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Yawing as before, the litter turned onto a still narrower street that Silk did not recognize.
“It’s up to the gods, I’m afraid. I don’t trust them — not even the Outsider, who seems to trust me — but they may smile on us yet.”
“Find girl?”
He had lost his desire to talk, but the intensity of his emotions drove the words forth. “What did he want with her!” As he spoke, the litter sped past a shop with a zither and a dusty bassoon in its window.
But Calde Silk of Viron did not see them.
“This is the kitchen?” Maytera Mint looked around her in surprise. It was the largest that she had ever seen.
“There are, ah, alternatives,” Remora ventured. “Still entire, eh? Equally, hum, unsigned by Sabered Sphigx.”
“I find it cozy,” Potto declared. “For one thing, there’s food, though your troops, my dear young General, made off with a lot. I like food, even if I can’t eat it. For another, I’m a good host, eager for the comfort of my guests, and it’s easy to heat. Behold this noble stove and laden woodbox. I’m happily immune to drafts, but you aren’t. I’m determined to make you comfortable. Those other rooms offer the chilly attractions of a society beauty. This will provide warmth and tea, even soup.” He giggled. “All the solid virtues of an old nurse. Besides, there are a great many sharp knives, and I’m always encouraged by the presence of sharp knives.”
“You can’t be here alone,” Maytera Mint said.
Potto gri
“Certainly not.”
“You have an azoth, the famous one given you by Silk. I won’t search you for it now.”
“I left it with Colonel Bison. If I had come armed after calling for a truce, you’d be entitled to kill me.”
“I am anyhow,” Potto told her. He picked up a stick of firewood and snapped it between his hands. “The rules of war protect armies and their auxiliaries. Yours is a rebellion, not a war, and rebels get no such protection. Patera there knows that’s the truth. Look at his face.”
“I — ah — assert the privilege of my cloth.”
“You can. You haven’t fought, so you’re entitled to it. The General has and isn’t. It’s all very simple.”
When neither replied, Potto added, “Speaking of cloth, I forgot to say that the rules apply only to soldiers and those auxiliaries who wear their city’s uniform, as General Saba does. You, my dear General, don’t. The upshot is that though I can’t offer violence to your armies as long as the truce holds, I’m entitled to break both your leggies if I want to, and even to wring your necky. Sit down, there’s a cozy little table right over there. I’ll build a fire and put the kettle on.”
They sat, Remora tucking the rich overrobe he wore around his legs, Maytera Mint as she might have in the cenoby, her delicate hands folded in her lap, and her head bowed.
Potto filled one of the stove’s fireboxes and stroked a stick of kinding. It burst into flame, not merely at one end like a torch, but along its entire length. He tossed it into the firebox and shoved the firebox back in place with an angry grinding of iron.
“He, um, intrigues to separate us,” Remora whispered. “A — ah — hallowed? Elementary stratagem, General. I shall, um, cleave to you, eh? If you in, ah, analogous fashion—”
“Maytera. Call me Maytera, please, Your Eminence, when we’re alone.”
“Indeed. Indeed! O, ah, soror neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum. O passi graviora, dabit Pas his guoque finem.”
Potto was filling a teakettle. Without turning his head, he said, “I have sharp ears. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Maytera Mint looked up. “Then I’m spared the necessity of raising my voice. Are you really Councillor Potto? We came to negotiate with the Ayuntamiento, not with anyone we chanced to meet. If you are, whose body was that?”
“Yes.” Potto put the kettle on the stove. “Mine. Have you more questions?”
“Certainly. Are you willing to stop all this bloodshed?”
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” He pulled out a stout stool and sat down so heavily the floor shook.
“Seeing good and brave troopers die? Watching someone who was eager to obey me a few seconds ago writhing and bleeding in the street? It does!”
“Well, it doesn’t me, and I don’t understand why it should you. I never have. Call it a gift. There are people who can listen to music all evening, then go home and write everything down, and others who can run faster and farther than a horse. Did you know that? Mine’s a less amazing gift, though it’s brought me success. I don’t feel pain I don’t feel. Is that what you call a tautology? It’s what life has taught me. I give it to you for nothing.”
Remora nodded, his long face longer than ever. “I, er, vouchsafe it might be included under that — ah — rubric.”
“Councillor.”
“Why — ah — indeed. I had no, um, intention—”
“Thanks. I’m the only member who forced his way in, or had to. Did you know that, either of you?”
Maytera Mint shook her head.
“We’re all related, as you can see from our names. Lemur and Loris were brothers. Lemur’s dead. You don’t have to look surprised, I know you know. He packed the Ayuntamiento with relatives, back before Patera here was born. I came to him. I approached him forthrightly and fairly. He’d brought in Galago, a second cousin by courtesy. I was much closer, and I said so. He said he’d take it under advisement. A week later — there’d been this and that, you know, nothing serious — he tried to have me killed. I saw to it that the man’s flesh was served to us at di
Maytera Mint nodded. “You’re proud of being useful, as everyone who is, is entided to be. Now you have a chance to be of great service to our whole city.”
“We have, ah, ventured forth in good faith,” Remora put in. “The general has come unarmed. My — ah — vocation prohibits weapons. Such, at least, is my own opinion, though the — our calde’s may differ. I ask you, Council or, whether you, er, similarly. Are we intermediaries? Or, um, captives?”
“You want to go before your tea’s ready?” Potto waved in the direction of the door. “Make the experiment, Patera.”
“My duty, um, confines me.”
“Then you’re a prisoner, but not mine. Dear young General Mint, wouldn’t you like to know how I manage to be alive in the kitchen and dead in the drawing room?”
“There were two of you, clearly.” She had taken her big wooden prayer beads from her pocket; she ran them through her fingers, comforted by their familiar shapes.
“No, only one, and that one is neither here nor there. As we aged, Cousin Tarsier made us new bodies out of chems. Lemur got the first one, and the rest of us later as we came to need them, bodies we can work from our beds. I can’t enjoy food, but I eat. I’m feeding intravenously right now.”
“What became of the chems?” Maytera Mint managed to keep her voice steady. “Of their minds?”
“I thought you were going to ask me whether he made the others more than one.”
“No. Clearly he did, or someone did. But you got this body from another person. And — and changed it to look like you? You must have. Did he consent to any of that?”
“The logical question is whether there are two of all of us.” Potto struck the table with his fist. “You didn’t even ask how I got the wood to burn. How am I supposed to deal with someone who won’t stick to the point?”
Remora began, “I, ah—” But Potto was not through. “By sticking with the point myself. That’s it! I may soon stick with one so well that it sticks out your back.” He turned to Remora. “Yes, Patera. You were about to say…?”
“I was, um, speculating, Councillor, upon how you ignited that wood so, er, effortlessly. I, um, hope that you will, um, consent to ah — illuminate that matter for us.”