Bright of the Sky (31 page)

During the days, Anzi sat at his side reading to him from Bei’s scrolls. She had a thousand to choose from. He learned things that he had once known, and things that he had never known. He tried to pay attention, to learn, but awash in the pain of his facial bones re-forming, it was difficult to concentrate. Sometimes he took out the photos of Johanna and Sydney, to seek some comfort from them. But they were creased and faded, accusing him by their deterioration.
Prince of the Ascendancy
, they seemed to say.

He saw glimpses of the bright city—with its carved halls and wide, curving stairs—and the labyrinth underneath, where labored the legates, consuls, factors, and stewards. He saw himself threading into the city, into its fabulous byways, seeing wonders. He saw the Lady Chiron, almost human, yes, almost. . . .
Lady Chiron lay beside him on a platform of hot light. Her nakedness
unnerved him. Some sexual acts were impossible. But one could be creative. She was
without inhibition.
Forcing himself to attend to the memory, he recalled:
Hadenth appearing in the doorway. Jealous. Chiron driving him away.

He hardly needed more details to know that what Bei had alluded to was true. He tried to imagine what kind of a man he had been. And then he was left to wonder what kind of a man he was now. His hands moved over his face, failing to find the old geography.

Seeing him touch his face, Anzi produced a mirror.

Even under the puffiness and bruises, Quinn could see that the face in the glass was narrow and strange. The blue of his eyes had become a burnished gold. Quinn didn’t recognize himself. It was comforting.

He must have smiled, because Anzi said, “Good?”

“Yes.” He pushed himself up to a sitting position, headache raging.

“Since you’re better”—she glanced at him ironically, knowing he was still shaky—“there is a matter to discuss. You won’t like it, though.”

He was sick, dispirited, and confused. Now there was more? Best to have it over with. He sat up fully, giving her his attention. She offered him water, and he took it, while she gathered her thoughts.

“Master Yulin worries that you’ll be captured when taking unwise actions at the Inyx sway.” She looked at the floor. “I worry also.”

Quinn’s breathing grew shallow. So now Yulin was withdrawing from the venture? Without Yulin’s help he couldn’t go far—perhaps nowhere. He waited for her to go on.

“Yet he knows you have this great desire to bring your daughter home. Thus his proposition that he urges you to think about most carefully. . . .”

“A proposition you’ve waited so long to tell me?”

“Yes, forgive me. I thought it would anger you, when you were already displeased with me.”

Quinn took a deep breath. When would she learn that it was best to tell him everything?

“My uncle says, yes, go to the land of the Inyx, but only to confirm that she’s there, and alive. If possible, speak with her and tell her to be patient. Then, when humans come to bargain with the Tarig over routes through our land, demand Sydney’s release. This preserves your disguise, and greatly improves the chances that both of you will survive.”

“And greatly reduces Yulin’s chances of being exposed.”

She looked away. “That too.”

He’d known that he had to free Sydney without anyone knowing it was Titus Quinn who had done it. Or that it was Dai Shen, son of Yulin, who had done it. Yulin was counting on remaining anonymous. Counting on it a little too hard. Yulin had hedged his bets by appearing to agree while planning to persuade him to more modest goals. The sudden arrival of the Tarig lord in the garden had cut short Yulin’s maneuvering.

Quinn turned to Anzi, his nerves taut. “What about you, Anzi? What do you think?” He wanted her to dig herself in, reveal her true agenda, now before her agreeable facade took over.

She looked at him, and her bright amber eyes were unapologetic. “I think it likely you will die otherwise, Dai Shen.”

So, she and her uncle were united. “Are my papers still in order? Or has Yulin voided the redstones he issued to me?”

“They’re still valid. He can’t change what you already have. And you do need to go the bright city, and must have his endorsements.”

“Just a small change. He wants me to see Sydney, and leave her where I find her.”

Anzi caught his bitter tone, and lowered her voice. “Yes, I’m sorry.” Still, she maintained her serenity. He wanted to shake her.
Doesn’t anything matter, Anzi?

Quinn’s mind was spinning with possible responses to all this. How much did he need Yulin’s enthusiastic support? He staggered to his feet, needing to pace, but he faltered, and Anzi rushed to steady him. He shook her off. Yulin was a schemer, ready to ditch him at the first sign of trouble. No, ready to ditch him now, before trouble even began. Quinn shook with anger and moved away from Anzi, testing his sea legs.

“What if I refuse?” It was his first instinct, to tell Yulin to go to hell.

She responded, “Then you continue as before, Dai Shen.”

“What?”

Anzi nodded. “We thought it likely you would refuse. Now you go on as before.”

He doubted what he was hearing. “No strings?” At her confused expression, he amended: “Yulin was just making a suggestion?”

“Yes. A suggestion—a wise one.”

He waited for her to say more, but it seemed that, for now, he still had Yulin’s support, even if it was forced. Yulin wasn’t abandoning him, only testing his resolve. The man didn’t know him very well. “Does he expect I’ll change later?”

“I don’t know what my uncle expects. Perhaps he hopes, when you see how difficult it is, that you will remember there is a second way. But for myself, I know that you will never change.” She bowed. “I have my answer. Thank you.”

“What is my answer?” Quinn wasn’t sure whether he had said anything or not.

“You said no, Dai Shen.”

There was a moment of silence when Quinn let himself absorb her quiet summation. She was allowing him to decide.

Quinn murmured, “My daughter’s waited long enough.”

“Yes, I know.” Anzi’s look was one that a friend might have who’d heard that you were dying, and approved of your bravery.

Here she stood, knowing how he had betrayed his wife, knowing that he had given in to the lords. Here she was saying,
Yes, you have to go. Even if it kills
you.
He would rather have her counting on his success than assuming he would fail, but she was giving him something else of equal importance: respect for his decision. He took a deep, cleansing breath. It wasn’t all shame, then.

She poured him another drink of water, and he drank it, and another. Still, she remained quiet. The conversation was over; she was letting his decision stand. She was saying,
If you must die trying, I will still help you. If you are
caught, I will go with you.
Anzi believed in his cause, not because she wanted the same thing, but because Quinn wanted it. He was profoundly grateful.

He looked around the small chamber. “A change of clothes, Anzi?”

She found a pile of folded, fresh clothes left by the servant Zhou. Quinn took them from her, and she helped him to change.

“I need to see Bei,” he said.

“When you feel stronger, Dai Shen,” she said, holding a new jacket for him.

“No, I need to see him now.” He closed the fasteners. He’d waited too long in bed, laid flat more by emotional shock than the physical one. Suddenly he was eager to be back on track. “Would you tell him, please, that I need to talk to him right now?”

“Yes.” She turned to go.

“And Anzi”—he had been meaning to say this to her for some time— “can’t you call me by my given name when we’re alone?”

Waiting by the door, she said, “Not Titus. That’s too dangerous.”

“I agree. But can’t you call me Shen, at least in private, as I call you Anzi and not Ji Anzi?”

She smiled. “Yes, if you want.”

“I want.”

He bowed as she left. Then he went to the basin and splashed water over his throbbing face and head, having forgotten his headache.

Bei knelt in the soil beneath the subterranean grow lights, hands muddy and work tunic soaked in sweat from pruning gleve plants. He picked a rock from the soil and slung it with practiced accuracy into the pile of stones nearby. The physical labor eased his worries and calmed the storm of memories triggered by Titus’s return.

Earlier in the day he had sent Zhou and the others out of the vegetable field so that he could work in silence, meditatively pulling tubers, checking leaves for mites, and harvesting grayals. But his serenity had been disrupted when Anzi came asking for a meeting with Titus, now apparently recovered enough to get out of bed.

And so Titus had come, looking hale except for swelling that must have felt like a Gond gnawing on his cheeks.

“I’m in your debt, Su Bei,” he began.

Bei stood, brushing the soil from his knees. “Well, you haven’t seen the result yet.” And the
result
might well be a garroting from Lord Hadenth. But Bei pushed this worry aside. He was glad to see Titus. Oddly, after all they’d been through together, Titus considered him a stranger. No memories. It made for awkward interactions, with Bei keeping his distance and Titus still summing him up, weighing things like blame, resentment, and gratitude.

“The eyes shouldn’t hurt you much,” Bei said. “It’s the facial bones that ache.”

“Getting better.”

The man had a high pain threshold; that was clear. He also seemed mentally improved. And had something on his mind.

Bei knelt to his task again, ripping out weeds and pruning. “Care to help? It’s a big field.” A little exercise wouldn’t hurt the lad, or Anzi either.

Titus made no move, but said, “I’ll leave soon.”

Bei knew it. A few more days and Titus could leave by sky bulb, since Dolwa-Pan had instructed her pilot to wait for Dai Shen’s departure. Bei tossed another stone into the pile. Good. Two stones, better than average.

“What’s the rock pile for?” Titus asked.

“Without rocks the soil is easier to work. We’ve tilled this soil so long, there’s hardly a stone left.” Bei sat back on his heels, wiping the sweat from his eyes. “You’ve come to ask something. Then ask.” He glanced away. “If you’re sure you want to know.”

Titus crouched down nearby, facing him. His yellow eyes had already vastly improved his face, although Bei had grown used to the blue, eyes that seemed to see farther than Chalin eyes. Not content to absorb things gradually, Titus always wanted to understand things right away. As now.

“The way to and from isn’t random, is it?”

Bei sighed. “If I knew how it was organized, would I be a minor scholar?”

“I think you may know someone who does.”

Bei glared up at Anzi. “Have you been putting these thoughts in his head?”

Anzi was watching with wide eyes. “No, Su Bei, your pardon. I didn’t know.”

How, by the vows, had the man found this out? Suzong, came the thought. Bei crept down the row of gleve, concentrating. He’d expected Titus to ask how he would get home once he had snatched the daughter from her jailers. But now, he demanded more, far more. Well, there were some things that even Titus Quinn couldn’t have. He tossed another rock into the pile and crawled on.

Then Titus’s hand was on his arm. “Bei.”

They met, eye to eye. “Why would I know of such things?” Bei shook Quinn’s hand off.

“Because you lived at the Ascendancy. The legates hoard information, and have been for a hundred thousand days. Someone there knows.”

It was Suzong who told him, Bei was sure. She’d see the Rose as a great power, one worth cultivating. She hated the lords, but not for any noble reason, only for her personal revenge, having watched her mother die of asphyxiation at the feet of a lord so long ago that she should have forgotten by now. Damn the woman, anyway. If Titus’s goal had been perilous before, this new meddling could sacrifice all.

He shook his head. “Titus, when you come back here, I’ll try to think of how to help you get out. The veil may not release you—may never release you. But come back here, and we’ll pray for luck. And that’s the end of it. I’ve done what I can for you.”

Titus was now on the other side of the row, pulling tiny stones out of the soil, making his way on hands and knees. He seized a decent-sized rock and flung it into the pile. “It’s a big field,” Titus said.

And I’m staying in it until you relent
was the implication.

Titus didn’t want just help; he wanted the secrets of the kingdom. He wanted everything, as he always did. Wanted the correlates, of course, so he could be the leader of the wave of immigration. Routes to the stars, indeed. No such thing. Humans wanted empire, not routes.

God’s beku, why should he betray his own land? Bei didn’t give a dumpling for the gracious lords and their paranoia. But wasn’t it true that the universes had been separate from the very beginning? It was better to stay separate than risk mixing. Who, after all, could wish to live in the dark when the bright beckoned?

Now Anzi was down on hands and knees, sorting rocks from the next row over. They would stick to him like gnats on a beku’s arse. Bei stood, slapping the dirt from his hands. His back ached, and his left wrist, where he’d been leaning on it, throbbed. Now he walked behind Titus as the man resolutely grubbed in the soil for rocks.

“Titus,” Bei said, trying to make his voice more reasonable, “you can’t use the correlates—even if someone had them in their possession—unless the lords permit it. You see that, don’t you?” The man couldn’t think that the Tarig would just stand by.

“I don’t care if they’re used. I just need to bring them home.”

“Oh. A bonus is waiting?”

Another stone hit the rock pile. “My nephew is waiting. He’s eleven years old.”

Bei frowned at this irrelevancy. He trudged behind as Titus continued down the row. “That would be, let’s see, Mateo? Your brother’s son?” He’d thought the boy would be grown by now, but the time differences, yes, you could never forget
those
. . . .

“I have to get back. Or they’ll put Mateo in a jar and never let him out. And I need to
have
something when I get there. I know that, eventually, the Rose will figure out the correlates. It could take hundreds of years, but they will.” He looked up, his new yellow gaze as intense as the old one. “Let me be the one to find them.”