Starwater Strains

by Gene Wolfe

  So Thyme saw them when he pushed aside the brush—wrapped in warm wool, and peacefully asleep. When the child woke and Thyme chided her for crying, she would say only that those who have seen clean water in the desert’s depths, without drinking, are entitled to tears.

  Slowly they mounted the mountains’ stony sides, old Thyme taking her hand and the child cradling her child. In time of peace, travelers would trudge the passes, as Thyme assured her. At present, divisions defended every defile, holding each high road against whole armies.

  A bit before evensong, they were to witness such a struggle. Thyme stopped, pointing for the child with the pine staff he had chosen before they had left the last trees behind. “Do you see the green squares?” he asked sadly. “This is no skirmish, but some major matter.”

  It seemed a storm had struck the mountain-cut below. The arrows flashed like lightning, and they heard the thunder of the guns. A surging green square gained ground, then wavered and went out like the lambent flame of some snuffed taper; a second square crept up the slope, covering the corpses of the slain.

  “See how resolutely they advance.” Thyme tapped a stone with his staff as he spoke. “Determined to win or die! Would you care to say which you think it will be?”

  She shook her head. She felt sure the soldier whose wool sagum she wore served in that square, though she told herself truly there was no way of knowing. Like the last, this square perished in the pass.

  A yellow column came, sliding along like a snake from the wild wadis of the west. Green cavalry gave it check, then gave way. Scattered green soldiers followed, fleeing.

  “The Westerners have the victory,” she said to Thyme, “and soon they will take Vert. Then there will be peace.”

  Thyme took up his staff and stood, ready to resume their march. “That pass has changed hands many times,” he told the child. “And the war is not yet won.”

  That night they camped near the enemy army. “Now wash your dress,” Thyme told her. “I will keep my eyes off you.” She did as he bid, scrubbing her soiled green gown in a sparkling stream. Sometimes soldiers stopped to talk with her. She was covered by her cloak, and she feigned a friendliness that was soon sincere. “Yellow will never yield,” the newest recruits replied when she pleaded for peace. The older soldiers only shrugged, or spit, or spoke of something else. Although their accent was strange, she soon ceased to notice it, speaking just as they spoke. No one she had known had worn yellow, yet save for their yellow coats the young men could have been her cousins.

  “Will there never be peace?” she asked Thyme when her dress was dry.

  “You will see,” he said, and would say no more.

  When the next day dawned, her baby, Barrus, could walk with his mother. Thyme found him trousers and a shirt, she dared not ask where, and she shortened the little legs, and the sleeves of the shirt. From the peaks they could see the plains, and in the misty distance the spires of Zant, that unyielding yellow city, glorious with gold.

  Barrus told tales of days she was sure he had only dreamed, chattering to the child of childish notions she had never known, then comforting her with kisses. “My mom forgets, doesn’t she?” He giggled, grinning. “But you always remember, Father Thyme, don’t you?”

  Thyme sighed and shook his head. “It is my task to wipe away. As you will learn.”

  They found a road that roved from wood to wood. Stunted shrubs made way for white pine, alder, and pale aspen. Barrus had a knife now, and cut a clever whistle with which he piped their progress from peak to pass, and at last to the mountain meadows. He did as Thyme told him, but defiantly, not freely. At each step they took he grew taller, and more sulky and more sullen. “I can beat Thyme,” he told his mother, tapping his toes to a tune he had taken from the thrush.

  “Please don’t!” She felt frightened; Thyme was their only friend.

  The great sage grimaced. “They always think they can, at his age.”

  A day of drizzle brought them to the bright gates of Zant, weary and wet. Sentries stopped them, guards in gorgeous golden armor who addressed them in the babyish voices of boys or asked the quavering questions of senescence.

  “We only want food and shelter,” Thyme told them. “Food, and a fire, and a little peace. Those are our only reasons for coming to Zant.”

  Perhaps the guards pitied the palsied old man, for they opened the gilt gates for them.

  “Are we going to go to an inn?” Barrus asked. He pointed to the painted boards grouped near the gate: the Golden Goblin, the Pilgrim’s Pause, the Royal Roast, and many more, all pied with paint to picture the Goose Girl, the Pilgrim putting down his pack, the Singing Oriole, and so on, so that even those who could not read the names could take their ease at an inn in any case.

  “No,” Thyme told him. “Or at least I hope not. This is the country of gold, so nowhere does gold buy less than here.”

  He stopped at the step of a private dwelling, rapping its dark door with a ring hung for that purpose. “Madame,” he said to the wary woman who came to his knock, “we are poor travelers, seeking a lodging for a night or two at a price we can afford. Can you tell us of some decent family who might take us in? We cannot pay much, but we will lay down ready money for whatever we get.”

  “No.” The dour woman would have shut her door and shot its bar, but that Thyme’s blunt black boot blocked its edge.

  “If not yourself, perhaps some neighbor?”

  “I don’t dislike any of my neighbors that much,” the dour woman told Thyme. “Now get your foot off my threshold, or I’ll call the dog.”

  Thyme stepped back, bowing as her door banged shut.

  A meager little man in a long yellow cloak stopped as it slammed, looking as wet as they were. “I heard what you said. I’ve got a room in a decent enough house, a couple of streets over. They might take you and your wife—”

  “My daughter, my son.”

  “And your daughter, I meant to say. And your grandson, if you can pay.”

  Thyme thanked him, and they went with him, down one sodden street and up another, until at length they arrived at an old-fashioned high city house, ornamented with carvings now decayed, with a second story overhanging the first, a third that overhung the second, and giddy garrets that overlooked the wall.

  Cheapening with the landlady, Thyme got the child and Barrus a garret and rented a similar room for himself. When the meager man who had guided them to the house had gone, their new hostess asked how well they knew him.

  “Less than you, I’m sure.” Thyme knelt by the tiled hearth that was now his own, for this night if not forever. There was a little tinder and a log or two.

  “You won’t get that burning,” said Barrus.

  “In time,” Thyme told him. His flint scratched his steel, sending a shower of flying sparks to the tinder.

  “Because,” the landlady continued confidentially, choosing to chat with the child, “we really know nothing about him here, except that he pays.”

  Thyme puffed his tinder. “He seems an honest enough man.” A small swirl of smoke curled toward the chimney.

  The child shivered; her cloak was soaked from hem to collar. “When he has that going,” she said to her son, “you should borrow a stick to light ours.”

  Barrus snapped, “I’m not an idiot, Mother.”

  The landlady laughed. “Maybe not, but you could fool some people, boy. Now, none of your sass to me, understand? Or all of you will be out in the street.

  “Our lodger, I was going to say, pays us by the month. But sometimes the only time we see him is when he pays.”

  “The very time,” Thyme remarked tartly, “when so many are invisible.”

  The landlady laughed again. “And don’t I know it! Still, you can’t help wondering where he goes and what he does.”

  A feeble flame flickered beside Thyme’s tinder, darkening the white wood before it dwindled and disappeared. “Does he share supper with your family?” He blew on the bright embers and f
anned them with his hand.

  She nodded knowingly. “Sometimes. Mutton tonight, like I told you.”

  Barrus said, “It’s burning right now, I bet.”

  “It’ll keep, boy. Besides, I want to see if you three need anything more before I go down to look at it. I don’t climb the steps more than I have to.” She was short and stout.

  “More blankets,” Barrus said bitterly. “And more firewood.”

  “There aren’t any more blankets. You can spread your coat on your bed, the same as we do. And if you want any more wood, boy, you’ll have to fetch it yourself—I’m not carrying another stick up here. Come along, and I’ll show you where it is.”

  The child spread chilled fingers before Thyme’s tiny blaze. “What do you think?”

  “I think it will catch that smallest log now,” Thyme told her. “Though it would be better if we had more tinder.”

  “About her lodger, Father Thyme. You know everything.”

  The old sage shook his head. “I find out everything,” he said, “sooner or later. But I don’t know everything. A fellow that rents a room and uses it only now and then? That’s a rich man who wants someplace to go when he’s not where he usually is. We’ll learn more at supper.”

  And so they did. There were two sober tinkers who rented a room together, as well as themselves and the meager man who had helped them locate their lodging, and the landlord and landlady. The meager man asked clever questions of the tinkers until he learned that neither had left the city since he had last seen them. Then he turned to Thyme to ask about their travels.

  “Over the mountains.” Thyme took a pair of potatoes from the big blue bowl that the landlord handed him. “And it was the making of the boy, but the destruction of my daughter, or nearly.”

  “Bad weather there,” their landlord allowed. His good wife gave him a long look, and he added, “Or so I’ve heard. I can’t say I’ve ever been there.”

  The child peered into her chipped plate, which was still empty.

  “It was worse here.” Thyme tried to pass her the potatoes, but was waved away. Barrus took the big bowl. “Not as cold as it was in the mountains, but the rain makes you feel it more.”

  A worn old woman licked chapped lips in the child’s plate, her wavering reflection as dim as her dead eyes.

  “Of course, the war made everything ten times worse.” An earthenware ladle drowned the dim woman in greasy mutton gravy.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the meager man muttered. He and Thyme talked for some time; he seemed eager to learn everything he could about both armies.

  “Will there ever be peace?” the child asked them.

  “When we win,” their landlord said loudly. Hasty for his favor, the two tinkers banged the battered tabletop with their spoons.

  Without speaking loudly, the meager lodger managed to make himself heard above the uproar. “Our emperor has pledged a rich reward for anyone who advises him on how peace may be achieved.”

  “Then your emperor is a wise man,” Thyme told him. To the child, Thyme’s tones seemed changed, as if an occult knowledge added weight now to words she did not wholly understand.

  “And that is pleasant news for us,” Thyme continued. “For we’ve come here expressly to see him.”

  Their landlady looked happy to hear it. “You may have to wait quite a while,” she said, “if that’s what you’ve come for. We don’t often see him ourselves. We can give you your rooms for a week, for five times the daily rent.”

  “That’s kind of you.” Thyme tasted a piece of brown bread before laying it on his plate and larding it with a ladleful of the gray gravy. “I think you mentioned something of that sort while we were getting the fire started.”

  “About the rent?”

  “About the emperor. You mentioned you didn’t see him much.”

  “I don’t remember that,” she said.

  “Then I was mistaken.” Thyme turned from her to look at her lodger. “It was you she was speaking of, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps it was.” The lodger pushed away his plate. “I don’t want to take the time of the whole company, but if you could come to my room after dinner, I might be able to advise you about the best ways of getting a glimpse of our emperor, though he doesn’t appear in public often.”

  “I’ve finished now.” Thyme took the napkin from his lap and laid it beside his knife. “I see you’re finished as well.”

  “Your poor daughter hasn’t eaten much.”

  Thyme nodded. “True. But her appetite will be better tomorrow, I think.”

  The landlord laid a hand on his arm. “No bread pudding? My wife’s bread pudding’s quite famous.”

  The two tinkers looked ready to laugh with pure pleasure. “All the more for us,” said the smaller. “I’ll take the old man’s,” added the taller.

  The child stood up, scraping back her chair. “May I come with my father?” she asked softly.

  The meager man began, “Possibly—”

  “She must.” Thyme took her in tow. “Now what about you, Barrus? Which will it be, peace or pudding?”

  “We don’t have pease today,” the landlady put in. “They’re a bit tough, so far into the season.”

  “Then I’ll take pudding,” Barrus said sullenly.

  “And we will see you later.” Thyme led the child to the stair. “It will be on the floor below ours, I suppose.”

  The lodger nodded as he slipped past them. “I’ll have to unlock the door.”

  “You are fortunate,” Thyme told him when they were seated inside. “Our rooms have no locks. Of course, we’ve little to leave in them when we go.”

  The meager man smiled mischievously. “I’m afraid I enjoy frustrating our good hostess.”

  “She’s the sort who snoops through drawers? I suppose so; she seems the kind of woman who would.”

  The meager man nodded. “Yet there are others who discover more secrets, without spying.”

  “True,” Thyme told him. “And kind men who repent of their kindness when they find that others are clever.”

  “If you know my secret,” the meager man said seriously, “you also know that I have means of silencing those who know secrets.”

  “Which need not be used in this case.” Thyme rose and went to the window, where he stood staring out at the smoking chimney pots of Zant.

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “My daughter and I will leave your city in the morning. In a day or two, we will have left its empire. I will not speak; nor will she, I assure you.”

  Bewildered, the child stared from Thyme to the meager man and back. “Please,” she said. “What are you two talking about?”

  Thyme turned. “The emperors of Vert trace their line from the first emperor for twenty generations,” he said softly. “It is not so here in Zant. Here emperor has deposed emperor, till at last one who was well liked was murdered in a manner so foul that the people would not consent to his murderer’s coronation. They chose another general in his place, a hero of humble birth who had risen through the ranks and was famous for his courage.” Thyme glanced toward the meager man as he finished speaking, a charged gaze that told the child much more than his mere words.

  “I understand—I think.”

  The meager man made a little motion of impatience. “Yes, I’m the Yellow Emperor. How did you know? Give me a simple, straightforward answer, please.”

  “I had your picture.” From the purse at his belt, Thyme took a copper coin. “When we were going over the mountains, I stole some clothes for the boy.”

  “From my dead soldiers?”

  “Yes. A few had a little money, which I thought might be useful in Zant. I confess I did not know how useful. When the Increate is with anyone, there rises a tide that bears into its harbor any ship that carries him.”

  “Millions of people have those coins.”

  “You asked me for a simple, straightforward answer,” Thyme reminded the emperor.

 
“Give me your subtle and complex answer; then.”

  “Not terribly subtle, I fear. Nor terribly complex. It is true that millions have such coins, and yet do not know you when they pass you in the street; but that is only because they cannot conceive that they might encounter someone so exalted someday—someone who holds the power of life and death over every one of them. I know otherwise; there is someone who holds the power of being or unbeing over me, and I shall encounter that someone at the end of Thyme. Thus I understand that such meetings are not impossible.”

  The child smiled. “Isn’t he wonderful?”

  “Indeed he is,” the emperor admitted. “It was nothing that I said?”

  “Nothing specific,” Thyme told him. “But our hostess had told us you seldom use the room you rent from her. My daughter asked me about it, and I indicated to her that you were perhaps a man of some wealth, and not what you seemed. You could have been a highwayman, but you lacked the blustering ways and the impressive physique those fellows use to overawe their victims. You had the manners of a gentleman, without the arrogance that is often conferred by birth—we had been with Prince Patizithes in Vert, and so my recollection of that sort of arrogance had been refreshed.”

  “I see.”

  “When you questioned me at our meal, my first thought was that you were a spy—an agent of the emperor’s, or of whoever gathers facts for him; but such a spy would have been much more interested in the enemy’s army than in his own. I asked myself who might have an equal interest in each. A general kept in the capital, perhaps, but such a general could not appear as a poor man in a place where rooms were let to lodgers. Then I recalled that the emperor had been a general, and that an emperor can do as he chooses. So I looked at the coin.”

  The child ventured a very small sound.

  “Yes?” the Yellow Emperor inquired.

  “Sir—sire—I thought emperors just sat on their thrones. In the palace.”

  “On occasions of state, I do,” the emperor acknowledged. “But here in Zant, the occasions of state are as few as I can make them. Quite frankly, there are too many other things I have to do.”