City Without End (23 page)

With the mSap on her back, Helice had to face the building as she inched along the ledge on the outside of the mansion. Keeping her weight pressed forward, her forehead slid along the rough adobe of the mansion’s facade, abrading her already sore face. By the time she got to the end of the building, she was frantic to find solid ground. Already, a Chalin servant had come looking out on one of the balconies; he hadn’t seen her, but it wouldn’t be long before someone did. Reaching the next balcony, she jumped down, sweating and frantic to hide.

She leaned over the railing to look at the bridge beneath her. A great superstructure held up the dwellings and the Way. If there was even as much as a thin girder to walk on, that was her way down. Pulling her cap more securely over her head, she sidled over the railing. Crouching on a plinth at the base of the lanai, she held on and took a closer look at the understructure.

Smooth and glassy. Well, she hadn’t expected
stairs
.

Shadows approached through the fog. A giant Adda was lumbering down on her. Then she remembered: the parade of gas bags planned for that afternoon.

A noise from above. Someone had opened the door to the lanai. All they need do was look down and they would see her.

“Hnnn,” came a sound from above.

Helice flattened herself on the ledge and craned her neck to look below. Just within reach, she saw a foothold and a handhold to pull herself under the mansion toward a fretwork of supports. She slid her foot in that direction. Bending her body double, she took hold of a strut with one hand, and then with all her remaining strength heaved herself to the new perch. To her profound relief, she heard a door closing above her. Anuve must have retreated inside.

Helice curled herself into a ball. Below her, navitar vessels bobbed on the sea. Someone pointed up at her, shouting. But it was the parade of Adda he noted, not her. A movement over her shoulder caught her attention. A few feet away Helice saw the hanging, cartilaginous ladders of the Adda sweep by.

Deng had found no one in his sweep through the mansion. Other Tarig were searching, the ones that had been hiding out of sight. Unsure what his next move should be, Deng returned to the residential quarter and was about to enter the mistress’s suite when he heard the loud snorting of the Inyx. Diverted, he ran into Riod’s stall and found the beast had hugely defecated in his nest.

Water
, came the Inyx’s thought. Deng would clean the straw later, but he took a moment to change the beast’s water.

In the suite next to Riod, Sydney was waiting at the open doors, hoping that Riod could occupy the stable boy who might at any moment come looking in her suite.

The moment was almost upon her. Here came the Adda with the purple fringe, the ladder swinging low. It bore down on her. She lifted her hand, waiting. When it came over the balcony, the huge creature threw a cool shadow over her. A man with a painted face stood high on the ladder, crouching down, reaching out his hand.

Sydney grabbed the ladder as it swept along the balcony floor. She stepped onto it just as it began to rise again to clear the balustrade. She climbed, and the man above her climbed backward, still holding out his hand. He gained the entrance to the cavity, and then she took his hand, and leapt into the Adda’s travel pouch.

The man with the painted face turned to the one other person inside, a man dressed in green silks, and said, “Climb into the sinuses, Yat Pang, I need privacy here.” The man obeyed, but Sydney hardly noticed him leaving. The voice. It was her father’s voice.

The line of Adda completed their pass of the Mistress of the Sway’s mansion and went just a little further than they needed to along this route to find a place to make the huge swing around. Zhiya had bribed the leader of the Adda processional to take his time. Still, Quinn had only a few minutes to see his daughter.

“Sydney,” he said, his voice deadened by the Adda’s fleshy girth. “My face is altered. Do you know me?” Say that you do, he thought, not even knowing exactly what he meant.

She stared at him, wild-eyed.

And he stared at her. She was slender but athletic. She looked not at all like Johanna. Dressed in deep red silks, her face flushed, she looked both beautiful and fierce. Close-cropped dark hair, wide brown eyes. He knew better than to look for welcome in those eyes.

“Please sit,” he said, kneeling on one side of the Adda’s entrance orifice.

After a moment, she sat on her heels on the other side. Through the hole appeared the shoreline of the Sea of Arising, exotic waters foaming against the land. He wanted to reach out across the space between them, but he had no right to touch her.

“I’ve loved you all your life. I still do.”

He saw a shadow of derision cross her face and hurried to say, before she could: “I was a prince of the city, but a hobbled one. I wore their clothes and ate their food, but they kept watch on me, never telling me where you were.

But I lived under their roofs, and took my days from them. I failed to find you. I never forgave myself. It’s the greatest regret of my life, Sydney. That I failed you.”

Sydney’s voice was grown up, a woman’s voice: “I watched for you.” Her face revealed nothing, not the slightest opening.

He knew she had waited for him. He didn’t want to make an excuse, but he forced himself to say the truth: “I went home to tell the Earth that the Tarig will destroy them. I had one chance to go home to deliver that message.

I took it. I had to.”

She was still evaluating his face, tracing the changes. Whether she was disappointed that he looked like someone else, Quinn couldn’t tell. “Heroic,” she said.

He saw how this would be. Let her lash out at him, in anger, in sarcasm. It was what had to happen. But there was no time for the father, for the daughter. The Adda would soon be making the turn, and she had to get back to the balcony.

“You don’t have much reason to care for the Earth.”

“For the Rose? No. I don’t remember it. There’ve been too many things . . . here.”

“I’ve come to plead for it in any case.”

A flicker went over her face. Maybe he should have said, I’ve come for you; come home with me. Just to offer it once. But he couldn’t. He was here for the Rose. He saw how he must seem to her: the loyal soldier, the man without feelings. How far that was from the truth she might never understand. He wanted to say, I threw the chain into the Nigh. For you, Sydney. I gave up the Rose, and put it at the mercy of the Tarig.

He didn’t say it; there wasn’t any time.

Outside the orifice, Quinn could see that the Adda were swooping around to retrace their path.

“I know Helice’s plan,” he said. “I want her. She’ll betray you in the end. I know her so well. . . . I don’t expect you to believe me. But I’m going to stop her. Give her to me and I’ll give you something in return. By God, I’ll give you the Tarig.”

An ironic smile. “They belong to you? I didn’t notice that.”

Her words were all measured and controlled. Oddly, amid this momentous discussion, he noticed that she spoke English with an accent. How strange. She spoke English with an Entirean accent. It slashed at him, somehow worse than anything.

She gazed at him with dead-eyed calm. There wouldn’t be any recriminations, then. If she’d been angry, he could have begged her pardon. If she’d been sad, he could have let it cut him. But she had moved past him. There was nothing except to plod on and lay his offer out.

“The Tarig have a tie to the Heart, the place they came from. They return to it, perhaps to replenish themselves. I know they’re altered beings. Pasted on to a living form. I’m going to cut them off from the source.”

“Heroic,” she said again, so cold and modulated.

“My God, don’t you care at all?” It rushed out of him, misdirected and desperate.

“Care?” Sydney’s face tightened, emotion in the corners. “I’d care if I thought you could cut them off. Then I’d care.”

But not about Earth. Not about him. “I have a way. It’s a gift given me from a Tarig lord.”

“One of your friends.”

After a beat he gave up the idea of arguing. “Yes, if that’s how you want to put it. He gave me a key. I’ll use it, and then I’ll bring you to the brink of the Heart and you can do with it what you will.” He watched her as she struggled to believe him. “In return, I want the Earth. I want Helice Maki. I won’t let you burn the Rose, Sydney. I know you’ve suffered. But you can’t help her kill the Rose.”

“The only reason I’m listening to you is that you never used the weapon. You threw it in the river.”

“What makes you think I did?” And how could she know that?

“We just know, that’s all.”

We. His mood fell grim. Helice knew. But by her silence, Sydney would say no more.

She looked out the orifice. The end of the bridge was coming into sight. “Yes, then.” She rose. “You can have her. I’ll trade you. Helice for the Ascendancy.”

She stood on the brink of climbing down. She laughed, and she was bright and beautiful when she did. “I can’t believe I’d trust you.” Shaking her head, she crouched down, watching for her chance to descend.

“Mo Ti,” he began, and her eyes flashed at hearing his name. “Mo Ti begs you to return him to service.”

“Why should he hesitate?”

“He told me about Helice’s plan—and, because I guessed the dreams of the Tarig were your doing, he told me of your plans as well. He’s won me as your ally. If you’ll have me.”

“Mo Ti told you,” she said. It sounded almost like an Eastern European accent. It made him sick that she was losing her hold on English. But it couldn’t matter, it didn’t matter.

“He may not return to service.”

There, she had cut off Mo Ti, too.

“It might be hard to trust him anymore,” she continued. “After he’s been with you.” She was casual with these cuts. She was an expert.

She looked closely at him. “They changed your eyes.” He nodded, numb. “You don’t look like yourself anymore.”

“I hope I’m changed.” That got a small reaction from her. But there was one thing more he had to say: “The Tarig lord. Lord Inweer. A few days ago he killed your mother.”

She stared at him, still no expression.

“He beat her to death when he discovered she tried to help me destroy the engine at Ahnenhoon.” She had a right to know that Johanna was dead.

“You knew there is an engine?”

Sydney nodded, then looked down through the opening. Glancing back at him, she asked, “Are you coming with me, then? To take Helice?”

“Yes. Let me go first. I’ll help you down”

“I don’t need help.” She descended.

They were coming in to the mansion. Quinn called up to Yat Pang in the Adda’s sinus cavity. “We’re ready!”

Yat Pang swung himself down. Sydney was already jumping from the ladder. Quinn scrambled down after her. The Adda was already rising to clear the balcony. Quinn grabbed onto Yat Pang, helping him jump safely.

They were on a large stone balcony, and the procession of Adda was sweeping by, returning to their staging ground.

On one of the Adda, Tai turned around to keep the people on the balcony in sight. They disappeared into the mansion. By the bright, he had just seen the Mistress of the Sway and Titus Quinn. He thought he had seen them.