by Gene Wolfe
Maytera Mint, might tilt the balance.
Or so Silk hoped.
Oosik looked up. "This says Lemur's dead."
Silk nodded.
"There have been rumors all day. What if your Prolocutor is
simply repeating them?"
"He's dead." Silk made the statement as forceful as he could,
fortified by the knowledge that for once there was no need to hedge
the truth. "You've got a glass, Colonel. You must. Ask it to find
Lemur for you."
"You saw him die?"
Silk shook his head, saying, "I saw his body, however," and Oosik
returned to the letter.
Too much boldness could ruin everything; it would be worse than
useless to try to make Oosik say or do anything that could be
brought up against him later.
Oosik put down the letter. "The Chapter is behind you, Calde. I
suspected as much, and this makes it very plain."
"It is now, apparently." Here was a chance for Oosik to declare
himself. "If you suspected it before you read that letter, Colonel, it
was doubly kind of you to let Patera Shell in to see me."
"I didn't, Calde. Captain Gecko did."
"I see. But you'll keep your promise?"
"I am a man of honor, Calde." Oosik refolded the letter and put it
in his pocket with his glasses. "I will also keep this. Neither of us
would want anyone else to read it. One of my officers, particularly."
Silk nodded. "You're welcome to."
"You want your clothes back. No doubt you would like to have
the contents of your pockets as well. Your beads are in there, I
think. I imagine you would like to tell them as you lie here."
"I would, yes. Very much."
"There are needlers, too. One is like the one with which you were
shot. There is also a smaller one that seems to have belonged to a
woman named Hyacinth."
"Yes," Silk said again.
"I see I know her, if she is the Hyacinth I'm thinking of. An
amiable girl, as well as a very beautiful one. I lay with her on
Phaesday."
Silk shut his eyes.
"I did not set out to give you pain, Calde. Look at me. I'm old
enough to be your father, or hers. Do you imagine she sends me
love letters?"
"Is that...?"
"What one of the letters in your pocket is?" Oosik nodded
solemnly "Captain Gecko told me the seals had not been broken
when he found them. Quite frankly, I doubted him. I see that I
should not have. You have not read them."
"No," Silk said.
"Captain Gecko has, and I. No one else. Gecko can be discreet
if I order it, and a man of honor must be a man of discretion, also.
Otherwise he is worse than useless. You did not recognize her seal?"
Silk shook his head. "I've never gotten a letter from her before."
"Calde, I have never gotten one at all." Oosik tugged his
mustache. "You would be well advised to keep that before you. Many
letters from women over the years, but never one from her. I say
again, I envy you."
"Thank you," Silk said.
"You love her." Oosik leaned back in his chair. "That is not a
question. You may not know it, but you do." His voice softened. "I
was your age once, Calde. Do you realize that in a month it may be
over?"
"In a day it may be over," Silk admitted. "Sometimes I hope it will be."
"You fear it, too. You need not say so. I understand. I told you I
knew her and it gave you pain, but I do not want you to think, later,
that I have been less than honest. I am being equally honest now.
Brutally honest with myself. My pride. I am nothing to her."
"Thank you again," Silk said.
"You are welcome. I do not say that she is nothing to me. I am not
a man of stone. But there are others, several who are much more.
To explain would be offensive."
"Certainly you don't have to go into details unless you want me to
shrive you. May I see her letter?"
"In a moment, Calde. Soon I will give it to you to keep. I think so,
at least. There is one further matter to be dealt with. You chanced
to mention a woman called Chenille. I know a woman of that name,
too. She lives in a yellow house."
Silk smiled and shook his head.
"That does not pain you at all. She is not the Chenille you took to
the lake?"
"I was amused at myself--at my stupidity. She told me she had
entertained colonels; but until you said you knew her, it had never
entered my mind that you were almost certain to be one of them.
There can't be a great many."
"Seven besides myself." Oosik rummaged in the bundle of clothing
and produced Musk's big needler and Hyacinth's small, gold-plated
one. After holding them up so that Silk could see them, he laid them
on the windowsill.
"The little one is hers," Silk said. "Hyacinth's. Could you see that
it's returned to her?"
Oosik nodded. "I shall send it by a mutual acquaintance. What
about the large one?"
"The owner's dead. I suppose it's mine now."
"I am too well mannered to ask if you killed him, but I hope he
was not one of our officers."
"No," Silk said, "and no. I confess I was tempted to kill him several
times--as he was undoubtedly tempted to kill me--but I didn't. I've
only killed once, in self-defense. May I read Hyacinth's letter now?"
"If I can find it." Oosik fumbled through Silk's clothes again, then
held up both the letters Silk had taken from the mantel in the manse
that morning. "This other is from another augur. You have no
interest in it?"
"Not as much, I'm afraid. Who is it?"
"I have forgotten." Oosik extracted the letter from its envelope
and unfolded it. "'Patera Remora, Coadjutor.' He wishes to see
you, or he did. You were to come to his suite in the Prolocutor's
Palace yesterday at three. You are more than a day late already,
Calde. Do you want it?"
"I suppose so," Silk said; and Oosik tossed it on the bed.
Oosik rose, holding out Hyacinth's letter. "This one you will not
wish to read while I watch, and I have urgent matters to attend to. I
may look in on you again, later this evening. Much later. If I am too
busy, I will see you in the morning, perhaps." He tugged his
mustache. "Will you think me a fool if I say I wish you well, Calde?
That if we were no longer opponents I should consider your
friendship an honor?"
"I'd think you were an estimable, honorable man," Silk told him,
"which you are."
"Thank you, Calde!" Oosik bowed, with a click of his booted heels.
"Colonel?"
"Your beads. I had forgotten. You will find them in a pocket of
the robe, I feel sure." Oosik turned to go, but turned back. "A
matter of curiosity. Are you familiar with the Palatine, Calde?"
Silk's right hand, holding Hyacinth's letter, had begun to tremble;
he pressed it against his knee so that Oosik would not see it. "I've
been there." By an effort of will, he kept his voice almost steady.
"Why do you ask?"
"Often, Calde?"
"Three times, I believe." It was impossible to think of anyt
hing but
Hyacinth; he could as easily have said fifty, or never. "Yes, three
times--once to the Palace, and twice to attend sacrifice at the Grand
Manteion."
"Nowhere else?"
Silk shook his head.
"There is a place having a wooden figure of Thelxiepeia. As an
augur, you may know where it is."
"There's an onyx image in the Grand Manteion--"
Oosik shook his head. "In Ermine's, to the right as one enters the
sellaria. One sees an arch with greenery beyond it At the rear,
there is a pool with goldfish. She stands by it holding a mirror. The
lighting is arranged so that the pool is reflected in her mirror, and
her mirror in the pool. It is mentioned in that letter." Oosik turned
upon his heel.
"Colonel, these needlers--"
He paused at the door. "Do you intend to shoot your way to
freedom, Calde?" Without waiting for Silk's reply he went out,
leaving the door ajar behind him. Silk heard the sentry come to
attention, and Oosik say, "You are dismissed. Return to the
guardroom immediately."
Silk's hands were still shaking as he unfolded Hyacinth's letter; it
was on stationery the color of heavy cream, scrawled in violet ink,
with many flourishes.
O My Darling Wee Flea:
I call you so not only because of the way you sprang from
my window, but because of the way you hopped into my
bed! How your lonely bloss has longed for a note from you!!!
You might have sent one by the kind friend who brought you
my gift, you know!
That had been Doctor Crane, and Doctor Crane was dead--had
died in his arms that very morning.
Now you have to tender me your thanks and so much more,
when next we meet! Don't you know that little place up on
the Palatine where Thelx holds up a mirror? _Hieraxday_.
Hy
Silk closed his eyes. It was foolish, he told himself. Utterly foolish.
The semiliterate scribbling of a woman whose education had ended
at fourteen, a girl who had been given to her father's superior as a
household servant and concubine, who had scarcely read a book or
written a letter, and was trying to flirt, to be arch and girlish and
charming on paper. How his instructors at the schola would have sneered!
Utterly foolish, and she had called him darling, had said she
longed for him, had risked compromising herself and Doctor Crane
to send him this.
He read it again, refolded it, and returned it to its envelope, then
pushed aside the quilt and got up.
Oosik had intended him to go, of course--had intended him to
escape, or perhaps to be killed escaping. For a few seconds he tried
to guess which. Had Oosik been insincere in speaking of friendship?
Oosik was capable of any quantity of double-dealing, if he was any
judge of men.
It did not matter.
He took his clothing from the chair and spread it on the bed. If
Oosik intended him to escape, he must escape as Oosik intended. If
Oosik intended him to be killed escaping, he must escape just the
same, doing his best to remain alive.
His tunic was crusted with his own blood and completely
unwearable; he threw it down and sat on the bed to pull on his
undershorts, trousers, and stockings. When he had tied his shoes,
he rose and jerked open a drawer of the bureau.
Most of the tunics were cheerful reds and yellows; but he found a
blue one, apparently never worn, so dark that it might pass for black
under any but the closest scrutiny. He laid it on the pillow beside the
letters, and put on a yellow one. The closet yielded a small traveling
bag. Slipping both letters into a pocket, he rolled up his robe,
stuffed it into the bag, and put the dark blue tunic on top of it.
The magazine status pin of the big needler indicated it was
loaded; he opened the action anyway trying to recall how Auk had
held his that night in the restaurant, and remembering at the last
moment Auk's adjuration to keep his finger off the trigger. The
magazine appeared to be full of long, deadly-looking needles, or
nearly full. Auk had said his needler held how many? A hundred or
more, surely; and this big needler that had been Musk's must hold at
least as many if not more. It was possible, of course, that it had been
disabled in some way.
There was no one in the hall outside. Silk closed the door, and
after a moment's thought put the quilt against its bottom and shut
the window, then sat down on the bed, sick and horribly weak.
When had he eaten last?
Very early that morning, in Limna, with Doctor Crane and that
captain whose name he had never learned or had forgotten, and the
captain's men. Kypris had granted another theophany, had
appeared to them, and to Maytera Marble and Patera Gulo, and
they had been full of the wonder of it, all three of them newly come
to religious feeling, and feeling that no one had ever come to it
before. He had eaten a very good omelet, then several slices of hot,
fresh bread with country butter, because the cook, roused from
sleep by a trooper, had popped the loaves that had been rising
overnight into the oven. He had drunk hot, strong coffee, too;
coffee lightened with cream the color of Hyacinth's stationery and
sweetened with honey from a white, blue-flowered bowl passed to
him by Doctor Crane, who had been putting honey on his bread.
Now Doctor Crane was dead, and so was one of the troopers, the
captain and the other trooper most likely dead too, killed in the
fighting before the Alambrera.
Silk lifted the big needler.
Someone had told him that he, too, should be dead--he could not
remember whether it had been the surgeon or Colonel Oosik.
Perhaps it had been Shell, although it did not seem the sort of thing
that Shell would say.
The needler would not fire. He tugged its trigger again and
returned it to the windowsill, congratulating himself on having
resolved to test it; saw that he had left the safety catch on, pushed it
off, took aim at a large bottle of cologne on the dresser, and
squeezed the trigger. The needler cracked in his hand like a
bullwhip and the bottle exploded, filling the room with the clean
scent of spruce.
He reapplied the safety and thrust the needler into his waistband
under the yellow tunic. If Musk's needler had not been disabled,
there was no point in testing Hyacinth's small one, too. He made
sure its safety catch was engaged, forced himself to stand, and
dropped it into his trousers pocket.
One thing more, and he could go. Had the young man whose
bedroom this was never written anything here? Looking around, he
saw no writing materials.
What of the owner of the perfumed scarf? She would write to
him, almost certainly. A woman who cared enough to drop a silk
scarf from her window would write notes and letters. And he would
keep them, concealing
them somewhere in this room and replying in
notes and letters of his own, though perhaps less frequently. The
study, if there was one, would belong to his father. Even a library
would not be sufficiently private. He would write to her here,
surely, sitting--where?
There had been no chair in the room until Shell brought one. The
occupant could only have sat on the bed or the floor, assuming that
he had sat at all. Silk sat down again, imagined that he held a quill,
pushed aside the chair Shell had put in front of the little night table,
and pulled it over to him. Its shallow drawer held a packet of
notepaper, a discolored scrap of flannel, a few envelopes, four
quills, and a small bottle of ink.
Choosing a quill, he wrote:
Sir, events beyond my control have forced me to occupy
your bedchamber for several hours, and I fear I have broken
a bottle of your cologne, and stained your sheets. In extreme
need, I have, in addition, appropriated two of your tunics
and your smallest traveling bag. I am heartily sorry to have
imposed on you in this fashion. I am compelled, as I
indicated.
When peace and order return to our city, as I pray that
they soon will, I will endeavor to locate you, make restitution,
and return your property. Alternately, you may apply
to me, at any time you find convenient. I am Pa. Silk, of Sun Street
For a long moment he paused, considering, the feathery end of the
gray goose-quill tickling his lips. Very well.
With a final dip into the ink, he added a comma and the word
_Calde_ after "Sun Street," and wiped the quill.
Restoring the quilt to the bed, he opened the door. The hall was
still empty. Back stairs brought him to the kitchen, in which it
appeared at least a company had been foraging for food. The back
door opened on what seemed, from what he could see by skylight,
to be a small formal garden; a white-painted gate was held shut by a
simple hook.
Outside on Basket Street, he stopped to look back at the house he
had left. Most of its windows were lit, including one on the second
floor whose lights were dimming; his, no doubt. Distant explosions
indicated the center of the city as well as anything could.
An officer on horseback who might easily have been the one who
had shot him galloped past without taking the least notice. Two
streets nearer the Palatine, a hurrying trooper carrying a dispatch