Bright of the Sky (37 page)

The boy stammered his agreement.

As the lord stalked off, BeSheb settled her bulk more comfortably into the cart, smiling to herself. The God of Misery sometimes came through generously. She fingered the coins as her new helper brought them to her. He was a good Chalin boy, nice of feature, though grubby. She put her mind to the task of planning how the boy could further serve her, in private, until the ebb.

As the Adda floated onward, Quinn and Anzi sat cross-legged on the fleshy floor, just close enough to the orifice to watch the land slide by.

As they sat side by side, Anzi took something from her pocket. On a long blue cord was a circular medallion. It looked familiar. She put it to Quinn’s ear, and the heartchime struck a tone, clear and soothing.

“Dolwa-Pan’s heartchime,” he said.

“To listen to the approach of the heartland,” Anzi said, handing him the necklace.

Quinn couldn’t reprimand her. She never kept anything for herself. He wondered if the Hirrin princess would make a decent scholar, like Bei, or a failed one, like Anzi. He said, “The princess liked to keep track of how close she was to the Ascendancy.”

“Yes,” Anzi said thoughtfully. “She should get over it.”

Quinn held the heartchime in his hand, wondering how it measured distance and translated it into music. “You’re not devoted to them,” he said to Anzi, thinking how there must be many in the Entire besides Suzong and Bei and Lord Oventroe who didn’t serve the gracious lords.

“They know all the knowledge—all the things I wonder about.” She smiled. “But no, Shen—would I be here if I served them?”

He had to remind himself how Anzi jeopardized herself, being with him. But he didn’t think that she thought of herself as a dissident. Or that any Chalin did.

“The Chalin haven’t ever rebelled. No one has, right?”

She blinked. “Rebelled? As in war?” The thought was clearly beyond her. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

Clearly, his question had disturbed her. Perhaps she saw the people of the Rose as prone to war, and feared a confrontation. He’d promised Su Bei that he’d protect the Entire, should the correlates ever become known. To do what he could. Thinking of the predations of Minerva, that might not be much.

“It may come to war, between our people,” he said to be as honest as he could.

She sat with that thought for a time. Then she murmured, “Whose side would you be on, Shen?”

He started to say the Rose. Because he was of that place. But something blocked the saying of it. He remained silent.

They sat without speaking a long while then, and Anzi let the subject pass.

The hills gathered closer, into a rumpled plain that would have defied a train’s path. Toward Last of Day, they passed over a forest of stubby golden trees. In its depths he spied a floating chain of winged insects, linked together, sweeping clouds of gnats into the airy basket. They watched the ground give way to corrugated valleys. He felt a peace descend, a familiar thing, something that came from the Entire, or the bright, or the singular vastness of the place with its unknowable horizon.

Hours later they tired of the views and, making what beds they could on the grain sacks, slept.

He woke to the waxing bright, greeted by the sour smell of grain and the innards of the Adda. They had left the forest behind and were skimming very slowly over a lake.

“It’s very shallow,” Anzi said, having wakened and come to the edge of the opening to sit with Quinn. “Water doesn’t generally collect on the surface. The bright burns it off.” She stopped short. Then she shoved him in the chest, with a sharp whack of her hand. “Back,” she hissed.

Just beyond the shore of the lake, a figure stood on the ground, hailing them. Beside the figure, a brightship sat on the plains. The Adda had slowed.

“Tarig . . . ,” Anzi whispered. “He comes.”

“Maybe the Adda won’t stop.”

“By bond law, the Adda has to stop. That’s why the ladder is always down.”

She hauled him across the floor, pointing up. “Climb, climb.”

“Why? We have our cover story.”

“But you drew a knife; they might question you too closely. Go!” She pushed him toward the wall. “Use the ridges as footholds; go into the sinuses. Hurry!”

“What about you?” He struggled with her as she kept pushing, and as the Adda kept lowering.

“I can pass! You can’t!” She started slapping at him. He began to climb, then looked down at her. “Go,” she repeated, waving her arms at him.

He climbed where she’d pointed, finding that the skin was ridged enough for a handhold. Near the top of the wall, the air grew hotter, alive with a yeasty smell. He saw a curve. It led into a small tunnel that required him to go on hands and knees. The yeasty smell grew deep and sickening.

He felt the blimplike body shake as it became clear that the Tarig had grabbed hold of the ladder and was coming aboard.

Quinn entered a bony, scalloped structure that spiraled wildly, with depressions and tubes branching out and dead-ending. This must be the sinuses Anzi referred to. A breeze wafted through, and Quinn hoped that the Tarig didn’t smell keenly.

He folded himself into a ball to keep from falling in this slick place. But hiding wouldn’t help much if the Tarig had reason to search. Had the god-woman raised suspicions about them?

He huddled and listened.

“Ah, the Chalin girl,” a melodious voice said.

“Lord, my life in your service,” came Anzi’s small voice.

“We do not know you.” The Tarig’s voice was deeply rich, and resonant, but the Adda amplified it hugely, and made it the voice of the beast herself.

Anzi said, “I am Lo May, of the Chingdu wielding, Bright Lord.”

God, she was lying. Quinn closed his eyes, listening hard.

“Going where?” the Tarig asked.

“Lord, by the Nigh, to visit my parents’ graves, both brave fallen of Ahnenhoon.”

“The Chalin girl is dutiful in grave-duty, to travel the Nigh.”

“Lo May would see a grand sight, of the Nigh.”

“Less dutiful, seeing sights.”

“Oh, please pardon such a girl, Bright Lord.”

A long spell of quiet. Quinn’s skin prickled with sweat and consternation. What was the Tarig doing?

“Do you see, Lo May, four sacks of grain?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Passage for a lone Chalin girl?”

A pause. Then: “No, Lord, there was one other here.”

“Where is this other? Hnnn?”

“Lord, he wished to lie with me and was insistent. By my rights of bonds, I used force to compel him down the ladder.”

“Ah. A Chalin man? And now he may die because you left him untended in the wilds. This can be murder, of the bond law.”

“Heaven give me mercy, I meant no harm, Lord.”

A long pause. Quinn’s mouth was dry. Murder? How could the conversation veer so sharply? Quinn thought it better to descend and kill this individual before he killed Anzi. He rose.

“A pretty Chalin girl,” the Tarig said.

Quinn didn’t like the tone. Silence again. Quinn was imagining things. Anzi, he thought, give me an indication of what is happening.

“Yet we saw no stragglers,” the Tarig continued.

“Perhaps, Lord, he was already rescued. Many Adda set out from the axis yesterday.”

“Hnnn. A pretty Chalin girl. Are we to think you are strong enough to compel a grown man down a ladder?”

“Yes, Lord. Lo May is.”

The Tarig’s voice came: “Ah, and keeps the bonds.”

“As the bright guides me, and as God takes little notice of one such as Lo May.”

And the Tarig again, more ominously: “We take notice.”

“Yes, Lord,” Anzi whispered.

“Do you know, Chalin girl, one named Wen An?”

A pause. “No. Is this a personage I should know?”

Quinn crept forward to listen more intently. Wen An—the scholar who had sent him to Yulin. This was a bad trend for the conversation. He put his hand on the Going Over blade, wondering how many Tarig were in that brightship, and if right now they stood outside holding guy wires while their fellow lord made inquiries.

“The Chalin scholar Wen An, her life is forfeit, and we seek her. Thus, if you know her, you will tell us, ah?”

“By the vows, I do not know Wen An.”

“Shaking?”

There was a silence as Quinn strained to hear words said more softly. Was Anzi shaking in fear? What was the lord doing? And he wondered if they carried their garrotes with them.

The silvery voice of the Tarig came: “We have frightened you.”

Again, Quinn couldn’t hear Anzi answer. He was beside himself with anxiety, and so crept to the very edge of the sinus cavity, where he could just see the sleeve of Anzi’s arm as she backed away from her inquisitor.

“There is no need for fear, Lo May. How long have you been traveling, and from where?”

“Lord, a sequent or more from the wielding, from Chingdu.”

She’d said five days, a
sequent
.

“In that journey, Lo May, you beheld the bright realm laid out before you, ah?”

Quinn could now see Anzi leaning against the wall. Anzi nodded.

“The bright realm lives in peace, the peace of the Entire. And Wen An has broken that peace, and sentients lie murdered. So then, do you fear our justice?”

“No, Bright Lord. It is the radiant path, heaven give me mercy.”

“Just so, Lo May. A good Chalin girl.” A bronze hand came forward and wiped a wisp of hair back from Anzi’s face.

If he touched her again, Quinn would use his knife.

“We like you, Chalin girl,” the lord said.

Quinn couldn’t see the Tarig, only Anzi standing like an animal frozen in a carnivore’s gaze.

“And now we leave you in peace.”

Anzi didn’t move, but watched the lord as he apparently moved away, toward the orifice.

As the lord climbed down the ladder, he said to those who waited below, “Only one Chalin girl, of no consequence.”

“Swords?” a voice asked from farther away.

“No swords,” the lord answered, his voice fading.

A long pause. Quinn wiped the sweat of his hands against his tunic, waiting and listening. The Adda lurched with the jump of the Tarig from the ladder, and then again with the release of the rope or ropes that secured the Adda in place. He felt the symbiont rising again, and the breath came back into him. By its motion, the Adda was under way again.

A whisper from below. “Dai Shen. Come down now.”

He climbed down the wall to meet her where she stood in the middle of the floor, very still.

“Gone,” she said, but her voice broke.

“Anzi.” He stepped closer, seeing that she looked whiter than usual.

She nodded at him, smiling. “Gone.”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course.” She looked around her. “Four bags.”

Yes, that almost did them in. Each person brought two bags. He should have brought two bags up the wall with him. It had almost gotten them killed. She had lied to the Tarig. The lord would have killed her. And then Quinn.

“It’s all right now,” he said.

“Yes, fine,” she said, trembling hard.

Quinn beckoned to her. “Come here.”

She went to him and buried her face in his tunic. His arms came around her, holding her to comfort her, to comfort himself. He felt a wash of tenderness drive through him. After a moment he said, “Lo May is a fast thinker.”

She laughed, leaning against him. “Lo May had to be. The other girl’s mind had fled.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

On the eternal River Nigh, the navitar guides the ships. Did you
think the Bright Realm flat? Not so, for it is curled. Nested
within the river are the binds, the nexus points. Only the navitar
can guide the ship into the binds, and across the twisting domain. The navitars take no payment. The price is theirs to pay: their
lives. They travel the terrible high-sentience path, and count it
happiness. They know the exotic laws that lie beyond the
Radiant Path, but when asked, they are dumb before you.

—from
The Book of the Thousand Gifts

S
LOW AND STEADY
, the Adda floated across the endless topography. In their haphazard drift, they had long since parted company with the other Adda that had launched at the same time, though now and again they spied one floating far away, its ladder hanging like the tail of a kite.

After the immense prairies, they crossed regions of stone up-crops, and abysmal chasms where the ground had split. Although no tectonic forces shaped this world, Anzi said that the nearer to the storm walls, the more that shocks split and shaped the land. It made her uncomfortable to talk of the walls—the bulwarks that sheltered this world in a necessary but violent embrace.

Bags of feed gradually disappeared up the Adda’s feeding tubes. At times Quinn rode on the ladder, inhaling the clove-scented air. He missed seeing the horizon and the sky, where the Entire’s soothing aspect was more profound. Huddled inside the Adda’s pouch, his thoughts drifted to his betrayal of Johanna. He wondered, not for the first time, if the peace of the Entire so over-took him the last time that he’d lost himself, and if that peace might again rob him of his will. But no. This time, he was going into the thick of it.

The Adda bore them onward through a heavy fog. In the Entire, fog was the usual form of precipitation, sometimes so thick the condensation rained from the ladder. The Adda absorbed the humidity, and her tissues temporarily swelled throughout the cavity. Among the other things Quinn learned about the Adda were her riders’ innovations in relieving themselves: the ladder partially folded up into a reasonable seat to cover the entrance orifice. It became the privy when sitting was called for.

Quinn had come to the end of his scrolls, and to pass the time, Anzi told tales and histories—of the five ages of the Entire, including the First Age when the lords lived in their original realm of the Heart, and the subsequent ages of building lands and creating sentients. There were stories of the manifesting of animal life from many different Rose templates—true stories of when and how such things occurred. She also recounted mythological tales of creatures like dragons—a tale from Earth, she conceded—and stories from other worlds, such as the myth of the river walkers that crept along, hanging upside down from the surface of the Nigh.