Sword and Citadel

by Gene Wolfe

Page 67

 

  "Mind if Ive a look at that yellow boy? Just to see if hes good. Ill send him right home. "

  I tossed him the coin, which he rubbed and bit and at last surrendered with a respectful look.

  "We may need your boat all day. "

  "For the yellow boy, you can have her all night too. Well both be glad of the company, like the undertaker remarked to the ghost. There was things in the river up till first light, which I suppose might have something to do with you optimates being out on the water this mornin?"

  "Cast off," I said. "You can tell me, if you will, what these strange things were while we are under way. "

  Although he had broached the subject himself, the steersman seemed reluctant to go into much detail - perhaps only because he had difficulty in finding words to express what he had felt and to describe what he had seen and heard. There was a light west wind, so that with the luggers batten-stiffened sails drawn taut we were able to run upstream handily. The brown girl had little to do but sit in the bow and trade glances with Eata. (It is possible she thought him, in his dirty gray shirt and trousers, only a paid attendant of ours. ) The steersman, who called himself her uncle, kept a steady pressure on the tiller as he talked, to keep the lugger from flying off the wind.

  "Ill tell you what I saw myself, like the carpenter did when he had the shutter up. We was eight or nine leagues north of where you hailed us. Clams was our cargo, you see, and theres no stoppin

  with them, not when theres a chance of a warm afternoon. We goes down to the lower river and buys them off the diggers, do you see, then runs them up the channel quick sos they can be et before they goes bad. If they goes off you lose all, but you make double or better if you can sell them good.

  "Ive spent more nights on the river in my life than anywhere else -

  its my bedroom, you might say, and this boats my cradle, though I dont usually get to sleep until mornin. But last night - sometimes I felt like I wasnt on old Gyoll at all, but on some other river, one that run up into the sky, or under the ground.

  "I doubt you noticed unless you was out late, but it was a still night with just little breaths of wind that would blow for about as long as it takes a man to swear, then die down, then blow again. There was mist too, thick as cotton. It hung over the water the way mists always does, with about so much clear space as you could roll a keg through between it and the river. Most of the time we couldnt see the lights on either shore, just the mist. I used to have a horn I blowed for those that couldnt see our lights, but it went over the side last year, and being copper it sunk. So I shouted last night, whenever I felt like there was another boat or anything close by us.

  "About a watch after the mist came I let Maxellindis go to sleep. Both sails was set, and when each puff of air come we would go up river a bit, and then Id set out the anchor again. You maybe dont know it, optimates, but the rule of the river is that them thats goin

  up keeps to the sides and them thats goin down takes the middle. We was goin up and ought to have been over to the east bank, but with the mist I couldnt tell.

  "Then I heard sweeps. I looked in the mist, but I couldnt see lights, and I hollered so theyd sheer off. I leaned over the gunnel and put my ear close to the water sos to hear better. A mist soaks up noises, but the best hearin you can ever have is when you gets your head under one, because the noise runs right along the water. Anyway, I did that, and she was a big one. You cant count how many sweeps there is with a good crew pullin, because they all go in and come up together, but when a big vessel goes fast you can hear water breakin

  under her bow, and this was a big one. I got up on top of the deckhouse tryin to see her, but there still wasnt any lights, though I knew she had to be close.

  "Just when I was climbin down I caught the sight of her - a galleass, four-masted and four-banked, no lights, comin right up the channel, as near as I could judge. Pray for them thats comin down, thinks I to myself, like the ox said when he fell out of the riggin.

  "Of course I only saw her for a minute before she was gone in the mist again, but I heard her a long while after. Seein her like that made me feel so queer I yelled every once in a while even if no other craft was by. We had made another half league, I suppose, or maybe a little less, when I heard somebody yell back. Only it wasnt like answerin my hail, but like somebodyd laid a rope end to him. I called again, and he called back regular, and it was a man I know named Trason what has his own boat just like I do. Is it you? he called, and I said it was and asked if he was all right. Tie up! he says.

  "I told him I couldnt. I had clams, and even if the night was cool, I wanted to sell soon as I could. Tie up, Trason calls again, Tie up and go ashore. So I call back, Why dont you? Just then he come in sight, and there was more on his boat than I wouldve thought it would hold - pandours, Id have said, but every pandour ever I saw had a face brown as mine or nearly, and these was white as the mist. They had scorpions and voulges - I could see the heads of them stickin up over the crests of their helmets. " I interrupted him to ask if the soldiers he had seen were starved looking and if they had large eyes.

  He shook his head, one corner of his mouth twisting up.

  "They was big men, bigger than you or me or anybody in this boat, a head taller than Trason. Anyway, they were gone in a moment, just like the galleass. That was the only other craft I saw till the mist lifted. But. . . "

  I said, "But you saw something else. Or heard something. " He nodded. "I thought maybe you and your people here was out because of them. Yes, I saw and I heard things. There was things in this river I never saw before. Maxellindis, when she woke up and I told her about it, said it was the manatees. Theyre pale in moonlight and look human enough if you dont come too close. But Ive seen

  em since I was a boy and never been fooled once. And there was womens voices, not loud but big. And something else. I couldnt understand what any of em was sayin, but I could hear the tone of it. You know how it is when youre listenin to people over the water? They would say so-and-so-and-so. Then the deeper voice - I cant call it a mans because I dont think it was one - the deeper voiced say go-and-do-that-and-this-and-that. I heard the womens voices three times and the other voice twice. You wont believe it, optimates, but sometimes it sounded like the voices was coming up out of the river. "

  With that he fell silent, looking out over the nenuphars. We were well above that part of Gyoll opposite the Citadel, but they were still packed more densely than wildflowers in any meadow this side of paradise.

  The Citadel itself was visible now as a whole, and for all its vastness seemed a glittering flock fluttering upon the hill, its thousand metal towers ready to leap into the air at a word. Below them the necropolis spread an embroidery of mingled white and green. I know it is fashionable to speak in tones of faint disgust of the "unhealthy" growth of the lawns and trees in such places, but I have never observed that there is actually anything unhealthy about it. Green things die that men may live, and men die that green things may live, even that ignorant and innocent man I killed with his own ax there long ago. All our foliage is faded, so it is said, and no doubt it is so; and when the New Sun comes, his bride, the New Urth, will give glory to him with leaves like emeralds. But in the present day, the day of the old sun and old Urth, I have never seen any other green so deep as the great pines in the necropolis when the wind swells their branches. They draw their strength from the departed generations of mankind, and the masts of argosies, that are built up of many trees, are not so high as they.

  The Sanguinary Field stands far from the river. We four drew strange looks as we journeyed there, but no one halted us. The Inn of Lost Loves, which had ever seemed to me the least permanent of the houses of men, still stood as it had on the afternoon when I had come there with Agia and Dorcas. The fat innkeeper very nearly fainted when he saw us; I made him fetch Ouen, the waiter. I had never really looked at him on that afternoon when he had carried in a tray for Dorcas, Agia, and me. I di
d so now. He was a balding man about as tall as Drotte, thin and somehow pinched looking; his eyes were deep blue, and there was a delicacy to the molding of his eyes and mouth that I recognized at once.

  "Do you know who we are?" I asked him.

  Slowly, he shook his head.

  "Have you never had a torturer to serve?"

  "Once this spring, sieur," he said. "And I know these two men in black are torturers. But youre no torturer, sieur, though youre dressed like one. "

  I let that pass. "You have never seen me?"

  "No, sieur. "

  "Very well, perhaps you have not. " (How strange it was to realize that I had changed so much. ) "Ouen, since you do not know me, it might be well if I knew you. Tell me where you were born and who your parents were, and how you came to be employed at this inn. "

  "My father was a shopkeeper, sieur. We lived in Oldgate, on the west bank. When I was ten or so, I think, he sent me to an inn to be a potboy, and Ive worked in one or another since. "

  "Your father was a shopkeeper. What of your mother?" Ouens face still held a waiters deference, but his eyes were puzzled. "I never knew her, sieur. Cas they called her, but she died when I was young. In childbirth, my father said. "

  "But you know what she looked like. "

  He nodded. "My father had a locket with her likeness. Once when I was twenty or so I came to see him and found out hed pledged it. Id come into a bit of money then helping a certain optimate with his affairs - carrying messages to the ladies and standing watch outside doors and so on, and I went to the pawnbrokers and paid the pledge and took it. I still wear it, sieur. In a place like ours, where theres so many in n out all the time, its best to keep your valuables about you. "

  He reached into his shirt and drew out a locket of cloisonne enamel. The pictures inside were of Dorcas in full face and profile, a Dorcas hardly younger than the Dorcas I had known.

  "You say you became a potboy at ten, Ouen. But you can read and write. "

  "A bit, sieur. " He looked embarrassed. "Ive asked people, various times, what writing said. I dont forget much. "

  "You wrote something when the torturer was here this spring," I told him. "Do you recall what you wrote?" Frightened, he shook his head. "Only a note to warn the girl. "

  "I do. It was, The woman with you has been here before. Do not trust her. Trudo says the man is a torturer. You are my mother come again. "

  Ouen tucked his locket under his shirt. "It was only that she was so much like her, sieur. When I was a younger man, I used to think that someday Id find such a woman. I told myself, you know, that I was a better man than my father, and he had, after all. But I never did, and now Im not so sure Im a better man. "

  "At that time, you did not know what a torturers habit looked like," I said. "But your friend Trudo, the ostler, knew. He knew a good deal more about torturers than you, and that was why he ran away. "

  "Yes, sieur. When he heard the torturer was asking for him, he did. "

  "But you saw the innocence of the girl and wanted to warn her against the torturer and the other woman. You were right about both of them, perhaps. "

  "If you say it, sieur. "

  "Do you know, Ouen, you look a bit like her. " The fat innkeeper had been listening more or less openly. Now he chuckled. "He looks more like you!"

  I am afraid I turned to stare at him.

  "No offense intended, sieur, but its true. Hes a bit older, but when you were talking I saw both your faces from the side, and there isnt a patch of difference. "

  I studied Ouen again. His hair and eyes were not dark like mine, but with that coloring aside, his face might almost have been my own.

  "You said you never found a woman like Dorcas - like that one in your locket. Still you found a woman, I think. " His eyes would not meet mine. "Several, sieur. "

  "And fathered a child. "

  "No, sieur!" He was startled. "Never, sieur!"

  "How interesting. Were you ever in difficulties with the law?"

  "Several times, sieur. "

  "It is well to keep your voice low, but it need not be so low as that. And look at me when you speak to me. A woman you loved - or perhaps only one who loved you - a dark woman-was taken once?"

  "Once, sieur," he said. "Yes, sieur. Catherine was her name. Its an old-fashioned name, they tell me. " He paused and shrugged. "There was trouble, as you say, sieur. Shed run off from some order of monials. The law got her, and I never saw her again. " He did not want to come, but we brought him with us when we returned to the lugger.

  When I had come upriver by night on the Samru, the line between the living and the dead city had been like that between the dark curve of the world and the celestial dome with its stars. Now, when there was so much more light, it had vanished. Half-ruinous structures lined the banks, but whether they were the homes of the most wretched of our citizens or mere deserted shells I could not determine until I saw a string on which three rags flapped.

  "In the guild we have the ideal of poverty," I said to Drotte as we leaned on the gunnel. "But those people do not need the ideal; they have achieved it. "

  "I should think theyd need it most of all," he answered. He was wrong. The Increate was there, a thing beyond the Hierodules and those they serve; even on the river, I could feel his presence as one feels that of the master of a great house, though he may be in an obscure room on another floor. When we went ashore, it seemed to me that if I were to step through any doorway there, I might surprise some shining figure; and that the commander of all such figures was everywhere invisible only because he was too large to be seen.

  We found a mans sandal, worn but not old, lying in one of the grassgrown streets. I said, "Im told there are looters wandering this place. That is one reason I asked you to come. If there were no one but myself involved, I would do it alone. "