Bright of the Sky (17 page)

“No one wants to die. I don’t, and your servants don’t. I’m not pleased to be the cause of the gardeners’ deaths.” Quinn held Yulin’s gaze. “Maybe death means more in my land than yours.”

Yulin murmured, “To take a long life is more than to take a short one.”

“Then let them live, Master Yulin. They don’t know me. To them, I’m Dai Shen who had a head injury.”

“Who was kept in the palace garden for some strange reason.”

Quinn spread his hands. “Who knows what the One Who Shines may decide, in his wisdom, to do?”

Yulin rumbled with laughter, and the hall echoed with it. Suzong petted her collar, now revealed as a small animal curled up around her neck. Two eyes blinked open from the furry mass.

Yulin stood, stepping off two carved stones his feet had been resting on, saying, “Cunning, Dai Shen, but unconvincing.”

He strolled toward Anzi, his movements graceful for one so heavy. “Your opinion, Niece?”

Anzi didn’t hesitate. “A compromise, Uncle.” Receiving his nod, she went on: “Let the gardeners live forever in the garden, not to mix with others.” She glanced at Quinn. “No deaths.”

Yulin drew himself up, gazing as near to straight-on to Anzi as he could manage. “It shall be so.”

Quinn frowned. “Life in a prison?”

Yulin held up a warning finger. “It is my last word on gardeners.”

Suzong muttered and reached for a cup next to her, slurping loudly while her collar went back to sleep.

Under Anzi’s pointed stare, Quinn managed to say, “Thank you, Master Yulin.” It wasn’t good enough, but it was an improvement. “Now we may move to the more important matters.”

“Matters,” Yulin repeated. “Such matters are?” He swung around to accuse Anzi. “Have I no
matters
pending, that I must have
matters
from a suppliant?”

Anzi hurried forward to pull on Quinn’s sleeve, trying to restrain him. “You said nothing of matters before,” she murmured to him.

“My daughter is a
matter
.” He turned to Yulin. “Help me to find her.” Did Anzi and Yulin hope that he’d forget why he’d come here?

Yulin’s face remained impassive, his wispy mustache framing a disdainful mouth. One man’s daughter could have no value to this master of the sway. Pity would not move him, nor threats. What threats could a prisoner make?

But Quinn was not just a prisoner. He was also an emissary: emissary of the Rose, if he dared claim such a thing. And he could. Who else could speak for his world? Not Stefan Polich, or Helice Maki. They were left behind. Titus Quinn was the one who’d come—alone, as he’d known he must. And he’d arrived with a powerful message:
Humans will come.
From his first confrontation with Yulin on the lake, he’d understood that that message was his one power in this place.

Now he would use that power to bend Yulin to his goals.

“Master Yulin, Lady Suzong,” he began, “you’ve sheltered me in your palace, and taught me your language. For these things I’m grateful. It’s been a good beginning.” It had been an ugly beginning, and someday he hoped to repay the fat master for his time spent in a jar and the death of Sen Tai the translator. But not yet.

He continued, “My people sent me here to bring home the child. This is the matter we have to discuss. It’s the first condition of peace between us. The Tarig offer no road to peace, so I turn to you. I know it won’t be an easy thing, or a safe thing. It requires that we break the Tarig law that bans contact.

“That law is already useless. I’ve come here twice, and others will come after me. Humans will come. If you hear nothing else from me today, hear this. Perhaps someday you’ll think yourselves fortunate, that you heard it first, and not your enemies.” He didn’t know who Yulin’s enemies were, but he was sure he had some.

“To safely return the human child to her home, I have to learn the way back, which only you of the Entire can know. Bringing her safely home will be proof that my people can travel to and from your land and also that we can traverse great distances in the Rose universe. So this child and travel routes are linked. Helping me will prove your friendship.”

“Friends of the Rose?” Yulin shook his head. “We must walk into the River Nigh with our pockets full of stones.”

“If there’s no help here, then we’ll have to find another sway to help us.”

Yulin exchanged glances with Suzong, then muttered, “How can the Entire provide traveling in the Rose?”

Quinn answered, “When I returned home the first time I came here, I arrived at a world very far from Earth.”

“Ah yes. Worlds. Balls of mud in the air, scattered far and wide. I have heard of these things. You wish to arrive at such a place with the small daughter. When you leave.”

“My masters are eager to know these routes. It’s their condition of alliance.”

Suzong leaned forward, her collar’s eyes wide open in a green glare. “What kind of ally can humans be? What can the evanescent possibly give to the immortal?”

Quinn turned to her, seeing an irritable old consort who listened more carefully than she pretended to. He was grateful for the remark, even clothed as it was in disdain, because it gave him a chance to argue his side. “Wealth,” he answered. “Trade. Power. You’re the mistress of a sway humans will take note of. The Chalin people are close in nature and temperament to humans. There’ll be rich trade, and it’ll begin here.”

He turned back to Yulin. “My people know the way in, now. That knowledge can’t be put back in a jar.”

Yulin smoothed his mustache with a jeweled hand. “You think the lords can’t put your people in any jar they please?”

Suzong watched the man of the Rose, every nuance of his gestures and speech. He was the first to come into the Entire. The first to strike a Tarig lord and live. Improbably, he had come back again, and now stood before them, a man to reckon with. His people would never be put off. They would leak into the realm, slowly or all at once, and this man was their high servant. Humans were coming, yes. And how would they come? Why, through the reaches. And once here, they would keep following, and then the Chalin would be the suppliants, being small in numbers compared to the beasts of the Rose. Better to befriend such invaders, to wring advantage from the hands of disaster. Her husband thought that when things changed it was time to retreat. Yulin had retreated his whole life until now he was a prisoner in his own house, afraid of the city, afraid even of his own relatives. If it weren’t for Suzong, he would long since have composed the saying for his grave flag, and that great fart in a barrel, Zai Gan, would be sitting in his chair.

Beyond the open terrace, the city lay spread out, the ancestral city of the Chalin. Today, Suzong found that sight small indeed. The bright lords granted Yulin governance of the sway, and in return Yulin was loyal. But scratch that surface devotion and one would find timidity. No wonder he looked like a man straining with constipation. He had to decide for or against treason.

The To and From the Rose Door was open, figuratively left ajar by this man Titus Quinn. Now she must watch Yulin throw his bulk against that door, striving in vain to shut it. When he was done pushing, then perhaps Suzong would have a small suggestion or two.

From the open terrace, a languid breeze brought the scent of hot dust and cloves mingled with the juices of a million people.

Quinn knew that this city, its very existence in an impossible universe, was an emblem of power. The Tarig had created this universe. But for all their power, the Tarig were afraid. They were afraid to be known by the Rose. They fear us, he thought with mounting confidence. The Tarig, somehow, are vulnerable.

Yulin’s question lingered.
You think the lords can’t put your people in any jar
they please?

“No,” he answered at last. “The lords can’t contain us. Understanding this, they fear us. It’s why for so long they’ve forbidden us to know each other. Because they’re afraid.”

Pausing, he saw that he had Yulin’s keen attention. And Suzong’s. Evidently the idea of the Tarig fearing someone was a totally new thought to them. And an appealing one. He could almost see Yulin’s mind weighing and scheming, whether to gamble or not.

Yulin’s response, when it came, was a low rumble. “What do you ask of me?”

“Set me free. Be my ally.”

Yulin shook his head. “Free? Free to hunt your daughter? The lords will find you in the same way as before. You will fall at their feet, and I will fall with you.”

“No. We won’t fail. You’ll make sure of that.”

The One Who Shines turned a darkened stare on him, then spat out, “You may snatch this daughter from the Inyx—although it exceeds the imagination to think how—but you will have no way back. No quick exit through the veils. While you wait, the Tarig, in all their power, will hunt for you.”

“As they did last time. And failed.”

Yulin snorted. “No man can win this game twice. Here is what I believe: You will attempt to bring your daughter out of the Inyx sway. You will stumble—perhaps in a small way, for not all disasters come from large errors. Then you will expose yourself, and me, that I hid you in the garden.” He turned to Anzi. “I kept him for your sake. Now, my niece, you see the trouble he brings.”

Anzi averted her eyes under the rebuke.

Quinn looked at her. “For her sake? Why for her sake?”

Yulin stroked his chin, saying, “Humans are held in high regard by some. Anzi is such a one.”

Quinn looked at Anzi, wondering how strongly she had already argued for him.

Yulin muttered, “She is in awe of you, like a useless scholar peering through the veil, hoping for a glimpse of the ancient race.” He looked at Quinn. “Yes, your race is ancient, but the Tarig are older yet, as all children know.”

“I know this, Master Yulin. That’s why I need your help. When I leave here, I have to pass as Chalin, and you can show me how. If you are my ally, help me. And if you know how to cross over to the Rose, tell me.”

Yulin waved his hand in dismissal. “Cross over and die. The gamble is where the exit point leads, and it may well be into eternal darkness.” He held up a hand to stop Quinn’s protest. Then, rising from his chair, he beckoned Suzong to join him, and he walked onto the terrace. Quinn and Anzi followed.

Here, the bright shone at full, creating an impression of a sparkling lid over the world. “Look out at my world,” Yulin said, stretching his hands out to display the city of Xi. “We live in peace, side by side, except for one war, far away. We have all the comforts we could wish. Now you urge me to throw all this away for the promise of alliance with people whom I have not even seen.”

Yes, that was Yulin’s dilemma. Quinn could see he wasn’t a gambling man, and he racked his mind for a way to sweeten the pot.

Suzong murmured at Yulin side, “But they will come anyway.” Her collar had moved up to wrap tightly around her neck, like a velvet noose.

Yulin turned to fix Quinn with a troubled gaze. “For the sake of travel? Is this their great hope?”

“To be free to travel, yes.”

Yulin gazed over the city as though even now seeing it overrun with evanescent humans. “One can die of too much travel.”

“One dies anyway.”

Yulin shook his head. “I know nothing of the ways to and from. I have kept the vows. Perhaps others . . . scholars, traitorous ones.” He glanced at Quinn. “But no doubt you will go looking. There’s no containing you.” The master sighed, as though despairing of his houseguest. “The future is changing.”

Suzong drew closer. “It always was. The garden walls, my husband, were only a temporary refuge.”

Yulin was perched on that wall. And needed a push. Quinn summoned all his wits. He had studied for one week. What did he know of the Chalin? What of the Entire? But he knew more than he could logically summon.

He let himself speak from the heart: “Maybe you’ll gain a new future for your people. The Tarig made this world. They also made you subservient. They require you to fight the Long War against the Paion at Ahnenhoon.”

He went on, “Why don’t the Tarig, with all their power, end the Long War? Because they have little to lose. They don’t fight, but require the sways to send their conscripts by the thousands, by the tens of thousands.”

“And they die,” Yulin murmured.

“Yes,” Suzong said. “Die early and often. Our young warriors, the best of us.” Suzong’s bright amber eyes looked like jewels, afire in the furnace glare of the sun.

The room was heavy with silence. Anzi looked like she was afraid to move, for fear of toppling the conversation in the wrong direction. He had the attention of Yulin and Suzong, had their imagination. And it was lit. He followed some underground stream of logic. It was all he could do, as ignorant as he was. It might even be true that the Tarig were invulnerable. But even if they were, Quinn would use them, would use Yulin, to take back what was his.

“What would the Chalin people rise to, given their lead, given a chance to say how they wanted to live?” Quinn plunged on. “You’re comfortable, Master Yulin, but not free.” In desperation, he turned to Suzong. Not everyone quailed before the bright lords. Yulin was a loyalist; but Suzong— ah, Suzong hated them. He said to her, “Do you want to serve the Tarig all your days?”

Yulin waited for her to answer Quinn’s challenge, and Anzi watched with wide eyes.

Suzong’s mouth quavered. “Serve them?” she whispered. “Who could wish to shovel the dung of beku?” She added, her mouth widening into a lively smile, “When one can ride them instead?”

Standing still as a mountain, Yulin had narrowed his eyes as he regarded his favorite wife. Perhaps he was thinking of trade and riches rather than defeat of the Tarig. But even if so, that might be enough to secure his allegiance.

At last Yulin nodded. “So be it, then.”

Quinn nodded. Yes. The garden can’t protect you anymore. For all the lies I’ve told, I know that much is true. In triumph, he stole a glance at Anzi, whose look took on a disturbing cast of adoration.

Warming to his decision, Yulin said, “We will find this small girl. And send her home.” He said it softly, as though hoping the lords wouldn’t hear.