A World Too Near (30 page)

She shrugged. “Nor is there any proof that he has acquired these secrets.” After a time she said, “On the other hand, one can also lose oneself in Rim City. Even if it is under the nose of the lords.”

“I would rather hie me to the end of the Radiant Arch, to the last sway of the last primacy, before I would live there, like a merchant.”

“Merchants, husband, sleep in clean beds and do not suffer our deficiencies of table.”

Yulin looked around his squalid quarters. He murmured, “The man of the Rose promised us more than squalor and the impudence of legates.”

“Ah. But you have vowed to expose him.”

“So I told the mincing legate.”

Suzong let that statement lie. She seemed content at the moment to let him stew in indecision. But let Titus Quinn set foot in camp, and by the Miserable God, the moment of decision would be upon him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Dread the gift of your enemy.

—a saying

I
N THE PRIME OF DAY, as the bright raised wavering pools of heat from the steppe, Mo Ti and Akay-Wat rode out to meet the stranger.

Over the last few intervals, the stranger’s mount had been sending guarded messages to Riod, that he bore a personage to camp, and one not blind. This was strange. Few outsiders found welcome in the Inyx sway, aside from the occasional itinerant healer or legate come
to register deaths and births. And this rider was very much an outsider.

Drawing to a stop on her mount, Akay-Wat squinted in the direction of the Nigh. “There, Mo Ti. See the dark shape?”

Mo Ti shifted his weight on Distanir’s broad back. “No one rides like that.”

“Yet he comes.”

“Sits his mount like a boil on a beku’s arse.”

Distanir pawed the ground, broadcasting a skittish anxiety.

As the mount and his rider drew closer, Mo Ti saw that the newcomer was a woman, dressed as a godder. Her thoughts, chaotic and rash, leapt between her mount and her welcoming committee. She was thinking of Titus Quinn.

Alarmed, Akay-Wat urged her mount forward.

Then Mo Ti thundered by on Distanir, rushing toward the stranger and raising a choking cloud of dust as he came to halt in front of the woman. “Shut your thoughts away,” he ordered. It was one thing for Sydney to think of Titus Quinn; the herd was used to that. But if this stranger brought news of the man, it was best kept well hidden, lest the Tarig have reason to snoop here.

The stranger looked at him in confusion.

“Shut your thoughts away,” Mo Ti repeated, “or I will knock you from your perch.”

“Here bring news,” the woman stuttered, “of man of Rose.” She looked triumphant, until Mo Ti’s blow felled her from her mount.

Akay-Wat rode up, her false leg sticking out farther than her other legs, though she still rode easily. “What creature is this?” she asked, looking at the godder lying sprawled.

Mo Ti dismounted and placed his hand on the new mount’s neck to calm him. “A liar and a fool,” he said, not knowing how true he would later find this summary.

The woman who called herself Helice sat on the other side of the tent wall, in a small enclosure that Mo Ti had erected for her. Sydney didn’t want the Tarig to see this visitor, and therefore she couldn’t look at the woman, either.

Mo Ti and Riod remained nearby, listening and absorbing the visitor’s remarkable story. But since the two women spoke the dark language, Mo Ti was left with an imperfect understanding of what she said. From time to time Sydney would stop to translate for him, and he gleaned some remnants from Riod, who stood nearby where the tent flap had been pulled back. Mo Ti worried about the woman’s presence here. Helice claimed to have crossed over from the Rose. Startling enough, and treasonous to boot. If the sway harbored her, they were implicated in vow-breaking. His mistress, however, had made it clear that she had no intention of reporting this stranger, who came with news, power, and promises. To ensure secrecy, Riod stood close by to hide the newcomer’s thoughts from the nearby herd.

Mo Ti brooded on the new, disquieting revelations. Just when Sydney needed to concentrate on their enterprise of insurgency, now came plots from afar. If the stranger could be believed—and this Mo Ti doubted—her betters in the Rose had plans afoot to destroy the Entire.

Why would the Rose seek to destroy us? In answer, the stranger said that the lords had built an engine that helped them feed off the Rose universe.

But why, Mo Ti thought, would the lords need the Rose? Surely they did not need the frail Rose for their grand design. Surely the All could not be so bound to the darkling realm; he did not like to think so. The Entire was the proper and bright realm. What had we to do with the imperfect wasteland that was the Rose? Yet the woman named Helice talked of fuel, and energy, and words like
entropy
, to convince Sydney that even the high lords needed to sustain such artificial order that was the Entire.

And Sydney nodded, engrossed. Convinced.

In this woman’s lengthy story, she warned that Titus Quinn had come back to prevent the destruction of his world. He possessed, she claimed, a catastrophic solution, one lethal to the Entire. The woman claimed she was in the radiant land to prevent this terrible outcome.

Why, though, would a woman of the Rose conspire to operate against the Rose’s interests?

The woman had the temerity to admit that she wished to stay here for the sake of the long life the Entire bestowed. For this reason, she opposed Titus Quinn’s mission, even if it eventually meant the destruction of her own world. If such a motive could be believed, it was a vile ambition. It was then that Mo Ti knew their visitor was without honor.

Riod sent,
Why come here to my roamlands?

Helice answered that it was her only hope. She knew that Sydney dwelled here and that Sydney had been wronged by her father, and she hoped to find a receptive place to hide. She admitted that to save the Entire she had tried to kill Quinn.

This mention of her father both disturbed and gripped Sydney. She demanded to know more, and Helice obliged her. She told how Quinn had risen in the ranks of the leaders of the Rose, using his knowledge of the Entire as his leverage. He bragged of all that he had learned when he had been a prince of the Bright Realm. He alone, he said, knew the Entire’s weaknesses and how it could be annihilated before it could endanger the Rose. Helice told how Titus Quinn had changed from former days, as his newfound power led him to large appetites, for both sexual exploits and control of the giant enterprise called Minerva.

Relating these things to Mo Ti, Sydney’s frown lines deepened. But Mo Ti saw something else: that Helice’s stories gave Sydney the pleasure of having her opinions confirmed. Her father deserved the enmity she harbored in her mind, as well as in the book of pinpricks where, when she had been blind, she had recorded her troubles.

Mo Ti listened to them talk until his legs cramped and he could sit no longer.

“My lady,” he interrupted. Sydney looked at him with some impatience. “My lady, I would speak with you in private.” He rose heavily to his feet.

“About what?”

Mo Ti glanced at the thin wall separating them from the newcomer. “About our enterprise—our enterprise of dreams.”

“It goes well, yes?”

“Yes, lady. Slowly, as we know we must be cautious. But . . .” Sydney waited for him to continue. “Not everything is for outsiders to hear,” he murmured.

“She doesn’t speak enough Lucent.”

“Still.” He rose to leave.

Sydney murmured, “Be patient, Mo Ti. I’ve waited four thousand days to hear of the Rose. I’ve waited four thousand days to know what my father intends, and how far his ambitions stretch. Now you can wait, Mo Ti.” To soften the rebuke, she added. “Can you wait?”

He bowed. “Mo Ti will wait. Outside.” He left her to whisper through the tent wall with the liar.

Outside, Akay-Wat paced up to him, her ears lifted. “She comes, oh yes?”

“No,” Mo Ti spat. “Not with the guest having more words than a beku has fleas.”

“The guest,” the Hirrin sighed. “I do not trust this stranger. Her mount says that all the way here, she was unhappy to ride. And did not wish a good bond with him. That is unnatural.”

“And why, Akay-Wat, does she not like her bonded mount, do you think?”

“Because she is a bad rider?”

He glanced back at Sydney’s tent, murmuring, “I think it is because she does not like to share her heart.”

“Oh dear,” Akay-Wat said, straining her long neck around to peer at the closed tent flap.

Mo Ti stood inside Helice’s tent. Distanir was just outside, ready to relay Mo Ti’s thoughts to Helice.

The woman had commandeered a small table on which now resided many small metal parts. She sat on a stool, hunched over the metal pieces.

He began by bidding Distanir to send Helice this question: “What are these
things?” He pointed to the objects on the table.

To his surprise, she spoke in Lucent. Halting, but clear enough. “My business. My tent, Mo Ti.”

She looked up at him from her seat at the table. Most people were wary around Mo Ti at first because of his size, but this woman was not intimidated. He decided to go to the point. “My mistress has duties in the camp that require her attention. Do not discourage her from high tasks. A thousand mounts wait on her.”

“Is that mount still lurking, waiting for me to ride him?”

“Vichna and you are bonded. It is the custom to ride.”

Helice was assembling something, and she continued to work as they talked. “I usually like animals, but the mounts . . . I’m not sure I care for them.”

“They aren’t animals.”

“Well, tell him to find another rider. I don’t like my thoughts tampered with.”

What was she hiding? He watched her with a new sense of antipathy. “Be aware that I suffer your interference only so far. You may not wish to test me.”

She bent over the task of assembling two of the metal pieces together. “You’re using long words, Mo Ti. Try to speak simply.”

“Endanger Sydney’s leadership, and I will kill you.”

Helice put down the metal fixture with elaborate care. “I’m not happy with you, Mo Ti. You talk against me with Sydney. I hear you in the tent, saying she must be cautious with me.”

So she spoke better Lucent than she admitted. “Yes, my mistress should be careful. Any advisor would say so.”

She prodded her little pieces of metal, turning them, fitting them together. “Advise her better, Mo Ti, or you won’t be an advisor long.”

Distanir, who stood outside, was sending distress and anger. But Mo Ti remained calm. This small, scarred woman meant to challenge him for his standing with Sydney. She had been here only three days, and already she presumed to hold power. Luckily she didn’t know that the herd had broken into the mind of the Tarig; she wasn’t yet Sydney’s confidante, in that, at least. He would pick his time to take this newcomer down.

Helice looked up at him. “Let me show you why you’re not going to kill me.”

She gestured at the pile of metal fixtures. “This will be an assembler. I’m sure you don’t have a word for it in Lucent. Think of it as a very capable stone well computation device. That can make things.”

Mo Ti peered down at the bewildering array of small mechanisms and apparatuses.

“Where did these come from?” He had seen nothing like them, nor had Helice brought anything with her when she first rode in on Vichna.

“Sewn into my undergarments.”

She looked at the array of parts spread out before her, as though daunted by her task, but determined to finish. “Fitting this together will take a few days. I first create an assembler, and the assembler will fashion what I need. It takes a little while to build a machine that can perform delicate surgery. Sydney understands she must be patient.”

Sydney? The two of them had discussed this apparatus without telling him?

Helice went on. “I came here to restore Sydney’s sight. We knew from Quinn’s first visit that she’d been blinded and sent to this sway. I meant to restore her vision when I found her. Now I’ve learned that the procedure will have to be a bit different than I expected—given the Tarig implant. But I can figure it out.”

Mo Ti understood he had been outmaneuvered. She was going to repair Sydney’s eyes. And Sydney would be grateful.

Helice had taken out the golden eye lenses that chafed her eyes. With the odd brown eyes gazing at him, he was conscious of the kinship between Helice and Sydney. These two were not Chalin. They were human. It unnerved him.

Still fixing him with her steady gaze, Helice said, “Do you see now why you shouldn’t get in my way?”

Sydney rode out, Riod under her, surging in long strides across the steppe. At her side, Mo Ti rode on Distanir, his thoughts in as much turmoil as hers.

Never before had either Sydney or Mo Ti considered the Entire as a threatened world, a
temporary
world. Today, in one stroke, they had learned that the Entire was the target of a terrible weapon—and not only that, but the Entire had exhausted its energy sources and now required an outside source: the Rose. How could such things take root in the mind and seem normal? How could one look on the steppe, the sway, the primacy, the very bright of the sky, and think that they were soon to pass?

Of one thing Sydney was sure: If the Entire needed the Rose for energy, then the Entire must have it. She didn’t hate the Rose, but her loyalties had long since faded for a land she had difficulty remembering.
One universe must
die; let it not be ours.

Titus Quinn was for the Rose, of course. At least he was loyal to
something
, she thought bitterly.

Sydney could let the mantis lords handle her father. She could send word to the Ascendancy, much as she hated the thought of collaborating with them. But Helice cautioned against this, saying that they would find and kill Quinn, which would be good, but then they would likely accelerate their plan to burn the Rose. Knowing that the Rose was alerted to the engine at Ahnenhoon, the Tarig would be forced to act before the Rose sent more instruments of destruction. Helice had a desire to let the Rose live for a few more years.