V
IT was early morning two days later that Brudoer heard voices, then the bolts thrown back on his cell door. The massive, steel-sheathed portal swung open, and five guardsmen entered. He flattened against the far stone wall.
The guardcaptain stepped forward and announced, “Your period of incarceration, as prescribed by Craydor, is over. The Protector has determined that you may be freed after public punishment, provided your attitudes are correct. Now, come.”
Brudoer moved away down the wall as the guardsmen advanced and took his elbows. He struggled, silently, until a come-along grip pulled threads of pain down his arms. Still he said nothing.
Emerging onto the lowest terrace, he saw a rack erected near the edge. Massed guardsmen lined the terrace and stood stationed above on each level, and much of the city also lined the walls arcing above him. He was jerked and wrestled to the rack, stripped of his tunic and shirt, and tied on. As he struggled, Brudoer scanned the crowd for the Protector, but she seemed to be nowhere. He did see a whip with three tails.
The guardchief read from a roll. “By order of the Protector and inner council, having served your thirty days, you may be freed after suffering public punishment for attacking a council member. You are to receive one lash for each two wounds you inflicted on the council member, eight in all. After that, if you humble yourself to her, and beg forgiveness, you will be reinstated in the community.”
A mixed murmur rolled through the crowd. Many clearly approved, cheering and clicking their tongues. Brudoer, turning his head, thought he heard a different undertone, a hesitant, dark muttering of protest. Twisting his neck farther, he yelled out, “One lash for each two wounds? Look at the whip. It has three tails, you flearidden heap of old fish guts! You—?” The guardchief thrust a gag into his mouth. On the terrace above, a great drum stood on a platform, and as a guardsman brought a heavy, padded stick down on it, Brudoer felt the first slashing cuts of the whip burn across his back. A surge of sound rose from the crowd. A second drum sound brought the lash again. Brudoer tried to scream, fought the gag, dashing his head from side to side.
At the third drum thud, Brudoer braced himself again but felt nothing. Wim, the deposed guardchief, had been assigned the task of lashing him. She threw down the whip. “I will not beat a child any longer on anyone’s orders,” she shrieked.
From high above, the Protector stepped to the edge of the top terrace and called down, “Then strap her to the rack over the criminal and let her take the lashes until she agrees.”
Three guardsmen seized Wim, but she never straggled. Her tunic was split down the back. She held out her arms to be tied down. “I am deeply sorry, Brudoer, for what I did to you,” she said in a loud voice.
“Gag her, gag her,” several voices called, almost all older women, but no such order was given. Udge stood high above now, her mouth down.
“Commence,” the Protector called down. The drum thudded. The guardchief with the whip swung it hard, and Wim screamed piercingly. The crowd sound fell to a murmur at the shriek, even the most inflexible citizen subdued before the reality of revolt’s painful consequences. The thud came again, and another lash brought a new scream, long and lingering. The guardchief again drew back the whip, grim and sweating, but also willing. Suddenly, like a sun flicker from a buckle, an arrow flashed from somewhere and took her through the neck. She turned, her arms fluttering up, her silent mouth open, then she staggered back and fell soundlessly off the terrace to fall to the rocks far below.
“Guardsmen, arm yourselves,” a guardcaptain shouted, but the crowd had already begun to scream and flee, pouring through the doors into the city and running down its corridors. Guardsmen soon sealed off all the entrances, while others stood with short-swords at the ready. From the second terrace, an old woman, with her hair up in two tiers, turned upward and yelled, “See what your tyranny has brought us, you bloody old wretch!” It was the Ardena, an old opponent of Udge’s.
“Arrest her,” the Protector called down.
A guardsman moved toward her, but she flashed at him, “On what charge? I am a family head, a member of the full council, and I have merely expressed my opinion.”
The guardsman hesitated.
“Arrest her immediately,” the Protector again called.
The guardsman turned. “What is the charge?” he called back.
“Will no one arrest her?” Udge screamed. “She has opposed the proceedings. She is under suspicion of aiding in the murder of the guardchief.”
The Ardena looked up at Udge and laughed derisively. A guardsman reached for her arm, but she shook him off. Another stepped to her side and murmured, “Auntie Unset, please. She will harm you. She’ll find a way. You must go. She will really harm you.” The old woman glared at him. “Please?” he said. She turned and left with dignity.
Above, Udge did not press the point. She would bide her time. “Release Wim and remove her guardsman’s insignia. She is remanded to the first cell. Put the criminal in the second cell. All guardcaptains report to the Broad Tower immediately,” she called. She turned and left.
In the hallways, the Ardena scolded her nephew unmercifully, but he held his ground. She turned into her quarters, attempting to shut the door, but he followed her in. “Sit down,” he said. She was amazed but complied. He shut the door. “Listen. You don’t know how far she has extended her control. She has done it by the general fear of disobeying Craydor’s wishes, which she claims to understand. You are in danger. You must send her an apology.”
“What? Never.”
“Then I will send it in your name, Auntie. I mean it. I won’t allow you—”
The Ardena stood and interrupted him. “You—you send in my name? You would dare?”
He took her hands. “Are you Brudoer? Will you lie down for her lash? Aren’t there different ways of winning? Don’t we need you in this family more than ever before? Can’t there be one clear spokesman for the opposition? This is a crisis. What’s happened to your subtlety?”
The Ardena sank back down, and he released her hands. “It seems so dishonorable.”
“About as dishonorable as for Gamwyn to escape, Ardena.”
She looked up at him. “I will send an apology,” she said. “It will hurt, but I will do it. You are right, after all.”
“Make it sycophantic, Auntie.”
The old woman suddenly wept into her hands. Then she lifted her eyes to him again, fiercely. “Yes, curse her bones. It will be so sycophantic she will choke on it.” The two laughed quietly with each other, and as the guardsman turned to go, the Ardena said, “This is not the end of it, though, you know.”
“No. No, it certainly is not.”
In the evening, as Brudoer lay on the stone floor of the second cell, still unwashed, throbbing with pain, he heard the door open. Turning his head, he saw his mother and two guardsmen. “I am allowed to wash you as long as I don’t talk to you. Otherwise, they will send me away,” she said.
Brudoer groaned. As she worked, he lay still. He could see her knees and the boots of one guardsman. She worked slowly. The pain shot through him like sheet lightning as she moved slowly over his back with warm, slightly soapy water. He set his jaw and allowed no sound to escape. She took great, almost exaggerated care, and through his pain, Brudoer saw that she was talking to him with her hands. They meant love, forbearance, defiance. He felt them tremble slightly. On his part he decided to tell her by perfect silence that he still was strong.
Finally she stood and said, “It is finished.” Then she looked around and remarked, “What a strange room. I suppose if Craydor designed it, it must mean something.”
“Silence.”
“Yes. That is it. Are you a father?” She put a strange accent on “it” and “father.” After they left, Brudoer lay without moving for a long time. What had that meant? “It” and “father.” What father? His own, of course. A thought darted into his mind. She had told him it was his father who had shot the arrow. Brudoer didn’t even know he had ever handled a bow. Amazing. But was it true?
Eventually he sat up slowly. The lofty light that burned until the guardsman drew it out from above at high night showed a room very different from the first. It had the usual band of letters, apparently meaningless, around it. Below that, the word ANGER repeated itself in a complete band around the room. Under that series of reliefs illustrated faces and bodies obviously in states of rage. Brudoer turned his head slowly upward, and saw two large heads in relief, a man and a woman calmly looking at each other. He sighed and rolled back on his stomach, drifting off to sleep.
Three days later, in the morning, a guardcaptain announced himself at the Broad Tower and was admitted. He saluted Udge.
“Well?”
“It is Wim, Protector. She is not in her cell. She is gone. We have checked. Five boats are also missing, and we cannot account for twenty-one young men.”
“From her family?”
“From all four quadrants, Protector.”
“When was she last seen?”
“All three shifts of yesterday’s prison guardsmen are missing. It would have been yesterday afternoon. What should we do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“You may go now. Thank you for your report.”
“What does it mean, Protector?” Cilia asked as the guardcaptain exited.
“Don’t you see? They have taken her to Pelbarigan. It is of no use for us to follow. They have made too much distance. Pelbarigan showed with the boy that they are not in sympathy with us. It begins to happen.”
“What?”
“The weak and unruly are leaving. This perfect city will always be self-sustaining. Perhaps it is time the scum bubbled over.”
Bival shuddered as the Protector said this. She wondered if Warret had gone. No. It had been all young men. She knew too that this move would only strengthen Udge with most of the populace, so fearful were they of initiative and so shocked at defiance. Sympathy also extended to the family of the slain guardchief. Murder was almost wholly unknown in Threerivers. It would generally be assumed that the murderer was among those who left. Bival was less sure all the time, though, of her own position. She stared out the window. A winter eagle turned lazy circles over the river. She felt as alone as the bird. She thought again of Craydor’s statement. It had left the egg behind. So had those who fled. But it was not the same, surely.
After he abandoned the canoe, Gamwyn struck out across the land west of the river, trending southward. He was cold in the late-fall weather. Unused to the outdoors, he hardly knew how to care for himself, but tried to live on ankleroot. At last, when he was quite sure there was no pursuit, he returned to the river, constructed a crude raft of driftwood, and set off on it. Loneliness bored into him. He felt the foolishness of his journey, but it never occurred to him to turn back.
Finally he passed the mouth of the Oh, with its dark water running down the east bank. He stopped to fish occasionally, using rough Pelbar traps of willow twigs. But he was not able to feed himself properly and sometimes felt light-headed. Once or twice he spent most of the day in his sleepsack, with the raft drifting and slowly spinning down the river. Somehow his plan would work out. It had to. He tried to pray but seemed not able to get through a thought without his mind drifting.
Far to the north, the Protector of Pelbarigan visited Wim in the infirmary. The younger woman was by then sitting up, though not leaning back as yet.
“You will not send me back, Protector, I beg you.”
“We have not been asked.”
“Not asked? Surely they must have surmised that we came here.”
“Your Protector is a shrewd woman. She has managed to dispose of a problem. In Threerivers you would always be a goad to her. What would she do with you? I imagine she wishes she could rid herself of Brudoer as well.”
“I’m not sure of that. I think she has been strengthened by all this. The conservatives are shocked, and they tighten up. So there is use for the boy. She will try to make his rebellion seem so monstrous that the family heads will cluster to her.”
“This world asks a great deal of its children, it seems: I wonder where Gamwyn is now. Far down the river, perhaps.” She sighed slightly. “I know you will not tell. Gamwyn told my grandson he would go to the sea to get another shell for Bival. He told him that. It is hard to believe. He thought it would make everything right again.”
Wim looked at Sagan. “And you let him, Protector?”
“Let him? He seems to have done it on his own. Would you rather that he were at Threerivers?”
“No. But is that the only other option?”
Sagan looked pensive. “I’m afraid it is. Pelbarigan has sent out other young men, in different circumstances, with staggering results. But never quite such a boy before. I wonder if he will survive.”
“I hope so, Protector.”
At that moment, Gamwyn lay on his back watching a red-tailed hawk flying in slow circles. He was cut with hunger. As he watched, it seemed to describe the shape of the shell in the air. “Shell? Shell?” he murmured. Then he heard voices. Rolling onto his elbow, he saw a long boat approaching, paddled by a gigantic young man. A small black-haired girl about his own age sat in the bow looking at him. They swung alongside the raft, and the girl jumped on.
“Hold the boat, Jamin,” she said. Then she knelt by Gamwyn. “Hello,” she whispered, frowning. “Are you all right? My name is Misque. Are you well? Come. Get in the boat with us and we will take you to Jaiyan’s Station. That’s. Jamin, Jaiyan’s son. Do you know of him? Who are you? What a strange haircut. Come on now, can you get up? Here, Jamin, I will hold the boat, and you get him and his gear. Come on. You’ll be all right. You look hungry. What’s your name? You aren’t a Sentani. Have you come far? Here. We will get your things.”
“Gamwyn,” he murmured.
“Me. My name.”
“Oh. Yes. Well, come. You are a skinny person, all right. Here, Jamie, pick him up.”
Jamin had said nothing yet. He picked up Gamwyn like a sack of dry leaves and laid him in the boat, scooping up the boy’s things. Then he heaved himself into the stern seat, shoving off from Gamwyn’s raft, which he left to float downstream. Gamwyn watched it, then turned to look at Misque’s penetrating eyes.
“I know,” she said. “Your hair. You are a Pelbar. A real Pelbar. I’ve never seen one. Look, Jamie, a Pelbar. Are you from Pelbarigan, or maybe that strange city—what is it?”
“Threerivers. Have you anything to eat?”
“Yes, that one. Threerivers. I’ve never seen it, but they say it is tall, silent, strange, and shadows live there. But Ravell has been there, and he knows people there.”
“The trader.”
“Yes. You know him? Look, Jamie, he knows Ravell. We are almost neighbors then. What are you doing here, anyway?”
Gamwyn didn’t reply. She pursed her mouth. “Well, no matter. Look, some of the old people are at the bank already.”
Gamwyn turned. On the near shore was an assemblage of people, some dark-skinned, some light, a few with red hair were outnumbered by those with gray. All were dressed in dark Sentani tunics and rough pants, their breath steaming in the cold air. Gamwyn felt faint as the boat grounded. Jamin stepped onto a thick plank, took hold of the bow, and easily dragged the whole thing up onto the bank. Gamwyn felt himself lifted, amid chatter, then carried by many hands up a hill.
Looking up, he saw a door frame as they passed into the darkness of a building. A piece of baked apple dipped in honey was thrust at his mouth. It nearly burnt. Another piece came. He was lifted onto a couch, where he ate, looking up at a circle of weathered old faces that laughed and speculated until he drifted off to sleep.
Gamwyn was eventually awakened by a gentle shaking on his arm. He opened his eyes and found himself in a shedlike room of rough boards, with three bunks. An old man bent over him, and as Gamwyn blinked, he said, “Wake, young one. Time for evening song.”
Yawning and standing, Gamwyn found himself led by the arm to join a number of others, all old, all moving through a maze of rooms to a central chamber that Gamwyn dimly recognized as the one he had been first brought to.
The building was a strange structure, large and circular, with palisaded log walls about three arms high. A high, conical roof capped it. In the center of the room stood an enormous pillar, made of one whole tree trunk, against which all the rafters leaned. Almost half the room was taken up by a complex and bizarre device.
“That’s Jaiyan,” the old man whispered and pointed to an extremely large man seated at the edge of the device with his back to the small crowd, facing rows of light brown blocks, which arced around him. He seemed surrounded by upright tubes, of a great variety of sizes. Off to the side, toward the back, stood a row of enormous bellows. A number of the old people went to them and began pumping them up and down.
Jaiyan reached out his fingers and depressed the blocks selectively. Gamwyn was startled at the sudden growth of sounds from the device, sounds becoming music, intricate and varied. Jaiyan began to move his fingers faster, jerking his head in emphasis, as he created facing sounds. Then Gamwyn noticed Jaiyan’s feet sometimes moving, too, depressing a series of wooden rods, as he rested his hands. The old people pumped the bellows faster and faster, and soon others moved to take their place. All who were not working sat as a polite audience. Low tones seemed to shake the whole hall, while high ones flitted among the rafters like sparrows. Gamwyn sat fascinated. It sounded as loud as the whole Threerivers choir singing at once, but this was more varied, though it had no chords.
At last Jaiyan stopped, stood, bowed, and laughed a guttural guffaw, extending his arms and thanking the workers at the bellows. Then he frowned and said, “Somehow it isn’t full enough. Needs another row of whistles. Something much deeper. Hmm. I see our new recruit is awake.” He walked toward Gamwyn and, practically kneeling, gave him the Sentani greeting, palms against each other, foreheads touching. Then he stood straight, looked down at the boy, and laughed again. “Hungry again?”
“Yes, thank you,” Gamwyn said softly.
“Misque? Misque. Take care of this bent reed. Feed him.” Then he turned to Gamwyn again and asked, “Can you build? Got any skills?”
“A few. I have done woodworking and some work as a mason’s helper. But I have mostly just done labor—as much as a boy can.”
“Wood turning?”
“A little. How shall I address you?”
Jaiyan laughed. “Misque calls me chief. That’s amusing enough.”
“What is that device, uh, chief?”
“That? An organ. Have you heard of an organ? Probably not. It’s the only one in the whole Heart River Valley, I imagine. I dug up an ancient building and found one. Took me years to figure it all out. It was called an organ—stamped right onto the brass. It makes music Atou himself would gladly listen to. Now, I’ll give you to Misque.”
She stood ready with a bowl of thick soup. She led Gamwyn to a side table and sat with him, prattling at him endlessly as he ate. Gamwyn felt something enigmatic about her. She wasn’t a Sentani, surely.
Finally, he asked, “What are you? Where are you from?”
“Oh, I was lost, like you. I’m from far away. To the east. Jaiyan took me in, like you. I live here now. I take care of Jamin. His son. I like it here, like you will.”
“From the east? East of the Tall Grass Sentani?”
“Much.”
“That’s Peshtak country.”
“Some of it is. There are other people. I am from far east of that.”
“From the eastern cities? Innanigan?”
“How do you know all that?”
“Some of us Pelbar have been there, you know.”
“Yes. The famous Jestak. But none since?”
“How did you get through the Peshtak without getting killed?”
She laughed. “I didn’t know they were there. It was mostly forest, you know. It’s an awful story, and I don’t want to tell it again. Maybe sometime. Now tell me how you came to leave Threerivers.”
“I have to go to the sea and get a shell.”
“The sea? A shell? You mean a seashell? Are you mad? That’s impossible. The Tusco would stop you. You? Such a spindle? Go to the sea?”
Gamwyn said nothing, just ate. Misque found Jaiyan and brought him over, and they got Gamwyn to tell his story. He summarized it, with traditional reticence about Pelbar affairs.
Jaiyan was silent awhile. “I can’t let you do it, little one. The Tusco would simply enslave you. You would come back here when you are as old as these people. It’s silly.” He waved his hand. “They’re all former slaves. Once they were Siveri. The Tusco took them and worked them until they were too old to be of use.”
“How did they get here?”
“The Tusco used to kill them, but I agreed to buy a number. I give them a home, and they work for me.”
“And pump the bellows?”
Jaiyan laughed. “Yes. Without them, I couldn’t play my organ. So we benefit each other. But you can’t go any farther. It’s a silly idea. You’ll have to give it up.”
“But… but, chief. Threerivers is my only home. All I know is there. I have to make right the wrong somehow.”
“Doesn’t sound like a wrong to me. You wait. The Tusco will be here in a few days with cotton to trade north. I am trading them tanned leather and other stuff. This is the one place the Sentani trade with the Tusco. You’ll see them. A swampy lot. Just ask yourself, then, if you want to hoe cotton and maryjane for them all your life—or until they throw you out because you’re of no use.”
Gamwyn felt utterly bleak. He began to sob even though he fought against it. Jaiyan stood, put his hands on his hips, turned and walked away, turned back and stared again. “I can’t let you do it. We have plenty of work here. You can help me with the new whistles. The Siveri are too backward to help.”
Gamwyn continued to sob. Jaiyan glared at him. Then he turned away again, saying over his shoulder, “Misque, take care of the child.”
The girl put her arm over Gamwyn’s shoulder. He looked at her. Her eyes were hard as the sun on metal. “Stop it. Stop it,” she hissed at him. “You don’t have to do that. You water-lily stem.”
“I’m trying.”
“Trying! Show some control. Look at you, blubbering like a baby.”
“You can go away. You don’t have to stay here.”
Misque sighed dramatically but said no more. Nor did she move her arm until Gamwyn regained his calm. Then she said, “Listen. Don’t think I’m going to baby you. You’ll have to pull your own weight and stand on your own spindles.”
“I never asked anything from you.”
“Remember that.”
Gamwyn looked at her, wondering, and saw hesitation and trouble in her expression, which she tried to hide. “I’m going back to bed,” he said.
At that time, Brudoer, now able to lie on his back again, rested in the sleeping alcove in the second cell at the base of Threerivers. On the low, curved ceiling over his head was a grotesque face, and again the word ANGER chiseled into the rock. At the foot of the bed, facing the other direction, was the faint word PEACE. Again, fury at his situation boiled over in him, and he struck out at the grotesque face, skinning his knuckles. He sucked at them, still furious. Suddenly it all seemed stupid. He closed his eyes, then opened them again to the word ANGER.
Slowly he took his bed apart and remade it so the angry face was at the foot. As he lay staring up at PEACE, he noticed a gull in flight very faintly etched into the curved stone. He reached out his hand to it, but it disappeared in the new shadows. He couldn’t really feel it distinctly. He drew his hand down and the image renewed itself in the sidelong light.
Another of Craydor’s ideas, he thought. It began to dawn on him that she was talking to him. He rolled over and looked around the cell walls. Most of what he saw was obvious, but the rows of letters were simply enigmatic and meant nothing at all. He would study them the next day.
At Jaiyan’s Station, Gamwyn quickly merged into the strange community. Like all the others, he had standard duties, but because he was small, quick, and bright, Jaiyan frequently used the boy as a helper in the endless adjustments and additions to his gigantic instrument.
The others took the enormous eccentricity in stride. It had taken over the trader’s life. With great pains and skill, he had deciphered the initial instrument he dug up and had recreated his version of it with a boy’s pure joy. He played it, with the Siveri at the bellows, three times a day, and between these times would tinker with it. Because it needed leather parts, he had built a tannery, and now bought skins from the Sentani, not only for his own use but for trade. His wood shop, too, employed the old people, who worked slowly and seemed content with their lot. They looked at him as a father. Long enslaved, they took everything mildly. They were free to leave, but since it was far to Siveri country and the Tusco slaving parties were everywhere, the old ones saw little to gain in returning after all the long years of their captivity.
Gamwyn enjoyed the quietness of the Siveri, but chafed at their bovine complacency. Really heavy work was done by Jaiyan himself, or by Jamin, his hulking, simpleminded son, the one person Misque seemed genuinely devoted to. She watched out for him, directing and harrying him the way a kingbird does a hawk, or, the way a mother does a child.
One afternoon, just as ice chunks began appearing in the river, Gamwyn heard a horn. Looking up, he saw three long, flat-bottomed boats coming up the river. “It’s the Tusco,” Misque said.
Gamwyn stared, as the laden boats, rowed by slaves, slowly drew up to the bank, where Jaiyan greeted them, holding up both hands. The sign was returned by a black-haired man in the bow of the lead boat. This man was dressed entirely in black leather, even wearing a tight leather helmet with cheekpieces.
Gamwyn shuddered. The man’s curved sword hung longer than the typical short-sword of the Heart River peoples. A quirt dangled from his left wrist, and as the slaves unloaded large bags of cotton, he flipped it idly against their backs. A line of guards, similarly dressed, stood in bow and stern, as well as on the bank. All were armed with bows.
Very little talk was exchanged as cotton was traded for leather, Pelbar ceramics, turned wood trays and cups, salted meat, and a large quantity of cattle bones. Near the end of the exchange, Gamwyn became aware that the leader stood next to him. Suddenly he took the boy’s cheeks in his hand and turned his head. He stared at Gamwyn.
“What he?”
Gamwyn reached up and with a guardsman’s thrust stuck his thumbnail into the man’s wrist. The man yelled and let go, and at that moment, Jamin stepped between the two. The Tusco retreated several steps.
“Not in deal,” Jamin said, “Not in deal.”
Jaiyan strode over and put his arm on the man’s shoulder. “It’s all right. He’s only another waif I’ve taken in. Only a boy.” The man’s glare softened slightly. “Come into the hall and we’ll settle our account,” Jaiyan added. The matter seemed ended, but Gamwyn didn’t like the way the Tusco bowmen looked at him. Jamin stayed right with him, but Misque was nowhere in sight.
The Tusco stayed the night, but in their boats, as was agreed. The whole time, a taste of danger hung like acrid woodsmoke in the air. Gamwyn was glad to see them cast off in the morning, their Siveri slaves wearily taking up the long, scarred oars to begin the downstream voyage.
Only then did Misque reappear. What did that mean? Gamwyn wondered. “How long have you been at Jaiyan’s Station?” he asked her.
“Awhile. Why?”
“No reason. Do you plan to stay here always?”
“Why? Want to marry me?” She laughed lightly at him.
“You never tell me about yourself.”
“About as much as you’ll tell me about Threerivers.”
“Why do you want to know about it?”
“Why do you want to know about me?”
At Threerivers, Brudoer whiled away long periods staring at the letters mingled on the wall. He could make out the word THE obviously worked into the pattern, but that was all. That was obvious. He was sure now that it was a pattern. He was so absorbed in deciphering it that when the two guardsmen came for his dishes, and to give him dinner, he scarcely noticed them. They were wary since he had been so unpredictable. One looked at the other and raised his eyebrows. Finally Brudoer glanced at them but seemed uninterested. They left, a little bewildered, deciding to report the change in the boy to the guardchief. Again Brudoer stared at the inscription, which read, THEPD. UERCPNOASHENOEFETBHEIRSOSFHEERLELHTTOE.OFIISLTEOCENNAH. It must mean something.
His eyes tired from looking, and all seemed to tremble and blur. He passed his hands in front of his face, and as he turned his head, the word SHELL seemed to jump from the tangled sequence of letters. He stared again, but couldn’t seem to find it. He carefully went over the list again. Wetting his finger in his water bowl, he spelled patterns on the floor, methodically going over the list again and again. The word wasn’t there. But he was sure he had seen it. Why that word? It seemed to mock him.
He looked again for the letters, then found only the first three, SHE, as before. No. That was not it. Then, at the third s, he found them again, each separated by a letter. SHELL. It was there. What else was there? He went back to the beginning, which he took to be THE, an easy clue to the fact that there was a code, then took every other letter as in the pattern. What came out was “The purpose of this shell too is to enh.” What shell? What of the rest?
Then he saw the two periods, one near the beginning, one nearer the end. Skipping the letters he had not used did no good. If periods were a clue, that meant to go backward. He began, but at that point the guardsmen took away the lamp, for it was by this times high night. Brudoer yelled for them to bring it back, shouting repeatedly, his voice resounding in the high cell, but he was plunged into darkness until the morning and had to crawl to his bed. He lay awake a long time pondering what Craydor might have meant. What shell? He thought ahead. In eight days he would again be taken from the cell. He was sure that Udge would try some pretext to put him back again.
Brudoer then began to wonder what he had missed in the letters of the, first cell. And he began to look forward to the third cell, though the thought of another whipping made him bead with sweat. He now had a secret—he alone with Craydor herself. Somehow that seemed momentous, and he stared and strained to see in the dark, knowing the faint gull image lay just over his head.
As she was chuckling again over the roll of “The Loves Of Aliyson,” Prope heard a crash from the direction of her small pantry. She sighed, rose, took her stick, and walked down the short hall to the room. Mall, her old servant, was on his knees, cleaning up the tea from a small crock he had dropped.
“Again! The best tea, I suppose?”
“No, not the best, but again I am sorry. I regret …”
Prope brought her stick down on his bent back with a solid whack. “Again!” she shrilled. “And again and again and again.” She whacked him with each word, then grew slightly faint with the effort and grasped the doorframe, panting.
“Leave. Leave at once. When I am going out, you may come back and clean this. And don’t save that filthy tea.”
“Oh, no. Of course.” Mall squeezed by her, being careful not to touch her, and hobbled toward the outer door. With gritted teeth she watched his back then blew out the lamp he had left lit in the pantry, and, leaning on her stick, returned to the sitting room to look at her sand watch.