Epiphany of the Long Sun (76 page)

"Whatever. Only the bufes aren't any good, and now you and him say the bios are no good either, sir." Sand wheeled to face Remora and pushed his slug gun into Remora's hands. "I knew, Patera. 'Fore you read it, I knew. You ever want to die?"

"I? Ah-no."

He's lying, Maytera Mint thought. I know what it is, and so does he.

"I do." Sand gestured toward Schist, Slate, and Shale. "So do they. Maybe they won't say it, but they do. I want to die for Pas, and I'm going to right now." He knelt, staring at the floor, and Remora looked helplessly down at the slug gun.

Maytera Mint murmured, "If you would prefer not to, Your Eminence, it would certainly be permissible for someone more familiar with the weapon to act for you."

"You, er, concur, General?"

She sighed. "Sometimes generals need sergeants to recall them to their duty. So it seems. Whether I learned it in a palaestra or not, Sergeant Sand is right. The Plan is the most important thing in the whorl, and the victim consents."

Still on his knees, Sand muttered, "Thanks, sir."

She knelt beside him. "I've heard it's possible for chems to-to reproduce. You've never done that?"

Slate said, "None of us have, General, and there's hardly any fem chems left." And Sand, "No. Never."

She turned back to Remora and held out her hands for the slug gun. "I've never fired one either, Your Eminence, but I know how they work and I've seen it done thousands of times since this began."

"No, Mayt-No, General."

"Please, Your Eminence. For your own sake."

He silenced her by raising Sand's slug gun and pointing it awkwardly at Sand. "Precisely. Ah-to the point. For my sake, General. If I must, um, officiate, the-ah-holy and um, self-sacrificing. Sole responsibility. Do you follow me? Criminal penalties, hey? Religious, likewise. Removed from the-ah-active clergy."

His wheezing breath seemed to fill the manteion. "But for him-ah-highest god. For Pas!" He jerked at the trigger.

"Not like that, Your Eminence. There's a safety, and if you hold it that way the recoil will cripple you. Or so I'm assured." She positioned the slug gun in his hands. "Grasp it firmly, tight against your shoulder, Then it will merely push you backwards. If you hold it loosely and try to keep it away, it will fly back and strike you like a club."

Sand said, "In the head, Patera. That's the best."

"I am augur here," Remora told him, and fired.

The crash of the shot was deafening in the enclosed space of the manteion. Sand rose; for an instant Maytera Mint could not see where the slug had hit him. Spinning to face the Sacred Window, he threw up both arms. There was an uncanny sound that might have been a cry of pain or harsh laughter. Black liquid spurted from his throat, spattering the clean black habit she had just put on.

And the Holy Hues began before Sand fell.

She blinked and stared, then blinked again. Not one face but two crowded the Window, one gaping and gasping, the other radiant with power and majesty, just-and more than just-pitiless and nurturing. "My faithful people," intoned Twice-headed Pas, "receive the blessing of your god."

"
I see him!
" From the voice she thought it must be Spider, although she could not be sure.

Pas's was thunder and a destroying wind. "Carry this most noble of my soldiers to the Grand manteion. I shall speak-"

Both his faces faded. Tawny yellows and iridescent blacks filled the Window on Mainframe. Serpents writhed across it as scorpions scuttled over their backs; behind them all, Spider and Maytera Mint, Eland and Remora, Slate, Shale, and Schist saw the agonized face of Echidna.

Pas returned as if Echidna had never been. "There our prophet Auk will restore him to us."

Lovers

A
s the floater rose, Hossaan said, "I've a dozen things to tell you, Caldé. I know there won't be time for all of them. It's only four streets."

"I know where it is," Silk snapped. "Hurry!" Xiphias laid a hand on his arm. "Easy, lad!"

Hossaan glanced at the small mirror above his head, and his eyes met Silk's. "So I'm going to tell the most important one first. You think there won't be anybody at the Grand Manteion when Hy gets there, and you're afraid she'll leave."

"Yes!"

"That's not right. I told you I had to talk to General Mint on your glass, and that was what made me late." Heeling like a close-hauled boat, the floater swerved around a gilded litter with eight bearers.

"I said we'd discuss it later."

"Right. Only because of what she said, I thought it might be smart to have a look at the Grand Manteion. There's three augurs in there and a couple thousand people."

"Did you see Hyacinth?"

Hossaan shook his head. "But I could've missed her pretty easily, Caldé. She's not as tall as the redhead, and there was a bunch of women with animals."

Oreb muttered, "No cut."

"She's probably still outside, Caldé. If she was climbing the Palatine when Mucor said she was, she can't have gotten to the Grand Manteion yet."

Xiphias asked, "Why's everybody there, lad?"

"There's been another theophany-there must have been. Do you know about Pas appearing to His Cognizance?"

"No, lad! Never heard about it!"

"I have," Hossaan said. "There's a rumor, anyhow. Do you think that's brought them?"

Silk shook his head. "It was Molpsday, and would be stale news now." Half to himseif he added, "What does it mean, when a dead god rises?"

No one answered him. The floater sped on.

A surging crowd filled Gold Street. "Stop!" Silk ordered Hossaan. "No! Higher if you can. I saw her. Turn around."

"Near us, Caldé?" They rose, blowers racing.

"Cut!" Oreb exclaimed. "Cut cat!"

"Two or three streets down the slope. Turn!"

The floater darted forward instead. "Your bird's right," Hossaan told Silk. "It would take too long to get through that mob, but we can duck down here-" He swerved onto a steep and narrow street bordered by high walls. "And cut across to Gold so we come up behind her. We'll be moving with them, and that will make it a lot faster."

Silk drew breath and exhaled. The aching weakness in his chest was fading, but it seemed to him that he had not filled his lungs properly for days. "You told Horn that your name was Willet, Willet. Also you found clothing-somewhere in the Caldé's Palace, I suppose-similar to the waiters', so that you could help them serve."

"I like to be useful, Caldé."

"I know you do, and it may be useful for you to tell me why you did those things before we locate Hyacinth-if we do. You say you have a dozen items to relate. That should be the next."

Still steering their floater expertly, Hossaan glanced over his shoulder at Xiphias.

"If Master Xiphias and Maytera Marble can't be trusted, no one can. If I explain your actions-I believe I can, you see-will you tell me whether I'm correct?"

They spun around a corner as though it were an eddy. "I'm afraid not. General Mint says Siyufs surrounded the Juzgado. That's why I thought I ought to check on the Grand Manteion."

"Where was she, and how did she learn of it?"

"I don't know, Caldé. She didn't say, and I didn't ask. She said one of Oosik's officers told her. Oosik had told him to try and get in touch with her."

Xiphias said, "He left when Willet here was handing out those appetizers, lad! Another waiter fetched him, remember?"

"Later than that-after I had asked Mucor to find out to which manteion Hyacinth was bringing her offering."

Their floater tacked on Gold, pushing through chattering pedestrians.

"You know what she looks like," Silk muttered. "She had on a black coat, and was carrying a large rabbit, I believe."

"Cat talk," Oreb informed him. "Talk bad."

"The bird's right, lad! The skinny girl said it talks!" Before Xiphias had finished speaking, their floater was slowing and stopping; the canopy slid into its back and sides.

For the space of a breath, Silk thought there had been a mistake. The hurrying young woman with something orange-furred tucked under her arm seemed too tall and too slender until she turned with their cowling nudging her leg, and he saw her face.

"Hyacinth!" He stood up by reflex, and for a moment he was half outside the floater (and she more than half in it) as they kissed.

When that kiss ended, they lay face-to-face on the soft leather seat, she crowded against its back and he practically falling off, with Xiphias standing over them and waving his saber to force passersby to keep their distance. They sat up, but their hands would not part. "I was afraid you were dead," Silk confessed.

And Hyacinth, "I shaggy near was, and I-but I…" Her eyes swam with tears. "Can't we put up the top?"

"I don't know how."

"I do." She freed her hand, and with a flurry of skirt and ruffled underskirt, and a flash of legs and spike-heeled scarlet shoes, was in Hossaan's seat. Xiphias ducked, and the canopy flowed up and darkened until it was nearly opaque.

She wiped her eyes. "Now I'm coming back. Catch me." She rolled over the back of the front seat so that Silk had to, and lying in his arms kissed him again. With no need of speech, her kiss said,
Beat me, shame and starve me. Do as you want with me, but don't leave me
. I'll never do those things, he thought, and tried to make his own kiss tell her so.

When they parted, he gasped, "Where do we start?"

She smiled. "That WAS the start. I love you. Let's start from there. I haven't felt this way since-since you jumped out my window."

He laughed, and she turned to Xiphias. "This time I know you from a rat. You teach sword fighting, and I want lessons. Do you always go around with him?"

"Much as I can, lass!"

Silk asked her, "Where have you been? I've had people searching everywhere."

"In a horrible old building in the Orilla, with a soldier as big as this floater watching me for Auk. You must know Auk, he says he knows you. Tartaros turned me loose."

Hyacinth grinned like a twelve-year-old. "You believe in the gods, but you won't believe that. I don't, and I know it happened. Do you mind if I don't call you darling?"

Silk shook his head. "Not in the least."

"I've called too many men that. I'll find something else, something good enough, but it may take a while." She turned back to Xiphias. "There's jump seats that fold down out of the back of that one. You'd be more comfortable."

"Feel better outside, lass! Know how to get this plagucy door open?"

She laid her hand on his. "You stay in here or we'll get all naked and sweaty, and weobught to do that someplace nicer. Where's the driver?"

"Hunting!" Xiphias jerked down a seat, sat, and contrived to sheath his saber. "Hunting your cat with Silk's bird!"

"That's right, I dropped Tick, and he cost five cards."

Silk said, "When you got free-and I'll be grateful to Tartaros forever-you should have come to me."

Hyacinth shook her head.

"I understand. You didn't know where I was, either."

"No, you don't. I did. I knew exactly where you were. At the Juzgado or the Caldé's Palace. Everybody I asked wanted to talk about you, and everybody said one place or the other. But I looked, well, like every other slut in the Orilla, only worse, and I stank. I couldn't wash, or only a little. I tried, but when the water's dirtier than your face it doesn't help much. I wanted perfume and powder, and a comb to hold my hair, except I had to wash it first and dry it. I tried to go back to Blood's. Do you know about Blood?"

"About your trying to go back there? No."

"And clean clothes, clean underwear and a bunch of other things. You know what I'd look like without all this stuff?"

"Yes," Silk declared. "Like Kypris herself."

"Thanks. Like a boy, only with tits down to my waist. You saw me naked."

Silk felt his face flush. "They weren't. Not nearly."

"That's the trouble with big ones," Hyacinth explained to Xiphias. "The bigger they are the lower they go, unless you've got something to hold them up. Will that make it hard for me to sword-fight?"

"Will if they bounce, lass! But there's ways! Think I don't know 'em, long as I've been at it?"

"I put myself in your hands, Master Xiphias." She gave him a sly, sidelong smile, then brushed Silk's cheek with a kiss. "I was going to see about lessons that time I came to meet you, I mean before I found out it was so bad here, before we left Blood's. When we got out of bed I said wouldn't I be a good sword-fighter, and you said you'd back a dell with shorter legs that wasn't so fond of her looks, or something like that. So I thought I'd learn and surprise you."

He nodded, speechless.

"I'm a good dancer, I really am, and I never had lessons, so I think with lessons I could learn. Only it's a long way to Blood's and Auk took my money, and I looked like a slut, so I turned around and went to Orchid's. She loaned me gelt and let me wash and, you know, fix up. But she says Blood's for ice. This was only about, oh, before I went to the market. Did you know? That Blood was dead? Since Phaesday, she says."

"Yes. I killed him." Hyacinth's eyes widened, and Silk felt pride, coupled with a deep shame in it. "I killed him with a sword Master Xiphias had loaned me, and destroyed the sword in the process. I'd rather not discuss the details. I understand why you wanted to return, or at least I believe-"

"All my things are out there! My clothes, my jewelry, everything I've got!"

"Also, you thought your driver would have gone back there, I'm certain. I also understand why you went to Orchid's; you anticipated help from her, and you received it. I went there myself for the same reason a few days ago, and I was helped as well-I found Chenille there. Which brings me to a point I ought to have raised sooner. What was the soldier's name? The one who watched you for Auk?"

"Hammerstone." Two tiny lines had appeared on Hyacinth's forehead. "It was Corporal Hammerstone, and he had stripes on his arm like a happy corporal, but painted on. All of a sudden you're worried, I can see it. What is it?"