Bright of the Sky (16 page)

    
The Tarig, being gracious lords, decreed that the new realm
would become enlivened with life and sentients, but superior in
every way to the beings of the Rose. The Entire would be, they
said, a realm of great brightness, perfect peace, and long life.
They bestowed the thousand gifts, creating sky and land and
many sentient beings according to forms seen in the Rose, as many
as pleased them.

    
The simulacra asked to be fashioned in the image of beings
in a sway on a minor world they admired. In reward of their
high service, the gracious lords granted this, creating the great
Chalin people. Then with their retinue, the gracious lords descended from the Heart into the Entire, and began the reign of
the bright.

—from
The Book of the Thousand Gifts

Q
UINN HAD LEARNED AN ASTONISHING THING
. He could read.

Anzi had been telling him about the Entire—that it was a habitat of cosmic dimensions, and that the River Nigh, the great transport system, conquered these distances. How it worked was another question Anzi couldn’t answer. The lords knew. They knew all. She kept asking if he remembered any of these things. He didn’t.

Mulling over these imponderables, Quinn asked for books—and receiving scrolls instead, he opened one. The letters formed words, words he knew.

He could read the Lucent tongue. The effect was astonishing, leaving him almost breathless as the words on the scrolls became meaningful.

Once he and Anzi discovered this, he began reading simple texts, children’s books, devouring the words and the knowledge, pouring over enlivened scrolls that streamed printed narratives.

After a day and a half of reading, the barriers broke, and the spoken language came to him, first haltingly, and then in a flood. He could understand Anzi as she spoke the Lucent tongue. Not all words, but most were there for the taking. Anzi talked as fast as she could, her eyes wide, and Quinn kept saying,
sett
,
sett.
Yes.

He could barely sleep, but paced Yulin’s garden with great energy, trying unsuccessfully to engage even the zookeepers in conversation. These attempts failed, as they shrank from him and averted their eyes. Returning to his scrolls, he read all he could of things pertaining to the
reaches
where, he learned, the barrier between the Entire and the Rose was thin and, as Anzi had said, observations could be made. The scrolls never so much as hinted that one might
step through
, but it was the most logical place to make a crossing. He could imagine it. He could almost remember it. The secret of the reaches was the thing Stefan Polich coveted, if it would provide star routes. And it might. But most important, it would provide the route home—for Sydney.

Speaking was harder than reading. He had to trust that he knew how to speak. By Anzi’s face, by her excitement in hearing him use the Lucent tongue, he learned that trust.

Keen to understand how the Chalin viewed their universe, and what physical laws governed it, he called for books on science and mathematics.

His vocabulary wasn’t up to the bewildering texts. In any case, it didn’t appear that Chalin science attempted to explain fundamental things: what the Entire was, its walls, its sky. What powered them. How they could exist.

But the jar had broken. He practiced the language, and as he did so, there came trailing pieces of memory.

An old man with a hawklike nose, bent over scribbling with a pen.

A silvery ocean far below him as he stood on a platform looking down.

Riding a giant bird through the air, the creature begging for freedom.

Pressing his hands against a glittering wall, pleading for release.

The memories triggered more questions. He told Anzi, “I knew an old man. A Chalin scholar.” The face had been coming into focus. Someone he knew well.

Correcting his grammar, Anzi nodded.

“Who is the old man, the scholar?”

“Perhaps the scholar Bei,” she answered. “Because he knew your language, the Tarig used him to interrogate you. Once, he was high in rank, but when you fled, we heard he was in disgrace. He retired to a far reach.”

Quinn tried to wring out a drop more of memory. Bei was there. Over and over. “I keep seeing his face, hearing his words.”

“That was your life for a time: interrogations. The lords wondered why you appeared. What you knew.”

“Bei was my enemy, then.”

“It is hard to say who are friends, who are enemies.”

Not to Quinn. He usually had that squarely pegged. “Why is it hard?”

Anzi’s voice fell to a whisper, and she looked away. “Sometimes, those who meant well did not do well. I am sorry.”

She didn’t know much on this score. She hadn’t been at the Ascendancy. He was the only one who had his complete past. Perhaps that past would emerge as language had. But there was more to this story of Bei, he was sure. “Do you know what happened between me and Bei? Was it something worse than interrogation?”

“Truly, Dai Shen, I don’t know.”

Nevertheless, his progress was so rapid that at their midday meal, she pronounced, “Soon you can leave the master’s garden of animals, Dai Shen.”

“I’m ready to leave now.”

“So you must think, Dai Shen.” She smiled. “But you must become more perfect if you are not to arouse curiosity.” He had learned some protocols to use when near Master Yulin, and his titles, and the names of his wives. To prepare him to enter the palace unremarked upon, she had tried to comb his hair back to form a tail, but so far it was too short.

“Am I so odd a Chalin?”

Her face became earnest. “I would not like to say ‘odd,’ Dai Shen. Only that more perfections are needed.”

“This might be as perfect as I get.”

She looked askance. “It will not go well for any who see you make a mistake. They would have to be destroyed.”

“But even the gardeners know I’m here. You can’t kill everyone.”

With a shake of her head, Anzi said, “Oh, but the keepers of these grounds must die.”

Quinn looked out at the forest, where four or five servants had quietly fed him and the animals these many days. “You’re going to kill these men?”

She must have noted that his expression changed, because hers did too. “Master Yulin must cloak your identity from the high lords. Remember that you attacked Lord Hadenth. If he were to discover that you are hidden here . . . It is necessary that the keepers remain silent.”

Quinn shook his head. He was getting tired of Yulin’s death sentences. He remembered the air bubbles bursting at the surface of the lake as Sen Tai released his last breath, chained to the muddy bottom.

“Why didn’t you remove the caretakers from the garden, if seeing me meant they’d be killed?”

“But who would feed the animals, then?”

“I could feed them, for God’s sake!”

“You had more important work.”

He rose, pacing away from her, trying and failing to summon patience. He turned back to her. “Take me to Yulin. I’m done waiting. Tell him I’m not happy about the gardeners.”

She stood also, anger flickering at the edges of her mouth. “No one is happy to kill them. You think we kill so easily? It’s all for you.”

He stared at her a moment, grappling with these cultural differences that seemed awful to him and normal to her. “Tell him, if the gardeners die, I will never speak another word of Lucent.”

“So, now you threaten the master?”

Perhaps a show of defiance would gain Yulin’s attention. “Tell him that I’ve had enough death.” It was true.

Anzi stood slowly and bowed. “I will bring him your plea.”

“Better bring him more than that.”

She scowled and left, leaving Quinn uneasy as to how much he could push this man, used to unquestioned obedience. But Yulin hadn’t killed him yet. There must be some reason, but it might be a profoundly small one. Quinn looked out over the tended park scanning for the gardeners, whose reticence he now understood.

When Anzi came back later, he could tell by her expression that Yulin hadn’t budged.

Quinn considered his bargaining position. It was appallingly weak. Still, he found himself striding away toward the lakeshore. There he took the raft and poled out alone to the middle of the lake, bringing a scroll with him. He meant to stay as long as it took. Anzi stood on the shore periodically cajoling and upbraiding him.

“Dai Shen, you have no food.”

“Dai Shen, the Master is not pleased with you. You should want to please him.”

“Dai Shen, you are ruining all I set out to do for you. You are ungrateful.”

The bright waxed and waned, shedding exotic images on the surface of the lake. He stayed on the raft, not answering Anzi. Sometimes he felt cold, and wished he’d remembered to bring a blanket from his hut. Sometimes orange carp came sniffing around the raft, and he thought of catching them to eat; but he didn’t like the smell of them. Now and then, at the lake’s edge, he saw a gardener in the undergrowth, the one with the halting walk, but the man faded back once Quinn looked at him. Too late—he must die according to the master of the sway.

To pass the time Quinn read the scroll he had selected, one that described the place called Ahnenhoon, the place of Johanna’s former imprisonment. It was the site of a war with a sentient species called the Paion that had been ongoing for six archons. Somehow he instinctively new that six archons was equal to thousands of years in Rose time. This everlasting war had taken many lives, many of them Chalin lives—and Inyx lives, those herd-beings who wanted their riders blind.

“Blind riders,” he said in the Lucent tongue. Speaking out loud brought more of the language to his command. He practiced what he would say to Yulin. How he would argue for the gardeners’ freedom, and his own. Because it was time for both. Having the language, and having it fluently, gave Quinn a strange sense of elation. He would make Yulin listen to him, to secure him as an ally, not a warden. It could be done, and Quinn thought he knew how.

At the brightening of the third day, Anzi came to the shore bearing a set of folded silks over her arm.

His clothes for the interview with Yulin.

As he poled back, he kept the smile off his face. But Anzi smiled. He thought her a graceful loser. And he thought that she was beginning to understand him.

At the shore, he tied up the raft and was grateful to see a basket of food waiting as well, and a small pot of steaming oba. The clothes she’d brought were similar to what he’d worn before: a square jacket and pants gathered at the waist. But this set was moss green stitched with red thread, a style Anzi had sometimes worn.

He transferred his pictures into one of the silk pockets. He was ready.

She cut a glance at him, smiling though disapproving. “You are stubborn,” she said, giving him a small square hat to mask his too-short hair.

“Yes.” It was what most people said about him, but he thought of the quality as steadfastness. Once he set his sights on something, he was not easily put off. But Anzi, like his sister-in-law before her, wished that Titus Quinn were more pliable—amenable to reason, or at least her own reasoning. Of all the women he’d ever met, it was only Johanna who’d loved him for what he was.

They walked to a curiously small gate, one that Anzi unlocked with a touch. Bending down, Quinn went through.

Watching them approach the Door of Eight Serenities, Chizu drank in the sight of Ji Anzi, lovely niece of the fat master. She walked with an athletic grace, her hair swinging just beneath her chin, hovering there as Chizu longed to hover, caressing her face.

After Dai Shen had passed through the gate, Chizu stepped out of the bushes to catch Anzi’s attention. He bowed low.

She frowned and gave a cursory nod, shattering Chizu’s moment of peace in which he thought that, given her beauty, she might shed a moment’s splendor on him, insignificant as he was, if he bowed low enough.

The gate clicked shut behind her, leaving Chizu with a bitter stomach.

So, too good are we? Too good for the steward of second rank, unworthy of even a proper bow. The
crippled
steward of second rank, good only for pissing on trees and hauling slop buckets. Yes, Ji Anzi, too good, now that you are the tutor of the wounded soldier who is no soldier.

His resolve fell into place. It gave him a refuge from the snub, the compensation afforded by revenge. I will complicate your life, fine lady, he thought. Yes, I will report to Yulin’s brother some things I’ve seen. Then we will see you and your fat master bow low.

Quinn stood before Master Yulin in the Hall of Wives, a large chamber, its walls carved in tiny patterns of a bearlike animal, Yulin’s icon. At the master’s side sat Suzong, his favorite wife, and an old one. She wore a red silk gown that made her skin look as pale as a fish belly. From an open porch, the glow of the day spilled across the floor, backlighting the two chairs where Yulin and Suzong sat.

“You have learned to speak,” Yulin said by way of greeting. His voice was a vibrant rumble from a man who looked like he could wrestle a beku to the ground. Despite his brocaded robes, Yulin reminded Quinn of the strong and plodding pack beast he’d ridden on his first day back.

“The Lucent tongue is among my languages now,” Quinn answered. He had bowed to Yulin, but he was not going to scrape. Behind him, he heard Anzi’s soft cough. He had neglected to say “One Who Shines,” or another of Yulin’s honorifics.

“The suppliant reads children’s scrolls,” Suzong said, to put him in his place.

“Yes. Though I am dumb as a beku, of course.”

Suzong’s buck teeth showed for a moment in an abrupt laugh.

“I have heard,” Yulin said, “of a petition to save gardeners’ lives. I would have thought your human masters had higher concerns.”

“They do. But I have discretion to please myself, Master Yulin.” It was one reason why he insisted on returning to this world alone, and not with a Minerva handler.

“Would it please you to take the slow death from the hands of Lord Hadenth?”