City Without End (27 page)

Someone was coming. Sydney met the servant at the door and took the bucket. Dismissing the girl, she went outside to find a spigot. Deng was nowhere in sight, and that was just as well. She had to think carefully about how to handle this. Deng had received orders from the Tarig lady to poison Riod. But Sydney couldn’t directly accuse Anuve, or even Deng, lest she push matters too far. Sydney might be Mistress of the Sway, but she was no equal of a Tarig.

Fresh, rushing water filled the pail. The execrable Deng had been poisoning Riod, under orders from Anuve. She should have guessed, should have paid closer attention. Thank goodness Riod’s heart powers, though diminished, had not failed him. Deng must have worked skillfully to hide his intentions.

And why had Anuve tried to kill Riod? It was obvious. The mantis lords—and ladies—were fearful of Inyx mind powers and wished to keep Sydney weak.

That Sydney hadn’t taken precautions against this possibility sickened her.

She brought her bucket of water into the stable and used her hands to form a scoop for Riod to drink from. He did so, feebly.

Her thoughts toward the steward were murderous, but toward Anuve, coldly calculating. She would wait her chance to punish Anuve. It might take some time, but Sydney would make her pay.

Tai bandaged the woman’s hands as best he could. She wouldn’t say how she had cut them, or if someone had done this to her. Huddled on the edge of his bed, ready to bolt at the first sign of treachery, she looked terrified.

As he bound her hands, he was shaking. If he was not mistaken, he thought that this remarkable being came from the forbidden place: the Rose.

There were clues. First, she spoke Lucent in a halting manner. Second, he thought that he had seen her in the home of the Mistress of the Sway, standing on the balcony. She kept a scarf wrapped around her neck and a tight skull cap that looked as though it perched on a bald head. It was said that those of the Rose began their lives with dark hair and moved to white, opposite to the All. So hiding her hair, or shaving it, was a clue.

He’d been watching the undercity for Titus Quinn. After seeing him riding the Adda yesterday, he looked for him in every crowd, in the face of every Chalin man. Then, instead of Titus Quinn, he had sighted this woman, the one he’d seen on Sen Ni’s porch. Her expensive silks made her stand out—Tai knew his silks. Furthermore, these were torn. He followed her, noting her reaction when she spied a Tarig on the street. The woman shrank into a doorway, turning away. She was hiding from them. That was when he got close to her and offered his help.

She had a heavy bundle wrapped in a scarf. From the moment the woman had sat on his bunk, she had protected the package. It rested against her back, and by the look in her eyes, Tai thought she would attack him if he so much as touched it. Maybe she thought that since he lived in a simple burrow, he was some common fellow who might steal from her. He’d have to assure her, somehow. This burrow was one he’d enlarged by digging into the hard packed soils under the city. It had no portal to the Nigh and only a cloth over the door. It was hovel, but at least it was a private place where he could care for her.

“Water, please.” A thick accent.

He brought her a drink in a clean cup, and it ran down her face as she drank, spilling into the scarf around her neck. She removed it, showing a patch of festering skin on her neck and chin. Now that he looked more closely, he thought she might be feverish.

“You need a healer.”

She quickly snapped, “No.” Her glance went to the door.

“All right. But you are sick.”

“Not sick. No healers. No one finds me.” She was wild-eyed and swaying from exhaustion, but afraid to sleep.

“I won’t let the Tarig find you,” he said. “I am honored to serve a being of the Rose.”

At this, she moved back, drawing closer to the package in back of her. “If you tell about me, I will kill you.” She gestured behind her. “This is a machine. I can make it hurt you even if you run.”

She was desperate, and perhaps delirious. He humored her. “Some of us revere the Rose, did you know that?”

“I know some things. Not others. Who are you?”

“I am Tai. I am a mort. Do you know what that is?” She watched him warily. “My friends and I think the Entire is a place where people live too long. It makes them shallow and boring. We shun the bright, the upper city, so we will live shorter lives, and deeper. Like you do in the Rose.”

She leaned against her machine, eyelids drooping. He wished she would lie down, but this appeared to be a woman who would sooner fall down than rest.

“Mort is a nickname for a Rose word meaning death. Morts aren’t afraid of death, not like most sentients. The lords say life is better here. It isn’t. I’m sure of that.”

“You like the Rose, Tai?”

That seemed friendlier, and he was quick to answer. “It is my dream. To go there.”

“I know how.”

His heart crimped at this utterance.

“Your dream.” She nodded. “Help me, and I will help you.”

“I was going to help you anyway.”

She asked for food then, and he spent his last minors on meat rolls and buns, bringing them back as fast as he could, afraid she would run away. But she was waiting for him.

He tried not to stare at her as she ate. He was so stimulated that he could hardly be still. At last he found the courage to ask, “Is Titus Quinn your friend?”

She swallowed a bite that looked like it got lodged halfway down throat.

“Yes. Such a good friend. What do you know of him?”

“I know that he was at Sen Ni’s dwelling on the crystal bridge. He took her up into the Adda, and after they were together a few increments, she came back down again. All very secret. I would never tell.”

She stopped eating for a while, eyes narrow. Then she said, “That is good, Tai. Don’t tell our secrets. You really don’t want to tell. There are very big plans at work. You can be part of it. Then I will send you to the Rose. You can live the short life you want. You like that?”

He nodded, overcome.

That seemed to please her, because she said, “My name is”—he thought she said Hel Ese. “I’m on a . . . Rose mission. But I can’t tell you about this. You have to trust me. Agreed?”

Tai began to relax. They were becoming friends. “If you have great things to accomplish, I want to be part of them.”

She looked around her. “Tell me where I am.”

“This is where I stay. It’s a hole, but it’s cheap. You’re in the undercity.

It’s where we—us morts—like to be, because it’s dark.”

“Secret from the Tarig?”

“No, the Tarig built it long ago. They know we’re here, but they don’t come down among us very much. Morts like it here, since we don’t fit in—” He pointed toward the ceiling. “—up there. No one will come here.”

She lay down, keeping the machine between herself and the wall. “I have to sleep.”

He brought her a blanket, a fairly clean one, he was happy to note. “Sleep, Hel Ese. No one will disturb you. Don’t worry.” He pulled the blanket over her as she lay down.

“Send you to the Rose,” she murmured. “If you hide me well. If not . . .”

It hurt his feelings that she was still threatening him. He glanced at the machine covered with a scarf. Glimpses of metal showed through the wrapping. A picture formed in his mind of a machine sprouting legs and rushing after him like a Paion. He didn’t doubt that she could be dangerous. There was something in her eyes that was flat and unreceptive. Once she knew him better, they would be friends.

She was already asleep, snoring lightly. Stepping close to her, he inspected the raw infection, oozing in places. He quelled a spike of worry. Counting out his few coins, he found he had just enough to buy medicinals.

Tai went to the flap on the door, slipping past it into the murky corridor. Elated and exhausted, he hurried to the market stalls. He kept an eye out for her good friend Titus Quinn.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Against the enemy, use a damning truth; to rouse one’s own forces,
a useful lie.

—from Tun Mu’s
Annals of War

“O
NLY HIRRIN SERVANTS,”
Sydney repeated again.

Lady Anuve looked down at her with flat black eyes. It was a look Sydney was coming to identify as fury.

Of all the assembled staff, Sydney wanted only Hirrin, the sentients who could not lie. As the first test of her freedom, she banished Anuve’s spies.

Riod stood by her side, distressingly weak but able to move under his own power now that Sydney herself fed and watered him. Today he was going back to the Inyx Sway, much as they both dreaded being separated.

Deng was the first servant to be dismissed, and if Anuve thought her poisonings had been discovered, then so be it. Because Anuve might overreact to a direct accusation, Sydney managed to hold her tongue. Clearly the mantis lords—and ladies—wanted no Inyx near the Bright City and its great secrets. In this regard, they would be surprised to learn how right they were.

Sydney pressed home her point. “I will have only Hirrin to serve me. And only Hirrin to escort us to the ship.”

“Armed Hirrin,” Anuve said, conceding the issue of servants. Hirrin made surprisingly good bodyguards. They could be equipped with ejectors in their mouths that would take down a sentient with a paralyzing stream at fifteen yards.

Sydney gave ground. “Yes, all right.” She had to pretend that she’d use force to restrain her father if he attempted contact.

Waving her hand at the Chalin and Jout palace staff, Lady Anuve sent them from the foyer to pack their belongings. Earlier Anuve had said once more what the terms were, of being free: “You serve as Mistress of the Sway as long as you do so with honor. This means obedience to us, ah?”

“Yes,” Sydney had answered. Thank God she wasn’t a Hirrin and could lie pleasantly.

Still, she didn’t trust even the Hirrin, not quite yet. She approached two Hirrin females Anuve had brought her.

“Do you serve me honestly, withholding nothing?” If she was truly free, then a Hirrin could answer a simple question.

The nearest Hirrin rolled her eyes and turned her long neck in Anuve’s direction. “Have we leave to serve the Mistress of the Sway, Bright One?”

By gesture from Anuve: Yes.

Sydney locked gazes with the Hirrin. “Do you keep secrets from me?”

“No, Mistress.”

Turning to the second Hirrin, she asked, “And do you?”

“I do not, Mistress Sen Ni.”

Sydney turned back to the remaining figures in the foyer: all were Hirrin except for Riod and Anuve. “Every day I will ask this of each of you.” That ought to clear the decks well enough.

Sydney turned to Anuve. “I’m going to the wharf. We’ll keep watch for the man of the Rose.” She wanted so badly to say,
And someday you’ll eat my
poison. Although it wouldn’t much matter, would it? You’d just come back as another
ugly fiend.

Sydney and Riod left, along with the Hirrin guards. It was a slow progression, marked by Riod’s uncertain steps. Sydney kept her hand on his flank:
I will miss you always, every minute, beloved.

Riod concentrated on negotiating the palace steps. He would walk on his own down to the dock at the foot of the bridge. A short walk, but painful for them both. Riod had been at her side without pause for a thousand days.

When he was gone, she would be alone. Mo Ti had left—oh, long ago, it seemed. Akay-Wat was in the roamlands. Helice had fled. Who was left now?

With Riod’s return home their goal of better penetrating the Ascendancy with dream probes evaporated. Helice still had her machine sapient; no doubt she still had her great plans of renaissance, within which she sought to control the Tarig at their doors. Perhaps Titus could find the doors to the Heart first. He said he had the means, though he hadn’t confided his methods to her.

As they came into the Way, citizens bowed to Sydney, recognizing her from the celebrations of investiture. As she and her company went on, a small crowd followed them. Few people here had seen an Inyx, much less Sen Ni, up close. They hailed her, and it lifted her spirits. Above them, the glimmering crystal bridge lay aslant, as though leaning out to touch the Ascendancy. Despite the sad duty of sending Riod away, the sight was riveting. It was the largest glass slipper in the universe, and Sydney was the most unlikely of Cinderellas. She was walking free under the shadow of the Ascendancy. She was a child of the Entire, a mistress of a country, and the daughter of no man—only the friend of a horned mount. Looking out at the silver disk of the Sea of Arising, she had the feeling she would never be this free again. Surely it was just a bit of doubt and not premonition. But it came to her hard and fast like instinctual knowledge.