by Gene Wolfe
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 calde—”
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? Calde’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 a
sked 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. Calde 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.”