Exodus from the Long Sun

Chapter 16 — Exodus from the Long Sun

They floated in an infinite emptiness lit by a remote, spool-shaped black sun: Sciathan the Flier, Patera Incus and Patera Remora, the old woman who called herself Moly, Nettle and Horn, the calde’s wife, and the calde. The shrinking red dot that was the lander winked out.

“Good-bye, Auk my noctolater.” The speaker seemed near, though there was a note in his voice that had traveled far; it was a man’s voice, deep, and heavy with sorrow.

“Good-bye, Auk,” Silk repeated; until he heard his own voice, he did not realize he had spoken aloud. “Good-bye, sister. Good-bye, Gib. Farewell.”

Maytera Marble murmured, “Heartbroken. Poor General Mint will be simply heartbroken.”

“He goes to a better place than any you have seen.”

“I disliked him, though the harlot Chenille was not devoid of pre-eminent qualities. Notwithstanding, I feel bereft…”

So softly that Silk supposed that only he could hear her, Hyacinth inquired, “Is that where? Those little dots?”

“To one or the other,” the god replied. “The blue whorl or the green. Auk’s lander cannot carry them to both.”

“Auk — ah. Devoted to you, eh? As we, um, all. He was, er, reformed? Devout. If you are not, um, hey?”

There was no reply. The distant sparks faded. Hyacinth gripped Silk’s arm, pointing to the black, spool-shaped sun behind them, from which light streamed. “What is that? Is it — is it…? The lander came out of it.”

“That is our Whorl” Sciathan wiped his eyes.

“That little thing?”

Already the little thing was fading; Silk relaxed. “You liked Auk, didn’t you? So did I. If I live as long as His Cognizance, I won’t forget meeting him in the Cock, sipping brandy while I tried to make out his face in the shadows.”

“When I saw Aer die, I did not weep. That pain was too deep for weeping. Auk is not dead, but no one will call me Upstairs any more. I weep for that.”

“Wish that he stated, um, unequivocally, eh?” Remora had already activated his propulsion module and was drifting toward the circular aperture. “Is — um — Great Pas satisfied? Is this adequate? Sufficient?”

Silk and Hyacinth followed him. Silk said, “If he were, we Cargo would return to our herds and fields. Auk has bought us a brief respite, that’s all. Pas will not be satisfied until the last person in the whorl has gone. It has served its purpose.”

They emerged into the penumbra, shade that seemed blinding light after the darkness. “I don’t see how Tartaros showed us the whorl from outside,” Hyacinth murmured. “There can’t be an eye out there, can there?” When Silk did not reply, “I don’t like not walking. My thighs are getting fat, I can feel it.”

Maytera Marble overtook them. “They can’t be, dear, you don’t eat anything. I’m worried about you.”

“I don’t like people seeing up my gown, either. I know it sounds silly, but I don’t. Every time I feel like somebody’s looking up there my thighs swell up and never go back down.”

“There is no up,” Incus called as he accelerated toward them, “nor is there any down. All is a realm of light.”

“The, um, deceased.” Remora glanced back at him, vaguely worried. “How shall we explain that, Your Eminence? The, um, faithful, eh? They expect the — ah — dear decedent.”

“Do you desire a visitation by your dead?” Sciathan asked.

Silk said flimly, “No.” Hyacinth’s jaw dropped, and for a moment her sculptured face looked foolish.

Silk decelerated to allow Sciathan to catch up. “I speak only for myself. I’ve met mine, and know and love them. The temptation to rejoin them would be too great. I know your offer was well intended but no, I do not.”

“There is no physicality,” the little Flier explained. “Mainframe recreates them and beams the data to one’s mind.”

“Moly, would you escort Hyacinth back to the airship for me, please? I have to confer with Sciathan.” Silk took the Flier’s arm.

Horn asked, “Can we come?” Silk hesitated, then shook his head; Oreb launched himself from Horn’s shoulder to flap after them upside down.

One by one the pilot was testing the engines; Horn counted as each coughed, roared to life, and declined to a hum.

Nettle asked, “Aren’t you going to knock?”

He would have preferred that she do it, but could not say so. “What on?”

“On the frame, I guess. They’re pretty solid.”

Silk pushed the curtain to one side as Horn raised his fist. “Hyacinth isn’t here. Were you looking for me?”

Both nodded.

“Very well, what can I do for you?”

Horn cleared his throat. “You promised me you wouldn’t go up on the roof again, Calde. Remember?”

“Of course. I’ve kept my promise.”

“Me and Nettle have been up there,” Horn said, and Oreb applauded with joyful wings.

Nettle said, “It’s not scary when you can float.” Her eyes appealed to Horn, who added, “We want you to go up with us.”

“You’re releasing me from my promise?”

Horn nodded. “Yeah.”

“Say yes, Horn.” Silk looked thoughtful. “You bear the repute of your palaestra.”

“Yes, Calde. Calde, is Patera Remora really going to be our new augur?”

“No.” Absentmindedly, Silk glanced around the cubicle for his propulsion module before remembering that he had returned it. “He cannot become your new augur, since he is augur there already. He’ll take up his duties when we get home. How do you keep from floating away? That might not be frightening, I’ll allow; but I would think it serious.”

“Bird save!”

“Yes, if I’m adrift you must tow me to safety.”

“There’s supplies in the last gondola,” Horn explained as Silk pushed off from the doorway. “We found a coil of rope in there. The table in the chartroom’s bolted down, so we tie onto the legs.”

“It’s better than having that thing on your back,” Nettle told Silk. “You just float around without having to worry about anything. When you’re tired of it, you pull yourself in.”

Horn added, “But I don’t get tired of it.”

“There’s something you want me to see.” They had floated through the officers’ sleeping quarters; Silk stopped, bulging the canvas partition, and opened the door to the messroom.

“Just — just everything you can see from out there.”

“Something to ask, in that case.”

In the chartroom, Silk knotted the finger-thick line about his waist in accordance with Horn’s instructions and pushed off from the table, out through the open hatch.

The airship had revolved, whether from the torque of its engines or the pressure of some passing breeze, until Mainframe stood upright as a wall, its black slabs of colossal mechanism jutting toward them and its Pylon an endless bridge that dwarfed the airship and vanished into night.

Horn gestured. “See, Calde? We don’t have to sit on the edge, but we can go over there if you want to. Way, way down you can see the Mountains That Look At Mountains, I guess. It’s kind of blue at first, then so bright you can’t be sure.”

Nettle emerged from the hatch. “I still don’t understand what Mainframe is, Calde. Just all those things with the lights running over them? And why do they have roofs here if it can’t rain? How would they get the rain to come down?”

“This is Mainframe,” Silk told her. “You are seeing it.”

“The big square things?”

“With what underlies its meadows and lawns; Mainframe is dispersed among them all. Imagine millions of millions of tiny circuits like those in a card — billions of billions, actually. The warmth of each is less than the twinkle of a firefly; but there are so many that if they were packed together their own heat would destroy them. They would become a second sun. As things are it is always summer here, thanks to those circuits.”

“That’s what you call the little wiggly gold lines in card?” Nettle inquired. “Circuits? They don’t do anything.”

“They would, if they were returned to their proper places in a lander. We will have to return some ourselves soon.”

Horn was watching Silk narrowly. “Did Sciathan tell you all that?”

“Not in so many words, but he said enough to let me infer the rest. What was it you wanted to ask?”

“A whole bunch of stuff. You know, Calde, for my book. Is it all right if I call you Calde?”

“Of course. Or Patera, or Silk, or even Patera Calde, which is what His Cognizance calls me. As you like.”

“I heard Chenille tell Moly that when she was Kypris she made you call her Chenille anyway. It must have seemed funny.”

Nettle said, “I’m not writing a book, Calde, but I’ve got stuff I want to ask, too. I’m helping Horn with his, I guess. I’ll have to, probably. Did you make the dead people come back and talk to us like they did?”

“Mainframe did that, Nettle.” Silk smiled. “Believe me, I’m unable to compel it to do anything. I asked Sciathan to ask it on our behalf, but he explained that it was unnecessary. Mainframe knows everything that takes place here; as soon as I formulated my request, Mainframe took it under consideration. I’m delighted that it was granted, immensely grateful.”

“But not back home.” Nettle waved vaguely at the deck some ten cubits below. “It doesn’t hear everything there.”

“No, it doesn’t; but it discovers more than I would have believed. Since Echidna’s theophany, I’ve assumed the gods knew only what they saw and heard through Sacred Windows and glasses, which seems to be very near the truth. Those are Mainframe’s principal sources, too; but it has others — the Fliers’ data, for example.”

Horn said, “I’ve got a tough one, Calde. I’m not trying to show you up or anything.

“Of course not. What is it?”

“Tartaros told Auk the short sun whorl would be like ours, only there wouldn’t be any people, or no people like us. Auk told Chenille, and I asked her. She said it means there’ll be grass and rocks and flowers, only not like we’re used to. Why is that?”

Nettle shook her head in disbelief. “That’s not hard at all. Because Pas picked them out for us to make it easy.”

“Or difficult,” Silk muttered.

“I don’t understand.”

“Suppose there were no plants or animals — we’ll leave the rocks aside. Auk’s lander is stocked with seeds and embryos, as you saw. He’ll be able to grow whichever ones he wants; and if the whorl he chooses had none of its own, those would be the only plants and animals with which he would have to deal. As things are, he’ll have a much more interesting time of it — as well as a much harder one.”

The hum of their engines deepened, and the three of them drifted toward the prow of the second gondola until the ropes that united them with the first were taut. “We’re under way,” Horn announced. Oreb agreed: “Go home!”

“As soon as we’re gone, I don’t think I’ll believe I was here.” Nettle sighed. “Grandma came for a talk. I said stay with me and we’ll take you back, but she said she couldn’t.”

“Patera Remora’s mother came to see him,” Horn told Silk. “He’s been smiling at everybody. He told her he had his own manteion now, and he’d sacrifice and shrive and bring the Peace, and wouldn’t have to work in the Palace any more. And she said it’s what she’d wanted for him all the time.”

“Hyacinth’s mother visited her, too.”

Nettle looked surprised. “I didn’t think her mother was dead, Calde.”

“Neither did Hyacinth.”

Hand over hand they pulled themselves forward again, until they were standing on the deck, although standing very lightly; Silk freed himself from the loop of rope.

Nettle said, “Calde, you never did answer my question about the roofs. And I wanted to know why the shade’s so close here, and we can’t see the sun.”

“The Pylon makes it,” Horn declared, “or anyhow it shoots it into the sky. Isn’t that right, Calde? Then the sun burns it but instead of smoke it turns into air. If the Pylon didn’t shoot out more, the shade would burn up and there’d be daylight all the time. Only Mainframe would fry, because it’s so close. The sun starts at the top of the Pylon and goes all the way to the West Pole.”

“Long way,” Oreb elaborated.

“We, too, have a long way to go,” Silk said, addressing neither Horn nor Nettle, “but at last we’ve begun.”

“I understand about the roofs now,” Nettle said.

He looked around at her. “Do you? Tell me.”

“We used to go to the lake every summer when I was little. Then… I don’t know, something happened, and it seemed like we never had enough money.”

“Taxes went up after the old calde died,” Horn told her. “They went up a lot.”

“Maybe that was it. Anyway, one year when I was nine or ten we waited till everybody else had gone home, and went when it was cheaper, and after that we never went any more.”

Silk nodded.

“It would be nice, sometimes, in the afternoons, and we’d swim, but it was pretty cold in the morning. One morning I got up when everybody else was still asleep and walked to the lake just to look at it. I think I knew this was the last year, and we wouldn’t come any more. Maybe we were going home that day.”

“This isn’t about roofs,” Horn said; but Silk put a finger to his lips.

“The lake was all covered with ghosts, white shapes coming up out of the water and reaching for the air, getting bigger and stronger all the time. I was thinking about ghosts a lot then, because Gam had, you know, gone to Mainframe, the one I talked to today. We were supposed to say she was in Mainframe, but we didn’t think it meant anything. Aren’t you going to say that it wasn’t really ghosts, Horn?”

He shook his head.

“It wasn’t, it was fog. There was an old lady fishing off the pier, and I guess she liked me because when I asked she said there was water in the air over the lake, and when it got cold enough it came together and made tiny little drops that take a long, long while to fall, and that was what you saw. I’d never wondered where fog came from before then.”

“Fog good.”

“That’s right, you’re a marsh bird. Don’t they come from Palustria, Calde? The swamps around there?”

Silk nodded. “I believe so.”

“What I was going to say was that the fog got thicker and thicker that day, and got everything wet. So if they have a lot of fogs here… We’re not hardly there, though, any more. But you know what I mean. Only you wouldn’t want it inside, so you’d have roofs, and they do.”

Horn said, “The fountains get the grass wet, too, like it does at home on a windy day. It’s not as much as you’d think, because there’s a thing that sucks in air at the bottom and takes the water out for the pump. If they shut that off, it would water everything.”

Silk tossed aside his rope and watched it settle to the deck. “We have weight once more.”

“Yeah, I know. I mean yes.”

“I should consider this better before I speak, Horn, but I find it exhilarating. When we arrived and could float — could fly, after a fashion, after Sciathan secured propulsion modules for us — I found that exhilarating as well. I’m contradicting myself, I suppose.”

Horn looked to Nettle, who said, “I don’t think so.”

“It’s not easy for me to sort out, and even less easy for me to explain. Sciathan is a Flier, in love with flight and pardonably proud of his wings and his special status among the Crew. Until we got here, I was confident that I understood his feelings.”

Horn looked puzzled. “Everybody flies here, Calde.”

“Exactly. They have to, and we flew in the same way. Or floated. Floated may be the better term. It’s easy, so much so that all three of us floated here without modules; but we floated under a lowering shade that never brought night or rose to bring a new day.”

“It’s getting to be daylight here.” Horn gestured toward the sky-filling brown bulk of the airship.

“We’ve reached the foothills of the Mountains That Look At Mountains,” Silk said, “and if we had tried to float this far, we’d have settled to the ground. But Sciathan flies over these hills, and across the mountains, too — or soars from valley to valley, if he chooses.”

“Bird fly!”

“Yes. Sciathan flies like Oreb here, or the eagle that brought down poor Iolar. I had a taste of that when I piloted this airship.” For a moment Silk’s smile was radiant.

Saba’s head emerged from the hatch. “Hello, Calde! Going to take a reading?”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

She swung herself easily onto the deck. “I do, and I’ve got the protractor so I can show you. It’s early yet, but I wanted to climb up here while it didn’t take so much lifting.” She chuckled. “I heard you talking about flying. I command a thousand pterotroopers, but I can’t fly like they do. Neither could you, we’re both too heavy. Even this girl would have to lose a little to be much good.”

“I was about to explain to Horn and Nettle that while wings are wonderful — and they are, truly, truly wonderful — feet are wonderful too. Doctor Crane, if he were still alive, could amputate my legs, and then I’d be light enough to fly the way your troopers do, and perhaps even as Sciathan does; but as much as I envy them, I wouldn’t want him to. It would be marvelous to fly as they do, so it’s not surprising that we envy them; but imagine how much someone without legs must envy us.”

“I don’t have to imagine. Some of my dearest friends have lost their legs.”

Horn asked, “Are you going to be pilot some on the way back, Calde? You like it so much I think you ought to. You were good at it, too.”

Saba said, “For somebody without training, he was better than good. He’ll be taking over in four hours.”

Horn looked relieved.

“When we’re past the mountains,” Silk told him, and walked forward to the prow of the gondola.

Saba trotted after him. “I wouldn’t do that, Calde. We still haven’t got all the altitude we want, and mountains can give you some tricky winds.”

“I’ll be fine; but you must remain where you are.”

Behind Saba, Nettle called, “Horn’s afraid you’re going to jump, Calde. That’s all it is”

“I’m not.”

“When General Saba said you were going to be the pilot, he felt a lot better, because he thought you wouldn’t want to miss it. We both did.”

Looking down upon the green and rising slopes far below, where hillside meadows yielded to forested heights, Silk smiled. “You don’t have to worry. I love life and Hyacinth too much to jump. Besides, if I jumped I wouldn’t be able to wrestle with your questions, Nettle — though that might be good for both of us. Have you more?”

“I was going to ask you about the mountains.” Timorously, she edged past Saba to grasp Silk’s hand. “It scares me to look at them. You know how lampreys look in the market? Those round mouths with rings and rings of teeth? These look like that to me, under us and up in the skylands too. Only a million times bigger.”

“Were you going to ask me why they exist? Because Pas built them to guard Mainframe; but that’s sheer speculation. I don’t know any more than you do.”

“If anybody lives there. And — and why there’s snow on the tops. The tops are closer to the sun, so they ought to be warmer.”

“I don’t believe that the sun heats air,” Silk told her absently, “not much, and perhaps not at all. If it did, the sun’s heat couldn’t reach us. If you think about it, you’ll soon realize that sunlight doesn’t illuminate air either; we could see air if it did, and we can’t.”

Behind Silk, Horn said, “No kind of light does then.”

“Correct, I’m sure. The warmth of the sun heats the soil and the waters, and they in return warm the air above them. Up here where there are only widely separated peaks, the air must be cold of necessity. Hence, snow; and in the Mountains That Look At Mountains, snow has weight enough to fall.”

Silk paused, considering. “I never asked Sciathan who lived in the mountains, or whether anyone did. I’ve seen no cities, but I would think a few people must, people who fled the cities or were driven out. It must be a wild and lawless place; no doubt many like it for just that reason.”

From the hatch Hyacinth called, “Silk, is that you?” and he turned to smile at her.

“I’ve been looking all over for you, but nobody’d seen you. Oh, hello, General.” As gracefully as ever, Hyacinth stepped from the ladder onto the deck. “Hi, sprats. Got a better view from up here? It’s bigger, anyway.”

“You can leave me to my own devices now,” Silk told Horn.

It was snowing in Viron, a hard fall that converted misery to unrelieved wretchedness, snow that rendered every surface slippery and made every garment damp, and rushed into Maytera Mint’s eyes each time she faced the wind.

“We have done what we can, My General.” Under stress of weather, the captain stood beside, not before, her. Both had their coat collars turned up against the wind and cold; his uniform cap was pulled over his ears like her striped stocking cap, his right arm inadequately immobilized by a bloodstained sling.

“I’m sure you have, Colonel, They’ll start dying in a few hours, I’m afraid, just the same.”

“I am not a colonel, My General.”

“You are, I just promoted you. Now show me you deserve it. Find them shelter.”

“I have tried, My General. I shall try again, though every house in this quarter has been burned.” He was not a tall man, yet he seemed tall as he spoke.

That about the houses had been unnecessary, Maytera Mint thought, and showed how tired he was. She said, “I know.”

“This was your own quarter, was it not? Near the Orilla?”

“It was, and it is.”

“I go. May I say first that I would prefer to fight for you and the gods, My General? Viron must be free!”

She shivered. “What if you lose that arm, Colonel?”

“One hand suffices to fire a needler, My General.”

She smiled in spite of her determination not to. “Even the left? Could you hit anything?”

He took a step backward, saluting with his uninjured arm. “When one cannot aim well, one closes with the enemy.”

He had vanished into the falling snow before she could return his salute. She lowered the hand that had not quite gotten to her eyebrow, and began to walk among the huddled hundreds who had fled the fighting.

I would know every face, she thought, if I could see their faces. Not the names, because I’ve never been good with names. Dear Pas, won’t you let us have even a single ray of sun?

Children and old people, old people and children. Did old people not fight because they were too feeble? Or was it that they had, over seventy or eighty years, come to appreciate the futility of it?

Something caught at her skirt. “Are they bringing food?” She dropped to one knee. The aged face might almost have been Maytera Rose’s. “I’ve ordered it, but there’s very little to be had. And we’ve very few people we can spare to look for it, wounded troopers mostly.”

“They’ll eat it themselves!”

Perhaps they will, Maytera Mint thought. They are hungry, too, I’m sure, and they’ve earned it. “Somebody will bring you something soon, before shadelow.” She stood up.

“Sib? Sib? Mama’s over there, and she’s real cold.”

She peered into the pale little face. “Perhaps you could find wood and start a fire. Someone must have an igniter.”

“She won’t…” The child’s voice fell away.

Maytera Mint dropped to one knee again. “Won’t what?”

“She won’t take my coat, Maytera. Will you make her?”

Oh, my! Oh, Echidna! “No. I cannot possibly interfere with so brave a woman,” There was something familiar about the small face beneath the old rabbit-skin cap. “Don’t I know you? Didn’t you go to our palaestra?”

The child nodded.

“Maytera Marble’s group. What’s your name?”

“Villus, Maytera.” A deep inhalation for words requiring boldness. “I was sick, Maytera. I got bit by a big snake. I really did. I’m not lying.”

“I’m sure you’re not, Villus.”

“That’s why she won’t, so tell her I’m well!” The small coat stood open now, displaying what appeared to be an adult’s sweater, far too large.

“No, Villus. Button those again before you freeze.” Her own fingers were fumbling with the buttons as she spoke. “Find wood, as I told you. There must be a little left, even if it’s charred on the outside. Make a fire.”

As she stood, the wind brought faint boomings that might almost have been thunder. Distant, she decided, yet not distant enough. It probably meant the enemy had broken through, but it would be worse than futile for her to rush back knowing nothing. Bison would send a messenger with news and a fresh horse. These two… “Are you all right?”

“We’ll keep.” An old man’s voice, an old man with his arm around a woman just as old. The old woman said, “We’re not hurt or anything.” “We been talking about that.” (The man again.) “We’d stay warmer moving around.” “We were pretty tired when we got here.”

“I’m trying to get you some food,” Maytera Mint told them.

“We could help, couldn’t we, Dahlia? Help pass it out, or anything you want done.”

“That’s good of you. Very good. Do either of you have an igniter?”

They shook their heads.

“Then you might look for one, ask other people. I set a little boy to gathering fuel a moment ago. If we could build a few fires, that would help a great deal.”

“All this burned.” The old man made an unfocused gesture with his free hand. “Should be coals yet.” His wife confirmed, “Bound to be, snow or no snow.” “I smell smoke.” Sniffing, he struggled to stand, and Maytera Mint helped him up. “I’ll have a look,” he said.

Here I am, Maytera Mockorange. I am the sibyl I dreamed of becoming, moving among sufferers and helping them, though I have so little help to give.

She visualized Maytera Mockorange’s severe features. The girl who would soon assume the new name Mint had yearned for renunciation and pictured herself walking through the whorl she would give up like a blessing; Maytera Mockorange had warned her of missed meals and meager food, of hard beds and hard thankless work. Of year after year of loneliness.

They had both been right.

Maytera Mint fell to her knees with folded hands and bowed head. “O Great Pas, O Mothering Echidna, you have given me my heart’s desire.” A feeling she had never known thrilled her: her body alone knelt in the snow; her spirit was kneeling among violets, baby’s breath, and lily-of-the-valley, in a bower of roses. “I have won life’s battle. I am complete. End my life today, if that is your pleasure. I shall rush into the arms of Hierax exulting.”

“We tried, Maytera.”

It had been a woman’s voice to her left, and its words had not been addressed to her. To another sibyl then? Maytera Mint got to her feet.

“Cold,” the woman was saying, “and there’s not a scrap of flesh on her poor bones.”

Three — no, four people. Two fat people sitting in the snow, with a starved face between the round, ruddy ones. The figure in black bending over them was the sibyl, clearly. What had been that young one’s name? “Maytera? Maytera Maple? Is that you?”

“No, sib.” She straightened up, turning her head farther than seemed possible, eyes glowing in a tarnished metal face. “It’s me, sib. It’s Maggie.”

“It — it — I — oh, sib! Moly!” And they were hugging and dancing as they had on the Palatine. “Sib, sib, SIB!”

Another distant boom.

“Moly! Oh, oh, Moly! May I call you Maytera Marble, just once? I’ve missed you so!”

“Be quick. I’m about to become an abandoned woman.”

“You, Moly?”

“Yes. I am.” Maytera Marble’s voice was firm as granite. “And don’t call me Moly, please. It’s not my name. It never was. My name’s Magnesia. Call me Maggie. Or Marble, if it makes you happy. My husband will — never mind. Have you met my granddaughter, sib? This is she, but I don’t think she’ll talk right now. You must excuse her.”

“Mucor?” Maytera Mint knelt beside the emaciated girl. “Our calde described you to me, and I’m an old friend of your grandmother’s.”

“Wake up.” Mucor’s pinched face grinned without meaning. “Break it.” There was no hint of intelligence in her stare. She said nothing further, and the silence of the snow closed about them until the fat woman ended it by saying, “This’s my husband, General. Shrike’s his name.”

“Scleroderma! Scleroderma, I didn’t recognize you.”

“Well, I knew you right off. I said that’s General Mint and I held her horse when she charged them on Cage Street, I did, and if you’d gone like you ought to you’d know her too.”

The fat man tugged the brim of his hat.

“I went up to the Calde’s Palace to see Maytera, only she wasn’t home and half the wall down, so I’ve been taking care of her granddaughter ever since, poor little thing. Did those bad women carry you off, Maytera? That’s what I heard.”

“You’d better call me Maggie,” Maytera Marble said, and pulled her habit over her head.

“Maytera!”

“I am not a sibyl any more,” the slender, shining figure declared. “I have become an abandoned woman, as I warned you I would.” She dropped the voluminous black gown over Mucor’s head, and pulled it down around her. “Put your arms into the sleeves, dear. It’s easy, they’re wide.”

“There was a old man that helped me with her,” Scleroderma explained, “but he went to fight, then the bad women came and we had to scoot.”

If it had not been for the shock of seeing Maytera Marble nude, Maytera Mint would have smiled.

“I think it means he’s dead, but I hope not. Aren’t you cold, Maytera?”

“Not a bit.” Maytera Marble straightened up. “This is much cooler and more comfortable, though I’m sure I’ll miss my pockets.” She turned to Maytera Mint. “I’ve been consorting with other abandoned women, a dozen at least. I’m afraid it’s rubbed off.”

Maytera Mint swallowed and coughed, wanting to bat the snowflakes away, to sit down with a mug of hot tea, to awaken and find that this little pewter-colored creature was not the elderly sibyl she had thought she knew. “Did they capture—”

With nimble fingers, Maytera Marble wound the long top of Maytera Mint’s blue-striped stocking cap about her neck like a scarf. “This way, dear, then you won’t be so cold, that’s what it’s for. You tuck the end in your coat.” She tucked it. “And the tassel keeps it from coming out. See?”

“These women!” Maytera Mint had spoken more loudly than she had intended, but she continued with the same vehemence, telling herself, I am a general after all. “Are you referring to enemy troopers or Willet’s spies?”

“No, no, no. Dear Chenille, who’s really quite a nice girl in her way, and the calde’s wife. She’s no better than she ought to be if you know what I mean. And the women our thieves brought. They were more interesting than the poor women, though the poor women were interesting too. But the thieves’ women didn’t mind taking their clothes off, or not very much. Dear Chenille actually enjoys it, I’d say. Her figure’s prettier than her face, so I find it understandable.” Scleroderma said, “So’s yours, Maytera,” and her husband nodded enthusiastically.

Another explosion punctuated the sentence. Cocking her head, Maytera Mint decided it had been nearer than the last; there had been something portentous about the sound.

“…Cognizance told us,” Scleroderma finished.

Maytera Mint asked, “Did you say His Cognizance?” Then, before anyone could answer, put her finger to her lips.

The stammering popping reports seemed to come from above her head. They were followed after an interval by the remote crash of shells.

“What is it, General?” Scleroderma asked.

“I heard guns. A battery of light pieces. You don’t often hear the shots, just the whine of the shells and the explosions. These are near, so they may be ours.”

Maytera Marble took Mucor’s hand and got her to her feet. “Will you excuse us? I want to take her to the fire.”

“Fire?” Maytera Mint looked around.

“Right over there. I just saw it. Come along, darling.”

Scleroderma and Shrike were getting to their feet as well, not swiftly but with so much effort, scrambling, and grunting that they gave the impression of frantic action.

The messenger should be here by now, Maytera Mint told herself, and stepped in front of Scleroderma. “You said His Cognizance was here? You must tell me before you go. But before you do, have you seen a mounted trooper leading another horse?”

Scleroderma shook her head.

“But His Cognizance was here?”

The fat man said, “Stopped an’ had a chat, nice as anybody. I wouldn’t of known, only the wife, she knows all that. Goes twice, three times most weeks. Just a little man older’n my pa. Had on a plain black whatchacallit, like any other augur.” He paused, his eyes following Maytera Marble and Mucor. “Crowd around any harder, an’ they’ll shove somebody in.”

“You’re right.” Maytera Mint trotted through the snow to the fire. “People! This little fire can’t warm even half of you. Collect more wood. Build another! You can light it from this one.” They dispersed with an alacrity that surprised her.

“Now then!” She whirled upon Scleroderma and Shrike. “If His Cognizance is here, I must speak to him. As a courtesy, if for no other reason. Where did he go?”

Shrike shrugged; Scleroderma said, “I don’t know, General,” and her husband added, “Said we’d have to leave this whorl, then the Calde come an’ got him. First time I ever seen him.”

“Calde Silk?”

Scleroderma nodded. “He didn’t know him either.”

The Trivigauntis had released their prisoners, as General Saba had promised; no other explanation made sense, and it was vitally important. Maytera Mint looked around frantically for the messenger Bison would surely have dispatched minutes ago.

“He was lookin’ for the calde,” Shrike explained, “only it was Calde Silk what found him.”

“There aren’t as many as there were.” Maytera Mint stood on tiptoe, blinking away snow.

“You told ’em to go find wood, General.”

“General! General!” Beneath the shouted words, she heard the stumbling clatter of a horse ridden too fast across littered ground. “This way!” She waved blindly.

Scleroderma muttered, “Just listen to those drums. Makes me want to go myself.”

“Drums?” Maytera Mint laughed nervously, and was ashamed of it at once. “I thought it was my heart. I really did.”

Through the snow, Bison’s messenger called, “General?” She waved as before, listening. Not the cadent rattle of the thin cylindrical drums the Trivigauntis used, but the steady thumpa-thumpa-thump of Vironese war drums, drums that suggested the palaestra’s big copper stew-pot whenever she saw them, war drums beating out the quickstep used to draw up troops in order of battle. Bison was about to attack, and was letting both the enemy and his own troopers know it.

“General!” The messenger dismounted, half falling off his rawboned brown pony. “Colonel Bison says we got to take it to ’em. The airship’s back. Probably you heard it, sir.”

Maytera Mint nodded. “I suppose I did.”

“They been droppin’ mortar bombs on us out of it all up and down the line, sir. Colonel says we got to get in close and mix up with ’em so they can’t.”

“Where is he? Didn’t you bring a horse for me?”

“Yes, sir, only the calde took it. Maybe I shouldn’t of let him, sir, but—”

“Certainly you should, if he wanted it.” She pushed the messenger out of her way and swung into the saddle. “I’ll have to take yours. Return on foot. Where’s Bison?”

“In the old boathouse, sir.” The messenger pointed vaguely through the twilit snow, leaving her by no means certain that he was not as lost as she felt.

“Good luck,” Scleroderma called. And then, “I’m coming.”

“You are not!” Maytera Mint locked her knees around the hard-used pony, heedless of the way the saddle hiked her wide black skirt past her knees. “You stay right here and take care of your husband. Help Maytera — I mean Maggie — with the mad girl.” She pointed to the messenger, realizing too late that she was doing it with the hilt of her azoth. “Are you certain he’s in the boathouse? I ordered him to stay back and not get himself killed.”

“Safest place, sir, with them bombs droppin’ on us.”

A floating blur resolved itself into two riders in dark clothing upon a single white horse. A familiar voice shouted, “Go! Follow that officer — he’ll take you to shelter. Get away from that fire!”

The voice was Silk’s. As she watched in utter disbelief he galloped through the fire. For a moment she hesitated; then the boom of slug guns decided her.

“I like this part though,” Hyacinth whispered, hugging Silk tighter than ever, “just don’t let it trot again.”

He did not, but lacked the breath to say so. Reining up, he shielded his eyes with the right hand that snatched at the pommel whenever he was distracted; the group he had glimpsed through the snow might be a woman with children, and probably was. Gritting his teeth, he slammed his heels into the white gelding’s flanks. It was essential not to trot — trotting shook them helpless. More essential not to lose the stirrups that fought free of his shoes whenever they were not gouging his ankles. The gelding slipped in the snow; for an instant he was sure.

Behind him, Hyacinth shrieked, “Up, stand up! That way!” She sounded angry; and briefly and disloyally, he wished that she possessed the clarion voice that Kypris had bestowed upon Maytera Mint — though it would have been still more useful to have it himself.

“My Calde!” A snow-speckled figure had caught the bridle.

“Yes, what is it?”

“All are within, My Calde. They are gone. You must too, before you die.”

He shook his head.

“But a few remain, I swear. I shall send them. You must compel him, Madame.”

Then the captain was running and the gelding trotting after him, and they were being shaken as if by a terrier.

“Here is the entrance, My Calde. I regret I cannot assist you and your lady to dismount.”

Too shaken even to think of disobeying, Silk slid from the gelding’s back and helped Hyacinth down. The captain pointed to a deep crater almost at his feet; its bottom gleamed with greenish light.

Too sharply for comfort, Silk recalled the grave he had been shown in a dream. “We got to ride on a deadcoach the first time,” he told Hyacinth. It was difficult to keep his voice casual. “That was a lot more comfortable, but there was dust instead of snow.” She stared at him.

“You must climb down.” The captain pointed again. “The climb is somewhat difficult. Several have fallen, though none were injured seriously.” He produced a needler, fumbling the safety with his left thumb.

Silk said, “You’re about to join the fighting.”

“Yes, My Calde. If you permit it.”

Silk shook his head. “I won’t. I have a message for you to give to General Mint. Do you know where Hyacinth and I are going?”

“Into this tunnel below the city, My Calde, to preserve yourself for Viron, as is proper.”

Hyacinth smoothed her gown. “We’re supposed to leave the whole whorl with thousands and thousands of cards. If we get to whatever it is, we’ll be rich.” She spat into the snow.

“I’ve taken all the funds I could out of the fisc,” Silk explained, “and His Cognizance has emptied the burse — the Chapter’s funds. I’m telling you this so you can tell General Mint what’s become of us, and what’s happened to the money. Do you know which Siyuf you’re fighting?”

A voice called, “Calde!”

“Is that you down there, Horn?”

“Yes, Calde.” Horn climbed toward him, his feet loosening stones that rattled down the slope to fall into the tunnel.

“Go back down,” Silk told him.

“My Calde, we have been so fortunate as to chance upon this refuge opened for the defenseless by the enemy’s bombs. I thank the good gods for it. You and your lady must employ it as well. Her airship cannot but see the fire.”

Horn caught Silk’s hand and joined them.

“As for this boy,” the captain finished, “I shall procure a weapon for him.”

“If we’re going we’d better go,” Hyacinth declared.

“You inquire concerning the two Siyufs, My Calde. I have heard only rumors. Are they true?”

“I spoke to General Mint on a glass before we returned,” Silk told him. “One of the councillors — Tarsier, I imagine — has altered a chem to look like Siyuf. She was supposed to mend relations between Trivigaunte and Viron, or see to it that the Trivigauntis lost if she could not. She appears to have chosen to occupy Siyuf’s place permanently and conquer Viron for herself instead. Generalissimo Oosik has freed the real Siyuf in the hope—”

The final words were lost in an explosion. Silk found himself half in the crater, with Horn beside him and Hyacinth clinging and sobbing. After a few seconds he managed to gasp, “That was too near. Near enough to ring my ears.”

“Where’s the captain?” Horn asked. From the bottom, Nettle shouted, “Horn!”

“I don’t know.” Silk raised his head to look around. “I can’t see him, or — are those horses?”

“Our horse.” Hyacinth staggered but managed to stand. “It must have been killed.”

“Unless the captain mounted it and rode away. In either case, we’d better go.”

She glared at him; then turned abruptly and slid down the slanting wall of the crater, pushing past Nettle and vanishing into the tunnel.

Horn caught Silk’s arm. “You were sort of waiting here with the captain, Calde. Like you didn’t want to.”

“Because I wasn’t sure all the people who fled the battle had gotten inside.”

Silk coughed and spat. “That explosion blew dirt into my mouth. I suppose it was open, as it usually is — I shouldn’t talk so much. At any rate, I wanted to tell him I was resigning my office, and General Mint is to succeed me. Don’t feel you have to chase after him with the message.”

Nettle called, “I’m going inside with Hyacinth. Are you coming?”

“In a minute,” Horn told her. “No, Calde, I won’t. But I promised His Cognizance I’d find you and bring you down there, and I’m going to as soon as …” He paused, shamefaced.

“What is it, Horn?”

“It’s a long way, he says, to the big cave where the people are asleep in bottles, and when we get there we’ll have to wake them up. Maybe we’d better get going.”

“No, Horn.” With the air of one who intends to remain for some time, Silk seated himself on the edge of the crater. “I asked Mucor to awaken the strongest man she could find and have him break the cylinder before the gas inside it killed him. If I could break one with Hyacinth’s needler as easily as I did, I’d think a very strong man might break one from within with his fists. They’ll be coming to meet us — or at least I hope they will — and may be able to show us a shorter route to the belly of the whorl, where the landers are.”

He studied Horn with troubled eyes. “Now, why did you stop me from following Hyacinth? What is it?”

“Nothing, Calde.”

Like noisy spirits, troopers on horseback thundered past, their faces obscured and their clothing dyed black by the snow.

“Those were Trivigauntis, I believe,” Silk said. “I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. Bad, I suppose. If I say it myself — tell you what I believe you were about to say — will you at least confess I’m right?”

“I don’t want to, Calde.

“But you will, I know. You were going to tell me why you and Nettle took me up on the roof of the gondola, where General Saba and Hyacinth joined us, pretending that they hadn’t—”

“I was going to tell you about falling off the time before, Calde. You said you tried to kill yourself and I stopped you, but it was the other way. I started to slide off on purpose. I don’t know what got into me, but you grabbed me. You were just about killed too, and now I remember. I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”

Silk shook his head. “If I hadn’t acted foolishly, you wouldn’t have been in danger at all; I provoked your danger and very nearly occasioned your death.”.

He sighed. “That wasn’t what you came so close to telling me, however. Hyacinth had been in General Saba’s cabin, though both pretended they had not been together. The walls of those cabins are cloth and bamboo, and you and Nettle were afraid I’d overhear them and realize they were doing the things that women do, at times, to provide each other pleasure.”

Seeing Horn’s expression, he smiled sadly. “Did you think I didn’t know such things occur? I’ve shriven women often, and in any event we were taught about them — and worse things — at the schola. We’re far too innocent for our duties when we leave it, I’m afraid; but our instructors ready us for the whorl as well as they can.” He looked down at the object that Horn was offering him. “What is that?”

“Your needler, Calde. It used to be the pilot’s, I guess. Hyacinth knocked it out of her hand, you said, and you picked it up. You must have left it there in the cockpit, because the Flier found it there and gave it to me.”

Silk accepted it, tucking it into his waistband. “You want me to kill Hyacinth with it. Is that the plan?”

“If you want to.” Wretchedly, Horn nodded.

“I don’t. I won’t. I’m taking this because I may need it — I’ve been down there, and I may have to protect her. Haven’t I told you about that?”

“Yes, Calde. On the airship for my book.”

“Good, I won’t have to go over it again. Now listen. You feel that Hyacinth has betrayed me, and unnaturally. I want you to at least consider, as I do, that Hyacinth herself may feel differently. Isn’t it possible — in fact, likely — that she feared that General Saba might regain her airship in fact as well as in name? That in that case it would be well for us — for Hyacinth and me, and every Vironese on board — if she were as friendly toward us as we could render her?”

Horn nodded reluctantly. “I guess so, Calde.”

“Furthermore, Hyacinth knew that I meant to return General Saba’s airship when we returned to the city. May not Hyacinth have considered that General Saba might at some future date be a good and strong friend to Viron?”

Through the break in the tunnel wall, Hyacinth called, “Aren’t you coming down?”

“Soon,” Silk told her. “We’re not finished here.”

“Calde, she’s the one dropping mortar bombs on us. General Saba is. That’s her up there in the airship right now.”

“It is indeed; but she’s dropping them because she’s been ordered to, as any good officer would. I doubt very much that Hyacinth cherished any hope of suborning General Saba from her duty; but there are many times when an officer, particularly a high-ranking one, may exercise discretion. Hyacinth tried, I believe, to do what she could to make certain any such decisions would favor us — more specifically, my government.”

“But we’re going. You said so on the airship, and before we found this way, we were going to have to walk all the way to the Juzgado. On the Short Sun Whorl, it won’t matter whether General Saba likes us or not, will it?”

“No. But Hyacinth could not have known aboard the airship that we would be leaving this soon, and she may even have hoped that we would not leave at all. I think she did.”

“I see.” Horn nodded; and when Silk did not speak again, he said, “Calde, we’d better go.”

“Soon, as I said. There’s one more thing — no, two. The first is that whatever that act might mean to me, or to you, or even to General Saba, it meant next to nothing to Hyacinth; she has performed similar ones hundreds of times with any number of partners. With Generalissimo Oosik, for example.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“No. But I do — he told me. When she had to leave the house of the commissioner who had obtained her from her father — I don’t even know which it was — she lived for a time with a captain. Eventually they quarreled and separated.”

“You don’t have to tell me all this, Calde.”

“Yes, I do. Not for your book — which you will probably never complete or even begin — but for guidance in your own life. Who was that captain? Would you care to guess?”

Horn shook his head.

“I think I can. He was very formal with her, but I saw his eyes — particularly when he stopped our horse. I don’t believe he meant much to her; he was a protector and provider when she needed one. She meant a great deal to him, however — no doubt she always will.”

Horn whispered, “She’s climbing back up,” and pointed.

Silk scrambled halfway down the crater to meet and assist her. “I won’t say I’m not delighted to see you — I’m always overjoyed to see you, Hyacinth, you know that. But Horn and I were about to join you down there.”

Entering the crater from the tunnel, Nettle called, “You wouldn’t believe all the people down here, Calde. Half the quarter. Marrow the greengrocer, and Shrike the butcher, and even the new augur that was with us on the airship. Moly’s here, and he’s making her wear his robe. The Prolocutor made everybody sit down.”

Horn offered his hand to Hyacinth, and the other to Silk. “My mother, and my brothers and sisters. That’s what I care about, only…” Something caught in his throat. “Only that sounds like I don’t care about my father.”

“But you do,” Hyacinth muttered. “I know how it is.”

“Yeah, I guess so. He made me work in the shop every day after palaestra, and — and we’d fight about that, and lots of other stuff.”

“I understand.”

“I’m the oldest,” Horn said, as though that accounted for everything.

Silk called, “If half the quarter’s down there, what about our manteion? The congregation, I mean, the people who came to sacrifice on Scylsday and the children from the palaestra?”

“They’re just about all here,” Nettle told him. “Not some of the men, they’re off fighting for General Mint. But, oh, Goldcrest and Feather and Villus, and my friend Ginger. Wait, let me think. Teasel is, and her sisters and brothers and her mother. And Asphodella and Aster. And Kit — he’s Kerria’s little brother, and she’s there too. And Holly and Hart. He’s wounded. And the catsmeat woman, and that old man that sells ices in the summer, and a whole lot more.”

Silk nodded, then smiled at Hyacinth. “I’ve done it — saved it from the dissolution of the whorl. Or at least I will have when we reach the new one. I was to save our manteion; and that is the manteion, all of those people coming together to worship. The rest was trimming, very much including me.”

Hyacinth could not look at him.

“When you came back up, I was explaining to Horn that in the end it is only love that matters. The Outsider once told me that though he’s not Kypris, she cannot help becoming him. The more she becomes a goddess of love in truth, the more they will unite — it was before we met in Ermine’s by the goldfish pool.” He smiled again. “Where Thelx holds up a mirror.”

Hyacinth nodded; and Horn saw that her eyes were filled with tears. He asked, “Did you really see him there, Calde? The Outsider?”

“Yes, in a dream, standing upon the water. I had only this left Horn, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t say it now, or that Hyacinth and Nettle shouldn’t hear it. It is that love forgets injuries. I know that Hyacinth would never betray me, just as you know that Nettle would never betray you; but if she did — if she did a thousand times — I would still love her.”

Almost violently, Hyacinth pushed herself away from the crater. “I can’t listen to any more of this. I don’t want to, and I won’t.” She stood up.

Silk said, “Then let us go,” and began to climb down to the break in the tunnel wall.

“I’m not going!” Hyacinth shouted. Her lovely face was savage. “You told me about that place, and I’ve seen it, and it’s horrible! All the landers are broken, you said, not like Auk’s, and you’re just hoping to fix them. And you’re giving up the whole city!” She turned and dashed away, vanishing in the swirling snow before she had taken five strides.

Silk tried to scramble back, but in his haste set off a slide that carried him almost to Nettle, who followed him when he began to climb again.

When he reached the surface and started after Hyacinth, Horn and Nettle went with him. A bomb burst near enough to shake the earth beneath their feet, and he stopped. “You have to go, both of you, and you must go together.”

His eyes flashed even in that snowy twilight. “Nettle, do you understand? Do you, Horn? I’ll find her, and enough cards to repair another lander. Get down there, find His Cognizance, and tell him. We’ll meet you at the landers, if we can.”

Nettle took Horn’s hand, and Silk said, “Make him go. By force, if you must.” He offered her his needler, but she drew her own, the one that had been Saba’s. He nodded, put his back in his waistband, and disappeared into the snow like a ghost. Overhead, the harsh voice of his bird sounded again and again: “Silk? Silk? Silk?”

For a score of poundings of their hearts, Nettle and Horn stood together, staring after him and wondering what the future held for them; until at length they smiled as one, she gave him Saba’s needler, and hand-in-hand they returned to the crater and scrambled down to the opening that a bomb had made in the tunnel wall, and went into the tunnel, where Horn’s mother was waiting for them.