Prince of Storms (19 page)

“Are you Manifest?”

“I am all of us. I have every opinion, every worry, every inquiry. I can be old or young. Now or then. I balance the teachings and tests. When each voice is brought into coherence within Jinda ceb wisdom, then I render judgment.”

“Are you a woman?”

“You are uncertain about Jinda ceb gender; therefore I came to you as both. Is it better to be female?”

They kept asking her that. “Yes.” She decided she'd rather talk to a woman, even if the Jinda ceb didn't really know what one was.

Avva ceb's features became more delicate.

Sen Ni said, “I came to talk to you about the world.”

“Speak about the world, then.”

She hadn't memorized anything to say, but the subject was never far from her reach. Who could let this land die?

Sen Ni pointed at the horizon. “We live in a world with walls. The walls hold our lives. Chalin, Hirrin, Ysli, Jout, Gond, Inyx. And now it holds the Jinda ceb Horat. All this is contained by the land, the walls, the bright. None of it can last long without outside fuel. Do your people know this?”

“I know.”

“But do the Jinda ceb know? All of them? The mothers, fathers, leaders, do they know?”

“I am Manifest. I am they. I know.”

“Well, what will you do?”

“When the time comes, we will leave again.”

She stared at Avva ceb.
Leave?
Just decamp and have done with it, after
all this—after the Long War? That was why they didn't restart the engine. They weren't ultimately threatened by its silence. They would just chop off their minoral and go drifting off wherever they had been before. It made her damn mad.

“If it's so easy to leave, why did you spend ten thousand years trying to come home?”

“Some will choose to stay,” Avva ceb said. “We came home for them.”

“Some of you will die with us.”

“Yes. To die at home. It is a thing we value: a good ending. We have not died for many archons. Some are ready to die.”

“Wouldn't it be better to live?”

“Yes. If we can without killing others.”

“But you killed millions in the Long War! How can you say you don't kill?”

“We killed those who came against us, on a field where soldiers came against soldiers. This death you speak of would kill a cosmos. It is different in quantity, different in kind. I say no. Unless you accomplish this on your own. In that case, we do not intervene.”

So they wanted to reap the benefit of a conflict. “That isn't fair.”

“No, it is not. We have discussed this dilemma for a thousand days. I have decided.”

“Well then, you won't listen to me.”

“I will listen. Avva ceb always listens.”

A cloud of dust appeared in the distance. Sen Ni wondered if it was a dust storm; how far would the projection of reality go?

She watched as the cloud grew. Soon she heard a distant drum of hooves. Her heart jumped. It was great massing of Inyx and riders. Inyx feet reaching for steppe land, riders leaning over curved horns, hair blown back from their fierce faces. She searched the front ranks for Riod. Yes, he was there. A lump came into her throat. He ran with Emka at his side. But he wasn't real. This was a projection of her heart. Behind him was Akay-Wat, and all the others. Mo Ti, too. Her eyes clouded with tears.

She turned back to Avva ceb. “It will all die. This steppe and all the midlands. The Nigh will boil away. How can you stand by? How can you be so
satisfied with yourselves! Help us, Avva ceb. Help us save the storm walls. Make them last, whatever it takes to do it. Let us live.”

“I hear your speech.”

“You should do a lot more than hear!” The mounts and their riders were forming up several hundred yards away. Riod and Emka tossed their heads and rubbed each other's flanks. No heart-sendings came to her. Avva ceb didn't know how to mimic
that
experience. Avva ceb had never ridden across the steps with an Inyx in her mind. Avva ceb was dried up, without guts or passion.

But she had not expected to win easily. “I have some things to trade.”

“Speak freely.”

I always do.
“I have a manifest of my own.”

“This is interesting to me.”

“It's not as big as yours, or as grand. I call it the Entirety. A representative from every sway. We'll meet and judge what's right for the Entire. If you help us, I'll invite the Jinda ceb to send one of their own to the Entirety. You'd be able to make a start in being accepted here. Right now you're not, you know.”

Avva ceb made no response to this, so she plunged on. “I have something more. The Inyx have powers of heart-sendings. You knew?”

“Avva ceb knows.”

“I can persuade the Inyx to speak favorably of you. They are very influential with dreamtime stories.” She left unsaid what
unfavorable
sendings might entail.

Sen Ni went on. “I know what it feels like to be a stranger, a stranger like you. I had to choose to be at home here. Before then, I was an outsider, protecting myself. Nothing mattered. But I've changed. I love this place. I would do anything to save it, and so should you. The Entire is worth loving—it always was, and it still is. That's what I think.”

“Is this what you have come to teach me?”

“Yes.”

“I think your offer is not enough. But I will consider it.”

Avva ceb stepped backward, diminishing in size and clarity. “Good-bye, Sen Ni. It has been interesting talking with you.”

“Remember me, Avva ceb. Remember what I told you.”

The being disappeared.

She still held the hoop in her hand, but the vision of the mounts and riders faded. Before releasing her grip on the handle, she heard a voice, vaguely familiar.

Well done, Sen Ni. It's not every day that Avva ceb expresses
interest
in something. It's why I quit going to Manifest. They'll probably take the hoop from you now. I think I'm in a little trouble about that.

ANZI LAY RESTLESS, HALF DREAMING
, confused by the tumult in her mind.
Close the windows
, she murmured to her helper, Sideree.

The room darkened.

Anzi was drowning in information, her body ablaze with Jinda ceb knowledge: communication, gossip, history, story art, House sagas, House indices, fusion art, submanifests.

She had not quite thought through what her display of life art would mean. She had accepted a computational to dwell in her body. In answer to her questions, Iritaj had spoken of important molecules and digital computation. But it did not make a great deal of sense. In the days of her sojourn among the Jinda ceb, she had found that they were not very good teachers of basic facts. Because their system of instruction depended upon their internal computations, they were unprepared to teach her.

Stirring on her bed, half in and out of sleep, she caught sight of someone new in her room. A regal-looking Jinda ceb female. Nor was she alone. On the other side of the room stood a young woman with strangely dark hair, wearing a scarlet padded jacket and trousers. It was Sen Ni. Improbable as it might be, it was Titus's daughter.

Sen Ni spoke to the other being.
Remember me, Avva ceb. Remember what I told you.

Avva ceb? Then this was Manifest. Manifest, coming clearly to her at last. But how could Sen Ni be in Manifest?

Sen Ni's image faded, leaving only Avva ceb in the room.

“So, Anzitaj” Avva ceb said, “you are part of the commonality, now. Come back again when you are stronger.”

Anzi felt the irresistible pull of sleep. Remarkably, she had broken through to Manifest. The trouble was, so had Sen Ni.

“You have a visitor, Anzitaj.” Sideree touched the shadow line of a window, bringing it into form. Prime of Day shone in from the garden.

Over the last three days, Anzi's visions had come under control. She could decide when to listen or
know
the many levels of information available to her. Mostly, she chose not to know.

“Who?” Her spirits lifted to think someone had come by to see her, as sick as she had been. Beginning yesterday, she had been able to take some clear soup, and this morning she had persuaded Sideree to help her wash her hair. As a result she felt somewhat presentable.

Sideree arranged pillows behind her. “I could send him away. Until you feel better.” Sideree was delicately slender, her skin having a juvenile pallor just moving into adult tones. On her back, a simple but appealing pastel design of squares and curved lines.

“Who, Sideree?”

“Nistothom.”

She didn't feel strong enough for
that
visit. But she was not about to compound the insults she had delivered to her old teacher. “Ask him to come in.”

When Nistothom entered, Anzi barely recognized him. Bulked up and less graceful than before, he had grown thick in the waist and shoulders. Sideree quietly left them alone.

Anzi's instinct was to stand to give him respect. To call him by his elegant name, to use the title of respect, but Nistothom could no longer be called Nistoth or titled Nan Da.

“So, here you come again,” Nistothom said. He looked at the tray and her bowl of unfinished soup. “Sick, are you?”

“I don't complain.”

“You do not complain. Very good, Anzitaj. Word will go out.”

“Would you care to sit down?” She managed to sit on the edge of the bed.

“I have been for a walk.” He was very changed from previous times: his shoulders bunched, his chest bulky, as though he'd wrapped himself in muscle and skin to fend off the world.

“Unfold a chair and sit, please, Nistoth.” An inward wince. That had been his former name.

Mercifully, he let the lapse go. “I stopped by the commons garden. No one asked me to contribute. So I have time to visit…old friends. I do not need travel slits. On foot will do. Plenty of time.”

He hadn't moved from the place he'd staked out in the middle of the room. He hadn't moved on from his disgrace.

“You will never be one of us,” he whispered.

“How could I know, Nistothom, what the penalty would be?”

They had stripped him of his rank. He was no longer a Beautiful One, but whether by group decree or a personal choice depended on how you viewed Manifest.

“You did not know,” Nistothom agreed. “Because it had not happened before, not in living memory of even the oldest of us. I am the only one. You think you are alone here, trying to be brave amid your useless transformation. But you chose to come here. You can go back to what you were. Live as long as I, Anzitaj; lose everything. Then you will be alone.”

She struggled to her feet.

“Do not bestir yourself,” he said. “You must have all your strength for
life art
. Iritaj wants it on your back, does he?” He staggered a step forward. “Let us have a look at you so far.”

She grabbed at the near table for stability. What did he plan to do, rip off her pajamas to look at her back?

“You can never forgive me; I know that. But please Nistothom—”

“Let us see this art, Anzitaj. Show your back!” He moved to the opposite side of the table, eyes watery and fierce. He leaned over, threatening.

“Please leave, Nistothom. I'm of Iritaj's House. You have no right.”

“Oh, Iritaj, yes. Another House. A new beginning!” His eyes lit up with
an alarming energy. He gestured wildly at her. “Show us how you fare! Show me your heart.”

Despite the table being between them, Anzi backed up, fighting tears. She wasn't afraid of him. The tears were for Nistothom, reduced to a rubble of his former self, a bitter, self-pitying old Jinda ceb with nothing to do but walk in others' gardens and accost those who had slighted him.

He showed teeth in an anguished grimace. “Then you shall see my art.” He spun around, surprisingly agile, unless it was just a maddened energy. His back shone.

On his grown clothes lurked a small brown whorl curving round and round, in an impressive turning vortice. But it was small, dark, and obvious. It had neither color nor subtlety. It seemed to drill into the back side of his heart, sucking spent and brownish blood.

He turned to face her again. “It is not much. I have been told the circles are perfect, though, the timing reminiscent of Botol.” Again, the ghastly show of teeth, indicating supreme mental pain. “I have been trying to move past the
little circles
. But I do not seem able to.”

“Nistothom…” she began in high distress.

“Yes?” He was daring her to say how it would grow in time, it would effloresce, it would soar. But he was old and stuck in circles and they both knew it.

“Yes?” he repeated.

She remained helplessly silent.

His voice came bland, as though, after this display of temper, the fight had gone out of him. “I just keep drilling down, you know. Down. There's nothing there.”

She tried to conjure words of comfort, but this was her former Nan Da talking. What could she teach
him
?

“If I keep on going down, there will be something to bring forth. Keep going down....” He shuffled to the door. “I came for a walk. I did not know I would come here. You must work on your art, Anzitaj. Fearless. We are afraid to know ourselves—remember what I always told you?” Reaching the door, he turned around to her. “Do you?”

“Yes, Nan Da.”

His hair tentacles curled in dismay at the title. “Little circles,” he muttered.

Then, perhaps remembering that he had a walk to complete, he waved the door open and left.

Sideree brought a new bowl of fragrant broth. It grew cold. She formed more windows onto the garden, but Anzi remained seated on the edge of the bed, not looking out.

Finally Sideree said, “Iritaj will call you stubborn if you do not eat.”

Anzi looked up at the girl's face, bright and cheerful, eager to set everything to rights. She took pity on her. “All right. Would you reheat the soup, please?”

“Of course!”

“And would you form a mirror in here? Do we have one?”

“Of course. Which first? The soup or the mirror?”

“Mirror.”

Sideree summoned a forma down from the ceiling cluster, touching it to assemble the mirror.

“Larger, please, Sideree.”

When it was done and affixed to the wall, Sideree helped Anzi over to it. Seeing that Anzi meant to pull off her shirt, she assisted.

Anzi turned her back to the mirror. But she couldn't really see her own back without another mirror. “A small mirror to hold,” she told the girl.

Receiving one, Anzi looked at her back for the first time since undergoing her augmentation. “Oh.”

Sideree gazed at Anzi's back. “It is…it is…” The poor girl was horribly embarrassed.

On the line of Anzi's spine was a gold strip of light, very thin and long, from buttocks to neck. It looked like a travel slit. Like a door open a crack.

“It is…” Sideree stuttered again, unable to find anything positive to say about something so plain.

“It is a beginning,” Anzi pronounced.

With relief, Sideree blurted, “Yes! A beginning.”

In a shabby go-down on the edge of a plaza in Rim City, Quinn began his surveillance of the God's Needle. He knew this tower, having stayed weeks in its vicinity. At the top of the needle he hoped to meet the Hirrin of his vision in the binds.

Across the room his guard Noheme kept watch out of her window, the only one at the right height for an Ysli.

“You may as well sleep,” she said. “I'll take the first watch.” They had waited several hours now, keeping the God's Needle in view.

“I'll watch with you.” Adrenaline kept Quinn awake. He hadn't known at first what to make of that sighting of the wounded Hirrin in the binds. He still didn't. But his future self had pointed at this Hirrin, as though to say,
Pay attention. Find him.
If it had to do with Geng De and his control over the little threads that hung down—Quinn still saw those awful, trailing threads—by God, he wanted to know.