Shadow & Claw

by Wolfe, Gene

  “Can’t you wash yourself?” Agia asked Dorcas.

  “I’d like a bath, yes, but not with you watching me.”

  “Severian will turn his head if you ask him. He did very well in a place where we were this morning.”

  “And you, madame,” Dorcas said softly. “I’d rather you didn’t watch. I’d like a private place, if I might have one.”

  Agia smiled at that, but I called the scullion again and gave her an orichalk to bring a folding screen. When it was set up, I told Dorcas I would buy her a gown if there were one to be had at the inn.

  “No,” she said. In a whisper, I asked Agia what she thought was the matter with her.

  “She likes what she has, clearly. I must walk with a hand up to hold my bodice if I wouldn’t be shamed for life.” She let her hand fall, so that her high breasts gleamed in the dying sunlight. “But those rags let her show just leg and chest enough. There’s a rent at the groin too, though I dare say you haven’t noticed it.”

  The innkeeper interrupted us, leading in a waiter who carried a plate of pastries, a bottle, and glasses. I explained that my clothing was wet, and he had a brazier brought in—then proceeded to warm himself by it, for all the world as if he stood in his private apartment. “Feels good, this time of year,” he said. “The sun’s dead and don’t know it yet, but we do. If you’re killed, you’ll get to miss next winter, and if you’re hurt bad, you’ll get to stay inside. That’s what I always tell them. Of course, most of the fights are around midsummer’s eve, so it’s more appropriate then, so to speak. I don’t know if it comforts them or not, but it does no harm.”

  I took off the brown mantle and my guild cloak, put my boots on a stool near the brazier, and stood beside him to dry my breeches and hose, asking if all those who came this way on monomachy stopped to refresh themselves with him. Like every man who feels himself likely to die, I would have been happy to know that I was taking part in some established tradition.

  “All? Oh, no,” he said. “May moderation and St. Amand bless you, sieur. If everyone who came tarried at my inn, why it wouldn’t be my inn—I’d have sold it, and be living comfortable in a big, stone house with atroxes at the door and a few young fellows with knives hanging about me to settle my enemies. No, there’s many a one goes by here without a glance, never thinking that when he comes past next time, it may be too late to drink my wine.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Agia, and handed me a glass. It was full to the brim with a dark, crimson vintage. Not a good wine, perhaps—it made my tongue prickle, and carried with its delicious taste something of harshness. But a wonderful wine, a wine better than good, in the mouth of someone as fatigued and cold as I. Agia held a full glass of her own, but I saw by her flaming cheeks and sparkling eyes that she had already downed one other at least. I told her to save something for Dorcas, and she said, “That milk and water virgin? She won’t drink it, and it’s you who’ll need courage—not she.”

  Not quite honestly, I said I was not afraid.

  The innkeeper exclaimed, “That’s the way! Don’t you be feared, and don’t fill your head with no noble thoughts about death and last days and all that. The ones that do is the ones that never come back, you may be sure. Now you was going to order a meal, I think, for you and your two young women afterward?”

  “We have ordered it,” I said.

  “Ordered, but not paid nothing toward, that was my meaning. Also there’s the wine and these here gâteaux secs. Those must be paid for here and now as they’re eaten here and now, and drank up too. For the dinner I’ll require a deposit of three orichalks, with two more to be paid when you come to eat it.”

  “And if I don’t come?”

  “Then there’s no more charge, sieur. That’s how I’m able to offer my dinners at such low prices.”

  The man’s complete insensibility disarmed me; I handed over the money and he left us. Agia peeped around the side of the screen behind which Dorcas was cleansing herself with the aid of the scullion, and I sat down again on the couch and took a pastry to go with what remained of my wine.

  “If we could make the hinges in this thing lock, Severian, we might enjoy ourselves for a few moments without interruption. We could put a chair against it, but no doubt those two would choose the worst possible moment to squall and knock everything over.”

  I was about to make some bantering reply when I noticed a scrap of paper, folded many times, that had been put beneath the waiter’s tray in such a fashion that it could be seen only by someone sitting where I was. “This is really too much,” I said. “A challenge, and now the mysterious note.”

  Agia came to look. “What are you talking about? Are you drunk already?”

  I put my hand on the rounded fullness of her hip, and when she made no objection, used that pleasant handle to draw her toward me until she could see the paper. “What do you suppose it says? ‘The Commonwealth has need of you—ride at once …’ ‘Your friend is he who shall say to you, camarilla …’ ‘Beware of the man with pink hair …’”

  Falling in with the joke, Agia offered, “‘Come when you hear three pebbles tap the window …’ The leaves, I should say here. ‘The rose hath stabbed the iris, who nectar affords …’ That’s your avern killing me, clearly. ‘You will know your true love by her red pagne …’” She bent to kiss me, then sat in my lap. “Aren’t you going to look?”

  “I am looking.” Her torn bodice had fallen again.

  “Not there. Cover that with your hand, and then you can look at the note.”

  I did as she told me, but left the note where it was. “It’s really too much, as I said a moment ago. The mysterious Septentrion and his challenge, then Hildegrin, and now this. Have I mentioned the Chatelaine Thecla to you?”

  “More than once, while we were walking.”

  “I loved her. She read a great deal—there was really nothing for her to do when I was gone but read and sew and sleep—and when I was with her we used to laugh at the plots of some of the stories. This sort of thing was always happening to the people in them, and they were incessantly involved in high and melodramatic affairs for which they had no qualifications.”

  Agia laughed with me and kissed me again, a lingering kiss. When our lips parted, she said, “What’s this about Hildegrin? He seemed ordinary enough.”

  I took another pastry, touched the note with it, then put a corner into her mouth. “Some time ago I saved the life of a man called Vodalus—”

  Agia pulled away from me, spewing crumbs. “Vodalus? You’re joking!”

  “Not at all. That’s what his friend called him. I was still hardly more than a boy, but I held back the haft of an ax for a moment. The blow would have killed him, and he gave me a chrisos.”

  “Wait. What has this to do with Hildegrin?”

  “When I first saw Vodalus, he had a man and a woman with him. Enemies came upon them, and Vodalus remained behind to fight while the other man took the woman to safety.” (I had decided it was wiser to say nothing about the corpse, or my killing of the axman.)

  “I’d have fought myself—then there’d have been three fighters instead of one. Go on.”

  “Hildegrin was the man with Vodalus, that’s all. If we had met him first, I would have had some idea, or thought I had some idea, of why a hipparch of the Septentrion Guard would want to fight me. And for that matter why someone has chosen to send me some sort of furtive message. You know, all the things the Chatelaine Thecla and I used to laugh about, spies and intrigue, masked trysts, lost heirs. What’s the matter, Agia?”

  “Do I revolt you? Am I so ugly?”

  “You’re beautiful, but you look as if you’re about to be sick. I think you drank too fast.”

  “Here.” A quick twist took Agia out of her pavonine gown; it lay about her brown, dusty feet like a heap of precious stones. I had seen her naked in the cathedral of the Pelerines, but now (whether because of the wine I had drunk or the wine she had drunk, because the light was dimmer now, o
r brighter, or only because she had been frightened and shamed then, covering her breasts and hiding her womanhood between her thighs) she drew me far more. I felt stupid with desire, thick-headed and thick-tongued as I pressed her warmth against my own cold flesh.

  “Severian, wait. I’m not a strumpet, whatever you may think. But there’s a price.”

  “What?”

  “You must promise me you won’t read that note. Throw it into the brazier.”

  I let go of her and stepped back.

  Tears appeared in her eyes, rising as springs do among rocks. “I wish you could see the way you’re looking at me now, Severian. No, I don’t know what it says. It’s just that-have you never heard of some women having supernatural knowledge? Premonitions? Knowing things they could not possibly have learned?”

  The longing I had felt was nearly gone. I was frightened as well as angry, though I did not know why. I said, “We have a guild of such women, our sisters, in the Citadel. Neither their faces nor their bodies are like yours.”

  “I know I’m not like that. But that’s why you must do what I advise. I’ve never in my life had a premonition of any strength, and I have one now. Don’t you see that must mean it’s something so true and so important to you that you can’t and mustn’t ignore it? Burn the note.”

  “Someone is trying to warn me, and you don’t want me to see it. I asked you if the Septentrion was your lover. You told me he was not, and I believed you.”

  She started to speak, but I silenced her.

  “I believe you still. Your voice had truth in it. Yet you are laboring to betray me in some way. Tell me now that isn’t so. Tell me you are acting in my best interests, and nothing beyond.”

  “Severian …”

  “Tell me.”

  “Severian, we met this morning. I hardly knew you and you hardly know me. What can you expect, and what would you expect if you had not just left the shelter of your guild? I’ve tried to help you from time to time. I’m trying to help you now.”

  “Put on your dress.” I took the note from under the tray. She rushed at me, but it was not difficult to hold her off with one hand. The note had been penned with a crow quill, in a straggling scrawl; in the dim light I could decipher only a few words.

  “I could have distracted you, and thrown it into the fire. That’s what I ought to have done. Severian, let me go—”

  “Be quiet.”

  “I had a knife, only last week. A misericorde with an ivy-root handle. We were hungry, and Agilus put it in pawn. If I had it still, I could stab you now!”

  “It would be in your gown, and your gown is over there on the floor.” I gave her a push that sent her staggering backward (there was wine enough in her stomach that it was not entirely from the violence of my motion) into the canvas chair, and carried the note to a spot where the last light of the sun penetrated the crowding leaves.

  The woman with you has been here before.

  Do not trust her. Trudo says the man is

  a torturer. You are my mother come again.

  XXVI

  Sennet

  I had just had time to absorb the words when Agia jumped from her chair, snatched the note from my hand, and threw it over the edge of the platform. For a moment she stood before me, looking from my face to Terminus Est, which by this time leaned, reassembled, against an arm of the couch. I think she feared I was going to strike off her head and throw it after the note. When I did nothing, she said, “Did you read it? Severian, say you didn’t!”

  “I read it, but I don’t understand it.”

  “Then don’t think about it.”

  “Be calm for a moment. It wasn’t even meant for me. It may have been for you, but if it was, why was it put where no one but I could see it? Agia, have you had a child? How old are you?”

  “Twenty-three. That’s plenty old enough, but no, I haven’t. I’ll let you look at my belly if you don’t believe me.”

  I tried to make a mental calculation and discovered I did not know enough about the maturation of women. “When did you menstruate first?”

  “Thirteen. If I’d got pregnant, I would have been fourteen when the baby came. Is that what you’re trying to find out?”

  “Yes. And the child would be nine now. If it were bright, it might be able to write a note like that. Do you want me to tell you what it said?”

  “No!”

  “How old would you say Dorcas is? Eighteen? Nineteen, perhaps?”

  “You shouldn’t think about it, Severian. Whatever it was.”

  “I won’t play games with you now. You’re a woman—how old?”

  Agia pursed her full lips. “I’d say your drab little mystery’s sixteen or seventeen. Hardly more than a child.”

  Sometimes, as I suppose everyone has noticed, talking of absent persons seems to summon them up like eidolons. So it was now. A panel of the screen swung back and Dorcas came out, no longer the muddy creature we had become accustomed to, but a round-breasted, slender girl of singular grace. I have seen skin whiter than hers, but that was not a healthy whiteness. Dorcas seemed to glow. Freed of filth, her hair was pale gold; her eyes were as they had always been: the deep blue of the world-river Uroboros in my dream. When she saw that Agia was naked, she tried to return to the shelter of the screen, but the thick body of the scullion prevented her.

  Agia said, “I had better put my rags on again before your pet faints.”

  Dorcas murmured, “I won’t look.”

  “I don’t care if you do,” Agia told her, but I noticed she turned her back to us while she put on her gown. Speaking to the wall of leaves, she added, “Now we really must go, Severian. The trumpet will sound at any moment.”

  “And what will that mean?”

  “You don’t know?” She swung about to face us. “When the machionations of the City Wall appear to touch the edge of the solar disc, a trumpet—the first—is sounded on the Sanguinary Field. Some think it’s only to regulate the combats there, though that’s not so. It is a signal to the guards inside the Wall to close the gates. It’s also the signal to begin the fighting, and if you’re there when it blows, that’s when your contest will start. When the sun is below the horizon and true night comes, a trumpeter on the Wall sounds tattoo. That means the gates will not be opened again even for those who carry special passes and also that anyone who, having given or received a challenge, has not yet come to the Field is assumed to have refused satisfaction. He can be assaulted wherever he is found, and an armiger or an exultant can engage assassins without soiling his honor.”

  The scullion, who had been standing by the stair listening to all this and nodding, moved aside for her master, the innkeeper. “Sieur,” he said, “if you indeed have a mortal appointing, I—”

  “That is just what my friend was saying,” I told him. “We must go.”

  Dorcas asked then if she might have some wine. Somewhat surprised, I nodded; the innkeeper poured her a glass, which she held in both hands like a child. I asked him if he supplied writing implements for his guests.

  “You wish to make a testament, sieur? Come with me—we have a bower reserved for that purpose. There’s no charge, and if you like, I will engage a boy who’ll carry the document to your executor.”

  I picked up Terminus Est and followed him, leaving Agia and Dorcas to keep watch on the avern. The bower our host boasted of was perched on a small limb and hardly big enough to hold a desk, but there was a stool there, several crow-quill pens, paper, and a pot of ink. I sat down and wrote out the words of the note; so far as I could judge, the paper was the same as that on which it had been written, and the ink gave the same faded black line. When I had sanded my scribble, folded it, and tucked it away in a compartment of my sabretache I seldom used, I told the innkeeper no messenger would be required, and asked if he knew anyone named Trudo.

  “Trudo, sieur?” He looked puzzled.

  “Yes. It’s a common enough name.”

  “Surely it is, sieur, I know that. I
t’s just that I was trying to think of somebody that might be known to me and somebody, if you understand me, sieur, in your exalted position. Some armiger or—”

  “Anyone,” I said. “Anyone at all. It would not, for example, be the name of the waiter who served us, would it?”

  “No, sieur. His name’s Ouen. I had a neighbor once named Trudo, sieur, but that was years ago, before I bought this place. I don’t suppose it would be him you’re after? Then there’s my ostler here—his name’s Trudo.”

  “I’d like to speak to him.”

  The innkeeper nodded, his chin vanishing in the fat that circled his neck. “As you wish, sieur. Not that he’s likely to be able to tell you much.” The steps creaked beneath his weight. “He’s from far south, I warn you.” (He meant the southern regions of the city, not the wild and largely treeless lands abutting on the ice.) “And from across the river to boot. You’re not likely to get much sense from him, though he’s a hard-working fellow.”

  I said, “I suspect I know what part of the city he comes from.”

  “Do you now? Well, that’s interesting, sieur. Very interesting. I’ve heard one or two say they could tell such things by the way a man dressed or how he spoke, but I wasn’t aware you’d laid eyes on Trudo, as the saying is.” We were nearing the ground now, and he bawled, “Trudo! Tr-u-u-do!” And then, “REINS!”

  No one appeared. A single flagstone the size of a large tabletop had been laid at the foot of the stair, and we stepped out upon it.

  It was just at that moment when lengthening shadows cease to be shadows at all and become instead pools of blackness, as if some fluid darker even than the waters of the Lake of Birds was rising from the ground. Hundreds of people, some alone, some in small groups, were hurrying over the grass from the direction of the city. All seemed intent, bowed by an eagerness they carried upon their backs and shoulders like a pack. Most bore no weapons I could see, but a few had cases of rapiers, and at some distance off I made out the white blossom of an avern, carried, it seemed, on a pole or staff just as mine was.