At first I think it’s a stupid idea. Then, as I get to my feet, I begin to warm to it. Soon I find the right set of stairs and follow them down to lower terraces. I walk through the muddy rows of hives, happy that the bees like rain less than I do. They remind me of Stain, and I wonder what the bastard is up to.
Then again, what do I care? Stain is somebody else’s problem now.
The bathhouse is empty when I step out of the rain. After removing my boots, I pull a towel from a rack beside the door and wipe the mud off my armor.
The bathwater is still. Wisps of steam rise off the surface as I cross the room and slide open the rice paper door leading to the exercise room. Inside, there are three muk-yanjong, the wooden dummies monks use to develop dexterity. Regulators use the same kind of dummy, except they’re metal, and we add punching to the routine.
The last time I was in the bathhouse, Riki-Tiki and Vienne were hiding in here, laughing at my attempts to avoid bath-by-monk. If only I could hear their laughter now.
“Cowboy,” Mimi says.
“Stow it.”
A scream wells within me, a sound that I hardly recognize, and I slam into the middle dummy. I attack the arms with my good hand, laying into the main beam with my elbows, slamming my fists into the padding so hard that the wood begins to crack.
Splinters fly from the pole, and I don’t care. My armor protects me. I can’t be hurt. I wish it would hurt. I wish something on the outside would hurt one carking iota as much as it hurts inside.
I slam the dummy with all the strength I have left. It revolves for two or three turns more, then slows.
“Whatever the mukyanjong has done to offend you,” Ghannouj says, appearing on the mat beside me, “I am sure that it now regrets it.”
“Not as much as I do.” I spin the pole again.
Unlike me, he’s not wet and not covered in mud. Holding a cup of tea, Ghannouj has changed from the linen robes into a dry combat uniform called a karategi.
“Your thoughts are troubled,” he says.
You think? “I lost Vienne. Riki-Tiki is dead, and I let Shoei and Yadokai down.”
He nods. “Yes.”
“It’s all,” as I slam a fist into the dummy, “my fault.”
He rocks on his heels and stretches his back. “You would like me to say that it isn’t?”
“No,” I say, rounding on him. “I don’t need absolution from you.”
He reaches out and stops the pole from spinning. “Who do you need it from, then? Would you like me to say that Riki-Tiki’s death is not of your doing? If I did, my words would ring false. When we link ourselves to a chain of events, we all bear responsibility for the inevitable outcomes.”
I ball up a fist but keep it pressed to my thigh. “Aren’t you angry? Doesn’t Riki-Tiki’s death bother you?”
“Of course it does.”
I twist my neck, popping the bones, and stretch my left shoulder, which is always stiff these days. “Then why don’t you show it?”
“How would you like me to do that? Flagellate myself with recriminations? Rage against the very forces of life and death that form the cornerstone of my beliefs?” He slurps tea from the cup. “Those destructive practices were one of the reasons that the Tengu left Earth behind.”
I spin around and shake a fist at him. “The least you could do is be a little pissed at me!”
“Why?” he says, ignoring my gesture. “All of us bear the burden of the child’s death. You believe that you could have sent her back to the monastery. I believe that I could have prevented her from leaving. We both are wrong. Riki-Tiki made her own choice.”
“Damn it!” I say, unable to stop the anger from ringing in my voice. “Maybe she wasn’t ready to make it.”
He shakes his head no. His eyebrows are thick and dark, like smudges of charcoal. They are also the most expressive part of his face, in contrast to his mouth, which seems perpetually happy. “There are always choices. Some of them terrible, as I told you that day at the teahouse.”
Vitun, even the man’s face is riling me up. “I thought you were talking about my choice to chase down the data instead of staying here with Vienne.”
He doesn’t argue. Instead, his gaze drifts to the windows rattling in their frames from the wind. “There was nothing,” he says, “terrible about that choice. You put your desires before Vienne. This time, you put Riki-Tiki before your desires.”
“Either way, it sucks.”
“Fate usually does,” he says. He takes me by the arm. “Come, there is a platter of daifuku in the teahouse. You will eat as we discuss the end of this path.”
I slip away from him, which is not as easy as I expected. His fingers are iron. “Yeah, well, my path is ended,” I say. “I can’t be the hero anymore.”
Ghannouj nods. “A thunderhead forms on the horizon, and evil humor that will choke the breath of us all. It is your fate, I believe, to cure Mars of her poisons, to align the spokes of the wheel.”
I laugh bitterly. “The bees told you that?”
“No,” he says, smiling. “I felt it in my heart and see it in yours. Vienne saw it, too. She believed her fate was to fight her brother’s battles. I believed that it was to find you and bring you here now.”
“I thought you didn’t care whether she lived or not after she ran off to join the Regulators.”
“Why would you think that? Tengu do not leave the monastery,” Ghannouj says. “That does not mean that there is no place here for Vienne. You cannot give up on her now, no matter what sins you have committed in her eyes.”
“He knows you too well,” Mimi says.
“I told you to stow it.”
“Your fates are intertwined,” Ghannouj continues. “You cannot reach your destiny unless she reaches hers. Find Vienne. Bring her back to us. Destiny is not finished with her.”
It’s tempting to believe him. To accept his words as truth, because he’s carking good at delivering speeches. But words don’t mean a thing when the bullets are flying.
“I don’t believe a word of this. It’s impossible. Vienne is hundreds of kilometers away, and I’m here. My motorbike is a useless heap of parts, and frankly, so am I. Look, I don’t know if I can find Vienne, and if I did, if there would be any Vienne left in her.”
He sips his tea and nods, his thick eyebrows forming an arch on his forehead. “If you are ready to desert Vienne, then I will leave you to the dummies. Please clean up the mud on the mats when you are finished.”
“What?” I yell, following him. “Who said I was deserting Vienne?
“You did.”
“No, I didn’t!”
Ghannouj makes a hand gesture like a maw opening and closing. “I asked you to bring her back to us, and your mouth went ‘impossible, impossible, impossible.’”
“Which doesn’t mean that I actually think that!” I want to throttle him! Instead, I make two fists and shake them as hard as I can. “I mean, even if it weren’t impossible, how am I supposed to get back to her? Teleport?”
“Or,” Ghannouj says with a perfectly straight face, “you could fly.”
“Now that is impossible!”
Ghannouj spins, driving a kick into the punching post, which bursts in the middle. The dummy bends in half, its guts a pile of splinters. Somehow, the abbot hasn’t spilled a single drop of tea. “Nothing is impossible, if you set your mind to the task. Follow me.”
The rain stops by the time we reach the teahouse. While I stay outside to knock the mud from my boots, Ghannouj goes inside. Above us, the clouds are thinning, and I can see the canyons gray in the distance. There is no sun yet, and the deck over the pond is still slick with rainwater.
A moment later the door slides open, and Ghannouj emerges with a tray. It is loaded with daifuku, green tea in a glass decanter, and a pile of bandages.
“Bandages?”
He bows slightly. “Not to worry. They usually aren’t necessary.”
“Usually?”
“R
emove your boots. They will get in the way.” He offers the tray. “Care for some daifuku?”
“No thanks.” I set my boots on the deck. “Mimi, any idea why he’d need bandages?”
“A few, but they involve great physical suffering. Would you like to hear them?”
“Never mind.”
Ghannouj stuffs three rice rolls into his cheek and takes a swig of tea. He lets out a resonant belch and taps his mouth with a fist. I can’t get over his mood, the easy way he accepts everything and gets on with the business at hand.
“‘The best lack all conviction,’” Mimi says, “‘while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh look,” she says, ignoring me, “the pond carp are hungry.”
Ghannouj grabs a bamboo pole and pushes a log away from the bank of the pond. He steps onto it, balancing easily. “Join me.”
“On that? You’re going to cure my fear of flying with a log?”
He taps the wood with the staff. “Balance is key. Internal balance cannot exist without external balance. Also, it’s more fun for me.”
“And me!” Mimi says.
“Remember,” he says. “Your fears did not prevent you from rescuing Vienne. Vienne prevented you from rescuing her.” He holds the log in place so that I can step on. The surface is slick with mud, and I slip twice before I catch my balance. We back away from each other so that we’re standing on either end. “But you can still overcome your own fear so that it does not rule you.”
“Overcoming fears,” I say skeptically. “I don’t really have that skill in my skill set.”
“It is not a skill,” Ghannouj says. “It is a state of bliss.”
Using my toes like fingers, I grip the wood and try to stay on. “I’m not feeling very blissful at the moment.” Angry, yes. Miserable with self-pity, yes. Blissful? Not a chance.
“Don’t be so negative,” Mimi says.
“It’s not negative to be a realist!”
Ghannouj rolls the log and laughs as I scramble. “Pay attention.”
“I am!”
“You misunderstand. Bliss is not pleasure. It is the state of ecstasy achieved when one has cleared the body of all obstructions. The state of bliss produces energy that bends light, so that the practitioner is not invisible but very difficult to see.”
Invisible? Yeah, right. “How do I reach this state of bliss?”
“Through many years of meditation and study.” Ghannouj bounces, and the log rises a half meter out of the pond, then slaps the surface. How does he expect me to listen when he’s trying to drown me?
“See? There’s not really time—”
“Or I can, as you would say,” he says, making his eyebrows dance, “beat the crap out of you.”
“Ha!” Mimi laughs.
“Excuse me?”
“Now that I have your attention.” He bows. “The bönpo teaches us that the body’s energy is governed by five pranic centers called qigong: breath, speech, sight, hearing, and thought. In order to achieve bliss, all of these centers must be opened, either by using the body’s own subtle winds or by vital forces.”
“What kind of vital force do you have in mind?”
He holds up the bamboo. “This.”
“You’re planning to hit me with that while I’m standing on a log in a pond in order to turn me invisible so I can’t feel fear?” A laugh slips out. “Bullets bounce off symbiarmor. What do you think a little stick can do?”
Whap!
The blunt tip of the stick strikes me between the eyes. I stagger back and almost step off the end of the log. My rear foot touches water, and I have to shift all my weight forward to stay on.
“Ha!” Mimi laughs again.
“Shut up, Mimi!”
“The qigong for sight is there,” Ghannouj says. “Remove your armor, and I will be able to strike the others just as easily.”
“Yeah. About that. There’s a bit of a hitch with the whole removing the armor thing.” I tug at my gloves to show him how the material has grafted itself to my skin. “It’s stuck, and I’ll be buggered as to how to get it off.”
He nods toward my nether regions. “How do you do your business?”
“It’s not grafted everywhere!” Thank goodness.
“Turn around,” he says.
“Why?”
“You ask why too much.”
“I’m naturally suspicious.”
“Turn around.”
As soon as I do a pirouette, whap! The stick strikes the base of my skull.
“Hey!” The armor solidifies, then softens, although it’s still stuck to my skin.
“Turn back,” he says.
“How did you know about that?”
“The weak spot of symbiarmor is the electronic nerve bundle at the base of the skull,” he says. “It was placed there as a fail-safe measure by the designers. Were you aware that the material in the suits was not created as body armor, but as a garment to protect from bee stings?”
“You seem to know a lot about Regulators for a monk.”
“Yet you seem to know very little about monks for a Regulator.” He strikes lightly five times: between my eyes, on the chin, on the breastbone, on the solar plexus, and below the navel. “These are the five qigong. While I strike them, you must say your word of prayer each time without fail. Do you understand?”
“I kind of don’t have a word of prayer.”
He chews the daifuku in his cheek, then swallows. “Think of one word that will bring you bliss.”
Vienne.
“Ready?”
I take a deep breath. “Yes.”
With speed impossible for such a big man, he snaps the stick against the base of my skull, then strikes each of the qigong. As he does, I repeat my prayer word.
Vienne.
My forehead and chin are stinging from the blows, and my solar plexus feels like it’s been drilled out. “How many times do you have to hit me?”
“It is not how many times I must strike you, but how many times that you must endure the strikes.”
“How many would that be?”
“Again.”
Vienne.
Ghannouj turns sideways and begins spinning the log with his feet. I match his movement, my feet sliding over the slick surface, taking tiny steps when I need to. The hits come, wave after wave, with blinding speed. At first I try to keep watching, to anticipate his movement, but with the pain between my eyes and the futility of tracking the blur of motion the bamboo becomes, I shut my eyes and concentrate.
“You could just jump off the log,” Mimi says. “Your body is not going to respond to—”
Vienne.
I lose track of the blows, lose track of time itself, and feel myself rising, as if my body has become weightless and a subtle wind is lifting me into the air. I want to spread my wings and soar. But something, something is holding me down, like an anchor chained to my ankle.
“Cowboy,” Mimi says. “Your heart. Arrhythmia.”
My eyes pop open. The light and the pain are blinding, and I stagger backward, my foot plunging into the water. Ghannouj catches my hand and pulls me back onto the log. His karategi is drenched, and his face is bloodred with exertion.
“How long are you going to put up with this, cowboy?” Mimi says.
“The unbinding is not working.” Ghannouj shakes the stick at me as if I’m at fault. “You are of two minds. One consciousness is focused, but the other is not, keeping you from achieving bliss.”
I flex my neck, and pain shoots down to my fingers. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“Tell her to be quiet, this woman who whispers to you.”
“Mimi?” I ask. “You can hear her?”
“I have always heard her. She is loud in your mind, and you depend too much on her counsel.”
“You can hear my thoughts?”
He pushes down on his end of the timber, lifting me into the air. Mos
s and water lilies drip from the wood. “Not yours. Just hers.”
“Of course,” I say. Why not? It makes as much sense as anything else does.
He rubs his chin, thinking. “Who is this Mimi?”
“She’s my A—old davos chief. She taught us all what it meant to be a Regulator.”
“How did her voice come to be in your mind?”
“It’s a long story, and I—”
Whap!
“You are still concealing truth. I can sense it.”
Whap!
“Cowboy,” Mimi says. “I insist that you stop. Your heart has experienced two rounds of arrhythmia, and your other vitals are showing wild fluctuations.”
No, I think. This is my decision to make. “Begin sleep protocols.”
“Wait!” she says.
“On my mark, three, two—”
“Spoilsport,” she pouts.
“One.” I tell Ghannouj, “Okay, she’s go—”
“Turn!” he barks.
On command, I pirouette again, and he rams the stick into the base of my skull. The pain drives my sight deep into my own mind, and I feel thin like a shadow, as my body begins to drift.
I hear the echo of Stain’s question in my ears. How much have you sacrificed for her? I want to ram the accusation down his throat like a fist-sized stone, but the truth is—nothing. That’s what I’ve sacrificed for her, nothing, not a damned thing. If justice were measuring what each of us had given the other, my side of the scales would be empty. No, worse, because not only have I not sacrificed for her, I helped erode the bedrock of her beliefs.
Vienne.
I hear Riki-Tiki scream as the shot hits her and she falls backward from the window. I see her ashen face as I bring her to the surface of the water. I look across the river and see Stain’s face become mine, and I sneer, then turn my back and walk away.
No! I will not walk away!
Vienne.
My body separates from itself and begins to rise into the air, unshackled, unbound, a tendril of smoke that seeps from a cold fire, above the monastery, far above the rim of the canyons that make up Noctis Labyrinthus and into the clouds that roil above.
Invisible Sun Page 23