NOW THAT YULIN HAD DECIDED TO DROWN TITUS QUINN, he was at peace.
The death of a sentient must never be undertaken lightly, nor did the master of the sway easily require such deaths. The Tarig lords alone took life, and then only seldom. It was just and fair.
Sometimes justice came in the back door, of course.
“Uncle,” came the girl's voice as she knelt in front of his dais.
He had almost forgotten about Anzi, trembling before him, face on the stone tiles, not daring to look at him.
Ignoring her, Yulin reviewed his decision with satisfaction.
Titus Quinn had come to him in a jar, the terrible gift of Wen An the scholar, who sought to transfer her bad fortune to him. May she fry in the bright, he thought. Thus, all unlooked-for, the man of the Rose was now living in his animal compound, and the sooner he stood at the bottom of the lake the better, the safer. Yulin took a dumpling from the tray and chewed it with pleasure. Yes, it was gratifying to have made the decision. The man had thrown him off course when he said that his people would come anyway. He congratulated himself on the shrewd insight that this alarming statement had nothing to do with his own predicament of playing host to the fugitive. Those who came next could never know the man's fate, or the identity of his executioner. Let them come. And may they arrive in some other sway and torment some other master.
Yulin arranged his robes to lie more loosely around his girth. They must all die. The man of the Rose, his village captors, the gardeners, and Wen An.
He had considered turning him over to Lord Hadenth, the lord Titus Quinn had so grievously injured. But suspicion would still fall on Yulin, even if he sent word immediately to the Ascendancy. The fiends would ask, why had Wen An sent the man here? And the answer lay groveling before Yulin: Ji Anzi, his worthless niece.
As though divining his thoughts, Anzi spoke again. “Uncle of my deliverance? May I speak?”
“No.”
Yulin looked down at the portraits lying in his lap. The wife. The daughter. Their fates were unfortunate, irrevocable. In the cause of his wife and child, the man of the Rose would make no end of trouble, even if the lords never found him. Yulin had heard about human attachments, and the chaos brought by a surfeit of emotion. Such as Titus Quinn so amply displayed his first sojourn here. No. The lake for this man. Sen Tai would perhaps be glad of company.
Picking at his gums with an ivory toothpick, Yulin thought that his favorite wife Suzong would be pleased with his resolve. Yulin sighed, staring out the window that faced his garden. Soon, he could stroll alone in his sanctuary, where now the despicable stranger stalked the grounds. There he could once again enjoy his collection of exotic animals, free from his wives’ complaints and his subject s’ demands.
Ji Anzi coughed softly, forcing Yulin's thoughts back to the present, and the question of whether or not to endure her protestations. He had sent for her, thinking she might aid his deliberations, but in the event, she had not been needed.
“Rise, then, Niece. I am finished with you.”
She stood, smoothing her jacket, looking properly deferential, and yet flushed with excitement. Best to quash her schemes before she could launch them.
“He is not welcome, Niece.” He locked a gaze on her so that she would know his intention. “It shall not be.”
Yulin nodded, feeling a moment's pity. “Go now, and find occupation for your energies.” He added, “Somewhere far from here.” He liked her well enough, but she brought misfortune, as even his late wife Caiji had admitted.
“And the others who have seen him come here?”
“They shall not be welcome, either.”
Her face reflected her inner strife, but to her credit, she held silent. Then she blurted: “But Wen An is your wife's cousin.”
“Even so.”
“A shame to kill Suzong's cousin for no reason.” Her next words came in a rush. “Wen An is utterly loyal to you. She spends all her days in a minoral no one has ever heard of, and travels only by beku. She will die with her mouth shut, yes, Uncle.”
Perhaps she was right, that Wen An might be spared….
Her voice needled at him: “And Suzong loves her so.”
His voice rose. “Do you decide when my orders are obeyed and when they are not?”
She fell to her knees, speaking into the floor once more. “No, Uncle of my deliverance.” He pulled at his mustache, thinking how she had brought disquiet and uncertainty to a day that had begun so well. Her voice was barely a whisper. “But such a waste, to kill Titus Quinn.”
“Eh?” What was this, a plea for the breaker of vows as well? He'd already given his ruling: They all die. Except, perhaps Wen An. Wife's cousin. Cause no end of trouble.
Her voice hovered like a swarm of gnats. “And Titus Quinn?”
He glanced around the audience chamber—private enough, but not impervious to spies: “His name, until I drown him, shall be Dai Shen. Never speak his Rose name again.”
“Yes, One Who Shines.”
This whole situation was her fault, if one went back far enough to find first causes. But he had long ago forgiven her. That is, until this man of the Rose had returned to haunt them.
Still, he took pity on her distress. “Rise, Anzi. You are in disfavor, but you may stand if you behave.”
As she rose, she met his eyes, and he saw that in the many days since he'd last seen her she had become a strong young woman, no longer gawky and too tall. Well, perhaps taller than a short man could wish, but her face was fine enough. Perhaps Suzong should be thinking of a suitable first husband for the girl….
“This man—Dai Shen,” Anzi was saying. “Perhaps we might yet wring advantage from him, learn from him. Learn what the Rose intends, now that they will come.”
Yes, a husband for the girl, and then a child. Either that or send her to the Long War, where she would learn the value of life, instead of living spoiled and demanding, as he had taught her to be. After her parents had died, she had been just another brat around the palace, but one he'd liked, and it was his own fault how she'd turned out.
She was still prattling on. “Everything will change, Uncle. The people of the Rose know us now. They will come here, as he has said. In your lifetime, you will see them come. Since many things will change, might you advance because of it? Better to plan than to be caught unawares.” She bowed quickly at his glare.
He murmured, “Well, I can kill him and then plan what to do when the rest come.” Why was he bothering to argue with her? She was a minor niece, and not in his counsels. This was a matter of high state that threatened his rule, his family, and his sway. Why argue with a girl who was so unlucky and of so little consequence?
Her voice became soothing and less confrontational. “Yes, you might want to kill him, eventually. But not until he's told you all he knows. Uncle, think of what he knows! You can gauge what the Rose will do, and plan with extreme delicacy how best to prosper.”
Waving her words away, he shook his head. Too dangerous.
Her face betrayed her misery. “I beg you, Uncle.”
He surged to his feet, upsetting the tray of dumplings, sending it clattering to the floor. “You dare to beg?”
She fell to the floor, burying her head.
He stormed toward her. “You dare to push me thus? To presume on my favor, after I have forgiven and protected you?” He looked down on her abject form, his face hot with rage, that she could be so base as to beg him.
Because of you, he thought, we almost died at the feet of the bright lords, that day now long past. Yet I hid you, protected you, and in a thousand days peace returned, and the Tarig were no wiser. And then the man of the Rose tried to kill a lord, and the nightmare began again. The lives of my family trembled on the tip of a branch, like a drop of water ready to fall with a nudge. And then it all passed, and life returned. Until now. May God look at Wen An and curse her.
He stared down at Anzi, the dumplings in his gut turning to stone. He took a calming breath. Many things, he thought, are this worthless niece's fault. But not Titus Quinn's return. To be fair, that's not her fault. And she gives good counsel about exploiting future events. Who does the man of the Rose serve, and what do his masters intend? I'd like to know the answers. I can always kill the man later.
“Sorry, so sorry, Uncle. Forgive me.” She huddled, still shrinking from his anger.
“If,” he began, “if I spare him for a few days, and we learn from him, I still doubt that I will welcome him in my sway.”
Even in his private chambers, he preferred not to use the words kill, murder, drown.
“Yes, Uncle. Just a few days, then decide. Very wise.”
He snorted. Craven flattery.
Turning her head, she looked at him from her crouch.
“Rise,” he said, weary of her, and less peaceful of mind now than before.
When she stood before him and raised her face to look at him, he saw her happiness, and it struck him with some force how temporary that state was likely to be. But in a long life, he noted philosophically, pain was no more than a ripple of water under a passing breeze.
“Anzi,” he said, “you speak the dark languages. I have in mind to assign you to bring forth Dai Shen's memories of how to speak proper Lucent. Why he has forgotten, we do not know. But you will teach him again.”
“Yes, Uncle of my deliverance.” In her eyes he saw the veneration. One day soon it would be sorrow, when the day came that Dai Shen joined Sen Tai at the bottom of the lake. That was the problem with Ji Anzi. She was too easily impressed, too susceptible to kindness.
The sooner she learned to be cruel, the happier she would be.
Quinn had exchanged the prison of the jar for the prison of the garden. He could, with difficulty, climb the smooth compound walls, but an impenetrable, invisible barrier at the top thwarted attempts to pass over.
He paced, longing to be away from here rather than wait for the one called Yulin to decide his fate. The vision of Sen Tai standing on the bottom of the lake haunted him, for its useless cruelty. It was better, the fat lord had said, for Titus Quinn to be dead than to have come back. He was unwelcome, and in danger. He'd gleaned as much from the old woman with the pack beast. He had a history here, and a bad one. Had it saved his life so far or jeopardized it?
He had been in this world nine days. Perhaps that interval was not nine days on Earth, nor even one day. But what was the relation of time between this place and home? Einstein had proven time was malleable. Did time pass at a different speed here? And was that relative speed constant? He might guess that fewer hours had passed on Earth in his absence. But wasn't it actually as likely that the progression of time was unpredictable—just as the location of the Entire was uncertain, shifting in Minerva's sensors? Whatever the relation between home and here, he hoped that Helice Maki had not had enough time as yet to set her gun sights on young Mateo.
The sky waxed and ebbed, disorienting him. Night and day were no such thing here. In an approximation of night, the sky cooled to bluish gray, ushering in a twilight of several hours. Then the sky burned white again. These were his nights and days. While Quinn slept, someone left food in stacked baskets outside his hut. He saw no one except the gardeners, who avoided him.
During the day he roamed the garden, examining the profusion of plants and Yulin's collection of animals. The smells were a thick soup, rich and jumbled, augmented by the sharp scents of dung. The animals paced in their pens, fluttering petaled flanks or tossing heads crowned with elaborate horns. For all their alien aspect, they were side-by-side with Earth animals: pandas and a pair of tigers. He kept casting about for theories to explain what he saw. The Chinese, he thought, had come here long ago, as had beings from other worlds. The world was a collection, perhaps, as this zoological garden was.
On the sixth day of his sojourn in Yulin's garden, he paced restlessly in a remote corner of the garden, coming unexpectedly on a gardener feeding a long-necked biped through the bars of its cage. The gardener, young and with a malformed hip, looked at Quinn in alarm and, dropping his pail of slops, fled into a dense stand of trees.
“Excuse me,” Quinn said. And then louder, after the man's retreating form, “Come back.” Using English, so it was useless. He'd grown tired of the isolation and wondered if the man might speak with him, might know Earth languages as others here did. But the gardeners acted afraid of him, so it was no use to try and engage them. Wearily, he continued his rounds of the walled park.
The screams of the animals in nearby cages set up a furor from deeper in the garden. Feeding time always created tension in the cages, and now the beasts seemed to sense that their meal would be late.
But these matters were far from the mind of the animal steward as he hurried to put distance between himself and the patient.
Chizu's loping gate compensated for his short right leg, and carried him swiftly if not gracefully. Hiding from the patient was Chizu's only thought. He had been foolish to let the man sneak up on him, so to endanger his position as animal steward of the second rank. Chizu's wage would hardly support a godder much less a demanding wife and hungry baby, but his side income as the eyes and ears of Preconsul Zai Gan, Yulin's brother and enemy, was sufficient to make him a most careful follower of Yulin's rules. The rules being, do not disturb patient, do not speak with patient, do not show yourself to patient except at a distance.
Chizu was so distressed at the near encounter that he voided his bladder right at the base of a sangwan tree, one of Yulin's favorites. He directed the stream up the fuzzy bark for good measure, pretending it was Yulin's hairy chest. One last pulse from his faucet for good measure, the old bastard.
Calm now, Chizu tried to absorb the startling new discovery: that the patient spoke a strange language. If the man were a scholar, dark languages could be at his command; but the man—Dai Shen his name was—was a soldier of Ahnenhoon, a remote son of Yulin by a mistress of another sway. Well, the Long War had delivered this Dai Shen of a head wound, stealing his ability to speak and remember who he was, and in his goodness Yulin had brought him here to speed his healing, for which he needed happy peace and no disturbing or clanking of food pails. But if the man was a scholar—speaking dark languages, after all!—then why put out the story that he was a soldier? For whatever the fat master wished to hide, that was a matter of interest to the fat master's brother.
True enough, if the patient were addled, he might babble outrageous words. But in truth he didn't act crazy, except for looking at common things as though startled that plants grew and animals screeched. Chizu and the others had been ready to believe he was gone in the head, since the patient wandered through the grounds like a child, like one stunned from a blow of a beku's hoof. But not raving.
He rubbed his hip absently, bringing blood to the gnarled joint. Would Zai Gan pay for this tidbit?
Zai Gan was Yulin's younger brother, and might rise to master of the sway if Yulin should fall from worthiness, perhaps disgracing himself. As a lofty preconsul of the Magisterium at the Ascendancy, Zai Gan was in position to lead, except for Yulin blocking the way. Of course, there was also the matter of Yulin's many daughters and sons, also eager to replace him, the consequence of Yulin's bedding of a thousand women, Yulin being a fountain of inexhaustible waters. This long line of replacements caused Yulin never to leave his house except in extreme necessity, as must have been the case when he fathered Dai Shen, since the mother's name was unknown in these parts, and no one had heard of this bastard son either. So Zai Gan had his spies, and waited for favorable events, of which this patient might be one.
What had the man said? Kum bak? Chizu memorized these words. Kum bak, and something else that he couldn't remember because he was a cursed animal steward and not a farting preconsul or a fat master of the sway. So he had perhaps not yet earned a reward from Zai Gan. No sense to risk a communication with the preconsul if the surmise that the patient was not a patient was unimportant, much less false.
Chizu rubbed his hip and frowned, considering. He could imagine the look on Zai Gan's face when the preconsul easily explained how the patient came to say this odd thing, and how Chizu had broken silence for no good reason and might be blind eyes and deaf ears and unworthy of Zai Gan's confidence.
Yes, better to wait and lurk, watching from a discreet distance this Dai Shen of the addled head.
He made his way to the low garden gate, the one even Yulin, very short, must bow down to pass through. The hinge squeaked as the Door of Eight Serenities swung closed behind him and locked.
In the lavender time, the twilight that passed for night, Quinn found he could gaze at the sky and watch its fires without straining his eyes. In the narrow patch above the canopy of trees, the sky-bright was a river, constantly changing, yet always the same. It settled him to watch it. Despite his hard start, and the death of the interpreter, he felt a barely controlled elation. The world beyond the ocean's horizon, the world no one had believed in but him, existed. He was standing in it. He was back. His brother would be dumbfounded. See, Rob? The universe is larger and more strange than you believed. And your brother isn't as strange as you thought.
Sleeping, he dreamed of the alien being in the village, staring at him, approaching with the garrote. Quinn stepped closer, engaging with the creature, eight inches taller, with a reach a yard long. I will kill him, he thought. The creature gazed at him with black eyes, without fear. Waking in the middle of the time-that-passed-for-night, he tried to remember what had happened to him here. But at his probings, the strands of memory dissolved.
In the morning, he woke with a start, feeling watched.
There on the edge of the clearing stood a woman. Even at this distance, her hair was iridescent in the morning light. She wore it at chin length, and was dressed in the same quilted, squarish jacket and pants that Sen Tai had worn. Standing to meet her, he saw she was tall for a woman. She regarded him a long time without speaking. He let her stare at him, because he was frankly staring at her. The strength of her face gave her years, but without lines, he thought her young. Her skin was very pale, and would have seemed chalky except for its fine tone. He couldn't decide whether she was beautiful—but striking, certainly.
Reaching into a deep pocket on the front of her jacket, she withdrew something and held it out to him.
His pictures.
He took them. Though creased and grayed, Johanna's likeness looked out at him with her half-playful, half-ironic expression. Her expression held strength, the kind she would have needed here, the kind he had so loved in her.
“Nahil,” he said. Thank you. He tucked the photos in his own jacket pocket. This was a small triumph—to demand his pictures, and to receive them.
The woman bowed slightly from the waist. Then she said in heavily accented English, “I am called Anzi. I will teach you to speak. When you speak Lucent words, then you leave the cage.” She gestured at the walled garden.
The man who could kill him wished instead to teach him. Perhaps Yulin had absorbed the message that humans were on their way. And that one of them had already arrived.
Quinn said, “I have forgotten your words.”
Anzi nodded. “You forget. You remember, soon.” She gestured for him to follow her as she turned down a path.
The overhead canopy closed in, obscuring the sky, tingeing the understory with a false twilight. Now and then she stopped to point at something, and utter its foreign name. She was pleased when he began to repeat the sounds after her.
He pointed to the sky, describing its fullness with a wave of his hand.
“The bright,” she said.
“What is the bright?”
She frowned. “Bright is...” She struggled for a moment, then said, “Above us.”
Her linguistic compromise brought a smile to his face.
She joined in, smiled broadly. Then the smile vanished, as though their endeavor were more serious in nature. She began naming things closer to the ground. Some sounded familiar.
Once, when she pointed at something, he gave the name on his own, from the Lucent tongue, as they called it. This brought a clap from Anzi. He thought it strange that the language these Chinese-seeming people spoke was not Chinese, if he was any judge, but some tongue with origins he couldn't even guess.
He stopped on the path, unable to wait any longer with the foremost question on his mind. Anzi turned, waiting for him.
“Where is my daughter?”
She didn't respond. To make it clear, he brought out Sydney's picture. “Where?”
She pointed over the wall, a gesture that thrilled him. “Long way ago,” she said.
“But she is here. Johanna is here.” He pointed over the garden wall. “Far away?”
“Wait for asking, yes, please.” She continued walking, and he joined her, struggling to restrain his questions.
Nearby, a long patch of leaf mold humped up, revealing a black snake a yard long, slithering away from them. She spoke its name, then added, in English, “Like Earth, you remember?”
It startled him to hear this, though he'd known he was not on Earth. Just where in all the cosmos was he, then?
He put the question to her: “Where am I?”
She told him in the Lucent tongue. Then in English: “Master Yulin's garden of animals.”
“No.” He waved his hands large around him. “Where am I, where is Master Yulin, where is the sky?”
She looked up at the sky, and she understood him. She spoke a phrase in her language. Then in English, she said, “You will remember. This is All. This is, you may say, the Entire.”
The Entire. Yes. That seemed right. It seemed like memory. “But how can you look the same as me? How can you be human?”
“We copy you. You were copied. We had such choice, how to look. We chose...that culture of long ago.”
“Chinese,” he said.
“Yes. Chinese. It was so important a sway once, when lords create the All. We chose such form.”
Imperfectly, Quinn thought. They've blurred some distinctions—around the eyes, the hair color...
Anzi went on: “Also, we chose such culture, but since have improved it, as all things are improved in the Entire.”
“All created by the lords...,” he repeated, looking around him, at the trees, the sky, and Anzi.
“Yes, certainly.”
“They are the tall creatures, with sculpted faces?”
Her expression became more alert. “You remember?”
“I saw a lord, in a village.”
“Yes, Tarig,” she said.
Tarig. The word seemed right, seemed awful. He asked, “They have powerful technology, beyond that of my people, beyond that of the Rose?”
She shook her head, not understanding. Technology.
“Science, manipulating forces of nature.”
Brightening, she nodded. “Yes. Such scientific arts are beyond you. None of us know such powers. They give knowledge to us, here and there. Crumbs from their large table.” Raising her arm, she pointed in a direction through the trees. “Long way. Don't fear.”
He didn't fear. But he remembered. Tarig. The face, long and beautiful. It crouched, looking down at him, its sinews sculpted from some bronze metal, one hand raised, four-fingered, becoming a blade, slicing the air toward him…. He stepped forward, muttering, “You will die now. It's over. “Then he turned, delivering a backward kick, thrusting hard into the Tarig's midsection, sending him staggering to his knees. In front of his eyes, he saw his fists bearing down on his enemy, and a great raptorlike scream erupted….
Anzi was standing in front of him, looking worried.
“I was a prisoner among the Tarig.”
Solemnly, she nodded, as though it saddened her. As though it were an awful thing.
“Hadenth,” Quinn continued. “He died.” The creature's name was Hadenth. He was a prince of the Tarig. Felled by Quinn's hand after the terrible thing that happened.
“No,” Anzi said. “He not dying. Wounding. He remember you.”
The prince was hurt, but still smiling. The memory faded. “What did Hadenth do to me that I tried to kill him?”
Anzi shook her head. “Ask later, please.”
“No, tell me now.”
Her face hardened. “Later. Master Yulin says later.”
He grabbed her arm. “I say now.”
Anzi freed herself in a swift move that wrenched his arm. Her eyes cooled. “Never touch one trained as warrior. I will teach you how not.” She moved into a fighting stance. With lightning speed, her foot swiped out and knocked him to the ground.
He stood, slapping off the dust from his fall. Normally, it would have stopped there. She was a woman, and he had a big advantage of strength. But this was not a normal time. Blood boiled under the surface, and he lunged at her. Pivoting out of his way, she yanked on his arm, using his own momentum to send him staggering. Her strength took him completely by surprise. She followed up with a kick that hammered his shoulder.
When he collected himself again, she was standing, hands in front of her, ready to punch. She said evenly, “You do not fight yet. You do not speak yet. You are not free. Yet.”
Taunting as this was, she stated the truth. He'd just lost a fight with her. It galled him, but he couldn't afford to alienate her like this—not when he needed her to inform him. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what happened.” She stared coldly at him. “Tell me, and then I'll practice your language. Not before.” He needed to learn the language, so it was a bluff to negotiate, but he guessed she was under pressure to teach him, and he could exploit that.
She frowned at his demand. “You must learn following Path. We all, even Master Yulin, following Radiant Path. Learn obedience, yes please.”
“I have a different path, I think.”
They faced off for a long time. Her face was as still as porcelain. “You have path; I have path. But now one, you must know.”
He doubted that. He might be in the Entire, but he was of Earth, of his own path. These things could wait, but knowing his past couldn't. “Anzi. Tell me.”
She glanced into the glen, as though worried Master Yulin would hear her. But she relented.
“Tarig sending Titus Quinn daughter away to far land where beings are who Tarig wish to be happy. They are the Inyx, rough creatures—of herd. One may ride upon such. And Inyx wish sentients to ride them. Daughter is a fine gift to the Inyx. The Inyx accept this gift. Long ago. But one thing they wish to be happy for...” She shook her head, wavering.
“Tell me.”
“That she must be a gift without sight. This the Tarig did. Took her sight.”
Quinn listened to the words, trying to process them. “Her sight?”
“She is blind.”
He paused, trying to register the words. “They blinded her?” He looked at her, waiting for her to retract this statement, but she didn't. “Blinded her?” he repeated. Then he whispered, “How?”
“We have no knowing. Tarig are surgeons. They do this. But we hear Inyx riders keeping their own eyes, though not the sight in them.”
A bellow came up from his throat. He kicked savagely at a thick sapling, and it snapped in two, sending a crack into the forest like a rifle shot. Anzi watched this without flinching.
She waited as he demolished several other of the master's plantings.
Finally he rested his forehead on the trunk of a tree that was more than a match for him.
His youngster, his sweet daughter. He gazed into the garden depths, whispering, “So I attacked the Tarig prince.”
From a distance, he heard Anzi say, “We heard. We are long way ago.”
“And now? Sydney still dwells there? With the Inaks?”
“Inyx, they are named. Perhaps she is there.”
He would get it all out now, quickly. “And Johanna?”
There was a very long silence. Quinn continued to stare into the forest, seeing trees and leaves and cages hidden among them, for the most dangerous animals. Like himself. They hadn't discovered all the harm he could do. “And my wife?” he repeated.
Silence still.
He couldn't bear to stretch it out. “Dead, then?”
“Dead.”
He heard her say this, perhaps in English, perhaps in her tongue. The dread that had been lurking in shadow now came into clear and awful light. He leaned against the tree looking at this odd girl, all white, all cold, mouthing words he desperately didn't want to hear, and must.
“How did she die?”
Anzi couldn't meet his gaze. “Of sadness, they saying.”
He whispered, “How do you know?”
“Everyone knows, of her dying of sad.”
She was dead. Had been, for many years. He closed his eyes. So now, how could it hurt this much? Such old news, and so fresh.
Quinn stared into the dark forest. He placed his hand on his pocket, feeling the paper inside. He pressed his hand against his chest, hanging his head.
Sydney. Blind, enslaved. What kind of hell was this, where a child was torn from her mother and blinded? Where a woman could be left to die of grief? Whatever this place was, it had kept Sydney too long, far too long. He would find this Inyx sway. And bring his daughter home.
“I promise,” he whispered. “Sydney, I promise.”
He wandered the garden a long while, avoiding Anzi, who followed him the rest of that day. When the twilight came he slept inside the hut, where it was almost dark. In misery, he tossed and fought with dreams.
Anzi woke him as the bright streamed through the window of his hut. He opened his eyes, wondering what the terrible thing was that had plagued his sleep. When he remembered Johanna and Sydney, he groaned, and clenched his eyes against the pain.
His keeper would have none of this. She'd brought hot food, and removed the top lid to entice him. To placate her, he took a few pieces of safe edibles.
She said, “We practice talk.”
He left the hut to go to the lake. Washing, he heard a new sound, a discordant music. Perhaps it came from the master's house, though it seemed far away. Somewhere, people laughed and had music. Somewhere, perhaps Sydney laughed, heard music. She lived, at least. He held on to that.
When Quinn came back to the hut, Anzi rose, bowing. This bowing was odd. Good food, bowing. All to please a prisoner. He picked up the pictures that had lain beside him during the twilight, and tucked them in his pocket.
Anzi watched this, narrowing her eyes. “We now talk,” she said.
“Not today.”
“Yes, today.” Eyes cold, she challenged him. Would she fight him, to make him a good student?
She gestured for him to come with her. “I show you something new.”
Giving up on privacy, he followed her in a new direction into the garden. From the depths came alien cries as creatures woke up and screamed for their pails. From one nearby pen, hidden by foliage, issued a haunting, ululating scream that could belong to no Earth creature.
Anzi walked ahead, saying the name of a plant. When he didn't repeat it, she stopped and pinned him with a stare. “You learn faster, Dai Shen.”
“Good. Glad you're pleased.”
“I not pleased. You not pleased. Not when Master Yulin putting you in his lake.” She stopped, glaring at him. “Deep in.”
“Maybe I'm a slow learner.”
“Master Yulin not yet decide, if killing you.” She raised a finger like a schoolteacher. “But may. If not learning.”
“I had a translator. He spoke my language. Yulin drowned him.”
Anzi bowed her head. “Unfortunate.”
At this breezy comment, Quinn snapped. “Now your master will have to wait for his slow student.” He was depressed by the death in this place. He'd only been here a short while, but already, there were three deaths, and one was Johanna.
“You not wanting your life, Dai Shen?”
He paused. That depended. Today, he was not so sure. “Why are you calling me that name?”
She continued deeper into the woods. Her voice trailed back as he reluctantly followed. “You can have new name. We conceal you from bright lords. Dai Shen is name for you, so saying Master Yulin.”
He thought that he'd found a crack in Yulin's armor. If he was hiding Quinn from the Tarig, Yulin was no doubt straying from the Radiant Path. Maybe the crack could be widened.
They came to a tall cage within which birds, some furred, some bald, flew to perches in treetops.
“We climb,” Anzi said, jumping up to the first strut where she could gain a foothold. Without waiting for him, she began to climb up the cage, using the cross-pieces where the birds roosted. He followed her.
“Keep fingers away,” came her voice.
Too late. A ochre-colored bird dove at his hand, narrowly missing it with its spiky teeth. After that, Quinn paid more attention, finally emerging on the lid of the aviary, above the treetops.
Here was a view of the limitless plain that Quinn had seen before. In the foreground, on every side, stretched a city, grand and dense, one that might house a million people. Above, the unending bright threw its blanket across the sky. The smell of the lavender grasses of the great plain came to his senses in a rush of clove-tinged perfume. The expanse lay devoid of any geological feature, or tree, or settlement besides the immense city beneath him. Whatever the towering gray walls had been that he'd seen before, they were invisible from here. The staggering emptiness of this land conveyed less a sense of isolation than of power. There was land enough to squander.
Anzi gestured. “Great city of Chalin sway,” she said. “Yulin's city of Xi.” She crouched in the center, where a top mast formed a pinnacle. Quinn crept closer to her, stepping carefully on the struts, below which lay a hundred-foot fall. “Chalin, that is people here. Outside”—she gestured to the plains—“is many sways, not all Chalin.”
She pointed to a palatial building layered into a hillside. “Master Yulin house.”
Yulin's dwelling was a sprawling palace, hewn from the same golden-black material as Quinn's own hut. Its architecture was one of rounded forms: domed roofs and half-circle porticos. The master's fine black stone gave way, in the rest of the city, to deep browns and golds, sparkling under the bright. “Yulin rules here?” Quinn asked.
“Master care for sway as please the Tarig to do so.”
The noises of the city came easily to this perch, and Quinn heard the music that had caught his attention earlier. Anzi pointed to a plaza, where a line of people wound through in a bedecked procession. The bright gleamed in raised cymbals and polished horns.
“This day of sadness, for Caiji, she dead. This her...” she search for a word. “Her funeral line.”
They watched the procession thread through an open space crowded with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people.
“Who is Caiji?”
“Caiji of master's many wife. Very near oldest of all wife.”
“Are you also the master's wife?”
Anzi looked startled at this. “No, you would say, niece to master. One of many nieces. Smallest niece.”
Quinn had not had time to wonder who Anzi was. Now he thought he knew why Yulin had sent him one who couldn't speak his language well. Because he trusted her, being a relative. He didn't trust his interpreter. Not with the news that Quinn had brought.
She sat with ease, perched on the aviary. Her jacket sleeve fell back from her wrist as she held onto the center plinth, showing her muscular forearm. In profile, Anzi looked to be about twenty years old. But her poise was of one older.
“Tarig come to Xi, sometime. They roam here, sometime there. Looking.”
“Looking for me?”
Anzi's eyes grew wide. “No. Lord of heaven give us not looking!”
“What do they look for?”
“Tarig do what they do.”
“When I was a prisoner among them, why did they send my wife and daughter away?”
Her face fell into sadness, as it had once before when he spoke of his imprisonment. “For controlling you better, we hearing. Separation was a grief. They use such grief. We hearing.” She thought for a moment. Then: “Also, girl and woman great gifts for those they wishing to please. And girl and woman, not being scholars, tell little that can be interesting to lords.”
So the lords wanted scholarship…. Despite Quinn's distinct impression of their great power, the Tarig did lack some things. “Do the Tarig know about Earth?”
Far below his perch on the aviary, he noticed that people in the funeral procession threw things to the crowds. A few children dashed forward to snatch these offerings.
He continued, “You know about Earth, Anzi. Does Master Yulin? Do the Tarig?”
Watching the procession, Anzi said, “Everyone know of Rose. But we vow that Rose not know us. This why Tarig kill you.” She looked pointedly at him. “Unless Master Yulin hide you well, which you learn to speak also.”
“Rose? You call it Rose?”
“Yes, long time call so. On Earth there is a plant call rose?” When he nodded, she said, “We have no plants shaped thus here. Nothing like such a creation as rose.”
A breeze lifted Quinn's hair, bringing to his nostrils the smell of dust and cooking and a tangle of chemicals that might be natural or manufactured. Anzi herself smelled like a human woman. And, if copied, was she human? He ran his hand through his hair, now growing beyond its usual cropped cut. It was, he knew, the same color as Anzi's: a hot white. Surely the sky didn't bleach all hair this color. Someone altered him to look like one of the Chalin people. Perhaps even the first visit here, he had to hide.
“Tell me my story, Anzi.”
She turned to look at him. Her face was sad. “Better if I speak better. When that story is said.”
“Say the story, now, Anzi. I'm ready.”
She crouched silently, looking over the city to the plain beyond.
He hated to wait on her whims, and he hated the constant effort of trying to remember. A lid pressed down on his past. He wondered who had clamped it there.
After a long while Anzi began to speak. “You came here,” she said. In her voice was an overlay of regret. “You came from the Rose, behind the veil. Long time we always know of Rose, the place of young death, and many wars. At the...reaches...our scholars study Rose. Long time. But never touched Rose, nor Rose touch us.”
The music of the procession still came to their high perch, but more faintly now, as the mourners wound from sight. He already had questions, but he feared interrupting her.
Anzi went on: “Then you come. In ship. Very confused time. Tarig want you, and keep you. Does Rose know about Entire? This Tarig ask. What powers dwell in Rose? Difficult to know what Rose understands. Our views of you are small, visions in a shattered glass. Tarig hope that you do not know us, but how to be sure? They wish to know enemy, and so keep you and asking questions. Send wife and daughter away, to keep you to please them. You please them if you think someday wife and daughter give back to you.” She shook her head, over and over. “Never give back to you.”
He listened to her words, memorizing them.
“Tarig are pleased. Learn that Rose is ignorant. Not fear so much Rose, since Rose not understand there is the All. Entire of all things. You please them. They keep you.”
“How long?” He couldn't help but ask.
She flattened her mouth, thinking. “Four thousand days, is possible.”
Four thousand days, that was almost eleven years, close to what he'd always thought.
Anzi went on: “Then one time you strike Hadenth, the high lord. We hearing this, but hard believe to strike a Tarig. So Tarig hunt you. But you go back? You gone back?”
He shook his head. “I don't know what I did. I think I went back then. I can't remember.” He glanced at her. “How would I have gone back?”
“This we wondered. How can Titus Quinn disappear among us? If gone back, how go back and not die in the black space? So I thought—we all thought—that you have died.” She seemed sad, recounting this, and Quinn thought perhaps he had not just made enemies in this place. She continued, “We hear that to not submit to high lords, you ended your days.” She smiled tentatively. “Not true, I see.”
Unexpectedly, she seemed genuinely glad, and he was touched. Perhaps the story of his capture was known, and some people rooted for him. He would ask later.
“So I was here four thousand days. And then disappeared...How long have I been gone?”
Anzi frowned, considering. “One hundred days. Not long. But long enough for us to wonder where Titus Quinn is.”
This proved it then, that there was no constant relation of time between here and there, between Anzi's land and his own. Back on Earth he'd languished two years without his family. Here only a few months had elapsed. A ratio of seven to one. Far different from the time when Earth registered his absence from the K-tunnel as a half year, and he'd experienced Entire time as ten years. A ratio of one to twenty.
He finished the most important computation: His daughter would be nineteen or twenty years old. Her childhood gone. He had been among the Tarig for her whole childhood.
“Why can't I remember, Anzi?”
“This we wonder also.” She smiled again, a very pleasant expression on her usually stern face. “But you will remember. No one can have your past, take same from you. You will recover it, yes.” The smile faded. “When you do, you must remember to forgive.”
“First, justice.”
“Entire justice is thing to learn. You are here now, so learn our justice. It begins with vow to keep invisible to our enemies, of which you, I am sorry, are one. In view of Tarig. Some of us not sure to see you as enemy. I am one of these, you must know.”
He would not argue this just now. There was too much to digest. Ten years...
“Dai Shen,” Anzi said, turning toward him to regain his attention, which was wandering to Johanna and the time before. “Here is thing to learn. It is most big thing, I believe. Caiji, who now dead, took her life on one hundred thousandth day of life. She lived long, and wishes to have remembering as Caiji of one hundred thousand days. You understand how long is one hundred thousand days?”
After a quick calculation, Quinn said, “About three hundred of Earth years.” He added, “The time it takes Earth to travel around its sun.”
“Yes. Suns.” She paused, as though considering this odd word. “We have no years, yet days we have, and count thus. Caiji lived as long as I may live, but you will not see one hundred thousand days, Dai Shen. This is thing to know. Your life is not so long. Yet all peoples in Rose would live long. Yes? So to come here, they are pleased to have one hundred thousand days or more. That is why the Tarig fear you. To take our All. To be longer than you are.”
“Are your lives truly so long, Anzi? Time might flow differently here, making it only seem that way.”
She seemed unperturbed. “No. The lords say your world has only short lives: thirty thousand days, not many more, of health and strength. But the lords extend our lives, by their grace. Some say that the night kills you, but believing thus is hard. It is more likely, and the lords say it, that the bright sustains us.”
The bright. If it was some function of the bright, then that was why, if humans came, they might be recipients of the long life Anzi claimed could be found here.
She began to climb down then, and he followed her. At the foot of the aviary, she turned to him. “Because of such long life, you perceive why you must never be here. First vow, which breaking is to die, we must withhold knowing of Entire from Rose.”
“Too late now, I expect.”
She closed her eyes. “I fear so.”
“Master Yulin won't want humans here.”
“To come with your many people? Your wars? No.”
“Or to pass through? To shorten Rose travel?”
She frowned. “Such travel is not possible, we are thinking. I am sorry.”
“I traveled here. The first time by accident, the second time deliberately. And back again. So it is possible.”
“No, it is a game of chance, especially going to the dark universe, your universe. You cross over to the Rose, but likely into black space. Most of the Rose is empty...you say, vacuum? No one knows how to pick place of arrival. Not even Master Yulin, nor all the Chalin scholars know this.”
Easy to claim that safe travel wasn't possible, but this was a matter to discuss with Yulin, not Yulin's niece.
She resumed leading him through the garden, naming things, drilling him in the Lucent tongue. “You learn more words,” she said. “So please Master Yulin.”
She was relentless. But he was also grateful for her. He did need to learn the Lucent tongue, and quickly. For Sydney's sake. For when he took her home.