Then I laughed with joy to find myself in paradise, and in laughing felt that I had never laughed before, that all the joy I had ever known had been but a vague intuition of this, sickly and misguided. More than life, I had wished a New Sun for Urth; and Urth’s New Sun was here, dancing about me like ten thousand sparkling spirits and tipping each wave with purest gold. Not even on Yesod had I seen such a sun! Its glory eclipsed every star and was like the eye of the Increate, not to be looked upon lest the pyrolater go blind.
Turning from that glory, I cried out as the undine had, in triumph and despair. Around me floated the wrack of Urth: trees uprooted, loose shingles, broken beams, and the bloated corpses of beasts and men. Here spread what the sailors who had fought against me on Yesod must have seen; and I, seeing it now as they had, no longer hated them for drawing work-worn knives against the coming of the New Sun, but felt a fresh surprise that Gunnie had defended me. (Not for the first time, I wondered too if she had tipped the balance; had she fought against me, she would have fought me, and not the eidolons. Such was her nature; and if I had died, Urth would have perished with me.)
Far off I heard, or thought I heard, an answering cry over the murmur of the many-tongued waves. I started toward it but soon halted, hampered by my cloak and boots; I kicked off the boots (though they were good ones and nearly new) and let them sink. The junior officer’s cloak soon followed, something I was later to regret. Swimming, running, and walking great distances have always made me conscious of my body, and it felt strong and well; the assassin’s poisoned wound had healed like the poisoned wound Agilus had made.
Yet it was merely well and strong. The inhuman power that it had drawn from my star was gone, though it must surely have healed me while it remained. When I tried to reach the part of myself that had once been there, it was as though one who had lost a leg sought to move it.
The cry came again. I answered, and dissatisfied with my progress (as well as I could judge, each wave I breasted drove me back as far as I had swum forward), I took a deep breath and swam some distance underwater.
I opened my eyes almost at once, for it seemed to me that the water held no sting of salt; and as a boy I had swum with open eyes in the wide cistern beneath the Bell Keep, and even in the stagnant shallows of Gyoll. This water appeared as clear as air, though blue-green at its depths. Vaguely, as we may see a tree above us mirrored in some quiet pool, I beheld the bottom, where something white moved in so slow and errant a fashion that I could not be sure whether it swam or merely drifted. The very purity and warmth of the water alarmed me; I grew fearful that I might somehow forget it was not air in fact and lose myself as I had once been lost among the dark and twining roots of the pale blue nenuphars.
I breached then, shooting free of the waves by two cubits, and saw, still some way off, a ragged raft to which two women clung, and on which a man stood shading his eyes with his hand while he scanned the tossing surface.
A dozen strokes carried me to them. The raft had been built of whatever floating stuff they could find, and bound together in any way that would serve. Its core was a large table such as an exultant might have spread for an intimate supper in his suite; and the table’s eight sturdy legs, now pawing the air by pairs, seemed parodies of masts.
When I had clambered onto the back of a cabinet (somewhat cumbered by the well-meant help I got), I saw that the survivors comprised a fat, bald man and the two women, both fairly young, one short and blessed with the merry, round face of a cheerful doll, the other tall, dark, and hollow-cheeked.
“You see,” the fat man said, “not all’s lost. There’ll be more, mark my word.”
The dark woman muttered, “And no water.”
“We’ll get something, never fear. Meantime, none to share amongst four’s but a bit worse than none to share amongst three, provided it’s doled out fairly.”
I said, “This must be fresh water all around us.”
The fat man shook his head. “I fear it’s the sea, sieur. High tides because of the Day Star, sieur, and they’ve swallowed up the countryside at present. Gyoll’s mixed in with them, to be sure, so the water’s not quite so salt as they say old Ocean is, sieur.”
“Don’t I know you? You seem familiar.”
He bowed as skillfully as any legate, all the while keeping a hand braced on one of the table legs. “Odilo, sieur. Master steward, sieur, and charged by our benign Autarch, whose smiles are the hopes of her humble servants, sieur, with the regulation of the whole of the Hypogeum Apotropaic in its entirety, sieur. Doubtless you saw me there, sieur, upon some visit you made to our House Absolute, though I did not have occasion to wait upon you there, sieur, I’m sure, as I would have recollected such an honor to the very day of my demise, sieur.”
The dark woman said, “Which may be this.”
I hesitated. I did not want to feign to be the exultant Odilo plainly took me for; but to announce myself the Autarch Severian would be awkward even if I were believed.
The doll-faced woman rescued me. “I’m Pega, and I was the armagette Pelagia’s soubrette.”
Odilo frowned. “Hardly well mannered for you to introduce yourself in such a way, Pega. You were her ancilla.”
And then to me. “She was a good servant, sieur, I have no question. A trifle giddy, perhaps.”
The doll-faced woman looked chastened, though I suspected the expression was entirely assumed. “I did madame’s hair and took care of her things, but she really kept me to tell her all the latest jokes and gossip, and to train Picopicaro. That was what she said, and she always called me her soubrette.” A fat tear rolled down her cheek, gleaming in the sun; but whether it was for her dead mistress or the dead bird, I could not be sure.
“And this, ah, female will not introduce herself to Pega and me. That is, beyond her name, which is—”
“Thais.”
“I am enriched by this introduction,” I said. By then I had remembered that I held honorary commissions in half a dozen legions and epitagms, all of which I could employ as incognitos without a lie. “Hipparch Severian, of the Black Tarentines.”
Pega’s mouth shaped a tiny circle. “Ooh! I must’ve seen you in the procession!” She turned to the woman who had called herself Thais. “His men wore lacquered cuir-bouilli with white plumes, and you never saw such destriers!”
Odilo murmured, “You went with your mistress, I take it?”
Pega made some response, but I gave it no heed. A corpse bobbing a chain from the raft had caught my eye, and I thought how absurd it was that I should squat on a dead man’s furniture and dissemble to servants with Valeria rotting underwater. How she would have mocked me! At a pause in the talk, I asked Odilo whether his father had not been steward before him in the same place.
He beamed with pleasure. “He was indeed, sieur, and gave the most complete satisfaction all his life. That was in the great days of Father Inire, sieur, when, if I may say so, sieur, our Hypogeum Apotropaic was famous all across the Commonwealth. May I ask why you inquire, sieur?”
“I merely wondered. It’s more or less the usual thing, I believe.”
“It is, sieur. The son’s given an opportunity to show his mettle if he can; and if he does, he retains the office. You may not believe it, sieur, but my father once encountered your namesake before he had become Autarch. Do you know of his life and deeds, sieur?”
“Not as much as I’d like to, Odilo.”
“Graciously spoken, sieur. Most graciously spoken indeed.” The fat steward nodded and beamed at the two women to make sure they appreciated the exquisite courtesy of my reply.