Pinion (32 page)

How could she not have seen this!?
The world’s distress was suddenly far more clear. This was not just another gleam, another power loose upon the land. Gashansunu realized that the girl brought with her a whole new path to power, one that would utterly upset the balance of Creation.

“Why have you not had her killed?” she asked, unthinking.

“Why
would
you have her killed?” he responded, angry at her words. “Once a thing can be done, it will be done again. She at least may have the means to control it, with your counsel.”

The Silent World flashed, a ripple passing through Hethor’s house so that the walls wavered and the very air grew a set of night-black eyes for a brief, uncertain moment. Paolina stood between them, shedding light and looking quite pleased.

“I think I’ve got it,” she said.

The two Chinese stared at one another. Wang looked shocked; the monk appeared smug.
There has been an argument the cataloger didn’t realize he was losing
, she thought, and bit back a laugh.

The Goan coast slid past off the starboard rail. Their headland was already in view. She did not fancy taking
Good Change
into the hidden harbor. Wang was an enemy. There was no other reason for him to be here.

She knew how the Mask Poinsard would have handled this monk, though. “Who are you, that you have the power to give orders here?”

“She is no one,” Wang almost snarled. “A monk with no name, who holds no respect for the proper order of things under Heaven.”

“I am found out.” The monk grinned and bowed, flowed out of the movement into a kick that passed within hairs of al-Wazir’s chin.

The chief swept a block with his good hand, but she was already beyond his grasp, leaping to the aft rail to take up the line that towed their boat.

“Come,” the monk shouted, “if you would be overboard.” She dropped out of sight.

Childress stepped to the rail. Her launch bobbed in the churn of
Good Change
’s twin screws. There was no sign of the monk.

“Where did she go?”

“A question that often troubles me,” Wang replied. “I have come to accept I will likely never know the answer.”

A much taller Chinese stepped to the rail and grasped Childress’ arm. She stared up at the sailor. “Release me,” she told him in Mandarin, “or it will go very poorly for you.”

He grinned, tightening his grip. “You speak like an English cow. You will come below.”

“Wu . . . ,” Wang began.

“Don’t be a greater fool than you must,” the sailor told him.

Childress nodded at al-Wazir, who struck Wu in the back of the head with his remaining fist. More sailors shouted as they poured out of a hatch.

“Over the side,” Wang urged.

“Why?” she asked, already climbing the rail.

“Because I believe that idiotic monk.” He yanked at the line in an effort to bring the launch closer.

Childress summoned her courage and leapt away from the stern. She hit hard, cracking her shins smartly enough to moan with the pain, but dragged herself to the rear of the boat.

Al-Wazir landed with a heavy thump a moment later, and they spun away from the wake of
Good Change
. The yacht was already turning. The chief took up the oars as best he could and began to gamely row toward shore.

It will be over in moments
, Childress thought.
Either we will be run down, or they will force us back aboard at gunpoint
.

But
Good Change
circled out to the west and steamed away. She saw Wang being beaten at the aft rail by a knot of sailors. Through the windows of the pilot house, she thought she spied a flash of saffron.

The monk, setting them free.

They slipped into the dank, guano-smelling darkness of the sea cave. Torches and electricks strung from the submarine showed the upper plates being restored as her engine compartment hatches were resealed.

“We go into the waters once more,” she told al-Wazir.

“Where bound, Mask? Me, I have errands in Africa. A Brass man needs helping, and a mad doctor besides.”

“If you wish to be left there, it can be done,” she said with a serene confidence. Her purposes had been made clear by Wang’s arrival in Goa, as if the scales had dropped from her eyes. God, answering her prayers with a burst of inspiration?

The only counterweight to the Silent Order was the white birds, so to the white birds she must go in her full estate as a Mask.

“I am bound for Europe,” Childress told al-Wazir. “And the halls of the
avebianco
. I will finish the mission of the Mask Poinsard, and take her place in their councils, to stem the Golden Bridge and the Silent Order.”

“How will you do that?” He shipped the oars as they glided to the stone pier. A Chinese sailor called down a greeting.

“First, Suez.” She smiled into the darkness. “We will find our way beyond that. England if we must, or at least the
avebianco
redoubt at Valetta, in Malta.”

Al-Wazir busied himself making them fast, then helped Childress up the ladder. The sharp whiff of his fight was still clear enough to stir the hairs on her neck. His male essence made her mindful of Captain Leung. To her surprise, Childress found no shame in that thought.

“Mayhap I’ll come with you,” the Scotsman growled. For a brief, strange moment she took him to mean that he, too, longed for the captain. “See this duty through before I resume my own.”

“Chief, voyaging with you has been no duty so far. A privilege, rather.” Childress touched his cheek. “Now go to attend to your shore party while I report to Captain Leung.”

“Aye, Mask. And you be having a care for that heart of yours.” He winked, then walked away into the deeper shadows of the cave.

I fool no one
, she thought, and realized she did not mind. Behind her, the launch splashed against the pier. Childress turned to look. The little hull rocked in the water, but no one was there.

The woman Gashansunu took her back to the amphitheater by moonlight that evening. The day had been quiet, though Gashansunu and Hethor seemed to have been arguing. Ming shadowed her all through the
afternoon, very nervous about the sorceress and taking no trouble to conceal his dislike.

Paolina did not find the woman so terribly difficult or strange enough to fear. She was different, and powerful, but this was just as true of Hethor. Or, admittedly, Paolina herself.

Now they stood amid the textured noises of evening. The screeching of the jungled daylight had subsided, but the insect hum was louder. Frogs gave voice in a rhythmic echo that seemed to reach beyond the horizon. Larger things splashed in the river, moving against the slow, greasy waters. Something of great size boomed a lament in the distance.

“This is not my place,” Gashansunu said. “I do not have the meditations for open jungle. The Silent World is curdled here, gathered around your Hethor as if he were a spindle with which to wind it.”

Something in her tone, even through the magic of Hethor’s speech spell, made it clear that she despised her own words.

“I would use your tongue,” Paolina told her, “if I could. I imagine we might discuss your Silent World much more effectively.”

“It does not matter. I am come to heal the cause of the world’s regrets. You and Hethor have both showed me much of what that may be, and how it should be addressed.”

“Now I am here.” She was conscious of Ming watching from an upper bench of the amphitheater, Hethor’s Arellya beside him. The English boy had pled fatigue hours ago and retired.

“We begin at night because when the sun has turned away from the world, some powers wane while others wax.”

Paolina understood a constraint when she heard one. “You mean to say that there are fewer considerations in your practice of magic.”

“Precisely.” Grudging approval hung in Gashansunu’s voice. “One might sing among a crowd of one’s neighbors; one might sing alone on a rooftop; one might listen to the music of the world. None of those are wrong; none of those are better. But each weighs differently, carries different meanings, makes different demands.”

“What do we sing on this rooftop?” Paolina did not yet see where this was going.

“I will show you the Silent World from within,” Gashansunu answered. “This will almost certainly aid you in understanding how your gleam may be used and misused.”

“When I use the gleam, I see the world as made of, well, levels. Gear trains made of up myriad smaller gear trains. It shows me the inner nature of things.”

“You witness an imperfect image of the Silent World,” Gashansunu replied. “There are layers. As above, so below, all the way down.”

“What lies at the bottom?”

“One can measure a circle beginning from anywhere. What lies at the end?”

“So . . . there is no bottom?”

Gashansunu made a strained noise. “If you were to pursue it deeply enough, you would come back out the top. But not all levels are the same. The Silent World is the true world. People live in the Shadow World, which is a reflection of the Silent World. Or better considered as a projection of it. That which is perfected in the Silent World can been seen here in imperfect copies of the world, of people, of purposes and intents.”

Paolina had to ask the obvious question. “If the Silent World is perfected, why do you abide in this world?”

“Because I am imperfect,” Gashansunu responded promptly. “I have studied decades to enter the Silent World, but I am not welcome there, however much my spirit might cry out for it. Not welcome
yet
, in any case.”

Paolina was glad to note that pride was not a sin confined to the people of Northern Earth. “How will you show me this Silent World?”

“Watch,” Gashansunu ordered. “Do not leave my side.”

She looped a braided silver cord on Paolina’s wrist, then passed it around her own. They stood facing, close enough to touch had there been a need. Gashansunu closed her eyes and began to hum. Something curled around the foreign sorceress, not quite tangible, not quite visible, but right on the edge of perception.

This is magic
, Paolina thought.
True magic, before my eyes
.

She blinked, and was somewhere else.

The landscape was no different, yet it was.

That thought did not make sense. Even so, it seemed profoundly true.

Ming glowed. So did Arellya. Gashansunu was far brighter, but cloaked at the same time. Paolina looked at her own hands. Light leaked from within, streaming through the pores of her skin.

The presence around Gashansunu was far more distinct now—a twin, but insubstantial even here. A Gashansunu-copy that was as dark as she was light, also cloaked.

Animals stirred the substance of the Silent World with their bright, rapid passing. The slow dreams of trees left far more deliberate ripples, while the memory of the rocks and soil beneath her feet moved at a pace even more leisurely than that of the tide.

Everything
lived, here.

She looked skyward. The Earth’s brass track showed as a pinpoint of light drawn out from horizon to horizon. The great, crushing weight of the planet upon the orbital ring must paint it with a smear of all the lives both fast and slow that passed upon the two halves of the Earth.

A sense of thoughtfulness tingled at Paolina, an idea calling for attention.
All is metaphor
. Her lips moved and bubbled, but no sound issued.
The gears and mechanics I see when I dip into the fabric of the world are truly no different than what this Gashansunu sees here
.

You are correct
, the other woman thought.
But some metaphors are more accurate. You see the brass in the sky and think the world must be brass all the way down. Is a tree made of leaves all the way down to its roots?

Paolina objected.
You cannot explain metaphor with more metaphor. That is a cheat
.

Why?

She was not sure how to answer that.

Try this
, Gashansunu urged.
Step across the river
.

Matching her spirit-guide pace for pace, Paolina found her foot reaching the far bank—fifty yards, at least—without a strain. They looked back at the glowing lights of life on the shore they had just left behind.