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“One of those women shot him?”
Maytera Marble’s voice reached them out of the darkness, spectrally reminiscent of old Maytera Rose’s. “Yes. I watched it. I saw him fall.”
Silk told her, “I’ve been expecting you to join us, Moly. I would have invited you, but I wasn’t sure where you were, and it wouldn’t do to go stumbling around waking up people.”
“Certainly not, Patera.”
Nettle said, “I’m glad you’re here, Maytera. I want to ask something. Everybody says we run things in Trivigaunte. The Rani’s a woman and so’s Generalissimo Siyuf. I saw her. So who were the women that Willet let in, the ones that shot Councillor Loris? Why did they take orders from him?”
Maytera Marble sniffed. “You’ve a great deal to learn, Nettle. Doesn’t Horn do what you tell him, sometimes, even when he doesn’t want to?”
“I don’t believe I can improve on that,” Silk said, “but I’ll enlarge upon it a trifle. They are spies, of course — agents of the Rani’s, as Hossaan himself is. I’m reasonably sure that they’re Vironese as well. Hossaan has told me that he and Doctor Crane were the only Trivigauntis in the ring they built up here, and I believe he was telling the truth.”
Horn began another question, but Silk stopped him. “I ought to tell you that before I went into the tu
“Don’t even talk about that place,” Nettle said, “every time I hear about it, it sounds so awful.”
“It is. But if I may talk about the dead woman, I would imagine she traveled here from Trivigaunte from time to time, probably in the guise of a trader. Chenille carried messages to a woman in the market, and the dead woman I found may well have been the same person. Hossaan wouldn’t have counted her as a part of Doctor Crane’s ring, since she wasn’t subject to Doctor Crane’s orders. I’d imagine she stayed here no more than a few weeks — a month at most — when she came.”
“Does anybody know about him?” Nettle inquired. “About Hammerstone? Is he, you know, all right?”
Maytera Marble murmured, “You want to know if I’m a widow so soon. I don’t know, but I doubt it. He was away searching for materials when Willet and his women came in, but he might have saved us all if he’d been there. He would certainly have saved Patera Incus and me, and the daughter we had begun to build, if he could.
Horn said, “There were two hundred Trivigauntis coming, Maytera. Patera had me out in the street watching for them. They would’ve killed Hammerstone, unless he gave up.”
“We’ll never know.” Maytera Marble seated herself beside Nettle.
“He may rescue you still,” Silk told Maytera Marble. “He may well rescue us all. From what I’ve seen of him, he will surely try, and that worries me — but I’d like to return to Nettle’s question.
“Because women have more power than men in Trivigaunte, Nettle, most people would expect that most or all of the Rani’s agents would be women — that’s as good a reason for employing men as I can think of. But it would be natural for male agents from Trivigaunte to recruit women here. Women would be more sympathetic to their point of view — Hyacinth said something like that when we first met — and men from Trivigaunte would naturally seek out courageous, assertive women like the ones among whom they had lived at home.
“We all tend to generalize too much, I’m afraid. If most augurs are pious and naive, for example, we imagine that every augur is, though if we were to reflect we would see immediately that it ca
“I want to ask about something else, Calde, but I’m afraid Maytera will be mad at me.”
“That’s the risk you run, Nettle dear.”
Horn said, “Tell me and I will.”
“No. If those women could spy and shoot a coundilor, I can do this. Calde, I was listening at the door. Maytera caught me and made me quit, but when she went to work on her child again I came back.”
“I’m not angry,” Maytera Marble told her, “but you should be angry with yourself. It was wrong, and you knew it.”
Silk said, “It hardly matters now.”
“Yes, it does. Because I heard something fight at the end, and it’s why I got up when I heard you talking to Horn. You — you just… Gave up. The councillor they shot? Loris? He was talking about giving away slug guns…”
“And I said that we could discuss terms later. That we surrendered.”
“Uh-huh.”
Horn objected, “We were wi
“Horn, he said they were, because the farmers would fight the Trivigauntis and they’d have to leave. Then the Calde said all right we give up, we’ll settle the arrangements when we’ve got more time. Only Maytera said he had to be calde, because if he wasn’t it wouldn’t mean anything.”
“Patera Silk has never been vindictive, dear.”
“I know, Maytera, and I know that word, but I don’t know what you mean by it. Didn’t you want to kill the councillors, Calde?”
“Of course not. As far as our insunection is concerned, what I’ve always wanted to do is end it. I want peace, and a reunited Viron. Echidna ordered Maytera Mint to destroy the Ayuntarniento and return the city to Scylla. Haven’t you ever thought about what that last instruction meant, Nettle?”
“Not enough, I guess.”
“Then think now.” Silk’s fingers groped for Ins ambion. “Returning to Scylla means returning to our Charter Scylla wrote it, and no quantity of prayers and sacrifices would be a convincing demonstration of loyalty as long as we violate it. The Charter demands an Ayuntamiento. Did you know that?”
Horn said, “I did, Patera.”
“From that, it’s clear Echidna does not want us to do away with the institution of the Ayuntamiento. There can be nothing wrong, surely, with a board of advisors elected at three-year intervals, which is what the Ayuntarniento is intended to be — a council of experienced men and women to whom the calde can turn in time of trouble. Echidna was demanding that the present and quite clearly illegitimate Ayuntamiento be dissolved, a demand entirely in harmony with her implied demand that our government return to the Charter.
“That being the case, the way to peace was clear, as I had seen from the begi
“You sound so sad, Calde.” Nettle shivered, snuggling against Horn. “It might happen yet.”
“Yes, it may. I was thinking of the time at Blood’s when Councillor Loris presented a list of demands to Moly and me.”
“Absurd demands,” Maytera Marble declared.
“Extreme demands, certainly. He wanted hostages from the Rani, and he would have put Generalissimo Oosik and the other high-ranking officers on trial. I defied him.”
“You offered to resign, too,” Maytera Marble said. “You were very brave, Patera.”
“I was very stupid, very tired, and very frightened. If I hadn’t been, I would have realized that the thing to do was to agree, stop the fighting, and go to work on the details. Have you ever talked with the clerks in the Juzgado, Nettle?”
“No, Calde.”
“I have. I made it a point to, because I knew Hyacinth’s father was a head clerk; she hates him, yet she will always be his daughter. I located him, and wliile we were talking about reforming the Fisc he said that the devils are in the details.