A World Too Near (27 page)

Quinn and his companions carried silk packs strapped to their shoulders, bearing their possessions and gifts of food and money from Zhiya. Helice had dispensed with her walking stick, traveling now with her throat carefully draped in a scarf.

“I never met the navitar,” Helice spat at Quinn in Lucent.

Startled, Quinn noted her vocabulary, her accent. Progressing fast. Soon Helice would be more dangerous than she’d been so far.

“Old and sick,” Quinn responded.

The pageant of godmen and godwomen had come to a halt near the river, joining an enormous encampment of travelers, all hoping to embark on the Nigh, but needing a ship of the river. The ships came on no discernible schedule.

He noted a bivouac of soldiers in the distance waiting transport to Ahnenhoon. On the outskirts of this camp, ponderous forms milled.

Benhu noted his gaze. “Inyx,” he said, exhaling a plume of brown pipe smoke.

To keep their thoughts well hidden, the three of them would have to shun the beasts. Proximity was a danger. Distance diluted Inyx communication with other sentients. But here they were close.
Don’t think about the Rose
, Benhu had advised.
Don’t think about Johanna
, Quinn reminded himself, veering away from his memories of her. So many thoughts to hide.

The Inyx were fresh arrivals, Benhu announced after a foray into the throngs of soldiers. Here, they would train with the fighting units, and afterward depart in batches for the Long War. Quinn kept looking in their direction, curiosity plucking at him. Sydney was with such creatures.
Mustn’t think
about Sydney.

The turbulence from the storm walls spawned gusts of wind that yanked on their silks and chilled them as they skirted the encampment to seek a place to bed down. As Helice threw a barrage of questions at him about the Nigh, Quinn finally tired of her. “Guard your thoughts. The Inyx are still close.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think the Inyx would turn us in? The way they despise the Tarig?”

Quinn noted that she had been gathering information on this subject, as well as other topics, no doubt. He preferred her ignorant, and didn’t respond.

The three of them found a spot for a camp in an undesirable region of hillocks, a marsh where the river inundated in rivulets of exotic matter. With Quinn and Helice resting on a small rise, Benhu went in search of a tent where they could find some shelter from the wind. Helice chattered, and he humored her incessant questions, wishing mightily for better company but knowing that, from this point on, he wouldn’t likely have any. In the distance, he caught a glimpse of Zhiya’s airship, hovering like a mother bird over her flock. Despite the news she had brought him, which he must not think about, he was glad of meeting the godwoman.

Quinn broke out some food wafers and tubes of water, stored like loops of sausages in their packs, while Helice managed a fire with the last of their resin logs. She infused a pot of oba.

Quinn let her serve him. The bright ebbed as he drank from the steaming cup, his thoughts circling around Johanna, who was back in his life in a way he could not comprehend. A profound lethargy settled over him.

Benhu returned with a tent. Helice demanded that she and Quinn share the tent, but she would not, she said, consider sleeping in the same tent with Benhu, who after all, had tried to kill her. Quinn hardly cared. Sleep beckoned, though it was only Twilight Ebb. He helped Helice pitch the tent while Benhu set out in search of a second tent.

Climbing inside the shelter, Quinn listened to the wind punch at the fabric walls. Just before he lost consciousness he realized that he was ill. A dreadful sleep pulled him under. He tried to rise, to speak, but his muscles failed, and his tongue hung limp. He fell into the black.

Looking up, he saw the tidal wave of the storm wall wavering, ready to tip.
Buckling high under the press of the shoreline, it had massed up to a dizzying height.
Now, at last, it curled over at the top. It plunged down, engulfing everything.

The ocean surge tossed him, rolled him in a human ball. The chain on his ankle
pulled him relentlessly downward. Must get the chain off. Must breathe.

“Me too!” Helice shouted. The chain, the chain. Helice was thrashing in the
storm, sinking just like him, clamoring for the chain. But why did she want the thing
that was dragging them to the bottom?

He fought back to a blurred and drugged consciousness. Helice was on top of him, facing backward, yanking at the cirque.

He growled at her, but his voice was a candle flame, flickering in the wind.

Four, five, one. Why was that important? Four, five, one.

The chain fell off.

An alarm blazed through him as he fought for clarity. Helice was stealing the cirque. Her feet hit him in the face as she scrambled from the tent. She had the chain. The only hope of the Rose, he managed to remember.

Rousing himself with a supreme effort, he launched himself out the tent door, falling on her with such force that the breath left her lungs in a gasp. Swearing at her in two languages, he groped to find her hands, to find the chain. How many hands did she have? He found nothing except her nails digging at him. He struck her, his blow glancing off her temple, but she fled.

He followed her. The ebb was dappled gray and purple, reflected in the slicks around him. Helice’s reflection ran through the iridescent pools, as if she took refuge in the exotic matter, rushing through a dimension he couldn’t penetrate. Scrambling after her in a daze, he lost her in the hillocks. He staggered on, fighting the urge to lie down and close his eyes. But there she
was again, just ahead, and he followed, jumping the pools, feeling like he might lose contact with the marsh and jump into flight. He saw her fall at the crest of the next hill, and putting on a burst of speed, he clambered up the slope, diving for her.

With the impact of his tackle, he saw the chain fly from Helice’s grasp. Leaving her sprawled behind him, Quinn dove down the embankment, losing his balance but sliding within reach of the cirque. He grabbed it.

Helice stood at the top of the hill, bent over, gasping. Then she straightened. Walking down the embankment, she came to a stop, looking down at him. He lay sprawled on the hillside, gripping the cirque so hard his nails dug into his palm. Helice kneeled down and yanked at the chain, but Quinn had it in a death grip. She stood, kicking him viciously and trying again to loosen the chain from his grasp.

She looked up. “Benhu’s coming,” she rasped. She gazed up at the storm wall, her silks shuddering in the wind. Then she regarded him once more, her face flat and hard. “Kill them, then,” she said. “Kill them, Titus.”

He whispered, “Kill who?”

She looked at him with contempt. “Everyone.” She pointed at the storm wall. “Everything. You can’t use that kind of destruction in the Entire. Ever. You can’t wage war here.”

She crouched down, getting closer to his level. “The chain will mangle everything.” She yanked at the cirque again, uselessly.

“My chain,” he mumbled.

She snorted. “You arrogant bastard. Your chain. Your Entire. Your family. I’m sick to death of you.” She stood, kicking her boot into his ribs. He barely felt it. She was moving off. Where was she going?

At some distance away, she turned back, saying, “Destroy the cirque unless you want to kill another child—your own this time. Maybe you don’t give a damn about her. You left her—twice, didn’t you?” Her voice lowered. “Family man. Big family man.” She staggered away.

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, Benhu bent over him. “Excellency, Excellency.” In the wind his beard and hair danced around his face, adding to his look of agitation.

“Helice ran away. Go get her,” Quinn murmured.

“But you’re hurt.”

“No. She drugged me. Get me up.” Benhu helped him to a sitting position. “Find her, Benhu. If she escapes, she’s a danger to us.”

At Quinn’s urging, Benhu was finally persuaded to follow Helice, and he loped off, following her footprints in the marshy soil.

Benhu rushed through the quagmire, fearful of the tendrils of the Nigh, the little fingers of silver poison. He jumped carefully across the streams, finding dry footholds, rushing to intercept the woman before she ruined everything. What if a Tarig lord was here, as sometimes they were, watching crowds, mingling to confound simple folk? What if a lord should demand that she speak, demand who she traveled with? He rushed on.

A glimpse of her, ahead, winding through the campfires of decent godmen. She turned back and, seeing Benhu, ran away, drawing the notice of those still awake at this hour, sipping oba or wine and wondering at the fuss.

Benhu cursed himself that he hadn’t killed her when he had the chance. It was what Lord Oventroe would have wanted. She’s a danger to us, Quinn had said. Benhu’s heart clutched at the thought of facing the lord and explaining why he hadn’t taken care of the problem, why he had allowed Quinn to be captured . . . but surely it wouldn’t come to that. Breaking into a run, he lifted his robes and pursued her with all his strength, but she was fast, and he lost sight of her amid the wagons and sky bulbs in the encampment of the godmen. Nearby, a ship had settled, a navitar’s vessel, resting on its struts after skimming over the marsh. A huge crowd jostled to approach it, shouting destinations and pleading with the ship keeper who stood on the bow. He and Quinn ought to be on that vessel now, rushing to their task, not tending this miscreant Gondling who had poisoned Benhu’s precious charge.

Catching sight of Helice again, Benhu followed her as she hurried past the camp and into a field that separated the decent folk from the herd of Inyx. To Benhu’s horror, she made straight for the beasts. This was the worst she could do, to lay their plans bare before the devouring minds of the barbarians. He staggered to a halt, legs weak, lungs aching.

As he watched, Helice stood some distance inside the Inyx camp, looking around her. Perhaps, in their surprise, the beasts would tolerate Benhu rushing forward to claim her.

But before he could move, Inyx mounts and their riders began crowding around Helice, closing off his view. What could she have said to them? She knew few words. And what did she want from them? Sanctuary? But why should they . . . Benhu groaned.

She didn’t need to speak. They spoke heart to heart. But what was in the woman’s heart? He walked slowly forward, hoping for a glimpse of what was happening. Other mounts and riders had joined the throng around her, but most of the Inyx surrounding her were riderless.

Benhu knew what she intended. Had he figured it out, or did the Inyx speak to him in their cursed sendings?

Choose me, choose me.

Do you ride?

No, teach me to ride.

Whimpering, Benhu saw disaster coming. Helice was throwing herself at the Inyx, hoping to bond with a stinking mount. What would that mount discover, looking into her thoughts?

He took a few steps closer, trying to think of a way to prevent what was happening.

Then, to his dismay, he saw Helice perched on the back of a mount. It was too late. She had been chosen. Benhu groaned.

A broad-backed Inyx took a few steps in his direction. Benhu judged his chances of rushing in, pulling her off the mount she rode, and screaming for help from the army troops quartered nearby. He did not find the courage to pull this off.

Helice rode away, deeper into the Inyx camp.

The mount who had been watching him now took a few menacing steps in his direction, the horns on his back gleaming under the bright.

Benhu heard,
Leave quickly.

Illogically plugging his ears against the beast’s questing mind, he hurried away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

An untold secret is a fire in the mouth.

—a saying

J
OHANNA STOOD BEFORE THE OPEN ARCHWAY leading to the Gond den, a place few in Ahnenhoon had seen. At her side was the stalwart Pai, aghast that her mistress would come to this place. She dabbed a perfumed scarf at her noise to dilute the stench.

All the way from Johanna’s apartments Pai had remonstrated against coming here. Johanna’s determination only fueled Pai’s suspicion that Morhab held her mistress hostage in some way. No doubt she suspected it had to do with Gao’s death three days ago, but Pai could only guess. Johanna had often longed to confide in Pai, but in the end she trusted no one.

Pai pursed her lips. “It is not suitable, mistress. Have him come to you, if he desires company.”

Company. If that is what Morhab wanted. It made Johanna ill to think it might be more.

Lurking a few steps behind them was the damnably quiet SuMing.

With the fortress in an uproar over Gao’s apparent suicide, SuMing had yet to tattle that Johanna had left her chambers that ebb-time. Perhaps the girl felt some pang of loyalty toward the woman who had saved her from a fall similar to Gao’s. Eventually SuMing might make demands in return for her silence. Damn the girl. Watching, ever watching.

“Ask the gracious lord for assistance, mistress,” Pai whispered, plucking at Johanna’s sleeve.

“I will go in.” Johanna’s tone brooked no argument, and she left her women behind
as she passed through the chamber opening. She breathed deeply to submerge her fear: He could hardly hurt her or leave bruises—Lord Inweer would notice. How trivial, that day on Morhab’s sled, when all he wanted was for her to sit next to him.

We’ve gone well beyond that, now, she thought.

Johanna passed into Morhab’s chamber, thick with the clotted air of decay. The glow from the corridor quickly fell away, and she found herself in a dim, vaulted room. She paused, letting her eyes adjust to the darkened premises. Here was one thing that she and Morhab had in common; they both liked the dark. Whatever she had to do, at least there would be an obscuring cloak. Oh Titus, she thought. I have failed you. I can’t help you, my darling. You must come and wipe the Repel from the face of the Entire. Wipe us all clean. She wasn’t afraid of that end. It had been quite a while since she had been afraid of dying.