view: the altar (from which Musk's fire-blackened corpse had
partially fallen); and beyond it, Maytera Marble's naked metal
body, sprawled near a coffin of softwood stained black.
'Those were her final rites,' Silk muttered to himself. 'Maytera
Rose's last sacrifice. I never knew.'
'Yes, sir, I fear they were.' The monitor sighed. 'I served her for
forty-three years, sir, eight months, and five days. Would you care
to view her as she was in life, sir? Or the last scene it was my
pleasure to display to her? As a species of informal memorial, sir? It
may console your evident grief, sir, if I may be so bold.'
Silk shook his head, then thought better of it. 'Is some god
prompting you, my son? The Outsider, perhaps?'
'Not that I'm aware of, sir.
'Last Phaesday I encountered a very cooperative monitor,' Silk
explained. 'He directed me to his mistress's weapons, something
that I wouldn't--in retrospect--have supposed a monitor would
normally do. I have since concluded that he had been ordered to
assist me by the goddess Kypris.'
'A credit to us all, sir.'
'He would not say so, of course. He had been enjoined to silence.
Show me that scene, the last your mistress saw.'
The monitor vanished. Choppy blue water stretched to the
horizon; in the mid-distance, a small fishing boat ran close-hauled
under a lowering sky. A black bird (Silk edged closer) fluttered in
the rigging, and a tall woman, naked or neariy so, stood beside the
helmsman. A movement of her left hand was accompanied by a
faint crimson flash.
Silk stroked his cheek. 'Can you repeat the order Maytera Rose
gave you that led you to show her this?'
'Certainly, sir. It was, 'Let's see what that slut Silk foisted on us is
doing now.' I apologize, sir, as I did to my mistress, for the meager
image of the subject. There was no nearer point from which to
display it, and the focal length of the glass through which I viewed it
was at its maximum.'
Hearing Silk's approach, Maytera Marble turned away from the
Window and tried to cover herself with her new hands. With averted
eyes, he passed her the habit he had taken from a nail in the wall of
her room, saying, 'It doesn't matter, Maytera. Not really.'
'I know, Patera. Yet I feel... There, it's on.'
He faced her and held out his hand. 'Can you stand up?'
'I don't know, Patera. I--I was about to try when you came.
Where is everyone?' Harder than flesh, her fingers took his. He
heaved with all his strength, reawakening the half-healed wounds
left by the beak of the white-headed one.
Maytera Marble stood, almost steadily, and endeavored to shake
the dust from her long, black skirt, murmuring, 'Thank you, Patera.
Did you get--? Thank you very much.'
He took a deep breath. 'I'm afraid you must think I've acted
improperly. I should explain that His Cognizance the Prolocutor
personally authorized me to enter your cenoby to bring you that.
His Cognizance is here; he's in the manse at the moment, I believe.'
He waited for her to speak, but she did not.
'Perhaps if you got out of the sun.'
She leaned heavily on his arm as he led her through the arched
gateway and the garden to her accustomed seat in the arbor.
In a voice not quite like her own, she said, 'There's something I
should tell you. Something I should have told you long ago.'
Silk nodded. 'There's something I should have told you long ago,
too, Maytera--and something new that I must tell you now. Please
let me go first; I think that will be best.'
It seemed she had not heard him. 'I bore a child once, Patera. A
son, a baby boy. It was... Oh, very long ago.'
'Built a son, you mean. You and your husband.'
She shook her head. 'Bore him in blood and pain, Patera. Great
Echidna had blinded me to the gods, but it wasn't enough. So I
suffered, and no doubt he suffered, too, poor little mite, though he
had done nothing. We nearly died, both of us.'
Silk could only stare at her smooth, metal face.
'And now somebody's dead, upstairs. I can't remember who. It
will come to me in a moment. I dreamt of snakes last night, and I
hate snakes. If I tell you now, I think perhaps I won't have that
dream again.'
'I hope not, Maytera,' he told her. And then, 'Think of something
else, if you can.'
'It was... Was not an easy confinement. I was forty, and had
never borne a child. Maytera Betel was our senior then, an excellent
woman. But fat, one of those people who lose nothing when they
fast. She became horribly tired when she fasted, but never thinner.'
He nodded, increasingly certain that Maytera Marble was possessed
again, and that he knew who possessed her.
'We pretended I was becoming fat, too. She used to tease me
about it, and our sibs believed her. I'd been such a small woman
before.'
Watching carefully for her reaction, Silk said, 'I would have
carried you, Maytera, if I could; but I knew you'd be too heavy for
me to lift.'
She ignored it. 'A few bad people gossiped, but that was all. Then
my time came. The pains were awful. Maytera had arranged for a
woman in the Orilla to care for me. Not a good woman, Maytera
said, but a better friend in time of need than many good women.
She told me she'd delivered children often, and washed her hands,
and washed me, and told me what to do, but it would not come
forth. My son. He wouldn't come into this world, though I pressed
and pressed until I was so tired I thought I must die.'
Her hand--he recognized it now as Maytera Rose's--found his.
Hoping it would reassure her, he squeezed it as hard as he could.
'She cut me with a knife from her kitchen that she dipped in
boiling water, and there was blood everywhere. Horrible! Horrible!
