TWO THINGS SYDNEY GUARDED MOST CAREFULLY. The first was her journal, where she recorded her life; the second was the window in the stable beside which her bunk staked out a berth.
The journal was to record the wrongs that were done, for later reckoning. The window was for the pleasure of the light on her skin. Everyone wanted a window. But only a few, like Sydney, were willing to fight for them.
She sat hunched up by her window, punching the tiny holes in the paper, writing about Glovid's death and her new mount. Riod was a fine racer, but in accepting him, Sydney's status had fallen. Riod had a bad reputation. He had long refused war service, along with a few rogue mounts that he led on sorties to harass other Inyx herds, creating ill will and incurring Priov's displeasure. Making matters worse, he sniffed around Priov's mares, insulting the old chief. Given this poor match with Riod, she might draw trouble. In the stable, sometimes trouble was bloody.
She called her living quarters a stable, because she liked the irony of the riders living there. The mounts, of course, needed no shelter, preferring openness, always. So their riders slept and lived in a big, drafty barracks, created by the sweat of their own labor and poorly built, often leaking during a heavy dew.
“Click, click, Sydney. I hear you click click with the pin in the paper.” From the next bunk came Akay-Wat's breathless voice.
Sydney gripped her needle and punched.
“Akay-Wat hears the clicks, yes. You tell your book about Akay-Wat, why don't you?” She chuckled, that wheezing strangle that seemed to close her windpipe.
“You're in here,” Sydney said.
Akay-Wat gasped. “Oh yes?” She clapped her four limbs. “Pleased, then.”
The rider wasn't the worst neighbor in the barracks by any means, though she talked too much. Akay-Wat was a Hirrin sentient, one of the best riders, despite looking like she could be ridden herself. She had a sturdy back and long legs with hoofed feet that could hug an Inyx's sides, holding fast. The mounts liked Hirrin, because they never wanted saddles. Her face was small compared to her body, a mere knob on the end of a long neck.
Akay-Wat was always trying to curry favor with Sydney, despite how mean Sydney had to be just to make her shut up so she could get some sleep at ebbtime. When Sydney wasn't around, Akay-Wat protected Sydney's things: her book, her bed, her blanket. So she was loyal. And stupid as spike grass.
“Click, click,” Akay-Wat crooned.
You couldn't answer her or she would never shut up. Sydney punched with her needle, forming her ideograms that no one else could read because she had made them up. Particularly the Inyx couldn't read them, because they couldn't feel such subtle bumps. The diary was invisible to them, just like their world was to her. That was fair.
She ran her hands over the pages where she had recorded her days among the stinking beasts. Punched into the pages was the record of those grim days at the Ascendancy, when her world had collapsed. The blinding, the loss of Titus and Johanna. Time was when she had called them Father, Mother. After they abandoned her, after it was clear they would never come for her, they became only Titus, Johanna. Seldom thought of these days.
Now she punched in her account of her return ride after Glovid's fall, and the ripple of muscle under Riod's coat, his young body fairly exploding with energy. The bright overhead, the steppe beneath, and pressed between, only the ride.
Her right hand cramped at her task of punching words, but she continued to write.
Akay-Wat had grown used to the pricking noise. It came at all hours of the day and the ebb. Now that Sydney had secured a bunk with a nice warm window, Akay-Wat had become her neighbor, and her status had increased, yes, immeasurably. Akay-Wat's bunk was in a space between windows. When the bunk next to her emptied due to the Jout who went off to war—and, so sadly, never returned—Sydney laid claim to it and, by sheer ferocity, won it. This event, more than any other, taught Akay-Wat the value of violence. For herself, of course, physical violence was impossible. Because Akay-Wat, so regrettably, was a coward.
Akay-Wat was one of the few sentients actually born in Priov's barracks. At her majority, she could have chosen to go or stay, but if she stayed, she must be blind. Her mother, before she went to the Long War, had begged her daughter to leave for a better life, but Akay-Wat had been afraid to leave the life she knew. Then, shortly after Akay-Wat relinquished her sight, Sydney arrived: dirty, scrappy, and silent, unable to speak the Lucent tongue. Akay-Wat helped her to learn, but she knew she was not clever enough or brave enough to be chosen as a friend. Once, she had dared to join in one of Sydney's fights. An enormous Jout sentient had nearly taken her head off. Since then, Akay-Wat had resigned herself to the meekness that came so naturally. However, Sydney's contempt was hard to bear, and got no better despite the little services Akay-Wat performed for her. Someone should perform them, certainly, for Sydney was a personage, even if foul-tempered and disfavored by the mounts. She was a former denizen of the vast darkness, a creature of Earth—a human. Astonishing enough, but there was more: she had lived for a time in the Ascendancy, and been the special prisoner of the Lords Hadenth, Inweer, Nehoov, Chiron, and Ghinamid. Her father was the infamous barbarian Titus Quinn, criminal and fugitive.
None of Sydney's past history mattered to the Inyx nor singled her out for preference. The Inyx lived apart, in a sway far from the heartland, and in a manner remote from the cultures of the Entire. Lucent-speaking creatures feared and reviled them, oh very. The Inyx formed no ties except among themselves and their riders. Some even believed that the Inyx considered themselves above the bright lords. The Inyx despised all those who could not speak heart-to-heart. In other words, everyone else. The Tarig, for their part, tolerated the Inyx as little more than beasts who were too base to understand Tarig greatness. Truly the lords were gracious.
Akay-Wat heard a snuffling noise near Sydney's bunk. Someone was awake early, and came snooping. Bad. Sydney did not like to be interrupted when writing. Akay-Wat waited to see what the human would do at this provocation.
Sydney heard the noise too. Someone was shuffling next to her bunk. It was Puss, announcing his presence by a faint whiff of urine.
The catlike creature had long limbs for swinging in trees, of which there were none in this sway. For this reason, Puss's arms were always busy, gesturing and scratching and getting into trouble. Its long tail made it vulnerable at payback times.
“Got the book, I hear. Nice little book,” he rasped, like he had a too-tight collar.
Puss was an Inyx spy, a smarmy Laroo, of a species that seemed born to be base. “Take a bath, Puss.” He couldn't know the term, but he could guess it meant no good.
“What a sensitive little nose. I wonder how you can bear to ride. Our mounts are such animals.”
She wouldn't be led into criticisms of the Inyx. Once, Priov had beaten her for an insulting remark about the state of the chief's broodmares. Old, flabby, and barren, Sydney had said. Some of the mares took exception, and Sydney had paid for it.
Puss rasped: “Tell what you write in that book, little rose.”
“That you stink because you pee on yourself.”
“Maybe you just pretend to write, but it's all nothing but pinpricks. That's what everyone thinks. The little rose thinks she's better than us, doesn't she?”
She was trying very hard to ignore the rose bit. However, after a certain point, her reputation was at stake. Once you showed weakness in the stables, you lost everything. Her knife hung in its sling on the bedstead beside her. It had drawn blood before.
“I try not to piss on myself. It's not a high standard.”
Puss jumped onto her bunk, murmuring, with fetid breath, “I don't like you, and neither did Glovid, my good friend.” She heard a stream of urine fall onto her mattress.
Sydney jumped off her bunk, yanking Puss with her by one furry leg. Puss screamed in pain as he hit the floor. Racing back for her knife, Sydney unsheathed it and advanced on the creature. “Lick it up, piss-face.” She gestured at her soiled bed.
Riders were crowding around, always game for a good fight, the shouting equal for Sydney and Puss. Akay-Wat was clomping nearby, saying, “Oh dear, oh dear, bad fighting.”
Puss leapt for Sydney, landing all four feet in her chest and bouncing off, leaving a claw mark on her neck. She froze in place to listen. A faint scraping sound preceded Puss's next jump, and she reached up to cut his stomach. By Tarig law, she mustn't kill him, but a nice cut was fair payback. She felt her knife slice through fur and heard a caterwauling as Puss raced for the barracks door.
Sydney charged after him, pushing past the gathered riders, who piled out of the barracks after her, into the gleaming bright. Some of Puss's fellow spies were in the melee, by the smell of them. They took turns darting in and out as she turned, slicing her knife to keep them cautious. Suddenly, one jumped onto her back, biting into her shoulder. She tossed him away, hardly feeling the wound, but ready now to murder them all.
The gang of Laroos grew silent. By the sound of a hoof slapping the dirt, she knew that a mount had come to see the fuss ended.
Unfortunately, it was Priov.
A breeze cooled the sweat on Sydney's body. She stood, knife in hand, as Puss whined for good effect.
Who is using bad knives? Priov directed at the group.
A hundred voices answered: Laroos accusing Sydney, Yslis accusing Hirrin, and, above it all, Akay-Wat saying, “Peed on the bed, did Laroo, to cause stinking.”
As the voices quieted Priov sent, Here is one with a bad knife. She didn't need to guess whom he was looking at. She sheathed the knife in her belt, saying, “The Laroo have knives growing in their hands. Claws are just as bad as knives.”
Now that a mount had arrived, sight trickled into Sydney's mind. She saw the ragged and dirty riders, a bad mix of the ugly and misshapen: the monkeylike Ysli with their sullen faces; the witless Hirrin, a cross between an ostrich and a donkey; and the Laroo, reddish fur glinting in the bright, standing stooped over like apes, with arms trailing at their sides. In their midst, a small human with matted black hair, as ugly as the rest of them.
Bring me the cuff, Priov demanded. A Laroo went to fetch the long-tailed whip that fit around the fetlock of the Inyx. Sydney, go to the post, he said.
She held fast, trying not to show her outrage, or even feel it. She wanted to give no emotional performance for the Inyx, but she couldn't help but remember the last whipping, when her nerves ran fire and she'd bitten through her lip without noticing. She thought of her book, and pin pricking this into the pages, the four hundredth wrong, unless it was the five hundredth. All could be borne, as long as there was a list.
Priov's mares, who stayed close by him, trickled into the scene, nervously gathering up their riders and tossing their heads, disliking the emotion-charged atmosphere. The Laroos climbed on, and several others, as Akay-Wat chanted, “Not fair, not fair.”
Sydney walked to the post, keeping her walk steady, her head high.
Akay-Wat looked at Sydney with profound admiration. She felt more words gathering: her impassioned speech on behalf of her friend. But Priov's mood was irritable, and Akay-Wat feared he might whip her, too. Yes, let him whip me. She began to move forward. When she heard Priov stamp his foot, the impulse vanished. A whipping hurt badly, especially if Priov used the cuff with the knots. The shame of her cowardice cut deeply as she saw, through the eyes of many mounts, Sydney standing calmly in the center of the yard.
Akay-Wat's mount, Skofke, moved up beside her, bending down so that Akay-Wat could climb up. He caught the drift of his rider's thoughts, and reflected them back to her in a horrible reverberation: coward, coward, coward. She clung to Skofke's back in misery, watching her friend slowly turn to grip the post.
Priov approached, wearing the cuff.
The mounts kept arriving, gathering riders up, tossing nervously about, picking up a cacophony of emotions. Then a new emotion: foreboding and excitement. A mount was galloping down the gully near the barracks, black coat glistening.
It was Riod, his thoughts clear as a shout: She is mine.
Silence fell on the gathering as Riod came to Sydney's side. Up, he said.
No, Priov demanded. First, the cuff.
Her hand went out to Riod's strong face, making sure where he was. Sydney was thrilled but also wary. Riod risked much, especially in front of Priov's mares, all milling about, witness to whether Priov could control one renegade Inyx or not. But he had dared to side with her against another Inyx.
“I used a knife on the Laroo,” she told him, to be fair.
Which Laroo?
“The one that pees on beds.”
He sent an emotion of contempt, and then she felt his front legs dip for her to mount. She sprang up, and Riod charged out of the circle, Sydney holding tight.
They thundered down the gully by the camp, and then out onto the steppe.
Priov shall not hit you, Riod sent.
She liked hearing that. Even though it was in Riod's self-interest not to have an injured rider, she caught his emotion of loyalty. It was a fierce and lovely emotion, one that stirred her like no other.
Those who should be loyal often weren't. No one had stood by her in four thousand days here: not Johanna, not Titus, not the powers of the Rose who never came looking for the vanished family. Only one person in four thousand days: an old Chalin woman, the prefect of the Magisterium—and even she couldn't save Sydney from the cruel hands of the Tarig or the cruel hearts of the Inyx. Sydney nevertheless loved Cixi. Her messages came infrequently, whispered by couriers, Chalin legates bringing new slaves. Messages like, Persevere, my strong girl. Remember the vows. The vows she and Cixi had sworn to each other. Someday soon we will be together again.
Sydney rode on, letting all the bad things peel away on the wind. It was a good day to ride, and not be beaten. A good day to remember that the most powerful Chalin in the All was her foster mother—no, her true mother—who would come for her someday.
Twilight slipped into the Shadow time, and they slowed their pace. It seemed likely they would spend this ebb-time on the steppe.
Riod found a shallow ravine and a stand of spike grass, bending down so Sydney could dismount. He walked away, hoofing the sand for a chance at water. Eventually a pool formed, and seeing it in his mind, Sydney came to cleanse herself.
Riod pranced closer, sniffing her.
“I'm all right,” she said, feeling his curiosity about her wounds. Through his eyes she saw herself: ragged, short hair, and in the dirty face, eyes still blue but so blank.
It was easy to forget she was blind. Not so easy to forget the Tarig's embrace, as he held her, as the claw came closer. There was confinement, steel-locked arms, and the mantis lord whispering to her….
Riod's warm breath wafted into her face. He licked at the deep scratch at her neck. When she loosened her collar, he cleansed her shoulder bite as well. Riod's warm tongue was probably full of germs, but it felt good. She didn't want to like this mount. She wanted to exploit him as he exploited her. It was disgusting that, to feel important, the mounts must have helpless riders. The Inyx claimed that blindness enhanced the ability of non-Inyx to pick up silent Inyx communication. Even if true, Sydney bristled at their domination. And at her growing affection for Riod.
I'm not your pet, she thought angrily, pushing him away.
What are you? Riod asked, rudely listening in.
“Stay out of my head!” she said aloud. She kicked the grass in frustration, stomping on patches of thread weed as Riod watched, feelings hurt, mixing his own feelings with hers.
Tomorrow she must face Priov again, and the thought sickened her. But she was weary now, needing sleep. She found a hollow in the ground and lay down, trusting Riod to watch over her because she was too weary to care whether that made her more dependent on him.
Standing guard, Riod faced out to the steppe. Through his eyes she saw the flat world stretched out, clean and empty, with a lavender blush dimming the land. As she drifted into sleep, she felt Riod's mind probing hers, looking for something. He hoped that, with her guard down, he might find a shred of reassurance.
Sydney fled into sleep, her only privacy.
As Quinn and Anzi debarked the train at the village of Na Jing, Anzi steered Quinn away from the Gond who had taken insult in their failure to purchase goods. The Gond urged her sling-bearers to hurry after Dai Shen, but this ploy failed when the Hirrin princess intercepted Anzi and Quinn and, striking up a conversation that Anzi now welcomed, offered transportation to Bei's reach. In this manner, Quinn found himself in the only mechanical air transport commonly available to travelers: a dirigible.
He called it a dirigible, and the princess, named Dolwa-Pan, called it a sky bulb. Dolwa-Pan was traveling to Bei's reach for scholarship, and thought nothing of the expense of a sky bulb for her sole use.
Now, the Hirrin princess stood next to Quinn gazing out the window of the dirigible, her small, round head perched like a flower on the long stalk of her neck. She had apologized a dozen times for reporting them to the train magister, and still she wasn't done. “I should never have thought you were a danger. So foolish, Dolwa-Pan.” Her floral perfumes spiked into his senses almost painfully.
“One took no notice,” he said, in the idiom.
A trip of ten days by beku was shortened to one day on this small airship that skimmed over the minoral valley at a height of two hundred feet. Nothing except the brightships soared higher here or anywhere that he had seen. No birds, no airplanes. The bright commanded the vertical space, and to approach it was to sicken. Flickers of memory suggested that Quinn had indeed flown there, and for a moment he was shaken by a keen sense of pleasure in that ride.
He was eager to ask Su Bei. Bei would know the truth, perhaps unlocking once and for all the memories that half intrigued, half haunted Quinn. So much depended on this scholar whom he had once known. Would Su Bei help him? Most immediately he needed the facial alterations—according to Anzi, not a difficult task or one, fortunately, that involved cutting. If Bei was willing to tell Quinn his past and alter his identity, then surely he would go the next step, of telling him where to find the correlates, since, Quinn reasoned, one treason led to another.
Su Bei was said to be in disgrace, partially blamed for Titus Quinn's escape so long ago. That could be both good and bad for Quinn. Bad, if Bei blamed him. Good, if he blamed the Tarig.
And who did Titus Quinn blame? Always, the Tarig. But they had intermediaries, and one of these had been Su Bei, his interrogator.
It wasn't at all clear that Bei would welcome him or even tolerate him. And if this gamble failed, he had only himself to blame, for insisting on Su Bei rather than on Anzi's choice for a surgeon. As well, there was the danger that Bei would see a chance to redeem himself, and betray Quinn to the lords.
He put his hand on the lump under his jacket, on the Going Over blade. He was no murderer. But if Bei tried to call Lord Hadenth down on him, he would kill Bei without hesitation.
Dolwa-Pan noted his absent gaze as he stared out the window. “What do you look for, Dai Shen?”
“Peace,” he murmured. Stefan and Helice would never believe his goal to be so simple. But in the end, after Sydney, after his own sway, he wanted just that.
Dolwa-Pan said to him, “Surely all creatures may be at peace on the Radiant Path?” Her prehensile lip adjusted her necklace, a medallion on a blue cord.
Anzi was making her way toward them, putting a stop to his ill-advised conversation. She interrupted, exchanging bows with Dolwa-Pan. “A lovely ride, Princess. Allow me to reimburse you for your trouble.”
Dolwa-Pan flattened her ears in a no, and they began a polite argument over sharing the cost of the sky bulb, with Dolwa-Pan finally persuading Anzi not to pay. Thus Anzi managed to deflect the conversation to safe topics. Quinn felt her reins on him, and chafed. Anzi had already assured him that Hirrin sentients could not be spies. They were afflicted—or blessed—with a profound inability to lie. If they expressed something they knew was untrue, they quite simply passed out. After learning this, he began to see in them a naïve sweetness. He was still on his guard though, Anzi should realize.
Through the window, Quinn watched the storm wall as it hovered blackly, a mere handspan tall at this distance. Along the top, it rippled where it conjoined the bright. It looked like a tidal wave of water, and had since the first time he'd spied it. That image was hard to shake since hour by hour the wall grew. The minoral narrowed toward its tip, where eventually the walls would converge.
Dolwa-Pan lipped at her medallion, bringing it up closer to one ear, as he had seen her do several times. This time he was close enough to hear a very faint chime.
Noting Quinn's gaze, the Hirrin said, “The tonals of regression. It is only a toy, a bauble.” She gazed out the window and seemed to grow wistful. “It was my choice to journey to this sway, to pursue scholarship. But even in this far minoral, I know where the gracious lords dwell, in the heartland. The tonals sing very low. We are far away.”
Anzi murmured, “Yet the vows keep us ever close.”
The pious remark served as a reminder to Quinn that they were speaking to one devoted to the Tarig. Anzi had earlier noted the Hirrin's heartchime, and warned him to be wary. To some in the Entire, the Tarig were little less than gods, and not only because of their powers. The Radiant Path was the structure of justice and well-being.
Well-being for some, he thought. Not for a man of the Rose, or a human child.
Outside, a sight caught Dolwa-Pan's attention. The distant storm wall was pierced by a crack of blinding light, like a door through the wall, filled with fire.
“A nascence,” Dolwa-Pan said. “It sputters from life to oblivion. Like us all, yes?” She gave a puff of air through her lips, a thing that passed for a sigh among her kind.
Quinn smiled. “You are a philosopher.”
Her ears flattened. “I have no need for philosophy, as the bright guides me.” With this lofty sentiment, she departed to tend to her Hirrin child, a tiny replica of his mother, who slept in the stern, lulled by the thrumming of the deck.
The wind blew the sky bulb, buffeting it, whipping its mooring lines as people ran to catch them.
The pilot worked his instruments as, outside, the world frowned gray with streaks of lightning. It was a storm, the perpetual storm here at the boundary of the Entire.
The young Hirrin screamed in terror, saying, “We will fall, we will fall down.” Answering him, Dolwa-Pan clutched him under her body, saying, “No, sweet one, we will not fall.” Then with a heavy thump she collapsed on the deck, her legs splayed out. Anzi went to her, and Quinn helped pull the princess off the terrified child.
“Fainted,” Anzi said.
The sky bulb pitched and spun in the gusts. From outside, shouts came from those helping the sky bulb to dock. The pilot cursed and shouted instructions, although outside no one could hear him. Quinn felt a pang of contempt for a pilot who botched a landing. But at last, with a hard jolt, the craft was down.
“Now we are safe,” Anzi told the small Hirrin, patting it on the front legs.
The pilot stood in the small opening to the control room. He scowled at the unconscious Hirrin lying on his deck. “Lied, did she?”
Anzi nodded. “She believed that she lied about falling. But because of your fine skills, we are safe.”
He snorted and went to the egress door, throwing it wide and filling the ship with a sour wind.
A gaggle of scholars stood waiting to help. The pilot called for a litter to carry the Hirrin, and urged Quinn and Anzi to debark, anxious to be gone from this place.
Clutching his pack, Quinn stepped out, Anzi following, their hair whipping in the wind. On three sides towered the world walls, blue-black and undulating. The storm walls were stitched into deep folds, quilting space to time in a plaid of grooved lines. It was impossible to gauge how close the walls were. Sometimes they appeared to surge forward, and sometimes to recede, and then to do both at once. Craning his neck, Quinn could see the bright only as a narrow wedge, bravely holding a sliver of sky. The bright was irrelevant here, where the walls rose close and high, undulating and sparking with filaments of light. Ozone stained the air, along with an indefinable smell that made Quinn slightly nauseous.
It was easy to think of this gray and lightning-streaked sky as a storm, a weather front like those at home. But there was no rain or thunder, so the illusion wore thin. He knew very well it was an illusion. The reality was that surrounding him here in the minoral were the Entire's boundaries, the power-drenched skin of the world beyond which lay his own cosmos, a conjunction that might well be the branes of two universes, touching.
Not far away, perhaps a thousand yards, the storm walls converged to a vertical black scar, a seam that might rip apart at any moment.
The reach. The place scholars converged to view the Rose, and one of the places where exchanges between worlds occurred. A game of chance, with all the odds against you. Unless you knew your way.
A group of Chalin scholars herded Anzi and him away from the dirigible. Grit blew in Quinn's face. He let himself be led until he could just make out a low structure highlighted by an impressive streak of yellow lightning that ribboned through the air.
Once at the building, they ducked under an archway and through creaking doors. Out of the wind and chaos, they paused and faced their hosts. There were five ancient Chalin, black-haired and shrunken. Hearing Anzi's request to speak with Bei, they bowed, saying they must determine whether Master Bei could be disturbed. They disappeared through a door set in the far wall.
Alone now, Quinn and Anzi took in the unfurnished hall, its floor littered with sand oozing through chinks. The nearby tumult caused the air inside the hall to thrum. Then the doors flew open, announcing the arrival of Dolwa-Pan, carried on the litter. The young Hirrin cowered next to his mother, and the party disappeared behind the inner doors.
The building rattled in the wind. He noted its disrepair: the cracks along the foundation and a slump of stone in the corner.
Anzi pointed to the high, carved door where the assistants had gone. “That's the To and From the Veil Door. There's one such door in every reach where scholars work. It will take us down below.”
Underground. He had wondered how scholars approached the tips of their world. He drew close, seeing that the door was etched with designs, now deeply pitted. He ran his fingers over the worn carvings. It was Lucent calligraphy, almost obliterated with time. He made out a portion: withhold the knowledge...the reach of the Entire.
Anzi came up next to him. “The Three Vows,” she said. And it was: the Three Vows repeated over and over around the door.
“Anzi, does every minoral have a reach like this?” If so, there were potentially thousands of access points to the Entire.
She paused. “Like this? No. Every minoral has a tip, but not all are valued and occupied.”
“Why not?”
“Not all are useful. Some yield nothing but darkness. But those that are productive, in those places the lords have provided the veils.”
“But even these are sometimes unreliable.”
She frowned. “Unreliable? They are all unreliable.” Shrugging, she added, “Some more than others.” She watched him closely, perhaps worried that she would be accused again of withholding information. “Scholars have great patience to wait at places like this.”
“The Tarig don't wait, I'm sure.” At her look of inquiry, he explained, “They'd know where to look, and when. Having the correlates.”
She shook her head. “But the lords seldom come to the reaches.”
“Maybe they want to hide the fact that correlates exist.”
Anzi grew thoughtful. “Yes, they do deny it. But if they have such correlates, it makes a mockery of all the studies, all the years of waiting.”
“Not very gracious of them.”
She glanced sharply at him, noting his smile.
“No,” she agreed. “It isn't.”
A noise came from the inner door. Anzi murmured, “Now we'll see if Su Bei is a friend or not.”
The door opened, and an assistant stood there. He had only a few strands of hair left, but these were carefully pulled up into a topknot. They followed him through the To and From the Veil Door and across a small anteroom into a box that, with much creaking and grinding, began to descend. And kept descending.
How deep was this world? And how could it be contained as it was? As the ozone-laden air infused his mouth and mind, it collected a memory: that he had once been captivated by that question, and that the answer had eluded him. Chalin legends said that the Entire was a natural place, enlivened eventually by the Tarig. Descending into this subterranean place, he felt a frisson of both awe and dread at this world's scale. It was said to be smaller than the Rose, but still profoundly vast, with land distances that normally could only occur in space. Nor was the Entire an extended ribbon of land: it was miles deep, perhaps infinitely deep. It came home to him once more that the bronze lords ruled more than the peoples of the Entire; they ruled nature.
With a small bump the elevator door opened. The assistant led them into a cavernous hall, where a domed ceiling arched over a center mound of instruments. Amid an impressive rack of stone well computing devices, only one was active, lighting the face of a lone scholar, an old woman bent over her screen. She craned her head to see who had interrupted her, then went back to her task.
They followed their guide into a corridor where the end was lost in darkness.
Without turning around the old man said, “If we had received warning of your visit, we could have enlivened a car. Now we must walk.” He led the way down a smooth tube, rounded on top and sides but shattered here and there by intrusions of soil and rock. Light nodes budded from the walls, waxing and waning with a throbbing of the ground. Quinn heard the drumming and felt it in his boots, his skin. After a few minutes, Quinn noticed a harmonic underneath the general vibration. It was a repeated refrain of four notes, simple and annoying. As they continued walking, a deep hum surged and faded, like a bass string plucked once. Whatever the rock and soil was composed of, it sang under the vibrations of the storm walls.
They came to the end of the tunnel and found a small chamber, rounded and domed like the first. Instrumentation crowded the walls, sharing space with long roping ridges like buried cables.
A man waited for them. Standing in the chamber was a man whose face was as lined as a crumpled map. A heavy rope of redstones hung around his neck. His white hair was shot through with streaks of black and was gathered in a clasp behind his neck. He stood nearly Quinn's height, and erect, with the form of one who had been robust in youth. Instantly, Quinn recognized him. Su Bei. He dug for shreds of memory. None came.
Anzi bowed, but Bei's gaze was on Quinn.
Quinn said, “I think you know me.”
Bei turned away, shaking his head. “A good day turned bad. Visitors, they said. By the bright...” He muttered something more, then turned back to them. “All that trouble getting you gone and what good did it do?” He nodded at the assistant, dismissing him back down the long tunnel.
Bei frowned at Quinn. “You've aged.”
“Hazards of the Rose.”
The old man snorted. “But they're your hazards, not mine. Why do you bring me your problems?”
“What makes you think I've got a problem?”
“If you're here,” the old man said, “you have a problem.” He glanced at Anzi. “Where was he found? Who knows about him?”
Anzi stepped forward. “I am Anzi, master.”
“I know who you are.”
She passed by this remark. “Wen An brought him from the Ti Jing reach, injured and stunned. She sent him to my uncle, and all who saw him are now silent, except Wen An, whom we must trust.”
Bei moved to Quinn's side, studying him from that angle.
Now a gleaming section of wall came into view—a glistening and translucent membrane covering a cleft in the room. Here, the walls of the chamber converged at an acute angle, leaving the membrane to cover a gap of perhaps four feet wide by nine feet high. It was impossible that the transition between worlds was constrained by the thin veil, or was it. The walls receded past the membrane into a long and tapering crevice that appeared to be filled with a viscous solution that pulsed now and then, causing the veil to tremble. Its surface flickered with starscapes.
Noting his gaze, Bei said, “You remember one of these?” He peered closer at Quinn. “You remember me?” Then he answered his question himself: “No, you don't. Good.”
“What are you afraid I'll remember?”
“Everything.” He gazed at Quinn a long time, then said, “Why have you come, Titus?”
“For your help.”
Bei grimaced. “No doubt. But why have you come back to the Entire?”
“For my wife and daughter.” And revising, “For Sydney.”
Bei closed his eyes a moment, and then shook his head. “The worst possible reason.” He came closer, examining Quinn's face. “Are you sure it's you? Yellow eyes—I don't remember yellow eyes.”
Anzi said, “Lenses, master.”
“So,” Bei said, “Yulin's helping him. Got himself an escort and fancy ideas about the daughter.” He turned to Anzi. “Yulin sent him to me?”
She shook her head. “But my uncle knows he came here, master.”
“So the old bear managed to avoid committing himself, eh? Doesn't surprise me.”
The membrane darkened suddenly, to utter blackness. Bei noted Quinn's gaze. “If I had my way, I'd send you through here this moment. But as you see, there's only death on the other side right now. Someday the veil might be productive.” He grimaced. “I'll have my grave flag by then. Meanwhile, the old and the infirm are welcome to it. And Hirrin royals with fancy ambitions.”
Quinn held his gaze. “I don't want to go through. When I do, it'll be with my daughter.”
“Daughter,” Bei muttered. Turning to Anzi, he said, “He's been addled like this since he arrived?”
Anzi faced him squarely. “He thinks he can save his daughter. Might it be true, master?”
Bei looked at her like she had caught Quinn's madness. “Might it be true? Of course it isn't!” He turned to Quinn. “Your daughter is far away. Another primacy away. No one goes there; why should they? The Inyx are good for nothing but running and dying in the Long War. Do you think the Inyx would give up your daughter easily? Alarms would be raised, and before you had gone a day's journey, the lords would have you. In all that you have forgotten, have you forgotten that they travel on the bright? Have you forgotten how they hate you?” As though in answer, a thrum sounded under their feet, a profoundly bass note like a chthonic god saying hmmmm.
Bei waved a dismissive hand. “No, you don't remember, of course not. You can thank me for that. When I sent you home, I sent you with white hair and drowned memories. The drowned memories were so you would never come back.” In a quieter voice he said, “The white hair was because I thought you might.”
He reached up to pick at Quinn's silk hat. “Still white? Good. It worked, then. I'm not a magician, you know. I don't have the power to find your daughter or help you kill yourself. Yes, I once served the Tarig. I lived among them and had every power a Chalin could want. Then Titus Quinn fell into a rage and everything fell apart. You struck Lord Hadenth.”
He peered at Quinn, waiting for a reaction. “Yes, struck him, with a lucky—or unlucky—blow that almost killed him. Then you fled Tarig justice, the first ever to do so. All this occurred under my tutelage, my responsibility.” He turned from Quinn and stared into the grotto of light, flickering low. “They let me live, thinking me witless. But my scholarship was over. All my studies. Taken from me. All my scrolls...” His voice quavered. “I came here. There is nothing left but scraps. We paste them together. So I have nothing to give you.”
He stood, looking old and defeated. “Go home, Titus. There's been enough ruin.”
Quinn let that sit for a moment. “The memories you took. I need them.” It was only part of what he needed from Bei, but the old man's mood was poor for asking favors.
Bei exclaimed, “What good would memories do you? They're all of the Ascendancy. It's all you knew, back then.” After a moment, understanding dawned. “You're going there?” He looked in astonishment at Anzi, then back at Quinn. “You will lie at their feet. And as well, the girl who helped you, the girl who started the whole disaster. She'll join you.” He peered at Anzi. “Yulin is allowing this?”
“My uncle says there is no stopping the people of the Rose. Now that Titus Quinn is here.”
Bei turned to Quinn. “Is that right? No stopping the human hordes?”
Quinn said, “No stopping our use of the Entire to travel in the Rose, by a detour through the veils.”
Bei looked from one to the other, running his hands through his hair. “And the daughter? She is relevant how?”
Quinn grew weary of the old man's hostility, but he kept his own impatience in check. He needed Bei's goodwill. “She's only relevant to me.”
Bei sighed. “This will be easy. Snatch your daughter from the Inyx sway. Open the veils to human travel, trusting that they have no interest in staying to live forever.” The old man paced, and as he did, his redstones clacked together, swinging on their strands. “I draw Titus Quinn to me like Paion to Ahnenhoon.” He shook his head. “God has noticed me.”
“You have no children, Su Bei.” Quinn was guessing, but he thought that was right. If he'd had children, he'd know why Quinn couldn't give up.
“No, no children. But if I did, I wouldn't let myself be killed for them.”
“I think you would.”
Bei shook his head. “You haven't changed. You never learned that things pass. She's lost to you. Best to accept this.”
“I can't do that.”
Bei eyed him with disgust. “Human, you are human. I keep forgetting that. Even if I sent you home, you'd be back, chasing after life and all the lost things. Why did I ever think otherwise?” He looked at Anzi. “Yulin has set all this in motion. I blame him. And the red crone, who should know better.” He raised an eyebrow at Anzi. “So they succumbed to the Titus Quinn spell, did they?” She didn't answer, and Bei turned back to Quinn. “You attract fierce attachments; you always did, Titus. Some you had cause to regret.” He slowly shook his head. “You don't remember that part, do you?”
There was a long pause, filled only by the throbbing rock and its odd harmonics, endlessly repeating. Quinn thought that if he stayed here long, he would have to plug his ears against that music.
A long silence ensued as Bei twitched his mouth in thought. Then he said: “I'll give you what is yours. Your story. But you won't thank me for it.”
“I will,” Quinn said.
Bei snorted. “We shall see.”
He walked to a side door and opened it, gesturing them through. As he did so, the veil's membrane flashed brighter, showing a streak of glowing, interstellar gas. A streak of white formed a finger of hot light, as though pointing the way into the abyss.