Gene Wolfe: Exodus from the Long Sun

Spider chuckled. He was, as she had concluded a half-hour before, rather too well suited to his name, a man who made her think of a fat, hairy spider watching its web in a dirty corner.

Quetzal said, “He’s taking us down into the tunnels.”

Spider opened a door as Quetzal spoke, revealing a flight of rough steps descending into darkness. “You know about those, old man?”

“I just came up from them. Did you hear me tell Potto I’d talked to Loris?”

“Councillor Potto to you.” Spider gestured with a needler; he was two full heads taller. “Now get down there before I kick you down.”

“I can’t walk fast, my son.” Quetzal tottered toward the steps. “I’ll delay you and the others.”

There had been a note in his quavering old voice that gave Maytera Mint a surge of irrational confidence. “The Nine avenge wrongs done to augurs and sibyls,” she warned Spider, “and their vengeance is swift and terrible. What they might do to someone who maltreats the Prolocutor, I shudder to think.”

Spider grinned, showing remarkably crooked teeth. “That’s lily, General. So don’t you shove him down and run. Stir it, now. The tall cully behind you, and me behind him. We’re all going to wait nice till Councillor Potto and my knot fetch along his dead body.”

She started down the steps, one hand on a wooden rail that seemed both grimy and insecure. Behind her, Remora said, “This is where, ah, the calde, eh? The cellar, in which, um — “

“Sergeant Sand,” she told him. The dull gleam that had been Quetzal’s hairless head had disappeared into the darkness; she quickened her pace, although the steps were steep and high, and she was afraid of falling. “Sergeant Sand held the calde down here for six hours or more. He told me about it.”

Remora bumped her from behind. “Sorry! Ah — pushed.”

“Keep moving,” Spider growled.

The sound of their voices had kindled a dull green light some distance down the steps; in the dimness she could make out ranked shelves of dusty jars, and what seemed to be abandoned machinery. Involuntarily she murmured, “He’s gone.”

Spider heard her. “Who is?”

“His Cognizance.” She halted, speaking over her shoulder. “Look for yourself. He should be on the stair in front of me, but he’s not.” At the last words, the bright bird called hope sang in her heart.

“There you are!” Maytera Marble exclaimed as Silk emerged from the chilly privacy of the vine-draped arbor. “There’s a man here looking for you, Patera. I said you weren’t here, but he says you’ve got a litter on Sun Street.”

Silk sighed. “It’s been like this since Phaesday. No doubt it’s extremely urgent.”

“That’s just what he said, Patera.” Maytera Marble nodded vigorously, her metal face luminous in the gray daylight. “And it must be. He came in a floater.”

Chenille’s smile turned to a stare. “Hello, Maytera. What happened to your hand?”

“How good of you to ask!” She displayed her stump of arm. “My hand’s fine, my daughter. I’ve got it in a drawer, wrapped up in a clean towel. It’s the rest of — we should go, Patera. He’s waiting for you in front of the cenoby. He came in through the garden and knocked at your manse. I thought he was looking for Patera Gulo.”

“I was shriving Chenille,” Silk explained. “I’m afraid we didn’t hear him.”

“I did,” Chenille declared, “only I thought it was on the street. It was while I was telling you about—” He silenced her, a finger to his lips.

“His name is Hossaan,” Maytera Marble continued. “He’s foreign, I think, but he says he knows you. He gave you a ride once, and he was on a boat with you out on the lake. Now where are you — ? Oh, I forgot. He can’t go through the cenoby.”

The last words were spoken to Silk’s back. At a limping run, he vanished into the narrow opening between the northwest corner of the manteion and the southwest corner of the cenoby.

“There’s a gate,” Maytera Marble explained to Chenille, “that opens onto the children’s playground from Silver Street. But you and I can go through the cenoby.”

She mounted the back step and opened the kitchen door. “My granddaughter’s in here. I had just fixed her a bite when I saw that man. Do you know her?”

“Your granddaughter?” Chenille shook her head.

“Perhaps you’d enjoy a little boiled beef too?” Maytera Marble lowered her voice. “I think it’s good for her to talk with other bio girls. She’s been, well, sheltered, I suppose you could call it. And I have something to say to Patera before that man makes off with him. I have a favor to ask him, a great big one.”

On Silver Street, Silk was already speaking to “that man.” “I haven’t been looking for you,” he said. “It was stupid of me, incredibly stupid. I’ve had Guardsmen out combing the city for Hyacinth and some other people, but you had slipped my mind completely.”

“We can talk in my floater, Calde.” Hossaan was slight and swarthy, with vigilant eyes. “It’ll be more private and get us out of this wind.”

“Thank you.” Stepping into the floater, Silk let himself sink into its black-leather upholstery.

The translucent canopy went up with a muted sigh, and the freezing gusts that had been punishing Viron ended, if only for them.

“If your Guardsmen had looked, they would’ve found me.” Hossaan smiled as he took his place in the front seat. “These things aren’t easy to hide.”

“I suppose not. I ran to see you as soon as I realized who you were because I want to ask where Hyacinth is. You brought her to Ermine’s on Hieraxday to meet me.”

Hossaan nodded.

“From your name — Maytera Marble told me that — you’re a Trivigaunti. Is that right? Doctor Crane said once that you were his second in command. Most of the spies he employed seem to have been Vironese, but it would be natural for him to have a few from his own city, people he could trust completely.”

“Only me, Calde. You’re right, though. More of us would have made us a lot more effective.”

“Do you know where Hyacinth is?”

“No. I wish I did.” Hossaan drew a deep breath. “You know, Calde, you’ve taken a load off my shoulders. I thought I’d have to find out how much you knew and make sure you didn’t learn more than you had to. It turns out you knew everything.”

Silk shook his head. “Not at all. Doctor Crane and I made an agreement. I told him all I’d learned or guessed about his activities, and in return he answered my questions about them. I had guessed very little, and he told me very little more, not even his real name.”

“It was Sigada.” Hossaan smiled bitterly. “It means he was supposed to be handsome and humble.”

“But he was neither. Thank you.” Silk nodded. “Sigada. I’ll always remember him as Doctor Crane, but I’m glad to know how he remembered himself. You weren’t called Hossaan when you were at Blood’s, I’m sure.”

“No. Willet.”

“I see. You didn’t give that name to Maytera Marble; you gave her your real one. You can’t have known that Doctor Crane had told me about you, because you can’t have talked to him between our conversation Tarsday afternoon and his death on Hieraxday morning.”

“I told you I didn’t know how much you knew, Calde.”

“That’s right.” Futilely, Silk groped in a pocket of his robe. “Do you know, I don’t have any prayer beads now? When I was a poor augur, I had beads in my pocket but no money. Now I have money, but no beads.”

“An improvement. You can buy some.”

“If I can find the time when the shops are open, and get into one without being mobbed. You said you were going to tell me no more than you had to; but plainly you intended to tell me you were a Trivigaunti spy.”