Gene Wolfe: Exodus from the Long Sun

“I have never, um, had the pleasure.” Remora started up the steps. “Nor has His Cognizance, I think. He, um, confided it to me a year or two past. We had been — um — dissecting? Decrying this, er, Blood’s influence. Was never a, um, visitor within these — ah — despoiled walls.”

“Neither have. I, Your Eminence.” Maytera Mint hiked up her skirt and started up the steps.

“To be sure. To be sure, General. I regret it. Regret it now. I will not dissemble, nor, um, ever. Seldom. To have seen this in its days of prosperity would — prosperity and peace, eh? The contrast ’twixt memory and the, um, less happy present. Do you follow me? Whereas one can now but picture… See that picture? Fine. Very fine indeed, eh? Torn. Might be refurbished yet, in skillful hands. Like the tali, eh?”

“I suppose.” She had glanced at the ruined furniture, and was studying the shadowy doorways of further rooms. “He kept women here, didn’t he? This bad man Blood who owned the house. Women — women who…”

“Enough, enough! Do not, um, perturb yourself, Maytera. General. A few such. An, er, select contingent. So I was given to understand upon the occasion of our — um — my tete-a-tete , eh? With old Quetzal. Do I, um, scandalize you? With His Cognizance. I am, ah, betimes inclined to be overfree. To presume upon an old friendship. A failing, I concede.” Remora advanced to study the damaged Murtagon.

“Was this where it happened?”

“Where the women — ah?” He glanced back at her with a half smile. “No indeed.”

“Where Calde Silk killed this man Blood, and Sergeant Sand killed Councillor Potto.”

“We’ve finer ones at the Palace, hey? Still it’s nice and might be — ah — emended. In an, um, one of the anterooms as I understand it, General. May I ask why you wish to know. An um, monument of some kind, possibly? A dedicational tablet of, er, bronze?”

“Because we know that the man who owned this house died in it, Your Eminence,” Maytera Mint explained. “This Blood, with Councillor Potto. If their bodies aren’t here, they’ve been removed by someone, and I’d think that if Generalissimo Oosik or even General Saba had done it I’d have heard. A councillor’s body? Everyone would be arguing about what should be done with it, and I would certainly have heard.”

Her tone grew crisp. “Now if you’ll oblige me.”

Remora, who was not used to being asked for favors in that peremptory fashion, looked around sharply.

“There seems to be no one here, though my informants… Never mind. Do you agree?”

“There is certainly no one in this room at present except — ah — ourselves. With regard to the, er, remainder of the, um, building, I — hum — further investigation.”

“I’ve been listening carefully and heard nothing. The bodies may be in plain view or hidden by furniture or whatnot.” Rather tardily Maytera Mint added, “Your Eminence. I’ll search the rooms on this side. I’d like you to search the other. We needn’t bother with the rest of the house, I think.”

“If there are no, er, bodies, General,” Remora smoothed the truant lock into place, “shall we return to the city — ah — forthwith? Might be wise, eh? We have no way of knowing what has transpired in our absence, hey?”

She nodded. “Agreed. We’ll know then that they’ve been here and may return later. I’ll leave one of Bison’s officers to watch, with a few troopers. If we do find a body, either one, it should be safe to assume that the Ayuntamiento’s troops have never come back at all. We can go back to the city at once and forget about this house.”

“Wisely, er, spoken.” Remora was already hurrying toward the first of his assigned roorns. “I shall inform you promptly should I discover an — ah — the mortal remains.”

The anteroom Maytera Mint entered had, it appeared, been the owner’s study. A massive mahogany desk, lavishly carved, stood against one wall, and there were shelves of books, mostly (she scanned the titles on a shelf at the level of her eyes) erotic if not pornographic: Three Maids and Their Mistress, The Astonishing Exploits of a Virile Young Man and His Donkey, His Resistance Overcome …

She turned away. What had it been like to be here under such a master? She tried to picture the lives of the women who had endured it, and failed. They had been bad women, as the whorl judged, but that only meant that they had commanded defenses greatly inferior to her own.

Strange, how she had come to think in military metaphors during the past few days.

The desk drawers seemed apt to tell her a good deal about the owner, who counted for nothing now, and nothing about the Ayuntamiento and those who served it. She opened a drawer at random anyway, glanced at the papers it had held — all of them concerned in some fashion with money — shut it, and made sure no corpse lay concealed in the leg hole.

“General!”

Turning so quickly that the long, black skirt of her habit billowed about her, she hurried out of the study and across the sellaria. “What is it, Your Eminence?”

He met her at the doorway, visibly struggling to conceal his pleasure. “I have the — ah — it is my unhappy duty—”

“You’ve found a body. Whose?”

“The, um, late councillor’s, I believe. If, perhaps, you would not care—”

“To see it? I must! Your Eminence, I’ve seen hundreds of bodies since this began. Thousands.” There had been a time when she had found it nearly impossible to cut the throat of a goat; as she pushed past Remora, she reflected that she would find that difficult still, and find it literally impossible to cut a man’s, even an enemy’s. Yet she had made plans and given orders that had clogged entire streets with corpses.

“I took the, um, responsibility? The — ah — presumption of, er, tidying him up. On his back now, eh? Folded the arms, prior to calling you.”

Potto lay almost at her feet, his arms crossed in such a way as to hide the wound Sand’s slug had made just below his sternum. The graying hair that he had worn long trailed over Blood’s lush carpet, and Maytera Mint found herself muttering, “He looks surprised.”

“Doubtless he — ah — was.” Remora cleared his throat. “Caught unawares, hey? Shot by one of his own. All in a, um, trice. So my prothonotary tells me. He — ah — Incus is his name, General. Patera Incus. He has, um, fallen prey in some — ah — wise to the notion that he’s old Quetzal—”

She knelt beside the corpse, traced the sign of addition, and opened its card case.

“Mad, I fear. Deranged. Bit of rest, eh? He’ll come to himself soon enough. General — ah — ?”

In the first place,” Maytera Mint explained, “there may be papers of value in here. In the second, there’s money, ten cards or so, and we need that very badly.”

“I, ah, see.”

Cards and papers vanished into her wide sleeve. “Where’s the blood? Did you clean up his blood before you called to me, Your Eminence?”

“Through the heart, eh?” Remora’s nasal tones sounded slightly strangled. “Not much bleeding then, eh? So I am — ah — apprised.”

Gently at first, then with increased vigor, Maytera Mint rubbed the councillor’s cheek. “This’s a chem!”

“I — um—”

She looked up at Remora. “You knew.”

“I — ah — suspected.”

“You rolled him over, you said, Your Eminence. You folded his arms. You must have known.”

“Then? Oh, yes, I — ah — confirmed, eh? I had, um, and — ah — Quetzal, eh? Old Quetzal. Wouldn’t tell. Asked him once. More, actually. He, ah, er, wouldn’t. Confides in me, eh? Nearly everything. Very, ah, delicate points. Sensitive matters, finances. Everything. But he — ah — wouldn’t.”