A World Too Near (34 page)

Quinn struggled to put his thoughts in a row. “Why am I sick?”

“Benhu said that a woman of the Rose poisoned you. Yes?” When he nodded, she went on, “Going into the binds, you became violently ill, and the lord made the navitar withdraw.”

The river, flashing silver under the bright, threw a shimmering reflection on the cabin ceiling. He wanted to ask where they were, but even in his muddled state he knew the answer made little difference.
Somewhere on the Nigh.
Theoretically, they were everywhere on the five Rivers Nigh. The time had come to decide at last, for or against the cirque. Lord Oventroe was here. Time to decide.

Bringing his knee closer so that he could touch his ankle, he found that the chain was still there. Cold, as always. And, as always when he touched the cirque, the activating sequence came to him:
Four, five, one, and then the reverse.
He looked at Anzi. The nasty gash on her face reminded him how many people he had risked or embroiled in his undertaking already. It was no time to back out. Nor would he, if he had to take the engine apart bolt by bolt.

He reached out his hand to her and she took it. “I’m glad you found me,” he said.

She smiled. “You hid well, as always.”

“Your hair grew long.”

“It has been some time since you have been here.”

“Yes. But not long in the Rose. Time passes differently there.”

“Yes.”

“I have a lot to tell you, Anzi.”
My wife is not dead
, he wanted to say to her.
I thought she was.
He didn’t know what he could say, or for that matter, what he could feel.

Instead, he whispered, “My daughter doesn’t want to see me.”

Anzi bent close to his ear. “Titus. Benhu has told me everything. You have cause to grieve, and cause for hope, too.” She looked over her shoulder. A Tarig sat there. Oventroe. Anzi whispered, “Do you trust him?”

“No. But I asked to see him.” He struggled, trying to rise. Anzi helped him to a sitting position.

The lord had come to the bedside and now stood over them.

Dressed in a dark great coat, Lord Oventroe looked less gaunt than many Tarig. He wore his blue-black hair clasped behind his neck, as he had the last time Quinn had seen him, when Quinn had infiltrated the bright city. On his vest and skirt, remnants of bloodstains were disappearing like soap bubbles popping.

In a deep voice that Quinn well remembered, the lord said, “One cannot tell which poison your body hates most, the Rose poison or the Entire poison.”

“Entire poison?” Quinn asked, his mind moving at half speed.

Oventroe took Anzi’s place, crouching near. “Benhu’s medicinals do not function in you. You are doubly poisoned.” Noting that Quinn reached down to cover the chain with his hand, Oventroe said, “This lord might have taken the device already if we meant to control you.” He glanced out the cabin portholes. “We have a pursuer. Speak quickly, if there is something we must know.”

“The chain is flawed, my lord.”

Hearing this, Oventroe cut a dark glance at the cirque. “Thus you called me here, at such great risk.” The Tarig looked at Anzi with a feral black regard.

“She stays,” Quinn said.

“She knows all your secrets. Is that wise?”

Quinn sharpened his tone. “I trust her.”

“Perhaps. But she brought notice to you. She was recognized. Her presence might have ruined our purpose.”

“She is on my side, Lord Oventroe. I need someone I can trust. You understand?”

Oventroe looked outside again. “We could ease your sickness if we had the means on board. But this is a simple vessel.” He looked back at Quinn.

“Nevertheless, be ready for my navitar to take us downward.”

“I’m ready.”

Oventroe gestured at the ship keeper to come forward. The Ysli obeyed, bowing deeply. A soft down covered him from head to foot, and he looked surprisingly steady for one in the presence of a Tarig.

“Tell Jesid to prepare,” Oventroe said. The Ysli bowed again and disappeared up the companionway.

“Who pursues us, my lord?” Quinn asked.

“My cousins.” That was ominous, but before Quinn could pursue the topic, Oventroe said, “Tell me of the flaw in the chain.”

“It’s a bad weapon, Lord Oventroe. Maybe a terrible one.”

Oventroe looked contemptuous. “We need a terrible weapon, ah?”

Quinn shut his eyes momentarily against the nausea. Anzi brought Quinn a cup of water, and after sipping a moment, he felt steadier.

He fixed Oventroe with as steady a gaze as he could muster. “The damn thing doesn’t work. Doesn’t work right. You want to blow the kingdom to hell and gone?”

“You have lost your courage, perhaps.”

“Listen to me.” If Oventroe would just listen. Taking a deep breath, he began to tell what he knew. He related what Helice had discovered of the true nature of the cirque: its catastrophic flaw that would let loose a nan plague on the Entire, leaving behind chaos and slag. He explained that he had been pursued in the Rose, and left there quickly, perhaps poorly prepared. Helice, however, might have been more canny in her appraisal of the nan than Stefan Polich had been. He didn’t necessarily believe her, but they couldn’t afford to ignore her.

Oventroe’s first utterance after he finished was that the woman lied. He examined motives she might have, or lapses in her methods. But Quinn had been there ahead of him, having had exactly those reactions. It couldn’t be assumed that Helice was lying. Quinn wasn’t willing to risk it, and he told Oventroe so.

The lord paced, a thing that Quinn had never known a Tarig to do. At last the lord muttered, “Does this woman Helice know who I am?”

“That you are a Tarig, yes. But not your name.”

“So Benhu assured us as well.” A claw extruded on the lord’s left hand, stroking the metal of his skirt. “She has the protection of the Inyx.” He continued pacing, lost in thought, ignoring Quinn and Anzi for now.

Quinn murmured to Anzi, “I told you that when I came
back, I’d bring war. But I can’t bring this kind of war.”

Anzi crept closer to him, lowering her voice for privacy. “But you must,” she whispered. “The Helice woman lied. How could she know what others did not?” When he didn’t answer, she went on, “Take no chances for the Rose, Titus. Let the Entire stand or fall. The Tarig made it to be vulnerable. It is no fault of yours. The Tarig made the engine to destroy you, and that is no fault of yours, either.” She put her hand on his ankle, near the chain. Involuntarily, he jerked, startled to have anyone touch the cirque. She removed her hand. “Use it, Titus. If one place must die, it must be us.”

“I can come back with a better device.” His stomach knotted for a moment and then relented. “Johanna said we have one hundred years. Let them burn stars. The great collapse will come in time, but not right away. I’ve got time to come back.”

Still watching the Tarig lord pace in his long strides, Anzi hissed, “No. You have only this one chance. How long before the Tarig who are against us figure out that you know about the engine? Once they do, they will surround the fortress. You have only this chance. Tell Lord Oventroe that we will bring it to Ahnenhoon.”

At the mention of his name, the lord stopped and looked down at them. Anzi gripped Quinn’s arm, but whether it was to steady him or steady herself, he wasn’t sure.

The lord announced, “We will open the cirque. Then we can know.”

The thought of Oventroe opening the nan sent alarms down Quinn’s nerves. “Why not give me something better to use? Give me a device I can trust.”

“We cannot. Any Tarig methods would appear as such, exposing this lord, who is your only ally against my cousins. But you bear a sufficient device. Primitive though it is, it has destructive molecular power.”

“Maybe you’re not hearing me.” Brushing aside Anzi’s warning grip on his arm, he went on. “Helice thinks this will destroy your land. Nothing left, my lord—not the bright, not the Nigh, not the Ascendancy. Not you. Or your cousins.”

“We always survive.”

“All right, you survive. But everyone else dies. I won’t do it.”

Oventroe knelt down, regarding Quinn with disdain. “We require that you save the Rose.”

“You don’t require me.” As Anzi’s fingernails dug into him, he added, “My lord.”

“Give us the cirque. We will open the chambers and determine potency. It is a delicate thing to undertake so far from devices that could assist. We have ability to compensate.” He held out his long hand. “Give us the chain.”

It could work. Oventroe would run his own tests with superior technology. If the chain’s kill sequence was dependable, if the nan would limit its scope of destruction, then the mission went forward. It made sense.

He looked into Oventroe’s stark face. He couldn’t do it.

Anzi nudged him, eager to get on with it.

He put a hand on her forearm, warning her off. There was more to this than assessing firepower. Something more . . .

“Get me a chair, Anzi, please.” Quinn struggled to his feet, swaying, whether from the ship’s pitch and yaw or his own. He felt the chair in back of him and lowered himself into it. Oventroe sat on the bunk along the far bulkhead, waiting.

Finally, Quinn said, “Tell me one thing, first: Why do you
care
? That’s the thing I’ve been struggling with. Why you care.”

Oventroe said, “We do not have time for such a discussion. Do you know how fast a brightship travels? Even now, they come looking for this lord. And looking for you.”

Anzi whispered, “Please, Titus.” She looked out the porthole as though there were a chance of seeing a Tarig brightship approach.

“It’s a matter of trust,” Quinn said. He nodded at Anzi. “I trust
her
. She’s the only one I trust.”

Oventroe sat quiet as stone, murmuring, “We saved your life on the banks of the Nigh. Do I wish you harm?”

“I don’t know. There are lots of ways to die. Maybe you’re reserving me for something special.” He ran his hands through his hair, trying to find a way to understand this Tarig and to find a way to put his fate in the Tarig’s hands. “Lord Oventroe, I wonder what drives you to help me. Unlike everyone else, you favor the Rose. Why?”

Oventroe stood up and gazed out the porthole toward the storm wall, where its gloaming light fell on his face and bare arms. He said, barely audible, “This lord opposed the engine from the beginning. One believes the Rose is not for burning.”

“Why do you care?”

Oventroe turned to face him. “Perhaps, Titus, it is for the same reason that you care for the Entire.”

That the Tarig used his name startled him. He stared at Oventroe, trying to discern the creature’s heart. He had just likened himself to Quinn. We have the same motives, he implied: to save a culture, a universe. But it was hard to trust a Tarig, particularly since their need for fuel was so great. If they
must
burn the Rose, how could Oventroe be against it?

He asked, “Will the Entire die without a new energy source?”

The lord paused. “One’s cousins did not look deep enough for solutions. They found an easy answer: the Rose.”

A spike of hope flashed. “Could you burn another place instead? A universe with no sentients?” If they looked past the Rose to another universe . . .

Oventroe put an end to that hope. “We have done so already. They are gone.”

“Burned other universes?”

“Naturally. The Rose has some traditional value. We turned to it last.” Oventroe glanced out the portal. He waved Quinn’s brimming questions away. “No time. Know that the hundreds of realities are generally cold and empty. They lack matter, or if they had supplies, they were soon gone. The Rose is next. It is almost endlessly productive for our purposes. But this lord mislikes what his cousins will do. Those who dwell in the Rose are the template on which we based the sentients. The Rose is, in some ways, our root stock. We must find other ways to sustain the All. That is one’s judgment, even if one must stand alone.

“Furthermore,” the lord added, “we are curious about you.”

“Curious,” Quinn repeated.

“Yes. We long ago learned all that can be discovered of fundamental things. But of evolving sentients, we can never know enough. This is why we brought life to the Entire—out of our interest in all that our fellow creatures do. We do not slaughter sentients, as you have observed, but establish justice. Now the Entire prepares to slaughter sentients of the Rose. We do not concur. We will never concur.”

They heard voices from the upper deck, the navitar’s cabin. In another moment, the ship keeper came down to say that Jesid wished to be under way. The binds were disturbed, the overseer reported. It might be a brightship.

Lurching to his feet, Quinn waved the overseer away. “First, answer me this: Some time ago I came to you in the Ascendancy, and asked you for help. You turned me away. Why?”

“We suspected that you were a spy of Lord Hadenth, sent as a trap. Why should we have believed you? Then you fled, and we knew, too late, that you were not in Hadenth’s service.”

“I asked you for the correlates.”

“So you did.”

“I ask for them now.”

Oventroe went silent. Quinn knew it was a gamble. But he saw a way to force Oventroe to commit to the Rose in an unambiguous way, and at the same time further an ultimate peace. Even if Quinn succeeded in destroying Ahnenhoon, that couldn’t
by itself ensure peace. Only a free exchange between the cultures could do that. They needed the correlates once and for all.

He said so. “You can’t spy through the veils and expect to know who we are and how we live. Let humans pass freely to and from. Let your own people come to the Rose. If you share that vision with me, then give me the correlates. As a token of your intentions.”

Oventroe looked from the companionway to Quinn and back again. He wanted to be gone. Were there brightships descending on them at this moment? Quinn didn’t know, but he did know that this was the last chance he would have to force a concession from the lord.

Oventroe growled, “Is it not enough that we allow you to destroy the fortress at Ahnenhoon, against the wishes of the Five?”

Quinn didn’t answer, holding his ground. Anzi came to his side to steady him as he stood.