Prince of Storms (39 page)

As she began to stagger toward him, Mo Ti strode forward, reaching for her. She collapsed into his arms.

He lowered her gently to the floor, where they clung to each other. He thought that given what she had gone through, any arms would have sufficed. But then she said, “I love you, Mo Ti. Forgive me, please.”

“Mo Ti is yours.” He sat in the lake of blood, his heart full to bursting.

When, a few minutes later, Venn came on board, she found two bodies: Geng De's and Titus Quinn's. A huge Chalin soldier she'd never seen before sat cradling a blood-soaked Sen Ni in his arms. Venn had no idea what had transpired.

Kneeling at Titus Quinn's side, she noted that he was still breathing.

The big man explained, “I had to knock him out lest he fall on my sword.”

Venn felt her derma contract in chagrin. “Then he's still looking for a good death.”

The soldier nodded. “So are we all.”

TAI HAD COME
. Ghoris allowed them use of her vessel while she remained on the bridge. In the main cabin, standing next to a basin of water, Quinn asked Tai to help him bathe and dress before Anzi saw him. Though exhausted, and despite a certain disorientation, he took reassurance from the fact that he knew he stank.

Finally clean, he allowed Tai to shave him and lay out fresh clothes. Now and then the thought came that he was supposed to kill someone. Ah. Geng De. Already dead.

Anzi was waiting outside. He looked at Tai. “How different am I?”

The man seemed to know what he was asking. “I would easily recognize you, Regent. Nothing is changed.”

Quinn took his word for it. “Let her in.” He was aware that his manner was abrupt. That would not do when he saw Anzi. It would not do.

Outside, on the deck of Ghoris's ship, Anzi waited, sitting on the deck, back against the bulkhead. From Mo Ti she had learned some details of the fight in the binds and its aftermath. Mo Ti relayed these things from Sen Ni, who lay in a tent near the shore, conscious, but with a head wound and broken ribs. Jinda ceb healers had her in hand. According to Mo Ti, the scene of Geng De's death had been a bloodbath; his body had been unceremoniously dropped into the Nigh. Mo Ti claimed that Quinn had charged him and taken the big man's sword against the side of his head. Anzi had wanted
to know if Titus had mistaken Mo Ti for an accomplice. Mo Ti had shrugged, saying, “Who knows what he thought?” And there was other critical news: the solitaires had descended on Ahnenhoon to restart the engine and prevent its destruction by the army. Lord Inweer had persuaded them to desist, and in fact to pursue their lives beyond the storm walls, presumably in the Rose. Breund and Ci Dehai had made full reports, praising Lord Inweer's actions. Inweer stood now within sight, pacing on the shore, waiting for an audience.

But in all of these reports, there was nothing of Titus and how he fared. That he was alive, she was supremely grateful. But no one had said—no one
could
say—how he
was
. Well, Venn. But Venn had only said that under the circumstances, Titus might be judged as doing
well enough
.

Hearing the door to the cabin open, Anzi jumped up from where she'd been sitting. Tai nodded at her, and they exchanged worried looks. She entered the cabin.

Titus rose to his feet and met her halfway across the cabin. She embraced him, and to her vast relief, he held her. Too soon, he released his grip, pulling back a step. “Anzi…” His face contorted as he struggled to say something.

It was difficult to watch. She moved in to relieve him of the burden. “It's all right. We have plenty of time.” Tai began to retreat outside, but Anzi said, “Stay.” She sensed that Tai's presence let Titus have some formality. That he needed it, until he grasped what he had been through.

They sat together on the bench under the portholes. She wrapped her arms around his good arm and let the silence bring some comfort. After a time Titus asked how Sydney was.

“She will recover. All the best healers are with her.”

“She mustn't be taken away. She must stay on this shore. Tell them that.”

“I will.”

“And Nistothom. He can't be punished, Anzi. Without him, we would all be dead.”

“Write these things down, Tai,” Anzi said.

Tai caught her gaze. “I already have,” he whispered.

She realized that Titus was repeating himself. That he didn't know what to say to her. An alarm rushed through her like a flood. But she said, “Everyone wants to see you. Can I tell them you'll sleep for a few hours?”

He turned to her, meeting her gaze for the first time. His eyes were very deep, like storm walls. “Thank you, Anzi. I don't need to sleep just yet.” She must have looked doubtful, because he said, “There are threads coming together right now.”

He was talking about threads. She felt a pinch in her heart, a fault line that she hoped wouldn't crack open.

Looking back at the nearest porthole, he said, “I don't think I can give them what they want.”

“You don't have to lead them.”

He was silent for a time. Then: “If I led them, powers would come to me. Sometimes I think there's safety in that.”

“But, Titus, the world is through demanding of you. You are free now.”

“They aren't done with me.” His glance went to the porthole. “And sometimes I
want
to lead them. If I led them, no one could touch the ones I love ever again.” He looked at her, but his gaze slid away. “I saw a thing, Anzi. It was a very likely future. In it I decide to lead them; I decide to be strong—and good. My intentions are good.”

“Tell me.”

“I take control. And everyone I love perishes. That's what happens. Most likely. Or likely enough.” He rose from the bench and leaned into a porthole. “People have come to the shore, waiting. How many, would you say?”

“A few hundred. They've been coming in for the last hour and a half.”

He nodded, facing her. “In my…imagination…I see them as a massive gathering.” His voice was so low she could hardly hear him. “That future. The one where they wait for me on the shore. That black future. If they continue to arrive, if they grow into a great crowd, then it's a very dangerous…thread.”

Again, the word
thread
. “Titus. You see things, yes?” She just wanted him to tell her straight out.

In his face, a flicker of wariness. “Yes. I'm sorry.”

He was altered. She knew that…but the process had been interrupted, which is why no one knew what he was or what was left of what he was. But God of Misery,
he saw things
. It was too large to think about. She came back
to surer ground: “You have to know, Titus, that you wouldn't lead them. You wouldn't take that power. You would not; you've never desired it.”

“I want to believe that. But Anzi, the world has a way…” He ran his hand through his hair, looking at Tai for help, looking beyond Tai. “Even before I became…what I am now, I watched what happened to people who were offered power. They took it, every one of them. Stefan Polich. Helice. The Tarig. Geng De. Even Lamar.”

He looked at her straight on. “It's happening to me.”

“No.” It came unbidden to her lips.

“But, you see, I am a navitar now.”

The words sank into her, heavily, doing damage on the way. All she had now were small arguments, side issues. She whispered, her voice losing its certainty, “You see possible futures, not sure ones.”

“That's not what I mean, Anzi. I am a
navitar
. Nistothom altered me. Who knows what I am capable of doing?” He looked toward the porthole. “The more they arrive, the more I think that I have already decided. If I had power, I could keep the people in my care safe. I would fight against becoming corrupt. I'm tempted to believe that ruling them would not make me dark. I would be better than that.”

“So I believe, Titus!”

“But the gathering makes me wonder. Because after the gathering come the bad things.”

She wanted to contradict him, to deny his fears. Instead, she said the only thing that she could swear was true: “You need to rest, Titus. Take some time with this.”

He went to her, grasping her hand and coaxing her up from her seat. “Anzi. There is something you could do for me. Don't let me leave this cabin. Not until Sen Ni is strong enough to stand outside her tent. The Entire needs to see her as strong and capable. So they can give her their devotion, instead of giving it to me.”

A streak of hope coursed through her. He had a plan. “Titus, if you sleep, I'll stand guard.” She turned toward Tai. “Give me your sword.”

Tai unsheathed the jeweled artifact and gave it to her.

“I'm going to stand outside that door,” she said to Titus. “And if you try to open it, you'll never get past me.”

The smallest smile came to his face. He looked at her in a way that still filled her with heat. “That's very good of you.”

“Yes. Now get some sleep.” Nodding at Tai as she passed him, she went out the door, closing it solidly behind her.

Anzi stood at the rail for the next few hours, keeping watch, praying that Titus wouldn't come through the door.

Venn stood outside Sen Ni's tent, where the young woman recuperated. Across the strand, she saw that Anzitaj still kept guard at Ghoris's ship's rail. Anzitaj had already turned Venn away, despite Venn saying that she had very critical business to settle with Titus Quinn. Of course it was business she couldn't divulge to the man's wife.

Just behind Sen Ni's pavilion was the orphans' tent. Apparently Geng De had taken a group of youngsters—youngsters!—with him in his horrid journey into the binds. Not all of them had survived. The vile man. But not so vile as the Tarig, who had buried in the Entire unspeakable mechanisms to collapse the world like a forma. It was the Jinda ceb against whom such measures were designed, of course. Poor cowardly Tarig.

A navitar vessel sped toward the shore, its deck crowded with pilgrims. It would join the dozens of others beached on the sand, gangways down. No doubt all these sentients had learned what was happening from Inyx sendings, messages that unwittingly contributed to Titus Quinn's nightmare. At first the majority of those on the shore had been Jinda ceb, setting up huts as though they expected a long wait. Now many other sentients had staked out groups and mixed in the crowd. And they kept arriving. While Titus Quinn slept, the crowd swelled, all attention on Ghoris's ship and the man who had come home from the fight.
Their
fight.

Titus Quinn was within his rights to criticize the Jinda ceb. Even though her people had been woven at the last, there was no excuse for their inaction before then. They might have resolved their moral dilemma by declaring
each realm sovereign.
That they had failed to acknowledge this fair doctrine was a measure of their yearning to come home, to
be
at home. At some level, they had
wanted
the Rose to burn.

As a Complete One, she should have vigorously spoken up. She felt her derma shiver with vexation. Truth was a terrible mirror to one's self-esteem.

Venn had begun to make amends. It was the hardest thing she had ever done, even including the misbegotten choice to become female in a society that was so loaded with bias that one must doubt the wisdom of ever assimilating in such a stew of misconceptions. Still, she would keep to her choice. Anzitaj was a good example of what females could be—with a little straightening out by a Beautiful One. Iritaj had met his best student, judging by the extraordinary progress in her life art. Such a lovely blue, and now, those traceries of silver. Exquisite.

So then, amends. She would help Titus Quinn. It would ruin her, but she owed it to him.

Mounted on Gevka at the fore of the long line of Inyx, Akay-Wat looked down on the banks of the Nigh from her vantage point on a low hill. It was the first hour of Early Day.