Wing & Nien Page 17

  For the first time, Nien’s silence served as his reply. The brothers met each other with a look both challenging and borderline furious.

  “E’te,” Wing acquiesced. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re running away.”

  “‘Running away’,” Nien mouthed, as much to himself as to Wing. “Coming from you, that’s comical. You don’t have to go anywhere and yet I’ve never seen anyone disappear like you’re able to. Must be ghost blood you’ve got in there.”

  Wing’s reaction to the insult was obvious but silent.

  Nien clenched his jaw. “I have to go.”

  Wing was quiet another beat. “When will it ever be enough? The books. The excursions. You had many students in your school from members of the Cant, but you had to press it, had to have Grek Occoju’s children, too.”

  Embarrassment wrapped a cold hand around Nien’s heart. For a time, he couldn’t speak. The urge to punch Wing in the face surfaced so strongly it shocked him. He’d not felt that much anger since the normal flares they’d had as kids. The compulsion shuddered down the length of his spine, leaving the fingers of his right hand tingling. Nien swallowed and turned away. Sucking in a long breath, he slowly felt the muscles in his back release.

  When he spoke again his voice was not angry, it was gutted: “I don’t know.” He took an unsteady breath. “Maybe never. But I can’t just hang around here. Not now that they closed the school, the Cant’s on Ime break, and — ”

  Nien caught himself. But Wing caught the hesitation, too.

  “What?” Wing asked.

  “You don’t want to hear it, Wing,” Nien said, keeping his back to Wing. “You never do.”

  There was a long moment, accusation throbbing in the air between them.

  Nien braced himself but from behind him, Wing said, “Just say it, Nien. You’ve needed to for a long time.” The bite in Wing’s tone was gone replaced with a close sadness, a surrender.

  Nien felt like one of the great trees was about to fall in the Mesko forest, but this time it wasn’t their people or the prophecy holding the felling axe, it was just him and Wing. He turned back around.

  “It’s falling apart, Wing. We all know it is. But you won’t talk about it. You won’t say anything.”

  “I can’t,” Wing said.

  “Yes, you can. Just tell them it’s not you. Give them a sound reason why you’re not.”

  “I’d think my refusal, all my obvious — flaws — would be reason enough.”

  “The only thing that’s obvious to them is that you’re the Leader. That’s all they see. And your silence just makes everything worse.”

  “What do you want me to do, Nien?”

  “Say something! Say anything! Yosha! Fa, me, Jake, mother. We can’t keep covering for you. Did you know fa withdrew his membership from the Council last season? — told the Council to leave us alone. Jake, some of his friends won’t talk to him anymore because they’re mad or confused, and others have been told by their parents that they can’t be friends with him, some nonsensical pressure to get you to step forward as Merehr. Mother, she’s just like you, won’t say a thing. But have you heard her crying when she thinks she’s alone in the house? — probably not, because you’re always out here, not running away. And then the school, they...” Nien nearly bit off his own tongue to keep from saying it.

  But Wing caught the hesitation. His next word held the gravity of physical weight. “What?”

  Nien forced himself to look at Wing. He felt sick inside with the struggle. He swore he would never tell Wing what had been said, the ultimatum he’d been given…

  “Grek Occoju said if I’d help convince you, they’d look the other way about the school.”

  Wing looked — now — as if he had been punched.

  “Nien,” he said. “I…”

  “Don’t,” Nien said quickly. “I’m just tired, Wing. I’m tired of trying to make everything better when you won’t do anything to help yourself.”

  The silence became so thick that Nien could feel the weight of it in the air between them and, as he watched, something strange happened to Wing’s eyes, light seemed to leave them, hollowing them out into blank pit-like orbs, the wells of a viper cave. Nien experienced an instantaneous reflex to reach out to Wing, like lunging out to stop someone from falling, but the silence weighed deathly heavy upon his arm, holding him back.

  “Go to Quieness,” Wing said quietly.

  Nien went to speak again but the look on Wing’s face stopped him.

  There was a single, painful moment, and Nien turned and walked away across the fields.

  As the sound of Nien’s pant legs brushing through the drying grasses of the fields began to fade, Wing braved to raise his eyes.

  In the distance, he found Nien, growing smaller and smaller against the horizon. Each step that took his brother further away felt to destroy any desire Wing had for retaining his place in the world. He wanted nothing more than to stop Nien but could not move his feet.

  As Nien disappeared into the distance with the same uncertainty as a prayer into an empty room, Wing’s gaze had nowhere else to go but up. The setting sun struck a path through a group of voluminous clouds and a single ray shone down upon the heart of the Uki mountain range, illuminating a solitary meadow in its light.

  Drawn like a hand to a lover’s tear, Wing reached out toward the shining meadow, almost able to feel it’s velvety softness beneath his fingertips. But as his hand neared, the clouds passed across the light and the brilliant ray scattered and disappeared.

  As Wing’s hand dropped, his knees buckled.

  It was a long time before he climbed back to his feet.

  Chapter 21

  The Lengths He’ll Go

  “E mpress,” a guard announced, opening the door to SiQQiy’s tactical quarters within the military administrations palace.

  SiQQiy turned and stepped forward as a young man, a pageboy in the private palace, hurried into the room nearly knocking over the tall thin-legged table holding SiQQiy’s delicate green plant.

  “Three members of the special unit have returned!”

  Behind the pageboy, Lead Netalf stepped into the room — and stumbled. SiQQiy caught him as he sank to his knees.

  SiQQiy turned to the pageboy. “Go get Rella, now.”

  The boy spun out of the room to retrieve the palace healer.

  “Netalf,” SiQQiy said, her voice pressed thin as the center page of a Quienan history book. “What’s happened?”

  “I’m not hurt,” he muttered, unable to say more until he’d taken a little more time to catch his breath.

  Disbelieving, SiQQiy began looking him over for injuries.

  “Twelve days past the lead galley we sent out, the Tregal, was attacked. The ship was badly damaged, but the crew and the flanking ships won the battle. They limped back to Jada Port.” Netalf slumped back on his heels, eyes closing briefly. “From a ridge high above Tou, we saw, in the docks and bay, a great wreckage of docking houses and ships. Leaving the unit atop the canyon, I and a member of the seventh Granj, descended the ridge and came as close to the bay from the other side of the river as we dared.”

  Netalf struggled to reach for something shoved deep into the pocket of his torn pants. From it he pulled a thin piece of wood. On it was a golden bit of lettering.

  SiQQiy squinted at it for only a moment before recognizing it: The golden emblem of the Ketan, one of their long missing merchant ships.

  “You have traveled so far in only twelve days?” she said incredulously. “An impossible journey. You came to the edge, Lead Netalf, of killing yourself and probably your horses as well.”

  “Nearly,” he answered, swallowing against the sinister dryness in his throat.

  Chancing to leave his side, SiQQiy got to her feet and, stepping across the room, retrieved her slender silver cup.

  She set it in Netalf’s hands, but they shook. Wrapping her hands around his, she helped him raise it to his lips.
>
  He noticed that she was giving him the water from her personal cup, but he drank nevertheless, the water giving him enough strength to get to his feet and into a chair.

  “We did not see any other ships in pursuit, though we did not stay long after the battle was over,” he said.

  “Was it the Ka’ull? Did you recognize their ships?”

  Netalf raised his eyes to meet hers. “Indeed, Empress, it was.”

  SiQQiy’s head bowed briefly. It did not take her long, however, to collect her emotions.

  Touching Netalf’s shoulder, she said, “You need rest now, and food. I will arrange for the latter if you will do the former.”

  Netalf nodded heartily. “I will gladly comply.”

  SiQQiy turned to her attendants. “Fetch a messenger for me.”

  “Which one?”

  SiQQiy thought for a moment — she would need one of her best, not a sprinter, but one able to keep a steady pace over a long distance.

  “Epith.”

  “What destination, Empress?”

  SiQQiy glanced at her and then back at Netalf where he sat, shivering with exhaustion in the chair.

  “Legran,” she said.

  Chapter 22

  The Big Valley

  Q uieness.

  The immensity of what Nien looked upon struck an awe so deep and great in him that he nearly forgot to breathe. Never, even in his wildest imagination, could he have pictured the sheer vastness of the valley that stretched out below him.

  In Rieeve the mountains were so close they stood like a door to a house. However, on the Quieness side, the mountains opposite him were purple with distance, along their peaks and meadows clouds lay like sleeping women in long white gowns.

  Still, as incredible as the landscape was, it was the civilization within it that lit a flame in Nien’s heart — an endless tangle of streets crawling with carts, carriages, and wagons. Buildings that stood up against the sky. And more people than he’d seen in a lifetime. All tiny ants, moving about busily in some unseen but well-orchestrated plan.

  This is it, Nien thought. Bleekla.

  The trip across the Uki had been a long one. Rather, it had felt like a long one. Wing had not even come back to the house to sleep the night before he left. Nien had felt so hollowed out after he and Wing’s exchange that all he’d wanted to do was leave — as soon as possible. There was absolutely nothing keeping him in Rieeve. Not the rest of the family, not the Cant. By the time he’d left, even those things had felt empty.

  Now he was here, standing above, looking down on Quieness.

  Hoping movement would steady his shaking hands, Nien began the last descent of his journey.

  Though the way down the mountain was easy with swaths of domesticated herd trails — unlike the haphazard and narrow game trails he’d had to travel on the way up out of Rieeve — by the time Nien reached the outskirts of Cao his legs had the density of wet rags, and his head swam with a levity that threatened to peel his feet off the dirt.

  Entering the streets of Cao, the people and carts that had looked so small and in-formidable from above came into sharp focus in an overwhelming kaleidoscope of intersections, shouting shop owners, racing carts, foul-mouthed transients, and frustrated buyers. People belonging to every race Nien had ever heard of (and he supposed many more that he’d not), moved up and down the walled streets in opposing directions like great herds directed by some invisible shepherd.

  Nien’s senses could hardly take it in.

  Feeling overwrought and literally overrun, it was the inconceivable light cut by the thousands of people from Preak that threw his mind into an unrecognizable heap.

  My race, he thought. So many of them. And they look just like me.

  One, a tall man, was approaching Nien amongst the sea of people heading in the opposite direction. Nien suddenly burned with the desire to speak to him. As the man neared, Nien reached out automatically — a passive, welcoming gesture of hello — to touch the man’s arm.

  The man flinched from Nien’s hand and spoke a single word of warning.

  Nien didn’t understand the word, but its intent was very clear. “Sorry,” he said, and stepped back.

  The man moved by, but his eyes stayed with Nien briefly, as if making sure Nien was not about to follow him.

  Nien made no such move, but his vacant eyes had unknowingly come to rest on an old woman who had begun to spit a string of unintelligible words at him.

  Having no idea what he might have done to elicit such a reaction, Nien shook himself. Focus! Find the library.

  Turning off the large street, he dove into an alley and found himself emerging into another street much narrower than the thoroughfare he’d come in on.

  A Quienan-looking man paused near him to look in his bag for something, and Nien spoke to him in the Fultershier, asking if he knew the way to the Library. But the man quickly shut his bag and moved on.

  Nien watched him go.

  Turning about, his gaze sought the comfort of the sidewalk. There, he found a young woman at an outdoor vendor looking over at him. Obviously, she wanted to sell her wares, and even though Nien had nothing to pay her with hoped she might take pity on him. Walking up to her booth, Nien introduced himself, and asked if she could direct him to the library.

  The woman looked him up and down, to his relief didn’t seem too disgusted that he wasn’t about to buy anything, and said, “You take Little Cao Street here to Meglinda. Then right, past the Leonna Art House, and keep going till you see the Arc Fountain on your left. Keep right of the fountain to Glenndan Street. From there just keep going like you’re heading out of the city — there are a lot of big buildings at that end. If you hit a solid dirt path you’ve gone too far.”

  Nien understood not half of what the woman said. He stared at her dumbly.

  She shook her head. “That way,” she said, pointing.

  Nien nodded and, moving off in the direction she’d pointed, had not gone far before stopping again, the only unmoving entity in a vast sea of motion.

  If he could not understand the Fultershier better than he had with the woman, what would he do? He did not speak Quienan, nor had there been any books in Rieeve on the subject except for one very small booklet he had accepted from Lant. Most embarrassing of all was that, though he bore the characteristics of the Preak, he could not speak their language either.

  Perhaps I am in over my head. This was a big, big mistake.

  An unfamiliar emotion started up inside him, swallowing his mind in a thick, grey cloud —

  Panic.

  He closed his eyes.

  Breathe, he told himself. Just breathe.

  Behind his breath and his pounding heart he found a small point of clarity.

  No, he told himself furiously. I came here for a reason. I had to come. I’ve come all this way. I can do this. Now is the time. If not now, never.

  Nien took another deep breath and opened his eyes.

  Looking up over the heads of people and the tops of carts and carriages, he spotted a cluster of grand buildings just on the outside of the frenzied commercial area he was now in. At the center of these buildings stood one, taller than the rest. If learning was, as Lant had said, of such great importance to the Quienans, then perhaps this building may be a place of learning — with any luck, the library Lant had spoken of.

  Heart racing, the large building held steadily in his sights, Nien pressed into the crowd and began to make his way toward what he hoped was his destination.

  As near and easy to spot as the building had appeared at first, it seemed to grow legs and move away the closer Nien thought he was to getting to it.

  Tired, thirsty, anxious, Nien fought to keep the panic and despair from creeping up on him again.

  Breaking into a narrow alleyway, he worked his way like a hungry rodent through the maze of buildings and streets, hurrying this way and that, weaving through people and diving down alleys until, at last, he scurried through a set of open-faced
businesses and emerged on the other side to behold one of the most beautiful sights his eyes had ever seen. Fronted by a long incoming street, a broad sweep of stairs, and a pair of massive columns was the great building. Looking up, Nien recognized one word in the lengthy inscription carved into the stone over the entryway: Kilendatta.

  Nien clutched his pack in a barely checked shout of joy. The Cao library.

  Leaving the streets, Nien walked up the stairs and through the immense columned entrance. Reaching out with both hands and grasping the large curving handles of two doors twice his height, Nien swung them open —

  And stopped.

  Endless concourses of books filled his vision, encircling a vista so deep and high Nien laughed spontaneously. Shelves soared over seventy steps above his head, exactly as Lant had said. Ladders led up to a metal railing that wheeled the edifice near its midsection, enabling access of the volumes stored above. The ceiling was braced with arches that culminated at the center in a grand circle. A blending of precious metals and coloured clays adorned the arches creating a swirling fresco of pink berries on light green vines.

  Moving deep within the various concourses, Nien began to glance over the books. Unable to read the titles of most of them, he eventually chose one on astronomy in the Fultershier. Intending merely to turn its pages, smell the ink, and continue to look for a book on the Quienan language, Nien caught himself looking up from the book to find that the sun had long set and he was the only one still sitting in the spacious reading area.

  Getting up, he slid the book back into its place and walked out of the hall. In the next hall over, he spotted a young woman replacing books into one of the great reaches of shelves. Near as he could tell, she was Quienan, though she could have been a combination of more than a few different races. Nien walked over to her, hoping his luck with the people here would be better than it had been out on the streets.

  She glanced over her shoulder as he approached. She had pretty features and bright eyes. Her dark blonde hair hung close to her shoulders, and her skin was pale.