I looked to see what Blue Wing had made of all this, or if he even knew, but he was perched there with his head tucked under his wing. So far as I could see, it had all gone by him, and I wondered if maybe I’d been dreaming.
Well, you big lunk, I told myself, you’ll just have to be your own witness. Whatever it was you saw, it seems to have healed your soul. Let it go at that. Then the goose bumps came back over me, not fierce like before, but in a sort of comfortable wash, and I almost grinned my face in two. Thank you, Melody, I thought after her. The feeling kept on fizzing another minute, like soda water, then faded and was gone.
Another half hour or so and I could see the fringe of Teklapori ahead, a darker darkness in the night. I’d been longer on the road than I’d had any idea of.
42: Farewell to Tekalos
Melody was gone, but I still needed to burn her body. It’s the way things are done in Yuulith. Lots of people there believe that ashing the body releases the soul from it; that otherwise it has to stay till the body decays. Which may be how it is, if you believe it strongly enough. I could have done it on the farm, but her best friends, along with me and Blue Wing, were Jeremid and Loro. They’d want to be there when the pyre was lit, to say a proper goodbye, and plenty of others would too. And she’d come to the ceremony, for their sake and mine, I had no doubt.
I’m getting ahead of myself though. When I drove up to the barbican, it was late enough that in Six-Month it would have been near dawn, but in Two-Month there was a lot of night left. In spite of my warm cap and coat and mitts, I felt about half froze. Overhead in the gate tower they didn’t believe who it was; told me to go away and come back at sunup. I told them that somebody better get down there and at least shine a lantern on me, or I’d have their ass on a stick. It took a minute, but finally someone shined a target lantern between the bars of a view slot, and in another half minute what they call “the spy’s gate” opened and a guard stepped out. The spy’s gate is just wide enough for a man. It’s like a ten-foot-long tunnel through the wall. In case of siege, you can use it to let spies in and out after dark. It has a small portcullis at the inner end that they can drop and trap you inside, if they want to. I told the guard who’d opened it that I needed to take the gig in. He could see who I was then, and explained apologetically that they weren’t allowed to open the main gate for anyone after midnight, not even a general. Said it had been the rule for a long long time, peace or war.
That not only irritated me, it felt like an insult to Melody, so I grabbed him by the greatcoat, shook him, and held him up against the stone wall.
“You go back inside,” I hissed, “and find the officer of the guard, and tell that son of a bitch that General Macurdy will personally flog him right down to the bare ribs if he doesn’t get his ass out here right away.” And at the time I meant it, though I’d never have done it.
When I let him go, he hurried back inside leaving a string of yessirs behind, and closed the spy’s gate after him. It took a few minutes for the officer of the guard to get there—he’d pulled his breeches on over his night shirt and smelled like stale beer—and after seeing for sure who it was, ordered the main gate opened, looking almost as worried about that as he was scared of me. I heard the windlass and chain grind, and watched it raise up. Then I drove the buggy through, and heard it being let down again.