ANZI WALKED BESIDE QUINN to his meeting with the high prefect. He'd confessed to her that he'd gone walking in the city, and now she refused to stay behind in his cell. Here at his side, she was determined to prevent similar lapses in judgment. So it was just as well he hadn't told her about Small Girl.
Although she was dressed in stolen clerk's attire with sloping hat, she made an unlikely bureaucrat. She strode tall, lacking the hunched back and squinting eyes. The garb had served double duty so far, since they'd used the hat to read Cho's redstone. The uniform wasn't all that she'd taken. In order to ascend one of the other pillars of the Ascendancy, she'd assumed another visitor's identity. She delighted him with her audacity, and he was surprised by how glad he was to see her—even as dangerous as her presence was.
He'd kidded her, “So I wasn't ready to do this on my own, after all.”
She had pursed her lips, but the smile came through. “I'm selfish, Dai Shen. My uncle would have me whipped for leaving you.” She'd let him save face, but he knew he was better off with her near.
And he'd been glad of her company last night as they pored over the document Cho had provided: Kang's account of the interrogations of Johanna. It was a dry summary, but Johanna shone through because of the lies she'd told. She had lied about Earth politics and company politics. Lied about Minerva, about technology, and about small personal matters. How many children did she have? Eight. How long had she lived? Fifty years. It was as though she was determined to thwart them even if it did no good. She had fought them with all her wits, and enjoyed it. No wonder he loved her.
Here, close to the salon of the high prefect, legates packed the halls, clutching scrolls or pausing to gossip, while clerks mingled with downcast eyes to avoid continuous bowing. Fluted columns framed the views of the heartland, now fallen into a dusty lavender time. Since Cixi preferred to meet in the ebb of day, it had become the fashion on this level of the Magisterium to work all ebb and sleep all day.
A wide staircase marked the boundary of the high prefect's salon doors. Legates stood in knots on the stairs, glancing at times to the gilded doors, hoping for a glimpse of Cixi.
Barely hiding a growing elation, Quinn walked to his interview. Drawing closer, he drew looks from legates who must have wondered how someone dressed in plain silks could hope to find a place in line. He bowed to the closest few. He was ready for his greatest challenge: securing the old woman's endorsement of his journey to the Inyx.
Pausing before the steps, Anzi whispered, “I will wait for you here, Dai Shen.”
“No, Anzi. Too conspicuous.”
“I will wait, I think.”
The legates on the stairs were watching him; it was time to go. He looked at her. Faithful Anzi. In danger because of him. He would send her on a harmless errand. “Find me a toy boat,” he said.
Anzi looked doubtful.
He lowered his voice. “One about this big,” he said, gesturing. “A boat that can be put in the water.”
He glanced up at the legate guarding the salon doors. The practice matches with Min Fe and Shi Zu were over. “To the dragon,” he said.
Anzi whispered, “Remember not to step on the dragon.”
He started up the stairs, threading his way through legates and preconsuls, the finely plumed birds of Cixi's aviary, whether Chalin, Ysli, or Hirrin. They turned to watch him as he made straight for the door, clutching his summons. This he presented to the Chalin gatekeeper, who perused the scroll and, finding it in order, reached to open the door. At that moment Quinn caught a glimpse of a familiar legate standing off to the side. Min Fe bowed in his direction, a jackal on the fringe of the lions.
Quinn stepped into Cixi's domain, into a foyer. A spike of worry hit him, that the old woman would remember him. Unlike the Tarig, Chalin were good at faces.
A Hirrin servant stood guard at yet another door. On the floor at the Hirrin's feet coiled an inlaid design in the likeness of a snake that appeared to slither under the door.
As Quinn approached, the servant opened the door, ushering him into an expansive colonnaded room with a sweeping view out to the city. Amid a dozen Hirrin attendants, Cixi sat on a raised chair. Dwarfed by the elaborate chair, the old woman perched there, her feet supported by a footstool. A Hirrin knelt at her side applying a lacquer to the prefect's fingernails. The fumes of the lacquer swept over Quinn's Jacobson's organ, along with smells of Hirrin perfumes.
The prefect's stiff gown and hair created an imposing façade, but the woman herself, as he'd noted before, was as small as a child. Her startlingly black hair was sculpted into a high bonnet framing a lined and crumpled face. Her fingernails were three inches long, curling in at the ends. She hadn't changed a bit.
Next to the dais, but standing somewhat back, was a huge man clad in a tentlike embroidered jacket and pants. This, he guessed from his glimpse of the man the other day, was Zai Gan. The man's scowl cut into the folds of his face. He looked like his rotund brother, but a crueler version.
Quinn bowed, noting that beneath his feet was the rest of the snake that he'd seen in the foyer. However, now he saw that it was no snake, but a dragon, scaled and whiskered. Jeweled teeth glowed in the grinning mouth.
When he rose from his bow, Cixi was glaring at him. The Hirrin at her side had stopped her ministrations and also stared at him.
Cixi looked at Zai Gan. Her deep voice had lost none of its authority: “Stands on Breathing Fire, Preconsul. You saw?”
“Shocking, High Prefect,” Zai Gan said.
Quinn had shocked her before he had even opened his mouth. She'd said stands…. He looked down, seeing that he stood on the dragon. Moving to the side, he stepped off it. The Hirrin attendants on the sidelines moved their heads in unison to note this.
Cixi smirked at him. “Born in a minoral?”
“My noble father despaired of me, Your Brilliance.”
She regarded him for a moment. “Are you of my acquaintance, petitioner?” Her face was all squinting eyes and wariness.
“It has never been my honor, High Prefect.”
“Yet you sound familiar.”
A pause stretched long enough to shred his stomach lining.
The Hirrin attendant blew too strongly on her nails, and Cixi jerked her hand away, frowning and readjusting the drape of her robes. “Minor son of Yulin. No, I suppose not. Does your father still pretend to service ten wives?”
“Nine, these days, Your Brilliance.” He'd seen Caiji's funeral procession.
A hiccup emerged from the prefect, an eruption that passed for a laugh. “Even so.” The Hirrin spectators fluttered their lips in amusement, and in an instant the suspicion on her face had passed.
“Which wife must claim you?” she asked.
“I am nothing so grand, High Prefect. No wife claims me.” With Yulin's brother standing close by, Quinn hoped to avoid speaking of things Zai Gan would know intimately. But Cixi, of course, controlled the conversation.
Cixi examined her glowing purple nails. “Well then, bastard son of the One Who Shines, is it an insult to send such a messenger to the high prefect?”
“It's true that the sublegate Min Fe found me unworthy. He would have sent me home before I could shock the great Cixi.” He glanced at the dragon on the floor.
“Perhaps that would have been well.” The attendants stood like a row of pawns on a chessboard, waiting for the queen's next move.
It was a hall of power. Quinn thought of Ghoris the navitar reaching out and gathering the lines of choice, of fate. Crisscrossing this room were invisible wires, the burning shadows of things that must be, or should be. All he had to do was grasp them and pull them toward him.
Cixi's voice came to him like a vibration almost beyond hearing: “Perhaps it takes more than that to shock the high prefect.”
“I'm relieved. It wasn't the image I had of your personage.”
“And what image did you have of this personage, bastard messenger?”
He took a chance at flattery: “A woman who wears the dragon, the only one who dares to wear it.”
“Ha.” Cixi pointed a blue-nailed finger at him. “This one is either very stupid or very smart.” She turned slightly to inquire of Zai Gan, “Which, Preconsul?”
Zai Gan muttered, “Stupid, it would seem.”
Cixi closed her eyes for a moment, revealing eyelids crusted with silver. “I am surrounded by stupidity. Why do I prefer Hirrin attendants, messenger?”
“Because Hirrin can't lie,” Quinn said.
She turned a virulent gaze on the preconsul. “But Chalin can, is that not correct?”
Zai Gan moved closer to the dais. “Yes, Your Brilliance.”
“Stop calling me that ridiculous name.”
Quinn made a mental note to do likewise, while Zai Gan squirmed under her gaze. Then Cixi turned once more to Quinn, beckoning him with a long finger. “Approach me, messenger.”
As Quinn did so, the Hirrin vacated the footstool where she had been seated, and bid him take her place. Sitting, Quinn met Cixi's gaze and managed, he thought, to look relaxed. Her hair wax smelled rancid, barely covered by her perfumed body powder. She looked like a gnome-queen presiding over a grotesque court. But she didn't suspect that the one in front of her was the most peculiar of them all.
Speaking more intimately now, Cixi asked, “Why should the Inyx be leaders of battle, when they cannot utter commands?”
“Madam, they can speak silently among themselves to coordinate.”
She held up a lacquered nail to make her point. “But silently. We do not trust those who whisper.”
Quinn nodded. “Wise, if whisperers have a choice. But the Inyx have no choice. All their speech is silent.”
Zai Gan snorted in response, and Cixi cut a glance at this impertinence. She resumed, “Then how, son of Yulin, do we know if they are loyal, when they never affirm that it is so? When we see no evidence of respect for the gracious lords? These creatures have no writing, no music, nothing to celebrate their Tarig creators. Is this natural, is this loyal?”
“It is loyal to fight for the high lords. This is worth more than bowing and writing.”
She allowed herself a small, awful smile, showing an even row of yellow teeth like kernels of corn. “Fighting worth more than bowing? You insult my legates, perhaps?”
Quinn murmured, half apology, half irony, “Born in a minoral.”
Cixi's face warred over whether to be amused or annoyed. By her tone, annoyance won. “But sent on high matters to the dragon's court. Strange.”
“My father gives me a chance to make up for past indiscretions, madam. If I succeed, I am redeemed.”
Her face twitched as though assaulted by a gnat. “No concern of mine.”
“No, High Prefect, your pardon.” But he'd told her the personal stakes. If she had a heart, it might affect her. Even a woman like this loves something, he thought.
She nodded at Zai Gan and he sidled forward, his bulk now looming next to Quinn. “How can the Inyx lead a battle, being silent?” he demanded.
“Your Excellency, they send their thoughts into the minds of others, and communicate perfectly. But not to lead a battle, merely to lead their own contingent. The battle strategy remains with its Chalin generals.”
Cixi examined her index finger, which shone more than her other nails. A tiny pattern of calligraphy appeared there, and Cixi scanned it. She went on: “Why should Yulin care what the Inyx do? The sublegate Min Fe has opined that Yulin has no loyal reason to plead for the Inyx.”
Words continued to scroll over Cixi's nail, and Quinn wondered if Min Fe was privy to the conversation, and dipping in. “Min Fe has spent too long with his papers. He knows nothing of Yulin now, if he ever did.”
Cixi was very still. “And the high prefect? Is her knowledge, too, a thing of paper?”
“Your pardon, madam. Min Fe and I have stooped to common brawling. We forget ourselves.”
The nail scrolled with protest. Cixi devoured every word, her eyes hungry for gossip and dispute.
Quinn pushed on: “Master Yulin's motives are simple, madam.”
Zai Gan could restrain himself no longer. “The bastard, banished son of Yulin knows him better than his closest brother?”
Quinn took a chance that Zai Gan was not as favored as the man supposed. “The preconsul has been absent from the sway a few days, and has not renewed ties. Thus, a worthless bastard son may indeed know more about some things in Xi.”
Cixi looked up from her nail, watching the two of them with something like glee.
Zai Gan's eyes shed pure loathing. “You presume much,” he murmured. Then louder, “So then, expert of Xi, tell us Yulin's secret reason for this enterprise.”
Quinn had his answer to this one ready. “It was never hidden, Excellency. The Inyx fight well, but their conscripts are declining. This clarity will inspire enlistment.”
Cixi muttered, “Such inspiration might have come ten thousand days ago.”
Quinn said, and immediately regretted it, “Perhaps Master Yulin should learn hurrying from Min Fe.”
Cixi's face darkened. “Do you instruct me on efficiency, messenger? Do you presume to speak as my equal?”
She made a motion as if to rise, and the Hirrin removed the footstool where her feet rested. Lifting her heavy robes, she stepped down, and Quinn stood also, moving out of her way. As she swept past Zai Gan and moved toward the windows, Quinn saw the woven icon on her back: an astonishing dragon in intricate detail, stitched in silver thread with red, green, and blue embellishments for scales, fins, and teeth.
Zai Gan followed her, bending down to whisper in her ear.
Turning back to Quinn, she stood on dramatically elevated shoes, but her height still fell short of four and a half feet. “Why, we ask again, is this clarity here now rather than before? What has changed? Why has Yulin changed? This fat old man who was more content to service wives than the war?”
“I do not know.” He watched as Cixi stood with the huge preconsul, dwarfed beside him. But it was obvious where the power lay. It fairly burst from the dragon magistrate.
Cixi stalked closer to him. “Now, suddenly you are stupid? You decide when to be clever, and when to know nothing?”
“I am no legate to play at court games, madam.”
“Court games,” Cixi hissed, looking up at him. “Is that what my questions are?”
He had pushed too far. She both despised the bureaucracy and reveled in it. He didn't know which end to play. He bowed, hoping to look tongue-tied.
Cixi's voice lowered as she flicked her gaze over the Hirrin attendants straining to hear. “I never liked Yulin, and he always despised me. Our antipathy goes back so long that we are both quite fond of it.” She glanced at him, her eyes like hardened amber. “It may be the only thing in your favor.” She turned to Zai Gan. “Leave us, Preconsul.”
He protested, “I have more questions, Your Brilliance.”
“Well, Her Brilliance does not. I am done with this interview.”
Quinn forgot to breathe. Done?
Slowly, Zai Gan bowed and swept from the room with surprising grace. But Cixi hadn't dismissed Quinn.
She approached him. Then she said, her voice taking on a formal tone. “After due consideration, and against the advice of my functionaries, I have decided to see Yulin's concept put to the test. This matter of Inyx officers of battle. It may please the Inyx to be so nominated.”
Quinn looked at her, stunned.
“In other words, I will enact your clarity and send you on your way.” She smirked. “No thanks, no bows?”
“Madam, my thanks indeed.” He bowed low, and meant it, heart soaring. He had read her correctly: that proud and brittle, she still craved a man who didn't fawn.
“Of course,” she murmured, “if this change in custom fails, your sire may blame you instead of himself. That would be like the old bear.”
Quinn said, trying to restrain his elation, “Perhaps my father would credit me for trying.”
Cixi sucked on her teeth, causing her face to collapse into its many lines. “Then he would be soft as well as fat.” She waved him away.
As he turned to leave, she said, “You were poorly prepared for this meeting. No petitioner has ever stood on the dragon.”
Quinn turned back to her. “Consul Shi Zu gave me instructions. But they were lengthy, and I fell asleep before finishing them.”
She smirked. “Shi Zu is a long-winded Adda with too many clothes.” Her eyes held him in place. Then she said, pleasantly enough, “Are you a schemer, Dai Shen?”
“I am what I am, High Prefect.”
“Oh, I doubt that. No one is what they are. Except the Hirrin.” She leaned forward. “I do not trust you, messenger. You are too smart to be a minor son of Yulin. Whatever you are, you have lost something today that you might value.”
“What have I lost, madam?” The lines in the room grew sticky, and sagged. He hoped it was Cixi who got caught in them, and not he.
“Your anonymity,” she answered. “Consider yourself under my close gaze from now on.”
“I risked much to be under your gaze, madam.” It was the truest thing he had said to her.
She regarded him, murmuring, “You are good with words. Perhaps you have a future as a legate, after all.”
Quinn bowed. “May God not look on me.”
“Mmm,” he heard her utter, a sound like a dragon purring.