A bath attendant — Sunriser-human, elderly, and frightened — had given him directions to what he'd called "A Grand Unusual, well-known, and kept in C-Creche Solitary." The old man had told the way, then ducked as a trooper with odd ears surfaced grinning from a tank beside, and splashed him.
As he walked, helmet under his arm — and noticing even the so-fine hauberk's weight — Baj traveled the ice paths and narrow streets of a city silent and waiting. He saw faces at iron-framed apartment windows, men and women shocked by the sudden loss of what had always been. Now, having to accept a future unimagined only the day before.
... Baj encountered several Guards patrols — menacing, then recognizing him — armed Persons pacing along the frozen streets. They were swiftly weaving the binding cords of the Wolf-General's rule, while the citizens of Boston, so many more thousands strong, still huddled, stunned, in their homes. — And doing so, of course, were completing their defeat. Walking, Baj had so far met only nine of Boston's people passing, hurrying by. None had looked him in the face, as if not to see, was not to be seen.
The bath attendant's directions seemed to have been certain enough, though distance hadn't been mentioned. It took more than a glass hour for Baj to reach the river — first trudging down Court Street (its sign in wrought iron on a post), then turning right onto Cambridge, to walk a very long way past many-storied buildings frosted white as celebration cakes.
As he went, the Township's heaven of high lamps shone their golden ever-daylight, throwing his shadow multiple. And it occurred to Baj that the Wolf-General would have to keep the Talents to sail up and serve them. Would keep the Talents, perhaps, for other chores as well....
From Cambridge Street, at last, onto a pleasant, pillared bridge — built of strong blue ice-blocks, and signed Longfellow. A shallow stream of glacier water wended below, white as goat's milk — melted perhaps by Boston's close breath, perhaps by the warmth of earth not so far beneath its bed.
Over the bridge, at River Street, there was a very small church, polished clear as best glass, and sculpted along its walls with Warm-time matters: ships with no sails, carriages with no horses drawing, planes in air and supported by nothing, or by whirlers, pro-pellers. Prayers in ice, it seemed to Baj, for those times' return — though he thought that Frozen-Jesus must dislike prayers intended to melt the Great they addressed.
As he passed this chapel, Baj saw through open iron doors that it held only one Boston citizen. A woman in handsome middle-age stood naked, her breath frosting in bitter air. She was praying amid a forest of small wonderfully-carved trees of ice, their perfect leaves scintillant under mirrored lamps.
Baj considered calling to her to go home. The Guard was certainly under discipline, but perhaps not perfectly at the end of this constantly-lit day of triumph.... Then he decided not, and left her to her prayers.
At the end of River Street, past four quite-elegant ice-brick buildings — perhaps the homes of notables — Baj came to the Township's edge at a looming barrier of ice, cracked and fissured, that rose in gleaming blues and greens to shadowed heights where no bright lamps hung.
In that uneven shade, a relief from lamplight constant, Baj found the large letters A, B, and C, posted in iron on a narrow, uneven path running along the base of the ice. A and B were indicated left. C, to the right, and he went that way.
There was a droning whistle sounding... sounding louder the further he went — climbing the steepening path, and annoying his sore hip.... That noise, the vibration of a single deep note, made his rapier buzz in its scabbard like a short-summer bee. Made him slightly sick with the sound — and perhaps from the long day's weariness, and sting and ache of his injuries. He stood still on the ice path, taking deep breaths so as not to vomit.
He saw sudden brightness, though his eyes were closed — brilliant as sunshine, so he thought for an instant that frozen Boston burned. But the light was in a dream, a dream while awake and standing, of the sun shimmering over an endless ocean of ice.
Baj staggered... opened his eyes only to the wonderful silent city — and as he did, felt illness fall away, so he was able to climb on up the path, though tired, and yawning.
He turned a corner to the left — edged around it — and saw a cut cave-mouth making that deep droning as the wind blew past it. There was a neat iron gate set into blue ice, but its key-turn and chain hung free.
Baj stepped down the path, gripped cold black grease on the iron — frigid even through new fur and leather gloves — and shoved the gate open on almost silent hinges.
Warmth... and warm darkness immediately. He drew his sword — when would that begin once more to seem hasty, odd? — and walked onto something less slippery than ice. Cut stone. He went on into darkness, the rapier's blade questing before... until what might have been faint lamplight ahead, became certain.
Still, he kept the sword drawn into richer and richer warmth. Off to his left, in what seemed an iron chimney vault of its own, the rumble and shuttered glare of a double-vented furnace heated itself to the dullest red. There was a soft splash of melt-water running through an ice-cut dug deep beside it.
Here was the warmest air Baj had known in weeks. Warmth at first, then becoming heat almost sickening, so he sheathed his rapier, tugged his gloves off, swung his cloak free and folded it over his arm... then kept moving, furred boots grating softly on graveled stone.
"Did you know..." A soft, echoing voice.
Baj stood still, hand on hilt.
"Did you know, Prince?" Patience. "Did you know that you stand where once a world wonder — the Mass-Into-Tech — once stood?"
Her voice had come from the right, and Baj went that way into lamplight brighter and brighter. Warm wind pressed gently at his back.
Patience waited outlined in an iron doorway by golden light, carved ice glittering beside and above her. "Dear Baj," she said, and stepped aside. Her white hair tied back with a leather string, she wore only a long, stained, white apron, and stood otherwise naked in lamplight, her body pale and slender as a young girl's, though softened, hollowed by age. "Dear Baj — in fine furs and mail, as a prince should be. And how stands our day's victory?"
"It stands, so far tonight." Baj walked with her into a huge round chamber, a sort of oubliette, shaped like a wild-bee hive. He'd seen the same spaces on Island, sunk deep under North Tower.
This room's roof, as with those much smaller, grimmer, donjons, came together into a round funnel shape — though here almost a bow-shot high, and lit spangled as all of Boston was, with clusters of hanging lamps. A faint odor of hot oil drifted on the air.
The chamber was warm, heated by the corridor's furnace draft flowing in and up through its roof. A roof, Baj saw, lined with iron sheeting framed away from the ice beneath it. Though still, runnels of milky melt-water trickled down carved drains.
There were wooden benches spaced around the room, with fat embroidered pillows drifted on them — and at the room's center, a stepped dais, heaped with more cushions. The encircling ice-block walls were rich with pegged bright decorations — polished copper moons and suns and stars — and four wide cord-hung tapestries spaced evenly around, all telling tales of pleasure in gardens Boston hadn't seen for many centuries. Beside each, a doorway into other rooms.
Two women — Boston women, gray-haired and sturdy in woven shirts and sealskin trousers — stood in one of those across the chamber, watching.
"Eleanor Potts," Patience said, "and her sister, Verity — an ancient New England name."
"I've never heard it," Baj said, and bowed to the women, who nodded back. "It means... truth?"
"Yes," Patience said, "and might as well have meant fidelity, loyalty, friendship. These have tended my Maxwell, and with wet-nurses, since he was born — and tend him still."
"Maxwell," Baj said, and looked for a child — perhaps already taking first steps.
"You've come to meet him."
"Yes, I've come to meet him.... And to ask his mother if she and
her son will accompany us. Leave Boston."
"Leave Boston?"
"The Wolf-General has more than suggested I go — with any who choose to go with me."
"Ah .. ." Patience smiled. "Concerned the Rule might make you a cause to interfere here?"
"Yes. — Where's your boy?"
Patience took his hand. "Come meet my dear dreamer." She led him to the dais, and up a wide step.
For an instant, Baj saw only big satin pillows, pale pink. Pillows over cushions, and half-covered by a white-bear's fur. Then he saw the pillows lived, and were the round arms and chest of a sleeping child. A baby — plump, perfect, its eyes closed by lids almost transparent, its hair a wisp of glossy brown. A baby the size of a man.
Bigger than a man. Richard's size.
Baj's voice caught in his throat for a moment, then he whispered, "Maxwell... are you sleeping?"
There was, perhaps, a deep murmur in response.
"Yes, he's sleeping.... See how he's grown?" Patience smiled down at her child. "Well, you wouldn't know that — but he has grown." She bent to kiss a huge, soft, dimpled hand. "My darling came as other babies came, but has grown and grown ... though not grown older."
"He's beautiful," Baj said. And the child was beautiful. Perfect, though so mighty. There was the odor of all infants about him — of newness, pee, oat powder... of shit, and sweetness.
Patience stretched sinewy, scarred arms yearning to the child as if to seize him, size or not, and haul him to her. But instead, gently stroked the huge round head, its fine drift of hair. .. gently traced the tender pouting lips so the baby shifted, tickled by the touch. "... Has any woman on the frozen earth a son like this?"
"Should he choose to grow older," Baj said, 'choose' seeming the proper word, "then a Great will certainly stand over Boston."
"And they haven't hurt him. Eleanor says the Faculty studied long, argued, considered foolish correctives — but hadn't yet decided." She smiled. "And now, I think the Talents will take the greatest care of us, hoping that Maxwell might someday twist the future as once they twisted the unborn — and so dream Boston back to itself again."
Baj stepped back a little, as if the baby were too large to stand close beside. "Even so, you and your son should come with us — and likely be safer than here with Sylvia Wolf-General."
" 'Likely' be safer?" Patience stroked her son's round cheek, bent over to kiss a dimple. "And where would that be?"
"I know ice-rigged boats; I've sailed since I was a boy. We can go east to the coast, to Boston's harbor. Choose a vessel there, and if loot and our pay suffice," he smiled, "buy it."
"And then?"
"Then, across the frozen Ocean Atlantic, to Atlas-Europe."
"But thousands of Warm-time miles, Baj, if any of the maps are true! And for what reason?"
"For... whatever reason awaits us there."
"And Maxwell and I?"
"Come with us."
Patience smiled. "Do you not think, dear, dear Baj — do you not think Maxwell might be too large even for the journey to the coast? And then too large for comfort in a fishing boat?"
"We will make do. We'll take him, and see him comfortable."
"And if still he grows ? Grows, and then grows slowly older to become what he must become?... Do you know what warmed goats, what willing women must be milked for him every day?"
"We'll bring goats — bring women."
"Sweet Baj, you're speaking of The Book's ark of Noah — not an adventuring barque with an exiled prince and whatever fighting friends." Patience reached over to fold the white bearskin coverlet back. "Too warm; he gets a rash." Maxwell stirred, cooed to himself, a deep, blurred, string-instrument note.
"— And of course, Nancy goes with you."
"Yes."
"I knew you two would love each other. I knew because I'm a woman — and what else would an exile prince and a pretty fox-girl do but fall into love. Inescapable.... But I knew also, because Maxwell dreamed it into a dream of mine in the Smoking-mountains. We saw you together — though you were both older — together at Island, on the Bronze Gate's landing." She shook the southern-cotton sheet out billowing, then covered the baby again. "Richard goes as well?"
"I believe he will. — Think again, Patience. Will you both be safe with the Guard ruling Boston?"
"Oh, Sylvia minds honor. Minds it the more for the wolf in her blood. She won't disturb me or my child — and besides, she must rule gently, with a triumph so rawly new, so unexpected... and half her Guard companies dead at South Gate." Patience tucked the sheet, saw to it a plumply massive arm was covered. "This room is sometimes too warm, sometimes cool. Drafts by the walls..."
She tucked and arranged until satisfied, then stepped back and observed her child as if he were a loved landscape. "— Baj, the Wolf-General holds here by her fingernails. If the people of Boston recover their courage, grow angry enough, she and her soldiers might still be overwhelmed."
"Formidable fingernails."
"Yes, but not sufficient for comfort. So Sylvia will rule gently for a long while... and will not allow the Talents' changes, anymore, their use of women's wombs."
"Will not," Baj said, "unless, in the future, she finds a need for guardsmen created perfectly fierce, perfectly obedient."
"A prince's thought, Baj." She smiled at him. "And like most such, unpleasant."
"Yes. Unpleasant. — You will not go?"
"No." Patience shook her head. "The Faculty... the Talents, will see us well-cared for, here. They will imagine Maxwell's gift a secret hope for a Sunriser Boston reborn." She sighed. "Besides, no baby — not even a wonder — should wander an ice ocean to perhaps, or maybe. That's a journey for a young man with a sword.... And what others?"
"I think Dolphus-Shrike may go with us — and his few men remaining — since their tribe will be living in peaceful dullness for some time, with the Wolf-General's Boston to deal with."
"Yes... And if they go, you will remember they are savages, however clever and well-read their chieftain?"
"I'll remember."
"They live by signs we never see."
"I know it.... And Nancy — all of them — will come to say good-bye to you and the baby."
Patience led him down from the dais, stood looking at him for a moment, a cool regard. Then she said, "I will never see you again, unless in Maxwell's dreams," and swept into his arms like a lover, hugging him close. Her body was startlingly small and slight. There was no human odor, not even of her breath, only the white scents of ice and stone. "I have two sons," she said, looking up into his eyes, her own dark as dug coal.
"Yes," Baj said, and kissed her forehead. "And I, a Third-mother."
"And would you have killed me at the Pens?"
"... Yes, if not for that little time to consider."
"Then you are Sam Monroe's son, more than Toghrul Khan's."
"Perhaps."
"Prince," Patience sighed, and left his arms, "I remember the boy I first saw fleeing through a windy day in the southern mountains, afraid, exhausted. But still, the man he was to become rested waiting in him like a shaft of stone. — The boy now is worn away by Lady Weather, and the man revealed.... Do you understand that the brave woman you killed at the Pens — the women we killed — were soldiers as much as any swordsmen, any halberdiers? They died of necessary war; and you — like the rest of us — simply an instrument."
"And no tragic figure?"
"Only if you're foolish enough to choose it."
"Oh," Baj said, "— I doubt if I'm done with foolish choices." He stepped up to the dais again, to the side of Maxwell's massive bed, leaned over and kissed the great warm round of the baby's cheek. "Farewell, my brother. Dream safety for our mother... and luck for me."
The giant child sighed, its eyes slowly opened, a pale wondering blue and soft with sleep. Perhaps seeing Baj, perhaps not, but only the vaulted lamp-spangled ceiling of its creche.
CHAPTER 30
Captain Pruitt, Sunri
ser and almost sixty, styled himself "Commodore"— though only to himself to ward the laughter of other fisher and sealer captains. At what was considered on the coast an advanced age, he owned three boats clear of debt. Sloops to sail blue sea or white ice — though ice-rigged now, as usual off New England. Ice-rigged to run days out to the great storm-split leads, with wet-rigging ready — once skates were up and stowed — to fish them.
Three boats and decent crews for every one — bits of seal-stuff born in two bosuns, though only evident in their odor.
Pope was at sea. Parson in the yards with cracked strakes, but Priestess — all ancient sacred names — Priestess was afloat, fresh scraped, caulked, and sounded, cord lines and hook-wire spooled, and provisioned for many weeks on sea ice to sea leads, for whenever came the cod.
... Buzz and buzz had sounded at the coast — with Bostonians in flight from their disaster. Pigeons also had come flying. But the city — under Sunrisers or Moonrisers — still must eat, and more and better than occasional musk-ox or caribou. Cod was the matter. And seal meat. And whale. So bitter buzzing beside the point — and history turned on its back — still the coast would fish, the coast would hunt and whale, and the men and women of the coast would be paid for it.
Captain (Commodore) Pruitt, a hard-hander but fair enough to his crews, had come down Priestess's gangway, still considering the luck of being necessary — and almost thirty frozen miles from unlucky Boston-town — when he saw an odd group waiting down the dock in day's-end light.
Waiting — with two caribou sledges just swinging away through fine blowing snow, leaving them standing with nothing but their bundles. And their weapons.
... As he was no fool in finding fish, so Captain Pruitt was no fool in avoiding ugly weather. He had a nose for it — and therefore turned back to climb aboard Priestess as if he'd recalled further business on her.
"You!"
It was one of those You's — this called in a young man's voice — that brought bad news with it. Pruitt sighed, signaled a seaman by her rail to keep sorting hooks by sizes, then turned to walk down to them.
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