Exodus from the Long Sun

I said, “We have to do the will of Pas.”

“Yes, my son. Never forget what you just said.”

By that time we had nearly reached the sleepers. Nettle ran ahead and woke up Remora, knowing that where there is no doctor an augur makes the best substitute; but Quetzal would not let him see his wound. “I’m an old man,” he said. “I’m ready to die. Let me go fast.” Yet he did not die until the following day, when we had begun to cross the abyss.

Remora brought him the Peace, and when it was over Quetzal gave him his gammadion, saying, “Your turn now, Patera. You were cheated by Scylla, but you’ll have to guide the Chapter in the Short Sun Whorl.”

(So it came to be. Although there are many other holy men here, His Cognizance Patera Remora heads what people from other cities call the Vironese Faith. I am adding this note because I know that not all of my readers came from Viron, and as Nettle’s copies are themselves copied, still more will be unfarniliar with the Chapter.)

But I am ru

“I was lying awake,” she said, “thinking things over. How we’d seen Mainframe, and about dear Chenille and Auk, and Patera Silk and Hyacinth. Wondering, too, whether my husband was still alive, and, well, various things.

“I saw His Cognizance get up and start down the tu

She broke down at that point, sobbing uncontrollably, and cried for so long that many of her listeners left to talk among themselves; but Nettle and I stayed, with Remora, Scleroderma, and a few others.

When she had regained her self-possession, she continued, “I wanted him to send someone else. He ordered me to go back, and I said thanks be to Pas that I’m a laywoman now and don’t have to obey, because I’m not going to let you run off alone like this, Your Cognizance, and get killed. I’m going with you. He said he knew these tu

Nettle said, “This isn’t your fault, Maggie. I don’t know how it happened, but I know you, and it can’t be.” The rest of us seconded her.

Maytera Marble shook her head. “After we’d walked a long, long way we came to a crossing where four tu

She choked and sobbed. “Where the tu

Nettle looked puzzled; I signaled her not to speak.

“So I ran some more.” Maytera Mint looked up at us, and it seemed worse to me than any weeping that her eyes were not full of tears. “He’d fallen down when I got there. He was bleeding terribly, like the animals do after the augur pulls his knife out, but he wouldn’t let me look at it, so I carried him.”

We ourselves carried him after that, carrying him in our arms like a child because we had no poles from which to make a stretcher. He directed us, for he knew where the Trivigauntis were, and down which tu

(I will say nothing of our brush with the Trivigauntis; it has been talked about until everyone is tired of listening. Shrike, Scleroderma, and I had needlers, as did certain others. Scleroderma risked her life to get our wounded to safety; and as the fighting grew hotter, she was wounded and wounded again, but she continued to nurse us when her skirt was stiff with her own blood.

(She has been dead for years now; I very much regret that it has taken me so long to pay her this well-deserved tribute. Her grandchildren are very proud of her and tell everyone that she was a great woman in Viron. Nobody in Viron thought her a great woman, only a short fat woman who trudged from house to house selling meat scraps, an amusing woman with a joke for everyone, who had dumped a bucket of scraps over Silk while he sat with her on a doorstep because she felt he was patronizing her. But the truth is that her grandchildren are right, and we in Viron were wrong. She was a very great woman, second only to General Mint. She would have ridden with General Mint if she could, and she fought the Guard in Cage Street and nursed the wounded afterward, and fought fires that night when it seemed the whole city might burn. In the end, she and Shrike lost their home and their shop, all that they possessed, to the fire that swept our quarter. Even then, she did not despair.)

Quetzal had brought hundreds of cards from the Burse. He had already entrusted most of them to Remora, and he gave him the rest when we reached the landers. Some of us had thought that he had refused to have his wound bandaged for fear his cards would be stolen, but when they had been turned over to the sleepers, he still refused.

With the sleepers, we filled two landers. It was thought best to have some of them on each, because they knew much more about their operation than any of us did. As has been told many times, the monitor who controlled our lander appeared in the glasses, displayed Blue and Green to us, and asked which was our destination. No one knew, so we consulted Quetzal, although he was too weak almost to speak.

He asked to be carried to the cockpit, as we called that part of our lander which Silk had called the nose. The monitor there displayed both whorls to him, as it had to Remora, Marrow, and me; and he chose Green, and choosing died. Remora then personally carried his body back to the small sickbay; it was no easy task, because our engines were firing as never before, not even when we had left the Long Sun Whorl. As it chanced, there was a glass in this sickbay, I suppose to advise those who cared for the sick.

There was a woman named Moorgrass on board whose trade it had been to wash the bodies of the dead, and perfume them, and prepare them for burial. Remora asked her to wash and prepare Quetzal’s, and Maytera Marble and Nettle volunteered to help her. I shall never forget their screams.

We did not know then that the inhumi live on Green, nor that they fly to Blue when the whorls are in conjunction, nor that they drink blood, nor even how they change their shapes. Or in fact anything about them. Yet everyone who saw Quetzal’s body was deeply disturbed; and Marrow and I urged that we come here to Blue instead of going to Green as he had advised.

Remora heard us out; but when we had finished, he affirmed his faith in Patera Quetzal, whose coadjutor he had been for so many years, and declared that we would remain on the course he had recommended. It was not until three days later, when it had become apparent to anyone who went into the cockpit that we were really on course to Blue, that we learned that the monitor had overruled him. No one questions its decision now.

Here I close my defense, having (as I hope) satisfied the demands of my critics. Whether I have or have not, having compromised my principles more than I wished. I repeat that I set out to tell Silk’s story, and no other.