Exodus from the Long Sun

Chapter 1 — Back from Death

An 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 Calde. 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 Calde 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, Calde’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.”

“Yet, ah—”

“Through the doorway, too.” They had nearly reached the steps of Blood’s portico. “That door would have been defended more strongly than any other point, and I can look right into the sellaria. There’s not a one. Where are they?”

“I would, er, hazard that the victorious troops disposed of them afterward.”

She shook her head vigorously. “Troopers who’ve won are never anxious to get the bodies of those they’ve killed out of sight, Your Eminence. Never! I’ve seen that much more often than I like. They’re proud, and it’s good for their morale. Yesterday Major Skin was begging, literally begging me, not to have bodies that had lain in the streets for days carted off. If the bodies are gone, it’s because their friends came back for them. It would be interesting to see if there are graves behind the house. That’s where they’d be, I imagine. By the wall, as far as possible from the road. Do you know if there are gardens in back?”

“I have never, um, had the pleasure.” Remora started up the steps. “Nor has His Cognizance, I think. He, um, confided it to me a year or two past. We had been — um — dissecting? Decrying this, er, Blood’s influence. Was never a, um, visitor within these — ah — despoiled walls.”

“Neither have. I, Your Eminence.” Maytera Mint hiked up her skirt and started up the steps.

“To be sure. To be sure, General. I regret it. Regret it now. I will not dissemble, nor, um, ever. Seldom. To have seen this in its days of prosperity would — prosperity and peace, eh? The contrast ’twixt memory and the, um, less happy present. Do you follow me? Whereas one can now but picture… See that picture? Fine. Very fine indeed, eh? Torn. Might be refurbished yet, in skillful hands. Like the tali, eh?”

“I suppose.” She had glanced at the ruined furniture, and was studying the shadowy doorways of further rooms. “He kept women here, didn’t he? This bad man Blood who owned the house. Women — women who…”

“Enough, enough! Do not, um, perturb yourself, Maytera. General. A few such. An, er, select contingent. So I was given to understand upon the occasion of our — um — my tete-a-tete, eh? With old Quetzal. Do I, um, scandalize you? With His Cognizance. I am, ah, betimes inclined to be overfree. To presume upon an old friendship. A failing, I concede.” Remora advanced to study the damaged Murtagon.

“Was this where it happened?”

“Where the women — ah?” He glanced back at her with a half smile. “No indeed.”

“Where Calde Silk killed this man Blood, and Sergeant Sand killed Councillor Potto.”

“We’ve finer ones at the Palace, hey? Still it’s nice and might be — ah — emended. In an, um, one of the anterooms as I understand it, General. May I ask why you wish to know. An um, monument of some kind, possibly? A dedicational tablet of, er, bronze?”

“Because we know that the man who owned this house died in it, Your Eminence,” Maytera Mint explained. “This Blood, with Councillor Potto. If their bodies aren’t here, they’ve been removed by someone, and I’d think that if Generalissimo Oosik or even General Saba had done it I’d have heard. A councillor’s body? Everyone would be arguing about what should be done with it, and I would certainly have heard.”

Her tone grew crisp. “Now if you’ll oblige me.”

Remora, who was not used to being asked for favors in that peremptory fashion, looked around sharply.

“There seems to be no one here, though my informants… Never mind. Do you agree?”

“There is certainly no one in this room at present except — ah — ourselves. With regard to the, er, remainder of the, um, building, I — hum — further investigation.”

“I’ve been listening carefully and heard nothing. The bodies may be in plain view or hidden by furniture or whatnot.” Rather tardily Maytera Mint added, “Your Eminence. I’ll search the rooms on this side. I’d like you to search the other. We needn’t bother with the rest of the house, I think.”

“If there are no, er, bodies, General,” Remora smoothed the truant lock into place, “shall we return to the city — ah — forthwith? Might be wise, eh? We have no way of knowing what has transpired in our absence, hey?”

She nodded. “Agreed. We’ll know then that they’ve been here and may return later. I’ll leave one of Bison’s officers to watch, with a few troopers. If we do find a body, either one, it should be safe to assume that the Ayuntamiento’s troops have never come back at all. We can go back to the city at once and forget about this house.”

“Wisely, er, spoken.” Remora was already hurrying toward the first of his assigned roorns. “I shall inform you promptly should I discover an — ah — the mortal remains.”

The anteroom Maytera Mint entered had, it appeared, been the owner’s study. A massive mahogany desk, lavishly carved, stood against one wall, and there were shelves of books, mostly (she scanned the titles on a shelf at the level of her eyes) erotic if not pornographic: Three Maids and Their Mistress, The Astonishing Exploits of a Virile Young Man and His Donkey, His Resistance Overcome…

She turned away. What had it been like to be here under such a master? She tried to picture the lives of the women who had endured it, and failed. They had been bad women, as the whorl judged, but that only meant that they had commanded defenses greatly inferior to her own.

Strange, how she had come to think in military metaphors during the past few days.

The desk drawers seemed apt to tell her a good deal about the owner, who counted for nothing now, and nothing about the Ayuntamiento and those who served it. She opened a drawer at random anyway, glanced at the papers it had held — all of them concerned in some fashion with money — shut it, and made sure no corpse lay concealed in the leg hole.

“General!”

Turning so quickly that the long, black skirt of her habit billowed about her, she hurried out of the study and across the sellaria. “What is it, Your Eminence?”

He met her at the doorway, visibly struggling to conceal his pleasure. “I have the — ah — it is my unhappy duty—”

“You’ve found a body. Whose?”

“The, um, late councillor’s, I believe. If, perhaps, you would not care—”

“To see it? I must! Your Eminence, I’ve seen hundreds of bodies since this began. Thousands.” There had been a time when she had found it nearly impossible to cut the throat of a goat; as she pushed past Remora, she reflected that she would find that difficult still, and find it literally impossible to cut a man’s, even an enemy’s. Yet she had made plans and given orders that had clogged entire streets with corpses.

“I took the, um, responsibility? The — ah — presumption of, er, tidying him up. On his back now, eh? Folded the arms, prior to calling you.”

Potto lay almost at her feet, his arms crossed in such a way as to hide the wound Sand’s slug had made just below his sternum. The graying hair that he had worn long trailed over Blood’s lush carpet, and Maytera Mint found herself muttering, “He looks surprised.”

“Doubtless he — ah — was.” Remora cleared his throat. “Caught unawares, hey? Shot by one of his own. All in a, um, trice. So my prothonotary tells me. He — ah — Incus is his name, General. Patera Incus. He has, um, fallen prey in some — ah — wise to the notion that he’s old Quetzal—”

She knelt beside the corpse, traced the sign of addition, and opened its card case.

“Mad, I fear. Deranged. Bit of rest, eh? He’ll come to himself soon enough. General — ah — ?”

In the first place,” Maytera Mint explained, “there may be papers of value in here. In the second, there’s money, ten cards or so, and we need that very badly.”

“I, ah, see.”

Cards and papers vanished into her wide sleeve. “Where’s the blood? Did you clean up his blood before you called to me, Your Eminence?”

“Through the heart, eh?” Remora’s nasal tones sounded slightly strangled. “Not much bleeding then, eh? So I am — ah — apprised.”

Gently at first, then with increased vigor, Maytera Mint rubbed the councillor’s cheek. “This’s a chem!”

“I — um—”

She looked up at Remora. “You knew.”

“I — ah — suspected.”

“You rolled him over, you said, Your Eminence. You folded his arms. You must have known.”

“Then? Oh, yes, I — ah — confirmed, eh? I had, um, and — ah — Quetzal, eh? Old Quetzal. Wouldn’t tell. Asked him once. More, actually. He, ah, er, wouldn’t. Confides in me, eh? Nearly everything. Very, ah, delicate points. Sensitive matters, finances. Everything. But he — ah — wouldn’t.”

Suddenly Remora was on his knees beside her. “General — ah — General. Alone here, hey? No one but, er, ourselves. May I call you Maytera?”

She ignored it. “There’ll be the question of burial. A dozen questions, really. You must have realized I’d find out.”

“I — ah — did. Indeed. Not so swiftly, however. You are most — or — perspicacious.”

“Then why didn’t you say so? Why all that nonsense about blood?”

“Because I — Incus. Patera Incus. And old Quetzal, eh? My position is, er, delicate. Imperiled. Maytera, hear me, I — ah — beg you. Yes, beg. Implore.”

She nodded. “I’m listening. What is it?”

“Incus, my prothonotary. Was. You know him?”

She shook her head. “Just tell me.”

“He’s been appointed Prolocutor. By, um, Scylla. He says it, I mean. Credits it himself, eh? Convinced. Spoke to him yesterday, but he — you…”

“Me?” For a second, Maytera Mint felt she was missing some vital clue. It dawned upon her, and she rocked backward to sit cross-legged on the carpet, her head in her hands.

“Maytera? Er, General?”

She looked up at Remora. “I was appointed by Echidna, in front of thousands of people. Is that it, Your Eminence?”

Remora’s mouth opened and shut silently.

“So you know it happened. All those witnesses. And I’ve been successful, as you say. The victorious commander, chosen for us by the gods. Even Bison and the captain talk like that, and then there’s Patera Silk.”

Remora nodded miserably.

“Everyone says he’s been appointed by Great Pas to be our calde, even Maytera Marble. He’s been successful, too, so it looks like the gods have decided to choose leaders for us, and if this Patera Incus is going to be the new Prolocutor, he’ll want to pick his own coadjutor.”

“Nor — ah — um — worse. If he — ah — old Quetzal, you know. Resourceful. Cunning. Seen it myself, hundreds of times, eh? Ayuntamiento had the force, but he’d get ’round them. Get ’round Lemur and Loris, all of them. Old man, hey? Foolish old man. What they think. His Cognizance. Quetzal. But sly, Mayt — General. Very sly. Deep.”

She made a small sound of encouragement.

“Compromise. I — ah — sense it. I am not, um, clever, General. Try to be, indeed. Try. Some have said — well, it pares no parsnips. But not like old Quetzal. Experienced, though. My — ah — self. Conferences, negotiations. And I wind it. Wind it already. Be coadjutor, Incus. Obvious, eh? First thing anybody would, er, formulate. Old Quetzal would — ah — visualize? Comprehend the whole before Incus finished. Old man. Die soon, hey? A year, two years, to — ah — fit yourself into the position, Patera. I’ll be gone. I can, um, hear him as I — we — speak. So I didn’t dare, eh? Tell you. You see my predicament? The — ah — Loris. Galago. All the rest. Chems, every one of them. I suspected it for years. Meeting with this one, that one, entire days, sometimes. Saw them up close. Quetzal knows, he must.”

“But His Cognizance wouldn’t talk about it?”

“No. Ah — no. Too sensitive. Even for me, eh? He, Incus. I told you?”

“You told me he says Scylla’s made him Prolocutor.”

“He, um, offered me…”

One bony hand pushed back the straying lock, and Maytera Mint saw how violently that hand shook. “He offered you…?”

“A — ah — appointment. A position. He was,” Remora swallowed, “not abusive. It was not, I judge, his intent to be — ah — disparage. He said that I — I refused, to be sure. His prothonotary. His, ah, I — I — I…”

Maytera Mint nodded. “I see.”

“We have been, er, companions, Maytera. Coworkers — ah — partners in peace, hey? Son and daughter of the Chapter. We have conferred, and the same — um — consecrated vision has inspired us both. I well — ah — recollect our first meeting. You averred with — um — coruscant eyes that peace was your, er, sole desire once you had — ah, um — executed the will of the gods. I affirmed? Avowed that it was mine likewise. In concert we have conferred with Brigadier Erne and the calde. You are a hero, um, heroine to the — ah — populace. There is talk of a statue, hey? A word from you, your support…”

“Be quiet,” she told him. “I haven’t had a moment to get used to the idea that the Ayuntamiento’s made up of chems, and now this.”

“If I, ah—”

“Be quiet, I said!” She drew a deep breath, running the fingers of both hands through her short brown hair. “To begin with, no, you may not call me Maytera. Not in private, and not any other time. If His Cognizance will release me, I mean to return to secular life. I,” another breath, “may marry. We’ll see. As for you, if this Patera Incus has in fact been named Prolocutor by Scylla, then he is Prolocutor, regardless of any arrangement that he and Patera Quetzal may make. I can readily imagine a younger man of great sanctity deferring to a much older one. Viewed in a certain light, it would be an act of noble self-renunciation. But it wouldn’t alter the fact. He would be our Prolocutor, though he wasn’t called so. Since he proposed that you become his prothonotary, plainly you’re not to be coadjutor any longer. No doubt Patera Quetzal is, in solemn truth, coadjutor. That being so, I’ll call you Patera.”

“My dear young woman!”

Her look silenced him. “I’m not your dear young woman, or anyone’s. I’m thirty-six, and I assure you that for a woman it’s no longer young. Call me General, or I’ll make your life a great deal less pleasant than it has been.”

A door at the far end of the room opened, and someone who was neither Mint nor Remora applauded. “Brava, my dear young general! Simply marvelous! You ought to be on the stage.”

He waddled over to them, a short, obese man with bright blue eyes, a cheerful round face, and hair so light as to be nearly blond. “But as for accepting an Ayuntamiento of chems, you need not trouble. I’m no chem, though I confess that the object before you is something of the kind.”

Remora gasped, having recognized him.

“This augur and I are old — I really can’t say friends. Acquaintances. You, I feel sure, are the rebels’ famous General Mint.” The stranger giggled. “Presumably you aim at supreme power, which would make you the Govern-Mint. I like that! I’m Councillor Potto. Curtain. Did you wish to speak to me?”

For a fleeting moment in which his heart nearly stopped, it seemed to Silk that he had seen Hyacinth among the cheering pedestrians. Before he could shout to his bearers, the woman turned her head and the illusion ended. He had been ready, as he realized as he settled back among the cushions, to spring out of the litter.

I need my glasses, he thought. My old ones, which I can’t possibly get back, or some new ones.

Oreb fluttered on his shoulder. “Good Silk!”

“Crazed Silk,” he told his bird. “Mad and foolish Silk. I mistook another woman for her.”

“No see.”

“My own thought exactly. Several times I’ve dreamed my mother was alive. Have I told you about that?”

Oreb whistled.

“For a minute or two after I woke up, I believed it, and I was so happy. This was like that.” Leaning from the right side of the litter, he addressed the head bearer. “You needn’t go so fast. You’ll wear yourselves out.”

The man grinned and bobbed his head.

Silk settled back again. Their speed was increasing. No doubt the bearers felt it a question of honor; when one carried the calde, one ran. Otherwise ordinary people who had never had the privilege of carrying the calde’s litter might think him on an errand of no importance. Which would never do; if his errand were of no importance, neither were his bearers.

“I’ve got twenty Guardsmen looking for her,” he told Oreb. “That’s not enough, since they didn’t find her, but it’s all we could spare with the Fourth Brigade holding out on the north side, and the Ayuntamiento in the tunnels.”

Mention of the tunnels made Oreb croak unhappily.

At what amounted to a dead run, the litter swayed, yawed, and swerved off Sun Street onto Lamp. Leaning out Silk said, “Music Street — I thought I made it clear. A block east.”

The head bearer’s head bobbed as before.

“If twenty Guardsmen can’t find her, Oreb, I certainly can’t; and last night I didn’t. We didn’t, I ought to say. So we need help, and I cant hink of three places — no, four — where we may get it. Today we’re going to try them all Most of the fires are out, and Maytera Mint and Oosik can actually fight better without me in the way; so although the physician says I should be in bed, and I’m not supposed to have a minute to myself, I intend to take as many hours as necessary.”

Yawing as before, the litter turned onto a still narrower street that Silk did not recognize.

“It’s up to the gods, I’m afraid. I don’t trust them — not even the Outsider, who seems to trust me — but they may smile on us yet.”

“Find girl?”

He had lost his desire to talk, but the intensity of his emotions drove the words forth. “What did he want with her!” As he spoke, the litter sped past a shop with a zither and a dusty bassoon in its window.

But Calde Silk of Viron did not see them.

“This is the kitchen?” Maytera Mint looked around her in surprise. It was the largest that she had ever seen.

“There are, ah, alternatives,” Remora ventured. “Still entire, eh? Equally, hum, unsigned by Sabered Sphigx.”

“I find it cozy,” Potto declared. “For one thing, there’s food, though your troops, my dear young General, made off with a lot. I like food, even if I can’t eat it. For another, I’m a good host, eager for the comfort of my guests, and it’s easy to heat. Behold this noble stove and laden woodbox. I’m happily immune to drafts, but you aren’t. I’m determined to make you comfortable. Those other rooms offer the chilly attractions of a society beauty. This will provide warmth and tea, even soup.” He giggled. “All the solid virtues of an old nurse. Besides, there are a great many sharp knives, and I’m always encouraged by the presence of sharp knives.”

“You can’t be here alone,” Maytera Mint said.

Potto grinned. “Do you propose to attack me if I am?”

“Certainly not.”

“You have an azoth, the famous one given you by Silk. I won’t search you for it now.”

“I left it with Colonel Bison. If I had come armed after calling for a truce, you’d be entitled to kill me.”

“I am anyhow,” Potto told her. He picked up a stick of firewood and snapped it between his hands. “The rules of war protect armies and their auxiliaries. Yours is a rebellion, not a war, and rebels get no such protection. Patera there knows that’s the truth. Look at his face.”

“I — ah — assert the privilege of my cloth.”

“You can. You haven’t fought, so you’re entitled to it. The General has and isn’t. It’s all very simple.”

When neither replied, Potto added, “Speaking of cloth, I forgot to say that the rules apply only to soldiers and those auxiliaries who wear their city’s uniform, as General Saba does. You, my dear General, don’t. The upshot is that though I can’t offer violence to your armies as long as the truce holds, I’m entitled to break both your leggies if I want to, and even to wring your necky. Sit down, there’s a cozy little table right over there. I’ll build a fire and put the kettle on.”

They sat, Remora tucking the rich overrobe he wore around his legs, Maytera Mint as she might have in the cenoby, her delicate hands folded in her lap, and her head bowed.

Potto filled one of the stove’s fireboxes and stroked a stick of kinding. It burst into flame, not merely at one end like a torch, but along its entire length. He tossed it into the firebox and shoved the firebox back in place with an angry grinding of iron.

“He, um, intrigues to separate us,” Remora whispered. “A — ah — hallowed? Elementary stratagem, General. I shall, um, cleave to you, eh? If you in, ah, analogous fashion—”

“Maytera. Call me Maytera, please, Your Eminence, when we’re alone.”

“Indeed. Indeed! O, ah, soror neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum. O passi graviora, dabit Pas his guoque finem.”

Potto was filling a teakettle. Without turning his head, he said, “I have sharp ears. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Maytera Mint looked up. “Then I’m spared the necessity of raising my voice. Are you really Councillor Potto? We came to negotiate with the Ayuntamiento, not with anyone we chanced to meet. If you are, whose body was that?”

“Yes.” Potto put the kettle on the stove. “Mine. Have you more questions?”

“Certainly. Are you willing to stop all this bloodshed?”

“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” He pulled out a stout stool and sat down so heavily the floor shook.

“Seeing good and brave troopers die? Watching someone who was eager to obey me a few seconds ago writhing and bleeding in the street? It does!”

“Well, it doesn’t me, and I don’t understand why it should you. I never have. Call it a gift. There are people who can listen to music all evening, then go home and write everything down, and others who can run faster and farther than a horse. Did you know that? Mine’s a less amazing gift, though it’s brought me success. I don’t feel pain I don’t feel. Is that what you call a tautology? It’s what life has taught me. I give it to you for nothing.”

Remora nodded, his long face longer than ever. “I, er, vouchsafe it might be included under that — ah — rubric.”

“Councillor.”

“Why — ah — indeed. I had no, um, intention—”

“Thanks. I’m the only member who forced his way in, or had to. Did you know that, either of you?”

Maytera Mint shook her head.

“We’re all related, as you can see from our names. Lemur and Loris were brothers. Lemur’s dead. You don’t have to look surprised, I know you know. He packed the Ayuntamiento with relatives, back before Patera here was born. I came to him. I approached him forthrightly and fairly. He’d brought in Galago, a second cousin by courtesy. I was much closer, and I said so. He said he’d take it under advisement. A week later — there’d been this and that, you know, nothing serious — he tried to have me killed. I saw to it that the man’s flesh was served to us at dinner, and dessert was his head in lemon sherbet. Lemur jerked away from it, and I scooped up a little sherbet with my fingers and ate it. I took the oath next day. Councillor Potto. My cousins soon discovered that I was a useful friend, not just an unpleasant relative.”

Maytera Mint nodded. “You’re proud of being useful, as everyone who is, is entided to be. Now you have a chance to be of great service to our whole city.”

“We have, ah, ventured forth in good faith,” Remora put in. “The general has come unarmed. My — ah — vocation prohibits weapons. Such, at least, is my own opinion, though the — our calde’s may differ. I ask you, Council or, whether you, er, similarly. Are we intermediaries? Or, um, captives?”

“You want to go before your tea’s ready?” Potto waved in the direction of the door. “Make the experiment, Patera.”

“My duty, um, confines me.”

“Then you’re a prisoner, but not mine. Dear young General Mint, wouldn’t you like to know how I manage to be alive in the kitchen and dead in the drawing room?”

“There were two of you, clearly.” She had taken her big wooden prayer beads from her pocket; she ran them through her fingers, comforted by their familiar shapes.

“No, only one, and that one is neither here nor there. As we aged, Cousin Tarsier made us new bodies out of chems. Lemur got the first one, and the rest of us later as we came to need them, bodies we can work from our beds. I can’t enjoy food, but I eat. I’m feeding intravenously right now.”

“What became of the chems?” Maytera Mint managed to keep her voice steady. “Of their minds?”

“I thought you were going to ask me whether he made the others more than one.”

“No. Clearly he did, or someone did. But you got this body from another person. And — and changed it to look like you? You must have. Did he consent to any of that?”

“The logical question is whether there are two of all of us.” Potto struck the table with his fist. “You didn’t even ask how I got the wood to burn. How am I supposed to deal with someone who won’t stick to the point?”

Remora began, “I, ah—” But Potto was not through. “By sticking with the point myself. That’s it! I may soon stick with one so well that it sticks out your back.” He turned to Remora. “Yes, Patera. You were about to say…?”

“I was, um, speculating, Councillor, upon how you ignited that wood so, er, effortlessly. I, um, hope that you will, um, consent to ah — illuminate that matter for us.”

“I am not going to sit here teaching a butcher chemistry. Can’t either of you understand that once I’ve told you what I want, I don’t want it? What are you doing here anyway? Dear General Mint’s the leader, after Silk. Why are you here?”

“To, er, mediate. We, um, His Cognizance and, hum—”

“To bring peace,” Maytera Mint declared. “Calde Silk has offered to let all of you keep your seats under the Charter. Considering all that’s happened, I think it very generous.”

“For life?”

Remora touched her arm, and she found it easy to interpret the jesture. “Is there a provision for life tenure? If so, I imagine it might be invoked.” Remora shook his head; the motion was slight, but she saw it.

Potto smiled; it was so unexpected that she wondered for a moment whether she had unwittingly promised a return to power.

Seeing it, Remora positively beamed. “Better! Oh, indeed! Must be mends, eh? Friends can make peace, foes, er, unable.”

“You misunderstand my expression, Patera.”

“I, um, hail and approve it. Time — ah — sufficient for understanding, er, presently. Maybe I put forward a proposal, Councillor? General? My wish, a heartfelt suggestion. That we — ah — solemnly convene at the present moment, offering our prayer to the Nine. Our petition, if you will, that—”

“Shut up,” Potto snapped. “I’ve got the key, and you go on blathering. Calde Silk sent you, General. Is that right?”

“He would approve of my coming, certainly. For days we’ve been trying to reach you councillors on our glasses. I thought we might try this.”

When Potto did not reply, she added, “His Eminence was chosen as an intermediary by your Brigadier Erne and our calde. Soon after, as I understand it, His Cognizance offered his help as well. We were and are overjoyed. I would hope—”

“You can’t speak for him,” Potto told her. “You may think you can, or that Patera here can, but you can’t. I’ve known him a long time, and there’s not a more malicious and unpredictable person in the city. Not even me. You’re a general, General?”

She nodded. “Appointed by Divine Echidna in a theophany. My instructions,” she amended them mentally in the interests of peace, “were to tear down the Alambrera and see to it that Viron remained loyal to Scylla. If you’re asking my position in the command structure, Calde Silk is the head of our government, civil as well as military. Generalissimo Oosik is our supreme military commander. I am in charge of the armed populace, and General Skate commands the Calde’s Guard.”

Potto tittered. “Then you’ve a firm grasp of the military situation. I don’t. Lemur was our military man. Explain our circumstances to me, General, so we can start together.”

“You’re serious?”

He rocked with silent merriment. “Never more.”

“As you wish. After Ophidian Echidna’s theophany, we had about thirty thousand troopers. Not that there were that many witnesses, or half that many, but a great many who heard what had happened from others joined us. Some were Guardsmen, none, I think, above captain. You, the Ayuntamiento, called out the Army, giving you something like seven thousand soldiers, besides the twenty-four thousand troopers of your Civil Guard.”

“Go on,” Potto told her. “None of this is quite right, but it’s interesting.”

“My figures for the Guard come from Generalissimo Oosik, who was certainly in a position to know. Those for the Army, from Sergeant Sand, the leader of those brave soldiers who saw that true loyalty lay in siding with the calde.”

Potto was still grinning. “Excuse the interruption.”

“I was about to say that since then we’ve gained strength, and you’ve lost it. By shadelow, we had nearly reached our present total of about fifty thousand. I’m referring to my own troops here. That night, every brigade of your Civil Guard went over to the calde except the Fourth. The Fourth and the Third, which was the generalissimo’s, had been holding the Palatine. The Fourth, commanded by Brigadier Erne was driven from it next day, and into the northern suburbs.”

“Where it still is.”

“That’s correct. We had fires all over the city to fight, hundreds of them, and we’ve been busy trying to get ourselves organized. When the Alambrera surrendered, we got thousands of slug guns and hundreds of thousands of rounds of arnmunition. We had to see to it that they went to people of good character. Furthermore, there’s a feeling that the Fourth Brigade might come over to our side in another day or two. Calde Silk and Generalissimo Oosik think so, and so do I. I’m told that His Cognizance is of the same opinion.”

Remora cleared his throat. “It was, hmp!, Brigadier Erne who, um, entreated me to — ah — initiate? To set in motion these negotiations. I, er, thereafter — shortly thereafter — sought out the calde, whom, um, approved likewise. I can — am able and — ah — authorized. The brigadier’s viewpoint.”

“Not now,” Potto told him. “General, could you crush the Fourth Brigade? Suppose Silk ordered it.”

“Certainly, in two or three hours. Less if I had a few taluses and floaters, as well as my people. But we’d rather not, obviously, in view of the loss of—”

“Not to me!” Potto chortled. “It’s not obvious to me! Is the bloodshed really what’s bothering you?”

“I should think it would bother anyone.”

“Well, you’re right, but you’re wrong too. The bloodshed wouldn’t bother me, but why shouldn’t you take five thousand prime troopers if you can get them? We would. Are those the only reasons, General?”

“I’ll be frank. There’s another aspect. You, by which I mean the Ayuntamiento, are down in the tunnels with most of the Army and a few troopers.”

“Nearly a thousand.”

“Setting them aside, you must have about seven thousand soldiers down there.”

Potto’s grin widened.

“More? Very well, if you say so. Seven thousand was our estimate. In any case, if we got deeply involved in an attack on the Fourth, which shouldn’t be our primary objective anyway, you might make a sortie from the tunnels and strike us from behind. According to reports I’ve had, it takes at least four of my troopers to match a soldier, which means that your seven thousand that’s the figure we discussed — are equivalent to twenty-eight thousand of mine. We didn’t feel we could risk it. I should say that we don’t feel we can as yet.”

Potto nodded rather too enthusiastically. “Someplace in all that verbiage was a morsel that seemed intelligent, my dear General. You said our Guard, or what’s left, wasn’t what you really wanted to destroy. That it was us. Why don’t you come down after us?”

Remora looked deeply distressed. “Do you, er, Councillor… Is this — ah — productive?”

“I think so. You’ll see. Answer me if you can, General.”

“Because the tunnels are too defensible. I haven’t been in them, but they’ve been described to me. A dozen soldiers could hold a place like that against a hundred troopers. If we’ve got to, we’ll find a way, digging shafts and so on. But we’d rather not, which is why I’m here. Also there’s another consideration. You spoke of destroying the Fourth. Clearly, we don’t want to. Still less do we want to destroy the Army, which is of immense value to our city. We know that—”

“You are an amazing woman.” Potto pushed his stool back and crossed the big kitchen to the stove. “A woman who talks sense whenever it suits her but can’t hear a kettle boil.”

“Women generally talk sense, if men will listen to it.”

“Those who are generals generally do, anyway. You’re right about the Fourth, and right about the Army and not tackling the tunnels, though you really don’t understand the situation at all. I’m our head spy, did you know that? I was in charge of Lemur’s spies, and now I’ve got Loris’s.” Potto tittered. “Who are generally the same, General, and mine. Do you really think all the troopers in the city are yours or ours? You simply can’t be that simple!” He lifted the big copper teakettle off the stove; it was spurting steam.

Maytera Mint pursed her lips.

“There are, um, an — ah — minuscule? Likewise. Token, eh? An — ah — few hundred…”

“Two hundred, more or less,” she supplied. “Two hundred Trivigaunti pterotroopers commanded by General Saba, who also commands the airship. Two hundred’s a very small force, as His Eminence says, though with supporting fire from the airship even a small force might accomplish a great deal. General Saba has offered her help when we move against the Fourth, by the way.”

“How kind.” Potto had carried the steaming teakettle to their table.

“Not to you, Councillor. I realize that. But to us it is. It’s a gesture good will from the Rani to the new government of Viron, and as is greatly appreciated.”

“Your diplomacy flourishes.” He raised the teakettle.

“It does. It’s in its infancy, but it does.” Maytera Mint stood. “We need a teapot, and tea. Sugar, milk, and a lemon, if His Eminence takes lemon. I’ll look for them.”

“I was about to ask you if my face looks dusty.”

“I beg your pardon, Councillor?”

“Whether it’s dusty. Look carefully, will you? Maybe we should go to a window, where the light will be better.”

“I don’t see any dust.” She was struck, unexpectedly and unpleasantly by the lack of warmth in that face, which seemed so animated. Maytera Marble’s familiar metal mask held a whorl of humility and passion; this, for all its seeming plumpness and high color, was as cold as Echidna’s serpents.

“It’s been packed away for years, you see.” Leaning back at an impossible angle, Potto scratched the tip of his nose with the steaming spout of the teakettle. “I’m the youngest member of the Ayuntamiento, dear General. Did you know that?”

Maytera Mint shook her head.

“Just the same, they thought this seemed too young, and asked me to replace it.” He contrived to lean even farther backward. A trickle of boiling water escaped the spout. “You don’t know about the Rani’s horde, either. Do you?”

“What about it?”

“My face?” Potto jabbed the spout toward it. “It was in storage. I said that, why didn’t you listen? Now I can’t see as clearly as I did. I may have dust in my eyes.”

Before Maytera Mint could stop him, he raised the teakettle and tilted it. Seething water cascaded down onto his nose and eyes. Remora exclaimed, “Oh, you gods!” as Maytera Mint jumped back from the hissing spray.

“There. That ought to do it.” Straightening up, Potto regarded her through wide blue eyes again, blinking hard to clear them of boiling drops. “That’s much better. I can see everything. I hope you can, too, my dear young General. The Rani’s horde has already set out, and there’s sixty thousand foot and fifteen thousand cavalry. I haven’t the luxury of an airship to keep watch on Viron’s enemies, but I do the best I can. Seventy-five thousand battle-hardened troopers, with their support troops, a supply train of fifteen thousand camels, and a labor battalion of ten thousand men.” Potto turned to Remora. “Trivigaunte’s men are of your school, Patera. No weapons. Or anyway they’re supposed to be.”

Remora had regained his composure. “If this extensive and, ah, formidable force is — ah — marching? Marching, you said, eh? Then I take it that it can’t be marching here, or you — um — the Ayuntamiento, more formally. Terms of surrender, hey?”

Potto tittered.

Maytera Mint squared her shoulders. “I wouldn’t laugh, Councillor. His Eminence is entirely correct. If the Rani is sending us a force of that size, your cause is doomed.”

“It’s just as I feared,” Potto told her. He held up the teakettle. “Do you think it’s cooled too much?”

“To make tea?” She took an involuntary step backward. “I doubt it.”

“To wash eyes, so they can see. I think you’re right. Boiling water stays hot for a long time.”

“I came under a flag of truce!”

He reached for her, moving much faster than so fat a man should have been able to. She whirled and ran, feeling his fingertips brush her habit, reached the door a hand’s breadth ahead of him, and flung herself through. An arm hooked her like a lamb; another pinned her own arms to her sides. Her face was crushed against musty cloth.

Sounding near, Potto said, “Bring her back in here.”

Not so near, words failed Remora. “You cannot — I mean to say simply cannot — woman’s a sibyl! You, you—”

“Oh, be quiet,” Potto told him. “Bend her over backwards, Spider. Make her look up at this.”

Abruptly there was light and air. The man who had caught her was as tall as Remora and as wide as Potto; he held her by her hair and dropped to one knee, pulling her across the other.

“My son.” Looking up at his heavy, unshaven chin, she found it horribly hard to keep from sounding frightened. “Do you realize what you’re doing?”

The man, presumably Spider, glanced to one side, presumably at Potto. “How’s this, Councillor?”

She rolled her eyes without finding him, and the thick fingers would not let her turn her head.

His voice came from a distance. “I’m putting the kettle back. We can’t have it cooling off while I give you the rules.”

Remora entered her field of view, seeming as lofty as a tower when he bent above them. “If there is — ah — Maytera. General. Anything I can do…?”

“There is,” she said. “Let Bison know what happened.”

“Go back to your seat,” Potto told Remora, and he vanished. “Didn’t you wonder, my dear General,” it was Potto’s cheerful, round face opposite Spider’s now, “how I happened to be so near my own corpse? Or what became of Blood’s? Blood was stabbed by your friend Silk. Let’s not call him Calde. We’re no longer being so polite.”

“Let me up, and I’ll be happy to ask you.”

“It won’t be necessary. Blood’s body has been hauled away already, you see. And you do see, don’t you? At present. I ordered that my own wasn’t to be touched, because I think we may be able to fix it. I came in person to pick it up, with a few of my most trusted spy catchers. Spider’s their jefe. I’d use soldiers, but they’re awfully sensitive, it seems, to mention of a calde, though you wouldn’t think it to look at them.”

From a distance, Remora called, “Councillor? Councillor!”

She shut her eyes. If she was never to see again, the last thing she saw should not be the high smoke-grimed ceiling of the kitchen in this ruined villa. Echidna, rather, her face filling the Sacred Window. Her mother’s face. Bison’s, with its quick eyes and curling black beard. Her room in the cenoby. Children playing, Maytera Marble’s group because she had always wanted them instead of the older girls this year and the older boys before Patera Pike died. Auk’s face, so ugly and serious, more precious than a stack of cards. Bison’s. Cage Street, and the floaters firing as the white stallion thundered toward them.

“Did you hear that, my dear General?”

“Hear what?” Maytera Mint opened her eyes, remembering too late that scalding water might be poured into them.

“Tell her, Patera! Tell her!” Potto was giggling like a girl of twelve, giggling so hard that he could hardly talk.

“I — ah — um — proposed an, er, substitution.”

“He wants to take your place. Really, it’s too funny.”

She tried to speak, and found that her eyes were filling with hot tears, irony so cheap and obvious as to be unbearable. “No, Your Eminence. But… But thank you.”

“He, um, Potto. Councillor. He wishes to, um, secure your — ah — collaboration, hey? I, um, endeavored to point out that to, er, spare me you would, eh? Whatever he wants.”

“I can already make you do anything I want.” Potto was back. He held the teakettle over her. “What I’m trying to do is what she’s done for years. Educate.” Giggling, he covered his mouth with his free hand. “Wash the dust out. Clarify her vision. Have I explained the rules?”

“Er — no.”

“Then I will. I have to. You want to save her, Patera?”

She could actually hear Remora’s teeth chatter. She had always supposed the business about chattering teeth was a sort of verbal convention, like hair standing on end.

“You made your offer, and I said no. But you can save me the trouble of washing her eyes.”

“I, um, every effort.”

“I’m going to ask questions. Educational questions. If her answers are right, we postpone the eyebath. Or if yours are. Ready? Spider, what about you? When you see the kettle tip, you’ll have to hold her tight and keep your hands clear.”

“Any time, Councillor.”

“I’ll start with an easy one. That’s the best way, don’t you think? If you really want children to learn. If you aren’t just showing off. Did you know Silk’s friend Doctor Crane?”

She shut her eyes again, finding it difficult to think. “Know him? No. Maytera Marble mentioned him once, the nice doctor who let her ride in his litter. I don’t think I ever saw him. I’m sure I haven’t met him.”

“And you never will. He’s dead.” Potto sounded pleased. “Your turn, Patera. What about you?”

“Crane, eh? A doctor? Can’t, um, place him.”

“He was a spy. Let’s give the poor fellow his due. He was a master spy, some say the Rani’s best. Trivigaunte had more spies in Viron than any other city. It still does, though they have no jefe now. Why do you think that is, Maytera? More spies than Urbs or Palustria?”

“All I can do is guess.” Her mouth was dry; she tried unsuccessfully to swallow. “The Rani’s a woman, but all the other cities near ours have male rulers. She may have been more sensitive to the danger you and your cousins presented.”

“Not bad. Can you improve on that, Patera?”

“I, ah, cheating.”

Potto giggled. “Double credit for it. Go ahead.”

“His Cognizance, eh? He told me. Not in so many words, eh? No mountains. First, um, er—”

“Objective,” Potto supplied.

“Indeed. Next, ah, year. Spring. Not long now, hey, Councillor? Winter has, um, commenced.”

“General, this is your area of expertise. Say another force is opposing yours, which is larger. Would you rather fight your way across a mountain range or a desert?”

“I’d want to see the desert,” she hedged.

“You can’t see either one, and if you won’t answer you won’t see anything.” The teakettle tilted a little.

“Then I prefer the desert.”

“Why?”

“Because fighting in mountains would be like fighting in tunnels. There would be narrow passes, in which we’d have to go at the enemy head-on. In a desert we could get around them.”

“Correct. Patera, I haven’t been giving you many chances, so you first. Two cities I’ll call Viron and Trivigaunte are separated by a lake and a desert. A big lake, though it’s been getting smaller and turning brackish. That’s the situation, and here’s the question. If the easiest city for Viron to attack is Trivigaunte, what’s easiest for Trivigaunte? Think carefully.”

“For, ah, them?” Remora’s voice quavered. “Us, I should say. Viron.”

“Do you agree, my dear General?”

She had begun a short prayer to Echidna while Remora was speaking; after murmuring the final phrase she said, “There could be other answers, but that’s the most probable. Viron.”

“I’m putting the kettle on again,” Potto told her. “Not because you’ve passed, but because you may fail right here, and I want the water hot enough to do the job. Listen carefully, because we’re going from geography to arithmetic. Listen, and think. Are you ready?”

She compelled her mind and lips. “I suppose so.”

Potto tittered. “Are you, Patera?”

“Ah… I wish, Councillor—”

“Save it for later. It’s time for arithmetic. The Rani of Trivigaunte has seventy-five thousand crack troopers in Viron. The so-called calde’s general has fifty thousand untrained ones, and the traitor commanding the Calde’s guard has about eighteen thousand fit for duty, of doubtful loyalty. If these numbers have you mixed up, I don’t blame you. Would you like me to stop here and repeat them, General?”

“Let me hear the rest.”

“We’re getting to the crux. Rani, seventy-five thousand. You, fifty thousand. Oosik, eighteen thousand. All these are troopers, armed bios. Now then, the Ayuntamiento, which opposes all three of them, has eight thousand two hundred soldiers and a thousand troopers underground, and another five thousand on the surface. The question is, who rules Viron? Answer, Patera.”

“The — ah — you do. The Ayuntamiento.”

“One drop for that,” Potto said. “I’ll fetch the kettle.”

Maytera Mint squeezed her eyes shut, clenching her teeth as a single scalding drop struck her forehead. Locked in a private nightmare of fear and pain, she heard the opening of the door as if it were leagues away. A new voice spoke in the reedy tones of an old man: “What’s this?”

Remora, overjoyed: “Your Cognizance!”

Almost carelessly, Potto said: “This is a nice surprise, I had men posted. Another prisoner’s welcome, just the same.”

She squinted upward. The sere old face over hers was one she had seen only at a distance; she had not realized then how its eyes glittered.

“Release her!” Quetzal snapped. “Let her go. Now!”

She tried to smile as Spider inquired, “Councillor?”

“Class dismissed for the present. It may resume soon, so think about the material.” He sounded angry.

Spider stood, and she fell to the floor.

“I’ve talked to your cousin Loris,” Quetzal told Potto, “and I’ve come to give you the news I brought him. If you decide to detain me afterward, it’s the risk I run.”

Potto spoke to Spider. “This old fox is the Prolocutor. If that’s going to bother you, say so.”

“Anything you want, Councillor.”

“He’s worth two of the general and ten of the butcher. Don’t forget it. Old man, what tricks have you cooked up?” Maytera Mint scrambled to her feet, trying not to step on the hem of her habit.

“No tricks, Councillor. There was a theophany during my sacrifice at the Grand Manteion.” Simultaneously, Maytera Mint received the impression that Quetzal was never excited, and that he was excited now.

Potto snorted and set his steaming teakettle on the table. “Another one? Who was it this time? Sphigx?”

Quetzal shook his head. “Pas.”

“Pas is dead!”

Quetzal turned from Potto. “Great Pas, Maytera. Lord Pas, the Father of the Seven. If it wasn’t him, it was his ghost. Which in point of fact is what the god himself said.”