Litany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  Better still, suppose that Chenille's commissioner were the grateful builder-no one would question the ability of a commissioner to underwrite the entire cost of even a very elaborate structure. It would not be a manteion, since it could have no Sacred Window, but sacrifice might take place there. Fostered by a commissioner, it might well support a resident augur-someone like himself.

  And Crane would have gone where Chenille's commissioner had gone, assuming that he had learned where that was.

  "Good! Good!" Oreb had completed his repast; balanced upon one splayed crimson foot, he was scraping his bill with the other.

  "Don't soil my robe," Silk told him. "I warn you, I'll be angry."

  As he replaced Crane's wrapping, Silk tried to imagine himself the commissioner. Two councillors had summoned him to the lake for a conference, presumably a confidential one, possibly concerned with military matters. He would (Silk decided) almost certainly travel to Limna by floater; but he would-again, almost certainly-leave his floater and its driver there in favor of a mode of transportation less likely to attract attention.

  To focus his thoughts as he often did in the palaestra, Silk pointed his forefinger at his pet. "He might hire a donkey, for example, like Auk and I did the other night."

  A small boat was gliding toward the lakeward end of the jetty, a gray-haired man minding its tiller while a couple of boys hastily furled its single sail.

  "That's it!"

  The night chough eyed him quizzically.

  "He would hire a boat, Oreb. Perhaps with a reliable man or two to do the sailing. A boat would be much faster than a donkey or even a horse. It would carry a secretary or a confidential clerk as well as the commissioner, and he could go straight to whatever point on the lake-"

  "Silk good?" Oreb stopped preening the tuft of scarlet feathers on his breast to cock his sleek head at Silk. "All right?"

  "No. Slightly wrong. He wouldn't hire a boat. That would cost him money of his own, and he might not feel that he could trust the men who sailed it for him. But the town must have boats-to keep the fishermen from fighting among themselves, for example-and whoever's governing it would fall all over himself hurrying to help a commissioner. So climb aboard, you silly bird. We're going to the Juzgado." After looking in several pockets, Silk found the advocate's visiting card. "On Shore Street. His chambers were on the same street as the Juzgado. Remember, Oreb? No doubt it's convenient when he has to hurry off to court."

  AS THE DOOR of the big shed opened, the old kite builder looked up in some surprise.

  The small, gray-bearded man in the doorway said, "Excuse me. I didn't know you were in here."

  "Just packing up to leave," the kite builder explained. For an instant he wondered whether Musk had thought that he might steal, and had sent this man to watch him.

  "I heard about the kite. You built it? Everyone says it was a beautiful job."

  "It certainly wasn't pretty." The kite builder tied a string around a sheaf of slender sticks. "But it was what they wanted, and it was one of the biggest I've ever done. The bigger they are, the higher they fly. To get up high, they have to lift a lot of wire, you know."

  "I'm Doctor Crane," the bearded man said. "I should have introduced myself earlier." He picked up one of the fish-oil lamps and shook it gently. "Nearly full. Have you been paid yet?"

  "Musk paid me, the full amount." The kite builder patted his pocket. "Not cards, a draft on the fisc. I suppose Blood sent you to see me out."

  "That's right, before they left. They're all gone now, I think. Blood and Musk are, at any rate, the guards, and a few of the servants."

  The kite builder nodded. "They took all the floaters. There were a couple in here. All the highriders, too. Am I supposed to talk to Blood before I leave? Musk didn't say anything about it."

  "Not as far as I know." Crane smiled. "The front gate's open and the talus got fired, so you can go whenever you like. You're welcome to stay, though, if you want to. When they get back from wherever they've gone, Blood might have a driver run you home. Where did they go, anyhow? Nobody told me."

  Scrabbling around for his favorite spokeshave, the kite discovered it under a scape of cloth. "To the lake. That's what some of them said."

  Crane nodded and smiled again. "Then they'll be gone quite a while, I'm afraid. But you're welcome to wait if you want to." He closed the door behind him and hurried back to the villa. If he did not look now, he asked himself, when would he? He'd never have a better chance. The pantry door stood open, and the door to the cellar stair was unlocked.

  The cellar was deep and very dark, and from what he had gathered during friendly chats with the footmen, there should be a wine cellar deeper yet. That might or might not be the same as the subcellar a maid had mentioned. Halfway down the stairs, Crane stopped to raise his lamp.

  Emptiness. Rusted, dust-shrouded machinery that could not, almost certainly, ever be set in motion again. And He descended the remaining steps and trotted across the dirty, uneven floor to look. Jars of preserves: peaches in brandy, and pickles. No doubt they'd come with the house.

  Would they post a sentry at the entrance to the tunnels? He had decided some time ago that they would not. The door (if it was a door) would be locked, however, or barred from below. Possibly hidden as well-located in a secret room or something of that kind. Here, behind the ranks of shelves, was another stair with, yes, footprints leading to it still visible in the dust.

  A short flight of steps this time, with a locked door at the bottom. His pick explored the lock for half a minute that seemed like five before the handle would turn to draw back the bolt.

  The creak of the hinges activated a light whose perpetual crawl had brought it near the peak of the low vault overhead. By its foggy light, he saw wine racks holding five hundred bottles at least; stacks of cases of brandy, agardente, rum, and cordials; and kegs of what was presumably strong beer. He moved several of the last and studied the floor beneath them, then scanned the floor everywhere, and at last tapped the walls.

  Nothing.

  "Well, well, well, a well," he murmured, "and a drink for the plowman." Opening a squat, black bottle that had clearly been sampled previously, he took a long swallow of pallid, fiery arrack, recorked the bottle, and made a last inspection.

  Nothing.

  He closed the wine cellar door silently behind him and twisted its handle clockwise, the muted squeal of the bolt recalling unpleasantly a small dog he had once watched Musk torment.

  For a moment he considered leaving the door unlocked; it would save time and almost certainly be blamed-if in fact Blood's sommelier or anyone else ever discovered it-upon a careless servant. Caution, however, as well as extensive training, urged him to leave everything precisely as he had found it.

  Sighing, he took out his picks, twisted the one that he had used to enter in the lock, and was rewarded by a faint click.

  "You're very good at it, aren't you?"

  Crane spun around. Someone-in the thick twilight of the cellar it appeared to be a tall, handsome, white-haired man-stood at the top of the short flight of steps looking down at him.

  "You recognize me, I hope?"

  Crane dropped his picks, drew, and fired in one single blur of motion, the rapid crack, crack, crack of his needler unnaturally loud in the confined space.

  "You can't hurt me with that," Councillor Lemur informed him. "Now come up here and give it to me, and I'll take you where you've been trying to go."

  "YOU HAD A commissioner come in this spring," Silk told the plump, middle-aged woman behind the heaped worktable. "You very kindly provided him with a small sailing vessel of some type." He gave her his most understanding smile. "I'm not about to ask you to provide me with a boat as well. I realize that I'm no commissioner."

  "Last spring, Patera? A commissioner from the city?" The woman looked baffled.

  At the precise moment that Silk became certain that he had forgotten the commissioner's name, he recalled it; he leaned closer to the
woman, wishing he had asked Chenille for a more detailed description. "Commissioner Simuliid. He's an extremely important official. A large and" (Silk struggled to capture the prochain ami's perpetual note of prudence and confidentiality) "-an-um-portly man. He wears a mustache."

  When the woman's expression remained blank, he added desperately, "a most becoming mustache, now, I would say, although perhaps-"

  "Commissioner Simuliid, Patera?"

  Silk nodded eagerly.

  "It wasn't that long ago. Not spring. Two months ago, maybe. Not more than three. It was terribly hot already, I remember, and he had on a big straw hat. You know the sort of thing, Patera?"

  Silk nodded encouragement. "Perfectly. I used to have one myself."

  "And he had a stick, too. Bigger than yours. But he didn't want a boat. We'd have been glad to lend him one, if he had, so it wasn't that." The woman nibbled at her pen. "He asked for something else, and we didn't have it, but I can't remember what it was."

  Oreb cocked his head. "Poor girl!"

  "Yes, indeed," Silk said, "if she was unable to assist Commissioner Simuliid."

  "I did help him," the woman insisted. "I know I did. He was quite satisfied when he left."

  Silk strove to appear an augur who moved frequently in the company of commissioners. "Certainly he didn't complain about you to me."

  "Don't you know what he wanted, Patera?" "Not what he wanted from you," he told the plump woman, "because I had been under the impression that he wanted a boat. There are some perfectly marvelous vistas all along the lakeshore, I understand; and I have been thinking that it would be a meritorious act for Commissioner Simuliid-or anyone-to erect an appropriate shrine to our Patroness on such a spot. Something tasteful, and not too small. The Commissioner may quite possibly have been thinking the same thing, from all that I know of him."

  "Are you sure he wasn't offering to repair it, Patera? Or build an addition? Something like that? Scylla's got a beautiful shrine near here already, and some very important people from the city often go out there to, you know, think things over."

  Silk snapped his fingers. "An addition! An attached aedicule for the practice of hydromancy. Why, of course! Even I ought to have realized-"

  Oreb croaked, "No cut?"

  "Not you, in any event," Silk told him. "Where is this shrine, my daughter?"

  "Where-?" Suddenly the woman's face was wreathed in smiles. "Why, that's what Commissioner Simuliid wanted, I remember now. A map. How to get there, really. We don't have any maps that show the shrine, there's some sort of a regulation, but you don't need one. All you have to do is follow the Pilgrims' Way, I told him. West around the bay, then south up onto the promontory. It's quite a climb, but if you just go from one white stone to the next, you can't possibly miss it." The woman got out a map. "It's not on here, but I can show you. The blue is the lake, and these black lines are for Limna. Do you see Shore Street?

  The shrine's right where I'm pointing, see? And this is where the Pilgrims' Way goes up the cliffs. Are you going to go up there yourself, Patera?"

  "At the first opportunity," Silk told her. Simuliid had made the pilgrimage; that seemed practically certain. The question was whether Crane had followed him.

  "And I thank you very much indeed, my daughter. You've been extremely helpful. Did you say that even councillors go there to meditate sometimes? An acquaintance of mine, Doctor Crane-you may know him; I believe he must spend a good deal of time out here at the lake-"

  The woman shook her head. "Oh, no, Patera. They're too old, I think."

  "Doctor Crane may have misinformed me, then. I thought he had gotten his information here, most likely from you. A small man with a short gray beard?"

  She shook her head. "I don't think he's been in here, Patera. But I don't think the councillors really come. He was probably thinking of commissioners. We've had several of them, and judges and so on, and sometimes they want to go in a boat, only we have to tell them they can't. It's up on a cliff, and there's no path up from the water. You have to follow the Pilgrims' Way. You can't even ride, because of where there's steps cut into the rock. I suppose that must be why the councillors don't come, too. I've never seen a councillor."

  Neither had he, Silk reflected as he left the Juzgado. Had anyone? He had seen their pictures-there had been a group portrait in the Juzgado, in fact-and Silk had seen the pictures so often that until he had actually considered it he had supposed that he had at some time or other seen the councillors themselves. But he had not, and could not recall having met anyone who had.

  Simuliid had, however; or at least he had told Chenille he had. Not, presumably, at the shrine of Scylla, since the councillors never went there. In one of the eating places, perhaps, or on a boat.

  "No cut?" Oreb wanted more reassurance.

  "Absolutely not. A shrine isn't really the best place for sacrifice, anyway, although it's often done. A properly instructed person, such as myself, is more apt to visit a shrine to meditate or do a little religious reading."

  Various political figures from the city often went to this lake slirine ofScylla's, according to the woman in the Juzgado. It seemed odd-politicians might make a show of belief, but he had never heard of one who seemed to have any genuine depth of religious feeling. The Prolocutor had little influence in the governance of the city these days, according to everyone except Remora.

  Yet either Auk or Chenille-it had been Auk, surely- had called Simuliid, whom he had known by sight, ox-weight or something of that sort. Had implied, at any rate, that he was a large and very heavy man. Yet Simuliid had made a pilgrimage to this shrine of Scylla's (or so it appeared) on foot, after the hot weather had begun. It seemed improbable in the extreme, particularly since he could not have met the councillors there.

  Silk massaged his cheek as he walked, gazing idly into shop windows. It was quite conceivable that Commissioner Simuliid's boast to Chenille had been nothing more than a vainglorious lie, in which case Chenille had not earned her five cards, and any time that Crane might have spent here had been wasted.

  But whether Crane had wasted his time or not, he did not appear to have traced Simuliid through Limna's Juzgado, as he himself had. It might even be that Crane had not traced him at all.

  "Something's very wrong here, Oreb. We've a rat in the wainscotting, if you know what I mean."

  "No boat?"

  "No boat, no doctor, and no councillors. No money. No manteion. No ability, either-not a speck of whatever it was that the Outsider thought he saw in me." Although the immortal gods, as reason taught and the Writings confirmed, did not "think" that they saw things. Not really. Gods knew.

  With no special purpose in mind, he had been strolling west along Shore Street. Now he found it obstructed by a. sizable boulder, painted white and crudely carved with the many-tentacled image of Scylla.

  He crossed to the center of the street to examine the image more closely and discovered a rhyming prayer beneath it. Tracing the sign of addition in the air, he appealed to Scylla for help (citing her city's need for the manteion and apologizing for his impetuosity in rushing off to the lake with so little reason to believe that there was anything to be gained) before reciting the prayer, somewhat amused to find that the great goddess's features, as depicted on the boulder, bore a chance resemblance to those of the helpful woman in the Juzgado.

  Members of the Ayuntamiento never visited the shrine, she had said, though commissioners came quite often. Did she herself visit the shrine with any frequency, and thus see who came and who did not? Almost certainly not, Silk decided.

  With a start, he realized that half a dozen passersby stood watching him as he prayed with head bowed before the image; when he turned away, a stocky man about his own age excused himself and asked whether he intended to make the pilgrimage to the shrine.

  "That was one of the points on which I begged for the goddess's guidance," Silk explained. "I told a good woman only a few minutes ago that I would go as soon as I had the opportun
ity. It was a rash promise, of course, because it can be very difficult to judge what 'opportunity' signifies. I have business here today, and so may be said to have none; but there is a remote chance that a pilgrimage to the shrine would further it. If that is so, I am clearly bound."

  A woman of about the same age said, "You shouldn't even think of it, Patera. Not when it's this hot."

  "Good girl!" Oreb muttered.

  "This is my wife, Chervil," the stocky man told Silk. "My name's Coypu, and we've made the pilgrimage twice." Silk started to speak, but Coypu waved it away. "That place over there has cold drinks. If you hike up to the shrine today, you'll need all the wet stuff you can hold, and we'd like to buy you something. But if you'll let us, and listen to us, you probably won't go at all."

  "Thirsty!"

  Chervil laughed, and Silk said, "Be quiet, Oreb. So am I for that matter."

  It was mercifully cool inside, and to Silk, stepping in from the sunlight, it seemed very dark. "They have beer, fruit juices-even coconut milk, if you haven't tried that- and spring water," Coypu told him. "Order whatever you like."

  To the waiter who appeared as soon as they sat down, he said, "My wife will have the bitter orange, and I'll take whatever kind of beer's been in your cistern the longest."

  He turned to Silk. "And you, Patera? Anything that you want."

  "Spring water, please. Two glasses would be nice."

  "We saw your picture on a fence," Chervil told him. "It can't have been more than five minutes ago-an augur with a bird on his shoulder, quite artistically rendered in chalk and charcoal. Over your head the artist had written, 'Silk is here!' And yesterday, back in the city, we saw 'Silk for Caldé.' "

  He nodded grimly. "I haven't seen the picture with the bird you mentioned, but I believe that I can guess who drew it. If so, I must have a word with her."

  The waiter set three moisture-beaded bottles-yellow, brown, and clear-on their table, with four glasses, and marked their score on a small slate.