Mitchell Smith: Moonrise

"Did you know…" A soft, echoing voice.

Baj stood still, hand on hilt.

"Did you know, Prince?" Patience. "Did you know that you stand where once a world wonder – the Mass-Into-Tech – once stood?"

Her voice had come from the right, and Baj went that way into lamplight brighter and brighter. Warm wind pressed gently at his back.

Patience waited outlined in an iron doorway by golden light, carved ice glittering beside and above her. "Dear Baj," she said, and stepped aside. Her white hair tied back with a leather string, she wore only a long, stained, white apron, and stood otherwise naked in lamplight, her body pale and slender as a young girl's, though softened, hollowed by age. "Dear Baj – in fine furs and mail, as a prince should be. And how stands our day's victory?"

"It stands, so far tonight." Baj walked with her into a huge round chamber, a sort of oubliette, shaped like a wild-bee hive. He'd seen the same spaces on Island, sunk deep under North Tower.

This room's roof, as with those much smaller, grimmer, donjons, came together into a round funnel shape – though here almost a bow-shot high, and lit spangled as all of Boston was, with clusters of hanging lamps. A faint odor of hot oil drifted on the air.

The chamber was warm, heated by the corridor's furnace draft flowing in and up through its roof. A roof, Baj saw, lined with iron sheeting framed away from the ice beneath it. Though still, runnels of milky melt-water trickled down carved drains.

There were wooden benches spaced around the room, with fat embroidered pillows drifted on them – and at the room's center, a stepped dais, heaped with more cushions. The encircling ice-block walls were rich with pegged bright decorations – polished copper moons and suns and stars – and four wide cord-hung tapestries spaced evenly around, all telling tales of pleasure in gardens Boston hadn't seen for many centuries. Beside each, a doorway into other rooms.

Two women – Boston women, gray-haired and sturdy in woven shirts and sealskin trousers – stood in one of those across the chamber, watching.

"Eleanor Potts," Patience said, "and her sister, Verity – an ancient New England name."

"I've never heard it," Baj said, and bowed to the women, who nodded back. "It means… truth?"

"Yes," Patience said, "and might as well have meant fidelity, loyalty, friendship. These have tended my Maxwell, and with wet-nurses, since he was born – and tend him still."

"Maxwell," Baj said, and looked for a child – perhaps already taking first steps.

"You've come to meet him."

"Yes, I've come to meet him… And to ask his mother if she and her son will accompany us. Leave Boston."

"Leave Boston?"

"The Wolf-General has more than suggested I go – with any who choose to go with me."

"Ah…" Patience smiled. "Concerned the Rule might make you a cause to interfere here?"

"Yes. – Where's your boy?"

Patience took his hand. "Come meet my dear dreamer." She led him to the dais, and up a wide step.

For an instant, Baj saw only big satin pillows, pale pink. Pillows over cushions, and half-covered by a white-bear's fur. Then he saw the pillows lived, and were the round arms and chest of a sleeping child. A baby – plump, perfect, its eyes closed by lids almost transparent, its hair a wisp of glossy brown. A baby the size of a man.

Bigger than a man. Richard's size.

Baj's voice caught in his throat for a moment, then he whispered, "Maxwell… are you sleeping?"

There was, perhaps, a deep murmur in response.

"Yes, he's sleeping… See how he's grown?" Patience smiled down at her child. "Well, you wouldn't know that – but he has grown." She bent to kiss a huge, soft, dimpled hand. "My darling came as other babies came, but has grown and grown… though not grown older."

"He's beautiful," Baj said. And the child was beautiful. Perfect, though so mighty. There was the odor of all infants about him – of newness, pee, oat powder… of shit, and sweetness.

Patience stretched sinewy, scarred arms yearning to the child as if to seize him, size or not, and haul him to her. But instead, gently stroked the huge round head, its fine drift of hair… gently traced the tender pouting lips so the baby shifted, tickled by the touch. "… Has any woman on the frozen earth a son like this?"

"Should he choose to grow older," Baj said, 'choose' seeming the proper word, "then a Great will certainly stand over Boston."

"And they haven't hurt him. Eleanor says the Faculty studied long, argued, considered foolish correctives – but hadn't yet decided." She smiled. "And now, I think the Talents will take the greatest care of us, hoping that Maxwell might someday twist the future as once they twisted the unborn – and so dream Boston back to itself again."

Baj stepped back a little, as if the baby were too large to stand close beside. "Even so, you and your son should come with us – and likely be safer than here with Sylvia Wolf-General."

" 'Likely' be safer?" Patience stroked her son's round cheek, bent over to kiss a dimple. "And where would that be?"

"I know ice-rigged boats; I've sailed since I was a boy. We can go east to the coast, to Boston's harbor. Choose a vessel there, and if loot and our pay suffice," he smiled, "buy it."

"And then?"

"Then, across the frozen Ocean Atlantic, to Atlas-Europe."

"But thousands of Warm-time miles, Baj, if any of the maps are true! And for what reason?"

"For… whatever reason awaits us there."

"And Maxwell and I?"

"Come with us."

Patience smiled. "Do you not think, dear, dear Baj – do you not think Maxwell might be too large even for the journey to the coast? And then too large for comfort in a fishing boat?"

"We will make do. We'll take him, and see him comfortable."

"And if still he grows? Grows, and then grows slowly older to become what he must become?… Do you know what warmed goats, what willing women must be milked for him every day?"

"We'll bring goats – bring women."

"Sweet Baj, you're speaking of The Book's ark of Noah – not an adventuring barque with an exiled prince and whatever fighting friends." Patience reached over to fold the white bearskin coverlet back. "Too warm; he gets a rash." Maxwell stirred, cooed to himself, a deep, blurred, string-instrument note.

"- And of course, Nancy goes with you."

"Yes."

"I knew you two would love each other. I knew because I'm a woman – and what else would an exile prince and a pretty fox-girl do but fall into love. Inescapable… But I knew also, because Maxwell dreamed it into a dream of mine in the Smoking-mountains. We saw you together – though you were both older – together at Island, on the Bronze Gate's landing." She shook the southern-cotton sheet out billowing, then covered the baby again. "Richard goes as well?"

"I believe he will. – Think again, Patience. Will you both be safe with the Guard ruling Boston?"

"Oh, Sylvia minds honor. Minds it the more for the wolf in her blood. She won't disturb me or my child – and besides, she must rule gently, with a triumph so rawly new, so unexpected… and half her Guard companies dead at South Gate." Patience tucked the sheet, saw to it a plumply massive arm was covered. "This room is sometimes too warm, sometimes cool. Drafts by the walls…"

She tucked and arranged until satisfied, then stepped back and observed her child as if he were a loved landscape. "- Baj, the Wolf-General holds here by her fingernails. If the people of Boston recover their courage, grow angry enough, she and her soldiers might still be overwhelmed."

"Formidable fingernails."

"Yes, but not sufficient for comfort. So Sylvia will rule gently for a long while… and will not allow the Talents' changes, anymore, their use of women's wombs."