“Yes, but it’s better when there are more people.”
“What—”
I motioned her to silence. A middle-aged man who had been eating alone had stood and tossed a last bone on his trencher. Now he was carrying his glass to our table. “Name’s Hadelin,” he said. “Skipper of Alcyone.”
I nodded. “Sit down, Captain Hadelin. What can we do for you?”
“Heard you talking to Kyrin. Said you wanted passage down the river. Some others are cheaper and some can give you better quarters. I mean bigger and more ornaments; there’s none cleaner. But there’s nothing faster than my Alcyone ‘cept the patrols, and we sail tomorrow morning.”
I asked how long it would take him to reach Nessus, and Burgundofara added, “And to the sea?”
“We should make Nessus day after, though it depends on wind and weather. Wind’s generally light and favorable this time of year, but if we get an early storm, we’ll have to tie up.”
I nodded. “Certainly.”
“Otherwise it should be day after tomorrow, about vespers or a bit before. I’ll land you anywhere you want, this side of the khan. We’ll tie up there two days to load and unload, then go on down. Nessus to the delta generally takes a fortnight or a bit less.”
“We’ll have to see your ship before we take passage.”
“You won’t find anything I’m ashamed of, sieur. Reason I came over to talk is we’ll be leaving early, and if it’s speed you want, we’ve got it. In the run of things we’d have sailed before you got to the water. But if you and her will meet me here soon as you can see the sun, we’ll eat a bite and go down together.”
“You’re staying in this inn tonight, Captain?”
“Yes, sieur. I stay on shore when I can. Most of us do. We’ll tie up somewhere tomorrow night too, if that be the will of the Pancreator.”
A waiter came with our dinners, and the innkeeper caught Hadelin’s eye from across the room. “’Scuse me, sieur,” he said. “Kyrin wants something, and you and her’ll want to eat. I’ll see you right here in the morning.”
“We’ll be here,” I promised.
“This is wonderful salmon,” Burgundofara told me as she ate. “We carry salt fish on the boats for the times when we don’t catch anything, but this is better. I didn’t know how much I’d missed it.”
I said I was glad she was enjoying it.
“And now I’ll be on a ship again. Think he’s a good captain? I bet he’s a demon to his crew.”
By a gesture, I warned her to be quiet. Hadelin was coming back.
When he had pulled out his chair again, she said, “Would you like some of my wine, Captain? They brought a whole bottle.”
“Half a glass, for sociability’s sake.” He glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to us, a corner of his mouth up by the width of three hairs. “Kyrin’s just warned me against you. Said you gave him a chrisos like none he’d seen.”
“He may return it, if he wishes. Do you want to see one of our coins?”
“I’m a sailor; we see coins from extern lands. Then too, there’s some from tombs, sometimes. Plenty of tombs up in the mountains, I suppose?”
“I have no idea.” I passed a chrisos across the table.
He examined it, bit it, and gave it back to me. “Gold all right. Looks a trifle like you, ‘cept he seems to have got himself cut up. Don’t suppose you noticed.”
“No,” I said. “I never thought of it.”
Hadelin nodded and pushed back his chair. “A man doesn’t shave himself sidewise. See you in the morning, sieur, madame.”
Upstairs, when I had hung my cloak and shirt on pegs and was washing my face and hands in the warm water the inn servants had brought, Burgundofara said, “He broke it, didn’t he?”
I knew what she meant and nodded.
“You should have contended with him.”
“I’m no magus,” I told her, “but I was in a duel of magic once. I was nearly killed.”
“You made that girl’s arm look right.”
“That wasn’t magic. I—”
A conch blared outside, followed by the confused clamor of many voices. I went to the window and looked out. Ours was an upper room, and our elevation gave me a good view over the heads of the crowd to its center, where the mountebank stood beside a bier supported on the shoulders of eight men. I could not help thinking for a moment that by speaking of him Burgundofara had summoned him.
Seeing me at the window, he blew his conch a second time, pointed to draw attention to me, and when everyone was staring called, “Raise up this man, fellow! If you cannot, I will. The mighty Ceryx shall make the dead walk Urth once more!” The body he indicated lay sprawled in the grotesque attitude of a statue overthrown, still in the grip of rigor.
I called, “You think me your competitor, mighty Ceryx, but I’ve no such ambition. We’re merely passing through Os on our way to the sea. We’re leaving tomorrow.” I closed the shutters and bolted them.
“It was him,” Burgundofara said. She had stripped and was crouched beside the basin.
“Yes,” I said.
I expected her to reproach me again, but she only said, “We’ll be rid of him as soon as we cast off. Would you like me tonight?”
“Later, perhaps. I want to think.” I dried myself and got into our bed.
“You’ll have to wake me, then,” she said. “All that wine’s made me sleepy.” The voice of Ceryx came through the shutters, lifted in an eerie chant.
“I will,” I told her as she slipped beneath the blankets with me.
Sleep was just closing my eyes when the dead man’s ax burst open the door, and he stalked into the room.
Chapter XXXI — Zama
I DID not know it was the dead man at first. The room was dark, the cramped little hall outside nearly as dark. I had been half asleep; I opened my eyes at the first blow of the ax, only to see the dim flash of steel when its edge broke through with the second.
Burgundofara screamed, and I rolled out of bed fumbling for weapons I no longer possessed. At the third blow, the door gave way. For an instant the dead man was silhouetted in the doorway. His ax struck the empty bed. Its frame broke, and the whole affair collapsed with a crash.
It seemed the poor volunteer I had killed so long ago in our necropolis had returned, and I was paralyzed with terror and guilt. Cutting the air, the dead man’s ax mimicked the hiss of Hildegrin’s spade as it swung past my head, then struck the plaster wall with a thud like the kick of a giant’s boot. The faint light from the doorway was extinguished for a moment as Burgundofara fled.
The ax struck the wall again, I think not a cubit from my ear. The dead man’s arm, as cold as a serpent and scented with decay, brushed my own. I grappled with him, moved by instinct, not thought.
Candles appeared, and a lantern. A pair of nearly naked men wrestled the dead man’s ax away, and Burgundofara held her knife to his throat. Hadelin stood beside her with a cutlass in one hand and a candlestick in the other. The innkeeper held his lantern up to the dead man’s face, and dropped it.
“He’s dead,” I said. “Surely you’ve seen such men before. So will you and I be in time.” I kicked the dead man’s legs from under him as Master Gurloes had once taught us, and he fell to the floor beside the extinguished lantern.
Burgundofara gasped, “I stabbed him, Severian. But he didn’t—” Her mouth snapped shut with the effort not to weep. The hand that held her bloodied knife shook.
As I put my arm about her, someone shouted, “Look out!”
Slowly, the dead man was getting to his feet. His eyes, which had been closed while he lay on the floor, opened, though they still held the unfocused stare of a corpse, and one lid drooped. A narrow wound in his side oozed dark blood.
Hadelin stepped forward, his cutlass raised.
“Wait,” I said, and held him back.