Exodus from the Long Sun tbotls-4 Read online

  Exodus from the Long Sun

  ( The Book of the Long Sun - 4 )

  Gene Wolfe

  This fourth volume of “The Book of the Long Sun” sees Patera Silk, the charismatic young auger continuing to play a key role as matters move to a surprising climax.

  Exodus from the Long Sun

  by Gene Wolfe

  Chapter 1 — Back from Death

  An eerie silence overhung the ruined villa. Listening for the closing of a slug gun’s bolt, Maytera Mint heard only the groan of the wind and the irregular snapping of the flag of truce she held.

  “On Phaesday they were in situ,” Patera Remora conceded. “The Ayuntamiento, eh?”

  They had come abreast of a dead talus, its painted steel sides blistered by fire and blackened by smoke; she caught a whiff of fish oil, despite the wind.

  “Might be repaired, eh, General?” Remora pushed back a lock of lank black hair that had fallen over his eyes. “Not like we biochemicals, hey? Still we — ah — dispatch their spirits to Mainframe. Not identical in the, um, revivified one, perhaps. Amongst the new parts.”

  “Or they really haven’t any,” Maytera Mint murmured. She had stopped to wait for Remora, and was taking the opportunity to study the windows of the house that had been Blood’s.

  Her remark bordered on heresy, but Remora thought it most prudent to return to his earlier topic. “If they’re not here, eh? Loris and the rest? Will, ah, Buffalo—”

  “Bison.” She turned back to Remora, her face pinched and the tip of her delicate nose red with cold. “Colonel Bison.”

  “Um, precisely. Will Colonel Bison,” Remora waved vaguely at the ruined wall, “and his — ah — troopers await our return back there?”

  “You heard my instructions, Your Eminence.”

  “But if we’re some time, eh? The front door is broken. Shattered, in fact.”

  Maytera Mint, who had noted it as they passed through the ruined gateway, nodded.

  “So it’s not a matter of knocking, hey? Not a mere matter of knocking at all.” Remora brightened. “Knock on the frame, eh? We could do that. Wait a bit. Polite.”

  “I will go inside,” she told him firmly, “and search. I would not presume to dictate Your Eminence’s course of action. If I can get in touch with the Ayuntamiento, I’ll ask them to send for you. If I can’t, I may be able to learn where we can. As for Colonel Bison, he’s completely loyal, my best officer. My only concern is that he may send in a patrol to look for us, though I have forbidden it.”

  “I, um, apprehend your position,” Remora said, rejoining her. “If one does not expect obedience, one will not, ah, be obeyed. Memorized it in schola, all of us did. Still, if he were to depart? Decamp. Our, um, withdrawal to the city could be hazardous, hey? Laborious, likewise.”

  “That’s not the question.” She forgot for a moment that Remora was the second highest dignitary of the Chapter. “The question is whether the enemy’s back. There are no bodies.”

  “These, ah—”

  “These taluses. It would take ten yoke of oxen to drag them away, I suppose. No dead bios or chems.”

  “The, ah, Army, eh? To the Calde. So I understood.”

  “Some soldiers went over to him, yes. Others who hadn’t heard about him didn’t, and were fighting their comrades here.”

  Remora nodded. “Unfortunate. Um, tragic.”

  “When this man Blood’s bodyguards learned Calde Silk had killed him, some attacked him and his soldiers. That’s when Generalissimo Oosik and General Saba stormed the house.”

  “Lovely, hum?” Remora harbored a sneaking admiration for architecture as others cherish a vice. “Even, ah, despoiled. Pity. Pity. More so, possibly. No pretensions now. No more vulgar display. Wreckage more — um — romantic? Poetic.” He favored Blood’s torn lawns with a toothy smile.

  Maytera Mint drew her soiled habit more tightly about her and for the hundredth time wished for her coif. “If we were to walk a little faster, Your Eminence, we could get out of this wind, whether the Ayuntamiento’s come back or not.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “And though I don’t concede that Bison—”

  “Those — um — corpses, General.” Catching up, Remora strode along beside her, his lanky legs making a single step of two of hers. “You were about to, er, um, propose that we afford them an — ah — sanctified burial? It would be most inconvenient, I fear. Most inopportune!”

  “Granted. But there must have been bodies, and I’d think more than a few. The Ayuntamiento’s soldiers and this man’s bodyguards would have been shooting from these windows.”

  Maytera Mint paused, drawing on her recent experiences to visualize the scene. “Floaters would have rushed the gate, and Guardsmen and General Saba’s pterotroopers must have swarmed through every break in the wall. Then my troopers from the city, thousands of them. Some must have been killed, I’d think at least a hundred. Some of the bodyguards and soldiers must have been killed too. See that line of pock-marks? Buzz-gun fire. A floater’s turret gun raked the front of the house.”

  “I, an—”

  For once she interrupted him. “We would have taken away our dead, or I hope we would. But what about theirs? They were retreating under fire, going down into the tunnels Sand talked about. Would they have dragged bodies along with them? I find it hard to believe, Your Eminence.”

  “If I may.” Remora cleared his throat. “It seems to me that you have, ah, disposed of the, um, dead yourself, though I confess that I am no great hand at matters military.”

  “Nor I. I was appointed by Echidna, you must have heard of that. What little I know I’ve picked up as I went along.”

  “Defeating commanders vastly more — ah — schooled. I would conjecture, leastwise, that there must be something like our schola for the officers of the, er, Calde’s Guard. As we call them now, eh, General? The Civil Guard we used to phrase it, hey? Admirable, I, um, insist.”

  “I’ve lost to them, too, Your Eminence. Lost nearly as often as I’ve won.” They were passing Scylla’s fountain, now sheathed in ice.

  “Though no great hand,” Remora repeated, “I offer the, um, this hypothesis. Would not well regulated troops inter their dead? The generalissimo’s men are, ah, proficient, to be sure, and we — ah — furnish a chaplain to each brigade. The, um, desiderata of that. Conduct military obsequies. Subsequently, please to follow me here, Mayt — General. Would not such, er, troopers compel the, ah, your own, though not then under, as it were, your eye—”

  “Make them bury the rest? Possibly.” Maytera Mint, who was very tired, forced herself to stand straighter and square her shoulders. “More likely no compulsion was needed. If they had not thought of it themselves, seeing the Guard and Saba’s pterotroopers loading their dead to take back to the city would suggest it. But what about the enemy dead? Where are they?”

  “Within this desolate, ah, mansion. I dare say. They would not have abandoned its shelter, hey? Shot through its windows. You — um — proposed it yourself.”

  She pointed with the stick that held her white flag. “See where the wall’s fallen? You can look into several rooms, and there’s not a single body in any of them.”

  “Yet, ah—”

  “Through the doorway, too.” They had nearly reached the steps of Blood’s portico. “That door would have been defended more strongly than any other point, and I can look right into the sellaria. There’s not a one. Where are they?”

  “I would, er, hazard that the victorious troops disposed of them afterward.”

  She shook her head vigorously. “Troopers who’ve won are never anxious to get the bodies of those they’ve killed out of sight, Your
Eminence. Never! I’ve seen that much more often than I like. They’re proud, and it’s good for their morale. Yesterday Major Skin was begging, literally begging me, not to have bodies that had lain in the streets for days carted off. If the bodies are gone, it’s because their friends came back for them. It would be interesting to see if there are graves behind the house. That’s where they’d be, I imagine. By the wall, as far as possible from the road. Do you know if there are gardens in back?”

  “I have never, um, had the pleasure.” Remora started up the steps. “Nor has His Cognizance, I think. He, um, confided it to me a year or two past. We had been — um — dissecting? Decrying this, er, Blood’s influence. Was never a, um, visitor within these — ah — despoiled walls.”

  “Neither have. I, Your Eminence.” Maytera Mint hiked up her skirt and started up the steps.

  “To be sure. To be sure, General. I regret it. Regret it now. I will not dissemble, nor, um, ever. Seldom. To have seen this in its days of prosperity would — prosperity and peace, eh? The contrast ’twixt memory and the, um, less happy present. Do you follow me? Whereas one can now but picture… See that picture? Fine. Very fine indeed, eh? Torn. Might be refurbished yet, in skillful hands. Like the tali, eh?”

  “I suppose.” She had glanced at the ruined furniture, and was studying the shadowy doorways of further rooms. “He kept women here, didn’t he? This bad man Blood who owned the house. Women — women who…”

  “Enough, enough! Do not, um, perturb yourself, Maytera. General. A few such. An, er, select contingent. So I was given to understand upon the occasion of our — um — my tete-a-tete, eh? With old Quetzal. Do I, um, scandalize you? With His Cognizance. I am, ah, betimes inclined to be overfree. To presume upon an old friendship. A failing, I concede.” Remora advanced to study the damaged Murtagon.

  “Was this where it happened?”

  “Where the women — ah?” He glanced back at her with a half smile. “No indeed.”

  “Where Calde Silk killed this man Blood, and Sergeant Sand killed Councillor Potto.”

  “We’ve finer ones at the Palace, hey? Still it’s nice and might be — ah — emended. In an, um, one of the anterooms as I understand it, General. May I ask why you wish to know. An um, monument of some kind, possibly? A dedicational tablet of, er, bronze?”

  “Because we know that the man who owned this house died in it, Your Eminence,” Maytera Mint explained. “This Blood, with Councillor Potto. If their bodies aren’t here, they’ve been removed by someone, and I’d think that if Generalissimo Oosik or even General Saba had done it I’d have heard. A councillor’s body? Everyone would be arguing about what should be done with it, and I would certainly have heard.”

  Her tone grew crisp. “Now if you’ll oblige me.”

  Remora, who was not used to being asked for favors in that peremptory fashion, looked around sharply.

  “There seems to be no one here, though my informants… Never mind. Do you agree?”

  “There is certainly no one in this room at present except — ah — ourselves. With regard to the, er, remainder of the, um, building, I — hum — further investigation.”

  “I’ve been listening carefully and heard nothing. The bodies may be in plain view or hidden by furniture or whatnot.” Rather tardily Maytera Mint added, “Your Eminence. I’ll search the rooms on this side. I’d like you to search the other. We needn’t bother with the rest of the house, I think.”

  “If there are no, er, bodies, General,” Remora smoothed the truant lock into place, “shall we return to the city — ah — forthwith? Might be wise, eh? We have no way of knowing what has transpired in our absence, hey?”

  She nodded. “Agreed. We’ll know then that they’ve been here and may return later. I’ll leave one of Bison’s officers to watch, with a few troopers. If we do find a body, either one, it should be safe to assume that the Ayuntamiento’s troops have never come back at all. We can go back to the city at once and forget about this house.”

  “Wisely, er, spoken.” Remora was already hurrying toward the first of his assigned roorns. “I shall inform you promptly should I discover an — ah — the mortal remains.”

  The anteroom Maytera Mint entered had, it appeared, been the owner’s study. A massive mahogany desk, lavishly carved, stood against one wall, and there were shelves of books, mostly (she scanned the titles on a shelf at the level of her eyes) erotic if not pornographic: Three Maids and Their Mistress, The Astonishing Exploits of a Virile Young Man and His Donkey, His Resistance Overcome…

  She turned away. What had it been like to be here under such a master? She tried to picture the lives of the women who had endured it, and failed. They had been bad women, as the whorl judged, but that only meant that they had commanded defenses greatly inferior to her own.

  Strange, how she had come to think in military metaphors during the past few days.

  The desk drawers seemed apt to tell her a good deal about the owner, who counted for nothing now, and nothing about the Ayuntamiento and those who served it. She opened a drawer at random anyway, glanced at the papers it had held — all of them concerned in some fashion with money — shut it, and made sure no corpse lay concealed in the leg hole.

  “General!”

  Turning so quickly that the long, black skirt of her habit billowed about her, she hurried out of the study and across the sellaria. “What is it, Your Eminence?”

  He met her at the doorway, visibly struggling to conceal his pleasure. “I have the — ah — it is my unhappy duty—”

  “You’ve found a body. Whose?”

  “The, um, late councillor’s, I believe. If, perhaps, you would not care—”

  “To see it? I must! Your Eminence, I’ve seen hundreds of bodies since this began. Thousands.” There had been a time when she had found it nearly impossible to cut the throat of a goat; as she pushed past Remora, she reflected that she would find that difficult still, and find it literally impossible to cut a man’s, even an enemy’s. Yet she had made plans and given orders that had clogged entire streets with corpses.

  “I took the, um, responsibility? The — ah — presumption of, er, tidying him up. On his back now, eh? Folded the arms, prior to calling you.”

  Potto lay almost at her feet, his arms crossed in such a way as to hide the wound Sand’s slug had made just below his sternum. The graying hair that he had worn long trailed over Blood’s lush carpet, and Maytera Mint found herself muttering, “He looks surprised.”

  “Doubtless he — ah — was.” Remora cleared his throat. “Caught unawares, hey? Shot by one of his own. All in a, um, trice. So my prothonotary tells me. He — ah — Incus is his name, General. Patera Incus. He has, um, fallen prey in some — ah — wise to the notion that he’s old Quetzal—”

  She knelt beside the corpse, traced the sign of addition, and opened its card case.

  “Mad, I fear. Deranged. Bit of rest, eh? He’ll come to himself soon enough. General — ah — ?”

  In the first place,” Maytera Mint explained, “there may be papers of value in here. In the second, there’s money, ten cards or so, and we need that very badly.”

  “I, ah, see.”

  Cards and papers vanished into her wide sleeve. “Where’s the blood? Did you clean up his blood before you called to me, Your Eminence?”

  “Through the heart, eh?” Remora’s nasal tones sounded slightly strangled. “Not much bleeding then, eh? So I am — ah — apprised.”

  Gently at first, then with increased vigor, Maytera Mint rubbed the councillor’s cheek. “This’s a chem!”

  “I — um—”

  She looked up at Remora. “You knew.”

  “I — ah — suspected.”

  “You rolled him over, you said, Your Eminence. You folded his arms. You must have known.”

  “Then? Oh, yes, I — ah — confirmed, eh? I had, um, and — ah — Quetzal, eh? Old Quetzal. Wouldn’t tell. Asked him once. More, actually. He, ah, er, wouldn’t. Confides in me, eh?
Nearly everything. Very, ah, delicate points. Sensitive matters, finances. Everything. But he — ah — wouldn’t.”

  Suddenly Remora was on his knees beside her. “General — ah — General. Alone here, hey? No one but, er, ourselves. May I call you Maytera?”

  She ignored it. “There’ll be the question of burial. A dozen questions, really. You must have realized I’d find out.”

  “I — ah — did. Indeed. Not so swiftly, however. You are most — or — perspicacious.”

  “Then why didn’t you say so? Why all that nonsense about blood?”

  “Because I — Incus. Patera Incus. And old Quetzal, eh? My position is, er, delicate. Imperiled. Maytera, hear me, I — ah — beg you. Yes, beg. Implore.”

  She nodded. “I’m listening. What is it?”

  “Incus, my prothonotary. Was. You know him?”

  She shook her head. “Just tell me.”

  “He’s been appointed Prolocutor. By, um, Scylla. He says it, I mean. Credits it himself, eh? Convinced. Spoke to him yesterday, but he — you…”

  “Me?” For a second, Maytera Mint felt she was missing some vital clue. It dawned upon her, and she rocked backward to sit cross-legged on the carpet, her head in her hands.

  “Maytera? Er, General?”

  She looked up at Remora. “I was appointed by Echidna, in front of thousands of people. Is that it, Your Eminence?”

  Remora’s mouth opened and shut silently.

  “So you know it happened. All those witnesses. And I’ve been successful, as you say. The victorious commander, chosen for us by the gods. Even Bison and the captain talk like that, and then there’s Patera Silk.”

  Remora nodded miserably.

  “Everyone says he’s been appointed by Great Pas to be our calde, even Maytera Marble. He’s been successful, too, so it looks like the gods have decided to choose leaders for us, and if this Patera Incus is going to be the new Prolocutor, he’ll want to pick his own coadjutor.”

  “Nor — ah — um — worse. If he — ah — old Quetzal, you know. Resourceful. Cunning. Seen it myself, hundreds of times, eh? Ayuntamiento had the force, but he’d get ’round them. Get ’round Lemur and Loris, all of them. Old man, hey? Foolish old man. What they think. His Cognizance. Quetzal. But sly, Mayt — General. Very sly. Deep.”