WEN AN WAS OLD, past the age when she expected to see miracles, or even the unexpected. A life of 50,000 days ensured that you had seen most everything at least twice. But looking into the eyes of the stranger, she knew that an old woman had just been given the gift of surprise. Of course, it might be a fatal one.
Now, as she led the beku down the valley, the stranger lay on the palanquin, still delirious. His head injury would heal, but he would not last long once they reached the village. So she must decide whether to cast him to his fate, or protect him. God not looking at me, she thought crossly. I haven't asked to be surprised; I've never hoped to make high decisions, nor ever looked to be garroted by a bright lord.
All of these things appeared likely to happen, because of the appearance on her doorstop of an out-of-place man.
She'd found him during her walk, shortly after rising. The stranger lay at the foot of a rock outcropping, as though he had fallen from its height, though why a man should climb a rock in the far reach of a dusty minoral was incomprehensible. Lugging him by beku to her outpost, she had cleaned his head wound, attempting to analyze it for infection, but the stone well could make nothing of his blood sample. When his eyes fluttered open for a moment, she understood why.
Blue eyes. After sitting a moment digesting this discovery, she leaned forward and picked up his left eyelid to confirm the impossible. Yes, blue.
It was no absolute proof that he was from the Rose. But combined with the odd clothes she drew a scholar's conclusion. All these years of peering through the veil at the Rose, eking out the merest snips of knowledge, and now she had a Rose specimen lying in her bed. The implications for scholarship staggered her. However, by bond law, her life was forfeit unless she turned him in. So much for scholarship.
“Heaven give us few surprises,” she muttered now as she led the beku by a rope. How had the man made the crossing? And why? He'd come with no army of invasion, nor in any brightship, to penetrate the great wall. The man groaned now and then, and the beku's ears twitched as though the beast wasn't used to moans in that strange tongue. She thought he spoke English, but she couldn't be sure, her Rose studies having focused on Mandarin, Cantonese, and Latin.
In the purse tied to her belt were the lenses she'd made for his eyes. She'd worked through the ebb forming them in case she decided to save his life. Now she must decide whether to give him to the lords or exploit his knowledge. Better, far better than squinting at the Rose universe through the veil, now she might ask this man directly, What is your world? How does it work? How do you live? Many scholars wished to know these things, and were allowed to study them, provided no one of the Rose ever guessed they were being looked at. This was the immutable vow of the realm: to hide, always hide, from the Rose. Some disagreed. Some wanted converse with the Rose, even a few of her own Chalin people. Wen An's position had long been that the worlds should have discourse and learn from each other. Until now, she'd assumed she would have her grave flag before that ever happened. It was well to stay far from politics. And treason.
If she was caught, the eye lenses she'd made would condemn her to lie at the feet of the bright lords. It wasn't too late to cast them away, to be innocent of breaking the vows. Yes, perhaps she should do that. She was too old to embark on new scholarship, to become an important personage. She was a minor scholar, of course; why else would she be stuck at this piddling, dusty reach, working alone and without decent help? She'd grown used to her routines, with her Rose gleanings filling a redstone every day, or every arc at the least. Why strive at her age? On the other hand, she might live to reach 100,000 days, and that meant she was only in the middling years of her life. Hadn't Master Yulin's wife Caiji just died at exactly 100,000 days? Yes, there was still time for important work. She glanced back at the unconscious man. But the fool spoke English, so again, this opportunity was not for her. It was a relief to decide this. Let those who wanted God's notice strive for importance. She would give the stranger up and have done with it.
Who to give him to, though—the lords or Master Yulin? Yes, Yulin might take it amiss for her to deal directly with the bright lords. She had family ties to Yulin's household; there was that as well. Yulin's oldest wife Suzong was Wen An's distant cousin. She knew enough of that exalted lady to suspect that Suzong did not love the Tarig, so let her grapple with the problem. People in high places had high responsibilities, and those in low didn't. She liked the justice of it. There's an end to it then: Let the man go to the Tarig, through the hands of Yulin, and leave her in peace.
Her feet hurt, treading on the rocky minoral floor. She sighed, feeling cowardly and also cross for having to walk six hours with the breath of a beku on her neck.
She turned to see the man stirring on the riding platform. A shame to have saved his life only to see the Tarig take it from him again. Or perhaps as with that other Rose visitor, the bright lords would keep him in a cage for their amusement, or so the story went, that a man of the Rose had been spared for the sake of the bright lady Chiron, who found him a source of amusement—though, of course, the Tarig didn't laugh.
As the Heart of Day cast its fiery heat over the trail, Wen An plodded onward, looking for a good resting spot now that the man was stirring.
Lying blind, his head riddled with pain, Quinn probed his surroundings with his sense of smell. A complex, pollen-filled breeze, tangy and fragrant; an organic musk of an animal. Underneath all other smells lay the memory-laden scent of cloves.
He hovered on the edge of consciousness, clinging to a hard platform that rocked under the swaying plod of some beast of transport. The smells of the beast staggered him. Hundreds, maybe thousands of compounds, churning, churning.
Under an impossible sky.
He rode in an open-sided tent. Sprawled against a hard backrest, he lay staring at a woven cloth sparkling here and there with defects through which the day needled at his eyes. They had stopped.
A woman peered in at him, old and strangely dressed. She spoke to him in a jumble of sounds, then handed him a cup of what smelled like water. He leaned on his side to slake his thirst, and this brought him closer to the edge of the overhead canopy. Gaping at the sight of the sky, he dropped the cup, drawing a blameful stare from the woman. She left, and his view widened.
The sky was on fire. High, stratified clouds boiled in a blue-white fire. It seemed as though it should blind him, but after the initial shock, he realized the fire was both gentle and bright. Why didn't the woman look up and remark on the clouds being on fire? But even as he thought the question, he knew the answer.
Because it was always like this: the sky, on fire.
It wasn't until that moment, as his transport beast crouched on the ground, and as the woman brought him another cup of water, that he was certain he was back. “Back,” he croaked, using his voice for the first time. His eyes watered, perhaps from too much sky-gazing, and a longing welled up in him. To see Sydney once again. To bring her and her mother home. If they were here, that thin hope that had become thick with repetition.
The woman narrowed her eyes, watching him drink.
He slept. When he woke, they were on the march again. The woman led a beast, massive in the shoulders and head, through a gilded landscape of yellows and brownish golds. When he scratched a wound on his temple, bits of dried blood flecked onto his hand. Punching through had been a rough journey—either that or he'd landed badly.
His guide saw him stir but, with little more than a backward glance, continued in front, holding the beast's lead. Her cloak, frosted with the gloaming light above, fluttered in a stiff, warm breeze. On either side, low desert hills hunched up, confining their path to a narrow track.
He was in a new land. He was back. There would be time enough to make sense of the fiery sky, and whether he had a friend or foe walking ahead of him. It was curious that the woman was human. How could there be humans here, in this place of strange grasses and alien beasts? Once he had known the answer. With this question began the great struggle that would engage him for the rest of his days: wrestling with his mind, with his soul, for what he'd known and what he had been. Before.
In time the beast stopped, and in a convoluted process of collapse, settled onto its knees. With some difficulty, Quinn dismounted and regarded the creature.
The animal munched on grass, reaching the clumps from its great height by virtue of a long but powerfully built neck. Topping the massive, scoop-jawed head was a small cranium and dainty ears. The four long, meaty legs ended in the broad-hooved pads of its feet. Coarse hairs on its hide sheltered small critters catching a free ride, or a free meal.
The woman rummaged in one of the animal's saddlebags. Presently she presented a few tidbits of food on a cloth, but they smelled inadvisable. Of more interest was the woman herself, her white eyebrows and golden eyes giving her an albino appearance. She wore Asian-style pants and a short jacket, silken and sturdy. Around her neck was a string of red, irregular stones. On her head she wore a wrap of silken cloth that slightly overhung her eyes, protecting them from the sun. From the sky-bright. He called it that, for lack of a better word.
From her packs the woman retrieved a new food offering. This was a kind of cereal that she mixed into a cup of water. He took the proffered cup, liking its smell already. Gulping it down, he held out the cup for more. She refilled it, smiling. He knew the word that was called for.
“Nahil,” he found himself saying. Thank you.
At this, the woman froze. Her lips parted to say something, then closed as she stared at him.
He had just revealed that he spoke at least a little of her language.
Finally she uttered a short phrase, a mash of words anchored by heavy glottals.
He didn't understand. The language lay buried inside him. Yet he'd said nahil.
His utterance had staggered her. She walked away, gazing down the valley, standing immobile for a long while.
Had he just made a drastic mistake? What a fool he was, to reveal something so important. But couldn't he be a stranger from another nation, who knew only limited words in her language? He waited, letting her make the next move.
Coming back, she looked up into his eyes and said something in her language.
He shook his head. I don't understand.
She squinted her eyes at him, perhaps disbelieving him, that he knew a word of her language, but not others. But why was this so disturbing?
Then it became clear. If he hadn't been so addled, he would have known instantly: She had known from the beginning that he wasn't of this world; and when he said thank you, she knew he'd been here before. Evidently this was not good news.
She turned away, then sat on a rock, staring at the dust. From time to time she glanced up irritably at him, muttering.
This woman had saved his life. Where would he have found water in this barren place? But where was she taking him? He was not ready to face others in this state: weak, disoriented, confused. And now he appeared to be a less-than-welcome guest. If he could just remember. Whatever had transpired the last time he was here, it was an unclaimed territory: deep inside of him yet out of reach.
At last the woman rose and, coming close, scrutinized his face. She nodded, pursing her lips, as though she'd just swallowed something distasteful. She turned to the pack beast and retrieved a length of cloth. By her gestures, he realized she wanted to drape his head. He kneeled as she wound the cloth and tucked it in.
This accomplished, she brought out a small box, opening it to reveal a remarkable thing: two small golden lenses. With gestures she showed him how to wear them.
He hesitated to put them on.
Her mouth formed a sneer of impatience. She gripped her neck and made a choking gesture. Evidently there was danger in being blue-eyed. He had little choice but to trust her, and he knelt down to cradle the box and insert the lenses into his eyes. Annoyingly, his vision clouded, but he was not uncomfortable.
The woman nodded with satisfaction. “Nahil,” she said.
He decided to trust her for now. She had revealed that he was in danger, and that she would help him. Even so little information was priceless.
They set out again, his guide insisting that he ride. Quinn felt a new energy, even an exultation. His strength was returning. He had survived. So far, he had survived.
At length they and their pack beast emerged from the narrow valley down which they had been traveling for hours. Before them lay a sight that both thrilled and sobered him: a colossal plain, relentlessly flat. Spanning it all, the heavens sparkled, forming an endless bright cloud to the limits of vision. In the sky's soft folds he perceived just the slightest dimming into lavender.
As they descended onto the plains, he saw that at the edge of the flatlands was a towering wall of blue-black that stretched to the limit of sight. The valley they had just come down—perhaps five miles wide—pierced that wall like a tributary. They had been in a minor valley. Now they were in the heart of things.
The wall was a dark escarpment, appearing to form the boundary of the world itself. At an awful height, it bore down on them, bringing a feeling of chaos restrained. It raced toward them over the dry mud pans....But even as his eyes told him this, he knew the wall didn't move.
Later. He would understand it later.
Several people with pack beasts passed them on their route. The road was little more than a dusty track. If they knew how to make eye lenses, he thought it strange they used no mechanized transport.
One man turned around to take a second look at Quinn, but otherwise he did not draw attention. His skin was slightly darker than most others here, but there were variations in skin tone, and he thought he might pass as long as he didn't have to speak.
The clouds overhead were cooling toward a time that might be dusk. It seemed that the day had been many hours too long already, yet still the sky-bright churned. They were approaching an inhabited place.
They came upon a corral of pack beasts like his own. Beyond this, a dusty but clean settlement—little more than three dozen or so huts, made of an irregular, molded material of an indescribable color somewhere between black and gold.
The people here conveyed an impression of lean physicality, precise of movement with little wasted on gestures. He would have said fighters, though he saw no arms. By their behavior they appeared more like traders—ones who knew a fair price and meant to fetch it. He had difficulty distinguishing men from women at a casual glance, for their dress had no obvious gender markers.
Into one of the huts his companion went barefoot; when she emerged, she presented him with a quilted jacket to go over his shirt. Peering into the doorway, Quinn saw goods laid out. Cottage industry.
His guide glanced ahead, and her face took on a look of alarm. In their path was a small crowd. This seemed to confound his guide, who looked to the left and right for a way to pass. But the line of huts funneled them toward the gathering, and it would draw attention to pause. As they moved closer, they heard voices raised.
They moved closer. In the midst of the small crowd lay a man, garroted. A device of sticks and wire was wound around his neck, and he was dragging air in between swollen lips. His hands bled as he pulled on the wires, to no avail.
Astride him, standing perhaps seven feet tall, was an extraordinary creature.
Thin, almost impossibly elongated, the being wore a long, narrow skirt, sleeveless tunic, and elaborately silvered vest. His powerful muscles declared his gender, when otherwise he might be mistaken for female. His face was deeply sculpted, and his lips, sensual and fine.
Quinn locked in on that face. It was the one on his door knocker. He felt the shock hit deep, into his bones. Here, beyond doubt, was the thing he must hide from.
Every aspect of this creature—his stature, bearing, and motions—was oddly beautiful. Beside him, the villagers looked fleshy and sordid. The creature's skin was a deep bronze, darker by far than any of those who stood staring at the victim, one of their own. The executioner straightened from his task and skimmed the crowd with his eyes, stopping for a moment on Quinn.
The creature held him under a dark gaze. Quinn fought for standing, wrestled for control, until the gaze dismissed him. To such a being, Quinn was not interesting.
Then the creature strode off, with a grace of movement unlikely in one so tall. The crowd parted for him swiftly, but no one would meet the creature's eyes. As the crowd dispersed, Quinn watched for the figure, but it had disappeared.
A tugging at his arm got Quinn moving again, despite a sense that he had just been given a clue to some profound puzzle.
They went past the strangling victim, who lay, one knee raised up, hands clutching at his throat, staring at the sky-bright. Those watching him lost interest, leaving him in his agony.
This vision clung to Quinn. Then the woman was leading him off to the side, down an alley with wagon ruts carved in the golden soil. He followed her, feeling drained by the day's irreconcilable images. He held the pack beast's reins as his companion made yet another house call. This time, though, she came back outside and motioned him to enter.
One look at the four men inside, and Quinn knew they were lying in wait for him. He landed the first blow, sending one of them crashing. The hut was small, and he was confined amid the three remaining men and the woman, all of whom rushed him. Filled with a savage will to escape, he spun around, lashing out again and again. He jabbed backward with an elbow and connected with flesh, but as he swung around to complete the assault, his stomach met a fist even larger than his own. The man looked surprised when Quinn managed a knee to his groin. But then Quinn was down on one knee, and they had his arms behind his back.
Looking up from the floor where they were securing ropes around his wrists, he gazed into the eyes of the woman who'd saved him from the desert. She slowly unwound her head scarf, then pulled her hands through her hair in a casual gesture of one home from a trying journey. Her hair was startlingly white.
They had been traveling for many days. Gagged and bound, Quinn was imprisoned in a tall jar with breathing holes at the top. His kicks could not shatter it. With no vision of the outside world, he couldn't gauge the passing of days, and slept between bouts of shouting for release. All ignored.
The jar was bad, but he could bide his time. They hadn't killed him, nor delivered him to the bronze creature. They had taken his boots and his pictures. At intervals they let him out to take food and walk and relieve himself, under guard. So he was not dead yet.
Sometimes he fell to thinking that he had gone mad at last. That this impossible world was his final refuge from sanity. He had seen unearthly creatures, and an unearthly sky. The black wall that rose like a tidal wave. Yet it was a consistent madness; and in his better moments he knew just where he was.
On his brief reprieves from the jar, he found never-ending desert—all hard yellow soil, without landmark or habitation. No trees grew on these plains, increasing its look of blasted flatness. Once, he saw a few round shapes floating in the sky. With no way to judge distance he couldn't tell if they were large or small. Dirigibles, he guessed. He listened to every word the guards spoke. The sounds of some words were familiar, and now and then a bit of meaning coalesced and shredded under his scrutiny.
When his captors tried to put him back in the jar, he fought them, even weak as he was from inactivity. Since they avoided hitting him, he presumed that they wanted to keep him healthy. He held on to this thread of hope—that they were permitting him to live—for all the reasons that he had to live: for Sydney, here, and for Mateo, there. Both in jeopardy because of Titus Quinn.
For a time he was sure that he was traveling on a train, or at least some kind of rolling transport. He tried learning about his captors and his surroundings by smell. He had taken to standing in a half crouch, with his fingers gripped through the holes in the top of the jar. There, the air was freshened, laden with scents other than his own. He let the air flow over his tongue, under the roof of his mouth. As he concentrated on the smells, an odd thing began to happen. Wisps of memory came riding on the smells. Faces of people, structures. Emotions, not all of them bad.
They let him out for a meal. The train was gone, nor were there tracks or any evidence for the conveyance. The journey continued in a cart pulled by two beasts such as he had seen before.
Not once in all his out-of-jar intervals did he ever witness night. The sky, he remembered, never ceased, and it never dimmed except to a twilight. Effortlessly, the word sailed into his consciousness. Bright. The river of the sky was called the bright.
The jar began to crack open. A fork of light blasted into Quinn's eyes as the jar parted slowly, pulling strands of viscous material with it. The two halves fell of their own weight, and he saw that he was in a forest: dim but, compared to the jar, gloriously brilliant. Animal screams and twitters and the musk of organics assaulted him.
A man stood before him, his white hair pulled into a topknot. Combined with his quilted clothing, he looked like a Chinese nobleman. From long ago.
He led Quinn a short distance to the shore of a small lake, perhaps three hundred yards across. Hugging its shore and screening further views, graceful trees and shrubs formed a tidy collar. Across the lake, Quinn could just make out the top of a grand edifice, its masonry sparkling under the furnace glare of the bright.
The Chinese-dressed man picked at an edge of Quinn's clothing, wrinkling his nose.
Quinn bathed in the lake. And the glory of it made him laugh. When he emerged, he received quilted pants, a cropped jacket, and soled slippers. He dressed, and when he put his feet into the shoes, they enlarged, molding to his feet. The technology of this place confused him, with its mixture of backward and advanced.
Around him the lush garden crowded his senses, smelling of moist soil, complex organics, and mildew-laden spores. In a tumult of growths, an upper story soared with spindly gold and cinnamon-colored fronds; crouching beneath, an understory of black, thick-leafed shrubs. Animal whoops and chitters announced other dwellers. Quinn ignored all this for now, concentrating instead on his visitor: young and fit and rich.
The young man led Quinn into a hut, where he gestured for Quinn to sit on a bench and offered a cup of water for Quinn to drink.
He drank, gratefully, but his attention drifted to a cylinder on the floor of the hut from which came the aroma of edibles.
The man noticed his glance. He fetched the cylinder, a stack of three round boxes. In each were different types of what might be dumplings. The man watched closely as Quinn brought each one to his nose and inhaled. Although thrown off by the many acrid odors of the jungle, he made some judgments about the food. He ate everything in the first two boxes, leaving the last untouched.
Then the young man spoke. In Chinese, Quinn guessed. Chinese. Quinn was certain the influence here was Chinese, although there was no epicanthic fold near the eyes, and the skin tones were too pale.
Quinn shook his head. I don't understand.
“We shall try this language next,” his jailer said, in deeply accent English.
Stunned, Quinn nodded his understanding. The man's utterance was even more preposterous than the Chinese version. Why would these people speak such languages? “Where am I?” Quinn asked. “What is this place?”
“Master Yulin's palace garden,” came the answer.
“Who is Master Yulin? And who are you?”
“I'm of no importance. But my name is Sen Tai.” He looked more closely at Quinn, frowning. “You hide your eyes. Why?”
He was referring to the lenses. “I don't know,” Quinn said truthfully. “A woman gave them to me, then forced me to go with the bandits who put me in a jar.”
A smile hovered at the edge of Sen Tai's mouth. “They weren't bandits. Take the coverings out.”
Quinn bent over his hand and popped the lenses out, relieved to be done with them. He wiped a wash of tears away as his eyes adjusted. When he looked up, Sen Tai was staring at him.
“Who is Master Yulin?” Quinn repeated.
“He is master of this sway, of this garden, and of your life.”
“I have a message for Master Yulin. I will convey it only to him.”
Sen Tai was very still. An animal screeched from some hidden place, as though laughing at Quinn's pretensions.
“I've come a long way to convey this message,” Quinn said.
“It's not so far to Wen An's reach, where you fell.”
“Farther than that.”
Sen Tai nodded slowly. He stepped over to the hut wall, where a glossy rope lay coiled. He spoke into the end of the rope, using the language that Quinn should know, and didn't.
Then he turned and announced, “My lord will come to the lake, where we will meet him.” He gestured to the door.
Master Yulin would come. Quinn hoped the master of the sway was not one of the bronze creatures he'd seen.
But he was out of the jar. Somehow, his stature had climbed. Would he still have stature when they discovered the truth? Quinn hoped so. The truth was his game plan.
Snugged up to the shore was a small raft, bare except for a pole, shackles, and a large block.
“I must bind you to these for the safety of my master,” Sen Tai said apologetically. But the shackles were attached to a heavy block. Noting Quinn's glance, Sen Tai said, “He's very cautious.”
“My own master will not be happy to think me so treated,” Quinn said.
“Your master does not rule here, I think.”
Quinn submitted, remembering the jar and how much worse his position might be.
As the young man poled him onto the lake, Quinn saw it was shallow, perhaps fifteen feet deep. As they glided to the middle of the lake, he got a clearer view of the garden. He spied cages here and there, from which wrong-looking animals peered at him. One cage was spacious, and held flying insects that formed chains of themselves, and dispersed again, as though spelling out answers for him in letters he had forgotten.
Across the lake a barge had set out.
As it approached, Quinn saw a rotund man poling it. Richly dressed, the man poled with an athletic grace. From his upper lip drooped a long white mustache. When he reached the lake's center, the master lifted his pole and plunged it into the lake bottom with a mighty downstroke. He held the pole, keeping his barge in place. Quinn's boatman did the same.
The man known as Master Yulin looked at Quinn with narrowed eyes.
Standing face-to-face, Yulin was by far the shorter of the two. He glanced at Quinn's boatman, speaking to him in their tongue.
Sen Tai said, “My master wishes you to answer three questions. Each one is worth your life.”
Quinn was listening. In the back of his mind he understood that the conversation would be through an interpreter. But his eyes were only on the master. “Ask, then.”
The master did, and the interpreter said, “Look at these pictures and tell who they are.”
On the other barge, the man held in his fat fingers the pictures of Johanna and Sydney. The little squares were creased and smeared, but still, seeing them in this place filled Quinn with a bright spear of courage.
“They are my wife and daughter.”
As this was translated, the master remained utterly still, his face taking on a golden glint from the water where the seething sky cast its image. A large carp roamed through the gilded water near Quinn's raft. The forest seemed to hold its breath.
Then, the second question: “What is your name?”
“Titus Quinn.”
After a pause, came the third question: “Why can you not speak the Lucent tongue, if you are Titus Quinn?”
So he did know their language. He had been here long enough to speak this exotic tongue. “I think I can speak it. I've just forgotten.” Beneath his feet, the platform rocked as he changed his stance. The chains chafed at his ankles.
The interpreter spoke softly, then, relaying the master's next words: “If you are truly he, then it would be far better for you to be at the bottom of this lake.”
The master, still unmoving, gazed at Quinn with a baleful stare.
Taking advantage of this pause, Quinn delivered the speech he had composed over his long days of confinement in the jar. He turned to the interpreter. “Tell this to your lord: You can drown me, but my people will come. They will come and they will ask permission to travel here, traveling to distant places in our world, using your world to shorten our journeys. You can hope to control them, and they will pay you well. But you can't stop them.”
The master stood, still holding his pole, as though it anchored him to the kingdom he was about to lose.
“What do you want?” came the question.
“My pictures back, for starters.”
Yulin's full mouth compressed flat. Then he looked at Sen Tai for the first time.
From behind Quinn came the translation: “Kill him.”
For an instant, Quinn thought Sen Tai was being told to kill him. But by Sen Tai's stricken look when Quinn turned around, this was not the case. After another exchange in their language, Sen Tai said in a whisper, “My master directs you to kill me.”
Gazing at Yulin, Quinn said, “Kill him yourself.”
After another order from Yulin, Sen Tai bent to unlock Quinn's shackles.
Then he bound them to his own ankles. Sen Tai dragged the block to the side of the raft, and Quinn stepped to the other side to keep the platform from tipping. The young man looked up into the sky for a few moments. Then he bent down and maneuvered the block so close to the edge that it almost toppled into the lake. Finally, it did topple, yanking him into the water, and into its depths.
Quinn looked in fury at Yulin. “Let me release him.”
The master shook his head, saying no, no, to whatever Quinn was asking.
At the bottom of the shallow lake, Quinn could see the man's white topknot as he stood there, bubbles streaming up to the surface.
A rage settled into Quinn's chest, cold and heavy. Yulin was a barbarian, and a cruel one.
After satisfying himself that the bubbles had ceased, Yulin yanked his pole from the mud. Turning a lofty glance on his prisoner, he pointed in the direction of the hut, directing Quinn to remain there. Then he pushed his barge off in the direction of the opposite shore.
Quinn forced himself to look into the water. He had no way to release the chain, and now, in any case, it was too late. Why kill Sen Tai? He thought it was because the interpreter now knew who Quinn was, and that information was valuable or dangerous, or both.
Sickened, Quinn thrust the pole into the water, pushing the raft back the way he'd come. This was a violent world. In such a place, could Johanna and Sydney have survived long? A fierce protectiveness swept through him, especially for his daughter—only nine years old, for God's sakes. However old she was now, she had been a child among these barbarians.
Poling to the shore, he felt eyes on him as animals peered from the forest thickets, some in cages, some free. He knew which state described him. But at least he was not in the jar.
They would have to kill him to put him in another jar.