Prince of Storms (37 page)

She did so. The main door, straight in back.

“Sit down when I say the kind of sentient he is. Chalin…”

She sat down.

Mo Ti had all he needed. He approached the door with a stealth easy to muster on the hard floor. Then turning sideways, he rammed through it, exploding into the next room, swinging his sword around to clear a space.

But the attack came from above. Boots hit him in the head and jaw. As Mo Ti tried to yank his short sword into play, he felt it tear from his grasp, clattering across the floor.

His attacker, who had likely jumped down from one of the raised capsules that dotted the room, drew back to employ a length of pipe, slashing it sideways, coming close enough for the swipe to hiss in Mo Ti's ear. Knife out, Mo Ti rushed forward to slice at an armpit, but his opponent had not made the mistake of swinging too hard. He had not fallen off his stance. A soldier of Ahnenhoon, then.

Mo Ti grinned. Then lunged.

His knife made contact with cloth, came free. The man saw he was overmatched and ducked under one of the boxlike capsules perched on tables. Mo Ti had never seen anything like them. But now there was one of these between him and his quarry.

He couldn't see his opponent. But, then neither could he be seen. He heard shuffling. The man was evading him by moving to the right around the box. Mo Ti would chase him to the right, for a while, and then—

The box flew open, hitting Mo Ti hard in the shoulder, enough to distract him. His assailant let out a whoop and flew at him, aiming the pipe for his temple. Mo Ti leaned back, evading the thrust and at the same time bringing up his knife to let the man impale himself on it.

The attacker fell to his knees, knife protruding from his abdomen. Then he fell backward to the floor.

Mo Ti bent next to him. “Do you wish to die quickly?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me, where is Sen Ni?”

The man croaked a laugh. “After I used her, she needed a long sleep. So I think…she's in bed.”

“Where?” Mo Ti said, knife hand trembling.

“In the binds where you'll never…”

Mo Ti finished the killing, then cleaned his knife on the man's shirt.

He stood up next to the hinged box that had sprung open. Inside was a concave bowl filled with very fine needles. The box looked like a bed for a someone very small. For a youngling, perhaps. He looked around him, frowning.

Moving to the next container, he discovered how to release the cover. Inside, the same. These boxes had been for the children. But to what purpose?

Smash them
, came Tarnya's thought.

And Mo Ti did, walking down the aisles, opening the boxes, smashing the insides with the pipe of his attacker.

When he finished, he left the room, slamming the door firmly shut on whatever horror the boxes might signify. He freed the young ones, pulling off their gags and bonds, and led them to the ship, carrying two of the most traumatized. A small mutiny broke out at the gangway where a few mistook Mo Ti's ship for the one belonging to “De De” and “the sheeper.”

At last they were herded into the main cabin, most too terrified to cry. As they got under way again, Tarnya sent soothing thoughts to the children.

“Tarnya,” Mo Ti interrupted. “Do you see Sen Ni?”

No. But Riod is always looking.

He must be patient. “She is in the binds, then.”

Where we cannot help her.

But Mo Ti looked out the portholes at the Nigh, keeping watch.

THE SHIP KEEPER WAS AN OLD
Y
SLI NAMED
L
AL
. He had a pronounced limp, and his arms looked withered on the vine. He would be no help in a fight.

Quinn passed him on the companionway. “Pull up the gangway. We're leaving.”

“When Ghoris says.”

Quinn looked at him. “She
does
say.” Bowing, the ship keeper nodded compliance and scurried away. Quinn wondered if perhaps Ghoris had not yet ordered it. Was he getting the order of events confused?

Entering the pilothouse, he found her waiting for him. Ghoris. He stopped at the threshold.

“What are you staring at?” she said, clear as you please.

He was much struck at the sight of her sitting in her pilot's chair. A yearning welled up in him. He wanted something from her, but he was afraid of what he would get.

She peered at him from small, beady eyes. “Where bound, Titus?”

“To kill the navitar Geng De. Find him.” Then he knew what he wanted from Ghoris. It surprised him. He wanted her to tell him that he wasn't a navitar. He wanted her to say, Nistothom wakened you in time.

Instead she whispered, her gaze like a drill, “For the daughter. You used to be for the daughter.”

“She's with Geng De,” he said, as though that covered the topic. But he wasn't going after Sydney; he was going for Geng De. Why not admit that all he thought about was the killing?

Ghoris's lip curled. She raised her arms in a swift gesture and the ship lurched, then rushed across the mudflats toward the river. In another moment she turned her great body and pointed to the ship's prow. The sound of the funnel crashing into its cradle, dipping into the Nigh.

He found himself kneeling in front of her. “Your blessing, Ghoris. Please.”

She growled, “I don't bless such as you.”

“I am what I have to be.”

“Whence the dark joy?”

In a fury, he grabbed her knee. “Bless me, you damned hag!”

Shoving him away, she stood up and thrust her head into the membrane above the dais, reaching her hands into the foam.

He watched her in awe as she grasped the binds in her hands.

The plunge enveloped him like a narcotic. He was wide awake. A navitar. His sight, vivid and devastating—his one thought,
Kill him
.

“Not what was supposed to happen!” Geng De shrieked.

Deep in the binds, the vessel creaked under the pressure of river matter. Sen Ni lay unconscious, unaware of all the damage she had caused, lying limp and useless, eyes crusted shut. She looked ugly and incompetent—and worse, she smelled.

“Not, not, not!” He kicked at her nest of blankets. “You and your Inyx beasts, who rape the mind!” He should have
woven
them, but he had never seen them in the binds as
important
. Had never looked. They were
beasts
!

Swirling around, he saw all the threads of the world hanging down from above, rippling, demanding his attention. He pushed them away, banished them with his will—grown very strong now, oh yes—and looked at the
reality of Tan Hao's death. It was not a
possibility
. It had just
happened
. And all the little ones.... Geng De threw back his head and howled in grief.

“All my…all my…little ones.” He sank onto the pilot's chair. Sobs racked him. “My little ones.”

A Chalin monster named Mo Ti had snatched them away. But there was no time to fix things—and how was he to drown the children without Han Tao?—but no time even if he could, because of the thing that Titus Quinn was doing.

“Not happening.” Geng De reached out, using his fingers to sense the filaments, the threads of this man whose future had just become more clear than ever—the regent, the man of the Rose, the
hsien
of the Entire. Titus Quinn. Somehow his future was impinging on Geng De's own. Not, not…

He took the red filaments in his hand. As he did so, he saw that Titus was already speeding on his way into the binds.

“No!” Geng De jerked around to face Sen Ni again. “His strands keep coming unraveled! You horrid girl—you could have helped me. But you chose the children, chose for them to be mortal…and now they are.” His voice slid into a growl. “I'm going to be alone. Forever.”

Tears fell down his face. “Sen Ni,” he whispered, drained of high emotion. He let himself see her in the old way, as a warrior princess who would have been a worthy sister and coruler. “Sen Ni, what shall I…
do
?”

It was as though she had spoken.
Fold, Geng De. Fold up the world. It is over.

He nodded, sucking in ragged breaths. How incredibly sad. Little Tiejun. All the young ones. They would have learned everything that he could have taught them. They would have bred among themselves, and the great weaving would have lasted for a time, a very long time. Now, the great peace would only last as long as Geng De.

It gave him a bitter pleasure to think of the weaving ahead of him. The storm walls.
Must hurry. Titus coming.

He banished the threads that drifted around him. Inconsequential now. The cords of the storm walls lay buried deep, and he would have to pursue them fathoms down. No need to hold the Nigh in his hands, to stand up through the membrane above his dais. Having drowned once, he had never needed to slime himself again.

Geng De sat quietly, still as the immeasurable veldt, the limitless midlands, the husk of a beetle. Deep, going deep. The walls were much larger below than above. Thicker, deeper, the walls were ancient beyond understanding. At their roots, the braided cords formed gargantuan cables. And these fell away into the abyss between worlds. It awed even him, who had seen so much. Dare he…tinker…with something so majestic?

Sen Ni urged him on:
Fold.

For a moment he doubted it was Sen Ni. For a moment he thought that she was the fierce side of his own mind: beautiful, warlike, elegant—all the things he could never be.

Things he could never be because a maddened fool had pushed him into the Nigh, and his father had not demanded the Tarig heal him, and he had become the first child navitar. All set in motion because of a stinking cultist who believed superstitions.

But based on truth! The Tarig had prepared for the ultimate defense of the Entire. Roll it up. Then unroll it, all enemies having perished. Once rolled up, it was over, though. For all Geng De's power, he could not re-create the sentient races.

But it could still be good.

He reached out his hand and traced his fingers along one of the cables of the storm walls. The entwined strands throbbed under his touch. Touching brought consternation, swirls of sounds, distant rumbling. He petted it again.

And again.

It began to move under his hand.

And then all of the cables plunging from all the storm walls began an almost imperceptible movement to unbraid. With sheer power and torque, in slow-motion grace, they began to untwist.

“I have him,” Ghoris shouted.

Quinn was out of the door, onto the outside deck. The Nigh layered around him, gentle stripes of time and space, swarming with sentients. They pushed on him as though sharing a too-small room. Or else it was the
quasiwind of the binds. He struggled to remain upright. Here in the depths, the Nigh was an illusion.

Under-sentients wished to see things in familiar ways. Quinn had gone beyond that now. He snapped into a knowledge of how to stand, to be, to ignore the tangle of time streams.

Where, where was the other ship? Not here. He strode to the port side of the deck, and there: a keel hung above. Geng De's ship, outlined in fire. “Rise!” he shouted to Ghoris.

In an instant Ghoris brought them alongside, and he, waiting at the gangway, released the lever. He was riding the ramp down even before it made contact with the other deck, and as it banged into place, he jumped onto Geng De's ship. Rushing to the main cabin door, he put his hand on the hatch release with a stitch of fear that there might be rows of sentients sitting on the benches inside, the drowned navitars of his vision.

The cabin, empty.

He rushed up the companionway, sword drawn. Threw open the door.

Geng De kneeled by Sydney's unconscious form.

He held a small dagger, a gleaming stiletto. “If you take another step, I will slit her throat.”

Quinn stopped, very carefully; he did not move. The dagger rested on her windpipe. Geng De was a rumpled, red-clothed gnome crouched beside his daughter, fifteen feet away, too far to launch himself.

All he needed to do was to advance, and while Geng De was slitting Sydney's throat, he would take his head off.
Kill him
. But he paused.

His gaze rested on Sydney's face. She lay sleeping, a lamb for slaughter. An acute pain ripped through him, dragging mercy and love in its wake.

Geng De's voice again: “Do not move one bit. Or I will slice open her throat.”

Something broke inside him, something bulky and inhuman, like a continent of ice shattering. He was a father, not a sack of duty and heroism, even if it was for the world. This was his daughter. Wasn't she why he had begun? Wasn't she why he had come to this terrible land? Wasn't this his last, his very last, chance for redemption? It surely was. He would finally free her.
God in whatever heaven you occupy, let me do this good thing at last.

With inexpressible relief, he decided he would not move forward and jeopardize her life. He would beg Geng De to spare her.

Then he saw the cables. Far away, but very close, the cords of the storm walls. And they were slowly twisting undone. Geng De held the knife with his right hand, and with his left, he touched the cords, fraying them.

Quinn tightened his grip on his sword. A billion sentients would die because of one man and his daughter.

In that instant he knew that he had to relinquish her. No matter the cost to himself, or to her. No matter how painful. Nothing in the world ever promised that it would be easy, that you could live with the choices you made. And some choices would break you, and still, you must make them. In full knowledge of what he was sacrificing, he decided to attack Geng De.

But to no avail. He could not move.

Geng De giggled. “Oh, caught in the web!” His eyes sparkled in mirth. “Woven solid, at last! While you stood wrapped in your garbled thoughts, I finished you. Woven!”

Locked in place. The only thing that moved was his mind, his plummeting mind. He had squandered his chance to kill the boy navitar.

Using his cane, Geng De dragged himself up from the floor. He advanced with careless ease. Grabbing Quinn's sword, he hurled it down the companionway. Quinn's knife, ripped out of his belt, followed, clattering down the stairs. With his enemy disarmed, Geng De dented Quinn's neck with his stiletto. “This was always my favorite future. Did you see this one?” He seemed annoyed that Quinn could not react. “I suppose it would have made no difference to you. All your futures are so bad.”