Bright of the Sky (51 page)

“No, High Prefect, your pardon.” But he’d told her the personal stakes. If she had a heart, it might affect her. Even a woman like this loves something, he thought.

She nodded at Zai Gan and he sidled forward, his bulk now looming next to Quinn. “How can the Inyx lead a battle, being silent?” he demanded.

“Your Excellency, they send their thoughts into the minds of others, and communicate perfectly. But not to lead a battle, merely to lead their own contingent. The battle strategy remains with its Chalin generals.”

Cixi examined her index finger, which shone more than her other nails. A tiny pattern of calligraphy appeared there, and Cixi scanned it. She went on: “Why should Yulin care what the Inyx do? The sublegate Min Fe has opined that Yulin has no loyal reason to plead for the Inyx.”

Words continued to scroll over Cixi’s nail, and Quinn wondered if Min Fe was privy to the conversation, and dipping in. “Min Fe has spent too long with his papers. He knows nothing of Yulin now, if he ever did.”

Cixi was very still. “And the high prefect? Is her knowledge, too, a thing of paper?”

“Your pardon, madam. Min Fe and I have stooped to common brawling. We forget ourselves.”

The nail scrolled with protest. Cixi devoured every word, her eyes hungry for gossip and dispute.

Quinn pushed on: “Master Yulin’s motives are simple, madam.”

Zai Gan could restrain himself no longer. “The bastard, banished son of Yulin knows him better than his closest brother?”

Quinn took a chance that Zai Gan was not as favored as the man supposed. “The preconsul has been absent from the sway a few days, and has not renewed ties. Thus, a worthless bastard son may indeed know more about some things in Xi.”

Cixi looked up from her nail, watching the two of them with something like glee.

Zai Gan’s eyes shed pure loathing. “You presume much,” he murmured. Then louder, “So then, expert of Xi, tell us Yulin’s secret reason for this enterprise.”

Quinn had his answer to this one ready. “It was never hidden, Excellency. The Inyx fight well, but their conscripts are declining. This clarity will inspire enlistment.”

Cixi muttered, “Such
inspiration
might have come ten thousand days ago.”

Quinn said, and immediately regretted it, “Perhaps Master Yulin should learn hurrying from Min Fe.”

Cixi’s face darkened. “Do you instruct me on efficiency, messenger? Do you presume to speak as my equal?”

She made a motion as if to rise, and the Hirrin removed the footstool where her feet rested. Lifting her heavy robes, she stepped down, and Quinn stood also, moving out of her way. As she swept past Zai Gan and moved toward the windows, Quinn saw the woven icon on her back: an astonishing dragon in intricate detail, stitched in silver thread with red, green, and blue embellishments for scales, fins, and teeth.

Zai Gan followed her, bending down to whisper in her ear.

Turning back to Quinn, she stood on dramatically elevated shoes, but her height still fell short of four and a half feet. “Why, we ask again, is this clarity here now rather than before? What has changed? Why has Yulin changed? This fat old man who was more content to service wives than the war?”

“I do not know.” He watched as Cixi stood with the huge preconsul, dwarfed beside him. But it was obvious where the power lay. It fairly burst from the dragon magistrate.

Cixi stalked closer to him. “Now, suddenly you are stupid? You decide when to be clever, and when to know nothing?”

“I am no legate to play at court games, madam.”

“Court games,” Cixi hissed, looking up at him. “Is that what my questions are?”

He had pushed too far. She both despised the bureaucracy and reveled in it. He didn’t know which end to play. He bowed, hoping to look tongue-tied.

Cixi’s voice lowered as she flicked her gaze over the Hirrin attendants straining to hear. “I never liked Yulin, and he always despised me. Our antipathy goes back so long that we are both quite fond of it.” She glanced at him, her eyes like hardened amber. “It may be the only thing in your favor.” She turned to Zai Gan. “Leave us, Preconsul.”

He protested, “I have more questions, Your Brilliance.”

“Well, Her Brilliance does not. I am done with this interview.”

Quinn forgot to breathe. Done?

Slowly, Zai Gan bowed and swept from the room with surprising grace. But Cixi hadn’t dismissed Quinn.

She approached him. Then she said, her voice taking on a formal tone. “After due consideration, and against the advice of my functionaries, I have decided to see Yulin’s concept put to the test. This matter of Inyx officers of battle. It may please the Inyx to be so nominated.”

Quinn looked at her, stunned.

“In other words, I will enact your clarity and send you on your way.” She smirked. “No thanks, no bows?”

“Madam, my thanks indeed.” He bowed low, and meant it, heart soaring. He had read her correctly: that proud and brittle, she still craved a man who didn’t fawn.

“Of course,” she murmured, “if this change in custom fails, your sire may blame you instead of himself. That would be like the old bear.”

Quinn said, trying to restrain his elation, “Perhaps my father would credit me for trying.”

Cixi sucked on her teeth, causing her face to collapse into its many lines. “Then he would be soft as well as fat.” She waved him away.

As he turned to leave, she said, “You were poorly prepared for this meeting. No petitioner has ever stood on the dragon.”

Quinn turned back to her. “Consul Shi Zu gave me instructions. But they were lengthy, and I fell asleep before finishing them.”

She smirked. “Shi Zu is a long-winded Adda with too many clothes.” Her eyes held him in place. Then she said, pleasantly enough, “Are you a schemer, Dai Shen?”

“I am what I am, High Prefect.”

“Oh, I doubt that. No one is what they are. Except the Hirrin.” She leaned forward. “I do not trust you, messenger. You are too smart to be a minor son of Yulin. Whatever you are, you have lost something today that you might value.”

“What have I lost, madam?” The lines in the room grew sticky, and sagged. He hoped it was Cixi who got caught in them, and not he.

“Your anonymity,” she answered. “Consider yourself under my close gaze from now on.”

“I risked much to be under your gaze, madam.” It was the truest thing he had said to her.

She regarded him, murmuring, “You are good with words. Perhaps you have a future as a legate, after all.”

Quinn bowed. “May God not look on me.”

“Mmm,” he heard her utter, a sound like a dragon purring.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

               Three things are lowly: the godman,
               the beku, the clerk. But only one is
               buried in the sky.

—a saying of the Magisterium

T
HE FUNCTIONARIES WATCHED QUINN
as he descended the stairs. Min Fe was not among them, nor Anzi. Quinn felt their gaze drill into his back as he passed them, but his relief made him immune. Despite Cixi’s doubts, he had won this piece. She didn’t trust him, but she didn’t trust anyone. She knew that Yulin was lazy, and in this new enterprise of his, she smelled a whiff of rot. Her nose was good.

As he headed for his cell, he saw Brahariar coming toward him down the corridor, bowing to all as she came. He caught the Jout’s eye, but she ignored him. Passing close to his elbow, she murmured, “Cho in the catacombs. Now.” She continued past him.

The catacombs. That would be a good place for whispering, if Cho needed privacy. Quinn descended the stairs and ramps to the level of his cell and then headed for the perimeter of the Magisterium, to throw off anyone following him. Let it appear, then, that he was going to his favorite balcony. There, he sat in his accustomed spot—one he hadn’t visited since his meeting with Hadenth three days ago. He gazed out at the glinting sea, pockmarked with mercurial clouds, wondering which of the distant primaries was the Long Arm of Fire, the name of the one where Sydney was.

After a time he rose, and instead of his usual route back, he climbed a short ramp to enter the Magisterium by another level. He hoped Cho’s secretiveness didn’t imply inauspicious news. He ducked into the interwall area that Brahariar had shown him. It didn’t lead all the way down, but by the time he was on the fifth level, and moving as quickly as looked normal, he thought he’d shaken any pursuer.

The cleric level was the smallest and most crowded level of the city’s underbelly. In their white silks the clerks looked like altered angels . . . a notion dispelled by the homely icon embroidered on their backs: the beku. Hundreds of stone well columns formed a tight forest of pillars. Avoiding the ceremonial entrance to the catacombs, Quinn threaded his way among the columns toward a minor access point. He knew the way. His knowledge of the city’s underbelly was emerging like a picture being stripped of sand in the wind. He felt that if he stayed here many more days he would have all his memories at last. But he would not stay. He would leave as soon as Cixi’s approval was recorded in the pandect, and his papers in order. The hope for the Entire’s great secret, the correlates—that hope must be deferred. He would come back for them, though. Even now he was casting about for some way to send Sydney back home, leaving him on this side of the veil.

Standing before the door to the catacombs, Quinn saw that the surface of the door was covered with writing. The Three Vows:
Withhold the knowledge
of the Entire from the non-Entire, Impose the peace of the Entire, Extend the reach of
the Entire. . . .
Entering, he descended the narrow stairs, coming at last to the bottom of the floating city.

A wall of cold air met him. Passing through the climate-control barrier, he found himself in a dark hall, filled, he knew, with banners for the cremated dead. He recalled that a supreme inducement to life at the Ascendancy was to plant one’s burial flag in the bright city catacombs. There had been a time when he assumed his own bones would reside here. As he walked, the floor lit up, then dimmed behind him, surrounding him with a soft halo. On either side of him the flags thrust out of funereal ovoids snugged up like the combs in a beehive. So far, by the vast darkness around him, he was alone.

Even in death the hierarchy remained. Here was the clerk section, with earnest flags:
Clerk of Humble Tasks, Glorious Masters. Servant trusted by Consul
Jin Se
.
Thirty Thousand Joyful Days
. The flags sparkled now and then with molecular fabbers scrubbing the dust away.

A noise stopped him. Ahead of him, a figure in white stepped out from a side aisle. As the figure came closer, he recognized Anzi.

She tapped her heel on the ground and they were in darkness.

“Anzi,” he whispered. “I came to meet Cho. Do you know why Cho called me here?”

“I didn’t know he had. I followed you,” she said. “I was afraid to contact you. There’s a legate watching me.”

“Min Fe.” After a beat he said, “She approved the mission, Anzi.”

“Oh, Shen! Approved?” He couldn’t see her face in the utter blackness, but her voice conveyed her happiness.

“I’ll tell you later, but yes, approved.”

They listened in the dark for a while, watching for lights, but only the dead kept them company.

Taking Quinn’s hand, Anzi placed an object in it. She had been successful in her assignment. It was a toy boat.

By the feel, it was crude, and not a proper replacement for Small Girl’s fine boat, but it might do.

Anzi said, “This is not for your daughter, certainly.”

“No.” He hadn’t had time to tell her everything. Now he did so, glad he couldn’t see her expression in the dark.

At last she asked, “Because you love your daughter, now the Tarig young are included?”

“I don’t know.” Nor did he.

“Truly, Dai Shen, it’s time to leave this place.”

“Soon.”

She put her hand on the toy, trying to take it, but he held on. “Anzi. There’s more.” She waited. “It’s about Cho. I did more than ask him to look up Kang’s reports.”

Again, she waited.

“The navitar said Johanna was at the center of things—of things relating to me.” He murmured, “She always was.”

Anzi’s voice grew dusky. “Yes, I know.”

They stood in silence for a long time, and around them the flags were still as alabaster. He whispered, “I asked Cho to look up a term. Arlis.”

“Arlis?”

“Johanna’s maiden name. There might be other code words she could hide under. I gave them all to Cho.”

Her voice was barely audible. “Heaven give us not looking. Now Cho will know it’s more than curiosity. It’s an obsession. An obsession on the part of a man that you cannot be.”

“Perhaps,” he said. It brought them all into danger. But he intended to get them out again. There was always a door out.

But just now he was looking for a door in. There were secrets here, in this Magisterium. Secrets that Johanna had. This is what he had gleaned from the navitar, though she hadn’t said so, not directly. Truthfully, it hadn’t taken much to push him toward Johanna, or what was left of her.

A scratching noise came from one side. Someone was on the aisle next to theirs. The shuffling noise continued until a loud pop occurred. Anzi tapped her foot, and the floor lit under her. By this wan light they saw that a compartment was empty, and something was snaking through from the other side. It was a hand.

The hand opened up. In the center was a small redstone. Quinn took it, and the hand disappeared. Then a funeral oval was jammed back into place. They listened for footsteps then, but the person had melted away.

Quinn held the stone in his fist.

“Read it later,” Anzi urged, looking around in alarm.

He stared her down. “We need a corner where you can stand guard for me.”

He led her to the rounded outer wall of the catacomb, where he borrowed her clerk’s hat. She stood guard some distance away.

In the dark and the silence, Quinn paused, hands sweating. Then he inserted the stone in the computational well of the hat. He waited while the stone dissolved and locked onto its bits of data.