City Without End (21 page)

Deng, the Chalin servant assigned to Riod’s care, came in, bearing fragrant grasses and making a new, fresh bed for the massive creature. Then he carefully emptied and refilled Riod’s trough of water, doing everything as he had been instructed. Deng felt uneasy around this mind-snatching creature. He had learned a poem to say over and over that assured he would not leak secrets to Sen Ni’s mount.

In the floors above Riod, the palace of the Mistress of the Sway was largely empty. Most of the staff of Sydney’s residence and offices was gathered with her at the front terrace of the mansion, accepting acclamation from the Great Procession moving past. Sydney, on view by the masses, wore a red satin chemise over slim pants and embroidered slippers. Her hair was pulled back into a cinched band, making it appear as though she had long hair; Anuve had supervised her grooming with care. But Sydney knew her stature in the sway would change the moment her father was in custody. For this reason it was doubly worrisome that Riod was incapable of his nightly spying on the Tarig. He wasn’t recovering from his bad trip by boat, and Sydney’s goal of examining the Tarig weak points at close range was slipping away.

She hoped her father would not try to come to her today. The longer he delayed, the longer Riod would have to recover his strength. And the longer she would have to adjust to the idea that she would betray Quinn to the Tarig. She had told Anuve that she didn’t care. Some days she wasn’t so sure.

Feeling hot and confined by her clothes, Sydney kicked off her slippers to cool her feet. No one would notice that she stood barefoot, and if they did, let them complain.

Down the way came the next pulse of sentients: Here was a dragon, a silk-tented carapace with many feet carrying it along. The whiskered face jumped up at the sound of cymbals, and the bodies carrying the dragon skin danced and stomped. Sydney’s household clapped and threw candies. For a moment, in the din of the parade, Sydney thought of Mo Ti. He should be here to see her in her role as Rim City mistress. In fact, she watched for him, thinking he might find her today. Had her father killed him or merely escaped him? And if the latter, then where was Mo Ti, and why hadn’t he come to her?

A Jout in a puffy costume of yellow and red broke out of the crowd and approached the stairs separating the mansion from the Way. He rushed up the stairs, holding out a gift—a tasseled crown of good craftsmanship, if cheap materials.

Sydney picked up the golden tiara and smiled at the Jout, waving her thanks. But now she had a dilemma: should she presume to wear a crown, even this fake one? She turned to the window at the back, almost hidden from view. There the Lady Anuve watched without being seen. If Sydney declined the crown, then she’d insult the Jout and the merrymakers who surrounded him, half drunk though they were. She had a moment’s pause as she considered whether putting on the crown might signal more of her plans than was terribly wise.

But she placed the tiara on her head. A burst of fireworks fountained into the sky, plowing a hole through the fog. In the dazzle of color streaming down, the crowd spilled up the stairs, trying for a better view. Amid the surge, Sydney noticed a strange person: a grinning and dancing dwarf with long white hair. Barging her way close, the dwarf thrust her stubby hand straight up at Sydney, saying quietly, “Read this in private if you want that crown for real.” She pressed a note into Sydney’s hand.

Then the dwarf laughed and pushed her way back to the procession, as Sydney’s servants hurried to take control of the steps.

The many-legged dragon jumped and pranced, disappearing into the fog. The Jout in the puffy costume cart-wheeled behind it. The parade kept coming.

Tai stood at the base of the bony ladder leading to the belly of the Adda. He’d never ridden an Adda before, but neither had most of the people assembled on the wharf. He was one of thirty handpicked men who would ride the trailing ladders in the procession. It was the best-paying job he’d had in the three weeks since he’d resolved to better himself. Looking at the other riders, he knew why he was chosen: they were all beautiful and young, and like him, they were willing to exploit it. They were all dressed identically in fine green silk with square hats to match. He knew what Bo or Fajan would say: that he was corrupt to be part of a Tarig celebration. But the twelve primals he was paid for looking flash in a parade and riding the tail of an Adda was a fine start to his savings. A man doesn’t go far without money in this world. And he certainly couldn’t cross to the next world with nothing in his pockets.

His was the ninth in the line of Adda. Thirty celestial beasts were caparisoned with braided and jeweled rigging, tassels dangling close to their huge eyes, streamers tied to their cartilage ladders that formed the boarding steps. The great creatures floated in a firm line, tethered to the wharf, ready to set sail. Normally confined to riding the prevailing winds, today the Tarig provided a narrow stream of wind to take them along the coast in one direction, and then back along the same route to this staging ground.

Tai looked up at his Adda and found to his consternation that she was looking down at him. He bowed. She blinked, her pearlescent eyelids faintly green, her eyelashes long and coarse.

Shreds of fog obscured the forward line of the Adda where the lead behemoth waited the signal to move. This was Beesha, an old favorite in Rim City, reduced these days to taking sightseers on sea outings, but beloved for her age and size. Tai would have loved to ride that one, but ninth in line was not haggish, either. He hoped to glimpse Sen Ni, she of the Rose, perhaps on her balcony. With luck, she might wave at him.

The Great Procession turned, and as it did, the fog began twisting away, evaporating under the bright.

In her quarters in the mansion, Helice felt dazed. She had only been in the world a few weeks; most of that time had been in the desolate tundra lands of the Inyx. Within a space of two weeks she had come to the center of the universe, almost under the shadow of the Ascendancy, and seen a fabulous city put on a display of grandeur. It was Mardi Gras, Chinese New Year, the Fourth of July—all magnified to Entirean standards.

As she looked out from her balcony, she saw in the distance a line of Adda approaching, the creatures of near mythical proportions that Quinn had described to her once and that had lived in her imagination ever since. She was here. She was standing amid all the glories that were the Entire. She loved it more than she could express. She was giddy with it. Happy, perhaps for the first time in her life. That stopped her. Hadn’t she been happy? Testing savvy, rushing headlong through her doctorate degrees, climbing in the ranks of Minerva? No, never happy. Happiness was what she felt today: life’s infinite possibility.

To make the day perfect, they would capture Titus Quinn. That would effectively remove Quinn from his position as the goddamned Christopher Columbus of the new universe. But even if he didn’t come today, he was irrelevant. He’d drowned the chain in the Nigh. That was the best thing he’d ever done. Maybe she didn’t hate him quite as much as before. Any man who couldn’t kill a whole world . . . but this was where she got into a bit of trouble. She planned to kill the Rose. So that made her a monster by most people’s standards. Until you remembered that the Tarig were bloody well going to burn it with or without Helice Maki. They were, in fact, burning some of it right now, those little beta tests of the big engine, those little flash deaths of stars in a faltering Rose universe. Helping them hurry it up just a tad did not make her responsible for the fact that it was bound to happen.

She checked on the mSap. It was computing away, good little thing. She’d set it to detect electromagnetic spikes in the Ascendancy, thinking they might coincide with Tarig transfer points. But there were such profound turbulences here next to the storm wall that the mSap couldn’t distinguish any pulses from the background fluctuations. Nor was Riod, the pathetic thing, doing any better with his side of it. Strange that a creature so massive should be the only one to sicken in the Nigh, though as to sickening, she had her own health worries. She put a hand to her face. The scabs still festered.

She patted the mSap. Keep going, she urged it. Once she had the transfer points identified, she’d have her security measures against the Tarig. They’d need to actually deal with her and not just dismiss her or kill her.

Replacing a wad of clothes on top of the mSap, she hid it again. The mSap would identify her as a foreigner. So far in the mansion she’d passed as Sydney’s fellow rider Hei Ling; that fiction had to be sustained for a while longer.

The cap she wore to deflect undue notice of her baldness chafed today. She threw it onto her bed and ran a hand over her head, feeling a growth of fuzz. Going to the mirror in the commode, she used a razor to quickly skim herself smooth again. She allowed herself a closer look in the mirror, touching her face where the infection still lingered. It wasn’t getting better. It was worse on her neck, but even her lower jaw now oozed in places. Helice had never been vain, but now she was worried. The burns from her crossing from the Rose had festered despite all the ointments and the ministrations of healers.

Pulling her scarf securely around her neck, she went to join Sydney. Mistress of the Sway against all odds, now the girl wanted to be queen. She hadn’t a clue how unlikely that was. Perhaps Helice would let her keep Rim City, though. Remarkably, they seemed to want the same things. It had been a brilliant stroke to hook up with the girl. So long as she was malleable, Sydney might do well in Helice’s regime.

Far below the mansion, on the river, a navitar vessel hung just outside the fogbank. From here the grand celebration looked ghostly, with fountains of skyrockets obscured and smeared by fog. Mo Ti looked up to the pilot house, seeing Ghoris staring out her viewports. Was she watching the Great Procession or some vision in her own head? Hard as she was to judge, he thought that lately she had been sad.

“Jaq,” she had said one day when Mo Ti was bathing her. “Jaq”—and her eyes might have held tears. She missed the ship keeper. Jaq had been sent away by the mistress he loved and served. Mo Ti knew the pain of that. Sydney had sent him to kill her father, to prevent him from using the world-wreaking chain. Mo Ti had not done so, and worried that Sydney might see that as disloyal. Nor was this his only slip. Sydney had also found him withholding intelligence from her; she had unfortunately discovered that Cixi had been the one to send him to protect and advise her. But as high prefect of the Magisterium, Cixi worked in exquisite secrecy, especially among the mind-intruding Inyx. Add to all this, now Mo Ti had gone against Sydney in something she might never forgive. He had told Titus Quinn about the plan to raise the kingdom. He had told Titus Quinn about the Tarig doors home. It was a moment of trust, one that Sydney might never understand. It might do little good to tell her that Quinn had the means—the correlates—to find the doors to the Heart. If Quinn found them first, he said he would deliver the Tarig kingdom to Sydney. She might think Mo Ti a fool, or worse, to believe him.