She should never have let them take Shuthmili. The worst part of it was that nobody here knew what they’d be losing. Shuthmili had lived with these people her whole life and none of them seemed to know her, or like her, even a little bit. Csorwe wanted to know how Shuthmili had ended up so strange and entertaining, when she’d grown up with a bunch of pencil-sharpening wankers who probably alphabetised their thumbscrews.
Shuthmili deserved to live, and Csorwe deserved to buy her another breakfast, and that was a fact. With that in mind, Csorwe planned her rescue.
15
The Life of an Adept
CSORWE STAYED OBEDIENTLY IN her quarters, keeping note of the watches, and of the Gates as they passed them by. They were only a few days out from Qaradoun. She needed to move sooner rather than later. A rotation of Wardens had been stationed at the door to the Adept dormitory. They were very clear about the fact that Adept Qanwa needed to meditate and prepare herself for the tether.
* * *
The Warden of the third watch left the door to the Adepts’ dormitory at the third hour of the morning, according to the ship’s internal clock. There was then a minute’s delay as the Warden of the fourth watch finished his morning cigarette. In this time, Csorwe picked the lock and slipped inside.
Shuthmili was asleep on the same bunk as before. She was frighteningly still, the blankets pulled up to her chin, her plaits coiled on the pillow on either side of her pinched little face.
A perfect face, Csorwe thought, and frowned, taken aback by the thought. That wasn’t why she was doing this.
“Shuthmili,” she whispered, shaking her lightly by the shoulder. “Wake up!”
It took Shuthmili a long time to surface. “Csorwe?” she murmured. “Why are you here?”
“Wanted to talk to you,” said Csorwe, suddenly embarrassed. The plan she had devised relied on Shuthmili agreeing with her quite quickly, but she hadn’t thought much about what she was going to say.
“You’re still here,” said Shuthmili, rubbing her eyes. “I’m glad. I thought you might have gone.”
“They wouldn’t let me in,” said Csorwe, ignoring the spark of warmth that kindled in her chest at the news that Shuthmili was glad to see her. “So—listen—we have two hours before the guards change position again. The next guy will probably look round the door to check you’re all right. And I think by then we should be gone.”
“What do you mean?” said Shuthmili. She sat up in bed, gathering the sheets around her.
“We’ll need to steal a shuttle-barge from the bay on the deck above,” said Csorwe. “But I know which way we can go and avoid the guards—”
“Are you—are you asking me to run away with you?” said Shuthmili. Mostly disbelieving, maybe a little amused. Then all amusement faded. “This is about the tether.”
“Yes,” said Csorwe. “Did you really know what it meant? You’ve really known all along?”
“I did,” said Shuthmili.
“But you said you’ve wanted it since you were little. You worked for it. I saw you studying—but you’ll die.”
“I won’t die,” said Shuthmili. “It’s not the same thing.”
“But you won’t be able to think for yourself,” said Csorwe, doing her best not to raise her voice. If the guard overheard them then none of this would matter.
“Thinking for oneself is an overrated luxury,” said Shuthmili. “As a part of Archer Quincury I will be safe from harm, and safe from accidentally harming others.”
“That’s not enough—” said Csorwe.
“It is,” said Shuthmili, with patience. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life picking over every passing thought for signs of corruption and staving off organ failure. Every time I use magic it takes a little more from me. If I don’t join the Quincuriate I’ll live to be forty, if I’m lucky, and once I die that’s it. There will be no rest for me at the Hearth of the Mara. The old Archer Five died peacefully at ninety-five.”
“So that gives you what, seventy-plus years as … that,” said Csorwe. She remembered what Shuthmili had told her about Archer, and it didn’t sound pleasant. “Running a protection racket.”
“Seventy-plus years protecting the Imperium,” said Shuthmili. “Preventing war. Making sure millions of people continue to live safely in Qarsazh. That’s important.”
She didn’t sound any more convinced by this than Csorwe was herself.
“There is a whole world out there, you know,” said Csorwe. “There are other things. Other places. You could do something else.”
There were so many worlds, so many possible lives, and she couldn’t imagine how to conjure up even one that would appeal to Shuthmili. She didn’t remember Sethennai having to work very hard to persuade her, all those years ago. She didn’t even remember everything he had said. Maybe she had just been a coward.
“Is it so hard to understand why I might choose this?” said Shuthmili. “To be a part of something greater. Not to doubt yourself all the time. Always to know where you belong and what you need to do.”
“Because you wouldn’t have any choice.”
“I don’t have any choice now,” said Shuthmili, as though this were blindingly obvious. “The life of an Adept is the life of an Adept, and there is nothing for me outside it. My family gave me up to the Church when I was a child. It’s pure chance that I know my aunt Zhiyouri, and I don’t remember my parents at all. I won’t ever marry or do any other job. I belong to the Church. Where I live, when I sleep, what I wear, what to eat, what to say, what to think. None of that is my choice.”
“And if you join this Quincuriate then you just won’t know that you ever wanted anything else,” said Csorwe.
“Yes, exactly,” said Shuthmili. “I will be where I am meant and wanted for the first time in my life. I will never be unhappy, and I will never be alone.”
“Well,” said Csorwe hopelessly. “I guess nobody else can promise you that. It just seems like a shame.” She wished she had better words to describe exactly how much of a shame it would be.
Shuthmili rubbed her eyes again as if hoping this might be a dream. When she spoke again, all her earlier assurance had faded. She sounded as if she were finding her own way in a mist.
“Everything I said—I always believed that. I do still believe it,” she said. “But it was odd—when I thought I must be compromised, that they’d never want me for the Quincuriate—I started thinking…”
“Yeah?” said Csorwe, doing her best to disguise her eagerness.
“I thought, well, I’ll just go back to research, I don’t need to be tethered for that, I can still contribute something. And it would be in my own name. I almost liked that idea, even if it would feel like a failure.”
She paused, ruefully, picking at her fingernails. She didn’t meet Csorwe’s eyes as she went on.
“And I liked seeing Tlaanthothe with you. It was interesting to go somewhere new. Once I’m tethered there won’t be many new places to see.”
She looked down, seeming to withdraw into herself, and Csorwe realised she was ashamed.
“I don’t know,” said Shuthmili. “I just don’t know. Maybe I’m weaker than I thought I was.”
“No,” said Csorwe. “I don’t know what you are, but you’re not that.” She glanced back at the door, where the silhouette of the guard’s head was dimly visible through the carved screen in the door.
“Even if I wanted to change my mind,” said Shuthmili, “just for the sake of argument. I’m not saying I will. Could we really just go? Just get up and leave?”
“Yeah,” said Csorwe. “Easy.”
It was, in fact, embarrassingly easy. Shuthmili called the Warden. When he came into the room, Csorwe unfolded from behind the door, clamped her hand over his mouth, pulled a pillowcase over his head, tied him up, and shoved him into the bunk.
“My word,” said Shuthmili, “I hope he’ll be all right.” She bit her lip, but she didn’t exactly linger in the cabin.
They crept down the corridor, following the route Csorwe had planned to the shuttle bay. Maybe Shuthmili’s nasty dragon goddess was keeping an eye on them. They weren’t seen. She gestured Shuthmili toward the nearest shuttle-barge and cranked open the doors to the bay.
“Are we just going to take it?” said Shuthmili, though she didn’t hesitate to climb in to the barge.
“Didn’t they teach you how to steal a ship at wizard school?” said Csorwe. There was no alarm from the innards of Reflection in Tranquillity—no sign at all of pursuit. She leapt into the barge after Shuthmili, pulled the release lever, and they fell away into the sky, like a leaf borne along on the surface of a stream.
* * *
Qanwa Zhiyouri did not allow herself many pleasures. The fewer, the sweeter, she felt, and delaying one’s rewards helped to focus the mind. On this occasion, she permitted herself a glass of wine. Specifically, a seventeen-year-old apricot wine from her own estate outside Qaradoun, which looked like liquefied topaz and tasted like the tears of a divinity.
The vintage was appropriate. It had been seventeen years since the power of the Traitor-Dragon had first manifested in Shuthmili. Qanwa’s brother Adhara had sent for her in a panic. From the incoherent scrawl, Zhiyouri had at first assumed his daughter had fallen out of a tree and injured herself.
When she had arrived at the townhouse, she learned the truth. The five-year-old Shuthmili was lying under a blooming cherry tree in the courtyard, surrounded by piles of blossom and fruit that were already beginning to decay. It was midwinter. The tree should not even have borne leaves. It certainly should not have been able to loop its roots so tightly around Shuthmili’s limbs that it became difficult to tell what was bark and what was flesh.
It was lucky for Shuthmili that her aunt had arrived on the scene so swiftly. Zhiyouri was already a fully trained Inquisitor, and had been able to remove the child safely from the tree without her little heart exploding. It could have been embarrassing for Zhiyouri—perhaps it didn’t say much for her professional acumen that she’d failed to notice her own niece was a half-realised mage—but the whole thing was kept very quiet. Only a few weeks later, Zhiyouri had delivered Shuthmili to the School of Aptitude herself.
As for the cherry tree, it was not created to cycle six months in a day. It had generated a full harvest of cherries and driven them to ripeness. Even if it could have ridden out the shock to its system, Shuthmili had sheared it from its place in time, and it was dead within the month.
Zhiyouri had witnessed the heartache that followed. There were few people, on this earth or any other, for whom she had much pity, but her younger brother was one. Shuthmili had been Adhara’s treasure. To learn that something you valued had been corrupt from the beginning was not pleasant.
In addition, in every office of the Imperial Registry, in every copy of the Genealogy, the page that listed the living members of the Qanwa house—the page where Zhiyouri’s own name appeared!—was now amended with a notice of Shuthmili’s poisonous aptitude. The Traitor’s curse ran in the blood. The prospects for advancement and marriage of every Qanwa were stunted, and would remain so for a generation or more. It had been a blow to Zhiyouri both personally and professionally.
Seventeen years later, Zhiyouri was doing very well for herself, and the sting had been soothed by her promotion to High Inquisitor. She didn’t blame Shuthmili, except in the way you couldn’t help but blame a wild dog for biting. It was nevertheless a great relief to know that the tether was close at hand. Once Shuthmili was shuffled away into the Quincuriate, her name would be written out: no longer a Qanwa, no longer a citizen, but a Quincury Adept and instrument of the Imperial will. The Genealogy would be amended and the whole sorrowful chapter would be closed, for her, for Adhara, and for the rest of the family. All the better because Zhiyouri would have a hand in closing it.
She sipped her wine and closed her eyes, thinking on the pleasant neatness of this. The apricot wine was made with the aid of a grey mould that grew upon the fruit and shrivelled it, sweetening the flesh inside even as it rotted the skin. It was the finest achievement of civilisation to take that kind of ugliness and transform it into something useful and beautiful.
A thunderous knock at the door disturbed her reverie. It was of course Inquisitor Tsaldu, the destroyer of all peace. She was irritated, to a degree that she recognised as irrational. It was just such a pity to waste this one luxury she’d allowed herself, before she could even enjoy it.
“Inquisitor Qanwa!” he said, his ghostly face gaping with horror. “Inquisitor—the Oshaaru passenger has gone, and—well—it seems she’s taken your niece with her.”
He told her everything. She gripped the edge of the desk to steady herself.
“Summon Vigil,” she said. “And the officers. We must change course immediately. Go, Tsaldu! At once!”
It had been a mistake to permit Sethennai’s lackey on board. Zhiyouri had nobody to blame for that but herself, but she spared herself only a few seconds of fury and recrimination. Anger was itself a pleasure, and it was easy to overindulge.
She sat at her desk, hands flat against the cool mahogany, and took a deep breath. This was a substantial annoyance, but if resolved quickly, it was not a disaster. It might almost be enjoyable to have a little diversion on their way to Qaradoun.
Zhiyouri doubted that the Oshaaru girl had any master plan. In all likelihood the scheme had been invented on the spur of the moment when she realised that Shuthmili was valuable.
It had been a long time since Zhiyouri had enjoyed a proper chase. Not since her work as a prosecutor, in fact. A chase, like a puzzle, had its protocols. At first, the hunter always appeared to be at a disadvantage. Inevitably, though, the quarry scattered and panicked. The hunter watched, waited, assembled her forces, and—at the last—closed the trap.
* * *
Shuthmili peered over the side of the barge, her fingertips pale where she was clutching the edge. Beneath them was a misty canyon, threaded with fine silvery rivers, little streams of light painted on the blue-black void.
“Of course,” she muttered. “Of course. Why would I plan half a minute into the future? Csorwe, I think we’ve made a mistake.”
“Yeah?” said Csorwe, who was sitting at the wheel.
“They aren’t just going to let me run. They’ll come after us as soon as they realise I’m gone. They’re probably already coming after us. You don’t know what they’ll do to get me back.”
“I can guess. They sent a frigate to Tlaanthothe for you already,” said Csorwe.
“Once they catch us they’ll kill you and they’ll take me to the Traitor’s Grave. And if they think for some reason that I came voluntarily, if they think I’ve gone rogue, they’ll kill both of us. Do you know how my people execute rogue mages?” said Shuthmili. “It’s—they have this monster—”
“Don’t think about it,” said Csorwe. “Doesn’t help to panic.”
She slowed the barge, steering it into a quiet spot under an overhang. This was going to take her full attention.
“Listen—we should turn back,” said Shuthmili, clutching the side. “Take us back to the ship. I’ll explain everything, I’ll try to make them understand that you were trying to help, but I’m fully committed to the tether, and—”
“If that’s what you want,” said Csorwe.
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” said Shuthmili. “You shouldn’t get yourself killed.”
“Neither should you. I couldn’t just let you walk into it. But if you want me to take you back to die, I will.”
“I won’t die,” said Shuthmili, as if this, of all things, had pushed her over the edge of losing her temper. “I told you. That’s not what it is.”
“All right. If you want me to take you back to tit around in a mask for an unnaturally long time, I will.”
“Whereas, if I stay to tit around in this dinghy with you, we will last perhaps half an hour before Tranquillity blows us out of the sky,” said Shuthmili.
“We’ve made it this far,” said Csorwe. It had been about half an hour. “The fourth watch isn’t due for another hour and a half, so they won’t know you’re even gone until then, and after that they won’t know which way we’ve gone. Once we’re past the Peacock Gate they’ll never be able to track us.”
Shuthmili fell silent for a moment, considering. The peaks and crags of the Echo Maze drifted by, blue and blurred in an indistinct false-dusk, and the wind flicked Csorwe’s hair back from her face.
“But then where do I go?” said Shuthmili, as if only just realising that she couldn’t go back to her inscriptions. “Do you have a plan in mind?”
“Sure. Come with me,” said Csorwe. It really might be that simple.
“I mean, after that,” said Shuthmili. “Come with you where?”
“Wherever,” said Csorwe.
“… it’s kind of you to offer,” said Shuthmili, as though presented with a particularly ugly birthday gift. “But you have your own work.”
“I’m serious,” said Csorwe.
“You can’t be,” she said. “Not really.”
“Deadly serious,” said Csorwe. “I thought it all through. You saw the Reliquary, you were there. Oranna has it and I need to get it back before she does something terrible. So I’m going to steal it from her and you should come and help.”
Shuthmili’s anger gave way to doubt. “Last time I was worse than useless. What if she captures me again?”
“I’m not going to let that happen,” said Csorwe.
“It’s easy to say that—” said Shuthmili. “And more to the point—she killed all those people. What’s to stop her hurting you, or worse—”
“A lot of people have tried to hurt me. And you would be useful. I don’t know magic, and you do. You’d be more than useful. You could help me stop her.”
Shuthmili looked unconvinced. Maybe it was time to try a different tack.
The Unspoken Name Page 28