by Gene Wolfe
"Cassava." She spoke as though in a dream.
He nodded solemnly. "Are you ill, Cassava?"
"I..."
"It's the heat, my daughter." To salve his conscience, he added,
"Perhaps. Perhaps it's the heat, in part at least. We should get you
out of the sun and away from this fire. Do you think you can walk,
Villus?"
"Yes, Patera."
Quetzal held out the needler. "Take this, Patera. You may need
it." It was too large for a pocket; Silk put it in his waistband beneath
his tunic, where he had carried the azoth. "Farther back, I think,"
Quetral told him. "Behind the point of the hip. It will be safer there
and just as convenient."
"Yes, Your Cognizance."
"This boy shouldn't walk." Quetzal picked up Villus. "He has
poison in his blood at present, and that's no little thing, though we
may hope there's only a little poison. May I put him in your manse,
Patera? He should be lying down, and this poor woman, too."
"Women are not--but of course if Your Cognizance--"
"They are with my permission," Quetzal told him. "I give it. I also
permit you, Patera, to go into the cenoby to fetch a sibyl's habit.
Maytera here," he glanced down at Maytera Marble, "may regain
consciousness at any moment. We must spare her as much embarrassment
as we can." With Villus over his shoulder, he took
Cassava's arm. "Come with me, my daughter. You and this boy will
have to nurse each other for a while."
Silk was already through the garden gate. He had never set foot in
the cenoby, but he thought he had a fair notion of its plan: sellaria,
refectory, kitchen, and pantry on the lower floor; bedrooms (four at
least, and perhaps as many as six) on the upper floor. Presumably
one would be Maytera Marble's, despite the fact that Maytera
Marble never slept.
As he trotted along the graveled path, he recalled that the altar
and Sacred Window were still in the middle of Sun Street. They
should be carried back into the manteion as soon as possible,
although that would take a dozen men. He opened the kitchen door
and found himself far from certain of even that necessity. Pas was
dead--no less a divine personage than Echidna had declared it--and
he, Silk, could not imagine himself sacrificing to Echidna again, or
so much as attending a sacrifice honoring her. Did it actually matter,
save to those gods, if the altar of the gods or the Window through
which they so rarely condescended to communicate were ground
beneath the wheels of dung carts and tradesmen's wagons?
Yet this was blasphemy. He shuddered.
The cenoby kitchen seemed almost familiar, in part, he decided,
because Maytera Marble had often mentioned this stove and this
woodbox, these cupboards and this larder; and in part because it
was, although cleaner, very much like his own.
Upstairs he found a hall that was an enlarged version of the
landing at the top of the stair in the manse, with three faded pictures
decorating its walls Pas, Echidna, and Tartaros bringing gifts of
food, progeny, and prosperity (here mawkishly symbolized by a
bouquet of marigolds) to a wedding; Scylla spreading her beautiful
unseen mantle over a traveler drinking from a pool in the southern
desert; and Molpe, perfunctorily disguised as a young woman of the
upper classes, approving a much older and poorer woman's feeding
pigeons.
Momentarily he paused to examine the last. Cassava might, he
decided, have posed for the old woman; he reflected bitterly that
the flock she fed could better have fed her, then reminded himself
that in a sense they had--that the closing years of her life were
brightened by the knowledge that she, who had so little left to give,
could still give something.
A door at the end of the hall was smashed. Curious, he went in.
The bed was neatly made and the floor swept. There was water in a
ewer on the nightstand, so this was certainly Maytera Mint's room
or Maytera Rose's, or perhaps the room in which Chenille had spent
Scylsday night. An icon of Scylla's hung on the wall, much darkened
by the votive lamps of the small shrine before it. And here was--yes
what appeared to be a working glass. This was Maytera Rose's
room, surely. Silk clapped, and a monitor's bloodless face appeared
in its gray depths.
"Why has Maytera Rose never told me she had this glass?" Silk
demanded.
"I have no idea, sir. Have you inquired?"
"Of course not!"
"That may well be the reason, sir."
"If you--" Silk rebuked himself, and found that he was smiling.
What was this, compared to the death of Doctor Crane or Echidna's
theophany? He must learn to relax, and to think.
When the manteion had been built, a glass must have been
provided for the use of the senior sibyl as well as the senior augur;
that was natural enough, and in fact praiseworthy. The senior
augur's glass, in what was now Patera Gulo's room, was out of order
and had been for decades; this one, the senior sibyl's, was still
functioning, perhaps only because it had been less used. Silk ran his
fingers through his disorderly yellow hair. "Are there more glasses in
this cenoby, my son?"
"No, sir."
He advanced a step, wishing that he had a walking stick to lean
upon. "In this manteion?"
"Yes, sir. There is one in the manse, sir, but it is no longer
summonable."
Silk nodded to himself. "I don't suppose you can tell me whether
the Alambrera has surrendered?"
Immediately the monitor's face vanished, replaced by the turreted
building and its flanking walls. Several thousand people were
milling before the grim iron doors, where a score of men attempted
to batter their way in with what seemed to be a building timber. As
Silk watched, two Guardsmen thrust slug guns over the parapet of a
turret on the right and opened fire.
Maytera Mint galloped into view, her black habit billowing about
her, looking no bigger than a child on the broad back of her mount.
She gestured urgently, the newfound silver trumpet that was her
voice apparently sounding retreat, although Silk could not distinguish
her words; the terrible discontinuity that was the azoth's blade
sprang from her upraised hand, and the parapet exploded in a
shower of stones.
"Another view," the monitor announced smoothly.
From a vantage point that appeared to be fifteen or twenty cubits
above the street, Silk found himself looking down at the mob before
the doors; some turned and ran; others were still raging against the
Alambrera's stone and iron. The sweating men with the timber
gathered themselves for a new assault, but one fell before they
began it, his face a pulpy mask of scarlet and white.
"Enough," Silk said.
The monitor returned. "I think it safe to say, sir, that the
Alambrera has not surrendered. If I may, I might add that in my
judgement it is not likely to do so before the arrival of the relief
force, sir."
"A relief force is on the way?"
"Yes, sir. The First Battalion of the Second Brigade of the Civil
Guard, sir, and three companies of soldiers." The monitor paused. "I
cannot locate them at the moment, sir, but not long ago they were
marching along Ale Street. Would you care to see it?"
"That's all right. I should go." Silk turned away, then back. "How
were you--there's an eye high up on a building on the other side of
Cage Street, isn't there? And another over the doors of the
Alambrera?"
"Precisely, sir."
"You must be familiar with this cenoby. Which room is Maytera
Marble's?"
"Less so than you may suppose, sir. There are no other glasses in
this cenoby, sir, as I told you. And no eyes save mine, sir. However,
from certain remarks of my mistress's, I infer that it may be the
second door on the left, sir."
"By your mistress you mean Maytera Rose? Where is she?"
"Yes, sir. My mistress has abandoned this land of trials and
sorrows for a clime infinitely more agreeable, sir. That is to say, for
Mainframe, sir. My lamented mistress has, in short, joined the
assembly of the immortal gods."
"She's dead?"
"Precisely so, sir. As to the present whereabouts of her remains,
they are, I believe, somewhat scattered. This is the best I can do,
sir."
The monitor's face vanished again, and Sun Street sprang into
view: the altar (from which Musk's fire-blackened corpse had
partially fallen); and beyond it, Maytera Marble's naked metal
body, sprawled near a coffin of softwood stained black.
"Those were her final rites," Silk muttered to himself. "Maytera
Rose's last sacrifice. I never knew."
"Yes, sir, I fear they were." The monitor sighed. "I served her for
forty-three years, sir, eight months, and five days. Would you care
to view her as she was in life, sir? Or the last scene it was my
pleasure to display to her? As a species of informal memorial, sir? It
may console your evident grief, sir, if I may be so bold."
Silk shook his head, then thought better of it. "Is some god
prompting you, my son? The Outsider, perhaps?"
"Not that I'm aware of, sir.
"Last Phaesday I encountered a very cooperative monitor," Silk
explained. "He directed me to his mistress's weapons, something
that I wouldn't--in retrospect--have supposed a monitor would
normally do. I have since concluded that he had been ordered to
assist me by the goddess Kypris."
"A credit to us all, sir."
"He would not say so, of course. He had been enjoined to silence.
Show me that scene, the last your mistress saw."
The monitor vanished. Choppy blue water stretched to the
horizon; in the mid-distance, a small fishing boat ran close-hauled
under a lowering sky. A black bird (Silk edged closer) fluttered in
the rigging, and a tall woman, naked or neariy so, stood beside the
helmsman. A movement of her left hand was accompanied by a
faint crimson flash.
Silk stroked his cheek. "Can you repeat the order Maytera Rose
gave you that led you to show her this?"
"Certainly, sir. It was, 'Let's see what that slut Silk foisted on us is
doing now.' I apologize, sir, as I did to my mistress, for the meager
image of the subject. There was no nearer point from which to
display it, and the focal length of the glass through which I viewed it
was at its maximum."
Hearing Silk's approach, Maytera Marble turned away from the
Window and tried to cover herself with her new hands. With averted
eyes, he passed her the habit he had taken from a nail in the wall of
her room, saying, "It doesn't matter, Maytera. Not really."
"I know, Patera. Yet I feel... There, it's on."
He faced her and held out his hand. "Can you stand up?"
"I don't know, Patera. I--I was about to try when you came.
Where is everyone?" Harder than flesh, her fingers took his. He
heaved with all his strength, reawakening the half-healed wounds
left by the beak of the white-headed one.
Maytera Marble stood, almost steadily, and endeavored to shake
the dust from her long, black skirt, murmuring, "Thank you, Patera.
Did you get--? Thank you very much."
He took a deep breath. "I'm afraid you must think I've acted
improperly. I should explain that His Cognizance the Prolocutor
personally authorized me to enter your cenoby to bring you that.
His Cognizance is here; he's in the manse at the moment, I believe."
He waited for her to speak, but she did not.
"Perhaps if you got out of the sun."
She leaned heavily on his arm as he led her through the arched
gateway and the garden to her accustomed seat in the arbor.
In a voice not quite like her own, she said, "There's something I
should tell you. Something I should have told you long ago."
Silk nodded. "There's something I should have told you long ago,
too, Maytera--and something new that I must tell you now. Please
let me go first; I think that will be best."
It seemed she had not heard him. "I bore a child once, Patera. A
son, a baby boy. It was... Oh, very long ago."
"Built a son, you mean. You and your husband."
She shook her head. "Bore him in blood and pain, Patera. Great
Echidna had blinded me to the gods, but it wasn't enough. So I
suffered, and no doubt he suffered, too, poor little mite, though he
had done nothing. We nearly died, both of us."
Silk could only stare at her smooth, metal face.
"And now somebody's dead, upstairs. I can't remember who. It
will come to me in a moment. I dreamt of snakes last night, and I
hate snakes. If I tell you now, I think perhaps I won't have that
dream again."
"I hope not, Maytera," he told her. And then, "Think of something
else, if you can."
"It was... Was not an easy confinement. I was forty, and had
never borne a child. Maytera Betel was our senior then, an excellent
woman. But fat, one of those people who lose nothing when they
fast. She became horribly tired when she fasted, but never thinner."
He nodded, increasingly certain that Maytera Marble was possessed
again, and that he knew who possessed her.
"We pretended I was becoming fat, too. She used to tease me
about it, and our sibs believed her. I'd been such a small woman
before."
Watching carefully for her reaction, Silk said, "I would have
carried you, Maytera, if I could; but I knew you'd be too heavy for
me to lift."
She ignored it. "A few bad people gossiped, but that was all. Then
my time came. The pains were awful. Maytera had arranged for a
woman in the Orilla to care for me. Not a good woman, Maytera
said, but a better friend in time of need than many good women.
She told me she'd delivered children often, and washed her hands,
and washed me, and told me what to do, but it would not come
forth. My son. He wouldn't come into this world, though I pressed
and pressed until I was so tired I thought I must die."
Her hand--he recognized it now as Maytera Rose's-
-found his.
Hoping it would reassure her, he squeezed it as hard as he could.
"She cut me with a knife from her kitchen that she dipped in
boiling water, and there was blood everywhere. Horrible! Horrible!
A doctor came and cut me again, and there he was, covered with my
blood and dripping. My son. They wanted me to nurse him, but I
wouldn't. I knew that she'd blinded me, Ophidian Echidna had
blinded me to the gods for what I'd done, but I thought that if I
didn't nurse it she might relent and let me see her after all. She
never has."
Silk said, "You don't have to tell me this, Maytera."
"They asked me to name him, and I did. They said they'd find a
family that wanted a child and would take him, and he'd never find
out, but he did, though it must have taken him a long while. He
spoke to Marble, said she must tell me he'd bought it, and his name.
When I heard his name, I knew."
Silk said gently, "It doesn't matter any more, Maytera. That was
long ago, and now the whole city's in revolt, and it no longer
matters. You must rest. Find peace."
"And that is why," Maytera Marble concluded. "Why my son
Bloody bought our manteion and made all this trouble."
The wind wafted smoke from the fig tree to Silk's nose, and he
sneezed.
"May every god bless you, Patera." Her voice sounded normal
again.
"Thank you," he said, and accepted the handkerchief she offered.
"Could you bring me water, do you think? Cool water?"
As sympathetically as he could, he told her, "You can't drink
water, Maytera."
"Please? Just a cup of cool water?"
He hurried to the manse. Today was Hieraxday, after all; no
doubt she wished him to bless the water for her in Hierax's name.
Later she would sprinkle it upon Maytera Rose's coffin and in the
corners of her bedroom to prevent Maytera's spirit from troubling
her again.
Cassava was sitting in the kitchen, in the chair Patera Pike had
used at meals. Silk said, "Shouldn't you lie down, my daughter? It
would make you feel better, I'm sure, and there's a divan in the
sellaria."
She stared at him. "That was a needler, wasn't it? I gave you a
needler. Why'd I have a thing like that?"
"Because someone gave it to you to give me." He smiled at her.
"I'm going to the Alambrera, you see, and I'll need it." He worked
the pump-handle vigorously, letting the first rusty half-bucketful