Epiphany of the Long Sun (17 page)

Bison said, "People are throwing stones at them from the roof-tops. The messenger told us that, too, remember? Maybe they'll kill a few Hoppies for us. Let's give them a chance."

"And perhaps some of their younger men will come over to us. We ought to give them as much opportunity as we can to do that." Inspired by the memory of games at the palaestra, she added, "When somebody changes sides, it counts twice, one more for us and one fewer for them. Besides, when they get here the Guards in the Alambrera will have to open those big doors to let them in." Their expressions showed that none of them had thought of that, and she concluded, "I'm not saying that we'll be able to get inside ourselves. But we might. Now them, how are we going to attack?"

"Behind and before, with as many men as we can," Bison rumbled.

Lime added, "We need to take them by surprise, Maytera."

"Which is another reason for attacking here. When they get to the Alambrera, they'll think they've reached their goal. They may relax a little. That will be the time for us to act."

"When the doors open." Bison drove a fist into his palm.

"Yes, I think so. What is it, Zoril?"

"I shouldn't say this. I know what everybody's going to think, but they've been shooting down on us from the walls and the high windows. Just about everybody we've lost, we've lost like that." He waited for contradiction, but there was none.

"There's buildings across the street as high as the wall, Maytera, and one just a little up the street that's higher. I think we ought to have people in there to shoot at the men on the wall. Some of mine that don't have needlers or slug guns could be on the roofs, too, throwing stones like the messenger talked about. A chunk of shiprock falling that far ought to hit as hard as a slug, and these Hoppies have got armor."

Maytera Mint nodded again. "You're right. I'm putting you in charge of that. Get some people-not just your own, some of the older boys and girls particularly-busy right away carrying stones and bricks up there. There must be plenty around after the fires.

"Lime, Your women are no longer fighters unless they've got needlers or slug guns. We need people to get our wounded out of the fight and take care of them. They can use their knives or whatever they have on anyone who tries to interfere with them. And that woman with the pitchfork? Go get her. I want to talk to her."

A fragment of broken plaster caught Maytera Mint's eye. "Now, Bison, look here." Picking it up, she scratched two widely spaced lines on the fire-blackened wall behind her. "This is Cage Street." With speed born of years of practice, she sketched in the Alambrera and the buildings facing it.

There was still a good deal of cedar left, and the fire on the altar had not quite gone out. Silk heaped fresh wood on it and let the wind fan it for him, sparks streaking Sun Street.

Quetzal had taken charge of Musk's corpse, arranging it decently beside Maytera Rose's coffin. Maytera Marble, who had gone to the cenoby for a sheet, had not yet returned.

"He was the most evil man I've ever known." Silk had not intended to speak aloud, but the words had come just the same. "Yet I can't help feeling sorry for him, and for all of us, as well, because he's gone."

Quetzal murmured, "Does you credit, Patera Caldé," and wiped the blade of the manteion's sacrificial knife, which he had rescued from the dust.

Vaguely, Silk wondered when he had dropped it. Maytera Rose had always taken care of it, washing and sharpening it after each sacrifice, no matter how minor; but Maytera Rose was gone, as dead as Musk.

After he had cut the sign of addition in Villas's ankle, of course, when he had knelt to suck out the poison.

When he had met Blood on Phaesday, Blood had said that he had promised someone-had promised a woman-that he would pray at this manteion for her. Suddenly Silk knew (without in the least understanding how he knew) that the "woman" had been Musk. Was Musk's spirit lingering in the vicinity of Musk's body and prompting him in some fashion? Whispering too softly to be heard? Silk traced the sign of addition, knowing that he should add a prayer to Thelxiepeia, the goddess of magic and ghosts, but unable to do so.

Musk had bought the manteion for Blood with Blood's money; and Musk must have felt, in some deep part of himself that all his evil actions had not killed, that he had done wrong-that he had by his purchase offended the gods. He had asked Blood to pray for him, or perhaps for them both, in the manteion that he had bought; and Blood had promised to do it.

Had Blood kept his promise?

"If you'd help with the feet, Patera Caldé?" Quetzal was standing at the head of Maytera Rose's coffin.

"Yes, of course, Your Cognizance. We can carry that in."

Quetzal shook his head. "We'll lay it on the sacred fire, Patera Caldé. Cremation is allowed when burial is impractical. If you would…?"

Silk picked up the foot of the coffin, finding it lighter than he had expected. "Shouldn't we petition the gods, Your Cognizance? On her behalf?"

"I already have, Patera Caldé. You were deep in thought. Now then, as high as you can, then quickly down upon the fire. Without dropping it, please. One, two,
three!
"

Silk did as he was told, then stepped hurriedly away from the lengthening flames. "Possibly we ought to have waited for Maytera, Your Cognizance."

Quetzal shook his head again. "This way is better, Patera Caldé. It would be better for you to keep from looking at the fire, too. Do you know why coffins have that peculiar shape, by the way? Look at me, Patera Caldé."

"To allow for the shoulders, Your Cognizance, or so I've heard."

Quetzal nodded. "That's what everyone's told. Would this sibyl of yours need extra room for her shoulders? Look at me, I said."

Already the thin, stained wood was blackening honestly, charring as the flames that licked it brought forth new flames. "No," Silk said, and looked away again. (It was strange to think that this bent, bald old man was in fact the Prolocutor.) "No, Your Cognizance. Nor would most women, or many men."

There was a stench of burning flesh.

"They do it so that we, the living, will know at which end the head lies, when the lid's on. Coffins are sometimes stood on end, you see. Patera!"

Silk's gaze had strayed to the fire again. He turned away and covered his eyes.

"I would have saved you that if I could," Quetzal told him, and Maytera Marble, arriving with the sheet, inquired, "Saved him from what, Your Cognizance?"

"Saved me from seeing Maytera Rose's face as the flames consumed it," Silk told her. He rubbed his eyes, hoping that she would think he had been rubbing them before, that he had gotten smoke in them.

She held out one end of the sheet. "I'm sorry I took so long, Patera. I-I happened to see my reflection. Then I looked for Maytera Mint's mirror. My cheek is scratched."

Silk took corners of the sheet in tear-dampened fingers; the wind tried to snatch it from him, but he held it fast. "So it is, Maytera. How did you do it?"

"I have no idea!"

To his surprise, Quetzal lifted Musk's half-consumed body easily. Clearly, this venerable old man was stronger than he appeared. "Spread it flat and hold it down," he told them. "We'll lay him on it and fold it over him."

A moment more, and Musk, too, rested among the flames.

"It's our duty to tend the fire until both have burned. We don't have to watch, and I suggest we don't." Quetzal had positioned himself between Silk and the altar. "Let us pray privately for the repose of their spirits."

Silk shut his eyes, bowed his head, and addressed himself to the Outsider, without much confidence that this most obscure of gods heard him or cared about what he said, or even existed.

"
And yet I know this
." (His lips moved, although no sound issued from them.) "
You are the only god for me. It is better for me that I should give you all my worship, though you are not, than that I should worship Echidna or even Kypris, whose faces l have seen. Thus I implore your mercy on these, our dead. Remember that I, whom once you signally honored, ought to have loved them both but could not, and so failed to provide the impetus that might have brought them to you before Hierax claimed them. Mine therefore is the guilt for any wrong they have done while they have known me. I accept it, and pray you will forgive them, who burn, and forgive me also, whose fire is not yet lit. Obscure Outsider, be not angry with us, though we have never sufficiently honored you. All that is outcast, discarded, and despised is yours. Are this man and this woman, who have been neglected by me, to be neglected by you as well? Recall the misery of our lives and their deaths. Are we never to find rest? I have searched my conscience, Outsider, to discover that in which l have displeased you. I find this: That I avoided Maytera Rose whenever I could, though she might have been to me the grandmother I have never known; and that I hated Musk, and feared him too, when he had not done me the least wrong. Both were yours, Outsider, as I now see; and for your sake I should have been loving with both. I renounce my pride, and I will honor their memories. This I swear. My life to you, Outsider, if you will forgive this man and this woman whom we burn today
."

Opening his eyes he saw that Quetzal had already finished, if he had ever prayed. Soon Maytera Marble raised her head as well, and he inquired, "Would Your Cognizance, who knows more about the immortal gods than anyone else in the whorl, instruct me regarding the Outsider? Though he's enlightened me, as I informed your coadjutor, I would be exceedingly grateful if you could tell me more."

"I have no information to give, Patera Caldé, regarding the Outsider or any other god. What little I have learned in the course of a long life, regarding the gods, I have tried to forget. You saw Echidna. After that, can you ask me why?"

"No, Your Cognizance." Silk looked nervously at Maytera Marble.

"I didn't, Your Cognizance. But I saw the Holy Hues and heard her voice, and it made me wonderfully happy. I remember that she exhorted all of us to purity and confirmed Scylla's patronage, nothing else. Can you tell me what else she said?"

"She told your sib to overthrow the Ayuntamiento. Let that be enough for you, Maytera, for the present."

"Maytera Mint? But she'll be killed!"

Quetzal's shoulders rose and fell. "I think we can count on it, Maytera. Before Kypris manifested here on Scylsday, the Windows of our city had been empty for decades. I can't take credit for that, it wasn't my doing. But I've done everything in my power to prevent theophanies. It hasn't been much, but I've done what I could. I proscribed human sacrifice, and got it made law, for one thing. I admit I'm proud of that."

He turned to Silk. "Patera Caldé, you wanted to know if I protested when the Ayuntamiento failed to hold an election to choose a new Caldé. You were right to ask, more right than you knew. If a new Caldé had been elected when the last died, we wouldn't have had that visit from Echidna today."

"If Your Cognizance-"

"No, I want to tell you. There are many things you have to know as Caldé, and this is one. But the situation wasn't as simple as you may think. What do you know about the Charter?"

"Next to nothing, Your Cognizance. We studied when I was a boy-that is to say, our teacher read it to us and answered our questions. I was ten, I think."

Maytera Marble said, "We're not supposed to teach it now. It was dropped from all the lesson plans years ago."

"At my order," Quetzal told them, "when even mentioning it became dangerous. We have copies at the Palace, however, and I've read it many times. It doesn't say, Patera Caldé, that an election must be held on the death of the Caldé, as you seem to believe. What it really says is that the Caldé is to hold office for life, that he may appoint his successor, and that a successor is to be elected if he dies without havmg done it. You see the difficulty?"

Uneasily, Silk glanced up and down the street, seeing no one near enough to overhear. "I'm afraid not, Your Cognizance. That sounds quite straightforward to me."

"It does
not
say that the Caldé must announce his choice, you'll notice. If he wants to keep it secret, he can do it. The reasons are so obvious I hesitate to explain them."

Silk nodded. "I can see that it would put them both in an uncomfonable position."

"In a very dangerous one, Patera Caldé. Partisans of the successor might assassinate the Caldé, while those who'd hoped to become Caldé would be tempted to murder the successor. When the last Caldé's will was read, it was found to designate a successor. I remember the exact wording. It said, 'Though he is not the son of my body, my son will succeed me.' What do you make of that?"

Silk stroked his cheek. "It didn't name this son?"

"No. I've given you the entire clause. The Caldé had never married, as I should have told you sooner. As far as anybody knew, he had no sons."

Maytera Marble ventured, "I never knew about this, Your Cognizance. Didn't the son tell them?"

"Not that I know of. It's possible he did and was killed secretly by Lemur or one of the other councillors, but I doubt it." Quetzal selected a long cedar split and poked the sinking fire. "If they'd done that, I'd have heard about it by this time. Probably much sooner. No public announcement was made, you understand. If there'd been one, pretenders would have put themselves forward and made endless trouble. The Ayuntamiento searched in secret. To be frank, I doubt that the boy would have lived if they'd found him."

Silk nodded reluctantly.

"If it had been a natural son, they could've used medical tests. As it was, the only hope was turn up a record. The monitors of every glass that could be located were queried. Old documents were read and reread, and the Caldé's relatives and associates interrogated, all without result. An election should have been held, and I urged one repeatedly because I was afraid we'd have a theophany from Scylla unless something was done. But an election would have been illegal, as I had to admit. The Caldé had designated his successor. They simply couldn't find him."