City Without End (18 page)

As to belonging, Tai thought he knew where he belonged. He’d been pushing it away too long. He wondered if he belonged in the Rose. Titus Quinn had shown it was possible to pass through the veil-of-worlds. Maybe Tai could too. Was it a far-fetched dream that someone like himself might go to a place so far away?

The thought solidified. Perhaps he really did belong in the Rose. Perhaps he had always been striving for it—through his pretensions as a mort, through his striving for intensity. A new vision came to him, that he would go to the Rose—somehow, he would go.

He walked home in a daze of startling clarity.

Zhiya huddled on Quinn’s divan, her short legs curled under a blanket against the cold. She was glad to see Quinn. He’d been missing for the last four days, and her imagination had been running to Tarig torture and worse.

“You might have sent word,” she murmured.

“You don’t seem happy to see me, Zhiya.”

“Oh, I’m happy. Last time I saw you, you were determined to be a common man. So disappointing.” She pushed back her long hair that had fallen over her shoulders. “I rather fancy a driven man.”

And she did like him more, now that he was back in the game. Not that it
was
a game: Hel Ese and her twisted idea of saving her people by killing them. Zhiya shook her head. That was taking zeal a little too far.

“Mo Ti might have made up this business of the matching engine, have you thought of that? To get you to kill the woman for him.” She wondered who would destroy their own land, their own home. Traitors were common as bekus, but this betrayal was breathtaking.

“It’s hard to credit,” Zhiya went on.

“She doesn’t like dreds.” Quinn was gazing out his veranda doors at the sea of Arising, even though, in the heavy fog, he couldn’t see it.

“Dreds?”

“An average person. She can’t stand average.”

The breeze was cold off the veranda and Zhiya snugged her blanket more firmly around her. “Close the door, my dear.”

“Do you suppose my daughter is down in those streets somewhere? She could be.”

“No, she’s playing the part of the Mistress of the Sway. Up in her mansion.”

Still looking out he murmured, “She has a sway. My child was a slave. And now . . .”

“You were a slave once, too. Quinns have a way of rising in the world.”

A gust rattled the porch doors. “Shut the doors,” she muttered. For the last two days a heavy fog had hung over the city, stoving up her joints and making her hair frizz. It was not a good day even before Quinn dropped the news that he was going to track somebody down and kill them.

He moved away from the porch doors at last and began pacing the room.

Zhiya got up and shut the doors herself. She turned to Quinn. “I’ll send one of my people to get rid of her. How convenient the little gondling is
in
town
. That’s to our advantage.”

He shook his head. “I’d like a few words with Helice before we put her out of her misery.”

Yes, Zhiya could well imagine. But was his disgust directed at Hel Ese or himself? She imagined that Quinn was kicking himself rather hard for not dealing with Ahnenhoon when he’d had the chance. She wasn’t about to bring
that
subject up—the little matter of the chain that could have destroyed Ahnenhoon lying at the bottom of the Nigh where Quinn had thrown it in a fit of moral goodness.

Quinn went on, “I need to find out where her engine is. That’s the important piece.”

Zhiya sighed. “Haven’t you figured out, my dear, that your daughter has set a trap for you? Why do you suppose the Tarig brought her here? To show their love of a scrawny Rose girl who’s caused them so much trouble?”

Quinn managed a bitter smile. Hiding a lot of pain, that smile, Zhiya guessed.

“I know it’s a trap.”

Now
that
surprised her. Quinn usually clung more tightly to his family illusions. She raised an eyebrow.

“Helice is there. I may never get closer to her.”

Somewhere in the distance, a short burst of fireworks shattered the silence; a little practice session for the big celebration. Purple and orange thudded into the sky, smearing the fog. Someone shouted, and horns blared. Then once again the fog cloaked the neighborhood with white and silence. The denizens of Rim City had been told to express joy at their new status of sway, and in ten days time they would oblige. The massive celebration would include a grand procession, galas, fireworks, floats, public drunkenness, and food venders lining the Way. It was a fine excuse for a street party, and Rim City denizens knew how to throw one, having the longest street in the Entire, the Way that circumnavigated the sea.

It might be odd to have a woman of the
Rose
as mistress, but since the city wouldn’t pay much attention to a leader anyway, she might as well be a darkling. At least she’d taken a proper name.
Sen Ni
had a Chalin sound, though it was just a transcription of her Rose name.

“Let me have my helpers bring Hel Ese out,” Zhiya said.

Quinn picked up the Paion artifact he’d brought back from the Long Gaze of Fire. He turned it in his hand, as he often did, gazing as though into an empty mirror where lost things might be seen—such as a daughter whose childhood one had missed.

“No,” Quinn answered. “They’ll never get her out. The place is guarded by Tarig; it’s up on that bridge.”

Yes, the damnable bridge. Sydney had taken residence in the biggest house in the lower Rim. Occupying the central span of the arch over one of the Rivers Nigh, her mansion was inaccessible by boat and had only one street passing near: the Way. The Way crossed the five great crystal bridges spanning the Nighs, leaning away from the storm walls that came to an end at the sea. The crystal bridges. Lit from within, spectacular in the Deep Ebb, now one of them was essentially a fortress.

Zhiya challenged him. “How can
you
get her out?”

“I don’t have to. I’ll question her there. Then, to escape, it’s just me.”

“You think your daughter won’t give you up to the Tarig. By the bright, you really think that.”

He didn’t answer.

Zhiya bit her tongue, but it had to be said. “You’re going to convince her you’ve been a loving father.”

“No. I’m going to ask her to forgive me.”

Zhiya stared at him. “Forgive you? She sent the big eunuch to kill you. Not a forgiving sort, that girl.”

When he didn’t answer, an ugly thought struck her. “You
want
her to betray you. That way you can pay off your debt.” She shook her head. “You’re a man with too many corners.”

“You wanted me to be a
hsien
.” He smiled. “This is my big chance.”

She’d rather meant for him to immortalize himself by bringing down the Tarig, not by winning this little skirmish between the Rose and the Entire.

But changing his mind was hopeless.

“What will you have me do?”

“For starters,” he said, “you could find me someone who isn’t afraid of heights.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nascence
: 1. A finger of land, often temporary, protruding from
a minoral. 2. A state of impermanence. 3. (informal) Difficulties
on all sides.

—from
Hol Fan’s Glossary of Needful Words

A
NZI WOKE IN DARKNESS
. An odd, insistent noise pounded at the walls of her bedchamber: a distant chugging punctuated by sharp, zinging cracks. This was no ordinary sound, even for the stormy minoral.

Rising from her bed, she threw on her long silk pants and padded jacket.

The door opened with a whack. Bei stood there, a candle in his hand.

“Get dressed.”

Stuffing her feet into her boots, she asked, “What is it?”

“The reach,” he said. “We’re leaving. Take what you must.” He waited outside, giving her privacy to dress.

By the urgency in his voice, Anzi didn’t question him, but hurriedly stuffed into her shirt the precious redstones on a thong. Earlier that evening she’d copied the correlates, and when Su Bei had burst into her room just now she thought he’d discovered this. The correlates were far too valuable to be in the scholar’s keeping if he planned to hoard them for mapmaking. Sneaking into his library tonight, she’d feared discovery at every moment and worried as well that Bei might detect her use of the computational device to fashion a copy. Titus would need the correlates for a means of escape from the All. Or if not, perhaps to bring over a force of people to support him.

But Su Bei had larger matters in hand. “The veil has split apart,” he said, breathless. Back in the corridor, no globes lit their way. The candle Bei held lit a ghostly path as he led them in a rush toward his library.

“The veil?”

“Yes! The veil of worlds, are you deaf? It split. It’s gone, gone blank, gone.”

In the library, the shelves were in disarray where Bei had already been stuffing their contents into packs. She went through to the veil-of-worlds room, where the destruction of the veil was plain: it had burst, and from behind it extruded a mass of viscous gel. Its push into the room had overturned stone well computational devices, no doubt ruining them.

“Help me,” Bei cried from the library, and Anzi rushed back to him. An unholy noise erupted from behind the wall, and it ballooned toward them, shattering the shelves that lined it, sending scrolls clattering to the floor.

“Master, what’s happening?”

“First the scrolls. In the packs. No, not that one, those!” He pointed toward another shelf.

Anzi began shoving the live scrolls and loose-leaf manuscripts into the nearest satchel. “A storm,” he said. “It’s raging up there. It began an hour past and built to a frenzy.”

“Wouldn’t we be safer down here?”

“No, we’re not safer! The minoral is cracking. Aren’t you listening?” He shoved an armload of material into another pack. “Go fetch the beku if you can’t pack. Bring them up from their stalls to the lift doors. No, bring them down here and we’ll load them. Now run, Anzi.”

She dashed to the door and turned around. “But Master, how can the minoral be cracking?” Nothing cracked in the Entire, much less a minoral, a whole valley. How could it?

“We’ll figure out
how
if we survive. I’ll write a treatise! Now, by a beku’s balls, run!”

“If we’re in a hurry, we should leave these scrolls.”

“
Leave
them? My studies, my texts?” He was stacking scrolls in the middle of the room, away from the debris of the bookcase wall. Already he had a pile that would never fit on the two remaining bekus. “Off with you, now.” He thrust a lit candle at her.

Grabbing it, Anzi ran. The ground trembled, and a sift of pulverized stone fell in front of her. The tunnels were shifting. Underground was not the place to be, Bei was right. But what was it like
above
?

At the stalls, the two bekus were snorting and tossing their heads, eyes wild. Anzi managed to saddle the beasts, which settled them a little. Then she slipped on the bridles and led them from their stalls. Shying at the noises, the bekus yanked and fretted at the reins until they stopped at an unexpected turn to the inhabited section and refused to enter.

Anzi hauled on the reins, but the beasts got the better of her, pulling in opposite directions and making a freakish braying sound she had never heard before. She tied off their reins to a stanchion in the wall and pelted back down the corridor to the library.

Bei was hauling the great packs of scrolls, carrying more than he could possibly manage. “Where have you been? Where are the cursed bekus?”

“Master, the bekus won’t come. Even if they did, they can’t carry all this down the minoral.”

“By the vows, I’ll drag them here . . .” He peered down the corridor, and Anzi put her hand on Bei’s arm. “Take the redstones with your treatise.” She added, to hide her theft, “And the redstones with the correlates. We’ll come back after the storm has passed.”

“The correlates . . .” Bei said, looking stricken. He rushed to his table and took them out of a lacquered box. Anzi helped him thread them onto his scholar’s necklace and he pulled it over his head. He eyed the stuffed satchels around him.