Authors: Kay Kenyon
City Without End (40 page)
The navitar bowed, “Well done, Mistress. No brightships, then. Well done.”
She glanced at him, pleased.
A Tarig pulled Quinn to his feet in a lunge of effortless power. The Tarig said, “First a ride by Adda. It may amuse us to see you fall from the beast, ah?” Quinn had goaded the lord. Perhaps not wise. The Tarig lord nearest him guided him forcibly out the door.
Out on the broad porch of the mansion, Quinn was made to wait. A small group of Hirrin servants had gathered to watch, but Sydney wasn’t in their midst. After what felt like an hour, he saw an Adda in the distance, winding its way slowly toward them in the slight breeze. Next to him, the Tarig lords stood like pillars.
It took a long time for the creature to tack to the verandah.
Sydney went to her apartments, shutting Geng De out in the hall. Perhaps he’d been right that she mustn’t seem to care for her father, but she still wanted to be alone right now.
Her apartment looked toward the sea, not the primacy, and so she couldn’t observe the proceedings on the verandah where they waited to convey her father to the Ascendancy.
She paced, trying to discharge her agitation. Ever since Helice had given herself up yesterday, Sydney had been vulnerable. Helice knew all her plans.
The woman’s ambitions could easily push Sydney aside. Would Helice expose her and the dream insurgency? It was a dark conjecture, but she could do nothing to prevent it. They weren’t friends. Any early hopes for that were long dispelled. They had used each other when convenient. Now, Sydney doubted Helice saw much convenience in it, but perhaps she was preoccupied.
Walking the perimeter of the room, Sydney noticed how empty it was.
The bed was, in the Tarig custom, in the center of the room. A carved chest at the foot of the bed contained her folded wardrobe, her book of pinpricks, a scroll with a likeness of her mother, and little else. Sydney owned almost nothing. Her life had focused on beings who were loyal to her, who loved her.
In her mind there was no difference between loyalty and love. Riod. Akay-Wat. Mo Ti. Cixi.
She paced. There was another name to add to that list. Who was it? Stopping, she considered. Wasn’t it the man she had just turned over to the mantis lords?
Oh God
, she thought, thinking in English.
I gave him to them.
She wandered to the doors to the balcony, and threw them open, walking into the pale light of Early Day. No, she hadn’t given him over. He’d done that to himself. But she saw herself telling the lords they could have him.
The Tarig listened to her; she had helped them control a mob; she acted the part of their Mistress of the Sway. They wanted to show themselves gracious, and she helped them to do so.
How had it come to her, this being in the mansions of the enemy? When Riod was here to spy on them, she’d had a reason. What was her reason now?
What was anything now except a corrupt and sickening dance?
A shadow passed over her.
The Adda. Its trailing membranes almost touched her head. It moved beyond the balcony, slowly floating over the edge of the sea. Titus was on board. The ladder from its orifice hung down, beckoning her. But the creature was already rising in the sky, puffing out its bladders until it rounded into a floating moon.
I think you loved me, Titus. It was never that you didn’t love me. It was that you couldn’t meet my proofs. You couldn’t be pure enough. You couldn’t be with me when Priov whipped me in the dorms, when Hadenth used his claws on me, when I had to trap my own food though I couldn’t see it, and when the riders told me you ate off crystal plates. But I think you would have traded places with me.
Perhaps the Adda would turn around. Perhaps the lords would say to each other, we must take all the Quinns, not just the father. Let them be here together as the prisoners they once were. Let them start over again, and see if it can be different.
But the Adda rose and rose higher.
She watched a long while until the Adda was merely a speck in the sky, like a planet far away.
C
AITLIN SLEPT IN HER CAR IN A DOWNTOWN PARKING GARAGE
. When businesses opened, she purchased a briefcase, then paid a visit to her bank and withdrew $300,000 in cash, a transaction that drew the attention of the bank manager. The manager made polite inquiries about her need for such an amount in cash. Scams and swindles abounded, she must be aware.
Yes, she was aware.
She faced him calmly. “We may be making another withdrawal in a few days. Let us know if this is inconvenient.” It would not be, the manager assured her.
She ate a fast-food breakfast, wolfing down something that a half an hour later, she couldn’t remember having eaten.
Highway 26 to Beaverton, meshed to savant control that kept each car a few feet behind the one in front, and then, unmeshed, onto side streets. Her destination: a run-down neighborhood with intentions to do better. Planter strips by the curbs held well-meant flowerbeds on the turn; a few houses had seen recent paint.
Kell Tobias’s had not. The former Minerva savant tender had let the yard go to weeds, but she liked that he bothered to mow them. Parking out front, she knocked on the door. No answer, though she heard music inside. After several tries, she was back in the car again, deciding to wait. Maybe he’d gone out, would be back. Her nerves started to unravel. Who else did she know who she could bribe into an act of computer piracy? No one.
Compulsively, she checked her message center. No word from Rob, but there wouldn’t be. They’d agreed not to communicate until she had a file to send him. Even encrypted, every data strand made her movements traceable. And Rob’s. He wasn’t telling her where he’d taken Mateo and Emily. Everything about the last two days felt like someone else’s life, someone who needed to hide. Someone like Titus Quinn’s sister-in-law.
A half hour passed. She’d go back to Emergent, try the hacking herself . . . no, it would take all day; she didn’t have time to waste. Kell, just come home. Sitting quietly in her car made her want to scream. Deep breaths. She’d wait until noon.
At ten minutes after, a beater of a car pulled into the driveway. Kell. With a sack of groceries. Caitlin’s heart kicked at her, hard. Propelled by adrenaline, she got out and approached him.
Kell had changed little. Still the three-day growth of beard. As skinny as ever, but a more wary look in his eyes than the old days when she’d seen him with Rob at Minerva. Then they’d been two aging savant tenders hanging out. From there, Rob had spiraled up and Kell down.
He squinted hard at her, and she had to remind him who she was. He nodded. Handing her the groceries, he stranded his code into the house lock.
Watching Kell work his data rings, she drank coffee from a stained cup. The living room wall was live with scrolled code. From time to time Kell shook his head to get the hair out of his eyes. Between Caitlin on the couch and Kell in his chair lay the briefcase containing his down payment for accessing Lamar Gelde’s files. If he failed, he kept the briefcase. If he succeeded, another similar payment in a week. It felt like a swindle to Caitlin. If her intervention succeeded, he should have a payment in the millions.
After a half-night’s sleep, Caitlin was marginally more clear-headed. Panic had receded, replaced by nagging doubt. She was operating on more instinct than proof. What would she tell the police? There’s something inside a reactor at Hanford. . . .
Kell had asked no questions. To his credit, he seemed relieved when she told him Rob knew what she was doing. Left unsaid was that if caught, they both could spend time in jail. All these considerations were pushed aside by the prospect of six hundred thousand dollars for two hours’ work.
“Holy Jesus, Lamar’s got himself a sweet piece of optics.”
What did he think, a former Minerva board director would be working off a minor optical computer? Lamar had a savant, absolutely. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d had a personal mSap, but that would be like using a hypersonic jet to get groceries.
Caitlin didn’t bother to comment. He wasn’t talking to her, anyway. She strolled to the window and kept watch on the street. If they’d been following her, they’d have been here by now. She just hoped that didn’t mean they were following Rob, instead.
When she turned back, Kell was frowning. “He’s pretty good,” he mumbled.
“Meaning?”
Data rings flashed; windows tiled up. Kell was mired down.
Caitlin knew better than to interrupt. She sat down, waiting, feeling the coffee cup in her hands go cold.
“Can you please hurry?” she asked, knowing how obnoxious that sounded.
An agonizing fifteen minutes later, he mumbled, “Trying something else. This should work.”
It didn’t. While Caitlin digested her stomach lining, Kell continued a single-minded and increasingly bitter struggle with Lamar’s firewalls.
From across the room she heard Kell mutter, “Okay, in.”
But the news wasn’t good. “Encrypted tighter than a virgin’s twat . . .”
She was ready to push him off the chair and have at the encryption herself.
An hour later, he finally broke through. Caitlin was facing Lamar’s file names on the wall display.
“Now it’s your turn to hurry,” he mumbled. “Get in, get out. Go.”
As the file contents ballooned onto the screen, Caitlin shook her head no.
No, not that. Not that. Keep going.
“Personnel,” she said, spying another name to try. “Open it.” Squinting up at the smart wall, she said, “Scroll to the bottom.”
He went to the end.
“How many names?”
“Exactly two thousand.”
“Scroll up to number sixteen.” He did so. She read: Caitlin Quinn.
Number seventeen, Mateo Quinn. Number eighteen, Emily Quinn.
“That file. Strand it to me. It was small enough to save onto her smart-Suit. “And print it.”
As he backed out of Lamar’s savant, he bragged, “No footprints.” Kell mopped up after himself. “I was a butterfly.”
