City Without End (57 page)

But she was on level five, not level four. How could he find her again, once inside the Magisterium and trying to guess which door led where? He’d have to try. Turning to leave, he paused. He would lose her. Going inside the Magisterium he could easily become lost. He knew the Magisterium only slightly, and these lower levels not at all.

He leaned over the rail again, looking below the jutting balcony on which he stood. His stomach contracted at the view: a drop of thirty thousand feet into a blinding mirror of water, reflecting the high bright. He would not look down again.

Moving to the very end of the balcony, he squinted down at the wall, seeing protuberances he might use for handholds. The wall curved inward, dropping away from his sight. It was impossible. But on closer inspection, he noted more jutting features of the skin of the Magisterium: nozzles, vents, spars, and moldings. He had no more time to evaluate; Helice was in his sights.

He climbed up to the rail, gripping it with what strength remained in his right arm. With his left, he reached out for a grip, spied his footing below him, and pulled himself out onto the outer wall of the Magisterium. The air was cold beyond the field barrier. Feeling with his feet for the next foothold, he discovered an indentation that gave him a tiny ledge to balance on. He lowered himself, willing strength into his right arm. Moving with what efficiency he could, he sought his next foothold. With his face next to the crenellations of the wall, he found his handholds, using his left arm and hand to lower himself, and his right to hold fast to the protuberance nearest his chest, to keep himself clinging.

Lower, now, and unable to lean out for a view of where he was going, he continued his blind downward creep. It had only been a minute, and already his good arm was losing strength. He hooked his right elbow around a large, jutting bar, resting his impaired hand. Without that bar, he might have fallen. Hanging thus, with a shallow foothold barely a help, he rested for a few seconds. But he had to keep going, or his body would give out.

Resuming the climb down, he found, of all things, a window. The deep reveal provided a tiny space for him. It was, blessedly, a flat sill. He rested there for a long time, but his hands were growing cold in the sharp air. He had forgotten the cold outside the field barrier. That might be a fatal miscalculation.

Crouching on the sill, he peered below. There was his destination, curved under and away: the rail of Helice’s balcony. Setting out once more, he willed his hands to by God hold on, because it was only another minute, and he would have his feet on the solid world of a balcony. He was now just a machine on a puzzle of a wall; there were only feet and hands—good hand, weak hand—searching, praying for a handhold, for the next foothold, . . .

The railing was just below him. With an urgent command to his trembling legs, he persuaded them to reach for the railing. He swung his leg, feeling for the rail, finding it. Now with one foot precariously planted, he clawed his way to an upright position. He felt he couldn’t move another inch.

His body had gone beyond its strength, held together by will alone. He felt like a block of ice. Somehow he managed to slide down from the rail; he didn’t allow himself to fall and collapse. Silence was important.

She was just around the curve of the wall.

Crouching and shivering, Quinn recovered. He tried not to gasp for air. Quietly he stood up and leaned out enough to see the rest of the balcony.

She was still there. But now she saw him.

Jumping up, she turned to flee. Quinn raced to grab her, reaching her and pulling her back. He jerked her against the wall, his hand at her neck.

She looked ghastly, sores oozing, hot blue eyes looking at him with feral panic.

“Don’t make me kill you,” he said in a whisper, all that was left of his lungs.

As she struggled against him, he noted with relief that she was not stronger than him in his exhausted state. He kept her pinned to the wall, his thumbs on her windpipe. “Now, Helice, you’re going to tell me. Everything.”

“About what?”

He struck her. To do so, he had to release her with his good hand. She fell away from his blow, stumbled, and fell. Following her, he fell on top of her, too weak to drag her up. Her face bleeding, she spat out the blood that ran into her mouth.

Sitting on top of her, he grabbed her hand and brought it forcibly in front of her face. “I’m going to break each of your fingers, starting with this one, unless you tell me where the machine is.” He leaned over her, ready to murder her, ready for anything, nothing held back.

“Go to hell.”

He pulled her index finger back in a jerk, breaking it.

She screamed. Then she clamped her mouth shut against the sobs. Her defiant eyes met his. Perhaps she didn’t understand that he was going to break them all.

He spat at her, “Don’t try lying to me, because I’m going to take you with me, back to the engine. If it isn’t there, I’ll kill you.”

“Go . . . ahead. I don’t care, I don’t bloody care. In fact, you can . . . kill me now.”

“Nobody wants to die,” he hissed. He climbed off her and pulled her to her feet, looking at her with loathing. They stood in a mutual embrace, each leaning against the other, each wounded, sick, exhausted. “You don’t want to die,” he said.

“Quinn,” she whispered, her eyes alight with a calm madness. “I don’t care what you do. I’m already dying. Didn’t you notice?”

He stared at her.

She smirked at his hesitation. “It’s too late for you. And it’s too late for me. I’m free of you. A dead woman already.”

“But you have an engine that will kill the world.” Now he needed to hear that there
was
an engine.

She grinned at him, cracking the scabs around her mouth. “Yes there’s a bloody fucking engine.” She held her hand with its broken finger next to her like a claw. “We’re already bringing people here, and they’re going to start over again. Start from a clean slate. Clean up the mess you’ve made. Your precious malformed Rose. Yank it out. Replant, as it were.”

Enraged, he dragged her to the rail.

As he hauled her, she gasped, “I won’t live to see it. But it was worth it, just to stop insufferable, self-righteous crusaders like you.”

He held her at the rail, forcing her to look over. “Look, look down. Tell me where the engine is, God damn you to hell. Before you die, do one decent thing.”

With far more strength than he’d guessed she had, she yanked away from him. Then with a quick jerk, she rammed her knee into his crotch. He crumpled, and as he did so, she kicked his damaged arm, sending him staggering against the rail, down to one knee.

Someone rushed at them. Suddenly someone else was between then, grabbing Helice, wrestling with her. Just as Quinn managed to haul himself to his feet, he saw Tai holding Helice balanced on the rail on her back. They struggled. Helice reached her knee back for a kick.

As she did so, Tai pushed hard against her, heaving her over the rail. She fell, the expression on her face startled and puzzled.

“No!” Quinn rasped. He reached for her as she fell. He clutched at her tunic, got hold of it, gripping it fiercely. His hand didn’t work, nor his fingers. The material shredded away from his grasp. She fell, dropping away, falling like a lost soul from heaven.

“No, no,” Quinn said, leaning over, watching as she fell, watching her grow smaller.

At last her form vanished into the platinum brilliance below.

Tai turned away from the sight, his face ashen.

Quinn was leaning his hands on the railing, letting his defeat settle around him, dark and brutal. She’d taken the information with her. My God, she was still falling, somewhere below, had not even hit the water yet. It would be minutes yet. It made him sick.

Tai croaked, “She would have pushed you. I tried to help, but she fought, and then . . .” he turned back and looked at the railing, as though he could see the progression of events more clearly, staring at it. “. . . and then I pushed her.”

Quinn still stared down, but he couldn’t see her anymore. “Yes. You pushed her.”

After a few moments Tai whispered, “I wouldn’t have pushed her, but she pushed against
me
.” When Quinn didn’t speak, he went on, “I tried to help you. She would have killed the Rose, wouldn’t she?”

“Yes. Perhaps she still will.”

Tai looked confused. “She was evil, wasn’t she?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what she was.”

But she was the only one who knew the location of the engine.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Guide the journey, O pilot mine;
Show the path, O clear-eyed one;
Keep me near, O wayfarer;
Bring me home, O navitar.

—
The Red Book of Prayer

Q
UINN HAD FALLEN INTO AN EXHAUSTED SLEEP
, more like unconsciousness than rest. Tai wakened him gently. “Food,” he said.

Rousing himself, Quinn let the memory of the last hours rush back. He groaned.

“You need to eat,” Tai said, spreading out fried tubers on a clean plate.

He had water too, and Quinn drank it all, wishing for more. His right arm felt like it’d been flayed open, and his left hand, the one that had borne most of his weight on the climb down to the balcony, would hardly close.

“How long have I been out?”

“An hour. It took a long time to find food.” Tai explained that the Mag-isterium was oddly silent, with clerks huddling together in great rooms and few sentients abroad in the corridors. He watched as Quinn ate.

After a time, Tai ventured, “She was trying to kill you. She was, wasn’t she?”

Quinn looked at Tai, wondering how much of a burden to put on the young man. Helice couldn’t have thrown him over the rail. Perhaps it had looked like that, the way they were struggling. He decided on mercy. “She’d been trying to kill me for some time.”

Quinn heaved himself to his feet. “To the plaza, Tai. If you’re coming with me?” Tai nodded. Quinn would watch for Lady Demat there. She was his only hope now. Maybe she could send him through the passage that Helice’s people were using, but going the other way. He didn’t know what was possible, only that he was running blind, trolling for some good fortune, somewhere.

He and Tai made their way up the ramps and stairs of the Magisterium toward the plaza. Watch for me in the plaza, Demat had said. After Ghinamid is dead. Demat needed to handle her own enemies before she would let Quinn handle
his
.

When they reached the outer door of the Magisterium, the one in the sunken garden, they walked through a packed layer of bird drones, their wings fluttering in useless attempts to rise. The steps to the main level of the Ascendancy were also littered with trembling birds, a black carpet that heaved and quivered. As they ascended the stairs, they heard shouts from the plaza. Scrambling to the top of the steps near the Hall of the Sleeping Lord, they found that the center of the plaza was the stage of a gruesome fight.

Covered in blood, the Sleeping Lord commanded the space. Quinn and Tai stood beside a pillar of the hall and tried to make sense of the scene. There were two individuals still standing in the scene of carnage, like a battlefield, with bodies strewn. One of those standing was Lord Ghinamid; the other a man dressed all in white. The clothes didn’t look like a clerk’s. The man had dark hair. Sickened, Quinn realized it was someone from Earth, crossing over, being murdered. It was an execution. Ghinamid followed the man’s staggering form, hacking at him. He had already taken his arm off. . . . Mortally wounded, the man fell to his knees. The lord drew closer and raised his sword arm. Standing over the man, his helm gleaming, his jacket spackled with blood, Ghinamid brought the sword down on the man’s head, splitting it in two. The body fell, pouring blood onto the paving stones.

Beside Quinn, Tai crumpled, vomiting.

Out of nothingness, another person emerged into the plaza. Dressed all in white, the young man took in the scene of bloodied corpses. He backed up, but nowhere to go.

Tai groaned. “Oh no.”

Ghinamid advanced. Already there were dozens of bodies. It was a massacre, and Quinn had no way to stop them coming.

As Ghinamid strode toward the next sacrifice, Quinn saw something in his peripheral vision. A lone figure standing at the base of the palatine hill, wearing dark green silks and white hair pulled back. It was Anzi. By God, Anzi.
Go back, hide
, his mind shouted at her.

Anzi had seen him where he stood beside the pillar and was trying to cross to him. Quinn waved her back, but she didn’t acknowledge him.

In the center of the plaza, the cry from a blow. Ghinamid made short work of the murder.

Meanwhile, Anzi darted to the bridge nearest her where a covered roof provided a hiding place. The other gaps in the plaza would not be so easy to cross, and she was getting closer to Ghinamid, who was just pulling back from his killing thrust.

“Tai,” Quinn said, “Find me a weapon. Something long: a knife, a staff.

Anything. Go into the Magisterium. Hurry.”

Tai, looking pale and wretched, caught the urgency in Quinn’s voice, but hesitated. “Are there weapons?”