Prince of Storms (34 page)

He drifted down into a valley of brightless ocean. His descent accelerating, he left behind the cascade of diatoms and detritus of life, entering a vacant land.

Vacant and soundless. It was as though he were being given a glimpse of the heat death of the universe—sad, but also majestic and profoundly timeless. What were human hopes against the march of entropy, the unimaginable drift of time?

But the events of the world were not quite over.

To his unnerving surprise, a ship hove into view.

Enormous and vivid, it sailed through the trench in stately progress. As it drew closer, Quinn saw through the portholes that it bore passengers. Sentients of the Entire: Chalin, Jout, Hirrin, Ysli. They sat on the benches of the main cabin, no longer children, but grown. They sat in a hopeless patience.

In the pilothouse, a Chalin navitar, lying on a bed. Geng De had grown thin and boneless, but his eyes were alert. He was watchful of other ships…vigilant lest the remaining navitars of the old world find him and kill him. But they were old and would soon die.

On the dais a younger man sat in the pilot's chair. So still he sat, staring into a globular tangle of strings that squirmed in front of him. He peered into the wriggling mass, bringing up a hand, then hesitating, choosing....

Tiejun was his name.

The ship motored on, soon lost in the depths of the Nigh.

No other ships followed. But Quinn saw the bones of navitar ships projecting from the silt of the bottom, long dead.

Then a change.

Something profoundly wrong was happening. It seemed the atoms in his body had been realigned. As though time's arrow flew backward.

He began to rise.

Beneath him, the profound silt, fathoms deep, sucked down at him.
Stay
, the bones of the navitars cried.
Stay
.

But he floated upward.

Venn watched Anzitaj leave the commons, some juveniles trailing at her heels, still asking questions. It was all as Venn had long planned. That new elements would enter the commonality to challenge the old, dry orthodoxies. And that the Jinda ceb would mix with the Entire in truth instead of merely in geography.

Her people had striven for archons to reclaim their place in the Entire. But it had been an empty fight, a struggle built on the ideology of return to the home place. It meant nothing! The Jinda ceb had no intention of growing or changing, despite their change in body, in adoption of gender, in helping with the industries of the storm walls and the mechanics that the Tarig had abandoned. All this was just a superficial accommodation. It had been Venn's vision that they might come home in a real way.

But the Jinda ceb had lost their understanding of
real
, having lived so long as an approximation of flesh and bone.

They were not fully committed to their new lives. As proof of this, she saw how easily the dark navitar had subverted them in Manifest. At first, Venn had judged that standing aloof from political affairs might suit them, but with these new, all-consuming threats, who could fail to act? The reason Geng De overcame them was that they were not truly threatened by the Drowning Time. They could go back to their correspondency life. There were factions who had never wished to leave it, who never wanted to adopt gender, or a new physiology—or bodies at all—and never, of course, death.

So, Anzitaj was right: Geng De had come into Manifest and trained them not to care. Trained them to keep coming to Manifest, where he lay in wait.

Venn felt the pull herself, but less than many for whom Manifest was a ubiquitous presence. She had, for example, peeked in as soon as Anzitaj was done with her lesson just now. Disconcertingly, she'd seen an empty hut occupied by ghost voices. Nistothom was there, sulking in a corner.

Venn stood up and began to think about a midday meal. Hunger for food was such a pleasant need. She prepared to trace a travel slit, then stopped.

Nistothom in Manifest?

Peculiar, given that he had been avoiding Manifest—and given what he was doing. He would not be there by his own volition.

Anzitaj was just disappearing down the path. A hot urgency gripped
Venn. Nistothom shouldn't be in Manifest. Something was terribly wrong. She had to judge whether to run after Anzi to tell her or to hurry to Titus Quinn's side.

Letting instinct prevail, Venn traced a slit in the air and pushed through it, thinking of her destination and finding herself borne there.

Before her, Nistothom's domicile. She sent her arrival notice to him, a gentle summons to open the door.

No response.

Walking around the hut, she found all the windows closed, as would be expected given that Nistothom and Titus were hiding their actions.

Gazing at the front door, willing it to open, willing Nistothom not to confirm her fears, Venn thought of the poor sentient lying within. Anzitaj's husband. As much as she liked Anzitaj, Venn had to admit her fears for Titus Quinn were completely selfish: He was going to enter the Nigh and drag Geng De out by his hair.

And Venn would make sure that he did.

“Open the door, Nistothom. And by your life art, get out of Manifest!”

Of course he probably couldn't hear her. She stared at the domicile, her imagination racing, wondering how far the former Nan Da might go under compulsion. Why oh why hadn't she brought Anzitaj with her? But there was nothing for it but to force matters. She put her hand on the door and pushed it open. Of course no one barred doors. There was no need to, the taboo against entering without permission being so strong.

She stood in the foyer of the hut. All silent.

Belatedly, she remembered that Nistothom was a rather large individual, bulky and muscular, and she had chosen female, as misbegotten a decision as she had ever made. She turned toward a noise.

Nistothom stood in a doorway.

“I came to see if you need any help,” Venn managed to say evenly. “Work always goes faster when there are four hands instead of two.” She tried to brush past him. He did not give way.

Nistothom muttered, “You were ever one to go it alone, Complete One. Now group action?”

She didn't like his tone, but decided to ignore it. “I admire you for what
you have taken on, Nistothom. You were the only one with courage. I wondered when someone besides me would start to think for themselves. So you are quite right about me. Independent action is what I shall preach from now on.” She looked into his eyes, set deep and distrustful. “Stand aside, Nistothom.”

His derma shrank around him, revealing a form grown even bulkier than Venn had remembered. “I tried,” he said.

Venn held her breath. “Tried? Nistothom, surely it did not fail?”

They gazed at each other in silence as Venn's fears mounted.

Lowering her voice, Venn growled, “Let me pass.” She shoved at him, and he relinquished the doorway. As she charged down the corridor looking into each room, Nistothom's voice followed her. “I could not help it.”

What had the dark navitar bidden him do? Had Titus Quinn come among them only to be betrayed? She approached the last doorway, hesitating to see what Nistothom had wrought. She went through.

There, sitting on the side of the bed, was Titus Quinn.

He was awake. Venn steadied her breathing. Their erstwhile savior looked like no such thing. Disheveled, he was in a state of shock, blinking now and then, staring at the floor.

Behind her, Nistothom murmured, “I woke him early.”

In alarm, Venn kneeled beside the bed. Titus Quinn struggled to meet her gaze, but in the end he looked past her, as though seeing something else much more interesting.

Nistothom sat heavily on the floor next to the bed. “Geng De told me to kill him. I decided not to.”

She looked at the former Nan Da and knew that he had mustered a supreme effort. “Well done, Nistoth,” she said. “Geng De should have known better than to try to warp a Beautiful One.”

“But I woke him early.”

Yes, of course he had. “Perhaps best.” What right did the Jinda ceb, did the Entire, have to put such a burden on a man? She looked into Titus Quinn's face and wondered how much of his mind was gone, and to no purpose. What were they leaving for Anzitaj to deal with? What were they leaving of the man himself?

“Venn.” The word came from Titus Quinn.

Startled, she looked up at him.

“Venn,” he said again, with a resonant voice that gave her an odd chill.

“You know my name?”

“I know you.” He gazed down at her with a look that was both intimate and remote, like someone who has known you a long time and can no longer have hope of you. Then he looked at Nistothom. “I sank. But then I rose up.” He tried to stand, and did manage to stagger to his feet. Nistothom leapt up to steady him.

“Bring me…” Titus Quinn stammered. He looked around the room, searching for something.

“What?” Nistothom asked, his voice barely a whisper as he surely must have been surveying the damage and wondering how deep it went in the man.

“My armor.”

Venn sucked in a breath. He thought he was well enough to go on. He thought he was remade. Of course! No one had yet told him it was early, too early.

Venn snapped an impatient look at Nistothom. Let him be the one to say it.

And he did: “I woke you by mistake. You have not absorbed enough of the navitar instructions.” He had to look away. “I succumbed to Geng De's dictates.”

Titus Quinn stared at Nistothom. Venn was very glad he had not turned that look on
her
.

He answered Nistothom. “I saw him. In the river. I saw the binds. As navitars do.”

He saw
me
, too, Venn thought, because he recognized her, and he had never met her. However incomplete this being was as a navitar, he saw things.

Titus Quinn held out a hand. “Bring me my armor.”

“There is no armor,” Nistothom answered. “You have a leather vest. A sword and scabbard.”

Quinn looked about the room again, searching, but failing to see that the vest and sword were in the corner. Nistothom fetched them and helped him put them on.

Venn supported most of Titus Quinn's weight on her arm. He needed to lie down, or sit down, not dress for a fight. He was in no condition for a fight.

But he pushed away from her, managing to walk under his own power. He left the room. Venn and Nistothom followed him as he wandered down the corridor and into the main room. He stood there, swaying in the center of the room.

Venn glanced at Nistothom. “Bring Anzitaj and Tai,” she said.

Quinn snapped a look at them. “No.”

They looked into his cold, yellow eyes.

“We leave now,” he said.

Venn planted her feet firmly in front of him. “We bring Anzitaj.”

Titus Quinn looked at her with such feral intensity that it took great willpower to hold his gaze. She struggled for a rejoinder, but he gave her no chance.

“We leave
now
without the woman and the secretary.”

A coarse summation of whom he was leaving behind. Venn said, “We promised them that—”

He grabbed her upper arm fiercely enough that his fingers would likely be imprinted in her derma. “I saw you die in this room.”

She stared at him. Was that a navitar's threat?

Titus Quinn turned to Nistothom. “No one follows me.”

Venn wondered what he had seen in the binds, how much was madness and how much was knowledge of things to come. Things that needed to come, if any of them were to survive.

She took Titus Quinn by the arm and opened a travel slit.

THE HATCHWAY OF THE PRISON SHIP
opened to Breund's touch. As he stood at the top of the ramp, a strong scent of ozone hit him. The great walls of the world crouched around the Repel on every side, seeming to lean in, as though at last they had overtopped their limits. Breund shrank from the sight, trying to keep his mind on what lay immediately before him: a dozen fighters, swords drawn, waiting for him at the bottom of the ramp. Two advanced.

“Hold.” A voice from the midst of the close-packed troops.

Ci Dehai stepped forward, the general familiar to Breund from the Ascendancy. He was shorter than his fighters and older, but no less grim. The soldiers gave way.

“Where is your prisoner, Breund?” the general demanded.

“Within.” Lord Inweer had refused to emerge to face overzealous troops. It was up to Breund to secure a parlay, and Breund had given his word to try to do so. But picturing a hundred arrows flying into the air and he the target, it had taken all his courage to open the ship's door.

“Your charge was to keep Lord Inweer from Ahnenhoon,” Ci Dehai growled.

Beyond the massed soldiers Breund could see the three brightships, gleaming dully near the far ramparts. As far as he could discern at this distance, they were shut tight.

“I failed in that. If I walk down, may we have words?”

“Come.”

Under the stares of the army, Breund came down the ramp with what dignity he could muster. Wind whipped his long coat about his thighs, such that he feared he would topple. At the bottom, he found himself surrounded by tall Chalin men adorned with too much metal.

He had never seen Ci Dehai up close. It was a formidable face. Breund's voice shook, despite his resolve to conduct himself with equanimity. “Lord Inweer would make a proposal.”

Ci Dehai glanced up at the door. It had shut, preventing the general from bestowing a glower on the perfidious Tarig. “Speak, then.”

At a glance from Ci Dehai the fighters moved off a few paces, giving him and Breund a circle of privacy.

So far, Ci Dehai was pleased that it had not come to arms.

He had formed his troops up to provide an aisle between Lord Inweer's prison ship and the brightships. Now they walked down this aisle together, he and the Tarig lord, toward the ships of Inweer's cousins. Breund, who had been Inweer's guard, followed behind casting worried looks at the storm walls as though those were the things that could kill him. At Breund's side, Lieutenant Han.

“Why did your cousins not attack, my lord?” Ci Dehai asked Lord Inweer as his soldiers watched the two close the distance.

“They yet may. I asked them to wait. There is always time to fight.”

Ci Dehai would use this parlay to great advantage. He needed time to destroy the engine. If his detail of soldiers
was
destroying it. Did they follow orders? Lieutenant Han said it was under way. If Han could be trusted. By a godder's balls, the man had better be trustworthy.

And if Han and the others were mutinous, was it from their own
convictions or was it from the navitar? Was mutiny the less egregious if woven? Ci Dehai thought not. You fought off an assault on your mind the same way you did an attack on your person. Each of his soldiers had been warned to report for sick duty if he could not rise to the occasion. Seventy had. Which gave him confidence in those remaining. Unless that, too, was woven. This new plain of battle gave him profound indigestion.

As the four of them came up to the forward brightship, the belly of the vessel pooled open under the struts. A Tarig lord descended, holding on by one hand for a moment, like an insect dropping from a birth sac. Ci Dehai did not know this lord's name.

Inweer went forward. “Cousin,” he said.

The new Tarig locked a gaze on Ci Dehai. Here was a Tarig lord who no doubt thought that Ci Dehai should be shoved from the battlements. Well, each sentient had his own idea of betrayal. As the Tarig lord surveyed the gathered troops perhaps he saw in them
their
concept of treachery: the Long War, needlessly fought.

The new Tarig nodded to Inweer. “The lord has come to join us, then.” He still scanned the gathered force as though counting them. “It will be a battle to the lower floor. Our first action will be to set the upper stones on fire. All will perish here.” He spoke freely, without lowering his voice.

Hearing this, Ci Dehai's heart turned dark.

“Yes.” Inweer said. “And then?”

“We preserve the All. They will love us again.” Another Tarig dropped down from the ship, and then another.

Ci Dehai noted that they were unarmed, or as unarmed as a Tarig ever was, each lord's body a weapon in itself.

“Look again, Lord Kamman,” Inweer said, turning to the massed troops: the Jout, Hirrin, Chalin, and Ysli.

As Ci Dehai followed their gazes, he saw with fresh eyes what the army of Ahnenhoon looked like. Their fierce faces, each imprinted with long memory. Every sentient had lost friends on these plains and buried them, when the issue could have been settled by the bestowal of a small minoral that by rights belonged to the Paion.

Inweer said, “They will never love you. Never.”

The other Tarig surveyed the assembled troops, too. They remained oppressively quiet.

Inweer went on, “But what do they matter, compared to us? They are evanescent, weak and changeable. You do not need them anymore. The great game is over, Lord Kamman.”

“We are solitaires,” Lord Kamman responded. “We will not revert to the Heart.” He turned a dark gaze on Inweer. “That is over, too.”

“Granted, but you can still live.”

One of the Tarig behind Kamman lunged forward, growling, “Where? Live where?”

His swift move lit a spark among them all. Han drew his sword. Ci Dehai heard others do so thirty paces off.

Inweer did not move. He raised his hand and pointed behind them. “There.” In that direction the storm wall loomed high and dark.

“To die? Like Lord Hadenth?” The lord stepped closer, claws unsheathed, jostling Kamman aside.

Kamman hissed, “Lord Ault, let him speak.”

Inweer kept his gaze on Lord Ault. “You can choose to go to the Rose, to find your freedom and your welcome there.”

“The Rose will die!”

“But my lord, one can decide to preserve it. And more: One can explore it. Go there. Find worlds of interest. Live.”

Ault stepped closer. “Lord Inweer is against us.”

“No, Cousin.”

“Do not call us cousin. First one accedes to the prison ship.” He threw a contemptuous gesture at the vessel. “Then one argues to give up the world. The lord is no Tarig. No, nor solitaire. The lord is nothing except injurious to our cause.”

By the time Ci Dehai knew that Ault would attack, it was too late. Ault lunged forward, striking a claw-ridden hand at Inweer's face.

Inweer swung out of the way, slamming Lord Kamman aside in his haste, sending him staggering back. In the confusion, Ault pressed forward, extruding a knife from his boot and sweeping a kick at Inweer, tearing fabric if not ligament.

Ci Dehai, Breund, and Han leapt out of the way.

“Stand back!” Ci Dehai bellowed at the troops, lest they mistake this for the start of an attack. “Give way. Give them room!”

Lord Kamman meanwhile had regained his footing, and held back other lords who looked eager to join in. But on whose side, Ci Dehai could not reckon.

“It's a diversion,” Han suggested, hand on sheathed sword hilt.

“Stay alert. Hold our line.” The eyes, the eyes, Ci Dehai thought. The swiftest way to kill a Tarig.

The two Tarig closed on each other. With a startling thrust, Lord Inweer, fully clawed, took a slice of scalp from Lord Ault's head.

Breund jostled between Ci Dehai and Han. “Lord Inweer is my charge. Help him,” he demanded.

“No interference,” Ci Dehai snapped.

“Then I shall,” Breund said, and walked toward the fray.

Ci Dehai made eye contact with Han, who strode forward and grabbed Breund by the arm. As Breund attempted to shake him off, Han struck him a fierce blow to the temple. As Breund bent forward, stunned, several soldiers came forward to haul him off.

Ault, bleeding heavily, stood swaying in place. Inweer, instead of following up his advantage, held back.

“You are no Tarig,” Ault rumbled. “Does the dead Rose female still hold dominion over one?”

Inweer shrugged. “Ah, but she is not dead.”

Ault wiped the blood from his eyes. “Twice a traitor.” With no hint of the coming explosive movement, Ault leapt into the air and formed a projectile of his body, aimed for Inweer's throat.

Inweer, faster than Ault, pivoted enough to deflect the bladed boot, but they both went down heavily in a sprawl of limbs, a clatter of bone and metal. Inweer recovered first from the fall. In a swift, knifelike movement, he jammed a knee onto Ault's chest and slid two claws into an eye.

The fight was over. Ault lay unmoving on the paving stones of the roof, red blood pooling beneath his head. The clash between lords had lasted fifteen seconds.

Lord Inweer turned to the gathered Tarig, the fight having drawn all of them from their ships. “You do not tell me what I must be. If I am not one of you, neither do I wish you ill. But I am a
solitaire
to this extent: I think and live for myself. Do you the same.” He wiped his claws on his metallic vest and retracted them.

Lord Kamman stood immobile, unreadable, as did his fellow solitaires. Ci Dehai held steady in the electrified moment, when the Tarig must choose retreat or mayhem. His soldiers of Ahnenhoon were ready for either.

At last Lord Inweer said, “I urge you to go to the Rose in peace. Share your knowledge; others will love you for that alone. You are all weary of the Entire, are you not? A fresh landscape might be…interesting.”

Kamman came forward. “Lord Inweer. This lord will take a brightship and go.” He turned to the others. “Those who will, come with us.”

“But not to the Earth,” Inweer said. “That remains apart.”

Kamman regarded him. “That is to be yours?”

“No. That is to be no one's. But there are many other Rose worlds. Worlds where your reputation does not precede you nor foul the respect you will otherwise so easily command.”

“My lord, come with us.”

“No. I will remain in the Entire. For as long as it endures.”

“Not long, by our standard.”

“Long enough, if one does not require forever.”

Lord Kamman turned to the other lords, the twelve remaining. “Choose, my lords,” his voice rumbled, “whether to stay or go.”

Behind the ramparts the storm wall glowered, the great curtain between worlds, billowing dark and soft, beckoning those who might not fear its mysteries.

A lord spoke up, his voice carving his decision in the air. “To the Rose.”

Then a Tarig lady of fierce aspect: “The Rose.”

One by one they spoke, pronouncing the name of the darkling realm. All twelve of them. When they had finished, Ci Dehai expelled the breath he had been unaware of holding. The contest was over.

Inweer kept watch as two lords came forward to retrieve Lord Ault's body and bear it away to a ship.

Meanwhile, Breund had recovered from his altercation with Lieutenant Han and came forward to stand at Ci Dehai's side, ready to render assistance to Lord Inweer.

Ci Dehai murmured to him, “Lord Inweer has much changed.”

Breund answered, “Perhaps he was always different. Because of the lady Johanna.”

Yes, Johanna. Alive, Inweer had taunted Ault. That must be conveyed to the regent. He glanced at Breund. “Perhaps your stewardship was influential.”

Breund's petaled skin tightened in pleasure, but he said, “I am only a simple Jout.”