Epiphany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  Strange, how she had come to think in military metaphors during the past few days.

  The desk drawers seemed apt to tell her a good deal about the owner, who counted for nothing now, and nothing about the Ayuntamiento and those who served it. She opened a drawer at random anyway, glanced at the papers it had held-all of them concerned in some fashion with money-shut it, and made sure no corpse lay concealed in the leg hole.

  "General!"

  Turning so quickly that the long, black skirt of her habit billowed about her, she hurried out of the study and across the sellaria. "What is it, Your Eminence?"

  He met her at the doorway, visibly struggling to conceal his pleasure. "I have the-ah-it is my unhappy duty-"

  "You've found a body. Whose?"

  "The, um, late councillor's, I believe. If, perhaps, you would not care-"

  "To see it? I must! Your Eminence, I've seen hundreds of bodies since this began. Thousands." There had been a time when she had found it nearly impossible to cut the throat of a goat; as she pushed past Remora, she reflected that she would find that difficult still, and find it literally impossible to cut a man's, even an enemy's. Yet she had made plans and given orders that had clogged entire streets with corpses.

  "I took the, um, responsibility? The-ah-presumption of, er, tidying him up. On his back now, eh? Folded the arms, prior to calling you."

  Potto lay almost at her feet, his arms crossed in such a way as to hide the wound Sand's slug had made just below his sternum. The graying hair that he had worn long trailed over Blood's lush carpet, and Maytera Mint found herself muttering, "He looks surprised."

  "Doubtless he-ah-was." Remora cleared his throat. "Caught unawares, hey? Shot by one of his own. All in a, um, trice. So my prothonotary tells me. He-ah-Incus is his name, General. Patera Incus. He has, um, fallen prey in some-ah-wise to the notion that he's old Quetzal-"

  She knelt beside the corpse, traced the sign of addition, and opened its card case.

  "Mad, I fear. Deranged. Bit of rest, eh? He'll come to himself soon enough. General-ah-?"

  In the first place," Maytera Mint explained, "there may be papers of value in here. In the second, there's money, ten cards or so, and we need that very badly."

  "I, ah, see."

  Cards and papers vanished into her wide sleeve. "Where's the blood? Did you clean up his blood before you called to me, Your Eminence?"

  "Through the heart, eh?" Remora's nasal tones sounded slightly strangled. "Not much bleeding then, eh? So I am-ah-apprised."

  Gently at first, then with increased vigor, Maytera Mint rubbed the councillor's cheek. "This's a chem!"

  "I-um-"

  She looked up at Remora. "You knew."

  "I-ah-suspected."

  "You rolled him over, you said, Your Eminence. You folded his arms. You must have known."

  "Then? Oh, yes, I-ah-confirmed, eh? I had, um, and-ah-Quetzal, eh? Old Quetzal. Wouldn't tell. Asked him once. More, actually. He, ah, er, wouldn't. Confides in me, eh? Nearly everything. Very, ah, delicate points. Sensitive matters, finances. Everything. But he-ah-wouldn't."

  Suddenly Remora was on his knees beside her. "General-ah-General. Alone here, hey? No one but, er, ourselves. May I call you Maytera?"

  She ignored it. "There'll be the question of burial. A dozen questions, really. You must have realized I'd find out."

  "I-ah-did. Indeed. Not so swiftly, however. You are most-or-perspicacious."

  "Then why didn't you say so? Why all that nonsense about blood?"

  "Because I-Incus. Patera Incus. And old Quetzal, eh? My position is, er, delicate. Imperiled. Maytera, hear me, I-ah-beg you. Yes, beg. Implore."

  She nodded. "I'm listening. What is it?"

  "Incus, my prothonotary. Was. You know him?"

  She shook her head. "Just tell me."

  "He's been appointed Prolocutor. By, um, Scylla. He says it, I mean. Credits it himself, eh? Convinced. Spoke to him yesterday, but he-you…"

  "Me?" For a second, Maytera Mint felt she was missing some vital clue. It dawned upon her, and she rocked backward to sit cross-legged on the carpet, her head in her hands.

  "Maytera? Er, General?"

  She looked up at Remora. "I was appointed by Echidna, in front of thousands of people. Is that it, Your Eminence?"

  Remora's mouth opened and shut silently.

  "So you know it happened. All those witnesses. And I've been successful, as you say. The victorious commander, chosen for us by the gods. Even Bison and the captain talk like that, and then there's Patera Silk."

  Remora nodded miserably.

  "Everyone says he's been appointed by Great Pas to be our Caldé, even Maytera Marble. He's been successful, too, so it looks like the gods have decided to choose leaders for us, and if this Patera Incus is going to be the new Prolocutor, he'll want to pick his own coadjutor."

  "Nor-ah-um-worse. If he-ah-old Quetzal, you know. Resourceful. Cunning. Seen it myself, hundreds of times, eh? Ayuntamiento had the force, but he'd get 'round them. Get 'round Lemur and Loris, all of them. Old man, hey? Foolish old man. What they think. His Cognizance. Quetzal. But sly, Mayt-General. Very sly. Deep."

  She made a small sound of encouragement.

  "Compromise. I-ah-sense it. I am not, um, clever, General. Try to be, indeed. Try. Some have said-well, it pares no parsnips. But not like old Quetzal. Experienced, though. My-ah-self. Conferences, negotiations. And I wind it. Wind it already. Be coadjutor, Incus. Obvious, eh? First thing anybody would, er, formulate. Old Quetzal would-ah-visualize? Comprehend the whole before Incus finished. Old man. Die soon, hey? A year, two years, to-ah-fit yourself into the position, Patera. I'll be gone. I can, um, hear him as I-we-speak. So I didn't dare, eh? Tell you. You see my predicament? The-ah-Loris. Galago. All the rest. Chems, every one of them. I suspected it for years. Meeting with this one, that one, entire days, sometimes. Saw them up close. Quetzal knows, he must."

  "But His Cognizance wouldn't talk about it?"

  "No. Ah-no. Too sensitive. Even for me, eh? He, Incus. I told you?"

  "You told me he says Scylla's made him Prolocutor."

  "He, um, offered me…"

  One bony hand pushed back the straying lock, and Maytera Mint saw how violently that hand shook. "He offered you…?"

  "A-ah-appointment. A position. He was," Remora swallowed, "not abusive. It was not, I judge, his intent to be-ah-disparage. He said that I-I refused, to be sure. His prothonotary. His, ah, I-I-I…"

  Maytera Mint nodded. "I see."

  "We have been, er, companions, Maytera. Coworkers-ah-partners in peace, hey? Son and daughter of the Chapter. We have conferred, and the same-um-consecrated vision has inspired us both. I well-ah-recollect our first meeting. You averred with-um-coruscant eyes that peace was your, er, sole desire once you had-ah, um-executed the will of the gods. I affirmed? Avowed that it was mine likewise. In concert we have conferred with Brigadier Erne and the Caldé. You are a hero, um, heroine to the-ah-populace. There is talk of a statue, hey? A word from you, your support…"

  "Be quiet," she told him. "I haven't had a moment to get used to the idea that the Ayuntamiento's made up of chems, and now this."

  "If I, ah-"

  "Be quiet, I said!" She drew a deep breath, running the fingers of both hands through her short brown hair. "To begin with, no, you may not call me Maytera. Not in private, and not any other time. If His Cognizance will release me, I mean to return to secular life. I," another breath, "may marry. We'll see. As for you, if this Patera Incus has in fact been named Prolocutor by Scylla, then he is Prolocutor, regardless of any arrangement that he and Patera Quetzal may make. I can readily imagine a younger man of great sanctity deferring to a much older one. Viewed in a certain light, it would be an act of noble self-renunciation. But it wouldn't alter the fact. He would be our Prolocutor, though he wasn't called so. Since he proposed that you become his prothonotary, plainly you're not to be coadjutor any longer. No doubt Patera Quetzal is, in solemn truth, coadjuto
r. That being so, I'll call you Patera."

  "My dear young woman!"

  Her look silenced him. "I'm not your dear young woman, or anyone's. I'm thirty-six, and I assure you that for a woman it's no longer young. Call me General, or I'll make your life a great deal less pleasant than it has been."

  A door at the far end of the room opened, and someone who was neither Mint nor Remora applauded. "Brava, my dear young general! Simply marvelous! You ought to be on the stage."

  He waddled over to them, a short, obese man with bright blue eyes, a cheerful round face, and hair so light as to be nearly blond. "But as for accepting an Ayuntamiento of chems, you need not trouble. I'm no chem, though I confess that the object before you is something of the kind."

  Remora gasped, having recognized him.

  "This augur and I are old-I really can't say friends. Acquaintances. You, I feel sure, are the rebels' famous General Mint." The stranger giggled. "Presumably you aim at supreme power, which would make you the Govern-Mint. I like that! I'm Councillor Potto. Curtain. Did you wish to speak to me?"

  For a fleeting moment in which his heart nearly stopped, it seemed to Silk that he had seen Hyacinth among the cheering pedestrians. Before he could shout to his bearers, the woman turned her head and the illusion ended. He had been ready, as he realized as he settled back among the cushions, to spring out of the litter.

  I need my glasses, he thought. My old ones, which I can't possibly get back, or some new ones.

  Oreb fluttered on his shoulder. "Good Silk!"

  "Crazed Silk," he told his bird. "Mad and foolish Silk. I mistook another woman for her."

  "No see."

  "My own thought exactly. Several times I've dreamed my mother was alive. Have I told you about that?"

  Oreb whistled.

  "For a minute or two after I woke up, I believed it, and I was so happy. This was like that." Leaning from the right side of the litter, he addressed the head bearer. "You needn't go so fast. You'll wear yourselves out."

  The man grinned and bobbed his head.

  Silk settled back again. Their speed was increasing. No doubt the bearers felt it a question of honor; when one carried the Caldé, one ran. Otherwise ordinary people who had never had the privilege of carrying the Caldé's litter might think him on an errand of no importance. Which would never do; if his errand were of no importance, neither were his bearers.

  "I've got twenty Guardsmen looking for her," he told Oreb. "That's not enough, since they didn't find her, but it's all we could spare with the Fourth Brigade holding out on the north side, and the Ayuntamiento in the tunnels."

  Mention of the tunnels made Oreb croak unhappily.

  At what amounted to a dead run, the litter swayed, yawed, and swerved off Sun Street onto Lamp. Leaning out Silk said, "Music Street-I thought I made it clear. A block east."

  The head bearer's head bobbed as before.

  "If twenty Guardsmen can't find her, Oreb, I certainly can't; and last night I didn't. We didn't, I ought to say. So we need help, and I cant hink of three places-no, four-where we may get it. Today we're going to try them all Most of the fires are out, and Maytera Mint and Oosik can actually fight better without me in the way; so although the physician says I should be in bed, and I'm not supposed to have a minute to myself, I intend to take as many hours as necessary."

  Yawing as before, the litter turned onto a still narrower street that Silk did not recognize.

  "It's up to the gods, I'm afraid. I don't trust them-not even the Outsider, who seems to trust me-but they may smile on us yet."

  "Find girl?"

  He had lost his desire to talk, but the intensity of his emotions drove the words forth. "What did he want with her!" As he spoke, the litter sped past a shop with a zither and a dusty bassoon in its window.

  But Caldé Silk of Viron did not see them.

  "This is the kitchen?" Maytera Mint looked around her in surprise. It was the largest that she had ever seen.

  "There are, ah, alternatives," Remora ventured. "Still entire, eh? Equally, hum, unsigned by Sabered Sphigx."

  "I find it cozy," Potto declared. "For one thing, there's food, though your troops, my dear young General, made off with a lot. I like food, even if I can't eat it. For another, I'm a good host, eager for the comfort of my guests, and it's easy to heat. Behold this noble stove and laden woodbox. I'm happily immune to drafts, but you aren't. I'm determined to make you comfortable. Those other rooms offer the chilly attractions of a society beauty. This will provide warmth and tea, even soup." He giggled. "All the solid virtues of an old nurse. Besides, there are a great many sharp knives, and I'm always encouraged by the presence of sharp knives."

  "You can't be here alone," Maytera Mint said.

  Potto grinned. "Do you propose to attack me if I am?"

  "Certainly not."

  "You have an azoth, the famous one given you by Silk. I won't search you for it now."

  "I left it with Colonel Bison. If I had come armed after calling for a truce, you'd be entitled to kill me."

  "I am anyhow," Potto told her. He picked up a stick of firewood and snapped it between his hands. "The rules of war protect armies and their auxiliaries. Yours is a rebellion, not a war, and rebels get no such protection. Patera there knows that's the truth. Look at his face."

  "I-ah-assert the privilege of my cloth."

  "You can. You haven't fought, so you're entitled to it. The General has and isn't. It's all very simple."

  When neither replied, Potto added, "Speaking of cloth, I forgot to say that the rules apply only to soldiers and those auxiliaries who wear their city's uniform, as General Saba does. You, my dear General, don't. The upshot is that though I can't offer violence to your armies as long as the truce holds, I'm entitled to break both your leggies if I want to, and even to wring your necky. Sit down, there's a cozy little table right over there. I'll build a fire and put the kettle on."

  They sat, Remora tucking the rich overrobe he wore around his legs, Maytera Mint as she might have in the cenoby, her delicate hands folded in her lap, and her head bowed.

  Potto filled one of the stove's fireboxes and stroked a stick of kinding. It burst into flame, not merely at one end like a torch, but along its entire length. He tossed it into the firebox and shoved the firebox back in place with an angry grinding of iron.

  "He, um, intrigues to separate us," Remora whispered. "A-ah-hallowed? Elementary stratagem, General. I shall, um, cleave to you, eh? If you in, ah, analogous fashion-"

  "Maytera. Call me Maytera, please, Your Eminence, when we're alone."

  "Indeed. Indeed! O, ah, soror neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum. O passi graviora, dabit Pas his guoque finem."

  Potto was filling a teakettle. Without turning his head, he said, "I have sharp ears. Don't say I didn't warn you."

  Maytera Mint looked up. "Then I'm spared the necessity of raising my voice. Are you really Councillor Potto? We came to negotiate with the Ayuntamiento, not with anyone we chanced to meet. If you are, whose body was that?"

  "Yes." Potto put the kettle on the stove. "Mine. Have you more questions?"

  "Certainly. Are you willing to stop all this bloodshed?"

  "It bothers you, doesn't it?" He pulled out a stout stool and sat down so heavily the floor shook.

  "Seeing good and brave troopers die? Watching someone who was eager to obey me a few seconds ago writhing and bleeding in the street? It does!"

  "Well, it doesn't me, and I don't understand why it should you. I never have. Call it a gift. There are people who can listen to music all evening, then go home and write everything down, and others who can run faster and farther than a horse. Did you know that? Mine's a less amazing gift, though it's brought me success. I don't feel pain I don't feel. Is that what you call a tautology? It's what life has taught me. I give it to you for nothing."

  Remora nodded, his long face longer than ever. "I, er, vouchsafe it might be included under that-ah-rubric."

  "Councillor
."

  "Why-ah-indeed. I had no, um, intention-"

  "Thanks. I'm the only member who forced his way in, or had to. Did you know that, either of you?"

  Maytera Mint shook her head.

  "We're all related, as you can see from our names. Lemur and Loris were brothers. Lemur's dead. You don't have to look surprised, I know you know. He packed the Ayuntamiento with relatives, back before Patera here was born. I came to him. I approached him forthrightly and fairly. He'd brought in Galago, a second cousin by courtesy. I was much closer, and I said so. He said he'd take it under advisement. A week later-there'd been this and that, you know, nothing serious-he tried to have me killed. I saw to it that the man's flesh was served to us at dinner, and dessert was his head in lemon sherbet. Lemur jerked away from it, and I scooped up a little sherbet with my fingers and ate it. I took the oath next day. Councillor Potto. My cousins soon discovered that I was a useful friend, not just an unpleasant relative."

  Maytera Mint nodded. "You're proud of being useful, as everyone who is, is entided to be. Now you have a chance to be of great service to our whole city."

  "We have, ah, ventured forth in good faith," Remora put in. "The general has come unarmed. My-ah-vocation prohibits weapons. Such, at least, is my own opinion, though the-our Caldé's may differ. I ask you, Council or, whether you, er, similarly. Are we intermediaries? Or, um, captives?"

  "You want to go before your tea's ready?" Potto waved in the direction of the door. "Make the experiment, Patera."

  "My duty, um, confines me."

  "Then you're a prisoner, but not mine. Dear young General Mint, wouldn't you like to know how I manage to be alive in the kitchen and dead in the drawing room?"

  "There were two of you, clearly." She had taken her big wooden prayer beads from her pocket; she ran them through her fingers, comforted by their familiar shapes.

  "No, only one, and that one is neither here nor there. As we aged, Cousin Tarsier made us new bodies out of chems. Lemur got the first one, and the rest of us later as we came to need them, bodies we can work from our beds. I can't enjoy food, but I eat. I'm feeding intravenously right now."