Prince of Storms (25 page)

Cixi. At the top of the steps. When Cixi caught sight of Sen Ni, she began to run toward her.

In the main hall of the mansion, Noheme waved a few of the soldiers toward her. She looked up at them, not for the first time cursing the damnably tall. “Continue searching. Find the rooms we've missed. Set a guard on the sea view porches. Let no Adda near.”

Just moments before, the regent had combed through the palace, joining in the search, but they had found no one except two clueless servants, one a cook. Both of them Hirrin, they said they had not seen Geng De or Sen Ni this morning.

Noheme feared they had lost the advantage of surprise and their quarry had escaped, but they had not yet searched the orphanage—the regent had just taken a few soldiers in that direction. Moving quickly through the main doors to join Zhiya's fighters in the gardens, Noheme saw a lone figure on the veranda.

An old Chalin woman, dressed in brown-and-gold silks. By the Miserable God, it was the former high prefect. Still unseen by the old woman, Noheme crept toward her.

Hearing someone behind her, the prefect turned. She backed up. “Stay away,” the old woman cawed. At the prefect's feet lay an abandoned sword. She picked it up with surprising alacrity.

Noheme said, “On your knees, old woman.” If she went down, Noheme would take her captive.

The high prefect laughed. “I'm too old to kneel.” She staggered up the steps, waving the sword around her head, giving it a lethal speed.

Surprised by the attack from the old crone, Noheme danced away and came at her low, under the circling blade. She jumped toward Cixi's chest, pushing her down the stairs, riding her like a tiny dragon, for it was the old dragon herself. As they landed on the ground, Noheme yanked out a knife from her belt and sliced the old woman's neck.

But from the side, a blow came, ruining her aim. Knocked off her perch onto the ground, Noheme found a Chalin man towering above her. She rolled away from his sword strike, but took a savage kick in the back. As she managed to get upright again, she met his sword in her chest. Deep, oh deep.

Placing a booted foot on the Ysli's chest, Tan Hao pulled his sword free.

Sen Ni threw herself down at Cixi's side. Blood streamed from Cixi's neck, but the wound did not look deep. Tan Hao had kicked the Ysli, perhaps in time.... Sen Ni wrapped a silk sash around Cixi's throat. Only a little blood, now. There, stanched.

“Leave her; she's dead.”

Sen Ni glared up at Tan Hao. “She's not dead.”

He bent down to grab her, but Sen Ni ducked away and hissed, “Carry her.”

By the look on her face he must have thought she would fight him. He knelt down and scooped Cixi up, already moving as he did so, growling at Sen Ni, “Over toward the side. The lowest window.”

Sen Ni stumbled after him, moving around to the side of the mansion. Nearby were the service huts where Riod had been billeted. The window in the mansion was sealed, but just next to it, a small block of stone yielded to Tan Hao's kick. It opened, forming a hole. She crouched down at Tan Hao's urging and scrambled through.

Cixi, Cixi.
She would recover. There was not much bleeding. The scarf, just in time.

Tan Hao pushed Cixi through the hole, none too gently, and Sen Ni grabbed her, pulling her to the floor. How light she was. Like a doll. How could so much of what one loved dwell in so light a frame?

Cixi moaned, trying to speak.

“Shh, Mother. All will be well.”

They were in darkness. Tan Hao had closed off the passageway. She knew that escape hole; it was one that her servants had carved into the house in case of a need to flee. Now she was using it to go back into the place where surely her father's men would be waiting.

Scraping sounds from behind her. Tan Hao was busy at something. Then a grinding noise, as a draft of cold air whuffed in from below.

“Stairs down,” Tan Hao said.

“Carry her.” A thin light came from the hole in the floor. Tan Hao bore Cixi below, and Sen Ni followed him down very steep stairs. The ceiling closed over them.

Light seeped in from vents in the floor. “We are under the bridge,” the ship keeper said. “Now we wait.”

On her knees next to Cixi, Sen Ni bent down, whispering, “Be still, Mother. We are escaping. We are safe.”

“Leave me,” Cixi whispered.

“But there is nowhere to go.”

A croaking noise, less like a voice than gargling of stones. “Who…is…he?”

“Geng De's ship keeper.” She looked up at Tan Hao, murmuring to him, “See, she will live.”

“No. She will not.”

Sen Ni lay down next to Cixi, careful not to disturb her head and neck. She felt a wetness where she came in contact with Cixi's side, but that was just from the first rush of blood. It was stanched now.

A noise just behind her. Tan Hao was dragging a panel of the floor aside, making too much noise. She could hardly hear Cixi, who was murmuring something. “Be quiet!” she ordered Tan Hao, but he paid no attention.

She placed her arm across Cixi's chest, comforted by the rise and fall of it. But it was so small a movement, like a breath remembered. “Mother,” she whispered, “stay.”

Cixi struggled to say something.

Sen Ni placed her ear very close to Cixi's mouth.

“Ask him…how to escape.”

Sen Ni turned toward the ship keeper. He had picked his way down into the hole in the floor, standing on some support down there, with the reflection of the sky off the river sending a blinding shaft of light into the room. “Tan Hao, how will we escape?”

“Sky bulb,” he said.

She turned back, the smell of blood in her nostrils. “Mother, by sky bulb.”

“Oh,” Cixi whispered. “Clever.”

“Yes.” Sen Ni's throat felt swollen and hot. She lay at Cixi's side, feeling the breaths, each one evidence of life. She closed her eyes and whispered, “It's a beautiful dirigible, coasting in, Mother. Full of soldiers—I can see them in
the view ports. They will take us away. A beautiful…” Her voice shredded.... “A beautiful…”

“Yesss.”

They were both covered in blood. It should be warm, but it was so cold. There was too much blood.

“A beautiful sky ship, Mother.”

“Yes, dear one. Sail away, sail…”

“Together,” Sen Ni whispered back. The chest, no movement now. No breaths. Not even one small breath. “We'll be…we'll be…sailing.”

She lay across Cixi's stony chest, her hands reaching to encircle her, holding on for as long as she could.

The children were frightened, of course. They'd been on a ship before, but this was a different ship, on the opposite side of the bridge from the usual wharf. And they'd been snatched from their beds, their nurses left behind. Geng De did his best to comfort them, but he hadn't the knack for it. The crying of a few started them all to wailing.

He counted them again. Sixteen young ones. Only sixteen! What had that gondling Hanwen done with all her time, getting only this many? But then he remembered that it was Tan Hao who had gathered them up, and he should have had three litters of them, but somehow, only two had come down the Way, borne by the solid Jout bearers they had quickly hired.

Tan Hao had bundled away the navitar of this ship, tying him up in a nearby shed. One did not kill a navitar, Geng De had made clear. Now the ship was his.

Geng De pulled little Tiejun onto his lap and patted his head, crooning, “Sen Ni will come, would you like that?”

Tiejun nodded and grew calmer. There, that was how you handled infants: You promised them things.

Sen Ni was his beloved sister. He had hoped to give her the Ascendancy, the Entire. They would have ruled it together, and Inweer would have restarted the engine, and they would have had their time under the bright.
When she had tired of that—and with the future that awaited her, he was sure that she would have—he would have taken her below.

But now he was afraid to remain above. Afraid to give Sen Ni the delicious play time she deserved.

Titus Quinn was succumbing to violence. Trying to kill his own daughter. The thought made Geng De a little sick. He'd tried so hard to weave Quinn, and with some surprising early success. No longer, no longer. Perhaps the regent really was the one rogue strand predicted by the book. Therefore Geng De must flee into the river so much sooner than he had hoped.

He knew that Sen Ni would resist. That's why he wouldn't tell her right away. The children were the way to reconcile her to the Nigh. She loved the children. He fervently hoped that she would come with him. He had the
Book of the Drowning Time
. He knew the way navitars were made. Without the machineries of the Tarig it would take a hundred days for her to become a holy pilot, but he would wait for her.

His eyes crowded with tears at the thought of the life they would have. The Indwelling. They would dwell in the lovely river.

Setting down Tiejun, he went outside on the deck, locking the cabin door behind him. He looked up at the crystal bridge. A geyser of smoke punched into the sky. Just over there was the dirigible working its way from the understory of the bridge.
Oh hurry, my sister.

Just a little while longer, and his troubles would be drowned. The beloved land would be preserved in the only way it could be, within the embrace of the river. The storm walls would come to enclose a narrow kingdom, leaving the bright a sliver of what it was. Thus contracted, thus modest in proportion and hunger, the land could subsist for millions of days. Time enough, if one was not greedy. Time enough for his dynasty of drowned navitars. Just as the old one had told him, just as the book foretold.

He would govern the thousand realms. The Rose, that magnificent kingdom, would need the most governance. The beings of the Rose must swim in his consciousness, in his will. He would test them against each other, playing out the great game of life to his satisfaction. And beyond the Rose, other worlds, too, even if they were small and few, and none so grand as the
Rose. The Indwelling would mean an end to striving. Let all creatures walk to his commands, their impulses controlled for the better.

Sadly, there would be no creatures in the Entire, none except navitars. That was not his fault, if they were doomed anyway, with the faulty way the Tarig had devised the world.

And the Indwelling was already history. The book was a
foretold history
. He was just carrying out what must be. He'd have to be sure Sen Ni understood that part.

He watched the sky bulb drawing near.
Hurry, dear sister.
They would speed toward the special place the old one had revealed: the Fold. He had been there several times and knew it was real. Everything was in readiness there.

Geng De sighed. He was so weary. Soon, he would bid good-bye to the world that so taxed him, weakened him. Below, he would partake of the joys of the Indwelling. He would play. And his children would play.

He turned around. The young ones peeked at him through the view ports.

Play
, my children, he thought with affection.
But first a sip of the Nigh.