A World Too Near (10 page)

With Cixi’s thoughts churning, they came at last to a door on the fifth level, deep in the underbelly of the Magisterium. Here was a chamber that could only be entered from the outside. A door retracted into the floor.

They proceeded down a corridor, Cixi leading the way, coming at last to a dimly lit chamber. In the center a cage held the hostage, the despicable steward Cho, who stood up, gripping the bars. As they approached, he bowed gracefully low, the picture of appropriate behavior, despite being stiff from questioning.

That this menial steward could be a traitor had surprised and intrigued Cixi. It wasn’t often her minions broke the rules, and never in as spectacular a manner as he had done. He had given into Quinn’s hands the very thing that now imperiled the kingdom: a redstone from Quinn’s wife, with intelligence from Ahnenhoon about the engine.

That redstone might never have been found. Though Cixi had her minions scouring the Magisterium, it took hundreds of days before they found the pulverized redstone that, reconstituted, revealed how Quinn had come into his forbidden knowledge.

Easy enough to track from there who could have helped Quinn find such an obscure redstone in the deep vaults of the library.

At the rear of the chamber, someone stirred.

A Tarig had been seated against the wall, and now stood, moving into the light. The Lady Chiron. She wore a long silver skirt slit to her thighs, and a beaded white vest that sparkled like shards of ice. Chiron approached them, carrying something in her long fingers.

Depta and Cixi bowed low, with Cho bowing repeatedly once again.

When Cixi rose, she saw that the Lady held a garrote. Did she plan to execute Cho after all?

“Bright Lady,” Cixi said, “my life in your service.”

“Yes,” Chiron said. Her black hair was enclosed in a net studded with diamonds. Chiron turned to Depta. “How is our kingdom, that you have viewed from the balconies?” Her voice was as deep as Lord Nehoov’s, or as Lord Hadenth’s had been. It lent her authority—not that she needed more.

Depta answered, “Glorious, my lady. One worried about sure footing at such heights. But there was no slipping.”

Chiron turned to gaze down on Cixi. “Ah. A fine walk, and good conversation. You are content, High Prefect?”

Cixi stepped back a pace to look Chiron in the eyes. Damn them, for being so tall. And what was being asked? Did Chiron wish to know if she was content with what she had sworn? No, by the bright, if it meant that Quinn would not be pursued with all the resources of the realm; no, if Chiron meant to forgive and protect him.

She forced a pleasant expression to the fore. “Yes, Bright Lady. Naturally, I obey.”

“Hnn,” Chiron mused. “Is it natural for you to obey, Cixi?”

Chiron stood against the backdrop of the bars of the cage, mistress of the world. For now, one must agree to all she said. Someday the fiends would be driven out, and Cixi’s own Chalin people would reign. Someday she would raise the true kingdom, with her dear girl replacing this strutting creature-queen. But for now, one said yes.

“Yes.”

Chiron tapped the garrote against her thigh, rustling her soft metal skirt.

Cixi glanced at the device. God has noticed me, she thought. Chiron had intended the device for her. The lady fingered it absently. Cixi stood stunned. She could have died here, a grubby, miserable death. No glorious dive from the rim, to be sung and woven into legend.

Chiron gazed at Cixi with unblinking dark eyes.

After one hundred thousand days of service, they had sent Depta to her with a question, which, if she had answered wrong, would have been followed by death at Chiron’s feet. She had come so close to the wrong answer, never guessing the price.

Chiron murmured, “We will bring Titus Quinn home. His apartments have been vacant a while, and he should occupy them again. This would please us. We will watch for him at Ahnenhoon, ah?”

Chiron meant
she
would watch. The other lords would be focused elsewhere.

Cixi found her voice. “Good hunting, Bright Lady. Do bring him home. Many here wish to see him again.”

Chiron laughed, a deep, throaty sound that even in Cixi’s long association with the Tarig she had seldom heard. “We will hunt, yes.” She turned, waving the garrote at the cage. “This one has revealed nothing additional today. Still, he will be preserved.” The steward’s life was forfeit, but Lady Chiron kept him as a hostage in case there were ties of the heart between the two men—Quinn being notoriously susceptible to friendship.

Chiron tucked the garrote in her belt and walked away, disappearing into the corridor. Depta followed her without properly taking her leave of Cixi— another slight, but one that barely registered in Cixi’s present state of stunned relief.

Cho stared at Chiron’s departing form. As a steward, he wouldn’t have seen high dealing among the exalted of the Magisterium. He shouldn’t have seen this much. When the lady Chiron was done with the creature, Cixi would personally stand on his neck until his hours were over.

Cixi murmured, “It seems you will not suffer the garrote today, Steward.”

Nor would she.

CHAPTER EIGHT

More bitter than a sip of the Nigh, an underling grown proud.

—a saying of the Magisterium

F
IRST- AND SECOND-DEGREE BURNS extended from Helice’s neck up one side of her jaw.

“ Don’t leave me,” she whispered.

Quinn knew that it must hurt her to speak. The crossing could have killed her. Killed him. Either Minerva had botched the insertion, or Benhu’s efforts to pull him into a veil-of-worlds had gone awry. Benhu admitted nothing, of course—instead boasting of a job well done; but Quinn suspected that Lord Oventroe’s programming had faltered when two came through instead of one.

Benhu crouched over Helice, smoothing ointment on her wound. She winced at his ministrations. Well equipped with medicinals, he must have been told to expect injuries.

Quinn watched closely as Benhu finished swabbing Helice’s wound. Threads of black shot through his hair, and his face bore a few creases, making him perhaps a hundred years old. Although thin, Benhu had a pot belly, and his face was long, accentuated by a wispy mustache stretching to his chin. To Quinn, he looked like a criminal gone to seed. He wore the white tunic and jacket of a godman, but only, Benhu claimed, as a disguise. The fellow, bumbling and officious, did not inspire confidence.

Helice turned toward Quinn, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight. “Don’t . . . leave me . . . here. Promise me.”

That was exactly what he planned to do. “I promise you’re going back where you came from; that’s what I promise.”

She shook her head, frowning from the pain. “. . . know you’re upset. Had to come, had to. You’ll see.”

Benhu snaked a look at Quinn. “If she doesn’t shut up, she’ll break open her wounds. Tell her.”

“You tell her—you’re the one that brought her over.”

“I can’t. She doesn’t understand decent speech. Use your own gibberish, and tell her to stay still.”

It could have been worse for Helice, though her burns were serious and her eyebrows singed off. She’d already shaved off her hair, of course; brown hair wouldn’t do among the Chalin. As for the yellow eye lenses, Quinn had removed those so that she didn’t dare go out of the chamber. This place was, Benhu had said, an abandoned scholar’s center, but not completely isolated. They could well meet others in the vicinity of this reach once they emerged from the cavern. Benhu should stay here and nurse Helice while Quinn went on, but the godman already refused to do so, saying,
I am to help you, not her.

A shudder rippled over her. Quinn said, “Give her something for the pain.”

Benhu pointed to the ointment. “This
is
for the pain.”

“Why should I trust you, anyway?”

Benhu looked mightily offended. “If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it when you were powerless and lying like a puking, helpless baby.”

“If you want to help me, tell the lord to ship her home. You know how to contact him. Tell him I won’t tolerate her, and she goes back.”

Helice watched them argue, looking worried, probably guessing it was about her. She tried to grip Quinn’s arm, but he moved out of reach, having no patience to listen to her. He was sure she had come here seeking glory, or to manage him, or for some other devious purpose that could get them both killed. He left her lying there, and rested against the smooth adobe of the chamber wall.

Helice was badly hurt. Minerva’s
improved
crossing was no better than using a raft to cross the Atlantic. They needed perfection, not improvement. They needed the correlates.
An open door
, Oventroe had called it. If, as Benhu claimed, he worked for the lord, then Quinn had a fighting
chance to secure them. If he won Oventroe’s trust. In his brief meeting with the Tarig lord, Oventroe had said,
It is too much to give for no advantage.
He would see about that. Time was when finding the correlates had been important for the sake of commerce. Now hopes of trade gave way to the needs of war. He didn’t want to think of his mission as war.
Sabotage
was a better word, and the one he clung to.

Benhu capped the ointment and wiped his hands on a silk rag. He sidled against the wall, resting. It had been a long day, and Benhu was not young.

Quinn stared at the veil-of-worlds where he’d come through. On the surface, a dark starscape shimmered. He was a world away from home. Last time here, Anzi had been at his side, his teacher and finally close friend. Now he had the likes of Helice and Benhu.

“How much time has passed since I left?”

Benhu nodded. “You’ll be wanting to know that, of course. Well, to do the sums . . .” His eyes cut sideways as he calculated. “Thirty arcs, give or take a handful of days.”

Three hundred days or so, then. Sydney was still young. He hadn’t allowed himself to worry about the chaotic relation of time between here and home. Or so he thought. A long breath shuddered out of him.

Benhu was prattling on. “You can be sure I haven’t had the time to be waiting thirty arcs. No, we figured out you’d be here about now, and I came as my duties allowed.”

“
We?
You and the lord figured it out?” The godman’s boasts were ludicrous.

“Oh, time correlations are all very complicated, and the lord and I couldn’t define it more than we did.”

Quinn leaned forward, putting an edge in his voice. “How did you know even that much? How did you know when I’d
want
to come, be
able
to come?”

Benhu looked affronted. “Well. The lord discerns when your side begins its probes—the tests that herald your crossing. Then he alerts me, and setting aside my many obligations—”

“I don’t like you, Benhu. You stretch the truth. Why should I trust you?”

“My lord wants what you want,” Benhu muttered.

“And what do I want?”

“Oh, to stop the engine, of course.” He grinned. “Don’t be surprised. The lord knows why you’re here. Did you think it a secret? Well, it
is
a secret, between the three of us, I assure you.”

It
should
have been a secret. Sharing it with this tattered godman, much less a Tarig lord, stung Quinn with dismay.

Benhu drew a pipe out of his pocket and loaded it with a gray weed. A candle gave his punk a flame and he puffed out a noxious stream of smoke. “You’ll stop the engine, the lord says. For the sake of converse. He says that your world and mine should work together, not crosswise. It makes sense, but against the vows, of course. The lord will persuade the other lords; don’t worry about that. Inevitable, the lord says, because as for going to and from, once it starts, you can’t stop it.”

“Get to the point, Benhu.” Quinn wondered how the godman knew his mission. How
Oventroe
knew it.

“So, the lord says peace is better than war, and converse better than everyone pretending no one else exists.” Benhu gestured with his pipe as he talked, punctuating his main points. “This Ahnenhoon thing, this engine, the lord’s against all that. Just like you are. You’re here to tear it down, of course.” He squinted through a haze of orange smoke. “How do you plan to do that, by the way?”

“If the lord’s against this Ahnenhoon thing, why doesn’t he take it down himself?”

Recognizing the word
Ahnenhoon
, Helice tried to sit up, pushing herself up on one elbow. Gently but firmly, Benhu pushed her down again.

Noting that Helice was paying attention, Quinn took stock of the fact that she might be not only an inconvenience, but an enemy. He put nothing past her. He murmured, “We will not speak the lord’s name around her. She is not to know.”

Benhu nodded, eyes wide at the thought that his lord’s name might have been overheard by one whom not even Titus Quinn trusted.

Quinn continued, “So why doesn’t your master get rid of the engine himself?”

The godman resumed sucking on his pipe. “Maybe he’s testing you. And think of this: How could a Tarig walk in there and not have a retinue, and not attract notice?”

“You’re guessing.”

Helice was growing more agitated and tried to sit up, slapping Benhu’s hands away. She managed to drag herself to the chamber wall, where she propped herself up. She looked like a monstrous gnome: small, hairless, her skin livid and bleeding. “Can’t you talk in English?”

Quinn turned on her with incredulity. “He doesn’t speak it. That’s your main problem here, Helice. You don’t know Lucent. Did you think about that before you planned this maneuver? Did Lamar think of it, or Stefan?” No wonder Lamar was acting so guilty. The son-of-a-bitch had caved in, never warning him.

“I’m smart; I can learn,” she whispered.

“No Helice, you’re dumb. This stunt proves it. You could have died, and still may. If the burn doesn’t get infected, then you’ll give yourself away the first time you open your mouth. Dumb, very dumb.”

He turned back to Benhu. “Why is it
my
bloody job to stop the engine?”

Benhu spat back, “The lord doesn’t tell me everything, and he won’t tell you either, even if you are the princeling, Titus Quinn.”