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Then I, still unmasked and in the dress of an apprentice, stepped forward and said: "Resistance avails nothing You are to be broken on the wheel, but ould do you no further indignity"

The ave no answer but reached out and touched the wheel, which at once fell to pieces, collapsing with a clatter to the floor, all its roses gone

"Behead her," demanded Maxentius, and I took up the sword It was very heavy

She knelt before h Iyou spare my life"

For the first ti, "Strike and fear not" I lifted the sword I remember that for a moment I feared it would overbalance me

When I think back on that time, it is that moment I recall first; to remember more, I must work forward or backward froray shirt and ragged trousers, with the blade poised above my head While I raised it, I was an apprentice; when it descended, I would be a journeyman of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence

It is our rule that the executioner ht; the maid's head lay in shadow on the block I knew that the sword in falling would do her no harenious mechanism that would elevate a wax head sin cloth Still I hesitated to give the blow

She spoke again fro in th as I was capable of, I sent the false blade down For an instant it seemed to me that it met resistance; then it thudded into the block, which fell into two Thebrothers Master Gurloes lifted it by the hair and Master Palaemon cupped his left hand to receive the blood

"With this, our chrism," he said, "I anoint you, Severian, our brother forever" His index finger traced the mark upon my forehead

"So be it," said Master Gurloes, and all the journeymen save I The maid stood

I knew even as I watched her that her head was only concealed in the cloth; but it see there I felt dizzy and tired

She took the wax head from Master Gurloes and pretended to replace it on her shoulders, slipping it by so before us radiant and whole I knelt before her, and the others withdrew

She raised the shich I had so lately struck off her head; the blade was bloody now from some contact with the wax "You are of the torturers," she said I felt the sword touch either shoulder, and at once eager hands were drawing the headme Before I well knehat had occurred, I was on the shoulders of two journeymen - it was only afterward that I learned they were Drotte and Roche, though I should have guessed it They were bearing h the center of the chapel, while everyone cheered and shouted

We were no sooner outside than the fireworks began: crackers about our feet and even around our ears, torpedoes banging against the thousand-year-old walls of the chapel, rockets red and yellow and green leaping into the air A gun froht

All the brave meats I have described were on the tables in the court; I sat at the head between Master Palaemon and Master Gurloes, and drank too much (very little, for me, has always been too much), and was cheered and toasted What became of the maid I do not know She disappeared as she has each Katharine's Day I can reain

How I reached my bed I have no notion Those who drink et all that befell theht, and perhaps it was so with et anything, who, if I h I seem to boast, do not truly understand what others et, for it see) only slept and was carried there

However it may be, I woke not in the familiar low room that was our dorher than wide, a journeyman's cabin, and because I was the most junior of the journeymen, the least desirable in the tower, a portless cubbyhole no larger than a cell

My bed seeripped the sides and sat up and it was still, but as soon as ain I felt I ide-awake - then that I ake again but had been sleeping only a moment before I was conscious that someone was in the tiny cabin with ht it was the young woman who had taken the part of our patroness

I sat up in the tossing bed Diht filtered beneath the door; there was no one there

When I lay down again, the room was filled with Thecla's perfuot out of bed, and nearly falling opened the door There was no one in the passage outside

A chamber pot waited beneath the bed, and I pulled it out and filled it within wine mixed with bile So out all that the guild had givenand sobbing I knelt beside the bed, and at last, after wiping ain

No doubt I slept I saw the chapel, but it was not the ruin I knew The roof hole and high and straight, and froleamed with polish; the ancient stone altar athed in cloth of gold Behind the altar rose a wonderful ment of sky without cloud or star had been torn away and spread upon the curving wall

I walked toward it down the aisle, and as I did so I was struck by how hter it was than the true sky, whose blue is nearly black even on the brightest day Yet how much more beautiful this was! It thrilledin air, borne up by the beauty of it, looking down upon the altar, down into the cup of crimson wine, down upon shewbread and antique knife I smiled

And woke In e outside, and I knew I had recognized theh I could not just then recall whose steps they were Struggling, I brought back the sound; it was no hu of soft feet, and an alain, so faint that for a tiht I had confusedup the passage, slowly going back The ht a wave of nausea; I let it fall again, telling ht pace back and forth, it was no affair of h I was, I felt I needed to fear unreality no longer - I was back in the world of solid objects and plain light

My door opened a trifle and Master Malrubius looked in as though to ht I waved to hiain It was some time before I recalled that he had died while I was still a boy

Chapter 12

THE TRAITOR

The next daytradition) spared fro of the Grand Court and the chapel, where most of the brothers were, I was needed in the oubliette For a fewcalm of the corridors sootheddown (the boy Eata, not quite so slea the clients' breakfast - cold e from the ruins of the banquet I had to explain to several clients that this was the only day of the year on which they would getone after another that there would be no excruciations - the feast day itself and the day after are exempt, and even when a sentence demands torment on those days, it is postponed The Chatelaine Thecla was still asleep I did not wake her, but unlocked her cell and carried her food in and put it on her table

Aboutto the landing, I sao cataphracts, an anagnost reading prayers, Master Gurloes, and a young woan to describe those that were vacant

"Then take this prisoner I have already signed for her"

I nodded and grasped the woman by the arm; the cataphracts released her and turned away like silver automata

The elaboration of her sateen costume (somewhat dirty and torn now) showed that she was an optiette would have worn finer stuffs in simpler lines, and no one fronost tried to follow us down the corridor, but Master Gurloes prevented him I heard the soldiers' steel-shod feet on the steps

"When a, somehow terrorized inflection "To be taken to the exah I were her father or her lover "Will I be?"

"Yes, Madame"

"How do you know?"