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Maytera Mint looked around at him in some surprise. His eyes seemed to have sunk into his skull, and his nose appeared both thi
“He’s not the right one,” Remora informed Maytera Mint.
She made herself smile.
“This is the one who talks to the one who’s not there. The right one was down here with the tall girl. He might be here.”
“This is Mucor,” Maytera Mint explained to Spider. “She’s Maytera’s granddaughter. We’ve spoken before.
“Do you remember, Mucor? You came to tell me our calde was in danger of capture, and I stormed the Palatine. Afterward, we met in person in the Juzgado.”
Remora nodded, his head bobbing like a toy’s, lank black hair mercifully concealing his terrible eyes. “Incus is his name. A little augur.”
“I don’t know him, though His Eminence has told me of him. Mucor? Mucor!”
The death-head grin was fading.
“Mucor, come back, please! If you see Bison or our calde, tell them — tell either or both — where I am, and that this man is holding us for Councillor Potto.”
“You won’t be then.” The final word was almost too faint to hear. The grin vanished; Remora tossed his hair back as he habitually did, and the eyes his gesture revealed were no longer terrifying. “Not all, hey? Many on our, um, the calde’s.”
When no one spoke, he added, “The general’s, hey?”
“You want my needler?” Spider asked Maytera Mint.
“Certainly, if you’re willing to let me have it.”
He presented it butt first. “You wouldn’t shoot me, would you, General? Not with my own needler that I gave you.”
She accepted it, glanced at it, and dropped it into one of her habit’s side pockets. “No. Only if I were compelled to, and perhaps not even then.”
“All right I’m goin’ to dig the graves now, see? You two can finish eatin’ and watch,” Spider stepped out into the empty tu
They followed him down the tu
For a second or longer, nothing happened.
The great barrier shuddered, creaked, and began to creep upward, rolling unpleasantly into itself. Abruptly, Maytera Mint became conscious of the stench of decay, nauseous yet so diffuse that she might almost have believed she imagined it. Remora snorted, sounding surprisingly horse-like, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“No fresh air, ’cept when the door’s open,” Spider remarked as he led them into the dim cul-de-sac the rising barrier had revealed. “It’ll air out pretty quick.” He stopped to point. “Right here’s where the shiprock ends. Have a look.”
Maytera Mint advanced to do so, crossing loose earth into which her scuffed black shoes sank. “I’m very glad you let us hear the word for that door. I’d hate to think of our being locked in here, unable to get it open.”
“I’m bein’ nice to you two so you’ll slide me in after it happens. See the rolls of poly?”
“Certainly.” She was examining the edge of the shiprock wall. “This is not as thick as I had imagined.”
“It’s pretty strong, though. There’s iron rods in it.”
“The — ah — interments.” Remora indicated scraps of paper that dotted the sloping earth at the end of the tu
Spider nodded. “Plenty of room left, but we got three in the guardroom, and Paca back in the big tu
“You — ah — depression. A mere, um, state of mind, my son. Emotion, hey?”
“Yes,” Maytera Mint agreed heartily. “You mustn’t talk as if your death were inevitable, Spider. I mean now, killed by those soldiers. It isn’t, and I pray it won’t happen.”
“That devil you called your sib’s granddaughter, General. What’d it say?”
“She is not a devil,” Maytera Mint delared firmly. “She is a living girl, one who has been shamefully mistreated.”
Spider grunted, picking up a long-handled spade that had lain between two rolls of synthetic.
“This, er, granddaughter, General. An — ah — difficult child?” Remora bit into a strip of dried beef.
Maytera Mint nodded absently, and found herself staring at one of the grim slips of soiled paper. Bending and squinting, she read a name, a date, and a few particulars of the dead man’s life. “Is this the most recent one, Spider? The paper seems cleaner than the others.”
“Yeah. Last spring.”
There was still half a loaf. Deep in thought, she tore away piece after piece, chewing and swallowing slowly, and drank from her bottle.
“I’m about done here.” Spider had ceased to dig, leaning on his spade. “Think you two could fetch a cull out for me? Door’s not locked.”
“I was about to suggest it myself,” Maytera Mint told him.
“We — ah — trust, hey? On our honor?”
“I have his needler, Your Eminence. We could go at any time, and I could shoot him if he tried to stop us.”
“In that case, um, the circumstances—”
“But he gave it to me, remember? Besides, he knows these tu
“Ah — the soldiers.”
“I feel certain they’d help up if we could find them, but what if we couldn’t? Spider, we’ll be happy to bring one of your late friends here for burial. Thank you for your trust in us. It is not misplaced.”
He nodded. “Cut off a big hunk of poly. You can lay him on that and drag him, it’s real slick. When you get him here, I’ll wrap him up in it.”
“May I borrow your knife?”
He got it from his pocket and handed it to her, then went back to his digging. Remora held the ends of the smaller roll while she pulled out and slashed free a length twice the height of a man.
As they carried it back to the guardroom, Remora muttered, “You, um, wonders with him, Maytera. I congratulate you.”
She shrugged, unconsciously thrusting her hand into her pocket to grasp Spider’s needler. “He has no slug gun, Your Eminence, and without one he would be defenseless against the soldiers. He’s hoping our presence will make it possible for him to surrender.”
“I, ah—” Remora opened the guardroom door and glanced around. Their stools stood in a circle as they had left them, and the three dead men still sprawled on the gritty shiprock floor, untouched. “One can always, eh? Give up? Capitulate. Not, um, that we—”
“One can always raise one’s hands and step into full view of the enemy,” Maytera Mint told him. “A good many troopers lose their lives doing it. This one nearest the door, I think. If Your Eminence will unfold that synthetic, we can roll him onto it, poor spirit.”
“You, er, concerned, eh?” Remora spread the synthetic winding sheet, holding it down with his knees as he wrestled with the dead man’s shoulder. “I observed your demeanor in — ah — there. As you ate.”
“Puzzled.” She forced her gaze away from the dead man’s eyes, wishing that it had been possible to roll him so that he lay face down again. “There was fresh earth on the blade of that spade. At least, I think it was fresh, or fairly fresh. Maytera has a little garden back at the cenoby, Your Eminence. I’ve helped her with it now and then, hoeing, and spading in the spring. I don’t think that Spider noticed it.”
“I fail to see the, um, import. Someone else, eh? Could be Councillor Potto, another — hum — subordinate.”
“I fail to see it too,” she told Remora. “Take the other corner, will you?”
Back at the end of the tu
They knelt. Maytera Mint found herself, rather to her own surprise, clasping the cold hand. If things had been different, she thought, we might have been man and wife, you and I. We must be nearly of an age.