The Shadow of the Torturer

by Gene Wolfe

Page 30

 

  "You didnt notice. You picked it up and it began to curl toward you, slowly, as though it were only half awake. But the other man, the hipparch, couldnt believe what he had seen. He was staring at you, and that woman Agia was shouting to him. And all at once he turned and ran away. The people who were watching didnt want him to, they wanted to see someone killed. So they tried to stop him, and he . . . "

  Her eyes were brimming with tears; she turned her head to keep me from seeing them. I said, "He struck several of them with his avern, and I suppose killed them. Then what happened?"

  "It wasnt just that he struck them. It struck at them, after the first two, like a snake. The ones who were cut with the leaves didnt die at once, they screamed, and some of them ran and fell and got up and ran again, as if they were blind, knocking other people down. And at last a big man struck him from behind and a woman who had been fighting somewhere else came with a braquemar. She cut the avern - not sidewise but down the stem so it split. Then some of the men held the hipparch and I heard her blade clash on his helmet. "

  "You were just standing there. I wasnt sure you even knew he was gone, and your avern was bending back toward your face. I thought of what the woman had done and hit at it with your sword. It was heavy, so very heavy at first, and then it was hardly heavy at all. But when I slashed down with it I felt as if I could have struck the head from a bison. Only I had forgotten to take off the sheath. But it knocked the avern out of your hand, and I took you and led you away . . . "

  "Where?" I asked.

  She shivered and dipped a piece of bread in the steaming broth. "I dont know. I didnt care. It was just so good to be walking with you, to know I was taking care of you the way you had taken care of me before we got the avern. But I was cold, terribly cold, when night came. I put your cloak all around you and fastened it in front, and you didnt seem to be cold, so I took this mantle and wrapped myself in it. My dress was falling to pieces. It still is. "

  I said, "I wanted to buy you another one when we were at the inn. "

  She shook her head, chewing the tough crust. "Do you know, I think this is the first food Ive had in a long, long time. I have pains in my stomach - thats why I drank the wine there - but this makes it feel better. I hadnt realized how weak I was getting. "

  "But I didnt want a new dress from there because I would have had to wear it for a long time, and it would always have reminded me of that day. You can buy me a dress now, if you like, because it will remind me of this day, when I thought you were dead when you were really well. "

  "Anyway, we got back into the city somehow. I was hoping to find a place to stop where you could lie down, but there were only big houses with terraces and balustrades. That sort of thing. Some soldiers came galloping up and asked if you were a carnifex. I didnt know the word, but I remembered what you had told me and so I told them you were a torturer, because soldiers have always seemed to me to be a kind of torturer and I knew they would help us. They tried to get you to ride, but you fell off. So some of them tied their capes between two lances and laid you on that, and put the ends of the lances in the stirrup straps of two destriers. One of them wanted to take me up into his saddle, but I wouldnt do it. I walked beside you all the way and sometimes I talked to you, but I dont think you heard me. "

  She drained the last of the broth. "Now I want to ask you a question. When I was washing myself behind the screen, I could hear you and Agia whispering about a note. Later you were looking for someone in the inn. Will you tell me about that?"

  "Why didnt you ask before?"

  "Because Agia was with us. If you had found out anything, I didnt want her to hear what it was. "

  "Im sure Agia could discover anything I discovered," I said. "I dont know her well, and in fact I dont feel I know her as well as I know you. But I know her well enough to realize that shes much cleverer than I am. "

  Dorcas shook her head again. "Shes the sort of woman whos good at making puzzles for other people, but not at solving ones she didnt make herself. I think she thinks - I dont know - sidewise. So no one else can follow it. Shes the kind of woman people say thinks like a man, but those women dont think like real men at all, in fact, they think less like real men than most women do. They just dont think like women. The way they do think is hard to follow, but that doesnt mean its clear, or deep. "

  I told her about the note, and what it said, and mentioned that although it had been destroyed I had copied it out on the inns paper and found it to be the same paper, and the same ink.

  "So someone wrote it there," she said pensively. "Probably one of the inn servants, because he called the ostler by name. But what does it mean?"

  "I dont know. "

  "I can tell you why it was put where it was. I sat there, on that horn settee, before you sat down. It made me happy, I recall, because you sat beside me. Do you remember if the waiter - he must have carried the note, whether he wrote it or not - put the tray there before I got up to bathe?"

  "I can remember everything," I said, "except last night. Agia sat in a folding canvas chair, you sat on the couch, thats right, and I sat down beside you. I had been carrying the avern on the pole as well as my sword, and I laid the avern flat behind the couch. The kitchen girl came in with water and towels for you, then she went out and got oil and rags for me. "

  Dorcas said, "We ought to have given her something. "

  "I gave her an orichalk to bring the screen. Thats probably as much as shes paid for a week. Anyway, you went behind it, and a moment later the host led the waiter in with the tray and wine. "

  "Thats why I didnt see it, then. But the waiter must have known where I was sitting, because there was no place else. So he left it under the tray, hoping Id see it when I came out. What was the first part again?"

  "The woman with you has been here before. Do not trust her. "

  "It must have been for me. If it had been for you, it would have distinguished between Agia and me, probably by hair color. And if it had been meant for Agia, it would have been out on the other side of the table where she would have seen it instead. "

  "So you reminded someone of his mother. "

  "Yes. " Once more there were tears in her eyes.

  "Youre not old enough to have had a child who could have written that note. "

  "I dont remember," she said, and buried her face in the loose folds of the brown mantle.

  Chapter 29

  AGILUS

  When the physician in charge had examined me and found I had no need of treatment, he asked us to leave the lazaret, where my cloak and sword were, as he said, upsetting to his patients.

  On the opposite side of the building in which I had eaten with the troopers, we found a shop that catered to their needs. Together with false jewelry and trinkets of the sort such men give their paramours, it carried a certain amount of womens clothing; and though my money had been much depleted by the dinner we had never returned to the Inn of Lost Loves to enjoy, I was able to buy Dorcas a simar.

  The entrance to the Hall of Justice was not far from this shop. A crowd of a hundred or so was milling before it, and since the people pointed and elbowed one another when they caught sight of my fuligin, we retreated again to the courtyard where the destriers were tethered. A portreeve from the Hall of Justice found us there - an imposing man with a high, white forehead like the belly of a pitcher. "You are the carnifex," he said. "I was told you are well enough to perform your office. "

  I told him I could do whatever was necessary today, if his master required it.

  "Today? No, no, thats not possible. The trial wont be over until this afternoon. "

  I remarked that since he had come to make certain I was well enough to carry out the execution, he must have felt certain the prisoner would be found guilty.

  "Oh, theres no question of that - not the least. Nine persons died, after all, and the man was apprehended on the spot. Hes of no consequence, so theres no possibility of pardon or appeal
. The tribunal will reconvene at midmorning, but you wont be required until noon. "

  Because I had had no direct experience with judges or courts (at the Citadel, our clients had always been sent to us, and Master Gurloes dealt with those officials who occasionally came to inquire about the disposition of some case or other), and because I was eager to actually perform the act in which I had been drilled for so long, I suggested that the chiliarch might wish to consider a torchlight ceremony that same night.

  "That would be impossible. He must meditate his decision. How would it look? A great many people feel already that the military magistrates are hasty and even capricious. And to be frank, a civil judge would probably have waited a week, and the case would be all the better for it, since there would have been ample time, then, for someone to come forward with fresh evidence, which of course no one will actually do. "

  "Tomorrow afternoon then," I said. "Well require quarters for the night. Also Ill want to examine the scaffold and block, and ready my client. "

  "Will I need a pass to see him?"

  The portreeve asked if we could not stay in the lazaret, and when I shook my head, we - the portreeve, Dorcas, and I - went there to permit him to argue with the physician in charge, who, as I had predicted, refused to have us. That was followed by a lengthy discussion with a noncommissioned officer of the menagie, who explained that it was impossible for us to stay in the barracks with the troopers, and that if we were to use one of the rooms set aside for the higher ranks, no one would want to occupy it in the future. In the end a little, windowless storeroom was cleared out for us, and two beds and some other furniture (all of which had seen hard use) brought in. I left Dorcas there, and after assuring myself that I was unlikely to step through a rotten board at the critical moment, or to have to saw the clients head off while I held him across my knee, I went to the cells to make the call that our traditions demand.

  Subjectively at least, there is a great difference between detention facilities to which one has become accustomed and those to which one has not. If I had been entering our own oubliette, I would have felt I was, quite literally, coming home - perhaps coming home to die, but coming home nevertheless. Although I would have realized in the abstract that our winding metal corridors and narrow gray doors might hold horror for the men and women confined there, I would have felt nothing of that horror myself, and if one of them had suggested I should, I would have been quick to point out their various comforts - clean sheets and ample blankets, regular meals, adequate light, privacy that was scarcely ever interrupted, and so on.

  Now, going down a narrow and twisted stone stair into a facility a hundredth the size of ours, my feelings were precisely the reverse of what I would have felt there. I was oppressed by the darkness and stench as if by a weight. The thought that I might myself be confined there by some accident (a misunderstood order, for example, or some unsuspected malice on the part of the portreeve) recurred no matter how often I pushed it aside.

  I heard the sobbing of a woman, and because the portreeve had spoken of a man, assumed that it came from a cell other than the one that held my client. That, I had been told, was the third from the right. I counted: one, two, and three. The door was merely wood bound with iron, but the locks (such is military efficiency!) had been oiled. Within, the sobbing hesitated and almost ceased as the bolt fell back.

  Inside a naked man lay upon straw. A chain ran from the iron collar about his neck to the wall. A woman, naked too, bent over him, her long, brown hair falling past her face and his so that it seemed to unite them. She turned to look at me, and I saw that it was Agia.

  She hissed, "Agilus!" and the man sat up. Their faces were so nearly alike that Agia might have been holding a mirror to her own.

  "It was you," I said. "But that isnt possible. " Even while I spoke, I was recalling the way Agia had behaved at the Sanguinary Field, and the strip of black I had seen by the hipparchs ear.

  "You," Agia said. "Because you lived, he has to die. "

  I could only answer, "Is it really Agilus?"

  "Of course. " My clients voice was an octave lower than his twins, though less steady. "You still dont understand, do you?"

  I could only shake my head.

  "It was Agia in the shop. In the Septentrion costume. She came in through the rear entrance while I was speaking to you, and I made a sign to her when you wouldnt even talk of selling the sword. "

  Agia said, "I couldnt speak - you would have known it for a womans voice - but the cuirass hid my breasts and the gauntlets my hands. Walking like a man isnt as hard as men think. "

  "Have you ever looked at that sword? The tang should be signed. " Agiluss hands lifted for a moment, as though he would have taken it still if he could.

  Agia added in a toneless voice, "It is. By Jovinian. I saw it in the inn. "

  There was a tiny window high up in the wall behind them and from it, suddenly, as though the ridge of a roof, or a cloud, had now fallen below the sun, a beam of light came to bathe them both. I looked from one aureate face to the other.

  "You tried to kill me. Just for my sword. "

  Agilus said, "I hoped you would leave it - dont you remember? I tried to persuade you to leave, to flee in disguise. I would have given the clothes to you, and as much money as I could. "

  "Severian, dont you understand? It was worth ten times more than our shop, and the shop was all we had. "

  "Youve done this before. You must have. Everything went too smoothly. A legal murder, with no body to weight for Gyoll. "

  "Youre going to kill Agilus, arent you? That must be why youre here - but you didnt know it was us until you opened the door. What have we done that youre not going to do?"

  Less stridently her brothers voice followed Agias. "It was a fair combat. We were equally armed, and you agreed to the conditions. Will you give me such a fight tomorrow?"