The Quantum Rose Read online

  All the stagmen looked uncomfortable, poised to return Lyode’s fire, yet holding back. No one wanted to shoot Kamoj’s bodyguard. The Argali stagmen had grown up with her and Gallium was her brother-in-law. The Ironbridge stagmen knew her as guardian of their governor’s betrothed. However, neither could they ignore that she had just sent a bowball hurtling within a few hand spans of the two governors.

  In a cold voice only Kamoj could hear, Jax said, "Your hospitality today continues to amaze me." Shifting his attention to Gallium Sunsmith, he spoke in a louder voice. "You. Escort Lyode back to Argali House."

  Gallium answered carefully. "It is my honor to serve you, sir. But perhaps Governor Argali would also like to do her best by Ironbridge, by accompanying her bodyguard back."

  Kamoj almost swore. She knew Lyode and Gallium meant well, and she valued their loyalty, but she wished they hadn’t interfered. It would only earn them Jax’s anger. She and Jax had to work this out. Although their merger was weighted in favor of Ironbridge, it gave control to neither party. They would share authority, she focused on Argali and he on Ironbridge. It benefited neither province if their governors couldn’t get along.

  She spoke to Jax in a gentle voice. "Please accept my apologies, Governor Ironbridge. I will discuss Lyode’s behavior with her on the walk back. We’ll straighten this out."

  He reached down for her injured foot, bending her leg at the knee so he could inspect her wound. "Can you walk on this?"

  "Yes." The position he was holding her leg in was more uncomfortable than the gouge itself.

  "Very well." When he let go, his fingers inadvertently scraped the gash, and she stiffened as pain shot through her foot. She held her silence and slid off the stag, taking care to land on her other foot.

  As she limped over to Lyode, bi-hooves scuffed behind her. Turning, she watched the riders thunder up the road to Argali.

  * * *

  Jul, the sun, had sunk behind the trees by the time Kamoj and Lyode walked around the last bend of the road, into view of Argali House. Legend claimed the house had once been luminescent pearl, all one surface without any seams. According to the temple scholar, who could read bits of the ancient codices, Argali House had been grown in a huge vat of liquid, on a framework of machines called nano-bots, which were supposedly so tiny you couldn’t see them even with a magnifying glass. After the house was complete, one was to believe the machines simply swam away and fell apart.

  Kamoj smiled. The old scrolls were full of absurdities. Jax had shown her one in his library that claimed Balumil, the world, went around Jul in an "elliptical orbit" and rotated around a tilted axis. This tilt, and their living here in the north, was purported to explain why nights were short in summer and long in winter, fifty-five hours of darkness on the longest night of the winter, leaving only five hours of sunlight.

  One year consisted of four seasons, of course: spring, summer, fall, winter. More formally, they called it the Long Year. A person could be born, reach maturity, wed, and have a family all within one Long Year. For some reason the scroll described this as a long time: hence the name. For an even more inexplicable reason, Kamoj’s ancestors had partitioned the Long Year into twenty equal time periods they called short-years. So each season was five short-years in length. People rarely bothered to say "short-year," though. Instead, they used the word year to refer to the short-year and always used Long Year when they meant the time it took for all four seasons to pass.

  Although Kamoj followed the convention, it made no sense to her. Why call it a "short-year." It wasn’t an actual year, after all. The scroll claimed this odd designation came about because a short-year on Balimul was close in length to a "standard" year.

  Standard for what?

  Still, it was more credible than too-little-to-see machines. Whatever the history of Argali House, it was wood and stone now, both the main building and the newer wings that rambled over the cleared land around it. Huge stacks of firewood stood along one side, stores for the winter. Bird-shaped lamps hung from the eaves, rocking in the breezes, their glass tinted in Argali colors, rose, gold, and green. Their radiance created a dam against the purple shadows that pooled under the trees. Here in the road, a fluted post stood like a sentinel, with a scalloped hook at its top. A lantern, molded and tinted like a rose, hung from the hook, its warm glow beckoning them home.

  They walked along the low wall that enclosed the house and entered the courtyard by a gate engraved with vines. Five stone steps ran the length of the house, leading up to a terrace, and five doors were set at even intervals along the front. The center door was larger than the others, stuccoed white and bordered by hieroglyphs painted in luminous blue, as well as the usual Argali colors.

  As they neared the house, Kamoj heard voices. By the time they reached the steps, it had resolved into two men arguing.

  "That sounds like Ironbridge," Lyode said.

  "Maxard too." Kamoj hesitated, her foot on the first step.

  Above them, the door slammed open. Maxard stood framed in the archway, a burly man in old farm clothes. His garb startled Kamoj more than his sudden appearance. By now her uncle should have been decked out in ceremonial dress and mail, ready to greet the Ironbridge party. Yet he looked as if he hadn’t even washed up since coming in from the fields.

  He spoke in a low voice. "You better get in here."

  She hurried up the steps. "What happened?" Had Jax been more offended than she realized?

  Maxard didn’t answer, just moved aside to let her into the entrance foyer, a small room paved with tiles glazed white and accented by Argali designs.

  Boots clattered in the hall beyond. Then Jax swept into the foyer with five of his stagmen. He paused in mid-stride when he saw Kamoj. Then he went past her, over to Maxard, towering over the younger man.

  "We aren’t through with this, Argali," Jax said.

  "My decision is made," Maxard answered.

  "Then you are a fool." Jax glanced at Kamoj, his face stiff with an emotion she couldn’t identify. Shock? He strode out the door with his stagmen, ignoring Lyode.

  Kamoj turned to her uncle. "What’s going on?"

  He shook his head, his face impossible to read. Lyode came up the stairs, but when she tried to enter the house, Maxard stretched out his arm, putting his hand against the door frame to block her way. He spoke with uncharacteristic anger. "What blew into your brain, Lyode? Why did you have to shoot at him? Of all days I didn’t need Jax Ironbridge angry, this was it."

  "He was mistreating Kamoj," Lyode replied.

  "So Gallium Sunsmith says." Maxard frowned at Kamoj. "What were you doing, running around the woods like a wild animal?"

  Kamoj stared at him. She always walked in the woods after she finished working in the stables. Maxard often came with her, the two of them discussing various projects for Argali or just enjoying each other’s company.

  Quietly she said, "Uncle, what is it? What’s wrong?"

  He blew out a gust of air. "Wait for me in the library."

  She studied his face, trying to fathom what troubled him. No hints showed. So she nodded, to him and to Lyode. Then she limped into her house.

  * * *

  The centuries had warped the library door arch beyond simple repair. Kamoj leaned her weight into the door to shove it closed. Inside the library, shelves filled with codices and books covered the walls. The lamp by Maxard’s favorite armchair shed light over a table there. A codex lay on the table, a parchment scroll made from the inner bark of a sunglass tree and painted with gesso, a smooth plaster. Glyphs covered it, delicate symbols inked in Argali colors. Kamoj could decipher none of the writing. But as she took responsibility for Argali, Maxard had more time for his scholarship. He was learning to read.

  Behind her the door scraped open, and she turned to see her uncle. With no preamble, he said, "I’ve something to show you."

  Puzzled, Kamoj accompanied him to an arched door in the far wall. The storeroom beyond had once held carpentry to
ols, but those were long gone, sold by her grandparents to purchase grain. Maxard fished a skeleton key out of his pocket and opened the tanglebirch door. Unexpectedly, oil lamps lit the room beyond. Kamoj stared past him–and gasped.

  Urns, boxes, chests, gigantic pots, finely wrought buckets: they all crammed the storeroom full to overflowing. Gems filled baskets, heaped like fruits, spilling onto the floor, diamonds that split the light into rainbows, emeralds as brilliant as the eyes of a greenglass, rose-rubies the size of fists, sapphires, topazes, amethysts, cats-eyes, jade, turquoise. She walked forward, and her foot kicked an opal the size of a polestork egg. It rolled across the floor and hit a bar of metal.

  Metal. Metal. Bars lay in tumbled piles: gold, silver, copper, bronze. Sheets of rolled platinum sat on cornucopias filled with fruits, flowers, and grains. Glazed pots brimmed with vegetables, and spice racks hung from the wall. Bracelets, anklets, and necklaces were everywhere, wrought from gold and studded with jewels. A chain of diamonds lay on a silver bowl heaped with eider plums. Just as valuable, dried foodstuffs filled cloth bags and woven baskets. Nor had she ever seen so many bolts of rich cloth in one place: glimsilks, brocades, rose-petal satins, gauzy scarves shot through with metallic threads, scale-velvets, plush and sparkling.

  And light strings! At first Kamoj thought she mistook the clump thrown on a pile of crystal goblets. But it was real. She went over and picked up the bundle of threads. They sparkled in the lamplight, perfect, no damage at all. This one bundle was enough to repair broken Current threads throughout the village, and it was only one of several in the room.

  Turning to Maxard, she spread out her arms, the threads clutched in one fist. "This is–it’s–is this ours?"

  He spoke in a cold voice. "Yes. It’s ours."

  "But Maxard, why do you look so dour!" A smile broke loose on her face. "This could support Argali for years! How did it happen?"

  "You tell me." He came over to her. "Just what did he give you out there today?"

  He? She blinked. "Who?"

  "Havyrl Lionstar."

  Hai! So Maxard had heard. "I didn’t know he was watching."

  "Watching what?"

  "Me swimming."

  "Then what?"

  Baffled, she said, "Then nothing."

  "Nothing?" Incredulity crackled in his voice. "What did you promise him, Kamoj? What sweet words did you whisper to compromise his honor?"

  Kamoj couldn’t imagine any woman having the temerity to try compromising the huge, brooding Lionstar. "What are you talking about?"

  "You promised to marry him if he gave you what you wanted, didn’t you?"

  "What?"

  Anger snapped in his voice. "Isn’t that why he sent this dowry?"

  Kamoj stared at him. "That’s crazy."

  "He must have liked whatever the two of you did."

  "We did nothing. You know I would never jeopardize our alliance with Ironbridge."

  Her uncle exhaled, his anger easing into puzzlement. "Then why did he send this dowry? Why does he insist on a merger with you tomorrow?"

  Kamoj felt as if she had just stepped into a bizarre skit played out for revelers during a harvest festival. "He what?"

  Maxard motioned at the storeroom. "His stagmen brought it today while I was tying up stalks in the tri-grain field. They spoke as if the arrangement were already made."

  It suddenly became clear to Kamoj. All too clear. Lionstar didn’t want the ruins of an old palace, or the trees in their forest.

  He wanted Argali. All of it.

  Strange though his methods were, they made a grim sort of sense. He had already demonstrated superiority in forces: many stagmen served him, over one hundred, far more than Maxard had, more even than Ironbridge. With his damnable "rent" he had taken the first step in establishing his wealth. He even laid symbolic claim to her province by living in the Quartz Palace, the ancestral Argali home. Any way they looked at it, he had set himself up as an authority to reckon with. Today he added the final, albeit unexpected, ingredient–a merger bid so far beyond the pale that the combined resources of all the Northern Lands could never best it.

  "Gods," Kamoj said. "No wonder Jax is angry." She set down the light threads. "There must be some way I can refuse this."

  "I’ve already asked the temple scholar," Maxard said. "And I’ve looked through the old codices myself. We’ve found nothing. You know the law. Better the offer or yield."

  She frowned. "I’m not going to marry that insane person."

  "Then he will be fully within his rights to take Argali by force. That was how it was done, Kamoj, in the time of the sky ships. Do you want a war with Lionstar?" Dryly he added, "I’m not sure my stagmen even know how to fight a war."

  "There must be some way out."

  He spoke carefully. "The merger could do well for Argali."

  She stiffened. "You want me to go through with it?"

  He spread his hands. "And what of survival, Governor?"

  So. Maxard finally spoke aloud what they obliquely dealt with in every discussion about the province. Drought, famine, killing seasons, high infant mortality, failing machines no one understood, lost medical knowledge, and overused fields: it all added up to one inescapable fact, the long slow dying of Argali.

  With the Ironbridge merger, their survival might still be a struggle, but their chances improved. At worst, Jax would annex her province, making it part of Ironbridge. She intended to do her best to keep Argali, and continue as its governor, but if she did lose it to Ironbridge, at least her people would have the protection and support of the strongest province on this continent. Although Jax didn’t inspire love among his people, he was an intelligent governor who earned loyalty and respect.

  And Lionstar? He might have wealth, but that didn’t mean he was a good leader. For all she knew he would drive Argali into ruin, famine, and death.

  "Hai, Maxard." She exhaled. "I need time to consider this."

  He touched her arm. "Go on upstairs. I’ll send a maize-girl up to tend you."

  "Lyode always tends to me."

  "I need her elsewhere tonight."

  She scowled. "You? Or Jax?" When he didn’t answer, she swore. "I won’t have my people flogged." She spun around to the door. "If you won’t tell him, I will."

  Maxard grabbed her arm, stopping her. Then he held up his other hand, a tiny space between his thumb and index finger. "Ironbridge is this close to declaring a rite of battle against us. I’ve barely thirty stagmen, Kamoj. He has over eighty, all of them better trained." He dropped his arms. "It would be a massacre. And you know Lyode. She would insist on fighting with them. Will you save Lyode and Gallium from a few lashes so they can die in battle?"

  Kamoj swallowed. "Don’t say that."

  His voice quieted. "With the mood Ironbridge is in now, seeing you will only enrage him. He can’t touch you, not yet, so Gallium and Lyode are the ones he will take his rage out on."

  Kamoj gritted her teeth. Knowing Maxard was right made it no easier. She wondered, too, if her uncle realized what else he had just said. Not yet. Softly she asked, "And after the merger, when the rages take Ironbridge? Who will pay the price of his anger then?"

  Maxard watched her with a strained expression, one that reminded her of the wrenching day he had come to tell her the bodies of her parents had been found, frozen beneath masses of ice in a late winter storm. She had never forgotten it.

  He spoke now in the same aching voice. "Does it occur to you that you might be better off with Lionstar?"

  She rubbed her arms as if she were cold. "What have I seen from Lionstar to make me think such a thing?"

  "Hai, Kami." He started to reach for her, to offer comfort, but she shook her head. She loved him for his concern, but she feared to accept it, lest taking shelter from the pain would make it harder to face her responsibilities when that shelter was gone.

  Maxard had caught her off guard with his insight into her relationship with Jax. Her uncle had always claimed he del
ayed her merger to give her experience at governing, lest Ironbridge be tempted to take advantage of a child bride. Now she wondered if it might have also been because Maxard had a better idea than he let on about the difficult life she faced with Jax. As an adult she had more emotional resources to deal with it.

  But Maxard hadn’t guessed the whole of it. Kamoj knew from her own experiences what would happen to Lyode and Gallium. The only difference was that in this case Jax would have one of his stagmen mete out the punishment rather than taking care of it himself, in private, with only Kamoj as witness–and recipient. She had never spoken of such incidents to Maxard, knowing that if he found out, he would have broken the betrothal no matter what price Argali paid. Kamoj couldn’t let that happen. She would never set her personal situation over the survival of her people.

  "Can you talk to Jax?" she asked. "Mollify him? Maybe you can keep him from hurting them."

  "I will do what I can." He watched her with concern. "This will work out."

  "Yes. It will." She wished she believed it.

  After she left her uncle, she walked through the house, down halls paneled in tanglebirch, then up a staircase that swept to a balcony on the second floor. At the top of the stairs she looked out over the foyer below. The entrance to the living room arched in the right-hand wall, enough of the room visible so she could see a chandelier hanging from the ceiling like an inverted rose, flickering with candles. It reflected in the table beneath it, drawing gleams of green and blue from the polished tanglebirch.

  Behind the table, a light panel glowed in the wall, the last working one in all the Northern Lands. When it failed, a thousand new light threads would do them no good. Even Opter Sunsmith couldn’t fix a broken panel. The knowledge had been lost long ago, even from the Sunsmith line.

  Kamoj turned and walked along the balcony to her room. She opened the door into a chamber warm with candlelight. It glowed on the parquetry floors, worn furniture, and her old doll collection on the table, her one concession to sentimentality. Her bed stood in one corner, each of its four posts a totem of rose blossoms and fruits, ending at the top with a closed bud.