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Authors: Gene Wolfe
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what that was."
She shook her head. "Is it all right if I sit down?"
I nodded, expecting her to sit on the chest or the spare bunk, but she sank to the floor, looking like a real child at last despite her height.
"A moment ago," I continued, "you kept asking me to kindle my light. After the second, it wasn't hard to guess you wanted to be certain your thrust would be a clean kill. So I used the words argosy and pelagic , because Abaia's slaves employ them as passwords; long ago someone who thought for a moment I might be one of you showed me a card saying he was to be found on Argosy Street, and Vodalus—you may have heard of him—once told me to a message to one who should say to me, 'The pelagic argosy sights—'" I never finished my quotation. On the ship, where heavy things were so light, the child fell forward very slowly; and yet it was fast enough for a soft tap when her forehead struck the floor. I am sure she must have been dead almost from the beginning of my vainglorious little speech.
Chapter VIII
The Empty Sleeve
WHEN IT was too late I moved very swiftly, turning Idas upon her back, feeling for a pulse, pounding her chest to shock her heart into renewed life, all of it perfectly useless. I found no pulse, and the reek of poison in her mouth.
It must have been hidden on her person. Not in her shirt, unless she had already slipped the pellet to her lips in the darkness, to be crushed and swallowed should she fail. In her hair, perhaps (though that seemed too short to have concealed anything), or in the waistband of her trousers. From either place she might easily have conveyed it unseen to her mouth as she staunched the blood from her arm.
Recalling what had occurred when I tried to reanimate the steward, I did not dare try to revive her. I searched her body, but found almost nothing beyond nine chrisos of gold, which I put into the pocket in the sheath. She had said that she had given a hand a chrisos to assist her; it seemed reasonable to suppose that Abaia (or whichever of his ministers had sent her out) had provided her with ten. When I cut away her boots, I found that the toes they had concealed were long and webbed. I sliced the boots to bits, searching them just as she had searched my own belongings a couple of watches earlier, but found no more she than had.
As I sat on my bunk and contemplated her body, I thought it strange that I had been deceived, though certainly I had been at first, deceived not so much by Idas as by my recollection of the undine who had freed me from the nenuphars of Gyoll and accosted me at the ford. She had been a giantess; thus I had seen Idas as a gangling youth and not as a giant child, though Baldanders had kept a somewhat similar child—a boy, and much younger—in his tower.
The undine's hair had been green, not white; perhaps that had done most of all. I should have realized that such a true and vivid green is not found in men or beasts with hair or fur, and when it seems to occur is the effect of algae, like that in the blood of the green man at Saltus. A rope left hanging in a pond will soon enough be green; what a fool I had been. Idas's death would have to be reported. My first thought was to speak to the captain, ensuring a favorable hearing for myself by contacting him through Barbatus or Famulimus.
I had no more than shut the door behind me when I realized that such an introduction was impossible. Our conversation in their stateroom had been their first encounter with me; it had therefore been my last with them. I would have to reach the captain in some other way, establish my identity, and report what had occurred. Idas had said that the repairs were being carried out below, and surely there would be an officer in charge of them. Once more I descended the windswept steps, this time continuing beyond the caged apports into an atmosphere warmer and damper still.
Absurd though it seemed, I somehow felt that my weight, which had been only slight on the tier
She shook her head. "Is it all right if I sit down?"
I nodded, expecting her to sit on the chest or the spare bunk, but she sank to the floor, looking like a real child at last despite her height.
"A moment ago," I continued, "you kept asking me to kindle my light. After the second, it wasn't hard to guess you wanted to be certain your thrust would be a clean kill. So I used the words argosy and pelagic , because Abaia's slaves employ them as passwords; long ago someone who thought for a moment I might be one of you showed me a card saying he was to be found on Argosy Street, and Vodalus—you may have heard of him—once told me to a message to one who should say to me, 'The pelagic argosy sights—'" I never finished my quotation. On the ship, where heavy things were so light, the child fell forward very slowly; and yet it was fast enough for a soft tap when her forehead struck the floor. I am sure she must have been dead almost from the beginning of my vainglorious little speech.
Chapter VIII
The Empty Sleeve
WHEN IT was too late I moved very swiftly, turning Idas upon her back, feeling for a pulse, pounding her chest to shock her heart into renewed life, all of it perfectly useless. I found no pulse, and the reek of poison in her mouth.
It must have been hidden on her person. Not in her shirt, unless she had already slipped the pellet to her lips in the darkness, to be crushed and swallowed should she fail. In her hair, perhaps (though that seemed too short to have concealed anything), or in the waistband of her trousers. From either place she might easily have conveyed it unseen to her mouth as she staunched the blood from her arm.
Recalling what had occurred when I tried to reanimate the steward, I did not dare try to revive her. I searched her body, but found almost nothing beyond nine chrisos of gold, which I put into the pocket in the sheath. She had said that she had given a hand a chrisos to assist her; it seemed reasonable to suppose that Abaia (or whichever of his ministers had sent her out) had provided her with ten. When I cut away her boots, I found that the toes they had concealed were long and webbed. I sliced the boots to bits, searching them just as she had searched my own belongings a couple of watches earlier, but found no more she than had.
As I sat on my bunk and contemplated her body, I thought it strange that I had been deceived, though certainly I had been at first, deceived not so much by Idas as by my recollection of the undine who had freed me from the nenuphars of Gyoll and accosted me at the ford. She had been a giantess; thus I had seen Idas as a gangling youth and not as a giant child, though Baldanders had kept a somewhat similar child—a boy, and much younger—in his tower.
The undine's hair had been green, not white; perhaps that had done most of all. I should have realized that such a true and vivid green is not found in men or beasts with hair or fur, and when it seems to occur is the effect of algae, like that in the blood of the green man at Saltus. A rope left hanging in a pond will soon enough be green; what a fool I had been. Idas's death would have to be reported. My first thought was to speak to the captain, ensuring a favorable hearing for myself by contacting him through Barbatus or Famulimus.
I had no more than shut the door behind me when I realized that such an introduction was impossible. Our conversation in their stateroom had been their first encounter with me; it had therefore been my last with them. I would have to reach the captain in some other way, establish my identity, and report what had occurred. Idas had said that the repairs were being carried out below, and surely there would be an officer in charge of them. Once more I descended the windswept steps, this time continuing beyond the caged apports into an atmosphere warmer and damper still.
Absurd though it seemed, I somehow felt that my weight, which had been only slight on the tier
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