Bright of the Sky (47 page)

As a servant in a galley slave outfit passed her, she scooped a champagne flute from the tray and roamed the crowd, stopping at a fountain to ditch the alcohol and replace it with water. Brain cells. Be needing them all, soon.

Near the seal pond sat a bemused bear with a studded collar, looking at the sleek sausages frolicking in the water. The bear was almost stupid from drugs, a cruelty she would have prevented if they’d consulted her.

She sat for a moment on a bench, and looked skyward once more. The stars. Because of the startling and inexplicable events of the past week, they could never look the same.

Stars were dying—dying early, dying wrongly. Near the horizon and rising steadily was Orion, with its belt of stars. She almost expected to see them wink out, one by one—as had happened on Tuesday to a few stars in the Orion Trapezium Cluster. Astronomers said four of them—young, hot stars—had vanished, and without last gasps, fluorescing gases, or outbursts of stellar material, without the slightest trace. Vanished.

She tried to see the situation as Stefan Polich did. The stars could be obscured behind Bok globules, clouds of cold gas and dust. Theories abounded of how stars like these could disappear from view, not only here, but at monitoring arrays at every one of the space platforms. A similar fate had befallen the star Beta Pictoris, far removed from the Trapezium group. Gone. The problem with the dust cocoon theory was that the events had been nearly instantaneous, and in essence defied every known physical law.

Helice looked around her at the costumed revelers. Despite fleeting mentions of the cosmic events in the newsTides, no one here looked up at the sky, or took note.

Stefan found it coincidental that it was happening now, just as they were probing the adjoining region.
But it’s a new phenomenon
, she’d argued. And his answer:
No, it’s new to
us
. Just because we’ve never seen it before doesn’t mean it’s
really new.

Perhaps, she thought. But the coincidence made her uneasy. Minerva was tinkering with higher-dimensional space-time. Sending probes, sending people, across a brane, a barrier that might exist for a
reason
. So, as much of a stretch as it might seem, suppose there was a connection between piercing the adjoining region and the deaths of stars?

She hoped that the star catastrophes were not due to some kind of retaliation. Retaliation on the part of the inhabitants on the other side who might have such capabilities. No, that truly was too fanciful.

However, it wasn’t a very great leap to imagine that the cosmos contained beings more advanced than humans. Cosmologists had long thought that the age of the universe suggested that highly advanced civilizations must exist somewhere. If the universe over there was as old as this one, perhaps an advanced civilization had asserted itself.

And an even more astonishing thought: If their powers were such that they could darken stars, could they also see into this universe? Could they know Minerva plans? Could they, for instance, see Helice herself at this moment?

Fanciful, perhaps. But leaps of understanding often began with outrageous conjecture.

And this was exactly the kind of thinking that Stefan Polich was incapable of. Instead, when she had hinted at these conjectures, he had dismissed them as too far-fetched, treating her like a dred or a precocious child.

It galled, and it hurt.

The man would never give her credit, would never mentor her or give her the opportunity to enter the region she longed to see. Thus her need for allies, the need to attend parties. Her forays, however, must be tentative and inconspicuous. Such as her conversation with Booth Waller a few days ago, when she’d let him glimpse, for a moment, her heart.

“Did you want to go?” she’d asked him. To catch him off guard, she’d stated it baldly, without preamble.

Booth had paused, then figured out that she was referring to Quinn’s mission. He decided, evidently, to be frank. “No.”

“
I
wanted to go.” She had let that sink in while Booth waited for some bitter comment or threat. But she couldn’t threaten him. He was Stefan’s handpicked man, and a favored senior staff member. He’d make a fine ally. She wondered then if Booth Waller saw the future as being with forty-three-year-old Stefan Polich or twenty-year-old Helice Maki.

A voice came from behind her: “Counting stars?

Stefan Polich approached her, a rather gawky Captain Hook. In his wake trailed Booth Waller himself, dressed as a Royal Canadian Mountie.

“Yes. Eight are missing.” If
he
wasn’t counting,
she
surely was.

She greeted Booth, who looked guilty. He was the favored one, and she wasn’t, and he had the grace to feel bad about it.

“Eight stars,” Stefan repeated as though they were far from his daily concerns. He took a gulp of champagne. “Don’t you ever let your hair down?”

As Helice looked more carefully at him, he seemed oddly vulnerable, and a little drunk. “Valkyries don’t.”

He looked wistful. “No, I suppose not.”

Gamely, she tried to be playful. “They’ve got important work on the battlefield— selecting the warriors destined for death.”

As the three of them wandered toward a small arched bridge overlooking a stream, Stefan asked, “What about me? Am I headed for Valhalla?” He looked down on her from a height emphasized by his enormous pirate boots.

She said, dangerously, “No.” Then, to throw him off balance, she smiled.

“And me?” Booth asked. He hitched up his gun belt with its wooden pistol.

If you were inclined to be pudgy, you shouldn’t wear a glorious red uniform like that. It emphasized his inadequacies. “I haven’t decided yet,” Helice answered, fixing him with a sweet but pointed look.

Stefan pressed his drooping mustache to fix it more firmly on his upper lip. As they watched the carp swimming below, Helice murmured, “Those stars—I still wonder if there’s a connection.”

Captain Hook snorted. “Our man next door, crapping around, burning up stars?”

She felt a surge of annoyance. “We should at least
think
about these things.”

“Helice, Helice. He’s only been there a week. Surely he hasn’t had time to destroy the fabric of the universe.”

She shot back: “But we have no idea, actually, how much time has passed there. If last time was any indication, he might now have been there for
months
.”

The three of them watched as a mottled gold-and-white carp circled in the slow-moving stream.

Stefan spoke softly. “On the other hand, he might not be there at all. He could be floating in space, charred and burned out, himself.”

These days Stefan looked increasingly like a worried man. The company needed Titus Quinn. Even if the adjoining region wasn’t a superhighway to the universe, it might be—at the very least—prime real estate. No, Stefan didn’t want to give up on his man on the other side.

But on that score, Helice was confident. “He’s there all right. Call it feminine intuition.”

Stefan held up his hands in mock earnestness. “I wouldn’t call it
feminine
intuition
to save my soul.”

“That’s only because you don’t
have
a soul, Stefan.” And smiled. Charm, she reminded herself.

On the banks of the stream four partygoers were staggering in the water. One, dressed like Robin Hood, took aim with his bow and arrow and struck the golden carp dead center. It continued to swim for a few moments, a bit lopsided.

Helice growled, “Whoever did that, fire them.”

Stefan waved the comment away. “It’s only a fish, Helice.” He lurched from the railing to intercept a galley slave bearing drinks.

As Stefan turned away, Booth closed the gap with Helice. He tilted his head toward the drunks splashing away upstream, saying in a low voice, “I believe those four are marginal performers. They’ll be gone on Monday.”

Helice let the words hang in the air while she savored them. She hadn’t realized until that moment how dark her mood had been. Now, she brightened. Booth was still holding her gaze.

“Let’s drink to that,” she said, sincerely.

Booth signaled to the galley slave, and retrieved two glasses.

The three of them clinked glasses, but it was only Helice and Booth who were sealing a bargain.

Stefan was past noticing, way past his alcohol limit. He slurred, “We’ve got to stick together, Helice.”

She smiled a consoling smile. “Of course we do.”

“Troubled times,” Stefan murmured. He sipped his champagne. “Ships sinking.”

“Mmm,” Helice said, watching the fish-killers vanish into the darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Birds fly, in the Rose,                          
Flowers bloom, in the Rose,                
The sky is dark, in the Rose,                
Kings die young, in the Rose.
               

—a child’s verse

S
TANDING OUTSIDE HIS CELL
on a dazzlingly clear morning, Quinn held the summons in his hand.

At last, Cixi had sent for him.

The summons, on a fine rolled parchment, was written in elaborate Lucent calligraphy. The appointment with the high prefect, arranged by Shi Zu and delivered by a full steward, would be tomorrow at the first hour of Shadow Ebb. Quinn was both eager to see her and uneasy. Here was a person who once knew him, and it would be a supreme test of his facial reconstruction. Threads of memory warned him that he and this woman had not been friends.

Turning to the window and its view of the city, Quinn fingered the scroll. Thanks to Cho, barriers were falling away. The steward had been right about Shi Zu. The legate had quickly dropped the idea of heading the Inyx mission once Quinn pretended indifference.

Now, he had a day to wait.

The city called him. And pushed him away. He must not meet, much less engage, the Tarig lords, who, despite his altered face, might recognize him. However, the city was large, and he would likely pass unnoticed in its byways. Hadenth hadn’t recognized him, after all. He marshaled his arguments in favor of going. Since he
was
going.

From the moment he’d come back to the Entire, he’d been haunted by who he’d once been in this place. His memories were still imperfect—just vivid enough to torment him.

So Quinn found himself walking toward the doorway into the city, where, if he walked, perhaps he could know if he was different this time.

He climbed the winding staircase to the second level of the Magisterium. He went down the passage with the vaulted ceiling, and through the gallery where columns divided the view of the city with their vertical bars. The voices of his two selves accompanied him, saying,
Go
. And,
Do not
. Clerks, factors, stewards, and legates bowed as protocols dictated. He moved past them in a dream, past the Hall of the Sleeping Lord and down the broad staircase into the city. Nearby, carp swam in the pool, and he stopped long enough to observe that the orange-backed fish, the one he had fed Bei’s redstone to, was not among them.

It was a relief to be out of doors. The bright fell over the towers and plazas of the city like the silver wings of an invisible god. He was not entirely oriented, but wandered, glimpsing new views of the city with each twist in his path. Water coursed through the canals. Along the pathways and in bazaars and plazas, non-Tarig sentients roamed freely, feeding fish or walking the promenade. Occasionally Quinn glimpsed a lord striding along an intersecting canal, but never close enough to cause concern.

So Titus Quinn walked through the city, marveling that he was here— that he had returned at all, that he was walking freely among his enemies. That, on the verge of leaving the Ascendancy, he had gone into its heart.

The bright streamed overhead—very close. Its buckling folds looked more than ever like porridge at a boil, a sight he now took for granted. Along the skyline of the city he saw the familiar spires that served no function that the Tarig would ever admit, except an aesthetic one. Like those godder temples, God’s Needles, but taller by far, they looked ready to spear prey infringing on the bright. In the heart of the palatine hill was the tallest spire, Ghinamid’s Tower, said to be the vacant habitation of the Masterful Lord, waiting for the time when he would awaken from his sleep. Bridges looped over the canals, feeding into meandering pathways that widened into plazas and plunged into shaded alleys overhung with black and purple vines.

He had asked Chiron once why the Entire had no flowers. She had pointed to black, glistening vines—beautiful, to her alien eyes. But not to human eyes.

They’re not like us. Not in any way
, Bei had said. The old scholar’s words came winding back to him:
The Tarig kept saying that if you relinquished information,
your family might be returned to you. One day led to the next, and the information
was never enough. Every day you asked. And every day the lords said, not yet.
You persisted, Titus. You never forgot them.

He gazed up at the palatine hill. He knew which mansion was Hadenth’s, and which Chiron’s. He walked toward the deserted home of Lord Inweer, long absent, long the keeper of Ahnenhoon—and Johanna. Here he was unlikely to meet a Tarig of consequence.

Closer to the palatine hill, the lesser mansions filled his view. The reflective metal walls tired his eyes, and he glanced instead through the deep windows, into the interiors where the Tarig lived their private lives. With their needs met by their technologies, they had no household servants. Nor were there commoners among the Tarig. In their supreme arrogance, all Tarig were nobles of the Entire.

Quinn found a narrow passage of stairs leading upward, and climbed it through circuitous twists colored by purple shadows.

He continued his climb, and the paths narrowed until he found himself on a private walk, opening onto a sunken garden. Around the entrance arch a vine looped, heavy with obsidian berries. He walked inside. Trees and shrubs stood at attention in regular lines, trimmed and precise. Unmistakably, it was a Tarig garden. In the center of the garden was a small pool.