by Gene Wolfe
“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, Calde.”
“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, Calde, 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, Calde? 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, Calde. 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, Calde.”
“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, Calde, 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, Calde.”
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 thirs
ty 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 Calde 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 facade 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 calde 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 s
till 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 calde’s pet. The calde 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 calde 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 calde chose. Isn’t that correct, Your Eminence?”
Remora did not reply.