Bright of the Sky

by Kay Kenyon

  Riders were crowding around, always game for a good fight, the shouting equal for Sydney and Puss. Akay-Wat was clomping nearby, saying, "Oh dear, oh dear, bad fighting."

  Puss leapt for Sydney, landing all four feet in her chest and bouncing off, leaving a claw mark on her neck. She froze in place to listen. A faint scraping sound preceded Puss's next jump, and she reached up to cut his stomach. By Tarig law, she mustn't kill him, but a nice cut was fair payback. She felt her knife slice through fur and heard a caterwauling as Puss raced for the barracks door.

  Sydney charged after him, pushing past the gathered riders, who piled out of the barracks after her, into the gleaming bright. Some of Puss's fellow spies were in the melee, by the smell of them. They took turns darting in and out as she turned, slicing her knife to keep them cautious. Suddenly, one jumped onto her back, biting into her shoulder. She tossed him away, hardly feeling the wound, but ready now to murder them all.

  The gang of Laroos grew silent. By the sound of a hoof slapping the dirt, she knew that a mount had come to see the fuss ended.

  Unfortunately, it was Priov.

  A breeze cooled the sweat on Sydney's body. She stood, knife in hand, as Puss whined for good effect.

  Who is using had knives? Priov directed at the group.

  A hundred voices answered: Laroos accusing Sydney, Yslis accusing Hirrin, and, above it all, Akay-Wat saying, "Peed on the bed, did Laroo, to cause stinking."

  As the voices quieted Priov sent, Here is one with a bad knife. She didn't need to guess whom he was looking at. She sheathed the knife in her belt, saying, "The Laroo have knives growing in their hands. Claws are just as bad as knives."

  Now that a mount had arrived, sight trickled into Sydney's mind. She saw the ragged and dirty riders, a bad mix of the ugly and misshapen: the monkeylike Ysli with their sullen faces; the witless Hirrin, a cross between an ostrich and a donkey; and the Laroo, reddish fur glinting in the bright, standing stooped over like apes, with arms trailing at their sides. In their midst, a small human with matted black hair, as ugly as the rest of them.

  Bring me the cuff, Priov demanded. A Laroo went to fetch the long-tailed whip that fit around the fetlock of the Inyx. Sydney, go to the post, he said.

  She held fast, trying not to show her outrage, or even feel it. She wanted to give no emotional performance for the Inyx, but she couldn't help but remember the last whipping, when her nerves ran fire and she'd bitten through her lip without noticing. She thought of her book, and pin pricking this into the pages, the four hundredth wrong, unless it was the five hundredth. All could be borne, as long as there was a list.

  Priov's mares, who stayed close by him, trickled into the scene, nervously gathering up their riders and tossing their heads, disliking the emotioncharged atmosphere. The Laroos climbed on, and several others, as Akay-Wat chanted, "Not fair, not fair."

  Sydney walked to the post, keeping her walk steady, her head high.

  Akay-Wat looked at Sydney with profound admiration. She felt more words gathering: her impassioned speech on behalf of her friend. But Priov's mood was irritable, and Akay-Wat feared he might whip her, too. Yes, let him whip me. She began to move forward. When she heard Priov stamp his foot, the impulse vanished. A whipping hurt badly, especially if Priov used the cuff with the knots. The shame of her cowardice cut deeply as she saw, through the eyes of many mounts, Sydney standing calmly in the center of the yard.

  Akay-Wat's mount, Skofke, moved up beside her, bending down so that Akay-Wat could climb up. He caught the drift of his rider's thoughts, and reflected them back to her in a horrible reverberation: coward, coward, coward. She clung to Skofke's back in misery, watching her friend slowly turn to grip the post.

  Priov approached, wearing the cuff.

  The mounts kept arriving, gathering riders up, tossing nervously about, picking up a cacophony of emotions. Then a new emotion: foreboding and excitement. A mount was galloping down the gully near the barracks, black coat glistening.

  It was Riod, his thoughts clear as a shout: She is mine.

  Silence fell on the gathering as Riod came to Sydney's side. Up, he said.

  No, Priov demanded. First, the cuff.

  Her hand went out to Riod's strong face, making sure where he was. Sydney was thrilled but also wary. Riod risked much, especially in front of Priov's mares, all milling about, witness to whether Priov could control one renegade Inyx or not. But he had dared to side with her against another Inyx.

  "I used a knife on the Laroo," she told him, to be fair.

  Which Laroo?

  "The one that pees on beds."

  He sent an emotion of contempt, and then she felt his front legs dip for her to mount. She sprang up, and Riod charged out of the circle, Sydney holding tight.

  They thundered down the gully by the camp, and then out onto the steppe.

  Priov shall not hit you, Riod sent.

  She liked hearing that. Even though it was in Riod's self-interest not to have an injured rider, she caught his emotion of loyalty. It was a fierce and lovely emotion, one that stirred her like no other.

  Those who should be loyal often weren't. No one had stood by her in four thousand days here: not Johanna, not Titus, not the powers of the Rose who never came looking for the vanished family. Only one person in four thousand days: an old Chalin woman, the prefect of the Magisterium-and even she couldn't save Sydney from the cruel hands of the Tarig or the cruel hearts of the Inyx. Sydney nevertheless loved Cixi. Her messages came infrequently, whispered by couriers, Chalin legates bringing new slaves. Messages like, Persevere, my strong girl. Remember the vows. The vows she and Cixi had sworn to each other. Someday soon we will be together again.

  Sydney rode on, letting all the bad things peel away on the wind. It was a good day to ride, and not be beaten. A good day to remember that the most powerful Chalin in the All was her foster mother-no, her true mother-who would come for her someday.

  Twilight slipped into the Shadow time, and they slowed their pace. It seemed likely they would spend this ebb-time on the steppe.

  Riod found a shallow ravine and a stand of spike grass, bending down so Sydney could dismount. He walked away, hoofing the sand for a chance at water. Eventually a pool formed, and seeing it in his mind, Sydney came to cleanse herself.

  Riod pranced closer, sniffing her.

  "I'm all right," she said, feeling his curiosity about her wounds. Through his eyes she saw herself: ragged, short hair, and in the dirty face, eyes still blue but so blank.

  It was easy to forget she was blind. Not so easy to forget the Tarig's embrace, as he held her, as the claw came closer. There was confinement, steel-locked arms, and the mantis lord whispering to her....

  Riod's warm breath wafted into her face. He licked at the deep scratch at her neck. When she loosened her collar, he cleansed her shoulder bite as well. Riod's warm tongue was probably full of germs, but it felt good. She didn't want to like this mount. She wanted to exploit him as he exploited her. It was disgusting that, to feel important, the mounts must have helpless riders. The Inyx claimed that blindness enhanced the ability of non-Inyx to pick up silent Inyx communication. Even if true, Sydney bristled at their domination. And at her growing affection for Riod.

  I'm not your pet, she thought angrily, pushing him away.

  What are you? Riod asked, rudely listening in.

  "Stay out of my head!" she said aloud. She kicked the grass in frustration, stomping on patches of thread weed as Riod watched, feelings hurt, mixing his own feelings with hers.

  Tomorrow she must face Priov again, and the thought sickened her. But she was weary now, needing sleep. She found a hollow in the ground and lay down, trusting Riod to watch over her because she was too weary to care whether that made her more dependent on him.

  Standing guard, Riod faced out to the steppe. Through his eyes she saw the flat world stretched out, clean and empty, with a lavender blush dimming the land. As she drifted into sleep, she felt Riod's mind pr
obing hers, looking for something. He hoped that, with her guard down, he might find a shred of reassurance.

  Sydney fled into sleep, her only privacy.

  As Quinn and Anzi debarked the train at the village of Na Jing, Anzi steered Quinn away from the Gond who had taken insult in their failure to purchase goods. The Gond urged her sling-bearers to hurry after Dal Shen, but this ploy failed when the Hirrin princess intercepted Anzi and Quinn and, striking up a conversation that Anzi now welcomed, offered transportation to Bei's reach. In this manner, Quinn found himself in the only mechanical air transport commonly available to travelers: a dirigible.

  He called it a dirigible, and the princess, named Dolwa-Pan, called it a sky bulb. Dolwa-Pan was traveling to Bei's reach for scholarship, and thought nothing of the expense of a sky bulb for her sole use.

  Now, the Hirrin princess stood next to Quinn gazing out the window of the dirigible, her small, round head perched like a flower on the long stalk of her neck. She had apologized a dozen times for reporting them to the train magister, and still she wasn't done. "I should never have thought you were a danger. So foolish, Dolwa-Pan." Her floral perfumes spiked into his senses almost painfully.

  "One took no notice," he said, in the idiom.

  A trip of ten days by beku was shortened to one day on this small airship that skimmed over the minoral valley at a height of two hundred feet. Nothing except the brightships soared higher here or anywhere that he had seen. No birds, no airplanes. The bright commanded the vertical space, and to approach it was to sicken. Flickers of memory suggested that Quinn had indeed flown there, and for a moment he was shaken by a keen sense of pleasure in that ride.

  He was eager to ask Su Bei. Bei would know the truth, perhaps unlocking once and for all the memories that half intrigued, half haunted Quinn. So much depended on this scholar whom he had once known. Would Su Bei help him? Most immediately he needed the facial alterationsaccording to Anzi, not a difficult task or one, fortunately, that involved cutting. If Bei was willing to tell Quinn his past and alter his identity, then surely he would go the next step, of telling him where to find the correlates, since, Quinn reasoned, one treason led to another.

  Su Bei was said to be in disgrace, partially blamed for Titus Quinn's escape so long ago. That could be both good and bad for Quinn. Bad, if Bei blamed him. Good, if he blamed the Tarig.

  And who did Titus Quinn blame? Always, the Tarig. But they had intermediaries, and one of these had been Su Bei, his interrogator.

  It wasn't at all clear that Bei would welcome him or even tolerate him. And if this gamble failed, he had only himself to blame, for insisting on Su Bei rather than on Anzi's choice for a surgeon. As well, there was the danger that Bei would see a chance to redeem himself, and betray Quinn to the lords.

  He put his hand on the lump under his jacket, on the Going Over blade. He was no murderer. But if Bei tried to call Lord Hadenth down on him, he would kill Bei without hesitation.

  Dolwa-Pan noted his absent gaze as he stared out the window. "What do you look for, Dal Shen?"

  "Peace," he murmured. Stefan and Helice would never believe his goal to be so simple. But in the end, after Sydney, after his own sway, he wanted just that.

  Dolwa-Pan said to him, "Surely all creatures may be at peace on the Radiant Path?" Her prehensile lip adjusted her necklace, a medallion on a blue cord.

  Anzi was making her way toward them, putting a stop to his ill-advised conversation. She interrupted, exchanging bows with Dolwa-Pan. "A lovely ride, Princess. Allow me to reimburse you for your trouble."

  Dolwa-Pan flattened her ears in a no, and they began a polite argument over sharing the cost of the sky bulb, with Dolwa-Pan finally persuading Anzi not to pay. Thus Anzi managed to deflect the conversation to safe topics. Quinn felt her reins on him, and chafed. Anzi had already assured him that Hirrin sentients could not be spies. They were afflicted-or blessed-with a profound inability to lie. If they expressed something they knew was untrue, they quite simply passed out. After learning this, he began to see in them a naive sweetness. He was still on his guard though, Anzi should realize.

  Through the window, Quinn watched the storm wall as it hovered blackly, a mere handspan tall at this distance. Along the top, it rippled where it conjoined the bright. It looked like a tidal wave of water, and had since the first time he'd spied it. That image was hard to shake since hour by hour the wall grew. The minoral narrowed toward its tip, where eventually the walls would converge.

  Dolwa-Pan lipped at her medallion, bringing it up closer to one ear, as he had seen her do several times. This time he was close enough to hear a very faint chime.

  Noting Quinn's gaze, the Hirrin said, "The tonals of regression. It is only a toy, a bauble." She gazed out the window and seemed to grow wistful. "It was my choice to journey to this sway, to pursue scholarship. But even in this far minoral, I know where the gracious lords dwell, in the heartland. The tonals sing very low. We are far away."

  Anzi murmured, "Yet the vows keep us ever close."

  The pious remark served as a reminder to Quinn that they were speaking to one devoted to the Tarig. Anzi had earlier noted the Hirrin's heartchime, and warned him to be wary. To some in the Entire, the Tarig were little less than gods, and not only because of their powers. The Radiant Path was the structure of justice and well-being.

  Well-being for some, he thought. Not for a man of the Rose, or a human child.

  Outside, a sight caught llolwa-Pan's attention. The distant storm wall was pierced by a crack of blinding light, like a door through the wall, filled with fire.

  "A nascence," llolwa-Pan said. "It sputters from life to oblivion. Like us all, yes?" She gave a puff of air through her lips, a thing that passed for a sigh among her kind.

  Quinn smiled. "You are a philosopher."

  Her ears flattened. "I have no need for philosophy, as the bright guides me." With this lofty sentiment, she departed to tend to her Hirrin child, a tiny replica of his mother, who slept in the stern, lulled by the thrumming of the deck.

  The wind blew the sky bulb, buffeting it, whipping its mooring lines as people ran to catch them.

  The pilot worked his instruments as, outside, the world frowned gray with streaks of lightning. It was a storm, the perpetual storm here at the boundary of the Entire.

  The young Hirrin screamed in terror, saying, "We will fall, we will fall down." Answering him, Dolwa-Pan clutched him under her body, saying, "No, sweet one, we will not fall." Then with a heavy thump she collapsed on the deck, her legs splayed out. Anzi went to her, and Quinn helped pull the princess off the terrified child.

  "Fainted," Anzi said.

  The sky bulb pitched and spun in the gusts. From outside, shouts came from those helping the sky bulb to dock. The pilot cursed and shouted instructions, although outside no one could hear him. Quinn felt a pang of contempt for a pilot who botched a landing. But at last, with a hard jolt, the craft was down.

  "Now we are safe," Anzi told the small Hirrin, patting it on the front legs.

  The pilot stood in the small opening to the control room. He scowled at the unconscious Hirrin lying on his deck. "Lied, did she?"

  Anzi nodded. "She believed that she lied about falling. But because of your fine skills, we are safe."

  He snorted and went to the egress door, throwing it wide and filling the ship with a sour wind.

  A gaggle of scholars stood waiting to help. The pilot called for a litter to carry the Hirrin, and urged Quinn and Anzi to debark, anxious to be gone from this place.

  Clutching his pack, Quinn stepped out, Anzi following, their hair whipping in the wind. On three sides towered the world walls, blue-black and undulating. The storm walls were stitched into deep folds, quilting space to time in a plaid of grooved lines. It was impossible to gauge how close the walls were. Sometimes they appeared to surge forward, and sometimes to recede, and then to do both at once. Craning his neck, Quinn could see the bright only as a narrow wedge, bravely holding a
sliver of sky. The bright was irrelevant here, where the walls rose close and high, undulating and sparking with filaments of light. Ozone stained the air, along with an indefinable smell that made Quinn slightly nauseous.

  It was easy to think of this gray and lightning-streaked sky as a storm, a weather front like those at home. But there was no rain or thunder, so the illusion wore thin. He knew very well it was an illusion. The reality was that surrounding him here in the minoral were the Entire's boundaries, the powerdrenched skin of the world beyond which lay his own cosmos, a conjunction that might well be the branes of two universes, touching.

  Not far away, perhaps a thousand yards, the storm walls converged to a vertical black scar, a seam that might rip apart at any moment.

  The reach. The place scholars converged to view the Rose, and one of the places where exchanges between worlds occurred. A game of chance, with all the odds against you. Unless you knew your way.

  A group of Chalin scholars herded Anzi and him away from the dirigible. Grit blew in Quinn's face. He let himself be led until he could just make out a low structure highlighted by an impressive streak of yellow lightning that ribboned through the air.

  Once at the building, they ducked under an archway and through creaking doors. Out of the wind and chaos, they paused and faced their hosts. There were five ancient Chalin, black-haired and shrunken. Hearing Anzi's request to speak with Bei, they bowed, saying they must determine whether Master Bei could be disturbed. They disappeared through a door set in the far wall.

  Alone now, Quinn and Anzi took in the unfurnished hall, its floor littered with sand oozing through chinks. The nearby tumult caused the air inside the hall to thrum. Then the doors flew open, announcing the arrival of Dolwa-Pan, carried on the litter. The young Hirrin cowered next to his mother, and the party disappeared behind the inner doors.

  The building rattled in the wind. He noted its disrepair: the cracks along the foundation and a slump of stone in the corner.

  Anzi pointed to the high, carved door where the assistants had gone. "That's the To and From the Veil Door. There's one such door in every reach where scholars work. It will take us down below."