City Without End (9 page)

The dreams, when they came, were all of the Tarig. They were bodiless, waves riding in light, pulses crying out in a shrieking brightness. He followed their essence, tracing pathways of pure thought that converged and separated. Here was Lord Hadenth, half mad, his pathway stuttering, dimpling into a momentary dark fold. Over there, Chiron, her presence swelling and beating like a heart. They had no true form. They chose bodies to suit.

He drifted, just beneath consciousness. On the deck above, Ghoris roared, still strong in her command of the binds: “They ride, ride. See the horned beasts, coming through the air! See who rides the beasts? It is the girl of your loins, Titus. She. She brings the dreams.”

At first all he could see was eddies of fire. But there, a shadow flying above, throwing a silhouette of an Inyx over the deck.

Quinn was burning up. His mouth filled with molten consciousness. The porthole view showed a flying beast, horns curving backward, leading a wingless armada. The shadows passed overhead, sparks shedding from their hooves, hitting the submerged deck like hail.

The ship was moving up, river matter slipping past the portholes. Quinn struggled to sit up. Shaking off his stupor, he crawled over to Mo Ti, who was still unconscious.

He shook the big man. “The dreams,” he croaked, trying to find his voice. “They’re Inyx dreams. Inyx, aren’t they?”

Mo Ti stirred, pawing at the air around him. Quinn moved off, waiting for the big man to come round. From the galley, Quinn heard rattling, signifying that the ship had surfaced and the ship keeper was preparing food. Ghoris would be starving.

Quinn settled himself cross-legged on the floor, waiting for Mo Ti to wake. Ghoris was quiet in her pilot’s chair above. But she’d already told him:
Sydney rides the beasts. She brings the dreams.
Could the Inyx send their minds so far? Could Sydney ride with them?

Mo Ti roused slowly. He sat on the bunk now, hands on his massive thighs, breathing like a bellows.

“Tell me about the dreams, Mo Ti.”

The giant stared at him from underneath heavy brows. “To each man his own dreams.”

“Except if they’re all the same.”

“Mo Ti’s dreams are different from other men.”

“I don’t think so.” Quinn paused while the ship keeper passed through the cabin, carrying a fragrant tray of food up the companionway. “Did you dream?”

“No.”

“I think you did. About fire.” When Mo Ti wouldn’t meet his gaze, he ventured, “Everyone’s dreaming of the Tarig. Anzi dreams of them, and I do. Not a coincidence, is it.”

Mo Ti stood, rubbing his great arms. “Mo Ti takes a piss.” He went out to the deck.

Quinn heard the ship keeper talking to Ghoris, urging her to eat. He thought about the visions in the binds; had he really seen the Inyx flying overhead, or was it the navitar’s words that made him imagine it?

Out on the deck, Quinn found the ship riding a sliver of the endless Nigh, a good mile or more off the storm wall. The dark palisade rose hugely into the sky, a storm-clad wall that bordered the river on one side to the limit of sight. Far above, the bright met the wall in a curdle of gravity and shadow. Nothing else rode the river, nor was there any sign of life on the shore.

It was into this river—some version of it—that Quinn had thrown the cirque, letting the river take it, transform it. The
threat
of the cirque, however, was still as powerful as ever.

He approached Mo Ti, who stared across the river into the colossal stretch of the primacy, whichever primacy this was. They stood side by side for a few minutes.

“You’ve told me part of it. Now tell me the rest, about my daughter.”

The giant regarded him.

Quinn pressed on: “I’m a worried man, Mo Ti. You shouldn’t worry a man with a big weapon.”

Mo Ti noted the change of tactic. “The weapon? But Titus Quinn loves the Entire. So he said.”

“That was before. Before I knew Helice was here with a bigger weapon.” He wondered whether, if he actually had the cirque, this time he would use it. “It’ll distress me to bring down the Entire. But I will.”

Quinn pissed into the river. His stream pierced the river surface and fell deep without seeming to mix. I
would
use it, he thought. And the conviction made him like himself better.

Moving around the prow for a view of the storm wall, Mo Ti gazed up at the silent, hovering turbulence. “Mo Ti did wonder when you would get your warrior’s balls.”

Quinn joined him at the rail. “I want to know about the dreams. The Inyx aren’t just sharing thoughts among themselves and their riders. It’s spreading beyond.”

Mo Ti cut him a sideways glance. “Show me the chain. I would see this killing bracelet.”

“It’s not with me. Near enough, though.”

Mo Ti gave him a flat stare. “Are you a man who desires power?”

“I’ll do what I have to for the Rose. Then I don’t care.”

A cynical smile exposed the giant’s yellow teeth, big as knuckles. “What man does not wish for power?” Quinn didn’t answer. “Would you take the Ascendancy from the Tarig?”

“If I could.” A new thought broke in. Sydney wanted the power. This was what Mo Ti was asking: was he a rival to Sydney? It almost made him laugh.

His daughter wanted to destroy the Tarig. Perhaps, in the aftermath, she wanted to take the Ascendancy. This is what Mo Ti meant when he said she was a power in the land. Ghoris said his daughter rode the Inyx. All of them. If so, and if they accessed dreams or minds, she might well be a power in the land. Would he stand in her way? Not a chance.

Would you take the Ascendancy from the Tarig?
“If she wants it, she’s welcome to it.” It was almost impossible for him to think of an eleven-year-old girl who loved to climb trees and use electronic paints planning to bring down an autocracy. But it wasn’t the disbelief that gave him the sickening stab in his gut. It was the sudden clear view of how little he knew his daughter anymore.

“Now tell me about the dreams.”

They were alone on the deck. Through the porthole Quinn glimpsed the ship keeper setting down a tray of food. Mo Ti stalked the deck, moving around to the port side, looking out again on the land. Quinn followed.

Mo Ti spoke quietly, in that way he had of making you lean a little closer to him to hear. “A story,” he began. While he talked, Mo Ti continued to scan the horizon, watching for pursuit. The man was alert, distrustful of appearances. Perhaps he didn’t understand that they were on board the ultimate stealth vessel.

“A thousand days ago, in one Inyx encampment, Sydney rebelled, saying she would have a free bond with her mount, who was Riod, an Inyx given to mischief and raiding other herds. He was fast and strong, and these qualities Sydney loved. Together they were all for speed and wildness, and each came to love the other, and their bond was free indeed. Soon I joined them on Dis-tanir, and we were four, free-bonded, and calling others to join us. Riod fought Priov for chieftainship of the herd and won. After that, Sydney sent the Hirrin Akay-Wat to the outlying herds urging them to end enslavement of the riders. A great stream of riders and their mounts came into Riod’s encampment. They pledged fealty to Sydney and Riod. The separate Inyx herds joined together, although the lords can never understand it, how voiceless beasts can form a great sway. Or if they do understand, they do not object. The Inyx make excellent war mounts.”

Quinn had known that the Inyx mind powers were highly valued on the battle grounds of Ahnenhoon—even if the species showed no deference to the Tarig.

Mo Ti continued, “Then you attacked the Tarig in their own city, and they knew you were back, looking for the daughter. They thought to keep watch for you through her eyes. They offered to cure the blindness she suffered, and she agreed. You have heard how those seeds bore fruit, how it won my mistress’s heart to the spider. She used her small god to undo what the lords had done, and Sydney was fully sighted, honestly sighted.

“So the sway was filled with the Inyx of many camps, their riders, their hopes for new sight such as Sydney had found. Already Hel Ese is assigned to restoring the power in their eyes, and the mounts do not object, being won over to free bond. The line is long in front of the spider’s tent.

“But each night in the great field, the Inyx were questing. Their powers are small when they act alone. But together, they can cast their thoughts far. Very far. Each night they joined forces to probe the Ascendancy itself, looking for a way to bring it down. They discovered that the Tarig return to a home far away to restore themselves. They do not live as ordinary sentients, but cowardly, shrink back to their home place. At Sydney’s bidding, the Inyx send the image out in dreams, so that all sentients may loathe the false lords.” Mo Ti snorted. “And the Tarig remain ignorant. They do not feel us in their minds, nor do they dream. We may spy as we like and thus Riod does, with the herd’s power. For Sydney’s sake.”

Quinn listened in silent amazement to Mo Ti’s claim of all that his daughter had dared to begin.

The big man went on: “Our aim is to drive the Tarig from their nest. And we may yet claim a victory.” He noted the doubt on Quinn’s face. “There is much you still do not yet know.”

Quinn didn’t move or breathe.

“The Tarig love to say how they descended into form from the Heart and now choose to live in the All. This much they admit. But it is not so noble as they say. They require their land of fire and do not stray far from it. Their visits into body are for a short time or a long time, as the will moves them. No Tarig dies, but returns to his homeland. There, each mixes into the greater like water in a pitcher. Find their entrances to the Heart, their means of returning, and you can control them. If we succeed, your goal also succeeds.”

They mix like water in a pitcher
. A stunning discovery, if true. “You know how they return?”

“Not yet.” Mo Ti squinted into the flatness of the primacy, a view so flat that, using a telescope, one could see the opposite storm wall, there being no curvature of this world.

Quinn felt a stirring, a revelation. “The lords don’t die?”

“No, nor are they born.”

“I’ve seen their children.”

“You have not. They are small adults, made dull of mind.”

Small girl floated in the water. She who had wanted a toy boat.
This was an imbecile? She had been more subtle than that, hadn’t she? Yet Mo Ti said she was only a Tarig made small and dull. He stared into the midlands of the primacy, letting the thought shed its liberation on him.
I never killed a child
.

Small girl was no child. It mattered, and it didn’t matter. At the time he’d thought she was a child, and he held her face beneath the water. Perhaps there was no reprieve. Still, “Thank you,” he whispered.

The disclosure kept rippling out:
The lords don’t die nor are they born
. He thought of Lady Chiron. Well and truly dead, he hoped. He said as much to Mo Ti, describing how Chiron had died, with nothing left of her body.

“Riod says the Heart remembers them. Can spit them out, good as before.” Mo Ti’s face showed what he made of such a thing.

Quinn pieced it together. “Then Chiron’s consciousness could come back. Some earlier version of her, kept safe as a . . . memory? . . . in the Heart.”

Mo Ti shrugged. “So Riod thinks. Who knows what the fiends do?”

The ship keeper came out of the cabin. “Food. The pilot’s leavings, if you care for them.”

He nodded thanks to the ship keeper, but they couldn’t eat yet. The Tarig wanted or needed to go home. But where was that home? Was it a physical entity in the Rose? Or might it be a universe unto itself? “Will you find these doorways, Mo Ti? Will Riod?”

“We live in this hope.”

“Maybe I can help. I have a thing that might be useful.” The correlates. In the secrets of how, where, and when the Entire corresponded to the Rose— and perhaps to other universes as well. He turned to the cabin. “Mo Ti, share a meal with me. The ship keeper brought us food.”

“First tell me your scheme.”

“Over a meal.” Thoughts came in a storm of hope. He had not killed a child. He had not. Amid the larger menace, an unguessed-at reprieve.

Mo Ti quirked his mouth into what might pass for a smile. “You think a man can eat after telling his captain’s secrets?”

Quinn smiled back. “Sure.”

They went for the food. And while they ate, Quinn disclosed a few revelations of his own. Mo Ti chewed his dumplings slowly, considering with profound interest Quinn’s claim that if the Heart was another universe, Quinn might just know how to get there.

Jaq the ship keeper plunged his hands in the soapy water, muttering as he cleaned the pilot’s meal plates. A ship keeper’s duty was to see that the ship kept its customs. And having guests in the navitar’s cabin was not customary. He slammed the cleaned utensils in their drawers. Like all ship keepers he deplored departures from ship custom. But there the two of them were, pressing their mundane concerns on her, and she barely able to sit up, keep her caftan on, and remember not to pass gas in company. Not only that, but the fat eunuch and his companion had eaten all the dumplings, and now Jaq had no luncheon except some pickled momo, a gift from three Gond who had a good journey.