by Gene Wolfe
“This officious laywoman once boasted that though others might be tempted to lie, her figures were accurate. So are mine. Inside of three months, Siyuf will be unable to feed her troops, to say nothing of her horses, mules, and camels. Having no alternative, she’ll return to Trivigaunte. By then half the city will have abandoned your rebellion. We came to inform you of that, and demand that you restore our personal accounts.”
“And keep your hands off the Fisc,” Potto subjoined.
“That will be guaranteed by their surrender.” Loris looked around the table, a councillor so rich in wisdom and experience that even Maytera Mint was inclined to accept everything that he said. “Would you care to hear our terms?”
“No.” Silk paused, listening to the sounds of hurrying feet in the foyer. “We haven’t time. I accept. We surrender. We can discuss terms when we have more leisure. That was why I hoped you’d remain, Councillor. It would have facilitated—”
At that moment I burst into the room. “They’re coming, Calde, like you said. A couple of hundred, some on horses.”
“Thank you, Horn.” Silk smiled sadly. “They’ll knock, I believe — at least I hope they will. If they do, delay them as long as you can, please.”
Potto was on his feet again. “We accept your surrender. Let’s go, Cousin!”
Maytera Marble stepped into their path. “Let me remind you of what I told you at my son’s. Calde Silk’s surrender is valid and binds everyone. Patera Silk’s means nothing at all. Do you accept him as Calde? For life?”
The door to the kitchen flew open then, and Hossaan strode in with a needler in each hand; behind him came a dozen women brandishing slug guns. “That life may be short,” he told Silk. “It will be, unless you get your hands up. The rest of you, too.”
One by one Hyacinth, Silk, Remora, Potto, Spider, and Horn complied, Maytera Marble and Bison raising their hands last, and together. Silk said, “You realize, I hope, that this is fundamentally a misunderstanding, a falling out among friends. It can be smoothed over, and soon will be.”
“Spread out,” Hossaan told the women who had entered with him. “Each cover a prisoner.” He smiled at Silk, a smile that did not reach his hooded eyes. “I hope you’re right, Calde. On the personal level, I like you and your wife. I’m carrying out Colonel Abanja’s—”
The crack of a needler cut him off. Ragged fire from the slug guns ended in a choking cloud of plaster dust and an ear-splitting roar as most of the west wall fell, severed from its foundations by the azoth Silk had received from Doctor Crane and given to Maytera Mint.
Chapter 14 — The Best Thieves in the Whorl
“Patera?” Horn inquired softly. “Calde?”
Silk sat up. “What is it?”
“Nettle’s asleep. Just about everybody is, but I knew you weren’t. I could see your eyes.”
Silk nodded, the motion almost invisible in the darkness of the freezing tent. “You’re right, I wasn’t; and you’re afraid, as we all are, and want reassurance. I’ll reassure you as much as I can, though that isn’t very much.”
“I have some questions, too.”
Silk smiled, his teeth flashing in the gloom. “So do I, but you can’t answer mine. I may be able to answer a few of yours. I’ll try.”
Nettle whispered, “I’m not asleep. Horn thought I was, but I was pretending so he’d sleep.” Horn took her hand as she said, “I’ve got a question too.”
“Reassurance first,” Silk told them. “You may need it more than you realize. It’s quite unlikely that Generalissimo Siyuf will have you executed or even imprisoned. Hossaan — that’s Willet’s real name, he’s a Trivigaunti — knows that you and Horn were at the palace to help Moly. Besides, you’re hardly more than children. Siyuf’s a harsh woman, but not a cruel one from what I’ve seen; she wouldn’t command the loyalty she does if she were. I can only guess, but I believe that you and Horn will be questioned and released.”
Horn asked, “Is there anything you don’t want us to tell?”
“No, tell them everything. Nothing you can say can harm Hyacinth or Moly or me. Or Patera Remora and Patera Incus, or even Spider. Nor can anything you say harm you. The better they understand your place in all this, the more likely it is that you’ll be set free once they’ve learned all they can from you — or so it seems to me.”
In a whisper, Nettle asked, “Does this mean we’ve failed, Patera?”
“Of course not. I’m not sure what you’re asking about whether you’re afraid we’ve failed as human beings—”
“Failed the gods.”
“No.” There was resolution in Silk’s voice. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“I’m eight years older. It seems an enormous separation to me, as no doubt it does to you. How does it appear to His Cognizance, do you think?”
Horn said, “Like nothing. His Cognizance was an old, old man when we were born.”
“When I was, too. Consider then how young we must appear to Pas, who built the whorl — or to the Outsider, who shaped our forebears from the mud of the Short-Sun Whorl.” Silk fell silent, listening to the slow pacing of the sentries outside, and Remora’s soft snores.
“Since the Outsider began us, let us begin with him. I’ve never seen him, except in a dream, and even then I couldn’t see his face clearly; but he’s seen me from the beginning — from before my own beginning in fact. He knows me far better than I know myself, and he chose me to perform a small task for him. I was to save our manteion from Blood.
“Blood is dead. Musk, who was the owner of record and who I once considered worse than Blood, is dead too. Patera Remora over there is the new augur on Sun Street — I believe that may be the Outsider’s way of telling me the task is done. You both helped do it, and I’m sure he’s grateful, as I am.”
Horn muttered, “We didn’t do anything, Patera.”
“Of course you did — but listen. I may be wrong, wrong about having saved our manteion, and wrong about the sign. I may fail after all; I can’t be sure. But I can be sure of this — he will forgive me if I fail, and he would surely forgive you. I know him more than well enough to be certain of that.”
Nettle said, “I was mostly thinking about Echidna. I saw her, when she talked to Maytera Mint, I was there.”
“So was I. Echidna told her to destroy the Alambrera. It has been destroyed, and the convicts have been freed. I freed them.”
“Yes, but—”
“Echidna also ordered the destruction of the Ayuntamiento. It is still in existence, if you like, but consider: Lemur, who headed it so long, is dead; so is Loris, who succeeded him.”
“Maytera says that wasn’t really him,” Nettle objected. “She says Maytera Mint said Potto just works the councillors that we see, like you’d work a puppet.”
Silk chuckled, a small, cheerful sound in the darkness. “Like the wooden man that Horn had when you were small.”
“Yes, Patera.”
“That’s true, I’m sure; and I’m equally sure that at one time it was true of all five councillors. Before Doctor Crane killed Lemur, however, we learned that the real Lemur had died some time before — years before, probably. The manipulated body had become Lemur, the only Lemur in existence, though it thought itself still manipulated by the corpse in Lemur’s bed. Do you follow this, Horn? Nettle?”
Nettle said, “I think so, Patera.”
“When I had time to think about that, which wasn’t until Doctor Crane and I had been pulled out of the water, I wondered about the other councillors. If Councillor Loris had remained with us as I asked, and if he had found it impossible to divert his consciousness to another chem, I would have known — and we would have held the presiding officer of the Ayuntamiento. As it was, I would guess that Loris himself knew before he came to treat with us; if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have snatched up the needler Generalissimo Oosik offered to Councillor Potto and begun firing. He understood Generalissimo Siyuf well enough to realize that she
would have him executed on some pretense, and knew he had his life to lose like any other man. In the event, he lost it sooner; but he had the satisfaction of a combatant’s death, which may have meant something to him.”
“One of those women shot him?”
Maytera Marble’s voice reached them out of the darkness, spectrally reminiscent of old Maytera Rose’s. “Yes. I watched it. I saw him fall.”
Silk told her, “I’ve been expecting you to join us, Moly. I would have invited you, but I wasn’t sure where you were, and it wouldn’t do to go stumbling around waking up people.”
“Certainly not, Patera.”
Nettle said, “I’m glad you’re here, Maytera. I want to ask something. Everybody says we run things in Trivigaunte. The Rani’s a woman and so’s Generalissimo Siyuf. I saw her. So who were the women that Willet let in, the ones that shot Councillor Loris? Why did they take orders from him?”
Maytera Marble sniffed. “You’ve a great deal to learn, Nettle. Doesn’t Horn do what you tell him, sometimes, even when he doesn’t want to?”
“I don’t believe I can improve on that,” Silk said, “but I’ll enlarge upon it a trifle. They are spies, of course — agents of the Rani’s, as Hossaan himself is. I’m reasonably sure that they’re Vironese as well. Hossaan has told me that he and Doctor Crane were the only Trivigauntis in the ring they built up here, and I believe he was telling the truth.”
Horn began another question, but Silk stopped him. “I ought to tell you that before I went into the tunnels by the lake I saw someone ahead of me. Later I saw footprints, and still later I came across the body of someone who Hammerstone told me had been a woman.”
“Don’t even talk about that place,” Nettle said, “every time I hear about it, it sounds so awful.”
“It is. But if I may talk about the dead woman, I would imagine she traveled here from Trivigaunte from time to time, probably in the guise of a trader. Chenille carried messages to a woman in the market, and the dead woman I found may well have been the same person. Hossaan wouldn’t have counted her as a part of Doctor Crane’s ring, since she wasn’t subject to Doctor Crane’s orders. I’d imagine she stayed here no more than a few weeks — a month at most — when she came.”
“Does anybody know about him?” Nettle inquired. “About Hammerstone? Is he, you know, all right?”
Maytera Marble murmured, “You want to know if I’m a widow so soon. I don’t know, but I doubt it. He was away searching for materials when Willet and his women came in, but he might have saved us all if he’d been there. He would certainly have saved Patera Incus and me, and the daughter we had begun to build, if he could.
Horn said, “There were two hundred Trivigauntis coming, Maytera. Patera had me out in the street watching for them. They would’ve killed Hammerstone, unless he gave up.”
“We’ll never know.” Maytera Marble seated herself beside Nettle.
“He may rescue you still,” Silk told Maytera Marble. “He may well rescue us all. From what I’ve seen of him, he will surely try, and that worries me — but I’d like to return to Nettle’s question.
“Because women have more power than men in Trivigaunte, Nettle, most people would expect that most or all of the Rani’s agents would be women — that’s as good a reason for employing men as I can think of. But it would be natural for male agents from Trivigaunte to recruit women here. Women would be more sympathetic to their point of view — Hyacinth said something like that when we first met — and men from Trivigaunte would naturally seek out courageous, assertive women like the ones among whom they had lived at home.
“We all tend to generalize too much, I’m afraid. If most augurs are pious and naive, for example, we imagine that every augur is, though if we were to reflect we would see immediately that it cannot be true. In the same way, there are bound to be bold men in Trivigaunte and brave and forceful women here — in fact there is a fine example of the latter sitting with us now. As for those women following Hossaan’s instructions, it really doesn’t matter if they were Vironese or Trivigauntis. If they wouldn’t obey, they would have been of no value to Doctor Crane and Hossaan, and would have been eliminated long ago.”
“I want to ask about something else, Calde, but I’m afraid Maytera will be mad at me.”
“That’s the risk you run, Nettle dear.”
Horn said, “Tell me and I will.”
“No. If those women could spy and shoot a coundilor, I can do this. Calde, I was listening at the door. Maytera caught me and made me quit, but when she went to work on her child again I came back.”
“I’m not angry,” Maytera Marble told her, “but you should be angry with yourself. It was wrong, and you knew it.”
Silk said, “It hardly matters now.”
“Yes, it does. Because I heard something fight at the end, and it’s why I got up when I heard you talking to Horn. You — you just… Gave up. The councillor they shot? Loris? He was talking about giving away slug guns…”
“And I said that we could discuss terms later. That we surrendered.”
“Uh-huh.”
Horn objected, “We were winning. Everybody said so.”
“Horn, he said they were, because the farmers would fight the Trivigauntis and they’d have to leave. Then the Calde said all right we give up, we’ll settle the arrangements when we’ve got more time. Only Maytera said he had to be calde, because if he wasn’t it wouldn’t mean anything.”
“Patera Silk has never been vindictive, dear.”
“I know, Maytera, and I know that word, but I don’t know what you mean by it. Didn’t you want to kill the councillors, Calde?”
“Of course not. As far as our insunection is concerned, what I’ve always wanted to do is end it. I want peace, and a reunited Viron. Echidna ordered Maytera Mint to destroy the Ayuntarniento and return the city to Scylla. Haven’t you ever thought about what that last instruction meant, Nettle?”
“Not enough, I guess.”
“Then think now.” Silk’s fingers groped for Ins ambion. “Returning to Scylla means returning to our Charter Scylla wrote it, and no quantity of prayers and sacrifices would be a convincing demonstration of loyalty as long as we violate it. The Charter demands an Ayuntamiento. Did you know that?”
Horn said, “I did, Patera.”
“From that, it’s clear Echidna does not want us to do away with the institution of the Ayuntamiento. There can be nothing wrong, surely, with a board of advisors elected at three-year intervals, which is what the Ayuntarniento is intended to be — a council of experienced men and women to whom the calde can turn in time of trouble. Echidna was demanding that the present and quite clearly illegitimate Ayuntamiento be dissolved, a demand entirely in harmony with her implied demand that our government return to the Charter.
“That being the case, the way to peace was clear, as I had seen from the beginning. I would remain as calde as long as the people wanted it. I could declare the present Ayuntamiento ended, announce an election, and urge everyone to support the surviving members of the previous Apintamiento. Those who still favored their cause would vote for them as well, and they would be reelected. Would have been, to be realistic.”
“You sound so sad, Calde.” Nettle shivered, snuggling against Horn. “It might happen yet.”
“Yes, it may. I was thinking of the time at Blood’s when Councillor Loris presented a list of demands to Moly and me.”
“Absurd demands,” Maytera Marble declared.
“Extreme demands, certainly. He wanted hostages from the Rani, and he would have put Generalissimo Oosik and the other high-ranking officers on trial. I defied him.”
“You offered to resign, too,” Maytera Marble said. “You were very brave, Patera.”
“I was very stupid, very tired, and very frightened. If I hadn’t been, I would have realized that the thing to do was to agree, stop the fighting, and go to work on the details. Have you ever talked with the clerks in the Juzgado, Nettle?”
/> “No, Calde.”
“I have. I made it a point to, because I knew Hyacinth’s father was a head clerk; she hates him, yet she will always be his daughter. I located him, and wliile we were talking about reforming the Fisc he said that the devils are in the details.
Silk chuckled, cheered by the memory. “Later, one of the officers of the Fisc made the same remark; and I recalled what we were taught in the schola — that the malice of devils is such that they destroy even evil people. My teachers didn’t really believe in them, as Patera Pike did; but I believe that what they said was true, and that what Hyacinth’s father and the official from the Fisc said was true as well.
“MI right, let the Ayuntamiento accommodate the devils. Peace would mean that nine-tenths of Siyufs horde could go home. Thousands of innocent women would be spared horrible deaths in the tunnels, we could buy enough food for those who remained here, and the Ayuntamiento’s chief weapon would be snatched from its hands — let it give our farmers slug guns, those guns would only make us stronger.”
“You were going to win by giving up?”
Silk shook his head. “No one wins by giving up, Nettle, though many fights are not worth winning. I was going to gain what I wanted — peace — by persuading my enemy that he gained by letting me have it, which happened to be the truth. I still hope to do it, though the prospect isn’t bright at the moment.”
Horn said, “General Mint and Colonel Bison got away. So did Generalissimo Oosik.” Nettle added, “The fat councillor did, too, I think. Is there going to be peace now because of what you said?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it.” Silk sighed. “It will depend mostly on the Trivigauntis; and as long as they hold us, Generalissimo Oosik and General Mint are liable to regard them as enemies as bad as the Ayuntamiento, if not worse.
Maytera Marble sniffed. “I don’t see why they want us.”
“His Cognizance is fond of giving short and long answers,” Silk told her. “In this case, he’d probably say that the short answer was that Siyuf has a bad conscience. She came to Viron as an ally, ostensibly, but with the secret hope of making it dependent upon Trivigaunte — a servant city.”