by Gene Wolfe
"As you like. Has anyone been trying to contact me?"
For perhaps a second, the monitor's face dissolved into darting lines. "Several, madame. Currently, Captain Serval. Do you wish to speak with him?"
She sensed that the name should have been familiar, yet it meant nothing to her. She nodded. Better to find out who he was and what he wanted, and be done.
The monitor's face revised itself, gaining color, a round chin, and a debonair mustache. "My General!" A brisk salute, which she returned almost automatically.
"My General, I have been ordered by Generalissimo Oosik to make you aware of the situation here."
She nodded. Where was "here"?
"It is a detachment of the Companion Cavalry, My General. They have posted sentries who are standing guard with mine as we speak. I have requested that their officer explain this to Generalissimo Oosik, but she refuses."
"I see." Maytera Mint took a deep breath and found herself wishing for a chair. "Let me say first, Captain, that it's good to see you again.
"For me it is a great pleasure, My General. An honor."
"Thank you, Captain. I'm sorry to find that you're still a captain, by the way. I'll talk to the generalissimo about that. You mentioned Companion Cavalry. That is the name of the unit?"
"Yes, My General."
The memory of Potto's boiling teakettle returned. "You'll have to forgive me, Captain. I've been out of touch for the past few days." It had seemed like weeks. "I was told that a Trivigaunti horde was marching toward the city. Am I to take it that this Companion Cavalry is theirs?"
"Yes, My General. An elite regiment."
Regiment was a new term to her, but she persevered. "What was it you wanted this officer from Trivigaunte to explain to the generalissimo?"
"I wish her to explain why she and her women are mounting a guard on our Juzgado, My General, when it is already guarded by my men and myself." (That was "here" then, almost certainly.) "I wish her to explain who has issued these orders and to what purpose."
"I take it she won't tell you either."
"No, My General. She will say only that her instructions are to protect our Juzgado until relieved. No more than that."
"Generalissimo Oosik asked you to make me aware of this situation. Where is he?"
"At the Caldé's Palace, My General. He is dining with the Caldé. He informs me that the Caldé has seen you, My General, in his glass, and that he has ordered a place set for you at his table. Generalissimo Oosik instructed me to request that you join them there if I reached you, should this be convenient."
"I need sleep more than food." It had slipped out.
"You drive yourself too hard, My General. I have observed this previously."
"Perhaps. Can you tell me what orders you received from Generalissimo Oosik regarding these Trivigauntis?"
"He is of the opinion that they have learned of a threat to the Juzgado, My General. I am to cooperate. There is to be no friction between those of my command and theirs." The captain paused, a pause pregnant with meaning. "Or as little as may be. I am to explore the situation and report once more, should I discover facts of significance."
"And notify me."
"Yes, My General. As I do."
"Also Colonel Bison, I hope. If Generalissimo Oosik did not tell you to notify Colonel Bison, I am ordering you to now. Tell him I consider Generalissimo Oosik's position prudent."
Someone was tapping at the door.
"Colonel Bison is also at the Caldé's dinner, My General. Generalissimo Oosik stated that he would inform him."
"Good. That will be all, then, Captain. Thank you for keeping me abreast of things." She returned his salute.
"Monitor, was Colonel Bison one of the people who have been trying to reach me?"
The captain's face grayed and sharpened. "Yes, madame."
"I want to speak to him now. He's at the Caldé's Palace." Vaguely, she recalled seeing it the year before on her way to sacrifice at the Grand Manteion, a huge house upon whose facade files of shuttered windows had risen like stacks of long and narrow coffins; she had shuddered and turned away. "I'll be out in a moment, Your Eminence!"
The monitor said, "I am aware of it, madame. I will ask someone to bring him to the glass there, madame."
She would see him-and he would see her: the tired eyes and bloodless mouth that the mirror had shown her, the wet hair plastered to her skull, the face black-and-blue with bruises, surmounted by a scab. "Monitor?"
"Yes, madame."
"Let me speak to whoever comes to the glass." This was the hardest thing she had ever done, harder even than shutting her eyes during Kypris's theophany. "I needn't speak to the colonel in person."
"Yes, madame."
A minute, then two, passed. The gray features melted and flowed, becoming those of a lean man with hooded eyes. "Yes, General Mint," he said. "I'm Willet, the Caldé's driver. How may I serve you?"
General Saba spoke, looking less like an angry sow than a dead one. "She's coming up here with it, Silk. Coming up the hill you're on."
"This is warlockery," Siyuf declared.
"I disagree, but I haven't time to discuss it now." Silk stood so abruptly that Oreb fluttered to maintain his balance. "Leaving you is the height of bad manners; I know it, and all of you are entitled to be furious with me. I'm leaving just the same. Maytera Marble will remain as my representative. I beg your forgiveness sincerely and fervently, but I must go." He was already halfway down the table,
Xiphias sprang to his feet as Silk strode past his chair. "Alone," Silk said. Undeterred, Xiphias hurried after him, and the door slammed behind them.
Saba's head jerked. She looked around self-consciously.
"We must speak of this," Siyuf hissed. "You must describe to me. Not now."
Major Hadale drained her wine. "I'll remember this dinner as long as I live. What entertainment!"
Maytera Marble whispered to Chenille. "I should have gone, too. He's hurt, and-"
Smoothly, Siyuf overrode her. "General Saba has say to me he suffer a broken ankle, Maytera. Maytera? It is how you are addressed?"
She nodded. "Yes, he did. He does. A week ago Phaesday, I think it was. He fell. But-but…"
"He limp. So I observed. He was in greatest haste, he took big steps. No so big of the right leg, however. The old swordswoman-sword-man. He, also, but the left."
"The Caldé was shot." Maytera Marble indicated her own chest with her working hand. "That's much worse."
"Not a slug gun, which would have kill there. A needler?" Siyuf glanced around the table, seeking information.
Oosik shrugged and spread his hands. "Yes, Generalissimo. A needler in the hand of one of my own officers. We strive to prevent these terrible mistakes. They occur in spite of all we do, as you must know."
"This is a remarkable young man. We do not breed like him in Trivigaunte, I think. Do you know the-what is this word? The ideas of Colonel Abanja?"
Oosik nodded to Siyufs staff officer. "I would like to hear them, particularly if they coneern our Caldé. What are they, Colonel?"
"I am something of an amateur historian, Generalissimo. An amateur military historian, if you will allow it."
"Every good officer should be."
"Thank you. I'm accused of shaping my theory to flatter Generalissimo Siyuf, but that is not the case. I have studied success. Not victory alone, because victory can be a matter of chance, and is frequently a matter of numbers and materiel. I searh out instances in which a small force has frustrated one that should have defeated it in days or hours."
Saba had regained her self-possession. "I still say that it is brilliance that's decisive. Military genius."
Maytera Marble sniffed decisively, and Siyuf said, "Colonel Abanja does not think this. Brilliance, it is well enough when the execution of the so-brilliant orders is brilliant also. I do not speak of genius for I know nothing. Except it is rare and not to be relied on."
Bison said, "I have a theory of my
own, based on what I've seen of General Mint. I'll be interested to see how it compares to the Colonel's."
"I mention Abanja's," Siyuf continued, "because I think Caldé Silk so fine an example of him. She believe it is not this genius, not any quality of the mind. That it is energy, by clearest thoughts directed. Tell us, Abanja."
"Successful commanders," Colonel Abanja began, "are those who are still acting, and acting sensibly, on the fourth day. They endure. We have a game that we play on horseback. I don't think you play it here, but I've won a good deal of money by betting on the games during the past year."
The ends of Oosik's mustache tilted upward. "Then you must tell us by all means, Colonel."
"It imitates war, as most games do. A cavalry skirmish in this case. The players may change mounts after each goal, but the players themselves can't be changed, or even replaced if one is hurt." Both Oosik and his son nodded.
"There is a twenty-minute rest for them, however, and so we speak of the first half of the game and the second, divided by this rest. What determines the result, I have found, is not which team scores the most goals in the first half, because there's seldom much disparity. The winning team will be the one that plays best and most aggressively in the second. When I see the team I've backed doing that, I double my bet, if I can."
Siyuf nodded. Her head moved scarcely one finger's width, but the nod announced that the time for controversy had ended. "Let us move from the fields where killi is played to this city of Viron, where is a so illustrative struggle. Who is winner? It is not too soon to say. One side hide in holes. Above prowl and roars the host of Viron and my horde of the Rani. For the second time I ask you that listen." She paused dramatically. "Who is winner here?"
No one spoke.
"A man? This man Caldé Silk? Can that be? Observe the leg broken, the wound to the chest of which Maytera our hostess speak. Yet he hunt by magic for a woman he require, and when by magic she is found, he leave food and friends and seek her out. Most women, even, would not do this."
Chenille said, "He's going to need a lot more help than one old man. I wish I'd made him take me along."
Across Xiphias's abandoned plate, Mattak said, "Two old men. His Cognizance has gone, too." Surprised, Siyuf stared at the empty chair next to her own.
Under his breath, Mattak added, "I'm glad."
Sergeant Sand spoke for them all. "He didn't come."
Kneeling by the headless, pawless body of Eland's second beast, Remora looked up. "I shall-ah-proceed. I have, um, led astray myself. Enthusiasm. Contagious, eh? But I, um, coadjutor, have not, eh? Seen a god. Possibly the victim will enlighten us."
As the holy knife laid open the beast from breastbone to pelvis, Spider said, "Sure, read it for us, it can't hurt."
It hurt the poor brute, Maytera Mint thought; but its death was swift, at least, and now the pain is over.
Sand had brought his slug gun to his shoulder before she saw Urus, halfway up the convoluted iron stair at the back of the manteion and taking its steps three at a time. She shouted, "Don't fire!" and Sand did not. A moment later the door at the top of the stair slammed shut. "He thought we were going to offer him," she explained to Eland. "Do you? We won't. I will not permit it."
Remora, who had been kneeling by the second victim, rose and strode to the ambion. "Extraordinary, eh? Extraordinary, my, er, sons. And daughter. Nothing, er, initially, and now this." Sand resumed his seat, his head bowed.
"An-ah-preface. Necessary, I think. The offering of persons was practiced in the past in-ah-here. Many of you aware of it. Have to be. Forbidden within, um, by the present holder of the baculus."
O you gods, Maytera Mint thought, he's going to say the entrails order us to sacrifice Eland. What am I to do?
"In practice, children, hey? Almost always. No sense sending a messenger who cannot see the, er, the recipient, eh? The offering of, um, persons, children, by no means usual even then, eh? In dire need. Only then."
Slate shifted his position until he stood behind Eland.
"Before my time. As an augur, eh? I would have-ah-declared…" Remora paused, his bony hands gripping the edges of the ambion, his eyes on the headless carcass.
"Never, eh? Couldn't do it. Not a child. Not even, um, Urus. Now-ah-two sides to the entrails. You follow me? One for the congregation and the city. Other the presenter and the augur. For the-ah-Our Holy City, war, death, and destruction. Bad. Calamitous! For the, um, myself, I shall. Offer a person, er, human being. Man. So Pas warns us. Me."
Maytera Mint said firmly, "Eland, can you see the gods?"
He looked at her in mild surprise. "I dunno, General. I never saw any."
There was no time for delicacy. "Have you had a woman? You must have!"
"Sure. Lots of times 'fore I got throwed in the pit."
She turned to Remora. "He is not suitable. I can see that, Your Eminence, and you must-"
Sand stood up. "I am." He jabbed his steel chest with a steel thumb; the noise it made was like the clank of a heavy chain.
"You can't mean it!"
"Yes, sir, I do." With oiled precision, Sand mounted the steps to the sanctuary. "He came. Great Pas came to the Grand Manteion."
Maytera Mint nodded reluctantly.
"He talked to the Prolocutor, and he told him to talk to us. To me. He said for us to get you out, 'cause it's part of the Plan. The Plan's the most important thing there is, sir."
"Certainly."
"You say that," he advanced on her, formidable as a talus, five hundredweight metal. "'Cause they taught you to in some palaestra. I say it 'cause I know it in my pump. He said get you and sacrifice, and he'd come and tell us what to do next. Pas said that."
Meekly, she nodded again.
"So we caught the bios, and then I thought maybe it's not enough so I made them catch the two gods."
"Bufes, Sergeant."
"Whatever. Only the bufes aren't any good, and now you and him say the bios are no good either, sir." Sand wheeled to face Remora and pushed his slug gun into Remora's hands. "I knew, Patera. 'Fore you read it, I knew. You ever want to die?"
"I? Ah-no."
He's lying, Maytera Mint thought. I know what it is, and so does he.
"I do." Sand gestured toward Schist, Slate, and Shale. "So do they. Maybe they won't say it, but they do. I want to die for Pas, and I'm going to right now." He knelt, staring at the floor, and Remora looked helplessly down at the slug gun.
Maytera Mint murmured, "If you would prefer not to, Your Eminence, it would certainly be permissible for someone more familiar with the weapon to act for you."
"You, er, concur, General?"
She sighed. "Sometimes generals need sergeants to recall them to their duty. So it seems. Whether I learned it in a palaestra or not, Sergeant Sand is right. The Plan is the most important thing in the whorl, and the victim consents."
Still on his knees, Sand muttered, "Thanks, sir."
She knelt beside him. "I've heard it's possible for chems to-to reproduce. You've never done that?"
Slate said, "None of us have, General, and there's hardly any fem chems left." And Sand, "No. Never."
She turned back to Remora and held out her hands for the slug gun. "I've never fired one either, Your Eminence, but I know how they work and I've seen it done thousands of times since this began."
"No, Mayt-No, General."
"Please, Your Eminence. For your own sake."
He silenced her by raising Sand's slug gun and pointing it awkwardly at Sand. "Precisely. Ah-to the point. For my sake, General. If I must, um, officiate, the-ah-holy and um, self-sacrificing. Sole responsibility. Do you follow me? Criminal penalties, hey? Religious, likewise. Removed from the-ah-active clergy."
His wheezing breath seemed to fill the manteion. "But for him-ah-highest god. For Pas!" He jerked at the trigger.
"Not like that, Your Eminence. There's a safety, and if you hold it that way the recoil will cripple you. Or so I'm assured." She positioned the s
lug gun in his hands. "Grasp it firmly, tight against your shoulder, Then it will merely push you backwards. If you hold it loosely and try to keep it away, it will fly back and strike you like a club."
Sand said, "In the head, Patera. That's the best."
"I am augur here," Remora told him, and fired.
The crash of the shot was deafening in the enclosed space of the manteion. Sand rose; for an instant Maytera Mint could not see where the slug had hit him. Spinning to face the Sacred Window, he threw up both arms. There was an uncanny sound that might have been a cry of pain or harsh laughter. Black liquid spurted from his throat, spattering the clean black habit she had just put on.
And the Holy Hues began before Sand fell.
She blinked and stared, then blinked again. Not one face but two crowded the Window, one gaping and gasping, the other radiant with power and majesty, just-and more than just-pitiless and nurturing. "My faithful people," intoned Twice-headed Pas, "receive the blessing of your god."
"I see him!" From the voice she thought it must be Spider, although she could not be sure.
Pas's was thunder and a destroying wind. "Carry this most noble of my soldiers to the Grand manteion. I shall speak-"
Both his faces faded. Tawny yellows and iridescent blacks filled the Window on Mainframe. Serpents writhed across it as scorpions scuttled over their backs; behind them all, Spider and Maytera Mint, Eland and Remora, Slate, Shale, and Schist saw the agonized face of Echidna.
Pas returned as if Echidna had never been. "There our prophet Auk will restore him to us."
Chapter 11
Lovers
As the floater rose, Hossaan said, "I've a dozen things to tell you, Caldé. I know there won't be time for all of them. It's only four streets."
"I know where it is," Silk snapped. "Hurry!" Xiphias laid a hand on his arm. "Easy, lad!"
Hossaan glanced at the small mirror above his head, and his eyes met Silk's. "So I'm going to tell the most important one first. You think there won't be anybody at the Grand Manteion when Hy gets there, and you're afraid she'll leave."
"Yes!"