Prince of Storms (38 page)

He stepped back, dropping his knife hand, holding the stiletto as though he had forgotten about it. “The thing is, Titus, all mine are bad as well.” He turned toward the porthole, pointing. “I had one…” His voice broke. “One with Sen Ni at my side, and the little ones.” Turning back to Quinn, his face full of passion, he said, “It was
beautiful
. She and I, we were two sides of one being, brother and sister. She lifted me up. I loved her.”

He looked down at Sydney, frowning with a new thought. “I had one thing wrong, though. It wasn't you, Titus, who was the one rogue strand. It
was always
her
. I never figured that out. It was fortunate for me that she was on my side, wasn't it?”

During this recitation, Quinn had struggled and leaned and raged against his restraints, but he could not even blink.

Geng De snapped a look at him. “You have one chance, though. A chance to live.” He snorted at Quinn's imagined reaction. “Oh yes,
live
. Why die as everyone is ready for you to do? Why die for
them
? Which of them helped you? Who offered to come after me? Where were your generals, friends, heroes of the Entire?

“Titus, you could come with me. I could spare you both, raise you up to be true navitars.” He smiled as though reading Quinn's expression, but he was only conversing with himself. “Why would I do such a thing? Because I don't want…to be alone.” He glanced at the porthole next to his pilot's chair as though seeing something outside. “My little ones have been stolen by the Chalin giant.” He looked up in perplexity, as though searching for pity. “I never wanted to be alone.”

Quinn's heart had begun beating again. A chance. An awful chance for his daughter's life. It was sweet, no matter how terrible. He imagined his daughter as a navitar. She would become like Ghoris. Was that so awful? But it was a nightmare future. Unspeakable. He knew this. But Sydney would
live
.

Geng De went on. “We could bring peace to the Rose and the Entire. Peace everywhere. The Rose has been at war with itself for archons. When it finds the other civilized realms it will be at war again. But we will enforce the peace. Peacekeepers. You see?”

A knowing expression crossed his face. “You don't believe me. But I don't need to lie! I've already won, haven't I?” He glanced at Sydney. “She would not forgive me if I killed you. Now that you're a hero. But if I transformed you both, she would love me for it. And father and daughter together again. Wouldn't that be nice?”

Geng De brightened as he seemed to discern Quinn wavering behind his locked eyes. And
was
he wavering?

The navitar went on, “I'll wait for you and Sen Ni until the change is done. Then we'll get on with things.” He waggled his fingers at the awful threads, the tangle of futures and lives.

Leaning on his cane, Geng De hobbled toward Sydney once more. He sat down heavily at her side. Reaching out his hands, he grasped a red braid, keeping his stiletto in one hand. “I'll unweave you just enough to speak.” He pulled at the thread. Then again. “You'll join us?”

Quinn managed a strangled cry. “No.”

Geng De frowned. “But it's
death
. It's forever. It's your
daughter
.”

The thought bloomed in Quinn's mind:
We would rather die.
His voice steadier now: “No.”

Geng De whispered, “I thought you loved her more than that. There was one future…”

Quinn was done with futures. “Let me…say good-bye…please.”

Geng De pursed his lips. “I didn't
see
this one. I don't
like
it.”

“Let me kiss her forehead.” Quinn could see that moment in his mind's eye; strangely, it compelled him. He wanted that good-bye.

Face twisted with contempt, Geng De looked down on Sydney. At last he staggered into a standing position and backed away. “Say good-bye, then,” he spat. “Tell her you like her better dead than alive. Tell her, Titus. Tell her!”

Quinn moved a foot forward, then another. It was a slow march across the short distance. Left foot. Right. He crumpled to his knees next to Sydney. To her sleeping form, he whispered, “Forgive me.” He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the blankets spilling over her. As he did so, he felt a long, unbending form under the covers. A blade. He was sure of it. A long knife. A
knife
, by God. But he was half paralyzed.

As he leaned over to kiss her on the forehead, he slipped a hand under the blankets. Pretending to half rise to reach toward her face, Quinn yanked the knife out from under the blankets. It was a very long kitchen knife—ten inches long.

In one heart-bursting lunge, he turned and launched himself clumsily toward Geng De. As he rammed himself forward the red braid that Geng De had been carefully tending split apart, fraying wildly.

Geng De backed up, mouth agape, raising his cane above his head, lashing it down heavily on Quinn's head. With Quinn's thrust interrupted, his still-bonded feet faltering, he crashed to his knees.

A savage kick to his stomach sent him sprawling to the floor. But the
kitchen knife was still in his grip. Reaching up, he slashed at Geng De as the boy navitar danced madly out of reach.

Another thudding blow from Geng De's booted foot. Quinn felt the breath leave him.

Overhead, the stiletto flashed. “It's forever!” Geng De shouted. The great, red-robed form bent down for the kill, raising the blade, while Quinn was just summoning willpower to roll, perhaps roll out of reach. Too late, because Geng De's dagger swept down.

But Geng De had forgotten the dais, and as he stepped back to brace his feet for the thrust, he tripped against the raised platform, stumbling. As he fell, he struck his head on the pilot's chair with a crunching whack.

In that instant Quinn rolled over and staggered to his feet.

Geng De lay against the dais, splayed out, stunned, unable to rise, his eyes wide with terror.

Staggering forward, Quinn fell on him, plunging his knife down, hoping to avoid the stiletto in Geng De's hand. He jammed his knife through Geng De's breastbone, deep into his chest. The stiletto in the navitar's hand went past his left cheek.

The boy navitar lay still and dead against the dais, the very throne he had hoped to occupy.

Quinn looked around him, trying to grasp what had just happened. Geng De dead. Sydney unharmed. She had hidden a knife under the blanket, somehow, somehow. He began to shake.

He noted a new movement of the ship. Up. Without a navitar to sustain the voyage—a navitar who knew how to travel, as Quinn as yet did not—the ship inevitably must rise from the binds. That was good.... Up was good....

River matter streamed past the portholes as they rose, but something was wrong. He had forgotten something. What?

The cables! He staggered up from the chair, understanding finally locking in. The cables, still slowly untwisting. The world was still unwinding. Quinn's only chance to stop it was while he was still in the binds, but
up, up.
…

He snatched at the nearest cable. His hand fell through it.

Up the ship went.

Half a navitar. Not a drowned navitar. Can't weave. He stared at the awful cables, as present to him as the pilot's chair, as the knife protruding from Geng De's chest. Can't weave. No, he could not weave, but this was not a braid. It was a twisted cord comprised of many threads.

Leaning forward, he cupped his hands around the great hawser in front of him.

He could press it closed. He was a navitar, as Ghoris was. He could at least
touch
them, if not braid them. He gripped his hands around the cable, and with all his will and passion, he pressed and squeezed the strands. Like twisting metal cords they shredded his palms. Still he pressed. He gave them his blood and his will, all that was left.

And then the cables were rushing away from him, recoiling, springing back under a relentless tension that could have made them accessible only for a moment longer. They yanked back into place, remade. He knew it was the place where they belonged, anchoring the Entire and its walls. He knew. He was enough of a navitar for that.

As the storm walls resounded with a deafening crack, the ship broke the surface of the Nigh. The vessel shuddered, sending Quinn reeling. He grabbed onto the pilot's chair—was thrown into it.

Light flooded into the cabin; life-giving, upper-world light.

He looked up. Through the membrane over the dais, he saw the bright, lavender and exalted. He could hardly stand or think, stunned as he was, but in the rebirth of the world, it didn't matter.

A movement caught his eye. Turning, a horrifying sight greeted him. Geng De, a knife protruding from his chest, was lunging at him with a long rapier, the blade pointing at Quinn's face.

Quinn began to move from his chair.

Behind Geng De was Sydney.

Quinn had almost gotten to his feet.

Sydney had a tiny dagger, the stiletto, raised up to strike at Geng De's back.

Quinn coiled to throw a kick at Geng De, but Geng De heard someone approach from behind—Sydney was dragging a blanket with her, still tangled up from the bedclothes.

Geng De pivoted and stepped out of Quinn's reach. He flung his rapier
arm back to slice at her face, but Quinn launched himself, deflecting Geng De's aim. The two of them sprawled onto the floor. The rapier clattered away.

They both scrambled for it. By a heartbeat, Quinn beat him to it.

Geng De was, incredibly, rising to his feet, tugging at the knife in his chest. Quinn grasped the rapier in two hands and swung the blade with all his strength at the navitar's neck, severing his head from his shoulders.

Geng De crumpled, his red robes ballooning out as he fell, covering his own head with a drift of red cloth.

The robes settled gently to the floor around Geng De's body. Blood flowed from under the caftan as though the cloth were melting. Quinn still held the rapier in a viselike grip, stunned that he had killed a man twice.

Sydney stood there, swaying to keep upright. She gazed at Geng De's body, her expression stony. “Are you sure he's dead?”

“Yes. This time, he is.” He kept the rapier just in case.

The blanket that she had dragged off the bed with her lay at her feet. She threw it over Geng De's body.

When she looked up, she whispered, “Father…”

It was that word that gave him permission. He went to her, taking her in his arms and holding her as fiercely as he dared, with her obvious injuries. “Sydney, Sydney,” he rasped. “It's over.”

The bad things that she had had to endure, those things were over now. At long, long last.

“You can have it now,” she murmured into his shoulder. “The Entire. You should have it. I nearly ruined it.”

“No, no,” he said. He felt her wince. “You must lie down.”

She pushed away from him, her face swollen and half-blackened. Somehow she stood upright, but just barely. “I've been lying down. I never want to see that bed again.”

“The floor then.”

They looked down at the lake of blood around them. She sank gracefully to a sitting position, sopping her silks in blood.

Geng De's covered form drew his gaze. The man had attacked him, though he had a ten-inch knife in his chest. Quinn still held the rapier in a firm grip. The rapier that had been hidden in the cane.

He wanted to say a thousand things to his daughter, but his mind was in shreds. Only simple things occurred to him. “The Entire lives,” he said. “You can help it.” She was the only choice. He would not be here. It was important for him to be gone.

She frowned in confusion. “And the Rose?”

“In your hands.”

Her voice was low but strong. “They will follow you. After what you've done, they will.”

“I'll never fight you again. Take it.”

She brought a hand up to push a strand of hair out of her eyes and left a great smear of blood on her face. She shook her head, murmuring, “Cixi is dead. Tiejun is dead. I am dead.”

“A Hirrin youngling died. But Tiejun is alive. Mo Ti saved him.” Tiejun was the young Chalin boy whom she so loved. He had seen Tiejun's futures. One of them was with him happily at Sydney's side, a surrogate son.

Hope began to come into her face. Then the expression vanished. “How many young ones died?”

“One.”

She shook her head. “How can you know this?”

He paused. “Sydney, I saw it.”

“Saw?”

“In the binds.”

Her face, terribly battered, now went darker. “You altered yourself,” she whispered. His silence was answer enough. “The Jinda ceb did this?”

He stood up, backing away from that look, that gaze that seemed to know what he had become.

“Let the Jinda ceb heal you.”

“It can't be done.” He remembered that part vividly. It was the final turn of the screw. “Can't…”

A door opened on the lower deck. So, the first wave of worshippers had arrived. He had saved the realm. The crowds would now gather—that was a very probable future. A heavy clanking on the companionway and Mo Ti burst into the cabin.

Seeing Sydney covered in blood and Quinn with the rapier in hand, Mo Ti said, “Now you die.”

Quinn laughed, and gripped the rapier, useless against Mo Ti's great sword.

Sydney shouted, “No!” She tried and failed to scramble up, uselessly holding out a restraining hand, “No! I pardon him!”

“No pardons,” Quinn said, and rushed toward Mo Ti, rapier extended.

Swinging his sword back, Mo Ti struck Quinn a broadside blow to the head. It was like a swat from a bear, knocking him senseless before he hit the floor.

Mo Ti looked down on Quinn's prone form. He thought he had never come so close to killing a man and withholding.

Sen Ni had managed to stand, her trousers soaked in gore, her hands dripping blood. Her face was battered and swollen. She was the best thing he had ever seen.