'I do.' Maytera Marble surveyed the hall; though she knew little
about art, she suspected that the misty landscape facing her was a
Murtagon. 'I want to talk about that. We've knocked down a good
deal of your wall, I'm afraid, Bloody, and I'd like to see your
beautiful house spared.'
Two soldiers stood aside, and Blood came to meet her. 'So would
I, Mama. I'd like to see us spared, too.'
'Is that why you didn't shoot? You killed that poor woman
General Saba sent, so why not me? Perhaps I shouldn't ask.'
Blood glanced to his right. 'A shag-up over there. _We_ didn't shoot
the fussock with the flag, and I want that settled right now. If there's
a question about it, there's no point in talking. I didn't shoot her,
and didn't tell anybody to. None of the boys did, either, and they
didn't get anybody to do it. Is that clear? Will you say Pas to that,
nothing back?'
Maytera Marble cocked and lifted her head, thus raising an
eyebrow. 'Someone shot her from a window of your house, Bloody.
I saw it.'
'All right, you saw it, and Trivigaunte's going to make somebody
pay. I don't blame them. What I'm saying is that it shouldn't be me
or the boys. We didn't do it, and that's not open to argument. I want
that settled before the cut.'
Maytera Marble put a hand on his shoulder. 'I understand,
Bloody. Do you know who did? Will you point them out to us?'
Blood hesitated, his apoplectic face growing redder than ever.
'If...' His eyes shifted toward a soldier almost too swiftly to be
seen. 'Yes, absolutely.' Several of the armored men muttered agreement.
'In that case it's accepted by our side,' Maytera Marble told him.
'I'll report to my principals, Generalissimo Oosik and General
Saba, that you had nothing to do with it and are anxious to testify
against the guilty parties. Who are they?'
Blood ignored the question. 'Good. Fine. They won't attack
while I'm talking to you?'
'Of course not.' Silently, Maytera Marble prayed that she was
being truthful.
'You'd probably like to sit. I know I would. Come in here, and I
think we can settle this.'
He showed her into a paneled drawing room and shut the door
firmly. 'My boys are getting edgy,' he explained, 'and that gets me
edgy around them.'
'They're my grandchildren?' Maytera Marble sank into a tapestry
chair too deep and too soft for her. 'Your sons?'
'I don't have any. You said you were my mother. I guess you
meant you came to talk for her.'
'I am your mother, Bloody.' Maytera Marble studied him, finding
traces of her earlier self in his heavy, cunning face, as well as far too
many of his father. 'I suppose you've seen me since you found out
who I was or had somebody look at me and describe me, and now
you don't recognize me. I understand. You're my son, just the same.'
He grasped the advantage by reflex. 'Then you wouldn't want to
see me killed, or would you?'
'No. No, I wouldn't.' She let her stick and white flag fall to the
carpet. 'If I had been willing to have you die, everything would have
been a great deal easier. Don't you see that? You should. You, of
all people.'
She paused, considering. 'I was an old woman before you found
out who I was, and I think I must have looked older. I was already
forty when you were born. That's terribly old for a bio mother.'
'She came a few times when I was little. I remember her.'
'Every three months, Bloody. Once in each season, if I could get
away alone that often. We were supposed to go out out in pairs. and
usually we had to.'
'She's dead? My mother?'
'Your foster mother? I don't know. I lost track of her when you
were nine.'
'I mean y--! Rose. Maytera Rose, my real mother.'
'Me.' Maytera Marble tapped her chest, a soft click.
'It was her funeral sacrifice. The other sibyl said so.'
'We burned parts of her,' Maytera Marble conceded. 'But mostly
those were parts of me in her coffin. Of Marble, I mean, though I've
kept her name. It makes things easier, with the children particularly.
And there's still a great deal of my personality left.'
Blood rose and went to the window. The dull green turret of a
Guard floater showed above a half-ruined section of wall. 'You
mind if I open this?'
'Certainly not. I'd prefer it.'
'I want to hear if they start shooting, so I can stop it.'
She nodded. 'My thought exactly, Bloody. Some of the children
have slug guns, and nearly all the rest have needlers. Perhaps I
should have taken them, but I was afraid we'd need them on the
walk out.' She sighed, the weary _hish_ of a mop across a terazzo
floor. 'The worst would have hidden theirs anyway, though none of
the children are really bad.'
'I remember when she lost her arm,' Blood told her. 'She used to
pat me on the head and say, you know, my, he's getting big. One
day it was a hand like your--'
'It was this one.' Maytera Marble displayed it.
'So I asked her what happened. I didn't know she was my mother
then. She was just a sibyl that came sometimes. My mother would
have tea and cookies.'
'Or sandwiches.' Maytera Marble supplemented his account.
'Very good sandwiches, too, though I was always careful not to eat
more than a fourth of one. Bacon in the fall, cheese in winter,
pickled burbot and chives on toast in spring, and curds and
watercress in summer. Do you remember, Bloody? We always gave
you one.'
'Sometimes it was all I got,' Blood said bitterly
'I know. That's why I never ate more than a founh.'
'Is that really the same hand?' Blood eyed it curiously.
