"I'd brought you this, lad, remember?" He bounded to the most
remote corner of the room and held up the silver-banded cane.
"Valuable!" He parried an imaginary opponents's thrust. "Useful!
Think I'd let them leave it behind in that garden?"
Hyacinth said, "You followed when we carried him up here, didn't
you? I saw you watching us from the foot of the stairs, but I didn't
know you from a rat then."
"I understand." Silk nodded almost imperceptibly. "His Eminence
left at once, I imagine. I had told him to find you if he could, Your
Cognizance. Did he?"
"No," Quetzal said. With halting steps, he made his way to a red
velvet chair and sat, laying the baculus across his knees. "Does it
matter, Patera Calde?"
"Probably not. I'm trying to straighten things out in my mind,
that's all." Silk's forefinger traced pensive circles on his beard-rough
cheek. "By this time, His Eminence may have reached
Maytera Mint--reached General Mint, I should say. It's possible
they have already begun to work out a truce. I hope so, it could
be helpful. Mucor reached her in any event; and when General
Mint heard Mucor's message, she attacked the Palatine hoping to
rescue me--I ought to have anticipated that. My mind wasn't as
clear as it should be last night, or I would never have told her
where I was."
Hyacinth asked, "Mucor? You mean Blood's abram girl? Was she
here?"
"In a sense." Silk found that by staring steadfastly at the yellow
goblets and chocolate cellos that danced across the carpet, it was
possible to speak to Hyacinth without choking, and even to think in
a patchy fashion about what he said. "I met her Phaesday night, and
I talked to her in the Glasshouse before you found me. I'll explain
about her later, though, if I may--it's appalling and rather complex.
The vital point is that she agreed to carry a message to General Mint
for me, and did it. Colonel Oosik's brigade was being held in reserve
when I spoke to him earlier; when the attack came, it must have
been brought up to strengthen the Palatine."
Hyacinth nodded. "That's what he told me before we woke you.
He said it was lucky for you because Councillor Loris ordered him
to send somebody to kill you, but he came himself instead and
brought you a doctor."
"I operated on you yesterday, Calde," the surgeon told Silk, "but I
don't expect you to remember me. You were very nearly dead." He
was horse-faced and balding; his eyes were rimmed with red, and
there were bloodstains on his rumpled green tunic.
"You can't have had much sleep, Doctor."
"Four hours. I wouldn't have slept that much, if my hands hadn't
started to shake. We have over a thousand wounded."
Hyacinth sat on the bed next to Silk. "That's about what we got,
too--four hours, I mean. I must look a hag."
He made the error of trying to verify it, and discovered that his
eyes refused to leave her face. "You are the most beautiful woman in
the Whorl," he said. Her hand found his, but she indicated Quetzal
by a slight tilting of her head.
Quetzal had been dozing--so it appeared--in the red chair; he
looked up as though she had pronounced his name. "Have you a
mirror, my child? There must be a mirror in a suite like this."
"There's a glass in the dressing room, Your Cognizance. It'll show
you your reflection if you ask." Hyacinth nibbled at her full lower
lip. "Only I ought to be in there getting dressed. Oosie will come
back in a minute, I think, with a speech for Patera and one of those
ear things."
Quetzal rose laboriously with the help of his baculus, and Silk's
heart went out to him. How feeble he was! "I've had four hours
sleep, Your Cognizance; Hyacinth less than that, I'm afraid, and the
doctor here about the same; but I don't believe Your Cognizance
can have slept at all."
"People my age don't need much, Patera Calde, but I'd like a
mirror. I have a skin condition. You've been too well bred to
remark upon it, but I do. I carry paint and powder now like a
woman, and fix my face whenever I get the chance."
"In the balneum, Your Cognizance." Hyacinth rose, too. "There's
a minor, and I'll dress while you're in there."
Quetzal tottered away. Hyacinth paused with one hand on the
latch-bar, clearly posing but so lovely that Silk could have forgiven
her things far worse. "You men think it takes women a long while to
get dressed, but it won't take me long this morning. Don't go
without me."
"We won't," Silk promised, and held his breath until the boudoir
door closed behind her.
"Bad thing," Oreb muttered from a bedpost.
Xiphias displayed the silver-banded cane to Silk. "Now I can show
you this, lad! Modest? Proper? Augur can't wear a sword, right?
But you can carry this! Had a stick first time you came, didn't you?"
"Bad thing!" Oreb dropped down upon Silk's shoulder.
"Yes, I had a walking stick then. It's gone now, I'm afraid. I broke it."
"Won't break this! Watch!" Between Xiphias's hands, the cane's
head separated from its brown wooden shaft, exposing a straight,
slender, double-edged blade. "Twist, and pull them apart! You try it!"
"I'd much rather put them back together." Silk accepted the cane
from him; it seemed heavy for a walking stick, and somewhat light
for a sword. "It's a bad thing, as Oreb says."
"Nickel in that steel! Chrome, too! Truth! Could parry an azoth!
Believe that?"
Silk shuddered. "I suppose so. I had an azoth once and couldn't
cut through a steel door with it."
The azoth reminded him of Hyacinth's gold-plated needler;
hurriedly, he put his hand in his pocket. "Here it is. I've got to return
this to her. I was.afraid that it would be gone, somehow, though I
can't imagine who might have taken it, except Hyacinth herself." He
laid it on the peach-colored sheet.
"I gave your big one back, lad. Still got it?"
Silk shook his head, and Xiphias began to prowl around the
room, opening cabinets and examining shelves.
"This cane will be useful, I admit," Silk told him, "but I really don't
require a needler."
Xiphias whirled to confront him, holding it out. "Going to make
peace, aren't you?"
"I hope to, Master Xiphias, and that's exactly--"
"What if they don't like the way you're making it, lad? Take it!"
"Here you are, Calde." Oosik bustled in with a sheet of paper and
a black object that seemed more like a flower molded from synthetic
than an actual ear. "I'll turn it on before I pass it to you, and all
you'll have to do is talk into it. Do you understand? My loudspeakers
will repeat everything that you say, and everyone will hear you.
Here's your speech."
He handed Silk the paper. "It would be best for you to read it over
first. Insert some thoughts of your own if you like. I would not
deviate too far from the text, however."
Words crawled across the sheet like ants, some bearing meaning
in their black ja
ws, most with none. _The insurgent forces. The Civil
Guard. The rebellion. The commissioners and the Ayuntamiento.
The Army. The arms in the Alambrera. The insurgents and the
Guard. Peace_.
There it was at last. _Peace_.
"All right." Silk let the sheet fall into his lap.
Oosik signaled to someone in the outer room, waited for a reply
that soon came, cleared his throat, and held the ear to his lips. "This
Is Generalissimo Oosik of the Calde's Guard. Hear me all ranks,
and especially you rebels. You're fighting us because you want to
make Patera Silk Calde, but Calde Silk is with us. He is with the
Guard, because he knows that we are with him. Now you soldiers.
Your duty is to obey our calde. He is sitting here beside me. Hear
his instructions."
Silk wanted his old chipped ambion very badly; his hands sought
it blindly as he spoke, rattling the paper. "My fellow citizens, what
Generalissimo Oosik has just told you is true. Are we not--" The
words seemed predisposed to hide behind his trembling fingers.
"Are we not, every one of us, citizens of Viron? On this historic
day, my fellow citizen--" The type blurred, and the next line began
a meaningless half sentence.
"Our city is in great danger," he said. "I believe the whole Whorl's
in great danger, though I can't be sure."
He coughed and spat clotted blood on the carpet. "Please excuse
me. I've been wounded. It doesn't matter, because I'm not going to
die. Neither are you, if only you'll listen."
Faintly, he heard his words re-echoed in the night beyond
Ermine's walls: "_You'll listen_." The loudspeakers Oosik had
mentioned, mouths with stentorian voices, had heard him in some
fashion, and in some fashion repeated his thoughts.
The door of the balneum opened. Framed in the doorway,
Quetzal gave him an encouraging nod, and Oreb flew back to his
post on the bedpost.
"We can't rebel against ourselves," Silk said. "So there is no
rebellion. There is no insurrection, and none of you are insurgents.
We can fight among ourselves, of course, and we've been doing it. It
was necessary, but the time of its necessity is over. There is a calde
again--I am your calde. We needed rain, and we have gotten rain."
He paused to look across the room at the rich smoke-gray drapes.
"Master Xiphias, will you open that window for me, please? Thank you."
He drew a deep and somewhat painful breath of cool, damp air.
"We've had rain, and if I'm any judge of weather, we'll get more.
Now let's have peace--it's a gift we can provide ourselves, one more
precious than rain. Let's have peace."
(What was it the captain had said whole ages ago in that inn?)
"Many of you are hungry. We plan to buy food with city funds and
sell it to you cheaply. Not free, because there are always people who
will waste anything free. But very cheaply, so that even beggars will
be able to buy enough. My Guard will release the convicts from the
pits. Generalissimo Oosik, His Cognizance the Prolocutor, and I are
going to the Alambrera this morning, and I'll order it. All convicts
are pardoned as of this moment--I pardon them. They'll be hungry
and weak, so please share whatever food you have with them."
He recalled his own hunger, hunger at the manse and worse
hunger underground, gnawing hunger that had become a sort of
illness by the time Mamelta located the strange, steaming meals of
the underground tower. "We had a poor harvest this year." he said.
"Let us pray, every one of us, for a better one next year. I've prayed
for that often, and I'll pray for it again; but if we want to have
enough to eat for the rest of our lives, we must have water for our
fields when the rains fail.
"There are ancient tunnels under the city. Some of you can
confirm that because you've come upon them while digging foundations.
They reach Lake Limna--I know that, because I've been in them. If we can
break through near the lake--and I'm sure we can--we can use them to
carry water to the farms. Then we'll all have
plenty of food, cheaply, for a long time." He wanted to say, until it's
time for us to leave this whorl behind us, but he bit the words back,
pausing instead to watch the gray drapes sway in the breeze and
listen to his own voice through the open window.
"If you have been fighting for me, don't use your weapons again
unless you're attacked. If you're a Guardsman, you have sworn that
you'll obey your officers." (He could not be sure of that, but it was
so probable that he asserted it boldly.) "Ultimately, that means
Generalissimo Oosik, who commands both the Guard and the
Army. You've already heard what he has to say. He's for peace. So am I."
Oosik pointed to himself, then to the ear; and Silk added, "You'll
hear him again, very soon."
He felt that the shade should be up by now--indeed that it was
past that time, the hour of first light, and time for the morning
prayer to Thelxiepeia; yet the city beyond the gray drapes was still
twilit. "To you whose loyalty is to the Ayuntamiento, I have two things to
say. The first is that you're fighting--dying, many of you--for an
institution that needs no defense. Neither I nor Generalissimo Oosik nor
there be peace? Help us make peace!
"The second is that the Ayuntamiento was created by our Charter.
Were it not for our Charter, it would have no right to exist, and
wouldn't exist. Our Charter grants to you--to you, the people of
Viron, and not to any official--the right to choose a new calde
whenever the position is vacant. It then makes the Ayuntamiento
subject to the calde you have chosen. I need not tell you that our
Charter proceeds from the immortal gods. All of you know that.
Generalissimo Oosik and I have been consulting His Cognizance the
Prolocutor on this matter of the calde and the Ayuntamiento. He is
here with us, and if I have misinformed you he will correct me, I feel
certain."
With his left hand Quetzal accepted the ear; his right traced a
trembling sign of addition. "Blessed be you in the Most Sacred
Name of Pas, the Father of the Gods, in that of Gracious Echidna,
His consort, in those of the Sons and their Daughters alike, this day
and forever, in the name of their eldest child, Scylla, Patroness of
this--"
He continued to speak, but Silk's attention deserted him; the
door of the dressing room had opened. Hyacinth stepped through it,
radiantly lovely in a flowing gown of scarlet silk. In a low voice she
said, "The glass in there just told me the Ayuntamiento's offering
ten thousand to anybody who kills you and two thousand each for
Oosie and His Cognizance. I thought you should know."
Silk nodded and thanked her; Oosik muttered, "It was only to be
expected."
"Consider, my children," Quetzal was saying, "how painful it must
be to Succoring Scylla to see the sons and daughters of the city that
she founded clawing one another's eyes. She has
provided everything
we require. First of all our Charter, the foundation of peace
and justice. If we wish to regain her favor we need only return to it.
If we wish to reclaim the peace we have lost, again we need only
return to her Charter. We wish justice, I know. I wish it myself, and
the wish for it has been planted in every bosom by Great Pas. Even
the worst of us wish to live in holiness, too. Perhaps there are a few
ingrates who don't, but they are very few. We wish all these things,
and we can make them ours by one simple act. Let us return to our
Charter. That is what the gods desire. Let us accept this anointed
augur, Patera Calde Silk. The gods desire that, too. To conform to
Sustaining Scylla's Charter, we must have a calde, and the smallest
of our children know on whom the choice has fallen. If you have any
doubts on these topics, my children, I beg you to consult the
anointed augur into whose care you are given. There is one, you
know, in every quarter. Or you may consult the next you see, or any
holy sibyl. They will tell you that the path of duty is not difficult but
simple and plain."
Quetzal paused, exhaling with a slight hiss. "Now, my children, a
most painful matter. Word has come to me that devils in human
shape are seeking our destruction. Falsely and evilly. they promise
money they have not got and will not pay, for our blood. Do not
believe their lies. Their lies offend the gods. Anyone who slays good
men for money is worse than a devil, and anyone who slays for
money he will never see is a fool. Worse than a fool, a dupe."
Oosik reached for the ear, but Quetzal shook his head.
"My children, it will soon be shadeup. A new day. Let it be a day
of peace. Let us stand together. Let us stand by the gods, by their
Charter, and by the calde they have chosen for us. I bid you farewell
for the present, but soon I hope to talk to you face-to-face and bless
you for the peace you've given our city. Now I believe Generalissimo
Oosik wants to speak to you again."
Oosik cleared his throat. "This is the Generalissimo. Operations
against the rebels are canceled, effective at once. Every officer will
be held responsible for his obedience to my order and for the actions
of his troopers or soldiers, as the case may be. Calde Silk and His
Cognizance are going through the city on one of our floaters. I