City Without End (6 page)

“We have considered the idea that the Chalin Sway should be yours. The master of that sway can be dismissed. You may do well there. In return, you will entrap your father the next time he appears before you. That is the condition. He cannot be loose in the Entire. We do not discuss this or compromise. Ah?”

Well, that was easy to agree to. “Yes, my lord.”

Satisfied, Inweer rose from his crouch and conferred with the other Tarig.

Riod pulled his front legs under him, lumbering up, front first, then back. He dipped his head down to allow Sydney to hold on to his fore horns.

Then he lifted his head, and Sydney rose up using his strength.

Someone approached them from the ranks of the riders who had been gathering at a distance. Takko the Laroo brought Riod a pan of water and Sydney a cup. He nodded at her, his face conveying relief. Sydney felt her skin crack at the effort of smiling.

The Tarig group turned to Sydney and Riod at last. Anuve spoke, “We like not the idea of the Chalin sway. It is too much to give, and it has its master, Zai Gan.” Anuve and Inweer exchanged glances like cuts. Surely she could not overrule Lord Inweer, who was, after all, one of the ruling Five.

“We have in mind, however, that small girl might go to Rim City. She can be magister of that city.”

Sydney was not dead. No, and she was being given a great prize, instead.

Numb, she could only listen.

Anuve regarded her. “It may suit our purposes. She may prove herself a loyal sentient.”

Rim City. At the foot of the Ascendancy. “Wherever you send me, Bright Ones, I have to bring Riod.” Sydney blurted it out, then saw how the Tarig regarded this interruption. They stared at her with expressions that silenced her.

Inweer said, “Take two or three companions, then.” He turned to Anuve.

“She will need loyalty around her.”

Anuve said nothing; Inweer outranked her. Sydney’s thoughts were giddy. Rim City was said to encircle the Sea of Arising, so it was within spitting distance of the Ascendancy. Oh, Riod. Oh, Mo Ti, she thought.

Inweer went on, “We would have her be mistress of a sway. Thus we will invest Rim City as a sway. It shows the Bright Realm that she has earned our respect. It shows that she is pardoned for her Rose birthing. It is well to pardon from time to time.” He nodded. “One concurs with you, Lady Anuve.

She will go to Rim Sway. It is a place no one else could want and no master of a sway need be cast down.”

Anuve fixed Sydney with a black look. “And you will bring Titus Quinn to us?”

Sydney nodded. “Yes. He’ll come, Bright One.”

Anuve growled, “He tends to slip away.”

“I’ll help you, my lady.”

“The daughter helps to snare the father? Even a father who helped her realign her sight?”

“Yes, my lady.” They had no clue what her relationship with Titus was.

That when he was a prince of the city, he had left her to her enslavement among the Inyx before she had found Riod to champion her. He had let the lords blind her. And he had lived like a king.

Lord Inweer was eager to be on his way and took his leave. Sydney and Anuve watched him stride back to his ship. He must feel satisfaction, Sydney thought, that he’d done a favor for Johanna. Now she was left with the aftertaste of
accepting
a favor from him. As the brightship slipped silently into its ascent path, Anuve murmured, “We must wonder how the lord gives credence to you.”

“The bright lady must know I do not love my father.”

“Do not all children love their parents?”

“Not all, Lady Anuve.”

“This will favor our purpose, Rose child.”

The phrase grated. “I am not a Rose child, my lady.”

The gloved hand came back and across Sydney’s face, sending her staggering backward. “You are what we say you are, ah?”

Sydney regained her footing and nodded, shrugging the pain of the blow away.

Anuve persisted, “We say you are a decoy.”

I am your death.
Sydney smiled. The Tarig had learned that humans smiled. They just hadn’t learned all the reasons why.

Already, Sydney’s mind was on Rim City. Oh Mo Ti, she thought. In that far city she would finally take on her new name that Mo Ti had devised for her: Sen Ni, to give her darkling name a Chalin style.

One step closer to raising the kingdom, one without Tarig lords and ladies.

Kay Kenyon 45

The camp was in a state of watchful brooding. The news spread quickly that Sydney was going to Rim City and that Riod would go with her. The shock of these revelations hit hard. Knots of riders stood talking in low tones, fearful of drawing the attention of the Tarig still in camp.

Helice stood in one of these groups, listening hard, trying to grasp what had happened, though her language skills were still imperfect. The riders didn’t despise her as much as before, since many had accepted her surgery to restore their vision. Blind riders might have been the fashion once; no longer.

Helice had ingratiated herself with the riders, but her refusal to bond with a mount kept her an outsider.

That wouldn’t matter anymore. She was going to Rim City. She’d be among that select group Sydney brought with her, no doubt about that. The girl needed her. For renaissance. One couldn’t think about that subject among the horse-beasts, though. She turned the thought aside.

She looked around her, trying to guess which of the nearby Inyx might be probing her mind. She disciplined herself to not dwell on certain matters.

The beasts could pick up thoughts, but only with effort and only if the thoughts were strong and well formed. Helice kept her mind skittering over her plans, touching on them and darting away. But even if the Inyx glimpsed her intentions, what could they do? She had been more or less honest with Sydney. Their goals were compatible, at least for a while.

As plodding as the Inyx were, even they could grasp the significance of Sydney moving to Rim City. There, Riod would be close enough to the Tarig home base to fine-tune their dream probes to greater effect. There were still pieces of intelligence Sydney and Helice needed. Rim City was a perfect base camp for the final assault. The riders said that the city was under the very shadow of the Ascendancy. Perfect.

Though the day was hot, Helice pulled her scarf up around her neck. She was self-conscious about the infection that had taken hold in her burns. The injuries she’d sustained from the rough passage into the Entire hadn’t healed well. Just when she thought she might be getting better, the burns on her neck and chin began to fester. The mSap’s medical knowledge was equal to any possessed by Earth’s finest physicians, but the tissue sample she’d analyzed yielded a culprit bacterium unknown to Rose medicine. To find a pharmaceutical treatment, she needed a laboratory, test subjects . . . it would mean weeks, even months of painstaking work.

Certainly the camp healer with her local remedies was of no help. Maybe Rim City would have better doctors, although she couldn’t afford close scrutiny. She didn’t know what medical technologies the Entire had, but it was a disturbing possibility that a physician might notice she was a little . . .

different. Chalin were human, or seemed to be. Who knew, though, if their physiologies were exactly the same?

No time to worry. Helice was buoyed by the prospect of being at the center of things. She had always savored being at the locus of events, decisions, and power. Not because she wanted power for herself—that was a side benefit—but because it meant working at the top of her game, using all the neurons the gene lottery bestowed. There was no better thing.

She wasn’t without sympathy for those who couldn’t think on her level.

She was well aware that most people would view such sympathy as condescension. In a culturally correct world, everyone was equal in some cosmic sense. The problem with cosmic sense was its fuzziness. It led to illogical conclusions such as that people deserved to be kept warm, fed, and entertained by virtue of being human. And if such humans had been able to take a suitable role in contributing to society, she would have been in favor of tithes for the mentally disadvantaged. However, these days there were so few suitable occupations. Nan bots built and maintained physical structures; AI-powered services of all kinds performed humble tasks. The unfortunate majority, with their average intelligence—hovering within fifteen to twenty points of one hundred and wickedly called dreds by some—led lives stuffed with virtual entertainments. Truly a circus maximus of the latter-day Roman Empire.

Well, they could live as they wished, of course. But the problem was— and here is where it affected Helice and her circle—they were yoking the intellectually gifted to their little cart.

That state of affairs was coming to an end.

Well, there was a bit more coming to an end, but it would be best not to dwell on it in front of the Inyx.

CHAPTER THREE

How can the Adda float so high?
—They have no memories to weigh them down.

—a child’s riddle

F
ROM THE OPEN DOOR OF HIS QUARTERS
, Quinn could watch the great sea. Time was when he had spent years looking down on this sea. Now he saw it from a new angle, like most of the things in his life.

He saw Anzi anew. They had begun badly, as she drew his escape pod into the Entire; a girl playing at magic like the sorcerer’s apprentice. Although that act had possibly saved his life and the lives of his family, it had also damned them. That seemed long ago. Since then, they had shared terror and deliverance so many times it was hard to imagine life without her. He saw the Entire through her eyes, he supposed. He saw himself through her eyes.

What would she think of him now, with his new face, courtesy of one of Zhiya’s back-alley healers? He’d changed features once before, in what had become a continuing distortion of the man Titus Quinn, played out on his face and elsewhere.

He walked to the small porch jutting out from his upper-story sitting room.

Where are you, Anzi? I’m not supposed to know. Still, where are you right now?

Johanna had released him from his marriage. She had moved on, and so, she claimed, should he. Their marriage had not survived the Entire. How could it? How could anything of the Rose survive this place?

Now, two weeks after Anzi had left, Quinn was well lodged in a small but luxurious suite of rooms in a node of the city where a reclusive resident might have privacy. Zhiya had arranged it at her own expense. A godwoman—even of venerable rank—must have a side income, and Zhiya did: her cadre of exclusive consorts who hired her to procure. His hideaway wasn’t far from her own quarters—although
far
was a troublesome concept here. By navitar vessel, every place was close in Rim City, a city girdling the Sea of Arising.

From this sea five rivers spread out like arms on a starfish. This was a radial universe, a cosmos with a geography; a place that couldn’t be, except as a profound construct of a stage-four civilization. Contained by storm walls, lidded by the bright, and pierced by the rivers Nigh—all this had become sensible to him, even inevitable. They called this place the Entire, as though there
was
nothing else. Sometimes that, too, made sense to him. A convenient mind-set, since he was stuck here. And since he probably wasn’t welcome in the Rose.

Did you deliver the weapon to Ahnenhoon, Quinn?
—I got it to the place.

And did you destroy the engine there?
—There was a problem.

What problem could matter enough? They’re going to burn us for fuel.

Quinn tried to conjure an answer. Minerva misjudged the nan. It would have destroyed this universe. Helice had warned him, but he hadn’t believed her. His thoughts stuck on this point. Why had Helice tried to protect the Entire? She must have seen some profit in the place, but what profit could matter if the Earth was threatened? Somehow the trade-off had seemed worth it to her. He’d very much like to know why.

Standing on the porch, he gazed at the distant pillars that seemed to bear up the Tarig capital city. Inside those conduits of exotic matter, lifts rose and fell, conveying functionaries and petitioners intent upon the chores of the colossal meritocracy. Commanding the summit, the Ascendancy, a stationary, misshapen moon. The floating city was the most formidable sight in the Entire
or
the Rose—and Quinn had seen many sights. He had captained star vessels. He had seen the Repel of Ahnenhoon. But this was a sight to stop one’s breath. Exactly as the Tarig intended.