Epiphany of the Long Sun (93 page)

"When I began, when Echidna called me her sword, I thought all we had to do was fight. I'm learning that fighting is the smallest part of it, and in some ways the easiest."

Smiling, Siyuf nodded.

"Quite often it's the other things that count most. You have to get supplies to the people who need them, and not just ammunition but food and bedding, and warm clothes. At any rate, part of our agreement was an acknowledgement by all of us that the Charter demands an Ayuntamiento."

Potto made her a seated bow.

"But not
just
an Ayuntamiento, an elected one with a full compliment of councillors. We can't hold elections because of the state things are in, so we've promised them after a year of peace. Meanwhile the present members will continue to serve, with Councillor Potto as Presiding Officer. New councillors are to be appointed as necessary by the Caldé, or in his absence by a de facto board of those who have his confidence. It consists of the current Ayuntamiento, including Councillor Newt now, with Generalissimo Oosik, His Cognizance, and me. I wanted a woman councillor-"

"You will not have her," Siyuf put in. "They are all men."

"So we appointed Kingcup. She's not here because she's out explaining all this to our people. I felt we needed-" Maytera Mint groped for words. "An ordinary woman with extraordinary gifts. Kingcup's from a poor family, but she built a successful livery stable from scratch, so she's used to managing. Besides, she's the bravest woman in Viron."

Oosik muttered, "No one but you would say that, General."

She brushed the compliment aside. "So Kingcup for the people and Newt for the Juzgado."

"With such as these you prepare to fight me," Siyuf mused, "but I am not there. This is sad. I beat you, I think. Does my General Rimah beat you also? I do not know. She is a good officer. You ask of love for my horde. Why is this?"

"Because we hope that you will want to preserve it," Oosik told her, "as I want to preserve the Guard. There has been some skirmishing already. If we fight in earnest, your horde will be destroyed and my Guard decimated." Maytera Mint added, "To say nothing of what will happen to our city," and Oosik nodded.

"We wish victory. None but cowards count life more high." Maytera Mint started to speak, but Oosik silenced her with a gesture. "I am confident General Rimah is an able officer. You're not the sort to tolerate anything less. There is a gulf, however, between an able officer and an exceptional leader. The ranks sense it at once, and the public almost as quickly. I will not ask if you care about your troops. We're too close for that, you and I, so close I can hear my own voice in everything you've said. You long for victory, and you know, as I do, that it would be more probable if you were in command of your troops. Wouldn't you agree that for any other-"

Potto interrupted. "A subject of the Rani's."

"That for another citizen of your city," Oosik continued, "to prevent you from resuming your place would be treason? It is not an idle question."

"You think someone does this? I wish to know."

"Let me." Maytera Mint's small, not uncomely face shone with energy and resolve. "You want to fight me, Siyuf, because of what you've heard about me. I don't want to fight you, and in fact it's the last thing I want. I want peace. I want to end this foolish fighting and let everybody in our city and yours go back to their proper lives. But it's been clear ever since your spies tried to arrest us that as long as you have our Caldé there can be no peace. I'm going to assume you understand that, because if you don't there's no use talking."

"I am captive also." Siyuf touched her chest.

"Exactly! You've saved me a lot of time. We've got you, but in a very important way we don't want you, since your city will fight to get you back. Clearly the sensible thing is to exchange you for our Caldé. Peace would be possible then, but if we still couldn't make peace, you and I would be fighting each other, which is what you want. Now if-"

Siyuf made a quick motion, the gesture of one accustomed to instant obedience. "I have pledged to your Sand that I will free Incus the holy man and Marble. She is your friend?"

"Yes, she is." Maytera Mint glanced at Oosik, but he did not speak. "You cheated Sergeant Sand and Corporal Hammerstone. You know you did. You knew those prisoners were already on your airship when you promised to let them go."

"Over this we fight a duel, perhaps, if I am free. It may still be so. I did not know, Mint. If you have deal with Saba and her airship as I, you know that what is to be at shadeup may not be until midday, or not this day or the next. Let me go. I get them again and free them. Caldé Silk also."

For a second or two Maytera Mint studied her with pursed lips. "All right, I'll accept that. I apologize."

Potto tittered.

"But your airship doesn't seem to have reached Trivigaunte yet. Does that bother you?"

Siyuf shook her head. "Tonight, or I think the morning."

Oosik rumbled, "Suppose I were to say tomorrow afternoon, Generalissimo. Your knowledge, I contend, is not so deep as you pretend. Tomorrow afternoon!"

Siyuf shrugged. "If you say. Perhaps."

"In that case I proffer a further supposition. Not before shadelow next Phaesday. What would you say to that?"

"That you are a fool. The airship could be here once more in such a time."

"Just so." Oosik wound his white-tipped mustache about his finger. "We have contacted Trivigaunte by glass, Generalissimo. We have spoken to your Minister of War. We have explained how things stand here, and offered to exchange you for Caldé Silk."

"They won't," Newt declared. "Won't do it or even talk about it, by Scylla! We invite your comments."

"I offer what is better. Let me speak with her."

Potto roared, slapping his thigh. "This is too, too rich! My dear young General, you're not even smiling. How do you do it?" He turned back to Siyuf, speaking across the empty chair. "You already have, and it didn't help a bit."

"I have not. Abanja for me, perhaps."

Maytera Mint said, "We think it's politics. By we I mean Generalissimo Oosik and I. The internal politics of your city. We'd like confirmation of that, and some suggestions about what to do about it."

"If this you say is true…" Siyuf shrugged again.

Oosik muttered, "Every city has its feuds, Generalissimo."

"Mine also. Our War Minister, you do not say her name. This is Ljam? A scar here?" Siyuf touched her upper lip.

Newt and Maytera Mint nodded.

"This is not possible. My city have politics, as your generalissimo say. Feuds, plottings, hatreds. Of these very many. But Ljam is with me most near. If I fail here she fail also. You understand? Lose her ministry, perhaps her head."

Oosik regarded Siyuf through slitted eyes. "You're saying it is impossible for her to betray you, Generalissimo?"

"She cannot unless she is betray herself!"

Potto sang, "I told you! I told you!"

"He thinks your airship's wrecked, or it's gone off course somehow." Maytera Mint looked somber. "Naturally they won't say so, and Generalissimo Oosik and I thought it was more likely they were playing some game, though Councillor Potto received a report implying it's gone. Now it seems he must be right. This is truly unfortunate."

"But we're going to let you go anyhow," Potto told Siyuf. "Isn't that nice of us?" He bounced from his chair and went to the door calling, "You can send them in!"

It was opened by a soldier; and Violet and a second Siyuf entered, Violet with her arm linked with the second Siyuf's. She stared at the first in open-mouthed amazement.

"You'll have to go now, my dear young strumpet," Potto told her. "We don't want you, though I'm sure many do. Have a seat, Generalissimo. I'll be with you in a half a moment."

"I am to sit beside this bio?" the second Siyuf inquired. "This I do not like. You say you send me to my horde, I think. When is it you do this?"

"You'll escape," Newt explained to the first Siyuf. "Or rather, she will."

"Too much warlockery for me." Hadale dropped into one of the cockpit's black-leather seats. "Too much in your city, and too much on our airship now that you're here. People at home say you're all warlocks, but I discounted it. I should have tripled everything. You're a warlock, Caldé, and I'd call you the chief warlock if I hadn't met the old man who sat between our generalissimo and General Saba."

"She refers to His Cognizance," Silk told Hyacinth; awed and delighted, he tried to stare at everything at once. "Like a conservatory…"

Oreb croaked, "Bad thing" as Tick squirmed in Hyacinth's grasp. "Add word, dew!"

"Three engines gone." Hadad peered morosely through the nearest rectangle of glass at the parting clouds and the rocky sand scape that they revealed. "What do you want? Surrender? I'll shoot you first and take my chances with the desert."

"Then we don't want it," Hyacinth declared.

"We don't in any case," Silk said, "and I'm no warlock; the truth is that I'm hardly an augur any more-I certainly don't feel like one."

"General Saba told me the other day that you read about our advance in sheepguts. Do you deny it?"

"No, though it isn't true. Denying it would waste time, so you may believe it if you like. There are five engines still in operation. Is that enough to keep us in the air?"

The navigator looked up from her charts, then returned to them; Hadale pointed to the ceiling. "None are needed to keep us up, the gas does it. Are we going to lose all our engines?"

Silk considered. "I can't promise that. I hope so."

"You hope so."

"No shoot," Oreb advised Hadale nervously. "Good man."

"It was what I intended." For a moment, Silk allowed his eyes to feast on Hyacinth's loveliness. "The risk that gave me most concern was that Hyacinth might be killed as a result of what I was doing; I hoped it wouldn't happen, and I'm very glad it won't. I betrayed my god for her-I was horribly afraid that it would recoil on me, as such things do."

She brought his hand to the soft warmth of her thigh. "You betrayed the Outsider for me? I'd never ask you to do that."

Hadale turned to the pilot, "We've still got five?"

The pilot nodded. "Can't make much headway against this wind with five, though, sir."

Hyacinth asked, "Aren't we going south anyway? Isn't the wind blowing us south to Trivigaunte? Somebody said something like that."

"It's blowing us south," Hadale told her bitterly, "but not to Trivigaunte. We turned east for about an hour before the first one quit."

"Veering north-northwest, sir," the pilot reported.

Having freed himself from Hyacinth's grasp, Tick stood on his hind legs to pat Hadale's knee. "Rust Milk, laddie. Milk bill take hit hall tight."

"He says you can trust my husband," Hyacinth interpreted. "He's right, too, and I don't think you ought to pay too much attention to what my husband says about betraying a god. He-oh, I don't know how to explain! He's forever blaming himself for the wrong things. He's sorry for holding me too tight when I wish he'd hold me tighter. See?"

"Your catachrest's an oracle of our goddess, so I have to trust him implicitly. Is that it?"

"I didn't say that." Hyacinth sat down. "I guess I would have, though, if I thought you'd believe it. Maybe it's right, and she isn't telling us."

"Hat's shoe!" Tick exclaimed.

Silk smiled. "I take it that General Saba's no longer in charge. Where is she?"

"In her bunk, with three troopers to watch her. I won't ask how you drove her mad. I'm sure you wouldn't tell me."

"I didn't." He leaned over the crescent-shaped instrument panel for a better view of the desert below. "I arranged for her to be possessed, that's all. You saw the same thing at our dinner. Are you in charge now? There's no one over you?"

"The War Minister. In a moment I'm going to have to report this situation to her."

"No talk," Oreb advised.

"By 'this situation' you mean-"

"Three engines out. I've told her about Saba turning east already. I had to. I was hoping you'd agree to repair the engines before I had to report them, too. That's why I let you come up here. Will you?"

"I can't." Silk took the seat next to Hyacinth's. "Nor would I if I could. We'd be back where we began, with Auk's people trying to seize control, and everyone-all of us, I mean-dying. I said I betrayed the Outsider because that was how I felt-"

"Wind's due west now, sir," the pilot reported.

"Course?"

"East by south, sir. We might try dropping down."

"Do it." Hadale considered. "A hundred and fifty cubits." She turned back to Silk. "You were afraid we'd crash. We may. It's dangerous to fly that low in weather as windy as this. If a downdraft catches us, we could be finished. But the wind won't be as strong down there."

Hyacinth gasped, and Silk said, "I can feel the airship descend. I rode in a moving room once that felt like this."

"You want to go east. That was how you had General Saba steering us."

He nodded, and smiled again. "To Mainframe. Auk wants to carry out the Plan of Pas, and the Outsider wants it, too, which is why I felt I was betraying him when I did what I did to your engines. But letting Auk try to take your airship wouldn't have achieved anything, and this was the only way I could think of to prevent him."

"So now that we don't have enough engines to fight the wind, you're working your magic on that."

Silk shook his head. "I can't. All that I can do is pray, which isn't magic at all, but begging. I've been doing it, and perhaps I've been heard."

He drew a deep breath. "You want your engines back in operation, Major. You want to preserve this airship, and to deliver me to your superiors in Trivigaunte; the rest of your prisoners don't matter greatly, as you must know. I do."

Slowly, Hadale nodded.

"We can do all that, if only you'll cooperate. Take us to Mainframe, as Pas commands and the Outsider wishes. Auk and his people can leave the whorl and thus begin carrying out the Plan. Hyacinth and I will return-"

"Shut up!" Hadale cocked her head, listening.