Prince of Storms (24 page)

“Do you understand, Hanwen?”

“Yes, I…yes, to tell you the truth. I will, I will.”

“My question is about the navitar Geng De. You know him?”

“Oh,” she sobbed. She shook her head over and over. “The navitar.”

“Tell me, Hanwen. Quickly now.”

“My boys. He said he'd ruin them. If I didn't do what he said, to gather the children and go into the city and take them. And if I didn't he'd make sure my boys had no employment.”

“You come into the city for children? You have children at the orphanage.”

“But he wanted more, and only a certain age. So I take them from the streets, and give them a sleeping potion, and carry them home in a bag, one at a time. All for him. And then I bring them to the vessel. I don't think he harms them! But I never go in. I don't know what he does. I don't know anything of what happens. Oh please. He threatened me. He said they would not be harmed. I believed him.”

Dark things curled in the back of his eyes, horrors and rage, and all the things that he had seen and done. He heard his own voice as though it belonged to someone else. “No, you didn't believe him, Hanwen. You did it anyway. You traded all the little ones for your own children's safety.”

“Anyone would. Who would go against their own children?”

Quinn's hand went to the knife in his belt.

Noheme saw the gesture, watching him as quiet as stone.

“Please…” the woman whimpered.

His voice was barely audible. “How many young ones?”

“Oh, oh. I don't—”

In an instant, Quinn brought his arm around the woman's throat, bringing her head up. His knife was at her jugular.

“How…
many
?”

“Twenty,” came the whisper.

His heart darkened. He might as well finish the job. She was a miserable, craven thing. In his peripheral awareness, Noheme and the other guard
watched. They waited for what he would do.
Kill her
, part of him urged. He had never used his power, but he could now. It would be justice, and no one would prevent him. He was the regent. The world was moving into shadows and death. No one stood against it but him. He pressed the knife closer.

Then he whipped his hand away from her, staggering backward. Noheme and the guard moved out of his way as he made for the door.

He crashed out of the hut into the alley. Clear, cold air sank into his lungs. Lavender shadows curled among the adobe buildings, pooling at his feet, staining his hands. Above him, the Ascendancy filled the sky like a moon gone to bones and gristle.

Noheme came out after a few minutes.

Quinn murmured, “Take her away somewhere.”

“Yes. What do you want me to do?”

“I don't care. She's never to go back to the orphanage.”

He walked down the alley to the quay. In the next slip over sat Geng De's ship at the dock. It had a canopy set up on the wharf, its purpose unknown. He saw no one in the environs. No navitar.

No children.

Quinn took passage on a ship to the foot of the floating city's pillars. As the lift ascended, he clutched the knife in his belt, wishing he had killed Hanwen. Wishing to purge the world of people who would maim and murder children. He should have killed her, but Geng De needed it worse. He pressed back into his chair, closing his eyes. Gradually his hand relaxed, and his body, leaving him numb. His rage subsided; he felt sick of himself. What was becoming of him? What did the world require him to do? He was afraid of the answer.

For the first time he glimpsed himself as perhaps his daughter saw him. A man with too much power and no restraints.

“T
AI
.” In his command tent surrounded by soldiers, Quinn regarded his wild-eyed secretary. Zhiya stood near. “Take these troops to the Magisterium, Tai, and post yourself at the high prefect's audience chamber. Keep Suzong safe; that's your role.” Tai nodded, with a deer-in-the-headlights gaze.

Most of the soldiers had gone down to take passage on ships. Quinn had another contingent waiting for him in the hangar.

Tindivir sat off to one side, looking unnaturally still, even for a Jinda ceb. Quinn hadn't asked his approval for the assault. The Jinda ceb had all the power, but used none of it. It took them off the board. Quinn supposed that if the Magisterium chose this moment to rise up, Tindivir would simply step into a travel slit and flee.

Quinn asked him, “Will you tell my wife where I've gone?”

“I will put it to Manifest, what she can hear, and what must wait.”

“By God, Tindivir, tell her.”

Silence met his demand. Quinn turned away, beyond disgust at their rules of group action. He moved to the door, having a few words with the soldiers who would stay behind.

Turning at the tent door, Quinn locked glances with Tai. The young man was terrified, but there was little reassurance to give him. Quinn nodded at Tai, then pushed out of the tent, into the soft light of the first hour of Early Day.

Zhiya walked with him toward the Palatine Hill. Behind them, the clatter of soldiers heading in the opposite direction, toward the Magisterium. He knew Cixi had spies there. But it would all be over before Cixi's loyalists in the Great Within could send word below.

“This time, I'm not woven,” he murmured to her as they hurried to the stairs.

“This is pure Titus Quinn,” she said, relishing action at last.

These days he constantly asked her to judge him. But it did seem as though Geng De had faltered in his attempts to control him. Perhaps he was the one rogue strand, after all, or the closest thing to it.

Zhiya hurried to keep up with his strides. “Titus, shall we take Sen Ni?” Quinn's heavy tread set up a thunder across the first small canal bridge.

He knew that he had to decide. Across the next bridge and now approaching the stairs up the Palatine Hill, he wrestled with whether to take his daughter prisoner. Geng De was to be taken. Slain if he was in danger of escaping. But Sydney…

Although she had fallen into Geng De's company, she was surely innocent of his grotesque scheme. The Drowning Time meant the death of the Entire—by any metric a sane person would use. But she was his collaborator, to a point, and might not believe a story of the Indwelling. She could not remain free.

He hesitated to give the order.

From the start he had been at war. Not with the Entire, but with himself— the kind of war that laid waste the inner terrain. It was a scorched land now. True, each time he betrayed his family it was for a good reason. He supposed he should feel proud of that.

In the hangar were twenty-five veterans of Ahnenhoon waiting by the brightship. With the hangar walls deactivated, the bright looked close enough to touch, its Early Day light milky and calm.

Quinn turned to Zhiya, looking down on her.

“Take her, Zhiya.”

She nodded.

He put his hand on her arm. “Do you agree?”

“It's the right thing.” Then she left on the run to follow her soldiers down the lift to the sea.

He gave his soldiers the same instruction he'd given Zhiya. Take Sen Ni. And foremost, take the navitar, alive or dead. Then he opened the hatchway to the belly of the ship.

Sen Ni was awake early, as was her custom from her barracks days. She quickly used the wash stall and dressed in the silks laid out the night before. Entering the residential hall, she noted Emar-Vod's absence from sentry duty. She relished not having to speak to or acknowledge anyone for a few peaceful moments.

Light filled the palace from the crystal walls, the transparent ceiling. Cixi always complained of it, more used to the Magisterium's muffled warrens. Truly Sen Ni did not like the place, either. She vastly preferred her tent in the roamlands.

She heard Cixi's hard-soled shoes before she saw the high prefect. Clacking along on shoes designed to make her appear taller, Cixi emerged from her reception den, accompanied by her Hirrin secretary.

“Did you hear a noise?” Cixi asked her by way of greeting.

“No, Mother. Just now?”

“Earlier.” Cixi grimaced. “We have an abode on the
Way
. Anyone of whatever rank can make a commotion right outside our doors.”

“The garden is peaceful, though. Walk with me.”

Making a sour expression at the prospect of a walk, Cixi dismissed her secretary. When they stepped into the gardens, Cixi paused.

“There was a noise. Now it's too quiet. Where are your guards?”

A wail came from the other end of the garden, a ululating cry that could only be the scream of a Hirrin.

“The orphanage!” Sydney cried. She grabbed Cixi's arm. “Find the guards.”

“No, inside with you, girl!”

“Tiejun is there....”

“We'll find the brat, only go inside! Where are the vile guards?” But Sen Ni was already rushing away toward the orphanage. “Sen Ni!” Cixi shouted. Then she kicked off her shoes and spun around to reenter the mansion.

Sen Ni crashed through the nearby hedge, tearing her silks, not feeling the twigs scratch, fear mounting. She remembered that Emar-Vod had not greeted her at her apartment door, and no Hirrin stood at the garden door....

She tore through the gazebo grounds, running hard. Then another wail from the orphanage, shattering the quiet again.

Quinn found the crystal chamber empty.

No one was in Geng De's hiding place. When the soldiers came out to report—dizzy from the binds—Quinn had the whole story in an instant. Geng De must have seen the assault ahead of time, and run.

Accompanied by a handful of soldiers, Quinn rushed up the shaft connecting the secret chamber to the vessel. They had found the ship empty, too. The vessel rocked from the pounding of the soldiers through it, searching.

Quinn's disappointment mounted to fury. Now, when he would risk everything, there was nothing in his grasp. By the look on his soldiers' faces, they felt the same. There were Ysli, Jout, Chalin, Hirrin. Each wearing a streamer of red. They couldn't know why he'd chosen that color. But it was for the Rose.

With Noheme at his side, he rushed back to the brightship. It gleamed on the wharf, perched like a prehistoric bird. They must attack the compound, then. He wondered why, if Geng De had foreseen the assault, he had not simply launched his vessel. Once in the Nigh, Quinn could not follow. But by good fortune his vessel still sat at the dock.

Zhiya had already begun the second prong of the attack, having rushed up the Way ten minutes before. Quinn and his contingent might have followed her on foot, but he knew that once the first pulse of soldiers hit the garden, his later force would have a harder fight at the choke point of the bridge. The ship would save them that fight.

The hatch door closed up behind them. At the pilot's chair he put his hands into the control field. With a jolt the ship sprang into the sky, hovering until he swerved the craft toward the center of the bridge.

In an instant he maneuvered into a descent. He spotted a clearing occupied by a small hut or gazebo. With no other choice, he brought the brightship down on it, the landing little more than a crash, throwing everyone on board into the force field restraints that sprang to life. Hatches open, his soldiers swarmed out, armed with swords.

They were in a garden. Shouts near and far. Smoke from the burning structure blinded them as they fanned out. Then, because they had seen him coming, defenders bulked up in the haze. At Quinn's side one of his soldiers fell to a dart striking his windpipe.

The bushes behind him exploded with motion. Two Hirrin crashed through, mouths open wide with dart slings, spraying slivers everywhere. Quinn flung himself beneath their hooves. As momentum carried them over him, he thrust up with his sword, slashing at the belly of one, rolling over and hacking at the fetlock of the second one, missing. He was already on his feet as the second one rounded, mouth shutting to wind up the mechanism. Before the Hirrin could open again, Quinn thrust forward with his sword, puncturing an eye.

The Hirrin screamed, sending darts into the treetops. Blood gouted out of the socket. Quinn severed the Hirrin's windpipe. Today he would kill anyone who got between him and Geng De. He turned, finding more Hirrin coming into play. If they didn't wear a red streamer, they would die.

Sen Ni stared at the abandoned orphanage hall, strewn with a cloak, a smashed toy, a shattered cup.

Not a cloak. As Sen Ni approached she found a body. It was Ling, one of the nurse girls, an ugly gash on her head. Wild with fear, she sprinted toward the children's sleeping quarters. “Tiejun!” she shouted.

From a side hall, a Hirrin clattered into the room. It was one of her attendants, a terrified one. “Mistress!” he sputtered. “There is a dead body in the hall; and now soldiers on the pathways!”

“Where are the children?”

“In the cooking room.”

Sen Ni rushed down the hall into the kitchen. There, twenty or so children were hiding behind the pantry shelves. Seeing her, they all began talking at once, or crying. Then she noticed the absence of very young ones.

She turned to one of the oldest. “Where are the young ones? Where's Tiejun?”

“He took them,” the Jout child said. “They're gone.”

“Who took them?”

“A Chalin man. Tall. He took Tiejun, and when Ling tried to stop him, he hit her.”

“When?”

“An hour ago.”

Instructing them to remain very quiet and stay in the cook room with the Hirrin for a guard, she charged back to the front door. Smoke ghosted through the compound. Behind its scrim, shouts, clanging of blades. Titus Quinn had come. He would complete what he started, now, to force the Entire to its knees.

A form took shape in the smoke. She cut glances left and right, choosing her path of escape.

“Geng De sent me,” the deep voice came. “Come with me.”

It was the ship keeper, Geng De's. What was his name? Yes, Tan Hao. “But the children. Where are they?”

“I put them in litters. They went to the ship.”

A riot of voices from farther off. Something was on fire. “To the mansion,” Tan Hao said. “That way's our escape.”

They rushed through a stand of vine trees, choosing a course along the perimeter of the garden.

“They'll be searching the mansion,” Sen Ni said as they ran.

“Quiet,” he snapped.

He put his beefy arm around her waist, and with that support she found herself in a headlong dash toward the mansion. She didn't trust him, but she was firmly under his control. The crystal palace was close now. With the wind having blown the area clear of smoke, she saw someone standing on the veranda.