Prince of Storms (9 page)

Quinn went on. “Those who remain behind, the solitaires, are a menace; they may bring war to the Entire. Give me a ship to strengthen my defenses.” Quinn wanted his own ships. At least one.

Tindivir did not immediately answer. Ahnwalun sat nearby, joining them this time since Anzi had not come along.

Ahnwalun said, “You ask for machines of war, where we are neutral.”

“Brightships have no weapons.”

Tindivir and Ahnwalun remained silent.

He would get nowhere with representatives like these. “I would like a chance to speak to Manifest.” He wanted to make his own case to the Jinda ceb. To communicate with Manifest he would need a hoop. Of course he had long had a communication hoop, though broken: the ancient hoop that Akay-Wat had given him when he first met her. An artifact of a former time.

“We will bring this request to Manifest,” Tindivir said. Tindivir needed no hoop, having internal access. Only juveniles needed such devices.

As for his other communication problems, a hoop was of no use: “I would send a message to the Rose.”

“Yes,” Tindivir said. “This can be done.”

“It is difficult, however,” Ahnwalun pointed out, lest any concession seem too easily given.

Tai faced off with Zhiya. She was in charge of the departure of the Tarig, but Tai was not sure that she should have been. He wanted the occasion to have the sort of dignity he imagined for momentous happenings, but Zhiya only thought of the practical aspects.

There were logistics involved. Not all Tarig were to be in the plaza at one time; they should come a few at a time. They would depart from the center of the plaza, where the lines of the canals would be aligned by Ahnwalun.

The functionaries of the Magisterium would stand as witness.

“A few embellishments, Mistress Zhiya, might not mar the day.” A bit of ceremony was surely in order.

Zhiya smirked. “The Tarig have gone back and forth for archons.”

“Never all at once.”

“No horns, Tai.”

“Well. But certainly the regent should say something.”

“Such as?”

“A short speech.”

“No, Tai. It'll take long enough to see them gone. No speeches.”

Tai bit his lip. “No ceremony, no acknowledgment that we have a new governance?”

Zhiya shrugged. “Titus Quinn's tents are in the plaza. The Jinda ceb Horat have their weird hut. We are under a new regime; this is obvious.”

He looked askance at her quilted pants and jacket. “At least wear silks.”

She grinned. “What would you suggest?”

He considered. “Perhaps a nice mauve. It would suit your complexion.”

“Tai, if you can find something that doesn't look like a skirt on a beku, I'll wear it.”

Some progress, after all. With Zhiya dressed up, he could wear his green and silver with the brocaded belt. The Tarig lords were leaving. On such a day it was surely important to look fine.

Dear Caitlin
,

I have stopped the engine at Ahnenhoon. Tell them that. I don't know who you should tell, not having any sense of what is going on there, or who knows about the Entire and the threat it once posed.

Tell them that I took Helice's mSap, by which she planned to blackmail the Tarig into submission, and I used it to force them to deactivate the engine that could have burned down the Rose. Helice is dead, as are most of the Minerva conspirators who tried to come here. A renegade Tarig cut them down, but it was no fault of Helice's for all that she was a monster. She hoped to bring her friends here, leaving
the Rose a smoking ruin. She was killed by a young man of the Entire whom she had betrayed.

The Tarig are no longer a threat; most are going to leave for another place that is outside the boundaries of the Entire. I don't know enough to call it another universe, though perhaps it is. We have help now from a people who call themselves the Jinda ceb Horat. I don't know them well yet, but they are the Tarig equals in technology.

Tell the family of John Hastings that he is alive, the only one who survived the passage over, besides Anzi, whom you met. Perhaps in time, I will send him to you, so that he can attest to how things stand here.

I'm saddened beyond measure by Rob's death. I haven't had time to grieve. You, Mateo, and Emily are often in my thoughts.

You will want to know how I am. The truth is, I'm grateful to be alive. I have Anzi, and she is my anchor and my best hope for happiness.

The Jinda ceb tell me that sending this—by gravity wave—is something that requires great energy. For this reason, I may not be able to write again, or if I do, it might be seldom. I don't know if, when this reaches you, years will have passed since the fight at Hanford. Caitlin, there is so much that I don't know.

I regret to tell you that Sydney and I are deeply estranged. She is free and strong in this world but feels I am an interloper. That I abandoned her. I fear she is right. I have the reins of power—to assure that the engine remains inactive—but it is a tenuous grip. Keeping the engine quiescent has earned me many enemies.

I must be brief, therefore: Persuade those who make the decisions that they should make no forays into the Entire. The more a threat against the Entire is perceived, the worse it may be for you.

I am not without power.

I will use what little I have for the Rose.

Caitlin, I wish you, with all my heart, to be well and to find happiness.

—Titus

A thick fog surrounded Yulin as his airships came to ground some distance from the Chalin capital city. Without better visibility, they should go on foot from here.

He descended the ramp from the airship's gondola, uneasy in the obscuring murk. His brother had held the great seat of Xi for five hundred days, but had recently fled at reports that Yulin was returning. So Yulin's loyalists had reported. But he wouldn't put it past Zai Gan to lie in wait and fall upon him, to keep his mastership of Xi. What good it could do him now that Cixi had fallen lower than a clerk, Yulin didn't know, but there would be satisfaction in the murder, he had little doubt.

Behind him six more airships had come to mast, troop transports from Ahnenhoon filled with enough good soldiers to mount a defense at Xi, if it came to that. They would form a decent escort into the city.

The moment had been one he'd lived out in his mind many times, but always in his imagination Suzong had been at his side. That she would now be sitting as high prefect he could not, even in a blazing fancy, have imagined. She had the authority to appoint masters of sways. She had reappointed him, and set aside Zai Gan, who by now was halfway to the forests of the Gond, if he was wise.

Yulin squinted into the mist. He thought he could discern the stolid heights of the city on the hill, unless it was the shadow of memory. How he longed for his gardens once more, and the contemplative life of the master of the sway! He hooked his thumbs into his waistband sash, a length of cloth considerably shorter than it had been before he'd been forced to live in tents in the scabbed hills near Ahnenhoon. These forty days past Titus Quinn had restored to order all that had been lost. Yulin supposed he was grateful.

He had been bound to Titus Quinn from the moment the man had arrived in a jar and taken refuge in his garden. Now the ties were strengthened by marriage—his niece; and politics—his wife. All in keeping with Suzong's predictions when she first surmised that Quinn would grind the Tarig to dust. Here, so far from the Ascendancy, he would miss the old crone. But she was determined that he take back Xi and begin to cultivate Chalin loyalty toward the regent however possible.

“Master Yulin.”

His chamberlain Guiling stood before him, having stepped out of the concealing fog. “There is a ship, Excellency. A Tarig ship.”

Yulin looked up, but he could see no higher than he could across.

“Not in flight.” Guiling pointed into the deep murk. “Over there.”

Annoyed by the man's calm at such alarming news, Yulin snapped, “Do the Tarig crave an audience?” He drew his sword, and his men fanned out to both sides.

“No,” Guiling said. “There are no Tarig.”

The group strode forward, walking blindly, the fog boiling around them. Yulin muttered, “A brightship? Empty, you say?”

“Yes, Master Yulin. The egress door open, and no one inside. They are all outside.”

“You said no Tarig,” Yulin growled.

“None alive, Master.” Guiling pointed. “See, here is the first.”

They came upon the body, if such it was—a lumpen form more like a blackened and collapsed tree than a Tarig. The creature had been burned.

Yulin bent down to assure himself that this charred litter of bones was indeed a high lord. A clawed hand stretched out from the blackened mass, leaving no doubt. The metallic cloth had curled tightly around the lord's central core as though it had tried to protect vitals. Yulin put his hand on the shrunken vest. It was still warm.

“The ship would not burn, though they tried,” Guiling said.

“They? They?”

“The militia of Xi. They left their standard flying over there, by the ship. They burned seven, Excellency.”

For a moment a breeze shredded the fog, revealing an outline of a grounded brightship. “Strange that the solitaires would come here.”

Guiling spat on the Tarig body. “Perhaps they thought the city loved them.”

“That love worked best at a distance.”

They moved on, passing two more blackened remains. Out of the fog emerged the green-and-brown standard of Xi, snapping in the breeze, its flutter making the scene of death and abandon all the more stark. Yulin wondered how many it had taken to have massacred the lords. Half a company? The fight must have been impressive; but the soldiers' bodies had been removed.

The massive ship towered over them now, crouching on segmented struts, like a dung beetle grown monstrous. From the egress hole streamed a smoky light. In the circle illumined by this fall of light lay a Tarig boot.

A somber mood fell on Yulin. Though unaccustomed to philosophical thought, he could not shrug off a sense that here, in this circle of light from the empty brightship, was the whole story of a great fall from power. One did not think of the Tarig as pulling on their boots, much less leaving them behind on the midlands. They—these seven—had dressed for the day and flown high and far, landing before a city they thought might give them welcome. They had catastrophically misjudged.

He turned to Guiling. “We walk from here. Send a contingent forward to announce us.”

Leaving a posting of guards behind to watch over the ship, Yulin and the remains of his former court walked toward the city.

“I 
WANT THAT SHIP
.” Quinn stood in the hut door, facing off with Tindivir. The Jinda ceb representative had relayed a report from Yulin about the slaughter of the Tarig—a bizarre end for those who had once been regarded as gods. But there was something more pressing than Tarig deaths on Quinn's mind: the abandoned brightship.

Tindivir's head swirls tightened in a display of tension. “That ship is far away.”

“You travel easily enough.”

“For me to bring you to the Chalin sway where the brightship is would be to position the Jinda ceb in your political questions. I will not.”

Quinn noticed how the somatic computing on Tindivir's back threw a dull glow on the hut wall. These were alien beings, he had to remind himself; so much more foreign to him than any other denizen of the Entire. Their political rationales were incomprehensible to him.

Well, if they would not help, he would bloody well go there himself. He would cross the primacy by dirigible. “Would you stop me if I went after it?”

“We remain aloof.”

For that, he was grateful, although he did not see himself pursuing the solitaires with one ship; perhaps Tindivir saw the limitations himself, and did not think one human in a ship would much threaten the peace.

“If I go, would you give me a communication device such as you provided for Yulin? I'd want to remain in touch with my people.” But all such messages would funnel through Tindivir, so a question could be raised as to how much messages would be filtered.

“A communication slit could be arranged.”

He nodded his thanks. It was a small favor among large concerns. “When will Manifest answer my request for help?”

“Manifest is still discussing.”

He ducked out of Tindivir's hut before he said things he would regret. The ship was a fine prize. But Tindivir wouldn't help retrieve it. And Quinn had to admit that he couldn't retrieve it himself, couldn't leave his command for the days it would take to cross the primacy from the River Nigh. He needed someone else to go. Someone who owed him a favor. He strode toward John Hastings's tent.

When Quinn entered, John looked up in surprise from his enlivened scroll and rose from his chair.

Nearby sat the mSap. Once, it had represented vast quantum-level computing power. Now, after what Quinn had seen of the Tarig and Jinda ceb, it seemed merely quaint, a steam engine compared to a Kardashev drive.

“Mind if I sit?” Quinn took the only other chair.

Tall and wiry, John seated himself again, looking uneasy. He was a man who needed to do penance for attempted universe murder. No doubt he wondered when, if ever, Quinn would forgive him, and Quinn himself didn't know. The man's complicity with Helice. With Lamar. God, it was still beyond comprehension. Quinn felt his anger push up from the place where, most days, he managed to banish it.

“I've come about the brightship.”

“The one that Master Yulin found? That one?”

“Yes. I want you to bring it back. Fly it here. That ship is too valuable to leave on the plains of Xi. I may have need of it.”

John looked around the tent as though hoping to find a reprieve somewhere in his scrolls. “I…I'm not a pilot. We've only tried flying them once; I wasn't at the controls.”

“The brightships almost fly themselves. You've said so yourself.”

“I've never been outside the Ascendancy. What if something happens?”

“Tindivir will give you a communication slit. And I'll send some of Zhiya's operatives with you. You'll have their guidance along the way.”

I'd have to go by the Nigh, and then…”

“…by dirigible. I know this is a lot, John.” But, by God, he didn't care. He was tired of hearing what could not be done. Time for someone to step up. “You'd be at some risk. I need to know if you're willing.”

A heavy silence. John finally mumbled, “There's landing the thing in the hangar.”

“The landing is almost automatic.”

John looked around his tent, at the comfortable study he had made of things for the past weeks.

“I'd like to trust you,” Quinn said.

“I wish that you would.” Then John seemed to realize that he could hardly refuse, that this assignment was little enough in the way of amends. He looked at Quinn, nodding grimly. “I'll go.” He did not look happy, but he managed a brave smile. It was a daunting assignment.

One Quinn would have loved to have had.

Sitting in her viewing tent next to the plaza, Suzong had to remind herself that this was not an execution. The Tarig would simply pass through the door between worlds. When they walked forward to the appointed spot and disappeared from the world, it would not be death.

A shame. They deserved a fine, bloody end, but Titus was in a mood to be merciful, a quality that he'd displayed before and which never ceased to amaze her. You get more flies with honey, he'd told her. Yes, she'd replied, but then your enemies expect dessert instead of punishment.

“You'll be a good high prefect, madam,” he'd said, smiling. A handsome
man when he smiled, which he did rather more often than in the old days, and usually in the direction of his wife, which warmed her heart to see. Ji Anzi was no longer young, but Suzong could attest to the success of such pairings, having been thousands of days older than Yulin when she stole his heart.

She wished the old bear could be at her side to watch the Tarig depart.

Functionaries crowded the edges of the great plaza: the factors, clerks, understewards, stewards, sublegates, preconsuls, and the rest. This was the first time Suzong had seen them all assembled—perhaps the first time anyone had seen such a sight—and she marveled at how many there were. Thousands. Their murmurs rose to her ears, a great stew of voices, among them her chief assistants—legates Suzong had quickly promoted to replace the old slate. She'd kept Mei Ing, whose job as subprefect was ceremonial anyway. No one could have imagined that she would ever have supplanted Cixi.

In the center of the plaza Titus had set up his viewing stand. Ji Anzi stood at his side, along with Zhiya—a godder, but one with excellent political instincts—and the strange young man whom Titus seemed to favor—what was his name? Yes, Li Yun Tai. Ci Dehai should have been there, but he had already departed for Ahnenhoon, there to hold the keep and raise an alarm if the solitaires made trouble.

She looked up to the Palatine Hill. Tarig massed there, standing on their verandas. Solemn, if she could judge at this distance. These were the ones, though, who
wanted
to go home. They'd have to trust that the Jinda ceb were actually effecting this transition and not throwing them into the void.

Thoughts of execution intruded again. Though Suzong was an old woman, the memory remained strong of her mother's garroting at the hands of a Tarig. Watching this procession would have to suffice for purgation.

They were coming down the steps now, the first group of them.

The plaza hushed.

GolMard waved at her assistant to spray the mist more liberally lest the consul risk a bad rash from the bright.

The Gond adjusted her bulk on the litter and watched as the first Tarig
strode into the plaza, moving toward the place where the lines converged and created the crossing-over door. It should properly be called the To and From the Veil Door. But since there was no veil here—nor any reach, for that matter—they must adjust their thinking about how it was possible to come and go. And that was the least of
the adjustments
. The lords themselves were abdicating. An unthinkable proposition only a few arcs ago, as was the prospect of Titus Quinn coming back to the bright city and setting up a tent in plain view of all. Not to mention the Paion welcomed here. There were many who remained chagrined at
that
adjustment. But it must be remembered that the Tarig could have stopped the Long War ages ago by simply reconnecting the Paion minoral, and had chosen instead, in the interests of running a nice little unifying war, not to.

Rumor had it that Lord Toth would lead the first group, and there he was, with his habitual expression of disdain. Behind him came fourteen others. The Tarig, she mused, ever and always thought in fives.
And they were leaving
. The thought sat like an undigested and too-large meal.

GolMard fully expected that Lord Toth would advance into the nexus point without ceremony, but to her surprise, as he passed the canopy under which the regent sat, the lord paused. He said something, and, astonishingly, the regent rose from his chair and approached Toth. They spoke for a moment, and then, without further delay, Toth turned from him and led his fellow lords straight into the wall, into the crossing point.

He disappeared. And then the next lord and then a Tarig lady. Others followed them, vanishing instantly in midstride.

A murmur of amazement or consternation rose from the plaza's edges. Even GolMard leaned forward, surprised that she had just seen the Tarig lords disappear, though they had all been told the lords were going home to the Heart, and the means whereby they would do so.

The next group of Tarig were already descending the stairs from the hill.

To cover her strong and unexpected emotions, GolMard waved at her servant. “More mist,” she said, hoping to keep her composure as the Tarig vanished from the Entire.

Anzi whispered to Quinn. “What did he say?”

Zhiya leaned in to hear. Quinn answered, “He said, in essence, goodbye.”

It had been a strange moment, a defining one. The Tarig were leaving the universe they had created and had controlled with a formerly unshakable grip. He remembered a time when they had seemed invulnerable, when their mere physical presence confounded. There were times over the last few days when he thought it somehow
amiss
for the Entire not to have lords. But go they must.