Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

If we lose, I will die equally; and in all probability by torture. In Han people die like that often. Why should the Man show me more mercy than he shows his own citizens? Thus I am doomed whether Hari Mau succeeds or fails. Nor is that all.

Our inhumi do as I ask because I have continued to free others, eighteen so far. When the war ends, I will have no use for them, and they will have no reason to wish me alive. With me dead, their precious secret will be safe. (Krait, who loved me and wanted so desperately for me to love him, can never have imagined that he was dooming me.) I have promised over and over to give them the locations of the remaining interments, which are concealed now by booths and the like. When I have done so, I will be as good as dead.

I have sent Evensong to buy a boat for me, telling her that it will be used by a spy whose identity I cannot reveal. When she has come back and the palace is asleep, I will go. I am still too ill to ride far, I fear; but I will be able to manage a small boat, or hope I will.

I will have to. How strange it will seem to be alone on a boat again. As though Green and the whole Whorl had never happened. Back on board a boat, and sailing down Nadi to the sea!

There is not time enough for me to re-read the earlier pages properly, but I believe I promised myself (and you, Nettle darling, if the Outsider someday grants my prayer) that I would not end this account before Sinew, Krait, and I went aboard the lander. That I would not end it, in fact, until we flew away from Pajarocu. I may not have time, however, if I continue to trace our way up the rivers.

No, I most certainly will not. Evensong may return from her errand at any minute. She can tell me where it is docked, and I will give her an hour to get to sleep. An hour at most, then I will leave Gaon forever.

So the lander first, and I will work my way backward from that as well as I can.

Krait, Sinew, and I had places on it. So did Seawrack, but Sinew and I had seen to it that she was not on board. We knew by then and had hidden weapons, he his hunting knife and I the two big, broad-bladed knives I had traded two silver pins for there in Pajarocu.

I should say, perhaps, that I had not bought them because I expected a fight on the lander at that time. (I assumed then that we would not board it.) I had gotten them, one for myself and one for Sinew, I thought, because I had resolved to get a knife of that type when I had found the floating tree and had been forced to chop it up with Sinew’s hunting knife. At that time I had not seen the lander, and had only just recovered from the shock of my first sight of Pajarocu, which I had, in my pitiful ignorance, imagined would be a town like New Viron or Three Rivers. They had no guards, and plain, somewhat roughly fitted handles of dark brown wood; their blades were broad, but thin enough to be flexible. I had tied them together, one hanging down my chest and the other down my back, and the rough leather overtunic that He-pens-sheep had made for me hid them very well.

They were taken from me, and I got instead the ancient black-bladed sword with which I cleared the sewer of corpses-but all that is outside the scope of this account, unless I am permitted to continue it on my own paper, in my own mill, on Lizard.

May the Outsider grant it!

Tonight that seems too much to ask even of a god.

How the rain thunders against the roof and walls! Who would have believed that there could be so much water in the whorl?

Sinew had tied his hunting knife to his thigh under his trousers. To tell the truth, I believed that he had my old needier as well. I may as well admit that, which is the truth. I believed he had lied to me about it, as he had lied to me so often about so many other things; but the traveler who had taken our old boat and abandoned him far up the rivers had taken my needier as well. Neither Sinew nor I ever set eyes on him again, but we soon united in wishing that he had boarded the lander with us, and that he had retained his weapon-my needier-as we had urged all the men boarding the lander to do. He was a bad man without a doubt, an opportunistic adventurer more than ready to exploit those he called friends, and to leave them in the lurch the moment it appeared to his advantage; but most of the men on the lander were as bad or worse, and more than a few were much worse.

I must make that clear. Were the inhumi who controlled it monsters? Yes. But so were we.

The rain has stopped. After so many days of rain it seems uncanny, although it does not actually rain without cease during the rainy season. If the season has not ended, it will rain again in an hour or two; if it has, this may be the last rain we will see for months. I have thrown open all the windows, determined to enjoy the respite.

Oreb is back! I got up just now to have another look at the sky, and he landed on my shoulder, scaring me silly. “Bird back!” he said, as if he had been gone for an hour. “Bird back! Good Silk!” and “Home good!”

And, oh, but it is good. It is so very good to see him again, and to know that when I go I will not go alone.

After writing that last I got out my old black robe, the robe that Olivine stole for me and that His Cognizance Patera Incus persuaded me to wear when I sacrificed in the Grand Manteion. Will I be wearing it still when I arrive at New Viron to report my failure? It seems likely I will. I have my jeweled vest under it, and am going to keep my rings. They owe me those, at least.

Good luck, Hari Mau!

Good luck, all you good folk of Gaon! You are better than most peoples I have met, hardworking, cheerful, and brave. May Quadrifons of the Crossroads, and all other gods both new and old, smile on you. No doubt they do.

Having written that, I cannot help adding that the very same things might be said with equal justice about the people of Han. They are argumentative and love to shout their displeasure at others (I have seen something of it in Evensong) but that does not mean they are vindictive, and in fact they are the exact reverse, quick to laugh and forgive everything and be friends again. They deserve a far better government than the Man’s.

Will Hari Mau’s be better? Beyond all question. But if Hari Mau is wise, he will appoint one of them the new Man, some leader whom everyone there respects, a kind and steady man, or even a woman, who has seen life and learned moderation and compassion. I should put that in the letter I am leaving for him, and I will.

Listen to Rajya Mantri, Hari Mau, but make your own decisions. Let him think that you confide in him.

Still no Evensong. I have been talking with Oreb, who has flown over this entire whorl-or says he has. When we fall silent I can hear Seawrack, faint and far, her voice keeping time with the beating of the waves.

Pajarocu is a portable town, as Wijzer said. I should say, rather, that it is a portable city, the shadow of the real City of Pajarocu, which must be somewhere in the Whorl . There are a few huts and a few tents; but they are not Pajarocu, and are in fact frowned upon. Let me explain what I mean, Nettle.

When you and I, with Marrow, Scleroderma and her husband, and all the rest came here, we looted the lander that had brought us and named the new town we hoped to build after the old city in which we had been born, and thereafter, for the most part, forgot it. (I remember very well how you and I had to rack our brains to recall the names of certain streets while we were writing our book; no doubt you do too.) We spoke of “Our Holy City of Viron,” or at least our augurs did when they blessed us; but save for the fact that it was the center of the Vironese Faith, there was nothing particularly holy about it.

Things are very different with Pajarocu and its people. In the Long Sun Whorl, their city seems to have been not so much a city like Viron as a ceremonial center, the place where they assembled on holy days and feast days. Each of the Nine had his or her lofty manteion of stone, there was a processional road like our own Alameda, a vast public square or plaza for open-air ceremonies, and so on.