Epiphany of the Long Sun (46 page)

"You had better not ask me to testify, either, Bloody," Maytera Marble told him. "I'd have to tell the judge that you tried to bribe our Caldé."

"They're coming," Mucor announced to Silk. "Councilior Loris has finished talking to Councillor Tarsier through the glass. They've decided to kill you and send your body back with the woman that killed Musk."

Silk froze, his eyes on Blood.

Oreb squawked, "Watch out!"

Instinctively, Maytera Marble reached out to her son, a plea for forgiveness and understanding.

His grip on the azoth tightened, and the shimmering horror that was its blade divided the cosmos, leaving Maytera Marble on one side and the hand she had held out to him on the other. It dropped to the carpet as the hideous discontinuity swung up, showering them with plaster and sundered lath. Silk shouted a warning; absurdly, he tried to shield her from Blood's downward cut with Xiphias's cane.

Its thin wooden casing exploded in blazing splinters; but the azoth's blade sprang back from the double-edged steel blade the casing had concealed, having notched it to the spine.

It seemed to Silk then that his arm moved of itself-that he merely watched it, a spectator fully as horrified as she, and fully as separated from his arm's acts. As the door flew in with a crash, that arm swung the ruined blade.

From behind Sergeant Sand and a second soldier equally soldier large, Potto barked, "
Shoot him?
"

The notched blade slid forward, penetrating Blood's throat as readily as the manteion's old bone-handled sacrificial knife had ever entered that of a ram.

"Shoot the Caldé?" Sand's hand caught the other soldier's slug gun.

Blood's knees buckled as the light left his eyes. The double-edged blade, scarlet to within a hand's breadth of the notch with Blood's own blood, retreated from his throat.

"Yes, the Caldé!"

For a moment it seemed to Silk that Maytera Marble should have knelt to catch Blood's blood; perhaps it seemed so to her as well, for she crouched, her remaining hand extended to her son as he fell.

Silk turned, the sword still in his hand. Sand's slug gun was no longer pointed at him, if it had ever been. Sand fired, and the second soldier a fraction of a second after him. Potto fell, his cheerful face slack with surprise.

"Take this, Patera." Maytera Marble was pressing Blood's azoth into his free hand. "Take it before I kill you with it."

He did, and she took Xiphias's ruined sword from him, and with its crook wedged between her small black shoes, contrived to wipe its blade with a big handkerchief that she shook from her sleeve.

There was a clash of heels and a crash of weapons as Sand and the second soldier saluted. Soldiers and men in silvered armor peering around them began to salute as well. Silk nodded in response, and when that seemed inadequate traced the sign of addition the air.

I
t had been hastily erected, Caldé Silk reflected, studying the triumphal arch that spanned the Alameda-very hastily. But surely this new generalissimo from Trivigaunte would understand the situation, would realize the difficulties they had labored under in organizing a formal welcome in a city still at war with what remained of its Ayuntamiento, and make allowances.

Now, this wind.

It stirred yellow dust from the gutters, whistled among the chimneys, and shook the ramshackle arch until it trembled like an aspen. Flowers covering the arch would have been nice, but that moment of searing heat on Hieraxday had made flowers out of the question. So much the better, Silk thought; this wind would surely have stripped off every petal an hour ago. Even as he watched, a long streamer of colored paper pulled free, becoming a flying jade snake that mounted to the sky.

There the Trivigaunte airship fought its straining tether, so high that its vast bulk appeared, if not festive, at least unthreatening. From that airship, it should be simple to gauge the advance of Generalissimo Siyuf's troops. Silk wished that there had been time to arrange for signals of some sort: a flag hung from the gondola when she entered the city, for example, or a smoke pot lit to warn that she had been delayed. Rather to his own surprise, he discovered that he was eager to go up in the airship himself, to see Viron like the skylands again, and travel among the clouds as the fliers did.

There were a lot of them out today, riding this cold wind. More, he decided, than he had ever seen before. A whole flock, like a flight of storks, was just now appearing from behind the airship. What city sent them forth to patrol the length of the sun, and what good did those patrols do? Speculation about the Fliers had been dismissed as bootless at the schola, until the Ayuntamiento had condemned them as spies.

Had the Ayuntamiento known? Did Councillor Loris, who wielded what authority remained to it, know now?

Might it not be possible to track Fliers in the airship, anchor at last at that fabled city, learn its name, and offer whatever assistance in its sacred labor Viron and Trivigaunte could provide?

(Buried, he had been wherever he had thought to be.)

A fresh gust, colder and wilder than any before it, roared up the Alameda, shaking its raddled poplars like rats. To his right General Saba stiffened, while he himself shivered without shame. He was wearing the Cloak of Lawful Governance over his augur's robe; it fell to his shoe-tops and was of the thickest tea-colored velvet, stiff with gold thread. He ought to have been awash in his own perspiration; he found himself wishing ardently for some sort of head-covering instead. General Saba had a dust-colored military cap and Generalissimo Oosik beyond her a tail helmet of green leather topped with a plume, but he had nothing.

He recalled the broad-brimmed straw hat he had worn while repairing the roof of the manteion-which would be missing more shingles, surely, thanks to this wind. He had pulled that hat down so that Blood's talus could not identify him later, and it had known him by that.

(Dead by his hand, Blood and the talus both.)

He had lost that recollected hat somehow. Might not this wind return it to him? All sorts of rubbish was blowing about, and stranger things had happened.

His wound throbbed. Mentally he pushed it aside, forcing himself to fill his lungs with cold air.

The shade had not climbed far yet, but what should have been a bright streak of purest gold seemed faint, and flushed with brownish purple. The Aureate Path was empty and failing visibly, signally the end of mankind's dream of paradise, of some inconceivable fraternity with its gods. For one vivid instant he remembered Iolar, the dying Flier. But no doubt the sun was merely dimmed at the moment, stained and darkened by dust. Winter was long overdue in any event. Was Maytera Mint, who would be so conspicuously absent from this, her victory parade, cold too? Wherever she was?

Was Hyacinth? Silk shivered again.

Far away, a band struck up, and ever so faintly he heard, or seemed to hear, the sound of bugles, the tramp of marching feet, and the clatter of cavalry.

That was a good sign, surely.

THE END OF BOOK THREE

Exodus from the Long Sun

Gene Wolfe

For Paul and Vicki Marxen

-we go way back.

Back from Death

A
n 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 Caldé. 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 Caldé 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, Caldé'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."