He stopped, that was all, stopped and stood in silence, dressed in a ceremonial chao pao as if conducting negotiations or taking a wife. And all those not watching Tris struggle her way across the bridge listened to a grey-haired, sad-eyed man tell his Emperor that the Librarian urgently requested a word.
And those fifteen billion watched Chuang Tzu shake his head, surprisingly regretfully, and then keep walking.
Many of them were still watching when Zaq skirted the Western Palaces and the Thousand Autumns Pavilion on his way to the rockeries and walkways of the Yuhua Yuan, the Butterfly Garden.
They didn't realize it yet but the Emperor had made a decision. Here was where he intended to stay. Not just for the morning or the rest of that day. Zaq would stay for however many nights and days it took for the Library to bring him the assassin.
And when this happened and the stranger had made it across the bridge and into the Forbidden City, Zaq would stare the young assassin in the eyes and ask the question 148 billion people wanted answered.
Why?
And then, if he was lucky, Zaq might finally be allowed to sleep.
"Shit," Luca said, then apologized.
Tris smiled. She could have told him words far worse. Some so vile he'd probably need coaching in their meaning. This thought kept her amused until he swore again, which was soon.
"What?" she said, stepping from one plank to another.
"Just this," said Luca. So thick was the falling snow that there were whole hours, sometimes longer, in which Luca drifted from sight behind her and Tris was anchored to his absence through a haze of floating white that stung like memory as it turned to tears on her face.
She had frostbite, her lips were frozen into a rictus grin and her ears felt missing, along with most of her fingers and both her feet from the ankles down. Only the wind was in their favour, having switched direction and turned to a light breeze that no longer threw snow directly into their faces.
"Keep going," Luca said.
Tris's world was reduced to narrow and uncertain strips of ice which glazed the ancient wooden planks over which she stepped. Luca's blade was stuck through her belt and she knew this was a stupid way to carry a naked weapon, but having the blade visible reminded her why she put one step after another instead of just doing what she wanted to do, which was curl up into a ball and give herself back to sleep. Instead she put one foot in front of the other and kept walking...
"Why have you stopped?"
Tris turned to find Luca at her side and realized she'd been staring over the edge of the bridge without even realizing it, both hands gripping one of the main cables. And she'd been standing there for so long that snow had made gloves of the backs of her fingers.
"I can't remember," Tris said.
"You okay?"
"Sure," said Tris, then thought about it. "I don't even know where I am," she said, gesturing wearily at the way ahead and then turning to include what little could be seen of the bridge behind, which was a half-dozen frosted planks that did scant justice to the hours they'd been walking. "Of course I'm not okay," she said. "How could I be?"
"We're almost there." Luca put one hand lightly on her shoulder and appeared not to notice when Tris shook it off.
"Two days at the most," she said. "Wasn't that what you told me?" They both knew it was and yet Luca seemed unfazed by the endlessness of the planks and almost happy that the ice glazing each one was becoming thinner by the hour. "So what changed?"
"I think," said Luca, "it's more a case of what's changing." He glanced at the cloud and then at the snowflakes which continued to fall long after they passed where Luca stood on the bridge beside Tris, both of them gripping a fat cable and staring into the abyss.
"‘What's changing’?"
"Well," Luca said, "there aren't that many alternatives. And since I doubt that time is expanding it must be the bridge."
"How can a bridge expand?"
"How can it not?" Luca slipped off his cloak and did something with his hands that unravelled whole layers of material not visible a moment earlier. "You sleep now," he said. "I'll keep guard."
As dawn filtered through the falling snow, Luca lifted his cloak and looked at the dying girl. She was so pale and so obviously frozen that the decision made itself. Pulling his hands from his pockets, Luca held them close to the girl's face and willed flame to dance between his fingertips.
And then, because this was not enough, he crawled under the cloak and wrapped both cloak and himself around Tris. He was alone on a bridge with a sleeping child, her head now resting on his knees and he felt... Luca wasn't too sure how he felt; fonder, probably, than he should have been of a creature not quite human and yet not like him either.
(And he knew that "child" was a relative term, but the brief span of her life could not be measured against the expanse of his.)
Baron Luca Pacioli was tired and old, despite appearances, and had come to realize he belonged neither to the civilization into which his father had been born nor to the 2023 worlds, which talked only to each other and so barely knew that Luca's people even existed. This was hard because Luca understood at least as well as the Tsungli Yamen that he was not allowed to die until he'd been received by the Emperor, even though the Bureau of Foreign Affairs refused to accept his world existed.
"Come on," Luca said, flicking his fingers to produce a flame that even he could see was less bright than it had been. "You need to wake up now."
And although many billions heard cold wind hum against the down ropes holding the planks on which Tris slept and a few million noticed that flakes fell oddly around a patch of snow on which the sleeping figure rested her head, none watching saw Luca or the sorrow that filled his amber eyes.
They just saw flames come from nowhere to warm the face of the girl as her cloak seemed to gather itself tight around her. She had powers, most of those watching agreed amongst themselves, talking across great distances with a single thought. And those powers, it was then agreed, made it possible that she might reach the Forbidden City after all.
Possible, but not likely.
A few billion of those still not watching began to watch, while many of those who'd announced they regarded the whole affair as tawdry and insignificant began to wonder if maybe they had been wrong.
CHAPTER 47
Marrakech, Summer 1977 [Then]
In the end, Malika's body found him.
"Moz, wait," Idries said. His face was strained, his fingers curled in on themselves, broken nails biting into his own flesh. His jellaba was filthy and his lips looked bitten.
"Fuck off," said Moz, not stopping.
"Hassan is looking for you."
"So?" Moz threw the comment over his shoulder. Already he was pushing his way through a crowd of nasrani tourists spilling from a coach onto a pavement outside a market in Gueliz.
"It's about Malika."
Moz stopped so abruptly that one of the foreigners ran into him. Whatever she saw in the eyes of the Marrakchi kid made her step back and take a sudden interest in a display of terracotta bowls.
"Malika?"
"You'd better come with me."
"Where is she?"
"Hassan will tell you," Idries said. Something like fear nictated across his eyes. Something dark, something adult.
"You tell me."
Idries shook his head. "Hassan will tell you," he insisted.
Between that market and their destination stood ten minutes of strained silence and whitewashed palm trees that flaked onto stone pavements built by the French and then abandoned along with the villas more than twenty years before. An Alsatian barked from behind a wrought-iron gate, the name on the post something European and strange. The streets became shabby as Idries led Moz away from Avenue Mohammed V towards the area around the Prison Civile, becoming smarter as Moz and Idries came out into a road that skirted Le Cimetière Européen.