The Emperor of Everything

Chapter 3

The path, though steep, seemed in better condition on this side of the pass, and they made good progress. By the time the sun was halfway down the afternoon sky, they had descended to the wooded foothills, where the trees were tall and ancient. Ruiz set a fast pace, but apart from the occasional mutter from Flomel, no one complained. As they walked down the path, the day grew darker, and soon the sun was hidden behind the clouds, and the light further dimmed by the branches of the trees that overhung the way. The Pharaohans drew closer together, made uneasy by this unnatural exuberance of greenery. Pharaoh’s one habitable plateau was such a dry barren place that only the richest and most powerful Pharaohans could afford to maintain gardens.

“What sort of folk could live in such a strange place,” asked Nisa in hushed tones.

“I don’t know. All kinds, probably, like everywhere else.” Ruiz spoke in a distracted voice. He felt something of the others’ uneasiness. The forest was dense enough that it offered ample opportunity for ambush.

Nisa took his distraction as a rebuke and drew away, for which he was sorry.

Despite Ruiz’s anxiety, nothing sprang at them from the undergrowth. No missiles flew at them, no nets dropped, no traps sprang. But by the time the light began to fall toward twilight, his troops were footsore and slow, except for Molnekh, who seemed as fresh as he had at the outset of their trek. His frail-looking body apparently disguised a hearty constitution.

They passed into a belt of up-tilted limestone strata. Here and there breakdowns had formed caves; just ahead a fairly capacious one opened just off the trail. The roof projected sufficiently to keep off the rain that threatened, but the cave was too shallow to attract large predators. Soot stains on the gray ceiling showed where other travelers had camped under the overhang, but none of the signs of use seemed recent, and Ruiz decided to call a halt. He was pinning all his hope on the highway he’d seen from the pass. They would reach it in the morning, and stumbling down the path in darkness would save little time, or at any rate not enough to risk the possibility of broken ankles and night-roving beasts.

Flomel stared gloomily at the shelter. “This is where we must spend the night? This damp hole?”

Ruiz grunted. “Be grateful you’re not still at the pass. That you have a need for shelter,” he said. His dislike of the conjuror had grown more intense over the last few days. It wasn’t just that Flomel had arranged Nisa’s brief death in the first phoenix play, or that he would have cheerfully killed her again at Corean’s behest. Dolmaero and Molnekh were equally culpable; none of the Pharaohans saw any great immorality in the brutality of the phoenix play, not even Nisa, who in an attempt to avoid a second death had once ripped a pair of sewing shears through Flomel’s guts. No, Flomel was an innocent product of his primitive culture, just as Ruiz Aw was a product of his own hypercivilized one.

But Flomel saw other human beings only in terms of their usefulness to Flomel.

Ruiz frowned, struck by an unpleasant notion. Was Flomel so different from himself? Yes, of course, he told himself fiercely. Otherwise I’d just kill the little snake and rest easier.

He shook himself; that was developing into a disquieting line of thought.

He directed the other men to set up the tents under the overhang, while he and Nisa gathered wood for a fire. He was reasonably certain that Corean wouldn’t catch up with them until late the next day, and so a fire would be a fairly safe luxury.

Several seasons had apparently come and gone since the last traveler had visited the shelter; there was plenty of wood within sight of the shelter. But they moved far enough away for a private conversation.

Nisa bent close to Ruiz as he snapped dry twigs from a small deadfall, and he caught the clean scent of her hair. He smiled and drew a deep breath. She turned to look at him through the dark veil of her hair. “Have I angered you?” she asked. Her voice was almost truculent.

“No, of course not,” he said. “Have I angered you?”

She smiled at his serious tone, and her face became cheerful. “No, not really. But you’ve been different, since you captured the boat.”

“I suppose so.” Ruiz set the deadfall across two boulders, and used his boots to snap its trunk into usable sections. “It’s because I’m working at my trade, and not just waiting for an opportunity to act. Though… waiting with you was as sweet a pastime as I’ve ever known.”

Her smile grew warmer, and her eyes shown with held-back tears. “I’m happy to hear that, Ruiz Aw. Though perhaps I shame myself to say so. No… that’s wrong. I’m a princess, but I’m sure you’re a prince in your own lands.”

He patted her hand. “I grew up a slave.”

Her eyes widened. “Then the princes in your land must be mighty indeed.”

He laughed. “I know of few especially mighty ones. In the pangalac worlds, persons of any station, even slaves, may make themselves kings and queens, if that is their desire — and if they can out-climb and out-fight and out-scheme all the other would-be rulers. There are many candidates, very many.”

“Your lands aren’t so different from mine.” She seemed a bit wistful, as if she had hoped that the wider universe was a happier and more just place. She straightened up with the armload of wood she had collected. “Well. You said you were working at your trade. What might that be?”

Ruiz shrugged. “It’s a simple one; staying alive. I hope to be a success for a few more days, long enough to get us away from Sook.”

She looked at him quizzically, lovely head tipped to the side appraisingly. “My confidence in your prospects grows daily. Will we share a tent tonight?”

“If that’s your wish.” He felt a sweet unfamiliar glow.

“That’s my wish, yes,” she said, and bumped him playfully with one round hip.

Later, with a low fire casting an orange light on the stone overhead, the five of them ate in silence. Looking at Dolmaero’s broad face, Ruiz saw that the Guildmaster had evolved more questions.

“What?” Ruiz asked.

“You will not be offended?” Dolmaero raised cautious eyes to Ruiz’s.

“No, speak freely.” Sometimes it saddened Ruiz that he seemed to inflict fear on everyone he met. Of course, Dolmaero had seen Ruiz perform terrible violence — so he could hardly blame Dolmaero for being wary.

Dolmaero sighed and looked down. “I must trust to your restraint, then.” For a long moment the Guildmaster was silent, staring into the fire. “I would ask you to tell me the truth about yourself, and about Pharaoh. Who are you, really? And what are we? And what have you to do with us?”

Ruiz was unprepared for such direct questions. His first impulse, born of a lifetime of subterfuge, was to lie as reassuringly as possible — he told himself that he must still protect his secrets, or risk triggering the death net. The meddling of Nacker the bootleg minddiver, and the near trigger after his attempted escape from Corean’s slave pens, had weakened the net somewhat… but if Corean recaptured him in such a way that he was helpless, the net would fire, and he would die. If the Gencha took him, the net would fire. If any other enemy of the League held him helpless, the net would fire.

It struck him that telling the Pharaohans the truth was no great threat, compared to these other likelihoods. After all, before any of them could be returned to Pharaoh they would be mindwiped.

He felt a sudden overwhelming weariness with deception. Caution evaporated. “Are you certain you wish to know these things?”

Dolmaero nodded heavily. Molnekh wore his usual look of bright-eyed amiable curiosity. Flomel curled his lip and feigned indifference.

“Please tell us, Ruiz Aw,” asked Nisa.

So he did.

He explained, with some hesitation, that he was a freelance enforcer, a man whose profession involved inflicting pain, stimulating fear, committing atrocities. No one seemed surprised, not even Nisa. Ruiz was a little taken aback by her easy acceptance of this ugly truth. Never forget, he told himself. She comes from an alien society, however human she may be genetically. Somehow the concept lacked force; perhaps he didn’t care what she was, as long as she was Nisa.

He explained that he had been hired to sniff out a poacher who was stealing valuable Pharaohan slaves. Despite his sudden distaste for deception, he was careful not to mention the League, and he described his commission and employers in deliberately ambiguous terms. The League was unpopular on Sook — since it was one of the strongest multistellar entities, and had an effective police arm. He couldn’t risk one of the Pharaohans dropping the League’s name in the presence of a local.

But even so, a truthful picture of Pharaoh’s status began to emerge. This information seemed less palatable to his listeners.

“Please,” said Dolmaero. “Explain further. Pharaoh is owned? Like a catapple plantation?”

“Something like that,” Ruiz said.

“But what do the pangalacs want from us? Gold? Snake oil?”

“Some oil is exported,” Ruiz said. “But mainly, the wealth of Pharaoh is in its conjurors. That’s why Corean stole your troupe from Bidderum. She would have one day sold your people to some collector of theatrical oddities, for a great deal of pangalac credit.”

Dolmaero looked wryly amused. “So we’re cattle? Or dancing banebears?”

“Oh, no. On the pangalac worlds the institution of slavery is restricted by many humane rules. It’s very unlikely you’d have been mistreated, had you been taken by a legitimate pangalac organization. Now Corean… she might have sold you to some wildworld monster — who can say?”

Molnekh looked bewildered and said nothing.

Nisa turned away and spoke in a low voice. “I always thought that Pharaoh belonged to my father.”

Of all the reactions, Flomel’s was the strangest. A look of malevolent defiant pride came into his eyes, though his face maintained its expression of ostentatious disinterest. He seemed to glare at Ruiz with a different, more submissive degree of hatred. The look on the conjuror’s face made Ruiz’s skin crawl.

“How long have we been owned?” asked Dolmaero.

“Many generations. Soon after your people developed conjuring into a high art.”

Nisa made a muffled sound of woe. Ruiz touched her shoulder. “What is it?”

“Nothing. It’s just… I remember, not so long ago, though now it seems a lifetime past, when I stood on my father’s terrace above the city, and drank a toast to my ancestors. The ones who first traveled about Pharaoh, performing their rough tricks. The ones whose cleverness had given me such a good life. And now I see that they made me a slave….”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t all bad. You haven’t had a major war since you became a client world. Three hundred years ago there was a plague that might have killed three quarters of your population; the owners stopped it before it started.”

She put her face in her hands. “My father’s hunting dirgos are content; they no longer remember what it was like to freely roam the wastes. They get meat twice a day, and the huntsman sees that they get enough exercise. It’s good, I suppose.”

Ruiz could find no comforting words to speak. He put his arm around her, pulled her close. She resisted for a moment, then turned her face to his chest.

Dolmaero spoke again, though this time he seemed to speak more to himself than to Ruiz. “I must find a way to get back to the troupe, someday. I must try to take them home; I’m responsible for them, you understand. Most of them didn’t seek glory or transfiguration; they worked to feed their families. Tell me, Ruiz. Now that the conjurors are gone, what will Corean do with the ones who are left?”

Ruiz shook his head. “I don’t know, Guildmaster.” He couldn’t see what use the depressing truth would be to Dolmaero. In all likelihood, Corean would simply euthanize the others, if she became convinced that she would never recapture the conjurors. What good was a conjuring troupe without conjurors?

A little time passed, and the fire burned low, until only a few red coals sputtered in the ashes. The night air was chill and damp, and Ruiz became very conscious of Nisa’s warmth against him. He found himself wishing that he could be frozen in time, that he could rest like this forever, that somehow the arc of his life could be arrested here and now, before it plunged down to the painful ending that probably waited for him a day or two down the line. He had managed all day to put from his mind the impossibility that they could escape Corean on foot, the improbability that the highway would be traveled by anyone willing to give transport to a ragged group like his.

All his life, he had possessed a talent for putting away thoughts he did not wish to think, a talent that had served him well in his violent pursuits; now he could not seem to do it. He looked down at Nisa’s dark head. Perhaps she had become too precious to him, but if so, there was nothing he wished to do about it.

Dolmaero stirred. “Another question, if you’ll permit, and then I must retire — or I won’t be able to walk very far tomorrow.”

Ruiz nodded.

“Then tell me… what are we to you that you should help us as you have? I know you are fond of the Noble Person… this is written in your face. But the rest of us? Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t seem the sort of person who often performs capricious acts of charity.”

Ruiz was also fond of Dolmaero, and was growing to like Molnekh’s cheerful energetic personality. Still, Dolmaero was essentially correct. Why had he undertaken to rescue the others?

He made a successful rationalization. “I expect your help in return.”

Dolmaero spread his hands. “But what can we do? We’re not trained in violence, we know nothing of this world.”

Ruiz considered. “Here’s the first thing: We must set a watch, so that one of us is always awake. I don’t know what predators live in these woods, or what sort of people. In any case, we mustn’t be taken by surprise. So… Molnekh, perhaps you’ll stand the first watch?”

“Of course,” said the skinny mage, beaming.

Ruiz looked up. He saw that the threatening clouds had blown away, and that patches of starry sky showed through the branches overhead. “See that bright star?” He pointed to an opening in the canopy. “When it hangs above the white-barked tree, call me for my watch. I’ll call Dolmaero, who will call Nisa.”

“And what shall I do?” sneered Flomel.

Ruiz pushed Nisa gently away and got to his feet. He picked up the self-securing leash he’d brought from the wrecked airboat. “Come with me, Master Flomel. I’ll tuck you in.”

Flomel followed him slowly to the tent farthest from the fire. “Must you hobble me like an untrained striderbeast?”

Ruiz set the leash, activated its mechanism, watched it corkscrew its taproot into the stone. “I must, until you’re better trained.”

“I know I’ve spoken roughly to you, but I’ve done you no real harm. Why do you so distrust me?” Flomel smiled a crooked smile, an expression of alarming duplicity, even in the dim light.

Ruiz snugged the leash around Flomel’s neck, sealed it. “Instinct, let us say.”

“I’ve learned much this night, Ruiz Aw. How may I earn your trust?” The smile trembled on Flomel’s thin mouth.

Ruiz laughed. “At the moment, I have difficulty with the concept. Perhaps you’ll think of something.” He tugged at the leash, found it secure. “Good night.”

Molnekh had taken his post at the side of the shelter and stood motionless against the gray stone. He was hard to spot in the darkness, and Ruiz felt a degree of approval. Molnekh was intelligent and adaptable; he might actually be of some help.

Dolmaero had gone to bed, and only Nisa remained by the dead fire, huddled over, arms clasping her legs to her chest. He went to her, lifted her to her feet. “We should rest,” he said.

She looked up at him with a curiously unreadable expression, and for a moment he thought she would tell him she no longer wished him to share her tent. He could hardly blame her, considering the unpleasant things he had revealed about her world and about her life.

But then she took his hand and led him to the tent.

They lay pressed together, bodies touching from head to toe. Though there was no passion in their embrace, Nisa clung to Ruiz tightly, apparently taking comfort in his closeness.

Unexpectedly, Ruiz was comforted too. He found it good just to hold her, to feel her heart beating against him. Her scent, her warm breath, the tickling touch of her hair; all these were pleasures more than adequate to the moment.

After a while her breathing grew regular, and she slept — but Ruiz felt no such urge. Who knew when, if ever, he would come across this species of delight again?

Two hours passed in a long sweet instant.

When Molnekh came to call him for his watch, Ruiz felt a deep pang of regret. He unwrapped himself from Nisa’s arms as carefully as he could, hoping not to wake her. She stirred, made drowsy wordless sounds, then seemed to settle back into sleep.

Outside, a low ground mist lay knee-deep beneath the trees. The forest was almost unnaturally quiet, except for the snores coming from Dolmaero’s tent.

“Everything’s well?” Ruiz whispered to Molnekh.

Molnekh nodded, showing a flash of white teeth in the darkness. “I can say this much: Nothing has happened. Is that good?”

Ruiz grinned back. “Time will tell, mage.”

Molnekh chuckled. “I’m tremendously reassured, Ruiz Aw.” He reached out one skeletal hand, laid it on Ruiz’s shoulder. “We all have great faith in your skills. Even Flomel, though his admiration is unwilling and pains him.” Molnekh chuckled again, then seemed to grow serious. “Our lives are in your hands, but all things considered, I feel sure matters could be worse.”

Ruiz was oddly moved. “I hope you’re right, Master Molnekh. We’ll do our best. Who knows, it may be enough.”

Molnekh patted his shoulder again, then turned away and crawled into Dolmaero’s tent. The snores stopped for a moment, then resumed.

Ruiz found a comfortable seat on a jumble of fallen stone, just outside the shelter. He settled himself for a long night. He felt no urge to sleep, and Dolmaero, the oldest and heaviest of them, would need all his strength to keep up tomorrow.

And if he had no other gift for Nisa, at least he could give her a few extra hours of sleep. He tried not to believe that this was her last night.

When Ruiz left the tent, Nisa woke. She reached for the comfort of sleep, but it didn’t immediately return. Uneasy thoughts crowded into her mind, as if they’d been waiting for an opportunity to catch her alone.

She thought of Ayam, Corean’s hermaphrodite slave, whose incautious decision to rape Nisa had provided Ruiz Aw with an opportunity to capture the airboat. She still ached where it had thrust itself into her, but the pain was fading. She remembered the terrible silent manner in which Ruiz had drawn the creature from her tent and throttled it, and the memory gave her a keen vindictive delight. It had died with such ambiguous surprise on its strange face, as if it couldn’t help finding some sort of perverse fulfillment in its own death.

Ruiz Aw. Such an odd man, such a perplexing tangle of mysteries. Tonight in the tent, he had known without words that, this once, she wanted just his comforting presence, his arms around her, and nothing more.

Not, she thought, that there was anything wrong with his lovemaking. In fact, never had she bedded with so skillful a lover. He was both fierce and tender, he seemed to know the ways her body wanted to be touched better than she did, he seemed to be able to sense the tempo of her passion perfectly. In bed, his mouth, usually so hard, became soft; his beautiful hands, those slayer’s hands, touched her gently when gentleness was what she wanted and gripped her strongly when the time was right for strength.

His fervor would be almost frightening, did it not bring her such overwhelming pleasure. She sensed in his lovemaking the same intensity she had seen in his face when he was killing his enemies — a thought both terrifying and fascinating.

Her memories of Ruiz Aw had strayed into uncomfortable areas, so she forced herself to think of the coming day. What new sights would she see, what marvelous things that had never existed on Pharaoh?

Then a quiver of anxiety went through her. And what new miracle would Ruiz perform, to keep them safe from Corean? Nisa had come to have an almost-fatalistic confidence in Ruiz; she refused to consider the possibility that Corean would best him, despite all the advantages that the slaver possessed: airboats, terrible weapons, monstrous henchmen.

No, she thought, growing drowsy again, Ruiz would manage, somehow. Her mind emptied, and then she slept.

After a while she dreamed.

The dream began well. She was once again Nisa, favored daughter of the King; once again she had all her pleasures: her bondservants, her gracious apartment in the palace, her books and games — and the adoration of everyone who knew her. She rested in a bower, gazing out at her father’s cool green gardens, wearing her favorite dress, a long high-waisted gown with vast butterfly sleeves, sewn from pale blue Hellsilk and spangled with tiny glitterlizard scales.

It was as if the past weeks had never happened. Her imprisonment, her painful role in the phoenix play and her death in the final act, her resurrection and capture by aliens, her strange attachment to the slayer Ruiz. All, all, a dream-memory, fading fast.

She forced away the tiny voice that whispered that this was the dream, and it fell silent.

Now she was moving through her father’s polished halls, drifting light as a thistle, with that glorious ease that comes in dreams. The dear familiar scenes floated past her dream eyes. The porcelain floor tiles that she had played on as a child, with their thousand subtle shades of ivory. The fountains she had bathed in. The shady rooms in which she had dallied with her lovers — sometimes the sons and daughters of noble houses, other times joyfolk from the public square.

A brief darkness fell over the dream, until she found herself on her favorite terrace, above all but the highest towers of the palace. The sun shone brilliantly on the city, and she felt a sense of grateful wonder. All this was hers, the palace, the great city, the vastness of Pharaoh beyond the walls. All hers to command.

She felt an exultation that made her giddy; she was so light with joy that when she spread her arms she was unsurprised to find the sleeves of her gown transformed into huge wings.

She rose up, soaring above everything, her movements swift as thought, inhumanly graceful.

The palace grew small beneath her and the sun grew fiercer, but she rushed upward, faster and faster, until it seemed that her wings trailed fire and she had become a comet, trailing glory.

An uneasiness came over her, too late. She discovered that she had passed the sun, and its dwindling warmth no longer reached her. Pharaoh was a grain of sand, lost in the void.

She looked up. Above her was a glassy black ceiling, a smooth arc that seemed to have no beginning and no end. She tried to slow herself, lest her delicate body be smashed against this barrier, but still she rose.

Finally a tiny round opening appeared in the otherwise featureless surface. An awful truth came to her; she saw that Pharaoh and everyone in it existed in a monstrous glass jar — and that she was rushing into its neck. Was it stoppered?

She brushed the slick walls painlessly, slid upward, slowing as the bottle’s neck narrowed and her body made firmer contact with the glass.

Finally she stuck, arms reaching upward, feet kicking furiously. No! she shouted soundlessly. She fought to get higher, clawing at the glass. Her wings were tearing, and this did hurt her, terribly, but she ignored the pain and struggled on. She moved a tiny bit, then a bit more. She had a sudden horrible sensation that the black tunnel was about to squeeze shut and crush her life away. She made a last muscle-tearing spasmodic effort.

And pulled herself to the top of the bottle, where she clung to the lip, and looked out across the starry wastes. Her wings were bloody tatters of agony, the stars were cold meaningless fires, impossibly far away.

She was terrified, but it was an oddly joyful terror, and at that moment she didn’t want to wake up.

Ruiz sat motionless for the remainder of the night, submerged in his thoughts, giving only a small part of his attention to the silent forest. He could see little hope for their survival, unless the highway they would reach tomorrow was a busy one, traveled by beings of remarkable confidence or naivete. Who else would stop to help them?

When Corean arrived, she would no doubt be equipped with mechanical sniffers, or some sort of trailing beast — these were standard tools used by all successful slavers. Depending on the efficiency of Corean’s sniffers, she would catch up to them tomorrow afternoon or the next morning — if Ruiz failed to find swift transportation away from the area.

Ruiz looked up through the canopy, saw bright stars, and the gleam of the Shard orbital platforms. Had it rained, as it had earlier promised to, the sniffers would have been slowed.

He worried at the problem, but could find no purchase on its slippery shell. He might attempt an ambush; he had the splinter gun. But Corean would doubtless be armed with heavier weapons. If her Mocrassar bondwarrior had finished its molt and was with Corean, confronting the slaver was hopeless, even if she were foolish enough to engage him at close range.

No, everything depended on finding transportation, which was to say everything depended on luck. This intransigent reality made him grind his teeth in frustration. He had always been lucky, but he had always been careful to put no faith in luck.

Never to need luck: that was the secret of being lucky. Now he needed it.

When gray light began to seep through the treetops, a few big raindrops fell, plopping into the leafy forest floor. Then they stopped.