Epiphany of the Long Sun Page 11

  "Hackum, you said you wouldn't hurt him!"

  "Did I? I don't remember."

  "He wasn't going to do anything to us."

  She had not touched him, but he sensed the nearness of her, the female smell of her loins and the musk of her hair. "He'd already done it, Jugs." He returned his knife to his boot, located Dace's body with groping fingers, and slung it across his shoulders. It felt no heavier than a boy's. "You want to bring that darkee? Could be good if we can figure away to light it."

  Chenille said nothing, but in a few seconds he heard the tinny rattle of the lantern.

  "He killed Dace. That'd be enough by itself, only he ate him some, too. That's why he didn't talk at first. Too busy chewing. He knew we'd want the old man's body, and he wanted to fill up."

  "He was starving. Starving down here." Chenille's voice was barely above a whisper.

  "Sure. Bird, you still around?"

  "Bird here!" Feathers brushed Auk's fingers; Oreb was riding atop Dace's corpse.

  "If you were starving, you might have done the same thing, Hackum."

  Auk did not reply, and she added, "Me, too, I guess."

  "It don't signify, Jugs." He was walking faster, striding along ahead of her.

  "I don't see why not!"

  "Because I had to. He'd have done it too, like I said. We're going to the pit. I told him so."

  "I don't like that, either." Chenille sounded as though she were about to weep.

  "I got to. I got too many friends that's been sent there, Jugs. If some's in this pit and I can get 'em out, I got to do it. And everybody in the pit's going to find out. Maybe Patera wouldn't tell 'em, if I asked nice. Maybe Hammerstone wouldn't. Only Urus would for sure. He'd say this cull, he did for a pal of Auk's and ate him, too, and Auk never done a thing. When I got 'em out, it'd be all over the city."

  A god laughed behind them, faintly but distinctly, the meaningless, humorless laughter of a lunatic; Auk wondered whether Chenille had heard it. "So I had to. And I did it. You would've too, in my shoes."

  The tunnel was growing lighter already. Ahead, where it was brighter still, he could see Incus, Hammerstone, and Urus still seated on the tunnel floor, Hammerstone with Chenille's launcher across his steel lap, Incus telling his beads, Urus staring back up the tunnel toward them.

  "All right, Hackum."

  Here were his hanger and his tunic. He laid down Dace's corpse, sheathed the hanger, and put on his tunic again.

  "Man good!" Oreb's beak snapped with appreciation.

  "You been eating off him? I told you about that."

  "Other man," Oreb explained. "My eyes."

  Auk shrugged. "Why not?"

  "Let's get out of here. Please, Hackum." Chenille was already several steps ahead.

  He nodded and picked up Dace.

  "I've got this bad feeling. Like he's still alive back there or something."

  "He ain't." Auk reassured her.

  As they reached the three who had waited, Incus pocketed his beads. "I would gladly have brought the Pardon of Par to our late comrade. But his spirit has flown."

  "Sure," Auk said. "We were just hoping you'd bury him, Patera, if we can find a place."

  "It's Patera now?"

  "And before. I was saying Patera before. You just didn't notice, Patera."

  "Oh, but I did, my son." Incus motioned for Hammerstone and Urus to rise. "I would do what I can for our unfortunate comrade in any case. Not for your sake, my son, but for his."

  Auk nodded. "That's all we're asking, Patera. Gelada's dead. Maybe I ought to tell everybody."

  Incus was eyeing Dace's body. "You cannot bear such a weight far, my son. Hammerstone will have to carry him, I suppose."

  "No," Auk said, his voice suddenly hard. "Urus will. Come're, Urus. Take it."

  Chapter 4

  The Plan of Pas

  "I'm sorry you did that, Mucor," Silk said mildly.

  The old woman shook her head. "I wasn't going to kill you. But I could've."

  "Of course you could."

  Quetzal had picked up the needler; he brushed it with his fingers, then produced a handkerchief with which to wipe off the white bull's blood. The old woman turned to watch him, her eyes widening as her death's-head grin faded.

  "I'm sorry, my daughter," Silk repeated. "I've noticed you at sacrifice now and then, but I don't recall your name."

  "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 suf
fered, 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."