Shadow & Claw (The Book of the New Sun #1-2 ) - Gene Wolfe Page 0,25

her bare shoulders to something more precious and more beautiful than flesh. “You’re going to kill me now, so what does it matter? All the local people tell stories about this place. They say those things come out at night during storms and take animals from the cowsheds, and sometimes break into the houses for children. There’s also a legend that they guard treasure inside, so I put that in the letter too. I thought if you wouldn’t come for your Thecla, you might for that. Can I stand with my back to you, Severian? If it’s all the same, I don’t want to see it coming.”

When she said that, I felt as though a weight had been lifted from my heart: I had not been certain I could strike her if I had to look into her face.

I raised my own iron phallus, and as I did so felt there was one more thing I wanted to ask Agia; but I could not recall what it might be.

“Strike,” she said. “I am ready.”

I sought good footing, and my fingers found the woman’s head at one end of the guard, the head that marked the female edge.

And a little later, again, “Strike!”

But by that time I had climbed out of the vale.

VIII

The Cultellarii

We returned to the inn in silence, and so slowly that the eastern sky was gray before we reached the town. Jonas was unsaddling the merychip when I said, “I didn’t kill her.”

He nodded without looking at me. “I know.”

“Did you watch? You said you wouldn’t.”

“I heard her voice when you were practically standing beside me. Will she try again?”

I waited, thinking, while he carried the little saddle into the tack room. When he came out, I said, “Yes, I’m sure she will. I didn’t exact a promise from her, if that’s what you mean. She wouldn’t have kept one in any case.”

“I would have killed her then.”

“Yes,” I said. “That would have been the right thing to do.”

We walked out of the stable together. There was light enough in the innyard now for us to see the well, and the wide doors that led into the inn.

“I don’t think it would have been right—I’m only saying that I would have done it. I would have imagined myself stabbed in my sleep, dying on a dirty bed somewhere, and I would have swung that thing. It wouldn’t have been right.” Jonas lifted the mace the man-ape had left behind, and chopped with it in a parody, brutal and graceless, of a sword cut. The head caught the light and both of us gasped.

It was of pounded gold.

Neither of us felt any desire to join the festivities the fair still proffered to those who had caroused all night. We retired to the room we shared, and prepared for sleep. When Jonas offered to share his gold with me, I refused. Earlier, I had had money in plenty and the advance on my fee, and he had been living, as it were, upon my largess. Now I was happy that he would no longer feel himself in my debt. I was ashamed, too, when I saw how completely he trusted me with his gold, and remembered how carefully I had concealed (in fact, still concealed) the existence of the Claw from him. I felt bound to tell him of it; but I did not, and contrived instead to slip my foot from my wet boot in such a way that the Claw fell into the toe.

I woke about noon, and after satisfying myself that the Claw was still there, roused Jonas as he had asked me. “There should be jewelers at the fair who’ll give me some sort of price for this,” he said. “At least, I can bargain with them. Want to come with me?”

“We should have something to eat, and by the time we’re through, I’ll be due at the scaffold.”

“Back to work then.”

“Yes.” I had picked up my cloak. It was sadly torn, and my boots were dull and still slightly damp.

“One of the maids here can sew that for you. It won’t be as good as new, but it will be a lot better than it is now.” Jonas swung open the door. “Come along, if you’re hungry. What are you looking so thoughtful about?”

In the inn’s parlor, with a good meal between us, and the innkeeper’s wife exercising her needle on my cloak in another room, I told him what had happened under the hill,