Bright of the Sky (21 page)

A hole opened. She dropped the stone into the hole, which closed up.

Anzi cradled the box in her arms to bring it closer to Quinn’s view. They waited. These things took time. The data rock must dissolve, and the molecular material must dock onto the locking sites, recognizing other molecules by shape. Computing work would result. It was pattern recognition based on shape-fitting. A uniquely Tarig twist to computer processing.

A picture formed on the forward face of the box. It was a wide plain, with an army massing. There were thousands of warriors, wearing armored suits in colors that may have signified branch of service. Great transport beasts stomped the ground, horselike animals with curved horns down their necks. Creatures rode them, creatures even stranger than their mounts.

“The Inyx,” Anzi said, pointing to the horse-creatures.

Quinn peered more closely. He had heard descriptions of these beasts. So, here were the native beings that ruled the Inyx sway. Incredible to think that Sydney lived among such creatures. Sentient creatures, he had to remind himself.

On the stone well screen, he noted a boiling black mass sliding down the flanks of distant, low hills. “Paion?” he asked, and Anzi nodded.

Quinn saw Ci Dehai standing on a platform with his lieutenants, pointing and directing. Behind him lay a dark and enormous keep.

“The Repel of Ahnenhoon,” Anzi whispered.

The stone well emitted a salty smell, bringing a flood of memory, of larger wells, and a labyrinth of rooms, where legates hunched over their labors. The Magisterium, he realized.

“Where did you get the redstone, Anzi?”

She watched as a contingent of tall Inyx mounts formed up next to the reviewing stand. But she didn’t answer.

“Is this from Ci Dehai? He gave you the redstone?”

She shook her head, still watching the scene, and pointing at things Quinn should notice, like a Tarig lord who stood well back, watching, wrapped in a long cloak.

“Anzi?”

She looked into his eyes with her trademark calm. “For you, Dai Shen,” she said. “I borrowed it for you.”

Quinn thought that Ci Dehai had not given it willingly. “You’ll get in trouble.”

“If he notices it gone, only then,” she said. “He has many stones.”

They watched the scene change as the bright dimmed over the battlefield, and the fight continued somewhere in the distance, where a clash of arms could be heard. But Quinn could only stare at the fortress. “Ahnenhoon,” he said.

“Yes. The fortress of the Long War. The Paion have come for many archons, beating on its doors. So far, our armies have kept them out.”

“Who lives at Ahnenhoon?” Besides—once—my wife, he thought.

“It’s the station of Lord Inweer.” She glanced in the direction of the figure on the well screen.

He remembered that name. The Lord Inweer. His wife’s jailer. Lord Inweer who looked so much like Lord Hadenth. It had taken Quinn years to figure out the difference between them. By temperament was the surest way. Hadenth was half-mad, for one thing.

The scene faded, and the stone budded out at the bottom of the box, falling into a small cup. It was still wet, but it looked exactly as it had before, despite having been dissolved. Anzi began threading it back on the thong.

“You stole it,” Quinn said.

“Yes.” She smiled as she threaded the stone on its string. “But I wanted you to see the battlefield. So you can almost have been there, which is the lie that must persuade others.”

Yes. So it would seem probable that Yulin had a son whom no one in the palace household had ever seen.

Anzi had grown still, and now her head turned slowly to face the open doorway. She rose, moving to the opening.

“Listen,” she said.

There was nothing. Then he realized the animals were silent. The treetops rustled in a breeze, but no bird cried from the aviary. No animal screamed or chittered. Even the lake was unnaturally placid. He and Anzi made eye contact, and he rose swiftly, joining her at the door. Tugging at his arm, Anzi led the way across the clearing, looking back as she hurried.

Then, in the shelter of the forest brush, they crouched down, watching. On the other side of the clearing, he spied a movement. A gardener moved among the bushes there, stealthily, and with the lurching gate of one whom Quinn recognized. The gardener, come to warn them of something?

As though in answer, Anzi looked at Quinn, shaking her head and frowning. She pulled his sleeve, urging him to follow her. “Quiet,” she whispered. They slowly moved out of their hiding place, retreating farther into the brush. They had barely spoken during these few minutes of flight, but by Anzi’s alarm, he understood they were in peril. She led him to a cage where a door lay ajar, and nothing lay within but overgrown vines.

Quinn checked behind them. A line of sight gave him a clear view of the top of the great aviary. There on the cage summit, against the dimming bright, an impossibly tall figure stood watch, its skin glinting bronze.

Anzi hissed at him. He followed her, helping her lift a heavy plate from the ground. The two of them managed to raise it, though it was covered with soil and plants. She motioned for him to crawl in, and she came close behind, lowering the trap door.

They were in a tunnel, in complete blackness.

“Made for Master Yulin to escape,” Anzi explained. “Hurry.”

Quinn followed her, heart pounding. She had said the Tarig come and go, looking . . . But why now? Had the gardeners betrayed him after all? Or Yulin himself?

“It’s the Tarig, Anzi. I saw one.”

“Yes,” she answered. “We are betrayed.”

The blackness of the underground passage was absolute. After so many days in a world where it never darkened, he was startled by the blackness, and the blind dash through the earthen tunnel. Yet, in that perfect blankness came a memory, keen and whole:

The escape capsule, heavily buffeted. Johanna at the controls, the ship breaking up, Sydney hunkering under a control panel while Quinn lurched forward, taking control of the navigation that didn’t respond. Dead controls, screens breaking up, the capsule thrashing. He reached for Johanna, thinking it would be their last moment. As he reached out she took his hand, pulling herself toward him; and as he looked into her face, it stretched and twisted. He saw her face slide sideways.
Sydney
, he called, but no answer, until, as he lost consciousness, he heard her voice, far away, saying,
Father
.
Father.
Growing more faint. After hours or days or moments, he awoke to a patch of light. He saw a woman with startlingly white hair. It had been Anzi, he now realized. She stepped back, retreating so far she was pressed against the wall of a strange alcove. She looked like she’d just seen the face of God.

Quinn stopped cold in the tunnel. “I know you.”

After a pause, came a small voice from up ahead. “Yes.”

“Who are you?”

“No time, Dai Shen. The Tarig—”

“The hell with the Tarig. Who are you?”

“Please, Dai Shen. I’ll tell you everything. First, run.”

But should he put himself in her hands? Where was she leading him? To more captors, as the other Chalin woman had? A sound close by. She had crept back to him, and he latched onto her, pressing her against the dirt wall. “Not until you tell me who you are.”

Her voice quavered. “Dai Shen, forgive me.” He waited to learn what for. She continued: “I took you here, into the All. It was my error, all my error. I am sorry.” She grew limp under his hands, sinking to the floor.

He crouched next to her. “You took me?”

“Yes, at the reach. Everything that befell you was my fault, because I saw you in your peril, and brought you into a worse one.”

“How? How did you bring me here?” He gripped her arm.

“The reach. At the veil. A forbidden thing, a terrible thing.”

He released her. “So that’s what Yulin meant, that he hid me for your sake. Because you owed me a debt.”

“Yes, forgive me. I could never be happy since, knowing your sorrow.”

Sounds of footfalls came from above their heads. He pushed her away. “Why should I trust you now?”

After a pause, her whisper came: “I don’t know.”

He leaned against the tunnel, trying to control his anger. “I don’t either.” Muffled, guttural voices came to them. He whispered, “Get us away from here, then.”

They rushed down the tunnel, finally coming to a bright patch where the air freshened. They peered through a tangle of hanging moss at a cityscape of glinting black buildings.

Anzi reached into her tunic and took something out. A knife. “Take this,” she said.

It was the knife from the armory. The Going Over blade.

He took the weapon and climbed through the opening after her, wondering what else she’d stolen, besides the redstone, the knife, and his family.

Yulin was sweating, but then, the day was warm. The pot of oba sat on a tray, steaming, adding to the suffocation of the surprise visit from Lord Echnon, a Tarig they had never met, but one whom Yulin knew was loose in the city, watching and wandering, as they increasingly did these days.

“May I offer refreshment, Bright Lord?” Suzong asked in a sweet voice, very steady.

The Tarig lord sat opposite them, his vest and long slit skirt of fine-spun metal—a tasteless display of wealth and weaving skill. With slicked-back hair, the elongated face seemed too thin to contain a fine mind, or a kind one.

When the servants had first arrived, stammering about a lone Tarig at the door, Suzong had spat at Yulin, “Mention Zai Gan, and that he does not love you. Let us discredit him as a jealous heir.” She cursed Zai Gan in awful terms, always quick to blame Yulin’s half brother for setbacks, and then, as the Tarig lord approached, she charged her face with a radiant smile, bowing low. It made Yulin wince inwardly to see her so frightened, and it set him more on edge than he was already.

“Oba?” Suzong asked the Tarig again. “Sorry, or I can send to the marketplace for skeel, which our kitchens lack, not expecting the honor of your visit.”

Lord Echnon looked out beyond the terrace where they sat, gazing at the garden treetops. “A very pretty garden. Yes, and its wild creatures in cages. Well fed?” Yulin winced inwardly, remembering how, earlier, the lord had climbed the aviary for a better view, his long arms grabbing for the crossbars, drawing the birds to peck at him, which had caused Yulin to nearly lose his bowels with dismay. But the birds soon lost interest in Tarig meat, and the lord climbed rapidly, like a river spider.

Well fed?
the lord had asked.

Yulin had been breathlessly waiting for the conversation to get under way, and now that it had, he was speechless. At Suzong’s pointed stare, he replied. “Oh certainly. The gardeners take excellent care of one’s collection. Thank you for your concern, Bright Lord.”

He fervently hoped that by now Anzi and Quinn were well away, melted into the teeming city, or fleeing beyond it. But why had Lord Echnon come? Yulin had known that the lord was in the city, but prowling, as was their custom, not paying social calls, just watching, unnerving all who came near.

Suzong still hovered with the oba pot, not having permission to pour or not pour.

As they waited for the lord to direct the conversation, Yulin loosened his sash belt, feeling too warm. Suzong warned him with her eyes, as though to say,
Stop fidgeting.
God’s beku, was he doing everything wrong?

Lord Echnon went on, “We have heard of the Chalin master’s park with cages. It is even larger than our own grounds.” He took pity on Suzong and nodded for her to pour.

She did so, with remarkable steadiness, spilling not a drop. Then she poured for Yulin, who gratefully slurped, wetting his throat. “Lord, it is my refuge,” he said. “I have many enemies who wait for me to walk among them, so it is wiser to do my walking at home.”

Echnon picked up his cup of oba, holding it with surprising delicacy for one with only four fingers, and all of them too long. He drank, slurping with polite appreciation, though it was well known that Tarig did not favor oba.

The lord turned his tar-black eyes on Yulin. The worst part of a Tarig visit was that they did not blink, so the impression of a fixed gaze was unnerving, even if one was innocent. “Terrible when enemies lie so close to one’s nest, ah?”

Yulin put on a face of gloom. “Yet more terrible when they are one’s own . . . relatives, Lord. As sometimes happens, of course, despite all the overtures one can make.” There. He had blamed his brother, indirectly. It was all he dared to do, lest he look too obvious.

The main question was, did the lord know that a man named Dai Shen was here? If so, then better to mention Dai Shen first, to appear forthcoming. But if the lord didn’t know, then no reason to mention a bastard son by a minor concubine. So Yulin dithered, wishing with all his heart that he and Suzong had had warning so they might have prepared a strategy. Now he was on his own.

“Excellent oba, Chalin wife,” the lord said to Suzong.

Chalin wife
was not her favorite appellation, but she sweetened her smile even further. “No, certainly not, Bright Lord, not up to the standard, nor what you deserve, but thank you.” She poured again, saying, “If Zai Gan were here, we could all enjoy oba together.” She sighed. “Now he will hear that we had honored company, but he was not invited. Please, if you see him, say we were distressed to not have time to summon him.”

Yulin was impressed that she had managed to turn the conversation from refreshment to his brother, while suggesting that the brother was testy and jealous, and that they were sorrowful at his absence. She was adroit, and he began to breathe easier. His cup refilled, he drank to cover his lack of a follow-on remark.

“We will tell him,” the lord said, implying he would be seeing Zai Gan, the poxy fat schemer. So perhaps Suzong was right, and Zai Gan was behind this visit. Meaning that Zai Gan had a spy in Yulin’s house. Meaning also that it was likely the lord knew there was a man in the garden. Or did he?

“Send for cakes, Suzong,” Yulin said. “Lord, may I offer food?” He hoped that this would force Echnon to come to the point.