by Gene Wolfe
Potto said, “I do anyhow. He’s valuable to us.”
“Clearly. Primarily in frustrating spies?”
Loris said, “Primarily, yes.”
“Spider, General Mint says you’re a decent man, a patriot in your way. If I were to release you to Councillor Potto, as you wish, would you be willing to give me your solemn promise that in so far as our forces are concerned, you would confine your activities entirely to counterintelligence? By ‘our forces’ I intend those headed by Generalissimo Oosik and Auk — not only the Guard, but General Mint’s volunteers, including those commanded by her through Colonel Bison.”
Spider licked his lips. “If Councillor Potto don’t tell me I can’t, yeah, I will.”
Potto raised a hand. “Wait. I think I heard something funny. Does your friend Auk have a private horde now?”
Auk grinned. “The best thieves in the whole city, the ones that’s going with me and Sciathan. A month for the airship, you said. I figure we might nab it a whole lot sooner.”
Sciathan stood up. “We must! If the Cargo will not leave the Whorl, Pas will drive everyone out as one drives a bear from a cave. He will starve and afflict Crew and Cargo until we go.”
Loris’s icy blue eyes twinkled. “A rain of blood. The Chrasmologic Writings speak of such things, I’m told.”
Remora nodded solemnly. “Ah — worse, Councillor. Plagues, hey? Famine, er, likewise.”
“Listen to me!” Sciathan s excited tenor cracked. “If a landing craft leaves, even one, Pas will wait for more. But if none leave everyone will be driven out. Do you understand now? We Crew have a craft ready, but so much Crew cannot be spared so early in the Plan. For this reason Tartaros has readied Auk for us, and we must have them!”
“Me and my knot,” Auk explicated.
Chenille added, “That’s me. I hope you don’t mind that I stayed to listen, Patera. But when Auk goes, I go too.”
“With my blessing,” Potto chortled. “Oh, yes! Very much so. I’ll be delighted to lose my accuser, and have the enemy lose its airship.”
He turned to Silk. “Will Spider be free to act in any way we choose against your cherished allies? That’s what it sounded like. You didn’t expect me to miss that, did you?”
“No.” Silk’s expression was guarded. “But if you had, I would have mentioned it to him. You may not be aware of it, but Maytera Mint left the tunnels with two other prisoners. One was a convict named Eland. Eland was murdered yesterday morning in the Grand Manteion.”
“A mystery!” Potto clapped his pudgy hands like a happy child. “I love them!”
“I don’t. I try to clear them up when I can, and I’ve been trying to clear up this one. My first thought was that this man Eland had been killed by some old enemy, most plausibly someone who had attended the sacrifice there the previous night and had seen him. I asked Auk to find out who that enemy might be, and had one of General Skate’s officers inquire as well.”
Silk shifted his attention from Potto to Spider. “The harder they looked, the less probable it appeared. Eland had not been a thief, as I had assumed, but a horse trainer who had killed his employer in a fit of rage. Presumably there was some public sympathy for him, since he was not executed. Auk could find nobody who knew of anyone who bore him a murderous grudge.”
Maytera Mint asked, “Did you consider Urus, Calde?”
“We did, but we quickly dismissed him. Eland had been a useful subordinate in the tunnels, where Urus would have had any number of opportunities to kill him in complete safety. Why wait? Why run the risk of being shot by Acting Corporal Slate, as the killer very nearly was? Besides, I’ve gotten a sketchy description of the killer, and if it’s even roughly correct, he was neither dirty nor dressed in rags. I’ll tell you later how I obtained it.”
“Got to protect his sources,” Spider explained. “That’s how it is, Maytera.”
“Most of Eland’s friends and relatives had assumed he was dead long ago,” Silk continued, “yet someone with a needler had quite deliberately climbed into the choir of the Grand Manteion to shoot him. Why? After I’d turned over the question for an hour or two, it occurred to me that someone might have made a mistake — that he might have intended to shoot another person entirely, and mistaken Eland for that person. Chenille here was able to tell me in considerable detail how everyone present had been dressed, and Auk and Spider appeared to be the only possibilities.”
Eyeing Spider, Oreb whistled.
“There were a number of sibyls present. All wore habits, and could be dismissed at once. So could Patera Incus and the body of Patera Jerboa — both were robed in black, as I am. No one could mistake a man for Chenille, and so on. If an error had been made, the intended victim was clearly Auk or Spider.”
Auk said, “I don’t think he was shooting at me.”
“Neither do I,” Silk told him. “You were near the altar, and thus somewhat nearer the killer. Furthermore, you were in a relatively well lit area. Spider and Eland were in a chapel behind the sanctuary, a more distant area as well as a more dimly lit one. I would guess that the killer had been given a verbal description of Spider, and had been told that he was being guarded by soldiers.”
Silk turned back to Spider. “Were you and Eland awake when he was shot?”
Spider nodded.
“Were you standing up?”
Spider shook his head. “We were sittin’ on the floor. That soldier wouldn’t let us get up unless we had a reason.”
“There you have it.” Silk shrugged. “At least, you have as much as I do. Sitting would tend to conceal the difference in size. Slate was guarding both of you, and from what I’ve heard, neither of you had been given an opportunity to wash and change clothes, as General Mint and Patera Remora did. In the dim light of the chapel, the killer may not have seen you at all. Or he may simply have felt that Eland corresponded more closely to the description he had been given.
“The question then became, who would want to kill Spider? Plausibly, the Ayuntamiento or the Trivigauntis. The first because he knows a great deal about its espionage and counterespionage activities, and about the tunnels under the city, information that he might pass on to Generalissimo Oosik, to General Mint, or to me.”
“I’d know about it. I’d have ordered it.” Potto giggled. “I didn’t.”
Silk nodded. “And you could easily have found an assassin who knows Spider by sight, I would think. The Trivigauntis are our allies — but they are Spider’s enemies, and he is said to know a great deal about their spies in Viron.” He fell silent.
Maytera Mint said, “You can’t be sure this is true.”
“No, I can’t; but I believe it very well may be. We stole a prisoner from Generalissimo Siyuf. Is it absurd to suppose that she might try to kill one we had? Since that may have been the case, it would be manifestly unjust to limit Spider’s activities with regard to Siyuf and her horde.”
“They went after me, so I can go after them,” Spider said.
“Exactly.”
Hyacinth touched Silk’s arm. “I don’t understand. Are we for them or against them?”
Maytera Mint was staring at Silk. “I feel this is almost ancient history, but before all this started — before poor Maytera Rose passed on, I felt that I understood you, just as I felt I understood myself. In the past ten days or so you’ve become somebody else, somebody I don’t understand at all, and so have I. You’re married now, I witnessed the ceremony, and I’m thinking about marrying too.”
A change in her expression told Silk that Bison’s hand had found hers.
After a moment of silence she added, “You’ve lost your faith, or most of it, I think. What’s happened to us?”
Potto laughed loudly.
Quetzal, seated between Oosik and Loris at the other end of the table, murmured, “Circumstances have changed, Maytera. That’s all, or nearly all. There is an essential core at the center of each man and woman that remains unaltered no matter how life’s externals
may be transformed or recombined. But it’s smaller than we think.”
Silk nodded his agreement.
“If I — ah — permitted.” Remora pushed back the errant lock of lank, black hair. “The General and I were companions in, um, adversity. The — ah — spirit. The inalterable core, as His Cognizance has, um, finely. The spirit that survives even death. It grows when trod upon, like the dandelion. I have learned it, eh? So may you, if you — um — reflect.”
He stared down at his long, bony hands. “Wouldn’t have killed Spider, hey? In those tunnels? Would’ve, er, failed. But I wish now I had tried, or very nearly. And here, eh? No longer coadjutor. Got my own manteion, hey? After all these years. Moved in today.”
He spoke to Silk. “I, er, necessary that I talk to you about it, eh, Calde? Sun Street. Accounts and so on. When we’re, um, we’ve adjourned.”
Silk managed to say, “Gladly, Patera.”
“Stripped of, er, power. That’s the expression. Smaller, outside, growing, inside. I — ah — feel it.” He held up the gammadion he wore; it was of plain iron.
As much to cover his embarrassment as her own, Maytera Mint asked Silk, “You said everything Siyuf’s done since her horde arrived could be defended, and she’s our ally, and yet you’re letting Spider go? Free to attack her and the rest of the Trivigauntis in any way Potto chooses?”
Potto rocked with merriment. “Be her again, Silk, and you can shoot yourself.”
He shook his head. “I’m not being asked to defend Siyuf’s actions now, but my own. I have changed, I suppose, General, as you say; but I don’t think I’ve changed as much as you may imagine. The faith I had, I had learned as one learns other lessons — from reading and lectures and my mother’s example and conversation. I’m in the process, I believe, of replacing it with new faith gained from experience — from circumstances, as His Eminence says. You have to wreck the old structure, or so it seems to me, before you can build the new one; otherwise, it’s always getting in the way.”
He held out his hand to Hyacinth, who took it.
“We’re married, as you say. I don’t believe my mother ever was. Did I tell you that?”
Maytera Mint shook her head.
“I told Maytera Marble, I’m sure. I know now, or think I know, how — how I came to be, as a result of something that happened to me in the tunnels, or at least underground. You don’t understand me, I know.”
“Certainly I do! You don’t have to talk about that, Calde, or anything. But I certainly wasn’t asking about that.”
Silk shook his head. “You don’t, you merely suppose you do. Councillor Potto, here’s a mystery for you. Can you solve it? I’ve lied about it once already tonight, I warn you; and I’ll lie again if I must.”
Maytera Mint objected, “You don’t tell lies, Patera.”
Silk shook his head. “We all do when we must. When we’re asked about something we heard in shriving, for example. We say we don’t know. This is something I have to lie about, at least until it no longer matters, simply because everyone would think I lied if I told the truth.”
Maytera Marble’s voice surprised him. “Not I, Patera.”
He turned in his chair to look at her.
“Chenille brought in tea and cookies, the ones she and Nettle baked, and she never came back. Horn seems to have disappeared, too. I thought something might be wrong.”
“A great many things are, Moly,” Silk told her, “but we’re trying to set a few right. Do you remember what I told you about my enlightenment? I saw Patera Pike praying, praying so very hard year after year for help for his manteion, remember?”
She nodded.
“Until the Outsider spoke in his heart, telling him his prayer was granted. When I had seen that, I waited, waited full of expectation, to see what help would be sent to him.”
Maytera Marble nodded. “I remember, Patera.”
“It arrived, and it was me. That was all it was. Me. Laugh, Councillor.”
Potto did not oblige.
“But for a moment, ever so briefly, I saw myself as Patera Pike had seen me then. It was a humbling experience. Better, it was a salutary one. I’m emboldened by thememory now, when I find myself having to reckon with councillors and generalissimos, people whose company is alien to me, and whose opposition I find terrifying.”
Maytera Marble nodded, “As they find yours, Patera.”
“I doubt it.” Shaking his head, Silk addressed Loris. “We’re prepared to offer you a very good bargain, Councillor — an exceptional one. Spider has promised he’ll confine himself to counterespionage as regards our forces if we will release him. We ask no oath on the Writings, no ceremony of that kind; a man’s word is good or it isn’t, and General Mint has indicated that his is. In exchange, we ask only your present self. I emphasize present — the Councillor Loris here with us. You can divert your consciousness to another such body as soon as we’re through conferring, and I assume that you will; it won’t be a violation of our bargain. Do you agree to the exchange?”
“No,” Loris said. “I have no second body available.”
Potto exclaimed, “I will!”
“I’m afraid not, Councillor. When you have a prisoner of similar importance, an exchange can be effected. Until then, Spider must remain with us. Councillor Loris, are you certain you won’t reconsider?”
Loris shook his head — then stared at Remora, who was seated to Potto’s right.
Quetzal murmured, “He has these fits occasionally, poor fellow. I think Patera Calde witnessed one last week.”
“I did, shortly before my bride and I were reunited at Ermine’s.” Longing to embrace her, Silk tore his gaze from Hyacinth’s.
“They’re coming, Silk.” Remora announced in a flattened voice. “A colonel and a hundred cavalry troopers.”
Oreb whistled sharply.
“Thank you. Auk, I’m afraid this means we have very little time. You and Sciathan must leave at once by a side door. Your followers are meeting at the Cock? Warn them that Trivigaunti patrols may search for them. Chenille had better go with you; otherwise they’re liable to take her to get you.”
Loris stood. “We’d better leave, too.”
“Not with us,” Auk snapped. “Out the front, if you’re going. C’mon, Upstairs. C’mon, Jugs.”
Potto rose, giggling. “He doesn’t share Silk’s love for you, Cousin Loris.”
Silk motioned for both to sit again. “You have come under a flag of truce. They’ll respect that, surely.”
“So did we,” Maytera Mint told him.
He ignored it. “You and Colonel Bison are affronted now because Generalissimo Siyuf wished to confiscate the weapons you gave your troopers. If she were here, she might explain that she acted in support of our government, the one opposed to the Ayuntamiento that Echidna ordered you to establish and that you have established. She probably feels sure, as General Saba and Chenille did Thelxday night, that once freed of the restraint of discipline your troopers will use their weapons to overturn it. Remember that, when we talk to these Trivigauntis.”
Silk addressed Oosik. “You, Generalissimo, are piqued because Generalissimo Siyuf bypassed you and Skate, issuing orders to the commanders of the brigades.”
Oosik nodded, his face grim.
“Bear in mind that when she tried to collect those weapons she was doing what you would have, had you not been restrained by my orders; and that she’s shown clearly that she thinks it useless to try to suborn your loyalty.”
“I — er, um?” Remora gaped at Quetzal’s vacated chair.
“His Cognizance has left us,” Silk explained. I suppose he went with Auk. You dozed off for a moment, I believe.
“Councillor Loris, Councillor Potto, you said you’d come to demand my surrender, with new terms. Let’s not trouble about the terms now. Explain briefly, if you will, how you know that we and our allies will be defeated.
Loris nodded. “Briefly, as you ask. Siyuf’s been sending patrols into t
he countryside to forage for food. They take whatever our people have and leave promissory notes in which our people have no confidence. Notes that are almost certainly valueless, in fact. Our farmers have begun hiding what food they have and organizing bands to resist—”
Oosik interrupted him. “You gave your permission, Calde, at the parade. I was thunderstruck.”
Hyacinth said, “You think you’re terribly clever, don’t you, Oosie. What would you have done?”
Oosik started to speak, but thought better of it.
“He would have told Generalissimo Siyuf that she’d have to buy what our farmers brought her — or so I imagine.” Silk shrugged. “They wouldn’t have brought enough, or nearly enough, and they wouldn’t have accepted promises to pay later. Soon she would have had to send out patrols, as she’s doing now, or shut her eyes to the fact that unit commanders were foraging for themselves. In either case, we would have had to stop them, or anyway we would have had to try. Within a short time we’d have been fighting Trivigauntis in the streets. I hoped to prevent that, or at least postpone it; but I’m afraid that I gained very little time for us, and it may be that I gained none at all.”
“We could have sent out foraging parties of our own,” Bison suggested.
Maytera Mint shook her head. “Then the farmers would have hated us instead of them. If they must hate somebody, it’s far better that they hate Siyuf and her Trivigauntis.”
“The point,” Loris interposed, “is that they’re beginning to resist. You’ve helped them, and we’re helping them more.”
Potto grinned at Silk. “Cementing their loyalty to us, you see. We’re the government of the good old days, coming up out of the ground with armloads of slug guns, and giving them away.” He tittered. “We get food aplenty for our bios. It’s mostly chems with us down below, and they don’t need it.”
“We estimate that fifteen thousand of General Mint’s fifty thousand-odd were countryfolk,” Loris continued. “They’re armed now, thanks to you. We’ve armed another four thousand thus far, and we continue to distribute arms. This sibyl—”
“I’m a laywoman again,” Maytera Marble told him.