Not a simple, but a complex man's idea of simplicity. Just as a courtier forms himself into something brilliant and involved, midway between a dancing master and a diplomacist, with a touch of assassin if needed, so Master Gurloes had shaped himself to be the dull creature a pursuivant or bailiff expected to see when he summoned the head of our guild, and that is the only thing a real torturer cannot be. The strain showed; though every part of Gurloes was as it should have been, none of the parts fit. He drank heavily and suffered from nightmares, but he had the nightmares when he had been drinking, as if the wine, instead of bolting the doors of his mind, threw them open and left him staggering about in the last hours of the night, trying to catch a glimpse of a sun that had not yet appeared, a sun that would banish the phantoms from his big cabin and permit him to dress and send the journeymen to their business. Sometimes he went to the top of our tower, above the guns, and waited there talking to himself, peering through glass said to be harder than flint for the first beams. He was the only one in our guild — Master Palaemon not excepted — who was unafraid of the energies there and the unseen mouths that spoke sometimes to human beings and sometimes to other mouths in other towers and keeps. He loved music, but he thumped the arm of his chair to it and tapped his foot, and did so most vigorously to the kind he liked best, whose rhythms were too subtle for any regular cadence. He ate too much and too seldom, read when he thought no one knew of it, and visited certain of our clients, including one on the third level, to talk of things none of us eaves-dropping in the corridor outside could understand. His eyes were refulgent, brighter than any woman's. He mispronounced quite common words: urticate, salpinx, bordereau. I cannot well tell you how bad he looked when I returned to the Citadel recently, how bad he looks now.
The Conversationalist
Next day, for the first time, I carried Thecla's supper to her. For a watch I remained with her, frequently observed through the slot in the cell door by Drotte. We played word games, at which she was far better than I, and after a while talked of those things those who have returned are said to say lie beyond death, she recounting what she had read in the smallest of the books I had brought her — not only the accepted views of the hierophants, but various eccentric and heretic theories.
“When I am free,” she said, “I shall found my own sect. I will tell everyone that its wisdom was revealed to me during my sojourn among the torturers. They'll listen to that.”
I asked what her teachings would be.
“That there is no agathodaemon or afterlife. That the mind is extinguished in death as in sleep, yet more so.”
“But who will you say revealed that to you?”
She shook her head, then rested her pointed chin upon one hand, a pose that showed off the graceful line of her neck admirably. “I haven't decided yet. An angel of ice, perhaps. Or a ghost. Which do you think best?”
“Isn't there a contradiction in that?”
“Precisely.” Her voice was rich with the pleasure the question gave her. “In that contradiction will reside the appeal of this new belief. One can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past — they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.”
I said, “These things are too complex for me.”
“No they're not. You're as intelligent as most young men, I think. But I suppose you torturers have no religion. Do they make you swear to give it up?”
“Not at all. We've a celestial patroness and observances, just like any other guild.”
“We don't,” she said. For a moment she seemed to brood on that. “Only the guilds do, you know, and the army, which is a kind of guild. We'd be better off, I think, if we did. Still all the days of feast and nights of vigil have become shows, opportunities to wear new dresses. Do you like this?” She stood and extended her arms to show the soiled gown.
“It's very pretty,” I ventured. “The embroidery, and the way the little pearls are sewed on.”
“It's the only thing I have here — what I was wearing when I was taken. It's for dinner, really. After late afternoon and before early evening.” I said I was sure Master Gurloes would have others brought if she asked.
“I already have, and he says he sent some people to the House Absolute to fetch them for me, but they were unable to find it, which means that the House Absolute is trying to pretend I don't exist. Anyway, it's possible all my clothes have been sent to our chateau in the north, or one of the villas. He's going to have his secretary write them for me.”
“Do you know who he sent?” I asked. “The House Absolute must be nearly as big as our Citadel, and I would think it would be impossible for anyone to miss.”
“On the contrary, it's quite easy. Since it can't be seen, you can be there and never know it if you're not lucky. Besides, with the roads closed, all they have to do is alert their spies to give a particular party incorrect direction, and they have spies everywhere.”
I started to ask how it was possible for the House Absolute (which I had always imagined a vast palace of gleaming towers and domed halls) to be invisible; but Thecla was already thinking of something else altogether, stroking a bracelet formed like a kraken, a kraken whose tentacles wrapped the white flesh of her arm; its eyes were cabochon emeralds. “They let me keep this, and it's quite valuable. Platinum, not silver. I was surprised.”
“There's no one here who can be bribed.”
“It might be sold in Nessus to buy clothing. Have any of my friends tried to see me? Do you know, Severian?”
I shook my head. “They would not be admitted.”
“I understand, but someone might try. Do you know that most of the people in the House Absolute don't know this place exists? I see you don't believe me.”
“You mean they don't know of the Citadel?”
