A World Too Near (31 page)

Why? Sydney had asked, suspicious that Helice’s stories might not add up.

Let me bring my friends here first, Helice answered. I have a few key people that I want around me. People who work for me. Give me this one thing: a little time before the lords descend. A dozen people, no more, she promised. Quinn could be stopped by an assassin. No need to get the Tarig involved, no need for them to flock here to the sway, asking questions and taking Helice in custody, as it seemed likely they would.

These arguments gave Sydney pause. She must prevent her enterprise against the Tarig from coming under scrutiny. If the lords came here, could Riod hide the herd’s thoughts from them? The lords weren’t receptive to speaking heart to heart, but some of the attendants who traveled with them would be. No, the Tarig must not come here.

All these ruminations kept at bay the dark thought of whom she would have to kill.

Last ebb she had taken out her journal and written down all that Helice had told her about the man’s ambitions. How he had set his heart on great things, and never on her. How, from the beginning, he had insisted that he alone return to the Entire so that he could forge the alliances that would bring him influence. He pursued something he called the correlates, so that, with this knowledge, he could be a captain of ships once more, finding ways through the Entire to access the stars. He had always loved his starships. Where was Sydney in all this talk of alliances and starships? How utterly forgotten she had been by the one man who could have helped her, back when she was a slave, and blind. When he sent a message to her at last, it was only to bid her wait longer. Why had he bothered to say such a thing?

He had come to destroy the All: the great Repel of Ahnenhoon, the primacy itself. And—the nan spreading—eventually all other primacies. Helice said the nan would race along the bright, jumping the Empty Lands, and bring down the world in but a short while. So coming for her was a pretense. Not that it mattered. These were a child’s hurts. Her life now was with Riod. She would have been content never to hear of her father again. But back he came to the bright realm, again and again, ripping open the sealed drawer where she kept the broken things of her life.

She set down these truths in her book, writing in her pinprick code so that the Tarig could decipher nothing. Here was another misery to lay at Titus Quinn’s feet: The Tarig had poisoned her sight in order to watch for her father.

“My lady,” Mo Ti said. They had dismounted for a rest. Riod
and Distanir fed on nearby tufts of goldweed while their riders drank from their canteens. Mo Ti had been trying to speak against Helice for days, but each time Sydney turned away. Mo Ti was jealous; that was clear.

“What is it, Mo Ti?”

“The woman Helice has told me of her machine.”

Ah, the machine. The one good thing that Sydney could count on amid her troubles.

“I don’t trust her,” Mo Ti said.

“Don’t trust her to tamper with my eyes? This caution comes rather late, Mo Ti.” She regretted her remark, but something in Mo Ti’s tone prevented her from withdrawing it.

“You trust her, I fear. But think: Why would she condone the destruction of the Rose? She is lying.”

“Helice says that the Rose is corrupt. The Rose has become a place where the idle live off the gifted. Those with schooling must work like slaves because the lazy want riches and entertainments. So Helice says.”

“You believe her.”

“Neither yes nor no. I don’t know her very well. But the Rose technology can make me whole again, Mo Ti. Unless she plans to kill me with her machine. I don’t think she does.”

“No. But there are other reasons for not doing it.” She waited while he went on. “If the Tarig view through your eyes fails completely, they will be alerted. Who could have the knowledge to undo their handiwork? They may come here to determine causes.” His crumpled face fell into a scowl. “They must not come here. How would we keep all thoughts secret, including all that the riders may suspect of our enterprise?”

First he had insisted that she have the Tarig surgery to restore her sight. Now he insisted that her eyes remain blighted. “I thought you would always be my protector, Mo Ti.”

He winced inwardly. “I am, on my life.”

“And keep me from my healing?”

“My lady, how can we trust the woman to have such a perfect machine?”

“Hasn’t Distanir already probed Helice’s mind and found her true?” She noted Mo Ti’s consternation that she had found out about that. “You sent Distanir to spy on her. Did you think Riod wouldn’t notice? Did you fear I wouldn’t allow it, and so neglected to tell me?”

Mo Ti’s voice went soft. “Yes.”

Sydney’s anger flared. “Helice felt your probe. She called it mind rape.”

He went on doggedly. “She is hiding something.”

“Don’t we all.” She turned from him, stalking over to Riod, and climbed on his back.
Ride with me, beloved
, she sent.

Mo Ti strode to her side, taking hold of one of Riod’s horns to make him pause. “My lady?”

Looking down on him, Sydney rasped, “I can’t bear having Tarig eyes. Not even to raise the kingdom.”

She goaded Riod into a leaping start, and he set out at a furious gallop, one that brought the wind into her face and turned the water around her eyes icy cold.

Helice stared at her handiwork, the labor of four days: the assembler. On the outside it was a box, higher than it was wide, big enough to produce something the size of a boot; smart enough to produce anything she could program. On the front face was the screen that served as her input pad. The screen had actually been the hardest part to conceal in her clothing. It had been secured into the back of her tunic, which is why she had always slept on her side.

Mo Ti was worried about the device. He’d be even more worried if he understood anything about molecular manipulation and quantum processors. But it was enough for the brooding troll to realize that he was no longer in charge. He had lumbered off to convince Sydney not to submit to modifications. Busy man, Mo Ti. He had to pedal furiously just to understand that the power structure had changed.

In any case, here was the assembler. It would take her Oriental jacket and pajama pants—the ones that looked like ordinary green silk except weren’t— and use them as raw materials from which to construct the mSap with its specialized arms.

The assembler had already given birth to a quite satisfactory ink pen. Delightful. Small beginnings in the service of profound ends. Someday she would show her children the ink pen and tell how she had come to the Inyx sway a poor sojourner—well, the story needed a few tweaks—and how her ascension to power had been just a logical journey from one advantage to the next. The Tarig? Why, they had to step aside. They were so used to lording it over the inadequate that when a true contender entered the fray, the lords had to bow the knee.

Even her subconscious agreed. Some nights she felt on the verge of knowing the chinks in the Tarig armor. Lucid dreams came to her, promising that the lords were weak and afraid. It would be helpful if they were, but even if not, she meant to banish or command them.

So far, she was pleased. Although round one, she had to admit, went to Quinn. He had managed to keep the cirque. And despite her attempts, she had never discovered the name of the lord who was the Tarig traitor. Useful intelligence. But she could never pry it out of Benhu.

Coming up, round two: assembling the mSap, so that Sydney would owe her a favor. Award that round to Helice.

Round three: getting rid of Mo Ti. A full-count knockout by Helice.

Round four: Quinn succumbing at last. And—this was the really excellent part—at the hands of his own daughter. It wasn’t as though Helice had to force the girl to do it. You just worked with the material at hand.

Helice now wore the padded jacket and rough pants that the riders preferred. From a pile on the table, she slowly fed the assembler her old clothes, guiding them into the receiving gate.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Oh navitar, where are we bound?
My navitar, what paths are found?
Oh navitar, the binds deform,
But waking, we are then reborn.
My navitar, the river is deep,
What falls in, the Nigh will keep.
Where bound, Where bound, the keeper cries,
You hear the binds, not the replies.
But sways await, the travelers sleep,
Cast off, cast off, and into the deep.

—“Shanty of the Binds,” a river song

Q
UINN WALKED ALONG THE BANKS OF THE NIGH. Across the river the storm wall bulked mightily into the sky, quaking with suppressed winds. Yet the air around him was tranquil. Far away, on the other side of the primacy, the matching storm wall spawned high winds, but here the Nigh imposed a slick calm, an unnatural quiet.

The poisons Helice had given Quinn still brought on regular bouts of nausea. Adding to this discomfort, his legs were swollen below the knees, the extent to which he had waded into the river. The cirque chafed against his ankle, its imprint now a circular greenish bruise, unless it was a stain from the metal links themselves.

He should rest. Instead, he had been walking for hours down primacy, away from the Inyx campsite. He must get far away in order to think freely. But how could distance make any difference to the Inyx capacities? Yesterday the mount had sent a message and received one back in a heartbeat.

His thoughts drifted to his daughter and to his wife. Sydney, Johanna. Round and round, spiraling down. He had never felt as bleak, not even after his starship broke up, with all hands lost. He used to think there was nothing worse than believing his family dead. Now he discovered there was: that they lived, and rejected him.

Anzi looked at the skewers of meat tended by a godman on an open fire. She could have devoured them all, burning hot. Having spent all her money on a tent, supplies, and bribes to ship keepers and travelers who might have seen a tall Chalen man with an Ascendancy accent, she had eaten nothing for two days except a few morsels. Six legs of river journeying, stopping in every travelers’ camp along the Nigh, searching, searching. Ling Xiao Sheng’s
purple stone sold quickly in one of those camps, but reaped only a tenth of its value, and now those primals were gone. Her only item of value was the heart chime she wore around her neck on a thong. She pulled it out, watching the orb sparkle. Held to the ear, it emitted a range of tones indicating relative distance from the bright city. Titus had given it to her. “Stay far from the Ascendancy,” he had said, as though she needed any inducement. The heart chime was a toy, or a devotional relic, depending on one’s opinion of the Tarig. The loyal Hirrin who’d given it to Titus wore it to remind her of her connection to the lords and the centrality of their great city. It had become a token of Anzi and Titus’s journey together, but she had resigned herself to its loss.

The godman noted the heart chime as she held it. He put on his bargaining face, turning the skewers over the coals.

“How many skewers for this costly keepsake?” she inquired.

He sized her up. “Three. No, I will go so far as four. Heart chime with thong.”

“By the vows, I’ll have all the skewers for this treasure.”

He scowled. “Seven sticks of meat.”

“Plus five minors in change.”

She ended up with eight skewers and no change. It was worth it, but chewing hurt, with her face still tender where she had cut a long gash in it— her only disguise. As she ate, her cheek began to bleed, drawing the attention of a group of Jouts gambling in a line coin toss. Folding her skewers into their wrap, she walked away to find some privacy. Along the way she scanned the knots of Chalin men for one as tall as Titus, and with his walk, though he might have changed his appearance, she knew.

Finding a place somewhat removed from the throng of godly servants and the occasional soldier, she ate ravenously.

Meet me at Ahnenhoon
, she had told him. If he wasn’t in these river camps, then she would go to the plains of Ahnenhoon. But it seemed unlikely he would have been able to attach himself to a military unit this quickly. He would be coming into the Entire through a veil-of-worlds. He would cross the primacy, and travel the river to the Repel; he might be in any of these camps, or arriving soon. Arriving soon. The prospect of seeing him lightened her heart.

She couldn’t remember when her feeling of obligation to him had changed to something more. Spending so many days with him she had learned what kindled him; the same things that caused the people of the Rose to burn with passion: family, honor, loyalty, ambition. Their short but intense lives made her own seem cold and shallow. She had always wanted a passionate life. And then, with Titus, she had found herself catching fire.

He is not for such as you.
Suzong’s words were caught in her skull.

There was a chance that Titus would become a personage of importance. Just as easily, he might remain an outsider. She wasn’t sure which she hoped would be the case, but with his wife long dead, he might look at Anzi, mightn’t he? On the other hand, she wasn’t hoping for marriage, and not the role of first wife, necessarily. God’s beku, who wanted marriage and its dreary routines?

In any case, and matters of the heart aside, he would need her when he returned. She knew he would return.
When I come back, Anzi
, he had said,
we’ll be
at war, your world and mine.
Ahnenhoon’s terrible secret would draw him back.

She would do anything to help him. When it came to war, she had no doubt which side she was on.

Chang had a raging headache brought on by too much drink last ebb and a harangue from his captain this morning. Told to walk it off and be ready for calisthenics by the first hour of Prime of Day, Chang trudged down the row of tents and out of the camp, drawn by curiosity to the cluster of godders who had arrived four days ago. Sky bulbs, wagons, broken-down coaches, and a caravan of mite-plagued beku had descended on the banks of the Nigh like an infestation of river spiders. His camp mates vowed that some godwomen were eager for proper company, and Chang thought that might be the quickest way to sobriety. The problem was, no decent woman could be found among those who served the woeful god. They were all blackened with age, sporting sores, or of the wrong sway for pillowing. However there was a Jout once who looked ravishing after a jar of wine was pissed away. . . .