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“Perhaps. I can understand how a soldier could capture such an animal. What I ca
“Mine was littler when I got ’em.” He watched the second beast vanish up the chute. “We killed the big ’uns, we had to. I got behind the little ’uns and got a noose over their mouth.”
“It must have been dangerous just the same.”
He shrugged, the motion of his skeletal shoulders barely visible. “I want to go up next. Be with ’em. That all right?”
From the chute, Slate called, “Pass up them other bios.”
“Certainly,” Maytera Mint told Eland. She gestured toward the chute, and Schist lifted him.
“You can’t get ’em to like you,” Eland said as his head vanished into the chute, “only maybe mine did, a little.”
From nearer the top, Slate told him, “Grab on.”
“If the bufes don’t bring Pas, lady, ’n they won’t, I know they won’t—”
Maytera Mint shook her head. “You ca
“Then it’s us. Me ’n Eland. Him, too,” Urus pointed to Spider, “if you let ’em. That sergeant—”
“My son.” Maytera Mint stepped so close to Urus that the muzzle of the needler she held gouged his ribs. “I have been most remiss with you. I have let you call me ‘lady’ or whatever you wished. I must remember to bring it up at my next shriving, if there is a next shriving. In future, you are to address me as Maytera. It means mother. Will you do that?”
“Yeah. Dimber here, Maytera.”
“That is well.” She smiled up at him; she was a full head shorter than he. “As your mother, your spiritual mother, I must explain something to you. Please pay strict attention.”
Urus nodded mutely. From the chute, Slate called, “Gimme another one.”
“Go, Spider,” Maytera Mint said, and turned back to Urus. “I haven’t had much time in which to form my estimate of your character, yet I think it accurate. It is not an estimate very favorable to you.”
When he did not speak, she added, “Not favorable at all. I will not compare you to such a man as Sergeant Sand. Though not pious, he is resolute, energetic, loyal, and reasonably honest. To compare him to you would be grossly unjust to him. Nor will I venture to compare you to His Eminence. His Eminence has less physical courage, I think, than many other men. Yet he has more than a casual observer might suppose, as I have seen, and his assiduity and piety have justly earned him a high position in the Chapter. He is intelligent as well, and he labors almost too diligently to put the mental acuity that he received from the gods at their service.”
“Have you got the safety on that thing, lady?”
“Call me Maytera. I insist on it.”
“All right, all right!” His voice shaking, Urus repeated, “Have you got the safety on?” and added, “Maytera?”
“No, my son, I do not.” She took a deep breath. “Stop talking and listen. Your life hangs upon it, and we haven’t long. I am a general and a sibyl. As a sibyl I try to find good in everyone, and though it may sound less than modest, I generally succeed. I find a great deal in His Eminence, as I would expect. I find more than I expected in Sergeant Sand. There is good in Private Slate, too, and in Private Shale and Private Schist here. Not good of a very high order, perhaps, but abundant in its kind. I have tried to find good in Spider and found more than I dared hope for. The glimmers of good in Eland are hardly discernible, yet unmistakable.” She sighed. “I talk too much when I’m tired. I hope you’ve followed me.”
Urus nodded. There was a faint play of light across one cheekbone; it was half a second before she understood that he was sweating, cold perspiration soaking the gray ash black and ru
“As a general, it is my duty to defeat the enemy. I must do it by killing men and women. I find that repugnant, but such is the case. You are the enemy, Urus. Do you follow me still?”
From the chute, Slate called, “Ready for the next one.”
“That will be you,” Maytera Mint told Shale. “Remember what I told you about those slings.”
He saluted with a clash of steel. “I’ll get right on it, sir.”
She returned her attention to Urus. “You are the enemy, I say. Should I, who have been called the Sword of Echidna, let you live when I have you at my mercy?”
“You’re fightin’ the Ayuntamiento, right? General, I swear by every shaggy god there is that I never done nothin—”
“Be quiet!” Angrily, she poked him with the muzzle of the big needler that had been Spider’s. “What you say is true, I’m sure. You never served the Ayuntamiento. But ultimately the enemy is evil. Evil is the ultimate enemy of us all.”
She fell silent, listening to the faint rattle as Shale was helped up the chute, to the sighing of the ever-present breeze, and to Urus’s feverish breathing. “The ash is not so thick in the air as it was,” she said.
Schist nodded. “Not so many stirrin’ it up, sir.”
“I suppose so, and those ugly beasts were struggling.” She jabbed Urus as hard as she could, and he yelped.
“This one, too. I’m tired, Urus. I’m awfully tired. I’ve slept on floors, and walked for leagues and leagues. I forget, sometimes, what I’ve said, and what I intended to say. You were thinking of snatching my needler a moment ago.”
Schist chuckled, a hard dry metallic rattle.
“No doubt you could. No doubt you can. Taking a needler from a tired woman much smaller than yourself, a woman so close that her needler is within easy reach, should be simple for you. For anybody.” She waited.
“If you’re not going to, you’d better raise your hands. Otherwise some small motion may cause me to pull the trigger.”
Slowly, Urus’s hands went up.
“As you say, you haven’t served the Ayuntamiento. I’ve talked with Councillor Potto, Urus. Did you know that?”
He shook his head.
“I have. Also with Spider, who served the Ayuntamiento and would serve it still if he could. With a number of Guardsmen, Generalissimo Oosik particularly, who served it for many years. I’ve questioned prisoners, too. In not one of them did I fail to discover some gleam of good. Councillor Potto is the worst, I think. But even Councillor Potto is not entirely evil.”
From the chute, Slate called, “How about the general and that other bio?”
Maytera Mint backed away, then motioned toward the area under the chute. “I give you fair warning. I must see some good in you, Urus, and soon.”
His smile was at once pitiable and horrible. “You’re goin’ to let me get out, lady? Let me go up there?”
“Call me Maytera!”
“M-maytera. Maytera, I figured, see, I’d made it out. Only it w-w-was just the pit, the shaggy pit, ’n then we run back down ’n got into it with the old man—”
Schist lifted him by his ankles. “He ain’t got no sores on his legs like that other one, sir. Maybe you saw ’em.”
Looking down at the needler, Maytera Mint felt herself nod.
“I had to sorta wash off my hands with ashes.” Somewhat violently, Schist shoved Urus’s head and shoulders into the chute. “After I lifted him, sir. I got pus on ’em, sir.”
“No doubt he’d been nipped from time to time by the beasts he had earlier,” Maytera Mint said absenfly. “Those would be the ones our calde says Patera Incus killed, perhaps.” Eland and Urus might have encountered Auk, in that case; she made a mental note to ask them about it, adding as an afterthought that she must not kill Urus before she had a chance to question him.
“You’re goin’ to stay, sir?”
“Until Private Shale lets down his slings. Yes, I am. Go ahead, Schist. Anytime they’re ready for you.”
The safety had been off, as she had said. Did that make her better, because she had told the truth? Or worse, because she had practically nerved herself to killing Urus? Dropping the needler into one of the big side pockets of her torn and soiled habit, she watched Schist’s feet disappear into the chute, then sat down in the ash to await Shale’s slings, or the beasts that he called gods, and Eland bufes.