'This cane will be useful, I admit,' Silk told him, 'but I really don't
require a needler.'
Xiphias whirled to confront him, holding it out. 'Going to make
peace, aren't you?'
'I hope to, Master Xiphias, and that's exactly--'
'What if they don't like the way you're making it, lad? Take it!'
'Here you are, Calde.' Oosik bustled in with a sheet of paper and
a black object that seemed more like a flower molded from synthetic
than an actual ear. 'I'll turn it on before I pass it to you, and all
you'll have to do is talk into it. Do you understand? My loudspeakers
will repeat everything that you say, and everyone will hear you.
Here's your speech.'
He handed Silk the paper. 'It would be best for you to read it over
first. Insert some thoughts of your own if you like. I would not
deviate too far from the text, however.'
Words crawled across the sheet like ants, some bearing meaning
in their black jaws, most with none. _The insurgent forces. The Civil
Guard. The rebellion. The commissioners and the Ayuntamiento.
The Army. The arms in the Alambrera. The insurgents and the
Guard. Peace_.
There it was at last. _Peace_.
'All right.' Silk let the sheet fall into his lap.
Oosik signaled to someone in the outer room, waited for a reply
that soon came, cleared his throat, and held the ear to his lips. 'This
Is Generalissimo Oosik of the Calde's Guard. Hear me all ranks,
and especially you rebels. You're fighting us because you want to
make Patera Silk Calde, but Calde Silk is with us. He is with the
Guard, because he knows that we are with him. Now you soldiers.
Your duty is to obey our calde. He is sitting here beside me. Hear
his instructions.'
Silk wanted his old chipped ambion very badly; his hands sought
it blindly as he spoke, rattling the paper. 'My fellow citizens, what
Generalissimo Oosik has just told you is true. Are we not--' The
words seemed predisposed to hide behind his trembling fingers.
'Are we not, every one of us, citizens of Viron? On this historic
day, my fellow citizen--' The type blurred, and the next line began
a meaningless half sentence.
'Our city is in great danger,' he said. 'I believe the whole Whorl's
in great danger, though I can't be sure.'
He coughed and spat clotted blood on the carpet. 'Please excuse
me. I've been wounded. It doesn't matter, because I'm not going to
die. Neither are you, if only you'll listen.'
Faintly, he heard his words re-echoed in the night beyond
Ermine's walls: '_You'll listen_.' The loudspeakers Oosik had
mentioned, mouths with stentorian voices, had heard him in some
fashion, and in some fashion repeated his thoughts.
The door of the balneum opened. Framed in the doorway,
Quetzal gave him an encouraging nod, and Oreb flew back to his
post on the bedpost.
'We can't rebel against ourselves,' Silk said. 'So there is no
rebellion. There is no insurrection, and none of you are insurgents.
We can fight among ourselves, of course, and we've been doing it. It
was necessary, but the time of its necessity is over. There is a calde
again--I am your calde. We needed rain, and we have gotten rain.'
He paused to look across the room at the rich smoke-gray drapes.
'Master Xiphias, will you open that window for me, please? Thank you.'
He drew a deep and somewhat painful breath of cool, damp air.
'We've had rain, and if I'm any judge of weather, we'll get more.
Now let's have peace--it's a gift we can provide ourselves, one more
precious than rain. Let's have peace.'
(What was it the captain had said whole ages ago in that inn?)
'Many of you are hungry. We plan to buy food with city funds and
sell it to you cheaply. Not free, because there are always people who
will waste anything free. But very cheaply, so that even beggars will
be able to buy enough. My Guard will release the convicts from the
pits. Generalissimo Oosik, His Cognizance the Prolocutor, and I are
going to the Alambrera this morning, and I'll order it. All convicts
are pardoned as of this moment--I pardon them. They'll be hungry
and weak, so please share whatever food you have with them.'
He recalled his own hunger, hunger at the manse and worse
hunger underground, gnawing hunger that had become a sort of
illness by the time Mamelta located the strange, steaming meals of
the underground tower. 'We had a poor harvest this year.' he said.
'Let us pray, every one of us, for a better one next year. I've prayed
for that often, and I'll pray for it again; but if we want to have
enough to eat for the rest of our lives, we must have water for our
fields when the rains fail.
'There are ancient tunnels under the city. Some of you can
confirm that because you've come upon them while digging foundations.
They reach Lake Limna--I know that, because I've been in them. If we can
break through near the lake--and I'm sure we can--we can use them to
carry water to the farms. Then we'll all have
plenty of food, cheaply, for a long time.' He wanted to say, until it's
time for us to leave this whorl behind us, but he bit the words back,
pausing instead to watch the gray drapes sway in the breeze and
listen to his own voice through the open window.
'If you have been fighting for me, don't use your weapons again
unless you're attacked. If you're a Guardsman, you have sworn that
you'll obey your officers.' (He could not be sure of that, but it was
so probable that he asserted it boldly.) 'Ultimately, that means
Generalissimo Oosik, who commands both the Guard and the
Army. You've already heard what he has to say. He's for peace. So am I.'
Oosik pointed to himself, then to the ear; and Silk added, 'You'll
hear him again, very soon.'
He felt that the shade should be up by now--indeed that it was
past that time, the hour of first light, and time for the morning
prayer to Thelxiepeia; yet the city beyond the gray drapes was still
twilit. 'To you whose loyalty is to the Ayuntamiento, I have two things to
say. The first is that you're fighting--dying, many of you--for an
