Epiphany of the Long Sun (42 page)

"He stayed behind after we brought the doves. He said he had a couple things to take care of, and he doesn't get into town very often. I thought maybe your side picked him up when he tried to come home.

Maytera Marble shook her head.

Blood took a liberal swallow from his glass. "I wasn't going to shoot you, Mama, and I didn't shoot her. You agreed to that already. Let's pin it down. In about an hour, the Guard could knock this house down and kill everybody. I know that. They're not doing it because they know we've got Silk in here. Isn't that right?"

Maytera Marble nodded. "Free him, turn him over to me, Bloody, and we'll go away and leave you alone."

"It's not that easy. He's here all right, right here in my house. But it's the councillors and their soldiers who've got him, not me."

"Then I must speak with them. Take me to them."

"I'll bring them in here," Blood told her, "they're all over." Under his breath he added, "It's still my hornbussing house, by Phaea's feast!"

Potto opened the door at the top of the cellar steps and crooked his finger at Sand. "Bring him up, Sergeant. We're getting them all together."

Sand saluted with a crash of titanium heels, his slug gun vertical before his face. "Yes, Councillor!" He nudged Silk with the toe of his right foot, and Silk rose.

He fell as he attempted to mount from the second step to the third, and again halfway up. "Here," Sand told him, and returned Xiphias's stick.

"Thank you," Silk murmured. And then, "I'm sorry. My legs feel a trifle weak, I'm afraid."

Potto said cheerfully, "We're going to try to give you back to your friends, Patera, if we can get them to take you." Grabbing the front of Remora's ruined robe, he jerked Silk up the remaining step. "You'd like to lie down again, wouldn't you? Get in a little nap? Maybe something to eat? Help us, and you'll get it."

He released Silk so suddenly that he fell a third time. "Has he tried to escape again, Sergeant?"

Silk did not hear Sand's reply; he was thinking about a great many things. Among them, names.

His own and Sand's were similar-each had four letters, each contained a single vowel, and each began with an S. They could not be related, however, because Sand was a chem and he a bio. Yet they were related by the similarity of their names. Not inconceivably (he found it a tantalizing idea). Sand was a cognate, a version of himself in some whorl of a higher order. Many things the Outsider had shown him seemed to imply that there were such whorls.

Sand prodded him from behind with the barrel of his slug gun, and he staggered against a wall.

Since chems were never augurs, it could not be that Sand had been meant to be an augur. Was it possible then, that he, Silk, had been meant to be a Guardsman? If he were a Guardsman instead of a failed augur, the many correspondences (already so marked) linking them would be much more perfect, and thus this inferior whorl they inhabited more perfect, too.

But, no his mother had wanted him to enter the Juzqado, to become a clerk there like Hyacinth's father and perhaps rise to commissioner. How glowingly she had spoken of a political career, almost up until the day he left for the schola.

"This way," Potto told him, and pushed him through a door and into a gorgeous room full of lounging soldiers and armored men. "Is that the Caldé?" one of the men asked another; the second nodded.

He was in politics at last, as his mother had wished.

He had pulled a chair over to her closet and stood on the seat to examine the Caldé's bust on its dark, high shelf; and she, finding him there intent upon it, had lifted it down for him, dusted it, and set it on her dressing table where he could see it better-wonder at the wide, flat cheeks, the narrow eyes, the high, rounded forehead, and the generous mouth that longed to speak. The Caldé's carved countenance rose again before his mind's eye, and it seemed to him that he had seen it someplace else only a day or two before.

Streaming sunlight, and cheeks that were not smooth wood but blotched and lightly pocked. Was it possible he had once seen the Caldé in person, perhaps as an infant?

"Now listen to me." Potto was standing before him, his plump, pleasant face half a head lower than Silk's own.

…had seen the Caldé outside, because even without his lost glasses he had noticed the powder on the cheeks and the flaws that the powder tried to cover-had seen him, in that case, under the auspices of the Outsider, in a sense.

Blood and Maytera Marble were sitting side-by-side when Potto shoved Silk into the room; he was so surprised to see her that for a moment he failed to notice Chenille, Xiphias, and a drooping augur lined up against the wall.

A still handsome elderly man standing by the fireplace said, "I'm Councillor Loris. I take it you're Silk?"

"Patera Silk. His Cognizance the Prolocutor has not yet accepted my resignation. May I sit down?"

Loris ignored the last. "You're the insurgent Caldé."

"Others have called me Caldé, but I'm not involved in an insurrection." Potto pushed him to the wall beside Chenille.

Loris smiled, his blue eyes glinting like chips of ice; and the seduction of his craggy wisdom was so great that even a mocking smile made it almost irresistible. "You killed my Cousin Lemur, did you, Caldé?"

Silk shook his head.

Maytera Marble said, "I don't know these others, except Chenille. Shouldn't I introduce myself?"

"I'll do it," Blood told her, "it's my house." With a slight start, Silk realized that Blood was in the chair he had occupied a week earlier, and that this was the same room.

"This is Councillor Loris," Blood began unnecessarily, "the new presiding officer of the Ayuntamiento. This other councillor's Councillor Potto."

"Caldé Silk and Councillor Potto are old acquaintances," Loris purred. "Isn't that right, Caldé?"

"I don't know this soldier myself," Blood continued, and paused to sip his drink. "It probably doesn't matter."

"Sergeant Sand," Silk told him. "He and Councillor Potto interrogated me Tarsday. It was very painful, and I suppose it's quite possible they're going to do it again."

Sand came to attention and appeared about to speak, but Silk stopped him with a gesture. "You were only doing your duty. Sergeant. I understand. In justice to you, I ought to add that you had treated me well earlier."

Potto said, "We won't need you here, Sergeant. You know what to do." Sand looked at Silk, saluted, executed an about-face, and left, shutting the door behind him.

"A very handsome young man," Maytera Marble remarked. "I was sorry to hear that he behaved badly toward you, Patera."

Blood indicated her with his glass. "This holy sibyl's Maytera Rose-"

Chenille tittered nervously. Maytera Marble said, "I'm Maytera Marble, Bloody. Remember? I explained about that. Chenille and I have met, and naturally Patera knows me well."

"Patera
Silk,
she means," elucidated the small augur in the corner. "I,
too,
am entitled to the honorific, as well as my more customary ones. Caldé, I have been appointed the new
Prolocutor
of
Viron
by
Subleviating Scylla
, who during that same
theophany
confirmed
you
as its Caldé. Am
I
, as I
dare hope
, the first to-"

Silk managed to smile. "It's a pleasure to see you again, Patera."

Chenille blurted, "Why weren't you dead? I've just been standing here… We couldn't, none of us-"

Xiphias cackled. "He's a tough one! Student of mine, too! Truth!"

Silk said, "Maytera, do you know Master Xiphias? Master Xiphias is teaching me to fence. Master Xiphias, this holy sibyl is Maytera Marble. She's the senior sibyl now at my- Of the manteion on Sun Street."

Maytera Marble added softly, "I'm also the representative of our Generalissimo Oosik and the Trivigauntis' General Saba, Patera. I've come to arrange your release."

His voice thick with mock sincerity, Loris said, "We hold the key to the crisis now, you see, the generous gods having flung the ring into our laps. How foolish are those who scorn the power of the immortal gods!"

A black shape darted through the open window, landing with a thump on Silk's shoulder. "Bird back!"

"Oreb!" Silk looked around at him, surprised and more pleased than he would have been willing to admit.

"
Scourging Scylla
," ignoring Oreb, Incus had leveled his forefinger at Loris, "has given
you
nothing."

"In that case, we have gained our present advantage by merit." Loris smiled. "We thank the undying, ever-generous gods for our talents."

Oreb cocked an inquiring head. "Good gods?"

"She will
destroy
all of you, should you harm
either
of the holy augurs present, or this
sibyl.
We are
sacred.
"

"We'll risk her wrath if need be. Old man, stop reaching for your sword. It's gone. Were you thinking of overpowering us?"

Xiphias shook his head. "You think I don't know there's soldiers out there?"

"You could not even if there were none." Loris took a bookend from the mantle; it shattered between his fingers with a sharp report and an explosion of snowy chips. The door flew open, revealing Sand and two other soldiers with leveled slug guns. Oreb whistled.

Potto told them, "It's all right. Shut it."

"Caldé Silk is a strong young man, but he's been severely wounded. You are an old one, unarmed, and not as strong as you suppose. Our new Prolocutor's not physically imposing. Need I continue?"

Silk said, "I can understand how you came to be in the tunnel, Master Xiphias-both you and His Cognizance. You ran for cover just as Hyacinth and I did-"

Blood interrupted. "You've got her? Where is she?"

"I don't. I had her, if you like. We were separated." Turning back to Xiphias, Silk continued, "After you dug me out of the loose soil, you went down the tunnel to look for water with Chenille and Patera, leaving His Cognizance with me-with my body, as you thought. Is that right?"

Xiphias nodded.

"Only we didn't think your body," Chenille told Silk, "We knew you were alive. His Cognizance said there was a pulse, only we didn't understand how you could be alive after getting buried like that."

Loris rattled what remained of the bookend in his hand. "What puzzles me-excuse my interrupting your conference-is your mention of His Cognizance. I take it you don't refer to our friend, but to the actual head of the Chapter? Was he in the tunnel with you, Caldé?"

"Yes, he was. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it."

Potto said happily, "He's an old man. One of the patrols will pick him up, Cousin."

"A clever old man." Loris looked grim. "A troublemaker."

Privately, Silk was trying to reconcile Quetzal's telling Chenille that he, Silk, was alive with his saying that they had thought him dead. He had lied in one or the other, but why?

"Bad thing!" Oreb told everyone.

Silk ventured, "A patrol headed by Sergeant Sand-one like the patrol that arrested me originally, I suppose-must have come across Master Xiphias, Patera Incus, and Chenille. I was surprised to see them here, but I believe I understand now. Sand must have sent the other man back here with them and gone on alone until he found me, perhaps because he'd heard my voice-I'd been talking to His Cognizance. Is that correct?"

"Where is this tunnel, Patera?" Maytera Marble asked. "Are you talking about a tunnel underneath the house?"

Potto grinned at her, displaying gleaming teeth.

Blood put down his drink. "Yeah, we're right over it, Mama, and it hooks up with a bunch of others."

Loris told her, "That's the first item you ought to pass on to your principals, Maytera. They think they have us like rats in a cauldron. Nothing could be further from the truth. We can leave this house, and them, whenever we wish."

Blood added, "Only I don't want to. It's my house."

She looked thoughtful, a finger pressed to her cheek.

"Bad hole." Oreb ruffled his feathers apprehensively. Chenille whispered, "Your bird was down there with us. Auk had him on the boat."

"You're sunburned!" Inwardly, Silk reproached his own stupidity. "I've been looking at you-gaping actually, I suppose. I hope you'll excuse it, but I couldn't imagine how your face had gotten so red, so close to the red-brown color of a wood-carving my mother used to have."

"She wore
nothing
on the boat," Incus interposed. "Then my robe. Maytera
forced
them to give her that gown."

Loris snapped, "Is this germane?"

"Perhaps not," Silk admitted. "It's just that Chenille has reminded me of a childhood incident, Councillor."

Loris waved aside Chenille's sunburn, tossing the largest fragment of the bookend onto the rosewood end table at Maytera Marble's elbow. "Marble? Isn't that your name, Maytera? The Caldé just reminded us of that."

"It is."

"That was what this knickknack was, I'd say. Real marble from the Short Sun Whorl, precisely like you." For an instant, Loris's face was no longer attractive. "I'll leave that chunk there so you don't forget it."

"I shan't," Maytera Marble promised. "It would be wise for you to keep in mind that you're surrounded by thousands of well-armed troops, Councillor. I suppose most people in my position would be inclined to exaggerate their numbers, but I won't. I'll tell you the truth, so you won't be able to say that you were deceived, or even misled, afterward. There are two companies of Trivigaunti pterotroopers, almost the entire Third Brigade of the Civil Guard, and elements of the Fourth. I asked Generalissimo Oosik what he meant by 'elements' and he said four floaters and the heavy weapons company. Besides all those, there are about five thousand of Maytera Mint's people, with more arriving from the city all the time. They've heard that Patera Silk's in here, and they want to charge the house. When I left, General Saba and Generalissimo Oosik were afraid they might not be able to prevent them without using Guardsmen and creating more friction."