by Gene Wolfe
“Mucor?” Maytera Mint knelt beside the emaciated girl. “Our calde described you to me, and I’m an old friend of your grandmother’s.”
“Wake up.” Mucor’s pinched face grinned without meaning. “Break it.” There was no hint of intelligence in her stare. She said nothing further, and the silence of the snow closed about them until the fat woman ended it by saying, “This’s my husband, General. Shrike’s his name.”
“Scleroderma! Scleroderma, I didn’t recognize you.”
“Well, I knew you right off. I said that’s General Mint and I held her horse when she charged them on Cage Street, I did, and if you’d gone like you ought to you’d know her too.”
The fat man tugged the brim of his hat.
“I went up to the Calde’s Palace to see Maytera, only she wasn’t home and half the wall down, so I’ve been taking care of her granddaughter ever since, poor little thing. Did those bad women carry you off, Maytera? That’s what I heard.”
“You’d better call me Maggie,” Maytera Marble said, and pulled her habit over her head.
“Maytera!”
“I am not a sibyl any more,” the slender, shining figure declared. “I have become an abandoned woman, as I warned you I would.” She dropped the voluminous black gown over Mucor’s head, and pulled it down around her. “Put your arms into the sleeves, dear. It’s easy, they’re wide.”
“There was a old man that helped me with her,” Scleroderma explained, “but he went to fight, then the bad women came and we had to scoot.”
If it had not been for the shock of seeing Maytera Marble nude, Maytera Mint would have smiled.
“I think it means he’s dead, but I hope not. Aren’t you cold, Maytera?”
“Not a bit.” Maytera Marble straightened up. “This is much cooler and more comfortable, though I’m sure I’ll miss my pockets.” She turned to Maytera Mint. “I’ve been consorting with other abandoned women, a dozen at least. I’m afraid it’s rubbed off.”
Maytera Mint swallowed and coughed, wanting to bat the snowflakes away, to sit down with a mug of hot tea, to awaken and find that this little pewter-colored creature was not the elderly sibyl she had thought she knew. “Did they capture—”
With nimble fingers, Maytera Marble wound the long top of Maytera Mint’s blue-striped stocking cap about her neck like a scarf. “This way, dear, then you won’t be so cold, that’s what it’s for. You tuck the end in your coat.” She tucked it. “And the tassel keeps it from coming out. See?”
“These women!” Maytera Mint had spoken more loudly than she had intended, but she continued with the same vehemence, telling herself, I am a general after all. “Are you referring to enemy troopers or Willet’s spies?”
“No, no, no. Dear Chenille, who’s really quite a nice girl in her way, and the calde’s wife. She’s no better than she ought to be if you know what I mean. And the women our thieves brought. They were more interesting than the poor women, though the poor women were interesting too. But the thieves’ women didn’t mind taking their clothes off, or not very much. Dear Chenille actually enjoys it, I’d say. Her figure’s prettier than her face, so I find it understandable.” Scleroderma said, “So’s yours, Maytera,” and her husband nodded enthusiastically.
Another explosion punctuated the sentence. Cocking her head, Maytera Mint decided it had been nearer than the last; there had been something portentous about the sound.
“…Cognizance told us,” Scleroderma finished.
Maytera Mint asked, “Did you say His Cognizance?” Then, before anyone could answer, put her finger to her lips.
The stammering popping reports seemed to come from above her head. They were followed after an interval by the remote crash of shells.
“What is it, General?” Scleroderma asked.
“I heard guns. A battery of light pieces. You don’t often hear the shots, just the whine of the shells and the explosions. These are near, so they may be ours.”
Maytera Marble took Mucor’s hand and got her to her feet. “Will you excuse us? I want to take her to the fire.”
“Fire?” Maytera Mint looked around.
“Right over there. I just saw it. Come along, darling.”
Scleroderma and Shrike were getting to their feet as well, not swiftly but with so much effort, scrambling, and grunting that they gave the impression of frantic action.
The messenger should be here by now, Maytera Mint told herself, and stepped in front of Scleroderma. “You said His Cognizance was here? You must tell me before you go. But before you do, have you seen a mounted trooper leading another horse?”
Scleroderma shook her head.
“But His Cognizance was here?”
The fat man said, “Stopped an’ had a chat, nice as anybody. I wouldn’t of known, only the wife, she knows all that. Goes twice, three times most weeks. Just a little man older’n my pa. Had on a plain black whatchacallit, like any other augur.” He paused, his eyes following Maytera Marble and Mucor. “Crowd around any harder, an’ they’ll shove somebody in.”
“You’re right.” Maytera Mint trotted through the snow to the fire. “People! This little fire can’t warm even half of you. Collect more wood. Build another! You can light it from this one.” They dispersed with an alacrity that surprised her.
“Now then!” She whirled upon Scleroderma and Shrike. “If His Cognizance is here, I must speak to him. As a courtesy, if for no other reason. Where did he go?”
Shrike shrugged; Scleroderma said, “I don’t know, General,” and her husband added, “Said we’d have to leave this whorl, then the Calde come an’ got him. First time I ever seen him.”
“Calde Silk?”
Scleroderma nodded. “He didn’t know him either.”
The Trivigauntis had released their prisoners, as General Saba had promised; no other explanation made sense, and it was vitally important. Maytera Mint looked around frantically for the messenger Bison would surely have dispatched minutes ago.
“He was lookin’ for the calde,” Shrike explained, “only it was Calde Silk what found him.”
“There aren’t as many as there were.” Maytera Mint stood on tiptoe, blinking away snow.
“You told ’em to go find wood, General.”
“General! General!” Beneath the shouted words, she heard the stumbling clatter of a horse ridden too fast across littered ground. “This way!” She waved blindly.
Scleroderma muttered, “Just listen to those drums. Makes me want to go myself.”
“Drums?” Maytera Mint laughed nervously, and was ashamed of it at once. “I thought it was my heart. I really did.”
Through the snow, Bison’s messenger called, “General?” She waved as before, listening. Not the cadent rattle of the thin cylindrical drums the Trivigauntis used, but the steady thumpa-thumpa-thump of Vironese war drums, drums that suggested the palaestra’s big copper stew-pot whenever she saw them, war drums beating out the quickstep used to draw up troops in order of battle. Bison was about to attack, and was letting both the enemy and his own troopers know it.
“General!” The messenger dismounted, half falling off his rawboned brown pony. “Colonel Bison says we got to take it to ’em. The airship’s back. Probably you heard it, sir.”
Maytera Mint nodded. “I suppose I did.”
“They been droppin’ mortar bombs on us out of it all up and down the line, sir. Colonel says we got to get in close and mix up with ’em so they can’t.”
“Where is he? Didn’t you bring a horse for me?”
“Yes, sir, only the calde took it. Maybe I shouldn’t of let him, sir, but—”
“Certainly you should, if he wanted it.” She pushed the messenger out of her way and swung into the saddle. “I’ll have to take yours. Return on foot. Where’s Bison?”
“In the old boathouse, sir.” The messenger pointed vaguely through the twilit snow, leaving her by no means certain that he was not as lost as she felt.
“Good luck,” Sclerode
rma called. And then, “I’m coming.”
“You are not!” Maytera Mint locked her knees around the hard-used pony, heedless of the way the saddle hiked her wide black skirt past her knees. “You stay right here and take care of your husband. Help Maytera — I mean Maggie — with the mad girl.” She pointed to the messenger, realizing too late that she was doing it with the hilt of her azoth. “Are you certain he’s in the boathouse? I ordered him to stay back and not get himself killed.”
“Safest place, sir, with them bombs droppin’ on us.”
A floating blur resolved itself into two riders in dark clothing upon a single white horse. A familiar voice shouted, “Go! Follow that officer — he’ll take you to shelter. Get away from that fire!”
The voice was Silk’s. As she watched in utter disbelief he galloped through the fire. For a moment she hesitated; then the boom of slug guns decided her.
“I like this part though,” Hyacinth whispered, hugging Silk tighter than ever, “just don’t let it trot again.”
He did not, but lacked the breath to say so. Reining up, he shielded his eyes with the right hand that snatched at the pommel whenever he was distracted; the group he had glimpsed through the snow might be a woman with children, and probably was. Gritting his teeth, he slammed his heels into the white gelding’s flanks. It was essential not to trot — trotting shook them helpless. More essential not to lose the stirrups that fought free of his shoes whenever they were not gouging his ankles. The gelding slipped in the snow; for an instant he was sure.
Behind him, Hyacinth shrieked, “Up, stand up! That way!” She sounded angry; and briefly and disloyally, he wished that she possessed the clarion voice that Kypris had bestowed upon Maytera Mint — though it would have been still more useful to have it himself.
“My Calde!” A snow-speckled figure had caught the bridle.
“Yes, what is it?”
“All are within, My Calde. They are gone. You must too, before you die.”
He shook his head.
“But a few remain, I swear. I shall send them. You must compel him, Madame.”
Then the captain was running and the gelding trotting after him, and they were being shaken as if by a terrier.
“Here is the entrance, My Calde. I regret I cannot assist you and your lady to dismount.”
Too shaken even to think of disobeying, Silk slid from the gelding’s back and helped Hyacinth down. The captain pointed to a deep crater almost at his feet; its bottom gleamed with greenish light.
Too sharply for comfort, Silk recalled the grave he had been shown in a dream. “We got to ride on a deadcoach the first time,” he told Hyacinth. It was difficult to keep his voice casual. “That was a lot more comfortable, but there was dust instead of snow.” She stared at him.
“You must climb down.” The captain pointed again. “The climb is somewhat difficult. Several have fallen, though none were injured seriously.” He produced a needler, fumbling the safety with his left thumb.
Silk said, “You’re about to join the fighting.”
“Yes, My Calde. If you permit it.”
Silk shook his head. “I won’t. I have a message for you to give to General Mint. Do you know where Hyacinth and I are going?”
“Into this tunnel below the city, My Calde, to preserve yourself for Viron, as is proper.”
Hyacinth smoothed her gown. “We’re supposed to leave the whole whorl with thousands and thousands of cards. If we get to whatever it is, we’ll be rich.” She spat into the snow.
“I’ve taken all the funds I could out of the fisc,” Silk explained, “and His Cognizance has emptied the burse — the Chapter’s funds. I’m telling you this so you can tell General Mint what’s become of us, and what’s happened to the money. Do you know which Siyuf you’re fighting?”
A voice called, “Calde!”
“Is that you down there, Horn?”
“Yes, Calde.” Horn climbed toward him, his feet loosening stones that rattled down the slope to fall into the tunnel.
“Go back down,” Silk told him.
“My Calde, we have been so fortunate as to chance upon this refuge opened for the defenseless by the enemy’s bombs. I thank the good gods for it. You and your lady must employ it as well. Her airship cannot but see the fire.”
Horn caught Silk’s hand and joined them.
“As for this boy,” the captain finished, “I shall procure a weapon for him.”
“If we’re going we’d better go,” Hyacinth declared.
“You inquire concerning the two Siyufs, My Calde. I have heard only rumors. Are they true?”
“I spoke to General Mint on a glass before we returned,” Silk told him. “One of the councillors — Tarsier, I imagine — has altered a chem to look like Siyuf. She was supposed to mend relations between Trivigaunte and Viron, or see to it that the Trivigauntis lost if she could not. She appears to have chosen to occupy Siyuf’s place permanently and conquer Viron for herself instead. Generalissimo Oosik has freed the real Siyuf in the hope—”
The final words were lost in an explosion. Silk found himself half in the crater, with Horn beside him and Hyacinth clinging and sobbing. After a few seconds he managed to gasp, “That was too near. Near enough to ring my ears.”
“Where’s the captain?” Horn asked. From the bottom, Nettle shouted, “Horn!”
“I don’t know.” Silk raised his head to look around. “I can’t see him, or — are those horses?”
“Our horse.” Hyacinth staggered but managed to stand. “It must have been killed.”
“Unless the captain mounted it and rode away. In either case, we’d better go.”
She glared at him; then turned abruptly and slid down the slanting wall of the crater, pushing past Nettle and vanishing into the tunnel.
Horn caught Silk’s arm. “You were sort of waiting here with the captain, Calde. Like you didn’t want to.”
“Because I wasn’t sure all the people who fled the battle had gotten inside.”
Silk coughed and spat. “That explosion blew dirt into my mouth. I suppose it was open, as it usually is — I shouldn’t talk so much. At any rate, I wanted to tell him I was resigning my office, and General Mint is to succeed me. Don’t feel you have to chase after him with the message.”
Nettle called, “I’m going inside with Hyacinth. Are you coming?”
“In a minute,” Horn told her. “No, Calde, I won’t. But I promised His Cognizance I’d find you and bring you down there, and I’m going to as soon as …” He paused, shamefaced.
“What is it, Horn?”
“It’s a long way, he says, to the big cave where the people are asleep in bottles, and when we get there we’ll have to wake them up. Maybe we’d better get going.”
“No, Horn.” With the air of one who intends to remain for some time, Silk seated himself on the edge of the crater. “I asked Mucor to awaken the strongest man she could find and have him break the cylinder before the gas inside it killed him. If I could break one with Hyacinth’s needler as easily as I did, I’d think a very strong man might break one from within with his fists. They’ll be coming to meet us — or at least I hope they will — and may be able to show us a shorter route to the belly of the whorl, where the landers are.”
He studied Horn with troubled eyes. “Now, why did you stop me from following Hyacinth? What is it?”
“Nothing, Calde.”
Like noisy spirits, troopers on horseback thundered past, their faces obscured and their clothing dyed black by the snow.
“Those were Trivigauntis, I believe,” Silk said. “I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. Bad, I suppose. If I say it myself — tell you what I believe you were about to say — will you at least confess I’m right?”
“I don’t want to, Calde.
“But you will, I know. You were going to tell me why you and Nettle took me up on the roof of the gondola, where General Saba and Hyacinth joined us, pretending that they hadn’t—”
Silk shook his head. “If I hadn’t acted foolishly, you wouldn’t have been in danger at all; I provoked your danger and very nearly occasioned your death.”.
He sighed. “That wasn’t what you came so close to telling me, however. Hyacinth had been in General Saba’s cabin, though both pretended they had not been together. The walls of those cabins are cloth and bamboo, and you and Nettle were afraid I’d overhear them and realize they were doing the things that women do, at times, to provide each other pleasure.”
Seeing Horn’s expression, he smiled sadly. “Did you think I didn’t know such things occur? I’ve shriven women often, and in any event we were taught about them — and worse things — at the schola. We’re far too innocent for our duties when we leave it, I’m afraid; but our instructors ready us for the whorl as well as they can.” He looked down at the object that Horn was offering him. “What is that?”
“Your needler, Calde. It used to be the pilot’s, I guess. Hyacinth knocked it out of her hand, you said, and you picked it up. You must have left it there in the cockpit, because the Flier found it there and gave it to me.”
Silk accepted it, tucking it into his waistband. “You want me to kill Hyacinth with it. Is that the plan?”
“If you want to.” Wretchedly, Horn nodded.
“I don’t. I won’t. I’m taking this because I may need it — I’ve been down there, and I may have to protect her. Haven’t I told you about that?”
“Yes, Calde. On the airship for my book.”
“Good, I won’t have to go over it again. Now listen. You feel that Hyacinth has betrayed me, and unnaturally. I want you to at least consider, as I do, that Hyacinth herself may feel differently. Isn’t it possible — in fact, likely — that she feared that General Saba might regain her airship in fact as well as in name? That in that case it would be well for us — for Hyacinth and me, and every Vironese on board — if she were as friendly toward us as we could render her?”