cranking the alternator. The thing is, you see, Severian, the client is highly placed.” His voice sank to a rough whisper. “Quite highly connected.” I said that I understood that.
“Not just an armiger family. High blood.” He turned, and after searching the disorderly shelves behind his chair produced a squat book. “Have you any notion how many exulted families there are? This lists only the ones that are still going. A compendium of the extinguished ones would take an encyclopedia, I suppose. I've extinguished a few of them myself.”
He laughed and I laughed with him.
“It gives about half a page to each. There are seven hundred and forty-six pages.”
I nodded to show I understoed.
“Most of them have nobody at court — can't afford it, or are afraid of it. Those are the small ones. The greater families must: the Autarch wants a concubine he can lay hands on if they start misbehaving. Now the Autarch can't play quadrille with five hundred women. There are maybe twenty. The rest talk to each other, and dance, and don't see him closer than a chain off once in a month.” I asked (trying to hold my voice steady) if the Autarch actually bedded these concubines.
Master Gurloes rolled his eyes and pulled at his jaw with one huge hand. “Well now, for decency's sake they have these khaibits, what they call the shadow women, that are common girls that look like the chatelaines. I don't know where they get them, but they're supposed to stand in place of the others. Of course they're not so tall.” He chuckled. “I said stand in place, but when they're laying down the tallness probably doesn't make much difference. They do say, though, that oftentimes it works the other way than it's supposed to. Instead of those shadow girls doing duty for their mistresses, the mistresses do it for them. But the present Autarch, whose every deed, I may say, is sweeter than honey in the mouths of this honorable guild and don't you forget it — in his case, I may say, from what I understand it is more than somewhat doubtful if he has the pleasure of any of them.”
Relief flooded my heart. “I never knew that. It's very interesting, Master.” Master Gurloes inclined his head to acknowledge that it was indeed, and laced his fingers over his belly. “Someday you may have the ordering of the guild yourself. You'll need to know these things. When I was your age — or a trifle younger, I suppose — I used to fancy I was of exulted blood. Some have been, you know.”
It struck me, and not for the first time, that Master Gurloes and Master Palaemon too must have known whence all the apprentices and younger journeymen had come, having approved their admissions originally.
“Whether I am or no, I cannot say. I have the physique of a rider, I think, and I am somewhat over the average in height despite a hard boyhood. For it was harder, much harder, forty years ago, I'll tell you.”
“So I have been told, Master.”
He sighed, the kind of wheezing noise a leather pillow sometimes makes when one sits on it. “But with the passage of time I have come to understand that the Increate, in choosing for me a career in our guild, was acting for my benefit. Doubtless I had acquired merit in a previous life, as I hope I have in this one.”
Master Gurloes fell silent, looking (it seemed to me) at the jumble of papers on his table, the instructions of jurists and the dossiers of clients. At last, when I was about to ask if he had anything further to tell me, he said, “In all my years, I have never known of a member of the guild put to torment. Of them, several hundred, I suppose.”
I ventured the commonplace saying that it was better to be a toad hidden under a stone than a butterfly crushed beneath it.
“We of the guild are more than toads, I think. But I should have added that though I have seen five hundred or more exultants in our cells, I have never, until now, had charge of a member of that inner circle of concubines closest to the Autarch.”
“The Chatelaine Thecla belonged to it? You implied that a moment ago, Master.” He nodded gloomily. “It wouldn't be so bad if she were to be put to torment at once, but that isn't to be. It may be years. It may be never.”
“You believe she may be released, Master?”
“She's a pawn in the Autarch's game with Vodalus — even I know that much. Her sister, the Chatelaine Thea, has fled the House Absolute to become his leman. They will bargain with Thecla for a time at least, and while they do, we must give her good fare. Yet not too good.”
“I see,” I said. I was acutely uncomfortable not knowing what the Chatelaine Thecla had told Drotte, and what Drotte had told Master Gurloes.
“She's asked for better food, and I've made arrangements to supply it. She's asked for company as well, and when we told her visitors would not be permitted, she urged that one of us, at least, should keep her company sometimes.” Master Gurloes paused to wipe his shining face with the edge of his cloak. I said, “I understand.” I was fairly certain that I indeed understood what was to come next.
“Because she had seen your face, she asked for you. I told her you'll sit with her while she eats. I don't ask your agreement — not only because you're subject to my instructions, but because I know you're loyal. What I do ask is that you be careful not to displease her, and not to please her too much.”
“I will do my best.” I was surprised to hear my own steady voice. Master Gurloes smiled as if I had eased him. “You've a good head, Severian, though it's a young one yet. Have you been with a woman?” When we apprentices talked, it was the custom to invent fables on this topic, but I was not among apprentices now, and I shook my head.
“You've never been to the witches? That may be for the best. They supplied my own instruction in the warm commerce, but I'm not sure I'd send them another such as I was. It's likely, though, that the Chatelaine wants her bed warmed. You're not to do it for her. Her pregnancy would be no ordinary one — it might force a delay in her torment and bring disgrace on the guild. You follow me?” I nodded.
“Boys your age are troubled. I'll have somebody take you where such ills are speedily cured.”
“As you wish, Master.”
“What? You don't thank me?”
“Thank you, Master,” I said.
Gurloes was one of the most complex men I have known, because he was a complex man trying to be simple.
