Epiphany of the Long Sun (15 page)

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 suffered, 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."

Silk said, "You don't have to tell me this, Maytera."

"They asked me to name him, and I did. They said they'd find a family that wanted a child and would take him, and he'd never find out, but he did, though it must have taken him a long while. He spoke to Marble, said she must tell me he'd bought it, and his name. When I heard his name, I knew."

Silk said gently, "It doesn't matter any more, Maytera. That was long ago, and now the whole city's in revolt, and it no longer matters. You must rest. Find peace."

"And that is why," Maytera Marble concluded. "Why my son Bloody bought our manteion and made all this trouble."

The wind wafted smoke from the fig tree to Silk's nose, and he sneezed.

"May every god bless you, Patera." Her voice sounded normal again.

"Thank you," he said, and accepted the handkerchief she offered.

"Could you bring me water, do you think? Cool water?"

As sympathetically as he could, he told her, "You can't drink water, Maytera."

"Please? Just a cup of cool water?"

He hurried to the manse. Today was Hieraxday, after all; no doubt she wished him to bless the water for her in Hierax's name. Later she would sprinkle it upon Maytera Rose's coffin and in the corners of her bedroom to prevent Maytera's spirit from troubling her again.

Cassava was sitting in the kitchen, in the chair Patera Pike had used at meals. Silk said, "Shouldn't you lie down, my daughter? It would make you feel better, I'm sure, and there's a divan in the sellaria."

She stared at him. "That was a needler, wasn't it? I gave you a needler. Why'd I have a thing like that?"

"Because someone gave it to you to give me." He smiled at her. "I'm going to the Alambrera, you see, and I'll need it." He worked the pump-handle vigorously, letting the first rusty half-bucketful drain away, catching the clear, cold flood that followed in a tumbler, and presenting it to Cassava. "Drink this, please, my daughter. It should make you feel better."

"You called me Mucor," she said. "Mucor." She set the untasted tumber on the kitchen table and rubbed her forehead. "Didn't you call me Mucor, Patera?"

"I mentioned Mucor, certainly; she was the person who gave you the needler to give to me." Studying her puzzled frown, Silk decided it would be wise to change the subject. "Can you tell me what has become of His Cognizance and little Villus, my daughter?"

"He carried him upstairs, Patera. He wanted him to lie down, like you wanted me."

"Doubtless he'll be down shortly." Silk reflected that the Prolocutor had probably intended to bandage Villus's leg, and lost some time searching for medical supplies. "Drink that water, please. I'm sure it will make you feel better." He filled a second tumbler and carried it outside.