by Gene Wolfe
Marble. "A moment ago when you spoke to Loris, you didn't want
us to leave this room. Would you mind telling me why?"
"Was I as transparent at that?"
"No, you weren't transparent at all; but I know you, and if you'd
really been so worried about me, you would have asked him to let us
talk in a bedroom where I could lie down, and to send for a doctor.
I don't suppose Blood's got one, now that Doctor Crane's dead; but
Loris might have been able to supply one, or to send someone for
one of the Guard's doctors under a flag of truce, like that white flag
next to your chair."
Maytera Marble looked grave. "I should have asked him to do
that. I can still ask, Patera. I'll go out and find him. It won't take a
moment."
"No, I'm fine. By Phaea's favor--" It was too late to call back the
conventional phrase. "I'll recover. Why did you want to stay here?"
"Because of this window." Maytera Marble waved a hand at it.
"Bloody had opened it while we were in here by ourselves, and I
worried the whole time that someone would get cold and shut it.
You must know Mucor, Patera. She said you sent her to me."
Silk nodded. "She's Blood's adopted daughter."
"Adopted? I didn't know that. She said she was Bloody's daughter.
That was Hieraxday night, terribly late... Do you know
Asphodella, Patera?"
Silk smiled. "Oh, yes. A lively little thing."
"That's her. I'd done the wash, you see, and I wanted to pour the
dirty water on my garden. Plants actually like dirty water with
soapsuds in it better than clean. It sounds wrong, I know, but they
do."
"If you say so, I'm sure it must be true."
"So I was pouring out the water, so much for each row, when
Asphodella pulled my skirt. I said what are you doing out so late,
child? And she told me she'd gone with the others to fight, but Horn
had sent her back--"
"Cat come!" Oreb warned. Silk looked for it, seeing none.
"Horn had sent her home, and quite right, too, if you ask me,
Patera. So now she wanted to know if there'd be palaestra on
Thelxday."
"Then," Silk said slowly, "her face changed. Is that it, Maytera?"
"Yes. Exactly. Her face became, well, horrible. She saw I was
frightened, as I certainly was, and said don't be afraid, Grandmother.
My name's Mucor, I'm Blood's daughter." Maytera Marble
paused, not certain that he understood. "Have I told you Bloody's
my son, Patera? Yes, I know I did, right after we sacrificed in the
street."
"He was Maytera Rose's," Suk said carefully. "You, I know, are
also Maytera Rose--at least, at times."
"All the time, Patera." Maytera Marble laughed. "I've integrated
our software. As far as we sibyls are concerned, I'm your best friend
and worst enemy, all in one."
He stirred uncomfortably in Blood's comfortable chair. "I was
never Maytera Rose's enemy, I hope."
"You thought I was yours, though, Patera. Perhaps I was, a little."
He leaned toward her, his hands folded over the crook of
Xiphias's cane. "Are you now, Maytera? Please be completely frank
with me."
"No. Your friend and well-wisher, Patera."
Oreb applauded, flapping his wings. "Good girl!"
She added, "Even if I were entirely Maytera Rose, I'd do all I
could to get you out of this."
Silk let himself fall back. It was astonishing how soft these chairs
of Blood's were. He remembered (vividly now) how badly he had
wanted to rest in his chair, to sleep in it, when he had talked with
Blood in this very room. Yet this one was better, just as Blood had
promised: yielding where it should, firm where firmness was desirable.
He stroked one wide arm, its maroon leather as smooth as
butter beneath his touch.
"They let me lie down after I was captured," he confided to
Maytera Marble. "Sand did. I'd had to walk all the way to this
house, and it was a very long way. It had seemed long when Auk
and I rode donkeys; and walking with Sand's gun at my back, it
seemed a great deal longer; but once we arrived, once we'd climbed
up through the hatch into the cellar, he let me lie down on the floor.
He isn't a bad man, really--just a disciplined soldier obeying bad
men. There's good in Loris, too, and even in Potto. I know you
must sense it, just as I do, Maytera; otherwise you'd never have
spoken to Potto as you did. That's why--one reason, anyway--I
don't feel that this situation from which you're trying to rescue me is
as bad as it appears, though I'll always be grateful."
"Cat! Cat!" Oreb flew from Silk's shoulder to the head of an
alabaster bust of Thelxiepeia.
Maytera Marble smiled. "There's no cat in here, you pretty bird."
"You were telling me about this room," Slik reminded her, "and
meeting Mucor. I wish you'd continue with that. It may be
significant."
"I--Patera, I want to tell you first about meeting you. It won't
take long. and it may be more important, maybe a lot more
important. You still think about the day you came to our manteion,
I know. You've mentioned it several times."
He nodded.
"Patera Pike was there, and you loved and respected him, but a
man wants a woman to talk to. Most men do, anyway, and you did.
You'd been raised by your mother, and we could see how you
missed her."
"I still do," Silk admitted.
"Don't feel bad about that, Patera. No one should ever be
ashamed of love."
Maytera Marble paused to collect her thoughts; her rapid scan
was back, and she reveled in it. "We were three sibyls, I was about to
say. Maytera Mint was still young and pretty, but so shy that she ran
from you whenever she could. When she couldn't, she would hardly
speak. Maybe she guessed what had happened to me long ago. I've
sometimes thought that, and you were young and good-looking, as
you still are."
He began a question, but thought better of it.
"I won't tell you who Bloody's father was, Patera. I've never told
anybody and I won't tell now. But I will tell you this. He never
knew. I don't think he even suspected."
Silk filled his lungs with the cool, clean breeze from the window.
"I slept with a woman last night, Maytera. With Hyacinth, the
woman Blood asked about."
"I'm sorry you told me."
"I wanted to. I've wanted--I want so badly, still, to tell people
who don't know, although a great many people know already. His
Cognizance and Master Xiphias and Generalissimo Oosik."
"And me." Maytera Marble's forefinger tapped her metal chest
through her habit. "I knew. Or rather, I guessed, as anybody would,
and I wish that you'd left it like that. Some things aren't improved
by talking about them."
Oreb broke off his inverted examination of Thelxiepeia's features
to applaud Maytera Marble. "Smart girl!"
"We were three sibyls, as I said. But Maytera Mint wasn't there
for you Patera, so I was the only ones left. I was old. I don't think
you ever grasped how ol
d. My faces had gone long before you were
born. You never realized they weren't there, did you?"
"What are you talking about? Your face is where it ought to be,
Maytera. I'm looking at it."
"This?" She drummed her fingers on it, a quick metallic _tap-tap-tap_.
"This is my faceplate, really. I used to have a face like yours. I
would say like Dahlia's, but she was before your time. Like Teasel's
or Nettle's, and there were things in it, little bits of alnico, that let
me really smile or frown when I moved them with the coils behind
my faceplate. But all that's gone except for the coils."
"It's a beautiful face," Silk insisted, "because it's yours."
"My other face wasn't, and what it was showed in your own every
time you saw it. I resented that, and you resented my resentment
and turned to me to ease your loneliness. But we were much more
alike than you realized, not that I've ever cared, myself, for
machines like this. I never thought they could be people, really, no
matter how many times they said they were. Now I'm just a message
written on those teeny gold doodads you see in cards. But I'm still
me, a person, because I always was."
Silk fumbled Remora's ruined robe for a handkerchief, and
finding none blotted his eyes on his sleeve.
"I didn't tell you that to make you feel sorry for me, Patera.
Neither of me were easy to love, no more than I am now. You were
able to love one just the same, and not very many men could have,
not even many augurs. I thought that if you knew how you came to
love and not like me, it might help you some other time with some
other woman."
"It will, I know." Silk sighed. "Thank you, Maytera. With myself,
most of all."
"Let's not talk about it any more. What do you think of the
Ayuntamiento's terms? Still what you told Loris?"
Silk made a last dab at his eyes, feeling the grit in the cloth,
knowing that he was dirtying his already-soiled face and not caring.
"I suppose so."
Maytera Marble nodded. "They're perfectly hopeless. Not a single
thing for Trivigaunte, and why should the Guard hand over its
senior officers, why should Generalissimo Oosik allow it? But if we
offered trials, regular ones with judges--"
"Man back!" A big hand glittering with rings had appeared on the
windowsill. It was followed by a yellow-sleeved arm and a whiff of
musk rose.
"That's why you wanted to stay here." Silk stood up a trifle
unsteadily, helped by the cane, and crossed the room to the
window. "So your son could join us."
"Why no, Patera. Not at all."
Leaning over the sill, Silk spoke to Blood. "Here, hold onto my
hand. I'll help you up."
"Thanks," Blood said. "I should have brought a stool or something."
"Take mine, too, Bloody." Maytera Marble braced one foot on the
sill in imitation of Silk.
Flushed redder than ever with exertion, Blood's face rose on the
other side of the window. With a grunt and a heave, he tumbled into
the room.
"Now for my granddaughter. She'll be easy after Bloody."
Bending over the sill again, Maytera Marble clasped skeletally
thin hands and lifted in an emaciated young woman with a seared
cheek.
"Poor girl!"
Silk nodded his agreement as he returned to his chair. "Hello,
Mucor. Sit down, please, so that I may sit. We're neither of us
strong."
"Needlers're no good 'gainst the soldiers," Blood puffed. He
brushed off the front of his tunic and reached beneath it. "So I'm
giving you this, Calde Silk."
"This" was an azoth, its long hilt rough with rubies and chased
with gold; its sharply curved guard was more elaborate than that of
the one Doctor Crane had given him at Hyacinth's urging, and
diamonds ringed its pommel.
Silk resumed his seat. "I should have anticipated that. Doctor
Crane told me you had two."
"Don't you want it?" Blood did not trouble to hide his surprise.
"No. Not now, at least."
"It's worth--"
"I know what it's worth, and how effective a weapon it can be in a
strong hand like yours. At the moment, I don't have one, though
that's the least of my reasons for refusing."
Silk settled back in his chair. "I asked your daughter to sit down,
and she was good enough to oblige me. I can't invite you to sit in
your house, and I'm very aware that I'm occupying your former
seat; but there are many others."
Blood sat.
"Thank you. Maytera--"
"Cat come!"
It did, almost before Oreb's agitated whoop, springing lightly
over the windowsill to land noiselessly in the middle of the room and
glare at Blood with eyes like burning amber. Maytera Marble
gathered her skirts as if it were a mouse; Silk asked, "Is that Lion? I
seem to remember him."
The lynx turned its glare on him and nodded.
"Patera's been making everybody sit," Maytera Marble told
Mucor. "It would be nicer if you had your big kitty sit too, Darling. I
wouldn't mind him so much then."
Lion lay down obediently, dividing his attention between Blood
and Oreb.
"Sphigx bless you." Maytera Marble traced the sign of addition.
"I--it's rather amusing now that I come to think of it, the sort of thing
the children enjoy. Patera thought I wanted this window open so
your Papa could come in, and I said, no, I hadn't even thought of it,
which was the plain truth. I wanted it opened because you told me
the first time, Darling, not to stay in rooms with the doors and
windows shut, because you might have to drop in again, and that
would make it harder. So I was happy when he opened this one, and
now you've come in through it, and your long-legged kitty, too."
"I didn't know she could take over an animal like that." Blood had
his thumb on the demon. "We didn't know she had any power left till
Lemur taped the calde talking to Crane, but it sounds like she's
been paying visits to both of you."
"Sneaking outside the window, Bloody? You shouldn't do that."
"I didn't."
"A listening device." Silk sighed. "I'm disappointed. I'd thought
there might be a secret door behind one of these big paintings.
When I was a sprat, boys' books were full of them, but I've never
actually seen one."
"You knew I'd come?"
"I surmised you might. Do you want the entire thing?"
Maytera Marble sniffed loudly. "I do, Patera."
"I wish you wouldn't make that noise," he told her.
"Then I won't, or at least not very often. But Bloody's my son,
and I meant I have a right to know."
"All right, the entire thing." Silk leaned back in his chair, eyes half
closed. "On Hieraxday, I walked some distance through the city with
His Cognizance, and from the East Edge to Ermine's; it was about
evenly divided between Maytera Mint's insurgents and the Guard. I
slept at Ermine's for a few hours, as I told you; when I woke up, half
the Guard seemed to have gone over to Maytera Mint."
Maytera Marble said, "All of it but the Second, I'm told."
"Good. Before I was brought here, I was in the tunnels or in the
cellar, so I didn't see much; but there were councillors here. It
seemed likely they were directing their forces in person, and I didn't
think they'd do that unless the situation was critical. Then too, you
told me you'd walked out here with the children and mentioned a
general from Trivigaunte--"
"General Saba. A very good woman at heart, from what I saw of
her, though quite large and rather prone to obstinacy."
"I assume it was her airship that attacked us when His Cognizance
and I were riding in Oosik's floater."
"Her airship's been over the city, certainly. It's been shooting and
dropping explosives. It's huge."
"Your Doctor Crane was a spy from Trivigaunte," Silk told Blood.
"You must know that by now. He told me once, joking, that if I were
in need of rescue all I'd have to do was kill him. He had a device in
his chest that let others find him and told them whether his heart
was beating. He was shot Rieraxday morning, due to a misunderstanding.
I imagine the attack on us resulted from a similar mix-up--the
Trivigauntis had been told the Guard was opposing us. When
they saw a Guard floater surrounded by officers on horseback, they
attacked it."
"I don't see what this has to do with me," Blood grunted.
"It has everything to do with you," Silk told him, "and I was right
about it, too--the only thing I've been completely right about. You
were fighting in a losing cause; this house was about to be
destroyed, and you might easily be wounded or killed. You knew
about the tunnels, and no doubt you've been down there. So have I,
as I've said--more than I like. I couldn't imagine your leaving this
house in flames and trudging off underground unless there were no
alternative."
"I worked shaggy hard to get this place."
"Don't swear, Bloody. It doesn't become you."
"I did! Your kind thinks it's easy. One wrong move and you're
packed for Mainframe, day after day, and nobody to help me I
could trust till I found Musk, nobody at all. It'd kill both of you in a
week. Shag yes, it would! Twelve years I did it before I ever took my
first crap in this place."
"Bloody!"
"It's only a guess," Silk admitted, "and I can't pretend an intimate
familiarity with your mental processes; but I'd imagine you've been