SYDNEY WOKE TO A DRIP OF WATER IN HER FACE. The stables resounded with the patter of water falling from the roof.
Knowing that the fog must be heavy, Sydney drew on her padded jacket, cinching it tight around her waist. She slipped her knife into her belt, in anticipation of breakfast if she was lucky.
Akay-Wat stirred on her pallet. “The traps, yes?” came her voice.
“Go back to sleep, Akay-Wat.” She wanted no freeloaders along.
“Your mount could bring you breakfast, but he is in mischief, oh yes?”
The whole stable knew of Riod and his pack of rogue Inyx. Again yesterday they had thundered off across the roamlands to test their courage against nearby hapless encampments, and better-behaved ones.
Ignoring Akay-Wat, Sydney slipped across the stables to the door, hoping to avoid the notice of the Laroo sleeping in a pile in the corner.
Outside, the fog met her face in a cool wool. It was early, the Between time. The fog might last until Early Day, by then filling their catchment system on the roof, supplementing the reservoir water that had retreated farther underground in recent days. Sydney snugged her jacket around her and made her way to her traps. She had high hopes for a steppe vole or two. The desert prey liked her traps in the heavy dew times, because they offered a roof—an innovation that other riders had copied from her. Technology in this sway was a receding dream. The mounts could use none, and liked independence from Ascendant things—the engineered food crops, their programmable adobe, their molecular computers.
Sydney liked that the Inyx shunned the mantis lords. Referring, in her former tongue, to the gracious lords as insects gave her a keen pleasure. Once a mantis lord had assaulted her, but that would never happen again, here in this far sway.
The stiletto claw flicked out. His voice, rasping: Now you will look out for the last time, small girl. But she had promised herself not to think about that. It was written down.
The things that could never be written down, nor barely thought of, concerned her friend, so far away, so close in her heart: Cixi. When, in her messages, Cixi urged her to remember the vows, they were not the vows of the mantis lords. Cixi had taught her new ones: Oppose the lords. Forswear the Rose. Raise the kingdom. The first two were easy, and she would have vowed them, anyway. Raise the kingdom was less clear to her, but Cixi had taught her that the kingdom yet to be was a worthy vow, and for love of her foster mother, Sydney had sworn to it.
Kneeling before her trap, she felt inside, finding several plump grubbies massed around her bait. She clipped them to the chain at her belt to carry them back to the roasting pits.
A noise pierced the fog, the high scream of an Inyx in the distance. She stood, listening, attending. Riod was home. She worried when he was gone, worried that he would stumble, as Glovid had, or that Priov would punish him, or that one of the herds he set upon would teach him a lesson.
Inyx hooves pounded in her direction. By the mount's sendings, it wasn't Riod, but Skofke, the battle-worn mount of Akay-Wat.
Drawing close, Akay-Wat announced: “They come with a stranger and large!” Her mount was eager to be gone, and stomped impatiently. Sydney picked up Skofke's excitement that Riod's band had captured a monster.
“Bring me with you.”
Akay-Wat extended a leg to help Sydney swing up behind her. On Skofke's back, they pounded toward the pasture.
“What monster, Akay-Wat?” Sydney asked as they galloped.
“Big as a mount! Dumb as a rock!”
Well, the monster must be dumb indeed, if Akay-Wat thought so. They approached the pasture, along with a throng of Inyx and their riders. Through many Inyx viewpoints, she was aware of the hulking mounts, horned and broad, and their unkempt alien riders. But of course, they were not alien here, only herself. Their smells clotted the air, a familiar stench that had long ago ceased to offend.
Through Skofke's eyes, Sydney saw Riod, his black hide darker and more lustrous than the others. Also, among the mounts, a troll moved, dark and lumbering.
More Inyx pounded in from across the encampment, massing into a dense herd. Not a good thing. It would have been better if Riod had sneaked in with less notice, since Priov disapproved of the forays. Riod tossed his head and snorted at Sydney, for now staying by his fellow rogue Distanir, an enormous dun-colored beast with one of his neck horns missing.
Riod sent, Riod is back, best rider.
Priov nosed into the center of the crowd, along with his rider, the detestable Feng. Cruel and big-boned, the Chalin hag still rode despite a withered leg, the result of a crushing fall under Priov. She nursed a particular hatred of Sydney for no good reason except that Sydney equally despised her, and once had beat her in an Inyx race when others would have let Feng win.
Feng spat at the stranger's feet. “Ya. Ugly as a turd.” The Chalin man—for he was Chalin, surely, despite his lumpish and gigantic form—glared at her with blind eyes. A nice trick, one that Sydney would like to learn.
From a hundred pairs of eyes, Sydney saw a fractured image of the man. The top of his head came nearly to Distanir's ears, if you counted his prodigious white topknot, gathered up in the military style. His arms were as big around as one of Sydney's thighs, his chest like a rain barrel. Even on such a large body, his face was oversized, from crumpled forehead to wide chin. In the stony face, the only expression was in his eyes, small and mean.
Priov's mares capered around this newcomer, sniffing rudely. But none of them looked big enough to be his mount. Besides, Distanir was sending a clear message, that he had already chosen the giant. The story came out in fits and starts, of how they had come upon the distant encampment of the band led by Ulrud the Lame, and the monster, this Chalin giant, had grabbed Distanir by the forehorn and nearly brought him to his knees by sheer power of his arms. Not expecting to steal anything other than honor, Riod and his fellows nevertheless charged away with their prize, and Ulrud's herd pursued them until the fog set in, covering Riod's retreat.
Riod came to Sydney's side, urging her to trade mounts. She sprang over to join him, and their delight in each other was instant. “Back, Riod, yes,” Sydney said, caressing his strong neck, realizing that without her planning it, and almost against her volition, Riod had found a place in her affection.
My rider, he sent to her, with overtones of exhaustion and pride.
Priov's hoof crashed down, shattering the mood of reunion. The old chief's displeasure radiated out to the assembled riders and their mounts. This raiding of Ulrud's roamlands would not do. They had brought an ugly prize, not even worth it. The mares screamed and pranced, defecating in agreement.
Goaded to action by this display, several mounts nipped at the giant, pulling on his clothes. He turned to glare at the harassment, but his beefy hands hung at his sides, passive. His attackers cantered away, and seeing that he would not retaliate, others darted in to yank at him.
Oddly, as the charging and nipping continued, not a single thought came from this man. To his credit, he seemed unafraid. But there was something insensible about him, as though he did not quite rise to the level of sentient.
Then Priov stepped close to the giant, and from her perch Feng reached down and pinched the man's bulbous nose. At this, the Laroo decided he was fair game, and left their mounts behind, clawing at his legs. Puss stood near the giant's boots, doing his usual: peeing.
Asserting his right of property, Distanir chased the Laroos off, leaving the Chalin man looking down at his wet feet. Being blind, he could easily smell what he could not see.
Sydney urged Riod to approach the giant. She looked down at the man. “You can fight back, you know. It's permitted.” She waited, seeing no reaction. Perhaps, being stupid, he couldn't talk. “Can you speak?”
The man stared into the fog, his mind as empty.
“It'll go better for you if you speak. It'll go better for you if you fight.” The man was becoming a fine target for cruelty, but he was causing it himself. “Most sentients have a name. Do you?”
Then the giant spoke, but it startled her, and everyone. His voice was soft, even effeminate. “Mo Ti,” he said.
The riders laughed. Mo Ti, they mimicked in lisping tones. Feng cried out, “Balls the size of marbles! Take off his pants and have a look!”
A Laroo jumped from his mare and approached Mo Ti, but warily.
Catching Sydney's displeasure, Riod surged forward and sent the Laroo sprawling.
Riod spun in a circle, looking for more fights, but this tussle was not about Mo Ti, Sydney realized, too late.
Puss, who had slipped away from the crowd, was now back, scampering up to Priov, handing something up to Feng. With a jolt of dismay, Sydney saw what it was. Her book of pinpricks.
Feng held up the book for all to see, while Akay-Wat took up a ululating cry: “Unfair, unfair.”
Priov sent: Thirteen days ago Riod's rider ran from her beating. Now she will lose her book.
As Akay-Wat's chant of “unfair” grew louder, Feng swung around to growl, “Keep your face shut, or I'll tie your ugly neck in a knot.” At this, Akay-Wat's cry halted as she cringed from Feng's threat.
Satisfied that she had the camp's attention, and sitting high on Priov's back, Feng opened the book and pretended to read. “I am a little princess of the Rose. Akay-Wat is very stupid, and should worship me.”
With a brief kick Sydney tried to nudge Riod forward, but he held fast to his position. Meanwhile Akay-Wat threw her distress into the minds of all, as though she had any reason to care.
Sydney turned in Akay-Wat's direction, giving vent to her disgust: “You spineless Hirrin. Your own mother a soldier! I would sooner look like this monster than a creature like you.”
Then, propelled by frustration, she recklessly jumped off Riod's back and stalked toward Feng, who was still pretending to read: “A princess like me should have a decent mount, not a scabby, mareless—”
Sydney reached for the book, but it was far out of reach, and Priov danced in a circle, keeping Sydney at bay.
Then, overcome with fury, and ignoring Riod's sent warnings, Sydney yanked as hard as she could on Feng's withered leg. The woman toppled from Priov, landing on her back in a thud. From the ground, she managed to toss the book to Puss, who bolted away. Sydney fell on the woman, landing a punch in the big woman's eye. Or somewhere that hurt badly, since it was all conveyed secondhand and the visual disappeared in a bewildering array of perspectives. All that was left was Feng's hatred flowing back from a hundred Inyx.
Riod stepped between them, a great wall of disapproval.
Sydney moved back, shamed that the crippled Feng was having difficulty rising from the ground. At Riod's command, Sydney mounted him, her misery now compounded by her own despicable behavior.
Akay-Wat was making an absurd whining sound that only someone with such a long neck could make.
Sydney hissed at her, “Just shut up, can't you?”
The shouts of the riders abated as a few of Feng's cronies helped her back into the saddle. In this comparative quiet, Sydney strained to find any sign of Puss, but the thief had fled with the book.
The only image that came strongly into her mind was that of Akay-Wat dismounting from Skofke and hobbling away, ears flattened and a slump in her neck.
With Puss's escape, Sydney's pinpricks of memory were lost. Gone was her record of those first days in the stable, when the old lord Flodistog had broken her spirit and commanded her to groom his ticks and clean his hooves; when she had learned to bunk with criminals who took her silk clothes and her scrolls and every other thing she had acquired in the mantis realm; when it first came to her that she would never go home, nor did her mother wish to go home, nor did her father remember her. When she had first learned what it was to be blind. And then to see the world in shattered glass.
Tears gathered, and though hidden in the fog, every mount knew her sorrow, and conveyed it to every rider. Her humiliation was complete.
“Wants her mommy,” Feng crowed. “Ya, we'd all like to have her mommy!”
Sydney urged her mount out of the camp. Riod, his mind filled with dismay, shoved his way out of the crowd and bounded away, seeking the privacy of the steppe. As he ran, the tumult of the camp with its chaotic sendings gradually diminished.
In a nearby gully, Sydney dismounted, leaning against Riod's solid neck. More tears might have come then, but she remembered her advice to Mo Ti: It will be better if you fight.
She would live like this no longer. She could endure fights, the camp's hatred, even whippings. But she must have honor, even if it only came from Riod. As the sky waxed into a stronger fire, the fog tore apart, clearing her mind.
“You know what I want,” she said to Riod.
To kill Feng? To ride Priov? Best rider has many wants.
That was true. Except about Priov, who was old and slow. “I want...” She struggled for words. “I want you to think of me as a free rider.”
Into Riod's mind came an image of the steppe, and a swift ride. This was what freedom meant to an Inyx. She would have to teach him what it meant to a human. “A free bond,” she said.
You accepted Riod.
“Not freely.”
What is a free bond?
“That I take you as my equal.”
You are small. Not Inyx.
“It doesn't matter.”
On the ridge Distanir appeared, and on his back, the giant Mo Ti, almost the same size as his mount. Sydney didn't want them near her. The giant had no true thoughts; he was an animal.
As they watched, Distanir and Mo Ti joined them. Through Riod, she saw the glower in the giant's little eyes, and knew one day he would strike out, and any sentient in his way would be dead. Maybe she would provoke him, and end her life. Sensing this, Riod's distress flooded her.
Sydney whispered to him, “I'd rather die than live this way.” She raised her face to feel the day's warmth, and its power came into her. “But if you make me free, I will raise you high, Riod. As my equal.”
Then Riod bent down, persuading her to mount again. As she did so, he sent: Yes. Equal. Free bond. By the flood of his mind, he gave her all that she asked for.
She leaned across his curved horns, rubbing her face against his neck. “Yes,” she answered. “Beloved Riod.” He didn't want her as a prisoner, but as herself. And trusted that her heart would still be bound to his. Yes, always, Riod.
Standing nearby observing all this were Distanir and his new rider. Sydney resented having to share these intimate thoughts with them, much less hear the giant intrude, saying, in his soft voice, “And Mo Ti, free bond, too.”
A surge of emotion came from him, hitting Sydney with unexpected force. The man had opened a window, and out had come a gust of desire.
Distanir bristled under the man's weight. He sent, You must prove yourself among us before such a gift.
It was a reasonable judgment, but Sydney was now considering Mo Ti in a different manner. He wanted free bond. This Chalin beast had heard her ask, and it had awakened his own desires. Wouldn't all riders desire it?
“Distanir,” she said. “Let Mo Ti be free. It's a better way to ride, yes?”
Distanir pawed the ground, remaining quiescent, holding his thoughts. But Mo Ti's eyes were alight, looking at Sydney with a new intelligence, with an assessing look, if her clouded view could be trusted.
A thought tugged at her, from under a pile of resentments, wrongs, and pinpricks: Wouldn't they all desire free bond? She let go of this thought in order to consider it further in private.
Her business with Riod was not finished. There was one thing more she must have, for honor's sake. Addressing Riod, she said, “My thoughts, beloved. Those are mine alone. Teach me to hide them.”
This drew agitation from Riod. Riod can't. Why hide what is plain to all, speaking heart to heart?
“Your thoughts aren't plain. You must send thoughts. But mine can be stolen. Some thoughts I don't want to share.” Thoughts of Cixi, for example, whom she must avoid thinking about for fear of exposing her. “Teach me to keep my thoughts, beloved.”
Riod can't. But Riod can create storms around your thoughts. Others will hear only confusion.
His pronouncement thrilled her. If what he said was true, no longer would Feng or Puss read the thoughts she so desperately wished to contain. “What if we're separated, Riod, when you're alone with your rogues? Can they steal my thoughts then?”
Riod creates a storm even from a distance. Others will not like it.
“Oh, but I'll like it, Riod. I'll like it very much.”
Her response flooded him with gratification. She laid her cheek against his horns and thought that already their free bond was a better bond than before. When she straightened, she sensed that Mo Ti had urged Distanir closer to her, until their knees almost touched.
Then Mo Ti brought forth something from his jacket. In his large square hand Mo Ti gripped the book of pinpricks, slightly charred, but intact. He handed it to her.
The book's leather cover was burned. Sydney felt pieces of it flaking away. But the rest had survived.
Distanir sent, Mo Ti put his hand in the fire. No one dared approach him. Feng is angry. An overtone of amusement threaded into the comment.
Sydney felt a grin spread across her face. She liked this Chalin monster, no matter how ugly he was. Unlike Akay-Wat, he was a worthy companion. She tucked the book in her jacket. It would never leave her side again.
“Perhaps, Distanir,” she said, “Mo Ti has proven himself?” Leaving Distanir to chew on that notion, she gripped Riod's rear horn. “A race?” she proposed.
Before the terms were even decided, Riod and Distanir charged out of the gully, onto the tundra. Sydney leaned forward, gripping the horns, whooping in joy.
It was a magnificent race, and one that she long remembered, even though she and Riod lost. Because against all odds, Mo Ti was a better rider.
“Don't look at them,” Anzi hissed as they rode in the open pedi cab.
Quinn tried not to stare. But in the crowds of the teeming city of Po, many Tarig roamed, their height making them stand out among lesser beings.
“Ignore them, Dai Shen. The murder has attracted them to the wielding, especially this axis point where a criminal might flee. If they stop us, I'll answer them.” She didn't look as though she was eager to do so. They had no idea how the Tarig questioning of Su Bei had gone; if badly, then Quinn's disguise might not hide him any longer.
Anzi kept her voice low, so as not to be overheard by the cab owner, who pedaled them toward the landing field. There they would take passage on another sort of blimp for their trip to the Nigh.
They wound through the pedestrian streets crowded with food stands, vendors, and hostels—most catering, Anzi said, to sentients needing to send communications. Quinn spied dozens of Tarig, often merely standing and watching, at other times towering over those they spoke to, their gazes neutral yet disturbing. He couldn't distinguish male from female, but he knew both went abroad with equal power. Their sculpted faces drew his gaze. It unnerved him that he'd chosen their image for the door knocker on his house. It was a cry from his subconscious to remember. But when he got home, he'd strip it off.
Anzi kept her hand on Quinn's forearm, in a gentle reminder to be inconspicuous. She didn't often touch him, and he wondered if she thought him so unpredictable that he'd do something to attract attention. Lately her worry was at the prospect of his contacting Lord Oventroe at the Ascendancy. He intended to pursue this matter of the correlates, although to induce Oventroe to deal with him, he might have to reveal who he was. Anzi argued against that, but in the last few days, seeing his resolve, she'd given up.
Pedaling furiously, the driver turned to look at them. He was an old Jout sentient, with massive shoulders and almost no neck, making turning around no mean feat. “Taking which road, mistress?” He pointed to an intersection where thousands of pedi cabs converged with people on foot.
“The quickest way, Steward,” she said.
“I'm no steward, by the bright.” The Jout's skin, rough with the overlapping armors of his hide, tightened in peevishness. Apparently the flattery hadn't been welcome.
“Then, Factor, pedal us the fastest way, and there'll be extra for you.” They were in a hurry to be out of this public setting; although Quinn, after five days on the train, was eager for a change.
An hour previously, they had arrived at this axis city, situated at one of the great sky pillars. On the outskirts of the city they had passed endless fields of gleve, the staple plant in this region. Engineered to produce edibles, gleve plants hung heavy with many staples, colorful vegetables and pods of quasi-meats. But by far the most arresting new view was the axis looming over the city. It was a massive and shining rope, connecting ground to sky, falling from a height of perhaps thirty thousand feet. Unlike the bright itself, the axis didn't buckle and fold like boiling porridge. Instead, it fell straight downward like a laser, where a domed structure accepted the beam into its roof. This pillar was the communication stream. Was the bright limited to sublight speeds? Quinn couldn't remember. But there was no other way to send messages, with radio impossible.
Now, coming to the end of the long ride through the city, their pedi cab arrived in a region of low hills covered with a fuzz of blue ground cover. There, hovering over the land, was their conveyance, an Adda, a floating being filled with a buoyant gas. Many days ago, when Quinn had been a prisoner in the jar, he'd looked over the plains and seen these beings dotting the sky. The creature was a true symbiont, one that had developed a relationship with travelers in exchange for food. The Adda who took passengers were all female, since the great cavity of the belly was used to transport young, and the males were too small to be useful.
“The Adda is sentient?” Quinn asked. Anzi had said so, but the beast did not look a likely winner in the intelligence race.
“In a way. There are more varieties of sentience here than on Earth. Her sentience is for electromagnetism and vanes of bright radiation.”
This symbiont would be their conveyance, if they could arrange passage. However, the lone Adda floating overhead was in high demand, beset by hundreds of Chalin and other sentients hoping to travel in the direction of the River Nigh, a direction called in the Chalin vernacular to the Nigh, as traveling away from the river was against the Nigh.
“How many can she carry?” Quinn asked.
“Oh, many, Dai Shen. Twenty or twenty-five individuals, if small.”
“We'll have a long wait, then.” They were far back in the line for passage.
She motioned him to follow, and they climbed up the slope of the hill where people were gathered. At the top, Quinn found that below them lay a deep crater.
In this depression floated a congregation of many Adda. To stabilize themselves they gripped guy wires in their mouths.
“The Adda assemble here out of the winds,” Anzi explained. “This valley is a subsidence, where an aquifer collapsed long ago, from overuse.” There were ways that a geography of sorts could form, but most uplift, of hills, for example, happened near the storm walls where the land bent from the forces of the dark boundaries. Still, this was a dramatic valley, in Entire terms.
Anzi plunged down the side of the hill, pushing through the crowds where people were climbing ladders and handing up satchels and bags of the fare: the seed food that motivated the Adda to take on passengers.
“That one,” she said, pointing to a smaller-sized behemoth that had lowered a membranous ladder but had not attracted riders thus far. “No one wants that one, so we may be able to journey alone.”
They purchased four bags of seed from a vendor, and Quinn hoisted three of them on his back, Anzi taking one. He followed her as she approached the symbiont. “Passage, grain for passage,” Anzi shouted to the Adda.
The great beast's side eyes shifted to examine the seed bags. The thick eyelids descended in a ponderous blink. Then the Adda lowered, signaling permission to enter.
Anzi climbed the ladder, then took the bags one by one from Quinn. As the last bag went on board, a flurry of activity drew Quinn's attention.
A personage was approaching, pushed in a decorated cart by three large Jout. Although the person's body was obscured by the sides of the cart, its head identified it instantly. A Gond.
The Jout pushed the cart toward Quinn as the Gond looked up at the Adda, shouting, “Passage for the godwoman, Nigh bound!”
The Gond's great horned head stared up at the Adda, exposing the Gond's aging neck, deeply hung with flabby flesh. She wore a white vest and sash, marking her as a follower of the Miserable God.
The cart came alongside Quinn, and the Gond, although sitting in the cart, came nearly eye to eye with him. The red gums of her mouth hung down, exposing the roots of her carnivore teeth. In the back of the cart were the sacks of grain that would be the godwoman's passage.
Quinn put up his hand. “We're full.”
The godwoman grinned, taking the comment amiss. “Not at all full. Plenty of room.”
“The Chalin woman travels alone.”
“The Chalin woman travels with you, my friend.”
“She likes not godmen.”
“Neither do I.” The Gond waved to her Jout helpers to take the sacks of grain on board. One of the Jout hoisted a sack and headed for the ladder, but Quinn blocked his way.
“Find another berth. You're not wanted here.”
The Jout stood shorter than Quinn but bigger around, and there were two more where that one came from. The Jout said without expression, “Give way.”
Anzi's face appeared in the orifice of the symbiont's belly, but Quinn was already dealing with the Jout, pushing him backward.
As the Jout surged by him and set a foot on the ladder, Quinn brought out his knife and thrust it into one of the sacks. Brown kernels spilled out, raising a cloud of dust. In her bass voice, the Gond barked, “Foul. The grain paid for!”
Several coins sprayed down from above as Anzi threw payment on the ground in front of the godwoman. The Jout paused, looking at Quinn's knife, still drawn. Then, sourly, he descended. “Foul,” the Jout repeated, but without conviction. He set the sacks down and motioned his cohorts to abandon the cart. They wouldn't fight for a godder, as the clergy were sometimes called.
In the ensuing quiet, Quinn sprinted up the ladder. When he started to draw it into the pouch, Anzi said, “No, the ladder stays down.”
As Quinn backed away from the opening, he heard the creature growl, “May God bless your journey.”
Hearing this, Anzi thrust her hand into her purse and threw many more coins out of the pouch opening. “Take back the prayer,” she shouted as the Adda let go of the ropes tethering her to the ground.
The godwoman laughed out loud, rumbling, “And may God keep you in His gaze all your days!”
As Anzi fumbled for more coins, Quinn stopped her. “It's only words.”
She looked doubtful as she crouched at the orifice, but ceased throwing money down.
The Gond sat in her cart with a wide circle of emptiness around her. Her wings glistened, wings that could never hope to raise her off the ground. A fallen angel came to mind, as the creature conjured visions of heaven and hell combined.
“I didn't know Gond could be priests,” Quinn murmured.
Anzi recited, “No sentient being is beyond hope.” She eyed Quinn. “But you, Dai Shen, should not have drawn a knife.”
He knew he shouldn't have, but sharing quarters with a godwoman could have been disastrous. Anzi bit her lip, but said nothing.
The Adda had risen into the sky to a height of about a hundred feet. Nearby, other of the blimplike creatures were letting go of their guy wires and starting a slow movement away.
They watched as the gathering in the valley receded.
He looked around him at the Adda's travel pouch. It was perhaps two-thirds of the creature's size, and was surrounded by pink, fleshy walls smelling of warm yeast. The balloon in which they rode swayed gently as the prevailing winds pulled it into the great migration path toward the River Nigh. As long as the seeds lasted, the Adda would not be tempted to descend and forage.
From high in the fleshy cavity came a whooshing sound.
“The wind in the Adda's sinuses,” Anzi said. She opened a bag and propped it against the Adda's side.
In a few moments, from the roof of the cavity, feeding tubes descended. They plunged into the first bag, producing a snuffling sound that clearly signified a boisterous feeding.
Quinn glanced at the orifice that served as the door of the passenger cavity. Once again he had drawn notice to himself, despite his resolve not to. But it was unthinkable to travel with a godwoman, much less a Gond. Godmen and godwomen were lonely souls, eager for converse and gossip. Some might well be in the employ of the Tarig. He took out the Going Over blade and began cleaning it.
Anzi sat next to him. “It was well done, Shen. To prevent the Gond from boarding. You had no choice.”
“No help for it now.”
“No,” she agreed, looking out through the orifice as though scanning for pursuers.
As the Adda drifted toward the Nigh, they began the longest duration of any leg of their journey.
Even though the primacies were narrow—perhaps four thousand miles wide—it was a slow journey to the Nigh from the populated centers on the other side of the primacy. But once a traveler arrived on the riverbanks the journey was almost over. So the heartland was near in a sense, as was Quinn's destination: the Ascendancy in the center of the heartland. From this hub radiated all the lobelike primacies, each with its own great river. He would travel another of those rivers to reach the primacy where Sydney lived.
Would she remember him? How would she remember him?
Since his meeting with Bei, he knew it was not a settled question.
In the valley of the Adda, the godwoman BeSheb looked around her, noting that her Jouts had fled and no one would approach her now to offer assistance.
She brushed her jacket, wiping away the grain particles that soiled the sacred white of her vestments. Foul, foul. A waste of grain, and now the coins lying where any miscreant could pick them up. She watched as the vile Adda set out on its journey, one that she prayed would be plagued by river spiders.
BeSheb shifted her weight in the conveyance and prayed to calm her spiking emotions. “Oh, Miserable God look at me; oh, counter of sins, observer of sorrows, creator of evil, craftsman of the poxy Chalin! Look at me. I am not afraid, I am not debased to attend thee, I freely give obeisance…. ”
A passing Hirrin looked with alarm in BeSheb's direction and ambled away, flattening her ears so as not to hear the prayer. The circle around the Gond grew wider, but no one dared touch the coins that sparkled in the bright like the yellow eyes of a buried god.
BeSheb threw her head back and voiced her prayers, and as she did so, her distress eased, and finally she grew silent and began to count the coins. Twelve of them, two of them primals. Well. That was ten times the price of the grain, and rightly compensated for her humiliation. So then, paying for one more sack plus the muscles of some hapless sentient to carry it, there should be plenty left to—
A shadow bent over one of the primals.
A Tarig crouched to pick it off the ground. He turned to BeSheb. “Your coin, ah?”
The Gond drew her wings around her, to settle her appearance and prepare to deal with the fiend. The Tarig were not believers, and God hated them even more than He hated most. Such was the teaching of the seer Hoptat, who set down the Ways of God the Miserable archons ago, before the days of radiance.
“Yes, Bright Lord, my life in your service,” BeSheb whispered, knowing that her voice was more subservient when gentle.
The lord approached her, holding the primal in his long fingers.
“Someone pays very handsomely for your prayers.”
BeSheb lifted her head to better see the fiend. “As to that, pardon me, it is not the case. The miscreants paid for damage to my sack of grain, which they inflicted by means of a sword, improperly drawn and threatening my Jout helpers.”
“We see no Jout helpers.”
The Gond licked her lips in irritation. “Certainly you do not. They fled.” She was still waiting for the fiend to give her the coin.
The lord fixed her with a most unpleasant gaze as the circle of emptiness around her widened and even the Adda moved off farther.
The Gond added, “One is sorry to contradict the lord, but truth is not always pleasant.” If he wanted to take offense, so he would. But the miscreants had insulted her, BeSheb of Ord, and she'd sooner end her days than keep quiet about it.
The Tarig's voice came melodious and calm. “Who has a sword and is using such?”
The Gond pointed skyward. “There, the Chalin man goes, riding alone, because he did not wish the Miserable God to accompany him.”
“Hnnn. Wished to be alone.” The Tarig seemed to smile. “Many wish to shun the God of Misery. We give permission to shun God, ah?” He fingered the gold primal, moving it among his four fingers like a filthy conjurer.
BeSheb scowled. “And permission also to wield knives?”
“You are bold, BeSheb, to speak so.”
He knew her name. Not just a lord stumbling upon a situation, then. Perhaps she had let her irritation show improperly.
The lord went on. “We like you. Speaking directly and fearlessly. Not often the case, BeSheb. One welcomes such diversion.”
BeSheb smirked. “They are all groveling toadies. A Gond speaks her thoughts.”
The coin fell, and BeSheb caught it. The Tarig turned, summoning with a gesture a Chalin boy who watched them from a distance. “Pick up the coins for this personage, young Chalin,” the lord commanded. “Then do the god-woman's bidding until the ebb, not requesting payment. Ah?”
The boy stammered his agreement.
As the lord stalked off, BeSheb settled her bulk more comfortably into the cart, smiling to herself. The God of Misery sometimes came through generously. She fingered the coins as her new helper brought them to her. He was a good Chalin boy, nice of feature, though grubby. She put her mind to the task of planning how the boy could further serve her, in private, until the ebb.
As the Adda floated onward, Quinn and Anzi sat cross-legged on the fleshy floor, just close enough to the orifice to watch the land slide by.
As they sat side by side, Anzi took something from her pocket. On a long blue cord was a circular medallion. It looked familiar. She put it to Quinn's ear, and the heartchime struck a tone, clear and soothing.
“Dolwa-Pan's heartchime,” he said.
“To listen to the approach of the heartland,” Anzi said, handing him the necklace.
Quinn couldn't reprimand her. She never kept anything for herself. He wondered if the Hirrin princess would make a decent scholar, like Bei, or a failed one, like Anzi. He said, “The princess liked to keep track of how close she was to the Ascendancy.”
“Yes,” Anzi said thoughtfully. “She should get over it.”
Quinn held the heartchime in his hand, wondering how it measured distance and translated it into music. “You're not devoted to them,” he said to Anzi, thinking how there must be many in the Entire besides Suzong and Bei and Lord Oventroe who didn't serve the gracious lords.
“They know all the knowledge—all the things I wonder about.” She smiled. “But no, Shen—would I be here if I served them?”
He had to remind himself how Anzi jeopardized herself, being with him. But he didn't think that she thought of herself as a dissident. Or that any Chalin did.
“The Chalin haven't ever rebelled. No one has, right?”
She blinked. “Rebelled? As in war?” The thought was clearly beyond her. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
Clearly, his question had disturbed her. Perhaps she saw the people of the Rose as prone to war, and feared a confrontation. He'd promised Su Bei that he'd protect the Entire, should the correlates ever become known. To do what he could. Thinking of the predations of Minerva, that might not be much.
“It may come to war, between our people,” he said to be as honest as he could.
She sat with that thought for a time. Then she murmured, “Whose side would you be on, Shen?”
He started to say the Rose. Because he was of that place. But something blocked the saying of it. He remained silent.
They sat without speaking a long while then, and Anzi let the subject pass.
The hills gathered closer, into a rumpled plain that would have defied a train's path. Toward Last of Day, they passed over a forest of stubby golden trees. In its depths he spied a floating chain of winged insects, linked together, sweeping clouds of gnats into the airy basket. They watched the ground give way to corrugated valleys. He felt a peace descend, a familiar thing, something that came from the Entire, or the bright, or the singular vastness of the place with its unknowable horizon.
Hours later they tired of the views and, making what beds they could on the grain sacks, slept.
He woke to the waxing bright, greeted by the sour smell of grain and the innards of the Adda. They had left the forest behind and were skimming very slowly over a lake.
“It's very shallow,” Anzi said, having wakened and come to the edge of the opening to sit with Quinn. “Water doesn't generally collect on the surface. The bright burns it off.” She stopped short. Then she shoved him in the chest, with a sharp whack of her hand. “Back,” she hissed.
Just beyond the shore of the lake, a figure stood on the ground, hailing them. Beside the figure, a brightship sat on the plains. The Adda had slowed.
“Tarig...,” Anzi whispered. “He comes.”
“Maybe the Adda won't stop.”
“By bond law, the Adda has to stop. That's why the ladder is always down.”
She hauled him across the floor, pointing up. “Climb, climb.”
“Why? We have our cover story.”
“But you drew a knife; they might question you too closely. Go!” She pushed him toward the wall. “Use the ridges as footholds; go into the sinuses. Hurry!”
“What about you?” He struggled with her as she kept pushing, and as the Adda kept lowering.
“I can pass! You can't!” She started slapping at him. He began to climb, then looked down at her. “Go,” she repeated, waving her arms at him.
He climbed where she'd pointed, finding that the skin was ridged enough for a handhold. Near the top of the wall, the air grew hotter, alive with a yeasty smell. He saw a curve. It led into a small tunnel that required him to go on hands and knees. The yeasty smell grew deep and sickening.
He felt the blimplike body shake as it became clear that the Tarig had grabbed hold of the ladder and was coming aboard.
Quinn entered a bony, scalloped structure that spiraled wildly, with depressions and tubes branching out and dead-ending. This must be the sinuses Anzi referred to. A breeze wafted through, and Quinn hoped that the Tarig didn't smell keenly.
He folded himself into a ball to keep from falling in this slick place. But hiding wouldn't help much if the Tarig had reason to search. Had the god-woman raised suspicions about them?
He huddled and listened.
“Ah, the Chalin girl,” a melodious voice said.
“Lord, my life in your service,” came Anzi's small voice.
“We do not know you.” The Tarig's voice was deeply rich, and resonant, but the Adda amplified it hugely, and made it the voice of the beast herself.
Anzi said, “I am Lo May, of the Chingdu wielding, Bright Lord.”
God, she was lying. Quinn closed his eyes, listening hard.
“Going where?” the Tarig asked.
“Lord, by the Nigh, to visit my parents' graves, both brave fallen of Ahnenhoon.”
“The Chalin girl is dutiful in grave-duty, to travel the Nigh.”
“Lo May would see a grand sight, of the Nigh.”
“Less dutiful, seeing sights.”
“Oh, please pardon such a girl, Bright Lord.”
A long spell of quiet. Quinn's skin prickled with sweat and consternation. What was the Tarig doing?
“Do you see, Lo May, four sacks of grain?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Passage for a lone Chalin girl?”
A pause. Then: “No, Lord, there was one other here.”
“Where is this other? Hnnn?”
“Lord, he wished to lie with me and was insistent. By my rights of bonds, I used force to compel him down the ladder.”
“Ah. A Chalin man? And now he may die because you left him untended in the wilds. This can be murder, of the bond law.”
“Heaven give me mercy, I meant no harm, Lord.”
A long pause. Quinn's mouth was dry. Murder? How could the conversation veer so sharply? Quinn thought it better to descend and kill this individual before he killed Anzi. He rose.
“A pretty Chalin girl,” the Tarig said.
Quinn didn't like the tone. Silence again. Quinn was imagining things. Anzi, he thought, give me an indication of what is happening.
“Yet we saw no stragglers,” the Tarig continued.
“Perhaps, Lord, he was already rescued. Many Adda set out from the axis yesterday.”
“Hnnn. A pretty Chalin girl. Are we to think you are strong enough to compel a grown man down a ladder?”
“Yes, Lord. Lo May is.”
The Tarig's voice came: “Ah, and keeps the bonds.”
“As the bright guides me, and as God takes little notice of one such as Lo May.”
And the Tarig again, more ominously: “We take notice.”
“Yes, Lord,” Anzi whispered.
“Do you know, Chalin girl, one named Wen An?”
A pause. “No. Is this a personage I should know?”
Quinn crept forward to listen more intently. Wen An—the scholar who had sent him to Yulin. This was a bad trend for the conversation. He put his hand on the Going Over blade, wondering how many Tarig were in that brightship, and if right now they stood outside holding guy wires while their fellow lord made inquiries.
“The Chalin scholar Wen An, her life is forfeit, and we seek her. Thus, if you know her, you will tell us, ah?”
“By the vows, I do not know Wen An.”
“Shaking?”
There was a silence as Quinn strained to hear words said more softly. Was Anzi shaking in fear? What was the lord doing? And he wondered if they carried their garrotes with them.
The silvery voice of the Tarig came: “We have frightened you.”
Again, Quinn couldn't hear Anzi answer. He was beside himself with anxiety, and so crept to the very edge of the sinus cavity, where he could just see the sleeve of Anzi's arm as she backed away from her inquisitor.
“There is no need for fear, Lo May. How long have you been traveling, and from where?”
“Lord, a sequent or more from the wielding, from Chingdu.”
She'd said five days, a sequent.
“In that journey, Lo May, you beheld the bright realm laid out before you, ah?”
Quinn could now see Anzi leaning against the wall. Anzi nodded.
“The bright realm lives in peace, the peace of the Entire. And Wen An has broken that peace, and sentients lie murdered. So then, do you fear our justice?”
“No, Bright Lord. It is the radiant path, heaven give me mercy.”
“Just so, Lo May. A good Chalin girl.” A bronze hand came forward and wiped a wisp of hair back from Anzi's face.
If he touched her again, Quinn would use his knife.
“We like you, Chalin girl,” the lord said.
Quinn couldn't see the Tarig, only Anzi standing like an animal frozen in a carnivore's gaze.
“And now we leave you in peace.”
Anzi didn't move, but watched the lord as he apparently moved away, toward the orifice.
As the lord climbed down the ladder, he said to those who waited below, “Only one Chalin girl, of no consequence.”
“Swords?” a voice asked from farther away.
“No swords,” the lord answered, his voice fading.
A long pause. Quinn wiped the sweat of his hands against his tunic, waiting and listening. The Adda lurched with the jump of the Tarig from the ladder, and then again with the release of the rope or ropes that secured the Adda in place. He felt the symbiont rising again, and the breath came back into him. By its motion, the Adda was under way again.
A whisper from below. “Dai Shen. Come down now.”
He climbed down the wall to meet her where she stood in the middle of the floor, very still.
“Gone,” she said, but her voice broke.
“Anzi.” He stepped closer, seeing that she looked whiter than usual.
She nodded at him, smiling. “Gone.”
“Are you all right?”
“Of course.” She looked around her. “Four bags.”
Yes, that almost did them in. Each person brought two bags. He should have brought two bags up the wall with him. It had almost gotten them killed. She had lied to the Tarig. The lord would have killed her. And then Quinn.
“It's all right now,” he said.
“Yes, fine,” she said, trembling hard.
Quinn beckoned to her. “Come here.”
She went to him and buried her face in his tunic. His arms came around her, holding her to comfort her, to comfort himself. He felt a wash of tenderness drive through him. After a moment he said, “Lo May is a fast thinker.”
She laughed, leaning against him. “Lo May had to be. The other girl's mind had fled.”