The Sword of the Lictor

X Lead

THERE WAS A moment when I thought I would fall into the gaping hole in the center of the little room before I could regain Terminus Est and carry the mistress of the Duck’s Nest to safety, and another when I was certain everything was going to fall — the trembling structure of the room itself and us together.

Yet in the end we escaped. When we reached the street, it was clear of dimarchi and townsfolk alike, the soldiers no doubt having been drawn to the fire below, and the people frightened indoors. I propped the woman with my arm, and though she was still too terrified to answer my questions intelligibly, I let her choose our way; as I had supposed she would, she led us unerringly to her inn.

Dorcas was asleep. I did not wake her, but sat down in the dark on a stool near the bed where there was now also a little table sufficient to hold the glass and bottle I had taken from the common room below. Whatever the wine was, it seemed strong in my mouth and yet no more than water after I had swallowed it; by the time Dorcas woke, I had drunk half the bottle and felt no more effect from it than I would have if I had swallowed so much sherbet.

She started up, then let her head fall upon the pillow again. “Severian. I should have known it was you.”

“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” I said. “I came to see how you were.”

“That’s very kind. It always seems, though, that when I wake up you’re bending over me.” For a moment she closed her eyes again. “You walk so very quietly in those thick-soled boots of yours, do you know that? It’s one reason people are afraid of you.”

“You said I reminded you of a vampire once, because I had been eating a pomegranate and my lips were stained with red. We laughed about it. Do you remember?” (It had been in a field within the Wall of Nessus, when we had slept beside Dr. Talos’s theater and awakened to feast on fruit dropped the night before by our fleeing audience.)

“Yes,” Dorcas said. “You want me to laugh again, don’t you? But I’m afraid I can’t ever laugh anymore.”

“Would you like some wine? It was free, and it’s not as bad as I expected.”

“To cheer me? No. One ought to drink, I think, when one is cheerful already. Otherwise nothing but more sorrow is poured into the cup.”

“At least have a swallow. The hostess here says you’ve been ill and haven’t eaten all day.”

I saw Dorcas’s golden head move on the pillow then as she turned it to look at me; and since she seemed fully awake, I ventured to light the candle.

She said, “You’re wearing your habit. You must have frightened her out of her wits.”

“No, she wasn’t afraid of me. She’s pouring into her cup whatever she finds in the bottle.”

“She’s been good to me — she’s very kind. Don’t be hard on her if she chooses to drink so late at night.”

“I wasn’t being hard on her. But won’t you have something? There must be food in the kitchen here, and I’ll bring you up whatever you want.”

My choice of phrase made Dorcas smile faintly. “I’ve been bringing up my own food all day. That was what she meant when she told you I’d been ill. Or did she tell you? Spewing. I should think you could smell it yet, though the poor woman did what she could to clean up after me.”

Dorcas paused and sniffed. “What is it I do smell? Scorched cloth? It must be the candle, but I don’t suppose you can trim the wick with that great blade of yours.”

I said, “It’s my cloak, I think. I’ve been standing too near a fire.”

“I’d ask you to open the window, but I see it’s open already. I’m afraid it’s bothering you. It does blow the candle about. Do the flickering shadows make you dizzy?”

“No,” I said. “It’s all right as long as I don’t actually look at the flame.”

“From your expression, you feel the way I always do around water.”

“This afternoon I found you sitting at the very edge of the river.”

“I know,” Dorcas said, and fell silent. It was a silence that lasted so long that I was afraid she was not going to speak again at all, that the pathological silence (as I now was sure it had been) that had seized her then had returned.

At last I said, “I was surprised to see you there — I remember that I looked several times before I was sure it was you, although I had been searching for you.”

“I spewed, Severian. I told you that, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you told me.”

“Do you know what I brought up?”

She was staring at the low ceiling, and I had the feeling that there was another Severian there, the kind and even noble Severian who existed only in Dorcas’s mind. All of us, I suppose, when we think we are talking most intimately to someone else, are actually addressing an image we have of the person to whom we believe we speak. But this seemed more than that; I felt that Dorcas would go on talking if I left the room. “No,” I answered. “Water, perhaps?”

“Sling-stones.”

I thought she was speaking metaphorically, and only ventured, “That must have been very unpleasant.”

Her head rolled on the pillow again, and now I could see her blue eyes with their wide pupils. In their emptiness they might have been two little ghosts. “Sling-stones, Severian my darling. Heavy little slugs of metal, each about as big around as a nut and not quite so long as my thumb and stamped with the word strike. They came rattling out of my throat into the bucket, and I reached down — put my hand down into the filth that came up with them and pulled them up to see. The woman who owns this inn came and took the bucket away, but I had wiped them off and saved them. There are two, and they’re in the drawer of that table now. She brought it to put my dinner on. Do you want to see them? Open it.”

I could not imagine what she was talking about, and asked if she thought someone was trying to poison her.

“No, not at all. Aren’t you going to open the drawer? You’re so brave. Don’t you want to look?”

“I trust you. If you say there are sling-stones in the table, I’m sure they’re there.”

“But you don’t believe I coughed them up. I don’t blame you. Isn’t there a story about a hunter’s daughter who was blessed by a pardal, so that beads of jet fell from her mouth when she spoke? And then her brother’s wife stole the blessing, and when she spoke toads hopped from her lips? I remember hearing it, but I never believed it.”

“How could anyone cough up lead?”

Dorcas laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “Easily. So very easily. Do you know what I saw today? Do you know why I couldn’t talk to you when you found me? And I couldn’t, Severian, I swear it. I know you thought I was just angry and being stubborn. But I wasn’t — I had become like a stone, wordless, because nothing seemed to matter, and I’m still not sure anything does. I’m sorry, though, for what I said about your not being brave. You are brave, I know that. It’s only that it seems not brave when you’re doing things to the poor prisoners here. You were so brave when you fought Agilus, and later when you would have fought with Baldanders because we thought he was going to kill Jolenta…”

She fell silent again, then sighed. “Oh, Severian, I’m so tired.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” I said. “About the prisoners. I want you to understand, even if you can’t forgive me. It was my profession, the thing I was trained to do from boyhood.” I leaned forward and took her hand; it seemed as frail as a songbird.

“You’ve said something like this before. Truly, I understand.”

“And I could do it well. Dorcas, that’s what you don’t understand. Excruciation and execution are arts, and I have the feel, the gift, the blessing. This sword — all the tools we use live when they’re in my hands. If I had remained at the Citadel, I might have been a master. Dorcas, are you listening? Does this mean anything at all to you?”

“Yes,” she said., “A bit, yes. I’m thirsty, though. If you’re through drinking, pour me a little of that wine now, please.”

I did as she asked, filling the glass no more than a quarter full because I was afraid she might spill it on her bedclothes.

She sat up to drink, something I had not been certain until then that she was capable of, and when she had swallowed the last scarlet drop hurled the glass out the window. I heard it shatter on the street below.

“I don’t want you to drink after me,” she told me. “And I knew that if I didn’t do that you would.”

“You think whatever is wrong with you is contagious, then?”

She laughed again. “Yes, but you have it already. You caught it from your mother. Death. Severian, you never asked me what it was I saw today.”