Exodus from the Long Sun
Chapter 1
Back from Death
An eerie silence overhung the ruined villa. Listening for the closing
of a slug gun's bolt, Maytera Mint heard only the groan of the wind
and the irregular snapping of the flag of truce she held.
"On Phaesday they were in situ," Patera Remora conceded. "The
Ayuntamiento, eh?"
They had come abreast of a dead talus, its painted steel sides
blistered by fire and blackened by smoke; she caught a whiff of fish
oil, despite the wind.
"Might be repaired, eh, General?" Remora pushed back a lock of
lank black hair that had fallen over his eyes. "Not like we biochemicals,
hey? Still we—ah—dispatch their spirits to Mainframe. Not identical
in the, um, revivified one, perhaps. Amongst the new parts."
"Or they really haven't any," Maytera Mint murmured. She had
stopped to wait for Remora, and was taking the opportunity to study
the windows of the house that had been Blood's.
Her remark bordered on heresy, but Remora thought it most
prudent to return to his earlier topic. "If they're not here, eh? Loris
and the rest? Will, ah, Buffalo—"
"Bison." She turned back to Remora, her face pinched and the tip
of her delicate nose red with cold. "Colonel Bison."
"Um, precisely. Will Colonel Bison," Remora waved vaguely at the
ruined wall, "and his—ah—troopers await our return back there?"
"You heard my instructions, Your Eminence."
"But if we're some time, eh? The front door is broken. Shattered,
in fact."
Maytera Mint, who had noted it as they passed through the ruined
gateway, nodded.
"So it's not a matter of knocking, hey? Not a mere matter of
knocking at all." Remora brightened. "Knock on the frame, eh? We
could do that. Wait a bit. Polite."
"I will go inside," she told him firmly, "and search. I would not
presume to dictate Your Eminence's course of action. If I can get
in touch with the Ayuntamiento, I'll ask them to send for you. If I
can't, I may be able to learn where we can. As for Colonel Bison,
he's completely loyal, my best officer. My only concern is that he
may send in a patrol to look for us, though I have forbidden it."
"I, um, apprehend your position," Remora said, rejoining her.
"If one does not expect obedience, one will not, ah, be obeyed.
Memorized it in schola, all of us did. Still, if he were to depart?
Decamp. Our, um, withdrawal to the city could be hazardous, hey?
Laborious, likewise."
"That's not the question." She forgot for a moment that Remora
was the second highest dignitary of the Chapter. "The question is
whether the enemy's back. There are no bodies."
"These, ah—"
"These taluses. It would take ten yoke of oxen to drag them away,
I suppose. No dead bios or chems."
"The, ah, Army, eh? To the Caldé. So I understood."
"Some soldiers went over to him, yes. Others who hadn't heard
about him didn't, and were fighting their comrades here."
Remora nodded. "Unfortunate. Um, tragic."
"When this man Blood's bodyguards learned Caldé Silk had killed
him, some attacked him and his soldiers. That's when Generalissimo
Oosik and General Saba stormed the house."
"Lovely, hum?" Remora harbored a sneaking admiration for
architecture as others cherish a vice. "Even, ah, despoiled. Pity. Pity. More
so, possibly. No pretensions now. No more vulgar display. Wreckage
more—um—romantic? Poetic." He favored Blood's torn lawns with
a toothy smile.
Maytera Mint drew her soiled habit more tightly about her and
for the hundredth time wished for her coif. "If we were to walk a
little faster, Your Eminence, we could get out of this wind, whether
the Ayuntamiento's come back or not."
"Of course, of course."
"And though I don't concede that Bison—"
"Those—um—corpses, General." Catching up, Remora strode
along beside her, his lanky legs making a single step of two of
hers. "You were about to, er, um, propose that we afford them
an—ah—sanctified burial? It would be most inconvenient, I fear.
Most inopportune!"
"Granted. But there must have been bodies, and I'd think more
than a few. The Ayuntamiento's soldiers and this man's bodyguards
would have been shooting from these windows."
Maytera Mint paused, drawing on her recent experiences to visualize
the scene. "Floaters would have rushed the gate, and Guardsmen and
General Saba's pterotroopers must have swarmed through every break
in the wall. Then my troopers from the city, thousands of them. Some
must have been killed, I'd think at least a hundred. Some of the
bodyguards and soldiers must have been killed too. See that line of
pock-marks? Buzz-gun fire. A floater's turret gun raked the front of
the house."
"I, an—"
For once she interrupted him. "We would have taken away our
dead, or I hope we would. But what about theirs? They were retreating
under fire, going down into the tunnels Sand talked about. Would
they have dragged bodies along with them? I find it hard to believe,
Your Eminence."
"If I may." Remora cleared his throat. "It seems to me that you
have, ah, disposed of the, um, dead yourself, though I confess that
I am no great hand at matters military."
"Nor I. I was appointed by Echidna, you must have heard of that.
What little I know I've picked up as I went along."
"Defeating commanders vastly more—ah—schooled. I would
conjecture, leastwise, that there must be something like our schola
for the officers of the, er, Caldé's Guard. As we call them now, eh,
General? The Civil Guard we used to phrase it, hey? Admirable, I,
um, insist."
"I've lost to them, too, Your Eminence. Lost nearly as often as I've
won." They were passing Scylla's fountain, now sheathed in ice.
"Though no great hand," Remora repeated, "I offer the, um, this hypothesis.
Would not well regulated troops inter their dead? The generalissimo's men
are, ah, proficient, to be sure, and we—ah—furnish a chaplain to each
brigade. The, um, desiderata of that. Conduct military obsequies. Subsequently,
please to follow me here, Mayt—General. Would not such, er, troopers
compel the, ah, your own, though not then under, as it were, your eye—"
"Make them bury the rest? Possibly." Maytera Mint, who was very
tired, forced herself to stand straighter and square her shoulders.
"More likely no compulsion was needed. If they had not thought
of it themselves, seeing the Guard and Saba's pterotroopers loading
their dead to take back to the city would suggest it. But what about
the enemy dead? Where are they?"
"Within this desolate, ah, mansion. I dare say. They would not have
abandoned its shelter, hey? Shot through its windows. You—um—proposed
it yourself."
She pointed with the stick that held her white flag. "See where the
wall's fallen? You can look into several rooms, and there's not a
single body in any of them."
"Yet, ah—"
"Through the doorway, too." They had nearly reached the steps of
Blood's portico. "That door would have been defended more strongly
than any other point, and I can look right into the sellaria. There's
not a one. Where are they?"
"I would, er, hazard that the victorious troops disposed of them
afterward."
She shook her head vigorously. "Troopers who've won are never
anxious to get the bodies of those they've killed out of sight, Your
Eminence. Never! I've seen that much more often than I like. They're
proud, and it's good for their morale. Yesterday Major Skin was
begging, literally begging me, not to have bodies that had lain in the
streets for days carted off. If the bodies are gone, it's because their
friends came back for them. It would be interesting to see if there
are graves behind the house. That's where they'd be, I imagine. By
the wall, as far as possible from the road. Do you know if there are
gardens in back?"
"I have never, um, had the pleasure." Remora started up the steps.
"Nor has His Cognizance, I think. He, um, confided it to me a
year or two past. We had been—um—dissecting? Decrying this, er, Blood's
influence. Was never a, um, visitor within these—ah—despoiled walls."
"Neither have. I, Your Eminence." Maytera Mint hiked up her skirt
and started up the steps.
"To be sure. To be sure, General. I regret it. Regret it now. I will not
dissemble, nor, um, ever. Seldom. To have seen this in its days of
prosperity would—prosperity and peace, eh? The contrast 'twixt memory
and the, um, less happy present. Do you follow me? Whereas one
can now but picture... See that picture? Fine. Very fine indeed, eh?
Torn. Might be refurbished yet, in skillful hands. Like the tali, eh?"
"I suppose." She had glanced at the ruined furniture, and was
studying the shadowy doorways of further rooms. "He kept women here, didn't
he? This bad man Blood who owned the house. Women—women who..."
"Enough, enough! Do not, um, perturb yourself, Maytera. General.
A few such. An, er, select contingent. So I was given to understand
upon the occasion of our—um—my tête-à-tête,
eh? With old Quetzal. Do I, um, scandalize you? With His Cognizance. I am,
ah, betimes inclined to be overfree. To presume upon an old friendship. A
failing, I concede." Remora advanced to study the damaged Murtagon.
"Was this where it happened?"
"Where the women—ah?" He glanced back at her with a half smile.
"No indeed."
"Where Caldé Silk killed this man Blood, and Sergeant Sand killed
Councillor Potto."
"We've finer ones at the Palace, hey? Still it's nice and might
be—ah—emended. In an, um, one of the anterooms as I understand
it, General. May I ask why you wish to know. An um, monument
of some kind, possibly? A dedicational tablet of, er, bronze?"
"Because we know that the man who owned this house died in
it, Your Eminence," Maytera Mint explained. "This Blood, with
Councillor Potto. If their bodies aren't here, they've been removed
by someone, and I'd think that if Generalissimo Oosik or even General
Saba had done it I'd have heard. A councillor's body? Everyone would
be arguing about what should be done with it, and I would certainly
have heard."
Her tone grew crisp. "Now if you'll oblige me."
Remora, who was not used to being asked for favors in that
peremptory fashion, looked around sharply.
"There seems to be no one here, though my informants... Never
mind. Do you agree?"
"There is certainly no one in this room at present
except—ah—ourselves. With regard to the, er, remainder of the, um,
building, I—hum—further investigation."
"I've been listening carefully and heard nothing. The bodies may
be in plain view or hidden by furniture or whatnot." Rather tardily
Maytera Mint added, "Your Eminence. I'll search the rooms on this
side. I'd like you to search the other. We needn't bother with the rest
of the house, I think."
"If there are no, er, bodies, General," Remora smoothed the truant
lock into place, "shall we return to the city—ah—forthwith? Might
be wise, eh? We have no way of knowing what has transpired in our
absence, hey?"
She nodded. "Agreed. We'll know then that they've been here and
may return later. I'll leave one of Bison's officers to watch, with a few
troopers. If we do find a body, either one, it should be safe to
assume that the Ayuntamiento's troops have never come back at all. We can
go back to the city at once and forget about this house."
"Wisely, er, spoken." Remora was already hurrying toward the first
of his assigned roorns. "I shall inform you promptly should I discover
an—ah—the mortal remains."
The anteroom Maytera Mint entered had, it appeared, been the
owner's study. A massive mahogany desk, lavishly carved, stood
against one wall, and there were shelves of books, mostly (she scanned
the titles on a shelf at the level of her eyes) erotic if not pornographic:
Three Maids and Their Mistress, The Astonishing Exploits of a Virile
Young Man and His Donkey, His Resistance Overcome...
She turned away. What had it been like to be here under such a
master? She tried to picture the lives of the women who had endured
it, and failed. They had been bad women, as the whorl judged, but
that only meant that they had commanded defenses greatly inferior
to her own.
Strange, how she had come to think in military metaphors during
the past few days.
The desk drawers seemed apt to tell her a good deal about the owner,
who counted for nothing now, and nothing about the Ayuntamiento
and those who served it. She opened a drawer at random anyway,
glanced at the papers it had held—all of them concerned in some
fashion with money—shut it, and made sure no corpse lay concealed
in the leg hole.
"General!"
Turning so quickly that the long, black skirt of her habit billowed
about her, she hurried out of the study and across the sellaria. "What
is it, Your Eminence?"
He met her at the doorway, visibly struggling to conceal his pleasure.
"I have the—ah—it is my unhappy duty—"
"You've found a body. Whose?"
"The, um, late councillor's, I believe. If, perhaps, you would not
care—"
"To see it? I must! Your Eminence, I've seen hundreds of bodies
since this began. Thousands." There had been a time when she had
found it nearly impossible to cut the throat of a goat; as she pushed
past Remora, she reflected that she would find that difficult still,
and find it literally impossible to cut a man's, even an enemy's. Yet
she had made plans and given orders that had clogged entire streets
with corpses.
"I took the, um, responsibility? The—ah—presumption of, er,
tidying him up. On his back now, eh? Folded the arms, prior to
calling you."
Potto lay almost at her feet, his arms crossed in such a way as to
hide the wound Sand's slug had made just below his sternum. The
graying hair that he had worn long trailed over Blood's lush carpet,
and Maytera Mint found herself muttering, "He looks surprised."
"Doubtless he—ah—was." Remora cleared his throat. "Caught
unawares, hey? Shot by one of his own. All in a, um, trice. So my
prothonotary tells me. He—ah—Incus is his name, General. Patera
Incus. He has, um, fallen prey in some—ah—wise to the notion that
he's old Quetzal—"
She knelt beside the corpse, traced the sign of addition, and opened
its card case.
"Mad, I fear. Deranged. Bit of rest, eh? He'll come to himself soon
enough. General—ah—?"
In the first place," Maytera Mint explained, "there may be papers
of value in here. In the second, there's money, ten cards or so, and
we need that very badly."
"I, ah, see."
Cards and papers vanished into her wide sleeve. "Where's the
blood? Did you clean up his blood before you called to me, Your
Eminence?"
"Through the heart, eh?" Remora's nasal tones sounded slightly
strangled. "Not much bleeding then, eh? So I am—ah—apprised."
Gently at first, then with increased vigor, Maytera Mint rubbed
the councillor's cheek. "This's a chem!"
"I—um—"
She looked up at Remora. "You knew."
"I—ah—suspected."
"You rolled him over, you said, Your Eminence. You folded his
arms. You must have known."
"Then? Oh, yes, I—ah—confirmed, eh? I had, um,
and—ah—Quetzal, eh? Old Quetzal. Wouldn't tell. Asked him once. More,
actually. He, ah, er, wouldn't. Confides in me, eh? Nearly everything. Very,
ah, delicate points. Sensitive matters, finances. Everything. But
he—ah—wouldn't."
Suddenly Remora was on his knees beside her. "General—ah—General.
Alone here, hey? No one but, er, ourselves. May I call you Maytera?"
She ignored it. "There'll be the question of burial. A dozen questions,
really. You must have realized I'd find out."
"I—ah—did. Indeed. Not so swiftly, however. You are
most—or—perspicacious."
"Then why didn't you say so? Why all that nonsense about
blood?"
"Because I—Incus. Patera Incus. And old Quetzal, eh? My position
is, er, delicate. Imperiled. Maytera, hear me, I—ah—beg you. Yes,
beg. Implore."
She nodded. "I'm listening. What is it?"
"Incus, my prothonotary. Was. You know him?"
She shook her head. "Just tell me."
"He's been appointed Prolocutor. By, um, Scylla. He says it, I
mean. Credits it himself, eh? Convinced. Spoke to him yesterday,
but he—you..."
"Me?" For a second, Maytera Mint felt she was missing some vital
clue. It dawned upon her, and she rocked backward to sit cross-legged
on the carpet, her head in her hands.
"Maytera? Er, General?"
She looked up at Remora. "I was appointed by Echidna, in front
of thousands of people. Is that it, Your Eminence?"
Remora's mouth opened and shut silently.
"So you know it happened. All those witnesses. And I've been
successful, as you say. The victorious commander, chosen for us by
the gods. Even Bison and the captain talk like that, and then there's
Patera Silk."
Remora nodded miserably.
"Everyone says he's been appointed by Great Pas to be our caldé,
even Maytera Marble. He's been successful, too, so it looks like
the gods have decided to choose leaders for us, and if this Patera
Incus is going to be the new Prolocutor, he'll want to pick his own
coadjutor."
"Nor—ah—um—worse. If he—ah—old Quetzal, you
know. Resourceful. Cunning. Seen it myself, hundreds of times,
eh? Ayuntamiento had the force, but he'd get 'round them. Get
'round Lemur and Loris, all of them. Old man, hey? Foolish old
man. What they think. His Cognizance. Quetzal. But sly, Mayt—General.
Very sly. Deep."
She made a small sound of encouragement.
"Compromise. I—ah—sense it. I am not, um, clever, General. Try
to be, indeed. Try. Some have said—well, it pares no parsnips. But not
like old Quetzal. Experienced, though. My—ah—self. Conferences,
negotiations. And I wind it. Wind it already. Be coadjutor, Incus.
Obvious, eh? First thing anybody would, er, formulate. Old Quetzal
would—ah—visualize? Comprehend the whole before Incus finished.
Old man. Die soon, hey? A year, two years, to—ah—fit yourself into
the position, Patera. I'll be gone. I can, um, hear him as I—we—speak.
So I didn't dare, eh? Tell you. You see my predicament? The—ah—Loris.
Galago. All the rest. Chems, every one of them. I suspected
it for years. Meeting with this one, that one, entire days, sometimes.
Saw them up close. Quetzal knows, he must."
"But His Cognizance wouldn't talk about it?"
"No. Ah—no. Too sensitive. Even for me, eh? He, Incus. I
told you?"
"You told me he says Scylla's made him Prolocutor."
"He, um, offered me..."
One bony hand pushed back the straying lock, and Maytera Mint
saw how violently that hand shook. "He offered you...?"
"A—ah—appointment. A position. He was," Remora swallowed,
"not abusive. It was not, I judge, his intent to be—ah—disparage.
He said that I—I refused, to be sure. His prothonotary. His, ah,
I—I—I..."
Maytera Mint nodded. "I see."
"We have been, er, companions, Maytera. Coworkers—ah—partners in peace,
hey? Son and daughter of the Chapter. We have conferred, and the
same—um—consecrated vision has inspired us both. I
well—ah—recollect our first meeting. You averred
with—um—coruscant eyes that peace was your, er, sole desire once you
had—ah, um—executed the will of the gods. I affirmed? Avowed that it was
mine likewise. In concert we have conferred with Brigadier Erne and the
caldé. You are a hero, um, heroine to the—ah—populace. There is
talk of a statue, hey? A word from you, your support..."
"Be quiet," she told him. "I haven't had a moment to get used to the
idea that the Ayuntamiento's made up of chems, and now this."
"If I, ah—"
"Be quiet, I said!" She drew a deep breath, running the fingers of
both hands through her short brown hair. "To begin with, no, you
may not call me Maytera. Not in private, and not any other time. If
His Cognizance will release me, I mean to return to secular life. I,"
another breath, "may marry. We'll see. As for you, if this Patera Incus
has in fact been named Prolocutor by Scylla, then he is Prolocutor,
regardless of any arrangement that he and Patera Quetzal may make.
I can readily imagine a younger man of great sanctity deferring to
a much older one. Viewed in a certain light, it would be an act of
noble self-renunciation. But it wouldn't alter the fact. He would be
our Prolocutor, though he wasn't called so. Since he proposed that
you become his prothonotary, plainly you're not to be coadjutor any
longer. No doubt Patera Quetzal is, in solemn truth, coadjutor. That
being so, I'll call you Patera."
"My dear young woman!"
Her look silenced him. "I'm not your dear young woman, or
anyone's. I'm thirty-six, and I assure you that for a woman it's no
longer young. Call me General, or I'll make your life a great deal
less pleasant than it has been."
A door at the far end of the room opened, and someone who was
neither Mint nor Remora applauded. "Brava, my dear young general!
Simply marvelous! You ought to be on the stage."
He waddled over to them, a short, obese man with bright blue eyes,
a cheerful round face, and hair so light as to be nearly blond. "But as
for accepting an Ayuntamiento of chems, you need not trouble. I'm
no chem, though I confess that the object before you is something
of the kind."
Remora gasped, having recognized him.
"This augur and I are old—I really can't say friends. Acquaintances.
You, I feel sure, are the rebels' famous General Mint." The stranger
giggled. "Presumably you aim at supreme power, which would make
you the Govern-Mint. I like that! I'm Councillor Potto. Curtain. Did
you wish to speak to me?"
For a fleeting moment in which his heart nearly stopped, it seemed
to Silk that he had seen Hyacinth among the cheering pedestrians.
Before he could shout to his bearers, the woman turned her head and
the illusion ended. He had been ready, as he realized as he settled
back among the cushions, to spring out of the litter.
I need my glasses, he thought. My old ones, which I can't possibly
get back, or some new ones.
Oreb fluttered on his shoulder. "Good Silk!"
"Crazed Silk," he told his bird. "Mad and foolish Silk. I mistook
another woman for her."
"No see."
"My own thought exactly. Several times I've dreamed my mother
was alive. Have I told you about that?"
Oreb whistled.
"For a minute or two after I woke up, I believed it, and I was so
happy. This was like that." Leaning from the right side of the litter,
he addressed the head bearer. "You needn't go so fast. You'll wear
yourselves out."
The man grinned and bobbed his head.
Silk settled back again. Their speed was increasing. No doubt the
bearers felt it a question of honor; when one carried the caldé, one ran.
Otherwise ordinary people who had never had the privilege of carrying
the caldé's litter might think him on an errand of no importance. Which
would never do; if his errand were of no importance, neither were his
bearers.
"I've got twenty Guardsmen looking for her," he told Oreb. "That's
not enough, since they didn't find her, but it's all we could spare
with the Fourth Brigade holding out on the north side, and the
Ayuntamiento in the tunnels."
Mention of the tunnels made Oreb croak unhappily.
At what amounted to a dead run, the litter swayed, yawed, and
swerved off Sun Street onto Lamp. Leaning out Silk said, "Music
Street—I thought I made it clear. A block east."
The head bearer's head bobbed as before.
"If twenty Guardsmen can't find her, Oreb, I certainly can't; and
last night I didn't. We didn't, I ought to say. So we need help, and I
cant hink of three places—no, four—where we may get it. Today we're
going to try them all Most of the fires are out, and Maytera Mint and
Oosik can actually fight better without me in the way; so although
the physician says I should be in bed, and I'm not supposed to have
a minute to myself, I intend to take as many hours as necessary."
Yawing as before, the litter turned onto a still narrower street that
Silk did not recognize.
"It's up to the gods, I'm afraid. I don't trust them—not even the
Outsider, who seems to trust me—but they may smile on us yet."
"Find girl?"
He had lost his desire to talk, but the intensity of his emotions
drove the words forth. "What did he want with her!" As he spoke,
the litter sped past a shop with a zither and a dusty bassoon in its
window.
But Caldé Silk of Viron did not see them.
"This is the kitchen?" Maytera Mint looked around her in surprise.
It was the largest that she had ever seen.
"There are, ah, alternatives," Remora ventured. "Still entire, eh?
Equally, hum, unsigned by Sabered Sphigx."
"I find it cozy," Potto declared. "For one thing, there's food, though
your troops, my dear young General, made off with a lot. I like food,
even if I can't eat it. For another, I'm a good host, eager for the
comfort of my guests, and it's easy to heat. Behold this noble stove
and laden woodbox. I'm happily immune to drafts, but you aren't.
I'm determined to make you comfortable. Those other rooms offer the
chilly attractions of a society beauty. This will provide warmth and tea,
even soup." He giggled. "All the solid virtues of an old nurse. Besides,
there are a great many sharp knives, and I'm always encouraged by
the presence of sharp knives."
"You can't be here alone," Maytera Mint said.
Potto grinned. "Do you propose to attack me if I am?"
"Certainly not."
"You have an azoth, the famous one given you by Silk. I won't
search you for it now."
"I left it with Colonel Bison. If I had come armed after calling for
a truce, you'd be entitled to kill me."
"I am anyhow," Potto told her. He picked up a stick of firewood
and snapped it between his hands. "The rules of war protect armies
and their auxiliaries. Yours is a rebellion, not a war, and rebels get
no such protection. Patera there knows that's the truth. Look at
his face."
"I—ah—assert the privilege of my cloth."
"You can. You haven't fought, so you're entitled to it. The General
has and isn't. It's all very simple."
When neither replied, Potto added, "Speaking of cloth, I forgot to
say that the rules apply only to soldiers and those auxiliaries who wear
their city's uniform, as General Saba does. You, my dear General,
don't. The upshot is that though I can't offer violence to your armies
as long as the truce holds, I'm entitled to break both your leggies if I
want to, and even to wring your necky. Sit down, there's a cozy little
table right over there. I'll build a fire and put the kettle on."
They sat, Remora tucking the rich overrobe he wore around his
legs, Maytera Mint as she might have in the cenoby, her delicate
hands folded in her lap, and her head bowed.
Potto filled one of the stove's fireboxes and stroked a stick of
kinding. It burst into flame, not merely at one end like a torch, but
along its entire length. He tossed it into the firebox and shoved the
firebox back in place with an angry grinding of iron.
"He, um, intrigues to separate us," Remora whispered. "A—ah—hallowed?
Elementary stratagem, General. I shall, um, cleave to you,
eh? If you in, ah, analogous fashion—"
"Maytera. Call me Maytera, please, Your Eminence, when we're
alone."
"Indeed. Indeed! O, ah, soror neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum.
O passi graviora, dabit Pas his guoque finem."
Potto was filling a teakettle. Without turning his head, he said, "I
have sharp ears. Don't say I didn't warn you."
Maytera Mint looked up. "Then I'm spared the necessity of raising
my voice. Are you really Councillor Potto? We came to negotiate with
the Ayuntamiento, not with anyone we chanced to meet. If you are,
whose body was that?"
"Yes." Potto put the kettle on the stove. "Mine. Have you more
questions?"
"Certainly. Are you willing to stop all this bloodshed?"
"It bothers you, doesn't it?" He pulled out a stout stool and sat
down so heavily the floor shook.
"Seeing good and brave troopers die? Watching someone who was
eager to obey me a few seconds ago writhing and bleeding in the
street? It does!"
"Well, it doesn't me, and I don't understand why it should you. I
never have. Call it a gift. There are people who can listen to music
all evening, then go home and write everything down, and others
who can run faster and farther than a horse. Did you know that?
Mine's a less amazing gift, though it's brought me success. I don't
feel pain I don't feel. Is that what you call a tautology? It's what life
has taught me. I give it to you for nothing."
Remora nodded, his long face longer than ever. "I, er, vouchsafe
it might be included under that—ah—rubric."
"Councillor."
"Why—ah—indeed. I had no, um, intention—"
"Thanks. I'm the only member who forced his way in, or had to.
Did you know that, either of you?"
Maytera Mint shook her head.
"We're all related, as you can see from our names. Lemur and Loris
were brothers. Lemur's dead. You don't have to look surprised, I know
you know. He packed the Ayuntamiento with relatives, back before
Patera here was born. I came to him. I approached him forthrightly
and fairly. He'd brought in Galago, a second cousin by courtesy. I
was much closer, and I said so. He said he'd take it under advisement.
A week later—there'd been this and that, you know, nothing serious—he
tried to have me killed. I saw to it that the man's flesh was
served to us at dinner, and dessert was his head in lemon sherbet.
Lemur jerked away from it, and I scooped up a little sherbet with
my fingers and ate it. I took the oath next day. Councillor Potto.
My cousins soon discovered that I was a useful friend, not just an
unpleasant relative."
Maytera Mint nodded. "You're proud of being useful, as everyone
who is, is entided to be. Now you have a chance to be of great service
to our whole city."
"We have, ah, ventured forth in good faith," Remora put in. "The
general has come unarmed. My—ah—vocation prohibits weapons.
Such, at least, is my own opinion, though the—our caldé's may differ. I
ask you, Council or, whether you, er, similarly. Are we intermediaries?
Or, um, captives?"
"You want to go before your tea's ready?" Potto waved in the
direction of the door. "Make the experiment, Patera."
"My duty, um, confines me."
"Then you're a prisoner, but not mine. Dear young General Mint,
wouldn't you like to know how I manage to be alive in the kitchen
and dead in the drawing room?"
"There were two of you, clearly." She had taken her big wooden
prayer beads from her pocket; she ran them through her fingers,
comforted by their familiar shapes.
"No, only one, and that one is neither here nor there. As we aged,
Cousin Tarsier made us new bodies out of chems. Lemur got the
first one, and the rest of us later as we came to need them, bodies
we can work from our beds. I can't enjoy food, but I eat. I'm feeding
intravenously right now."
"What became of the chems?" Maytera Mint managed to keep her
voice steady. "Of their minds?"
"I thought you were going to ask me whether he made the others
more than one."
"No. Clearly he did, or someone did. But you got this body from
another person. And—and changed it to look like you? You must
have. Did he consent to any of that?"
"The logical question is whether there are two of all of us." Potto
struck the table with his fist. "You didn't even ask how I got the wood
to burn. How am I supposed to deal with someone who won't stick
to the point?"
Remora began, "I, ah—" But Potto was not through. "By sticking
with the point myself. That's it! I may soon stick with one so well
that it sticks out your back." He turned to Remora. "Yes, Patera.
You were about to say...?"
"I was, um, speculating, Councillor, upon how you ignited that
wood so, er, effortlessly. I, um, hope that you will, um, consent to
ah—illuminate that matter for us."
"I am not going to sit here teaching a butcher chemistry. Can't
either of you understand that once I've told you what I want, I don't
want it? What are you doing here anyway? Dear General Mint's the
leader, after Silk. Why are you here?"
"To, er, mediate. We, um, His Cognizance and, hum—"
"To bring peace," Maytera Mint declared. "Caldé Silk has offered
to let all of you keep your seats under the Charter. Considering all
that's happened, I think it very generous."
"For life?"
Remora touched her arm, and she found it easy to interpret the
jesture. "Is there a provision for life tenure? If so, I imagine it might
be invoked." Remora shook his head; the motion was slight, but
she saw it.
Potto smiled; it was so unexpected that she wondered for
a moment whether she had unwittingly promised a return to
power.
Seeing it, Remora positively beamed. "Better! Oh, indeed! Must be
mends, eh? Friends can make peace, foes, er, unable."
"You misunderstand my expression, Patera."
"I, um, hail and approve it. Time—ah—sufficient for understanding,
er, presently. Maybe I put forward a proposal, Councillor? General?
My wish, a heartfelt suggestion. That we—ah—solemnly convene at
the present moment, offering our prayer to the Nine. Our petition,
if you will, that—"
"Shut up," Potto snapped. "I've got the key, and you go on blathering.
Caldé Silk sent you, General. Is that right?"
"He would approve of my coming, certainly. For days we've been
trying to reach you councillors on our glasses. I thought we might
try this."
When Potto did not reply, she added, "His Eminence was chosen
as an intermediary by your Brigadier Erne and our caldé. Soon after,
as I understand it, His Cognizance offered his help as well. We were
and are overjoyed. I would hope—"
"You can't speak for him," Potto told her. "You may think
you can, or that Patera here can, but you can't. I've known
him a long time, and there's not a more malicious and unpredictable
person in the city. Not even me. You're a general, General?"
She nodded. "Appointed by Divine Echidna in a theophany. My
instructions," she amended them mentally in the interests of peace,
"were to tear down the Alambrera and see to it that Viron remained
loyal to Scylla. If you're asking my position in the command structure,
Caldé Silk is the head of our government, civil as well as military.
Generalissimo Oosik is our supreme military commander. I am in
charge of the armed populace, and General Skate commands the
Caldé's Guard."
Potto tittered. "Then you've a firm grasp of the military situation.
I don't. Lemur was our military man. Explain our circumstances to
me, General, so we can start together."
"You're serious?"
He rocked with silent merriment. "Never more."
"As you wish. After Ophidian Echidna's theophany, we had about
thirty thousand troopers. Not that there were that many witnesses,
or half that many, but a great many who heard what had happened
from others joined us. Some were Guardsmen, none, I think, above
captain. You, the Ayuntamiento, called out the Army, giving you
something like seven thousand soldiers, besides the twenty-four
thousand troopers of your Civil Guard."
"Go on," Potto told her. "None of this is quite right, but it's
interesting."
"My figures for the Guard come from Generalissimo Oosik, who
was certainly in a position to know. Those for the Army, from Sergeant
Sand, the leader of those brave soldiers who saw that true loyalty lay
in siding with the caldé."
Potto was still grinning. "Excuse the interruption."
"I was about to say that since then we've gained strength, and
you've lost it. By shadelow, we had nearly reached our present total
of about fifty thousand. I'm referring to my own troops here. That
night, every brigade of your Civil Guard went over to the caldé except
the Fourth. The Fourth and the Third, which was the generalissimo's,
had been holding the Palatine. The Fourth, commanded by Brigadier
Erne was driven from it next day, and into the northern suburbs."
"Where it still is."
"That's correct. We had fires all over the city to fight, hundreds of
them, and we've been busy trying to get ourselves organized. When the
Alambrera surrendered, we got thousands of slug guns and hundreds
of thousands of rounds of arnmunition. We had to see to it that they
went to people of good character. Furthermore, there's a feeling that
the Fourth Brigade might come over to our side in another day or
two. Caldé Silk and Generalissimo Oosik think so, and so do I. I'm
told that His Cognizance is of the same opinion."
Remora cleared his throat. "It was, hmp!, Brigadier Erne who, um,
entreated me to—ah—initiate? To set in motion these negotiations.
I, er, thereafter—shortly thereafter—sought out the caldé, whom,
um, approved likewise. I can—am able and—ah—authorized. The
brigadier's viewpoint."
"Not now," Potto told him. "General, could you crush the Fourth
Brigade? Suppose Silk ordered it."
"Certainly, in two or three hours. Less if I had a few taluses and
floaters, as well as my people. But we'd rather not, obviously, in
view of the loss of—"
"Not to me!" Potto chortled. "It's not obvious to me! Is the bloodshed
really what's bothering you?"
"I should think it would bother anyone."
"Well, you're right, but you're wrong too. The bloodshed wouldn't
bother me, but why shouldn't you take five thousand prime troopers
if you can get them? We would. Are those the only reasons,
General?"
"I'll be frank. There's another aspect. You, by which I mean the
Ayuntamiento, are down in the tunnels with most of the Army and
a few troopers."
"Nearly a thousand."
"Setting them aside, you must have about seven thousand soldiers
down there."
Potto's grin widened.
"More? Very well, if you say so. Seven thousand was our estimate.
In any case, if we got deeply involved in an attack on the Fourth,
which shouldn't be our primary objective anyway, you might make
a sortie from the tunnels and strike us from behind. According to
reports I've had, it takes at least four of my troopers to match a
soldier, which means that your seven thousand that's the figure
we discussed—are equivalent to twenty-eight thousand of mine. We
didn't feel we could risk it. I should say that we don't feel we can
as yet."
Potto nodded rather too enthusiastically. "Someplace in all that
verbiage was a morsel that seemed intelligent, my dear General. You
said our Guard, or what's left, wasn't what you really wanted to
destroy. That it was us. Why don't you come down after us?"
Remora looked deeply distressed. "Do you, er, Councillor... Is
this—ah—productive?"
"I think so. You'll see. Answer me if you can, General."
"Because the tunnels are too defensible. I haven't been in them,
but they've been described to me. A dozen soldiers could hold a
place like that against a hundred troopers. If we've got to, we'll
find a way, digging shafts and so on. But we'd rather not, which
is why I'm here. Also there's another consideration. You spoke of
destroying the Fourth. Clearly, we don't want to. Still less do we
want to destroy the Army, which is of immense value to our city.
We know that—"
"You are an amazing woman." Potto pushed his stool back and
crossed the big kitchen to the stove. "A woman who talks sense
whenever it suits her but can't hear a kettle boil."
"Women generally talk sense, if men will listen to it."
"Those who are generals generally do, anyway. You're right about
the Fourth, and right about the Army and not tackling the tunnels,
though you really don't understand the situation at all. I'm our head
spy, did you know that? I was in charge of Lemur's spies, and now
I've got Loris's." Potto tittered. "Who are generally the same, General,
and mine. Do you really think all the troopers in the city are yours
or ours? You simply can't be that simple!" He lifted the big copper
teakettle off the stove; it was spurting steam.
Maytera Mint pursed her lips.
"There are, um, an—ah—minuscule? Likewise. Token, eh? An—ah—few
hundred..."
"Two hundred, more or less," she supplied. "Two hundred Trivigaunti
pterotroopers commanded by General Saba, who also commands the
airship. Two hundred's a very small force, as His Eminence says,
though with supporting fire from the airship even a small force might
accomplish a great deal. General Saba has offered her help when we
move against the Fourth, by the way."
"How kind." Potto had carried the steaming teakettle to their
table.
"Not to you, Councillor. I realize that. But to us it is. It's a gesture
good will from the Rani to the new government of Viron, and as
is greatly appreciated."
"Your diplomacy flourishes." He raised the teakettle.
"It does. It's in its infancy, but it does." Maytera Mint stood. "We
need a teapot, and tea. Sugar, milk, and a lemon, if His Eminence
takes lemon. I'll look for them."
"I was about to ask you if my face looks dusty."
"I beg your pardon, Councillor?"
"Whether it's dusty. Look carefully, will you? Maybe we should
go to a window, where the light will be better."
"I don't see any dust." She was struck, unexpectedly and unpleasantly
by the lack of warmth in that face, which seemed so animated.
Maytera Marble's familiar metal mask held a whorl of humility and
passion; this, for all its seeming plumpness and high color, was
as cold as Echidna's serpents.
"It's been packed away for years, you see." Leaning back at an
impossible angle, Potto scratched the tip of his nose with the steaming
spout of the teakettle. "I'm the youngest member of the Ayuntamiento,
dear General. Did you know that?"
Maytera Mint shook her head.
"Just the same, they thought this seemed too young, and asked
me to replace it." He contrived to lean even farther backward. A
trickle of boiling water escaped the spout. "You don't know about
the Rani's horde, either. Do you?"
"What about it?"
"My face?" Potto jabbed the spout toward it. "It was in storage. I
said that, why didn't you listen? Now I can't see as clearly as I did.
I may have dust in my eyes."
Before Maytera Mint could stop him, he raised the teakettle and
tilted it. Seething water cascaded down onto his nose and eyes. Remora
exclaimed, "Oh, you gods!" as Maytera Mint jumped back from the
hissing spray.
"There. That ought to do it." Straightening up, Potto regarded her
through wide blue eyes again, blinking hard to clear them of boiling
drops. "That's much better. I can see everything. I hope you can, too,
my dear young General. The Rani's horde has already set out, and
there's sixty thousand foot and fifteen thousand cavalry. I haven't
the luxury of an airship to keep watch on Viron's enemies, but I do
the best I can. Seventy-five thousand battle-hardened troopers, with
their support troops, a supply train of fifteen thousand camels, and
a labor battalion of ten thousand men." Potto turned to Remora.
"Trivigaunte's men are of your school, Patera. No weapons. Or
anyway they're supposed to be."
Remora had regained his composure. "If this extensive and, ah,
formidable force is—ah—marching? Marching, you said, eh? Then I
take it that it can't be marching here, or you—um—the Ayuntamiento,
more formally. Terms of surrender, hey?"
Potto tittered.
Maytera Mint squared her shoulders. "I wouldn't laugh, Councillor.
His Eminence is entirely correct. If the Rani is sending us a force of
that size, your cause is doomed."
"It's just as I feared," Potto told her. He held up the teakettle. "Do
you think it's cooled too much?"
"To make tea?" She took an involuntary step backward. "I doubt
it."
"To wash eyes, so they can see. I think you're right. Boiling water
stays hot for a long time."
"I came under a flag of truce!"
He reached for her, moving much faster than so fat a man should
have been able to. She whirled and ran, feeling his fingertips brush
her habit, reached the door a hand's breadth ahead of him, and flung
herself through. An arm hooked her like a lamb; another pinned her
own arms to her sides. Her face was crushed against musty cloth.
Sounding near, Potto said, "Bring her back in here."
Not so near, words failed Remora. "You cannot—I mean to say
simply cannot—woman's a sibyl! You, you—"
"Oh, be quiet," Potto told him. "Bend her over backwards, Spider.
Make her look up at this."
Abruptly there was light and air. The man who had caught her
was as tall as Remora and as wide as Potto; he held her by her hair
and dropped to one knee, pulling her across the other.
"My son." Looking up at his heavy, unshaven chin, she found it
horribly hard to keep from sounding frightened. "Do you realize what
you're doing?"
The man, presumably Spider, glanced to one side, presumably at
Potto. "How's this, Councillor?"
She rolled her eyes without finding him, and the thick fingers would
not let her turn her head.
His voice came from a distance. "I'm putting the kettle back. We
can't have it cooling off while I give you the rules."
Remora entered her field of view, seeming as lofty as a tower when
he bent above them. "If there is—ah—Maytera. General. Anything I
can do...?"
"There is," she said. "Let Bison know what happened."
"Go back to your seat," Potto told Remora, and he vanished.
"Didn't you wonder, my dear General," it was Potto's cheerful,
round face opposite Spider's now, "how I happened to be so near
my own corpse? Or what became of Blood's? Blood was stabbed by
your friend Silk. Let's not call him Caldé. We're no longer being so
polite."
"Let me up, and I'll be happy to ask you."
"It won't be necessary. Blood's body has been hauled away already,
you see. And you do see, don't you? At present. I ordered that my own
wasn't to be touched, because I think we may be able to fix it. I came
in person to pick it up, with a few of my most trusted spy catchers.
Spider's their jefe. I'd use soldiers, but they're awfully sensitive, it
seems, to mention of a caldé, though you wouldn't think it to look
at them."
From a distance, Remora called, "Councillor? Councillor!"
She shut her eyes. If she was never to see again, the last thing she
saw should not be the high smoke-grimed ceiling of the kitchen in this
ruined villa. Echidna, rather, her face filling the Sacred Window. Her
mother's face. Bison's, with its quick eyes and curling black beard.
Her room in the cenoby. Children playing, Maytera Marble's group
because she had always wanted them instead of the older girls this
year and the older boys before Patera Pike died. Auk's face, so ugly
and serious, more precious than a stack of cards. Bison's. Cage Street,
and the floaters firing as the white stallion thundered toward them.
"Did you hear that, my dear General?"
"Hear what?" Maytera Mint opened her eyes, remembering too late
that scalding water might be poured into them.
"Tell her, Patera! Tell her!" Potto was giggling like a girl of twelve,
giggling so hard that he could hardly talk.
"I—ah—um—proposed an, er, substitution."
"He wants to take your place. Really, it's too funny."
She tried to speak, and found that her eyes were filling with hot
tears, irony so cheap and obvious as to be unbearable. "No, Your
Eminence. But... But thank you."
"He, um, Potto. Councillor. He wishes to, um, secure your—ah—collaboration,
hey? I, um, endeavored to point out that to, er, spare
me you would, eh? Whatever he wants."
"I can already make you do anything I want." Potto was back. He
held the teakettle over her. "What I'm trying to do is what she's done
for years. Educate." Giggling, he covered his mouth with his free hand.
"Wash the dust out. Clarify her vision. Have I explained the rules?"
"Er—no."
"Then I will. I have to. You want to save her, Patera?"
She could actually hear Remora's teeth chatter. She had always
supposed the business about chattering teeth was a sort of verbal
convention, like hair standing on end.
"You made your offer, and I said no. But you can save me the
trouble of washing her eyes."
"I, um, every effort."
"I'm going to ask questions. Educational questions. If her answers
are right, we postpone the eyebath. Or if yours are. Ready? Spider,
what about you? When you see the kettle tip, you'll have to hold her
tight and keep your hands clear."
"Any time, Councillor."
"I'll start with an easy one. That's the best way, don't you think?
If you really want children to learn. If you aren't just showing off.
Did you know Silk's friend Doctor Crane?"
She shut her eyes again, finding it difficult to think. "Know him?
No. Maytera Marble mentioned him once, the nice doctor who let
her ride in his litter. I don't think I ever saw him. I'm sure I haven't
met him."
"And you never will. He's dead." Potto sounded pleased. "Your
turn, Patera. What about you?"
"Crane, eh? A doctor? Can't, um, place him."
"He was a spy. Let's give the poor fellow his due. He was a master
spy, some say the Rani's best. Trivigaunte had more spies in Viron
than any other city. It still does, though they have no jefe now. Why
do you think that is, Maytera? More spies than Urbs or Palustria?"
"All I can do is guess." Her mouth was dry; she tried unsuccessfully
to swallow. "The Rani's a woman, but all the other cities near ours
have male rulers. She may have been more sensitive to the danger
you and your cousins presented."
"Not bad. Can you improve on that, Patera?"
"I, ah, cheating."
Potto giggled. "Double credit for it. Go ahead."
"His Cognizance, eh? He told me. Not in so many words, eh? No
mountains. First, um, er—"
"Objective," Potto supplied.
"Indeed. Next, ah, year. Spring. Not long now, hey, Councillor?
Winter has, um, commenced."
"General, this is your area of expertise. Say another force is opposing
yours, which is larger. Would you rather fight your way across a
mountain range or a desert?"
"I'd want to see the desert," she hedged.
"You can't see either one, and if you won't answer you won't see
anything." The teakettle tilted a little.
"Then I prefer the desert."
"Why?"
"Because fighting in mountains would be like fighting in tunnels.
There would be narrow passes, in which we'd have to go at the enemy
head-on. In a desert we could get around them."
"Correct. Patera, I haven't been giving you many chances, so you
first. Two cities I'll call Viron and Trivigaunte are separated by a lake
and a desert. A big lake, though it's been getting smaller and turning
brackish. That's the situation, and here's the question. If the easiest
city for Viron to attack is Trivigaunte, what's easiest for Trivigaunte?
Think carefully."
"For, ah, them?" Remora's voice quavered. "Us, I should say.
Viron."
"Do you agree, my dear General?"
She had begun a short prayer to Echidna while Remora was
speaking; after murmuring the final phrase she said, "There could
be other answers, but that's the most probable. Viron."
"I'm putting the kettle on again," Potto told her. "Not because
you've passed, but because you may fail right here, and I want the
water hot enough to do the job. Listen carefully, because we're going
from geography to arithmetic. Listen, and think. Are you ready?"
She compelled her mind and lips. "I suppose so."
Potto tittered. "Are you, Patera?"
"Ah... I wish, Councillor—"
"Save it for later. It's time for arithmetic. The Rani of Trivigaunte
has seventy-five thousand crack troopers in Viron. The so-called
caldé's general has fifty thousand untrained ones, and the traitor
commanding the Caldé's guard has about eighteen thousand fit for
duty, of doubtful loyalty. If these numbers have you mixed up, I
don't blame you. Would you like me to stop here and repeat them,
General?"
"Let me hear the rest."
"We're getting to the crux. Rani, seventy-five thousand. You, fifty
thousand. Oosik, eighteen thousand. All these are troopers, armed
bios. Now then, the Ayuntamiento, which opposes all three of them,
has eight thousand two hundred soldiers and a thousand troopers
underground, and another five thousand on the surface. The question
is, who rules Viron? Answer, Patera."
"The—ah—you do. The Ayuntamiento."
"One drop for that," Potto said. "I'll fetch the kettle."
Maytera Mint squeezed her eyes shut, clenching her teeth as a single
scalding drop struck her forehead. Locked in a private nightmare
of fear and pain, she heard the opening of the door as if it were
leagues away. A new voice spoke in the reedy tones of an old man:
"What's this?"
Remora, overjoyed: "Your Cognizance!"
Almost carelessly, Potto said: "This is a nice surprise, I had men
posted. Another prisoner's welcome, just the same."
She squinted upward. The sere old face over hers was one she
had seen only at a distance; she had not realized then how its eyes
glittered.
"Release her!" Quetzal snapped. "Let her go. Now!"
She tried to smile as Spider inquired, "Councillor?"
"Class dismissed for the present. It may resume soon, so think
about the material." He sounded angry.
Spider stood, and she fell to the floor.
"I've talked to your cousin Loris," Quetzal told Potto, "and I've
come to give you the news I brought him. If you decide to detain
me afterward, it's the risk I run."
Potto spoke to Spider. "This old fox is the Prolocutor. If that's
going to bother you, say so."
"Anything you want, Councillor."
"He's worth two of the general and ten of the butcher. Don't
forget it. Old man, what tricks have you cooked up?" Maytera Mint
scrambled to her feet, trying not to step on the hem of her habit.
"No tricks, Councillor. There was a theophany during my sacrifice
at the Grand Manteion." Simultaneously, Maytera Mint received
the impression that Quetzal was never excited, and that he was
excited now.
Potto snorted and set his steaming teakettle on the table. "Another
one? Who was it this time? Sphigx?"
Quetzal shook his head. "Pas."
"Pas is dead!"
Quetzal turned from Potto. "Great Pas, Maytera. Lord Pas, the
Father of the Seven. If it wasn't him, it was his ghost. Which in
point of fact is what the god himself said."
Chapter 2
His Name Is Hossaan
He himself had shut this door from inside and shot the bolt; it had
been the final action of his exorcism. But if this door (the obscure
side door of what had been a manteion, and what many passers-by
no doubt assumed was a manteion still) was used to admit patrons
who did not want to be seen entering Orchid's, there should be
someone to answer his knock. By summer habit, he squinted up
to gauge the width of the narrowing sun; it was masked by clouds
dark with rain or snow, and the awe-inspiring mummy-colored bulk
of the Trivigaunti airship.
He knocked again. His bearers had put down the litter and were
making themselves comfortable. Did he dare risk their seeing him
pound on a door to which nobody came? What would Commissioner
Newt have to say about the effect on his prestige and popularity?
What would Oosik say? Would it replace the fighting as the talk of
the city?
He was smiling at the thought when the door was opened by a
small and markedly unattractive woman with a faded rag over her
graying hair. "Come—uh. It ain't any more, Patera."
"I am Orchid's spiritual advisor," Silk told her firmly. "Admit me."
The woman backed away; he stepped inside and bolted the door
behind him. "Take me to her."
"I'm cleaning up in here." She eyed Oreb with disfavor.
Silk conceded privately that the former manteion could use a
cleaning. He glanced up at the stage to see whether the new backdrop
was as blasphemous as the one he had cut down, and was illogically
pleased to find that it was merely obscene.
"She'll be in her room. She might not be up yet."
"Take me to her," he repeated, and added, "At once!"
"I won't knock." The small woman sounded frightened.
"Never mind. I remember the way." He pushed past her and strode
across the former manteion with scarcely a twinge from his ankle.
Here was the step on which he had sat to talk to Musk. Musk was
dead now. The memory of Musk's tortured face returned.
The courtyard beyond the manteion was deserted but by no means
empty, littered with scraps of food over which crows and pigeons
squabbled, spilled liquors, bottles, and broken glass. Oreb, bigger
than the biggest crow, watched fascinated, cocking his head this way
and that.
Orpine's naked corpse had sprawled on this wooden stair. There
was no point in looking for bloodstains today, or in trying not to step
on such stains as might be present. Silk climbed, his eyes resolutely
fixed on the gallery above.
What faith he'd had then! That Silk would be praying now, as
confident as a child that the gods heard each word, a prayer to Molpe
as patroness of the day, and one to Pas, who was as dead as Crane,
Orpine, and Musk. Most of all, that earlier Silk would have prayed
devoutly to the Outsider, though the Outsider had warned that he
would send no aid.
Yet the Outsider had come with healing when he had lain near death.
And to be more accurate (Silk paused at the top of the steps, remembering)
the Outsider had not actually said that he would get no help, but
warned him to expect none—which was not precisely the same thing.
Buoyed by the thought, he walked along the creaking gallery to the
door that Crane had opened when he came out to examine Orpine's
body, and was about to open it himself when it was opened from
within.
He blinked, gasped, and blinked again. Oreb, whom few things
surprised, whistled before croaking, "Lo, girl."
"Hi, Oreb. Hello, Patera. All the blessings on you this afternoon
and all that."
Silk smiled, finding it easier than he had expected; there was nothing
to be gained by berating her, surely. "Chenille, it's good to see you.
I've been wondering where you were. I have people searching for
you and Auk."
"You thought I was finished with this." The expression of her coarse,
flat-cheeked face was by no means easy to read, but she sounded
despondent.
"I hoped you were," Silk said carefully. "I still hope you are—that
last night was the last night." If the gods did not care, why should
he? He thrust the thought aside.
"Nobody last night, Patera. There wasn't enough to keep the other
dells busy. You're thinking how about rust, aren't you? I can tell
from the way you look at me. Not since the funeral. Come on in."
She stepped back.
He entered, careful not to brush her jutting breasts.
"Now you're wondering how long it'll last. Me too. You didn't
know I was a regular mind reader, did you?" She srniled, and the
smile made him want to put his arms around her.
He nodded instead. "You're very perceptive. I was."
Oreb felt he had been left out long enough. "Where Auk?"
"I don't know. You want to come to my room, Patera? You can
sit, and we could talk like we did that other time."
"I must speak to Orchid—but if you wish it."
"We don't have to. Come on, she's probably about dressed. Her
room's up this way." Chenille led him along a corridor he recalled
only vaguely. "Maybe I could come by tomorrow to talk? Only you're
not at the place on Sun Street anymore, are you?"
"No," Silk said, "but I'm going there when I leave here. Would you
like to come?" When Chenille did not reply, he added, "I have a litter;
I've been trying to spare my ankle."
She was shocked. "You can't let people see me with you!"
"We'll put the curtains down."
"Then we could talk in there, huh? All right."
Silk, too, had come to a decision. "I'd like to have you with me
when I speak to Orchid. Will you do it?"
"Sure, if you want me." She stopped before Orchid's door. "Only I
hope you're not going to get her mad."
Recalling the small woman's fear, Silk knocked. "Were you
leaving just now, Chenille? We can arrange to meet later, if this
is inconvenient."
She shook her head. "I saw you out my window and put this gown
on, that's all."
Orchid's door had opened. Orchid, in a black peignoir that reminded
Silk vividly of the pink one she had worn when she had admitted him
with Crane, was staring open mouthed.
He tore his own gaze from her gaping garment. "May I speak with
you when you've finished dressing, Orchid? It's urgent; I wouldn't
have troubled you otherwise."
Numbly, the fat woman retreated.
"Come on, Patera." Chenille led the way in. "She can put on a,
you know, more of a wrap-up." To Orchid she added, "He's gimp,
remember? Maybe you could invite him to sit."
Orchid had recovered enough to tug at the lace-decked edges of the
peignoir, covering bulging flesh that would reappear the moment she
released them. "I—you're the caldé now. The new one. Everybody's
talking about you."
Oreb offered proof. "Say Silk!"
"I'm afraid I am. I'm still the same man, however, and I need
your help."
Chenille said firmly. "Have a seat, Patera."
"Yeah, sit down. Do I call you Caldé or Patera?"
"I really prefer to stand as long as you and Chenille are standing.
May I say it's pleasant to see you again? Pleasant to see you both.
I've been looking for Chenille, as I told her, and I've met so many
new people—commissioners at the Juzgado and so forth—that you
seem like old friends."
"Good friends." Chenille dropped onto the green-velvet couch. "I'll
never forget how you stood up to the councillors at Blood's." She
turned to Orchid. "I told you about it, right?"
"Yeah, but I never thought I'd see you again, Caldé. I mean to
talk to."
He grasped the opportunity. "You saw me when Hyacinth and I
were riding through the city, and we saw you. Have you seen Hyacinth
since then?"
Orchid shook her head as she sat down beside Chenille.
Gratefully, Silk sat too. "I mean her no harm—none whatsoever.
I merely wish to find her."
"I'm sure you don't, Caldé. I'd tell you if knew."
Chenille said, "You're going to ask me in a minute. I can't remember
how long it's been since I saw Hy. A couple months. Maybe longer
than that."
"No girl?" Oreb inquired.
Silk looked around at him. "Chenille is only one of the people we've
been trying to find, actually. Now I'm hoping to find out something
about the others."
"I'll call you Caldé," Orchid announced. "It feels easier. A hoppy
was here asking about Hy. Did you know that?"
"I sent him, indirectly at least."
"He wanted to know about Chen, too. And Auk." Orchid glanced
at Chenille, afraid that she was revealing too much.
"But you told him nothing. I can't blame you. In your place I
would probably have done the same."
Orchid struggled to her feet. "I'm forgetting my manners. Maybe
you'd like a glass of wine? I remember that time when you said
you were sorry you only had water, but water was what I wanted
right then. You got some for me, and good water too. You've got
a good well."
"No wine, thank you. You told the Guardsman who came here
that you didn't know where Hyacinth, or Chenille, or Auk was. I
know you must have, because any information you provided him
would have been reported to me, with its source. As I said, I would
very likely have acted just as you did, if I had been in your place.
This afternoon it occurred to me that you might tell me more than
you'd tell someone you didn't know or trust, so I came in person. I
take it that Chenille was already here when he arrived to question
you. Was that yesterday?"
Orchid nodded. Chenille said, "It's my fault, Patera. I asked her
not to tell anybody." For perhaps five seconds she was silent, nibbling
at her lower lip. "Because of that other man. You know who I mean,
Patera? He was at Blood's, too, and he didn't get shot like the fat
one. The tall one. He saw me, and he heard my name."
Silk's forefinger drew small circles on his cheek. "Do you think he
knew enough about you to search for you here?"
"I don't know. I've tried to remember everything Blood said, and
I don't remember anything about that. Only he might have said
something before or after or maybe even something I've forgotten.
He'd seen me, and knew who I was."
"In that case," Silk said slowly, "I'm surprised that you came
back here."
Orchid poured a pony of brandy. "It isn't as dumb as you think,
Caldé. If somebody came around, we'd tell her so she'd have time
to hide. We did with the hoppy, didn't we, Chen?"
"That's right, Patera. Anyhow I pretty much had to. I didn't have
any money—"
"I must speak to you about that; remind me after we leave."
"Except a little here, and my jewelry's here, except for this ring."
She held up her hand to display it, and the ruby glowed like a coal
from the forge. "I think it's worth a deck, and so does Orchid."
Orchid nodded emphatically.
"Only Auk gave it to me, and I told him I'd never sell it. I won't,
either. Remember when you and me talked in the front room of your
little house, Patera?"
"Yes, I do. I'm surprised that you do, however."
"I didn't to start, but after a while it came back. What I was going
to say is I had my best pieces on, my jade earrings and the necklace,
only it got lost when my good wool gown did."
Silk nodded. "Patera Incus said Maytera Marble had made Blood
give you the chenille one you had on there."
"Uh-huh. I'll tell you about losing the other one and my necklace
some other time. What I was going to say is they hurt my ears, down
in the tunnel. I took them off and gave them to Auk, and he put them
in his pocket." She fell silent, her chest heaving dramatically.
"When I find Auk, I'll remind him to return them to you."
"There's something I've got to tell you about him, too. You won't
believe me, but I've got to tell you just the same. Only not now."
"All right. Tell me when you feel ready to do so." Silk turned back
to Orchid. "Permit me to ask again. Do you know where Hyacinth
is? Do you have any idea at all?"
Shaking her head, Orchid passed her brandy to Chenille. "Drink
it, you'll feel better." Freed of the stem, Orchid's beringed fingers
clenched. "Patera, I need a favor and I need it bad. Ever since I saw
you in the hall I've been trying to think of a good way to ask. If I
knew anything that would help you find Hy, I'd tell you and ask for
my favor. I don't, but I got connections and they know places the
hoppies never heard of I'll get them on it as quick as I can."
Oreb flew from Silk's shoulder to Chenille's. "Where Auk?"
"My question exactly," Silk said. "You told the Guardsman you
didn't know where Hyacinth was, and you were telling him the truth.
You lied when you told him that you didn't know where Chenille
was. What about Auk?"
Orchid shook her head. "I've got a couple culls asking. He's got
Chen's bobbers, like she says. We know he's around. We've talked
to bucks that saw him. Isn't that right?"
Chenille nodded.
"But nobody seems to know where he dosses. A friend of mine told
him I wanted to see him, and he said maybe he'd come later, but he
hasn't." Orchid tapped her forehead. "He's cank, they say. Talking
clutter."
"Let me know if he comes, will you please? Immediately."
"Absolutely, Caldé. You can count on it. Want me to keep him
here until you get here?"
"He'll stay," Chenille interposed. "He'll be in my room."
"Yes, I do," Silk told Orchid. "You've offered me several favors,
and I want them all. I want very much to learn where Hyacinth is. I
want to learn where Auk is, too, and I want you to keep him here if
he comes. He used to come here often, I know. You said you required
a favor from me. I'll help you if I can. What is it?"
"Blood's dead. That's what Chen says, and it's all over town anyhow.
They say—am I stepping in it?"
Chenille swallowed a sip of brandy. "They say you killed him,
Patera. Thats what some people told me out at his house before the
fighting was over."
Orchid took a step toward Silk. "I own this." Her voice was husky
with emotion. "This house of mine. But I bought it with money Blood
gave me, and I had to sign a paper."
Belatedly, Silk rose too. "What did it say?"
"I don't know. It was at his place in the country. Once in a while
he'd come to town and see people, but mostly he sent word and you
went out there to see him. If he liked you, he'd send his floater for
you. That was the first time in my life I got to ride in one."
Recalling his trip from Blood's villa to the manteion on Sun Street,
Silk nodded. "Go on."
"We talked about, you know, what sort of house I'd found, where
it was and how big and the girls I'd got lined up. Then he pulled out a
paper and said sign this. I did, and he stuck it away again and gave me
the money. I got the deed, and it's in my name, but now he's dead and
I don't know about the paper. I want to keep my house. It would kill
me to lose it. That's lily. With him gone, I don't know where I stand,
but I'd feel a lot better knowing I had the caldé in my corner."
"He is." Silk started toward the door. "You have my word, Orchid;
but I must go—we must, if Chenille's coming."
"I've got to get my coat." She was already on her feet. "Your litter's
around back? On Music? I'll meet you."
As he rattled down the wooden steps, Silk could not be sure he
had told her it was, or that he had replied at all.
"If you don't want to, they won't make you," Auk told his listeners.
"You think the gods are a bunch of hoppies? They don't push anybody
around. Why should they? When they want to do you a good turn,
they say do this and this, 'cause it's going to be good, you're going
to like it. Only if you say it's a queer lay, they say dimber by us,
we'll give it to somebody else. Remember Kypris? She didn't say go
uphill and solve all those kens. She said if you want to, go to it and
I'll keep the street. This is like that. I'm not here to make anybody
do anything. Neither's Tartaros."
One of his listeners asked, "What've we got to do now?"
The blind god whose hand was upon Auk's shoulder whispered,
"Tell him to make ready."
"To start with, you got to get yourself set," Auk said. "Get used
to it. You'll be going to a new place. It'll be better, real nice, but
all the stuff you're used to will be down the chute. Even the sun'll
be different, a short sun that won't ever go out. You got to think
about it, and that's why I'm here, to start you culls thinking. You
want to think about what to take, and who to take with you, and
talk to 'em. If you're like me, you're going to want pals. Tell 'em.
Every man's got to have a woman, too, and every woman's got to
take a man. Just sprats don't have to have anybody."
A big-nosed woman shouted, "Over here!" and Auk's listeners drifted
away, forming two long lines, slug guns at the ready.
"That went well," Tartaros whispered.
"They didn't believe me." Wearily, Auk started back down the tunnel;
this one was open to the sky, as most were on this level. The walls
were walls, but had doors and windows in them. He was still trying
to make up his mind whether that made things better or worse.
"Men come slowly to belief," the god whispered, "nor is that to
be deplored. Some have taken the first step already, because you
urged it."
Auk felt a glow of satisfaction. "If you figure that was enough, what
we did back there, dimber with me. Think I ought to steal something
for her to eat? I said I would."
"You must steal more cards, as well."
Auk steered the blind god around a hoppy's corpse, its eyes and
mouth black with cold-numbed flies. "You won't let me spend 'em,
Terrible Tartaros."
"We will have need of many cards, and quickly. Have I not made
it clear to you?"
"Yeah, to fix up a lander." Auk smiled at the thought. "I guess
you did."
"That is well. Your mind is mending. Steal food, if you wish, Auk,
and more cards where you can."
As their litter jogged down Sun Street Chenille said, "I'd like you to
shrive me. Will this take long enough?"
"That will depend on how much you have to tell me." Silk was acutely
aware of her hip pressing his own. He recalled a rule forbidding sibyls
from riding in a litter with a man; he was beginning to feel that there
should be another—strictly enforced—against augurs riding with
women. "Certainly it would be more regular to do it in the manteion,
where we would not be pressed for time."
"You know what I'm afraid of? I'm afraid of some goddess getting
in me again. You don't know about Scylla, do you?"
"I've spoken with Patera Incus. He told me that Scylla had possessed
you—it was one of the reasons I was anxious to find you—and that
she, through you, had appointed him Prolocutor."
Chenille nodded, the motion of her head almost ghostly in the
tightly curtained litter. "I remember that a little. Only he talked
about it so much after she let me go that I can't be sure exactly
what I said. Auk could tell you."
"I'll ask when we find him; but the Prolocutorship is a concern of
the Chapter's, not the civil government's. In other words, I have no
more say in the matter than any other member of the clergy, and
none at all as caldé. Was Auk the only other person present?"
"Dace, but he's dead."
"I see. I refrained from asking Patera about witnesses. As I said,
it's a matter that concerns me only as one augur among many. It
may be that I'll no longer be an augur at all when the matter comes
before the clergy."
Silk was silent for a moment, his eyes vague. "If what Patera reports
is true, and I'm inclined to credit him, it's unfortunate that Scylla
didn't make her wish known at a time when other augurs, or sibyls,
were present. Most of the—"
Chenille interrupted. "I wouldn't mind if it was Kypris again. It
might be nice. Only Scylla was really rough. That's how I lost my gown
and my good jade necklace, I'd go out to the lake and look for it, only
I'm pretty sure somebody's found it by this time. Anyway, isn't there
someplace where we could do it besides in the manteion? Kypris got
me when I was in there, and Scylla when I was in her shrine at the lake.
I'm going to try to stay away from places like that for a while."
"I see. If you don't look at the Sacred Window, you can't be
possessed—so Kypris implied, at least." Too late, Silk recalled that there
was no Window in Scylla's shrine. "It may be that there are other means, of
course," he finished lamely, "or that only she is limited in that fashion."
"Don't you bucks ever get possessed?"
"Certainly we do. In fact, it's much more usual, or so the
Chrasmologic Writings imply. Men are normally possessed by
male gods, such as Pas, Tartaros, Hierax, and the Outsider, or
such minor male gods as Catamitus. That is true of enlightenment
as well. I myself was enlightened by the Outsider, not Pas, though
it would appear that common report attributes my enlightenment to
Pas." Silk forbore mentioning that Pas was dead.
"The reason I was asking—"
Their litter stopped, lowered gently to an uneven surface. Oreb
pushed the curtain aside with beak, and was gone.
"I'll be here a while," Silk told the head bearer. "It might be best if
I were to pay you now."
The head bearer made an awkward bow with one eye on his men,
who were helping Chenille out of the litter. "We'll wait, Caldé. No
trouble."
Silk got out his cardcase. "May I give you something so you can
refresh yourselves while you wait?"
"We'll be all right." The head bearer backed away.
"As you wish."
The garden gate was unlocked; Silk opened it for Chenille. "I was
afraid you'd give them too much," she whispered as she passed.
"They'd get drunk."
That explained the head bearer's refusal, Silk decided as he reclosed
the gate; it would not do for the bearers of the caldé's litter to be
drunk. He made a mental note to allow for the propensity of the
lowest classes to drink too much.
"Is anybody here?" Chenille looked about her at the arbor and the
wells, the berry brambles and wilted tomato vines under the windows
of the manse, the seared fig and the leafless little pear, and the spaded
black soil that had been Maytera Marble's struggling garden.
"At the moment? I can't say. I assume that Patera Gulo's still off
fighting—or at any rate off watching what's left of Erne's brigade.
Maytera Marble's probably in the cenoby; we'll find out when I've
shriven you."
• • •
"You won't hold us long with a handful of men," Maytera Mint told
Spider. "Colonel Bison has five hundred."
Spider chuckled. He was, as she had concluded a half-hour before,
rather too well suited to his name, a man who made her think of a
fat, hairy spider watching its web in a dirty corner.
Quetzal said, "He's taking us down into the tunnels."
Spider opened a door as Quetzal spoke, revealing a flight of rough
steps descending into darkness. "You know about those, old man?"
"I just came up from them. Did you hear me tell Potto I'd talked
to Loris?"
"Councillor Potto to you." Spider gestured with a needler; he was two
full heads taller. "Now get down there before I kick you down."
"I can't walk fast, my son." Quetzal tottered toward the steps. "I'll
delay you and the others."
There had been a note in his quavering old voice that gave Maytera
Mint a surge of irrational confidence. "The Nine avenge wrongs done
to augurs and sibyls," she warned Spider, "and their vengeance is
swift and terrible. What they might do to someone who maltreats
the Prolocutor, I shudder to think."
Spider grinned, showing remarkably crooked teeth. "That's lily,
General. So don't you shove him down and run. Stir it, now.
The tall cully behind you, and me behind him. We're all going
to wait nice till Councillor Potto and my knot fetch along his
dead body."
She started down the steps, one hand on a wooden rail that seemed
both grimy and insecure. Behind her, Remora said, "This is where,
ah, the caldé, eh? The cellar, in which, um—"
"Sergeant Sand," she told him. The dull gleam that had been
Quetzal's hairless head had disappeared into the darkness; she
quickened her pace, although the steps were steep and high, and
she was afraid of falling. "Sergeant Sand held the caldé down here
for six hours or more. He told me about it."
Remora bumped her from behind. "Sorry! Ah—pushed."
"Keep moving," Spider growled.
The sound of their voices had kindled a dull green light some
distance down the steps; in the dimness she could make out ranked
shelves of dusty jars, and what seemed to be abandoned machinery.
Involuntarily she murmured, "He's gone."
Spider heard her. "Who is?"
"His Cognizance." She halted, speaking over her shoulder. "Look
for yourself. He should be on the stair in front of me, but he's not."
At the last words, the bright bird called hope sang in her heart.
"There you are!" Maytera Marble exclaimed as Silk emerged from the
chilly privacy of the vine-draped arbor. "There's a man here looking
for you, Patera. I said you weren't here, but he says you've got a
litter on Sun Street."
Silk sighed. "It's been like this since Phaesday. No doubt it's
extremely urgent."
"That's just what he said, Patera." Maytera Marble nodded vigorously,
her metal face luminous in the gray daylight. "And it must be.
He came in a floater."
Chenille's smile turned to a stare. "Hello, Maytera. What happened
to your hand?"
"How good of you to ask!" She displayed her stump of arm. "My
hand's fine, my daughter. I've got it in a drawer, wrapped up in a clean
towel. It's the rest of—we should go, Patera. He's waiting for you in
front of the cenoby. He came in through the garden and knocked at
your manse. I thought he was looking for Patera Gulo."
"I was shriving Chenille," Silk explained. "I'm afraid we didn't
hear him."
"I did," Chenille declared, "only I thought it was on the street. It
was while I was telling you about—" He silenced her, a finger to
his lips.
"His name is Hossaan," Maytera Marble continued. "He's foreign,
I think, but he says he knows you. He gave you a ride once, and he
was on a boat with you out on the lake. Now where are you—? Oh,
I forgot. He can't go through the cenoby."
The last words were spoken to Silk's back. At a limping run, he
vanished into the narrow opening between the northwest corner of
the manteion and the southwest corner of the cenoby.
"There's a gate," Maytera Marble explained to Chenille, "that opens
onto the children's playground from Silver Street. But you and I can
go through the cenoby."
She mounted the back step and opened the kitchen door. "My
granddaughter's in here. I had just fixed her a bite when I saw that
man. Do you know her?"
"Your granddaughter?" Chenille shook her head.
"Perhaps you'd enjoy a little boiled beef too?" Maytera Marble
lowered her voice. "I think it's good for her to talk with other bio
girls. She's been, well, sheltered, I suppose you could call it. And
I have something to say to Patera before that man makes off with
him. I have a favor to ask him, a great big one."
On Silver Street, Silk was already speaking to "that man." "I haven't
been looking for you," he said. "It was stupid of me, incredibly stupid.
I've had Guardsmen out combing the city for Hyacinth and some
other people, but you had slipped my mind completely."
"We can talk in my floater, Caldé." Hossaan was slight and
swarthy, with vigilant eyes. "It'll be more private and get us out
of this wind."
"Thank you." Stepping into the floater, Silk let himself sink into
its black-leather upholstery.
The translucent canopy went up with a muted sigh, and the freezing
gusts that had been punishing Viron ended, if only for them.
"If your Guardsmen had looked, they would've found me." Hossaan
smiled as he took his place in the front seat. "These things aren't easy
to hide."
"I suppose not. I ran to see you as soon as I realized who you
were because I want to ask where Hyacinth is. You brought her to
Ermine's on Hieraxday to meet me."
Hossaan nodded.
"From your name—Maytera Marble told me that—you're a
Trivigaunti. Is that right? Doctor Crane said once that you were
his second in command. Most of the spies he employed seem to
have been Vironese, but it would be natural for him to have a few
from his own city, people he could trust completely."
"Only me, Caldé. You're right, though. More of us would have
made us a lot more effective."
"Do you know where Hyacinth is?"
"No. I wish I did." Hossaan drew a deep breath. "You know, Caldé,
you've taken a load off my shoulders. I thought I'd have to find out
how much you knew and make sure you didn't learn more than you
had to. It turns out you knew everything."
Silk shook his head. "Not at all. Doctor Crane and I made an
agreement. I told him all I'd learned or guessed about his activities,
and in return he answered my questions about them. I had guessed
very little, and he told me very little more, not even his real name."
"It was Sigada." Hossaan smiled bitterly. "It means he was supposed
to be handsome and humble."
"But he was neither. Thank you." Silk nodded. "Sigada. I'll always
remember him as Doctor Crane, but I'm glad to know how he
remembered himself. You weren't called Hossaan when you were
at Blood's, I'm sure."
"No. Willet."
"I see. You didn't give that name to Maytera Marble; you gave
her your real one. You can't have known that Doctor Crane had
told me about you, because you can't have talked to him between
our conversation Tarsday afternoon and his death on Hieraxday
morning."
"I told you I didn't know how much you knew, Caldé."
"That's right." Futilely, Silk groped in a pocket of his robe. "Do
you know, I don't have any prayer beads now? When I was a poor
augur, I had beads in my pocket but no money. Now I have money,
but no beads."
"An improvement. You can buy some."
"If I can find the time when the shops are open, and get into one
without being mobbed. You said you were going to tell me no more
than you had to; but plainly you intended to tell me you were a
Trivigaunti spy."
"That's right. I was going to tell you because you would have known
it from the news I came to give you. Generalissimo Siyuf is coming to
reinforce you, with thousands of troopers. I just found out about it
myself." Hossaan twisted in his seat until he was face-to-face with Silk.
"It means your victory is assured, Caldé. If you're not defeated before
she arrives, it will be impossible for you to be defeated at all." There
was a timid tap on the canopy, and Hossaan said, "It's the sibyl."
Turning, Silk saw Maytera Marble's metal face, hardly a span
from his. "Let her in, please. I can't imagine myself saying anything. I
wouldn't want her to know—or hearing any such news or confidence,
except in shriving."
The canopy retraced, and Maytera Marble entered, her long black
skin and wide sleeves flapping in the wind. "I spoke to you, Patera,
but you couldn't hear me."
"No," Silk said. "No, Maytera, I couldn't." He motioned to Hossaan
and the canopy enclosed them as before.
"I don't want to interrupt, but seeing you in this machine I thought
you might be about to leave. And...and..."
"I suppose we are, but not without Chenille. I want to take her
with me. Is she in the cenoby?"
Maytera Marble nodded. "I'll go get her in a moment, Patera. She's
eating."
"But first you want to tell me something. Is it about her, or," Silk
hesitated, "your granddaughter, Maytera?"
"I wanted to ask you for something, Patera, actually. I realize
that you and this foreign gentleman were conferring, and that it's
important. But this won't take long. I'll ask and go."
"Hossaan is from Trivigaunte," Silk told her, "like your friend
General Saba. They're our allies, as you must know, and I've just
learned from Hossaan that they're sending more troops to help us."
"Why, that's wonderful!" Maytera Marble smiled, her head back
and inclined to the right. "But after news like that my little problem
will seem terribly insignificant, I'm afraid."
"I'm certain it won't, Maytera. You're not the sort who bothers
others with insignificant problems." To Hossaan, Silk added, "Now
I want to say that Maytera was to me what you were to Doctor
Crane, but she was far more. I came to this manteion straight from
the schola, and I'd been here only a bit over a year when Patera
Pike died. Maytera saved me from making a fool of myself at least
once a day." He paused, remembering. "Though I wish it had been
more, because I did make a fool of myself often, in spite of all that
she could do."
"I intrigued against you, too," Maytera Marble confessed. "I didn't
hate you, or at least I told myself I didn't. But I obstructed and
embarrassed you in small ways, telling myself that it was for your
own good." Her voice grew urgent. "I don't have the right to ask
favors. I know that, but—"
"Of course you do!"
"I can't manage it myself. I wish I could. I've prayed for the means,
but I can't. Do you know Marl, Patera?"
"I don't think so." Silk, who knew few chems, exhausted his mental
list quickly. "She—?"
"He, Patera."
"He can't attend our sacrifices. I can't even remember the last time
I saw a chem there—except you, of course."
"There aren't many left," Hossaan put in, "here or in my own city.
Is he a soldier?"
Maytera Marble shook her head. "He's a valet. He works for a man
called Fulmar. I don't see him often at all, but I went over yesterday,
my granddaughter and I did, and..."
"Go on, Maytera."
"I showed him my hand. The one that my—you know..."
Silk nodded, he hoped encouragingly. "It's better not to dwell on
that, Maytera, I'm sure. You showed him your hand."
"I brought it in a little basket, wrapped up in a towel, because
there's fluid that might leak out. It's a very good hand still. It's just
that I can't put it back on."
"I understand."
"Marl says there's a shop, though I'd think it would have to be a
big place, really, way over past the crooked bridge, where they make
taluses and fix them. Mostly it's fixing, he said, because it takes so
long to make one, and so much money. We chems aren't really like
taluses. We were made in the Short Sun Whorl, and we can think
and see a great deal better, and we don't burn fish oil," she laughed
nervously, "or anything like that. But Marl thought they might be
able to do this for me—put it back—if I had the money. It wouldn't
be like making a chem or even a talus, just a simple repair."
"Yes. Yes, of course. I should have thought of something like that,
Maytera. Welding? Is that that they call it?"
Hossaan said, "That's what they call it when they fix a floater."
"It's not just reuniting the metal, Patera. There are little tubes in
there, tiny tubes, and wires, and things like threads—fibers, they're
called—that pipe light. Look." She held up her useless right arm,
pushing back the sleeve so that he could see the sheared end. "Marl
thought they might be able to do it. He's as old as I was, Patera,
and I don't think he always reasons correctly any more. But..."
Silk nodded. "It's your only chance. I understand."
"Marl would have given me the money if he'd had it, but he's very
poor. This Fulmar doesn't pay him, just clothes and a place to live.
And even if I had money, they might not want to try it, Marl said,
unless I had a great deal."
"Believe me, I'll help you, Maytera. We'll go as quickly as we can.
You have my word on it."
She had taken a large white handkerchief from her empty sleeve.
"I'm so sorry, Patera." She dabbed at her eyes. "I can't really cry, not
for a long, long time. And yet I feel that way. There's so much work,
with you gone and Patera Gulo gone, and Maytera Mint gone, and my
granddaughter to take care of, and just one hand for everything."
Silk reached another decision. "I'm going to take you away, too,
Maytera, for the time being at least. You and Mucor both. I need
you both, and it's too dangerous for you—and for her, particularly—to
be here alone. Will you come with me if I ask you to? Remember,
I'm still the augur of this manteion."
She looked up at him with a new glow behind the scratched, dry
lenses of her eyes. "Yes indeed, Patera, if you tell me to. I'll have to
straighten up first and put things away. Put a notice on the door of
the palaestra so the children will know."
"Good. There's a Caldé's Palace on the Palatine, as well as
the Prolocutor's. I'm sure you must remember when the caldé
lived there."
She nodded.
"I'm reopening it. I've slept in the Juzgado the past few nights,
but that's never been more than an expedient; if Viron's to have a
new caldé, he has to live in the Caldé's Palace. I'll need a place to
entertain Generalissimo Siyuf when she arrives, to begin with. We'll
want an official welcome for her and her troops, too, and I'll have to
notify Generalissimo Oosik as soon as possible. Thousands of fresh
troops are certain to change his plans."
Silk turned to Hossaan. "How long do we have? Can you give me
some idea?"
"Not an accurate one, Caldé. I'm not sure when she left Trivigaunte,
and Siyul's a famous hard marcher."
"A week?"
"I doubt it." Hossaan shook his head. "Three or four days, at
a guess."
"Patera." Maytera Marble touched Silk's arm. "I can't live in the
same house with a man, not even an augur. I know nothing will—but
the Chapter..."
"You can if he's ill," Silk told her firmly. "You can sleep in the
same house to nurse him. I've a chest wound—I'll show it to
you as soon as we get there, and you can change the dressing
for me. I'm also recovering from a broken ankle. His Cognizance
will grant you a dispensation, I'm sure, or the coadjutor can.
Hossaan, can you take us back to the Juzgado? There will be
four of us."
"Sure thing, Caldé."
"I don't have a floater at present, except for the Guard floaters,
and Oosik needs those. Perhaps I could hire you and your floater—we'll
talk about it.
"Maytera, do whatever you must, and tack up that note. I was
hoping to sacrifice here and go to the Cock when I left, but both
will have to wait. Tomorrow, perhaps.
"Hossaan, I'm going into the manse for a moment while she does
all that; then we'll collect Mucor and a young woman who came
here with me, and pay off my litter."
"I heard you had a pet bird," Saba said, eyeing Oreb; she was a
massive woman with a marked resemblance to an angry sow.
Silk smiled. "I'm not sure pet's the correct word. I've been trying
to set him free for days. The result has been that he comes and goes
as he pleases, says anything he wants, and seems to enjoy himself far
more than I do. Today we went back to my manteion, mostly to enlist
Maytera Marble's help in airing this place out. I got some important
news there, by the way, which I'll give you in a moment."
"That's right." Saba snapped her fingers. "You holy men are
supposed to be able to find out the gods' will by looking at sheep
guts, aren't you?"
"Yes. Some of us are better at it than others, of course, and no
one's ever suggested that I'm much better than average. Don't you
have augurs in Trivigaunte?"
"No cut!" Oreb required reassurance.
"Not you, silly bird. Positively not." Silk smiled again. "I got him
as a victim, you see; and though I've ruled that out, he's afraid I'll
change my mind. What I wanted to tell you is that I went into the
manse to see if I'd left my beads there Phaesday night. I should have
said earlier that he'd flown off when I got out of my litter.
"Well, I went into the kitchen because I empty my pockets on
the kitchen table sometimes, and there he was on the larder. 'Bird
home,' he told me, and seemed quite content; but he rode out on
my shoulder when I left."
"He sounds like a good trooper," Saba leaned back in her ivory-inlaid
armchair. "You have so many male troopers here. I'm still getting used
to them, though most fight well enough. I have news for you, too,
Caldé, when you've given me yours."
"In a moment. To tell the truth, I'm afraid you'll rush off the
minute you hear it and I want to ask about augury in Trivigaunte.
Besides, Chenille's making coffee, and she'll be disappointed if we
don't drink it. She wants to meet you, too—you helped save her;
she was one of the hostages at Blood's." Seeing that Saba did not
understand him, Silk added, "The villa in the country."
"Oh, there. You were the one we came after, Caldé."
"But you saved Chenille too, and Patera Incus and Master Xiphias—you
and Generalissimo Oosik, and several thousand of General
Mint's people, I ought to say."
Saba nodded. "We were a little part, but we did what we could.
Where's Mint, anyhow?"
"Trying to turn courageous but untrained and undisciplined
volunteers into a smoothly running horde, I assume. I've tried
to do that sort of thing myself on a much smaller scale—with
the mothers of the children at our palaestra, for example. I don't
envy her the task."
"You've got to get rough with them, sometimes," Saba told him,
looking as if that were the aspect she enjoyed. "There's times to be
pals, all troopers together. And there's times when you need the
karbaj."
Silk wisely refrained from asking what the karbaj was. "About
augury. From what you said, I take it that it's not practiced in
Trivigaunte? Is that correct?"
Saba inclined her head, the movement barely perceptible. "You try
to make the gods like you by cutting up animals. We don't. I'm not
trying to offend you."
"Not at all, General."
"I'm a plain-spoken old campaigner, and I don't pretend to be
anything more. Or anything less. A simple old trooper. The way
things are here makes me try and act like an ambassador, so I do
my best." She laughed loudly. "But that's not too good, so I'll give
it to you straight. Your customs seem backwards to me, and I keep
waiting for them to turn around. Take her, now." Saba pointed to
Chenille, who had entered with a tray. "Here's a woman and a man
talking, and a woman waiting on them. I'm not saying you never see
that at home, but you don't see it often."
"But to get back—" Silk accepted a cup. "Thank you, Chenille.
You didn't have to do this, and I'm not sure General Saba realizes
that. Goodness and servility look alike at times, though they're very
different. Won't you sit down?"
"If I won't bother you."
"Of course not. We'll be happy to have your company, and I know
you were anxious to meet General Saba. She's the commander of the
Rani's airship."
"I know." Chenille gave Saba an admiring smile.
"She was one of your rescuers. Generalissimo Oosik told me
afterward that he'd be delighted to see the kind of efficiency her
pterotroopers displayed in a brigade of our Guard."
"They're picked women, every one of them," Saba told Silk
complacently. "The competition to get in is fierce. We turn away
ten for each we take."
"I want to get back to augury. If I seem to be harping on it, I hope
you'll excuse me; I was trained as an augur, and I doubt that I'll ever
lose interest in it entirely. But first, would it be possible for me to go
up in your airship some time?"
Saba winked at Chenille, her brutal face briefly humorous.
"One of the students—his name is Horn, and he's acting as a
messenger here for the present—told me not long ago that he'd
dreamed of flying. So have I, though I didn't admit it to Horn, or
even to myself when I spoke with him."
"Bird fly!" Oreb proclaimed.
"Exactly. We can scarcely look up without seeing a bird; and there
are fliers every few days, proving it can be done. When I was a boy,
I used to imagine they were shouting, "We can fly and you can't!"
up there too high to be heard. I knew it was foolish, but the feeling
has never left me entirely."
"Wing good." Hopping onto Silk's head, Oreb displayed it.
"He couldn't fly for a while," Silk explained. "Before that I doubt
that he took much pride in it."
"I'm going to surprise you, Caldé," Saba announced. "You are
welcome to visit my airship anytime. Just let me know when you're
coming so I can get things trooper-like for you."
"Of course." Silk sipped from his cup, pausing to admire the
delicate porcelain, brave with gilt and holding a painted Scylla as
well as coffee.
"If that were wine, I'd tell you I was going to fit you up with wings
like my girls", the teeth of Saba's underjaw showed in a savage grin,
"and shove you out. But sham diplomats don't get to make that sort
of a joke."
Silk sighed. "I'd thought about it. I'm not at all sure I have the
courage, but perhaps I might try."
"Don't. You'd be crippled for life if you weren't killed. My girls
start with a platform that would fit in this room. I—who's that!"
"Who?" Silk glanced at the doors; so did Chenille.
"There was a face in that mirror." Saba stood up, her cup still in
her hand. "Somebody that isn't in here, somebody I've never seen
before. I saw her!"
"I'm sure you did, General." Silk put down his coffee.
"You've only just reopened this palace, isn't that right?"
"Less than an hour ago, actually. Maytera Marble and—"
"A secret passage." Saba's tone brooked no contradiction. "The
mirror's a peephole, and somebody's spying from in there already.
One passage at least, and there could be more, I've seen some at
home. What's that girl doing?"
Chenille had gone to the mirror and grasped the sides of its ornate
frame with both hands. "It's dusty," she told Silk. "They had dust
covers over all this, but dust got in anyhow." With a grunt of effort,
she lifted the mirror from its hook; behind it was featureless plaster,
somewhat lighter in color than that to either side.
Silk had risen when Saba did. He limped to the wall and rapped it
with his knuckles, evoking solid thuds. Saba stared, her wide mouth
working.
"Want me to put this back, Patera?" Chenille inquired.
"I don't think so. Not yet, at least. I'll do it, or Master Xiphias
can. Can you put it down without dropping it?"
"I think so. I'm pretty strong."
The heels of Saba's polished riding boots came together with a click.
"I apologize, Caldé. I'm leaving. Again, I regret this very much."
"Don't go yet," Silk said hastily. "Your Generalissimo Siyuf is
bringing us thousands of—"
Saba's cup fell to the costly carpet, splashing it and her gleaming
boots with black coffee. "That's the news I was going to tell you!
You—you learned that from animal guts?"
Chapter 3
The First Theophany on Thelxday
Three busy days after Saba had dropped her coffee, Marrow the
greengrocer abandoned the pleasant anticipation of the parade that
was to close the market early to stare at the weary prophet nearing
his stall. "Auk?" Marrow smoothed his fruit-stained apron. "Aren't
you Auk?"
"That's me." The prophet stepped out of the wind to lean against
a table piled with oranges.
"You're a friend of the caldé's. That's what they say."
"I guess." Auk saatched his stubbled jaw. "I like him, anyhow, and
I brought a ram when Kypris came. I don't know if he likes me,
though. If he don't, I don't blame him."
Marrow wiped his nose on his sleeve. "You're a friend of General
Mint's, too."
"Everybody is now. That's what I hear."
"Scleroderma told me. You know her? The butcher's wife."
Auk shook his head.
"She knows you, and she says you used to come to Silk's manteion,
on Sun Street."
"Yeah. I know where it is."
"She says you'd sit in a little garden they've got and talk to her.
To General Mint. Would you like an orange?"
"Sure, but I don't have the money. Not that I can spend."
"Take some. Wait a minute, I'll get you a bag." Marrow hurried
to the back of his stall, and Auk slipped a peach into his pocket.
"Now you're going around talking about the Plan of Pas. Would
you like some bananas? Real bananas from Urbs?"
Auk looked at the price. "No," he said.
"Free. I'm not going to charge you."
Auk straightened up, filling his barrel of a chest with air. "Yeah. I
know. That's why I don't want any. Listen up. I'd steal your bananas,
see? That's lily. I'd steal 'em and riffle your till, 'cause that's the kind I
am. I'm a dimber thief, and Tartaros needs cards for something we're
planning to do. Only I won't let you give me bananas. They cost you
too much, and it wouldn't be right."
"But—"
"Muzzle it." Auk had begun to peel an orange, pulling away bright
cusps of rind with strong, soiled fingers. "I got a mort back in the
Orilla I'm supposed to take care of. She's hungry, and she's not used
to it like me. So if you want to put oranges and maybe a couple
potatoes in that sack, I'll thank you for 'em and take 'em to her.
No bananas, see? But nab the gelt off these that want to buy first.
I'll take the sack when you're done, if you still want to give it."
"That's Auk the Prophet," Marrow whispered to the crowd around
his stall. "A dozen yellow apples, madame? And two cabbages?
Absolutely! Very fresh and very cheap."
A few minutes later he told Auk, "I want to take you over to
Shrike's as soon as my boy gets back. Scleroderma's husband? He'll
let you have a bite or two of meat, I'm sure."
There were two hundred, if not more, waiting for Auk in the Orilla,
and another hundred following him. Tartaros whispered, "You are
fatigued, Auk my noctolater, and cold."
"You got the lily there, Terrible Tartaros."
"Therefore you are liable to be impatient."
"Not me. I been fired and cold up on the roof, when they were
looking with dogs."
"Be warned. This time the prize is greater."
Auk shouldered their way through the crowd, halted at the door
of the boarded-up shop that had been his destination, and put down
the bags he carried. "Listen up, all you culls."
The crowd hushed.
"I don't know what you want, but I know what I want. I want
to leave this stuff with the dell inside. She's hungry, and some
cullys in the market gave me this for her. If you want to see
me, you've done it. If you want to hear me, you've done that,
too. If it's something else, let me give her these and we'll talk
about it."
A voice from the crowd called, "We want you to sacrifice!"
"You're abram. I'm no augur." Auk pounded on the warped door.
"Hammerstone! Look alive in there!"
The door opened; at the sight of the towering soldier, the crowd fell
silent. "This ain't one of the Ayuntamiento's," Auk shouted hastily.
"He's working for the gods like I am, only when we were corning
here..." He tried to remember when they had come; although he
vividly recalled watching Hammerstone free himself from tons of
shattered shiprock, he could not shut his mind upon the day. "It
was when the Alambrera gave up. Anyway all these trooper culls
were taking shots at him, so we figured it was better for him to
pull it in."
Behind him Hammerstone hissed. "Ask if Patera's here." It was like
receiving confidences from a thunderhead.
"Patera Incus!" Auk shouted. "We're looking for this real holy augur
named Patera Incus. Somebody said something about a sacrifice. Is
Patera Incus out there?"
Voices from the back of the crowd: "You do it!"
From behind Hammerstone, Hyacinth inquired urgently, "Is there
food in those? I want it."
Tartaros whispered, "Tell them you will," by some miracle overcoming
the clamor of the crowd.
Auk was so surprised he turned to look. "What the shaggy—I mean
yeah, dimber, Terrible Tartaros. Anything." Passing both sacks to
Hammerstone, he cupped his hands around his mouth. "I'll sacrifice.
You got it!"
"When?" Four men lifted a terrified brown kid over their heads;
its unhappy bleats were visible, although inaudible.
"Now, Auk my noctolater."
"Now!" Auk repeated.
A thin man whose coat and hat had once been costly asked, "You
say you're doing the gods' will. Will a god appear?"
Auk waited for assurance from the blind god at his side, but none
was forthcoming.
Others took up the question. "Will a god come?"
"What do you think?" Auk challenged them, and a hundred
arguments broke out at once.
From behind Hammerstone's green bulk, Hyacinth inquired,
"Where're we going to do it?"
"I thought you were eating."
"She is," Hammerstone rumbled. "I can hear her."
The noise grew as fifty men and a dozen loud-voiced women shouted
demands. Auk muttered, "Terrible Tartaros, you better tell me what to
tell 'em or we could have a problem here."
"Have I not, Auk my noctolater? You are to sacrifice, to me or to
whatever god you wish."
Auk turned to Hammerstone. "Get out of the door. I got to tell
both of you, and I ain't going to talk to her through you."
The soldier emerged into the street, evoking another awed silence.
Revealed, Hyacinth chewed and gulped, wiping her hands on her
soiled gown. "That was a nectarine, I think, and I think I swallowed
the pit. I can't remember spitting it out. Maybe I chewed it up. Thelx,
was it good!"
"You take care of this stuff," Auk told her, "I got to go to Sun
Street."
"I'm coming!"
Auk shook his head. "I ain't no augur—"
Tattaros whispered, "Bring the soldier and the woman."
"But I got to sacrifice. Scalding Scylla wanted me to, too. She was
going to make me give her Dace, probably."
"I'll need a coat and a bath, makeup—don't you hit me! if you
hit me again I'll—I'll—"
"You're coming all right," Auk told her, "and we're going now." He
strode into the crowd. "Listen here! Slap a muzzle on it, you culls.
Listen up!"
Hammerstone fired his slug gun into the air.
"No god's coming! You want me to sacrifice, we'll go over to Sun
Street and do it right. Only no god!" Under his breath he added,
"You couldn't see one anyhow, you cank cullys."
They followed him through the narrow street nonetheless, cowed
by him more than by the menacing soldier beside him who never
relaxed his hold on the shivering, disheveled young woman in the
red silk gown.
From the highest step of Silk's manteion, Auk addressed them
again. "I told you there ain't going to be a god. You jerk me around,
don't you? Sacrifice right this minute! Show us a god, Auk! All your
clatter. You think you could jerk me around like you do if I could
jerk the gods around? I can't. Neither can you. What I'm telling you
is, it's time."
He drew his brass-mounted hanger. "I can cut your goats with
this. That's nothing. Can I cut myself out of the whorl? That's what
matters. Think about it. Nobody but you can make you think, not
even gods."
"Sacrifice!" someone shouted.
"Not even the gods!" Auk bellowed. "Only they can snuff you if
you don't, see? Or just leave you to die, 'cause this whorl's finished!
Tartaros told me!"
The crowd stirred.
"Ever see a dead bitch in the street? And her pups still trying to
suck? That's you! And that's me!" Over his shoulder Auk added,
"Open these doors, Hammerstone."
The soldier hooked a finger as thick as a crowbar through one
wrought iron handle and rattled the door until it seemed it must
leave its hinges. "It's locked."
"Then bust it down. We'll use the wood."
Hammerstone released the door and drew back his fist, but Hyacinth
exclalined, "Wait! Somebody's coming!"
In a moment Auk heard the rattle and squeak of the old iron lock,
and the solid thunk as the bolt slid back. He grasped the handle
and pulled.
"Patera!" Hammerstone knelt as a father does to embrace a boy
who does not like being lifted, and hugged Incus in arms that could
have splintered the ribs of a bull.
Even Auk smiled. "Hi, Patera. Where you been?"
Hyacinth, torn between the opportunity for flight and the deliverance
she sensed was almost at hand, nudged Auk. "Is this him? The
one Hammerstone talks about all the time?"
"Yeah. You want to argue with him? Me neither."
Pointing to Incus he announced, "This's the augur I asked you
about. Now we can have a regular augur, and maybe he'll let me
help. We'll need wood for the altar, you scavy? Some of you got to
go get us some. Cedar if you can find any, any kind if you can't."
From Hammerstone's embrace, Incus protested, "Auk, my son!"
"We got to, Patera. You like for lots of people to see you sacrifice?
I got you three or four hundred here. Hammerstone, loosen up or
you'll chill him."
Speaking so quickly her racing words flashed past like frightened
linnets, Hyacinth gabbled, "Patera, I know what I look like, I know
how awful, but I'm not the sort that would ever set her cap for a
cully like this or even let him, you know, talk to her even if he just
wanted to talk, you know how they do, and that's not me, and I've
got money and good clothes even if you wouldn't think it to look
at me and jewelry, and I know people, I've got, you know, bucks
that would do me favors any time, commissioners and brigadiers,
and I know the caldé, I really do, he's a particular friend of mine
and this man and the soldier have been making me stay in a dirty
freezing place with rats, and you've got to help me, Patera, you've
got to tell—"
Auk clapped a hand over her month. "She goes on like that quite a
bit, Patera, and we ain't got time for it all. Let him go, Hammerstone.
Get him inside there and up to the altar. You can carry him, I guess,
if it makes you feel better."
"I've prayed," Incus managed to gasp as Hammerstone hoisted him,
"all morning, prayed upon my knees with tears and bitterest
groans—don't drop me, Hammerstone my son, your shoulders are
slippery—for a sign of favor from Surging Scylla or any other god,
the smallest morsel of assistance, the most humble crumb
of succor in my divinely ordained mission."
"I'd say maybe you got it," Auk told him. "What do you think,
Terrible Tartaros?"
Briefly, the blind god's hand tightened on his. "Release the woman,
Auk my noctolater. I am about to leave you. I have mended your
mind, insofar as I am able."
Auk turned, although he knew he could not see the god.
"It will heal itself soon of the damage that remains. I have explained
your task, and you have learned better than I could have hoped. Direct
your gaze to the Sacred Window, Auk my noctolater."
"This's the Plan, Terrible Tartaros. Emptying the whole whorl. I
can't do that by myself!"
"Look at the screen, Auk. At the Sacred Window. This is the last
instruction I shall give you."
Auk sank to his knees. Faintly, through the open door, the silver
glow shone from the far end of the manteion. "Get out of my way,
Hammerstone! I got to see the Window."
"Farewell, Auk. May neither of us forget the prayers you offered
nightside, while I hearkened invisible in your glass."
Auk stood up, alone.
"You're crying." Hyacinth stepped closer to peer at him. "Auk,
you're crying."
"Yeah. I guess I am." He wiped his streaming eyes with his fingers.
"I never had any father."
"I do, and he's a pig's arse." Worshippers pushed past them caryying
armloads of wood; some paused to stare.
"I got to get up there and do it. You want to go, go on. I won't
stop you."
"I can leave anytime I want to?"
"Yeah, Hy. Beat the hoof."
"Then I'm going to—no, that's abram. G'bye, Bruiser." Her lips
brushed his.
"Auk my son!" Incus stood beside the altar, directing the laying of
the fire. "We've more wood than we require. Tell them to desist."
He did, happy to have something to do.
At Silk's ambion, Incus drew himself up beyond his full height,
rising on his toes. "A holy augur's blessing upon each and every one
of you, my children. Silence, back there! This is a manteion, a house
sacred to the immortal gods." It was the hour he had dreamed of
since childhood.
"Hammerstone, my son. It is best to offer our pious gifts upon a
fire kindled directly from the beneficent rays. This is not accorded
us on this day of darkness. If you will look in the sacristy, behind
the Sacred Window, you may discover a fire-keeper, a vessel of metal
or even lowly terra cotta safeguarding the holy spark against such an
hour as this."
"I'm on it, Patera."
Incus returned his attention to the congregation. "At this point,
my children, I am severely tempted to discover to you my own
identity, and the multifarious vicissitudes and tribulations through
which I come to you today. I refrain, however. I am an augur,
as you see. I am that augur whom Surfeiting Scylla has designated
Prolocutor-to-be, charged with the utter destruction of the
Ayunta—"
For half a minute, their cheers silenced him.
"I am in addition—might I say comrade, Auk? A fellow sufferer
at least of Auk's."
From the manteion floor Auk shouted, "A dimber mate!"
"Thank you. Beset, as you should know, by woe and eager for a
situation of venerational tranquility, I bethought me of this manteion,
the new caldé's own, as a place to which I might retire, pray and
contemplate the inscrutable ways of the gods. I had not seen it and
had heard much of it during the brief days since Auk, my dear friend
Hammerstone—"
"I got it right here, Patera." Hammerstone displayed a pierced clay
pot from which a feeble crimson glow proceeded.
"Auk, are you to assist me? Is that to be our procedure?"
A seemingly disembodied voice called, "He has to kill 'em!"
"Then he shall, and with my blessing. What of the liturgy,
however? Auk?"
Auk had climbed the steps to the altar. "I don't know the words,
Patera. You'll have to do it."
"I shall. And if Auk is to assist, why need my dear friend
Hammerstone be excluded? Put the sacred flame to this fuel, if you
will, Hammerstone.
"I obtained the key, journeyed hence, and locked myself in, counting
the lock's blessed squeakings among the treasures of my spirit. I came,
I say, in search of quiet, resolved upon prayer and suppication. I
found it, as I had hoped, and spent hours upon my knees, the least
supplicant of the immortal gods. It is a practice I recommend to you
without reservation."
A tongue of fire had sprung up where Hammerstone fanned the
wood piled on the altar.
"I was safe from all interruption. Or so I thought. Then you arrived,
a tumultuous throng, elevating me to this sacred ambion. How clearly
the gods speak! Surmounting Scylla had lifted me to the Prolocutorship.
Now was I cautioned that the Prolocutor—I—can be no holy recluse,
however he may long for peace. Pray for me, my children, as I pray
for myself. Let me not forget my lesson!
"Auk, my son. Have you the knife of sacrifice?"
Auk drew his boot knife. "This's all I got, Patera."
"Then it must suffice. Bring it to me and I shall bless it." Incus
did so, tracing the sign of addition over the blade. Before he
finished, Hammerstone had been forced to step back from the
leaping flames.
"In a sacred ceremony more regular, I should now ask their presenters
to which of the Nine, or other immortal gods, they wished to offer the
fair victims. Today, however—"
Someone shouted, "To Tartaros! He's always on him!"
"They ain't black," Auk told the speaker.
Incus nodded solemnly. "In the present instance that must be
dispensed with. None are white. Nor are any black, as my erstwhile
comrade has rightly said. Therefore each shall be offered to all
the gods."
After glancing at the first victim, Incus faced the Sacred Window,
his arms and his voice raised dramatically. "Accept all you gods, the
sacrifice of this fine piglet. And speak to us, we beg, of the times that
are to come. What are we to do? Your lightest word will—will—"
He got no further.
The silver radiance showed flecks of color, faded pastels that might
have been shadows or phantoms, the visual illusions of disordered
sight, dabs of rose and azure that blossomed and withered, shot with
pearl and ebony.
Poised beside the young pig, Auk dropped his knife and fell to his
knees. Momentarily it seemed that he could make out a face on the
left. Then another, wholly different, on the right. A voice spoke, such
a voice as Auk had never heard, filled with the roar of mighty engines.
It praised him and urged him to seek something or someone. Now
and again, though only now and again, he heard or at least believed
he heard, a term he knew: ghost, augur, plan. Then silence.
Incus, too, was on his knees; his hands were clasped, his face that
of a child.
The piglet had vanished, drawn perhaps into the Window, or
perhaps merely fled through the dim manteion and out into the
windy winter morning.
Hammerstone stood at rigid attention, his right hand raised in
a salute.
For a time that might have been long or short, after the voice
spoke no more and the half-formed colors had gone, all was silence;
the congregation might have been so many statues, there in the
old manteion on Sun Street, statues with starting eyes and gaping
mouths.
Then the noise began. Men who had been sitting sprang to their
feet; men who had been kneeling jumped up to dance upon the pews.
Some howled as though in agony. Some shrieked as if in ecstasy. A
woman fell in a fit, thrashing, contorted as a swatted fly, belching
bloody foam as her teeth tore her tongue and lips; no one noticed
her, or cared.
"He's gone." Auk rose slowly, still staring at the now-empty Window.
More loudly, loudly enough to make himself heard by Hammerstone,
he said, "He ain't here, not any more. That was him, wasn't it? That
was Pas."
Hammerstone's steel arm crashed to his steel side, a sound like the
clash of swords.
"Did anybody... You understand him, Patera? It sounded like
he was talking about—about—" A man Auk did not know reached
out and touched Auk's coat as he might have touched the Sacred
Window.
"He liked me," Auk concluded weakly. "Kind of like he liked me,
that was what it sounded like." No one heard him.
Incus was on his feet. He tottered to the ambion; although his mouth
opened and shut and his lips appeared to shape words, no words could
be heard above the din. At last he motioned to Hammerstone, and
Hammerstone thundered for silence.
"It is my task—" Incus's voice had risen to a squeak; he cleared his
throat. "My task to explicate for you the utterance of the god." The
recurrence of something near his accustomed singsong restored his confidence.
"To gloss upon his message and relay his commands."
A man in the second row shouted, "It was Pas, wasn't it?"
Incus nodded, his cheeks trembling. "It was. Lord Pas, the Father
of the whorl and the Builder of the Gods." Neither he nor his hearers
noticed his mistake.
"He talked to me," Hammerstone told Auk. His voice held a dawning
joy. "I seen him once, way off, reviewing the parade. This time he talked
to me. Like I'm talking to you, and he gave me a order."
Auk nodded numbly.
"Patera will have heard, won't he? Sure he will. We'll talk about
this years from now, how Pas talked to us and gave me the order.
Me and Patera."
"Ere I commence my exegesis," his voice was stronger, and carried
an authority that stilled the congregation, "I shall confide to you
something not generally known, which I myself learned only today.
There has been no announcement, but I was not sworn to secrecy.
On Molpsday Great Pas granted a theophany to the—the aged worthy
augur who has for innumerable decades served us as Prolocutor. His
office has been attorned to me by Saving Scylla, who would doubtless
see his protracted devotion rewarded with that freedom from concerns
which is the perfumed ointment of superannuity. It was that, I confess,
which sent me in search of tranquility, as I have related. The
disquieting intelligence that the Father of the Seven had manifested
himself to one whom I have been only too ready to reckon a rival."
"Did he say something about me?" Half pleading and half threatening,
Auk closed upon the ambion. "He said something, didn't he?
What was it?" Hammerstone interposed himself.
"I prayed to Pas," Incus continued, wondering. "I urged the
justice of my cause with tears. Now how clearly do I see this lesser
plan, the plan that is to set in motion his greater Plan! First he
bestowed his benefaction upon the Prolocutor that was, then upon the
new." Incus indicated his own stomach. "It is the hallmark of the
actions of the gods that, however unanticipated they may be, once done
they are seen to be both perfect and inevitable.
"And now I confide the divine utterance that Great Pas has
vouchsafed to us."
High above the mummy-colored bead that was General Saba's airship,
but five hundred cubits below the low winter clouds, Fliers whom
Caldé Silk was just then likening to a flight of storks rode the
blustering north wind.
From their center, Sciathan studied his companions. Their eyes
were on the clouds, as he had expected, or else the sere brown fields,
the silver threads of streams, or the shrinking lake; no mere emergency
could overcome the habits of years, no urging—not even a god's—bring
them to consider the teeming Cargo below relevant.
Sciathan himself glanced up at the clouds and scanned his
instruments before abandoning both. A long yellow-brown column
of marchers was approaching the city from the south. He had glimpsed
similar parades often, giving little thought to them and what they might
portend; soldiers and troopers could be halted by avalanches, turned
aside by floods and forest fires, and dispersed by storms not much
less readily than flotillas. No host had ever succeeded in crossing
the Mountains That Look At Mountains; and in all likelihood, none
ever would. Here in the hold, hordes like the one below would be a
different matter.
Chapter 4
Swords of Sphigx
Standing stiffly in his official cloak of tea-colored velvet, Caldé Silk
cursed himself mentally for not providing chairs—or rather, for not
seeing to it that chairs were provided. He had supposed (such, he told
himself, had been his lamentable innocence, his utter unfitness for the
position thrust upon him) that he, with Quetzal, Oosik, and Saba—and
Maytera Mint, if she could be found—would take their places
on this platform, at which the force dispatched by Trivigaunte to the
aid of Viron would appear.
The fact, of course, was otherwise. The fact was that even
Generalissimo Siyuf's highly disciplined horde of seventy-five thousands
remained a mass of seventy-five thousand women and men—to say
nothing of thousands of horses and none but the Nine knew how
many camels.
Camels!
As a precociously pious boy, he had considered Sphigx the least
attractive goddess, a tawny-maned virago, more lioness than woman.
Now it appeared that real lions had nothing to do with real warfare;
horses, mules, and camels were the pets of Stabbing Sphigx, and he
would have accepted them happily (or even gerbils, guinea pigs, and
geese) if only they would appear in reality.
A freezing gust shook the triumphal arch. It had been hastily
erected, and would almost certainly collapse if this winter wind blew
even a trifle harder; indeed, it was liable to collapse in any event if
Siyuf's troopers did not put in an appearance soon.
Surely there ought to be somebody in the crowd around the platform
who could and would fetch chairs. First, he decided, he would ask that
a chair be provided for Quetzal, who was of advanced years and had
been standing for the better part of an hour; then, as if it were an
afterthought, he could order chairs for Oosik and Saba, and himself
as well. Five minutes more and he would leave the platform, collar
a commissioner, and demand chairs. He must and he would—that
was all there was to it.
The wind rose again, and he clenched his teeth. Yellow dust gave it
a score of visible bodies, whirling devils that skated over the Alameda.
A streamer of green paper tore free of the arch to mount the wind in
sinuous curves, vanishing in a few seconds against the heaving bulk
of the tethered airship.
From that airship, he reflected, it should be simple to gauge the
advance of Siyuf's troops. Given just one more day, he might have
arranged for signals: a flag hung out from the foremost gondola
when her advance guard entered the city, or a smoke-pot lit for an
unanticipated delay. To his own surprise, he found that he had lost
none of his eagerness to board that airship, in spite of multiplying
duties and the winter wind. Like Horn (just the person to find chairs,
or boxes at least) he longed to fly as the Fliers did.
There were a lot of them today. More, he decided, than he had
ever seen before. An entire flock, like a flight of storks, was just now
appearing from behind the airship. What city sent them to patrol the
sun, and what good could such patrols do?
A fresh gust roared along the Alameda, shaking its raddled poplars.
To his right Saba stiffened, while he himself shivered shamelessly.
The Cloak of Lawful Governance tossed like Lake Limna about his
shins, and would have streamed behind him like a banner if he had
not been holding it with both hands. Hours ago, when he had put
it on in the Juzgado, it had carried in its long train a sensation
of oppressive and almost suffocating warmth; he had been sorely
tempted to substitute a cheap (and therefore thin) augur's robe for
the luxuriously thick one he was wearing under it, although Master
Xiphias and Commissioner Trematode had dissuaded him. By this
time it should have been soaked with his perspiration; instead he
found himself wishing fervently for a head covering of some kind.
Saba had her dust-colored military cap, and Oosik a tall helmet of
green leather. He had nothing.
The old broad-brimmed straw hat he had worn while repairing
the roof was gone—lost at Blood's, like Maytera Mint. The new
broad-brimmed straw he had bought at the lake was gone too, left
in the room from which the talus had snatched him. Patera Pike's
cap, the black calotte that Patera had worn in winter, was back at
the manse—he had scarcely dared to touch it after Patera's ghost
had dropped it on the landing.
All were dead now, Pike, Blood, and the talus. The second and
third by his own hand.
Would this Siyuf and her troopers never come? He searched the
clouds beyond the airship for a glimpse of the sun. The dying Flier
had said they were losing control. With what chains did one control
the sun? With what tiller was it steered?
But no doubt the sun was merely masked by the threatening clouds;
it would be childish to complain because winter had come at last when
the calendar declared it half over.
Spring soon, unless this winter proved to be as protracted as the
summer that had preceded it. If the rains failed then, so would he;
if the new corn sprouted and died, Viron's new god-appointed caldé
would surely die with it. He pictured himself and Hyacinth fleeing
the city on fast horses, but Hyacinth was as lost as Maytera Mint,
and he knew nothing about horses save that they might be offered
to Pas without impropriety. This though Pas was dead.
Was Hyacinth dead as well? Silk shivered again.
A band struck up in the distance, and ever so faintly his ears caught
the clear, brave voices of trumpets and the clatter of cavalry.
Someone, it might have been Oosik, said "Ah!" Silk felt himself
smile, happy in the knowledge that he had not been alone in his
misery and impatience. On his right Saba murmured, "I can identify
the units as they approach, if you want, and tell you a little about
their history."
He nodded. "Please do, General. I'd appreciate it very much." He
was tempted to ask her about the Fliers, as commander of the airship,
she might know something of interest—possibly even of value. But
it would be the height of bad manners for him to display curiosity
about anything other than the military might of Trivigaunte at this
moment.
A young woman's dark face (after a brief uncertainty he recognized
Horn's sweetheart Nettle) appeared at the left side of the platform.
Loudly enough for him to overhear, she asked, "Wouldn't you like to
sit down, Your Cognizance? There's a man renting folding stools."
Quetzal beamed. "How kind you are, my daughter! No, I've got
my baculus, so I'm better off than the others." (It was not entirely
true; Oosik had his heavy sword in front of him and was leaning
upon it as if it were a walking stick.) "Patera Caldé isn't as lucky,"
Quetzal continued. "Would you like this kind girl to rent you a stool,
Patera Caldé?"
It would be unthinkable, of course, for him to sit while the
Prolocutor stood. Silk said, "Thank you very much,. Nettle. But no.
It's not necessary."
"I've just decided," Quetzal told Nettle, "that though I wouldn't
like one stool, I'd like two. One for me and one for Patera Caldé.
Have you enough money for two?"
Nettle assured him she had, and disappeared in the crowd.
On Silk's right Saba muttered, "You men lack the stamina of
women. It's biology and nothing to be ashamed of, but it shows why
we make the best troopers." His cheeks burned; a subtle alteration
in Quetzal's posture hinted that he too had heard, and was awaiting
Silk's reply.
What would Quetzal himself have replied? Saba's remark bordered
on inexcusable arrogance, surely, and such arrogance was punished
by the just gods—or so he had been taught in the schola. Reflecting,
he decided it was one of the few things he had been taught that seemed
undeniably true.
He smiled. "You're entirely correct, General, as always. No observer
can help noticing that women endure far more than men, and with
greater fortitude."
On Saba's right, Oosik muttered, "Our caldé has a broken ankle.
Haven't you seen how he limps?"
"It had slipped my mind, Caldé." Saba sounded honestly contrite.
"Please accept my apologies."
"You have nothing to apologize for, General. You stated an
inarguable fact. Sphigx and Scylla might apologize for facts, I
suppose—but a mortal?"
"Just the same, I—here they come."
The first riders, tall women on spirited horses, could be seen
through the arch. Each bore a slender lance, and a yellow pennant
stood out below the head of each lance. "The Companion
Cavalry," Saba told Silk in a low voice. "All are wellborn, and
in addition to their regular duties, they supply bodyguards to
the Rani."
"I know nothing about these matters," Silk leaned toward her, "but
wouldn't slug guns be more effective than lances?"
"You'll be able to see them better in a moment. They have slug
guns in scabbards, left of their saddles. Their lances are used in a
charge. You can't fire a slug gun with its muzzle at the horse's ears
without panicking the horse."
Silk nodded, but could not help thinking that from the accounts
he had been given, Maytera Mint and her volunteers had fired
needlers when they charged the floaters in Cage Street. Presumably,
the moderate crack of a needler did not disturb a horse like the boom
of a slug gun. To him at least, it seemed that even a small needler like
Hyacinth's, with a capacity of fifty or a hundred needles, would be a
superior weapon.
Nettle reappeared, holding up folding stools with canvas seats.
Quetzal accepted one, and Nettle went to the front of the platform
to pass the other to Silk.
He took it and exhibited it to Saba. "Wouldn't you like this, General?
You're welcome to it."
"Absolutely not!"
"We could sit alternately, if you like," Silk persevered. "You could
rest a while, then return it to me."
She shook her head, her lips tight; and Silk put down the stool,
empty, between them.
The Companions had ridden in threes and had appeared to be
scanning the crowd; having kept a rough count, Silk felt sure there
had been no more than two hundred. The troopers behind them bore
no lances and were neither so regular in size nor so well mounted; but
they rode ten abreast, led by an officer in a dusty old cloak on the
finest horse that he had ever seen.
"Generalissimo Siyuf," Saba muttered. "She's related to the Rani
on her father's side, as well as her mother's."
"Your supreme military commander."
Saba nodded. "A military genius."
Surveying that hawk-like profile, he decided it might well be true,
and was certainly true enough to make Siyuf a valuable ally; genius
or not, she radiated resolution and intelligence. He could not help
wondering what she had been told about him, and what she thought
of him now, the insecure young ruler of a foreign city; the urge to comb
his untidy hair with his fingers, as he would have in a conversation
with Quetzal, was practically irresistible. For half a second, his eyes
locked with hers.
Then Saba saluted, and her salute was returned negligently by
Siyuf; at once Oosik saluted her, in accord with the protocol agreed
to Tarsday. Behind her, rank after rank of disciplined young women
drew sabers and faced right, seemingly oblivious to the swirling dust
and biting wind.
"Generalissimo Siyuf rides at the head of her own regiment. She
joined eighteen years ago as a brevet lieutenant, and it's known now
as the Generalissimo's Auxiliary Light Horse..."
Saba fell silent; shivering, Silk murmured, "Yes?"
"Your people aren't cheering, Caldé. Not nearly enough. The
Generalissimo won't be pleased."
He seized the opportunity. "Perhaps they're afraid they may panic
your horses." It had been juvenile, but for a minute or more he
enjoyed it.
A wide break in what had threatened to become an infinite
succession of mounted troopers apparently marked the end of the
Generalissimo's Auxiliary Light Horse. It was followed by the yellow,
brown, and red flag of Trivigaunte, borne by an officer on horseback
and escorted by an honor guard clearly drawn from the Companion
Cavalry, and the banner by the band whose martial music had been
the first indication that the Rani's troops were near. The musicians,
marching with the precision of a picture in a drill book, were all men
and all bearded; the onlookers' cheers increased noticeably as they
passed.
"They're really very good," Silk told Saba, hoping to restore friendly
relations. "Very skillful indeed, and our people seem to love their
music."
"I'm an old campaigner, Caldé."
Privately wondering what the campaigns had been, and how
Generalissimo Siyuf had revealed her military genius in them, Silk
ventured, "So I understand."
"Your people are cheering because they're men. You think we
keep our men chained in the cellar, but most of our support troops
are men."
"With beards," Silk commented; it seemed safe.
"Exactly. You shave yours off to make yourself look more like a
woman. I'm not criticizing you for it, in your position I'd do the
same thing. But we don't let our men do it at home. They can trim
their beards with scissors if they want to, and these support troops
are required to. But they can't shave, or pull the hairs out."
Silk felt himself wince and hoped she had not noticed it.
"We've only let them use scissors for about twenty years," she
continued. "When I was a lieutenant they couldn't, and you saw a
good many with beards below their waists. We let them tuck them
into their belts, and some people felt that was going too far. The
idea is that a beard makes it easy to cut a man's throat. You grab
it and jerk his head up."
"I see," Silk said. Mentally, he cancelled the beard he had only just
resolved to grow.
"These are Princess Silah's Own Dragoons. You'll notice—"
Oosik interrupted. "I do not mean to begin an argument, General,
but I question that it is actually done. If it is, it cannot be done often.
Men are much stronger than women."
Saba indicated the mounted troopers passing before them. "Horses
are stronger than women, Generalissimo."
Silk chuckled.
"Don't you believe me, Caldé?" Saba was holding back a smile. "It's
true, I swear, in our city. We've been breeding chargers since Pas laid
his first brick, and our horses are stronger than women and—"
"Wiser than men," Silk finished for her. "I don't doubt it for a
moment."
"Who is?" inquired a new voice. "Everyone, I think."
Silk turned to look as Generalissimo Siyuf stepped onto the
reviewing platform. "Here you are." He offered his hand. "I was
afraid you'd be delayed. It's an honor to greet you at last, and a
great pleasure. Welcome to Viron. I'm Caldé Silk."
She shook his hand awkwardly, unsmiling; her own was hard and
dry, not quite as strong as he had anticipated. "It is my joy to see your
lively city, Caldé Silk. Most of my life I have spend in the south. Your
Viron is not more than a name on my maps, one week ago. My parade
is bad, I know. When they must march they cannot be drilled. When
they fight it is the same."
Silk assured her that he had been enormously impressed by what
he had seen, and introduced her to Quetzal and Oosik.
"We will see your troops after mine," she told Oosik. "We pass them
waiting. Ah, you have a stool for me, Caldé. Thank you." She seated
herself between Silk and Saba. "This is most welcome. I have been
up since three, in the saddle since five. I have tire two horses. I must
have a fresh one for this."
"It was very good of you to join us after you'd marched," Silk
told her sincerely. "We've all heard great things about you. We were
anxious to meet you."
Siyuf's eyes were on her troops. "I do not come for you, Caldé
Silk. I come for me. Soon we fight together. Is this right? Or does
this mean you will fight me and I you?"
"No. That's perfecfly correct. Together, we'll fight the Ayuntamiento,
if we must. I'd much rather we didn't have to."
"And I. Both." Siyuf pulled her cap down and drew her streaked
old cloak over her knees.
For a time, no one spoke. Silk pretended to watch the parade as
cavalry gave way to infantry, attractive young women who saluted
the reviewing platform by holding their slug guns vertically at their
left shoulders and marching with a stiff stride that reminded him of
sibyls dancing at a sacrifice.
Mostly, he studied Siyuf and reexamined her remarks, and his
own. Her cap was clean and well-shaped, but by no means new,
her cloak frankly soiled; no doubt she had changed horses as she
had said, but she had not changed clothes. Her boots were slightly
scuffed, her spurs (he risked a surreptitious glance at Saba's feet)
markedly larger than her subordinate's.
She had not hesitated to claim the empty stool. Silk tried to put
himself in the place of one of the expressionless women marching
past. Would they feel ashamed of their Generalissimo? Would they
think her weak?
Would he, if he were somehow a member of Siyuf's horde? After
arguing the point with himself; he decided that he would not. Sitting
when others had to stand was one of the surest signs of rank, and her
clothes proclaimed that she need answer to no one, that no bullying
sergeant or trumpeting colonel dared rebuke her. In imagination,
Silk soared from the platform to a gondola of the airship, and
from it scanned the parade. There was the reviewing platform, on
it various dignitaries of Viron and Trivigaunte. Who was in charge?
Who commanded the rest?
It was unquestionably Siyuf, who was seated with Quetzal and
himself to her left and Saba and Oosik to her fight—the civil
authorities, religious and civic, on one side in other words; and the
military, Trivigaunti and Vironese, on the other. When Viron's own
troopers marched past, they would receive the same impression.
"Is it always so cold here in the north?" Siyuf pulled her cloak more
tightly about her.
"No," Silk told her. "We had a very long summer this year, and a
very warm one."
"I wish we have come to your city then, Caldé. When I was small my
teachers told me this north was cold. I learn to write it on examinations,
but I do not believe. Why should it be so?"
"I have no idea." Silk considered. "I learned it just as you did, and
I don't believe I ever thought of questioning it. To tell you the truth,
I accepted just about everything I was taught, including many things
I ought to have questioned."
"The sun." Siyuf pointed up without looking upward. "This begin
at the east and end at the west. That is only because we say it so, I
know. Here you may speak different. But from East Pole to West
Pole or West Pole to East. Your day in Viron is soon our day in
Trivigaunte. Is that true?"
"Yes," Silk said. "Of course."
"Then what do you do to make your day so cold?"
Saba laughed, and Silk and Oosik joined her.
Quetzal seemed not to have heard, contemplating the ranked women
passing before him through half-closed eyes. Studying him sidelong,
Silk sensed a need, a longing, that he himself did not feel, and
puzzled over it until he recalled that Saba had said that sacrifices
were not offered in her city. The Chapter would be different there,
quite possibly known by another name; each of the marching women
was, in that case, a potential convert to Viron's more dignified mode
of worship. No wonder then that Quetzal eyed them so hungrily.
To amend the religious thinking of even a few would be a signal
accomplishment and a glorious conclusion to his long, meritorious
career. Furthermore, there were thousands and thousands of them,
the vast majority still young, still malleable, as Saba for example
was not.
As if the comparison had stirred her to speech, Saba asked, "What
do you think, Generalissimo? A fine body of women?"
Oosik declared that he had been favorably impressed.
"How old are they?" Silk inquired suddenly; he had not intended
to speak.
"We take them at seventeen," Saba told him. "There's a year of
training before they're assigned to permanent units. After that we
keep them four years."
"Do you mean that they have to become troopers? What if one
doesn't want to?"
Saba pointed. "See that one with the big feet? And her over there,
the tall one with a stripe?"
"At the end of the line? Yes, I see her."
Saba pointed again. "There, that little fat one. None of them
wanted to."
"I see. I'm surprised you know these troopers so well, General. Is
this group a part of your airship's crew?"
"No, Caldé." Saba glanced across Siyuf's head with the suppressed
smile he had noticed earlier. "In weather like this we need everybody
on board. I picked them by chance, but that's the truth about them.
Who'd want to be a trooper?"
Silk glanced at Oosik, who was looking at him; troopers in Viron
served voluntarily.
Another band, then hundreds of saddleless horses herded by
mounted men. Seeing Silk's puzzled expression, Saba explained,
"They're remounts. When a trooper's horse is shot, she has to fight
on foot unless there's a remount for her."
Siyuf looked up at him. "Do you not have remounts for your own
cavalry?" He found her steady eyes disconcerting.
Oosik said quickly, "Our practice is to issue two horses to each
mounted trooper. He is responsible for their care, and is to ride
them alternately unless one goes lame. In peacetime he rides one on
one day and the other on the next."
"You, Generalissimo. Were you a horse officer? We say cavalrywoman,
but I do not think you will say that here. A cavalryman,
I think?"
Oosik made her a small bow. "Correct, Generalissimo. No, I was not,
nor are most of our officers. We have only one mounted company per
brigade, though the second has two at present. My son is a cavalryman,
however."
For the first time, Siyuf smiled; seeing it, Silk could readily imagine
her subordinates risking their lives to earn that smile. She said, "I hope
to meet him. Tomorrow or the day after. We shall speak of horses."
"He will be honored, Generalissimo. Unfortunately he is unwell at
present."
"I see." She turned back to the parade, and her voice became
indifferent. "It is sad that boys must fight here."
Mules hauling cannon followed the horse herd. "I expected camels,"
Silk told her.
"Horses and camels do not make friends," she said absently. "It is best
we hold them apart. Mules are more..." She snapped her fingers.
"Easygoing," Saba supplied. "They don't mind camels as much as
most horses do."
"Does it really take eight to pull one of these big guns?"
"On your street of fine stones? No. But over our desert where
is no road, many more sometimes. Then one must lend to another
its mules and wait. I have seen sixteen unable to pull a single
howitzer from the mud. That was not on this march, or we would
not be here."
Saba asked, "Didn't you notice the mixed gun crews, Caldé? I
expected you to ask about them."
Already the last cannon was rumbling past. After it came a long
triple line of small carts with male drivers; each cart was drawn by
a pair of mules.
Silk said, "I'm accustomed to working with women, General.
With Maytera Marble and Maytera Mint at my manteion, before
I became caldé—with Maytera Rose as well until she left us.
Your mixed crews seem more normal to me than," he groped for
an inoffensive phrase, ending lamely, "than the other thing, just
women or just men."
"Men drive the mules and hump shells. They do those almost as
well as women could. Women lay the guns and fire them."
Siyuf asked, "Where is General Mint? Did you not call her Mother
Mint just now? Or are there two of this name?"
"No, they're the same person. She's a sibyl as well as a general,
just as I'm an augur as well as caldé." Silk was tempted to add that
he hoped to drop the first soon.
"She marches with her troops today?"
"I'm afraid not." A bare-faced lie would serve best, but he was
unwilling to provide one. "We're still engaged with the enemy,
Generalissimo."
If Siyuf suspected, nothing in her face revealed it. "I am sorry I
do not meet her. Next you see camels."
Silk, who had seen camels singly or in small caravans of a dozen or
a score, had scarcely imagined that there were so many in the whorl—not
hundreds but thousands, innumerable camels tied one behind
another in strings of thirty or more, each such string led by a single
camel-driver riding its big lead camel. They grunted continually as
they walked, peering at everything with haughty eyes in faces that
recalled Remora's.
"They carried food, mostly," Saba explained, "and oats and barley
for the horses and mules. They're lightly loaded now."
Here was one of the most sensitive points. "You have to realize
there's very little food in Viron." Silk picked his way among snares.
"We're delighted to have you, and we'll do our best to feed you and
your troops; but the harvest was bad, and our farmers have been
hoarding food because of the fighting."
"We know your difficulties." Siyuf's dust-colored cap and hunched
shoulders spoke. "We will send out foraging parties."
"Thank you," Silk said. "That's extremely kind of you."
Oosik stared.
"Which reminds me," Silk hurried on, "I've planned a small, informal
dinner tonight at the Caldé's Palace." (He found he could not bring
himself to say, "At my palace.") "You're all invited, and I hope that
all of you can attend. We haven't got a real kitchen yet, but I've
arranged to have Ermine's cater our dinner; Ermine's serves the best
food in our city, or at least it has that reputation."
"I must bring with me a staff officer." Siyuf turned to face him.
"This our custom demands. May I do this?"
"Of course. She will be very welcome."
"Then I come. Saba also, if you wish it."
"I certainly do," Silk assured Siyuf.
Saba nodded reluctandy.
Oosik said, "You may rely upon me, Caldé."
"Thank you. And you, Your Cognizance?"
With the help of the baculus, Quetzal rose. "I've no food, Patera
Caldé. That's what you'll talk about, isn't it?"
"I'm sure we will; we have that to discuss, along with many other
things. You have wisdom, Your Cognizance, and we may need it
more than food."
"Then I'll be there. I may even have suggestions."
Chapter 5
The Man from Mainframe
A hand signal held the group parallel to the human stream below;
Sciathan reinforced it with helmet notification: "Two east." As each
agreed, he checked them off mentally: Grian, Sumaire, Mear, and
Aer were still willing to accept his leadership. His right arm stiff,
he slapped toward Viron's thatch and shingles, palm down. "Going
lower." Fingertips to forehead. "You may follow if you choose."
Aer almost certainly would.
Was this man Auk among the marchers' creeping rectangles? One
of the spectators whose cheers had dwindled to chirps in the vastness
of the sky? Either way this Auk was a lone individual, his fellow
citizens a myriad of myriads. As he had from the beginning, Sciathan
told himself that he should be bursting with pride; for this daunting,
almost impossible mission, Mainframe had chosen them.
The possibility that Mainframe wished to destroy them had to be
dismissed unheard, like the equal possibility that he, Aer, and the
rest had been chosen because they were expendable.
Right arm pointing, hand cupped. "I fly east."
Four acknowledgements. They were all coming.
He had begun a circuit of the city. They would have to land soon,
have to remove and secure their wings, question and persuade its
inhabitants in the Common Tongue. Whether he was a miracle
worker or a malcontent, his fluency had no doubt been a factor.
Where was there a good, big field, with people near but not too
near, close to the city? Below him, a house with a desert-colored
peaked roof sprang up like a mushroom.
Right arm extended, palm flat, motioning down. "Lower."
It seemed that he could read the character of each of his
companions in their acknowledgments: Grian weighing the odds; Sumaire
narrow-eyed, her hands deadly still; Mear frantic for adventure; Aer
concerned for everybody except herself.
At this altitude they were within the reach of small-arms fire, and
small arms were evident; all the overseers of the bearded men erecting
tents seemed to have them. He reminded himself that once they had
landed the presence or absence of weapons would make no difference,
that any mob of Cargos could kill them with stones or sticks. In fact
the weapons that these Cargos had should be an advantage; armed,
they would be less apt to feel threatened.
Pointing arm, hand a fist. "North." Two fingers down, separated.
"Terminate flight."
"Aye, Sumaire." Taut face, dry lips, hooded eyes.
"Aye, Mear!" Descending too fast and glorying in it.
"Aye, Grian." Picking his spot.
"Aye, Aer". Worrying about him, worried not that he would crash
but that he would bungle his approach.
Grassy land, a little uneven. No more time for character or planning.
Reverse thrust, legs down and feet together, hands braced for a fall
that must be straight forward.
Mear was already down, having pulled up at the precise moment
and landed striding; reckless though Mear was, no more skilled flier
ever tuned the sun. Now he, too, would have to land without a fall
or lose what authority he had. Four cubits, stall, drop into the
wind. Did it!
At once a gust nearly blew him off his feet.
Grian, Surnaire and Aer came down as he was taking off his
wings and PM, Aer too close, perhaps; Sumaire four-pointing; Grian
dropping a full eight, wings bow-bent when he hit.
Big women were running toward them from the tent ground,
pursued, overtaken, and surpassed by a lone woman on horseback.
"Peace!" He raised both hands, palms out. "We who serve the gods
mean no harm."
The rider reined up, a handweapon drawn. "There are no gods but
the goddess!"
Could the database be wrong? "We are her supporters and
servitors!"
A dozen towering women surrounded them, some staring, some
leveling short, gap-mouthed guns, some clearly waiting for the
mounted woman's instructions.
"We come from Mainframe," Sciathan explained. "Mainframe, the
home of the goddess. At her order we come to find Auk." Privately
he wondered which goddess it was.
"We'll help you, but first you must give your weapons to us." There
was calculation in the mounted woman's eyes.
Aer said, "No gun, no knife."
The mounted woman's attention went to her at once. "You're in
charge?"
Aer shook her head. "Fliers." She touched her chin. "Aer I am.
All fly."
Mear joined them carrying his wings and PM, and accompanied
by a gaggle of big women. "Each is one. Five ones."
"Surrender your weapons," the woman on horseback told him.
Coming up behind Mear, Sumaire held out her hands. "Mine. With
these I kill."
Calculation again. "You're the leader."
"Yes. My own."
Mear said, "I am mine. No weapon. No gun. You give?" One of
the big women laughed loudly and the horse shied, neck bent and
hooves dancing.
"Quiet, you!" Pulling up the reins, the mounted woman scrutinized
them. "Marhaba! Betifham 'arabi?"
Aer and Mear looked to Sciathan; he could only shrug.
She holstered her weapon and dismounted; her smile could not
vanquish something vindictive that had made her face its own. "We
started badly," she told Aer. "Let's start over and be friends. I'm
Major Sirka, Flier Aer. I command the advance party of the Horde
of Trivigaunte. I can't welcome you to this city, because this city's
not mine. Mine's to the south. You have flown over it many times.
You must know it."
Aer nodded and smiled. "Beautiful!"
"This man," Major Sirka nodded at Sciathan, "came looking for a
Vironese, another man. Are you looking for a woman?"
Sumaire said, "The man. Where will we find Auk?"
Grian, who arrived still wearing his PM, said slowly, "We are not
like you are, Woman."
"I wouldn't expect you to be, little man. Now listen to me.
You're..."
Her voice faded; she had become a painted figure, an image of gray
on a featureless plain. Sciathan felt his lips drawn back and lifted in
a grin by someone else.
Aer gaped at him, eyes wide as her mouth. Now, when all other
color had fled, the blue of her eyes was still bright. Someone else
reached out to her with Sciathan's arms, and in a distant place she
screamed.
The flash and boom of the shot so startled him that almost he
woke; colors were briefly real, the scarlet-daubed thing at his feet
Aer. He felt himself thrust violently down and back into a helpless
dark at the edge of oblivion.
Sumaire slew with a touch and Mear fought with desperate valor
until more shots threw both to the ground in their first embrace.
Still carrying his wings, Grian shot straight up. He, Sciathan, should
fly too; but his PM was gone, his hands bound. Turning, he saw his
wings and kicked and stamped them.
"Let me think, Patera." Maytera Marble cocked her head to one side.
"The generalissimo from Trivigaunte and another one, but we don't
know her name. I'm assuming it will be a woman."
Silk nodded. "I believe we can rely on it."
"We don't know how much either one eats. Probably a lot. Then
there's General Saba and Generalissimo Oosik. I've seen them, and
they'll want a whorl of food. Are each of them going to bring
somebody, too?"
"That's a good point." Silk considered. "Oosik's almost certain to,
because Siyuf said she'd bring one of her staff. Let's assume that
they both do. That's six so far."
"All big eaters."
"I'm sure you're right, but His Cognizance and I won't eat much
and you'll eat nothing."
"Am I invited?" It was difficult to read Maytera Marble's expression.
"Of course you are. You're the hostess, the mistress of the house—of
this palace, I should have said."
"I thought Chenille might do it, Patera."
"She's a guest." Silk settled himself more comfortably in the big
wingback chair, conscious that he would have to leave it soon. "She's
here only because she may be in danger."
"She's a real help, that girl. She does everything I tell her to and
looks for more. There are times when I have to hold her back,
Patera."
"Now I understand. You were afraid I wouldn't invite her, that I'd
ask her to wait on table or something. She's invited—or she will be
as soon as I see her. I want her, and your granddaughter and Master
Xiphias; I sent Horn to tell him."
"I teach arithmetic." Maytera Marble sighed. "And now I want to
count on my fingers. What's worse, I can't. Only up to five, and
we had six with Generalissimo Oosik and all those foreign officers.
You and His Cognizance make eight. The old fencing master nine.
Chenille, ten. Mucor and me, twelve. If you're going to invite anybody
else, you'd better make it two, Patera. Thirteen at table's not lucky. I
don't know why, but you're supposed to bring somebody in off the
street if you have to, to make fourteen."
Silk stood up. "No, that should be all. Now come with me. I asked
Hossaan to bring the floater, and I think I heard it a moment ago."
"Where...? I can't go away, Patera. Not with company for dinner
tonight."
Silk had anticipated that; he imagined himself arguing with
Siyuf and was firm. "Of course you can. You're going to. Go
get your hand."
"No. No." Maytera Marble's one functioning hand gripped the arm
of her chair so tightly that the upholstery rose like dough between its
metal fingers. "You don't understand. You're a good man. Too good,
to tell the truth. Too good to me, as you always have been. But I've
a thousand things to do between now and dinner. What time will it
be? Six?"
"Eight. I do understand, Maytera, and that's why we're going to
that shop the valet—what was his name?"
"Marl. Patera, I can't."
"Exactly. You can't because you have only one hand. You have
to tell Chenille, for the most part, and get her to do it. So we're
going to get your right hand reattached. As you say, there's a lot to
be done, and with two hands you'll be able to do twice as much as
Chenille, instead of half as much."
Without waiting for her to reply, he strode to the door. "I'll be
outside; I want to ask Hossaan why their generalissimo speaks the
way she does. We'll expect you in five minutes, with your hand." As
he stepped into the reception hall, he added, "You and Chenille, and
your granddaughter Bring her, too."
Maytera Marble's last wailing "Patera..." was cut off by the
closing of the door. Grinning, Silk limped the length of the reception
hall and got an overrobe of plain black fleece from the cloakroom
off the foyer.
The outer door swung toward him before he could open it, and
Hossaan stepped inside with Oreb perched on his shoulder. "Your
bird was out there, Caldé. I guess he couldn't find a window open,
so I brought him in."
"Girls fly," Oreb aoaked, fluttering. "Bird see."
"Yes, and just in time, silly bird. Come here."
Oreb hopped to Silk's wrist. "Men perch!"
"He's been flying up to the airship," Silk explained. "By now he
probably understands it a great deal better than I do. They lower
people from it in a thing like an oversized birdcage, and bring people
and supplies up; that seems to interest him." He hesitated, then waved
toward a long divan. "Let's sit down for a moment. There's something
I want to ask you."
"Sure thing, Caldé."
"We could do this in your floater, but I have the feeling there'd be
somebody wanting to talk to me, and I don't want to be interrupted.
Did you see the parade?"
Hossaan nodded. "I was keeping an eye on you up on that stand,
Caldé, in case you wanted me."
"Good. Then you saw me talking to Generalissimo Siyuf and
General Saba. Do you know either of them, by the way?"
"Personally, you mean, Caldé? No, I don't. I know what they
look like."
"You haven't spoken to them."
Hossaan shook his head.
"But you've traveled. You're from Trivigaunte originally?"
"Yes, Caldé. I was born there. You'd be a fool to take anything I
tell you at face value. You realize that, I'm sure."
"Good man!" Oreb defended him. "Men fly. Perch!"
"Of course. I understand that your primary loyalty must be to your
native city."
"It is. And you're right. I've traveled more than most men ever do.
I can tell you about some of the places I've been, if you like, but I
can't always tell you what I was doing there."
Silk nodded thoughtfully. "Here in Viron, we sometimes say that
someone speaks Vironese, as if it were a separate language. It isn't, of
course. It's just that we have certain idiomatic expressions that aren't
used, as far as I know, in other cities. There are words we pronounce
differently as well. I know very little about other cities, but I wouldn't
be surprised to learn that they have peculiarities of their own."
"That's right. I think I know what you're going to ask me, but
go on."
"Is there any reason you shouldn't tell me about it?"
"Not a one."
"All right. I was going to say that there actually are other languages,
languages quite different from ours. Latin, for example, and French.
We have French and Latin books, and there are passages in the
Writings in those languages, which makes them of interest to scholars
and even to ordinary augurs like me. Presumably there are cities in
which those languages are spoken just as we speak Vironese here."
"The Common Tongue," Hossaan said. "That's what travelers
generally call it, and it's what we call it in Trivigaunte."
"I see." Silk's forefinger traced small circles on his cheek. "In that
case you, from your foreign perspective, would say that both Viron
and Palustria, for instance, speak the Common Tongue? Palustrian is
similar enough to Vironese that one might have to listen to a speaker
for several minutes to determine his native city. Or so I was taught
at the schola."
"You've got it, Caldé."
"Very well then. I can imagine a foreign city in which another
language is spoken, Latin let us say. And I can easily imagine
one like Palustria, where the Common Tongue is spoken;
I can't prove it, but I suspect that there may be more differences
between the speech of a Vironese of the upper class and
a beggar or a bricklayer than there are between an ordinary
merchant from Viron and a like merchant from Palustria. What
I cannot imagine is a city in which some citizens speak the
Common Tongue, as you call it, and others Latin or another
language."
Hossaan nodded, but said nothing.
"Men fly!" Oreb announced, having lost patience with his owner.
He launched himself from Silk's shoulder and flapped around the
room spiraling higher. "Fly! Fly! Girls! Men!" He extended his wings
in a long glide. "Perch!"
"Great Pas guide us!" Maytera Marble was coming down the
staircase with Chenille and Mucor. "What's gotten into your bird,
Patera?"
"I don't know," said Silk—who thought, however, that he did.
"Hossaan, he came to you while you were waiting in the floater, is
that right?"
"He landed on the back of the seat, Caldé, and started tailing. I
couldn't understand him at first."
"Yet another language, or at least another way of speaking the
Common Tongue." Silk smiled wryly. "What did he say?"
"'Bird out, bird out, Silk in.' Like that, Caldé."
Silk nodded. "Go out and wait for us. Put the canopy up. I
don't know how long the wait will be, and there's no point in
your freezing."
As Hossaan left, Chenille asked, "Aren't we going, Patera?"
"In a moment. Step into the library, please, everybody. Oreb, where
are the flying men and flying girls who perched?"
Oreb hopped to a corner occupied by a fat-bellied vase and rapped
it sharply with his beak.
"Northeast, Mucor," Silk muttered. "Did you see that?"
Her skull-like face turned toward him as a pale funeral lily lifts
its blossom to the sun. "Flying, Silk?"
"Fliers, I believe. The people who fly on wings made of something
that looks like gauze."
Chenille added, "Like the Trivigaunti pterotroopers, only their
wings are longer and look like they'd be lighter."
The night chough flew to Silk's shoulder.
"One more question, Oreb. Were there houses where the flying
people landed?"
"House now! Quick house!"
Silk took a handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, and draped
it over his spread fingers. "Like this?"
"Yes, yes!"
"Sit down, please," Silk told the three women. "Mucor, as a great
favor to me, and your grandmother, too, do you think you could
find out what these Fliers are doing?"
When she did not answer, he said, "Search the grazing land north
and east of the city, where the Rani's men are putting up their tents.
I believe that may be what he means when he says quick houses. The
Fliers will have taken off their wings when they landed, I imagine, and
they'll probably leave at least one of their number to guard them."
"As Patera says, this is for both of us, Mucor." Maytera Marble
patted her knee. "I don't know why it's important, but I'm sure it
must be."
Chenille remarked, "You know, I've been wanting to have a look at
this ever since that Trivigaunti saw her in the mirror, only now I can't
even tell if she's doing it. You ought to be chanting and sprinkling
perfume on Thelxiepeia's picture."
"The miracle—or magic, if that's what you wish to call it—is in
Mucor," Silk told her.
"Auk believes in the gods, Patera. He's really religious in his way,
and he knows I had Scylla inside running things. But what I'm seeing
wouldn't make him believe in this."
"Auk," Mucor repeated suddenly.
Oreb cocked his head like Maytera Marble. "Where Auk?"
Mucor's toneless voice seemed to emanate from a forsaken place
beyond the universe. "Where Auk is... Silk? Chain my hands. Feet
smash strong-wings."
Chapter 6
In Spider's Web
"Are we truly, um, abandoned, Maytera? Solitary? Or are there
other ears, eh? In this dark and—er—noisome. That's the
question, hum?"
"I don't know. I have no way of telling. Do you?" The question
Maytera Mint herself was debating was whether it would be disrespectful
to lie down before Remora did.
"I—ah—no. I have none, I confess."
"Do you have a secret that would let Potto and the other councillors
return to power in defiance of the gods?"
"I would—um—General. Be safer not, eh? Not to speak upon
such, er, topics."
"It certainly would if you had one, Your Eminence. Do you?" She
was trying fo forget how thirsty she was.
"Positively not. Not privy to military matters, eh?"
"Neither do I, Your Eminence, so let them listen all they want."
It was ecstasy to take her shoes off; for half a minute she debated
taking off her long black stockings, too, but selfcontrol prevailed.
"By now Bison's taken charge. Or someone else has, but probably
it's Bison. He was my best officer, absolutely steady in a crisis
but not very imaginative. If he can find somebody a little more
creative to advise him, Bison should give the Ayuntamiento a very
difficult time."
"I am, er, suffused with pleasure at the prospect."
"So am I, Your Eminence. I just hope it's true." She leaned back
against the wall.
"You will, um, reproach me."
"Never, Your Eminence."
"You, or others. One never lacks for, um, critics? Patera Feelers.
Faultfinders. You will—um—er—vociferate that as a, um, intermediary
I must restrain my partisanship."
She laid her arms on her knees, and her head upon her arms.
"I rejoin, General, by, er, asseverating that I have done so. And
do so, eh? In our, um, current instance and beyond, hey? It is not
partisanship but reason, hey? I am a man of peace. I have so,
um, declared myself. Under flag of truce, eh? Having consulted
Brigadier Erne. Having likewise consulted Caldé Silk. Brought the,
um, exceedingly significant—hum. You, General. I brought you to
discuss, er, armistice. An—ah—feat of diplomacy? Triumph. Is my,
er, our persons. Are they respected? They are not!"
"I'm going to stretch out, if that won't upset you, Your Eminence.
I'll tuck my skirt around my legs."
"No, no, Mayt—General. I can scarcely make out your, ah, self in
this—er—stygian. There is one quarrel that cannot be mediated, hey?"
"We certainly haven't succeeded in mediating this one."
"I refer to the quarrel between good and, um, evil. Yes, evil. As a man
of the cloth, an augur erstwhile destined, eh? Destined for—ah—greatness.
As that, um, augur, fallible, eh? At whiles foolish, eh? Yet
sensible of the ultimate, hey? I cannot mediate all quarrels, for I cannot
mediate that one. I have set down my name in the lists, eh? Long since.
I am for good. I cannot close my eyes to evil. Will not. Both."
"That's good." Maytera Mint closed hers. The only light in the dark,
bare room was a long streak of watery green under the door; closing
her eyes should have made little difference, yet she found it deeply
restful.
"If—er—ah—um—hum," Remora said; or at least, so she heard
him. The façade of the Corn Exchange was falling very slowly, while
she waited powerless to move.
She woke with a start. "Your Eminence?"
"Yes, General?"
"Some dreams are sent by the gods."
"Ah—indubitably."
"Has anyone ever proposed that all dreams are? That every dream
is a message from the gods?"
"I—um. Cannot recollect, eh? I shall devote thought to the, er,
query. Possibly. Quite possibly."
"Because I just had a very commonplace sort of dream, Your
Eminence, but I feel that it may have been sent by a god."
"Unusual? Extraordinary. If I do not presume, hey? No wish to,
er, intrude. But I offer my, um, if desired."
"I dreamed I was standing on the street in front of the Corn
Exchange. It was falling on me, but I couldn't run."
"I—ah—see."
"It actually happened a few days ago. We pulled it down with oxen.
I could've run then, but I didn't want to. I wanted to die, so I stood
there and watched it fall until Rook carried me out of danger. He
was nearly killed, as well as I."
"The—ah—import? I fail to see it, General."
"A god, I think, was telling me that since I'd chosen to die then,
I shouldn't be afraid of dying now, that nothing they can do to me
could be worse than being crushed by that building, which was the
way I'd chosen to die not long ago."
"What god, hey? What god, General? Have you any notion?"
She knew from an alteration in Remora's voice that he had
straightened up. She had, temporarily at least, ransomed him from
self-pity; she wished fervently that someone would ransom her. "I
haven't the least idea which god may have favored me, Your
Eminence, assuming one did. I don't recall anything that would
furnish a clue."
"No animals, eh?"
"None, Your Eminence. Just the street, and the falling stones. It
was after shadelow, and all I remember is how dark they looked
against the skylands."
"Not, um, Day-Ruling Pas. Sun god, eh? Master of the Long Sun
and all that. Tartaros, hum? Night god. Dark stones, dark god.
Bats—ah—flittering?"
Maytera Mint rolled her head so that the tip of her sharp little
nose made a small arc of negation. "No animals, Your Eminence, as
I said. None whatsoever."
"I shall—ah—prefer. I prefer to, um, suspend? No, table. Table
the question, eh? If only for the nonce. In my, er, not inconsiderable
experience an, um, signature may be—ah—descried by one who,
eh? Shall peer about. Let us peer about, Maytera. What day is this,
would you say?"
"Now?"
"Ah—yes. And then, eh? What day did you feel it to be in your,
um, envisagement?"
"If you mean the night it happened...?"
"No. Did it, ah, seem to you a particular day, eh? Were you, um,
conscious of a—ah—the calendar?"
"No, Your Eminence.
"What day is it now? As we, ah, converse."
How many times had their captors halted to eat and sleep? Three?
Four? "I can't be sure." Maytera Mint was beginning to regret
mentioning her dream; she let her eyelids fall.
"Guess, General. What day?"
"Hieraxday or Thelxday, I suppose."
"Bodies, eh? Vultures?"
"No. Just the skylands, the building and the stones."
"Mirrors, monkeys, deer? Cards, teacups—ah—string? Any colored
string? Poultry, nothing of the sort?"
"No, Your Eminence. Nothing of the sort."
"Space—um—largeness? Skylands, eh? You were—ah—not
insensible of them?"
"I knew that they were there, Your Eminence. In fact they seemed
significant, though I can't say how."
"We, er, progress? Yes, progress. Actually happened, you said?
Building fell, eh? You rescued."
"Yes, it was at the beginning of the fighting. I mean to say, Your
Eminence, that it was at what we call the beginning now. At the time
we felt we'd been fighting a long while, that those of us who'd been
fighting from the start had done a great deal of it." Maytera Mint
paused, reflecting.
"We were like children who have gone to palaestra for the first
time the year before. When the next year starts, children like that feel
themselves old hands, veterans. They give advice to the new children
and patronize them, when the truth is that their own education has
scarcely begun."
Remora grunted assent. "I have observed, um, similar."
"And now—I mean before we went out to that house where the
caldé was rescued. Things had quieted down. We had the Fourth
penned up, and nobody wanted to go after it right away. We sensed
that Erne was wavering, and you confirmed it. The Ayuntamiento was
down in these tunnels, and those of us who thought about it saw how
difficult it would be to root them out. We dared hope that some other
way could be found. That was why I went out there with you."
She waited for Remora to speak, but he did not.
"People came forward. They would appear, so to speak, to tell us
how bravely they'd fought and all they'd done. And I'd think, who
are you? Why didn't I ever notice you before, if you were such a
famous fighter? Bison had done everything, taken part in almost
every fight.
"And Wool, I'd think. Wool has done a great deal, never shirked,
not always saying I'll do it, General, like Bison, but when we were
repulsed and I'd look back and see one person still there, still shooting
when the rest had fallen back and there were hoppies—Guardsmen,
Your Eminence, troopers of the Civil Guard—close enough to touch,
it would be Wool.
"Then I'd remember that Wool was dead, and think where were
the ones who rode with me, where was Kingcup who brought us her
horses when her horses were all she had? I hope she's alive, Your
Eminence, but I couldn't locate her, couldn't find her, and all these
new people telling about the wonderful things they'd done, when I
didn't remember them at all. Skink led an attack on the Palatine and
had both his less blown off. Where was he? Where was the giant with
the gaps in his teeth? I don't even remember his name, but I remember
looking up at them, he must have been twice my height, and wondering
who had been big enough to hit him way up there, and what he'd hit
him with, and what had happened after he did it."
"What was his name?"
"The giant, Your Eminence? I can't recall it. Cat? Or Tomcat,
something like that. No, Gib. That was it. Gib. It means a male cat,
Your Eminence, so that would make it Snarling Sphigx, the Patroness
of Trivigaunte. Cats are hers, cats and lions. But Gib wasn't in my
dream."
"The man who saved you."
"Oh, him. It was Rook, but rooks aren't sacred to any god, are
they, Your Eminence? Eagles for Pas. Hawks, too, because hawks are
little eagles, or something like them. Thrushes and larks for Molpe,
but rooks can't sing. Poultry for Thelxiepeia, as Your Eminence said
a moment ago, but rooks—wait.
"I've got it, Your Eminence. I was thinking lists, wasn't I? Thinking
about lists instead of animals and what they look like. And a rook
looks like a night chough, like the caldé's pet. The caldé got him to
give to the god who enlightened him. People think it was Pas, almost
everyone seems to think that, but I asked the caldé about it and he
said it wasn't, that it was one of the minor gods, the Outsider. I
don't know much about him, Your Eminence. I'm sure you must
know much more than I, but night choughs must be sacred to him.
Or if they aren't, they're associated with him now, because that was
the sacrifice the caldé chose. Isn't that correct, Your Eminence?"
Remora did not reply.
Maytera Mint thought of getting up to see whether he had gone.
It seemed to her that she had slept even as she spoke aloud; but it
was too delicious, far too delicious to lie where she was, with Bison
in the other bed snoring softly and Auk to watch over them. "Auk?"
she called softly. "Auk?"
Auk would bring them water, would surely bring water if she asked
for it, a carafe of cold clear water, fresh from the well, and glasses.
More loudly this time: "Auk!"
Yeah, Mother. Right here.
"Auk, my son?"
"Sorry, Patera." Shivering in the afternoon sunlight, Auk returned
his attention to Incus. "Thought I heard something."
"You desired to speak with me?"
"Right. Back in the manteion you explained what he said." Auk felt
uneasy among the Palatine's gracious mansions of gray stone; until
now he had visited them only to steal.
"I endeavored to explain, certainly. It was my sacred duty to do so,
thus I strove to make clear the divine utterances."
"You were clear as polymer, Patera," Hammerstone declared loyally.
"I felt like I could understand every word Pas ever said before you
finished."
Voices called for them to halt, and they did.
"Bios with slug guns, Patera. I heard them behind us, but I was
hoping they wouldn't mess around."
Afraid he was about to be arrested, Auk grumbled, "Can't a man
walk uphill any more?"
By then the patrol leader had noted Incus's black robe. "Sorry,
Patera. It's the soldier. They say some are on our side. Is he one?"
Hammerstone nodded. "You got it."
"Indeed, my son." Incus favored the patrol with a toothy smile.
"You have my sacred word as an augur and your—well, let us not
go into that. You have my sacred word that Corporal Hammerstone
longs for the overthrow of the Ayuntamiento, even as I do myself."
"I'm Sergeant Linsang," the patrol leader said. "Are you going to
the Grand manteion, Patera?"
Incus shook his head. "To the Prolocutor's Palace, my son. I am
a resident thereof" His voice grew confidential. "I have been favored
with a theophany. Great Pas himself so favored me. It is not the first,
but the second time that I have been thus favored by the gods. You
will scarcely credit it, I know, for I scarcely credit it myself. But
both my companions were present upon the latter occasion. They will
attest to the theophany, I feel quite certain."
One of Linsang's troopers raised his slug gun so that it no longer
pointed at Auk. "Aren't you Auk? Auk the prophet?"
"That's me."
"He's been going all over the city," the trooper explained to Linsang,
"telling everybody to get ready for Pas's Plan. He says Tartaros told
him to."
"He did," Auk declared stoutly. "Pas wants me to keep on doing
it, too. What about you, trooper? Are you set to go? Set to give up
on the whole whorl?"
Linsang asked, "What did Pas say? That is if I'm not—"
"It is irregular," Incus conceded, "but not contrary to the canon.
Do all of you desire to hear the words of the Father of the Gods?"
Several assured him that they did.
"And will you," Incus pursued his advantage, "permit us to proceed
upon our sacred errand once you have heard them?"
Linsang's troopers nodded. They were in their teens, and identifiable
as troopers only by their slug guns and bandoliers.
Linsang objected. "I need to get it from this soldier, first.
Hammerstone? Is that your name, Corporal?"
"Present and accounted for." Hammerstone's own slug gun was
pointed at the skylands, its butt on his hip.
"Are you for the Ayuntamiento or the caldé?"
"The caldé, Sergeant."
"How do you feel about the Ayuntamiento?"
"If the caldé or Patera here said not to shoot them, I wouldn't do
it. If it's up to me, they're dead meat."
One of the troopers ventured, "A soldier killed Councillor Potto.
That's what we heard."
Hammerstone grinned, his head back and his chin out. "It wasn't
me, but I'll shake his hand first chance I get."
"All right." Linsang grounded his slug gun. "You can go on to the
Prolocutor's Palace, Patera. Them, too. Only tell us what Pas had
to say."
"I fear not." Incus shook his head. "You would not accept my
sacred word, my son, but insisted that Hammerstone speak for himself.
As it chanced, though nothing is mere chance to the immortal gods,
but a moment previously he had declared that he comprehends the god's
entire message, while my other companion, Auk, wished a fuller
exposition."
Incus turned to the prophet in question. "Is that not so, Auk? Am
I not correct?"
"You got it, Patera. Maybe I'm dumb. There's not many that said
so where I could hear 'em, but maybe I am. Only this is important,
and some was about me. I got to be sure I got it straight, so I can
do what he wants me to."
"Would that such stupidity as yours were more widespread. The
Chrasmologic Writings assert that the wisdom of the immortal gods
is but folly in the ears of mortal men. Persevere in your stupidity, and
you will be welcomed to Mainframe." Incus nodded to the big soldier.
"Tell us, Hammerstone, my son, and do not fear that you may blunder
or omit a sacred injunction. I shall amend any such innocent errors,
though I anticipate none."
"I can't do it as good as you, Patera, but I'll give it my best shot.
Let me get my thinking works going." For eight or ten seconds,
Hammerstone was as immobile as a statue.
"All right, I got it. It was when that bio was bringing up the pig.
First the colors came on, right? Then his face. He started off by
blessing everybody and said that everybody that was there 'cause
they came with Auk—that was everybody but you, Patera—he
blessed twice, once for coming and once for following Auk. Have
I got that right?"
Incus nodded. "Admirable, Hammerstone, my son."
"Then he said he was giving us this theophany 'cause his son told
him what was coming down in the manteion we were at, only he
didn't say which son it was."
"Terrible Tartaros," Auk assured him.
Incus raised an admonitory finger. "He did not so state."
"Maybe not, but I'd just been talking to him. That's who it
had to be."
"He said his son'd given Auk his orders, and they were the right
ones. He and his son were going to see to it everybody got the word.
We'd been thinking about his Plan like it was way off, when it was
already time to move out..."
"Continue, my son."
"I'm sorry, Patera. That's when he started talking about me, and
I get kind of choked up. It was the greatest moment of my life, right?
I mean, if I was to make sergeant or anything like that I'd feel pretty
good. But this was Pas. I got his drift and later you explained, and
it was like I'd been feeling it was, just exactly. Hearing you say it
was just about like I was hearing it all over again from him. I'm
thinking there's a war, and all the good people's on his side. That's
this son—"
"Terrible Tartaros," Auk put in.
"And the caldé and Auk and naturally you are, Patera... And
it's the side I'm on, too. He said how Auk got hurt when he was
underground with us and how hard he'd been working for his Plan,
and he was sending somebody from Mainframe to help him out."
"From the Pole, Corporal. That is the term which the god
himself preferred to employ. That Mainframe is at the Pole, I
freely concede."
Auk edged nearer. "To help me out? I'm the cull?"
"Yeah, you're the one, only I'm supposed to help too. He said he
was going to decorate you for what you've done soon as you do what
he wants you to next. Only here's where Patera said something I got
to say too, so it'll make sense to these other bios. Pas is us chems'
god. He's the god of all the digital, nuclear-chemical stuff. You got
to buy that if you want to see where Pas's coming from. Isn't that
right, Patera?"
Incus nodded solemnly.
"'Cause Pas told us what Auk's decoration's going to be. Anytime
he sees anything like me, he's going to understand it straight off.
How it goes together and what it's supposed to do, and how. Pas
means to stick all the data into Auk, 'cause he'll need it to carry out
the Plan."
Linsang and his troopers stared at Auk openmouthed. Auk
endeavored to appear humble.
"That was when he gave me my direct order, and it wasn't
just 'cause I happened to be around. I never thought anything
like this would happen to me. I asked Patera about it back
at the manteion, and he says if I hadn't been the one Pas
wanted, I wouldn't have been there, it would've been some other
tinpot. But it wasn't. I'm the one. Patera says it was probably
'cause him and me are, you know, like brothers only closer,
and he's a holy augur, and as soon as he said it I knew it
was right.
"Pas needs a soldier, so which one? There's thousands. Why, the
augur's friend, doesn't that make sense? The friend of the augur
Scylla picked to be the new Prolocutor, that's the one you need. A
god don't have to think about stuff like that, he just knows. He said,
talking to me, Auk might have a little trouble at first. You stick with
him and help him over the tough spots. You're a mechanism, help
him out and he'll help you. So here we are, Patera and me both, and
we're trying to help."
Linsang asked Incus, "Was that all, Patera?"
"All? I should say it was more than enough, my son. But no. It was
not. Let us have the remainder, Hammerstone."
"He said that a while back, forty years, he said, he knew he was
going to die—"
"To die?" Linsang was incredulous.
"That's what he said. He saw it coming, so he sort of took off little
pieces of himself and hid them in various bios where they wouldn't
be found. Then he died, and he's been dead for quite a while."
Incus cleared his throat. "All of you, and I, similarly, must
comprehend the dificulties under which a god seeking to communicate with
human kind labors. He can but speak to us in words mere mortals
apprehend. Thus by die, the Father of the Gods indicated his own
renewal. That noblest of trees, the goldenshower, is sacred to
Great Pas. You cannot be ignorant of so elementary a fact."
Linsang and several of his troopers nodded.
"Suppose that a forest of goldenshowers could speak to us. Would
it not say, 'That I, the sacred forest, may remain young and strong,
my aged trees must fall, though they have endured for centuries.
Let young trees spring up in their places. I, the forest, endure.'
Hammerstone?"
"I'm on it, Patera. He said now when his Plan's starting to move,
he's putting himself back together. He said right now he was his own
ghost, Pas's ghost, but with more of his pieces getting found, he'll be
Pas again. He wants us to help. Auk in particular, but everybody's
supposed to pitch in. We got to find this one particular bio, Patera
Jerboa, 'cause he's got the piece for Viron. There was maybe five or
six hundred bios in the manteion, but after Patera'd explained the
whole thing to them, there wasn't one that knew who this Patera
Jerboa was or where we could maybe find him.
"So Patera told them not to bunch up, but scatter and start asking
people all over, and bring him to Auk when they got him. Then he
told Auk the Chapter's got records about all this stuff, where every
augur's at and what he's doing there, and they're in the Palace, and
Patera knows where and how to read them. He's worked with them
for years, right Patera? So him and Auk and me started off to take
a look, and here we are."
"The majesty of diction was lacking, Hammerstone, my son, yet the
matter was in attendance." Incus regarded Linsang and his troopers.
"What of you? We seek to obey the dictates of the Father of the Seven.
Can you assist us? No holy augur can know every other. We are far
too numerous. Do you know of a Patera Jerboa? Any of you? Speak."
No one did.
Shots woke Maytera Mint. At first, as she lay blinking in the darkness,
she did not know what the sounds had been; she was hungry and
thirsty, vaguely conscious of the cold, and conscious that she had
been cold for a long time, shivering as she slept. Her buttocks and
shoulder blades, pressed by her slight weight to unyielding shiprock,
were numb, her feet freezing.
She sat up. Her room had been the smallest and meanest in the old
cenoby on Silver Street, with a ceiling that dripped at every shower;
yet it had not been too small or too mean for a window past whose
threadbare drape wisps of light crept on even the darkest nights.
Three sharp bangs, unevenly spaced. Pictures falling? She recalled
an incident from her childhood: an old watercolor had fallen when its
yellowed string rotted through at last, and had taken another picture
and a small vase down with it. Once she had heard a horse trying to
kick its way out of its stall. The shots had sounded like that.
"Ah, General?"
The voice had been Remora's; his nasal tones brought it all back
to her. "Yes, Your Eminence."
"You have, um, familiar with the sound of gunfire, hey? During
the past—ah—fighting."
"Yes, Your Eminence. Tolerably so." Against her will, she found
herself wondering how many Remoras there had been, how many
augurs and sibyls who had responded to Echidna's theophany by
going to the safest place they could find and staying there. Patera
Silk had not. (But then, he wouldn't.) Patera Silk had been shot in
the chest, had been captured, and had contrived, somehow, to turn
Oosik and the whole Third Brigade, the act that had done more than
any other to determine the course of their insurrection. But how many
more—
"Er, General?"
"Yes, Your Eminence. I was considering the matter. The door
is thick and rather tightly fitted, and these walls are shiprock.
Those factors must have affected the quality of the shots as we
heard them."
"You—ah—believe them shots, eh?"
"I'm putting on my shoes, Your Eminence." She groped for them
in the dark. "If we're to be taken somewhere—"
"Quite right." Remora sounded cheerful. "Quetzal, eh? Old Quetzal.
His Cognizance, I ought to say."
More thirsty than ever, Maytera Mint licked her dry lips. "His
Cognizance, Your Eminence?"
"Rescue, eh? He's come for me, er, we. Or—ah—sent somebody.
Shrewd, eh? Plays a deep game, old Quetzal. Card sense in both—um—the
applicable senses."
She tried to imagine the elderly Prolocutor fighting, slug gun in
hand, against Spider and his spy-catchers, and failed utterly. "I would
think Bison's sent scouts into the tunnels by this time, Your Eminence.
If we're lucky, it may be some of them we heard. But even if they notice
this door, they may not be able to get it open.
Another shot, and it was definitely a shot.
"They will notice it, General. I—um—my word on it. My
gammadion, eh?"
"Your gammadion, Your Eminence?"
"Not you, ah, sibyls. But we augurs. Holy augurs, eh? Wear Pas's
voided cross. Comes apart. Use to test a Window, hey? Tighten
connections, make adjustments, all that sort of, er, operations. Gold,
hey? Mine is. Coadjutor, eh? Stones. Not like old Quetzal's, I, um,
but gems. Annethysts, largely. Gold chain. Under my tunic, generally.
Out at sacrifice, hey?"
"I'm familiar with them, Your Eminence."
"I've—ah—slipped it beneath the door, Maytera. Push it out, eh?
Pull it back in. Moving object, hum? Catches the light, ah, attracts
the eye."
She went to the door (almost tripping over Remora) and rapped
it sharply with the heel of one shoe.
"Admirable—ah—admirable. Crude, eh? Yet it—ah!"
The latch outside rattled and the door swung in, impeded by
Remora. The burly Spider growled, "What's that noise?"
The lights in the tunnel were so dim that Maytera Mint did not
blink. "I was pounding on the door with my shoe. We heard shots
and hoped we'd be freed."
"Come on." Spider gestured with the barrel of his needler.
"We, um' require food," Remora ventured. "Water or—ah similar,
er, potable."
"You won't if you don't get movin'."
"You don't dare shoot us," Maytera Mint declared. "We're valuable
hostages. What would you tell—"
He caught her arm and jerked her through the doorway. "I'm
strong, see?"
"I never doubted it." She tested her shoulder, fearing he had
dislocated it.
"Strong as a chem. Not one of them soldiers, maybe, but a regular
chem. You with me, sib? So I don't have to shoot you. There's twenty,
thirty things I could do." One of Spider's men was lounging in the
tunnel; he held a gleaming slug gun. "I'm ready to try a couple," Spider
continued. "You scavy Councillor Potto's kettle? Wasn't anythin'. He
was just playin', he's like that. I don't fool. We get lots of spies."
"I'm delighted to hear it." Maytera Mint had feared that she would
not be allowed to resume her shoe; she tightened the bow and
straightened up with an odd little thrill of triumph.
"I learned a lot, workin' on them. I never seen one so tough I
couldn't get him to tell me anythin' I wanted to know. That way,
and keep movin'."
"I, er, weak. Thirsty, eh? What one physically—ow!"
Remora had been prodded from behind by the man with the slug
gun, who said, "I kicked a dead cull once till he got up and ran."
"The gods—ah—Pas. Tartaros, eh?" Remora progressed with rapid,
unsteady strides, outdistancing Maytera Mint.
"Slow up!"
"I—ah—prayed. Beads. eh? The, um' general slept."
"You should have awakened me," she protested, and got a shove
from Spider.
"Never! Wouldn't, um, consider—" Remora froze until he was
prodded from behind. Somewhat nearsighted, Maytera Mint blinked
as she tried to peer ahead through the watery light.
"Dead cull," Spider told her. "One of mine."
"Was that the shooting we heard?"
Spider pushed her forward. "Yeah." Another push. "He was
watchin' your door. Sib, you better shaggy learn to drive your
shaggy ass or you're going to learn a shaggy bunch you don't want
to know."
She whirled, facing him. "I've already learned something, but it
was something I wanted to know. That I wanted very much to know,
in fact."
He struck her face with the flat of his hand, spinning her around
and knocking her down, the blow as loud as the boom of a slug gun.
"Pick her up," he told Remora.
Remora did, carrying her like a child as he staggered down the
tunnel. When they reached the corpse, the man with the slug gun
caught his arm and ordered him to stop, and he set her on her feet.
"You're cryin'," Spider told her.
"I am. I shouldn't," she wiped her eyes, "because I know our hour
will come. Perhaps I should cry for you instead, but that will come
later if it comes at all."
Remora had knelt beside the corpse; he rose shaking his head. "The
spirit has, ah, dispensed with its house of flesh."
The man with the slug gun asked, "You were going to say the
words over him?"
"I—ah—so intended. It is too late."
"He never believed in it."
Maytera Mint said, "Then I should weep for him. A short life
and a violent death in this wretched place. You can write on his
stone, here lies one who sought no succor from the gods, and hence
received none."
The man with the slug gun chuckled. "Maybe you can. How about
it, Spider?"
"Sure, why not? She can do it while we're waiting."
Remora ventured, "May we be seated? My legs, er, flaccid."
"Go ahead. They'll be along in a minute."
"If you mean Bison's scouts, I feel certain you're right," Maytera
Mint told him.
He took off his cap and ran a dirty comb through greasy, graying
hair. "You figure Bison's boys chilled him? You're abram."
"I doubt that you even know who Bison is."
"The shag I don't. I got people all through your knot. You think
I don't?"
"Thank you very much." She wiped away the last tears with her
sleeve. "We appreciate all who come to us."
He laughed. "You appreciate them? They're tellin' us what you do,
every move you make."
"Meanwhile they must work and fight for us, if they're not to
be detected." She sat down next to Remora. "They would like to
rise in our councils, I suppose. To do it, they'll have to work and
fight well."
"S'pose all you want to," Spider grunted.
"You are, um, confident it was not one of Colonel Bison's
men—er—persons. Troopers. Who shot this, um?"
"Sure. Sib, how come my culls don't faze you?"
"Isn't it obvious? Because we're hiding nothing. You want to learn
our secrets, but they're only virtue and prudence. His Eminence and
I had hoped to arrange a peace in which your spies and you might
live. Now there will be none. We—"
"All right! Muzzle it!"
"Will root you out. We'll go down into this wretched hole and
fight, find the underwater boat on which—"
He kicked her.
"You held the caldé—"
He kicked her again, and she screamed.
Remora lurched to his feet. "Really, I cannot—simply, ah, will not
tolerate this. Kick me, if you like." Spider pushed him; he staggered,
tripped over the corpse, and fell.
"And drop stones on it from the surface or catch it in a net," Maytera
Mint finished. "If you want our plans, there you have them. Your spies
can tell you nothing more."
"You're one tough little girl."
"I'm a gross coward," she told him. "I realized it about an hour after
Echidna declared me her sword. We were storming the Alambrera.
It might be more accurate to say we were trying to. I—shall I
tell you?"
Spider put away his comb. "I'll break you."
"You have already. I screamed, didn't I? What more do you need
to complete your triumph? My death?" She threw her arms wide.
"Shoot!"
"Another time, maybe." Spider turned his attention to Remora, who
was sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. "You, Patera. Your
Eminence. Is that what they call you?"
"You may call me either. Or neither, eh? I should, um, opt for
neither, given the choice. I—ah—covet no honors from you."
"You can die, too, Patera."
"I, um, well aware. Thinking, hey? Thinking while I, um, bore the
general. Not valiant, eh? Not like, er, she."
"Your Eminence, I am not brave!"
"You are, Maytera—ah—General. Yes, you are. Not, um, sensible
of it, conceivably. I—ah—am not. Was a, um, prisoner of Erne's.
I told you, eh?"
"You told me you'd conferred with him, not that you were his
prisoner."
Remora looked toward Spider, seeking his permission; Spider said,
"Sure, I'd say we got time."
"In the, um, Palace, eh? Eating dinner. Warned, eh? By a page.
Guardsmen coming. Thought they wanted—ah—consult me. Waited
for my sweet. In they tramped, these, er, troopers. Where's the
Prolocutor? That was the, um, term they employed. I endeavored to
explain. His Cognizance comes and, ah, departs at his, er, pleasure.
Arrested me, hey? Hands bound, all that. Under my robe, eh? I,
urn, petitioned that favor, and they, er, condescended. Marched
me out."
Remora paused to swallow. "Frightened, General. Badly frightened.
Horribly, er, affrighted. Coward. Questions, eh? Questions, questions.
Read, um, statements I never made, eh? Spoke in my own defense.
Struck. Said I'd lied. Struck, eh? On and—ah—more of the, er, like
treatment."
Maytera Mint nodded. Her right cheek was beginning to swell,
but her eyes were full of sympathy. "I'm sorry, Your Eminence.
Truly sorry."
"Said they'd kill me, eh? Needler at my head. All that. Coward,
lost control. Bowels, er, voided. Soiled my clothes. Had to speak to
the Brigadier. Said that over and over. I—ah—know him. Knew
him, eh? In better days. Yes, in better days. Saw him at last. Truce,
eh? Truce, cease-fire. I can, er, bring one about, hey? Caldé's an
augur. Let me go. Spoke through glass to—ah—Councillor. Loris.
Councillor Loris. He said—urn—let him go. And they—ah—did.
Brigadier Erne did. Fellow I'd—ah—chatted with, hey? Ten, twenty,
er, occasions. Parties, dinners, receptions. Gossip, prattle over wine.
Beaten, wet—um—stinking. But free. Free."
Spider laughed.
"Back to the Palace, hey? Frightened—ah—terrified. Shooting augurs,
eh? Sibyls, too. I, um, didn't see it. For that thank—ah—Tartaros.
Thanked Tenebrous Tartaros for it, for, er, shielding my
eyes. But I knew, eh? They told me. Felt the—ah—slug. Needle
strike my back a score of times in—er—three streets. Roughly,
eh? Roughly three. Dead twenty times. Back to the Palace, washed.
Listening all the while. Listening for them. Why, eh? Why listen?"
Remora's bony fingers laced and loosed, knotting and writhing free
to form new knots.
"My—ah—rise. Page as a lad. Schola. Augur. My mother, eh? Be
Prolocutor someday, eh? Mother, couple aunts. Father, too, hum?
Acolyte, desk in the Palace, higher every year or so, hey? Father died.
Careful, hey? Careful, worked hard, hey? Always careful, no enemies,
hey? Long hours. Aunt died. Work and wait, eh? Coadjutor died. Younger than
old Quetzal, hey? Dead at his table, eh? Lying on his—um—documents.
Coadjutor, Mother. Old then, eh? Very. But her eyes shone, Maytera. Er,
General. Her eyes shone." Remora's own were full of tears.
"There is no need for you to torment yourself like this, Your
Eminence."
Spider told the man with the slug gun, "See what's keepin' them." He
rose, nodded to Maytera Mint, and walked away, down the tunnel.
"Mother..." Remora coughed, a racking cough deep in his chest. "Sorry.
My, um, couldn't prevent it. Mother dead, hey? Mother dead, General. All dead,
then. Mother, father, both, er, sisters. Not Mother's—ah—her vision.
Vision for me. Prolocutor. Why afraid? Beatings.
Blows, eh? 'Fraid of them, too. Most of all—ah—her vision." He
fell silent.
Wanting desperately to change the subject, Maytera Mint asked
Spider, "Where is that man going? What are we waiting here for?"
"A stretcher." Spider shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
"For him." He gestured toward the corpse.
"You're going to carry it away for burial?"
"Cleaned up, hey?" Remora had not been listening. "Lay clothes.
Left the Palace. Soon as I could. Went to Ermine's. Caldé might
come. I knew. I knew. In the, um, his letter."
Maytera Mint nodded, supposing that the letter had been addressed
to Remora.
"Went to Ermine's. Drinking den there. Lay clothing so they
wouldn't—ah—shoot. Waited. Porter dropped something in the
street. Up like a rabbit. Die, never Prolocutor. Her spirit, eh? Her
ghost. Her vision for me."
"It never occurred to me that you were waiting for a means to carry
the body," Maytera Mint told Spider. "It should have, but I've seen
so many left lying where they fell."
He cleared his throat. "We got a place. You'll see it."
"Down here?"
"Yeah. Eight, ten chains from here."
Maytera Mint indicated the corpse. "Did you like him, Spider? You
must have."
"He was all right, and I worked with him ten years."
"Then you would not object if I covered his face?"
"Nah. Go ahead."
She did, standing and smoothing the black skirt of her habit, taking
short steps to the. side of the corpse, kneeling, and spreading a dirty
handkerchief she took from her sleeve over its face. "May Great Pas
pardon your spirit."
"No more—ah—the vision." Remora was addressing no one.
"An, er, administrative post, eh? Finance. Most, er, plausibly.
Finance. No."
"Muzzle it," Spider told him. "See, sib, there's this place where they
was diggin' one of these tunnels. They put a big door in it like they
did. You seen some."
Maytera Mint nodded.
"Martyr, hey? No martyrs since, ah—"
"They went fifty, sixty steps in and quit. I don't know why. Quit
in dirt. We're under the city, and it's mostly dirt up here."
"Are we? I thought you were taking us to the lake."
"Maybe we will, but we're takin' you here for now. We meet
down here sometimes. Meet with Councillor Potto, and when we
get somebody, we generally leave him where you two were. It's a
old storeroom, I guess, but I don't—" They heard the thunderous
boom of a slug gun, attenuated by distance but unmistakable.
"Guan must of shot somethin'," Spider told Maytera Mint.
"Or he was shot himself."
"He's a rough boy. He can take care of himself. What was I talkin'
about?"
"How you bury the other rough boys." She sighed. "It was interesting.
I'd like to hear more about it."
"Sure." Spider sat down facing her, his needler still in his fight
hand. Settled in his place, he held it up. "I could put this away. You
aren't goin' to jump me, either of you."
"I—ah—intend it," Remora muttered.
"Huh! I don't think so." Spider thrust the needler into his coat. "Like
I said, sib, there's a big door, and I got the word for it. Councillor
Potto told it to me a long time back. So you go in and where it ends
there's dirt. Down towards the lake, where they run deeper, it's all
rock or shiprock, but up this high there's a lot of dirt."
"I understand."
He touched the shiprock wall. "Behind here's dirt. I can tell from
how it's made. What we do, when somebody's chilled up in the city
and there's nobody for them, we bring them down. Or if somebody
dies down here. That happened one time."
Seated again, Maytera Mint nodded toward the corpse.
"Lily. Twice, now. But before, one of my knot got hurt up there
and we brought him down, but he died. We dig straight in, like, into
the dirt till the hole's long enough. We got rolls of poly. We lay some
poly in the hole and wrap them up in some more, and slide them right
in." He looked at her quizzically, and she nodded.
"Then we put some dirt back to fill the hole, right? And everybody's
got a shiv." He took a big stag-handled clasp knife from his pocket.
"We write the name and some stuff about him on a piece of paper,
and we stick it up with his shiv so we don't dig there again for
anybody else."
"As a memorial, too," Maytera Mint suggested, "though I doubt
that you would admit it."
"That's lily, sib, I wouldn't. It's just somethin' for the older bucks
like me. When we go in there again we look at them, and then maybe
we tell the new culls. Like we used to have cull name of Titi that would
put on a gown and pay his face like they do. Not you, sib. You know
what I mean, powder and rouge, and all that. Perfume."
She nodded. "Indeed I do, and I'm not offended in the least.
Go on."
"Give Titi a half-hour, and he's the best lookin' mort in the city.
He kept his hair kind of long, and he could fix it just a little different
and it was a mort's hair cut short. Not as short as yours, but short,
and soon as you saw it you knew it was a mort's hair. If Titi hadn't
paid his dial, that shaggy hair'd make you abram. You'd be talkin'
to yourself."
"A person like that must have been of great value to you."
"Lily, he was. He was a bob cull, too. There was this time when
we were workin' on a knot from Urbs. We knew who they was and
what they was after, and was peery a while to see what they done
and who they talked to. We do it in our trade all the time. We'd
see they found out things Councillor Potto wanted Urbs to know,
and we'd foyst in queer, too, fixed so they'd like it. One came fly.
Know what I mean, sib?"
"I believe so."
"We could've done for him. Chilled him, you know. But we don't
unless we got to."
Remora looked up. "Urn—inevocable. No—ah—going back
after, eh?"
"Slap on, Patera. That's her in a egg cup. You know this one, see?
He's a hog grubber, won't spend. Or he's one of them that lushes till
shadeup and don't forget a thing. Whatever. Soon as he's cold, it's
all down the chute, and Urbs'll send a new cull.
"So what I laid to was to get him nabbed. I got Titi to hook him
and go 'round to two, three places so's to get some to say they seen
them. Then Titi went to Hoppy and capped I been ramped. The
Urber done it. They got him to go along to finger.
"I knew the ken, so'd Titi, and I was keepin' him there. I'd planted
books goin', to keep him on top. Not lumb, but lowre enough, you
know, to have him sure he'd draw my deck."
"I—ah—dishonest game? You, er, cheated?"
Spider. Did you?"
"Sure thing. But not skinnin' him. I'd take his gelt and let him win
back and more to the bargain. He had to lose swop, or I'd been shy
more'n I had. Larger, he'd got to win so he wouldn't stamp. I'd say
haven't you nicked me proper and push my chair, you know the lay,
and he'd say one more hand. I knew Titi was goin' to have to let the
hoppies carry him two or three places 'fore he steered 'em right.
"In they prance, and Titi fingered the Urber and blubbed like two
morts, and the hoppies grabbled him and what's your name, you're
for iron."
"Rape is a very serious charge," Maytera Mint protested. "He could
have been sent to the pits."
"Sure thing, but Titi wasn't goin' to dock. I wanted him shy of
his knot to Pasday, that's all. Well, he broke and run at Titi. Petal,
what're you doin' to me, and the rest, and he's nabbed a flicker and
bashes it on the cat ladder."
"A wine bottle as a weapon, you mean?" This was a foreign whorl
to Maytera Mint.
"A glass tumbler, sib, but it's the same notion." Spider chuckled.
"Titi fans him so hard he's back across and on my knee if I hadn't
hopped. Knocked over my perch and both down together.
"Now right here's where my jabber pays. Titi run to him bawlin'
like a calf with the cow in the kitchen, and Hoppy? Never twigged. I
was on velvet. Showed me the door. Titi had to stay and cap, which
he did, and Hoppy never twigged. I'd like to turn up another, but
I've never seen any half so fine, not even on boards."
"Yet he's dead," Maytera Mint said pensively. "He's dead and buried
in that place you told us about, because there was no one else who
cared enough to bury him. Otherwise we would not be talking about
him. How did he die?"
"I was hopin' you wouldn't quiz me, sib."
She smiled. "I'll withdraw the question if you'll call me Maytera.
Will you do that for me?"
"Sure thing." Spider's hand massaged his stubbled jowls. "I'm goin'
to tell you anyhow. Thing is, some culls nicker. All right, it's abram.
But, well..."
"But he was your friend."
"Nah. I miss him, though. I brought him in. I found him, and I
got him in, helped him out of a queer lay he was standin' and all
that, and pretty quick he's a dimber hand. Everybody knew, all my
knot. They stood him wide. You wouldn't think, and they didn't
to start, but after a while. I told about how he said the Urber
ramped him."
"Yes, you did."
"A buck tried it, see, Maytera? He got down to shag and
twigged Titi's yard, and did for him on account. Squeezed his
pipe for him."
"That's sad. I understand perfectly why you dislike it when people
laugh. May I ask about him, too?" She gestured toward the corpse.
"What was his name?"
"Paca." While seconds crawled by, Spider stared at the
handkerchief-shrouded face. "He was a pretty good all-round cull, know what
I say? For jabber or a breakin' lay or rags-and-tags, any of the jobs
we do, smokin' or liffin' seal—"
Remora looked up.
"Any game you name, I could name you better. You don't
always know, though, and sometimes that cull's got his plate full
or he's crank, and Paca could take it. Once in a while he'd big
my glimms."
Spider spoke to Remora. "I was goin' to ask, Patera, if you'd cap
for him. Think you could?"
"Pray for, um, Peccary? Paca. I, er, have. Privately, eh? While we,
er, now."
"When I slide him in," Spider explained impatiently. "Cut bene
whiddes for everybody."
"I—ah—indeed. Honored."
"What about Guan?" Maytera Mint inquired. "Aren't we going to
bury him, too? Wouldn't you like His Eminence to pray for him as
well? Perhaps we could make it a group ceremony.
"Guan's not for ice."
"Certainly he is." She sighed. "Where is your stretcher?"
"He'll be along in a minute."
"Thirsty, eh? Might we, um, hungry, likewise."
"So am.I," Maytera Mint declared. "You have a stretcher somewhere,
or so you say, Spider. If there's food and water there, too, may we not
go to it?"
"I, ah—"
"You ate and drank last night, I assume, and this morning. You,
Guan, Paca, and the others. We didn't."
Spider clambered to his feet. "All right, you two, you got it. Come
on. I want to see what's keepin' those putts."
"Ah—water? And, um, something to eat?"
"Sure thing. We got prog and plonk. There's a well, too. I ought
to of let you have some last night. You need a hand up, Patera?
How 'bout you, Maytera?"
"I'm fine, thank you, Spider."
"I—ah—give warning," Remora said as Spider helped him to
stand. "The next, um, instance. Strike the General. Or me. I shall
attack, eh? Will. Martyr, hey? Gone but—um, er—commemorated.
Unforgotten."
"He isn't going to," Maytera Mint told Remora briskly. "We are
past all that hitting and hating with Spider. Don't you understand,
Your Eminence?"
"Come on," Spider repeated, and started down the tunnel. "You
want to eat? I'll bet you anythin' they aren't cold."
"Um, forbidden."
"Wagering is contrary to the regulations of the Chapter," Maytera
Mint explained, "but I am prepared to violate them and accept
whatever punishment may be meted out to me. I say that they are
dead, all of them. The men you sent for the stretcher, and Guan,
too. As dead as Paca. Will you take my bet?"
"Sure thing." Spider had drawn his needler again. "I got a card says
I'm right."
"I don't want your card. What I want are answers to three questions.
You must promise to answer in full. No lies and no evasions. No half
truths. What will you have from us if we lose? We haven't any money,
or at least I have none."
Spider halted, waiting for her. "I donno, sib. Maytera, I mean.
That's better, huh? You call each other sib, though."
She nodded. "We call one another sib, which is short for sibyl,
because maytera is reserved for the sibyl in charge of the cenoby
in which we live. There's only one other sibyl in my cenoby since
Maytera Rose passed on, Maytera Marble. She is senior to me, so
she is in charge. I will call her Maytera when next we meet, assuming
that Maytera Rose has been buried."
"You, too, huh? Well, I'm sorry, Maytera. Come on, Your
Eminence, shake it up."
"His Eminence has a gold gammadion set with gems," Maytera Mint
confided. "He might be willing to make it my stake in our bet. I'll try
to persuade him."
Spider shook his head. "I could nab it anytime."
"Certainly you could, but you would have stolen it. Though
Tenebrous Tartaros, whose realm this surely is, is the patron of
thieves, I doubt very much that he approves of stealing from augurs,
and all the other gods surely condemn it. If you won His Eminence's
gammadion you would have acquired it honesdy, and would have
no reason to fear divine retribution."
"Yeah. But you don't think I'll win."
Maytera Mint shook her head. "No, I don't. I will not deceive you,
Spider. I am as sure as I can be without having seen them that all
those men are dead. If you accept my bet, you'll have to answer my
questions, one for each dead man."
"All right, I'll tell you what I want, Maytera. But I'm goin' to call
you General. That's who I want to bet with, the rebel general. Can
I do that? Patera does."
"Certainly. I'd prefer it, in fact."
"You figure I'm a thief. I can tell by the way you were talkin' a
minute ago. That's the lily, isn't it, General?"
"You employ a great deal of cant, Spider, and cant is used principally
by thieves. Also by prostitutes, with whom I've spoken now and then,
but most of them steal when it seems safe."
"Most everybody will," Spider told her positively.
"Perhaps. If so, it is small wonder that the gods show us no more
affection than they do."
"Well, I ain't a thief. I talk like I do 'cause we're with them a lot.
Spies don't ken with people like you, General, or this other sibyl you
call Maytera. She don't know anythin' they need, see? You do, but
if they were to ken with you, they'd need a shaggy good reason or
you'd start thinkin', why's he around all the time?" Spider paused
for breath.
"You go to some city to look into things, you know, and you want
somebody local to help out, what you want's a thief six to one. When
we got to have new blood, that's where we look, too. Not always, but
mostly."
"I understand, Spider..."
"Out with it."
"Very well." Maytera Mint took a deep breath. "Were you a thief
previously? Is that how you came to be a spy-catcher?"
He grinned at her, displaying crooked and discolored teeth. "What
makes you think you can believe me, General?"
"I'm a good judge of character."
"I'd lie to you."
"Indeed you would, and you might do it so skillfully, that I would
think you were telling the truth. But you won't lie to me about this,
not here and not now. Were you? It's none of my affair, and to
confess the truth there is a thief I taught when he was a child of
whom I'm very fond. His name is Auk."
"I know him," Spider said.
"You do? That hadn't occurred to me, but now that you've
mentioned it, no doubt you must. Does he—is he one of your
knot, as you call it?"
"That'd feague you, huh? He's not. Auk won't work for anybody
else, and he's too peppery for my trade anyhow. I wasn't a thief
either. I was a hoppy. You believe that?"
"If you say it's true, absolutely. May I ask why you left the
Caldé's Guard?"
"They callin' it that again? That's what it was when I went in, then
they changed it. They kicked me out. Let's not talk about why."
Remora, who had caught up with them and overheard much of
their conversation, muttered, "No, ah, never. Only shriving, hey?
There—um—solely."
"I won't ask," Maytera Mint promised.
"Pulled off my stripes and put them on my back. I could show you
the scars. Cull called Desmid brought me in. He's cold. I been catchin'
spies for Viron twenty-two years now. I don't know how many I've
nabbed or helped nab, thirty or forty. Could be more, and there's a
lot we don't want to nab but could anytime we wanted to. I'm tellin'
you 'cause of what I want my end of our bet to be. I'm stickin' with
Councillor Potto, see? Twenty-two years I been workin' for him, and
he took me when I didn't have two bits or a padken. I'm his man,
always will be."
"In that case, let us hope a peace can be arranged that will permit
Councillor Potto to retain his seat."
Spider nodded. "Sure thing. All right, let's talk about this bet. First
off, these three questions. Suppose you were to ask me who my boys
are, the ones you think's yours. I can't tell you names. You see that?
I won't lie to you, General, but I won't tell, either."
"I understand. I won't ask you to betray your friends."
"All right, here's what I want. If your side wins and you get loose,
you don't nab me and my knot for spyin' on you, or for holdin' you
like we're doin'."
Maytera Mint started to speak, but Spider raised his hand. "That's
not all. You let us keep doin' what we been doin' for Viron. You're
goin' to need us worse than you think. If you do that, I'll tell what's
gone on before, and give you the files."
"I can't. I would accept that bet if I could, cheerfully and
without hesitation. But those are matters for the caldé and the
new Ayuntamiento, not for me."
"The, um, terms. He, er, designated? Specified yourself General.
Not the—ah—reconstituted Ayuntarniento or the caldé, hey?"
"But he means our side. The caldé, Generalissimo Oosik, and even
the Trivigauntis. Don't you, Spider? For myself, I would give you
my word, as I said. In fact, I do, whether I win or lose. But I cannot
bind the caldé and an Ayuntamiento that does not yet exist."
"But you'll promise, General? Personally?"
"Absolutely. I have and I do."
Spider indicated Remora with a jerk of his thumb. "Have him flash
that gaud. Pas's cross. You can swear on that."
"If you wish. Will you allow me my three questions, when I win?
Full, honest answers?"
"Sure thing. I'll swear too, if you want."
"Then it won't be necessary."
Remora had produced his gammadion; Maytera Mint laid her hand
upon it. "I, General Mint of the Horde of Viron, called by some the
rebel or insurgent forces, I who am also Maytera Mint of the Sun
Street mantelon, do hereby swear that should we prevail I will not
punish nor attempt to punish this man Spider and his subordinates
for their activities in collecting intelligence for the Ayuntamiento as
presently constituted. I further swear that I will do everything I can
to prevent others from so punishing them, short of force. In addition,
I will actively support their being retained in their function, that is to
say the counterintelligence function, in which they have served our
city faithfully. I will do these things whether I win my wager with
Spider or lose it."
She drew breath. "Is that satisfactory?"
"Ought to cover it."
"Great Pas, bear witness! Ophidian Echidna, whose sword I am,
bear witness! Scintillating Scylla, Patroness of Our Holy City of
Viron, bear witness!"
"Good enough." Spider held out his hand. "Have we got a bet? Shake
on it." Solemnly they shook hands, her own small hand enveloped in
a thickly muscled one twice its size.
"All right, I'll tell you right now I got a lock. We're almost there."
He gestured. "See that side tunnel up ahead? We go in there, and the
old guardroom's only four, five steps. If they were cold, we'd have
made them before this."
She shook her head. "To the contrary, though I wish you were
correct. They would have heard our voices and called out."
A hundred steps brought them to the side tunnel's entrance. As
soon as they turned into it, she caught sight of a man's feet protruding
from a doorway. "That will be Guan," she murmured.
Spider stopped her, spreading his arms to hold Remora back as
well. "That's Hyrax. I always twig a cully's shoes, or a mort's either.
Shoes tell more than any kind of kick. A lot know it, but that don't
stop it from bein' true."
"Wasn't the other man with Hyrax, Spider? Where is he?"
"In there." Spider's breath rasped in his throat. "Just out of sight,
most likely. You don't shoot a cull soon as you see him through the
door, not if he's comin' in. You let him get inside. That way you got
two tries if he beats hoof."
He turned to Remora. "You first, Patera. Pull out Pas's cross and
have it where they can see, and hold your hands up. You're a augur
in a robe, not holdin' a slug gun or anything. They won't shoot you,
or I don't think they will. Tell them I got the general. Leave us be,
or she's cold."
Remora looked stricken.
"You wanted to die down here, didn't you? This's your chance.
Go on before I shoot you myself. They won't."
"They must know we're out here," Maytera Mint said. "They will
have heard us. If not before, they will certainly have heard that."
Spider did not reply; his eyes were on Remora.
"I, er, shall." Remora backed away, raised his hands, and turned
toward the doorway.
"Pas's gammadion," Maytera Mint prompted him. "Take it out so
they can see it."
If Remora heard her advice, he ignored it. She watched him pause
at the threshold, then step through. There was no shot.
"They used to have soldiers down here awake and ready to go if
there was trouble," Spider told her. His hoarse voice was close to a
whisper. "That was before the Guard. That's what Councillor Potto
told me one time, and he ought to know."
They stood side-by-side in silence after that. There was no sound
from the guardroom, no sound from any source save the almost
inaudible sigh of the cool wind that filled the tunnel.
At length Spider said, "I should of told him to take a look around
in there. I guess he's doin' it anyhow."
"I'm going too." Maytera Mint started toward the doorway.
"Hornbuss!" Spider caught her arm. "You're goin' to do what I say,
and I say you can't."