City Without End (47 page)

Her destination: the wharf and Geng De. He had not come to her since the massacre in the city—too long an absence for one who wanted to be her advisor.

From the wharf she saw that the sea had fallen to an amethyst hue, reflecting the bright in Deep Ebb. As she boarded the navitar’s vessel, her followers milled on the dock, waiting for her. The ship keeper met her at the main cabin door, leading her to the companionway.

But as the ship keeper began to ascend the stairs, Sydney placed a restraining hand on the Hirrin’s back. “Alone.” The ship keeper retreated as Sydney climbed the stairs.

Geng De sat at a small writing desk. Turning at her entrance, he spread his arms in welcome.

She went to him, exchanging the kiss that, for Geng De, sealed their bond. “My Sen Ni,” he said. “You should be resting, like me—after your triumph in the city.”

“But where have you been? It’s been six days.” Her tone was more blameful than she had planned.

His expression turned pained. “No. That is not how it will be between us. You will not chastise me for what I do. I have kept you alive. I have dissolved the bad strands.” His youthful voice had an odd rasp. Perhaps he wasn’t well.

He went on. “The binds showed me a future: you on the junked float in the street. I saw how the lord climbed up and drew a handful of claws across your neck. You slumped against him, and before any of us could climb to your side, you were dead. Then, all who came to your aid were slaughtered.”

He gazed at her until he judged she had absorbed that vision.

“Instead, Sen Ni, you turned the Tarig line away from massacre. You brought help to the injured. These sentients now love you.” He gestured toward the pier where the crowd waited for her. “You did well. You did what I knew you were capable of. But
I
wove that future in your strands.
I
did that.

I am still protecting you.”

She hadn’t thought clearly how the things that were happening might be separated into events that were bound to occur and those that were altered.

It stunned her to think that the confrontation with the Tarig soldiers had been orchestrated by Geng De.

But there were immediate matters before them, serious ones. “What about Helice? We have to know what she’s doing. Have you . . . seen . . . anything?”

Agitated, the navitar struggled to his feet. “No. Do you think me a magician? Performing for a carnival?”

This was a new tone of voice, and she didn’t like it. “She needs watching, Geng De. I had hoped to find the doors. Now, maybe she’s done it first.”

It was then that she noticed a cane leaning against the bulkhead. He took it for support, shuffling to the nearest porthole.

“That’s not who needs watching,” he murmured, staring out.

“If you’re tired, then rest,” she said, trying to soften the tension in the room.

He turned to her, looking bemused. “I will. I will rest when I must and follow the binds as I can. Neither you nor I decide, but it comes to us. By all that’s bright, sister!” He waved the cane at her. “No one has ever done it before—to take the day and make it conform. No one else is a child of the river. But even for such as me, it takes from me.
Takes
from me.”

His lecturing tone grated, making her push harder. “What about my father? Surely you’ve seen
him
in the binds.”

“Oh yes. Him I’ve seen.” Standing with his back to the light of the portal, his shadowed face was impossible to read.

“Must I beg you to tell me?”

“That was the vision I wrestled with, the one that sapped the strength from my limbs. I
wrestled
with it.” He leaned on the cane, as though just the memory of it made him weaker.

She waited, suddenly fearful.

“I see a thread that floats almost in my grasp, where he acknowledges you.

A beloved daughter. The wronged child. And he lays the Entire at your feet.”

The simple words undid her. Her face heated up, and she turned away.

Beloved daughter
. . .

“And then,” Geng De went on, “I’ve also seen . . . other things.” His gaze slid away.

Her father would die. The navitar was going to tell her that he would die in the Ascendancy. She stood frozen. A glint of the ebbing sky struck the porthole as the vessel rocked at anchor.

Geng De’s voice was low and soft: “I’ve seen him cast you down.”

“No, he would not . . .”

The navitar’s voice rode over hers: “I’ve seen him king himself.”

“That is not a true vision,” she snapped.

He only gave a small, insufferable smile. “Now
you
are the navitar?”

“I . . . I am his daughter.” It was feeble, embarrassing.

“Daughters can be sacrificed. As surely you recall?”

She spun around, throwing out the words with venom. “Have better visions, Geng De.”

Now a silence came between them, cold and prolonged. What was she saying? Geng De didn’t decide what to see.
Neither you nor I decide, but it comes
to us.
What she’d first feared he’d say—that her father would die in the floating city—was now preferable to
I’ve seen him king himself
.

Her voice faltered. “King, you say?”

He limped closer to her, his face showing a trace of compassion. “It is a thread. Hope for a different one. But be prepared, Sen Ni, for the worst.”

For years she’d been prepared for the worst from Titus Quinn. Why did it hurt so much now?

Geng De put a hand on her arm and said, his eyes pleading: “Learn to trust me, as I do you.”

“Trust is a hard thing.” When she thought of
trust
, it was only Riod who came to mind.

“Hard things are just beginning.” He sagged against his cane and made his way to the closest chair, where he eased himself down.

Ashamed to take so little note of his condition, she brought him a cup of water from a pitcher on a nearby table.

Holding the glass without drinking, he looked up at her. “When will you call me brother?”

She tried to control her voice, but it was husky in her throat. “Don’t ask me today.” She went to the stairs and turned back. Geng De was her advisor now; without him, who did she have?

“Come to me soon.”

“Yes.”

Cixi went to her secret meeting in full view of the world. She might have taken a secret passage; there were passageways everywhere. They riddled the floating city, ancient, between-the-walls routes, some so old even Cixi could not remember which high prefect had had them forged. But some things were more reliable in full daylight.

She was accompanied by a procession of legates and consuls snaking through the great plaza and over the bridges. Her formally clad entourage made its way toward the hill of mansions to pay an imperial visit to the darkling in his cell. Parasols up, the attendants shielded the high prefect from even the ebb’s bruised light, and carried scrolls so that work could be done in progress. The outing took a very long time, a grand sight, even in Deep Ebb.

Civil servants and visiting petitioners who, at the first sign of trouble, had run in confusion to their chambers below crept back when the dragon court’s delegation was sighted. They craned necks to make out the smallest personage, the one who wore the dragon icon on her jacket. Cixi hobbled onward, looking regal, she presumed, whereas her pace was dictated solely by the God-blasted platform shoes.

She was attended by the clerk Shuyong, should she wish to compose messages or have a minion on hand for errands. None of the legates with her this ebb knew the clerk; he was new and coached by Cixi how to act.

Subprefect Mei Ing bent close, murmuring, “The lords are everywhere, Your Brilliance. Will they let us pass?”

Without deigning to look at Mei Ing, Cixi muttered, “I’ll see the gondling.”

Mei Ing fell silent then. By the expression on Cixi’s face, no words were welcome; Mei Ing could not imagine that even the Tarig would question her mistress in such a mood.

Cixi noted Mei Ing’s cowering aspect with satisfaction. They must all understand that she went to the darkling to bid him fry in the bright. Even the lords could understand that High Prefect Cixi would demand to see the man who had made a fool of her. On his infamous return to the Bright City the time before, Titus Quinn had pretended to be someone else. The traitor had gone so far as to brazenly seek an audience with Cixi. And she had let him pass. Even the lowliest clerk knew Cixi’s fury over this humiliation. And they were not wrong.

A bird flitted close over their heads. Cixi didn’t allow herself to look up.

Of course the fiends would have their spies about. In the last few days the loathsome flying vermin had even swooped down into the Magisterium, taking in views of the balconies and windows there. No, she would not take note of them. Most people thought they were favored creatures of the Tarig, and they
were
favored, the vile little spies. Well let them peek. All they could see was the prefect and her entourage.

The procession of the dragon’s court reached the palatine hill. Through the steep and narrow avenues, the functionaries passed throngs of Tarig who waited and watched in their silent manner. Cixi looked to neither the right nor the left, affecting single-minded purpose, despite her deep disquiet.

She was a woman in desperate need of news. For the first time in a reign of one hundred thousand days, she was bereft of information. The lords had not summoned Cixi, had not sent word, had not
informed
her of any details regarding the astonishing events of the last days: The damage to Lord Ghinamid’s Tower; what would be done with Titus Quinn; what they had learned from Hel Ese, and why they had taken her from her prison cell in the Eye.

Her spies had learned that Titus Quinn had been tortured in the street. But he still lived, they said. That might prove useful. She needed him for information and guessed that he had some pieces she lacked. Oh, how it galled.

A Tarig lord blocked her path.

Cixi bowed. “Lord Echnon, my life in your service, I will see the darkling.”

“High Prefect,” the lord acknowledged. “Which darkling?”

“The creature who wormed his way into my court. The gondling who came in disguise and caused the death of our beloved Lord Hadenth. The darkling who stood before my throne and lied.” She bowed again, not so low this time. “That one.”

“Ah.”

“May I pass?”

Standing aside, he waved her forward.

“He is caged where, Bright Lord?” She said this pleasantly enough, but she had lost face by having to ask what she should have been already told.

The lord pointed to the mansion of Lady Demat, and the line of legates got under way once more.

Quinn’s jailors brought him water and small, tough bricks of food. They might be poison, but he ate them. He slept what seemed like long hours, perhaps induced by the food. A Tarig came in once to clean his wounds, but Quinn was in a stupor; all he knew was that it was not Lord Oventroe.

The lord had abandoned him.

He sat on his pallet and leaned forward with his bad arm braced on his thigh. If Oventroe was washing his hands of him, then the whole strategy of coming here had failed. The lord might have reasons for delay, but Quinn could no longer rely on rescue from that quarter.

There remained another angle. Ugly beyond bearing, the idea had been wheedling into his consciousness over the last hours. It was time to use every scrap of leverage he had.

He managed to rise. Staggering over to the bars of light that separated his cell from a small antechamber, he shouted for his guards.

A Hirrin appeared in the outer door. He was impassive and cold-eyed, like all his Hirrin guards.

“Tell Lady Demat I have to see her. I’ve got something important to tell her.”

The Hirrin blinked. “Next time I see her I might mention that.”

And she might slit your long, ugly throat, too, he thought. “Tell her, if you value your career in the Magisterium.”

The door slammed.

He had not handled that well. Next time he would try a more diplomatic approach.

But at his next opportunity, it was the same Hirrin guard, and he responded no better to flattery than he had to threats.