(urth) Close Reading: Torturer Chapter I

[Roy C. Lackey]

Sarah Dorrance-Minch wrote:
>>  I can't help but wonder why Severian was called in to assist with the
Revolutionary given his pre-existing relationship with Thecla, which even
were it not intimate was certainly close enough to create a clear conflict
of interest in the client/torturer relationship. Which surely the masters of
the guild would have known. So, was somebody paid off? Or did one of
Severian's masters have a hidden reason for wanting to tempt Severian to do
something that would get him kicked out of the guild?<<

Severian was certainly intimate with Thecla. Perhaps the answers to your
questions lie in the answer to another question: Who gave the order for her
to be tortured? Not merely tortured, but tortured in a manner that would
result in her slow but sure death.

The Matachin Tower was the autarch's private dungeon, not the city jail.
Most people in Nessus didn't even know it existed. Thecla's death there
served no useful purpose. She was not even being used as part of a
public-relations ploy to deter sedition. The Old Autarch professed ignorance
of her plight until after she was dead, but also endorsed the action of the
"certain officers" who had caused her to be arrested in secret.

Thea had already fled the House Absolute to be with Vodalus before Thecla
was arrested. Thecla was imprisoned for a year before her death. Alive, she
possessed at least as much value to the autarch as she did as a ceremonial
concubine. Dead, she lost all value to the autarch and risked the
possibility that her influential exultant family up north would turn openly
against him.

Even if those "officers" decided that holding her prisoner while
negotiations with her family or Vodalus went on behind the scenes was a
fruitless endeavor, they could better have left their options open by
letting her sit in prison indefinitely. They could even have had her
executed and be done with it. But they didn't. *Someone* ordered her
tortured first. The torture wasn't even for the purpose of extracting
information or compelling cooperation. As far as Thecla was concerned, the
torture was purely vindictive and would result in her death, even if
Severian hadn't shortened the ordeal by giving her a knife.

This all strikes me as rather bold decision for "certain officers" to make
behind the autarch's back, particularly given that Thecla was one of the
twenty-or-so favored concubines in the autarch's inner circle. That the
order for her torture coincided with Severian's elevation to journeyman can
have been no accident. Some power-behind-the-throne was at work here.
Thecla's death did nothing to further the welfare of the Commonwealth or the
autarch. Her death was the goad needed to push Severian out of the insulated
nest of the guild and put him on the path to the Phoenix Throne. And the
throne was just a necessary stepping stone to Yesod and a New Sun.

Those time walkers Severian mentioned near the end of CITADEL who intervened
in the life of the "first Severian" were still orchestrating events in his
own life. In the end, Thecla's blood is on their hands.

-Roy