by Gene Wolfe
“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 calde. 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, Calde. 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 calde’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 calde, 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 calde 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.” S
he 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, Calde.” 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, Calde. 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, Calde, 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, Calde.”
“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, Calde. 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.”