Quintessence Sky (11 page)

CHAPTER 6

"SO it's the nova that's depleting all the
salt," Parris said.

"It's worse than that." Matthew sat on a
chair with his leg propped up in front of him, his hose rolled down
to reveal the skin. There was nothing to see. The skin was
unbroken, and looked as healthy as ever. The pain had lessened
since they had seen the nova, but it was still intense enough to
keep Matthew's attention.

"If we run out of salt, we'll die slow and
painful deaths," Parris said. "Along with every other creature on
the island. How can it be worse than that?"

"Because the scales only registered the
effect of the nova when the clouds parted." Matthew looked at him
expectantly.

"Which means?"

"Which means the clouds can block the effect
of the nova. Which means all the salt depletion we've measured so
far has been
despite
the protection of the clouds. Which
means—"

"—once the storms blow over, we're
doomed."

"That's what it looks like," Matthew
said.

They were in the Quintessence Society's
experimentation building. The first building they used for that
purpose had been small, only a single room topped with a garret
that Matthew had made his home. That building had burned down along
with the rest of the settlement in the battle with the manticores.
When they rebuilt, they had made it larger, divided into four rooms
on the ground floor, with two rooms on the second floor where
Matthew had taken up residence.

Though not for much longer. Soon he and
Catherine would be married. A new home had already been built for
the purpose, glittering with freshly poured diamond walls, not yet
dimmed by the everyday assault of smoke and dirt and rain.

Parris examined Matthew's wound. He had been
a physic back in England, but there hadn't been much call for
medical skill on Horizon. "I want to try substitution," he
said.

Matthew frowned. "Why?"

"There's something strange about that wound.
I don't understand it."

"Go ahead, then," Matthew said. "I don't
mind."

Substitution was a central law of
quintessence that they had only begun to understand. It was the
principle by which bell-boxes worked, as well as the manticores'
ability to share consciousness and memories. The idea was that two
pieces of a thing would retain a quintessence bond, regardless of
how far apart they were separated. Changes to one would affect the
other. It was also the principle behind the heat exchanger that
heated and cooled their homes.

When the principle was applied to two human
beings, however, it caused an interesting effect. Parris spat into
a glass of water and handed it to Matthew, who drank it down. The
saliva, until recently part of Parris's body, retained a bond,
though not as permanent a one as if Matthew had swallowed a hair or
a drop of blood. This bond would only last about ten minutes until
it broke down.

As he finished the drink, the pain from his
leg faded. Parris, on the other hand, grimaced and clutched at his
own thigh. The wound itself hadn't moved, but Parris now felt
Matthew's pain, and vice versa.

Parris grunted. "That's bad," he said.

Matthew allowed himself a small smile. Back
home, there was no way to tell if you were brave or cowardly in the
face of pain, because no one else could ever feel what you were
feeling. It was gratifying to have someone else feel the same thing
and acknowledge that it was bad. Though it was odd to feel someone
else's body, to feel Parris's clothes around him, and to feel a
coolness on his head where Parris's hair was thinning. Parris
cracked his knuckles, and Matthew felt the sensation in his own
hands.

"It feels more like a laceration than a
bruise," Parris said. "Never mind the fact that quintessence should
be healing it, a wound that feels like that should be visible on
the skin."

"Maybe something's hurting me just beneath my
skin?" Matthew suggested.

Parris pulled his mouth to one side, looking
doubtful. "I'm concerned about something else. You remember back on
the ship, when that mutineer sailor stabbed you in the leg?"

Matthew nodded, a chill passing through him.
"You don't mean . . ."

"Was it this same leg? The same spot?"

"The exact same. It didn't occur to me, but I
think you're right." That wound had been deep and bloody, but a
drink of quintessence water had healed it.

"We know the changes quintessence brings
aren't permanent in some ways," Parris said. "Quintessence turns
sea water fresh, but if we go home, it transforms back into salt in
our bodies. We turn sand into grain, but outside a quintessence
field, it turns back again."

"So away from the island, my leg would still
be wounded?" Matthew said.

"That's what I'm suggesting. The wound never
healed in the normal sense; it was just transformed into healthy
flesh by quintessence. I think the pain you feel is further
indication that the quintessence field around the island is
weakening."

"But why?" Matthew felt an itch at his neck
and scratched at it, realizing belatedly that it was Parris's neck
that itched, not his, so scratching it accomplished nothing. A
thought struck him then, and he gasped. "Catherine's been
complaining of headaches."

Parris's eyes widened. "She was shot in the
head by Tavera," he said, giving voice to what was in both of their
minds. "If she goes out of a quintessence field . . ."

"The wound would still be there. She would
die."

Parris stood and began pacing. "What would
cause something like this to happen? What could affect the
sky?"

"We've always suspected that it's the
proximity of the stars that gives Horizon its wealth of
quintessence," Matthew said. "If something happened that removed
quintessence from part of the sky . . ."

Parris raised both hands, frustrated. "What
on earth could cause something like that?"

The effects of the substitution were wearing
off, and the pain was settling back into Matthew's leg again. He
rolled his hose back into place and put his foot on the floor. "I
don't know," he said.

"What if we can't stop it?" Parris said.

Matthew shrugged. "We have three choices. We
figure out how to stop it, we figure out how to go home, or we
die."

Going home was problematic. They still had a
ship, the
Western Star
, the one that had brought them to
Horizon, but the way home was hazardous, and once they arrived,
they would be utterly dependent on the shekinah flatworms they
brought with them for survival. Eventually, the salt and sand in
their bodies might work its way out as they ate normal food and
drank normal water, but would that happen before the worms
died?

Besides, they had fled from England because,
under Queen Mary's rule, Protestants were being imprisoned or
exiled. To return would be to run right back into that danger. He
supposed they could return to a different country, one with a
Protestant king, but there was no guarantee that English exiles
arriving with unexplained magical powers would be
well-received.

The door to the outside opened, letting in a
draught of heat and the smell of rain. Parris's wife, Joan,
appeared in the doorway, water glistening on her clothing. She was
a small woman, dressed traditionally in a full gown with squared
cap and a shawl around her neck. She was out of breath. Parris
jumped to his feet. "What's wrong?"

"Catherine rang in an hour ago," Joan said,
her voice sharp. "I've been searching the colony for you. Where
have you been?"

"What was the message?" Parris said.

"I don't know your fool code," she snapped.
"That's why I was looking for you."

They followed her back to the house, where
the bell-box sat silent. Parris tried it, a quick greeting. There
was no response. He tried again. Patiently, minute by minute, he
pressed the lever, then waited in vain for the bell to ring.
Matthew watched, his dread growing. Of course, there were
explanations. Perhaps Catherine had lost the bell-box, or broken
it, or was sleeping and didn't hear it.

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Parris
said.

"Why doesn't anyone listen to me?" Joan said.
"You send a young woman, all alone, into a dangerous wilderness,
and then you're surprised when something happens to her. Fools,
both of you. And you say you love her."

Matthew felt a flash of anger, but he kept it
inside. He hadn't wanted Catherine to go either. It was she who had
insisted.

Parris glared at his wife. "You go too far.
It's not love to keep her locked in a cage."

"Is it love to see her dead?"

Matthew barely heard them. Where was she?
What had happened? She was too smart to lose her bell-box. And it
was too simple a device to break easily. They had to go out after
her, right away, while they still had an idea of which direction to
find her.

The door flew open, and Blanca ran into the
room. She was young, Spanish, and exceptionally beautiful, with
dark eyes and long, dark hair. Matthew thought Catherine was
pretty, and all the more so because he loved her, but Blanca made
heads turn whenever she entered a room. She wore a long skirt and a
man's loose-fitting doublet, and her hair flowed in lustrous waves
down her back. In England this would have been scandalous, a look
reserved for the bedroom and only seen by a woman's husband, but on
Horizon, the rules were different. Catherine wore her hair the same
way, and called it the only practical choice.

Blanca's eyes were wide, and she was
breathing hard. She looked panicked.

"What is it?" Matthew said.

"There are manticores at the barrier," she
said. "They have news about Catherine."

MATTHEW'S father was already at the barrier,
to Matthew's annoyance. "Let me do the talking," he said. "This is
a delicate conversation."

"I already talked to them. They say they know
where Catherine is," Blanca said.

"Even so," his father said. "We don't want to
alienate them. They're our allies for the moment, and we want to
keep it that way."

It was obvious to Matthew that Blanca didn't
much like his father either, and he didn't blame her. The ratio of
men to women on Horizon was about ten to one, and half the
unmarried men between the ages of seventeen and fifty had at one
time or another proposed marriage to Blanca. This far from England,
with no parents or social structure, there was no one to tell her
what to do, and she had rejected them all. It had been a subject of
much resentment and debate in the colony, many believing that she
had no right to refuse when there were so few women available.
Matthew's father had tried to intervene and commanded her to marry
a forty-five year old salt farmer whose wife had died. She had
refused to cooperate. His father had been ready to throw her in the
stocks, but Matthew had argued him down—shouted at him, really—and
it caused enough dissention that eventually his father had let the
matter drop.

Three red manticores crouched on the other
side of the invisible barrier. Once Matthew put a drop of skink
tears in one eye, however, he could see it clearly, like a
shimmering fence made of parallel lines of light. The lines
stretched between posts of split beetlewood, and had been fashioned
using one of the basic principles of quintessence: that two pieces
of a living thing, separated by any distance, would retain a
connection. Matthew and Catherine had first discovered that
principle onboard the
Western Star
by playing with broken
ironfish bones. They hadn't been able to see the threads then, only
observe the effect one broken piece could have on the other, even
across the length of the ship. It had led to the invention of the
first bell-box.