CIXI ALLOWED HERSELF TO BE TAKEN to a place of interest by the legate Zai Gan. It was an endless source of amusement, watching her legates strive with each other. The high prefect indulged Zai Gan because she wished to give him the impression that she favored him, which she did not.
Interrupting their preparations for an outing into the city, Zai Gan had persuaded her to come on a minor detour. She fought to hide her anxiety, to give no hint to Zai Gan that she would far rather be on her way into the city, where her fate might be decided.
Zai Gan towered over her. Well, most Chalin did, despite her habit of wearing stacked shoes. The legate also possessed an ample circumference, but unlike his brother Yulin, whose girth was all muscle, Zai Gan was soft. She didn't make the mistake of thinking him soft of purpose. His purpose had ever been to supplant Master Yulin, and Cixi had been playing off this ambition for so many days it began to bore her.
They exited the second level of the Magisterium onto a small deck, where her view of the sea was far and clear. She bowed for a moment, acknowledging the vast empire of the lords. May they fry in the bright, she thought.
She and Zai Gan stood on a balcony, one of hundreds of viewing platforms, ramps, and balconies hugging the city's underbelly. Since the underside of the city was shaped like a bowl, most sentients thought that when they stood outside on the lower levels, they were not observable from above, but this wasn't so. At Zai Gan's command, the floor realigned itself, and Cixi could see through to the level underneath.
Below her stood a well-built Chalin man, looking over the edge. Was he going to jump? She hoped Zai Gan hadn't brought her here to observe a forbidden suicide.
“It is Dai Shen, Your Brilliance. He comes here, day after day.”
“And?” He should come to the point. There had better be a point.
“It's not normal to stare at the sea. What is he looking for?”
“That, Legate, would be your job to discover.” Dai Shen, Dai Shen—she was tired of Zai Gan's entreaties about this messenger. Yes, he had suddenly appeared as Yulin's long-absent son. Yes, he had suddenly been sent on an important mission to the city. Many things happened suddenly. All that sudden meant was that your intelligence outlets had failed you.
Zai Gan said, “He stares. Suspiciously stares.”
“Like one with a head injury?”
Zai Gan puffed out his lower lip. “Then why was he not in the garden when Lord Echnon sought him? And why has my gardener disappeared?”
Cixi snorted. Yulin had had the spy killed, of course. She could accuse the fat master of the sway, but best not to accuse without proof. And she had some sympathy for Yulin's execution of a member of his very own household who would tell tales. Even so, Cixi would have made an issue of this murder if the tales the gardener had told had been worth hearing. Unfortunately, they weren't.
Desperately wishing to be on her way, she fixed Zai Gan with a look that said, One's invaluable time has been wasted by this stinking beku. Cixi had made an art form of facial expressions, and her minions had composed treatises on the subject.
But Zai Gan would not be hurried. “Dai Shen's petition, Your Brilliance. Deny it. If he succeeds with this Inyx matter, it strengthens Yulin and delays my inheritance.” The man was desperate for Dai Shen's mission to fail. A few days ago he had barred Dai Shen's companion, Ji Anzi, from ascending.
He spoke presumptuously. But she forced herself to indulge him, for the sake of her larger plans—oh, far larger than Zai Gan could hope to grasp. “But,” she said, “if Yulin's proposal is carried out and fails, you can set up your throne in his sway. Indeed, Yulin's idea might fail in a spectacular manner. Inyx beasts as officers of battle! Absurd.”
The legate's eyes peered out at her like an animal trapped in a fleshy cage. “Such a failure could take a thousand days to manifest.”
“Mmm,” Cixi murmured, a sound she quite liked as it could be interpreted by the listener as favorable or not, and sometimes, as now, she chose to be ambiguous.
She looked down at the young man standing at the edge of the rim. Indeed, he looked oddly fixated. And something else about him: his stature, the way he stood, reminded her of someone.
Meanwhile, standing below the two observers, Quinn was counting the days he'd been here. A total of eight. Three days since his unsatisfactory encounter with Min Fe, and one day since he had succeeded in meeting the consul Shi Zu. The very fact that they had met and no Tarig had swooped down on him led Quinn to believe that surveillance was customary, that he had not been singled out. Still, he had not escaped notice, as Bei had strongly advised him to do.
Yet his strategy to go over Min Fe's head direct to his superior had worked. To Quinn's great good fortune, Shi Zu despised Min Fe. With one exception, the meeting had gone well, and Quinn needed to think hard about that exception. But for the moment, he was distracted by the view of the sea far below.
Thirty thousand feet below, the Sea of Arising lay in a glittering platinum sheet. Although he could see only a wedge of the ocean at the moment, Quinn knew it was circular, and a million miles in circumference.
He had been coming here over the last few days because the sight had been steadily restoring his memory.
A field barrier stilled the winds, replacing the need for a railing. The unobstructed view fell away, drawing his eyes to the hammered sea, crawling with wisps of exotic clouds. The walkway was only a yard wide. It was possible to fall, but it would take a push. One could fall for five minutes. With a 360-degree view, it would be the supreme free fall. However, rather than being struck by the height, Quinn was keenly aware—as he had always been—of the feeling of centrality. Of being in the center of a radial universe: the center of the bright, the heartland, and the power. This was the memory that had visited him again and again in the Rose. As he sank into these memories, he thought of how, in some sways, even thinking was dangerous. He wondered if, for Sydney, the Inyx ability to decode thoughts was a particular misery. It would be for him, and he thought her very much like her father.
In the far distance, the squat storm walls surrounded the sea like a hurricane circling the eye of the storm. Overhead, the bright looked like a hammered plate of light resting on distant blue legs. The storm walls were broken in his view by two small gaps where the visible primacies plunged outward from their source. Though he knew that he should not be able to see all the way to the storm walls, a miragelike bending of light brought the walls closer.
He remembered this. Quinn had lived there, as he had been told, as he now recalled. He remembered Bei pouring steaming oba from a pot and discussing medieval Earth history. Quinn's suite of rooms looked onto a courtyard. A remarkable tapestry adorned one wall of his room. There were no locks on the doors.
He remembered the Lady Chiron's kindness when his sorrow had been a million miles in circumference. When Hadenth goaded Quinn, she stood nearby, forbidding the lord. And that protection—for no one could protect against a high lord other than another—brought Quinn's gratitude, and later, that retreat into physical solace, an act that now repulsed him.
They lay on a shining bed, lit from above. Lit from a sky window, releasing the bright over their naked bodies. As he moved, she matched him, angle for angle, curve for curve, keeping contact along the lengths of their bodies, although she was taller than he. She was supple, curious, inexhaustible. He had vowed to stay away from her, and had succeeded for a long while. But eventually, he went to her suite. She rushed to meet him. She could not fully accept him into her, because the divide between her legs was small. Over time this became irrelevant.
He understood why it had happened. There was the loneliness, the years of separation from Johanna. But he would give anything for it not to have happened while Johanna languished at Ahnenhoon.
It gnawed at him. To so completely succumb to the Tarig. Was it the power that he had relished? He couldn't see himself as that man. Remembering the navitar's prophecies, he wondered if his betrayals had set in motion some profound wheel of retribution.
He turned from the maze of these thoughts. Tomorrow he would come back and confront them again. Until Shi Zu arranged a summons from Cixi.
Shi Zu was pleasant but dangerous. He affected elaborate dress, including brocaded trousers and a golden jacket. The symbol embroidered on the back of his garment was that of a sky chain, bright insects linked and floating in the sky, a configuration he had seen before. This foppish consul was amused by Quinn's bypass of Min Fe. Then it occurred to the consul that, given the importance of a matter altering military protocol, perhaps a person of high standing should present Yulin's clarity to the Inyx sway. Quite possibly that functionary should be Shi Zu himself. Quinn hoped his arguments against this were persuasive.
He looked around him, thinking that he might even now be observed. If so, it wouldn't hurt to show his heartchime—that bauble of the devoted, that told the wearer how close they were to the beloved Ascendancy. He brought forth the heartchime and held it to his ear, listening to the high tone that was the Ascendancy's pitch. He wondered where Anzi was, and hoped she was safe.
Heading down the ramp to return to the inner Magisterium, deep in thought, he made his way into the third level. A familiar voice caught him off guard.
“Your Excellency,” Cho said, bowing before him in the junction of a small corridor with a wide one.
“Steward Cho,” Quinn replied, matching the bow.
This brought a look of consternation and a yet lower bow. “Please, Excellency, I'm an understeward.” Rising, he said, “Seeing the sights, are you? Everyone sees the sights on their first visit.” He looked past Quinn to a doorway to an outer deck. “There are better views. Seating areas, and so forth.”
“You must know them all, my friend. Did you deliver your trunks to the legate Min Fe?”
Cho's face fell only a little. “A pressing weight of duty has not allowed him to view the documents. So far.” Sidling closer and lowering his voice, Cho said, “We've heard that Min Fe has suffered a rebuke from the consul Shi Zu.”
Quinn stifled a smile. “Has he? Perhaps it's long overdue.”
Cho looked startled. “An alarming thought, Excellency.”
“Please, Cho, Dai Shen will do.”
Cho bobbed, agreeing, and they began to walk together. Hearing of Shi Zu's notion to usurp Dai Shen's mission and travel to the Inyx sway himself, Cho looked worried. Then, hearing that Quinn had tried to talk Shi Zu out of such a notion, Cho said, “Forgive me, Excellency—Dai Shen—but you may be in jeopardy of a small misstep in protocol.”
“Or a rather large stumble?” Quinn could not quite recall the Chalin equivalent of bull in a china shop, though he was sure there was one.
“No, no stumbling, none whatsoever, but if I may suggest...” He waited for a nod from His Excellency. Receiving it, he went on, “You must let him win, of course.”
They came upon a great atrium. Arising from one end was a narrow but ornate staircase that twisted at intervals to disappear into the second level. Leading the way upward, Cho continued, “If I may offer a small idea, let him have the mission without protest.”
That wasn't damn likely. “My father would think me a failure to give my duty to another.”
A rustle from above them signaled that someone was descending the stairs. Quinn looked up. Just turning onto the next landing came a grandly dressed Chalin woman attended by ladies wearing heavily embroidered silks. Quinn and Cho bowed deeply as the entourage passed, Cho murmuring, “Subprefect Mei Ing, and glorious consuls.” Switching quickly from unctuous to practical, he returned to his subject: “By letting him win, you will win, Dai Shen, do you see?”
Quinn turned to watch the ladies descend, especially the one with the river walker emblazoned on her tunic. Perhaps if the high prefect wouldn't see him, the plain prefect might.
Cho continued, “Permit me; it wouldn't be seemly to disagree with the consul that he is the most fit to handle the matter. But once you agree with his superior judgment, he will abandon the plan. He would never leave the Ascendancy, Dai Shen. He'd lose his place in line.”
Quinn glanced at the steward, thinking that Cho the hapless might in fact be quite the master at navigating the bureaucracy.
“I haven't presumed too far?” Cho asked, cutting his eyes at Quinn.
“No, it's very valuable advice. I'm not a subtle man.” He shrugged. “A soldier.”
Cho stuttered. “But I'm subtle, you think?”
“Yes, Understeward Cho should advise all newcomers here. It could be a side business. There's a Jout I know who could use some help.”
Cho hardly knew how to respond to this half-jest, but his steps came more lively, and he pointed out the sights, most of them actually new to Quinn, although not all.
They had come to the highest level of the Magisterium by means of the asymmetrical staircase, into a narrow passage with a vaulted ceiling. As they started down this hall, Quinn thought he knew where Cho was leading him. It was to the chamber of Lord Ghinamid.
“Most newcomers want to see the Sleeping Lord,” Cho said.
They passed through tall galleries lit by windows and crowded with prosperous-looking legates, including a few Hirrin sentients. Then, crossing out of the Magisterium, they came under the sky for a moment into a sunken garden, then climbed curved stairs and came into the city above. They were in the city, where he should not be seen. Not planned—but not unwelcome, either.
At the head of the stairs and through an outdoor gallery, they came at last to the open doors of the Sleeping Lord's chamber.
The cavernous room was filled with an orange light from burnished walls that looked to be quilted in giant squares of etched metal. The chamber was empty except for two features: on three sides of the room a raised gallery was supported by columns; below the gallery and in the center of the room was a raised platform. From the gallery, a scattering of sentients viewed the Sleeping Lord's resting place.
As he had lain for two million days, Lord Ghinamid rested on the raised platform on a black bed of exotic matter, never aging. Quinn didn't expect that the Masterful Lord would look any different than he had the last time Quinn had seen him, nor did he.
Approaching the platform, they bowed, then gazed up at the Tarig lord. The face, long and narrow like all the Tarig, looked carved but alive, and harder than most. There was that quality to Tarig skin that was both metallic and supple. Ghinamid's form was clothed in a black chitinous-looking robe. The eyes were covered by two black, oblong stones that looked like they might topple off if the lord came into REM sleep.
“Asleep,” Cho said. “What must he dream of?”
“Home,” Quinn replied, remembering that he had once fled into sleep himself from sheer homesickness.
They had lowered their voices, as though not to disturb the sleeper. Cho asked, “You know the stories, then?”
“Some.” He well remembered the tale of Lord Ghinamid, who couldn't bear his separation from his original home in the Heart. He had been among the first great lords to rule the Entire, and therefore was impossibly old.
“Of course, your pardon. You are of Yulin's household, an educated man, naturally.”
Quinn looked around the hall. It was now deserted. Both the mezzanine and the hall were empty except for the two of them.
And a lord, on the perimeter.
A Tarig stood at a doorway, watching them. Cho was now as still as a mouse in an owl's gaze.
Quinn turned to leave, and Cho fell in step with him. From behind, he heard the clicking of the Tarig's feet approaching.
A voice, wasted, deep, and familiar said, “He dreams, do you say?”
It was a mistake to pretend the lord hadn't spoken to them. Even before he turned to face the Tarig, Quinn remembered the main way to tell one Tarig from another. By voice.
He turned to face Lord Hadenth, and in that moment it seemed that time looped back, and that he had never left this place.
He had forgotten what the lord had said.
“Dreams?” Lord Hadenth repeated.
Recovering his wits, Quinn answered, “We wonder if the great one dreams. We are ignorant, Bright Lord.”
Cho was bowing so low Quinn thought he might topple.
In a terrible moment, Quinn declined to bow. He knew what he should do, and couldn't.
Lord Hadenth had reached the dais and stood there, resting a bare muscled arm on what Quinn had always considered the bier. Hadenth wore a sleeveless long tunic over a straight skirt, slit to the knees for easy movement. Over the tunic was a vest of woven platinum thread. At his neck he wore a collar of twisted metal. Quinn had always thought of it as a dog collar. He had learned how to hate at the feet of this creature. Fearing that it showed, he breathed deeply to quiet himself.
Hadenth looked at Cho. “We do not know you.”
Cho bowed. “Bright Lord, Steward Cho of the fourth level, of the Hanwin wielding of the house of Lu. Bright Lord.”
“Ah, the understeward.” Hadenth flicked his gaze at Quinn. “You, we know.”
The three words cut at him, stopped his breath. He would not be captured; he had set his mind to that, a million miles ago.
“Bright Lord?”
The Tarig hadn't moved, and said casually enough, “Watching, watching.” He reached up to touch Lord Ghinamid's feet. “For eight days, watching, on the rim. And for what? What approaches, hnnn?”
So the legates were not the only ones who spied—but to have Hadenth take notice, that cooled his heart.
“The view, High Lord. A fearful view, and beautiful.”
Hadenth had now turned his full attention to Ghinamid's feet, which were at eye level for him. He petted the feet, as though meditating with what was left of his mind. The smell of overbearing sweetness came to Quinn's sensitive mouth.
From beside Quinn, Cho made a sound like a strangled whistle. But he was only attempting to swallow. No doubt Cho was used to Tarig; but he may never have been in the presence of one of the five high lords.
Hadenth's voice, although deep like all Tarig voices, had a shredded quality, as though he had been shouting too long. “Who watches from the rim?”
“Bright Lord, by your sufferance, Dai Shen, soldier of Ahnenhoon and smallest son of Master Yulin of the great sway.”
Quinn looked closely at Hadenth for scars. The blow he had delivered was crushing, almost killing him. But why should any Tarig keep scars? He felt a keen disappointment.
Hadenth said, “From Ahnenhoon to the heartland. Such a long way. And not getting lost, either. Hnnn. Without companions all the while, wearing a chime?” He approached swiftly, but Quinn held his place, and then found himself an arm's length from Hadenth, the lord who had blinded Sydney. And told her father about it in excruciating detail.
Extruding a three-inch nail, Hadenth reached toward Quinn and lifted the chain from around his throat. He drew forth the heartchime. In the Tarig's hand a remarkable sound erupted from the pendant, like a distant scream.
Quinn's eyes met Hadenth's. Now, at this range, would be the test of Bei's surgeries. It seemed impossible that this creature would not remember him, would not see him for who he was. But the Tarig did not attend to faces.
The lord dropped the chime and pointed to Cho. “Is this not a companion, and traveler?”
Cho visibly flinched, and opened his mouth to answer. Then, thinking better of it, closed his mouth.
The lord shouted at him, “Speak, Steward!”
Cho gargled something. Then, beginning again, he said, “Traveled. Yes. Bright Lord. On the River Nigh, by your leave and gracious permission for the legate Min Fe, the lowliest matters, of course. A mere understeward.”
Lowering his voice, Hadenth said, “Enough speaking.” He turned and walked slowly back to the bier. Suddenly he spun around and, flicking his hand, indicated that they were to follow him.
Quinn did so, putting a hand in the small of Cho's back to steady him.
At the bier, Hadenth once more took up a rhythmic stroking of Ghinamid's shod feet as his black gaze lit on Quinn again. “Fighter of Ahnenhoon, a pleasant little title. Wounds? Any?”
“Small wounds, Lord.” But lasting ones, he thought. And in the next thought, Anzi's words came to him: Do not, do not risk...
Anzi wanted him to put the past behind. But for Quinn the hope still lingered: father, mother, and daughter together once more. Being in this city, it still seemed possible. But seeing Hadenth reminded him that it would never come again.
“Wounds,” Hadenth whispered. Perhaps he remembered his own. Those received. Those given.
The lord was weaving from one subject to the next. Perhaps he roamed these halls like an elder with dementia: respected but ignored. With no mechanism of retirement or abdication, the Tarig didn't know how to remove a high lord from power if one became unfit for duty.
“Son of the great sway,” Hadenth murmured, gazing at Quinn. “Does Yulin know where the leaks are? Hnnn? How the invaders travel into the realm?”
Invaders. Did the lord sense something amiss? He answered: “Yulin confides little in one such as me, Bright Lord.”
“But you are son of Yulin, so you said? Did we mis-hear?”
“No, Lord. I said so.”
“Ah, son of Yulin knows what Yulin knows. So, again, does Yulin know how the aggressors slide into the All?”
Aggressors. With relief, Quinn realized that Hadenth was talking about the Paion. He answered, “No, Lord. He does not know. Nor do I.”
The lord's gaze was unnaturally steady. The Tarig had no need to blink, a thing Quinn had always hated.
“You speak bravely. Too bravely, for one who stares at views. We do not favor you,” Hadenth said.
No, and never had. “Bright Lord, my life in your service.”
Hadenth waved this away. “Yes, yes.” He picked at the shoe of Ghinamid, muttering to himself. Then he turned to Quinn. “You think yourself brave, to face the Paion?”
“No more than any soldier, Bright Lord.”
“Braver still, to face your Lord Hadenth, ah?”
Quinn remained silent, not liking this turn of conversation.
At the lord's next action, Cho gasped. The Tarig sprang up on Ghinamid's platform, crouching like a gargoyle at the foot of the sleeping form. “Hnnn?” His voice had risen higher, louder. Cho was now shaking hard. Hadenth's voice echoed in the room. “You think I cannot kill the invaders at will? You think this lord a coward?”
Quinn guessed that the lord was beyond conversation. He glanced at the Sleeping Lord, half expecting him to wake up in all the commotion, but he slept on.
“Well? Well?” Hadenth rasped.
In a whisper, Cho pleaded, “Answer him, Dai Shen.”
“A simple soldier does not presume to judge a high lord.”
Hadenth beckoned to Quinn, and Quinn walked closer to the bier.
Still crouching, the lord bent close, his scent coming strong to Quinn's senses. “You do not tremble like the steward.” Hadenth flicked a gaze at Cho. “Such poise, for a common son of Yulin.”
Quinn needed to mollify him, and was able to bring himself to say: “Bright Lord, I have not the grace to know Ascendancy ways. Being a common son of Yulin.”
A line formed on Hadenth's cheek, less a frown than a ceramic crack. “And being common, you gape at our high views. Hnn. The heights alarm you? Yes, admit that the fighter of Ahnenhoon fears the long fall.”
Quinn could barely bring himself to speak to Hadenth. His stomach clenched with the effort of it. “It would take a long time to hit the ground. A fearful thing.” He thought of pushing the lord. Of seeing the fear on Hadenth's face.
Cho softly cleared his throat, eyes pleading with Quinn.
Hadenth jumped down, landing lightly on his feet. Whatever mental damage he might have suffered, he was still agile. “Perhaps we will have you stand on the rim for our amusement, ah?”
From behind, Cho whispered, “Supreme Lord, we are called to duties, below, in your service, by your leave.”
Hadenth swung around to face the steward. “No, not so. We are called to duties. You are not called.” He squinted at Cho. “Ah?”
“Yes, pardon, Bright Lord,” Cho managed to say.
With that, Lord Hadenth turned and walked away, boots clicking on the floor, striding like an upright insect. He passed through the small door from which he'd first entered. After a few steps, he stopped and turned around.
Returning to the doorway, the Tarig reached out and pushed the door closed.
Quinn watched the door for several moments, unsure whether Hadenth was gone for good. But the door remained shut.
“He's gone,” Cho whispered.
“Yes.” Quinn wasn't sure if he was glad or disappointed. Hadenth had deteriorated from the old days. Reduced to muttering paranoia and intimidating stewards, he was still capable of higher viciousness, Quinn was certain.
Cho led the way from the chamber. Silently, they emerged onto the steps outside, which led to a plaza where a view of the city spread in one direction and the innards of the Magisterium spread in the other. Still intent on controlling his emotions, Quinn descended and walked across a small courtyard toward the fountain he'd visited before.
The steps sank directly into the pool. He sat on the steps and pulled out a small brick of food, a compressed bar that was his food allowance for the day, and shared it with the carp. The bits of food floated, attracting a pod of fish, but not the orange-backed one.
Cho stood at the head of the stairs mopping his brow with his scarf. His jacket bore the understeward emblem of the lowly white carp. Cho took a step forward, startled. “Dai Shen,” he said, “here is a sight.”
As Quinn joined him, Cho said, “This is a day of wonders. There is the high prefect herself.”
Quinn joined Cho at the head of the stairs and looked where he pointed. Here was the very woman he'd come to see. On so short a woman, her hair looked impossibly tall, and glinted as though lacquered. She held a parasol, and was dressed in bright green edged with orange. At her side was an enormous Chalin man, richly dressed.
“The preconsul Zai Gan,” Cho said. “You had known Master Yulin's brother in the great sway?”
“No. I was banished from court.”
Cho cut a glance at him. “Indeed? Shocking, Excellency.” He frowned, considering something. “That must be why he knows so little of you, and is reduced to asking questions of a steward such as myself.”
Quinn covered his alarm. “What sorts of questions?”
“Oh, as to your business here.” He looked offended. “I told him nothing, I assure you. As though I know the business of personages!”
Bei had spoken truly when he'd said that the Magisterium was full of spies. Far from passing unnoticed, Quinn's every movement seemed to draw interest. Truly, his best chance was to leave as soon as possible. But, so far, he could not leave.
Cixi hated to be under the bright. She once had had a reputation for never leaving the Magisterium, but she had gradually changed her habits in order to allow just such an outing as this. Once every few days she took a walk, and often, it was only walking.
Unaccustomed to walking, Zai Gan was already puffing at her side. But he wouldn't have turned down an offer to be seen with the high prefect. Many eyes were following them, Cixi was sure, though no one dared to approach them without a summons. Around the promenade near the canals her presence was becoming noted, as functionaries bowed, even from a great distance away. She was the center of attention. Given this inescapable fact, it became essential to do her treasons in a most public manner.
Zai Gan did not often accompany her on these little forays. She bestowed the honor of her company on a different functionary each time. Once, to shock her sycophants, she had walked with a clerk. But it was all for one purpose, that out of her many forays, she would hear the thing she longed for in the tower of Ghinamid, in the alcove where she could lose her life.
Her hands felt slick with perspiration, but she didn't dare wipe them on her jacket, lest a hundred pairs of eyes take note. God's beku, but she hated going abroad!
Zai Gan whipped out a fan from his belt. “Are you warm, Your Brilliance?” He fluttered the thing at her face.
She cut him a look: One more evil exhalation from your mouth, and I will have it stuffed with offal.
Zai Gan snapped the fan shut and they strolled on.
“Such lovely swimming creatures,” Cixi said in her sweetest tone. She had cultivated the impression over these thousands of days that she was fascinated by the fish, though there was not a nonsentient in the All that she could abide. Of course, as the saying went, not all carp were carp.
Zai Gan grunted. “It's not natural to breathe water.”
“Whatever the lords decree is natural,” Cixi snapped.
He slid a glance at her, always watchful for how far her loyalties went. He knew she spied incessantly, and perhaps he wondered what her purposes were. No. Zai Gan didn't wonder. He could see no farther than master-of-the-sway. He no doubt believed that her machinations were all for who should be promoted in the Magisterium, and who merited advancement in the sways. Someone like Zai Gan could not imagine that Cixi's vision reached farther than his own.
She made a turn toward the great tower. She meant for it to be a natural meander in that direction. On some outings she stopped at the tower, and some outings she didn't. All to make the real visit appear trivial.
Leaving Zai Gan outside the entrance, Cixi entered the tower. Ahead of her were the three hundred stairs. She had only a few moments to do what she must. Once finished, she must climb to the top and appear to be taking in the view from the ramparts. Sentients all over the city—those who had noted that she visited the tower—would expect to see her there.
Cixi took off her elevated shoes, leaving them at the first bend in the stairs, and raced upward.
They were stairs made for giants, and already her thigh muscles ached. The Tarig could ascend them easily; the length of their stride was unnerving. They could cross a room in an instant just by standing and taking a huge stride forward. She shuddered.
Coming to the alcove, she placed her hands inside and pressed the nub that gave her access to the bright. Or that might give access. Here, in the tallest structure on the palatine hill, one was very close indeed to the river of fire. The fiends shaded the city from its fierceness, somehow. And also, somehow, they passed messages through the bright, and not at speeds they allowed their subjects, but at bright speeds. Cixi's spies had discovered this long ago. Nor was she surprised to find this so. Of course the bright lords communicated at a distance. Would they have created the Entire any other way?
And where could they send messages or receive messages from? Her investigations had revealed three additional places: the brightships, any axis city, and the River Nigh. Only Tarig commanded the ships; and only Tarig knew how to empower messages at bright speed at the axis cities. But all navitars knew how to send messages from the binds. And whether navitars were loyal or not, now that was a question of great complexity. For one thing, they were deranged.
After a thousand days of subterfuge, Cixi had found a navitar who might send a message. The navitar was one who plied the river in the Long Gaze of Fire. Cixi had both ends covered.
Once all this had been well ordered, Cixi began looking for the message. But so far, her envoys had failed to signify that they had reached her beloved girl. For four thousand days, there had been no word, but she kept faith, returning again and again to the tower.
Oh my dear girl, Cixi thought. Her devotion to the child was an always-burning coal, and the girl had a matching ember in her own heart. So Cixi's messengers had told her. She loves you still, mistress. Cixi believed them, because her own heart was that steadfast, and because she had told them that, should they lie, she would pull out their intestines through their navels. Slowly.
Now, kneeling in the alcove, she placed the redstone in the cup, and it disappeared. Nothing, nothing. But these things took time.
There were days in which Cixi felt that Mo Ti was her last hope. Mo Ti was the most intelligent, able, and fearless servant she'd ever had. If he couldn't succeed, she might never in this life have another chance to bring a mentor to the dear girl's side. Had Mo Ti escaped blinding? Even if he hadn't, had he managed to infiltrate Priov's encampment? And if so, had the girl come to trust him?
And then, miraculously, words formed on the wall, a section of stone that for a moment became a screen. Her answer. She stared at the letters forming: Always to last.
Always to last...Cixi's face flushed hot with shock. Mo Ti had arrived.
There was no further message, nor was there need. Had he failed irrevocably, Mo Ti would have sent, Dark as rose night. And if he had not yet surmounted barriers, Hold up the bright.
Without completely absorbing this joyful news, Cixi rushed up the stairs, raising her knees high under her robes, straining against the demands of another hundred stairs. Her legs stung with pain, but she yanked her old body up the risers. Up, up, and may God look upon all fiends. Up, up...
At the top she leaned against the stones of the rampart, her chest near exploding, her legs melting. Below, Zai Gan kept guard, ready to create a diversion should someone try to enter before he saw her at the top.
By his demeanor below she knew that he'd seen her. No doubt the fat fool must wonder what she was doing all this while. How astounded he would be to know the truth.
Turning to leave, she found a Tarig standing before her.
“Lord, my life,” she said.
But it was not a fiend. It was the image of a fiend, captured in the stone walls of the tower. His features looked pockmarked and rumpled in the imperfect screen of the rough wall.
“Ah, Cixi,” he said.
By his voice, it was...But he must speak again.
“Is that you, Bright Lord? Your likeness in the stone?” She wished she were not barefooted. Perhaps he wouldn't notice.
“Yes, it is our likeness, not our self. Unless we have become ugly in one day?”
Lord Oventroe. Cixi almost collapsed with relief. It was a disaster if he knew what she'd done. But he was the best fiend to encounter here.
“Lord, my life,” she repeated, skipping the rest of the benediction, as she dared to do as high prefect.
“Yes. Your life.” He watched her with stony eyes, stony face. “Have you ever thought how you would choose to die if a lord uncovered repugnance for you?”
Her heart sank like a stone in a pool. He was going to kill her.
“Yes.”
“Now we shall guess. You would die by poison rather than by the slow death.” He held up a long-fingered hand. “No, not true. We think this would not be your way. Ah, we have it.” He pointed to the rampart, where it was cut low enough to create a viewing port. “Stand near there, Prefect.”
“Shall I climb up?”
“Don't be dramatic. What if you please us, and you go down again, down the long stairs? Then there would be scandal from the prefect having stood on the lip of the tower as though despondent.” He looked behind him, giving the impression that he was actually there. “Everyone is watching you, ah?”
“Surely they do watch. But cannot see you, Lord.”
“No. We must be secret.” He turned and paced, walking around the circular summit, walking in the walls.
Lord Oventroe was the only lord she knew of who paced. He'd often claimed that it was the only useful thing that humans had ever taught him. It was peculiar in the extreme, that after all they knew of the Rose, he picked this senseless thing to mimic. This minor thought came unbidden into her mind as she considered throwing herself from the tower. She thought of her dear girl, and her throat constricted.
“Secrets,” Lord Oventroe was saying. “We both of us have secrets, Prefect.”
She tried to think which one he knew, besides that she used the bright like a lord.
He went on: “My secret is well kept by you, Cixi of Chendu wielding.”
It was almost a term of endearment, his use of her childhood name. She held her breath.
His face came to rest on a flat piece of stone, bringing his features into better resolution. He was fuller of face than most fiends, and it softened him. The ladies of the city—Tarig ladies, of course—found him handsome. “Yes,” Lord Oventroe went on, “you have known that we have a personal alcove. Other lords know not of it. This is the secret you have kept, Prefect.”
She had kept it secret. All secrets were coins to be hoarded, and praise be to Heaven, she had hoarded this one.
A change in Lord Oventroe's expression signaled pleasure. “We would thank you, but it's not our style, is it?”
“Unthinkable, Lord.”
“You should have been a Tarig, Cixi of Chendu.” No doubt he meant it as an extraordinary compliment.
“Sometimes I feel that I am.” She cut a glance down the stairs, thinking of the alcove.
He said, “There are legates who know what you know?”
“No.”
“We hope this is true, Cixi. We also hope that your messaging is for minor villainy and doesn't cross this lord's interests.”
And what were his interests? Cixi would give much to know. Lord Oventroe had a fanatical hatred of the Rose, as all sentients knew. Also, and as few sentients knew, he had hopes to replace Hadenth as a high lord, because Hadenth had failed in security in the past. But no high lord ever stepped down, so this was not a reasonable goal. One could assume it was not.
“Dragons are content with their caves and their treasures, my lord.”
His face flickered with amusement. Cixi thought that pacing was not the only thing that Oventroe had copied from the Rose. In all his fanatical observations of the enemy, he had unwittingly become more like them.
“The day you are content, Prefect, we will open the doors to the Rose.”
She bowed very low, acknowledging this truth. She was not content. But let him believe that she possessed common ambitions. Let no one guess—and never the lords—that she meant to raise the kingdom. The Chalin kingdom.
When she rose from her bow, Lord Oventroe had disappeared.
A slight breeze wicked sweat from her face. “By my grave flag,” she whispered, shivering.
She was safe, for the time being. But he knew that she partook of forbidden things. How had he discovered her, and who else might know? From now on she was under his scrutiny. Where else did he lurk, and in what guise? Did he really see her today, or was it only an image? It was sickening to think that the lords might spy so easily….
She began descending the three hundred stairs. Why had the lord spared her life? Only one reason: she might have told someone else what she knew. And now he needed her to keep them silent, who otherwise might divulge his secret. Oh, the power of secrets. By their leverage one could topple a high tower, or an empire.
Partway down the stairs she slipped into her shoes again. At the bottom, Zai Gan met her, noting her distress. “A hard climb, Your Brilliance?”
“No, Preconsul,” she managed to say in a neutral tone. “But sometimes the way down is harder than going up.” And when he looked at her inquiringly, she gave him the face that said, Shut up and let me think.
Then she concentrated on making it back to her quarters without collapsing.
That night in his cell, Quinn stared at the luminescent ceiling, dimmed for ebb-time. In its cool light he saw Hadenth's face, heard his shredded voice. The creature had been watching him. Eight days on the rim...
The Chalin rumor wasn't true, that Quinn's beating had addled the lord's mind. Hadenth was the same as he'd always been. Predatory and unpredictable. Why had Hadenth been watching him, or did the Tarig watch everything?
He felt cooped up, and restless. Nine days in the Magisterium, and still no contact with the traitor Tarig. If he was a traitor. And no word from the high prefect…. Abandoning sleep, he rose and took his clothes off the pegs on the wall. The cleaning fabbers had done their work, and he dressed in his silk garments, now spotless.
Out in the corridor, he noted that the Jout's door was open. Brahariar had also given up on sleep, and sat on her bed weeping. He knew that the Jout's petition, whatever it was, languished. Pitying her, earlier Quinn had asked Cho to help her, if he could.
Quinn walked. Was Hadenth watching him even now? If they thought their city so vulnerable that they spied incessantly, why have the Magisterium here at all? Why not install it at the base of the pillars instead?
The halls at ebb-time were as active as during the day. The great bureaucracy needed every hour of every long Entire day to govern the universe, the only universe worth having. The All they sometimes called it, their way of assuring themselves that they were superior.
He descended the ramp to the fourth level, which housed the archive, where scholars and functionaries pursued their arcane studies, and where all knowledge gathered by scholars eventually found a home.
There were several subjects he longed to pursue there. But it would draw attention if he pursued Johanna's records, from the time she was interrogated here. A minor son of Yulin shouldn't be looking up information about Johanna Quinn and her interrogator, Kang. Even though Kang's record would only be a fragment of Johanna, fragments might be important, if, as the navitar had said, Johanna was at the center of things.
This level was crowded with clerks. They wore the wide and backward-sloping hats that housed their computational boards, a type of stone well. From the back, the clerks’ hats were alive with readouts as the stones made their way from top to bottom, spitting into a long sock that hung like a kite's tail down the clerks’ backs. Making his way through twisting corridors, past the cells of factors and stewards, he came at last to the archive, which he wanted to enter, and shouldn't. He stood at the open door to the great hall. Here, giant pillars held the computational wells, and stairwells corkscrewed around the columns, accessing the wells.
He would have liked to see what information the library held on the Inyx sway, so that he could bolster his plan to free Sydney, the one that Yulin was so sure would fail. Certainly if the Inyx could probe his mind, then he was deprived of his strongest tactic: stealth. As well, he hungered to delve into the question of the correlates, if the lords by some lapse had left clues here.
But none of these paths of inquiry were open to him. He didn't know how to use the library. He didn't know how data was stored, how to access it, how to conduct searches. His very ineptness might draw attention.
He stood at the archive door undecided. Once, he had known the ways of the archive. Once, he had come here looking for the correlations between here and there. But he was not that same man. This version of Titus Quinn was stone well illiterate.
He turned away from the archive door. Min Fe was standing in the corridor.
The legate blinked at him, his eyes magnified in his glasses. “A soldier who studies? A wonder.”
“I was curious about the great library. Very impressive.” He tried to pass, but Min Fe blocked him.
“The man of weapons offends us.”
“Was there an offense? If so, my pardon.”
Min Fe hissed, “Pardon, is it? I grant no pardon for your insults.” Two clerks emerged from the archive, bowing deeply as they passed. Min Fe watched them retreat down the corridor.
“Cho's promotion is an outrage, of course. He is without merit, without distinction. A pedantic, visionless underling who has contributed no new scrolls to the pandect in five thousand days…. ” Min Fe noted Quinn's look of surprise. “Certainly you've heard that Shi Zu, taking revenge against me for imagined faults, raised the worthless menial to full steward?”
So the consul had promoted Cho at long last.
He went on, “Shi Zu credits Cho with guiding you in your assaults on protocol. Don't think it a victory, Dai Shen of Yulin's household. You've made an enemy here. A not-inconsiderable one, I assure you.”
Quinn looked the sublegate squarely in the face. “I'm in a hurry, for Master Yulin's sake. Lest I suffer a beating.” He tried to let Min Fe win, but it was no use. The man hated him.
Min Fe said, “May a beating be the least of your rewards.”
“Many days to you, Sublegate.” Quinn walked away. Min Fe did not follow him as he headed back to his quarters.
Quinn knew what Anzi would have advised: to placate the man, win him over. Well, it was too late for that now, and he didn't regret it. He wouldn't yield to Min Fe, as before he had yielded to the Tarig...for ten years. He was not the same man.
Before he left, he meant to prove that.