The Emperor of Everything

Chapter 4

Ruiz hurried the others through the morning’s necessities: breakfast, packing, stretching sore muscles. Dolmaero seemed somewhat refreshed by his slumber, but he went up to Ruiz and spoke in mildly truculent tones. “Why did you not call me for my watch?”

“I wasn’t sleepy,” Ruiz answered. “Why should we both suffer.”

“Well, next time, call me. I can do my part.”

“I know,” Ruiz said, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper. “In fact, I have a job for you today. I’ll ask you to keep a close eye on Flomel. Nisa will watch him too, but she may not be strong enough to stop him if he takes a notion to do something foolish.”

Dolmaero nodded. “As you say. It’s odd. There was a time when the troupe was everything to me… and despite Flomel’s unpleasant aspects, I thought him a great man. He was such a wonderful conjuror.” Dolmaero sighed. “But times change, and now I see that I was a fool.”

“No, no. You weren’t a fool, Guildmaster — you were like everyone else, doing the best you could with what you knew.”

“Perhaps… kind of you to say so, anyway.” Dolmaero returned to his packing.

The path was broader and smoother now, and they made good time. For a while Ruiz treated himself to the pleasure of walking hand in hand with Nisa, following the others. He felt a bit silly, like an overage schoolboy, but Nisa apparently saw nothing undignified in such affectionate gestures. Her hand clasped his tightly; occasionally she turned her lovely face up to him and gave him a smile.

By midmorning, they began to pass evidence of recent use: plastic food wrappers, discarded articles of clothing, small heaps of charcoal where fires had been built. Ruiz forced himself into a higher level of alertness. He released Nisa’s hand, called a halt.

“We’ll have to be more careful now,” he told the others. “I’m going to run ahead and see if the way is clear. You follow at a slower pace. If you hear or see something you don’t understand or that seems dangerous — or if you meet with anyone — get off the path and hide in the forest.”

Ruiz looked at Flomel, saw the sly expression he wore. “Above all, don’t let Flomel get away.” He took the leash out, fastened it to Flomel’s neck, and gave the other end to Dolmaero. “And if he attempts to cry out or otherwise attract attention, kill him as quickly and quietly as possible. Can you manage that?”

Dolmaero nodded, face somber. He fingered the dagger he carried in his sash. “You may rely on me, Ruiz Aw.”

Flomel’s expression wavered between outrage and disbelief, but he said nothing.

Ruiz bent and brushed his lips against Nisa’s and whispered in her ear so that only she could hear. “Watch them all.”

Then he ran away down the path.

When he was several hundred meters ahead, he slowed to a more cautious pace. The forest was unchanged, though the path had become a broad promenade, paved with ochre bricks.

He began to pass stone benches with fancifully carved legs and backs, and it occurred to him that the path functioned as someone’s picnic ground. But he met no picnickers, though he hoped earnestly to — preferably picnickers with a high-speed airboat, armored and bristling with weaponry. He laughed at himself. He might as well wish for his picnickers to also be too abysmally stupid to use any of the security technology such a vessel would carry.

No, what he needed was picnickers with, say, five motorized bicycles.

The path looped through the woods in graceful sweeps, and Ruiz would have cut across, had the undergrowth not been so dense. Because of the path’s curvature, he could see only a short distance ahead. There was an unidentifiable change in the air, and a feeling of imminence touched him. He began to think that the highway junction must be near, and he became even more cautious, keeping to the shadiest side of the path, alert for any sign that he was not alone.

Ruiz came around the last curve and discovered that his hoped-for “highway” was actually a canal.

The path terminated in a sunny clearing, in which stood an elevated landing built of shiny pink granite, over which rose a decorative gateway — two columns in the form of attenuated weasels, supporting an arched lintel carved in the likeness of two winged reptiles, toothy snouts kissing in the center. Here and there striped poles rose above the landing, still carrying ragged scraps of faded cloth, apparently left from a time when the landing had been covered with a festive canopy.

The immediate impression was of long disuse, and Ruiz’s heart sank.

He approached the landing slowly, still alert, but with a growing sense of futility. The scattering of recent trash on the path had raised his hopes, but the landing’s air of abandonment had dampened them.

He climbed the steps and went across the landing to the canal. The canal itself seemed to be in perfect repair. It had two narrow channels, separated by a strip of monocrete. The still black water had an unpleasant oily quality, but no debris blocked the channels — hopeful evidence that the canal was still in occasional use. He looked to the left. The canal cut south through the trees in a perfectly straight line, and though the branches formed a tunnel over the canal, none of them hung low enough to impede the progress of a barge. It appeared they were trimmed on a regular schedule.

Ruiz went to the verge of the canal, and peered over the monocrete curb. Repulsor strips were set into the side, just above the waterline, an indication that the canal was maintained by folk of a fairly high-tech level. No growth fouled the canal sides, another indication of advanced engineering.

He sat on the curb and considered his options. Was there time to build a raft? Perhaps — he could use the splinter gun to fell trees, though that would severely deplete its power cell. But what then? When Corean arrived, her sniffers would lead her to the canal, and she wouldn’t have to go far to catch up to them. Besides, it was doubtful they could pole the raft at a significantly greater speed than they could walk.

Maybe they could confuse the trail — go down the canal a couple of hours and kick Flomel off the raft, run him into the woods to divert the snifters. No — without a good deal of luck — and an improbably degree of incompetence on Corean’s part — that would be no more than a brief delaying tactic. All their scent-signatures were surely on file in Corean’s computers and accessible to her sniffers. She would either ignore Flomel, or split off a portion of her forces to catch him.

Idly, he flipped a twig into the dark water. It lay there for an instant, and then he felt a high-frequency vibration in the curb. He jumped up and stood back, but not before he saw the twig shatter and then dissolve in a swirling pool of foam. The vibration ceased.

He abandoned the idea of a raft, as well as several barely formed ideas about using the canal as a hiding place.

He walked a few paces south along the curb and saw that there was ample concealment away from the landing. It would be no trouble to jump to the deck of a passing barge from here, if the barge wasn’t moving too fast and wasn’t defended with automatic weaponry or too many guards.

As this thought passed through his mind, he heard the mutter of an engine and looked north, to see a barge moving sedately toward him in the near channel. He stepped back into a clump of bushes and waited.

As it came closer, he saw that it apparently carried no passengers or crew. In fact, it seemed to be an automated cargo carrier, heavily armored against pilferage, but showing no obvious armament. Its back was featureless steel, rounded at the topsides.

It seemed perfect. When it drew abreast of his hiding place and he had still seen no defenses, he accepted the risk and leaped aboard. The barge was moving deceptively fast, and he stumbled before catching his balance.

Nothing struck him down, to his astonishment.

He turned and looked at the landing, receding behind him, the trees closing in around the waterway. Safe, he thought. With any luck, Corean would never catch him — her sniffers would have to search both banks of the canal, which they would do at a speed that in all likelihood would be slower than the speed with which he was now fleeing. If the barge didn’t carry him into a fatally hostile situation, he’d survive.

The glow of happiness he felt faded almost instantly.

Nisa. And the others, but mainly: Nisa. The sunny landing had become just a bright spot in the shadowy tunnel of green. No, don’t be foolish, he told himself. They’d had no chance before — what had changed? If he got off the barge, who knew when another might happen along? It could be days. Or weeks. Long before that, his hide would be decorating Corean’s apartment.

But there was Nisa. He couldn’t be sure what Corean would do to Nisa and the other escapees, but it wouldn’t be pleasant. In his mind’s eye he could see the others reaching the landing, to find him gone. What would they think had happened? Flomel would know, he was sure — this was exactly the sort of thing Flomel would do, if he got the chance.

He sighed and turned to leap back to the bank. He saw a space between the trees and jumped — and as he did, the mission-imperative rose up in his mind and shrieked that he was doing the wrong thing.

He almost fell into the canal, but he made the bank and fell rolling. The mission-imperative hurt him terribly. It couldn’t kill him, as the death net could — but it could hurt him. What it was saying, in wordless waves of pain, was: “Ruiz Aw, you have deviated from the accomplishment of the mission you promised to perform for the Art League.”

Ruiz lay sprawled, shuddering with pain, teeth clenched on a scream, until the mission-imperative ceased its punishment. After a time he sat up, still shaky. Never again, he promised himself. Never again would he allow anyone to tamper with his mind, to install another’s agenda in place of his own.

When he was strong enough, he stood and began walking the bank, back to the landing.

The others had arrived when he reached the clearing. They stood in a tight apprehensive knot at the foot of the landing, looking about uncertainly. They didn’t see him immediately.

He paused behind the last clump of concealing brambles and watched for a moment. Dolmaero’s broad face showed a mixture of anxiety and disillusionment. Molnekh glanced about, looking blandly alert. Flomel, still tethered to the leash Dolmaero held, wore a face full of malevolent triumph.

Nisa stood slightly apart from the others, and she seemed to be striving for calm and confidence.

She’s been defending me, he thought, and his heart melted, just a little.

Ruiz stepped out and they jumped.

“Hello,” he said.

He took a malicious pleasure in watching Flomel’s face fall, but the light in Nisa’s face was a far better reward.

“We feared for you,” said Dolmaero with a rare cautious smile.

Molnekh grinned, an oddly macabre expression in that skeletal face. “Oh, certainly we did — but perhaps we felt a bit of anxiety about our own selves.”

Ruiz laughed. “Nonsense. We’re all far too brave for such emotions.”

Nisa hugged him. “I wasn’t worried,” she said.

“You’re too optimistic, Noble Person,” Ruiz said, in what must have been an odd tone, for she looked confused momentarily.

“Well, thank you. Anyway, this may be good luck,” Ruiz continued, indicating the canal.

“What is it?” Molnekh asked. The Pharaohan came from a world in which water was far too rare and precious to leave open to the air.

“It’s a ‘canal,’” he said, using the pangalac word. “It’s a low-energy transport system. Things called ‘barges’ float along it, propelled by internal engines or pushed by barges specially designed for that purpose.”

“It seems an oddly complicated system, in a place where one may as easily soar through the air,” remarked Dolmaero, as if he couldn’t quite believe in such an eccentric concept.

“Perhaps,” said Ruiz. “But it works reliably, uses little energy, and provides a safe and picturesque means of travel. For example, we wouldn’t have crashed into a mountainside, had we traveled by barge.”

“A point,” Dolmaero conceded.

“And how do we summon one of these barges?” demanded Flomel.

Ruiz smiled a bit sadly. “You’ve cut to the heart of our present difficulty, I fear. We have no means of calling up a barge — we must hope that one happens by before Corean catches up with us.”

Flomel snorted contemptuously. The others looked stricken, except for Nisa, who perhaps had come to rely too greatly on Ruiz’s luck.

“It’s not so bad,” Ruiz said. “One passed through just a few minutes ago. I rode it a short distance, to see if it was feasible.”

“So that’s where you were?” Dolmaero looked just the smallest bit skeptical, and Ruiz realized: He knows me better than any of the others, even Nisa.

“Yes. The barges move rapidly, but not so fast that we won’t be able to jump aboard — provided that their decks are undefended, as the last one was.”

“Meanwhile, what shall we do? Shall we eat? It’s lunch-time.” Molnekh looked cheerfully famished.

“Why not?”

They sat on the landing’s steps and ate the last of Corean’s food. Ruiz tried to clear his mind of the unpleasantnesses that, it seemed, must soon occur. He had no reasonable hope that another barge would pass through before Corean caught up with them; still, why deny the sweetness of the moment. The sun was warm on his back, and Nisa sat close to him, her thigh pressed comfortably against his. It was possible that Corean would not arrive until tomorrow morning — if not, he hoped to enjoy another night in Nisa’s arms. It seemed a worthwhile way of spending his last night.

No! He mustn’t accept, he mustn’t give up. Cold rationality would be of little use at this point; an entirely rational being in his position would have long ago perished.

He examined the landing with an eye to ambush. He had the splinter gun. He could hide the others in the bushes. He could tie Flomel to one of the landing’s poles, a sacrificial goat. Maybe Corean would assume Flomel to be excess baggage left behind when they fled, and stop to question him. Who could tell; perhaps Corean would be foolish enough to emerge from her boat unarmored, and he could potshot her. He looked up at the carved gate. If Corean’s craft approached the clearing at a low level, as would be the case if she was using mech sniffers, Ruiz might be able to hide atop the lintel, in the wingfolds of one of the granite reptiles.

Well, it was a plan, though not a terribly good one. Still, it was far better than supine acceptance.

Ruiz finished his lunch and leaned back against the warm stone. Suppose another barge actually did arrive. How would he get everyone aboard? The barges apparently moved at a fairly high speed. Ruiz might be able to run fast enough to keep up with one for a short distance but none of the others seemed that quick. They’d have one chance to jump aboard; anyone who missed would be left behind. Flomel would try to be a problem; if he dragged his feet, he might slow one of them disastrously.

The others had finished their lunch and were sitting in a silent group on the other side of the landing steps, looking about aimlessly.

Ruiz stood. “Come,” he said. “Let’s discuss strategy.”

The others rose. Dolmaero tugged Flomel to his feet; the mage now regarded the Guildmaster with the same virulent hatred he directed at Ruiz.

“To the canalside,” said Ruiz.

When they all stood on the bank, Ruiz spoke. “The problem is more complex than it looks. The barges move rapidly, and we will have but one chance to board — supposing that the barges are uncrewed and undefended, as the last one was. Also, we don’t know which way the barge will be coming. If it’s going south, that would be best, since we are on this bank. However, if it’s going north, it will travel in the far channel.”

“How will we reach it?” asked Dolmaero.

“A good question. I have a plan; it may work.” Ruiz glanced at the trees on the north side of the clearing. He selected an overhanging branch about the diameter of Flomel’s neck, pulled the splinter gun out, and fired a burst. The spinning wires cut through the wood and dropped the branch into the canal, where it shuddered and disintegrated.

Molnekh stepped cautiously back from the verge. “I’d been hoping for a bath,” he said wryly.

Ruiz smiled and shrugged. “Inadvisable.” He turned to Flomel. “I must warn you now, Master Flomel. If you’re in any way obstructive, I’ll have to use the gun; I can’t let Corean catch you, as richly as you deserve that fate.”

Flomel swallowed, eyes wide. “I understand.” For the moment the mage seemed subdued and tractable.

“Anyway,” Ruiz continued. “If we see a northbound barge, I’ll try to drop a tree across the first channel, which we must all scramble over before the barge reaches the landing. Then we must distribute ourselves along the bank, for reasons that will be obvious. I’ll jump on first, so I can help catch you. Then Nisa, followed by Dolmaero, then Flomel, then Molnekh. This is the technique you must use: Before the barge reaches you, you must run as fast as you can in the direction the barge is moving. When it reaches you, run a little faster and jump aboard. With any luck, none of us will break an ankle.”

“There’s that word again,” said Dolmaero — but he was smiling.

“I’m afraid so,” said Ruiz.

The Pharaohan men settled in the shadow of the gate to wait. Dolmaero and Molnekh made an effort to restore their stubbly heads to a decently shaven state, using the dagger Ruiz had given Dolmaero. They took turns scraping at each other’s scalp, the scraper working industriously, the scrapee making terrible faces as the not-very-sharp knife did its damage.

After a while, they reluctantly agreed to shave Flomel, and Ruiz thought to detect a certain pleasure in Molnekh’s homely face as he inflicted pain on the senior mage.

But finally all were restored to a socially acceptable condition, their scalp tattoos glowing in the sunlight.

Ruiz had decided to let his hair grow out, since his disguise as a Pharaohan snake oil peddler was thoroughly compromised — and already there was a fine black nap obscuring his fading tattoos.

A silence fell over the clearing. The only sound Ruiz could hear was the slight click and rattle that came from Molnekh and Flomel, who were doing dexterity exercises, passing small stones and twigs through their agile fingers. Ruiz found this an oddly touching exhibition of faith. It wasn’t terribly likely that the mages would ever practice their art again, even if they succeeded in escaping Sook — yet they remained devoted to their craft.

After a time even these sounds ceased, and the breeze went as light as a sigh. In this deeper silence, Ruiz heard the faint splash of dripping water.

He turned his head. It seemed to him that the sound originated from the north edge of the clearing, where a faint path led into the forest.

“Wait here,” he said to Nisa. “Call out if you hear or see anything — especially if a barge comes.”

He went into the forest, following the path. Less than fifty meters beyond the edge of the clearing, he came to a bower.

A fountain dripped a slow trickle of cool water over a bronze statue of some graceful browsing creature. It had a head much like an Old Earth deer, delicate and fey, but it had six long, powerful legs. The fountain fed a clear shallow pool surrounded by a low coping of pink granite. At the back of the pool the overflow slid glistening over a Watergate into a tiny stream that meandered off toward the canal.

Ruiz sat for a moment on the coping, trailing his fingers through the water. He shut his eyes. For the minute he sat there, his mind was blessedly empty.

He went back to the others and told them about the fountain. He turned to Nisa and said, “Would you like to bathe? You must be ready to abandon your bath instantly, should a barge come — even if it means boarding naked and dripping.”

Nisa smiled delightedly. “Oh yes. I’ll be ready to leap out, I promise… but it would be so good to be clean.”

“All right. The Noble Person will bathe first, then the rest can take a turn.”

She was undressing as the two of them walked down the path, handing her garments to him as fast as she could pull them off. By the time they reached the pool, she was running ahead, naked and lovely. She splashed into the pool and sank down into the cool water with a sigh of contentment.

“Oh, this is so wonderful,” she said. “I stink of the pens, of Ayam, of the potions the philterers filled me with before we boarded the boat.” She scooped up handfuls of silvery sand from the pool’s bottom and began to scrub vigorously.

Ruiz watched for a while, filling his eyes with her, which she didn’t seem to mind — in fact, her movements took on something of that flirtatious languor that he had found so compelling when she had bathed for the first time in the slave pen, the day they had become lovers. But now the circumstances were different, and while her body delighted his eyes as much as it had on that other day, he was too taut with anxiety to respond as he had then.

After a bit, he knelt by the outlet and scrubbed her clothes clean in the flow, as best he could, and then wrung them out and spread them on low-growing bushes to dry.

She smiled as though he had committed an entertaining eccentricity. “Thank you, Ruiz.”

He shrugged. “You’re welcome. Perhaps you’d do the same for me when I bathe.”

For a moment she seemed to regard his remark as an insult. Her nostrils flared, and she opened her mouth as though to utter some stern reproof. But then she saw that he was smiling, and her annoyance seemed to evaporate, and she laughed. “Why not? I must have a new trade in this new world, since I’m no longer a princess. Maybe I’ll be a washerwoman.”

“You’ll be the most beautiful washerwoman on Sook,” he said.

“Do you think so? Yet you don’t join me.”

“I wish I could, but what if a barge appeared at an awkward moment? If I were forced to suddenly choose between salvation and consummation, I fear I might be indecisive.”

“Oh,” she said, but her eyes were shining. “Well, at least I’ll be sweeter tonight than I was last night.”

“You were sweet enough for me last night,” he said.

When she was done, he stripped and scrubbed off as quickly as he could. From the corner of his eye, he watched her slosh his clothes about inexpertly in the little brook. When he put them on, they were soaking wet and not much cleaner than before, but he thanked her solemnly.

The Pharaohan men scurried toward the fountain as Ruiz and Nisa left the bower. Ruiz admonished them to be ready for swift action, and left them to their ablutions.

Ruiz spent the rest of the afternoon on the bank, listening for a barge, but giving most of his attention to Nisa, who sat beside him, leaning against his shoulder. She spoke of her former life on Pharaoh, as she had done during the days they spent imprisoned in Corean’s apartments, but Ruiz detected a difference in her attitudes. Before, she had recounted the wonders of her father’s palace with great pride. Now her recollections were apparently diminished by the new knowledge she had acquired — it was as if she looked back through the wrong end of a telescope, so that everything she remembered was smaller and grubbier, compared to the things she’d seen since her capture. And yet… her wistful affection for the things she had lost was more obvious than ever, as though she no longer took for granted those familiar pleasures.

As the time passed and the sun dropped lower in the sky and no barges appeared, Ruiz became increasingly tense. Finally he decided he must prepare for the worst. If Corean had made the best possible time, she might well arrive within the hour.

He called the others over. “Listen,” he said. “There’s a chance that Corean may get here before the sun goes down. If not, we’ll be safe for the night — remember, the Shards permit no high-speed night travel on Sook. But… if she does arrive, we’ll have to be ready.

“I’m going to hide on top of the gate. I may get a clear shot. In any case, if Corean comes you’ll be on your own — run into the woods and try to get away.”

He sent Dolmaero and Flomel to the south side of the clearing. “You watch and listen — if you see or hear anything coming, shout. If Flomel gives trouble, pitch him in the canal.”

He gathered Nisa to him, held her tight, kissed her. “You and Molnekh watch from the north.”

She hugged him with all her strength, then went off without another word.

When the others were in place, he climbed the gate. He had some difficulty with the smooth granite, but the carving was sufficiently deep to provide a few handholds and footholds. He reached the lintel, then eased himself into the crevice between the reptile’s body and folded wing. He was high enough to see over most of the treetops; perhaps he would spot Corean’s airboat in time to give the others enough warning to scatter into the woods.

Ruiz Aw tried to find a comfortable perch, but was only partly successful. He was as ready as he could be. He tried not to think of anything but the satisfaction he would take in killing Corean.