"If..." His eyes shifted toward a soldier almost too swiftly to be
seen. "Yes, absolutely." Several of the armored men muttered agreement.
"In that case it's accepted by our side," Maytera Marble told him.
"I'll report to my principals, Generalissimo Oosik and General
Saba, that you had nothing to do with it and are anxious to testify
against the guilty parties. Who are they?"
Blood ignored the question. "Good. Fine. They won't attack
while I'm talking to you?"
"Of course not." Silently, Maytera Marble prayed that she was
being truthful.
"You'd probably like to sit. I know I would. Come in here, and I
think we can settle this."
He showed her into a paneled drawing room and shut the door
firmly. "My boys are getting edgy," he explained, "and that gets me
edgy around them."
"They're my grandchildren?" Maytera Marble sank into a tapestry
chair too deep and too soft for her. "Your sons?"
"I don't have any. You said you were my mother. I guess you
meant you came to talk for her."
"I am your mother, Bloody." Maytera Marble studied him, finding
traces of her earlier self in his heavy, cunning face, as well as far too
many of his father. "I suppose you've seen me since you found out
who I was or had somebody look at me and describe me, and now
you don't recognize me. I understand. You're my son, just the same."
He grasped the advantage by reflex. "Then you wouldn't want to
see me killed, or would you?"
"No. No, I wouldn't." She let her stick and white flag fall to the
carpet. "If I had been willing to have you die, everything would have
been a great deal easier. Don't you see that? You should. You, of
all people."
She paused, considering. "I was an old woman before you found
out who I was, and I think I must have looked older. I was already
forty when you were born. That's terribly old for a bio mother."
"She came a few times when I was little. I remember her."
"Every three months, Bloody. Once in each season, if I could get
away alone that often. We were supposed to go out out in pairs. and
usually we had to."
"She's dead? My mother?"
"Your foster mother? I don't know. I lost track of her when you
were nine."
"I mean y--! Rose. Maytera Rose, my real mother."
"Me." Maytera Marble tapped her chest, a soft click.
"It was her funeral sacrifice. The other sibyl said so."
"We burned parts of her," Maytera Marble conceded. "But mostly
those were parts of me in her coffin. Of Marble, I mean, though I've
kept her name. It makes things easier, with the children particularly.
And there's still a great deal of my personality left."
Blood rose and went to the window. The dull green turret of a
Guard floater showed above a half-ruined section of wall. "You
mind if I open this?"
"Certainly not. I'd prefer it."
"I want to hear if they start shooting, so I can stop it."
She nodded. "My thought exactly, Bloody. Some of the children
have slug guns, and nearly all the rest have needlers. Perhaps I
should have taken them, but I was afraid we'd need them on the
walk out." She sighed, the weary _hish_ of a mop across a terazzo
floor. "The worst would have hidden theirs anyway, though none of
the children are really bad."
"I remember when she lost her arm," Blood told her. "She used to
pat me on the head and say, you know, my, he's getting big. One
day it was a hand like your--"
"It was this one." Maytera Marble displayed it.
"So I asked her what happened. I didn't know she was my mother
then. She was just a sibyl that came sometimes. My mother would
have tea and cookies."
"Or sandwiches." Maytera Marble supplemented his account.
"Very good sandwiches, too, though I was always careful not to eat
more than a fourth of one. Bacon in the fall, cheese in winter,
pickled burbot and chives on toast in spring, and curds and
watercress in summer. Do you remember, Bloody? We always gave
you one."
"Sometimes it was all I got," Blood said bitterly
"I know. That's why I never ate more than a founh."
"Is that really the same hand?" Blood eyed it curiously.
"Yes, it is, It's hard to change hands yourself, Bloody, because
you have to do it one-handed. It was particularly hard for me,
because by then I already had a great many new parts. Or rather, I
had reclaimed a great many old ones. They worked better, that was
why I wanted them, but I wasn't used to the new assembly yet,
which made changing hands harder. It would have been wasteful to
burn them, though. They were in much better condition than my old
ones."
"Even if it is, I'm not going to call you Mother."
Maytera Marble smiled, lifting her head and inclining it to the
right as she always did. "You have already, Bloody. Out there. You
called me Mama. It sounded wonderful."
When he said nothing, she added, "You said you were going to
open that window. Why don't you?"
He nodded and raised the sash. "That's why I bought your
manteion, do you know about that? I wasn't just a sprat nobody
wanted any more. I had money and influence, and I got word my
mother was dying. I hadn't spoken to her in fifteen, twenty years,
but I asked Musk, and he said if I really wanted to get even it might
be my last chance. I saw the sense in that, so we went, both of us."
"To get even, Bloody?" Maytera Marble lifted an eyebrow.
"It doesn't matter. I was sitting with her, see, and she needed
something, so I sent Musk. Then I said something and called her
Mom, and she said your mother's still alive, I tried to be a mother to
you, Blood, and I swore I wouldn't tell."
Turning from the window to face Maytera Marble, he added, "She
wouldn't, either. But I found out."
"And bought our manteion to torment me, Bloody?"
"Yeah. The taxes were in arrears. I'm real close to the Ayuntamiento.
I guess you know that already or you wouldn't have come
out here shooting."
"You have councillors here, staying with you. Loris, Tarsier, and
Potto. That was one reason I wanted to talk."
Blood shook his head. "Tarsier's gone. Who told you?"
"Like your foster mother, I've sworn not to tell."
"One of my people? Somebody in this house?"
"My lips are sealed, Bloody."
"We'll get into that later, maybe. Yeah, I've got them staying
here. It's not the first time, either. When I found out about you--if
you're who you say you are--I talked to Loris, just one friend to
another, and he let me have it for taxes. Know how much it was?
Twelve hundred and change. I was going to leave you hanging, keep
talking about tearing the whole thing down. Then Silk came out
here. The great Calde Silk himself! Nobody would believe that now,
but he did. He solved my house like a thief. By Phaea, he was a thief."
Maytera Marble sniffed. It was at once a devastating and a
confounding sniff, the sniff of a destroyer of cities and a confronter
of governments; Blood winced, and she enjoyed it so much that she
sniffed again. "So are you, Bloody."
"Lily." Blood swallowed. "Only your Silk's no better, is he? Not a
dog's right better. So I saw a chance to turn a few cards and have a
little fun by making the whole wormy knot of you squirm. I'd got