Prince of Storms (17 page)

Venn plunged on. “Oh dear, I think Iritaj will have to keep you sitting here through the whole ebb. You are not softened up yet, not in the least.” She rose and raised her hand to cut a travel slit in the air. Turning back, she said, “Good for you. Give him a challenge.” She smirked, a practiced expression, and one that Anzi had helped the Jinda ceb learn. It had spread wildly through Manifest and the submanifests, and it made Anzi glad to see they still used it. Maybe she wasn't a total pariah.

Without saying more, Venn stood up from her seat and snapped away. Anzi, her mood vastly improved, decided that Venn was a potential friend. It comforted her to think so, just as it comforted her to think that Titus missed her desperately and wished that she had not gone.

As it turned out, Iritaj did keep Anzi waiting into the ebb, but at last someone came for her. Entering the Beautiful One's domicile, she was determined to take Venn's advice and submit to Iritaj's disciplines, whatever they were.

Iritaj was not alone. In his spacious receiving room he sat with three others, but there could be no mistaking Iritaj. Of considerable heft, he sat so far shoved into a chair it looked like he might be trapped in it.

When his quiet stare seemed to imply that she was interrupting, Anzi said, “Tindivir said you would give me a hearing.”

“Did he?” Iritaj rasped. “Must I listen to you as well as teach you?” He waved an answer away, although Anzi knew better than to respond to such a gibe.

His skin was milky brown, much lighter than most of the coloration she had seen today. With coloration the only clue, it was difficult at first glance to discern gender—that latest addition to their makeup. For instance, the Jinda ceb could see no reason for breasts, nor did females select a tapering
waist. They had decided to adopt customary genitalia, hidden, however, by their outer derma. All this Anzi had learned in a quick summary from Tindivir.

“Nan Da Iritaj,” Anzi said, trying to recoup, “thank you for seeing me.”

One of those present said, “Be welcome Ji Anzi. It was brave of you to come.”

Iritaj cut a look at the speaker. “That one spoke for you in Manifest, so she joins us here today.” He gestured Anzi to an empty chair of the deep and padded kind Iritaj seemed to favor. Above his head on the steep walls the forma clustered so closely, it seemed the hut would cave in. For now, the only assembled pieces were the chairs.

“First, as to Nistothom,” Iritaj said. “He has retreated from public life. But his life art is a small clot on his back. He does not recover.”

She couldn't help but point out their role in this. “It was harsh, to expunge his art.”

Another person spoke up. “She has come to teach us.”

Anzi turned to this individual. “Please pardon me.”

Iritaj nodded. “So you have asked of us. Pardon. Thus we are here.” After a pause, he said, “I will help you. In Manifest, we have decided to help you.”

He went on, “You have asked our pardon for your actions. Understand, Ji Anzi, that we do pardon you. We grant that you were impelled to these actions by your love of certain people and outcomes. But you must also understand that in the Jinda ceb Horat way, those actions were insulting to us. You know our history. How we were once fierce individuals and warlike. After the Tarig cut us away, we evolved in our separate time frame. We had a million million days to advance from barbarism to a high culture. During that time we learned to value a commonality of decision and effort. We have grown toward a life in which seldom does one person put the whole at risk. This you knew.

“It is easy to pardon, but difficult to trust again. However, if you take on a journey of life art, our acceptance would come easier.”

Life art? But that was impossible. She hardly knew how to respond.

Iritaj went on. “To create your life art would require that you grow a knowledge system. As the Jinda ceb have developed.”

“Inside my body?”

“Yes.”

It was the last thing she had expected. She tried to sort through the implications.

Iritaj's derma contracted in irritation. “Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Nan Da.” To develop life art was an honor; an opportunity. But where would she display such art? Perhaps they would devise some garment that would allow it. But it would mean…taking in a knowledge system. Their computational abilities that resided inside.

Iritaj seemed to understand her hesitation. “We can undertake this easily. But it may be a difficult adjustment for you.”

“Would I participate in Manifest?”

Iritaj's head swirls tightened. “Not to further your ends. Only Jinda ceb matters come to Manifest. You must honor our neutrality.”

It would have been too much to hope for.

“You will carry your display on your being.”

“On a special garment?”

“It would not be on a garment, but on your skin. Just as it is on our own skin.”

She stared at him, and all four of the Jinda ceb watched her carefully in return.

“You will wear a backless garment that will keep your display public. As we all proclaim our life art in public.” He spread his hands to include the others in the room. “So we have decided among ourselves, those who spoke for you in Manifest, and those who spoke against. Two on each side of the dispute, lest we err on the side of leniency or punishment.”

“On my skin?” Anzi finally managed to utter.

“It can be done.”

She wanted to ask why
on her skin
, but it might not seem respectful, and besides, she knew why. So that she would be like them. Their clothes were of their bodies. She would not take off and put on her life art. She would be her life art, the very essence of Jinda ceb practice.

“What else changes? Will I become a Jinda ceb? In my body, or way of thinking?

“That would be impossible. But your body will have a state of being whereby you can enter Manifest and know what it knows. You can read, converse, explore. If you choose. If not, do not use your capabilities.”

“Will my life art always be there?”

He shifted in his chair. “If you
choose
, Anzi. Erase it if you wish. If you ignore your capabilities, you will not know that they exist.”

“How long would it take to have a display?”

“I cannot tell. How far does your vision reach? No one can say who Ji Anzi is, but we shall learn. Do you accept?”

They all sat still, waiting silently for yes or no. Oh, Titus, she thought, and wished that he were here. She was already altered in her husband's eyes. Now this. But the honor of participating in life art would give her standing among the Jinda ceb. She would become a more effective emissary. She wanted to ask for time to consider, but it would be ungracious to hesitate over this high honor. And she needn't use her capabilities. They would be suppressed, if she wished.

“I accept.”

One by one the three others stood and opened their travel slits, snapping away, no doubt to gossip and report to Manifest.

“Bravely done, Anzitaj,” Iritaj said, bestowing upon her the last syllable of his name.

She wondered what Titus would think of a wife so changed. But from the outside, it would only be a picture on her back. And it was too late now; she had been accepted into the House of Iritaj.

RIOD SOARED WITH HIS HERD MATES
, spiraling into the sky and into the night thoughts of the Entire. At his side, Emka, adding her fierce will to the force of the thousand mounts. Together they projected Riod's vision outward, a dream for this ebb that would reach each sentient, deflected only by the dreamless Tarig. Riod told the story that had been told to him by his best rider, how the fragile sky of the world must have food to live; how without sustenance it would fail. And how the one styling himself regent would destroy the roamlands, the steppes, and the primacies, bringing them all down, down, into darkness. Riod felt Emka at his side, giving him strength. Our army will win, Emka assured him. The Entire will rise up. We will awaken them, warn them, tell them the story that only we can tell. He and Emka were of like mind on this. Riod thrust himself forward, into the landscape of dreams.

Ci Dehai stood on the ramparts of Ahnenhoon, gazing at the empty war plains. The land lay quiet, rippling with a gentle Deep Ebb light. He could not have said why the sight of peace made him uneasy, yet it did. Perhaps the dreams that had driven him from his bedchamber set the ebb's tone. He looked up at the sky, finding in the turbulent folds of the bright a mirror of his heart.

Below, and across the Gathering Yard, his army was billeted, fortifying the Repel from Tarig—or any other—intrusion.

Gone were the days of Paion dirigibles welling up in the middle of the air, striking fear and also presenting a target. Gone but missed, he had to admit. It was good to know who your enemy was, and the Paion had been sturdy foes. Now the enemy might be the solitaires, or the forces of Rim City under the banner of Sen Ni. His officers were under orders to conduct vigorous training exercises for the troops, lest they forget it might still come to battle.

One of them approached now, his lieutenant, Han. Ci Dehai watched him guardedly. This was the damnable legacy of the dark navitar, that they must look on each other as possible assassins.

He signed the scroll—orders for the coming day—and only after the captain left did he turn back to the plains.

A primacy's reach was the grandest sight in the Entire. The two storm walls converged, forming a curving wall of blackness, like the prow of a ship cutting into the void. What lay beyond the storm walls? Before, he had always thought, the Paion. His imagination went no further. These days one was forced to think of where the Paion—the Jinda ceb—had been, and where the Rose was, and the Miserable God only knew what else.

Ci Dehai turned his mind from these fancies. Beneath his feet, the adamantine stones of the Repel lay quiet, purged of the throbbing of the engine—that engine banished by the man who once had known little of command and less of combat.

Now Ci Dehai had been instructed to send a small and, above all, loyal task force of soldiers to the Ascendancy in case of defensive need. He had suggested this before to the regent, but Quinn had demurred.

He wondered what might be afoot in the realm that the regent had changed his mind. But the man's daughter planned to overthrow him. Surely that was enough.

In Venn's domicile, Obbwanir stood at the door, looking into the luxurious Deep Ebb that darkened the roofs and made the huts look like black spears. Her people had had eons of war. Even before the War of the Entire, there had
been war among her own kind. Now war came again, or soon would. And the commonality would have nothing to do with it, by concurrence of Manifest.

She turned her gaze from the village roofs to the lavender folds of the sky. Peace, she thought, was a harsh choice. They had fought once for the Entire, spending their precious energy on involutions at the plains of Ahnenhoon. Would they abandon their responsibility now? Would Manifest remain unmoved, even when the last day of the Entire waxed into being? And if not, would they choose to destroy the Rose universe? If they did, each one of them would carry this into their derma, showing themselves craven and violent. Who could bear to look upon such life art?

To Obbwanir's surprise, Venn joined her at the hut's threshold, clad simply in her plainself.

“Learn to sleep through these dreams,” Venn said, “or you will be no use to me.”

“But what will we do, Complete One, if the bright cannot last?”

“Oh, we will just go back where we were.”

“But that kind of life…Manifest concluded this was much better.”

Venn made a disdainful noise with her tongue. “At least then we could sleep undisturbed. Tell Manifest to
do
something about this dream nonsense.”

“We do not know how.”

“We could shoot those great, horned, galloping things.”

Obbwanir was horrified. “You must not say that.”

“Well. That is what they always said in Manifest.” Venn huffed off to bed.

Anzi's dreams were laced with poison. The Jinda ceb potions moved through her, resetting the workings of her body. She slept and woke; then slept again, resuming the awful dream.

Titus sat on a carved throne, with the skin of a dragon draped over his feet. All the sways were in chains before him on the great plaza of the Ascendancy. He raised a scepter, pointing to the bright, bringing shadows on the faces of those assembled. Jouts and Hirrin moaned in fear. At his side stood Johanna. Titus reached out to hold her hand.

Someone was at Anzi's side, gentling her. Had she cried out? Her nurse
held a cup of water for her to drink. Anzi sat up against her pillows, taking what liquid she could to slake a ferocious thirst.

“Sideree,” she whispered.

“Anzitaj. It will become easier.”

She slumped down onto the bed again, giving in to sleep, trying not to imagine that her back was glowing.

Before he threw off his covers, Breund had lain awake for an hour avoiding treasonous dreams. Rising from his bunk, he performed his ablutions at the water fount, and donned a tunic coat over his sleep silks. If he could not sensibly rest, he could make a report to his superiors.

In the main cabin, Lord Inweer slept in the pilot's chair, as was his custom. Not that he slept as a normal sentient, but his eyes were closed and he would not be productive of conversation.

Settling himself before the workstation, Breund touched the shadow line that brought his report scroll into dimension. He wrote with his stylus:

Since leaving the Radiant Arch Primacy we have been traveling in the Bright River Primacy, sometimes descending for the ebb, but most times remaining aloft. The lord has been quiet since the terrible event of the immolations....

He glanced over at Inweer. Still asleep. It made him uneasy to write reports in front of the lord, but the lord could not read the report from over there.

They had been together fifteen days, and small things loomed large in the close quarters. They spoke little, but there was an interaction of movement and glance that defined a gross communication. It was a respite when Lord Inweer retreated to his private quarters. But he seldom did, for he loved the pilot chair and seemed to change course often for the pleasure of it. Unless it was a convoluted plan for finding the other brightships, a fear that grew in Breund especially after the Gond forest.

…
which has seemed to darken his mood.

He erased this. Speculation on mood was unproductive.

Lord Inweer continues to pilot the ship manually, his constant preference. He has said to me that he has not seen much of the Entire, a statement that greatly surprised me.

He removed the comment about surprise.

…
since his post had always been Ahnenhoon. He displays the land below us in large array, peering at things such as geography and the occasional Laroo city that we pass. Although Lord Inweer appears to seek out habitation, we know better than to descend near populations. There are pent-up hatreds of the Tarig lords, and word has spread that they deserve burning. I have sternly warned Lord Inweer that we will not be welcome in cities.

It was a curious thing to warn or direct the lord. Sometimes Breund wondered if he was the warden or the lord was. Lord Inweer sat in the pilot's chair, which seemed more and more like a command center. Nor did the lord ever defer to Breund or ask permissions. Breund did not require it, but one would think, since so much depended on Breund's good reports, that the lord might show some respect. Not that he was ever arrogant, or if he was arrogant, not that he was ever quite challenging. Well, once, in the forest.

It still troubled him to be writing about the Tarig personage while the lord occupied the cabin. He glanced over and found, disconcertingly, that the lord was watching him.

“So late in the ebb, hnn?”

“I could not manage to sleep. Please pardon me if I…awakened you.”

Inweer cocked his head. “I do not need rest as you do.”

“But perhaps it is restful, to be quiet?”

The lord regarded him for a few beats. “You do not know me.”

Breund had not meant to be presumptuous. “Of course not, Lord Inweer.”