Epiphany of the Long Sun (44 page)

"Good girl!"

"Yes, Oreb. Indeed she is." Silk returned his attention to Maytera Marble. "A moment ago when you spoke to Loris, you didn't want us to leave this room. Would you mind telling me why?"

"Was I as transparent at that?"

"No, you weren't transparent at all; but I know you, and if you'd really been so worried about me, you would have asked him to let us talk in a bedroom where I could lie down, and to send for a doctor. I don't suppose Blood's got one, now that Doctor Crane's dead; but Loris might have been able to supply one, or to send someone for one of the Guard's doctors under a flag of truce, like that white flag next to your chair."

Maytera Marble looked grave. "I should have asked him to do that. I can still ask, Patera. I'll go out and find him. It won't take a moment."

"No, I'm fine. By Phaea's favor-" It was too late to call back the conventional phrase. "I'll recover. Why did you want to stay here?"

"Because of this window." Maytera Marble waved a hand at it. "Bloody had opened it while we were in here by ourselves, and I worried the whole time that someone would get cold and shut it. You must know Mucor, Patera. She said you sent her to me."

Silk nodded. "She's Blood's adopted daughter."

"Adopted? I didn't know that. She said she was Bloody's daughter. That was Hieraxday night, terribly late… Do you know Asphodella, Patera?"

Silk smiled. "Oh, yes. A lively little thing."

"That's her. I'd done the wash, you see, and I wanted to pour the dirty water on my garden. Plants actually like dirty water with soapsuds in it better than clean. It sounds wrong, I know, but they do."

"If you say so, I'm sure it must be true."

"So I was pouring out the water, so much for each row, when Asphodella pulled my skirt. I said what are you doing out so late, child? And she told me she'd gone with the others to fight, but Horn had sent her back-"

"Cat come!" Oreb warned. Silk looked for it, seeing none.

"Horn had sent her home, and quite right, too, if you ask me, Patera. So now she wanted to know if there'd be palaestra on Thelxday."

"Then," Silk said slowly, "her face changed. Is that it, Maytera?"

"Yes. Exactly. Her face became, well, horrible. She saw I was frightened, as I certainly was, and said don't be afraid, Grandmother. My name's Mucor, I'm Blood's daughter." Maytera Marble paused, not certain that he understood. "Have I told you Bloody's my son, Patera? Yes, I know I did, right after we sacrificed in the street."

"He was Maytera Rose's," Suk said carefully. "You, I know, are also Maytera Rose-at least, at times."

"All the time, Patera." Maytera Marble laughed. "I've integrated our software. As far as we sibyls are concerned, I'm your best friend and worst enemy, all in one."

He stirred uncomfortably in Blood's comfortable chair. "I was never Maytera Rose's enemy, I hope."

"You thought I was yours, though, Patera. Perhaps I was, a little."

He leaned toward her, his hands folded over the crook of Xiphias's cane. "Are you now, Maytera? Please be completely frank with me."

"No. Your friend and well-wisher, Patera."

Oreb applauded, flapping his wings. "Good girl!"

She added, "Even if I were entirely Maytera Rose, I'd do all I could to get you out of this."

Silk let himself fall back. It was astonishing how soft these chairs of Blood's were. He remembered (vividly now) how badly he had wanted to rest in his chair, to sleep in it, when he had talked with Blood in this very room. Yet this one was better, just as Blood had promised: yielding where it should, firm where firmness was desirable. He stroked one wide arm, its maroon leather as smooth as butter beneath his touch.

"They let me lie down after I was captured," he confided to Maytera Marble. "Sand did. I'd had to walk all the way to this house, and it was a very long way. It had seemed long when Auk and I rode donkeys; and walking with Sand's gun at my back, it seemed a great deal longer; but once we arrived, once we'd climbed up through the hatch into the cellar, he let me lie down on the floor. He isn't a bad man, really-just a disciplined soldier obeying bad men. There's good in Loris, too, and even in Potto. I know you must sense it, just as I do, Maytera; otherwise you'd never have spoken to Potto as you did. That's why-one reason, anyway-I don't feel that this situation from which you're trying to rescue me is as bad as it appears, though I'll always be grateful."

"Cat! Cat!" Oreb flew from Silk's shoulder to the head of an alabaster bust of Thelxiepeia.

Maytera Marble smiled. "There's no cat in here, you pretty bird."

"You were telling me about this room," Slik reminded her, "and meeting Mucor. I wish you'd continue with that. It may be significant."

"I-Patera, I want to tell you first about meeting you. It won't take long. and it may be more important, maybe a lot more important. You still think about the day you came to our manteion, I know. You've mentioned it several times."

He nodded.

"Patera Pike was there, and you loved and respected him, but a man wants a woman to talk to. Most men do, anyway, and you did. You'd been raised by your mother, and we could see how you missed her."

"I still do," Silk admitted.

"Don't feel bad about that, Patera. No one should ever be ashamed of love."

Maytera Marble paused to collect her thoughts; her rapid scan was back, and she reveled in it. "We were three sibyls, I was about to say. Maytera Mint was still young and pretty, but so shy that she ran from you whenever she could. When she couldn't, she would hardly speak. Maybe she guessed what had happened to me long ago. I've sometimes thought that, and you were young and good-looking, as you still are."

He began a question, but thought better of it.

"I won't tell you who Bloody's father was, Patera. I've never told anybody and I won't tell now. But I will tell you this. He never knew. I don't think he even suspected."

Silk filled his lungs with the cool, clean breeze from the window. "I slept with a woman last night, Maytera. With Hyacinth, the woman Blood asked about."

"I'm sorry you told me."

"I wanted to. I've wanted-I want so badly, still, to tell people who don't know, although a great many people know already. His Cognizance and Master Xiphias and Generalissimo Oosik."

"And me." Maytera Marble's forefinger tapped her metal chest through her habit. "I knew. Or rather, I guessed, as anybody would, and I wish that you'd left it like that. Some things aren't improved by talking about them."

Oreb broke off his inverted examination of Thelxiepeia's features to applaud Maytera Marble. "Smart girl!"

"We were three sibyls, as I said. But Maytera Mint wasn't there for you Patera, so I was the only ones left. I was old. I don't think you ever grasped how old. My faces had gone long before you were born. You never realized they weren't there, did you?"

"What are you talking about? Your face is where it ought to be, Maytera. I'm looking at it."

"This?" She drummed her fingers on it, a quick metallic
tap-tap-tap.
"This is my faceplate, really. I used to have a face like yours. I would say like Dahlia's, but she was before your time. Like Teasel's or Nettle's, and there were things in it, little bits of alnico, that let me really smile or frown when I moved them with the coils behind my faceplate. But all that's gone except for the coils."

"It's a beautiful face," Silk insisted, "because it's yours."

"My other face wasn't, and what it was showed in your own every time you saw it. I resented that, and you resented my resentment and turned to me to ease your loneliness. But we were much more alike than you realized, not that I've ever cared, myself, for machines like this. I never thought they could be people, really, no matter how many times they said they were. Now I'm just a message written on those teeny gold doodads you see in cards. But I'm still me, a person, because I always was."

Silk fumbled Remora's ruined robe for a handkerchief, and finding none blotted his eyes on his sleeve.

"I didn't tell you that to make you feel sorry for me, Patera. Neither of me were easy to love, no more than I am now. You were able to love one just the same, and not very many men could have, not even many augurs. I thought that if you knew how you came to love and not like me, it might help you some other time with some other woman."

"It will, I know." Silk sighed. "Thank you, Maytera. With myself, most of all."

"Let's not talk about it any more. What do you think of the Ayuntamiento's terms? Still what you told Loris?"

Silk made a last dab at his eyes, feeling the grit in the cloth, knowing that he was dirtying his already-soiled face and not caring. "I suppose so."

Maytera Marble nodded. "They're perfectly hopeless. Not a single thing for Trivigaunte, and why should the Guard hand over its senior officers, why should Generalissimo Oosik allow it? But if we offered trials, regular ones with judges-"

"Man back!" A big hand glittering with rings had appeared on the windowsill. It was followed by a yellow-sleeved arm and a whiff of musk rose.

"That's why you wanted to stay here." Silk stood up a trifle unsteadily, helped by the cane, and crossed the room to the window. "So your son could join us."

"Why no, Patera. Not at all."

Leaning over the sill, Silk spoke to Blood. "Here, hold onto my hand. I'll help you up."

"Thanks," Blood said. "I should have brought a stool or something."

"Take mine, too, Bloody." Maytera Marble braced one foot on the sill in imitation of Silk.

Flushed redder than ever with exertion, Blood's face rose on the other side of the window. With a grunt and a heave, he tumbled into the room.

"Now for my granddaughter. She'll be easy after Bloody." Bending over the sill again, Maytera Marble clasped skeletally thin hands and lifted in an emaciated young woman with a seared cheek.

"Poor girl!"

Silk nodded his agreement as he returned to his chair. "Hello, Mucor. Sit down, please, so that I may sit. We're neither of us strong."

"Needlers're no good 'gainst the soldiers," Blood puffed. He brushed off the front of his tunic and reached beneath it. "So I'm giving you this, Caldé Silk."

"This" was an azoth, its long hilt rough with rubies and chased with gold; its sharply curved guard was more elaborate than that of the one Doctor Crane had given him at Hyacinth's urging, and diamonds ringed its pommel.

Silk resumed his seat. "I should have anticipated that. Doctor Crane told me you had two."

"Don't you want it?" Blood did not trouble to hide his surprise.

"No. Not now, at least."

"It's worth-"

"I know what it's worth, and how effective a weapon it can be in a strong hand like yours. At the moment, I don't have one, though that's the least of my reasons for refusing."

Silk settled back in his chair. "I asked your daughter to sit down, and she was good enough to oblige me. I can't invite you to sit in your house, and I'm very aware that I'm occupying your former seat; but there are many others."

Blood sat.

"Thank you. Maytera-"

"Cat come!"

It did, almost before Oreb's agitated whoop, springing lightly over the windowsill to land noiselessly in the middle of the room and glare at Blood with eyes like burning amber. Maytera Marble gathered her skirts as if it were a mouse; Silk asked, "Is that Lion? I seem to remember him."

The lynx turned its glare on him and nodded.

"Patera's been making everybody sit," Maytera Marble told Mucor. "It would be nicer if you had your big kitty sit too, Darling. I wouldn't mind him so much then."

Lion lay down obediently, dividing his attention between Blood and Oreb.

"Sphigx bless you." Maytera Marble traced the sign of addition. "I-it's rather amusing now that I come to think of it, the sort of thing the children enjoy. Patera thought I wanted this window open so your Papa could come in, and I said, no, I hadn't even thought of it, which was the plain truth. I wanted it opened because you told me the first time, Darling, not to stay in rooms with the doors and windows shut, because you might have to drop in again, and that would make it harder. So I was happy when he opened this one, and now you've come in through it, and your long-legged kitty, too."

"I didn't know she could take over an animal like that." Blood had his thumb on the demon. "We didn't know she had any power left till Lemur taped the Caldé talking to Crane, but it sounds like she's been paying visits to both of you."

"Sneaking outside the window, Bloody? You shouldn't do that."

"I didn't."

"A listening device." Silk sighed. "I'm disappointed. I'd thought there might be a secret door behind one of these big paintings. When I was a sprat, boys' books were full of them, but I've never actually seen one."

"You knew I'd come?"

"I surmised you might. Do you want the entire thing?"

Maytera Marble sniffed loudly. "I do, Patera."

"I wish you wouldn't make that noise," he told her.

"Then I won't, or at least not very often. But Bloody's my son, and I meant I have a right to know."

"All right, the entire thing." Silk leaned back in his chair, eyes half closed. "On Hieraxday, I walked some distance through the city with His Cognizance, and from the East Edge to Ermine's; it was about evenly divided between Maytera Mint's insurgents and the Guard. I slept at Ermine's for a few hours, as I told you; when I woke up, half the Guard seemed to have gone over to Maytera Mint."

Maytera Marble said, "All of it but the Second, I'm told."

"Good. Before I was brought here, I was in the tunnels or in the cellar, so I didn't see much; but there were councillors here. It seemed likely they were directing their forces in person, and I didn't think they'd do that unless the situation was critical. Then too, you told me you'd walked out here with the children and mentioned a general from Trivigaunte-"

"General Saba. A very good woman at heart, from what I saw of her, though quite large and rather prone to obstinacy."

"I assume it was her airship that attacked us when His Cognizance and I were riding in Oosik's floater."