him was a train approaching from far away.
“Fortunate,” Anzi said, nodding with satisfaction.
“The right train?” Quinn asked.
“Who knows? But it's the one to the scholar Bei.” Motioning for him to hurry, she disappeared back down the stairs.
Quinn hurried after her. He had expected her to loot the offerings, there being several fine pieces among the junk, but apparently Anzi didn't steal from God. The woman had her standards.
Waiting for the train, they shared a pilfered meal in a cemetery close to the station. The cemetery was deserted, but still, they couldn't relax. Surely the Tarig watched the trains. Small flags fluttered from shafts that pierced the graves, giving each soul a lofty-sounding name: Weaver of a Thousand Silks; Son Who Saw a Far Primacy; Aunt of a Shining Face; Soldier of Ahnenhoon (many of those); Soldier of One Arm; Child Dying on the Nigh. Now they shared their meager meal, next to the grave of One Who Laughed.
From their place, they could see thick crowds milling on the platform. “How far is it to Bei?” Quinn asked.
“An arc, at least,” she said. An arc was ten days. A long time to remain undercover, trying to pass for Chalin. Anzi admitted that Bei, or those in Bei's service, could perform the alterations—although, she couldn't help but point out, it would be much preferable to go to Jia Wa and not be countermanding Master Yulin's orders.
Quinn remembered Bei's face. Frowning, netted with lines of age, the hair threaded with black. A hawk nose, and a hawk's eyes, blinking relentlessly, repeating relentlessly, “Tell me, Titus. Tell me...” And the old man would write, hunched over his scrolls, and Titus would listen to the skritch skritch of his pen.
“Do you think Bei will help us, Anzi?”
“If you must pick a destination not endorsed by Master Yulin, Su Bei is not a bad choice. He is loyal to Yulin.”
“But not to me.”
“Now they are the same thing.”
Quinn let himself hope so. He had been fueled by hope from his first day back. There wasn't much left without it. He had a young nephew who unwittingly depended on his uncle to return from the Entire. Helice Maki had made it clear: Quinn had to come back. Preferably with good news, but he must come back. Perhaps he would come back with more than she could imagine.
A commotion on the distant train platform signaled the approach of the train. They quickly rose, eager to be under way. It was a risk to be in close quarters with the denizens of this new world, but they had no choice. Anzi had listed all the rules of riding on trains. Every few moments she thought of one more thing he should remember to do or refrain from doing. They set out across the field of graves.
Anzi caught his attention with her eyes. Someone was following them.
She murmured to him, “I will pretend to relieve myself, Dai Shen. When he approaches, I will spring at him, and you also.”
He turned his back as Anzi went off a distance, crouching. And then their pursuer was upon them, taking Anzi down easily and catching Quinn's punch before it was even thrown.
Standing above them was a man with half a face. “You learned nothing,” Ci Dehai said, looking sour.
Anzi brushed herself off, rising to bow before the fighting teacher.
Quinn had fallen hard, but rose with what dignity he could muster.
Handing Anzi a small pouch, Ci Dehai said, “Four hundred primals. Spend little.” He fixed Anzi with a cold glare. “But spend, instead of stealing.”
Anzi bowed. “Thank you, High Warrior of Ahnenhoon.” The purse of money disappeared into her tunic pocket. Then, under his critical gaze, she reached into her pocket and withdrew the redstone, handing it to him.
The general took the stone, but still waited.
From his waistband, Quinn removed the knife.
Ci Dehai made no move to take it. “I would have thought my lessons better repaid than this.”
Quinn nodded. It was fair to think so, but a man needed a weapon, despite Helice Maki's theory that the Entire would be nonviolent.
“The Tarig—,” Anzi began.
Ci Dehai interrupted: “Wanted a tour of the famed gardens of Master Yulin. A lord, snooping—but finding nothing.” He recounted the conversation of the lord and Yulin. “Best to leave now, however.”
“Dai Shen insists that we see Su Bei,” Anzi said. “I couldn't dissuade him.”
The old warrior turned his face so that his one eye locked on Quinn. “Su Bei? No. Better to prevail on someone less conspicuous. Jia Wa, for example.”
Quinn responded, “I need what Bei can tell me of my history.”
“Not advisable.”
“Nevertheless.”
Ci Dehai looked at the man of the Rose with new concern. This Dai Shen had enticed Yulin into a ludicrous alliance: the Master of the sway and the Rose fugitive. The blackmail was explicit: Help me, or you'll be my people's enemy. And even Suzong of a thousand ambitions had urged her husband to comply. But to what advantage? What did it matter if Yulin was an enemy of the Rose? Since the Rose was powerless against the bright lords, why should anyone fear Dai Shen or his masters?
He looked at Dai Shen, still hoping to convince him against this new course of action. “Bei is in disgrace, and has little to offer.” But Dai Shen set his mouth and wouldn't budge.
Perhaps, Ci Dehai thought, he should save his master the peril of this rash scheme by dispatching Dai Shen here and now. A small matter, to slit his throat in this field. How could the man's patrons know that Yulin hadn't cooperated, if the emissary never returned? The Rose would send other scouts who would find other personages to exploit, and he would be doing Yulin an enormous favor. He itched to take his blade from its sheath at his waist and put this man into one of these convenient graves.
His hand hovered over his knife, and he saw that Anzi saw this, and moved between Ci Dehai and Dai Shen.
As Dai Shen grew wary, Ci Dehai saw his moment evaporating, when he could make a clean kill. He had lost the advantage of surprise, all because of Yulin's worthless niece. Still, it could all easily be done within a moment.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the train coming into the station.
Anzi said, “I doubt that my uncle cares whether it is Bei or Wa whom we take refuge with. Both are loyal. I'm sure my uncle would permit it, Warrior of Ahnenhoon.”
He relaxed his knife hand. He didn't want to hurt Anzi nor face Yulin's outrage if she was wounded. And now she was giving him an excuse not to kill Dai Shen, either. And so the moment passed when he might have killed the man. A part of him was relieved—the part that had sized up Titus Quinn in training sessions and knew him for a better man than most.
Ci Dehai turned to Quinn. “I see you are set on this course.”
“I am,” came the answer. “Tell Master Yulin I believe our enterprise will be safer if Su Bei can tell me my history.”
In the distance, on the train platform, crowd noises surged.
Ci Dehai snorted, giving in, feeling older than his days. Time was when he wouldn't have hesitated to save his master from a troublesome individual.
He glanced at the knife Dai Shen had stolen. “Keep the blade. Use it on Master Yulin's enemies.” Or on yourself if events turn bad.
He unstrapped a small pack from his back. “Here are some children's scrolls to continue your journey from ignorance. Also inside is a thong on which are strung four redstones, each one a copy of Yulin's message to the prefect.” He handed the pack to Quinn, who thanked him.
Turning to Anzi, he said, “Once again you have leave to create disorder. Your uncle has given you another chance. Don't squander it, Ji Anzi.”
Looking up to note the approach of the train, he said to Quinn, “If you make it to the Ascendancy, Master Yulin warns that you must, above all, win over the high prefect Cixi. But know this: She despises the One Who Shines. Master Yulin is second only to Cixi. Do you understand what this means, Dai Shen?”
Quinn nodded. “She won't welcome any chance for Yulin to succeed.”
“Can you charm a dragon, then?”
“Any hints?” Quinn asked.
“No,” he said. “I'm a fighter, not a diplomat.” As Quinn and Anzi repeated their thanks and headed off, Ci Dehai added, “And beware of her legates. They're worse than she is.”
Quinn and Anzi began hurrying toward the train platform, threading their way through the graves. “Does he like anyone?” Quinn asked Anzi.
She smiled. “He's too wise to have friends.”
Carrying the pack of scrolls and data stones, he took his position behind his mistress. She assumed a regal stride, clutching the purse Ci Dehai had given her.
They approached the platform where the thing they called a train was waiting. It was very long, and here at the loading dock he couldn't see the front of the assemblage, or the rear. The surface of the compartments was smooth but mottled, looking more like cooled lava than worked metal. No wheels, and no tracks. He could almost conclude that it was not a train at all, not as he would define it. But there were coaches. Between each coach, a connecting tube.
Just before they boarded, he had time to hope that when they copied this from the Rose, they'd had the decency to keep a caboose.