As one being my mount and I went to war.
As half a being, I came home.
I turn my face upward. Does the bright still shine?
—lament of an Inyx rider
TO THE SURPRISE OF THE ENCAMPMENT—and the fury of her enemies— Sydney had acquired a bodyguard: the giant Mo Ti. Although he spoke little, and made no threats, her fellow riders feared the man. He had a reputation as a fighter of Ahnenhoon, and several days ago had effortlessly tossed a Laroo half the length of the barracks for scratching Sydney. Even the camp’s sole Jout—the only sentient Mo Ti’s size—kept a distance from the man.
Sydney didn’t know why the man attached himself to her, but he now had a free bond with his mount, so he had already prospered from her friendship. So far, the concept of free bond had a loyal following of two riders.
Feng considered free bond a heresy, relentlessly agitating against Sydney. But with Mo Ti near, Sydney could brazenly promote her idea, countering the arguments from the riders that free bond—a term she’d made up—would make the herd weak. On the contrary, she and Riod had developed a strangely fierce devotion, one that knitted rider to mount, opening the gates of emotion and loyalty until it was a clean, swift river passing between them, one that at times overtook its banks and spread to the herd.
Most often, though, Sydney and Mo Ti rode out alone, keeping apart from others. She enjoyed his quiet presence, and took from him the lesson that strength could be gentle. He never blustered or picked fights, and in stark contrast to the obsequious Akay-Wat, gave Sydney subdued respect. In imitation, Sydney began to modify her behavior, carrying herself with more dignity, a change that Mo Ti seemed to approve. Even so, in nearly two arcs of days together, Sydney had never felt one reflected emotion from him.
Thus the days passed, and Sydney knew a measure of happiness that surprised her. Riod, too, was less apt to go off raiding, and day by day grew more certain of free bond.
Lurking in the background, and now so cowed that she seldom spoke, was Akay-Wat, watching with limpid brown eyes as Sydney transferred her interest to Mo Ti, allowing him to serve her and utterly supplant the duties that Akay-Wat had enjoyed, such as keeping Puss from soiling Sydney’s bed and watching over her book of pinpricks—moot in any case, because now Sydney carried it with her in a pack wherever she went.
Sydney had developed a habit of signaling Riod with a tap on his neck when she wished him to convey her thoughts to others. Such as when she passed Akay-Wat, thinking, Miserable coward. Or when she passed Feng, thinking, Slave. Afraid of free bond. In this way she and Riod kept the appearance of her thoughts leaking out, a necessary precaution lest they tackle too many taboos at once.
However, these peaceful days were at an end, as they were soon to learn.
The four of them rode back to the encampment after a long ride, with Riod shedding restive thoughts, and then alarming ones. Instinctively, Sydney and Mo Ti hunkered down for a fast ride, and at last thundered into a strangely quiet yard.
Silent riders stood in clumps in the yard, watching them approach.
Riod was picking up the news that someone in the camp had died.
“Who?” Sydney asked.
In the barracks, Riod sent. Akay-Wat.
They dismounted, and the group parted for Sydney and Mo Ti as they approached the barracks. Riod broke custom and entered the rider quarters with Sydney. Two sentients occupied the room, one of them unconscious.
Adikar, the Ysli healer, turned at their approach. “Akay-Wat,” he said. “Her mount has killed her.”
Through Riod’s sending, Sydney saw the Hirrin lying in a mass of bloody bandages. Eyes closed, Akay-Wat softly bleated.
“Dies,” the Ysli said. “Her foreleg. A pulp.”
Sydney caught a glimpse through Riod’s eyes of Akay-Wat’s grievous injury, her shattered right foreleg. “Skofke did this?” Sydney asked, stunned to think that a mount would maim his own rider.
Adikar said, “Free bond, she wanted. This was the answer.”
A clumping sound announced that Feng was approaching the bunk. Her tone was grim. “We got to remove the leg, and we would if any of us had the eyes for it.” She paused. “Ever seen somebody die pus-filled and raving? Put her down, I say.”
The Ysli healer muttered, “Against the vows, a kill like that.”
We do not tell the lords, Riod sent.
Feng offered, “We could send for a Tarig surgeon.”
“Won’t last till then,” the Ysli muttered.
Put the Hirrin down, came Riod’s command.
Sydney turned to him, putting her hand on his broad face, “My friend, not yours.”
It shamed her to call Akay-Wat a friend now, as the Hirrin lay dying, when Sydney had given her hardly a thought before. Akay-Wat had pleaded for scraps of friendship, scraps that Sydney withheld out of annoyance—and worse, a kind of involuntary dislike. Her careless words of insult had driven the Hirrin to a rash demonstration of bravery, and now she would die for it.
Sydney was thinking hard. “Maybe we could take the leg using Riod’s sight to guide us.”
Feng snorted. “Ya. And a beku can pilot the Nigh.” She thunked her cane on the floor. “Take the creature to my cabin. No one wants to hear her screaming.”
Mo Ti bent down and gathered up the Hirrin. He carried her easily, as though she was made of straw.
In the yard, Priov cantered forward, his emotions cold. She angered her mount, he sent. But he did not kill her.
“Go to hell,” Sydney said, in
English.
The bright dimmed, and Akay-Wat ceased her bleating. Her wound, though washed, was putrefying. Sydney crouched by the cot, holding the unconscious Akay-Wat’s other foreleg, stroking it, while Mo Ti stood watch nearby. The vigil wouldn’t last long.
The Ysli healer brought candles to the room, lighting them for good luck. But Akay-Wat needed more than luck. She needed an amputation.
With the fragrance of candles burning, the smells of Akay-Wat’s wound subsided a little. But nothing could ease Sydney’s dismay at her part in all this. Worse, she was aware that wanting Akay-Wat to survive was partially to forestall the self-recrimination she would go through after the Hirrin’s death. It was hypocritical to hope for Akay-Wat’s life. But it was not all selfish. The Hirrin had indeed been a friend, or had tried to be.
When Adikar left, Mo Ti drank from a water jar. His throat opened, and down went a jarful of water. Sydney heard him wipe his mouth against his sleeve.
Then he crouched down to Sydney’s level. “I fought the Long War,” he said.
She knew he had been a soldier, but since coming to the encampment he had said nothing further about himself. Sydney was surprised he did now, in these circumstances.
“How did you end up here? You must have made enemies.”
“Mo Ti killed a man in a fight. A fellow soldier.”
She hoped her silence would encourage him to elaborate, and he did.
“They let me live, because of good service. They said I would come here. Five soldiers took me aside for my blinding. All had fought with me. They shackled me and sent me on the long journey. There was the great forest, the veldt, the storm wall, and the River Nigh. Then I came to a new primacy. I had no friends. Most sentients were afraid of me, all except you.”
Akay-Wat twisted on her pallet, but remained silent.
“On my journey,” Mo Ti said in his soft voice, “I saw all the wonders.” After a pause, he continued, “I am not blind.”
Sydney considered this stunning pronouncement. “But you have to be. Everyone would know.”
His voice went to a whisper. “Mo Ti hides thoughts.”
“Touch my hand.” Sydney stretched her arm out to the side. She felt his large hand grasp hers with assurance. Then she believed him, partly from this demonstration, and partly from a conviction that he wouldn’t lie to her. “Your fellow soldiers never carried out the blinding.”
“They did not. So I learned to pretend.”
“How?” she asked. But Mo Ti didn’t answer. Perhaps by his very bulk he could shield his true self. Clearly Mo Ti was smarter than he acted, perhaps smarter than them all.
As Sydney struggled to absorb this news, Mo Ti’s singsong voice came to her: “I can take this Hirrin’s leg,” he said. “I did many surgeries in the Long War.”
This was an even more alarming thought. “If you fix her leg, they’ll know you can see.” Then they would perform the blinding that should have been done long ago.
“Mo Ti must remove her leg, or she’ll die, and badly.”
He was asking her advice, and maybe her permission. Sydney wrestled with how to answer. It was Akay-Wat’s life. But it was Mo Ti’s sight at stake—and she’d be complicit in his lies.
Mo Ti said, “We could say that Riod was present, and we did it through his sight.”
“Would they believe it?” she asked.
“Friends would believe. Not enemies.”
She had spent little time making friends, and she would have one fewer if Akay-Wat died. “What shall we do, Mo Ti?”
After a long pause he answered, “How much does Riod love you?”
He had just told her he would risk it, if Riod agreed. She was startled by his courage. Needing a moment to think, she walked outside, inhaling the fresh air, her thoughts crowded with Mo Ti’s revelation.
Mo Ti watched her go. Next to him, Akay-Wat rolled her head from side to side as she fought the infection. The smell of putrefaction filled the room.
So then, young mistress, Mo Ti thought. Now we’ll see what stuff you’re made of.
He rose to stretch his legs, knowing that a long period of crouching and bending lay ahead of him if he was to save the leg below the knee. If he could, then the Hirrin might walk again. Otherwise, best to use the knife on her neck, not her leg.
Akay-Wat, he thought, you stupid beku. The old dragon wouldn’t want me taking risks for a witless Hirrin. And yet. Akay-Wat showed courage confronting her mount, and no act of courage deserves a death as bad as this one.
Cixi, you have to trust me now. Who else do you have who will do your bidding here, in the Long Gaze of Fire? How many times did you try to plant one of your own among the Inyx? How many times did your spies fail to achieve banishment to the Inyx, or fail to reach this encampment? Only Mo Ti found a way to Priov’s herd. Mo Ti, who waited a thousand days in Ulrud’s encampment, and seeing a chance with Riod’s renegade attack, seized it. Yes, and now that Mo Ti is here, Mo Ti must decide whether to be blind or not.
Watching the Hirrin toss in her delirium, he considered how the problem with her surgery could be turned to advantage. It would be dangerous, and must have Riod’s support. Much depended on Riod, who would one day lead the camp. Also, much depended on the young mistress, and whether she was ready for acts of courage. If she wasn’t ready now, maybe she never would be. Soldiers of her same age died at Ahnenhoon every day. She was old enough to prove her worth.
He’d proven his to Cixi at an early age, when the legates brought him before her at the Ascendancy, accused of a treasonous remark. He’d been nothing but a clerk, and an ugly one, reviled and goaded, bitter with the All of his life, and hating the Tarig since birth. He expected a death sentence, standing before Cixi’s throne. Then she had sent her attendants from the room.
“Tell me your heart,” she said. She was so small, she came up to his belt. But he was afraid of her nevertheless. “If you tell me all the truth, you shall live,” she said. “I swear by the bright.”
That high pledge convinced him to say what his heart held. All dark things. How he had cringed at his father’s devotion to the lords; how he was embittered by his father’s lack of advancement despite many thousand days of service; and how he had grieved when his mother, seeing how Mo Ti grew uglier every day, had jumped to her death from the rim of the city. Thereafter his enemies had called him Son of the Falling Stone, and he learned to hate the legates and the fiends they served.
Cixi gave him a new chance. Eventually he learned that he and the old dragon were bound by a hatred of the lords, and that the young girl who languished among the Inyx could be counted on to share this treason. “But hate,” Cixi had told him, “is not enough. There must be a worthy desire. That, Mo Ti, is the kingdom raised.”
The kingdom the young mistress would raise, if she could be brought to see it.
And now Mo Ti was here to help her. Perhaps because of Akay-Wat, raising the kingdom must come sooner rather than later.
The Hirrin’s surgery would cause an uproar. It would shake down the encampment, forcing all to take sides. Then they would know friends from enemies, and the weak from the strong.
Priov was an old beast, and must yield to Riod soon, before mating season. Then they would be set for greater things, once the mistress rode at the front of the herd. Mo Ti had considered hamstringing the old chief himself, but it would be better for Riod to overcome him, if Riod could be inspired to move on Priov before mating season made fighting look fine. The season was still six hundred days off, too long to wait, for Cixi’s purposes.
He took his whetstone from his jacket and began sharpening his small knife. It would need to have a good edge for the small work. For the large, the mistress must find him a saw.
Outside, the yard was empty except for Riod. In the sky, the evening’s deep pewter folds coiled overhead. Riod trotted up to Sydney, eager for comfort as Akay-Wat neared death. Sydney hugged his neck and let her thoughts pour into him.
As Riod absorbed Mo Ti’s secret, his distress flooded back to his rider, completing a loop of shared emotion.
“Beloved,” she whispered to him. “Why should Mo Ti be blind? To be blind makes us need you. So it isn’t a free bond, after all.”
You are free, Riod asserted. Choose another mount. Then know, you are free.
He couldn’t help it. He wanted to see the world for her, to strengthen the emotional ties between them. What was the custom, she wondered, for the species the Inyx were copied from? In that other world, who rode the Inyx? She liked to think that they were not blind.
At this moment she didn’t want to challenge Riod’s ideas, but the decision about Akay-Wat couldn’t wait.
“I’ll help Mo Ti save Akay-Wat’s leg,” she told Riod. “And then I’ll fight to protect Mo Ti.”
He paced away, distraught. Sydney let him consider. Riod had to think who he was, and what he was willing to die for. She had never guessed free bond would come to violence and choosing sides. But since it had, she needed Riod with her.
When at last he trotted back to her, she leaned against his flank, feeling his warmth and the beat of his strong heart. He whispered into her mind: I will fight for Sydney, who fights for Mo Ti.
It was settled, then. Perhaps it had been settled from the day she and Riod pledged a free bond. Hadn’t she said, I’d rather die than live like this?
“Send for Distanir,” she told Riod. “Ask him if he’ll stand with us, or if we need a new mount for Mo Ti.” Riod hesitated, nervous. But finally he acquiesced, moving off to find Distanir.
Late into the ebb, with Sydney assisting, Mo Ti performed the surgery that removed Akay-Wat’s leg. Adikar had left medicinals behind, but refused to be further associated with the whole affair.
Now, the surgery over, Akay-Wat lay sleeping under heavy sedation. By her side sat Sydney and Mo Ti. The door lay wide open, clearing the sick room of vapors and closeted heat. The Hirrin would live, Mo Ti predicted. But Sydney wasn’t sure how a Hirrin could walk or ride with a false leg.
They sat in silence for a time. Sydney felt a little self-conscious that Mo Ti could see her, and she raked her hair back with her hands, trying to arrange it.
At this, Mo Ti laughed, but it was a warm sound, not mocking. He was relaxed, and his assured manner calmed her.
“You aren’t worried, Mo Ti?”
“No, mistress. Only decisions are hard. Now we see what comes to us.” Akay-Wat bleated softly and her eyes fluttered open, but without consciousness. He continued, “It’s good to stand for something, Mo Ti thinks.”
He was right. It did feel good. “We can never be free if we’re blind,” she said.
But Mo Ti’s next words disturbed her: in his deceptively soft voice, he said, “You think too small.”
She sat up, stung by the criticism. “You think it’s small, to defy Inyx custom?”
He turned to the water bucket and ladled a large dipper full to his lips, gulping it down. “Yes, vastly small.”
“Then why,” she blurted in irritation, “are we doing this?”
She heard him shift positions, leaning across Akay-Wat’s prone form. “Who is your enemy, mistress?”
“Priov,” she answered. Then added: “Feng. The Laroos.” When silence greeted these answers, she murmured, “The mantis lords.”
“Yes, the lords,” Mo Ti said in that voice that was no match for either his bulk or his brains. “Because of their cruel hands.”
Sydney paused. She’d never told anyone about how Hadenth had personally taken her sight. “How do you know about cruel hands?”
“That’s a common story. Every grunt has heard it.”
It stung to think her humiliation was a common story. If it was common. “Did someone send you here, Mo Ti?”
For a moment she hoped that he might be a messenger from Cixi . . . but now Mo Ti crushed that hope: “Mo Ti is alone,” he said, “but I will help you to overcome your enemy.”
Overcome? That was not a word that made sense, when it came to the mantis lords. But here in this tiny cabin, she strained forward to hear more. She was drawn to Mo Ti, his steady heart and mind, and his vision. It was as though she stood on his broad shoulders, and could see across a far-flung land.
“Tell me how, Mo Ti.”
“Ah, mistress. It begins with the Inyx, and depends on the Inyx.”
“Tell me how,” she whispered, her nerves on fire.
And that ebb they watched over Akay-Wat, and talked, as Mo Ti’s voice droned on, soft and thrilling.