EXODUS FROM THE LONG SUN
                       by Gene Wolfe

                Chapter 1 -- Back from Death

An eerie silence overhung the ruined villa. Listening for the closing
of a slug gun's bolt, Maytera Mint heard only the groan of the wind
and the irregular snapping of the flag of truce she held.
    "On Phaesday they were _in situ_," Patera Remora conceded. "The
Ayuntamiento, eh?"
    They had come abreast of a dead talus, its painted steel sides
blistered by fire and blackened by smoke; she caught a whiff of fish
oil, despite the wind.
    "Might be repaired, eh, General?" Remora pushed back a lock of
lank black hair that had fallen over his eyes. "Not like we biochemicals,
hey? Still we--ah--dispatch their spirits to Mainframe. Not identical
in the, um, revivified one, perhaps. Amongst the new parts."
    "Or they really haven't any," Maytera Mint murmured. She had
stopped to wait for Remora, and was taking the opportunity to study
the windows of the house that had been Blood's.
    Her remark bordered on heresy, but Remora thought it most
prudent to return to his earlier topic. "If they're not here, eh? Loris
and the rest? Will, ah, Buffalo--"
    "Bison." She turned back to Remora, her face pinched and the tip
of her delicate nose red with cold. "Colonel Bison."
    "Um, precisely. Will Colonel Bison," Remora waved vaguely at the
ruined wall, "and his--ah--troopers await our return back there?"
    "You heard my instructions, Your Eminence."
    "But if we're some time, eh? The front door is broken. Shattered,
in fact."
    Maytera Mint, who had noted it as they passed through the ruined
gateway, nodded.
    "So it's not a matter of knocking, hey? Not a mere matter of
knocking at all." Remora brightened. "Knock on the frame, eh? We
could do that. Wait a bit. Polite."
    "I will go inside," she told him firmly, "and search. I would not
presume to dictate Your Eminence's course of action. If I can get
in touch with the Ayuntamiento, I'll ask them to send for you. If I
can't, I may be able to learn where we can. As for Colonel Bison,
he's completely loyal, my best officer. My only concern is that he
may send in a patrol to look for us, though I have forbidden it."
    "I, um, apprehend your position," Remora said, rejoining her.
"If one does not expect obedience, one will not, ah, be obeyed.
Memorized it in schola, all of us did. Still, if he were to depart?
Decamp. Our, um, withdrawal to the city could be hazardous, hey?
Laborious, likewise."
    "That's not the question." She forgot for a moment that Remora
was the second highest dignitary of the Chapter. "The question is
whether the enemy's back. There are no bodies."
    "These, ah--"
    "These taluses. It would take ten yoke of oxen to drag them away,
I suppose. No dead bios or chems."
    "The, ah, Army, eh? To the Calde. So I understood."
    "Some soldiers went over to him, yes. Others who hadn't heard
about him didn't, and were fighting their comrades here."
    Remora nodded. "Unfortunate. Um, tragic."
    "When this man Blood's bodyguards learned Calde Silk had killed
him, some attacked him and his soldiers. That's when Generalissimo
Oosik and General Saba stormed the house."
    "Lovely, hum?" Remora harbored a sneaking admiration for
architecture as others cherish a vice. "Even, ah, despoiled. Pity. Pity. More
so, possibly. No pretensions now. No more vulgar display. Wreckage
more--um--romantic? Poetic." He favored Blood's torn lawns with
a toothy smile.
    Maytera Mint drew her soiled habit more tightly about her and
for the hundredth time wished for her coif. "If we were to walk a
little faster, Your Eminence, we could get out of this wind, whether
the Ayuntamiento's come back or not."
    "Of course, of course."
    "And though I don't concede that Bison--"
    "Those--um--corpses, General." Catching up, Remora strode
along beside her, his lanky legs making a single step of two of
hers. "You were about to, er, um, propose that we afford them
an--ah--sanctified burial? It would be most inconvenient, I fear.
Most inopportune!"
    "Granted. But there must have been bodies, and I'd think more
than a few. The Ayuntamiento's soldiers and this man's bodyguards
would have been shooting from these windows."
    Maytera Mint paused, drawing on her recent experiences to visualize
the scene. "Floaters would have rushed the gate, and Guardsmen and
General Saba's pterotroopers must have swarmed through every break
in the wall. Then my troopers from the city, thousands of them. Some
must have been killed, I'd think at least a hundred. Some of the
bodyguards and soldiers must have been killed too. See that line of
pock-marks? Buzz-gun fire. A floater's turret gun raked the front of
the house."
    "I, an--"
    For once she interrupted him. "We would have taken away our
dead, or I hope we would. But what about theirs? They were retreating
under fire, going down into the tunnels Sand talked about. Would
they have dragged bodies along with them? I find it hard to believe,
Your Eminence."
    "If I may." Remora cleared his throat. "It seems to me that you
have, ah, disposed of the, um, dead yourself, though I confess that
I am no great hand at matters military."
    "Nor I. I was appointed by Echidna, you must have heard of that.
What little I know I've picked up as I went along."
    "Defeating commanders vastly more--ah--schooled. I would
conjecture, leastwise, that there must be something like our schola
for the officers of the, er, Calde's Guard. As we call them now, eh,
General? The Civil Guard we used to phrase it, hey? Admirable, I,
um, insist."
    "I've lost to them, too, Your Eminence. Lost nearly as often as I've
won." They were passing Scylla's fountain, now sheathed in ice.
    "Though no great hand," Remora repeated, "I offer the, um, this hypothesis.
Would not well regulated troops inter their dead? The generalissimo's men
are, ah, proficient, to be sure, and we--ah--furnish a chaplain to each
brigade. The, um, desiderata of that. Conduct military obsequies. Subsequently,
please to follow me here, Mayt--General. Would not such, er, troopers
compel the, ah, your own, though not then under, as it were, your eye--"
    "Make them bury the rest? Possibly." Maytera Mint, who was very
tired, forced herself to stand straighter and square her shoulders.
"More likely no compulsion was needed. If they had not thought
of it themselves, seeing the Guard and Saba's pterotroopers loading
their dead to take back to the city would suggest it. But what about
the enemy dead? Where are they?"
    "Within this desolate, ah, mansion. I dare say. They would not have
abandoned its shelter, hey? Shot through its windows. You--um--proposed
it yourself."
    She pointed with the stick that held her white flag. "See where the
wall's fallen? You can look into several rooms, and there's not a
single body in any of them."
    "Yet, ah--"
    "Through the doorway, too." They had nearly reached the steps of
Blood's portico. "That door would have been defended more strongly
than any other point, and I can look right into the sellaria. There's
not a one. Where are they?"
    "I would, er, hazard that the victorious troops disposed of them
afterward."
    She shook her head vigorously. "Troopers who've won are never
anxious to get the bodies of those they've killed out of sight, Your
Eminence. Never! I've seen that much more often than I like. They're
proud, and it's good for their morale. Yesterday Major Skin was
begging, literally begging me, not to have bodies that had lain in the
streets for days carted off. If the bodies are gone, it's because their
friends came back for them. It would be interesting to see if there
are graves behind the house. That's where they'd be, I imagine. By
the wall, as far as possible from the road. Do you know if there are
gardens in back?"
    "I have never, um, had the pleasure." Remora started up the steps.
"Nor has His Cognizance, I think. He, um, confided it to me a
year or two past. We had been--um--dissecting? Decrying this, er, Blood's
influence. Was never a, um, visitor within these--ah--despoiled walls."
    "Neither have. I, Your Eminence." Maytera Mint hiked up her skirt
and started up the steps.
    "To be sure. To be sure, General. I regret it. Regret it now. I will not
dissemble, nor, um, ever. Seldom. To have seen this in its days of
prosperity would--prosperity and peace, eh? The contrast 'twixt memory
and the, um, less happy present. Do you follow me? Whereas one
can now but picture... See that picture? Fine. Very fine indeed, eh?
Torn. Might be refurbished yet, in skillful hands. Like the tali, eh?"
    "I suppose." She had glanced at the ruined furniture, and was
studying the shadowy doorways of further rooms. "He kept women here, didn't
he? This bad man Blood who owned the house. Women--women who..."
    "Enough, enough! Do not, um, perturb yourself, Maytera. General.
A few such. An, er, select contingent. So I was given to understand
upon the occasion of our--um--my _tete-a-tete_,
eh? With old Quetzal. Do I, um, scandalize you? With His Cognizance. I am,
ah, betimes inclined to be overfree. To presume upon an old friendship. A
failing, I concede." Remora advanced to study the damaged Murtagon.
    "Was this where it happened?"
    "Where the women--ah?" He glanced back at her with a half smile.
"No indeed."
    "Where Calde Silk killed this man Blood, and Sergeant Sand killed
Councillor Potto."
    "We've finer ones at the Palace, hey? Still it's nice and might
be--ah--emended. In an, um, one of the anterooms as I understand
it, General. May I ask why you wish to know. An um, monument
of some kind, possibly? A dedicational tablet of, er, bronze?"
    "Because we know that the man who owned this house died in
it, Your Eminence," Maytera Mint explained. "This Blood, with
Councillor Potto. If their bodies aren't here, they've been removed
by someone, and I'd think that if Generalissimo Oosik or even General
Saba had done it I'd have heard. A councillor's body? Everyone would
be arguing about what should be done with it, and I would certainly
have heard."
    Her tone grew crisp. "Now if you'll oblige me."
    Remora, who was not used to being asked for favors in that
peremptory fashion, looked around sharply.
    "There seems to be no one here, though my informants... Never
mind. Do you agree?"
    "There is certainly no one in this room at present
except--ah--ourselves. With regard to the, er, remainder of the, um,
building, I--hum--further investigation."
    "I've been listening carefully and heard nothing. The bodies may
be in plain view or hidden by furniture or whatnot." Rather tardily
Maytera Mint added, "Your Eminence. I'll search the rooms on this
side. I'd like you to search the other. We needn't bother with the rest
of the house, I think."
    "If there are no, er, bodies, General," Remora smoothed the truant
lock into place, "shall we return to the city--ah--forthwith? Might
be wise, eh? We have no way of knowing what has transpired in our
absence, hey?"
    She nodded. "Agreed. We'll know then that they've been here and
may return later. I'll leave one of Bison's officers to watch, with a few
troopers. If we _do_ find a body, either one, it should be safe to
assume that the Ayuntamiento's troops have never come back at all. We can
go back to the city at once and forget about this house."
    "Wisely, er, spoken." Remora was already hurrying toward the first
of his assigned roorns. "I shall inform you promptly should I discover
an--ah--the mortal remains."
    The anteroom Maytera Mint entered had, it appeared, been the
owner's study. A massive mahogany desk, lavishly carved, stood
against one wall, and there were shelves of books, mostly (she scanned
the titles on a shelf at the level of her eyes) erotic if not pornographic:
_Three Maids and Their Mistress, The Astonishing Exploits of a Virile
Young Man and His Donkey, His Resistance Overcome_...
    She turned away. What had it been like to be here under such a
master? She tried to picture the lives of the women who had endured
it, and failed. They had been bad women, as the whorl judged, but
that only meant that they had commanded defenses greatly inferior
to her own.
    Strange, how she had come to think in military metaphors during
the past few days.
    The desk drawers seemed apt to tell her a good deal about the owner,
who counted for nothing now, and nothing about the Ayuntamiento
and those who served it. She opened a drawer at random anyway,
glanced at the papers it had held--all of them concerned in some
fashion with money--shut it, and made sure no corpse lay concealed
in the leg hole.
    "_General!_"
    Turning so quickly that the long, black skirt of her habit billowed
about her, she hurried out of the study and across the sellaria. "What
is it, Your Eminence?"
    He met her at the doorway, visibly struggling to conceal his pleasure.
"I have the--ah--it is my unhappy duty--"
    "You've found a body. Whose?"
    "The, um, late councillor's, I believe. If, perhaps, you would not
care--"
    "To see it? I must! Your Eminence, I've seen hundreds of bodies
since this began. Thousands." There had been a time when she had
found it nearly impossible to cut the throat of a goat; as she pushed
past Remora, she reflected that she would find that difficult still,
and find it literally impossible to cut a man's, even an enemy's. Yet
she had made plans and given orders that had clogged entire streets
with corpses.
    "I took the, um, responsibility? The--ah--presumption of, er,
tidying him up. On his back now, eh? Folded the arms, prior to
calling you."
    Potto lay almost at her feet, his arms crossed in such a way as to
hide the wound Sand's slug had made just below his sternum. The
graying hair that he had worn long trailed over Blood's lush carpet,
and Maytera Mint found herself muttering, "He looks surprised."
    "Doubtless he--ah--was." Remora cleared his throat. "Caught
unawares, hey? Shot by one of his own. All in a, um, trice. So my
prothonotary tells me. He--ah--Incus is his name, General. Patera
Incus. He has, um, fallen prey in some--ah--wise to the notion that
he's old Quetzal--"
    She knelt beside the corpse, traced the sign of addition, and opened
its card case.
    "Mad, I fear. Deranged. Bit of rest, eh? He'll come to himself soon
enough. General--ah--?"
    In the first place," Maytera Mint explained, "there may be papers
of value in here. In the second, there's money, ten cards or so, and
we need that very badly."
    "I, ah, see."
    Cards and papers vanished into her wide sleeve. "Where's the
blood? Did you clean up his blood before you called to me, Your
Eminence?"
    "Through the heart, eh?" Remora's nasal tones sounded slightly
strangled. "Not much bleeding then, eh? So I am--ah--apprised."
    Gently at first, then with increased vigor, Maytera Mint rubbed
the councillor's cheek. "This's a chem!"
    "I--um--"
    She looked up at Remora. "You knew."
    "I--ah--suspected."
    "You rolled him over, you said, Your Eminence. You folded his
arms. You must have known."
    "Then? Oh, yes, I--ah--confirmed, eh? I had, um,
and--ah--Quetzal, eh? Old Quetzal. Wouldn't tell. Asked him once. More,
actually. He, ah, er, wouldn't. Confides in me, eh? Nearly everything. Very,
ah, delicate points. Sensitive matters, finances. Everything. But
he--ah--wouldn't."
    Suddenly Remora was on his knees beside her. "General--ah--General.
Alone here, hey? No one but, er, ourselves. May I call you Maytera?"
    She ignored it. "There'll be the question of burial. A dozen questions,
really. You must have realized I'd find out."
    "I--ah--did. Indeed. Not so swiftly, however. You are
most--or--perspicacious."
    "Then why didn't you say so? Why all that nonsense about
blood?"
    "Because I--Incus. Patera Incus. And old Quetzal, eh? My position
is, er, delicate. Imperiled. Maytera, hear me, I--ah--beg you. Yes,
beg. Implore."
    She nodded. "I'm listening. What is it?"
    "Incus, my prothonotary. Was. You know him?"
    She shook her head. "Just tell me."
    "He's been appointed Prolocutor. By, um, Scylla. He says it, I
mean. Credits it himself, eh? Convinced. Spoke to him yesterday,
but he--you..."
    "Me?" For a second, Maytera Mint felt she was missing some vital
clue. It dawned upon her, and she rocked backward to sit cross-legged
on the carpet, her head in her hands.
    "Maytera? Er, General?"
    She looked up at Remora. "I was appointed by Echidna, in front
of thousands of people. Is that it, Your Eminence?"
    Remora's mouth opened and shut silently.
    "So you know it happened. All those witnesses. And I've been
successful, as you say. The victorious commander, chosen for us by
the gods. Even Bison and the captain talk like that, and then there's
Patera Silk."
    Remora nodded miserably.
    "Everyone says he's been appointed by Great Pas to be our calde,
even Maytera Marble. He's been successful, too, so it looks like
the gods have decided to choose leaders for us, and if this Patera
Incus is going to be the new Prolocutor, he'll want to pick his own
coadjutor."
    "Nor--ah--um--worse. If he--ah--old Quetzal, you
know. Resourceful. Cunning. Seen it myself, hundreds of times,
eh? Ayuntamiento had the force, but he'd get 'round them. Get
'round Lemur and Loris, all of them. Old man, hey? Foolish old
man. What they think. His Cognizance. Quetzal. But sly, Mayt--General.
Very sly. Deep."
    She made a small sound of encouragement.
    "Compromise. I--ah--sense it. I am not, um, clever, General. Try
to be, indeed. Try. Some have said--well, it pares no parsnips. But not
like old Quetzal. Experienced, though. My--ah--self. Conferences,
negotiations. And I wind it. Wind it already. Be coadjutor, Incus.
Obvious, eh? First thing anybody would, er, formulate. Old Quetzal
would--ah--visualize? Comprehend the whole before Incus finished.
Old man. Die soon, hey? A year, two years, to--ah--fit yourself into
the position, Patera. I'll be gone. I can, um, hear him as I--we--speak.
So I didn't dare, eh? Tell you. You see my predicament? The--ah--Loris.
Galago. All the rest. Chems, every one of them. I suspected
it for years. Meeting with this one, that one, entire days, sometimes.
Saw them up close. Quetzal knows, he must."
    "But His Cognizance wouldn't talk about it?"
    "No. Ah--no. Too sensitive. Even for me, eh? He, Incus. I
told you?"
    "You told me he says Scylla's made him Prolocutor."
    "He, um, offered me..."
    One bony hand pushed back the straying lock, and Maytera Mint
saw how violently that hand shook. "He offered you...?"
    "A--ah--appointment. A position. He was," Remora swallowed,
"not abusive. It was not, I judge, his intent to be--ah--disparage.
He said that I--I refused, to be sure. His prothonotary. His, ah,
I--I--I..."
    Maytera Mint nodded. "I see."
    "We have been, er, companions, Maytera. Coworkers--ah--partners in peace,
hey? Son and daughter of the Chapter. We have conferred, and the
same--um--consecrated vision has inspired us both. I
well--ah--recollect our first meeting. You averred
with--um--coruscant eyes that peace was your, er, sole desire once you
had--ah, um--executed the will of the gods. I affirmed? Avowed that it was
mine likewise. In concert we have conferred with Brigadier Erne and the
calde. You are a hero, um, heroine to the--ah--populace. There is
talk of a statue, hey? A word from you, your support..."
    "Be quiet," she told him. "I haven't had a moment to get used to the
idea that the Ayuntamiento's made up of chems, and now this."
    "If I, ah--"
    "Be quiet, I said!" She drew a deep breath, running the fingers of
both hands through her short brown hair. "To begin with, no, you
may not call me Maytera. Not in private, and not any other time. If
His Cognizance will release me, I mean to return to secular life. I,"
another breath, "may marry. We'll see. As for you, if this Patera Incus
has in fact been named Prolocutor by Scylla, then he _is_ Prolocutor,
regardless of any arrangement that he and Patera Quetzal may make.
I can readily imagine a younger man of great sanctity deferring to
a much older one. Viewed in a certain light, it would be an act of
noble self-renunciation. But it wouldn't alter the fact. He would be
our Prolocutor, though he wasn't called so. Since he proposed that
you become his prothonotary, plainly you're not to be coadjutor any
longer. No doubt Patera Quetzal is, in solemn truth, coadjutor. That
being so, I'll call you Patera."
    "My dear young woman!"
    Her look silenced him. "I'm not your dear young woman, or
anyone's. I'm thirty-six, and I assure you that for a woman it's no
longer young. Call me General, or I'll make your life a great deal
less pleasant than it has been."
    A door at the far end of the room opened, and someone who was
neither Mint nor Remora applauded. "Brava, my dear young general!
Simply marvelous! You ought to be on the stage."
    He waddled over to them, a short, obese man with bright blue eyes,
a cheerful round face, and hair so light as to be nearly blond. "But as
for accepting an Ayuntamiento of chems, you need not trouble. I'm
no chem, though I confess that the object before you is something
of the kind."
    Remora gasped, having recognized him.
    "This augur and I are old--I really can't say friends. Acquaintances.
You, I feel sure, are the rebels' famous General Mint." The stranger
giggled. "Presumably you aim at supreme power, which would make
you the Govern-Mint. I like that! I'm Councillor Potto. Curtain. Did
you wish to speak to me?"

For a fleeting moment in which his heart nearly stopped, it seemed
to Silk that he had seen Hyacinth among the cheering pedestrians.
Before he could shout to his bearers, the woman turned her head and
the illusion ended. He had been ready, as he realized as he settled
back among the cushions, to spring out of the litter.
    I need my glasses, he thought. My old ones, which I can't possibly
get back, or some new ones.
    Oreb fluttered on his shoulder. "Good Silk!"
    "Crazed Silk," he told his bird. "Mad and foolish Silk. I mistook
another woman for her."
    "No see."
    "My own thought exactly. Several times I've dreamed my mother
was alive. Have I told you about that?"
    Oreb whistled.
    "For a minute or two after I woke up, I believed it, and I was so
happy. This was like that." Leaning from the right side of the litter,
he addressed the head bearer. "You needn't go so fast. You'll wear
yourselves out."
    The man grinned and bobbed his head.
    Silk settled back again. Their speed was increasing. No doubt the
bearers felt it a question of honor; when one carried the calde, one ran.
Otherwise ordinary people who had never had the privilege of carrying
the calde's litter might think him on an errand of no importance. Which
would never do; if his errand were of no importance, neither were his
bearers.
    "I've got twenty Guardsmen looking for her," he told Oreb. "That's
not enough, since they didn't find her, but it's all we could spare
with the Fourth Brigade holding out on the north side, and the
Ayuntamiento in the tunnels."
    Mention of the tunnels made Oreb croak unhappily.
    At what amounted to a dead run, the litter swayed, yawed, and
swerved off Sun Street onto Lamp. Leaning out Silk said, "Music
Street--I thought I made it clear. A block east."
    The head bearer's head bobbed as before.
    "If twenty Guardsmen can't find her, Oreb, I certainly can't; and
last night I didn't. We didn't, I ought to say. So we need help, and I
cant hink of three places--no, four--where we may get it. Today we're
going to try them all Most of the fires are out, and Maytera Mint and
Oosik can actually fight better without me in the way; so although
the physician says I should be in bed, and I'm not supposed to have
a minute to myself, I intend to take as many hours as necessary."
    Yawing as before, the litter turned onto a still narrower street that
Silk did not recognize.
    "It's up to the gods, I'm afraid. I don't trust them--not even the
Outsider, who seems to trust me--but they may smile on us yet."
    "Find girl?"
    He had lost his desire to talk, but the intensity of his emotions
drove the words forth. "What did he _want_ with her!" As he spoke,
the litter sped past a shop with a zither and a dusty bassoon in its
window.
    But Calde Silk of Viron did not see them.

"This is the kitchen?" Maytera Mint looked around her in surprise.
It was the largest that she had ever seen.
    "There are, ah, alternatives," Remora ventured. "Still entire, eh?
Equally, hum, unsigned by Sabered Sphigx."
    "I find it cozy," Potto declared. "For one thing, there's food, though
your troops, my dear young General, made off with a lot. I like food,
even if I can't eat it. For another, I'm a good host, eager for the
comfort of my guests, and it's easy to heat. Behold this noble stove
and laden woodbox. I'm happily immune to drafts, but you aren't.
I'm determined to make you comfortable. Those other rooms offer the
chilly attractions of a society beauty. This will provide warmth and tea,
even soup." He giggled. "All the solid virtues of an old nurse. Besides,
there are a great many sharp knives, and I'm always encouraged by
the presence of sharp knives."
    "You can't be here alone," Maytera Mint said.
    Potto grinned. "Do you propose to attack me if I am?"
    "Certainly not."
    "You have an azoth, the famous one given you by Silk. I won't
search you for it now."
    "I left it with Colonel Bison. If I had come armed after calling for
a truce, you'd be entitled to kill me."
    "I am anyhow," Potto told her. He picked up a stick of firewood
and snapped it between his hands. "The rules of war protect armies
and their auxiliaries. Yours is a rebellion, not a war, and rebels get
no such protection. Patera there knows that's the truth. Look at
his face."
    "I--ah--assert the privilege of my cloth."
    "You can. You haven't fought, so you're entitled to it. The General
has and isn't. It's all very simple."
    When neither replied, Potto added, "Speaking of cloth, I forgot to
say that the rules apply only to soldiers and those auxiliaries who wear
their city's uniform, as General Saba does. You, my dear General,
don't. The upshot is that though I can't offer violence to your armies
as long as the truce holds, I'm entitled to break both your leggies if I
want to, and even to wring your necky. Sit down, there's a cozy little
table right over there. I'll build a fire and put the kettle on."
    They sat, Remora tucking the rich overrobe he wore around his
legs, Maytera Mint as she might have in the cenoby, her delicate
hands folded in her lap, and her head bowed.
    Potto filled one of the stove's fireboxes and stroked a stick of
kinding. It burst into flame, not merely at one end like a torch, but
along its entire length. He tossed it into the firebox and shoved the
firebox back in place with an angry grinding of iron.
    "He, um, intrigues to separate us," Remora whispered. "A--ah--hallowed?
Elementary stratagem, General. I shall, um, cleave to you,
eh? If you in, ah, analogous fashion--"
    "Maytera. Call me Maytera, please, Your Eminence, when we're
alone."
    "Indeed. Indeed! _O_, ah, _soror neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum.
O passi graviora, dabit Pas his guoque finem_."
    Potto was filling a teakettle. Without turning his head, he said, "I
have sharp ears. Don't say I didn't warn you."
    Maytera Mint looked up. "Then I'm spared the necessity of raising
my voice. Are you really Councillor Potto? We came to negotiate with
the Ayuntamiento, not with anyone we chanced to meet. If you are,
whose body was that?"
    "Yes." Potto put the kettle on the stove. "Mine. Have you more
questions?"
    "Certainly. Are you willing to stop all this bloodshed?"
    "It bothers you, doesn't it?" He pulled out a stout stool and sat
down so heavily the floor shook.
    "Seeing good and brave troopers die? Watching someone who was
eager to obey me a few seconds ago writhing and bleeding in the
street? It does!"
    "Well, it doesn't me, and I don't understand why it should you. I
never have. Call it a gift. There are people who can listen to music
all evening, then go home and write everything down, and others
who can run faster and farther than a horse. Did you know that?
Mine's a less amazing gift, though it's brought me success. I don't
feel pain I don't feel. Is that what you call a tautology? It's what life
has taught me. I give it to you for nothing."
    Remora nodded, his long face longer than ever. "I, er, vouchsafe
it might be included under that--ah--rubric."
    "Councillor."
    "Why--ah--indeed. I had no, um, intention--"
    "Thanks. I'm the only member who forced his way in, or had to.
Did you know that, either of you?"
    Maytera Mint shook her head.
    "We're all related, as you can see from our names. Lemur and Loris
were brothers. Lemur's dead. You don't have to look surprised, I know
you know. He packed the Ayuntamiento with relatives, back before
Patera here was born. I came to him. I approached him forthrightly
and fairly. He'd brought in Galago, a second cousin by courtesy. I
was much closer, and I said so. He said he'd take it under advisement.
A week later--there'd been this and that, you know, nothing serious--he
tried to have me killed. I saw to it that the man's flesh was
served to us at dinner, and dessert was his head in lemon sherbet.
Lemur jerked away from it, and I scooped up a little sherbet with
my fingers and ate it. I took the oath next day. Councillor Potto.
My cousins soon discovered that I was a useful friend, not just an
unpleasant relative."
    Maytera Mint nodded. "You're proud of being useful, as everyone
who is, is entided to be. Now you have a chance to be of great service
to our whole city."
    "We have, ah, ventured forth in good faith," Remora put in. "The
general has come unarmed. My--ah--vocation prohibits weapons.
Such, at least, is my own opinion, though the--our calde's may differ. I
ask you, Council or, whether you, er, similarly. Are we intermediaries?
Or, um, captives?"
    "You want to go before your tea's ready?" Potto waved in the
direction of the door. "Make the experiment, Patera."
    "My duty, um, confines me."
    "Then you're a prisoner, but not mine. Dear young General Mint,
wouldn't you like to know how I manage to be alive in the kitchen
and dead in the drawing room?"
    "There were two of you, clearly." She had taken her big wooden
prayer beads from her pocket; she ran them through her fingers,
comforted by their familiar shapes.
    "No, only one, and that one is neither here nor there. As we aged,
Cousin Tarsier made us new bodies out of chems. Lemur got the
first one, and the rest of us later as we came to need them, bodies
we can work from our beds. I can't enjoy food, but I eat. I'm feeding
intravenously right now."
    "What became of the chems?" Maytera Mint managed to keep her
voice steady. "Of their minds?"
    "I thought you were going to ask me whether he made the others
more than one."
    "No. Clearly he did, or someone did. But you got this body from
another person. And--and changed it to look like you? You must
have. Did he consent to any of that?"
    "The logical question is whether there are two of all of us." Potto
struck the table with his fist. "You didn't even ask how I got the wood
to burn. How am I supposed to deal with someone who won't stick
to the point?"
    Remora began, "I, ah--" But Potto was not through. "By sticking
with the point myself. That's it! I may soon stick with one so well
that it sticks out your back." He turned to Remora. "Yes, Patera.
You were about to say...?"
    "I was, um, speculating, Councillor, upon how you ignited that
wood so, er, effortlessly. I, um, hope that you will, um, consent to
ah--illuminate that matter for us."
    "I am not going to sit here teaching a butcher chemistry. Can't
either of you understand that once I've told you what I want, I don't
want it? What are _you_ doing here anyway? Dear General Mint's the
leader, after Silk. Why are you here?"
    "To, er, mediate. We, um, His Cognizance and, hum--"
    "To bring peace," Maytera Mint declared. "Calde Silk has offered
to let all of you keep your seats under the Charter. Considering all
that's happened, I think it very generous."
    "For life?"
    Remora touched her arm, and she found it easy to interpret the
jesture. "Is there a provision for life tenure? If so, I imagine it might
be invoked." Remora shook his head; the motion was slight, but
she saw it.
    Potto smiled; it was so unexpected that she wondered for
a moment whether she had unwittingly promised a return to
power.
    Seeing it, Remora positively beamed. "Better! Oh, indeed! Must be
mends, eh? Friends can make peace, foes, er, unable."
    "You misunderstand my expression, Patera."
    "I, um, hail and approve it. Time--ah--sufficient for understanding,
er, presently. Maybe I put forward a proposal, Councillor? General?
My wish, a heartfelt suggestion. That we--ah--solemnly convene at
the present moment, offering our prayer to the Nine. Our petition,
if you will, that--"
    "Shut up," Potto snapped. "I've got the key, and you go on blathering.
Calde Silk sent you, General. Is that right?"
    "He would approve of my coming, certainly. For days we've been
trying to reach you councillors on our glasses. I thought we might
try this."
    When Potto did not reply, she added, "His Eminence was chosen
as an intermediary by your Brigadier Erne and our calde. Soon after,
as I understand it, His Cognizance offered his help as well. We were
and are overjoyed. I would hope--"
    "You can't speak for him," Potto told her. "You may think
you can, or that Patera here can, but you can't. I've known
him a long time, and there's not a more malicious and unpredictable
person in the city. Not even me. You're a general, General?"
    She nodded. "Appointed by Divine Echidna in a theophany. My
instructions," she amended them mentally in the interests of peace,
"were to tear down the Alambrera and see to it that Viron remained
loyal to Scylla. If you're asking my position in the command structure,
Calde Silk is the head of our government, civil as well as military.
Generalissimo Oosik is our supreme military commander. I am in
charge of the armed populace, and General Skate commands the
Calde's Guard."
    Potto tittered. "Then you've a firm grasp of the military situation.
I don't. Lemur was our military man. Explain our circumstances to
me, General, so we can start together."
    "You're serious?"
    He rocked with silent merriment. "Never more."
    "As you wish. After Ophidian Echidna's theophany, we had about
thirty thousand troopers. Not that there were that many witnesses,
or half that many, but a great many who heard what had happened
from others joined us. Some were Guardsmen, none, I think, above
captain. You, the Ayuntamiento, called out the Army, giving you
something like seven thousand soldiers, besides the twenty-four
thousand troopers of your Civil Guard."
    "Go on," Potto told her. "None of this is quite right, but it's
interesting."
    "My figures for the Guard come from Generalissimo Oosik, who
was certainly in a position to know. Those for the Army, from Sergeant
Sand, the leader of those brave soldiers who saw that true loyalty lay
in siding with the calde."
    Potto was still grinning. "Excuse the interruption."
    "I was about to say that since then we've gained strength, and
you've lost it. By shadelow, we had nearly reached our present total
of about fifty thousand. I'm referring to my own troops here. That
night, every brigade of your Civil Guard went over to the calde except
the Fourth. The Fourth and the Third, which was the generalissimo's,
had been holding the Palatine. The Fourth, commanded by Brigadier
Erne was driven from it next day, and into the northern suburbs."
    "Where it still is."
    "That's correct. We had fires all over the city to fight, hundreds of
them, and we've been busy trying to get ourselves organized. When the
Alambrera surrendered, we got thousands of slug guns and hundreds
of thousands of rounds of arnmunition. We had to see to it that they
went to people of good character. Furthermore, there's a feeling that
the Fourth Brigade might come over to our side in another day or
two. Calde Silk and Generalissimo Oosik think so, and so do I. I'm
told that His Cognizance is of the same opinion."
    Remora cleared his throat. "It was, hmp!, Brigadier Erne who, um,
entreated me to--ah--initiate? To set in motion these negotiations.
I, er, thereafter--shortly thereafter--sought out the calde, whom,
um, approved likewise. I can--am able and--ah--authorized. The
brigadier's viewpoint."
    "Not now," Potto told him. "General, could you crush the Fourth
Brigade? Suppose Silk ordered it."
    "Certainly, in two or three hours. Less if I had a few taluses and
floaters, as well as my people. But we'd rather not, obviously, in
view of the loss of--"
    "Not to me!" Potto chortled. "It's not obvious to me! Is the bloodshed
really what's bothering you?"
    "I should think it would bother anyone."
    "Well, you're right, but you're wrong too. The bloodshed wouldn't
bother me, but why shouldn't you take five thousand prime troopers
if you can get them? We would. Are those the only reasons,
General?"
    "I'll be frank. There's another aspect. You, by which I mean the
Ayuntamiento, are down in the tunnels with most of the Army and
a few troopers."
    "Nearly a thousand."
    "Setting them aside, you must have about seven thousand soldiers
down there."
    Potto's grin widened.
    "More? Very well, if you say so. Seven thousand was our estimate.
In any case, if we got deeply involved in an attack on the Fourth,
which shouldn't be our primary objective anyway, you might make
a sortie from the tunnels and strike us from behind. According to
reports I've had, it takes at least four of my troopers to match a
soldier, which means that your seven thousand  that's the figure
we discussed--are equivalent to twenty-eight thousand of mine. We
didn't feel we could risk it. I should say that we don't feel we can
as yet."
    Potto nodded rather too enthusiastically. "Someplace in all that
verbiage was a morsel that seemed intelligent, my dear General. You
said our Guard, or what's left, wasn't what you really wanted to
destroy. That it was us. Why don't you come down after us?"
    Remora looked deeply distressed. "Do you, er, Councillor... Is
this--ah--productive?"
    "I think so. You'll see. Answer me if you can, General."
    "Because the tunnels are too defensible. I haven't been in them,
but they've been described to me. A dozen soldiers could hold a
place like that against a hundred troopers. If we've got to, we'll
find a way, digging shafts and so on. But we'd rather not, which
is why I'm here. Also there's another consideration. You spoke of
destroying the Fourth. Clearly, we don't want to. Still less do we
want to destroy the Army, which is of immense value to our city.
We know that--"
    "You are an amazing woman." Potto pushed his stool back and
crossed the big kitchen to the stove. "A woman who talks sense
whenever it suits her but can't hear a kettle boil."
    "Women generally talk sense, if men will listen to it."
    "Those who are generals generally do, anyway. You're right about
the Fourth, and right about the Army and not tackling the tunnels,
though you really don't understand the situation at all. I'm our head
spy, did you know that? I was in charge of Lemur's spies, and now
I've got Loris's." Potto tittered. "Who are generally the same, General,
and mine. Do you really think all the troopers in the city are yours
or ours? You simply can't be that simple!" He lifted the big copper
teakettle off the stove; it was spurting steam.
    Maytera Mint pursed her lips.
    "There are, um, an--ah--minuscule? Likewise. Token, eh? An--ah--few
hundred..."
    "Two hundred, more or less," she supplied. "Two hundred Trivigaunti
pterotroopers commanded by General Saba, who also commands the
airship. Two hundred's a very small force, as His Eminence says,
though with supporting fire from the airship even a small force might
accomplish a great deal. General Saba has offered her help when we
move against the Fourth, by the way."
    "How kind." Potto had carried the steaming teakettle to their
table.
    "Not to you, Councillor. I realize that. But to us it is. It's a gesture
good will from the Rani to the new government of Viron, and as
is greatly appreciated."
    "Your diplomacy flourishes." He raised the teakettle.
    "It  does. It's in its infancy, but it does." Maytera Mint stood. "We
need a teapot, and tea. Sugar, milk, and a lemon, if His Eminence
takes lemon. I'll look for them."
    "I was about to ask you if my face looks dusty."
    "I beg your pardon, Councillor?"
    "Whether it's dusty. Look carefully, will you? Maybe we should
go to a window, where the light will be better."
    "I  don't see any dust." She was struck, unexpectedly and unpleasantly
by the lack of warmth in that face, which seemed so animated.
Maytera Marble's familiar metal mask held a whorl of humility and
passion; this, for all its seeming plumpness and high color, was
as cold as Echidna's serpents.
    "It's been packed away for years, you see." Leaning back at an
impossible angle, Potto scratched the tip of his nose with the steaming
spout of the teakettle. "I'm the youngest member of the Ayuntamiento,
dear General. Did you know that?"
    Maytera Mint shook her head.
    "Just the same, they thought this seemed too young, and asked
me to replace it." He contrived to lean even farther backward. A
trickle of boiling water escaped the spout. "You don't know about
the Rani's horde, either. Do you?"
    "What about it?"
    "My face?" Potto jabbed the spout toward it. "It was in storage. I
said that, why didn't you listen? Now I can't see as clearly as I did.
I may have dust in my eyes."
    Before Maytera Mint could stop him, he raised the teakettle and
tilted it. Seething water cascaded down onto his nose and eyes. Remora
exclaimed, "Oh, you gods!" as Maytera Mint jumped back from the
hissing spray.
    "There. That ought to do it." Straightening up, Potto regarded her
through wide blue eyes again, blinking hard to clear them of boiling
drops. "That's much better. I can see everything. I hope you can, too,
my dear young General. The Rani's horde has already set out, and
there's sixty thousand foot and fifteen thousand cavalry. I haven't
the luxury of an airship to keep watch on Viron's enemies, but I do
the best I can. Seventy-five thousand battle-hardened troopers, with
their support troops, a supply train of fifteen thousand camels, and
a labor battalion of ten thousand men." Potto turned to Remora.
"Trivigaunte's men are of your school, Patera. No weapons. Or
anyway they're supposed to be."
    Remora had regained his composure. "If this extensive and, ah,
formidable force is--ah--marching? Marching, you said, eh? Then I
take it that it can't be marching here, or you--um--the Ayuntamiento,
more formally. Terms of surrender, hey?"
    Potto tittered.
    Maytera Mint squared her shoulders. "I wouldn't laugh, Councillor.
His Eminence is entirely correct. If the Rani is sending us a force of
that size, your cause is doomed."
    "It's just as I feared," Potto told her. He held up the teakettle. "Do
you think it's cooled too much?"
    "To make tea?" She took an involuntary step backward. "I doubt
it."
    "To wash eyes, so they can see. I think you're right. Boiling water
stays hot for a long time."
    "I came under a flag of truce!"
    He reached for her, moving much faster than so fat a man should
have been able to. She whirled and ran, feeling his fingertips brush
her habit, reached the door a hand's breadth ahead of him, and flung
herself through. An arm hooked her like a lamb; another pinned her
own arms to her sides. Her face was crushed against musty cloth.
    Sounding near, Potto said, "Bring her back in here."
    Not so near, words failed Remora. "You cannot--I mean to say
simply cannot--woman's a sibyl! You, you--"
    "Oh, be quiet," Potto told him. "Bend her over backwards, Spider.
Make her look up at this."
    Abruptly there was light and air. The man who had caught her
was as tall as Remora and as wide as Potto; he held her by her hair
and dropped to one knee, pulling her across the other.
    "My son." Looking up at his heavy, unshaven chin, she found it
horribly hard to keep from sounding frightened. "Do you realize what
you're doing?"
    The man, presumably Spider, glanced to one side, presumably at
Potto. "How's this, Councillor?"
    She rolled her eyes without finding him, and the thick fingers would
not let her turn her head.
    His voice came from a distance. "I'm putting the kettle back. We
can't have it cooling off while I give you the rules."
    Remora entered her field of view, seeming as lofty as a tower when
he bent above them. "If there is--ah--Maytera. General. Anything I
can do...?"
    "There is," she said. "Let Bison know what happened."
    "Go back to your seat," Potto told Remora, and he vanished.
"Didn't you wonder, my dear General," it was Potto's cheerful,
round face opposite Spider's now, "how I happened to be so near
my own corpse? Or what became of Blood's? Blood was stabbed by
your friend Silk. Let's not call him Calde. We're no longer being so
polite."
    "Let me up, and I'll be happy to ask you."
    "It won't be necessary. Blood's body has been hauled away already,
you see. And you do see, don't you? At present. I ordered that my own
wasn't to be touched, because I think we may be able to fix it. I came
in person to pick it up, with a few of my most trusted spy catchers.
Spider's their jefe. I'd use soldiers, but they're awfully sensitive, it
seems, to mention of a calde, though you wouldn't think it to look
at them."
    From a distance, Remora called, "Councillor? Councillor!"
    She shut her eyes. If she was never to see again, the last thing she
saw should not be the high smoke-grimed ceiling of the kitchen in this
ruined villa. Echidna, rather, her face filling the Sacred Window. Her
mother's face. Bison's, with its quick eyes and curling black beard.
Her room in the cenoby. Children playing, Maytera Marble's group
because she had always wanted them instead of the older girls this
year and the older boys before Patera Pike died. Auk's face, so ugly
and serious, more precious than a stack of cards. Bison's. Cage Street,
and the floaters firing as the white stallion thundered toward them.
    "Did you hear that, my dear General?"
    "Hear what?" Maytera Mint opened her eyes, remembering too late
that scalding water might be poured into them.
    "Tell her, Patera! Tell her!" Potto was giggling like a girl of twelve,
giggling so hard that he could hardly talk.
    "I--ah--um--proposed an, er, substitution."
    "He wants to take your place. Really, it's too funny."
    She tried to speak, and found that her eyes were filling with hot
tears, irony so cheap and obvious as to be unbearable. "No, Your
Eminence. But... But thank you."
    "He, um, Potto. Councillor. He wishes to, um, secure your--ah--collaboration,
hey? I, um, endeavored to point out that to, er, spare
me you would, eh? Whatever he wants."
    "I can already make you do anything I want." Potto was back. He
held the teakettle over her. "What I'm trying to do is what she's done
for years. Educate." Giggling, he covered his mouth with his free hand.
"Wash the dust out. Clarify her vision. Have I explained the rules?"
    "Er--no."
    "Then I will. I have to. You want to save her, Patera?"
    She could actually hear Remora's teeth chatter. She had always
supposed the business about chattering teeth was a sort of verbal
convention, like hair standing on end.
    "You made your offer, and I said no. But you can save me the
trouble of washing her eyes."
    "I, um, every effort."
    "I'm going to ask questions. Educational questions. If her answers
are right, we postpone the eyebath. Or if yours are. Ready? Spider,
what about you? When you see the kettle tip, you'll have to hold her
tight and keep your hands clear."
    "Any time, Councillor."
    "I'll start with an easy one. That's the best way, don't you think?
If you really want children to learn. If you aren't just showing off.
Did you know Silk's friend Doctor Crane?"
    She shut her eyes again, finding it difficult to think. "Know him?
No. Maytera Marble mentioned him once, the nice doctor who let
her ride in his litter. I don't think I ever saw him. I'm sure I haven't
met him."
    "And you never will. He's dead." Potto sounded pleased. "Your
turn, Patera. What about you?"
    "Crane, eh? A doctor? Can't, um, place him."
    "He was a spy. Let's give the poor fellow his due. He was a master
spy, some say the Rani's best. Trivigaunte had more spies in Viron
than any other city. It still does, though they have no jefe now. Why
do you think that is, Maytera? More spies than Urbs or Palustria?"
    "All I can do is guess." Her mouth was dry; she tried unsuccessfully
to swallow. "The Rani's a woman, but all the other cities near ours
have male rulers. She may have been more sensitive to the danger
you and your cousins presented."
    "Not bad. Can you improve on that, Patera?"
    "I, ah, cheating."
    Potto giggled. "Double credit for it. Go ahead."
    "His Cognizance, eh? He told me. Not in so many words, eh? No
mountains. First, um, er--"
    "Objective," Potto supplied.
    "Indeed. Next, ah, year. Spring. Not long now, hey, Councillor?
Winter has, um, commenced."
    "General, this is your area of expertise. Say another force is opposing
yours, which is larger. Would you rather fight your way across a
mountain range or a desert?"
    "I'd want to see the desert," she hedged.
    "You can't see either one, and if you won't answer you won't see
anything." The teakettle tilted a little.
    "Then I prefer the desert."
    "Why?"
    "Because fighting in mountains would be like fighting in tunnels.
There would be narrow passes, in which we'd have to go at the enemy
head-on. In a desert we could get around them."
    "Correct. Patera, I haven't been giving you many chances, so you
first. Two cities I'll call Viron and Trivigaunte are separated by a lake
and a desert. A big lake, though it's been getting smaller and turning
brackish. That's the situation, and here's the question. If the easiest
city for Viron to attack is Trivigaunte, what's easiest for Trivigaunte?
Think carefully."
    "For, ah, them?" Remora's voice quavered. "Us, I should say.
Viron."
    "Do you agree, my dear General?"
    She had begun a short prayer to Echidna while Remora was
speaking; after murmuring the final phrase she said, "There could
be other answers, but that's the most probable. Viron."
    "I'm putting the kettle on again," Potto told her. "Not because
you've passed, but because you may fail right here, and I want the
water hot enough to do the job. Listen carefully, because we're going
from geography to arithmetic. Listen, and think. Are you ready?"
    She compelled her mind and lips. "I suppose so."
    Potto tittered. "Are you, Patera?"
    "Ah... I wish, Councillor--"
    "Save it for later. It's time for arithmetic. The Rani of Trivigaunte
has seventy-five thousand crack troopers in Viron. The so-called
calde's general has fifty thousand untrained ones, and the traitor
commanding the Calde's guard has about eighteen thousand fit for
duty, of doubtful loyalty. If these numbers have you mixed up, I
don't blame you. Would you like me to stop here and repeat them,
General?"
    "Let me hear the rest."
    "We're getting to the crux. Rani, seventy-five thousand. You, fifty
thousand. Oosik, eighteen thousand. All these are troopers, armed
bios. Now then, the Ayuntamiento, which opposes all three of them,
has eight thousand two hundred soldiers and a thousand troopers
underground, and another five thousand on the surface. The question
is, _who rules Viron?_ Answer, Patera."
    "The--ah--you do. The Ayuntamiento."
    "One drop for that," Potto said. "I'll fetch the kettle."
    Maytera Mint squeezed her eyes shut, clenching her teeth as a single
scalding drop struck her forehead. Locked in a private nightmare
of fear and pain, she heard the opening of the door as if it were
leagues away. A new voice spoke in the reedy tones of an old man:
"What's this?"
    Remora, overjoyed: "_Your Cognizance!_"
    Almost carelessly, Potto said: "This is a nice surprise, I had men
posted. Another prisoner's welcome, just the same."
    She squinted upward. The sere old face over hers was one she
had seen only at a distance; she had not realized then how its eyes
glittered.
    "Release her!" Quetzal snapped. "Let her go. Now!"
    She tried to smile as Spider inquired, "Councillor?"
    "Class dismissed for the present. It may resume soon, so think
about the material." He sounded angry.
    Spider stood, and she fell to the floor.
    "I've talked to your cousin Loris," Quetzal told Potto, "and I've
come to give you the news I brought him. If you decide to detain
me afterward, it's the risk I run."
    Potto spoke to Spider. "This old fox is the Prolocutor. If that's
going to bother you, say so."
    "Anything you want, Councillor."
    "He's worth two of the general and ten of the butcher. Don't
forget it. Old man, what tricks have you cooked up?" Maytera Mint
scrambled to her feet, trying not to step on the hem of her habit.
    "No tricks, Councillor. There was a theophany during my sacrifice
at the Grand Manteion." Simultaneously, Maytera Mint received
the impression that Quetzal was never excited, and that he was
excited now.
    Potto snorted and set his steaming teakettle on the table. "Another
one? Who was it this time? Sphigx?"
    Quetzal shook his head. "Pas."
    "Pas is dead!"
    Quetzal turned from Potto. "Great Pas, Maytera. Lord Pas, the
Father of the Seven. If it wasn't him, it was his ghost. Which in
point of fact is what the god himself said."

                  Chapter 2 -- His Name Is Hossaan

He himself had shut this door from inside and shot the bolt; it had
been the final action of his exorcism. But if this door (the obscure
side door of what had been a manteion, and what many passers-by
no doubt assumed was a manteion still) was used to admit patrons
who did not want to be seen entering Orchid's, there should be
someone to answer his knock. By summer habit, he squinted up
to gauge the width of the narrowing sun; it was masked by clouds
dark with rain or snow, and the awe-inspiring mummy-colored bulk
of the Trivigaunti airship.
    He knocked again. His bearers had put down the litter and were
making themselves comfortable. Did he dare risk their seeing him
pound on a door to which nobody came? What would Commissioner
Newt have to say about the effect on his prestige and popularity?
What would Oosik say? Would it replace the fighting as the talk of
the city?
    He was smiling at the thought when the door was opened by a
small and markedly unattractive woman with a faded rag over her
graying hair. "Come--uh. It ain't any more, Patera."
    "I am Orchid's spiritual advisor," Silk told her firmly. "Admit me."
The woman backed away; he stepped inside and bolted the door
behind him. "Take me to her."
    "I'm cleaning up in here." She eyed Oreb with disfavor.
    Silk conceded privately that the former manteion could use a
cleaning. He glanced up at the stage to see whether the new backdrop
was as blasphemous as the one he had cut down, and was illogically
pleased to find that it was merely obscene.
    "She'll be in her room. She might not be up yet."
    "Take me to her," he repeated, and added, "At once!"
    "I won't knock." The small woman sounded frightened.
    "Never mind. I remember the way." He pushed past her and strode
across the former manteion with scarcely a twinge from his ankle.
Here was the step on which he had sat to talk to Musk. Musk was
dead now. The memory of Musk's tortured face returned.
    The courtyard beyond the manteion was deserted but by no means
empty, littered with scraps of food over which crows and pigeons
squabbled, spilled liquors, bottles, and broken glass. Oreb, bigger
than the biggest crow, watched fascinated, cocking his head this way
and that.
    Orpine's naked corpse had sprawled on this wooden stair. There
was no point in looking for bloodstains today, or in trying not to step
on such stains as might be present. Silk climbed, his eyes resolutely
fixed on the gallery above.
    What faith he'd had then! That Silk would be praying now, as
confident as a child that the gods heard each word, a prayer to Molpe
as patroness of the day, and one to Pas, who was as dead as Crane,
Orpine, and Musk. Most of all, that earlier Silk would have prayed
devoutly to the Outsider, though the Outsider had warned that he
would send no aid.
    Yet the Outsider had come with healing when he had lain near death.
And to be more accurate (Silk paused at the top of the steps, remembering)
the Outsider had not actually said that he would get no help, but
warned him to expect none--which was not precisely the same thing.
    Buoyed by the thought, he walked along the creaking gallery to the
door that Crane had opened when he came out to examine Orpine's
body, and was about to open it himself when it was opened from
within.
    He blinked, gasped, and blinked again. Oreb, whom few things
surprised, whistled before croaking, "Lo, girl."
    "Hi, Oreb. Hello, Patera. All the blessings on you this afternoon
and all that."
    Silk smiled, finding it easier than he had expected; there was nothing
to be gained by berating her, surely. "Chenille, it's good to see you.
I've been wondering where you were. I have people searching for
you and Auk."
    "You thought I was finished with this." The expression of her coarse,
flat-cheeked face was by no means easy to read, but she sounded
despondent.
    "I hoped you were," Silk said carefully. "I still hope you are--that
last night was the last night." If the gods did not care, why should
he? He thrust the thought aside.
    "Nobody last night, Patera. There wasn't enough to keep the other
dells busy. You're thinking how about rust, aren't you? I can tell
from the way you look at me. Not since the funeral. Come on in."
She stepped back.
    He entered, careful not to brush her jutting breasts.
    "Now you're wondering how long it'll last. Me too. You didn't
know I was a regular mind reader, did you?" She srniled, and the
smile made him want to put his arms around her.
    He nodded instead. "You're very perceptive. I was."
    Oreb felt he had been left out long enough. "Where Auk?"
    "I don't know. You want to come to my room, Patera? You can
sit, and we could talk like we did that other time."
    "I must speak to Orchid--but if you wish it."
    "We don't have to. Come on, she's probably about dressed. Her
room's up this way." Chenille led him along a corridor he recalled
only vaguely. "Maybe I could come by tomorrow to talk? Only you're
not at the place on Sun Street anymore, are you?"
    "No," Silk said, "but I'm going there when I leave here. Would you
like to come?" When Chenille did not reply, he added, "I have a litter;
I've been trying to spare my ankle."
    She was shocked. "You can't let people see me with you!"
    "We'll put the curtains down."
    "Then we could talk in there, huh? All right."
    Silk, too, had come to a decision. "I'd like to have you with me
when I speak to Orchid. Will you do it?"
    "Sure, if you want me." She stopped before Orchid's door. "Only I
hope you're not going to get her mad."
    Recalling the small woman's fear, Silk knocked. "Were you
leaving just now, Chenille? We can arrange to meet later, if this
is inconvenient."
    She shook her head. "I saw you out my window and put this gown
on, that's all."
    Orchid's door had opened. Orchid, in a black peignoir that reminded
Silk vividly of the pink one she had worn when she had admitted him
with Crane, was staring open mouthed.
    He tore his own gaze from her gaping garment. "May I speak with
you when you've finished dressing, Orchid? It's urgent; I wouldn't
have troubled you otherwise."
    Numbly, the fat woman retreated.
    "Come on, Patera." Chenille led the way in. "She can put on a,
you know, more of a wrap-up." To Orchid she added, "He's gimp,
remember? Maybe you could invite him to sit."
    Orchid had recovered enough to tug at the lace-decked edges of the
peignoir, covering bulging flesh that would reappear the moment she
released them. "I--you're the calde now. The new one. Everybody's
talking about you."
    Oreb offered proof. "Say Silk!"
    "I'm afraid I am. I'm still the same man, however, and I need
your help."
    Chenille said firmly. "Have a seat, Patera."
    "Yeah, sit down. Do I call you Calde or Patera?"
    "I really prefer to stand as long as you and Chenille are standing.
May I say it's pleasant to see you again? Pleasant to see you both.
I've been looking for Chenille, as I told her, and I've met so many
new people--commissioners at the Juzgado and so forth--that you
seem like old friends."
    "Good friends." Chenille dropped onto the green-velvet couch. "I'll
never forget how you stood up to the councillors at Blood's." She
turned to Orchid. "I told you about it, right?"
    "Yeah, but I never thought I'd see you again, Calde. I mean to
talk to."
    He grasped the opportunity. "You saw me when Hyacinth and I
were riding through the city, and we saw you. Have you seen Hyacinth
since then?"
    Orchid shook her head as she sat down beside Chenille.
    Gratefully, Silk sat too. "I mean her no harm--none whatsoever.
I merely wish to find her."
    "I'm sure you don't, Calde. I'd tell you if knew."
    Chenille said, "You're going to ask me in a minute. I can't remember
how long it's been since I saw Hy. A couple months. Maybe longer
than that."
    "No girl?" Oreb inquired.
    Silk looked around at him. "Chenille is only one of the people we've
been trying to find, actually. Now I'm hoping to find out something
about the others."
    "I'll call you Calde," Orchid announced. "It feels easier. A hoppy
was here asking about Hy. Did you know that?"
    "I sent him, indirectly at least."
    "He wanted to know about Chen, too. And Auk." Orchid glanced
at Chenille, afraid that she was revealing too much.
    "But you told him nothing. I can't blame you. In your place I
would probably have done the same."
    Orchid struggled to her feet. "I'm forgetting my manners. Maybe
you'd like a glass of wine? I remember that time when you said
you were sorry you only had water, but water was what I wanted
right then. You got some for me, and good water too. You've got
a good well."
    "No wine, thank you. You told the Guardsman who came here
that you didn't know where Hyacinth, or Chenille, or Auk was. I
know you must have, because any information you provided him
would have been reported to me, with its source. As I said, I would
very likely have acted just as you did, if I had been in your place.
This afternoon it occurred to me that you might tell me more than
you'd tell someone you didn't know or trust, so I came in person. I
take it that Chenille was already here when he arrived to question
you. Was that yesterday?"
    Orchid nodded. Chenille said, "It's my fault, Patera. I asked her
not to tell anybody." For perhaps five seconds she was silent, nibbling
at her lower lip. "Because of that other man. You know who I mean,
Patera? He was at Blood's, too, and he didn't get shot like the fat
one. The tall one. He saw me, and he heard my name."
    Silk's forefinger drew small circles on his cheek. "Do you think he
knew enough about you to search for you here?"
    "I don't know. I've tried to remember everything Blood said, and
I don't remember anything about that. Only he might have said
something before or after or maybe even something I've forgotten.
He'd seen me, and knew who I was."
    "In that case," Silk said slowly, "I'm surprised that you came
back here."
    Orchid poured a pony of brandy. "It isn't as dumb as you think,
Calde. If somebody came around, we'd tell her so she'd have time
to hide. We did with the hoppy, didn't we, Chen?"
    "That's right, Patera. Anyhow I pretty much had to. I didn't have
any money--"
    "I must speak to you about that; remind me after we leave."
    "Except a little here, and my jewelry's here, except for this ring."
She held up her hand to display it, and the ruby glowed like a coal
from the forge. "I think it's worth a deck, and so does Orchid."
    Orchid nodded emphatically.
    "Only Auk gave it to me, and I told him I'd never sell it. I won't,
either. Remember when you and me talked in the front room of your
little house, Patera?"
    "Yes, I do. I'm surprised that you do, however."
    "I didn't to start, but after a while it came back. What I was going
to say is I had my best pieces on, my jade earrings and the necklace,
only it got lost when my good wool gown did."
    Silk nodded. "Patera Incus said Maytera Marble had made Blood
give you the chenille one you had on there."
    "Uh-huh. I'll tell you about losing the other one and my necklace
some other time. What I was going to say is they hurt my ears, down
in the tunnel. I took them off and gave them to Auk, and he put them
in his pocket." She fell silent, her chest heaving dramatically.
    "When I find Auk, I'll remind him to return them to you."
    "There's something I've got to tell you about him, too. You won't
believe me, but I've got to tell you just the same. Only not now."
    "All right. Tell me when you feel ready to do so." Silk turned back
to Orchid. "Permit me to ask again. Do you know where Hyacinth
is? Do you have any idea at all?"
    Shaking her head, Orchid passed her brandy to Chenille. "Drink
it, you'll feel better." Freed of the stem, Orchid's beringed fingers
clenched. "Patera, I need a favor and I need it bad. Ever since I saw
you in the hall I've been trying to think of a good way to ask. If I
knew anything that would help you find Hy, I'd tell you and ask for
my favor. I don't, but I got connections and they know places the
hoppies never heard of I'll get them on it as quick as I can."
    Oreb flew from Silk's shoulder to Chenille's. "Where Auk?"
    "My question exactly," Silk said. "You told the Guardsman you
didn't know where Hyacinth was, and you were telling him the truth.
You lied when you told him that you didn't know where Chenille
was. What about Auk?"
    Orchid shook her head. "I've got a couple culls asking. He's got
Chen's bobbers, like she says. We know he's around. We've talked
to bucks that saw him. Isn't that right?"
    Chenille nodded.
    "But nobody seems to know where he dosses. A friend of mine told
him I wanted to see him, and he said maybe he'd come later, but he
hasn't." Orchid tapped her forehead. "He's cank, they say. Talking
clutter."
    "Let me know if he comes, will you please? Immediately."
    "Absolutely, Calde. You can count on it. Want me to keep him
here until you get here?"
    "He'll stay," Chenille interposed. "He'll be in my room."
    "Yes, I do," Silk told Orchid. "You've offered me several favors,
and I want them all. I want very much to learn where Hyacinth is. I
want to learn where Auk is, too, and I want you to keep him here if
he comes. He used to come here often, I know. You said you required
a favor from me. I'll help you if I can. What is it?"
    "Blood's dead. That's what Chen says, and it's all over town anyhow.
They say--am I stepping in it?"
    Chenille swallowed a sip of brandy. "They say you killed him,
Patera. Thats what some people told me out at his house before the
fighting was over."
    Orchid took a step toward Silk. "I own this." Her voice was husky
with emotion. "This house of mine. But I bought it with money Blood
gave me, and I had to sign a paper."
    Belatedly, Silk rose too. "What did it say?"
    "I don't know. It was at his place in the country. Once in a while
he'd come to town and see people, but mostly he sent word and you
went out there to see him. If he liked you, he'd send his floater for
you. That was the first time in my life I got to ride in one."
    Recalling his trip from Blood's villa to the manteion on Sun Street,
Silk nodded. "Go on."
    "We talked about, you know, what sort of house I'd found, where
it was and how big and the girls I'd got lined up. Then he pulled out a
paper and said sign this. I did, and he stuck it away again and gave me
the money. I got the deed, and it's in my name, but now he's dead and
I don't know about the paper. I want to keep my house. It would kill
me to lose it. That's lily. With him gone, I don't know where I stand,
but I'd feel a lot better knowing I had the calde in my corner."
    "He is." Silk started toward the door. "You have my word, Orchid;
but I must go--we must, if Chenille's coming."
    "I've got to get my coat." She was already on her feet. "Your litter's
around back? On Music? I'll meet you."
    As he rattled down the wooden steps, Silk could not be sure he
had told her it was, or that he had replied at all.

"If you don't want to, they won't make you," Auk told his listeners.
"You think the gods are a bunch of hoppies? They don't push anybody
around. Why should they? When they want to do you a good turn,
they say do this and this, 'cause it's going to be good, you're going
to like it. Only if you say it's a queer lay, they say dimber by us,
we'll give it to somebody else. Remember Kypris? She didn't say go
uphill and solve all those kens. She said if you want to, go to it and
I'll keep the street. This is like that. I'm not here to make anybody
do anything. Neither's Tartaros."
    One of his listeners asked, "What've we got to do now?"
    The blind god whose hand was upon Auk's shoulder whispered,
"Tell him to make ready."
    "To start with, you got to get yourself set," Auk said. "Get used
to it. You'll be going to a new place. It'll be better, real nice, but
all the stuff you're used to will be down the chute. Even the sun'll
be different, a short sun that won't ever go out. You got to think
about it, and that's why I'm here, to start you culls thinking. You
want to think about what to take, and who to take with you, and
talk to 'em. If you're like me, you're going to want pals. Tell 'em.
Every man's got to have a woman, too, and every woman's got to
take a man. Just sprats don't have to have anybody."
    A big-nosed woman shouted, "Over here!" and Auk's listeners drifted
away, forming two long lines, slug guns at the ready.
    "That went well," Tartaros whispered.
    "They didn't believe me." Wearily, Auk started back down the tunnel;
this one was open to the sky, as most were on this level. The walls
were walls, but had doors and windows in them. He was still trying
to make up his mind whether that made things better or worse.
    "Men come slowly to belief," the god whispered, "nor is that to
be deplored. Some have taken the first step already, because you
urged it."
    Auk felt a glow of satisfaction. "If you figure that was enough, what
we did back there, dimber with me. Think I ought to steal something
for her to eat? I said I would."
    "You must steal more cards, as well."
    Auk steered the blind god around a hoppy's corpse, its eyes and
mouth black with cold-numbed flies. "You won't let me spend 'em,
Terrible Tartaros."
    "We will have need of many cards, and quickly. Have I not made
it clear to you?"
    "Yeah, to fix up a lander." Auk smiled at the thought. "I guess
you did."
    "That is well. Your mind is mending. Steal food, if you wish, Auk,
and more cards where you can."

As their litter jogged down Sun Street Chenille said, "I'd like you to
shrive me. Will this take long enough?"
    "That will depend on how much you have to tell me." Silk was acutely
aware of her hip pressing his own. He recalled a rule forbidding sibyls
from riding in a litter with a man; he was beginning to feel that there
should be another--strictly enforced--against augurs riding with
women. "Certainly it would be more regular to do it in the manteion,
where we would not be pressed for time."
    "You know what I'm afraid of? I'm afraid of some goddess getting
in me again. You don't know about Scylla, do you?"
    "I've spoken with Patera Incus. He told me that Scylla had possessed
you--it was one of the reasons I was anxious to find you--and that
she, through you, had appointed him Prolocutor."
    Chenille nodded, the motion of her head almost ghostly in the
tightly curtained litter. "I remember that a little. Only he talked
about it so much after she let me go that I can't be sure exactly
what I said. Auk could tell you."
    "I'll ask when we find him; but the Prolocutorship is a concern of
the Chapter's, not the civil government's. In other words, I have no
more say in the matter than any other member of the clergy, and
none at all as calde. Was Auk the only other person present?"
    "Dace, but he's dead."
    "I see. I refrained from asking Patera about witnesses. As I said,
it's a matter that concerns me only as one augur among many. It
may be that I'll no longer be an augur at all when the matter comes
before the clergy."
    Silk was silent for a moment, his eyes vague. "If what Patera reports
is true, and I'm inclined to credit him, it's unfortunate that Scylla
didn't make her wish known at a time when other augurs, or sibyls,
were present. Most of the--"
    Chenille interrupted. "I wouldn't mind if it was Kypris again. It
might be nice. Only Scylla was really rough. That's how I lost my gown
and my good jade necklace, I'd go out to the lake and look for it, only
I'm pretty sure somebody's found it by this time. Anyway, isn't there
someplace where we could do it besides in the manteion? Kypris got
me when I was in there, and Scylla when I was in her shrine at the lake.
I'm going to try to stay away from places like that for a while."
    "I see. If you don't look at the Sacred Window, you can't be
possessed--so Kypris implied, at least." Too late, Silk recalled that there
was no Window in Scylla's shrine. "It may be that there are other means, of
course," he finished lamely, "or that only she is limited in that fashion."
    "Don't you bucks ever get possessed?"
    "Certainly we do. In fact, it's much more usual, or so the
Chrasmologic Writings imply. Men are normally possessed by
male gods, such as Pas, Tartaros, Hierax, and the Outsider, or
such minor male gods as Catamitus. That is true of enlightenment
as well. I myself was enlightened by the Outsider, not Pas, though
it would appear that common report attributes my enlightenment to
Pas." Silk forbore mentioning that Pas was dead.
    "The reason I was asking--"
    Their litter stopped, lowered gently to an uneven surface. Oreb
pushed the curtain aside with beak, and was gone.
    "I'll be here a while," Silk told the head bearer. "It might be best if
I were to pay you now."
    The head bearer made an awkward bow with one eye on his men,
who were helping Chenille out of the litter. "We'll wait, Calde. No
trouble."
    Silk got out his cardcase. "May I give you something so you can
refresh yourselves while you wait?"
    "We'll be all right." The head bearer backed away.
    "As you wish."
    The garden gate was unlocked; Silk opened it for Chenille. "I was
afraid you'd give them too much," she whispered as she passed.
"They'd get drunk."
    That explained the head bearer's refusal, Silk decided as he reclosed
the gate; it would not do for the bearers of the calde's litter to be
drunk. He made a mental note to allow for the propensity of the
lowest classes to drink too much.
    "Is anybody here?" Chenille looked about her at the arbor and the
wells, the berry brambles and wilted tomato vines under the windows
of the manse, the seared fig and the leafless little pear, and the spaded
black soil that had been Maytera Marble's struggling garden.
    "At the moment? I can't say. I assume that Patera Gulo's still off
fighting--or at any rate off watching what's left of Erne's brigade.
Maytera Marble's probably in the cenoby; we'll find out when I've
shriven you."
                           *  *  *
"You won't hold us long with a handful of men," Maytera Mint told
Spider. "Colonel Bison has five hundred."
    Spider chuckled. He was, as she had concluded a half-hour before,
rather too well suited to his name, a man who made her think of a
fat, hairy spider watching its web in a dirty corner.
    Quetzal said, "He's taking us down into the tunnels."
    Spider opened a door as Quetzal spoke, revealing a flight of rough
steps descending into darkness. "You know about those, old man?"
    "I just came up from them. Did you hear me tell Potto I'd talked
to Loris?"
    "Councillor Potto to you." Spider gestured with a needler; he was two
full heads taller. "Now get down there before I kick you down."
    "I can't walk fast, my son." Quetzal tottered toward the steps. "I'll
delay you and the others."
    There had been a note in his quavering old voice that gave Maytera
Mint a surge of irrational confidence. "The Nine avenge wrongs done
to augurs and sibyls," she warned Spider, "and their vengeance is
swift and terrible. What they might do to someone who maltreats
the Prolocutor, I shudder to think."
    Spider grinned, showing remarkably crooked teeth. "That's lily,
General. So don't you shove him down and run. Stir it, now.
The tall cully behind you, and me behind him. We're all going
to wait nice till Councillor Potto and my knot fetch along his
dead body."
    She started down the steps, one hand on a wooden rail that seemed
both grimy and insecure. Behind her, Remora said, "This is where,
ah, the calde, eh? The cellar, in which, um--" 
    "Sergeant Sand," she told him. The dull gleam that had been
Quetzal's hairless head had disappeared into the darkness; she
quickened her pace, although the steps were steep and high, and
she was afraid of falling. "Sergeant Sand held the calde down here
for six hours or more. He told me about it."
    Remora bumped her from behind. "Sorry! Ah--pushed."
    "Keep moving," Spider growled.
    The sound of their voices had kindled a dull green light some
distance down the steps; in the dimness she could make out ranked
shelves of dusty jars, and what seemed to be abandoned machinery.
Involuntarily she murmured, "He's gone."
    Spider heard her. "Who is?"
    "His Cognizance." She halted, speaking over her shoulder. "Look
for yourself. He should be on the stair in front of me, but he's not."
At the last words, the bright bird called _hope_ sang in her heart.

"There you are!" Maytera Marble exclaimed as Silk emerged from the
chilly privacy of the vine-draped arbor. "There's a man here looking
for you, Patera. I said you weren't here, but he says you've got a
litter on Sun Street."
    Silk sighed. "It's been like this since Phaesday. No doubt it's
extremely urgent."
    "That's just what he said, Patera." Maytera Marble nodded vigorously,
her metal face luminous in the gray daylight. "And it must be.
He came in a floater."
    Chenille's smile turned to a stare. "Hello, Maytera. What happened
to your hand?"
    "How good of you to ask!" She displayed her stump of arm. "My
hand's fine, my daughter. I've got it in a drawer, wrapped up in a clean
towel. It's the rest of--we should go, Patera. He's waiting for you in
front of the cenoby. He came in through the garden and knocked at
your manse. I thought he was looking for Patera Gulo."
    "I was shriving Chenille," Silk explained. "I'm afraid we didn't
hear him."
    "I did," Chenille declared, "only I thought it was on the street. It
was while I was telling you about--" He silenced her, a finger to
his lips.
    "His name is Hossaan," Maytera Marble continued. "He's foreign,
I think, but he says he knows you. He gave you a ride once, and he
was on a boat with you out on the lake. Now where are you--? Oh,
I forgot. He can't go through the cenoby."
    The last words were spoken to Silk's back. At a limping run, he
vanished into the narrow opening between the northwest corner of
the manteion and the southwest corner of the cenoby.
    "There's a gate," Maytera Marble explained to Chenille, "that opens
onto the children's playground from Silver Street. But you and I can
go through the cenoby."
    She mounted the back step and opened the kitchen door. "My
granddaughter's in here. I had just fixed her a bite when I saw that
man. Do you know her?"
    "Your granddaughter?" Chenille shook her head.
    "Perhaps you'd enjoy a little boiled beef too?" Maytera Marble
lowered her voice. "I think it's good for her to talk with other bio
girls. She's been, well, sheltered, I suppose you could call it. And
I have something to say to Patera before that man makes off with
him. I have a favor to ask him, a great big one."

On Silver Street, Silk was already speaking to "that man." "I haven't
been looking for you," he said. "It was stupid of me, incredibly stupid.
I've had Guardsmen out combing the city for Hyacinth and some
other people, but you had slipped my mind completely."
    "We can talk in my floater, Calde." Hossaan was slight and
swarthy, with vigilant eyes. "It'll be more private and get us out
of this wind."
    "Thank you." Stepping into the floater, Silk let himself sink into
its black-leather upholstery.
    The translucent canopy went up with a muted sigh, and the freezing
gusts that had been punishing Viron ended, if only for them.
    "If your Guardsmen had looked, they would've found me." Hossaan
smiled as he took his place in the front seat. "These things aren't easy
to hide."
    "I suppose not. I ran to see you as soon as I realized who you
were because I want to ask where Hyacinth is. You brought her to
Ermine's on Hieraxday to meet me."
    Hossaan nodded.
    "From your name--Maytera Marble told me that--you're a
Trivigaunti. Is that right? Doctor Crane said once that you were
his second in command. Most of the spies he employed seem to
have been Vironese, but it would be natural for him to have a few
from his own city, people he could trust completely."
    "Only me, Calde. You're right, though. More of us would have
made us a lot more effective."
    "Do you know where Hyacinth is?"
    "No. I wish I did." Hossaan drew a deep breath. "You know, Calde,
you've taken a load off my shoulders. I thought I'd have to find out
how much you knew and make sure you didn't learn more than you
had to. It turns out you knew everything."
    Silk shook his head. "Not at all. Doctor Crane and I made an
agreement. I told him all I'd learned or guessed about his activities,
and in return he answered my questions about them. I had guessed
very little, and he told me very little more, not even his real name."
    "It was Sigada." Hossaan smiled bitterly. "It means he was supposed
to be handsome and humble."
    "But he was neither. Thank you." Silk nodded. "Sigada. I'll always
remember him as Doctor Crane, but I'm glad to know how he
remembered himself. You weren't called Hossaan when you were
at Blood's, I'm sure."
    "No. Willet."
    "I see. You didn't give that name to Maytera Marble; you gave
her your real one. You can't have known that Doctor Crane had
told me about you, because you can't have talked to him between
our conversation Tarsday afternoon and his death on Hieraxday
morning."
    "I told you I didn't know how much you knew, Calde."
    "That's right." Futilely, Silk groped in a pocket of his robe. "Do
you know, I don't have any prayer beads now? When I was a poor
augur, I had beads in my pocket but no money. Now I have money,
but no beads."
    "An improvement. You can buy some."
    "If I can find the time when the shops are open, and get into one
without being mobbed. You said you were going to tell me no more
than you had to; but plainly you intended to tell me you were a
Trivigaunti spy."
    "That's right. I was going to tell you because you would have known
it from the news I came to give you. Generalissimo Siyuf is coming to
reinforce you, with thousands of troopers. I just found out about it
myself." Hossaan twisted in his seat until he was face-to-face with Silk.
"It means your victory is assured, Calde. If you're not defeated before
she arrives, it will be impossible for you to be defeated at all." There
was a timid tap on the canopy, and Hossaan said, "It's the sibyl."
    Turning, Silk saw Maytera Marble's metal face, hardly a span
from his. "Let her in, please. I can't imagine myself saying anything. I
wouldn't want her to know--or hearing any such news or confidence,
except in shriving."
    The canopy retraced, and Maytera Marble entered, her long black
skin and wide sleeves flapping in the wind. "I spoke to you, Patera,
but you couldn't hear me."
    "No," Silk said. "No, Maytera, I couldn't." He motioned to Hossaan
and the canopy enclosed them as before.
    "I don't want to interrupt, but seeing you in this machine I thought
you might be about to leave. And...and..."
    "I suppose we are, but not without Chenille. I want to take her
with me. Is she in the cenoby?"
    Maytera Marble nodded. "I'll go get her in a moment, Patera. She's
eating."
    "But first you want to tell me something. Is it about her, or," Silk
hesitated, "your granddaughter, Maytera?"
    "I wanted to ask you for something, Patera, actually. I realize
that you and this foreign gentleman were conferring, and that it's
important. But this won't take long. I'll ask and go."
    "Hossaan is from Trivigaunte," Silk told her, "like your friend
General Saba. They're our allies, as you must know, and I've just
learned from Hossaan that they're sending more troops to help us."
    "Why, that's wonderful!" Maytera Marble smiled, her head back
and inclined to the right. "But after news like that my little problem
will seem terribly insignificant, I'm afraid."
    "I'm certain it won't, Maytera. You're not the sort who bothers
others with insignificant problems." To Hossaan, Silk added, "Now
I want to say that Maytera was to me what you were to Doctor
Crane, but she was far more. I came to this manteion straight from
the schola, and I'd been here only a bit over a year when Patera
Pike died. Maytera saved me from making a fool of myself at least
once a day." He paused, remembering. "Though I wish it had been
more, because I did make a fool of myself often, in spite of all that
she could do."
    "I intrigued against you, too," Maytera Marble confessed. "I didn't
hate you, or at least I told myself I didn't. But I obstructed and
embarrassed you in small ways, telling myself that it was for your
own good." Her voice grew urgent. "I don't have the _right_ to ask
favors. I know that, but--"
    "Of course you do!"
    "I can't manage it myself. I wish I could. I've prayed for the means,
but I can't. Do you know Marl, Patera?"
    "I don't think so." Silk, who knew few chems, exhausted his mental
list quickly. "She--?"
    "He, Patera."
    "He can't attend our sacrifices. I can't even remember the last time
I saw a chem there--except you, of course."
    "There aren't many left," Hossaan put in, "here or in my own city.
Is he a soldier?"
    Maytera Marble shook her head. "He's a valet. He works for a man
called Fulmar. I don't see him often at all, but I went over yesterday,
my granddaughter and I did, and..."
    "Go on, Maytera."
    "I showed him my hand. The one that my--you know..."
    Silk nodded, he hoped encouragingly. "It's better not to dwell on
that, Maytera, I'm sure. You showed him your hand."
    "I brought it in a little basket, wrapped up in a towel, because
there's fluid that might leak out. It's a very good hand still. It's just
that I can't put it back on."
    "I understand."
    "Marl says there's a shop, though I'd think it would have to be a
big place, really, way over past the crooked bridge, where they make
taluses and fix them. Mostly it's fixing, he said, because it takes so
long to make one, and so much money. We chems aren't really like
taluses. We were made in the Short Sun Whorl, and we can think
and see a great deal better, and we don't burn fish oil," she laughed
nervously, "or anything like that. But Marl thought they might be
able to do this for me--put it back--if I had the money. It wouldn't
be like making a chem or even a talus, just a simple repair."
    "Yes. Yes, of course. I should have thought of something like that,
Maytera. Welding? Is that that they call it?"
    Hossaan said, "That's what they call it when they fix a floater."
    "It's not just reuniting the metal, Patera. There are little tubes in
there, tiny tubes, and wires, and things like threads--fibers, they're
called--that pipe light. Look." She held up her useless right arm,
pushing back the sleeve so that he could see the sheared end. "Marl
thought they might be able to do it. He's as old as I was, Patera,
and I don't think he always reasons correctly any more. But..."
    Silk nodded. "It's your only chance. I understand."
    "Marl would have given me the money if he'd had it, but he's very
poor. This Fulmar doesn't pay him, just clothes and a place to live.
And even if I had money, they might not want to try it, Marl said,
unless I had a great deal."
    "Believe me, I'll help you, Maytera. We'll go as quickly as we can.
You have my word on it."
    She had taken a large white handkerchief from her empty sleeve.
"I'm so sorry, Patera." She dabbed at her eyes. "I can't really cry, not
for a long, long time. And yet I feel that way. There's so much work,
with you gone and Patera Gulo gone, and Maytera Mint gone, and my
granddaughter to take care of, and just one hand for everything."
    Silk reached another decision. "I'm going to take you away, too,
Maytera, for the time being at least. You and Mucor both. I need
you both, and it's too dangerous for you--and for her, particularly--to
be here alone. Will you come with me if I ask you to? Remember,
I'm still the augur of this manteion."
    She looked up at him with a new glow behind the scratched, dry
lenses of her eyes. "Yes indeed, Patera, if you tell me to. I'll have to
straighten up first and put things away. Put a notice on the door of
the palaestra so the children will know."
    "Good. There's a Calde's Palace on the Palatine, as well as
the Prolocutor's. I'm sure you must remember when the calde
lived there."
    She nodded.
    "I'm reopening it. I've slept in the Juzgado the past few nights,
but that's never been more than an expedient; if Viron's to have a
new calde, he has to live in the Calde's Palace. I'll need a place to
entertain Generalissimo Siyuf when she arrives, to begin with. We'll
want an official welcome for her and her troops, too, and I'll have to
notify Generalissimo Oosik as soon as possible. Thousands of fresh
troops are certain to change his plans."
    Silk turned to Hossaan. "How long do we have? Can you give me
some idea?"
    "Not an accurate one, Calde. I'm not sure when she left Trivigaunte,
and Siyul's a famous hard marcher."
    "A week?"
    "I doubt it." Hossaan shook his head. "Three or four days, at
a guess."
    "Patera." Maytera Marble touched Silk's arm. "I can't live in the
same house with a man, not even an augur. I know nothing will--but
the Chapter..."
    "You can if he's ill," Silk told her firmly. "You can sleep in the
same house to nurse him. I've a chest wound--I'll show it to
you as soon as we get there, and you can change the dressing
for me. I'm also recovering from a broken ankle. His Cognizance
will grant you a dispensation, I'm sure, or the coadjutor can.
Hossaan, can you take us back to the Juzgado? There will be
four of us."
    "Sure thing, Calde."
    "I don't have a floater at present, except for the Guard floaters,
and Oosik needs those. Perhaps I could hire you and your floater--we'll
talk about it.
    "Maytera, do whatever you must, and tack up that note. I was
hoping to sacrifice here and go to the Cock when I left, but both
will have to wait. Tomorrow, perhaps.
    "Hossaan, I'm going into the manse for a moment while she does
all that; then we'll collect Mucor and a young woman who came
here with me, and pay off my litter."

"I heard you had a pet bird," Saba said, eyeing Oreb; she was a
massive woman with a marked resemblance to an angry sow.
    Silk smiled. "I'm not sure pet's the correct word. I've been trying
to set him free for days. The result has been that he comes and goes
as he pleases, says anything he wants, and seems to enjoy himself far
more than I do. Today we went back to my manteion, mostly to enlist
Maytera Marble's help in airing this place out. I got some important
news there, by the way, which I'll give you in a moment."
    "That's right." Saba snapped her fingers. "You holy men are
supposed to be able to find out the gods' will by looking at sheep
guts, aren't you?"
    "Yes. Some of us are better at it than others, of course, and no
one's ever suggested that I'm much better than average. Don't you
have augurs in Trivigaunte?"
    "No cut!" Oreb required reassurance.
    "Not you, silly bird. Positively not." Silk smiled again. "I got him
as a victim, you see; and though I've ruled that out, he's afraid I'll
change my mind. What I wanted to tell you is that I went into the
manse to see if I'd left my beads there Phaesday night. I should have
said earlier that he'd flown off when I got out of my litter.
    "Well, I went into the kitchen because I empty my pockets on
the kitchen table sometimes, and there he was on the larder. 'Bird
home,' he told me, and seemed quite content; but he rode out on
my shoulder when I left."
    "He sounds like a good trooper," Saba leaned back in her ivory-inlaid
armchair. "You have so many male troopers here. I'm still getting used
to them, though most fight well enough. I have news for you, too,
Calde, when you've given me yours."
    "In a moment. To tell the truth, I'm afraid you'll rush off the
minute you hear it and I want to ask about augury in Trivigaunte.
Besides, Chenille's making coffee, and she'll be disappointed if we
don't drink it. She wants to meet you, too--you helped save her;
she was one of the hostages at Blood's." Seeing that Saba did not
understand him, Silk added, "The villa in the country."
    "Oh, there. You were the one we came after, Calde."
    "But you saved Chenille too, and Patera Incus and Master Xiphias--you
and Generalissimo Oosik, and several thousand of General
Mint's people, I ought to say."
    Saba nodded. "We were a little part, but we did what we could.
Where's Mint, anyhow?"
    "Trying to turn courageous but untrained and undisciplined
volunteers into a smoothly running horde, I assume. I've tried
to do that sort of thing myself on a much smaller scale--with
the mothers of the children at our palaestra, for example. I don't
envy her the task."
    "You've got to get rough with them, sometimes," Saba told him,
looking as if that were the aspect she enjoyed. "There's times to be
pals, all troopers together. And there's times when you need the
_karbaj_."
    Silk wisely refrained from asking what the _karbaj_ was. "About
augury. From what you said, I take it that it's not practiced in
Trivigaunte? Is that correct?"
    Saba inclined her head, the movement barely perceptible. "You try
to make the gods like you by cutting up animals. We don't. I'm not
trying to offend you."
    "Not at all, General."
    "I'm a plain-spoken old campaigner, and I don't pretend to be
anything more. Or anything less. A simple old trooper. The way
things are here makes me try and act like an ambassador, so I do
my best." She laughed loudly. "But that's not too good, so I'll give
it to you straight. Your customs seem backwards to me, and I keep
waiting for them to turn around. Take her, now." Saba pointed to
Chenille, who had entered with a tray. "Here's a woman and a man
talking, and a woman waiting on them. I'm not saying you never see
that at home, but you don't see it often."
    "But to get back--" Silk accepted a cup. "Thank you, Chenille.
You didn't have to do this, and I'm not sure General Saba realizes
that. Goodness and servility look alike at times, though they're very
different. Won't you sit down?"
    "If I won't bother you."
    "Of course not. We'll be happy to have your company, and I know
you were anxious to meet General Saba. She's the commander of the
Rani's airship."
    "I know." Chenille gave Saba an admiring smile.
    "She was one of your rescuers. Generalissimo Oosik told me
afterward that he'd be delighted to see the kind of efficiency her
pterotroopers displayed in a brigade of our Guard."
    "They're picked women, every one of them," Saba told Silk
complacently. "The competition to get in is fierce. We turn away
ten for each we take."
    "I want to get back to augury. If I seem to be harping on it, I hope
you'll excuse me; I was trained as an augur, and I doubt that I'll ever
lose interest in it entirely. But first, would it be possible for me to go
up in your airship some time?"
    Saba winked at Chenille, her brutal face briefly humorous.
    "One of the students--his name is Horn, and he's acting as a
messenger here for the present--told me not long ago that he'd
dreamed of flying. So have I, though I didn't admit it to Horn, or
even to myself when I spoke with him."
    "Bird fly!" Oreb proclaimed.
    "Exactly. We can scarcely look up without seeing a bird; and there
are fliers every few days, proving it can be done. When I was a boy,
I used to imagine they were shouting, "We can fly and you can't!"
up there too high to be heard. I knew it was foolish, but the feeling
has never left me entirely."
    "Wing good." Hopping onto Silk's head, Oreb displayed it.
    "He couldn't fly for a while," Silk explained. "Before that I doubt
that he took much pride in it."
    "I'm going to surprise you, Calde," Saba announced. "You are
welcome to visit my airship anytime. Just let me know when you're
coming so I can get things trooper-like for you."
    "Of course." Silk sipped from his cup, pausing to admire the
delicate porcelain, brave with gilt and holding a painted Scylla as
well as coffee.
    "If that were wine, I'd tell you I was going to fit you up with wings
like my girls", the teeth of Saba's underjaw showed in a savage grin,
"and shove you out. But sham diplomats don't get to make that sort
of a joke."
    Silk sighed. "I'd thought about it. I'm not at all sure I have the
courage, but perhaps I might try."
    "Don't. You'd be crippled for life if you weren't killed. My girls
start with a platform that would fit in this room. I--who's that!"
    "Who?" Silk glanced at the doors; so did Chenille.
    "There was a face in that mirror." Saba stood up, her cup still in
her hand. "Somebody that isn't in here, somebody I've never seen
before. I saw her!"
    "I'm sure you did, General." Silk put down his coffee.
    "You've only just reopened this palace, isn't that right?"
    "Less than an hour ago, actually. Maytera Marble and--"
    "A secret passage." Saba's tone brooked no contradiction. "The
mirror's a peephole, and somebody's spying from in there already.
One passage at least, and there could be more, I've seen some at
home. What's that girl doing?"
    Chenille had gone to the mirror and grasped the sides of its ornate
frame with both hands. "It's dusty," she told Silk. "They had dust
covers over all this, but dust got in anyhow." With a grunt of effort,
she lifted the mirror from its hook; behind it was featureless plaster,
somewhat lighter in color than that to either side.
    Silk had risen when Saba did. He limped to the wall and rapped it
with his knuckles, evoking solid thuds. Saba stared, her wide mouth
working.
    "Want me to put this back, Patera?" Chenille inquired.
    "I don't think so. Not yet, at least. I'll do it, or Master Xiphias
can. Can you put it down without dropping it?"
    "I think so. I'm pretty strong."
    The heels of Saba's polished riding boots came together with a click.
"I apologize, Calde. I'm leaving. Again, I regret this very much."
    "Don't go yet," Silk said hastily. "Your Generalissimo Siyuf is
bringing us thousands of--"
    Saba's cup fell to the costly carpet, splashing it and her gleaming
boots with black coffee. "That's the news I was going to tell you!
You--you learned that from animal guts?"

                  Chapter 3 -- The First Theophany on Thelxday

Three busy days after Saba had dropped her coffee, Marrow the
greengrocer abandoned the pleasant anticipation of the parade that
was to close the market early to stare at the weary prophet nearing
his stall. "Auk?" Marrow smoothed his fruit-stained apron. "Aren't
you Auk?"
    "That's me." The prophet stepped out of the wind to lean against
a table piled with oranges.
    "You're a friend of the calde's. That's what they say."
    "I guess." Auk saatched his stubbled jaw. "I like him, anyhow, and
I brought a ram when Kypris came. I don't know if he likes me,
though. If he don't, I don't blame him."
    Marrow wiped his nose on his sleeve. "You're a friend of General
Mint's, too."
    "Everybody is now. That's what I hear."
    "Scleroderma told me. You know her? The butcher's wife."
    Auk shook his head.
    "She knows you, and she says you used to come to Silk's manteion,
on Sun Street."
    "Yeah. I know where it is."
    "She says you'd sit in a little garden they've got and talk to her.
To General Mint. Would you like an orange?"
    "Sure, but I don't have the money. Not that I can spend."
    "Take some. Wait a minute, I'll get you a bag." Marrow hurried
to the back of his stall, and Auk slipped a peach into his pocket.
    "Now you're going around talking about the Plan of Pas. Would
you like some bananas? Real bananas from Urbs?"
    Auk looked at the price. "No," he said.
    "Free. I'm not going to charge you."
    Auk straightened up, filling his barrel of a chest with air. "Yeah. I
know. That's why I don't want any. Listen up. I'd steal your bananas,
see? That's lily. I'd steal 'em and riffle your till, 'cause that's the kind I
am. I'm a dimber thief, and Tartaros needs cards for something we're
planning to do. Only I won't let you give me bananas. They cost you
too much, and it wouldn't be right."
    "But--"
    "Muzzle it." Auk had begun to peel an orange, pulling away bright
cusps of rind with strong, soiled fingers. "I got a mort back in the
Orilla I'm supposed to take care of. She's hungry, and she's not used
to it like me. So if you want to put oranges and maybe a couple
potatoes in that sack, I'll thank you for 'em and take 'em to her.
No bananas, see? But nab the gelt off these that want to buy first.
I'll take the sack when you're done, if you still want to give it."
    "That's Auk the Prophet," Marrow whispered to the crowd around
his stall. "A dozen yellow apples, madame? And two cabbages?
Absolutely! Very fresh and very cheap."
    A few minutes later he told Auk, "I want to take you over to
Shrike's as soon as my boy gets back. Scleroderma's husband? He'll
let you have a bite or two of meat, I'm sure."

There were two hundred, if not more, waiting for Auk in the Orilla,
and another hundred following him. Tartaros whispered, "You are
fatigued, Auk my noctolater, and cold."
    "You got the lily there, Terrible Tartaros."
    "Therefore you are liable to be impatient."
    "Not me. I been fired and cold up on the roof, when they were
looking with dogs."
    "Be warned. This time the prize is greater."
    Auk shouldered their way through the crowd, halted at the door
of the boarded-up shop that had been his destination, and put down
the bags he carried. "Listen up, all you culls."
    The crowd hushed.
    "I don't know what you want, but I know what I want. I want
to leave this stuff with the dell inside. She's hungry, and some
cullys in the market gave me this for her. If you want to see
me, you've done it. If you want to hear me, you've done that,
too. If it's something else, let me give her these and we'll talk
about it."
    A voice from the crowd called, "We want you to sacrifice!"
    "You're abram. I'm no augur." Auk pounded on the warped door.
"Hammerstone! Look alive in there!"
    The door opened; at the sight of the towering soldier, the crowd fell
silent. "This ain't one of the Ayuntamiento's," Auk shouted hastily.
"He's working for the gods like I am, only when we were corning
here..." He tried to remember when they had come; although he
vividly recalled watching Hammerstone free himself from tons of
shattered shiprock, he could not shut his mind upon the day. "It
was when the Alambrera gave up. Anyway all these trooper culls
were taking shots at him, so we figured it was better for him to
pull it in."
    Behind him Hammerstone hissed. "Ask if Patera's here." It was like
receiving confidences from a thunderhead.
    "Patera Incus!" Auk shouted. "We're looking for this real holy augur
named Patera Incus. Somebody said something about a sacrifice. Is
Patera Incus out there?"
    Voices from the back of the crowd: "_You do it!_"
    From behind Hammerstone, Hyacinth inquired urgently, "Is there
food in those? I want it."
    Tartaros whispered, "Tell them you will," by some miracle overcoming
the clamor of the crowd.
    Auk was so surprised he turned to look. "What the shaggy--I mean
yeah, dimber, Terrible Tartaros. Anything." Passing both sacks to
Hammerstone, he cupped his hands around his mouth. "I'll sacrifice.
You got it!"
    "When?" Four men lifted a terrified brown kid over their heads;
its unhappy bleats were visible, although inaudible.
    "Now, Auk my noctolater."
    "Now!" Auk repeated.
    A thin man whose coat and hat had once been costly asked, "You
say you're doing the gods' will. Will a god appear?"
    Auk waited for assurance from the blind god at his side, but none
was forthcoming.
    Others took up the question. "_Will a god come?_"
    "What do you think?" Auk challenged them, and a hundred
arguments broke out at once.
    From behind Hammerstone's green bulk, Hyacinth inquired,
"Where're we going to do it?"
    "I thought you were eating."
    "She is," Hammerstone rumbled. "I can hear her."
    The noise grew as fifty men and a dozen loud-voiced women shouted
demands. Auk muttered, "Terrible Tartaros, you better tell me what to
tell 'em or we could have a problem here."
    "Have I not, Auk my noctolater? You are to sacrifice, to me or to
whatever god you wish."
    Auk turned to Hammerstone. "Get out of the door. I got to tell
both of you, and I ain't going to talk to her through you."
    The soldier emerged into the street, evoking another awed silence.
Revealed, Hyacinth chewed and gulped, wiping her hands on her
soiled gown. "That was a nectarine, I think, and I think I swallowed
the pit. I can't remember spitting it out. Maybe I chewed it up. Thelx,
was it good!"
    "You take care of this stuff," Auk told her, "I got to go to Sun
Street."
    "I'm coming!"
    Auk shook his head. "I ain't no augur--"
    Tattaros whispered, "Bring the soldier and the woman."
    "But I got to sacrifice. Scalding Scylla wanted me to, too. She was
going to make me give her Dace, probably."
    "I'll need a coat and a bath, makeup--don't you hit me! if you
hit me again I'll--I'll--"
    "You're coming all right," Auk told her, "and we're going now." He
strode into the crowd. "Listen here! Slap a muzzle on it, you culls.
Listen up!"
    Hammerstone fired his slug gun into the air.
    "No god's coming! You want me to sacrifice, we'll go over to Sun
Street and do it right. Only no god!" Under his breath he added,
"You couldn't see one anyhow, you cank cullys."
    They followed him through the narrow street nonetheless, cowed
by him more than by the menacing soldier beside him who never
relaxed his hold on the shivering, disheveled young woman in the
red silk gown.
    From the highest step of Silk's manteion, Auk addressed them
again. "I told you there ain't going to be a god. You jerk me around,
don't you? Sacrifice right this minute! Show us a god, Auk! All your
clatter. You think you could jerk me around like you do if I could
jerk the gods around? I can't. Neither can you. What I'm telling you
is, it's time."
    He drew his brass-mounted hanger. "I can cut your goats with
this. That's nothing. Can I cut myself out of the whorl? That's what
matters. Think about it. Nobody but you can make you think, not
even gods."
    "Sacrifice!" someone shouted.
    "Not even the gods!" Auk bellowed. "Only they can snuff you if
you don't, see? Or just leave you to die, 'cause this whorl's finished!
Tartaros told me!"
    The crowd stirred.
    "Ever see a dead bitch in the street? And her pups still trying to
suck? That's you! And that's me!" Over his shoulder Auk added,
"Open these doors, Hammerstone."
    The soldier hooked a finger as thick as a crowbar through one
wrought iron handle and rattled the door until it seemed it must
leave its hinges. "It's locked."
    "Then bust it down. We'll use the wood."
    Hammerstone released the door and drew back his fist, but Hyacinth
exclalined, "Wait! Somebody's coming!"
    In a moment Auk heard the rattle and squeak of the old iron lock,
and the solid _thunk_ as the bolt slid back. He grasped the handle
and pulled.
    "_Patera!_" Hammerstone knelt as a father does to embrace a boy
who does not like being lifted, and hugged Incus in arms that could
have splintered the ribs of a bull.
    Even Auk smiled. "Hi, Patera. Where you been?"
    Hyacinth, torn between the opportunity for flight and the deliverance
she sensed was almost at hand, nudged Auk. "Is this him? The
one Hammerstone talks about all the time?"
    "Yeah. You want to argue with him? Me neither."
    Pointing to Incus he announced, "This's the augur I asked you
about. Now we can have a regular augur, and maybe he'll let me
help. We'll need wood for the altar, you scavy? Some of you got to
go get us some. Cedar if you can find any, any kind if you can't."
    From Hammerstone's embrace, Incus protested, "_Auk_, my son!"
    "We got to, Patera. You like for lots of people to see you sacrifice?
I got you three or four hundred here. Hammerstone, loosen up or
you'll chill him."
    Speaking so quickly her racing words flashed past like frightened
linnets, Hyacinth gabbled, "Patera, I know what I look like, I know
how awful, but I'm not the sort that would ever set her cap for a
cully like this or even let him, you know, talk to her even if he just
wanted to talk, you know how they do, and that's not me, and I've
got money and good clothes even if you wouldn't think it to look
at me and jewelry, and I know people, I've got, you know, bucks
that would do me favors any time, commissioners and brigadiers,
and I know the calde, I really do, he's a particular friend of mine
and this man and the soldier have been making me stay in a dirty
freezing place with rats, and you've got to help me, Patera, you've
got to tell--"
    Auk clapped a hand over her month. "She goes on like that quite a
bit, Patera, and we ain't got time for it all. Let him go, Hammerstone.
Get him inside there and up to the altar. You can carry him, I guess,
if it makes you feel better."
    "I've _prayed_," Incus managed to gasp as Hammerstone hoisted him,
"all morning, prayed upon my _knees_ with tears and _bitterest
groans_--don't drop me, Hammerstone my son, your shoulders are
slippery--for a sign of _favor_ from Surging Scylla or any other god,
the smallest _morsel_ of _assistance_, the most humble _crumb_
of _succor_ in my _divinely ordained_ mission."
    "I'd say maybe you got it," Auk told him. "What do you think,
Terrible Tartaros?"
    Briefly, the blind god's hand tightened on his. "Release the woman,
Auk my noctolater. I am about to leave you. I have mended your
mind, insofar as I am able."
    Auk turned, although he knew he could not see the god.
    "It will heal itself soon of the damage that remains. I have explained
your task, and you have learned better than I could have hoped. Direct
your gaze to the Sacred Window, Auk my noctolater."
    "This's the Plan, Terrible Tartaros. Emptying the whole whorl. I
can't do that by myself!"
    "Look at the screen, Auk. At the Sacred Window. This is the last
instruction I shall give you."
    Auk sank to his knees. Faintly, through the open door, the silver
glow shone from the far end of the manteion. "Get out of my way,
Hammerstone! I got to see the Window."
    "Farewell, Auk. May neither of us forget the prayers you offered
nightside, while I hearkened invisible in your glass."
    Auk stood up, alone.
    "You're crying." Hyacinth stepped closer to peer at him. "Auk,
you're _crying_."
    "Yeah. I guess I am." He wiped his streaming eyes with his fingers.
"I never had any father."
    "I do, and he's a pig's arse." Worshippers pushed past them caryying
armloads of wood; some paused to stare.
    "I got to get up there and do it. You want to go, go on. I won't
stop you."
    "I can leave anytime I want to?"
    "Yeah, Hy. Beat the hoof."
    "Then I'm going to--no, that's abram. G'bye, Bruiser." Her lips
brushed his.
    "_Auk_ my son!" Incus stood beside the altar, directing the laying of
the fire. "We've more wood than we require. Tell them to _desist_."
    He did, happy to have something to do.
    At Silk's ambion, Incus drew himself up beyond his full height,
rising on his toes. "A holy _augur's_ blessing upon each and every one
of you, my children. _Silence_, back there! This is a _manteion_, a house
sacred to the _immortal gods_." It was the hour he had dreamed of
since childhood.
    "_Hammerstone_, my son. It is best to offer our _pious gifts_ upon a
fire kindled _directly_ from the _beneficent_ rays. This is not accorded
us on this _day of darkness_. If you will look in the sacristy, behind
the _Sacred Window_, you may discover a _fire-keeper_, a vessel of metal
or even lowly _terra cotta_ safeguarding the _holy spark_ against such an
hour as _this_."
    "I'm on it, Patera."
    Incus returned his attention to the congregation. "_At this point_,
my children, I am severely tempted to _discover_ to you my own
identity, and the _multifarious vicissitudes_ and _tribulations_ through
which I come to you _today_. I _refrain_, however. I am an _augur_,
as you see. I am _that_ augur whom _Surfeiting Scylla_ has designated
_Prolocutor-to-be_, charged with the _utter destruction_ of the
_Ayunta_--"
    For half a minute, their cheers silenced him.
    "I am _in addition_--might I say _comrade_, Auk? A _fellow sufferer_
at least of Auk's."
    From the manteion floor Auk shouted, "A dimber mate!"
    "_Thank you_. Beset, as you should know, by _woe_ and eager for a
_situation_ of _venerational tranquility_, I bethought me of this manteion,
the _new calde's own_, as a place to which I might retire, pray and
contemplate the _inscrutable_ ways of the gods. I had not seen it and
had heard much of it during the _brief days_ since Auk, my dear friend
_Hammerstone_--"
    "I got it right here, Patera." Hammerstone displayed a pierced clay
pot from which a feeble crimson glow proceeded.
    "_Auk_, are you to _assist_ me? Is that to be our _procedure?_"
    A seemingly disembodied voice called, "He has to kill 'em!"
    "Then he _shall_, and with my blessing. What of the _liturgy_,
however? _Auk?_"
    Auk had climbed the steps to the altar. "I don't know the words,
Patera. You'll have to do it."
    "I _shall_. And if _Auk_ is to assist, why need my dear friend
_Hammerstone_ be excluded? Put the _sacred flame_ to this _fuel_, if you
will, Hammerstone.
    "I obtained the _key_, journeyed _hence_, and locked myself in, counting
the lock's _blessed squeakings_ among the _treasures_ of my _spirit_. I came,
I say, in search of _quiet_, resolved upon _prayer and suppication_. I
_found_ it, as I had hoped, and spent hours upon my _knees_, the least
supplicant of the _immortal gods_. It is a practice I recommend to you
_without reservation_."
    A tongue of fire had sprung up where Hammerstone fanned the
wood piled on the altar.
    "I was safe from all _interruption_. Or so I thought. Then you arrived,
a _tumultuous throng_, elevating me to this _sacred_ ambion. How _clearly_
the gods speak! _Surmounting Scylla_ had _lifted_ me to the _Prolocutorship_.
Now was I _cautioned_ that the _Prolocutor--I_--can be no _holy recluse_,
however he may _long_ for peace. _Pray_ for me, my _children_, as I pray
for _myself_. Let me _not_ forget my _lesson!_
    "_Auk_, my son. Have you the _knife_ of _sacrifice?_"
    Auk drew his boot knife. "This's all I got, Patera."
    "Then it must _suffice_. Bring it to _me_ and _I_ shall _bless_ it." Incus
did so, tracing the sign of addition over the blade. Before he
finished, Hammerstone had been forced to step back from the
leaping flames.
    "In a _sacred ceremony_ more regular, I should now ask their presenters
to which of the _Nine_, or other _immortal gods_, they wished to offer the
_fair victims. Today_, however--"
    Someone shouted, "To Tartaros! He's always on him!"
    "They ain't black," Auk told the speaker.
    Incus nodded solemnly. "In the _present instance_ that must be
_dispensed_ with. None are _white_. Nor are any _black_, as my erstwhile
comrade has _rightly_ said. Therefore _each_ shall be offered to _all_
the _gods_."
    After glancing at the first victim, Incus faced the Sacred Window,
his arms and his voice raised dramatically. "_Accept_ all you gods, the
sacrifice of this fine _piglet_. And speak to us, we beg, of the times that
are to _come. What_ are we to do? Your _lightest_ word will--will--"
    He got no further.
    The silver radiance showed flecks of color, faded pastels that might
have been shadows or phantoms, the visual illusions of disordered
sight, dabs of rose and azure that blossomed and withered, shot with
pearl and ebony.
    Poised beside the young pig, Auk dropped his knife and fell to his
knees. Momentarily it seemed that he could make out a face on the
left. Then another, wholly different, on the right. A voice spoke, such
a voice as Auk had never heard, filled with the roar of mighty engines.
It praised him and urged him to seek something or someone. Now
and again, though only now and again, he heard or at least believed
he heard, a term he knew: _ghost, augur, plan_. Then silence.
    Incus, too, was on his knees; his hands were clasped, his face that
of a child.
    The piglet had vanished, drawn perhaps into the Window, or
perhaps merely fled through the dim manteion and out into the
windy winter morning.
    Hammerstone stood at rigid attention, his right hand raised in
a salute.
    For a time that might have been long or short, after the voice
spoke no more and the half-formed colors had gone, all was silence;
the congregation might have been so many statues, there in the
old manteion on Sun Street, statues with starting eyes and gaping
mouths.
    Then the noise began. Men who had been sitting sprang to their
feet; men who had been kneeling jumped up to dance upon the pews.
Some howled as though in agony. Some shrieked as if in ecstasy. A
woman fell in a fit, thrashing, contorted as a swatted fly, belching
bloody foam as her teeth tore her tongue and lips; no one noticed
her, or cared.
    "He's gone." Auk rose slowly, still staring at the now-empty Window.
More loudly, loudly enough to make himself heard by Hammerstone,
he said, "He ain't here, not any more. That was him, wasn't it? That
was Pas."
    Hammerstone's steel arm crashed to his steel side, a sound like the
clash of swords.
    "Did anybody... You understand him, Patera? It sounded like
he was talking about--about--" A man Auk did not know reached
out and touched Auk's coat as he might have touched the Sacred
Window.
    "He liked me," Auk concluded weakly. "Kind of like he liked me,
that was what it sounded like." No one heard him.
    Incus was on his feet. He tottered to the ambion; although his mouth
opened and shut and his lips appeared to shape words, no words could
be heard above the din. At last he motioned to Hammerstone, and
Hammerstone thundered for silence.
    "It is my task--" Incus's voice had risen to a squeak; he cleared his
throat. "My task to _explicate_ for you the _utterance_ of the god." The
recurrence of something near his accustomed singsong restored his confidence.
"To _gloss_ upon his _message_ and _relay_ his _commands_."
    A man in the second row shouted, "It was Pas, wasn't it?"
    Incus nodded, his cheeks trembling. "It _was_. Lord _Pas_, the _Father_
of the _whorl_ and the _Builder_ of the _Gods_." Neither he nor his hearers
noticed his mistake.
    "He talked to me," Hammerstone told Auk. His voice held a dawning
joy. "I seen him once, way off, reviewing the parade. This time he talked
to me. Like I'm talking to you, and he gave me a order."
    Auk nodded numbly.
    "Patera will have heard, won't he? Sure he will. We'll talk about
this years from now, how Pas talked to us and gave me the order.
Me and Patera."
    "Ere I _commence_ my _exegesis_," his voice was stronger, and carried
an authority that stilled the congregation, "I shall _confide_ to you
something not generally known, which I _myself_ learned only _today_.
There has been no _announcement_, but I was not sworn to _secrecy_.
On _Molpsday_ Great _Pas_ granted a _theophany_ to the--the _aged worthy
augur_ who has for _innumerable decades_ served us as _Prolocutor_. His
office has been _attorned_ to me by _Saving Scylla_, who would doubtless
see his _protracted devotion_ rewarded with that _freedom_ from _concerns_
which is the _perfumed ointment_ of _superannuity_. It was that, I _confess_,
which sent me in search of _tranquility_, as I have _related_. The
_disquieting intelligence_ that the _Father_ of the _Seven_ had _manifested_
himself to one whom I have been _only too ready_ to reckon a _rival_."
    "Did he say something about me?" Half pleading and half threatening,
Auk closed upon the ambion. "He said something, didn't he?
What was it?" Hammerstone interposed himself.
    "I _prayed_ to _Pas_," Incus continued, wondering. "I urged the
_justice_ of my _cause_ with _tears_. Now how _clearly_ do I see this lesser
_plan_, the _plan_ that is to set in motion his _greater Plan!_ First he
_bestowed_ his _benefaction_ upon the _Prolocutor_ that was, then upon the
_new_." Incus indicated his own stomach. "It is the _hallmark_ of the
_actions_ of the _gods_ that, however _unanticipated_ they may be, once done
they are seen to be both _perfect_ and _inevitable_.
    "And _now_ I confide the _divine utterance_ that _Great Pas_ has
_vouchsafed_ to us."

High above the mummy-colored bead that was General Saba's airship,
but five hundred cubits below the low winter clouds, Fliers whom
Calde Silk was just then likening to a flight of storks rode the
blustering north wind.
    From their center, Sciathan studied his companions. Their eyes
were on the clouds, as he had expected, or else the sere brown fields,
the silver threads of streams, or the shrinking lake; no mere emergency
could overcome the habits of years, no urging--not even a god's--bring
them to consider the teeming Cargo below relevant.
    Sciathan himself glanced up at the clouds and scanned his
instruments before abandoning both. A long yellow-brown column
of marchers was approaching the city from the south. He had glimpsed
similar parades often, giving little thought to them and what they might
portend; soldiers and troopers could be halted by avalanches, turned
aside by floods and forest fires, and dispersed by storms not much
less readily than flotillas. No host had ever succeeded in crossing
the Mountains That Look At Mountains; and in all likelihood, none
ever would. Here in the hold, hordes like the one below would be a
different matter.

                  Chapter 4 -- Swords of Sphigx

Standing stiffly in his official cloak of tea-colored velvet, Calde Silk
cursed himself mentally for not providing chairs--or rather, for not
seeing to it that chairs were provided. He had supposed (such, he told
himself, had been his lamentable innocence, his utter unfitness for the
position thrust upon him) that he, with Quetzal, Oosik, and Saba--and
Maytera Mint, if she could be found--would take their places
on this platform, at which the force dispatched by Trivigaunte to the
aid of Viron would appear.
    The fact, of course, was otherwise. The fact was that even
Generalissimo Siyuf's highly disciplined horde of seventy-five thousands
remained a mass of seventy-five thousand women and men--to say
nothing of thousands of horses and none but the Nine knew how
many camels.
    Camels!
    As a precociously pious boy, he had considered Sphigx the least
attractive goddess, a tawny-maned virago, more lioness than woman.
Now it appeared that real lions had nothing to do with real warfare;
horses, mules, and camels were the pets of Stabbing Sphigx, and he
would have accepted them happily (or even gerbils, guinea pigs, and
geese) if only they would appear in reality.
    A freezing gust shook the triumphal arch. It had been hastily
erected, and would almost certainly collapse if this winter wind blew
even a trifle harder; indeed, it was liable to collapse in any event if
Siyuf's troopers did not put in an appearance soon.
    Surely there ought to be somebody in the crowd around the platform
who could and would fetch chairs. First, he decided, he would ask that
a chair be provided for Quetzal, who was of advanced years and had
been standing for the better part of an hour; then, as if it were an
afterthought, he could order chairs for Oosik and Saba, and himself
as well. Five minutes more and he would leave the platform, collar
a commissioner, and demand chairs. He must and he would--that
was all there was to it.
    The wind rose again, and he clenched his teeth. Yellow dust gave it
a score of visible bodies, whirling devils that skated over the Alameda.
A streamer of green paper tore free of the arch to mount the wind in
sinuous curves, vanishing in a few seconds against the heaving bulk
of the tethered airship.
    From that airship, he reflected, it should be simple to gauge the
advance of Siyuf's troops. Given just one more day, he might have
arranged for signals: a flag hung out from the foremost gondola
when her advance guard entered the city, or a smoke-pot lit for an
unanticipated delay. To his own surprise, he found that he had lost
none of his eagerness to board that airship, in spite of multiplying
duties and the winter wind. Like Horn (just the person to find chairs,
or boxes at least) he longed to fly as the Fliers did.
    There were a lot of them today. More, he decided, than he had
ever seen before. An entire flock, like a flight of storks, was just now
appearing from behind the airship. What city sent them to patrol the
sun, and what good could such patrols do?
    A fresh gust roared along the Alameda, shaking its raddled poplars.
To his right Saba stiffened, while he himself shivered shamelessly.
The Cloak of Lawful Governance tossed like Lake Limna about his
shins, and would have streamed behind him like a banner if he had
not been holding it with both hands. Hours ago, when he had put
it on in the Juzgado, it had carried in its long train a sensation
of oppressive and almost suffocating warmth; he had been sorely
tempted to substitute a cheap (and therefore thin) augur's robe for
the luxuriously thick one he was wearing under it, although Master
Xiphias and Commissioner Trematode had dissuaded him. By this
time it should have been soaked with his perspiration; instead he
found himself wishing fervently for a head covering of some kind.
Saba had her dust-colored military cap, and Oosik a tall helmet of
green leather. He had nothing.
    The old broad-brimmed straw hat he had worn while repairing
the roof was gone--lost at Blood's, like Maytera Mint. The new
broad-brimmed straw he had bought at the lake was gone too, left
in the room from which the talus had snatched him. Patera Pike's
cap, the black calotte that Patera had worn in winter, was back at
the manse--he had scarcely dared to touch it after Patera's ghost
had dropped it on the landing.
    All were dead now, Pike, Blood, and the talus. The second and
third by his own hand.
    Would this Siyuf and her troopers never come? He searched the
clouds beyond the airship for a glimpse of the sun. The dying Flier
had said they were losing control. With what chains did one control
the sun? With what tiller was it steered?
    But no doubt the sun was merely masked by the threatening clouds;
it would be childish to complain because winter had come at last when
the calendar declared it half over.
    Spring soon, unless this winter proved to be as protracted as the
summer that had preceded it. If the rains failed then, so would he;
if the new corn sprouted and died, Viron's new god-appointed calde
would surely die with it. He pictured himself and Hyacinth fleeing
the city on fast horses, but Hyacinth was as lost as Maytera Mint,
and he knew nothing about horses save that they might be offered
to Pas without impropriety. This though Pas was dead.
    Was Hyacinth dead as well? Silk shivered again.
    A band struck up in the distance, and ever so faintly his ears caught
the clear, brave voices of trumpets and the clatter of cavalry.
    Someone, it might have been Oosik, said "Ah!" Silk felt himself
smile, happy in the knowledge that he had not been alone in his
misery and impatience. On his right Saba murmured, "I can identify
the units as they approach, if you want, and tell you a little about
their history."
    He nodded. "Please do, General. I'd appreciate it very much." He
was tempted to ask her about the Fliers, as commander of the airship,
she might know something of interest--possibly even of value. But
it would be the height of bad manners for him to display curiosity
about anything other than the military might of Trivigaunte at this
moment.
    A young woman's dark face (after a brief uncertainty he recognized
Horn's sweetheart Nettle) appeared at the left side of the platform.
Loudly enough for him to overhear, she asked, "Wouldn't you like to
sit down, Your Cognizance? There's a man renting folding stools."
    Quetzal beamed. "How kind you are, my daughter! No, I've got
my baculus, so I'm better off than the others." (It was not entirely
true; Oosik had his heavy sword in front of him and was leaning
upon it as if it were a walking stick.) "Patera Calde isn't as lucky,"
Quetzal continued. "Would you like this kind girl to rent you a stool,
Patera Calde?"
    It would be unthinkable, of course, for him to sit while the
Prolocutor stood. Silk said, "Thank you very much,. Nettle. But no.
It's not necessary."
    "I've just decided," Quetzal told Nettle, "that though I wouldn't
like _one_ stool, I'd like two. One for me and one for Patera Calde.
Have you enough money for two?"
    Nettle assured him she had, and disappeared in the crowd.
    On Silk's right Saba muttered, "You men lack the stamina of
women. It's biology and nothing to be ashamed of, but it shows why
we make the best troopers." His cheeks burned; a subtle alteration
in Quetzal's posture hinted that he too had heard, and was awaiting
Silk's reply.
    What would Quetzal himself have replied? Saba's remark bordered
on inexcusable arrogance, surely, and such arrogance was punished
by the just gods--or so he had been taught in the schola. Reflecting,
he decided it was one of the few things he had been taught that seemed
undeniably true.
    He smiled. "You're entirely correct, General, as always. No observer
can help noticing that women endure far more than men, and with
greater fortitude."
    On Saba's right, Oosik muttered, "Our calde has a broken ankle.
Haven't you seen how he limps?"
    "It had slipped my mind, Calde." Saba sounded honestly contrite.
"Please accept my apologies."
    "You have nothing to apologize for, General. You stated an
inarguable fact. Sphigx and Scylla might apologize for facts, I
suppose--but a mortal?"
    "Just the same, I--here they come."
    The first riders, tall women on spirited horses, could be seen
through the arch. Each bore a slender lance, and a yellow pennant
stood out below the head of each lance. "The Companion
Cavalry," Saba told Silk in a low voice. "All are wellborn, and
in addition to their regular duties, they supply bodyguards to
the Rani."
    "I know nothing about these matters," Silk leaned toward her, "but
wouldn't slug guns be more effective than lances?"
    "You'll be able to see them better in a moment. They have slug
guns in scabbards, left of their saddles. Their lances are used in a
charge. You can't fire a slug gun with its muzzle at the horse's ears
without panicking the horse."
    Silk nodded, but could not help thinking that from the accounts
he had been given, Maytera Mint and her volunteers had fired
needlers when they charged the floaters in Cage Street. Presumably,
the moderate crack of a needler did not disturb a horse like the boom
of a slug gun. To him at least, it seemed that even a small needler like
Hyacinth's, with a capacity of fifty or a hundred needles, would be a
superior weapon.
    Nettle reappeared, holding up folding stools with canvas seats.
Quetzal accepted one, and Nettle went to the front of the platform
to pass the other to Silk.
    He took it and exhibited it to Saba. "Wouldn't you like this, General?
You're welcome to it."
    "Absolutely not!"
    "We could sit alternately, if you like," Silk persevered. "You could
rest a while, then return it to me."
    She shook her head, her lips tight; and Silk put down the stool,
empty, between them.
    The Companions had ridden in threes and had appeared to be
scanning the crowd; having kept a rough count, Silk felt sure there
had been no more than two hundred. The troopers behind them bore
no lances and were neither so regular in size nor so well mounted; but
they rode ten abreast, led by an officer in a dusty old cloak on the
finest horse that he had ever seen.
    "Generalissimo Siyuf," Saba muttered. "She's related to the Rani
on her father's side, as well as her mother's."
    "Your supreme military commander."
    Saba nodded. "A military genius."
    Surveying that hawk-like profile, he decided it might well be true,
and was certainly true enough to make Siyuf a valuable ally; genius
or not, she radiated resolution and intelligence. He could not help
wondering what she had been told about him, and what she thought
of him now, the insecure young ruler of a foreign city; the urge to comb
his untidy hair with his fingers, as he would have in a conversation
with Quetzal, was practically irresistible. For half a second, his eyes
locked with hers.
    Then Saba saluted, and her salute was returned negligently by
Siyuf; at once Oosik saluted her, in accord with the protocol agreed
to Tarsday. Behind her, rank after rank of disciplined young women
drew sabers and faced right, seemingly oblivious to the swirling dust
and biting wind.
    "Generalissimo Siyuf rides at the head of her own regiment. She
joined eighteen years ago as a brevet lieutenant, and it's known now
as the Generalissimo's Auxiliary Light Horse..."
    Saba fell silent; shivering, Silk murmured, "Yes?"
    "Your people aren't cheering, Calde. Not nearly enough. The
Generalissimo won't be pleased."
    He seized the opportunity. "Perhaps they're afraid they may panic
your horses." It had been juvenile, but for a minute or more he
enjoyed it.
    A wide break in what had threatened to become an infinite
succession of mounted troopers apparently marked the end of the
Generalissimo's Auxiliary Light Horse. It was followed by the yellow,
brown, and red flag of Trivigaunte, borne by an officer on horseback
and escorted by an honor guard clearly drawn from the Companion
Cavalry, and the banner by the band whose martial music had been
the first indication that the Rani's troops were near. The musicians,
marching with the precision of a picture in a drill book, were all men
and all bearded; the onlookers' cheers increased noticeably as they
passed.
    "They're really very good," Silk told Saba, hoping to restore friendly
relations. "Very skillful indeed, and our people seem to love their
music."
    "I'm an old campaigner, Calde."
    Privately wondering what the campaigns had been, and how
Generalissimo Siyuf had revealed her military genius in them, Silk
ventured, "So I understand."
    "Your people are cheering because they're men. You think we
keep our men chained in the cellar, but most of our support troops
are men."
    "With beards," Silk commented; it seemed safe.
    "Exactly. You shave yours off to make yourself look more like a
woman. I'm not criticizing you for it, in your position I'd do the
same thing. But we don't let our men do it at home. They can trim
their beards with scissors if they want to, and these support troops
are required to. But they can't shave, or pull the hairs out."
    Silk felt himself wince and hoped she had not noticed it.
    "We've only let them use scissors for about twenty years," she
continued. "When I was a lieutenant they couldn't, and you saw a
good many with beards below their waists. We let them tuck them
into their belts, and some people felt that was going too far. The
idea is that a beard makes it easy to cut a man's throat. You grab
it and jerk his head up."
    "I see," Silk said. Mentally, he cancelled the beard he had only just
resolved to grow.
    "These are Princess Silah's Own Dragoons. You'll notice--"
    Oosik interrupted. "I do not mean to begin an argument, General,
but I question that it is actually done. If it is, it cannot be done often.
Men are much stronger than women."
    Saba indicated the mounted troopers passing before them. "Horses
are stronger than women, Generalissimo."
    Silk chuckled.
    "Don't you believe me, Calde?" Saba was holding back a smile. "It's
true, I swear, in our city. We've been breeding chargers since Pas laid
his first brick, and our horses are stronger than women and--"
    "Wiser than men," Silk finished for her. "I don't doubt it for a
moment."
    "Who is?" inquired a new voice. "Everyone, I think."
    Silk turned to look as Generalissimo Siyuf stepped onto the
reviewing platform. "Here you are." He offered his hand. "I was
afraid you'd be delayed. It's an honor to greet you at last, and a
great pleasure. Welcome to Viron. I'm Calde Silk."
    She shook his hand awkwardly, unsmiling; her own was hard and
dry, not quite as strong as he had anticipated. "It is my joy to see your
lively city, Calde Silk. Most of my life I have spend in the south. Your
Viron is not more than a name on my maps, one week ago. My parade
is bad, I know. When they must march they cannot be drilled. When
they fight it is the same."
    Silk assured her that he had been enormously impressed by what
he had seen, and introduced her to Quetzal and Oosik.
    "We will see your troops after mine," she told Oosik. "We pass them
waiting. Ah, you have a stool for me, Calde. Thank you." She seated
herself between Silk and Saba. "This is most welcome. I have been
up since three, in the saddle since five. I have tire two horses. I must
have a fresh one for this."
    "It was very good of you to join us after you'd marched," Silk
told her sincerely. "We've all heard great things about you. We were
anxious to meet you."
    Siyuf's eyes were on her troops. "I do not come for you, Calde
Silk. I come for me. Soon we fight together. Is this right? Or does
this mean you will fight me and I you?"
    "No. That's perfecfly correct. Together, we'll fight the Ayuntamiento,
if we must. I'd much rather we didn't have to."
    "And I. Both." Siyuf pulled her cap down and drew her streaked
old cloak over her knees.
    For a time, no one spoke. Silk pretended to watch the parade as
cavalry gave way to infantry, attractive young women who saluted
the reviewing platform by holding their slug guns vertically at their
left shoulders and marching with a stiff stride that reminded him of
sibyls dancing at a sacrifice.
    Mostly, he studied Siyuf and reexamined her remarks, and his
own. Her cap was clean and well-shaped, but by no means new,
her cloak frankly soiled; no doubt she had changed horses as she
had said, but she had not changed clothes. Her boots were slightly
scuffed, her spurs (he risked a surreptitious glance at Saba's feet)
markedly larger than her subordinate's.
    She had not hesitated to claim the empty stool. Silk tried to put
himself in the place of one of the expressionless women marching
past. Would they feel ashamed of their Generalissimo? Would they
think her weak?
    Would he, if he were somehow a member of Siyuf's horde? After
arguing the point with himself; he decided that he would not. Sitting
when others had to stand was one of the surest signs of rank, and her
clothes proclaimed that she need answer to no one, that no bullying
sergeant or trumpeting colonel dared rebuke her. In imagination,
Silk soared from the platform to a gondola of the airship, and
from it scanned the parade. There was the reviewing platform, on
it various dignitaries of Viron and Trivigaunte. Who was in charge?
Who commanded the rest?
    It was unquestionably Siyuf, who was seated with Quetzal and
himself to her left and Saba and Oosik to her fight--the civil
authorities, religious and civic, on one side in other words; and the
military, Trivigaunti and Vironese, on the other. When Viron's own
troopers marched past, they would receive the same impression.
    "Is it always so cold here in the north?" Siyuf pulled her cloak more
tightly about her.
    "No," Silk told her. "We had a very long summer this year, and a
very warm one."
    "I wish we have come to your city then, Calde. When I was small my
teachers told me this north was cold. I learn to write it on examinations,
but I do not believe. Why should it be so?"
    "I have no idea." Silk considered. "I learned it just as you did, and
I don't believe I ever thought of questioning it. To tell you the truth,
I accepted just about everything I was taught, including many things
I ought to have questioned."
    "The sun." Siyuf pointed up without looking upward. "This begin
at the east and end at the west. That is only because we say it so, I
know. Here you may speak different. But from East Pole to West
Pole or West Pole to East. Your day in Viron is soon our day in
Trivigaunte. Is that true?"
    "Yes," Silk said. "Of course."
    "Then what do you do to make your day so cold?"
    Saba laughed, and Silk and Oosik joined her.
    Quetzal seemed not to have heard, contemplating the ranked women
passing before him through half-closed eyes. Studying him sidelong,
Silk sensed a need, a longing, that he himself did not feel, and
puzzled over it until he recalled that Saba had said that sacrifices
were not offered in her city. The Chapter would be different there,
quite possibly known by another name; each of the marching women
was, in that case, a potential convert to Viron's more dignified mode
of worship. No wonder then that Quetzal eyed them so hungrily.
To amend the religious thinking of even a few would be a signal
accomplishment and a glorious conclusion to his long, meritorious
career. Furthermore, there were thousands and thousands of them,
the vast majority still young, still malleable, as Saba for example
was not.
    As if the comparison had stirred her to speech, Saba asked, "What
do you think, Generalissimo? A fine body of women?"
    Oosik declared that he had been favorably impressed.
    "How old are they?" Silk inquired suddenly; he had not intended
to speak.
    "We take them at seventeen," Saba told him. "There's a year of
training before they're assigned to permanent units. After that we
keep them four years."
    "Do you mean that they have to become troopers? What if one
doesn't want to?"
    Saba pointed. "See that one with the big feet? And her over there,
the tall one with a stripe?"
    "At the end of the line? Yes, I see her."
    Saba pointed again. "There, that little fat one. None of them
wanted to."
    "I see. I'm surprised you know these troopers so well, General. Is
this group a part of your airship's crew?"
    "No, Calde." Saba glanced across Siyuf's head with the suppressed
smile he had noticed earlier. "In weather like this we need everybody
on board. I picked them by chance, but that's the truth about them.
Who'd want to be a trooper?"
    Silk glanced at Oosik, who was looking at him; troopers in Viron
served voluntarily.
    Another band, then hundreds of saddleless horses herded by
mounted men. Seeing Silk's puzzled expression, Saba explained,
"They're remounts. When a trooper's horse is shot, she has to fight
on foot unless there's a remount for her."
    Siyuf looked up at him. "Do you not have remounts for your own
cavalry?" He found her steady eyes disconcerting.
    Oosik said quickly, "Our practice is to issue two horses to each
mounted trooper. He is responsible for their care, and is to ride
them alternately unless one goes lame. In peacetime he rides one on
one day and the other on the next."
    "You, Generalissimo. Were you a horse officer? We say cavalrywoman,
but I do not think you will say that here. A cavalryman,
I think?"
    Oosik made her a small bow. "Correct, Generalissimo. No, I was not,
nor are most of our officers. We have only one mounted company per
brigade, though the second has two at present. My son is a cavalryman,
however."
    For the first time, Siyuf smiled; seeing it, Silk could readily imagine
her subordinates risking their lives to earn that smile. She said, "I hope
to meet him. Tomorrow or the day after. We shall speak of horses."
    "He will be honored, Generalissimo. Unfortunately he is unwell at
present."
    "I see." She turned back to the parade, and her voice became
indifferent. "It is sad that boys must fight here."
    Mules hauling cannon followed the horse herd. "I expected camels,"
Silk told her.
    "Horses and camels do not make friends," she said absently. "It is best
we hold them apart. Mules are more..." She snapped her fingers.
    "Easygoing," Saba supplied. "They don't mind camels as much as
most horses do."
    "Does it really take eight to pull one of these big guns?"
    "On your street of fine stones? No. But over our desert where
is no road, many more sometimes. Then one must lend to another
its mules and wait. I have seen sixteen unable to pull a single
howitzer from the mud. That was not on this march, or we would
not be here."
    Saba asked, "Didn't you notice the mixed gun crews, Calde? I
expected you to ask about them."
    Already the last cannon was rumbling past. After it came a long
triple line of small carts with male drivers; each cart was drawn by
a pair of mules.
    Silk said, "I'm accustomed to working with women, General.
With Maytera Marble and Maytera Mint at my manteion, before
I became calde--with Maytera Rose as well until she left us.
Your mixed crews seem more normal to me than," he groped for
an inoffensive phrase, ending lamely, "than the other thing, just
women or just men."
    "Men drive the mules and hump shells. They do those almost as
well as women could. Women lay the guns and fire them."
    Siyuf asked, "Where is General Mint? Did you not call her Mother
Mint just now? Or are there two of this name?"
    "No, they're the same person. She's a sibyl as well as a general,
just as I'm an augur as well as calde." Silk was tempted to add that
he hoped to drop the first soon.
    "She marches with her troops today?"
    "I'm afraid not." A bare-faced lie would serve best, but he was
unwilling to provide one. "We're still engaged with the enemy,
Generalissimo."
    If Siyuf suspected, nothing in her face revealed it. "I am sorry I
do not meet her. Next you see camels."
    Silk, who had seen camels singly or in small caravans of a dozen or
a score, had scarcely imagined that there were so many in the whorl--not
hundreds but thousands, innumerable camels tied one behind
another in strings of thirty or more, each such string led by a single
camel-driver riding its big lead camel. They grunted continually as
they walked, peering at everything with haughty eyes in faces that
recalled Remora's.
    "They carried food, mostly," Saba explained, "and oats and barley
for the horses and mules. They're lightly loaded now."
    Here was one of the most sensitive points. "You have to realize
there's very little food in Viron." Silk picked his way among snares.
"We're delighted to have you, and we'll do our best to feed you and
your troops; but the harvest was bad, and our farmers have been
hoarding food because of the fighting."
    "We know your difficulties." Siyuf's dust-colored cap and hunched
shoulders spoke. "We will send out foraging parties."
    "Thank you," Silk said. "That's extremely kind of you."
    Oosik stared.
    "Which reminds me," Silk hurried on, "I've planned a small, informal
dinner tonight at the Calde's Palace." (He found he could not bring
himself to say, "_At my palace_.") "You're all invited, and I hope that
all of you can attend. We haven't got a real kitchen yet, but I've
arranged to have Ermine's cater our dinner; Ermine's serves the best
food in our city, or at least it has that reputation."
    "I must bring with me a staff officer." Siyuf turned to face him.
"This our custom demands. May I do this?"
    "Of course. She will be very welcome."
    "Then I come. Saba also, if you wish it."
    "I certainly do," Silk assured Siyuf.
    Saba nodded reluctandy.
    Oosik said, "You may rely upon me, Calde."
    "Thank you. And you, Your Cognizance?"
    With the help of the baculus, Quetzal rose. "I've no food, Patera
Calde. That's what you'll talk about, isn't it?"
    "I'm sure we will; we have that to discuss, along with many other
things. You have wisdom, Your Cognizance, and we may need it
more than food."
    "Then I'll be there. I may even have suggestions."

                  Chapter 5 -- The Man from Mainframe

A hand signal held the group parallel to the human stream below;
Sciathan reinforced it with helmet notification: "Two east." As each
agreed, he checked them off mentally: Grian, Sumaire, Mear, and
Aer were still willing to accept his leadership. His right arm stiff,
he slapped toward Viron's thatch and shingles, palm down. "Going
lower." Fingertips to forehead. "You may follow if you choose."
    Aer almost certainly would.
    Was this man Auk among the marchers' creeping rectangles? One
of the spectators whose cheers had dwindled to chirps in the vastness
of the sky? Either way this Auk was a lone individual, his fellow
citizens a myriad of myriads. As he had from the beginning, Sciathan
told himself that he should be bursting with pride; for this daunting,
almost impossible mission, Mainframe had chosen them.
    The possibility that Mainframe wished to destroy them had to be
dismissed unheard, like the equal possibility that he, Aer, and the
rest had been chosen because they were expendable.
    Right arm pointing, hand cupped. "I fly east."
    Four acknowledgements. They were all coming.
    He had begun a circuit of the city. They would have to land soon,
have to remove and secure their wings, question and persuade its
inhabitants in the Common Tongue. Whether he was a miracle
worker or a malcontent, his fluency had no doubt been a factor.
    Where was there a good, big field, with people near but not too
near, close to the city? Below him, a house with a desert-colored
peaked roof sprang up like a mushroom.
    Right arm extended, palm flat, motioning down. "Lower."
    It seemed that he could read the character of each of his
companions in their acknowledgments: Grian weighing the odds; Sumaire
narrow-eyed, her hands deadly still; Mear frantic for adventure; Aer
concerned for everybody except herself.
    At this altitude they were within the reach of small-arms fire, and
small arms were evident; all the overseers of the bearded men erecting
tents seemed to have them. He reminded himself that once they had
landed the presence or absence of weapons would make no difference,
that any mob of Cargos could kill them with stones or sticks. In fact
the weapons that these Cargos had should be an advantage; armed,
they would be less apt to feel threatened.
    Pointing arm, hand a fist. "North." Two fingers down, separated.
"Terminate flight."
    "_Aye, Sumaire_." Taut face, dry lips, hooded eyes.
    "_Aye, Mear_!" Descending too fast and glorying in it.
    "_Aye, Grian_." Picking his spot.
    "_Aye, Aer_". Worrying about him, worried not that he would crash
but that he would bungle his approach.
    Grassy land, a little uneven. No more time for character or planning.
Reverse thrust, legs down and feet together, hands braced for a fall
that must be straight forward.
    Mear was already down, having pulled up at the precise moment
and landed striding; reckless though Mear was, no more skilled flier
ever tuned the sun. Now he, too, would have to land without a fall
or lose what authority he had. Four cubits, stall, drop into the
wind. Did it!
    At once a gust nearly blew him off his feet.
    Grian, Surnaire and Aer came down as he was taking off his
wings and PM, Aer too close, perhaps; Sumaire four-pointing; Grian
dropping a full eight, wings bow-bent when he hit.
    Big women were running toward them from the tent ground,
pursued, overtaken, and surpassed by a lone woman on horseback.
    "Peace!" He raised both hands, palms out. "We who serve the gods
mean no harm."
    The rider reined up, a handweapon drawn. "There are no gods but
the goddess!"
    Could the database be wrong? "We are her supporters and
servitors!"
    A dozen towering women surrounded them, some staring, some
leveling short, gap-mouthed guns, some clearly waiting for the
mounted woman's instructions.
    "We come from Mainframe," Sciathan explained. "Mainframe, the
home of the goddess. At her order we come to find Auk." Privately
he wondered which goddess it was.
    "We'll help you, but first you must give your weapons to us." There
was calculation in the mounted woman's eyes.
    Aer said, "No gun, no knife."
    The mounted woman's attention went to her at once. "You're in
charge?"
    Aer shook her head. "Fliers." She touched her chin. "Aer I am.
All fly."
    Mear joined them carrying his wings and PM, and accompanied
by a gaggle of big women. "Each is one. Five ones."
    "Surrender your weapons," the woman on horseback told him.
    Coming up behind Mear, Sumaire held out her hands. "Mine. With
these I kill."
    Calculation again. "You're the leader."
    "Yes. My own."
    Mear said, "I am mine. No weapon. No gun. You give?" One of
the big women laughed loudly and the horse shied, neck bent and
hooves dancing.
    "Quiet, you!" Pulling up the reins, the mounted woman scrutinized
them. "_Marhaba! Betifham 'arabi?_"
    Aer and Mear looked to Sciathan; he could only shrug.
    She holstered her weapon and dismounted; her smile could not
vanquish something vindictive that had made her face its own. "We
started badly," she told Aer. "Let's start over and be friends. I'm
Major Sirka, Flier Aer. I command the advance party of the Horde
of Trivigaunte. I can't welcome you to this city, because this city's
not mine. Mine's to the south. You have flown over it many times.
You must know it."
    Aer nodded and smiled. "Beautiful!"
    "This man," Major Sirka nodded at Sciathan, "came looking for a
Vironese, another man. Are you looking for a woman?"
    Sumaire said, "The man. Where will we find Auk?"
    Grian, who arrived still wearing his PM, said slowly, "We are not
like you are, Woman."
    "I wouldn't expect you to be, little man. Now listen to me.
You're..."
    Her voice faded; she had become a painted figure, an image of gray
on a featureless plain. Sciathan felt his lips drawn back and lifted in
a grin by someone else.
    Aer gaped at him, eyes wide as her mouth. Now, when all other
color had fled, the blue of her eyes was still bright. Someone else
reached out to her with Sciathan's arms, and in a distant place she
screamed.
    The flash and boom of the shot so startled him that almost he
woke; colors were briefly real, the scarlet-daubed thing at his feet
Aer. He felt himself thrust violently down and back into a helpless
dark at the edge of oblivion.
    Sumaire slew with a touch and Mear fought with desperate valor
until more shots threw both to the ground in their first embrace.
Still carrying his wings, Grian shot straight up. He, Sciathan, should
fly too; but his PM was gone, his hands bound. Turning, he saw his
wings and kicked and stamped them.

"Let me think, Patera." Maytera Marble cocked her head to one side.
"The generalissimo from Trivigaunte and another one, but we don't
know her name. I'm assuming it will be a woman."
    Silk nodded. "I believe we can rely on it."
    "We don't know how much either one eats. Probably a lot. Then
there's General Saba and Generalissimo Oosik. I've seen them, and
they'll want a whorl of food. Are each of them going to bring
somebody, too?"
    "That's a good point." Silk considered. "Oosik's almost certain to,
because Siyuf said she'd bring one of her staff. Let's assume that
they both do. That's six so far."
    "All big eaters."
    "I'm sure you're right, but His Cognizance and I won't eat much
and you'll eat nothing."
    "Am I invited?" It was difficult to read Maytera Marble's expression.
    "Of course you are. You're the hostess, the mistress of the house--of
this palace, I should have said."
    "I thought Chenille might do it, Patera."
    "She's a guest." Silk settled himself more comfortably in the big
wingback chair, conscious that he would have to leave it soon. "She's
here only because she may be in danger."
    "She's a real help, that girl. She does everything I tell her to and
looks for more. There are times when I have to hold her back,
Patera."
    "Now I understand. You were afraid I wouldn't invite her, that I'd
ask her to wait on table or something. She's invited--or she will be
as soon as I see her. I want her, and your granddaughter and Master
Xiphias; I sent Horn to tell him."
    "I teach arithmetic." Maytera Marble sighed. "And now I want to
count on my fingers. What's worse, I can't. Only up to five, and
we had six with Generalissimo Oosik and all those foreign officers.
You and His Cognizance make eight. The old fencing master nine.
Chenille, ten. Mucor and me, twelve. If you're going to invite anybody
else, you'd better make it two, Patera. Thirteen at table's not lucky. I
don't know why, but you're supposed to bring somebody in off the
street if you have to, to make fourteen."
    Silk stood up. "No, that should be all. Now come with me. I asked
Hossaan to bring the floater, and I think I heard it a moment ago."
    "Where...? I can't go away, Patera. Not with company for dinner
tonight."
    Silk had anticipated that; he imagined himself arguing with
Siyuf and was firm. "Of course you can. You're going to. Go
get your hand."
    "No. No." Maytera Marble's one functioning hand gripped the arm
of her chair so tightly that the upholstery rose like dough between its
metal fingers. "You don't understand. You're a good man. Too good,
to tell the truth. Too good to me, as you always have been. But I've
a thousand things to do between now and dinner. What time will it
be? Six?"
    "Eight. I do understand, Maytera, and that's why we're going to
that shop the valet--what was his name?"
    "Marl. Patera, I can't."
    "Exactly. You can't because you have only one hand. You have
to tell Chenille, for the most part, and get her to do it. So we're
going to get your right hand reattached. As you say, there's a lot to
be done, and with two hands you'll be able to do twice as much as
Chenille, instead of half as much."
    Without waiting for her to reply, he strode to the door. "I'll be
outside; I want to ask Hossaan why their generalissimo speaks the
way she does. We'll expect you in five minutes, with your hand." As
he stepped into the reception hall, he added, "You and Chenille, and
your granddaughter Bring her, too."
    Maytera Marble's last wailing "_Patera_..." was cut off by the
closing of the door. Grinning, Silk limped the length of the reception
hall and got an overrobe of plain black fleece from the cloakroom
off the foyer.
    The outer door swung toward him before he could open it, and
Hossaan stepped inside with Oreb perched on his shoulder. "Your
bird was out there, Calde. I guess he couldn't find a window open,
so I brought him in."
    "Girls fly," Oreb aoaked, fluttering. "Bird see."
    "Yes, and just in time, silly bird. Come here."
    Oreb hopped to Silk's wrist. "Men perch!"
    "He's been flying up to the airship," Silk explained. "By now he
probably understands it a great deal better than I do. They lower
people from it in a thing like an oversized birdcage, and bring people
and supplies up; that seems to interest him." He hesitated, then waved
toward a long divan. "Let's sit down for a moment. There's something
I want to ask you."
    "Sure thing, Calde."
    "We could do this in your floater, but I have the feeling there'd be
somebody wanting to talk to me, and I don't want to be interrupted.
Did you see the parade?"
    Hossaan nodded. "I was keeping an eye on you up on that stand,
Calde, in case you wanted me."
    "Good. Then you saw me talking to Generalissimo Siyuf and
General Saba. Do you know either of them, by the way?"
    "Personally, you mean, Calde? No, I don't. I know what they
look like."
    "You haven't spoken to them."
    Hossaan shook his head.
    "But you've traveled. You're from Trivigaunte originally?"
    "Yes, Calde. I was born there. You'd be a fool to take anything I
tell you at face value. You realize that, I'm sure."
    "Good man!" Oreb defended him. "Men fly. Perch!"
    "Of course. I understand that your primary loyalty must be to your
native city."
    "It is. And you're right. I've traveled more than most men ever do.
I can tell you about some of the places I've been, if you like, but I
can't always tell you what I was doing there."
    Silk nodded thoughtfully. "Here in Viron, we sometimes say that
someone speaks Vironese, as if it were a separate language. It isn't, of
course. It's just that we have certain idiomatic expressions that aren't
used, as far as I know, in other cities. There are words we pronounce
differently as well. I know very little about other cities, but I wouldn't
be surprised to learn that they have peculiarities of their own."
    "That's right. I think I know what you're going to ask me, but
go on."
    "Is there any reason you shouldn't tell me about it?"
    "Not a one."
    "All right. I was going to say that there actually are other languages,
languages quite different from ours. Latin, for example, and French.
We have French and Latin books, and there are passages in the
Writings in those languages, which makes them of interest to scholars
and even to ordinary augurs like me. Presumably there are cities in
which those languages are spoken just as we speak Vironese here."
    "The Common Tongue," Hossaan said. "That's what travelers
generally call it, and it's what we call it in Trivigaunte."
    "I see." Silk's forefinger traced small circles on his cheek. "In that
case you, from your foreign perspective, would say that both Viron
and Palustria, for instance, speak the Common Tongue? Palustrian is
similar enough to Vironese that one might have to listen to a speaker
for several minutes to determine his native city. Or so I was taught
at the schola."
    "You've got it, Calde."
    "Very well then. I can imagine a foreign city in which another
language is spoken, Latin let us say. And I can easily imagine
one like Palustria, where the Common Tongue is spoken;
I can't prove it, but I suspect that there may be more differences
between the speech of a Vironese of the upper class and
a beggar or a bricklayer than there are between an ordinary
merchant from Viron and a like merchant from Palustria. What
I cannot imagine is a city in which some citizens speak the
Common Tongue, as you call it, and others Latin or another
language."
    Hossaan nodded, but said nothing.
    "Men fly!" Oreb announced, having lost patience with his owner.
He launched himself from Silk's shoulder and flapped around the
room spiraling higher. "Fly! Fly! Girls! Men!" He extended his wings
in a long glide. "Perch!"
    "Great Pas guide us!" Maytera Marble was coming down the
staircase with Chenille and Mucor. "What's gotten into your bird,
Patera?"
    "I don't know," said Silk--who thought, however, that he did.
"Hossaan, he came to you while you were waiting in the floater, is
that right?"
    "He landed on the back of the seat, Calde, and started tailing. I
couldn't understand him at first."
    "Yet another language, or at least another way of speaking the
Common Tongue." Silk smiled wryly. "What did he say?"
    "'Bird out, bird out, Silk in.' Like that, Calde."
    Silk nodded. "Go out and wait for us. Put the canopy up. I
don't know how long the wait will be, and there's no point in
your freezing."
    As Hossaan left, Chenille asked, "Aren't we going, Patera?"
    "In a moment. Step into the library, please, everybody. Oreb, where
are the flying men and flying girls who perched?"
    Oreb hopped to a corner occupied by a fat-bellied vase and rapped
it sharply with his beak.
    "Northeast, Mucor," Silk muttered. "Did you see that?"
    Her skull-like face turned toward him as a pale funeral lily lifts
its blossom to the sun. "Flying, Silk?"
    "Fliers, I believe. The people who fly on wings made of something
that looks like gauze."
    Chenille added, "Like the Trivigaunti pterotroopers, only their
wings are longer and look like they'd be lighter."
    The night chough flew to Silk's shoulder.
    "One more question, Oreb. Were there houses where the flying
people landed?"
    "House now! Quick house!"
    Silk took a handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, and draped
it over his spread fingers. "Like this?"
    "Yes, yes!"
    "Sit down, please," Silk told the three women. "Mucor, as a great
favor to me, and your grandmother, too, do you think you could
find out what these Fliers are doing?"
    When she did not answer, he said, "Search the grazing land north
and east of the city, where the Rani's men are putting up their tents.
I believe that may be what he means when he says quick houses. The
Fliers will have taken off their wings when they landed, I imagine, and
they'll probably leave at least one of their number to guard them."
    "As Patera says, this is for both of us, Mucor." Maytera Marble
patted her knee. "I don't know why it's important, but I'm sure it
must be."
    Chenille remarked, "You know, I've been wanting to have a look at
this ever since that Trivigaunti saw her in the mirror, only now I can't
even tell if she's doing it. You ought to be chanting and sprinkling
perfume on Thelxiepeia's picture."
    "The miracle--or magic, if that's what you wish to call it--is in
Mucor," Silk told her.
    "Auk believes in the gods, Patera. He's really religious in his way,
and he knows I had Scylla inside running things. But what I'm seeing
wouldn't make him believe in this."
    "Auk," Mucor repeated suddenly.
    Oreb cocked his head like Maytera Marble. "Where Auk?"
    Mucor's toneless voice seemed to emanate from a forsaken place
beyond the universe. "Where Auk is... Silk? Chain my hands. Feet
smash strong-wings."

                  Chapter 6 -- In Spider's Web

"Are we truly, um, abandoned, Maytera? Solitary? Or are there
other ears, eh? In this dark and--er--noisome. That's the
question, hum?"
    "I don't know. I have no way of telling. Do you?" The question
Maytera Mint herself was debating was whether it would be disrespectful
to lie down before Remora did.
    "I--ah--no. I have none, I confess."
    "Do you have a secret that would let Potto and the other councillors
return to power in defiance of the gods?"
    "I would--um--General. Be safer not, eh? Not to speak upon
such, er, topics."
    "It certainly would if you had one, Your Eminence. Do you?" She
was trying fo forget how thirsty she was.
    "Positively not. Not privy to military matters, eh?"
    "Neither do I, Your Eminence, so let them listen all they want."
It was ecstasy to take her shoes off; for half a minute she debated
taking off her long black stockings, too, but selfcontrol prevailed.
"By now Bison's taken charge. Or someone else has, but probably
it's Bison. He was my best officer, absolutely steady in a crisis
but not very imaginative. If he can find somebody a little more
creative to advise him, Bison should give the Ayuntamiento a very
difficult time."
    "I am, er, suffused with pleasure at the prospect."
    "So am I, Your Eminence. I just hope it's true." She leaned back
against the wall.
    "You will, um, reproach me."
    "Never, Your Eminence."
    "You, or others. One never lacks for, um, critics? Patera Feelers.
Faultfinders. You will--um--er--vociferate that as a, um, intermediary
I must restrain my partisanship."
    She laid her arms on her knees, and her head upon her arms.
    "I rejoin, General, by, er, asseverating that I have done so. And
do so, eh? In our, um, current instance and beyond, hey? It is not
partisanship but reason, hey? I am a man of peace. I have so,
um, declared myself. Under flag of truce, eh? Having consulted
Brigadier Erne. Having likewise consulted Calde Silk. Brought the,
um, exceedingly significant--hum. You, General. I brought you to
discuss, er, armistice. An--ah--feat of diplomacy? Triumph. Is my,
er, our persons. Are they respected? They are not!"
    "I'm going to stretch out, if that won't upset you, Your Eminence.
I'll tuck my skirt around my legs."
    "No, no, Mayt--General. I can scarcely make out your, ah, self in
this--er--stygian. There is one quarrel that cannot be mediated, hey?"
    "We certainly haven't succeeded in mediating this one."
    "I refer to the quarrel between good and, um, evil. Yes, evil. As a man
of the cloth, an augur erstwhile destined, eh? Destined for--ah--greatness.
As that, um, augur, fallible, eh? At whiles foolish, eh? Yet
sensible of the ultimate, hey? I cannot mediate all quarrels, for I cannot
mediate that one. I have set down my name in the lists, eh? Long since.
I am for good. I cannot close my eyes to evil. Will not. Both."
    "That's good." Maytera Mint closed hers. The only light in the dark,
bare room was a long streak of watery green under the door; closing
her eyes should have made little difference, yet she found it deeply
restful.
    "If--er--ah--um--hum," Remora said; or at least, so she heard
him. The facade of the Corn Exchange was falling very slowly, while
she waited powerless to move.

She woke with a start. "Your Eminence?"
    "Yes, General?"
    "Some dreams are sent by the gods."
    "Ah--indubitably."
    "Has anyone ever proposed that all dreams are? That every dream
is a message from the gods?"
    "I--um. Cannot recollect, eh? I shall devote thought to the, er,
query. Possibly. Quite possibly."
    "Because I just had a very commonplace sort of dream, Your
Eminence, but I feel that it may have been sent by a god."
    "Unusual? Extraordinary. If I do not presume, hey? No wish to,
er, intrude. But I offer my, um, if desired."
    "I dreamed I was standing on the street in front of the Corn
Exchange. It was falling on me, but I couldn't run."
    "I--ah--see."
    "It actually happened a few days ago. We pulled it down with oxen.
I could've run then, but I didn't want to. I wanted to die, so I stood
there and watched it fall until Rook carried me out of danger. He
was nearly killed, as well as I."
    "The--ah--import? I fail to see it, General."
    "A god, I think, was telling me that since I'd chosen to die then,
I shouldn't be afraid of dying now, that nothing they can do to me
could be worse than being crushed by that building, which was the
way I'd chosen to die not long ago."
    "What god, hey? What god, General? Have you any notion?"
    She knew from an alteration in Remora's voice that he had
straightened up. She had, temporarily at least, ransomed him from
self-pity; she wished fervently that someone would ransom her. "I
haven't the least idea which god may have favored me, Your
Eminence, assuming one did. I don't recall anything that would
furnish a clue."
    "No animals, eh?"
    "None, Your Eminence. Just the street, and the falling stones. It
was after shadelow, and all I remember is how dark they looked
against the skylands."
    "Not, um, Day-Ruling Pas. Sun god, eh? Master of the Long Sun
and all that. Tartaros, hum? Night god. Dark stones, dark god.
Bats--ah--flittering?"
    Maytera Mint rolled her head so that the tip of her sharp little
nose made a small arc of negation. "No animals, Your Eminence, as
I said. None whatsoever."
    "I shall--ah--prefer. I prefer to, um, suspend? No, table. Table
the question, eh? If only for the nonce. In my, er, not inconsiderable
experience an, um, signature may be--ah--descried by one who,
eh? Shall peer about. Let us peer about, Maytera. What day is this,
would you say?"
    "Now?"
    "Ah--yes. And then, eh? What day did you feel it to be in your,
um, envisagement?"
    "If you mean the night it happened...?"
    "No. Did it, ah, seem to you a particular day, eh? Were you, um,
conscious of a--ah--the calendar?"
    "No, Your Eminence.
    "What day is it now? As we, ah, converse."
    How many times had their captors halted to eat and sleep? Three?
Four? "I can't be sure." Maytera Mint was beginning to regret
mentioning her dream; she let her eyelids fall.
    "Guess, General. What day?"
    "Hieraxday or Thelxday, I suppose."
    "Bodies, eh? Vultures?"
    "No. Just the skylands, the building and the stones."
    "Mirrors, monkeys, deer? Cards, teacups--ah--string? Any colored
string? Poultry, nothing of the sort?"
    "No, Your Eminence. Nothing of the sort."
    "Space--um--largeness? Skylands, eh? You were--ah--not
insensible of them?"
    "I knew that they were there, Your Eminence. In fact they seemed
significant, though I can't say how."
    "We, er, progress? Yes, progress. Actually happened, you said?
Building fell, eh? You rescued."
    "Yes, it was at the beginning of the fighting. I mean to say, Your
Eminence, that it was at what we call the beginning now. At the time
we felt we'd been fighting a long while, that those of us who'd been
fighting from the start had done a great deal of it." Maytera Mint
paused, reflecting.
    "We were like children who have gone to palaestra for the first
time the year before. When the next year starts, children like that feel
themselves old hands, veterans. They give advice to the new children
and patronize them, when the truth is that their own education has
scarcely begun."
    Remora grunted assent. "I have observed, um, similar."
    "And now--I mean before we went out to that house where the
calde was rescued. Things had quieted down. We had the Fourth
penned up, and nobody wanted to go after it right away. We sensed
that Erne was wavering, and you confirmed it. The Ayuntamiento was
down in these tunnels, and those of us who thought about it saw how
difficult it would be to root them out. We dared hope that some other
way could be found. That was why I went out there with you."
    She waited for Remora to speak, but he did not.
    "People came forward. They would appear, so to speak, to tell us
how bravely they'd fought and all they'd done. And I'd think, who
are you? Why didn't I ever notice you before, if you were such a
famous fighter? Bison had done everything, taken part in almost
every fight.
    "And Wool, I'd think. Wool has done a great deal, never shirked,
not always saying I'll do it, General, like Bison, but when we were
repulsed and I'd look back and see one person still there, still shooting
when the rest had fallen back and there were hoppies--Guardsmen,
Your Eminence, troopers of the Civil Guard--close enough to touch,
it would be Wool.
    "Then I'd remember that Wool was dead, and think where were
the ones who rode with me, where was Kingcup who brought us her
horses when her horses were all she had? I hope she's alive, Your
Eminence, but I couldn't locate her, couldn't find her, and all these
new people telling about the wonderful things they'd done, when I
didn't remember them at all. Skink led an attack on the Palatine and
had both his less blown off. Where was he? Where was the giant with
the gaps in his teeth? I don't even remember his name, but I remember
looking up at them, he must have been twice my height, and wondering
who had been big enough to hit him way up there, and what he'd hit
him with, and what had happened after he did it."
    "What was his name?"
    "The giant, Your Eminence? I can't recall it. Cat? Or Tomcat,
something like that. No, Gib. That was it. Gib. It means a male cat,
Your Eminence, so that would make it Snarling Sphigx, the Patroness
of Trivigaunte. Cats are hers, cats and lions. But Gib wasn't in my
dream."
    "The man who saved you."
    "Oh, him. It was Rook, but rooks aren't sacred to any god, are
they, Your Eminence? Eagles for Pas. Hawks, too, because hawks are
little eagles, or something like them. Thrushes and larks for Molpe,
but rooks can't sing. Poultry for Thelxiepeia, as Your Eminence said
a moment ago, but rooks--wait.
    "I've got it, Your Eminence. I was thinking lists, wasn't I? Thinking
about lists instead of animals and what they look like. And a rook
looks like a night chough, like the calde's pet. The calde got him to
give to the god who enlightened him. People think it was Pas, almost
everyone seems to think that, but I asked the calde about it and he
said it wasn't, that it was one of the minor gods, the Outsider. I
don't know much about him, Your Eminence. I'm sure you must
know much more than I, but night choughs must be sacred to him.
Or if they aren't, they're associated with him now, because that was
the sacrifice the calde chose. Isn't that correct, Your Eminence?"
    Remora did not reply.
    Maytera Mint thought of getting up to see whether he had gone.
It seemed to her that she had slept even as she spoke aloud; but it
was too delicious, far too delicious to lie where she was, with Bison
in the other bed snoring softly and Auk to watch over them. "Auk?"
she called softly. "Auk?"
    Auk would bring them water, would surely bring water if she asked
for it, a carafe of cold clear water, fresh from the well, and glasses.
More loudly this time: "Auk!"
    Yeah, Mother. Right here.

"_Auk_, my son?"
    "Sorry, Patera." Shivering in the afternoon sunlight, Auk returned
his attention to Incus. "Thought I heard something."
    "You desired to speak with me?"
    "Right. Back in the manteion you explained what he said." Auk felt
uneasy among the Palatine's gracious mansions of gray stone; until
now he had visited them only to steal.
    "I _endeavored_ to explain, certainly. It was my _sacred duty_ to do so,
thus I _strove_ to make clear the _divine utterances_."
    "You were clear as polymer, Patera," Hammerstone declared loyally.
"I felt like I could understand every word Pas ever said before you
finished."
    Voices called for them to halt, and they did.
    "Bios with slug guns, Patera. I heard them behind us, but I was
hoping they wouldn't mess around."
    Afraid he was about to be arrested, Auk grumbled, "Can't a man
walk uphill any more?"
    By then the patrol leader had noted Incus's black robe. "Sorry,
Patera. It's the soldier. They say some are on our side. Is he one?"
    Hammerstone nodded. "You got it."
    "_Indeed_, my son." Incus favored the patrol with a toothy smile.
"You have my _sacred word_ as an augur and your--well, let us not
go into _that_. You have my _sacred word_ that Corporal _Hammerstone_
longs for the overthrow of the Ayuntamiento, even as I do myself."
    "I'm Sergeant Linsang," the patrol leader said. "Are you going to
the Grand manteion, Patera?"
    Incus shook his head. "To the _Prolocutor's Palace_, my son. I am
a resident _thereof_" His voice grew confidential. "I have been favored
with a _theophany. Great Pas himself_ so favored _me_. It is not the first,
but the _second_ time that I have been thus _favored_ by the gods. You
will _scarcely_ credit it, I know, for I scarcely credit it _myself_. But
_both_ my companions were present upon the _latter_ occasion. They will
attest to the _theophany_, I feel quite _certain_."
    One of Linsang's troopers raised his slug gun so that it no longer
pointed at Auk. "Aren't you Auk? Auk the prophet?"
    "That's me."
    "He's been going all over the city," the trooper explained to Linsang,
"telling everybody to get ready for Pas's Plan. He says Tartaros told
him to."
    "He did," Auk declared stoutly. "Pas wants me to keep on doing
it, too. What about you, trooper? Are you set to go? Set to give up
on the whole whorl?"
    Linsang asked, "What did Pas say? That is if I'm not--"
    "It is _irregular_," Incus conceded, "but not _contrary_ to the _canon_.
Do all of you _desire_ to hear the words of the _Father of the Gods?_"
    Several assured him that they did.
    "And _will_ you," Incus pursued his advantage, "permit us to _proceed_
upon our _sacred errand_ once you have _heard them?_"
    Linsang's troopers nodded. They were in their teens, and identifiable
as troopers only by their slug guns and bandoliers.
    Linsang objected. "I need to get it from this soldier, first.
Hammerstone? Is that your name, Corporal?"
    "Present and accounted for." Hammerstone's own slug gun was
pointed at the skylands, its butt on his hip.
    "Are you for the Ayuntamiento or the calde?"
    "The calde, Sergeant."
    "How do you feel about the Ayuntamiento?"
    "If the calde or Patera here said not to shoot them, I wouldn't do
it. If it's up to me, they're dead meat."
    One of the troopers ventured, "A soldier killed Councillor Potto.
That's what we heard."
    Hammerstone grinned, his head back and his chin out. "It wasn't
me, but I'll shake his hand first chance I get."
    "All right." Linsang grounded his slug gun. "You can go on to the
Prolocutor's Palace, Patera. Them, too. Only tell us what Pas had
to say."
    "I fear _not_." Incus shook his head. "You would not _accept_ my
_sacred word_, my son, but _insisted_ that Hammerstone speak for _himself_.
As it chanced, though nothing is mere _chance_ to the _immortal gods_,
but a moment previously he had _declared_ that he _comprehends_ the god's
entire _message_, while my other companion, _Auk_, wished a fuller
_exposition_."
    Incus turned to the prophet in question. "Is that not _so_, Auk? Am
I not _correct?_"
    "You got it, Patera. Maybe I'm dumb. There's not many that said
so where I could hear 'em, but maybe I am. Only this is important,
and some was about me. I got to be sure I got it straight, so I can
do what he wants me to."
    "_Would_ that such _stupidity_ as yours were more _widespread_. The
_Chrasmologic Writings_ assert that the _wisdom_ of the _immortal gods_
is but _folly_ in the ears of _mortal men. Persevere_ in your _stupidity_, and
you will be welcomed to _Mainframe_." Incus nodded to the big soldier.
"Tell us, _Hammerstone_, my son, and do not fear that you may _blunder_
or omit a _sacred_ injunction. I shall _amend_ any such _innocent errors_,
though I _anticipate_ none."
    "I can't do it as good as you, Patera, but I'll give it my best shot.
Let me get my thinking works going." For eight or ten seconds,
Hammerstone was as immobile as a statue.
    "All right, I got it. It was when that bio was bringing up the pig.
First the colors came on, right? Then his face. He started off by
blessing everybody and said that everybody that was there 'cause
they came with Auk--that was everybody but you, Patera--he
blessed twice, once for coming and once for following Auk. Have
I got that right?"
    Incus nodded. "_Admirable_, Hammerstone, my son."
    "Then he said he was giving us this theophany 'cause his son told
him what was coming down in the manteion we were at, only he
didn't say which son it was."
    "Terrible Tartaros," Auk assured him.
    Incus raised an admonitory finger. "He did not _so state_."
    "Maybe not, but I'd just been talking to him. That's who it
had to be."
    "He said his son'd given Auk his orders, and they were the right
ones. He and his son were going to see to it everybody got the word.
We'd been thinking about his Plan like it was way off, when it was
already time to move out..."
    "Continue, my son."
    "I'm sorry, Patera. That's when he started talking about me, and
I get kind of choked up. It was the greatest moment of my life, right?
I mean, if I was to make sergeant or anything like that I'd feel pretty
good. But this was Pas. I got his drift and later you explained, and
it was like I'd been feeling it was, just exactly. Hearing you say it
was just about like I was hearing it all over again from him. I'm
thinking there's a war, and all the good people's on his side. That's
this son--"
    "Terrible Tartaros," Auk put in.
    "And the calde and Auk and naturally you are, Patera... And
it's the side I'm on, too. He said how Auk got hurt when he was
underground with us and how hard he'd been working for his Plan,
and he was sending somebody from Mainframe to help him out."
    "From the _Pole_, Corporal. That is the term which the god
_himself_ preferred to employ. That _Mainframe_ is at the _Pole_, I
freely concede."
    Auk edged nearer. "To help _me_ out? I'm the cull?"
    "Yeah, you're the one, only I'm supposed to help too. He said he
was going to decorate you for what you've done soon as you do what
he wants you to next. Only here's where Patera said something I got
to say too, so it'll make sense to these other bios. Pas is us chems'
god. He's the god of all the digital, nuclear-chemical stuff. You got
to buy that if you want to see where Pas's coming from. Isn't that
right, Patera?"
    Incus nodded solemnly.
    "'Cause Pas told us what Auk's decoration's going to be. Anytime
he sees anything like me, he's going to understand it straight off.
How it goes together and what it's supposed to do, and how. Pas
means to stick all the data into Auk, 'cause he'll need it to carry out
the Plan."
    Linsang and his troopers stared at Auk openmouthed. Auk
endeavored to appear humble.
    "That was when he gave me my direct order, and it wasn't
just 'cause I happened to be around. I never thought anything
like this would happen to me. I asked Patera about it back
at the manteion, and he says if I hadn't been the one Pas
wanted, I wouldn't have been there, it would've been some other
tinpot. But it wasn't. I'm the one. Patera says it was probably
'cause him and me are, you know, like brothers only closer,
and he's a holy augur, and as soon as he said it I knew it
was right.
    "Pas needs a soldier, so which one? There's thousands. Why, the
augur's friend, doesn't that make sense? The friend of the augur
Scylla picked to be the new Prolocutor, that's the one you need. A
god don't have to think about stuff like that, he just knows. He said,
talking to me, Auk might have a little trouble at first. You stick with
him and help him over the tough spots. You're a mechanism, help
him out and he'll help you. So here we are, Patera and me both, and
we're trying to help."
    Linsang asked Incus, "Was that all, Patera?"
    "_All?_ I should say it was more than _enough_, my son. But no. It was
_not_. Let us have the _remainder_, Hammerstone."
    "He said that a while back, forty years, he said, he knew he was
going to die--"
    "To die?" Linsang was incredulous.
    "That's what he said. He saw it coming, so he sort of took off little
pieces of himself and hid them in various bios where they wouldn't
be found. Then he died, and he's been dead for quite a while."
    Incus cleared his throat. "All of _you_, and I, _similarly_, must
comprehend the _dificulties_ under which a god seeking to _communicate_ with
_human kind_ labors. He can but speak to us in words mere _mortals_
apprehend. Thus by _die_, the _Father_ of the _Gods_ indicated his own
_renewal_. That _noblest_ of _trees_, the _goldenshower_, is sacred to
_Great Pas_. You cannot be ignorant of so _elementary_ a fact."
    Linsang and several of his troopers nodded.
    "_Suppose_ that a _forest_ of goldenshowers could _speak_ to us. Would
it not say, 'That _I_, the _sacred forest_, may remain _young_ and _strong_,
my _aged_ trees must _fall_, though they have _endured_ for _centuries_.
Let _young_ trees spring up in their _places_. I, the _forest, endure_.'
Hammerstone?"
    "I'm on it, Patera. He said now when his Plan's starting to move,
he's putting himself back together. He said right now he was his own
ghost, Pas's ghost, but with more of his pieces getting found, he'll be
Pas again. He wants us to help. Auk in particular, but everybody's
supposed to pitch in. We got to find this one particular bio, Patera
Jerboa, 'cause he's got the piece for Viron. There was maybe five or
six hundred bios in the manteion, but after Patera'd explained the
whole thing to them, there wasn't one that knew who this Patera
Jerboa was or where we could maybe find him.
    "So Patera told them not to bunch up, but scatter and start asking
people all over, and bring him to Auk when they got him. Then he
told Auk the Chapter's got records about all this stuff, where every
augur's at and what he's doing there, and they're in the Palace, and
Patera knows where and how to read them. He's worked with them
for years, right Patera? So him and Auk and me started off to take
a look, and here we are."
    "The _majesty_ of diction was lacking, _Hammerstone_, my son, yet the
_matter_ was in _attendance_." Incus regarded Linsang and his troopers.
"What of _you?_ We seek to obey the dictates of the _Father_ of the _Seven_.
Can you _assist_ us? No _holy augur_ can know every other. We are _far_
too _numerous_. Do you know of a _Patera Jerboa?_ Any of you? _Speak_."
    No one did.

Shots woke Maytera Mint. At first, as she lay blinking in the darkness,
she did not know what the sounds had been; she was hungry and
thirsty, vaguely conscious of the cold, and conscious that she had
been cold for a long time, shivering as she slept. Her buttocks and
shoulder blades, pressed by her slight weight to unyielding shiprock,
were numb, her feet freezing.
    She sat up. Her room had been the smallest and meanest in the old
cenoby on Silver Street, with a ceiling that dripped at every shower;
yet it had not been too small or too mean for a window past whose
threadbare drape wisps of light crept on even the darkest nights.
    Three sharp bangs, unevenly spaced. Pictures falling? She recalled
an incident from her childhood: an old watercolor had fallen when its
yellowed string rotted through at last, and had taken another picture
and a small vase down with it. Once she had heard a horse trying to
kick its way out of its stall. The shots had sounded like that.
    "Ah, General?"
    The voice had been Remora's; his nasal tones brought it all back
to her. "Yes, Your Eminence."
    "You have, um, familiar with the sound of gunfire, hey? During
the past--ah--fighting."
    "Yes, Your Eminence. Tolerably so." Against her will, she found
herself wondering how many Remoras there had been, how many
augurs and sibyls who had responded to Echidna's theophany by
going to the safest place they could find and staying there. Patera
Silk had not. (But then, he wouldn't.) Patera Silk had been shot in
the chest, had been captured, and had contrived, somehow, to turn
Oosik and the whole Third Brigade, the act that had done more than
any other to determine the course of their insurrection. But how many
more--
    "Er, General?"
    "Yes, Your Eminence. I was considering the matter. The door
is thick and rather tightly fitted, and these walls are shiprock.
Those factors must have affected the quality of the shots as we
heard them."
    "You--ah--believe them shots, eh?"
    "I'm putting on my shoes, Your Eminence." She groped for them
in the dark. "If we're to be taken somewhere--"
    "Quite right." Remora sounded cheerful. "Quetzal, eh? Old Quetzal.
His Cognizance, I ought to say."
    More thirsty than ever, Maytera Mint licked her dry lips. "His
Cognizance, Your Eminence?"
    "Rescue, eh? He's come for me, er, we. Or--ah--sent somebody.
Shrewd, eh? Plays a deep game, old Quetzal. Card sense in both--um--the
applicable senses."
    She tried to imagine the elderly Prolocutor fighting, slug gun in
hand, against Spider and his spy-catchers, and failed utterly. "I would
think Bison's sent scouts into the tunnels by this time, Your Eminence.
If we're lucky, it may be some of them we heard. But even if they notice
this door, they may not be able to get it open.
    Another shot, and it was definitely a shot.
    "They will notice it, General. I--um--my word on it. My
gammadion, eh?"
    "Your gammadion, Your Eminence?"
    "Not you, ah, sibyls. But we augurs. Holy augurs, eh? Wear Pas's
voided cross. Comes apart. Use to test a Window, hey? Tighten
connections, make adjustments, all that sort of, er, operations. Gold,
hey? Mine is. Coadjutor, eh? Stones. Not like old Quetzal's, I, um,
but gems. Annethysts, largely. Gold chain. Under my tunic, generally.
Out at sacrifice, hey?"
    "I'm familiar with them, Your Eminence."
    "I've--ah--slipped it beneath the door, Maytera. Push it out, eh?
Pull it back in. Moving object, hum? Catches the light, ah, attracts
the eye."
    She went to the door (almost tripping over Remora) and rapped
it sharply with the heel of one shoe.
    "Admirable--ah--admirable. Crude, eh? Yet it--ah!"
    The latch outside rattled and the door swung in, impeded by
Remora. The burly Spider growled, "What's that noise?"
    The lights in the tunnel were so dim that Maytera Mint did not
blink. "I was pounding on the door with my shoe. We heard shots
and hoped we'd be freed."
    "Come on." Spider gestured with the barrel of his needler.
    "We, um' require food," Remora ventured. "Water or--ah similar,
er, potable."
    "You won't if you don't get movin'."
    "You don't dare shoot us," Maytera Mint declared. "We're valuable
hostages. What would you tell--"
    He caught her arm and jerked her through the doorway. "I'm
strong, see?"
    "I never doubted it." She tested her shoulder, fearing he had
dislocated it.
    "Strong as a chem. Not one of them soldiers, maybe, but a regular
chem. You with me, sib? So I don't have to shoot you. There's twenty,
thirty things I could do." One of Spider's men was lounging in the
tunnel; he held a gleaming slug gun. "I'm ready to try a couple," Spider
continued. "You scavy Councillor Potto's kettle? Wasn't anythin'. He
was just playin', he's like that. I don't fool. We get lots of spies."
    "I'm delighted to hear it." Maytera Mint had feared that she would
not be allowed to resume her shoe; she tightened the bow and
straightened up with an odd little thrill of triumph.
    "I learned a lot, workin' on them. I never seen one so tough I
couldn't get him to tell me anythin' I wanted to know. That way,
and keep movin'."
    "I, er, weak. Thirsty, eh? What one physically--ow!"
    Remora had been prodded from behind by the man with the slug
gun, who said, "I kicked a dead cull once till he got up and ran."
    "The gods--ah--Pas. Tartaros, eh?" Remora progressed with rapid,
unsteady strides, outdistancing Maytera Mint.
    "Slow up!"
    "I--ah--prayed. Beads. eh? The, um' general slept."
    "You should have awakened me," she protested, and got a shove
from Spider.
    "Never! Wouldn't, um, consider--" Remora froze until he was
prodded from behind. Somewhat nearsighted, Maytera Mint blinked
as she tried to peer ahead through the watery light.
    "Dead cull," Spider told her. "One of mine."
    "Was that the shooting we heard?"
    Spider pushed her forward. "Yeah." Another push. "He was
watchin' your door. Sib, you better shaggy learn to drive your
shaggy ass or you're going to learn a shaggy bunch you don't want
to know."
    She whirled, facing him. "I've already learned something, but it
was something I wanted to know. That I wanted very much to know,
in fact."
    He struck her face with the flat of his hand, spinning her around
and knocking her down, the blow as loud as the boom of a slug gun.
"Pick her up," he told Remora.
    Remora did, carrying her like a child as he staggered down the
tunnel. When they reached the corpse, the man with the slug gun
caught his arm and ordered him to stop, and he set her on her feet.
"You're cryin'," Spider told her.
    "I am. I shouldn't," she wiped her eyes, "because I know our hour
will come. Perhaps I should cry for you instead, but that will come
later if it comes at all."
    Remora had knelt beside the corpse; he rose shaking his head. "The
spirit has, ah, dispensed with its house of flesh."
    The man with the slug gun asked, "You were going to say the
words over him?"
    "I--ah--so intended. It is too late."
    "He never believed in it."
    Maytera Mint said, "Then I should weep for him. A short life
and a violent death in this wretched place. You can write on his
stone, here lies one who sought no succor from the gods, and hence
received none."
    The man with the slug gun chuckled. "Maybe you can. How about
it, Spider?"
    "Sure, why not? She can do it while we're waiting."
    Remora ventured, "May we be seated? My legs, er, flaccid."
    "Go ahead. They'll be along in a minute."
    "If you mean Bison's scouts, I feel certain you're right," Maytera
Mint told him.
    He took off his cap and ran a dirty comb through greasy, graying
hair. "You figure Bison's boys chilled him? You're abram."
    "I doubt that you even know who Bison is."
    "The shag I don't. I got people all through your knot. You think
I don't?"
    "Thank you very much." She wiped away the last tears with her
sleeve. "We appreciate all who come to us."
    He laughed. "You appreciate them? They're tellin' us what you do,
every move you make."
    "Meanwhile they must work and fight for us, if they're not to
be detected." She sat down next to Remora. "They would like to
rise in our councils, I suppose. To do it, they'll have to work and
fight well."
    "S'pose all you want to," Spider grunted.
    "You are, um, confident it was not one of Colonel Bison's
men--er--persons. Troopers. Who shot this, um?"
    "Sure. Sib, how come my culls don't faze you?"
    "Isn't it obvious? Because we're hiding nothing. You want to learn
our secrets, but they're only virtue and prudence. His Eminence and
I had hoped to arrange a peace in which your spies and you might
live. Now there will be none. We--"
    "All right! Muzzle it!"
    "Will root you out. We'll go down into this wretched hole and
fight, find the underwater boat on which--"
    He kicked her.
    "You held the calde--"
    He kicked her again, and she screamed.
    Remora lurched to his feet. "Really, I cannot--simply, ah, will not
tolerate this. Kick me, if you like." Spider pushed him; he staggered,
tripped over the corpse, and fell.
    "And drop stones on it from the surface or catch it in a net," Maytera
Mint finished. "If you want our plans, there you have them. Your spies
can tell you nothing more."
    "You're one tough little girl."
    "I'm a gross coward," she told him. "I realized it about an hour after
Echidna declared me her sword. We were storming the Alambrera.
It might be more accurate to say we were trying to. I--shall I
tell you?"
    Spider put away his comb. "I'll break you."
    "You have already. I screamed, didn't I? What more do you need
to complete your triumph? My death?" She threw her arms wide.
"Shoot!"
    "Another time, maybe." Spider turned his attention to Remora, who
was sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. "You, Patera. Your
Eminence. Is that what they call you?"
    "You may call me either. Or neither, eh? I should, um, opt for
neither, given the choice. I--ah--covet no honors from you."
    "You can die, too, Patera."
    "I, um, well aware. Thinking, hey? Thinking while I, um, bore the
general. Not valiant, eh? Not like, er, she."
    "Your Eminence, I am _not_ brave!"
    "You are, Maytera--ah--General. Yes, you are. Not, um, sensible
of it, conceivably. I--ah--am not. Was a, um, prisoner of Erne's.
I told you, eh?"
    "You told me you'd conferred with him, not that you were his
prisoner."
    Remora looked toward Spider, seeking his permission; Spider said,
"Sure, I'd say we got time."
    "In the, um, Palace, eh? Eating dinner. Warned, eh? By a page.
Guardsmen coming. Thought they wanted--ah--consult me. Waited
for my sweet. In they tramped, these, er, troopers. Where's the
Prolocutor? That was the, um, term they employed. I endeavored to
explain. His Cognizance comes and, ah, departs at his, er, pleasure.
Arrested me, hey? Hands bound, all that. Under my robe, eh? I,
urn, petitioned that favor, and they, er, condescended. Marched
me out."
    Remora paused to swallow. "Frightened, General. Badly frightened.
Horribly, er, affrighted. Coward. Questions, eh? Questions, questions.
Read, um, statements I never made, eh? Spoke in my own defense.
Struck. Said I'd lied. Struck, eh? On and--ah--more of the, er, like
treatment."
    Maytera Mint nodded. Her right cheek was beginning to swell,
but her eyes were full of sympathy. "I'm sorry, Your Eminence.
Truly sorry."
    "Said they'd kill me, eh? Needler at my head. All that. Coward,
lost control. Bowels, er, voided. Soiled my clothes. Had to speak to
the Brigadier. Said that over and over. I--ah--know him. Knew
him, eh? In better days. Yes, in better days. Saw him at last. Truce,
eh? Truce, cease-fire. I can, er, bring one about, hey? Calde's an
augur. Let me go. Spoke through glass to--ah--Councillor. Loris.
Councillor Loris. He said--urn--let him go. And they--ah--did.
Brigadier Erne did. Fellow I'd--ah--chatted with, hey? Ten, twenty,
er, occasions. Parties, dinners, receptions. Gossip, prattle over wine.
Beaten, wet--um--stinking. But free. Free."
    Spider laughed.
    "Back to the Palace, hey? Frightened--ah--terrified. Shooting augurs,
eh? Sibyls, too. I, um, didn't see it. For that thank--ah--Tartaros.
Thanked Tenebrous Tartaros for it, for, er, shielding my
eyes. But I knew, eh? They told me. Felt the--ah--slug. Needle
strike my back a score of times in--er--three streets. Roughly,
eh? Roughly three. Dead twenty times. Back to the Palace, washed.
Listening all the while. Listening for them. Why, eh? Why listen?"
Remora's bony fingers laced and loosed, knotting and writhing free
to form new knots.
    "My--ah--rise. Page as a lad. Schola. Augur. My mother, eh? Be
Prolocutor someday, eh? Mother, couple aunts. Father, too, hum?
Acolyte, desk in the Palace, higher every year or so, hey? Father died.
Careful, hey? Careful, worked hard, hey? Always careful, no enemies,
hey? Long hours. Aunt died. Work and wait, eh? Coadjutor died. Younger than
old Quetzal, hey? Dead at his table, eh? Lying on his--um--documents.
Coadjutor, Mother. Old then, eh? Very. But her eyes shone, Maytera. Er,
General. Her eyes shone." Remora's own were full of tears.
    "There is no need for you to torment yourself like this, Your
Eminence."
    Spider told the man with the slug gun, "See what's keepin' them." He
rose, nodded to Maytera Mint, and walked away, down the tunnel.
    "Mother..." Remora coughed, a racking cough deep in his chest. "Sorry.
My, um, couldn't prevent it. Mother dead, hey? Mother dead, General. All dead,
then. Mother, father, both, er, sisters. Not Mother's--ah--her vision.
Vision for me. Prolocutor. Why afraid? Beatings.
Blows, eh? 'Fraid of them, too. Most of all--ah--her vision." He
fell silent.
    Wanting desperately to change the subject, Maytera Mint asked
Spider, "Where is that man going? What are we waiting here for?"
    "A stretcher." Spider shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
"For him." He gestured toward the corpse.
    "You're going to carry it away for burial?"
    "Cleaned up, hey?" Remora had not been listening. "Lay clothes.
Left the Palace. Soon as I could. Went to Ermine's. Calde might
come. I knew. I knew. In the, um, his letter."
    Maytera Mint nodded, supposing that the letter had been addressed
to Remora.
    "Went to Ermine's. Drinking den there. Lay clothing so they
wouldn't--ah--shoot. Waited. Porter dropped something in the
street. Up like a rabbit. Die, never Prolocutor. Her spirit, eh? Her
ghost. Her vision for me."
    "It never occurred to me that you were waiting for a means to carry
the body," Maytera Mint told Spider. "It should have, but I've seen
so many left lying where they fell."
    He cleared his throat. "We got a place. You'll see it."
    "Down here?"
    "Yeah. Eight, ten chains from here."
    Maytera Mint indicated the corpse. "Did you like him, Spider? You
must have."
    "He was all right, and I worked with him ten years."
    "Then you would not object if I covered his face?"
    "Nah. Go ahead."
    She did, standing and smoothing the black skirt of her habit, taking
short steps to the. side of the corpse, kneeling, and spreading a dirty
handkerchief she took from her sleeve over its face. "May Great Pas
pardon your spirit."
    "No more--ah--the vision." Remora was addressing no one.
"An, er, administrative post, eh? Finance. Most, er, plausibly.
Finance. No."
    "Muzzle it," Spider told him. "See, sib, there's this place where they
was diggin' one of these tunnels. They put a big door in it like they
did. You seen some."
    Maytera Mint nodded.
    "Martyr, hey? No martyrs since, ah--"
    "They went fifty, sixty steps in and quit. I don't know why. Quit
in dirt. We're under the city, and it's mostly dirt up here."
    "Are we? I thought you were taking us to the lake."
    "Maybe we will, but we're takin' you here for now. We meet
down here sometimes. Meet with Councillor Potto, and when we
get somebody, we generally leave him where you two were. It's a
old storeroom, I guess, but I don't--" They heard the thunderous
boom of a slug gun, attenuated by distance but unmistakable.
    "Guan must of shot somethin'," Spider told Maytera Mint.
    "Or he was shot himself."
    "He's a rough boy. He can take care of himself. What was I talkin'
about?"
    "How you bury the other rough boys." She sighed. "It was interesting.
I'd like to hear more about it."
    "Sure." Spider sat down facing her, his needler still in his fight
hand. Settled in his place, he held it up. "I could put this away. You
aren't goin' to jump me, either of you."
    "I--ah--intend it," Remora muttered.
    "Huh! I don't think so." Spider thrust the needler into his coat. "Like
I said, sib, there's a big door, and I got the word for it. Councillor
Potto told it to me a long time back. So you go in and where it ends
there's dirt. Down towards the lake, where they run deeper, it's all
rock or shiprock, but up this high there's a lot of dirt."
    "I understand."
    He touched the shiprock wall. "Behind here's dirt. I can tell from
how it's made. What we do, when somebody's chilled up in the city
and there's nobody for them, we bring them down. Or if somebody
dies down here. That happened one time."
    Seated again, Maytera Mint nodded toward the corpse.
    "Lily. Twice, now. But before, one of my knot got hurt up there
and we brought him down, but he died. We dig straight in, like, into
the dirt till the hole's long enough. We got rolls of poly. We lay some
poly in the hole and wrap them up in some more, and slide them right
in." He looked at her quizzically, and she nodded.
    "Then we put some dirt back to fill the hole, right? And everybody's
got a shiv." He took a big stag-handled clasp knife from his pocket.
"We write the name and some stuff about him on a piece of paper,
and we stick it up with his shiv so we don't dig there again for
anybody else."
    "As a memorial, too," Maytera Mint suggested, "though I doubt
that you would admit it."
    "That's lily, sib, I wouldn't. It's just somethin' for the older bucks
like me. When we go in there again we look at them, and then maybe
we tell the new culls. Like we used to have cull name of Titi that would
put on a gown and pay his face like they do. Not you, sib. You know
what I mean, powder and rouge, and all that. Perfume."
    She nodded. "Indeed I do, and I'm not offended in the least.
Go on."
    "Give Titi a half-hour, and he's the best lookin' mort in the city.
He kept his hair kind of long, and he could fix it just a little different
and it was a mort's hair cut short. Not as short as yours, but short,
and soon as you saw it you knew it was a mort's hair. If Titi hadn't
paid his dial, that shaggy hair'd make you abram. You'd be talkin'
to yourself."
    "A person like that must have been of great value to you."
    "Lily, he was. He was a bob cull, too. There was this time when
we were workin' on a knot from Urbs. We knew who they was and
what they was after, and was peery a while to see what they done
and who they talked to. We do it in our trade all the time. We'd
see they found out things Councillor Potto wanted Urbs to know,
and we'd foyst in queer, too, fixed so they'd like it. One came fly.
Know what I mean, sib?"
    "I believe so."
    "We could've done for him. Chilled him, you know. But we don't
unless we got to."
    Remora looked up. "Urn--inevocable. No--ah--going back
after, eh?"
    "Slap on, Patera. That's her in a egg cup. You know this one, see?
He's a hog grubber, won't spend. Or he's one of them that lushes till
shadeup and don't forget a thing. Whatever. Soon as he's cold, it's
all down the chute, and Urbs'll send a new cull.
    "So what I laid to was to get him nabbed. I got Titi to hook him
and go 'round to two, three places so's to get some to say they seen
them. Then Titi went to Hoppy and capped I been ramped. The
Urber done it. They got him to go along to finger.
    "I knew the ken, so'd Titi, and I was keepin' him there. I'd planted
books goin', to keep him on top. Not lumb, but lowre enough, you
know, to have him sure he'd draw my deck."
    "I--ah--dishonest game? You, er, cheated?"
Spider. Did you?"
    "Sure thing. But not skinnin' him. I'd take his gelt and let him win
back and more to the bargain. He had to lose swop, or I'd been shy
more'n I had. Larger, he'd got to win so he wouldn't stamp. I'd say
haven't you nicked me proper and push my chair, you know the lay,
and he'd say one more hand. I knew Titi was goin' to have to let the
hoppies carry him two or three places 'fore he steered 'em right.
    "In they prance, and Titi fingered the Urber and blubbed like two
morts, and the hoppies grabbled him and what's your name, you're
for iron."
    "Rape is a very serious charge," Maytera Mint protested. "He could
have been sent to the pits."
    "Sure thing, but Titi wasn't goin' to dock. I wanted him shy of
his knot to Pasday, that's all. Well, he broke and run at Titi. Petal,
what're you doin' to me, and the rest, and he's nabbed a flicker and
bashes it on the cat ladder."
    "A wine bottle as a weapon, you mean?" This was a foreign whorl
to Maytera Mint.
    "A glass tumbler, sib, but it's the same notion." Spider chuckled.
"Titi fans him so hard he's back across and on my knee if I hadn't
hopped. Knocked over my perch and both down together.
    "Now right here's where my jabber pays. Titi run to him bawlin'
like a calf with the cow in the kitchen, and Hoppy? Never twigged. I
was on velvet. Showed me the door. Titi had to stay and cap, which
he did, and Hoppy never twigged. I'd like to turn up another, but
I've never seen any half so fine, not even on boards."
    "Yet he's dead," Maytera Mint said pensively. "He's dead and buried
in that place you told us about, because there was no one else who
cared enough to bury him. Otherwise we would not be talking about
him. How did he die?"
    "I was hopin' you wouldn't quiz me, sib."
    She smiled. "I'll withdraw the question if you'll call me Maytera.
Will you do that for me?"
    "Sure thing." Spider's hand massaged his stubbled jowls. "I'm goin'
to tell you anyhow. Thing is, some culls nicker. All right, it's abram.
But, well..."
    "But he was your friend."
    "Nah. I miss him, though. I brought him in. I found him, and I
got him in, helped him out of a queer lay he was standin' and all
that, and pretty quick he's a dimber hand. Everybody knew, all my
knot. They stood him wide. You wouldn't think, and they didn't
to start, but after a while. I told about how he said the Urber
ramped him."
    "Yes, you did."
    "A buck tried it, see, Maytera? He got down to shag and
twigged Titi's yard, and did for him on account. Squeezed his
pipe for him."
    "That's sad. I understand perfectly why you dislike it when people
laugh. May I ask about him, too?" She gestured toward the corpse.
"What was his name?"
    "Paca." While seconds crawled by, Spider stared at the
handkerchief-shrouded face. "He was a pretty good all-round cull, know what
I say? For jabber or a breakin' lay or rags-and-tags, any of the jobs
we do, smokin' or liffin' seal--"
    Remora looked up.
    "Any game you name, I could name you better. You don't
always know, though, and sometimes that cull's got his plate full
or he's crank, and Paca could take it. Once in a while he'd big
my glimms."
    Spider spoke to Remora. "I was goin' to ask, Patera, if you'd cap
for him. Think you could?"
    "Pray for, um, Peccary? Paca. I, er, have. Privately, eh? While we,
er, now."
    "When I slide him in," Spider explained impatiently. "Cut bene
whiddes for everybody."
    "I--ah--indeed. Honored."
    "What about Guan?" Maytera Mint inquired. "Aren't we going to
bury him, too? Wouldn't you like His Eminence to pray for him as
well? Perhaps we could make it a group ceremony.
    "Guan's not for ice."
    "Certainly he is." She sighed. "Where is your stretcher?"
    "He'll be along in a minute."
    "Thirsty, eh? Might we, um, hungry, likewise."
    "So am.I," Maytera Mint declared. "You have a stretcher somewhere,
or so you say, Spider. If there's food and water there, too, may we not
go to it?"
    "I, ah--"
    "You ate and drank last night, I assume, and this morning. You,
Guan, Paca, and the others. We didn't."
    Spider clambered to his feet. "All right, you two, you got it. Come
on. I want to see what's keepin' those putts."
    "Ah--water? And, um, something to eat?"
    "Sure thing. We got prog and plonk. There's a well, too. I ought
to of let you have some last night. You need a hand up, Patera?
How 'bout you, Maytera?"
    "I'm fine, thank you, Spider."
    "I--ah--give warning," Remora said as Spider helped him to
stand. "The next, um, instance. Strike the General. Or me. I shall
attack, eh? Will. Martyr, hey? Gone but--um, er--commemorated.
Unforgotten."
    "He isn't going to," Maytera Mint told Remora briskly. "We are
past all that hitting and hating with Spider. Don't you understand,
Your Eminence?"
    "Come on," Spider repeated, and started down the tunnel. "You
want to eat? I'll bet you anythin' they aren't cold."
    "Um, forbidden."
    "Wagering is contrary to the regulations of the Chapter," Maytera
Mint explained, "but I am prepared to violate them and accept
whatever punishment may be meted out to me. I say that they are
dead, all of them. The men you sent for the stretcher, and Guan,
too. As dead as Paca. Will you take my bet?"
    "Sure thing." Spider had drawn his needler again. "I got a card says
I'm right."
    "I don't want your card. What I want are answers to three questions.
You must promise to answer in full. No lies and no evasions. No half
truths. What will you have from us if we lose? We haven't any money,
or at least I have none."
    Spider halted, waiting for her. "I donno, sib. Maytera, I mean.
That's better, huh? You call each other sib, though."
    She nodded. "We call one another sib, which is short for _sibyl_,
because _maytera_ is reserved for the sibyl in charge of the cenoby
in which we live. There's only one other sibyl in my cenoby since
Maytera Rose passed on, Maytera Marble. She is senior to me, so
she is in charge. I will call her Maytera when next we meet, assuming
that Maytera Rose has been buried."
    "You, too, huh? Well, I'm sorry, Maytera. Come on, Your
Eminence, shake it up."
    "His Eminence has a gold gammadion set with gems," Maytera Mint
confided. "He might be willing to make it my stake in our bet. I'll try
to persuade him."
    Spider shook his head. "I could nab it anytime."
    "Certainly you could, but you would have stolen it. Though
Tenebrous Tartaros, whose realm this surely is, is the patron of
thieves, I doubt very much that he approves of stealing from augurs,
and all the other gods surely condemn it. If you won His Eminence's
gammadion you would have acquired it honesdy, and would have
no reason to fear divine retribution."
    "Yeah. But you don't think I'll win."
    Maytera Mint shook her head. "No, I don't. I will not deceive you,
Spider. I am as sure as I can be without having seen them that all
those men are dead. If you accept my bet, you'll have to answer my
questions, one for each dead man."
    "All right, I'll tell you what I want, Maytera. But I'm goin' to call
you General. That's who I want to bet with, the rebel general. Can
I do that? Patera does."
    "Certainly. I'd prefer it, in fact."
    "You figure I'm a thief. I can tell by the way you were talkin' a
minute ago. That's the lily, isn't it, General?"
    "You employ a great deal of cant, Spider, and cant is used principally
by thieves. Also by prostitutes, with whom I've spoken now and then,
but most of them steal when it seems safe."
    "Most everybody will," Spider told her positively.
    "Perhaps. If so, it is small wonder that the gods show us no more
affection than they do."
    "Well, I ain't a thief. I talk like I do 'cause we're with them a lot.
Spies don't ken with people like you, General, or this other sibyl you
call Maytera. She don't know anythin' they need, see? You do, but
if they were to ken with you, they'd need a shaggy good reason or
you'd start thinkin', why's he around all the time?" Spider paused
for breath.
    "You go to some city to look into things, you know, and you want
somebody local to help out, what you want's a thief six to one. When
we got to have new blood, that's where we look, too. Not always, but
mostly."
    "I understand, Spider..."
    "Out with it."
    "Very well." Maytera Mint took a deep breath. "Were you a thief
previously? Is that how you came to be a spy-catcher?"
    He grinned at her, displaying crooked and discolored teeth. "What
makes you think you can believe me, General?"
    "I'm a good judge of character."
    "I'd lie to you."
    "Indeed you would, and you might do it so skillfully, that I would
think you were telling the truth. But you won't lie to me about this,
not here and not now. Were you? It's none of my affair, and to
confess the truth there is a thief I taught when he was a child of
whom I'm very fond. His name is Auk."
    "I know him," Spider said.
    "You do? That hadn't occurred to me, but now that you've
mentioned it, no doubt you must. Does he--is he one of your
knot, as you call it?"
    "That'd feague you, huh? He's not. Auk won't work for anybody
else, and he's too peppery for my trade anyhow. I wasn't a thief
either. I was a hoppy. You believe that?"
    "If you say it's true, absolutely. May I ask why you left the
Calde's Guard?"
    "They callin' it that again? That's what it was when I went in, then
they changed it. They kicked me out. Let's not talk about why."
    Remora, who had caught up with them and overheard much of
their conversation, muttered, "No, ah, never. Only shriving, hey?
There--um--solely."
    "I won't ask," Maytera Mint promised.
    "Pulled off my stripes and put them on my back. I could show you
the scars. Cull called Desmid brought me in. He's cold. I been catchin'
spies for Viron twenty-two years now. I don't know how many I've
nabbed or helped nab, thirty or forty. Could be more, and there's a
lot we don't want to nab but could anytime we wanted to. I'm tellin'
you 'cause of what I want my end of our bet to be. I'm stickin' with
Councillor Potto, see? Twenty-two years I been workin' for him, and
he took me when I didn't have two bits or a padken. I'm his man,
always will be."
    "In that case, let us hope a peace can be arranged that will permit
Councillor Potto to retain his seat."
    Spider nodded. "Sure thing. All right, let's talk about this bet. First
off, these three questions. Suppose you were to ask me who my boys
are, the ones you think's yours. I can't tell you names. You see that?
I won't lie to you, General, but I won't tell, either."
    "I understand. I won't ask you to betray your friends."
    "All right, here's what I want. If your side wins and you get loose,
you don't nab me and my knot for spyin' on you, or for holdin' you
like we're doin'."
    Maytera Mint started to speak, but Spider raised his hand. "That's
not all. You let us keep doin' what we been doin' for Viron. You're
goin' to need us worse than you think. If you do that, I'll tell what's
gone on before, and give you the files."
    "I can't. I would accept that bet if I could, cheerfully and
without hesitation. But those are matters for the calde and the
new Ayuntamiento, not for me."
    "The, um, terms. He, er, designated? Specified yourself General.
Not the--ah--reconstituted Ayuntarniento or the calde, hey?"
    "But he means our side. The calde, Generalissimo Oosik, and even
the Trivigauntis. Don't you, Spider? For myself, I would give you
my word, as I said. In fact, I do, whether I win or lose. But I cannot
bind the calde and an Ayuntamiento that does not yet exist."
    "But you'll promise, General? Personally?"
    "Absolutely. I have and I do."
    Spider indicated Remora with a jerk of his thumb. "Have him flash
that gaud. Pas's cross. You can swear on that."
    "If you wish. Will you allow me my three questions, when I win?
Full, honest answers?"
    "Sure thing. I'll swear too, if you want."
    "Then it won't be necessary."
    Remora had produced his gammadion; Maytera Mint laid her hand
upon it. "I, General Mint of the Horde of Viron, called by some the
rebel or insurgent forces, I who am also Maytera Mint of the Sun
Street mantelon, do hereby swear that should we prevail I will not
punish nor attempt to punish this man Spider and his subordinates
for their activities in collecting intelligence for the Ayuntamiento as
presently constituted. I further swear that I will do everything I can
to prevent others from so punishing them, short of force. In addition,
I will actively support their being retained in their function, that is to
say the counterintelligence function, in which they have served our
city faithfully. I will do these things whether I win my wager with
Spider or lose it."
    She drew breath. "Is that satisfactory?"
    "Ought to cover it."
    "Great Pas, bear witness! Ophidian Echidna, whose sword I am,
bear witness! Scintillating Scylla, Patroness of Our Holy City of
Viron, bear witness!"
    "Good enough." Spider held out his hand. "Have we got a bet? Shake
on it." Solemnly they shook hands, her own small hand enveloped in
a thickly muscled one twice its size.
    "All right, I'll tell you right now I got a lock. We're almost there."
He gestured. "See that side tunnel up ahead? We go in there, and the
old guardroom's only four, five steps. If they were cold, we'd have
made them before this."
    She shook her head. "To the contrary, though I wish you were
correct. They would have heard our voices and called out."
    A hundred steps brought them to the side tunnel's entrance. As
soon as they turned into it, she caught sight of a man's feet protruding
from a doorway. "That will be Guan," she murmured.
    Spider stopped her, spreading his arms to hold Remora back as
well. "That's Hyrax. I always twig a cully's shoes, or a mort's either.
Shoes tell more than any kind of kick. A lot know it, but that don't
stop it from bein' true."
    "Wasn't the other man with Hyrax, Spider? Where is he?"
    "In there." Spider's breath rasped in his throat. "Just out of sight,
most likely. You don't shoot a cull soon as you see him through the
door, not if he's comin' in. You let him get inside. That way you got
two tries if he beats hoof."
    He turned to Remora. "You first, Patera. Pull out Pas's cross and
have it where they can see, and hold your hands up. You're a augur
in a robe, not holdin' a slug gun or anything. They won't shoot you,
or I don't think they will. Tell them I got the general. Leave us be,
or she's cold."
    Remora looked stricken.
    "You wanted to die down here, didn't you? This's your chance.
Go on before I shoot you myself. They won't."
    "They must know we're out here," Maytera Mint said. "They will
have heard us. If not before, they will certainly have heard that."
Spider did not reply; his eyes were on Remora.
    "I, er, shall." Remora backed away, raised his hands, and turned
toward the doorway.
    "Pas's gammadion," Maytera Mint prompted him. "Take it out so
they can see it."
    If Remora heard her advice, he ignored it. She watched him pause
at the threshold, then step through. There was no shot.
    "They used to have soldiers down here awake and ready to go if
there was trouble," Spider told her. His hoarse voice was close to a
whisper. "That was before the Guard. That's what Councillor Potto
told me one time, and he ought to know."
    They stood side-by-side in silence after that. There was no sound
from the guardroom, no sound from any source save the almost
inaudible sigh of the cool wind that filled the tunnel.
    At length Spider said, "I should of told him to take a look around
in there. I guess he's doin' it anyhow."
    "I'm going too." Maytera Mint started toward the doorway.
    "Hornbuss!" Spider caught her arm. "You're goin' to do what I say,
and I say you can't."
    "Your Eminence!" she called. "Are you all right?"
    For a few seconds her words echoed hollowly from the gray walls,
and she felt certain that she and Spider were the only living people
within earshot. Then Remora stepped out of the doorway, avoiding
the dead man. He held out a bottle of thick, mottled glass. "Water,
Maytera! General. Ah--potable. Um, pure, in so far as I can, um,
gauge its qualities."
    Spider snapped, "Nobody in there?"
    "Not--ah--dead men. Two, in addition to the one you, um, observe
in the entrance. Shot with slug guns, I--ah--or, um, both with a
single such gun. Quite possibly. Our, ah, companions, oh? Yesterday,
likewise earlier. One the, um--"
    "Guan."
    "Er, yes. Ah--the name you gave. Furnished? Supplied." Having come
near enough, Remora handed the bottle to Maytera Mint. "He dropped this, I
fancy, General. So it appeared, oh? When he--um--attained life's
culmination. Some spilt, eh?"
    She was drinking and did not trouble to reply. The water was cool
and clean and tasted fresh and unspeakably delicious. All her life
she had been taught that Surging Scylla, the water goddess, was
first among the Seven; she had not realized either how true or how
important that insight was until this moment.

                  Chapter 7 -- The Brown Mechanics

Silk looked around curiously, finding it hard to believe that this
enclosure, this collection of sheds surrounded by a fence, produced
taluses. On his shoulder, Oreb croaked in dismay.
    "It's starting to rain," Chenille announced; she pushed back
raspberry curls to squint at the sky.
    "I've been trying to remember where I came from," Maytera Marble
ventured. "I don't think it was like this at all." She edged Mucor toward
the shelter of the sentry box as she spoke.
    If Fliers were a rain sign, what might Fliers who landed presage?
The final days of the whorl? Silk decided to keep the speculation to
himself. "I should have asked you about that long ago, Maytera. Tell
me about it."
    "I couldn't remember a thing then, I'm sure. Not till poor Maytera
Rose bequeathed me my new parts. I'm sure I must have told you
about them."
    Silk nodded.
    "A week last Tarsday, that was. They're much better than my old
ones, but after I'd put them in, it was hard for me to keep straight
which memories were Marble's and which were mine."
    Chenille corrected her. "The other way, Maytera."
    "You're quite right, dear. Anyway, I recollect a big room with
green walls. There were pallets, or perhaps metal tables, little ones
about as high as a bed."
    "Here comes one of the guards." Chenille pointed.
    "I was lying on one, and I didn't have any clothes on. Perhaps I
shouldn't talk about this, Patera."
    "Go ahead. It's not immoral, and it could be important."
    "I was trying to boot, and I remember that the girl next to me sat
up and said she was naked, which she certainly was. When she did,
somebody brought her a dress."
    The guard halted with a clash of armored heels, one hand leveled
across his slug gun. "Follow me, Calde."
    "No wet," Oreb muttered.
    "He has a point," Silk remarked as they set out. "Could we borrow
umbrellas? If we're going to have to walk between these buildings,
as I expect we will."
    "I'll get some while you're talking to the director," the guard
promised; he trotted ahead to open the door of a brick structure
not much different from a modest house.
    "We can wait outside," Chenille told Silk. "I mean, in the hall or
whatever, just as long as it's out of the rain."
    He shook his head, entering a reception room presided over by a
woman rather too large for it. She smiled. "Go right on in, please,
Calde."
    "Will there be enough chairs? There are four of us."
    From the room beyond, a short man beginning to go bald told
him, "Three chairs and a settle. Come in!" He offered his hand.
"Swallow's my name, Calde." Silk shook it and introduced Maytera
Marble, Mucor, and Chenille.
    Swallow nodded, still smiling. "Sit down, please, ladies, Calde.
You're lame, I hear, and I see you're limping." He shut the door.
"Everybody's got some tidbit about you. You're lame, you've got that
tame bird, and you predicted the downfall of the Ayuntarniento. I'm
sure you've heard it all."
    Silk took a leather armchair near Swallow's table. "And now you're
surprised to see how young I am, and would like to ask my age."
    "Why, that's none of my affair, Calde."
    "I'm twenty-three. You must be," he glanced at Swallow's hands,
"in your forties. Forty-five or forty-six. Am I right?"
    "I'm glad you're not, Calde. I'm forty-three."
    "Twenty years older than I am, precisely. You must think I'm
very young and inexperienced to head the city government. I
am, and I realize it. I have to depend on the judgement of
more experienced men and women. That's one reason Maytera
Marble's with me today; it's also the reason I'm here talking to
you, an older man with experience I haven't got but need to
draw upon."
    "I'll be happy to help you any way I can, Cald--. Would you like
something before we get started? Coffee, wine, tea? Would the young
ladies? Chamomile can fetch us some."
    Chenille shook her head; Silk said, "No thank you. You build
taluses here?"
    "We do. That's our business and our only business."
    Oreb offered his judgement on taluses. "Bad things!"
    "Be quiet, silly bird." Silk leaned back, the tips of his fingers
together. "I know nothing about business, and this must be a
remarkable one."
    "Not to me." Swallow smiled. "I grew up in it, working in our shops.
But you're right, it's unique. That's the word we like to use. Call it
self-promotion if you want, but it fits."
    "Because a talus is a person," Silk continued, "both in law and in
fact. There are boatyards along the shore of the lake, where I was a
few days ago. The boatwrights build a boat there; and when they're
through, the fishermen paint eyes on it and call it 'she'. They give
it a name, as well."
    Swallow nodded.
    "A boat has a certain character, just as this chair does. This is
comfortable and solid, brown, and so forth. A boat may be a willing
or a reluctant sailer, it may be stable or prone to rock. But a boat
isn't a person."
    Maytera Marble cleared her throat, a rasp like the scraping of
a crusted pan. "Are you going to ask how they can build a talus
with a certain character, Patera? I don't think they can, really. I've
never..."
    "Go on, Maytera."
    "Never built a child. With a man, you know. But--but from what
I understand, we can't either. We do our best, give the child all the
advantages we can. But after that, it's up to the gods. To Molding
Molpe and Lord Pas, principally."
    Swallow nodded again. "It's no different here, Maytera. The layman
thinks taluses are all alike. That's because they all sound the same to
him. When you've spent a while talking to them, you find out they
don't really talk alike even if they all sound like taluses. When it
comes to ingenuity or honesty, that kind of thing, they can differ
pretty widely. As you say, it depends on the spirit they get from
the gods.
    "They're all boring," Mucor told him; he seemed about to reply,
but meeting her corpse-like gaze quickly looked away.
    "There is another difference I wanted to inquire about," Silk
interposed. "I mean between taluses and boats, or any other
man-made object. If I were to go to Limna with a case full of
cards, I could buy a boat; and once I had paid for it, it would be
mine. I could sail it or leave it tied to a pier. I could burn or sink it
if I wanted to, or give it to Maytera here, or to Chenille or anyone I
chose. A talus is a person, and I would assume that in cities in which
slavery is legal, anyone with sufficient funds could go to a facility
such as yours and order a talus built--"
    "You can do that here, Calde," Swallow put in.
    "Ah. That's interesting."
    "Good thing?" Oreb inquired.
    Maytera Marble said, "It seems to me that all this applied to me
once as well, Patera. No one owned me. I've always been free, I'm
sure, and yet I did what I was told. I still do, for the most part.
I respect authority, and when I was younger, I don't think it even
occurred to me to question it." She looked thoughtful, her head down
and inclined to the left.
    To encourage her Oreb croaked, "Talk now."
    "Most bio--do you really want to hear this, Patera? I could tell
you later, if you like."
    "Of course I do. Tell us."
    "I was just going to say that most bio children are like that, too.
I don't mean that there are no bad children, though foolish people
say that because it makes them feel virtuous. But there are really
very few. I've taught children for a long time, and most can be
controlled quite easily with a few little scoldings and a few words
of praise." She paused, lifting her head and squaring her shoulders.
"So can most grownups. Not quite so easily, but it isn't a lot more
difficult."
    Swallow chuckled. "She's right, Calde. I boss almost two hundred
employees here, and as a general thing a good chewing out now and
then and a pat on the back for good work are all it takes. Once in
a rare while we take on somebody that doesn't work out, stealing
tools or whatever, and we've got to get rid of him. But it doesn't
happen often."
    "I've been thinking about Marl, Patera."
    Silk nodded, noting as he did the first large drops of the rain
that had been threatening; they were tapping on the window panes
tentatively, but with growing urgency.
    "Marl doesn't receive any wages at all. I told you."
    Swallow raised an eyebrow. "Black mechanics, Maytera? It sounds
like it."
    "I don't know. I really hadn't considered it. I was just going to say
that Marl seems like an extreme instance of--of pliability. I suppose
you could call it that..."
    Maytera Marble's remaining hand tightened its grip on the handle
of the small basket in her lap. "And if you can make use of that
pliability to control others as you do, Director, with a little money
and scoldings and praise, then it seems to me people like you don't
really need slaves, except as sops to their egos. I'm expressing this
offensively, I know, but I think you see what I mean. As for black
mechanics, aren't they legendary? Largely legendary, I should have
said. I know that some people practiced the black art in the past."
    "There's still a bit around in my opinion, Maytera. In my business
we hear things, and that's one of the things we hear." Swallow turned
to Silk. "I'm a blunt man, Calde, and I'm going to ask you straight
out. Are you interested in getting a new talus for the Guard? Is that
why you're here?"
    "I've been considering it," Silk admitted. "Several, perhaps."
    Swallow smiled. "Good. Very good! I'm delighted to hear it. I've
been telling our people that this unrest was sure to bring in some
fresh business, and I'm glad to see I was right. You're wondering
why you should have to pay for something that the city can't own,
aren't you?"
    "I am. Also how I can be assured that the taluses Viron pays for
will be loyal and obedient."
    "It's a good question." Swallow hitched his chair nearer his office
table, resting his elbows on it. "First of all, if you want absolute
assurance, I can't give it to you. Nobody can. I'm told there's an
outfit in Wick now that tells people that, but they're lying. Suppose
you went to that boatyard in Limna. Could the people building boats
there give you an iron-clad guarantee that any boat they sold you
would never sink or turn over? Under any circumstances?"
    "I doubt it.
    "So do I. If they did, they'd be lying exactly like those fellows in
Wick. Here's the guarantee we offer. If one of our taluses betrays
your interests or won't carry out a legitimate order, within the first
two years you employ it, we will refund the entire amount you paid.
When I say 'you' now, I mean the city. For the third year, the amount
is cut by a quarter. You get three quarters of what you paid us back.
During the fourth you get half, then a quarter."
    "Nothing after the fifth year?" Maytera Marble asked.
    "That's right. But you will have had five years service from your
talus by that time, don't forget."
    Silk nodded thoughtfully.
    "I'd like to have your business," Swallow continued. "I don't deny
that. We rarely receive an order for more than a single talus. And it
would be a feather in our cap to be able to say we already had a
large order from the new government. So here's what I'll do. I said
a full refund if there's any serious trouble during the first two years.
All right, for each talus you get over one, I'll increase the guarantee
by one year. Say you were to order three. Is that about what you're
thinking of, Calde?"
    "Perhaps."
    "Then let's say three. That's two over one, so you'd get a full cash
refund--we're talking here about the price of the individual talus,
not the price of all three."
    "I understand," Silk said.
    "A full refund on that talus for serious trouble during the first
four years. After that, three quarters, then half and a quarter, as
I've already outlined it to you. You'll be entirely covered or partly
covered for... How long, Maytera?"
    "Twenty-five percent in the seventh year, Patera," she told Silk.
"Nothing after that.
    "Good deal?" Oreb tugged a lock of Silk's hair.
    "A safe one, at least, I believe. You don't have to pay often, do
you, Director Swallow?"
    Swallow smiled and relaxed. "No, we don't. If we did, we'd be
bankrupt. We paid a quarter-price refund fifteen years ago--no,
make that sixteen. I was foundry supervisor then, and I felt it was a
pretty dubious case. All of us knew it was, really, and if we'd fought
it in court, we'd probably have won. But it was only a quarter, the
customer was making a lot of noise, and the director we had then
wanted to establish that we keep our promises. I'm not saying he
was wrong, just that the talus in question had been abused. The
customer'd had it piling bricks, which isn't natural."
    "What is?" Silk inquired.
    "Fighting and protection, the same things you'd expect from a
watchdog." Swallow cleared his throat. "Can I get a little bit personal,
Maytera? No disrespect intended, but you brought up an important
principle, obedience to authority. What you said made a lot of sense,
and I'd like to use you for an example."
    Chenille said, "I don't think you ought to. Tell him no, Maytera.
I don't think this is a good idea at all."
    "Because it wlll make me more aware of my nature, dear? I don't
believe it will, since I'm very much aware of it already. I've spent
many, many hours thinking about who I am and what the gods
require of me. But if it does, even a little, I'll thank the director
very sincerely for the insight."
    "No talk," Oreb advised Swallow.
    He chuckled. "I won't say what I was going to, I promise. But I will
say this. What I was going to say, I could have said about myself or
anybody else in this room. I just thought the clothes might make it
clearer."
    "The clothes that were given to me when I woke? I didn't get to
them, but you're right. After a while I sat up too, and another girl
gave me my first clothes. Were you going to ask me what kind of
clothes they were?"
    Swallow nodded. "That's right, I was."
    "A little black dress, very simple, with rather a short skirt.
Underclothes." Maytera Marble paused to smile. "I was about to
say I'd prefer not to describe them, but they were so plain that
there's hardly anything to describe. Black shoes with low heels, but
I don't think there were any stockings. A pretty little lace apron and
a matching cap. It's easy for me to describe those clothes, because
people from Ermine's came to Patera's palace just before we left,
and there were young women dressed exactly as I was then, except
that they had stockings."
    "Did they come to clean?" Swallow asked. "Sweep and dust?"
    "Dear Chenille and I have done that already. To wash the dishes
they'll need tonight and set the table, and wash walls we haven't
gotten to. At least I hope they'll wash those walls and the downstairs
windows. I asked them to."
    Swallow hodded again. "You see, Calde, each of us is born to do
certain things. Maytera was born to sweep and dust, and wash walls
and floors, and she's still doing it. Did you have to urge her to?"
    Silk shook his head.
    "I would have been surprised if you'd said you did, and it shows the
important principle I want to explain. When you're born to do a thing,
and somebody gives you a chance to do it, that's all it takes. Everybody
else is afraid I'll embarrass her, so let's talk about your bird."
    "Oreb," Oreb elucidated.
    "Nobody's got to make him fly. He flies because it's his nature.
Nobody has to make him talk either. He was born to."
    "Talk good!"
    "There you have it. All right, it's a talus's nature to fight and
protect property. Give your talus a chance to do those things, and
it will do them. You're afraid the ones we build for you will give
you a hard time, but you're calde, and if they did, you'd give them
a hard time too, wouldn't you? Have them arrested and disarmed?
And tried, too, eventually?"
    "I suppose. so.
    "Naturally you would. So why should they make trouble, when
what you want them to do is what they want to do? The things they
were born to do?"
    "I was at a country house guarded by a talus not long ago, and
Mucor told me it could be bribed, though it took a great deal of
money." Silk looked at her for confirmation.
    "Musk said so."
    Chenille asked, "What would a talus do with money?" and
Maytera Marble ventured, "The same things that you or I would,
I suppose, dear."
    "You were asking how you could buy something you couldn't own,
Calde." Swallow picked up a pencil, apparently to rap the tablet before
him. "Let me tell you about that now, about the financial arrangements.
When a talus is finished, it owes us, by law, the cost of its manufacture
plus fifteen percent."
    "Even though the city has paid for it?"
    "Exactly. What the city's doing, you see, is advancing us the money
we'd eventually get from the talus. We make no more than we would
if we'd built without an order. Which we seldom do, by the way,
since by building to order we get our money a lot sooner. What's
even more important, we don't have to worry about the talus getting
killed before it can pay us."
    Silk nodded while his right forefinger drew small circles on his
cheek. "I see."
    "We require payment in full before the talus is finished. When
it's finished, we explain that it has been built because there's an
employer anxious to hire it. That's you, Calde. We also explain the
nature of wages, what wages it can reasonably expect, and what
bonuses."
    "But I don't actually pay it. Isn't that correct?"
    "I can see you grasp the idea already. That's right, you don't. Let's
say that you and your talus agree on five cards a month, a fair wage.
From that, you deduct your expenses for fuel, maintenance, and
repairs, if any. Most employers furnish ammo free of charge. It's
customary."
    Silk nodded again.
    "You report the net to us, or you can have the talus do it. We
deduct it from the talus's debt. Eventually its indebtedness will be
wiped out and it can keep the wages it earns."
    "Provided it survives that long."
    "You've got it." Swallow glanced over his shoulder at the windows
behind him, where the tapping of raindrops had mounted to a steady,
insistent pounding. "If you'd rather have a look at our shops another
time...?"
    "Patera," Maytera Marble began, "I don't--"
    She was interrupted by Silk, who stood as he spoke. "I'm eager to
see them, and I'm sure a little rain won't hurt me. I was caught in that
downpour a week from yesterday, but here I am. I don't want you
to feel that you have to take us around in person, however, Director.
Someone else can do it."
    "Not take the calde around?" Grinning broadly, Swallow rose too.
"I wouldn't miss it for any money. The ladies can wait in here if
they like."
    "I'm coming," Maytera Marble declared. "My granddaughter can
stay here with Chenille."
    "Me too," Chenille announced. "I want to see this."
    "In that case Mucor will have to come with us, Patera."
    "I can fly," she informed Swallow gravely. "Even in the rain. But
they can't."
    The promised umbrellas had been left on a chair in the outer room.
Chenille picked one up. "Here's a black one for you, Patera, if you
want it."
    Silk shook his head. "Let Maytera have it."
    Hanging her basket on her right forearm, she accepted the black
umbrella and shook it out. "It's bad luck to open them indoors, they
say, but I've already had mine. I can't thank that nice young man
for getting these for us."
    "One of your guards," Silk explained. "Now that I come to think
of it, it seems strange that you've hired bios to protect this place
instead of a talus."
    "We do have a talus." Swallow accepted a yellow umbrella from
Chenille. "As a matter of fact we have two now, because of the unrest.
They're in the guard shack."
    He went to the door, opening his umbrella. "You went by it on
your way here. They have windows so they can keep an eye on the
gate, but mostly they listen for shooting or shouting. A lot of the
little matters that our guards handle, a good bio can take care of
better than any talus. Suppose you had taluses patrolling the streets
instead of troopers, Calde. You'd have a dozen people shot every
night, instead of one or two a week."
    Opening the green umbrella that Chenille handed him, Silk followed
Swallow out into the rain. "I've dealt with taluses once or twice, and
I'm sure you're right."
    "They protect the plant at night, and we have them there ready to
roll in case of serious fighting. So far it's been around the Palatine
and the Alambrera. I'm sure you know."
    Silk nodded.
    "Would you like to look at them? There's the guard shack." Swallow
pointed at a weathered wooden shed.
    "Not now, thank you." Silk had to raise his voice to make himself
heard above the rattle of rain on his umbrella. "Later, perhaps. Right
now I'd like to see how they're made."
    "Good. That's where I'm taking you. Excuse me a minute, and I'll
get the door."
    Swallow strode off through the rain; Silk limped after him as
rapidly as he could, splashing through deepening puddles in shoes
that were already sodden.
    The wide wooden door Swallow had opened let them into a
cavernous structure whose floor was covered with coarse sand; three
men were working in a pit a few steps from the doorway, illuminated
by a single bleary light high overhead. "This is the foundry," Swallow
announced as Maytera Marble and Mucor entered under a single
black umbrella. "I always start visitors here, because it's where I
started myself. I sifted, shoveled, ran errands, and the rest of it.
It's hard, dirty work, but I was bringing home a little money to
help my folks, and I've never felt so good about anything I've done
in my life."
    Chenille exclairned, "You make those great big things out of sand?
I don't believe it!" Oreb flew off into the darkness at the other end
of the building to explore.
    "There are some glass parts, and they really are made out of sand,
but not by us." Swallow shut his umbrella and thumped its tip on the
sand-strewn floor. "This is foundry sand and wouldn't make good
glass. But we cast some big parts in sand, which is what these men
are getting ready to do."
    He pointed with his umbrella. "You see the hollow left by the
form when it was lifted out? Those round pieces are called cores.
They're made of compressed sand with a starch binder, and if they
aren't positioned exactly right, and firmly enough that they stay in
place when the iron's poured, the whole piece will be ruined. What
they're doing here is preparing to cast an engine block, Calde." At
the last word, the workers looked up.
    Silk had been trying to locate Oreb in the darkness. "This seems a
very large place for three men."
    "When we're going full tilt, which we will be tomorrow if we get
your order today, there will be eighteen men and six boys working
in here, Calde. I've had to lay off everybody except my best men,
which I don't like to do."
    Taking Silk unobtrusively by the elbow, Swallow led him deeper
into the building, his voice kindling a second light. "They're all good
men to tell the truth, and the boys are smart lads who'll be good men
too before long. We can't use anything else. I hate layoffs because I
know the people I let go won't be able to find another job, generally.
But if they could, I'd hate them worse because I'd lose them, and
you can't just bring in an untrained man and have him go to work.
It takes years."
    Maytera Marble inquired, "How old are the boys?"
    "We start them at fourteen nowadays. I was twelve when I started."
Silk heard the soft exhalation of Swallow's breath. "We had layoffs
then, too, though it wasn't as hard as now. Not usually. I never got
to go to palaestra, but there was a woman on our street who had,
and she taught me to read and write and figure during layoffs. I'm
pretty good with figures, if I do say it. She was a friend of Mother's
and wouldn't take anything for it, but I always thought that someday
I'd get to where I could pay her. I was just about there, just made
leadman here, when she died."
    Silk asked, "May I speak as an augur instead of calde?"
    "Go ahead. I'm not religious, but maybe I should be."
    "Then I'll explain to you that the woman who helped you out of
friendship for your mother had been helped herself, when she was
younger, by some earlier person you never met."
    Swallow nodded. "I suppose it's likely enough."
    "She couldn't repay that person any more than you could repay
her, but when she helped you she wiped out her debt. When you
help someone, you'll wipe out yours. Possibly you already have--I
have no way of knowing.
    "I've tried once or twice, Calde."
    "You say you're not religious. Nor am I, though I was very religious
not long ago. Because I'm not, I'm not going to say that this passing
forward from one generation to the next is the method the gods have
ordained for the settlement of such debts, though perhaps it is. In
any event, it's a good one, one that lets people die, as everyone must,
feeling that they've squared accounts with the whorl."
    Maytera Marble said, "Perhaps he already has, Patera, by employing
those boys."
    Swallow shrugged. "They don't pay, and that's the truth. We pay
a card a month, and they're not worth it to us. But we're not doing
it from charity. We have to have them so they can learn the work.
If we didn't, someday we'd need foundrymen and there wouldn't be
any, no matter how much we offered."
    "Then it was good of you to... Lay them off? Is that what you call
it? So they could attend a palaestra. Because I'd think that if you were
teaching them, they'd be the last ones you'd want to send home."
    "They were," Swallow told her shortly.
    Chenille had been looking at the largest ladle Silk had ever seen, a
great cup of scaly pottery large enough to hold a man. "Is this what
you melt the iron in?"
    "That's right." Swallow was himself again at once, brisk and all
business. "It's heated in this brick furnace here." He went to it. "It
burns charcoal with a forced draft, and it takes a lot. Those bunkers
you saw against the wall where we came in were for sand. Every casting
we make uses up a little, and they're our reserve. These bunkers hold
charcoal and steel scrap. We fill up that crucible with scrap, lower it
into the furnace, and put the lid on. When it's been in long enough,
depending on how much scrap was in it, we lift it out the same way
and pour."
    A slightly smaller crucible stood on the other side of the brick
furnace; reaching into it, Chenille displayed an irregular scab of
shining yellow metal. "This looks almost like gold."
    Oreb flew over for a closer inspection.
    "It's brass," Swallow told her. "A talus's head requires some pretty
complicated castings, and brass is easier to cast than iron, so we use
that for the head."
    Silk said, "Some taluses wear helmets, I've noticed, while others
don't."
    "The helmet's actually a part of the head," Swallow told him. "Or
you could say it takes the place of the skullplate. Would you like
helmets on the taluses we're going to build for the city? I can specify
them in the contract."
    "I don't know. I was wondering whether a helmet furnished better
protection for the head." In his mind's eye, Silk saw the talus he had
killed; the shimmering discontinuity that was the blade of the azoth
he had thought Hyacinth's had struck it below the eye, vaporizing
metal and inflicting a mortal wound.
    "Not really." Swallow clapped his hands to brighten the lights. "Over
here we have the forms for various head designs. They're made so the
parts can be switched. Say you like the nose on one head, but you'd
rather have the mouth on another. We can give you both without
any additional charge. We cast the nose you want and the mouth
you want, and after the castings have been cleaned up, they'll fit
together."
    "How thick is the metal?" Silk inquired.
    "Two to four fingers, depending on where you measure. It has to be
at least two, to get enough melt through the space." Proudly, Swallow
gestured toward a row of somewhat worn-looking wooden heads, each
nearly as tall as he was. "There they are, Calde, twenty-nine of them.
Since all of them trade parts, there's almost no limit to the number
of faces we can provide."
    "I see. Is two fingers of brass enough to stop a slug?"
    "No shoot," Oreb advised from Chenille's shoulder.
    "It depends, Calde. How far away was the trooper when he fired?
That can make a big difference. So can the angle it strikes at. If it
hits square on, it might go through if the trooper was standing close.
I've known that to happen. The talus has its own guns, though, and
unless it's out of ammo, an enemy trooper that close isn't likely to
be alive."
    Chenille grinned. "I'll say!"
    "What we've found," Swallow continued, "is it's pretty rare for a
trooper to shoot at the head at all. The thorax plate and the front of
the abdomen are bigger targets, but they're steel. I'll show you some
in the welding shop."
    "Will a slug penetrate them?"
    Swallow shook his head. "I've never known it to happen. I won't
say it can't, I'd want to run some tests. But it's very unusual, if it
happens at all."
    Silk turned to Chenille. "You and Auk were riding on the back of
a talus when it encountered some of the Ayuntamiento's soldiers in
the tunnel. You told me about that."
    She nodded. "Patera Incus was with us, too, Patera. So was
Oreb here."
    "Later on, one of the wounded soldiers?"
    Chenille nodded again. "The talus stopped to shoot, I guess that's
why it stopped anyhow, and Auk got on Patera about not bringing
the dead ones Pas's Pardon. We could see a bunch of dead ones in
back of us. There were lights in that tunnel, and some of the dead
ones were on fire."
    "I understand."
    "So Patera did. He got off the talus. Auk was just--he couldn't
believe it. Then the talus saw what had happened and said for Patera
to get back on, and he said only if you'll take this soldier too. That
was Stony, we found out his name later."
    Maytera Marble asked, "Wasn't this nice talus that let you ride on
it killed, dear? I think you told me about its death, and how the holy
augur who was with you brought it the Pardon."
    Silk nodded. "That's the point I particularly want to hear about,
Chenille. How was that talus killed? Where did the slug strike it?"
    "I don't think it was a slug at all, Patera. Stony said it was a missile.
Some of the soldiers had launchers--I got one myself, after--and
they were shooting them."
    "You'll have to excuse my ignorance," to relieve the pain in his
ankle, Silk backed to the crucible and sat down on its rim, "but I'm
not familiar with those. What's the difference between a missile and
a launcher?"
    "The launcher fires the missile, Calde."
    "That's right. Just almost exactly like a slug gun shoots a slug.
Maybe they ought to call a launcher a missile gun, but they don't."
    "You had one of these weapons, Chenille? Where is it now?"
    "I don't know. Stony took it to shoot at the Trivigaunti pterotroopers.
That was while me and Auk were in the pit with Trivigauntis flying all
around and you talking at us from that floater up in the air. Somebody
yelled for us to get back in the tunnel, and it sounded like a real good
idea to me."
    Swallow said, "A missile's a very different proposition from a slug,
Calde. A slug's just a heavy metal cylinder. It hits the target a lot
harder than a needle or a stone from a sling, but that's only because
it's heavier than a needle and going faster than a stone. Missiles carry
an explosive charge, and that lets them do a lot more damage."
    "Missiles are heavier, I think, too," Chenille told Silk. "I've seen
troopers carrying forty or fifty slugs--"
    "Cartridges," Swallow corrected her.
    "Whatever. They had them on a special canvas strap, and they were
walking around fine. I think if you loaded a trooper down with forty
or fifty missiles, he couldn't hardly stand up. My launcher was nice
and light when I found it, but Stony helped me load it, and it was
really heavy after that."
    "Director Swallow."
    "Yes, Calde?"
    "You mentioned a part called the thorax plate. I take it that's the
part covering what I would call the talus's chest."
    "Exactly right, Calde.
    "Chenille says the soldier Patera Incus befriended felt that their
talus had been killed by one of those things--by a missile fired from
a launcher. Are those the terms?"
    Swallow nodded; Chenille said, "That's it, Patera."
    "But if I understood her, he was on the talus's back at the time
that it was shot. How could he have known?"
    Swallow fingered his chin. "He lived through this, didn't he? He
must of, since the young lady said he took her launcher later. If he
had a chance to see the talus afterward--"
    "Man see," Oreb announced confidently. "Iron man."
    "In that case, Calde, it wouldn't have been hard for him to tell
the difference between a wound from a slug gun and one from a
missile."
    Silk nodded again, largely to himself. "Was this a facial wound,
Chenille? Do you recall?"
    She shook her head. "He talked to us after. I'm not sure where he
was hit, but lower down."
    Silk stood up. "You mentioned your welding shop, Director. I want
to see it--and ask a favor. May we go now?"
    As they left, Silk lagged to question Mucor. "You told us you could
fly in the rain," belatedly he opened his umbrella, "but they couldn't.
By 'they' did you intend the Fliers?"
    She only stared.
    "Is that why it rains after they've flown over? Because they somehow
prevent it when they're present?"
    "Answer him, dear," Maytera Marble prompted, but Mucor did
not speak.
    As they splashed along a rutted path between sodden wooden
structures that could easily have been barns, Swallow remarked, "I
wish you had better weather for this, Calde, but I hear the farmers
need rain pretty badly."
    Silk could not help smiling. "They need it so badly that the sight
and sound of it fill my heart with joy. All the time we were in your
foundry I was listening to it, and the finest music in the whorl
couldn't have moved me half so much. I don't suppose Chenille or
Maytera like it--I know Oreb here doesn't, and I'm a bit worried
about Mucor, whose health is frail; but I'd rather walk through this
than the clearest sunshine."
    Swallow opened the door of another ramshackle building, releasing
a puff of acrid smoke and revealing a large and dirty canvas screen.
"Foundry work's pretty crude, Calde. In the old times they knew a
lot we don't, though I've spent a good part of my life trying to learn
their secrets. What I'm going to show you now's closer to what you
might have seen on the Short Sun Whorl. But before I do, I've got
to warn you. You mustn't look at the process. At the blue welding
fire, in other words. The light's too bright. It can make you blind."
    Silk shook his umbrella. "Smiths join iron by heating and pounding
it. I used to watch them as a boy. I wasn't blinded, so what you're
doing here must be a different process."
    Chenille tossed back wet raspberry curls. "Better make sure Oreb
doesn't watch either, Patera."
    "I certainly will." For Swallow's benefit, Silk added significantly,
"At times we all look at things we shouldn't. Even birds do it."
    Swallow blinked and abandoned his study of Chenille's damp gown.
"Sometimes people think we do it different because we're working with
steel instead of iron, but that's not true. We use this method because it
works on pieces your smith couldn't have welded, because they're too
big to be hammered." Light showed above the canvas screen, brilliant
enough to make the rafters cast sharp shadows on the underside of
the roof.
    "One of our men's making a weld now. We'll wait here till he's
through, if it's all right with you, Calde. Then we can go in, and I'll
show you what he's doing and how he does it. He'll be welding up
a thorax plate, I think."
    While her remaining hand closed the black umbrella she had shared
with Mucor, Maytera Marble gave Silk a significant look.
    He nodded. "I want to see it. In fact, I'm very eager to, Director.
You spoke of thick pieces in connection with these thorax plates and
so on? How thick are they?"
    "Three fingers." Swallow held them up.
    "I want mine thicker. Six at least. Can you do that?"
    Swallow looked startled. "Why...? Could we weld them, do
you mean? We could, but it would take longer. It would be a lot
more work."
    "Then do it," Silk told him.
    Oreb whistled.
    "Put it in our contract, six-finger thorax plates. What was the other
piece? Below the thorax plate?"
    "The abdomen front plate?" Swallow suggested.
    "That's it. How thick is it?"
    "Three fingers, too, Calde." Swallow hesitated, his eyes thoughtful.
"Do you want them thicker? I suppose it could be done, but it may take
us a while to find steel that thick and work out a way to bend it."
    Oreb exclaimed, "No, no!"
    "We cannot afford delay, Director. Viron requires these taluses
immediately. I realize you can't supply them today, but if you could,
I'd accept them and pay you for them, and thank you. You join steel
here--that's what the workrnan on the other side of this screen is
doing?"
    Swallow nodded.
    "Then make my thorax plates and abdomen front plates out of two
pieces of the steel you have, each three fingers thick. Maytera here
could make me a robe from doubled cloth, if I had need of such a
thing. Why couldn't you do this?"
    "We can, I think." Swallow cleared his throat. "There'll be problems.
With all respect, Calde, welding steel isn't as simple as sewing, but
think it could be done. Can I ask...?"
    "Why they need it? So they can fight the Ayuntannento's soldiers
in the tunnels, of course. I've been down in those tunnels, Director--I
even fought a talus there. There was only a step of clearance between
the sides of that talus and the sides of the tunnel. A soldier who got
that close would be very close indeed; and the taluses I want you to
build will have troopers protecting their backs. The danger will be
in front, where it will come from soldiers armed with weapons like
the one Chenille had."
    "Launchers," she supplied.
    "Exactly. Launchers shooting missiles." Silk collected his thoughts.
"The heads still trouble me. You say you can't cast them from iron?"
    "No, Calde. We usually paint them black. Nearly always, because
it makes the eyes and teeth show up better If we could cast them
from iron we wouldn't have to paint them or touch up scratches,
so we've tried it. Iron won't make castings that detailed, not till we
learn more about casting it, at any rate."
    "Too bad!" The light above the screen had vanished; Oreb flew up
to peer over.
    "Yes, it is," Silk confirmed.
    "But you're worried about strength, Calde. Resistance to slugs and
that sort of thing. And to tell you the truth, iron wouldn't be a lot
better. It might even be worse. Cast iron's a wonderful material in a
lot of ways, but it's pretty brittle. That's why we use steel plate for
the abdomen and so forth."
    "Patera? Director?" Maytera Marble looked from Silk to Swallow
and back. "Couldn't the talus hold something in front of its face? A
piece of steel with a handle like an umbrella?"
    Silk nodded. "And look over the top. Yes, that could be done, I'm
sure, Maytera."
    "There's one other possibility, Calde," Swallow offered hesitantly.
"This is from the old days too. But it was done right here, I understand,
though it was before my time. We might try bronze."
    Silk looked around at him sharply. "Isn't that what they are
now?"
    Chenille shook her head. "It's brass, Patera. Remember when I
held that piece up? He said brass."
    "Bronze would be a lot stronger, Calde." Swallow cleared his throat
again. "Tougher, too. I mean real bronze. This is kind of hard to
explain."
    "Go ahead," Silk told him. "I'll make every effort to understand
you, and it's important."
    "Let me start with iron, maybe that will make it clearer. You and
I talked about iron. Casting it and so forth."
    Silk nodded.
    "What people call iron's really three different materials, Calde.
The commonest is just soft steel, any steel that doesn't have a lot of
carbon in it. People call that tin when it's rolled out as sheet metal,
and sometimes it's plated with tin. Most people have never seen a
real chunk of solid tin."
    "Go on."
    "When you watched that blacksmith making horseshoes, that was
what he was using. He probably called it iron, but it was really soft
steel, iron with just a little touch of carbon. If there's gobs of carbon
in it, it's cast iron, the melt we pour in the foundry. You can't pound
cast iron the way a smith does. It'll break."
    "I remember that you said it was brittle."
    "That's right, it is. It has lots of uses, but you can't use it for armor
or a hammer head, or anything like that."
    Swallow took a deep breath. "Number three's wrought iron, and
that really is iron, though there's generally some slag in it, too. We
start with cast iron and burn all the carbon out, when we want some.
It's pretty soft, and it'll take almost any amount of bending. Mostly
it's used for fancy window grills and that kind of a thing."
    "You still haven't told me anything about bronze."
    "I thought this might help make it clearer, Calde. You see, there's a
couple dozen alloys people call bronze, because they look like bronze.
Most have quite a bit of pot metal in them and no tin at all. Tin costs
too much. Real tin."
    Silk stirred impatiently.
    "That makes real bronze cost a lot, too. Real bronze, not the stuff
you'd get if you bought a bronze figure of some god, is half tin and
half copper."
    "Is that all?"
    Swallow nodded. "It's a pretty simple alloy, but it's got marvelous
properties. It's tougher than steel and almost as strong, and you can
hammer and weld it, and machine it easier than anything except cast
iron. I know that because we still make some little parts out of it,
sleeve bearings mostly, and the worms for the big worm gears. But
when I was a boy, the older men said they used to cast heads out
of it, and there were still some old taluses around with those bronze
heads."
    Silk leaned against the doorframe; he was already tired, had been
tired before the parade had ended, and there was still the dinner
tonight; he resolved to get an hour's sleep before eight, no matter
what happened. Aloud he asked, "Can you cast bronze--this real
bronze--as well as brass?"
    "Better, Calde. We cast those worms I mentioned, and then machine
the bearing surfaces, so I know. It would speed things up too, because
the parts wouldn't need so much cleanup. But it would be expensive,
because of the cost of the tin."
    "Have you got the tin? Here right now?"
    Swallow nodded. "Because we still use bronze for the worms and
so forth."
    "Then do it. Use it."
    "I'll have to up the price, Calde. I'm sorry, but I will. Even if you
order two or three."
    "Then up it." Longing for the brown leather chair he had occupied earlier,
Silk added, "We'll talk about how much when we get back to your office. And
don't forget the double-thick thorax and front plates.  Obviously you'll need
a little more for those, and the steel umbrellas--shields, I suppose you'd
call them that Maytera suggested."
    Mucor said, "The storm will pass over soon," surprising everyone;
then, "I'm tired."
    "She ought to sit down," Silk told Swallow, "and so should I, but
first I must ask you about Maytera's hand. She's got it in her basket.
Maytera, will you show it to him, please?"
    "Man cut," Oreb remarked from his perch on the top of the screen.
Silk was not certain whether he meant that Blood had severed it or
that Blood himself had been killed--by him--as animals were as
sacrifice.
    Maytera Marble had passed her basket to Swallow; he took off the
white towel that had covered her now-lifeless right hand and held it
up, in appearance the hand of an elderly woman. A short cylinder
of silvery metal extended from its wrist. "I lost some fluid," she told
him, "but not very much. There are valves and things to control that.
I'm sure you know."
    He nodded absently.
    "But the tubes would have to be mended some way. The one that
brings the fluid to move my fingers, and the one that takes it back."
    Silk said, "We'd appreciate it very much, Director, if you would
do everything you can for Maytera. She can't pay you; but I may
be able to, if it isn't too much. If it is, I feel sure I can arrange for
you to be paid.
    "Don't worry about that, Calde." Swallow returned the severed
hand to its basket. "We'd be happy to do what we can for Maytera
here as a counesy to you. We could rejoin those pressure and return
tubes, though it'll take delicate work."
    Maytera Marble smiled, her face shining.
    "The load-bearing part's no problem at all. Or I don't think it
should be. It won't look quite as pretty as it did, though. Repairs
never do."
    "I won't mind a bit," Maytera Marble assured him.
    "The difficulty--pardon me, Calde." Swallow closed the door, the
only source of daylight on their side of the canvas screen. "Maytera,
will you hold up your arm a minute? I need to show the calde
something."
    She did, and Swallow pointed. "Look down in here, Calde. Maytera,
I want you to try to move your fingers. Pretend that you're going to
grab hold of my nose."
    Minute glimmerings appeared in the shadowy interior of the stump
of arm, pin-point gleams that reminded Silk oddly of the scattered
diamonds he had seen beneath the belly of the whorl.
    "There! See that, Calde? Those are glass threads, like very fine
wires, with light running through them. It's fluid that powers her
fingers, like she said, but it's those twinkles that steer them. The
twinkles are messages. They're supposed to tell every joint in her
hand how to move."
    Hesitantly, Silk nodded.
    "Suppose you were to put a man on a hilltop twenty miles away,
and tell him to ride as soon as he saw a lantern run up the flagpole
of the Juzgado. It's the same principle."
    "I believe I understand."
    "When ordinary wire like we use gets cut, you can fix it by wrapping
the ends together. With glass threads like you find in chems, that won't
work. You've got to have a special tool they call on opticsynapter. We
don't have one here because we don't use glass thread. We haven't
any way to make it."
    Silk endeavored to ignore Maytera Marble's disappointment. "Then
we must locate one of these tools--and someone who knows how to
use it, I assume--and tie the glass threads? Is that correct? Then you
can complete the repair?"
    Swallow shook his head. "If she went around with her hand hanging
from the glass string, it would probably break. We can do the welding
right now, and we'd better. When you find an opticsynapter she can
take off her hand in the usual way. The operator shouldn't have any
trouble fishing out the other end of the string."
    "Where would we find one?"
    "There you have me, Calde. A doctor who specializes in chems
should have one, but I don't know of one here in Viron."
    Chenille snapped her fingers. "I know somebody!"
    "Do you, dear? Do you really?" Maytera Marble's voice, usually
so calm, trembled noticeably.
    "You bet. Stony had one of those strings cut where our talus had
shot him, and Patera Incus fixed it for him so he could move again.
He had a gadget to do it with, and that's what he said it was, an
opticsynapter. I was watching him."
    Silk turned to Blood's emaciated daughter. "You were gone a
few minutes ago, Mucor. Are you back with us? Please answer, if
you can."
    She nodded. "With the Flier, Silk. Women have him. They want
to know about the thing that lets him fly."
    "I see. Perhaps it would be wiser for us not to speak of that at
present. I want you to search for Patera Incus for me, as well as
Hyacinth and Auk. Do you know him?"
    After a silence that seemed long, Mucor said, "No, Silk."
    "He was a prisoner in your father's house for a while, at the same
time I was. He's an augur too, short, with a round face and prominent
teeth. A few years older than I. I realize you don't see things as we
do, but that is how we see him."
    Mucor did not reply, and Maytera Marble passed her working
hand before Mucor's eyes without result. "She's gone, Patera. She's
looking for him, I think."
    "Let's hope she finds all three soon." Silk glanced up at Oreb. "Has
the man finished working over there? Joining the iron, or whatever
you'd call it?"
    "No fire! No more!"
    "Thank you. Come along, Director. As interesting as all this is, and
potentially valuable, I can't spare more time for it. Your workman
must begin Maytera's repair. You and I can discuss our contract
while he works. How many taluses could you build at the same
time if you called back all of the employees you've sent home? Don't
exaggerate."
    "I won't. I just wish I had my charts here. The movement of parts,
you know, Calde, and the time required to make them."
    "How many?" Silk stepped around the screen into a clutter of
metal tables, remembering at the final moment to smile at the
leather-aproned craftsman at work there. "Good afternoon, my son.
Thelxiepeia bless you."
    "Four, Calde." Behind him, Silk heard Swallow's relieved exhalation.
"I want to say five, but I can't guarantee it. We could start a fifth, once
the first four are moving along."
    "Then the city will order four," Silk decided, "with the double front
plates I described, heads of real bronze, and the shields. We must
consider armament, too, I suppose, and price. How long will four
require?"
    Swallow gnawed his lip. "I'm going to say two months. That's the
best I can promise, Calde."
    "Six weeks. Hire new people and train them--there are thousands
of unemployed men and women in this city. Work day and night." Silk
paused, considering. "The city agrees to pay a premium of six cards
for each day less than forty-five. You have my word on that."
    Swallow licked his lips.
    From his perch on the screen, Oreb crowed, "Silk win!"

                  Chapter 8 -- To Save Your Life

Repressing a shudder, Maytera Mint stepped over the dead man's
leg, the last to go into the guardroom. Over Hyrax's leg, she told
herself firmly. It was only Hyrax's leg, and not a thing of honor;
_Hyrax_, a near-homophone of _Hierax_, was a name often given boys
whose mothers had died in childbirth.
    Now, Maytera Mint reflected, Hierax had come for Hyrax.
    "They, the--ah..." Remora began, and fell silent.
    "Soldiers." Spider seated himself on a stool. "Soldiers got them."
He pulled up his tunic and thrust his needler into his waistband, let
the tunic fall into place again, and wiped his hands on his thighs.
"See how good they got shot, Patera? Dead center, all three. That's
soldiers' shootin'."
    "I would have thought that Hyrax's body would warn Guan,"
Maytera Mint ventured. She was looking down at Guan's body as
she spoke. "He must have seen it, exactly as we did."
    Spider nodded. "That's why he figured there wasn't nobody layin'
for him. He figured they'd of moved it if they were, and he had a
slug gun, didn't he? I'd want to know more than feet in the door,
wouldn't I? So he went in careful and had a look around, see? That's
how I would of done, and that's how Guan did. Then he set his gun
down, probably stood it in the corner, and got that water. That's
when they got him, shot him from in back. See where he's lyin'? He
was watchin' the door while he drank. He couldn't shut it without
movin' Hyrax, and he hadn't done that yet, but he was watchin',
only a soldier was in here with him that he didn't know about, and
that's when he shot him."
    "May I sit, too?" Maytera Mint had found another stool. "May His
Emminence?"
    "Sure."
    "We--er--arms? Should be armed." Remora was poking about
the guardroom. "Slug guns, hey? Slug guns for soldiers, um, chems.
Chemical persons, eh? All of them. The slug guns of the, um,
departed."
    "They're gone," Spider informed him. "They all had slug guns.
That's Guan, Hyrax, and Sewellel. A slug gun'll do for a soldier,
and soldiers don't like them lyin' around.
    "I am sorry," Maytera Mint told him. "Genuinely sorry. You must
understand that. I sympathize with your grief, not just conventionally
but actually."
    "All fight. Sure."
    "Nevertheless, I have won our bet. You pledged your word to give
me honest answers to three questions. If you would prefer to wait,
I understand. We may not have long, however."
    "I might not," Spider told her. "That's what you're thinkin', isn't
it? Say it."
    She shook her head. "I'm not, because I don't understand the
situation sufficiently. When you've answered my questions, I may.
Here is the first. The Army is by no means alone in its possession
of slug guns. All Bison's troopers have them, as do many others. Yet
you were entirely certain it was not one of Bison's troopers who had
killed Paca. Why was that?"
    Remora put in, "He's answered already, hey? The--urn--accuracy.
Precision.
    "Yeah, that. But we saw them, and the other boys shot at them.
You said you heard shootin' when we had you locked up. Well, that
was what you heard. It was soldiers, two or three, maybe. If they'd
known there wasn't but five of us and me with no slug gun, they'd
have shot it out, but they couldn't be sure we didn't have a couple
dozen, that's what I think. So they beat hoof figurin' to chill us one
at a time." He sighed. "We ought to of stuck together, but I didn't
see it like that then."
    "Thank you." Maytera Mint laced her fingers in her lap as
she considered. "If they have come to rescue His Eminence
and me, there would be no reason for us to shoot them if
we had slug guns to do it. That's not a question, Spider. It's
a comment."
    "It's right enough, whichever it is. But if you're tryin' to find out
who sent them or why, you're not goin' to get it out of me. I don't
know. The Army's ours, the Ayuntamiento's. All the soldiers are
supposed to know about us."
    "Possibly, um, councillor, eh?" Remora had carried over a stool.
"Might not he have come to--ah--dubiety? You have, um, informers?
Against the general's forces, eh? Might not the councillor have come
to fear that the calde, er, likewise? You?"
    "Maybe." Spider rose, went to the door, and taking Hyrax's wrists
pulled him into the room. "But I don't believe it."
    "Nor do I," Maytera Mint murmured as Spider shut the door and
bolted it.
    "You gamble, eh? Put yourself at hazard. And us. If the soldiers
you apprehend are concealed, hey? There are other, um, chambers?
In addition to this in which we, er, presently?"
    "That's the latrine," Spider told him, nodding toward an interior
door. "We got one of those portable jakes in there. The other's the
storeroom. Yeah, they could be in either one. Or locked out. I'll take
that for now."
    He turned to Maytera Mint. "You got two more questions, General.
You goin' to ask them? Or you want more water and somethin' to
eat? You can eat first if you want to."
    Observing Remora's expression, she said, "Why can't we eat while
I ask? We're adults."
    "Swell. Patera, you're the hungriest, right?"
    "I, er, possibly."
    "Then you go in and get it. The door's not locked. Go in there,
have a look at the prog, and bring out whatever you and the general
want. Fetch along some wine, too, and more water if you want it."
    Remora gulped. "If they are, hey? Inside?"
    "They most likely won't shoot you. Tell them they won't have to
shoot me, neither. Tell them all I got's a needler. When we went up
to that house, I figured a needler'd be plenty and leave a hand free.
Besides, it's what I usually pack."
    "I shall emphasize the point, um, assuming." Remora faced about
and bowed his head.
    "Well, get to it. Open the shaggy door."
    "He's praying," Maytera Mint explained. "He knows that he may
be shot as soon as he does. He's commending himself to High Hierax
and offering the other gods what may be his final prayers as a living
person."
    "Well, make it quick!"
    "Thank you for answering my first question," Maytera Mint said
to distract Spider. "I agree that you've answered fully and fairly, as
specified. My second may be a bit touchier. I want to point out in
advance that it concerns no confidential matters of our city's. Or of
the Ayuntamiento's, in so far as the two can be distinguished.
    "Before I ask, would you like to pray too? If there are soldiers in
there, which you seem to think possible, they are more likely to shoot
you than His Eminence. And if they shoot His Eminence, they will
certainly shoot us as well."
    Spider gave her a twisted grin. "How about you, General? You're
a sibyl. Why aren't you prayin'?"
    She took out her beads and fingered them while she framed her
answer. "Because I have prayed a great deal already during the past
few days. I have been in danger almost constantly, and I've sent
others into dangers far worse and prayed for them. I would only
be repeating the petitions I've made so often. Also because I've told
the gods again and again that I'm very willing to die if that is their
will for me. If I were to pray, I would pray only that His Eminence,
and you, be spared. I do so pray. Great Pas, hear my plea!"
    Spider grunted.
    "Furthermore, I don't believe there are soldiers hiding in here. I
think that what must have happened was that one of them was in
here looking for something. He heard Guan come in and hid, then
came out and shot Guan after Guan's first and perhaps rather cursory
examination failed to find him. Would the water have come from the
storeroom?"
    Spider nodded. "Right."
    "Then I should think that the soldier was in the latrine. Since
chems don't use them, he might have thought Guan wouldn't expect
him there."
    Spider said nothing, sitting with eyes half shut, his back against
the shiprock wall.
    "Here is my second question. You'll recall that Councillor Potto
described the situation on the surface to His Eminence and me, then
asked who was master of the city. His description made it clear that
he was implying the Rani was. I take it you will concede that. You
were present."
    "Sure. When her troopers come out of her airship, some of yours
took shots at them. You know that?"
    "I do. Many died as a result of that tragic error."
    "Those troopers thought Viron was bein' invaded, and they were
right. Sure, the Trivigauntis are goin' to help you fight us. Sure,
they're goin' to make this Silk calde. But he'll lose his job the first
time he balks. What's the question?"
    "You've answered it already, at least in part. I planned to ask what
you know of the plans of the Trivigauntis."
    Remora cleared his throat. "I am--ah--readied. Also resolved.
You yourselves, eh? Are you, um...?"
    "Go ahead," Spider told him.
    Remora took two determined steps to his right and threw wide
the door.
    "That's the latrine, you putt!"
    Calmly, Remora turned. "I am, ah, was aware of it. I, um,
eavesdropped, eh? Couldn't help it. The General, um, indicated
that this, ah, necessary room would be the point of greatest, er,
greater hazard. I revere her intellect. More than your own, if I may
be thus--ah--incivil."
    "Usually I do better than this," Spider told him. "Now get in there
where you're s'posed to, and don't forget to bring me out a bottle."
    "You would--ah--indubitably have had me, um, risk the necessary
room as well." Remora opened the storeroom door as he spoke. "I
therefore, eh? Advised by the immortal gods. Or so I would like to,
um, have it. The greater risk first."
    He stepped into the storeroom. "As for, ah, this..." He clapped
to brighten the single dull light on the ceiling. "It is equally, um,
innocent? Unpeopled."
    "In that case, I would like another bottle of water, Your Eminence,"
Maytera Mint declared firmly, "if it's not too much trouble. And some
bread, if there is any. Meat, too. I would be very grateful." To Spider
she continued, "I inquired about what you knew, you'll notice, not
what you guessed. Do you know this? Or is it speculation?"
    "I know it. Now you'll want to know how I know."
    She shook her head, marveling to find herself--little Maytera Mint
from Sun Street!--haggling with such a man over such a matter. "I
won't require you to reveal your sources."
    "I'll tell you anyhow. Councillor Potto told me before we went up
there. He wasn't just guessin', neither."
    Remora emerged from the storeroom with a dusty wine bottle, two
even dustier bottles of water, and several small packages wrapped in
tinted synthetic.
    Spider accepted the wine. "Brown's bread and red's meat. I ought
to of told you, but I guess you worked it out yourself."
    "It was not--ah--cryptic." Remora sat down. "This, er, packet is
unopened, Maytera. I, hum, sampled the other. Somewhat saline,
but tasty."
    She accepted a red package and unwrapped it eagerly; it held flat
strips of what seemed to be dried beef. "We thank all gods for this
good food," she murmured. "Thanks to Fair Phaea, especially. Praise
Pasturing Pas for fat cattle." She tore the leathery meat with her teeth
and thought it sweet as sugarcane.
    "Councillor Potto can lie birds out of a tree," Spider drew the cork
of the wine bottle with a pop. "I've heard him to where I just about
believed him myself. You said while we were talkin' in the tunnel
that you figured I could fool you if I wanted to. I'm not so sure,
but Councillor Potto could put it over on me, and I know it. Only
this wasn't that. He just said it, listenin' to himself. I don't think he
cared a sham shaggy bit whether I believed it. But I do, and I've
known him twenty years, like I said."
    Maytera Mint nodded and swallowed. "Thank you. And thank
you, Your Eminence, for this food. I thanked the gods, I fear, but
not their proximal agent."
    "Quite all right, eh? Um--delighted. Have some bread." Remora
handed her a brown-wrapped package. "Strengthening. Ah--fortifying."
    "Thank you again. Thank you very much. All praise to Fruiting
Echidna, whose sword I am."
    She paused as she tore the loaf. "Spider, I'll ask my final question,
if I may. I won't be able to, with my mouth full of this good bread.
You may not know the answer."
    "If I don't know, I don't." He wiped the top of the wine bottle on
his cuff and held it out to her. "You want to bless this, too, while
you're doin' everythin' else?"
    "Certainly." Maytera Mint laid the bread in her lap with the
remainder of the dried beef and traced the sign of addition over
the bottle. "Praise to you, Exhilarating Thelxiepeia, and praise to
you, likewise, dark son of Thyone."
    "Want a drink? Help yourself."
    She sipped cautiously, then more boldly.
    "I bet that was the first wine you ever had in your life. Am
I right?"
    She shook her head. "Laymen--they are men in fact, very
largely--give us a bottle now and then. When it happens, we have a glass
at dinner until it's gone." She hesitated. "We did, I should have said.
Maytera Rose and I did, but we won't any more. She passed away
last Tarsday, and I've scarcely had a moment to mourn her. She
was..."
    "A, umph, excellent sibyl," Remora put in. He chewed and
swallowed. "Doubtless. I did not have the--ah--happiness of
her acquaintance. But doubtless, eh? No doubt of it."
    "A good woman whom life had treated sufficiently roughly that she
struck out, at times, before she was struck." Maytera Mint finished
pensively. "Toward the end she struck at others habitually, I would
say. It could be unpleasant, and yet her asperity was fundamentally
defensive. That's good wine. Might I have a little more, Spider?"
    "Sure thing."
    "Thank you." She sipped again. "Perhaps His Eminence would like
some too."
    "Dimber with me."
    Maytera Mint wiped the mouth of the bottle and passed it to
Remora. "My third question now. As I said, you may not know
the answer. But what was the original purpose of these tunnels? I've
been wondering ever since our calde described them to me, and it
may be important."
    Spider leaned back, his homely heavy-featured face tilted upward
and his eyes closed. "That's somethin' I can tell you all right, but I
got to think."
    "As I say--"
    He leaned forward once more, his eyes open and one large hand
tugging at his stubbled jaw. "I didn't say I don't know. Councillor
Potto told me about them. One thing he said was it wasn't just one
thing. There's three or maybe four, and they go under the whole
whorl. You know that?"
    Her mouth full, Maytera Mint shook her head.
    "If you went along the big one we turned off of," Spider jerked his
thumb at the door, "far enough, you could get clean to the skylands,
maybe. I don't know anybody that ever tried it, but that's what
Councillor Potto said one time. You can be way out in the sticks
where there isn't any houses or anythin', nothin' but trees and bushes,
and maybe there's one right under you. Could be a hundred cubits
down or so close you'd hit it puttin' in a fence post."
    Hoping her face did not betray the skepticism she felt, she said,
"The labor involved must have been incredible."
    "Pas built them. It's queer, tellin' you two that. You ought to tell
me. But he did. He did it when he was buildin' the whorl, so it wasn't
as bad as you'd figure."
    The wine returned to Spider, who drank and wiped his mouth on
the back of his hand. "His boys did the real work, accordin' to the
councillor. When we say Pas made it, it just means he had the idea
and ran the job."
    "His divine--ah--puissance animated his servants."
    "If you say so. But there was a lot, see? He wanted the job done
fast. Mind if I have a little of that?"
    Spider took two strips of dried meat from Maytera Mint's lap.
"I'm with him there, I'm the same way. You got a job to do, you do
it. Wrap it up and tie the string. Let one drag, and somethin' always
goes queer." He bit through both strips.
    "If they were indeed constructed by Pas, it must have been for some
good reason. It's one of the paradoxes of isagogics--" Maytera Mint
looked to Remora for permission to speak on learned and holy topics,
and received it. "That Pas, with all power at his disposal, squanders
none. He never acts without a purpose, and educes a multitude of
benefits from a single action."
    She paused, inviting contradiction. "We sibyls don't go to the schola,
but we receive some education as postulants, and we read, of course.
We can also question our augurs if we wish, though I confess I've
seldom done so."
    "All--ah--admirably correct, Maytera. General."
    Spider nodded. "Councillor Potto said somethin' like that about
the tunnels. We were talkin' about when they got built."
    "I'd like to hear it."
    "It was while they were buildin' the whorl, like I said. To start it
was just a big hunk of rock. You know that?"
    "Certainly. The Chrasmologic Writings emphasize it."
    "So how could they get in and get the rock out? They dug a bunch
of tunnels. Then they had to haul in dirt and trees, and pretty soon a
big cart would come out and it'd be tearin' up stuff they just planted.
These tunnels are shiprock in lots of places, especially high up. You
twig that?"
    "Most have been, I believe. Nearly all."
    "All right. They made those before they brought in dirt, see? Up
on the surface, only it was bare rock then, and now that's maybe ten,
twenty cubits down. They set those stretches up and shoveled dirt
around them. Then they could cart in more, and the trees, without
tearin' up what they'd already finished."
    Maytera Mint swallowed bread. "But the deeper tunnels are bored
through stone? That's how our calde described them."
    "Sure, that's how they got the rock out. Look up at the skylands
next time you're out in the open. Look at how much room there is,
just clouds and air, and the sun and the shade, all right? What's a
few tunnels compared to that?"
    Remora nodded vigorously. "'How mighty are the works of Pas!'
The, er, initial line of the Chrasmologic Writings, eh? Therefore known
to--ah--all. Even laymen. We clergy, um, prone to forget."
    "He pumped water through them too," Spider continued. "You take
the lake. That's a shaggy lot of water. Think if old Pas had to bring it
in barrels. So for the little stuff, he just run pipes down the tunnels,
but for big ones like the lake, he put in doors to keep the water out
of the ones he wanted to stay dry, and pumped. I could show you a
cave by the lake with one of those doors in the back. That's where
Pas pumped in water to fill the lake, and he put in that door 'cause he
didn't want the water to wash back into his tunnels when he was done.
That cave used to be under the water when the lake was bigger."
    Spider fell silent, and Maytera Mint remarked, "Something's
troubling you."
    "I was just thinkin' about a couple things. I told you this side one
ends in dirt, and that's where we bury them?"
    She nodded.
    "There's one of those doors in front of the dirt. I guess the big
tunnel was one of them they pumped in, and they didn't want water
in it. What we're in now was probably put in after. Anyway, talkin'
about doors reminded me we're goin' to have to bury these culls.
It'll take a lot of diggin'."
    "I had assumed we would," she said. "You indicated there were two
points troubling you. May I ask what the second was? And what the
other uses of these tunnels are?"
    "That's the same question two times." Spider shrugged. "You never
asked me why the lake keeps gettin' smaller."
    "I didn't suppose you knew, and to tell the truth, I've never thought
much about it. The water has gone elsewhere, I suppose. Down into
these tunnels, perhaps."
    "You couldn't be any wronger about that, General."
    Remora put his water bottle on the floor between his feet. "You
know, eh? Privy to the, um, information?"
    "Yes, I'd like to know, too," Maytera Mint said, "if you don't mind.
And I've by no means finished eating yet."
    "It's all the same. You wanted to know what else they're good for
and somethin' else. I forget."
    "The second consideration that troubled you."
    "Same thing. The sun shines all the time, don't it?"
    "Certainly."
    "But we get night half the time 'cause the shade's there. It cools
things off, right? When it's hot, you're happy to see the shade come
down, 'cause you know it's goin' to get cooler. Wintertime, you don't
like it so much."
    "Primary. Um, puerile. What--ah--the significance?"
    "See this room, Patera? Three doors. Let's say they're all shut.
No windows, all right? Now s'pose the sun started at that corner
there and run over to that one, about as big as a rope. That's
the whorl. That's what it's like, see? Goin' to get pretty hot in
here, right?"
    "I take your point," Maytera Mint told Spider, "but I do not
understand it. The whorl is very large."
    "Not that big. It's been goin' for three hundred years and over.
That's what they say."
    "The, um, fact. Provable in a--ah--many ways."
    "Good here, Patera. It had to be hot enough for people to live in
when Pas started it, see?"
    Neither Remora nor Maytera Mint spoke.
    "But it couldn't get much hotter or we'd fry. Couldn't get much
hotter with the sun goin' all the time. So there had to be some way
to get shut of the heat."
    "The--ah--outside, eh? Beyond the whorl. The, um, Writings state,
hey? An--uh, um--frigid night."
    "You got it. Notice how the wind blows all the time down here?
It's cold, too, colder than up top, anyhow."
    "I, um, fail--"
    Maytera Mint interrupted. "I see! Air circulates through these
tunnels, doesn't it, Spider? Some of them must be filled with warm
air bound for the night outside. The ones we've been in are carrying
cold air back to the surface."
    "Bull's-eye, General. Well, it's not workin' as good as it did. You
said about lake water goin' in the tunnels."
    She nodded.
    "Suppose it fills a tunnel half up. The wind can't blow as much,
see? If it fills the whole tunnel in just one spot, the wind can't blow
at all. There's places where the shiprock gave way, too, and wind
can't blow there either. So it's gettin' hotter. We don't notice, 'cause
it's too slow. But talk to old people and they'll say winters used to
be colder, and longer, too." Spider stood. "I'm goin' to start diggin'.
You want to eat more, bring it along."
    "I do and I will," Maytera Mint gathered up what remained of her
bread and meat, picked up her bottle of water, and rose. The bolt of
the outer door clanked back; the shadowy side tunnel beyond was
deserted.
    "They've gone off," Spider told her over his shoulder. "I'd like to
know why they started shootin' at my boys."
    She sighed. "Because they were Ayuntamientados, I should imagine.
Four brave men who had kept Viron secure for years, slain by others
who've guarded it for centuries. That's what we've come to."
    "Not all, eh?" Remora closed the door behind him. "All the, um.
Not, ah, er, fah..." His mouth worked soundlessly.
    Maytera Mint looked around at him in some surprise. His eyes
seemed to have sunk into his skull, and his nose appeared both thinner
and smaller. As she watched, his lips drew back, exposing his big,
discolored teeth in a frightful grin. Spider exclaimed, "Sphigx shit!"
    "He's not the right one," Remora informed Maytera Mint.
    She made herself smile.
    "This is the one who talks to the one who's not there. The right
one was down here with the tall girl. He might be here."
    "This is Mucor," Maytera Mint explained to Spider. "She's Maytera's
granddaughter. We've spoken before.
    "Do you remember, Mucor? You came to tell me our calde was in
danger of capture, and I stormed the Palatine. Afterward, we met in
person in the Juzgado."
    Remora nodded, his head bobbing like a toy's, lank black hair
mercifully concealing his terrible eyes. "Incus is his name. A little
augur."
    "I don't know him, though His Eminence has told me of him.
Mucor? Mucor!"
    The death-head grin was fading.
    "Mucor, come back, please! If you see Bison or our calde, tell
them--tell either or both--where I am, and that this man is holding us
for Councillor Potto."
    "You won't be then." The final word was almost too faint to hear.
The grin vanished; Remora tossed his hair back as he habitually did,
and the eyes his gesture revealed were no longer terrifying. "Not all,
hey? Many on our, um, the calde's."
    When no one spoke, he added, "The general's, hey?"
    "You want my needler?" Spider asked Maytera Mint.
    "Certainly, if you're willing to let me have it."
    He presented it butt first. "You wouldn't shoot me, would you,
General? Not with my own needler that I gave you."
    She accepted it, glanced at it, and dropped it into one of her
habit's side pockets. "No. Only if I were compelled to, and perhaps
not even then."
    "All right I'm goin' to dig the graves now, see? You two can finish
eatin' and watch," Spider stepped out into the empty tunnel, "but if
I'm cold 'fore I finish, it's for me. You wrap me and slide me in.
Knife's in my pocket."
    They followed him down the tunnel until it was blocked by a massive
barrier of rusty iron. "Councillor Potto doesn't want anybody to hear,"
Spider confided, "but I guess it don't matter any more. _Fraus!_"
    For a second or longer, nothing happened.
    The great barrier shuddered, creaked, and began to creep upward,
rolling unpleasantly into itself. Abruptly, Maytera Mint became
conscious of the stench of decay, nauseous yet so diffuse that
she might almost have believed she imagined it. Remora snorted,
sounding surprisingly horse-like, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
    "No fresh air, 'cept when the door's open," Spider remarked as he
led them into the dim cul-de-sac the rising barrier had revealed. "It'll
air out pretty quick." He stopped to point. "Right here's where the
shiprock ends. Have a look."
    Maytera Mint advanced to do so, crossing loose earth into which
her scuffed black shoes sank. "I'm very glad you let us hear the word
for that door. I'd hate to think of our being locked in here, unable
to get it open."
    "I'm bein' nice to you two so you'll slide me in after it happens.
See the rolls of poly?"
    "Certainly." She was examining the edge of the shiprock wall. "This
is not as thick as I had imagined."
    "It's pretty strong, though. There's iron rods in it."
    "The--ah--interments." Remora indicated scraps of paper that
dotted the sloping earth at the end of the tunnel. "Those, um, are
they all?" He counted them silently, his lips twitching. "Eleven
in--ah--toto?"
    Spider nodded. "Plenty of room left, but we got three in the
guardroom, and Paca back in the big tunnel, and me."
    "You--ah--depression. A mere, um, state of mind, my son.
Emotion, hey?"
    "Yes," Maytera Mint agreed heartily. "You mustn't talk as if your
death were inevitable, Spider. I mean now, killed by those soldiers.
It isn't, and I pray it won't happen."
    "That devil you called your sib's granddaughter, General. What'd
it say?"
    "She is not a devil," Maytera Mint delared firmly. "She is a living
girl, one who has been shamefully mistreated."
    Spider grunted, picking up a long-handled spade that had lain
between two rolls of synthetic.
    "This, er, granddaughter, General. An--ah--difficult child?"
Remora bit into a strip of dried beef.
    Maytera Mint nodded absently, and found herself staring at one
of the grim slips of soiled paper. Bending and squinting, she read a
name, a date, and a few particulars of the dead man's life. "Is this the
most recent one, Spider? The paper seems cleaner than the others."
    "Yeah. Last spring."
    There was still half a loaf. Deep in thought, she tore away piece after
piece, chewing and swallowing slowly, and drank from her bottle.
    "I'm about done here." Spider had ceased to dig, leaning on his
spade. "Think you two could fetch a cull out for me? Door's not
locked."
    "I was about to suggest it myself," Maytera Mint told him.
    "We--ah--trust, hey? On our honor?"
    "I have his needler, Your Eminence. We could go at any time, and
I could shoot him if he tried to stop us."
    "In that case, um, the circumstances--"
    "But he gave it to me, remember? Besides, he knows these tunnels,
and we don't."
    "Ah--the soldiers."
    "I feel certain they'd help up if we could find them, but what
if we couldn't? Spider, we'll be happy to bring one of your late
friends here for burial. Thank you for your trust in us. It is not
misplaced."
    He nodded. "Cut off a big hunk of poly. You can lay him on that
and drag him, it's real slick. When you get him here, I'll wrap him
up in it."
    "May I borrow your knife?"
    He got it from his pocket and handed it to her, then went back
to his digging. Remora held the ends of the smaller roll while she
pulled out and slashed free a length twice the height of a man.
    As they carried it back to the guardroom, Remora muttered, "You,
um, wonders with him, Maytera. I congratulate you."
    She shrugged, unconsciously thrusting her hand into her pocket
to grasp Spider's needler. "He has no slug gun, Your Eminence, and
without one he would be defenseless against the soldiers. He's hoping
our presence will make it possible for him to surrender."
    "I, ah--" Remora opened the guardroom door and glanced around.
Their stools stood in a circle as they had left them, and the three dead
men still sprawled on the gritty shiprock floor, untouched. "One can
always, eh? Give up? Capitulate. Not, um, that we--"
    "One can always raise one's hands and step into full view of the
enemy," Maytera Mint told him. "A good many troopers lose their
lives doing it. This one nearest the door, I think. If Your Eminence
will unfold that synthetic, we can roll him onto it, poor spirit."
    "You, er, concerned, eh?" Remora spread the synthetic winding
sheet, holding it down with his knees as he wrestled with the dead
man's shoulder. "I observed your demeanor in--ah--there. As
you ate."
    "Puzzled." She forced her gaze away from the dead man's eyes,
wishing that it had been possible to roll him so that he lay face
down again. "There was fresh earth on the blade of that spade.
At least, I think it was fresh, or fairly fresh. Maytera has a little
garden back at the cenoby, Your Eminence. I've helped her with it
now and then, hoeing, and spading in the spring. I don't think that
Spider noticed it."
    "I fail to see the, um, import. Someone else, eh? Could be Councillor
Potto, another--hum--subordinate."
    "I fail to see it too," she told Remora. "Take the other corner,
will you?"
    Back at the end of the tunnel, Spider had completed the first
grave and begun a second. "That's Hyrax." He produced a stump
of pencil and a battered notebook. "I'll write, you two cap for
him."
    They knelt. Maytera Mint found herself, rather to her own surprise,
clasping the cold hand. If things had been different, she thought, we
might have been man and wife, you and I. We must be nearly of
an age.
    The drone of Remora's prayer reminded her of the singsong
voices of children in the classroom, recifing the multiplication table,
memorizing prayers for meals, for betrothals, for the dead. Had she
taught girls this year? Or boys? She could not remember.
    We would have kissed and held hands, and done what men and
women do, and I would have borne you a child, perhaps, my own
child. But when I met Bison...
    "All right, General, let him go. I got to fold this over him." Suddenly
Hyrax was no longer a dead man, but a statue or a picture, still visible
but blurred and faintly blue through the synthetic.
    "His knife." She rose, dusting loose earth from her black skirt by
reflex. "You'll need his knife for the paper."
    "I already got it. You want to help, Patera? I could do it alone,
but it'll be easier with two." They crouched, one on either side,
and Spider said, "Lift when I do, see? A-one and a-two and
a-_three!_"
    Raising the shrouded corpse to waist level, they slid it into its grave;
and he began shovelling earth after it, pausing from time to time to
tamp the damp dark face of death with the handle of his spade. He
said, "You're wonderin' why we don't dig them down the way you
usually do, I guess."
    "The, um, papers," Remora ventured. "Stepped upon, eh? Trodden."
    "There's that. But mostly it's easier to dig here. Then too, we'd
have to walk on the old ones to bury the new ones."

As they were leaving the guardroom with Guan stretched on a
fresh sheet of poly, laughter, faint and mad, echoed in the main
tunnel. "Wait!" Maytera Mint told Remora. "Did you hear that? You
must have!"
    He shuddered. "I--ah--possibly."
    "Will you do me a favor, Your Eminence?" She did not wait for his
assent. "Go back in there and get two packages of that dried meat. One
for yourself, and one for me. We can put them in our pockets."
    "That--ah--merriment..."
    "I have no idea, Your Eminence. I have a feeling, a presentiment,
if you will, that we may need food."
    "If we--er--never mind." Remora vanished into the guardroom.
    When he returned, Maytera Mint handed him a needler.
    "But I am--er--better, perhaps, with you, eh, General? Your,
um, forte."
    "That isn't Spider's, it's Guan's," she told him. "Spider said a needler
was what he usually used, remember? It didn't really make much of an
impression at the time, but afterward, thinking about that poor man
who dressed as a woman, it struck me that the other spy-catchers
must have done the same thing. They would want some sort of a
weapon, and before the rebellion nobody but a Guardsman could
walk around the city carrying a slug gun. Then I wondered--this
was while we were bringing Hyrax--what they did with them when
they got their slug guns. It seemed likely that most of them had
simply put them in their waistbands, under their tunics, where they
were accustomed to carrying them."
    "Most, um, sagacious."
    "Thank you, Your Eminence. Anyway, whatever that was we heard
wasn't a soldier. Do you agree?"
    "I, um, indubitably." Remora stared down at the needler in
his hand.
    "Or a chem at all, any kind of chem. So a needler should work,
and we may need them, just as we may need this meat, for
which I haven't yet thanked you. Thank you very much, Your
Eminence. It was a great condescension for you to oblige me as
you have."
    "You must know how to, um, operate? Manage this?" Remora might
not have heard her.
    "It's not difficult. Push that down," she pointed to the safety catch,
"when you wish to shoot. Point it, and pull the trigger. If you want
to shoot a second needle, pull it again. I won't show you how to
reload now. There isn't time, and we don't have any more needles
anyway."
    Remora gulped and nodded.
    "In your waistband under your robe, perhaps. I believe that's where
our calde must carry his."
    "I--ah. It would be, er, inadvisable, hey? When we return to
the--ah--up there."
    "I won't tell anyone if you don't." Maytera Mint stooped for a corner
of the sheet of synthetic on which Guan's body lay. "We'd better go
now, and quickly, or Spider will wonder what delayed us."
    At the end of the side tunnel she knelt as she had before, trying
to keep her mind upon appropriate petitions to the gods. Guan had
kicked her shortly before Spider had locked her away with Remora
so that he and his men could sleep; the right side of her thigh was
still sore and stiff. She had scarcely given it a thought since it had
happened, or so she had convinced herself. Now that Guan was dead,
now that Guan lay before her, she found she could not free her mind
from the memory of that kick. It was easy to mouth _I forgive you_, and
to ask the gods, Echidna particularly, not to hold the kick against him;
yet she felt that her forgiveness did not reach her heart, however hard
she tried to bring it there.
    The transparent sheet covered Guan as a sister sheet from the
parent roll had covered Hyrax, and Maytera Mint got to her feet.
What was the third man's name? He had been the quietest of their
captors; she had thought him sullen and marked him as potentially
the most dangerous. She would never know, now, whether she had
been correct.
    "How 'bout if you dig for Sewellel, Patera? I'll go back with General
Mint here and fetch him."
    "Why, ah--"
    She saw Remora assure himself that his needler was in place with
a touch of his forearm, and said, "He's not going to attack me, Your
Eminence. He would like to speak to me in private, I imagine."
    Remora managed to smile. "In that, um, circumstances, I
shall--ah--comply. With all good will."
    "What it really is," Spider told him, "is I want to see if you can do
it right. You'll have to dig for me, see? You seen me do it. Now you
do for Sewellel and Paca, and that'll be two for each of us. Let's move
out, General."
    Obediently, she followed him down the side tunnel. "What I told
Patera's lily," Spider said as they walked. "You know that word?
Means the truth."
    "Yes, I do, though I've always considered it children's slang. My
pupils use it sometimes."
    "But that you said, General. That was the lily too."
    She nodded, striving to make her nod sympathetic.
    "I'm sorry about the way I talk. Sometimes I swear when I didn't
mean to. It's just that I always do."
    "I understand, believe me."
    He stopped abruptly. "Thing is, I don't believe you. Or him, back
there. Patera What'shisface.
    "Remora."
    Spider waved aside Remora's identity. "Echidna made you a general?
She talked to you about it?"
    "She certainly did."
    "Could you see her like you're seein' me now? Could you make
out what she was sayin'? She talked to you out of one of those big
glasses they got in manteions?"
    "Exactly. I can repeat everything she said, if you wish. I'd be happy
to." This was a return to familiar ground, and Maytera Mint felt more
confident than she had since she and Remora had passed through the
ruined gate of Blood's villa.
    "I know somebody that says he couldn't really hear the words. He
just knew what she meant."
    "He had known woman," Maytera Mint explained, hoping that
Spider would understand what she intended by _known_. "Or else he
had... Excuse this, please. The indelicacy."
    "Sure thing."
    "He had known another man, or a boy, as men know women. That
man you told us about? Titi? I should imagine--"
    "Yeah, so do I, and the other way, too. Sure he did. Is that the
only reason?"
    "It is. By Echidna's will, those who have enjoyed carnal knowledge
of others may not behold the gods. Nor may they hear them distinctly,
though in most cases they understand them. It varies between
individuals, and several reasons have been put forward for that.
If you don't mind, I won't explain those in detail. They concern
the frequency and the specific natures of various sexual relations.
You can readily construct them, or similar theories, for yourself."
    "Sure, General. You can skip all that."
    "I have never known Man. Therefore I saw the face of the goddess
exactly as I see yours. More clearly, because her face was very bright.
I heard each word she uttered, and can repeat them verbatim, as I
said. When I have known Man..."
    The guilty words had slipped out; she hurried on, conscious that
her cheeks were reddening. "I shall no longer be able to see Echidna.
No more than your friend could. In the event that I know Man--I
mean, have relations with a--with a husband. My husband. Then
I won't be able to repeat the words of the gods any more than
you could."
    "That was the thing I was wanting to talk to you about."
    "The words of the goddess? She said--"
    Spider waved Echidna's words aside. "You gettin' married and
knowin' a man, like you said. I got to tell you."
    Her hand closed about the needler in her pocket. "Do you mean
yourself, Spider? No. Not willingly."
    He shook his head. "Bison. I'm fly, see? I can tell from how you
talk about him. It got you worried when I said I got culls you think's
yours. You were scared Bison was one."
    "Certainly not!" Maytera Mint took three deep breaths and relaxed
her hold on the needler. "I suppose I was, a little."
    "Yeah, I know. You kept tellin' yourself it couldn't be like that,
on account of stuff he's said to you."
    She had taken a step backward; she found that her shoulders were
pressed against the tunnel's cold shiprock. "I haven't said anything
to him, Spider, nor has he said a single such word to me. Nothing!
But I've seen--or believed I saw... And he, Bison, no doubt has--has.
Seen me. And heard me, too. My voice. In the same fashion."
    "Yeah, I got you, General." To her surprise, Spider leaned against
the wall next to her, sparing her the embarrassment of his gaze. "How
old are you?"
    "That is none of your affair." She made her voice as firm as
she could.
    "Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. How old'd you say I am?"
    She shook her head. "Since I decline to confide my age to you, it
would be completely inappropriate for me to speculate on yours."
    "I'm forty-eight, and that's lily. I'd say you're about thirty-three,
thirty-four. If that's queer I'm sorry, but you wouldn't tell me."
    "Nor will I now."
    "I just want to say it goes awful fast. Life goes by awful
fast. You think you know all about that now. The shag you
do. I remember all kind of things that happened when I was
a sprat."
    "I understand, Spider. I know precisely what you mean."
    "You just think you do. I've had maybe a hundred women. I wish
I'd kept count, but I didn't. There was only two I didn't have to pay,
and one was abram once you got to know her."
    "It's quite normal for men to think women--" Maytera Mint sought
for a diplomatic word. "Irrational. And for women to think men
irrational as well."
    "Handin' you the lily, I had to pay the other one, too. I didn't
give her the gelt, but she cost a shaggy lot more. More than she was
worth." Spider shot Maytera Mint a sidelong look. "I got something
important to say, but I don't know how to make you believe me."
    "Is it true, Spider?"
    "Shag, yes! Every word.
    "Then I will believe you, even if you don't believe me about the
gods. What is it?"
    "This isn't it. This's what I should of said back there, see? There
was a time when I might of got a woman like you, but that's over.
Over and done up, see? Just slipped away. Last year I met one I
thought I might like and sort of shaved her a little, you know? And
she shaved me back. Then she seen I was gettin' to be serious, and
she just froze up. She'd look at me, and her eyes kept sayin' _too old,
too old_. It goes so fast. I didn't feel like I'd got old. I still don't."
    For a half-minute or more, his silence filled the tunnel.
    "All right, about this buck Bison."
    Maytera Mint forced herself to nod.
    "I'm goin' to die. Probably it won't be very long at all. Back there
where we bury, I kept hopin' they'd shoot me and I'd get to say
it before I went cold, 'cause then you'd believe me. But they don't
shoot like that. The way my culls got it, you're chilled straight off,
so I got to say it right here. He was one of mine, see? Bison was. A
dimber hand."
    She could not be certain she had spoken; perhaps not.
    "He was supposed to check in every night. I'd meet him, see, in
this certain place. But he only come the first time, the first night."
    It was possible to breathe again.
    "So I sent somebody. I sent this cully we're fetchin', Sewellel.
Bison, he told him he was out. He wouldn't tell you anything
about us, but he wouldn't tell us anything about you, neither.
That's the lily, General. That's how it was. I don't blame you if
you don't believe it, and in your shoes maybe I wouldn't. But
I'm goin' today and know it, and I'd like you to cap for me when
I'm cold."
    "Pray for your spirit." She was still trying to wrap her understanding
about the fact.
    "Yeah. So it's lily. I told you I wouldn't tell you who mine was,
the ones you thought was yours. But he's not mine any more. That's
what I'm tellin' you."
    She found herself entering the guardroom again, with no memory
of having resumed their walk. "Shall I go back and cut off a piece
of synthetic?" she asked. "I forgot entirely that we'd need another
one. If you carry Sewellel on your shoulders, you'll have blood all
over you."
    "I got it right here," Spider told her. He held it up.
    "But I have your knife. You gave me that so..."
    "I used Guan's, 'fore I wrote for him." Spider smiled, a small, sad
smile heart-wrenchingly foreign to his coarse face. "It don't really
take three. It don't even take two, see? I been down here by myself
and buried a couple times, and that's what I do, 'cause I start by
findin' the dead cull's knife."
    "Yes," she said. "Yes, I'm certain you must have been the only
mourner that those men had, more than once." She thrust her hands
into her pockets, found his needler and her beads, and at last his
knife. "Take it, please. I don't want to bury you, Spider. I won't. I
want to save your life, and I'm going to try. I'm going to try very
hard, and I'll succeed."
    He shook his head, but she forced the rough clasp knife into his
hand. "Close the door, please. I think it would be better if we didn't
startle His Eminence.
    Striding purposefully now, she crossed the guardroom and entered
the storeroom. "I should have gone in here before," she told Spider
over her shoulder. "I let His Eminence do it both times, and it
was cowardly of me. This locker--I suppose that's what you
call it--with the sign of addition on it in red. Is this where the
stretcher's kept?"
    Behind her, Spider said, "Yeah, that's it."
    She turned, drawing his needler. "Raise both your hands, Spider.
You are my prisoner."
    He stared at her, his eyes wide.
    "He may be able to see us. I can't be sure. Raise them! Hold them
up before he kills you."
    As Spider lifted his hands, the front of the locker swung open;
a soldier stepped out and saluted, his slug gun stiffly vertical, his
steel heels clashing. Maytera Mint said, "You aren't Sergeant Sand.
What's your name?"
    "Private Schist, sir!"
    "Thank you. There's a dead man in the outer room. I take it you
killed him?"
    "That's right, sir."
    "Take the synthetic this man's holding and wrap him--the dead
man out there, I mean. Wrap the dead man's body in that. You can
carry it for us."
    Schist saluted again.
    Spider said, "You knew he was in there all the time."
    Maytera Mint shook her head, finding herself suddenly weak with
relief. "I wish I were that... I don't know what to call it. That godlike.
People believe I am, but I'm not. I have to think and think."
    She paused to watch Schist through the doorway as he knelt
beside Sewellel's corpse. "And even then I ask Bison's advice, and
the captain's. Often I find they've seen more deeply into the problem
than I have. I suppose it's useless to ask whether you were telling me
the whole truth about Bison now. You can put down your hands,
I think."
    "I was, yeah." From his expression, Spider was relieved as well.
"How'd you figure he was in there?"
    "From the earth on the spade. There was fresh earth on the blade.
Didn't you notice it?"
    He shook his head.
    From the guardroom, Schist announced, "I got him, sir."
    "Good. You'd better walk ahead of us, Spider, and put up your
hands again. There are more, you see. They could have rushed you
hours ago, but they must have been afraid you'd kill His Eminence
and me."
    A hundred thoughts crowded her mind. "Besides, if we let you
walk behind us, you might decide that your duty to Councillor Potto
compelled you to run. Then this soldier would fire."
    "I'd hit you, too," Schist said. "I don't miss much." He patted
Sewellel's swathed corpse, slung over his left shoulder.
    "Can I put my hand down to open the door?"
    "Certainly," Maytera Mint told him; and Schist, "Sure."
    "I ought to explain that I've spoken with Private Schist's sergeant,"
Maytera Mint continued as they left the guardroom. "That was on
Sphixday, the day after our calde was rescued. His name is Sand,
and he has come over to our side, to the calde's side, with his entire
squad. Or rather, with what remains of it, because several were killed
by a talus."
    "I know how it feels."
    "I realize you do, Spider. Neither you nor I, nor Sergeant Sand,
created war. What I was going to say is that our calde and I, with
Sergeant Sand himself and Generalissimo Oosik and General Saba,
conferred upon how we might make the best possible use of Schist
here and the rest. Of the few soldiers we had. It wasn't a lengthy
debate, because all of us found the answer rather obvious. The
soldiers knew these tunnels, and none of us did, though our calde
had spent some time in them. Furthermore, down here they might
encounter other soldiers whom they could bring over to our side.
Plainly then, the best use that could be made of them was to send
them back here to scout the enemy's dispositions, and augment their
number if they could."
    "All right, but how'd you know he was in there from the dirt on
my spade?"
    "It was fresh, as I said. Still somewhat damp. I asked about the
grave that looked most new, and read the date on the paper, and
it wasn't nearly new enough. So somebody else had been burying
something. I thought of an ear, as they're called, or something of the
sort, though to the best of my knowledge Sand didn't have one." She
fell silent, listening to their echoing footsteps.
    "Go on," Spider urged her.
    "Eventually I realized that room back there was a better place. A
soldier as intelligent as Sand would surely anticipate that we would
stop there to eat and talk. He'd want to know what we said, since
you might say something that would be of value to him. He was
right, because as soon as we arrived I began asking my questions.
At any rate, he had Schist hide and listen, and when we left we were
going here."
    Already, too soon as it seemed to Maytera Mint, they had passed
beneath the great iron door, and Remora was staring at Schist. She
called, "It's all right, Your Eminence! We have been rescued, and
Spider is our prisoner."
    The earth around Remora erupted as two more soldiers freed
themselves from it.

                  Chapter 9 -- A Piece of Pas

Auk pounded on the door of the old manse on Brick Street with
the butt of his needler. Behind him, Incus cleared his throat, a
soft and apologetic noise that might have issued from a rabbit or
a squirrel. Behind Incus, twenty-two men and women murmured to
one another.
    Auk pounded again.
    "He's in there, trooper," Hammerstone declared. "Somebody is,
anyhow. I hear him."
    "I didn't," Auk remarked, "and I got good ears."
    "Not good enough. Want me to bust the door, Patera?"
    "_By no means_. Auk, my son, allow _me_."
    Wearily, Auk stepped away from the door. "You think you can
knock better than me, Patera, you go right ahead."
    "My _knock_ would be no more effectual than _your own_, my son, I
feel quite confident._Less so_, if anything. My _mind_, however, may yet
be of _service_."
    "Patera's the smartest bio there is," Hammerstone told the crowd,
"the smartest in the whole _Whorl_" They edged forward, trying to peer
around him.
    Incus drew himself up to his full height, which was by no means great.
"_Blessed_ be this _manse_, in the _Most Sacred Name_ of
_Pass Father of the Gods_, in whose name _we_ come. Blessed be it
in the name of _Gracious Echidna, His Consort_, in those of their
_Sons_ and their _Daughters_ alike, this day and until _Pas's
Plan_ attains _fulfillment_, in the name of _Scylla_, Patroness
of this Our Holy City of Viron and _my own_ patroness."
    Hammerstone leaned toward him, reporting in a harsh stage
whisper, "They stopped moving around in there, Patera."
    Incus filled his lungs again. "Patera _Jerboa!_ For you we have the
_highest and holiest_ veneration. _I_ who speak am _like you a
holy augur_. Indeed, I am _more_, for I am _that augur_ whom
Scintillating Scylla _herself_ has _chosen_ to lead the _Chapter_
of _Our Holy City_.
    "Accompanying _me_ are two _laymen_ who _themselves_ have
the greatest of claims to your _revered attention_, for they are _Auk_
and _Hammerstone_, the biochemical person and the _chemical_ one,
_cojoined_, selected by Lord Pas _himself_ to execute his will at a
_holy sacrifice_ at which _I_ presided, this very--"
    The door opened a hand's breadth, and the pale, affrighted face of
Patera Shell appeared. "You--you... Are you really an augur?"
    "I _am_, my son. But if _you_ are _Patera Jerboa_, the augur of this
manteion, you are the _wrong_ Patera Jerboa, one whom we do
_not_ seek."
    From behind Hammerstone, the foremost of Auk's followers
declared, "He ain't no augur! Twig his gipon."
    Incus turned back to address him, one small foot blocking the
door. "Oh, but he _is_, my son. Do _I_ not know _my own kind?_ No mere
_tunic_ can deceive _me_."
    "Yeah," Auk put in, "he's a augur right enough, or I never seen
one. C'mere, Patera." Catching Shell's wrist, he jerked him through
the doorway. "What's your name?"
    Shell only stared at him with wide eyes, his mouth opening and
shutting.
    "He's Patera Shell, my acolyte," announced a white-bearded man
who had taken Shell's place; his antiquated voice creaked and groaned
like the wheel of an overloaded cart, although he wore a brilliant
blue tunic intended for a young man. "I'm Patera Jerboa, and I'm
augur here." His rheumy eyes fastened upon Incus, "You're looking
for me. I don't hear much any more, but I heard that. Very well." 
Jerboa stepped through the doorway and traced the sign of addition
between Incus and himself, making it both higher and wider than was
currently customary. "Do what you came to, but let Shell go."
    Auk already had. "You're the cull, all right. You got a Window
in your manteion, Patera?"
    "It would not be a manteion without one. I've--" Jerboa coughed
and spat. "I've served my Window for sixty-one years. I'd..." He
fell silent, sucking his gums as he looked ftom Auk to Incus and
back. "Who's in charge here?"
    "I am," Auk told him, and offered his hand. "I'm what you call a
theodidact, Patera. Patera Incus there ought to have told you. I been
enlightened by Tartaros. Right now, I'm doing a job for his pa. So're
they." He jerked his thumb at Hammerstone and Incus, then held out
his hand again.
    Jerboa clasped it, his own hand dry and cold, with a grip that
seemed oddly weak for its size; for a moment his eyes were bright.
"I was going to say that I'd like to die in front of my Sacred Window,
my son, but you haven't come to kill us."
    "Course not. Thing is, Patera, you got a piece of Pas."
    Shell, who had relaxed somewhat, stared again.
    "He wants it back now. He sent us to get it for him."
    "My son--"
    "That's the job I been talking about, Patera. That's what he asked
me to do for him at the theophany."
    One of Auk's followers called, "This afternoon, Patera! We were
there!"
    "There has been another?" Jerboa lifted his raddled old face to the
vanishing thread of gold that was the long sun, and seemed at that
moment nearly as tall as Auk.
    "At Silk's manteion!" the same follower called.
    Auk nodded. "Only this time it was Pas, Patera. You know about
that, don't you? You seen him one time yourself, that's what
he said."
    "He did," Shell announced unexpectedly.
    "Dimber here." Auk felt the last lingering doubt melt away, and
grinned. "That's good, Patera. That's real good! People talk about
how long it's been since any god come to a Window, or they did
'fore Kypris told us we could solve any place we wanted that night.
Only they don't never say when last time was, or who it was that
got the god to come. Pas said it was you and gave your name, but
we didn't know where to find you."
    Shell looked beseechingly at Incus. "I don't understand, Patera.
The Peace of Pas? Patera's brought the Peace of Pas to thousands,
I'm sure, but--"
    "A chunk of him," Hammerstone explained. "Like a slice, sort of,
or if I was to unscrew one of my fingers."
    "We need some animals for him," Auk announced, raising his voice.
"A whole herd of 'em. _Listen up, you culls!_ We found him. This right
here's the holy augur that's got a piece of Pas in his head, a piece
that Pas wants back. Our job was to find him. I mean mine and
Hammerstone's, and Patera's here."
    A sibyl, herself stooped and old, appeared like a shadow at Jerboa's
side. "Are they going to hurt you, Patera? I came through the manse.
I broke the rule, but I don't care. If you are--if they're going to do
something bad to you..."
    "It will be all right, Maytera," the old augur assured her.
"Everything's going to be all right."
    Still addressing his followers, Auk told them, "We did our job, and
it's your turn. You want to be part of this? Part of the biggest thing
that's ever happened yet? You want to bring Pas back for people
everywhere in the whorl? You get us those animals now, good ones.
Get 'em anyway you can, and bring 'em back to this manteion."

"You can't answer your own door," Maytera Marble scolded Silk.
"You simply cannot!"
    He resumed his seat, vaguely unhappy that the longed-for respite
from the stacks of paper before him would be postponed. The city's
various accounts at the Fisc totalled--he tapped his pencil in
unconscious imitation of Swallow--not much over four hundred
thousand cards. In private hands it would have been a vast fortune;
but the Guard had to be paid, as did the commissioners, clerks, and
other functionaries, to say nothing of the contractors who sometimes
cleaned the streets and were supposed to keep them in repair.
    His mouth twisting, he recalled his promise--so lightly given--to
reward those who had fought bravely on either side.
    All four taluses would have to be paid for as well before Swallow
would deliver even one; it was in the contract he had signed less than
an hour ago. Long before those taluses were finished, the Guard
would need food, ammunition, and repairs to five armed floaters.
(For the tenth or twelfth time that day, Silk considered using those
floaters in the tunnels and rejected it.) Meanwhile, both the taluses
the Guard employed currently, the remnant of those it had when the
fighting began, would have to be paid as well.
    Maytera Marble reentered, bowing. "It's Generalissimo Oosik,
Patera. He desires to speak with you at once." Oosik's bulky form
was visible in the reception hall beyond the ornate doorway, rocking
back and forth with impatience.
    "Of course," Silk said heartily. "Show him in, please, Maytera. I
apologize for asking you to get the door."
    "It was no trouble, Patera. I was glad to do it."
    Behind her, Oosik was already marching into the room; he halted
before Silk's work table and saluted with a flourish and a click of
polished heels. "I trust that your wounds are not too troublesome,
Calde.
    "Not at all, Generalissimo. Thank you, Maytera--that will be
all."
    "Coffee, Patera? Tea?"
    Oosik shook his head.
    "No, but thank you." Silk waved her away. "Pull up a chair,
Generalissimo. Sit down and relax. Have you found--?"
    Oosik shook his head. "I regret not, Calde."
    "Sit down. What is it, then?"
    "You watched the parade, as I did." Oosik carried over an armless
chair that looked too small for him.
    "The Guard detachment was amazingly trim, I thought, for having
just been taken from the fighting."
    "Pah!" Oosik blew aside the detachment. "I thank you, Calde. You
are gracious. But the Trivigauntis? That was the thing to see, Siyuf's
horde."
    Silk, who had been wondering how to bring up the matters that
had occupied his mind earlier in the afternoon, tried to seize the
opportunity. "It was what I didn't see that seemed most significant.
Sit down, please. I don't like having to look up at you like this."
    Oosik sat. "You saw their infantry. I hope you were impressed,
as I was."
    "Of course."
    "Also their cavalry. A great deal of that, Calde. Twice what I had
expected." Oosik wound one end of his white-tipped mustache around
his finger and tugged.
    "The cavalry was beautiful, certainly, but I was struck by their
guns; I'd never seen big guns like that. Do we--do you have any,
Generalissimo?"
    "A few, yes. Never as many as I would like. What did you think
of their floaters, Calde?"
    "There weren't any."
    "What of the taluses? I should like your opinion, Calde."
    Silk shook his head. "You won't get it, Generalissimo. There weren't
any of those either. That is a matter--"
    "Precisely so!" Oosik released his mustache and waved his forefinger
to emphasize his point. "I do not seek to embarrass you, Calde. Every
man knows much upon some subjects, little or nothing on others. It
cannot be otherwise. No one can predict what will happen in war, yet
a commander must try. What sort of fighting does Siyuf anticipate
here? A horde shapes itself as a man dresses, at one time to hunt, at
another to attend the theater. I have seen her horde now, and I will
tell you."
    Silk, who had been about to speak at length himself, said, "Please
do, Generalissimo."
    "She will fight above ground, not in tunnels. Not in the city, either,
or little. Infantry, Calde, for fighting in a city, and to defend one.
The guns that so impressed you are for defense also. Mostly she will
attack. Thus she brings cavalry, which can go swiftly to a place chosen
by herself in her airship and strike without warning. She spoke of
mules to free her guns from mud. I overheard your talk, for which
I hope you will forgive me."
    "Of course you did; you were standing beside General Saba."
    "Exactly so. Why not taluses, Calde? In your Guard, we use
our taluses to free mired guns and even wagons, and a talus is
stronger than thirty mules. Why will she not use taluses, and tell
you so?"
    "Because she hasn't got any. I noticed it at the time, and before the
parade was over I became very conscious of it. It may be that no one in
Trivigaunte knows how to make them, though I'd think unemployed
taluses would go there seeking work if that were the case."
    "They have kept their taluses at home to defend their city, Calde.
Their floaters, too. Those are best for forcing a city street, however.
I would think them best for tunnels, also."
    "I agree."
    "They would have been destroyed in the tunnels, fighting the soldiers
and taluses of the Ayuntamiento. You see."
    Silk, who feared that he saw only too well, said, "Not as clearly
as I'd like. Go on, Generalissimo."
    "My wife visits a woman who professes to reveal the future to her."
Oosik tugged his mustache again. "She says she does not believe this,
but she does. I have upbraided her without effect. A man without a
wife is spared a full half of life's unpleasantness."
    "We augurs," Silk said carefully, "profess to reveal the future, too.
That is to say, we profess to read the will of the gods in the entrails
of their sacrifices. I admit that the intestines of a sheep seem like
an unlikely tablet even for a god, but history records many striking
instances of accurate predictions."
    A slight smile elevated Oosik's mustache. "My change of topic did
not discomfit you, Calde."
    "Not at all."
    "Good. I mentioned this woman because she and many like her are
false, and I do not wish you to think me a false prophet like them. If
I predict, with success, the next event of the war, will that increase
my credit with you?"
    "It can go no higher, Generalissimo."
    "Then this will demonstrate that I deserve the confidence you repose
in me. Siyuf will send a force of substance into the tunnels. It will
bravely engage the enemy, and there will be terrible fighting. You,
I think, Calde, will be taken to see it, if you will go. You will find
a tunnel choked with bodies."
    Silk nodded thoughtfully.
    "Once more in the Juzgado, you will insist that the force be
withdrawn, those gallant young girls. Soon it will be, and after that,
Siyuf will fight in the tunnels no more."
    "You are a false prophet, Generalissimo," Silk told him. "Having
heard your prophesy, I won't permit that to happen."
    "In which case we must fight there, and because they are narrow,
a hundred or two at a time. One by one we will lose our floaters
and taluses, and with them scores of troopers. It will be slow
work, and while it is done our numbers will grow less each day.
These thousands and thousands of troopers of General Mint's, who
constitute so formidable a force. Can you afford to pay them?"
    Silk shook his head.
    "Then what will there be to hold them, if there is little fighting
for them? A trooper fights for honor, Calde, whether he is General
Skate's trooper or hers. Or from loyalty. Or for loot sometimes. But
he waits for pay. He will not wait without it, because when there
is no fighting there is no honor to win, no flag to die for, no loot
to gain."
    "The Trivigauntis are stronger than we are already," Silk said
pensively. "I think so at least, after what I saw today."
    Oosik shook his head. "Not yet, Calde, though Mint's ranks have
begun to thin, perhaps. By the end of the winter--" Oosik was
interrupted by climes, and Horn's hurrying footsteps.

The three augurs had agreed that Jerboa would offer the first victim
and the largest. The rest--eight had been led through the chill dusk into
the old manteion on Brick Street, and more were expected momentarily--would
be divided between Incus and Shell, with Incus offering the
second, fourth, sixth, and eighth, and each choosing freely from those
available, as long as he did not choose the largest.
    Auk, who had been a silent witness to their discussion, watched
with interest as Jerboa tottered to the ambion; this feeble frame, this
snowy-haired, half-naked skull, contained a tiny fragment of Great
Pas, Lord of the Whorl and Father of the Seven. Did it know it was
about to be reclaimed?
    Shag yes, Auk told himself, it was bound to. He, Auk, had explained
the whole thing to old Jerboa, hadn't he? How gods could tear chunks
off themselves without getting smaller, and how they could slip those
into a cull. The chunk could be jefe then if it wanted to, but it didn't
have to. It could, as he had been at pains to make clear, just go along.
It was like a buck on a donkey. Sure, he could order it around, make
it trot or stop, turn one way or the other--only he didn't have to.
Maybe he'd just let go of the reins, hook a leg over the pommel, and
snoodge, letting his donkey graze or look for water, or whatever it
wanted to. That was what Pas had done for years and years, but
how long would he keep it up?
    "My very dear new friends," Jerboa began, "I know you have not,
any of you--" He coughed and clearly wished to spit, but swallowed.
"That you haven't come out here and brought the gods more fine
offerings than we've seen since... I don't know."
    Benevolently, he looked toward the sibyls gathered about the fire
that the youngest was kindling on the altar. "Maytera Wood, you've
a better memory. They just brought another calf. That makes three.
No, four. Four nice calves and four lambs, and a colt. We'll have a
bull before we're done, I declare... What was I going to ask you
about, Maytera?"
    "When we'd had better animals," the oldest sibyl told him. "It was
when you came from the schola, Patera. Your parents and your aunt
bought a bullock and a peacock, and--oh, dear. It was Maytera
Salvia who told me. What else did she say?"
    "A monkey," Jerboa informed her. "I recollect the monkey, Maytera."
He had not liked offering the monkey, and something of that showed
in his face after sixty-one years. "It doesn't matter. There were nine,
one for each of the Nine."
    As if they were a backward class, he fixed his eyes on Auk and
Hammerstone, and those of Auk's followers who had returned. "There
are nine great gods, as all you young people should know. That's Pas
and Echidna, and their children. What my father and my aunt did was
to buy a gift for each, for me to give them the first time I sacrificed.
On that altar right over there it was. Most were small. Some kind of
a singing bird for Molpe, and a mole for Tartaros, and the monkey.
I recollect those."
    Incus, waiting with Shell, stirred impatiently.
    If Jerboa noticed, he did not betray it. "What they were doing was
a very important thing. They were starting a young man off--" He
coughed again. "Excuse it. The gods' will, I'm sure. I just want to say
it's a more important thing that we're doing tonight. A god, not just
any god but Lord Pas himself, they say, has told these new gentlemen
and Patera--Patera--?"
    "Incus," Hammerstone prompted from a front seat.
    "What's an incus anyway? I don't think I've offered an incus in
all my years. Well, never mind. One of those little things that live in
trees and eat the birds' eggs, I imagine." Another cough. "Told them
if they'd find me... Is that right?"
    Incus, who had been on the point of objecting violently a moment
before, exerted self-control. "_You_ are indeed the augur whom Pas
_himself_ designated, Patera, if you are that _Jerboa_ whom he
intended."
    Shell added encouragingly, "I'm sure you are, Patera."
    "If they'd find me and sacrifice, he'd come again, he said. Have I
got that right?"
    Hammerstone, Incus, and even Shell nodded confirmation, as did
most of those assembled; there was a stir at the back of the manteion
as an immensely tall worshipper led in a tame baboon.
    "What I wanted to say while our good sibyls get the fire going is
that it's not a little thing. Not a little thing at all. Theophanies over
on Sun Street lately, and this you've come from makes three. But
I'm no stranger to them, not what you could call a stranger at all."
    He turned, shuffling around behind his ambion to address Incus.
"You talked to Pas, did you?"
    "I _did_." Incus swelled with pride.
    Jerboa faced about again. "He said he was going to come. Well,
we'll see. It'll be a great thing, a tremendous thing. If it happens."
    Maytera Wood presented him with the knife of sacrifice, the signal
that the sacred fire was burning satisfactorily. "I'll have that black
calf with the white face," he decided.
                            *  *  *
"Bird back!"
    Bison halted before Silk's table and saluted at the very moment that
Oreb, who had been riding on Horn's shoulder, landed upon Silk's
head; no slightest twitching of Bison's thick black beard betrayed
amusement, although it seemed to Silk that there had been the
briefest possible flicker of hilarity in Bison's dark and darting eyes.
"I'm early, Calde," Bison confessed. "I came beforehand because I
want to talk to you. If you object, I understand. Go ahead and tell
me. But I have to talk to you, and I hope you'll let me when you're
through."
    "We could have talked at dinner." Silk was thinking about Bison's
salute. Bison had not tried to imitate a Guardsman's click, snap, and
flourish, which would almost certainly have rendered him ridiculous;
yet the salute had conveyed respect for order and the office of calde,
plainly and even attractively.
    "Not alone. Part of what I'm going to say..." Bison let the thought
trail off.
    Oosik rose. "We must speak more upon our topic, Calde. Not now,
but soon. I hope you agree."
    Silk nodded, causing Oreb to hop from his head to his left
shoulder.
    "With your permission, I shall look in on my son. I hope he is well
enough to attend. I will return at eight."
    Silk glanced at the clock; it was after seven. "Of course. Tell your
son, please, that all of us hold high hopes for his recovery." Oosik
saluted and made an about face.
    Stepping aside for Oosik, Horn put in, "Willet's back with Master
Xiphias, Calde. He asked me to tell you."
    Silk was on the point of instructing Horn to call Hossaan by his
true name, but thought better of it. If Hossaan had called himself
Willet, Hossaan had no doubt had a reason.
    "Master Xiphias's in the Blue Room. He says he doesn't have to
see you before dinner unless you want to see him."
    "That's good." Silk smiled. "I'm in dire need of people who don't
have to see me. I wish that there were more. You'd better go home
now, Horn, or you'll miss supper."
    "Nettle and me are going to help. We'll get something."
    "Fish heads?" Oreb inquired.
    "If there are any, I'll save them for you," Horn promised.
    "Very well, Horn, and thank you." Silk returned to Bison. "When
I heard you were here early, I hoped that you had come to tell me
you'd found Maytera Mint. I take it you haven't."
    "No, Calde, but that's what I want to talk to you about."
    "Then sit down and do it. I don't have long before dinner--the
other guests will be here soon--but we can finish up afterward if
we must."
    Bison sat; like Oosik, he seemed too large for the chair. "You've
talked to Loris and Potto on a glass, Calde."
    Silk nodded.
    "They won't talk to me. I know, because I tried before I came here.
But they talked to you, and they might talk to you again. I want you
to ask them to let you see General Mint for yourself. They say they've
got her. Make them prove it."
    "Why do you doubt them, Colonel?"
    Bison sighed and leaned back. "I knew you'd ask that. I don't blame
you, I would too. Just the same, I kept hoping you wouldn't."
    "Poor man!" Oreb commiserated.
    "When I ask to see her, they'll want to know why. I must have
something to tell them, and the more compelling it is, the more
likely it will be that they'll show her to us--assuming that they
have her."
    "You'll let me watch?"
    "Certainly." Silk paused, his forefinger tracing circles on his cheek.
"You're emotionally involved. Oreb senses it, and so do I. I hope you
won't let your attachment to Maytera Mint, one that I feel myself,
goad you into acting rashly.
    "I hope so, too, Calde." Bison clenched hairy fists that looked as
big as hams. "You've been down in the tunnels. You said so during
that meeting."
    "Bad hole!"
    "Well, so have I. Maybe I should've told you then, but I didn't
because it didn't seem relevant and I didn't want you to think I was
showing off. There's a way down in the Orilla, and I'm pretty sure
there's more, besides the one under the Juzgado that Sand and his
soldiers used."
    Silk nodded. It had not occurred to him that Bison might be a
thief, and he adjusted his mind to the new information as Bison
spoke again.
    "I got a hunch after a while. I remembered a place down there, an
old guardroom that they used when there were soldiers underneath
the city all the time. I had a feeling they might have taken her there,
and went in with thirty of my troopers to check it out myself."
    "Bad hole!" Oreb repeated; and Silk nodded again. "It is a bad hole,
and I'm not in the least sure that what you did was wise, Colonel. I
understand why you did it, however.
    "We found the place all right." The big hands clasped and seemed
intent upon pulling each other's fingers off "The door was open, and
there were bloodstains all over the floor. Fresh blood, Calde."
    "Which could have been anybody's." Silk hoped that his expression
did not reveal the dismay he felt. "Horn! Horn, would you come back
in here for a moment, please?"
    "When we got back to the sufface, I tried to talk to the Ayuntamiento
on a glass," Bison continued. "There used to be one in that old
guardroom, I think, but it was stolen a long time ago, if there was.
Anyway, I tried to talk to Potto, and when he wouldn't, to Loris.
Then to Tarsier or Galago. None of them would speak to me. That
was when I came here."
    "Did you ask your glass to find Maytera for you?"
    Bison shook his head. "It didn't occur to me. Do you think they
might have her where there's a glass?"
    Horn burst in. "Yes, Patera? I mean Calde.
    "It's late," Silk said, "and I'm getting tired. It seems to me that I've
been inviting people to dinner all day long, and relying on Maytera
to keep track of everybody. Would you ask her, please, as soon as
she has time, to write me a complete list of the guests we expect?"
    "I can tell you, Calde. Or write it out for you if you'd rather. I
wrote the placecards and put them around."
    "Tell me then. If I need a written list afterward, I'll have you do
it."
    "You, Calde, at the head of the table. On your right will be
Generalissimo Siyuf. Maytera said we had to put her there because
the dinner was to welcome her to the city."
    Silk nodded. "Quite right."
    "Then His Cognizance. She'll be between you and him."
    Oreb fluttered uncomfortably; Silk said, "Go on."
    "Then General Saba, she's the captain of their airship. Then Colonel
Bison."
    "I'm Colonel Bison," Bison explained. "I came a little early to speak
to the Calde."
    "Good man!" Oreb assured Horn.
    "Horn is one of the boys at our palaestra," Silk told Bison. "The
leader of the boys at our palaestra, I ought to say, and he's been
worth a hundred cards to us. Continue, if you please, Horn."
    "Sure. Colonel Bison, then Generalissimo Siyuf's staff officer,
whoever she is. And then Maytera at the foot of the table, only
I don't think she's going to sit down there much and talk to people,
Calde. She's too excited and worried about something going wrong
in the kitchen. That's the chair closest to the kitchen."
    "Of course.
    "On her right there'll be General Saba's staff officer, then Chenille,
then Master Xiphias."
    "I'm beginning to lose track," Silk told him. "Where will Generalissimo
Oosik sit?"
    "On your left, Calde. Then his son. When he got here, he said please
put his son right beside him, because he's been so sick. He's worried
about him."
    "Naturally," Silk said.
    "Then Master Xiphias on the Generalissimo's son's left."
    "If I've been following you, there should be five people on the
right side of the table and five on the left." Silk counted on his
fingers. "Right--Siyuf, His Cognizance, Saba, Colonel Bison here,
and Siyufs staff officer. Left--Oosik, his son, Xiphias, Chenille, and
Saba's staff officer.
    "That's right, Calde, and you and Maytera make twelve."
    "Bird eat?"
    "Yes indeed." Silk smiled, glancing sidelong at Oreb. "I wouldn't
think of dining without your company. Unfortunately you'd make
thirteen at table the way things stand; you won't, however, because
I'm asking Horn to ask Maytera to set one more place to my immediate
left--a place for General Mint. Please letter a card for her as well,
Horn, and set her place exactly like all the others. It will make the
left side a trifle more crowded than the right, but the guests on that
side will have to bear it."
    "It's a real big table, Calde. It won't be bad."
    "I know, I've seen it. Perhaps General Mint will come. Let's hope
so. She'll certainly be welcome if she does."
    "Very welcome," Bison rumbled.
    "So they--no, wait a moment. What about Mucor? Surely she isn't
going to help you in the kitchen. Isn't she going to eat with us?"
    Horn looked slightly embarrassed. "Maytera thought it'd be
better for her to eat in her room, Calde. She isn't always--you know."
    "Maytera Marble's granddaughter," Silk explained to Bison. "I don't
believe you've met her."
    Bison shook his head.
    "She must certainly eat with us. Tell Maytera I insist upon it.
She had better be close to Maytera, however. Put her on the right
side, between Maytera and Generalissimo Siyuf's staff officer. That
gives us six on each side, and fourteen places--fifteen diners in all,
including Oreb. Be sure to letter a placecard for Mucor as well as
one for General Mint."
    Silk heaved a sigh of relief, feeling better than he had since early
that morning; his informal dinner no longer seemed a mere formality,
and when the dinner was over the formalities (which he had come to
detest) would be over as well. "She may be dead," he told Bison. "With
all my heart, I pray she isn't, but she may be."
    Bison nodded gloomily.
    "Even if she is, however--even if we were to find her body, even
if we knew beyond doubt that she was dead--we dare not let the
Trivigauntis know it, or even suspect we think it. She has won more
victories than any other commander we've got, and the better chance
they think we have of winning, the more help they will provide us.
Am I making myself clear?"
    Bison nodded again. "We mustn't let her troopers know, either.
Half would go after her on their own, if they knew the Ayuntanriento's
got her."
    "Or your troopers. Quite correct." Silk pushed back his chair and
stood up. "Come with me; there's a glass in the next room."

The gauntletted hand of old Jerboa withdrew the knife of sacrifice, and
the calf fell to its knees and rolled over on its side, its spurting blood
captured in an earthenware chalice held by one of the younger sibyls.
With more dexterity than Auk would have believed he possessed,
Jerboa cut off the calfs head and laid it on the fire. The right rear
hoof gave him some difficulty, but he persisted.
    A fleeting fleck of color in the Sacred Window caught Auk's eye.
He gasped, and it was gone.
    The impact of the call's final hoof sent up a fountain of scarlet
sparks; Jerboa faced the Window, hands aloft. "Accept, O Great
Pas--" He coughed. "Pas who art of all gods..."
    The window bloomed pink, violet, and gold. As Auk watched
open-mouthed, the dancing hues coalesced into a face of more than
human beauty--one that he saw as plainly as he had ever seen any
other woman's. "You seek my lover," the goddess said.
    "We do, O Great Goddess." Jerboa's reedy old voice was weaker
than ever. "We seek him because we seek to do his will."
    Auk blurted, "He said he'd come if we'd find Patera."
    The goddess's violet eyes left Jerboa. "So much love... So much
love here. Auk? You are Auk? Find her, Auk. Clasp her to you.
Never part."
    "All right," Auk said, and repeated, "All right." It was difficult to
argue with a goddess. "I sure will, Kindly Kypris. Only Pas gave us
this job. We had to find Patera, so we did. Now we got to find Pas,
got to get the two together, like."
    "The Grand Manteion. Auk." The goddess's shining eyes left him,
opening their bottomless lakes to Jerboa once more. "Will you go,
old man? Dear old man, so filled with love...? Will you find my
lover and your god? Jerboa?"
    The old augur struggled to speak. Shell said, "I'll take him, Great
Goddess. We'll go together." His voice was stronger than Auk had
ever heard it.
    Although he could not tear his gaze from hers, Incus, on his knees,
scuttled backward. "I am _pledged_..."
    "To prevent my mischief." Kypris's laughter was the peal of icy
bells. "To kill fifty? A hundred children. Or more, that little Scylla
may heed you. Homely little Scylla, with her father's temperament
and her mother's intellect."
    Incus seemed incapable of speech or motion.
    "You'll require a sacrifice... Auk? Not children."
    "Not children," Auk repeated, and felt an immense relief.
    "My lover. Pas? My lover is engaged with his wife. At present."
This time the precious bells were warm and merry. "Not in making
more... Brats? You call them sprats. No. Oh, no. Wiping her out
of core. Do you know what that means? Auk?" Kypris's smile found
Shell. "Tell him..."
    "He don't have to, Kindly Kypris. I got it."
    "You will need a victim. To get my lover's attention. Not a child...
Auk? Something unusual. Think upon it."
    "A victim in the grand Manteion," Auk repeated numbly.
    "Several. Perhaps. Auk. I offer no... Suggestions. But tonight. As
quickly as you can." For a half-second her high, ivory-smooth brow
wrinkled in thought. "The piece the old man has may aid him in the
fight. I hope so."

As Silk limped into the room, one of the waiters provided by Ermine's
pulled out his chair for him. He halted behind it, his hands resting on
the back. Bison, smiling broadly, made his way down the table to his
seat near the foot.
    "Welcome," Silk said. He had intended to welcome them in the
name of the gods, but the words died unspoken. "Welcome in the
name of the City of Viron, to all of you. I deeply regret that I was
unable to welcome most of you when you arrived; but I was engaged
with Colonel Bison. Maytera will have welcomed you, I feel sure, in
Scylla's name."
    At the other end of the table, Maytera Marble nodded.
    Xiphias whispered, "Sit down lad! Want your leg worse?"
    "In which case," Silk continued, "I welcome you in the name of
him who enlightened me, the Outsider, the only god I trust."
    "He is right, Calde." Oosik pushed back his chair. "If you will not,
my son and I must rise. We cannot remain seated while our superior
stands." The pale cornet on his left was struggling to get to his feet
already.
    "Of course. That was thoughtless of me, Generalissimo. I beg your
pardon, and your son's." Silk sat, finding his inlaid rosewood chair
rather too high. "I was about to say that I do trust him, now, though
it's very hard for me to trust any god."
    "We are like children, Patera Calde," Quetzal told him, and Oreb
flew from Silk's shoulder to perch upon the topmost level of the crystal
chandelier. "A child has to trust its parents, even when they're not to
be trusted."
    The pale cornet looked up with a flash of anger that seemed as
much a symptom as an emotion. "What are you two implying!"
    "Nothing, Mattak. Nothing at all." His father's big hand covered
his.
    Siyuf's laugh was clear, pleasant, and unaffected. "So we feel of
Sphigx, Calde. But are we fighting among ourselves so quick as this?
At home we make a rule that there is allowed no fighting until the
fourth bottle."
    "That's a good rule," Bison put in, still smiling. "But the tenth might
be better."
    The young officer had already relaxed, slumping back in his chair;
Silk smiled, too. "I don't know what the proper form is, but this is
a thoroughly informal dinner anyway. Generalissimo Siyuf, have
you met your fellow diners? I know you know His Cognizance
and Generalissimo Oosik."
    "There is one I should particularly like to meet, Calde Silk. That
very promising girl who sits with Major Hadale."
    The major, a gaunt, hard-faced woman of about forty, said, "Her
name is Chenille, Generalissimo. She's living here in the palace
temporarily."
    Siyuf cocked an eyebrow at Silk. "I am surprise that you have not
seated her next to you. She could fit in very easily here between you
and me."
    "Good girl!" Oreb assured Siyuf from his lofty perch.
    "Major Hadale is correct," Silk told Siyuf. "Her name is Chenille,
and she's a close friend. So much has happened since we met that I
could call her an old one. She has been helping Maytera here, haven't
you, Chenille?"
    She stared down at her plate. "Yes, Patera."
    "Is there anyone else? What about Master Xiphias?"
    "I have not this pleasure." Siyuf's eyes remained upon Chenille.
    "Master Xiphias is my fencing teacher and my friend, as well as
the best swordsman I have ever seen."
    "Rich, too, lad! Rich! You asked me to open the window, remember?
Up there in Ermine's! Everybody heard you! Think they'd stay away
after that? Breaking my door down! Doubled my charges Molpsday,
tripled them yesterday. It's the truth!"
    "I am happy for you," Siyuf told him. "Your Calde speaks of
swordsmen. He has never seen a swordswoman, perhaps. Soon we
must cross blades for him."
    Silk recalled Hyacinth's feigned fencing with the azoth; to hide what
he felt, he said, "We are neglecting the cornet. Neither Generalissimo
Siyuf nor I have met you, Cornet. That is our loss, beyond doubt.
Are you a swordsman? As a cavalry officer, you must be."
    "I am Cornet Mattak, Calde," the young officer announced politely.
"My sword has been drawn against you. I'm sure you know that. Now
I long to draw it again, in your service."
    "You must recover your health first," his father told him.
    Quetzal murmured, "I will pray for him, Generalissimo. We augurs
teach others to pray for their foes. We try, at least. We seldom get
a chance to pray for ours, because we have so few. I'm grateful for
this opportunity."
    Maytera Marble was equally grateful for the opportunity to turn
the talk to religion. "It's Lord Pas who teaches us that, isn't it, Your
Cognizance?"
    "No, Maytera." Quetzal's hairless head swayed from side to side
above his long, wrinkled neck.
    Mattak said, "I want to apologize, Your Cognizance. I've been
feverish..." His voice faded as he met Quetzal's gaze.
    "My son has horrible dreams," Oosik explained to the table at large.
"Even when he is awake--" He was interrupted by the arrival of the
wine, a huge bottle rich with dust and cobwebs.
    "We've an extensive cellar here," Silk told Siyuf, "laid down by
my predecessor. Experts tell me a good deal of it may have soured,
however. I know nothing about such things myself."
    The sommelier poured him a half finger, releasing a light aroma
suggestive of wildflowers. "Not this, Calde."
    "No, indeed." Silk swirled the pale fluid in his glass. "I really
don't need to taste it. No ceremony could mean less." He tasted it
nonetheless, and nodded.
    "Except these introductions," Bison said unexpectedly, "if the
generalissimo's intelligence is as good as I imagine. I'm Colonel
Bison, Generalissimo.
    "They are not," Siyuf told him, "yet I hear of you, and I receive
a description I find accurate." She let the sommelier half fill her
wineglass, then waved him away. "You are Mint's chief subordinate.
Not long ago you are upon the same footing as many others. Now
you are their superior, answerable to her alone. Is it not so?"
    "I'm her second in command, yes."
    "So well regarded that Calde Silk closets himself with you before
this dinner. I congratulate you."
    Siyuf paused, glancing around the table. "There is but one other
I do not know. That thin girl beside my Colonel Abanja. She is
also of the calde's household? Pretty Chenille, you must know her.
Tell me."
    "Her name's Mucor, and she's Maytera's granddaughter," Chenille
explained. "We take care of her."
    "This is by adoption, I take it."
    Chenille hesitated, then nodded.
    "Hello, Mucor. I am Generalissimo Siyuf from Trivigaunte. Are
we to hope that you will soon be a fine strong trooper? Or a holy
woman like your grandmother?"
    Mucor did not reply. The sommelier paused, his bottle poised
above her wineglass. Maytera Marble put her left hand over it, and
Silk shook his head.
    "I see. This is not fortunate. Calde Silk, you know of my General
Saba, and you have heard the names of Colonel Abanja and Major
Hadale, also. Will you not tell me of the empty chair at your left? I
did not read the little card before sitting.
    "Wait!" Siyuf raised her hand. "Let me to guess. Mine is the place
of honor. I am your distinguished guest. But in the second is not
Generalissimo Oosik as I expect, but another. It is then for someone
deserving of exceptional honor, and not one of us, for Crane who
saved you from the enemy is now dead."
    Surreptitiously, Silk made the sign of addition.
    "Tell me if I am right as far as I have gone. If Crane is living and
I am wrong, I like to know."
    "No, he's dead. I wish it weren't so."
    A waiter whose livery differed from the others came in with a tray
of hors d'oeuvres; as he set the first small plate before Siyuf, Silk
recognized him as Hossaan.
    If Siyuf herself had recognized him as well, she gave no indication.
"Then Crane must be dismissed. Each officer here was permitted a
subordinate. That is our custom, and I think it a good one. For me,
Colonel Abanja, for my General Saba is Major Hadale, and for your
own generalissimo his son. But there is here also Colonel Bison. Mint
herself is not present."
    "You're entirely correct," Silk told Siyuf, still studying Hossaan out
of the corner of his eye; he handed Maytera Mint's placecard to Siyuf
He had invited Bison himself and forgotten to tell him that he could
bring a subordinate, but there seemed little point in mentioning it.
    "Bird eat?" The hors d'oeuvres included clams from Lake Limna,
and Oreb regarded them hungrily
    "Of course," Silk told him. "Come down and take whatever
you fancy."
    Oreb fluttered nervously. "Girl say."
    "Me?" Chenille looked up at him. "Why Oreb, how nice! I'm flattered,
I really and truly am. I always thought you liked Auk better." She
gulped, and Maytera Marble directed a searching glance at her. "Only
I don't blame you, because I do too. I'll get a bunch of these, and
you can have anything you want, like Patera says." Oreb glided from
the chandelier.
    Siyuf asked Silk, "He is dead, this Auk?"
    Silk shook his head.
    "He is not, and so this card," Siyuf held it up, "should be for him.
Is that not so? He is alive, you say. But your General Mint is as dead
as my Doctor Crane."
    Quetzal asked, "Are you sure, Generalissimo? I have good reasons
for thinking otherwise."
    "You have cut open some sheep."
    "Many, I fear."
    "A god speaks to us, also. Sublime Sphigx cares more for us than
any other city. She alone of the gods speaks to us in our ancient
tongue, speaking as we did in my mother's house, and as we speak
in mine."
    Silk said, "The High Speech of Trivigaunte? I've heard of it, but
I don't believe I've ever heard the language itself. Could you say
something for us? A prayer or a bit of poetry?"
    Siyuf shook her head. "It is not for amusement at dinner parties,
Calde. Instead, I shall say what I set out to say. It is that no other
city is so close to its goddess as we. Look at you. You have a goddess,
you say. Scylla. Yet your women are slaves. If Scylla cared for you,
she would care for them."
    Mattak started to protest, but Siyuf raised her voice. "We who are
near the heart of Sphigx do not butcher beasts to read her will in offal.
Each day we pray to her, and do not tease her with questions but offer
sincere praise. When we wish to know a thing, we go and find it out.
Your Mint has been shot." She looked at Saba for confirmation, and
Saba nodded.
    "This is not pleasant," Siyuf continued, "and I would like that I
am not the one to say it. She went to treat with the enemy, is that
not so?"
    From Saba's right, Bison answered, "Yes. It is."
    "With a holy man to safeguard. The enemy has killed both.
Captured, they say, but I have spoken to their leader, this man
Loris, and he cannot produce either." Siyuf waited for someone to
contradict her, but no one did.
    "Your Mint was of greatest spirit. I would have liked to speak to
her. Even a bout with practice swords, this old man to see fair play.
All I have heard says plainly that she was of greatest spirit, and
I am sure that when she, who had come to talk peace, was made
prisoner she would resist. Some fool shot her and her holy man
also, a filthy crime. I learned of this after our parade and already
I have set our Labor Corps to dig. We will find these tunnels, make
a new entrance near the big lake, and soon find one that shall lead
us to this Ayuntamiento of Viron. Then Mint will be avenged."
    Bison glanced at Silk; Silk nodded, and Bison said, "I must tell
you, Generalissimo, that the calde and I saw General Mint in his
glass before we sat down. The calde had a place set for her originally
as a sort of signal, I'd say. He wanted to show that we hoped she
was still alive."
    "That she would return to us soon," Silk added.
    "Now that chair," Bison gestured, "is more than a symbol. Calde
Silk got a monitor to show us what it had seen before we questioned
it, and it was General Mint, with four other people and some soldiers
and animals hurrying along a tunnel. She may join us before the
evening's over."
    Siyuf pursed her lips. "If your Mint was in the hands of soldiers,
is not that the enemy?"
    Saba put down her wineglass. "Vironese soldiers protected the calde
when some private guards tried to kill him, sir. I mentioned that..."
Her voice altered and her mouth assumed a ghastly grin. "I found her,
Silk. She was in the market. She bought a little animal that talks.
She's taking it where they kill them."

                  Chapter 10 -- A Life for Pas

Sergeant Sand had scrambled up first. Maytera Mint, exhausted and
practically suffocated by the ash that filled the air of the tunnel,
thought it strange that it should be large enough to admit his bulky
steel body. She had purified the altar of the old manteion on Sun
Street many times, and although she told herself that she must surely
be mistaken, it seemed to her that its chute had been scarcely half as
large as this one.
    "These victims, eh?" Remora coughed, eyeing the yearling tunnel
gods Eland had taken charge of. "For, hem!, Pas. His--er--ah--ghost?"
    Schist nodded. "That's what the Prolocutor says."
    "You're saying that Pas is dead." Maytera Mint was by no means
sure she believed such a thing possible, still less that it had taken
place. "He's come back as a ghost?"
    "That's it, General."
    Shale added, "We're not sayin' it happened, but that's what he
says." He jerked his head toward the chute into which Sand's heels
had vanished. "Sarge believes him. So do I, I guess."
    Urus edged nearer Maytera Mint. "They're abram, lady, all these
chems Look, we're bios, all right? You 'n me, 'n Spider 'n Eland
here. Even the long butcher."
    She could scarcely make out Urus's features in the ash-dimmed light;
yet she could picture his wheedling expression only too vividly.
    "We got to stick, us bios. Got to make a knot, don't we? The way
they're talkin', we'll all be cold."
    "Good riddance," Spider muttered.
    Sand's voice ended the conversation, hollow-sounding as it echoed
down the chute overhead. "The augur next. Hand him up."
    Remora was peering up the chute. "It's a manteion, eh?"
    "Big one, Patera. Pretty dark, too. Wait a minute."
    Slate had crouched at Remora's feet. "I'm goin' to grab you by
the legs, see, Patera? I'm goin' to lift you up 'n in. Get your arms
up over your head to steer yourself. When you're in good, I'll
push on your feet 'n get you up as far as I can. Maybe you'll
have to wiggle up a little more before Sarge can grab hold of
you." Abruptly the dark mouth of the chute became a rectangle
of light.
    It is big, Maytera Mint thought; it has to be. They have a lot of
victims, burn a cartload of wood at every sacrifice.
    Sand's voice returned. "They got oil lamps here. I lit a couple
for you."
    "Thank you!" Remora called. "My most, um, deepest--ah--sincere
appreciation, my son." He looked down at Slate. "I am ready, eh?
Lift away."
    "You'll be fine, Your Eminence," Maytera Mint assured him.
    "You think--ah--fear me apprehensive." Remora smiled, his teeth
visible in the light from the chute. "To, um, revisit the whorl of light,
Maytera, I should--umph!"
    Slate had grasped his ankles and was rising. For a moment Remora
swayed dangerously and it seemed he must fall; but Spider pushed his
hips to right him, and in another second his arms and head were out
of sight.
    "Here he comes, Sarge!"
    "What it is, see," Urus was nearly at Maytera Mint's ear, "is they
think they ought to give Pas somethin'. He put that in their heads,
your jefe did."
    "His Cognizance." Coughing, she turned to face Urus. "I cannot
imagine His Cognizance in these horrible tunnels, though I know
he was here with the calde."
    "Me neither. Only, see--"
    "Be quiet." Maytera Mint was studying Eland's beasts. "How are
we going to get these animals up there, Slate?"
    "I been thinkin' about that," Slate said. "Watch this."
    Crouching again, he sprang into the chute and scrambled up.
    "You two'd better stay here to lift the general and me up," Spider
told Schist and Shale.
    "Sure thing." With Slate gone, Schist leaned back against the
shiprock wall. "We'll pass 'em up just like the slug guns. You'll see."
    Shale indicated the opening with a contemptuous gesture. "He's
buckin' for another stripe, Slate is. We used to have this corporal
from 'H' Company, only he bought it in the big fight with the talus
the other day. This time probably they'll promote from inside, and
Slate figures he'll cop it."
    Slate's voice came from the chute. "Knock off jawin' down there
'n pass them guns."
    Schist said, "Sure thing," and lifted the bundled slug guns into
the chute. Shale explained, "I strapped 'em together with one of the
slings. Makes 'em easier to handle."
    The bundle of guns vanished amid scrapings and bumpings. Schist
tilted his head back and to the left to grin at Maytera Mint. "He's
hangin' in there, see? Sarge's got his feet."
    Spider coughed. "Maybe you'd like to go next, General."
    "I would," she confessed, "but I'll go last. It is my place as the senior
officer present."
    "I don't think you can jump up there," Schist objected.
    She turned on him. "'I don't think you can jump up there, _sir_.'
Or '_General_.' I give you your choice, Private, which is more than
I ought to give you."
    "Yes, sir. Only I don't think you can, sir, and I'd be glad to stay
down here and help you, sir."
    "That won't be necessary." Maytera Mint turned to the other soldier.
"Private Shale."
    "Yes, sir!" Shale snapped to attention.
    "You were very ingenious with that sling. After you and Private
Schist have passed these beasts up and helped Spider, Urus, and this
other convict--"
    "Eland," Eland put in, speaking for the first time since they had
reached this darkest stretch of tunnel.
    "Thank you. And Eland to climb up, you will contrive a rope of
slug gun slings, making a loop at the bottom into which I can put
one foot. Can you do that?"
    "Sure thing, sir."
    "Good. Do it. Then you can pull me up. Last."
    Spider ventured, "You're goin' to be down here all alone, for a
minute or two, anyhow."
    "These--" She was wracked by a paroxysm of coughing. "These
animals. I don't know what to call them."
    "Bufes," Eland supplied.
    "Thank you." Turning her head, she spat. "I will not call them gods.
That must stop. More bufes may come, though I hope they won't. I
pray they won't. But if they do I'll shoot them. If I don't see them
in time, or don't aim well, I will die."
    "I'll stay with you," Spider told her.
    She shook her head. "Only one--"
    From the chute, Slate called, "Gimme a god." Shale lifted a squirming
beast over his head and thrust its hindquarters into the opening in the
ceiling; its eyes were wild, and blood ran from the sinews binding its
muzzle.
    "I dunno if I could of trained 'em as big as that," Eland muttered,
"only it seems like a shame to waste 'em."
    "I caught 'em, sir," Shale explained to Maytera Mint. "The bios
and me were back by that dead bio you left behind. We knew the
smell would fetch 'em."
    Schist added, "That was why Slate and Sarge jumped out of the
dirt when they did, probably, sir. Sarge thought you might scare 'em
off if you went back for the dead one."
    "Perhaps. I can understand how a soldier could capture such an
animal. What I cannot understand is how you, Eland, were able to
capture others without the help of one."
    "Mine was littler when I got 'em." He watched the second beast
vanish up the chute. "We killed the big 'uns, we had to. I got behind
the little 'uns and got a noose over their mouth."
    "It must have been dangerous just the same."
    He shrugged, the motion of his skeletal shoulders barely visible.
"I want to go up next. Be with 'em. That all right?"
    From the chute, Slate called, "Pass up them other bios."
    "Certainly," Maytera Mint told Eland. She gestured toward the
chute, and Schist lifted him.
    "You can't get 'em to like you," Eland said as his head vanished
into the chute, "only maybe mine did, a little."
    From nearer the top, Slate told him, "Grab on."
    "If the bufes don't bring Pas, lady, 'n they won't, I know they
won't--"
    Maytera Mint shook her head. "You cannot know."
    "Then it's us. Me 'n Eland. Him, too," Urus pointed to Spider, "if
you let 'em. That sergeant--"
    "My son." Maytera Mint stepped so close to Urus that the muzzle
of the needler she held gouged his ribs. "I have been most remiss
with you. I have let you call me 'lady' or whatever you wished.
I must remember to bring it up at my next shriving, if there is a
next shriving. In future, you are to address me as Maytera. It means
mother. Will you do that?"
    "Yeah. Dimber here, Maytera."
    "That is well." She smiled up at him; she was a full head shorter than
he. "As your mother, your spiritual mother, I must explain something
to you. Please pay strict attention."
    Urus nodded mutely. From the chute, Slate called, "Gimme
another one."
    "Go, Spider," Maytera Mint said, and turned back to Urus. "I haven't
had much time in which to form my estimate of your character, yet I
think it accurate. It is not an estimate very favorable to you."
    When he did not speak, she added, "Not favorable at all. I will not
compare you to such a man as Sergeant Sand. Though not pious, he
is resolute, energetic, loyal, and reasonably honest. To compare him
to you would be grossly unjust to him. Nor will I venture to compare
you to His Eminence. His Eminence has less physical courage, I think,
than many other men. Yet he has more than a casual observer might
suppose, as I have seen, and his assiduity and piety have justly earned
him a high position in the Chapter. He is intelligent as well, and he
labors almost too diligently to put the mental acuity that he received
from the gods at their service."
    "Have you got the safety on that thing, lady?"
    "Call me Maytera. I insist on it."
    "All right, all right!" His voice shaking, Urus repeated, "Have you
got the safety on?" and added, "Maytera?"
    "No, my son, I do not." She took a deep breath. "Stop talking
and listen. Your life hangs upon it, and we haven't long. I am a
general and a sibyl. As a sibyl I try to find good in everyone, and
though it may sound less than modest, I generally succeed. I find a
great deal in His Eminence, as I would expect. I find more than I
expected in Sergeant Sand. There is good in Private Slate, too, and
in Private Shale and Private Schist here. Not good of a very high
order, perhaps, but abundant in its kind. I have tried to find good
in Spider and found more than I dared hope for. The glimmers of
good in Eland are hardly discernible, yet unmistakable." She sighed.
"I talk too much when I'm tired. I hope you've followed me."
    Urus nodded. There was a faint play of light across one cheekbone;
it was half a second before she understood that he was sweating, cold
perspiration soaking the gray ash black and running down his face
like rivulets of fresh paint.
    "As a general, it is my duty to defeat the enemy. I must do it by
killing men and women. I find that repugnant, but such is the case.
You are the enemy, Urus. Do you follow me still?"
    From the chute, Slate called, "Ready for the next one."
    "That will be you," Maytera Mint told Shale. "Remember what I
told you about those slings."
    He saluted with a clash of steel. "I'll get right on it, sir."
    She returned her attention to Urus. "You are the enemy, I say.
Should I, who have been called the Sword of Echidna, let you live
when I have you at my mercy?"
    "You're fightin' the Ayuntamiento, right? General, I swear by every
shaggy god there is that I never done nothin--"
    "Be quiet!" Angrily, she poked him with the muzzle of the big
needler that had been Spider's. "What you say is true, I'm sure.
You never served the Ayuntamiento. But ultimately the enemy is
evil. Evil is the ultimate enemy of us all."
    She fell silent, listening to the faint rattle as Shale was helped up the
chute, to the sighing of the ever-present breeze, and to Urus's feverish
breathing. "The ash is not so thick in the air as it was," she said.
    Schist nodded. "Not so many stirrin' it up, sir."
    "I suppose so, and those ugly beasts were struggling." She jabbed
Urus as hard as she could, and he yelped.
    "This one, too. I'm tired, Urus. I'm awfully tired. I've slept on
floors, and walked for leagues and leagues. I forget, sometimes,
what I've said, and what I intended to say. You were thinking of
snatching my needler a moment ago."
    Schist chuckled, a hard dry metallic rattle.
    "No doubt you could. No doubt you can. Taking a needler from a
tired woman much smaller than yourself, a woman so close that her
needler is within easy reach, should be simple for you. For anybody."
She waited.
    "If you're not going to, you'd better raise your hands. Otherwise
some small motion may cause me to pull the trigger."
    Slowly, Urus's hands went up.
    "As you say, you haven't served the Ayuntamiento. I've talked with
Councillor Potto, Urus. Did you know that?"
    He shook his head.
    "I have. Also with Spider, who served the Ayuntamiento and would
serve it still if he could. With a number of Guardsmen, Generalissimo
Oosik particularly, who served it for many years. I've questioned
prisoners, too. In not one of them did I fail to discover some gleam
of good. Councillor Potto is the worst, I think. But even Councillor
Potto is not entirely evil."
    From the chute, Slate called, "How about the general and that
other bio?"
    Maytera Mint backed away, then motioned toward the area under
the chute. "I give you fair warning. I must see some good in you,
Urus, and soon."
    His smile was at once pitiable and horrible. "You're goin' to let
me get out, lady? Let me go up there?"
    "Call me Maytera!"
    "M-maytera. Maytera, I figured, see, I'd made it out. Only it
w-w-was just the pit, the shaggy pit, 'n then we run back down 'n
got into it with the old man--"
    Schist lifted him by his ankles. "He ain't got no sores on his legs
like that other one, sir. Maybe you saw 'em."
    Looking down at the needler, Maytera Mint felt herself nod.
    "I had to sorta wash off my hands with ashes." Somewhat violently,
Schist shoved Urus's head and shoulders into the chute. "After I lifted
him, sir. I got pus on 'em, sir."
    "No doubt he'd been nipped from time to time by the beasts he
had earlier," Maytera Mint said absenfly. "Those would be the ones
our calde says Patera Incus killed, perhaps." Eland and Urus might
have encountered Auk, in that case; she made a mental note to ask
them about it, adding as an afterthought that she must not kill Urus
before she had a chance to question him.
    "You're goin' to stay, sir?"
    "Until Private Shale lets down his slings. Yes, I am. Go ahead,
Schist. Anytime they're ready for you."
    The safety had been off, as she had said. Did that make her better,
because she had told the truth? Or worse, because she had practically
nerved herself to killing Urus? Dropping the needler into one of the
big side pockets of her torn and soiled habit, she watched Schist's feet
disappear into the chute, then sat down in the ash to await Shale's
slings, or the beasts that he called gods, and Eland bufes.

Bison put down the untasted leg of a pheasant. "Two cards to every
one of them, Calde?"
    Silk nodded, his eyes upon Mucor. "Yes. I hadn't meant to tell
you tonight, Colonel. To be more exact, I hadn't planned to make
my decision until morning."
    Saba began, "I submit--"
    "But if Mucor can locate the manteion to which the woman I've
had her looking for is bringing her offering, I'll be busy tomorrow.
Besides, it's better that I announce it now, so that Generalissimo Oosik
and Generalissimo Siyuf can hear it. We'll send the volunteers home
tomorrow, each with a letter of credit worth two cards at the Fisc."
    "Calde..." Oosik reached across Maytera Mint's vacant place to
touch Silk's arm. "It will take longer than one day merely to collect
their weapons."
    Silk shook his head. "We won't collect them. They're to keep
whatever they have--those are their weapons now"
    Saba looked at Siyuf, and when Siyuf did not speak, said, "That's
unheard-of. It's folly. Insanity." Chenille caught Silk's eye and nodded.
"She's right, Patera. It's abram."
    He spoke to Maytera Marble, at the far end of the table. "You
told me something earlier that weighed heavily with me, Maytera;
there's no one whose judgement I value more, as you know. Would
you repeat it for us?"
    "I can't, Patera. I don't remember what it was."
    Xiphias put in, "Couldn't you just let them keep their swords,
lad?"
    "I could scarcely take those, could I? Those are their own property
already. Chenille, you agree that I shouldn't do this. Why not?"
    Saba snapped, "Because they're men, ninety percent of them, and
unstable, like all men." Chenille added, "They'll kill each other,
Patera."
    "Of course they will--they always have." Silk addressed Siyuf "My
manteion is in what we call the Sun Street Quarter. I should explain
that our city counts many more quarters than four; a quarter in our
sense really means no more than the area served by a manteion."
    If she inclined her head, the motion was too slight to be seen. "Fifty
thousand, Calde Silk? All with slug guns?"
    "There are more than fifty thousand certainly, but not all of them
have slug guns. Fifty thousand slug guns, perhaps, or a little over."
    When she put no further question, he said, "It's a violent quarter;
most augurs would say it's the worst in the city. It borders on the Orilla,
which is what we call an empty quarter--one without a manteion. A
few people from the Orilla come to our manteion, however, just as a
few from our quarter go into the Orilla to buy stolen goods. What
I was going to say is that there's seldom a week without a killing or
two, and there are often three or four. When one man decides to kill
another, he does it. If he has a slug gun or a needler, he may use it;
but if he doesn't, he uses a dagger or a sword. Or a hatchet, an axe,
or a stick of firewood."
    Recalling Auk, Silk added, "A big, strong man may simply knock
down a weaker one and kick him to death. A group of men could
clearly do the same thing; and I know of one instance in which a
man who had raped a child was killed by a dozen women, who beat
him to death with their washing sticks and stabbed him with kitchen
knives and scissors."
    Hadale told him, "One woman can kill a man, Calde. It's common
at home, and there's a woman at this table who's killed several."
    "It isn't uncommon here, either, Major; and that bears on the
thing Maytera told me that impressed me so much. A woman from
our quarter came to see her this afternoon, and Maytera asked if
she wasn't afraid to walk so far through the city when just about
everyone has a slug gun or a needler. The woman said she wasn't,
because she had one, too."
    Silk paused, inviting comment, and Saba growled, "They'll over
throw you, Calde, in half a year or less."
    "You may well be right." He spread his hands. "But not by force,
since they won't have to--I haven't the least desire to retain this
office if our people don't want me. That's the chief difference
between the Ayuntarniento and our side, really. But I think you've
hit on something important. The reason the Ayuntamiento didn't
let our people have slug guns or launchers like the one Chenille
told me about this afternoon was that they are effective means
of fighting soldiers and troopers in armor. The Ayuntanniento
believed that if our people didn't have those weapons it could
rule as long as it retained the loyalty of the Army and the
Guard."
    "Very sensible," Saba declared.
    "Perhaps, but it didn't work very well. A few days ago, our people
overwhelmed hundreds of Guardsmen and took their weapons. I see
I have not convinced you."
    Saba shook her head.
    "Then let me say this. Generalissimo Oosik says that he would
need more than a day to collect the weapons of General Mint's
volunteers."
    Bison added, "If they'd surrender them."
    "Exactly. The best troopers would give their weapons up when they
were ordered to, but the worst would hide theirs--the precise opposite
of the situation we'd prefer. Furthermore, it would take at least as
long to reissue those weapons, and we may need the volunteers again
any day."
    Quetzal, who had been nodding over his untouched plate, murmured,
"One hundred thousand cards is a large sum, Patera Calde.
Can you afford that much?"
    Silk shook his head.
    Xiphias exclaimed, "Then don't, lad! Don't do it!"
    "We can't afford to do it, Master Xiphias." Silk smiled wryly. "But
we cannot afford not to, either. In the first place, I promised to reward
those who fought bravely on either side, and I've done nothing thus far.
There may be a thousand things we cannot afford. No doubt there are.
But the thing we cannot afford above all--the thing we dare not risk--is
to have people come to believe that my promises are worthless.
So tomorrow, as I say, every trooper that General Mint and Colonel
Bison have is to receive two cards, and permission to return to his or
her home and occupation. Those who were given slug guns or other
weapons are to be told that the weapons are theirs now. No one
will be able to complain that those who fought on our side went
unrewarded, at least."
    Siyuf smiled. "Like you, Calde Silk, I think we may need the horde
of Mint again, and soon. When you call for them they will come,
having been rewarded handsomely for the first time."
    "Thank you. Most of our financial troubles result from various
businesses--"
    Hossaan had entered as he spoke, carrying a huge roast upon a
magnificent golden platter. "The people from Ermine's can see to
that, Willet," Silk told him. "Please get your floater ready--I'll want
it soon."
    Oreb flew up the table, circling warily before perching on Silk's
shoulder. "Bird too!"
    "Of course, if you wish."
    "Let me hear the rest, Calde Silk. I am most interested."
    "I was about to say that if the overdue taxes were paid, our city
government would be rolling in wealth, Generalissimo. General
Mint's troopers will spend the cards they receive very quickly for
the most part, and that should produce a wave of prosperity. If we
make forceful efforts to collect the overdue taxes then, we may be
able to meet our other obligations."
    Siyuf looked down the table to Saba. "You have tell me he is
mad. He is not mad. He is only more clever than you. It is not
the same."

Might not the dead rise and walk again? There were tales of such
things, and they flitted through Maytera Mint's mind as she was
drawn up the chute.
    I was sacrificed, she thought. I should have realized it when
Councillor Potto had Spider bend me over his knee. A drop struck
me, too. How wonderful it would be if all the rest could come back
up through these the way I am!
    The top of the chute was a glaring rectangle above her, light so
bright that it seemed to her it must surely be noon, with the whole of
Pas's long sun pouring golden radiance through the windows of the
manteion into which she rose. Fascinated, she watched Slate's metal
hands in silhouette as they slowly and steadily hauled her up, each
grip succeeded by the next.
    Then a hand of flesh, Remora's long blue-veined hand, was
reaching for her; she caught it and let him help her climb from
the looped slings to a mosaic floor. "There you are, Maytera.
I, um, we have been waiting for you. The sergeant is most, er,
desirous to proceed, eh?" Remora's face was clean, his soiled
overrobe was gone, and his costly robe had been replaced by one
more costly still.
    She looked for the windows she had pictured, expecting to find
them glowing with sunshine; but there were no windows, only scores
of rock-crystal holy lamps surmounted by long, bright flames, and a
fire blazing upon the altar.
    "I--ah--kindled the, um," Remora ventured, following the direction
of her eyes. "It seemed provident."
    "Certainly. You've cleaned up, too. May I ask where, Your
Eminence?" Catching sight of Urus edging toward the back of the
manteion, she shouted, "Sergeant! Stop that prisoner!"
    "An, er, dressing chamber? Cubiculum. Off the sacristy, eh? For
sibyls. Cabinets--ah--wardrobes in there. So I, um, given to
understand."
    "I'll want water and soap," she told him. "Warm water, if that's
possible. You've washed, clearly."
    Spider interjected, "The sergeant wants to sacrifice right away.
He--" From his position between Urus and the door, Sand himself rasped,
"The Prolocutor told us Pas would come, sir. I reported that. It's the
Plan, and standing orders say it's got higher priority than anything
else." Slate nodded agreement.
    "Indeed it does. But Pas may _not_ come as well. We must be prepared
for that eventuality, too. I say that, though I hate putting myself on
the same side as Urus, who feels certain Pas won't. But if he comes,
as we hope, we must be fit to receive him. Not only I, but all of you
as well." She followed Remora onto the sanctuary elevation and past
the fire-crowned altar.
    "The, um, locality, hey?" Remora was almost grinning.
    "What about it, Your Eminence? If you're asking whether I know
where we are," she glanced around her, "I haven't the least idea. I
didn't know that a manteion like this existed."
    They entered the sacristy, thrice the size of Silk's on Sun Street;
a shelf held a long row of jeweled chalices, and a block of fragrant
sandalwood a dozen sacrificial knives whose gold or ivory handles
flashed with gems.
    "I have officiated here, er, innumerable," Remora informed her. "Five
hundred, eh? A thousand? I should not contest even so lofty a figure as that.
It is the, um, oratorium abolitus, the private chapel beneath the Palace. For
His Cognizance's use, hey? And augurs who have--ah--administrative
duties, eh? We, er, offer our--ah--seldom-seen? Obscure services to the
gods."
    He was about to go; she caught the voluminous sleeve of his robe.
"The room where I can wash? Where there may be a clean habit I
can borrow?"
    "Oh, yes, yes, yes! Right--ah--door." He opened it for her. "Should
be a bolt, eh? Inside. No doubt, no doubt. Water likewise. Tank, eh?"
He pointed at the ceiling. "Under the--ah--in the west cupola."
    The room was twice as large as her longed-for bedroom in the
cenoby. Gratefully, she shut its door and shot the bolt. Two large
wardrobes and a wash basin; a pierced copper hamper, presumably
for laundry; a full-length mirror on one wall and a glass on another.
A table in a corner.
    Opening one of the wardrobes, she found half a dozen clean habits
of various sizes; she draped the biggest over the glass, then emptied
her pockets onto the table, took off her own habit, and dropped it
into the hamper. It was probably beyond saving, and the Chapter
owed her a round hundred new ones at least.
    Grimly stepping out of her soiled underdrawers and removing
her chemise and bandeau, she resolved to collect those habits and
distribute them to sibyls as poor as she.
    It was Mainframe itself to take off her shoes and stockings, although
she had to sit on the floor to do it, which made it seem likely there
were no clean stockings. She rinsed the ones she had taken off, wrung
them as dry as she could, and hung them over the open door of the
wardrobe.
    The tap to her left gushed water that was at first tepid, then
pleasantly steaming. There was a boiler somewhere in the Palace,
presumably; Maytera Mockorange, whose family had been wealthy,
had spoken of such luxury, although Maytera Mint had never dreamed
it might be available to sibyls.
    She had to wash her hands three times (with scented soap!) before
the suds that streamed from them were no longer black with filth.
Even so, small crescents remained under her nails. The point of
a needle from her needler attended to those.
    Her small, tired face seemed to her equally dirty, if not worse;
gingerly dabbing at the bruises and burns, she washed it again and
again, washing her short brown hair too, then sponged her entire
body, heedless of the pools that formed on the red-tiled floor.
    Remora's querulous voice penetrated the heavy wooden door.
"_The...Sergeant Sand. Sergeant Sand wishes_--"
    She felt her sly little smile, although she struggled to repress it.
"Tell him that I myself wish for sandwiches, Your Eminence, and
ask what he knows about court-martials."
    "_You...chaff_."
    "Not at all. Tell him that and ask him." Her image in the mirror
appalled her. If Bison were ever to see her like this!
    Not that he or any other man ever would, presumably; but men
did not like skinny legs, narrow hips, or small breasts, all of which
she possessed to a degree that seemed appalling. Yet she had been
pretty twenty years ago; many people had told her so, many of
them men.
    A pretty girl whose long curls had bordered upon chestnut. Some
of those men might have been lying, and no doubt some had been.
But all of them? It seemed improbable.
    The other wardrobe was divided into pigeonholes; most were
empty, but one held two clean chemises and two pairs of clean
underdrawers. The underdrawers were several sizes too large, but
wearable with the string pulled tight. She could rinse her bandeau
as she had her stockings--
    In a flurry of rebellion, she flung it into the hamper. A bandeau
to cover up what? To hold in what? She had worn one because her
mother, and subsequently Maytera Rose, had said she must; she
looked no different now in this yellowed chemise than she had in
her own in the cenoby.
    Snatching the habit from the glass, she clapped her hands. "Monitor?
Monitor?" She had used glasses during the past few days, but was not
completely comfortable with them.
    "Yes, madame." The floating gray face was at once detached and
deferential.
    "Look at me. I'm lacking an essential item of feminine apparel.
What is it?"
    "Several, madame. A gown, madame. Hose, and shoes."
    "Besides those." She turned sideways and stood on tiptoe. "What
is it?"
    "I am at a loss, madame. I might offer a conjecture."
    "You needn't bother." She took the smallest habit from the first
wardrobe. "Do you know who I am?" For an instant she was wrapped
in darkness before it setfied into place. Still no coif, she thought. Still
no coif.
    "I recognize you now, madame. You are General Mint. I was
ignorant of your identity, previously. Would you prefer that I address
you as General?"
    "As you like. Has anyone been trying to contact me?"
    For perhaps a second, the monitor's face dissolved into darting
lines. "Several, madame. Currently, Captain Serval. Do you wish to
speak with him?"
    She sensed that the name should have been familiar, yet it meant
nothing to her. She nodded. Better to find out who he was and what
he wanted, and be done.
    The monitor's face revised itself, gaining color, a round chin, and a
debonair mustache. "My General!" A brisk salute, which she returned
almost automatically.
    "My General, I have been ordered by Generalissimo Oosik to make
you aware of the situation here."
    She nodded. Where was "here"?
    "It is a detachment of the Companion Cavalry, My General. They
have posted sentries who are standing guard with mine as we speak. I
have requested that their officer explain this to Generalissimo Oosik,
but she refuses."
    "I see." Maytera Mint took a deep breath and found herself
wishing for a chair. "Let me say first, Captain, that it's good to
see you again.
    "For me it is a great pleasure, My General. An honor."
    "Thank you, Captain. I'm sorry to find that you're still a captain,
by the way. I'll talk to the generalissimo about that. You mentioned
Companion Cavalry. That is the name of the unit?"
    "Yes, My General."
    The memory of Potto's boiling teakettle returned. "You'll have to
forgive me, Captain. I've been out of touch for the past few days."
It had seemed like weeks. "I was told that a Trivigaunti horde was
marching toward the city. Am I to take it that this Companion
Cavalry is theirs?"
    "Yes, My General. An elite regiment."
    _Regiment_ was a new term to her, but she persevered. "What
was it you wanted this officer from Trivigaunte to explain to the
generalissimo?"
    "I wish her to explain why she and her women are mounting a
guard on our Juzgado, My General, when it is already guarded
by my men and myself." (That was "here" then, almost certainly.)
"I wish her to explain who has issued these orders and to what
purpose."
    "I take it she won't tell you either."
    "No, My General. She will say only that her instructions are to
protect our Juzgado until relieved. No more than that."
    "Generalissimo Oosik asked you to make me aware of this situation.
Where is he?"
    "At the Calde's Palace, My General. He is dining with the calde.
He informs me that the calde has seen you, My General, in his glass,
and that he has ordered a place set for you at his table. Generalissimo
Oosik instructed me to request that you join them there if I reached
you, should this be convenient."
    "I need sleep more than food." It had slipped out.
    "You drive yourself too hard, My General. I have observed this
previously."
    "Perhaps. Can you tell me what orders you received from Generalissimo
Oosik regarding these Trivigauntis?"
    "He is of the opinion that they have learned of a threat to the
Juzgado, My General. I am to cooperate. There is to be no friction
between those of my command and theirs." The captain paused, a
pause pregnant with meaning. "Or as little as may be. I am to
explore the situation and report once more, should I discover facts
of significance."
    "And notify me."
    "Yes, My General. As I do."
    "Also Colonel Bison, I hope. If Generalissimo Oosik did not tell
you to notify Colonel Bison, I am ordering you to now. Tell him I
consider Generalissimo Oosik's position prudent."
    Someone was tapping at the door.
    "Colonel Bison is also at the calde's dinner, My General.
Generalissimo Oosik stated that he would inform him."
    "Good. That will be all, then, Captain. Thank you for keeping me
abreast of things." She returned his salute.
    "Monitor, was Colonel Bison one of the people who have been
trying to reach me?"
    The captain's face grayed and sharpened. "Yes, madame."
    "I want to speak to him now. He's at the Calde's Palace." Vaguely,
she recalled seeing it the year before on her way to sacrifice at
the Grand Manteion, a huge house upon whose facade files of
shuttered windows had risen like stacks of long and narrow coffins;
she had shuddered and turned away. "I'll be out in a moment, Your
Eminence!"
    The monitor said, "I am aware of it, madame. I will ask someone
to bring him to the glass there, madame."
    She would see him--and he would see her: the tired eyes and
bloodless mouth that the mirror had shown her, the wet hair plastered
to her skull, the face black-and-blue with bruises, surmounted by a
scab. "Monitor?"
    "Yes, madame."
    "Let me speak to whoever comes to the glass." This was the hardest
thing she had ever done, harder even than shutting her eyes during
Kypris's theophany. "I needn't speak to the colonel in person."
    "Yes, madame."
    A minute, then two, passed. The gray features melted and
flowed, becoming those of a lean man with hooded eyes. "Yes,
General Mint," he said. "I'm Willet, the calde's driver. How may
I serve you?"

General Saba spoke, looking less like an angry sow than a dead one.
"She's coming up here with it, Silk. Coming up the hill you're on."
    "This is warlockery," Siyuf declared.
    "I disagree, but I haven't time to discuss it now." Silk stood so
abruptly that Oreb fluttered to maintain his balance. "Leaving you
is the height of bad manners; I know it, and all of you are entitled
to be furious with me. I'm leaving just the same. Maytera Marble
will remain as my representative. I beg your forgiveness sincerely and
fervently, but I must go." He was already halfway down the table,
    Xiphias sprang to his feet as Silk strode past his chair. "Alone," Silk
said. Undeterred, Xiphias hurried after him, and the door slammed
behind them.
    Saba's head jerked. She looked around self-consciously.
    "We must speak of this," Siyuf hissed. "You must describe to me.
Not now."
    Major Hadale drained her wine. "I'll remember this dinner as long
as I live. What entertainment!"
    Maytera Marble whispered to Chenille. "I should have gone, too.
He's hurt, and--"
    Smoothly, Siyuf overrode her. "General Saba has say to me he suffer
a broken ankle, Maytera. Maytera? It is how you are addressed?"
    She nodded. "Yes, he did. He does. A week ago Phaesday, I think
it was. He fell. But--but..."
    "He limp. So I observed. He was in greatest haste, he took big
steps. No so big of the right leg, however. The old
swordswoman--sword-man. He, also, but the left."
    "The calde was shot." Maytera Marble indicated her own chest with
her working hand. "That's much worse."
    "Not a slug gun, which would have kill there. A needler?" Siyuf
glanced around the table, seeking information.
    Oosik shrugged and spread his hands. "Yes, Generalissimo. A
needler in the hand of one of my own officers. We strive to
prevent these terrible mistakes. They occur in spite of all we do,
as you must know."
    "This is a remarkable young man. We do not breed like him in
Trivigaunte, I think. Do you know the--what is this word? The
ideas of Colonel Abanja?"
    Oosik nodded to Siyufs staff officer. "I would like to hear them,
particularly if they coneern our calde. What are they, Colonel?"
    "I am something of an amateur historian, Generalissimo. An
amateur military historian, if you will allow it."
    "Every good officer should be."
    "Thank you. I'm accused of shaping my theory to flatter Generalissimo
Siyuf, but that is not the case. I have studied success. Not victory
alone, because victory can be a matter of chance, and is frequently a
matter of numbers and materiel. I searh out instances in which a
small force has frustrated one that should have defeated it in days
or hours."
    Saba had regained her self-possession. "I still say that it is brilliance
that's decisive. Military genius."
    Maytera Marble sniffed decisively, and Siyuf said, "Colonel Abanja
does not think this. Brilliance, it is well enough when the execution of
the so-brilliant orders is brilliant also. I do not speak of genius for
I know nothing. Except it is rare and not to be relied on."
    Bison said, "I have a theory of my own, based on what I've seen
of General Mint. I'll be interested to see how it compares to the
Colonel's."
    "I mention Abanja's," Siyuf continued, "because I think Calde Silk
so fine an example of him. She believe it is not this genius, not any
quality of the mind. That it is energy, by clearest thoughts directed.
Tell us, Abanja."
    "Successful commanders," Colonel Abanja began, "are those who
are still acting, and acting sensibly, on the fourth day. They endure.
We have a game that we play on horseback. I don't think you play
it here, but I've won a good deal of money by betting on the games
during the past year."
    The ends of Oosik's mustache tilted upward. "Then you must tell
us by all means, Colonel."
    "It imitates war, as most games do. A cavalry skirmish in this case.
The players may change mounts after each goal, but the players
themselves can't be changed, or even replaced if one is hurt." Both
Oosik and his son nodded.
    "There is a twenty-minute rest for them, however, and so we speak
of the first half of the game and the second, divided by this rest. What
determines the result, I have found, is not which team scores the most
goals in the first half, because there's seldom much disparity. The
winning team will be the one that plays best and most aggressively
in the second. When I see the team I've backed doing that, I double
my bet, if I can."
    Siyuf nodded. Her head moved scarcely one finger's width, but
the nod announced that the time for controversy had ended. "Let us move from
the fields where _killi_ is played to this city of Viron, where
is a so illustrative struggle. Who is winner? It is not too soon to say.
One side hide in holes. Above prowl and roars the host of Viron and
my horde of the Rani. For the second time I ask you that listen." She
paused dramatically. "Who is winner here?"
    No one spoke.
    "A man? This man Calde Silk? Can that be? Observe the leg broken,
the wound to the chest of which Maytera our hostess speak. Yet he
hunt by magic for a woman he require, and when by magic she is
found, he leave food and friends and seek her out. Most women,
even, would not do this."
    Chenille said, "He's going to need a lot more help than one old
man. I wish I'd made him take me along."
    Across Xiphias's abandoned plate, Mattak said, "Two old men.
His Cognizance has gone, too." Surprised, Siyuf stared at the empty
chair next to her own.
    Under his breath, Mattak added, "I'm glad."

Sergeant Sand spoke for them all. "He didn't come."
    Kneeling by the headless, pawless body of Eland's second beast,
Remora looked up. "I shall--ah--proceed. I have, um, led astray
myself. Enthusiasm. Contagious, eh? But I, um, coadjutor, have not,
eh? Seen a god. Possibly the victim will enlighten us."
    As the holy knife laid open the beast from breastbone to pelvis,
Spider said, "Sure, read it for us, it can't hurt."
    It hurt the poor brute, Maytera Mint thought; but its death was
swift, at least, and now the pain is over.
    Sand had brought his slug gun to his shoulder before she saw
Urus, halfway up the convoluted iron stair at the back of the
manteion and taking its steps three at a time. She shouted, "Don't
fire!" and Sand did not. A moment later the door at the top
of the stair slammed shut. "He thought we were going to offer
him," she explained to Eland. "Do you? We won't. I will not
permit it."
    Remora, who had been kneeling by the second victim, rose and
strode to the ambion. "Extraordinary, eh? Extraordinary, my, er, sons.
And daughter. Nothing, er, initially, and now this." Sand resumed his
seat, his head bowed.
    "An--ah--preface. Necessary, I think. The offering of persons was
practiced in the past in--ah--here. Many of you aware of it. Have
to be. Forbidden within, um, by the present holder of the baculus."
    O you gods, Maytera Mint thought, he's going to say the entrails
order us to sacrifice Eland. What am I to do?
    "In practice, children, hey? Almost always. No sense sending a
messenger who cannot see the, er, the recipient, eh? The offering
of, um, persons, children, by no means usual even then, eh? In dire
need. Only then."
    Slate shifted his position until he stood behind Eland.
    "Before my time. As an augur, eh? I would have--ah--declared..."
Remora paused, his bony hands gripping the edges of the ambion, his
eyes on the headless carcass.
    "Never, eh? Couldn't do it. Not a child. Not even, um, Urus.
Now--ah--two sides to the entrails. You follow me? One for the
congregation and the city. Other the presenter and the augur. For
the--ah--Our Holy City, war, death, and destruction. Bad. Calamitous!
For the, um, myself, I shall. Offer a person, er, human being. Man. So Pas
warns us. Me."
    Maytera Mint said firmly, "Eland, can you see the gods?"
    He looked at her in mild surprise. "I dunno, General. I never
saw any."
    There was no time for delicacy. "Have you had a woman? You
must have!"
    "Sure. Lots of times 'fore I got throwed in the pit."
    She turned to Remora. "He is not suitable. I can see that, Your
Eminence, and you must--"
    Sand stood up. "I am." He jabbed his steel chest with a steel thumb;
the noise it made was like the clank of a heavy chain.
    "You can't mean it!"
    "Yes, sir, I do." With oiled precision, Sand mounted the steps to
the sanctuary. "He came. Great Pas came to the Grand Manteion."
    Maytera Mint nodded reluctantly.
    "He talked to the Prolocutor, and he told him to talk to us. To
me. He said for us to get you out, 'cause it's part of the Plan. The
Plan's the most important thing there is, sir."
    "Certainly."
    "You say that," he advanced on her, formidable as a talus, five
hundredweight metal. "'Cause they taught you to in some palaestra.
I say it 'cause I know it in my pump. He said get you and sacrifice,
and he'd come and tell us what to do next. Pas said that."
    Meekly, she nodded again.
    "So we caught the bios, and then I thought maybe it's not enough
so I made them catch the two gods."
    "Bufes, Sergeant."
    "Whatever. Only the bufes aren't any good, and now you and him
say the bios are no good either, sir." Sand wheeled to face Remora
and pushed his slug gun into Remora's hands. "I knew, Patera. 'Fore
you read it, I knew. You ever want to die?"
    "I? Ah--no."
    He's lying, Maytera Mint thought. I know what it is, and so
does he.
    "I do." Sand gestured toward Schist, Slate, and Shale. "So do they.
Maybe they won't say it, but they do. I want to die for Pas, and
I'm going to right now." He knelt, staring at the floor, and Remora
looked helplessly down at the slug gun.
    Maytera Mint murmured, "If you would prefer not to, Your
Eminence, it would certainly be permissible for someone more
familiar with the weapon to act for you."
    "You, er, concur, General?"
    She sighed. "Sometimes generals need sergeants to recall them to
their duty. So it seems. Whether I learned it in a palaestra or not,
Sergeant Sand is right. The Plan is the most important thing in the
whorl, and the victim consents."
    Still on his knees, Sand muttered, "Thanks, sir."
    She knelt beside him. "I've heard it's possible for chems to--to
reproduce. You've never done that?"
    Slate said, "None of us have, General, and there's hardly any fem
chems left." And Sand, "No. Never."
    She turned back to Remora and held out her hands for the slug
gun. "I've never fired one either, Your Eminence, but I know how they
work and I've seen it done thousands of times since this began."
    "No, Mayt--No, General."
    "Please, Your Eminence. For your own sake."
    He silenced her by raising Sand's slug gun and pointing it
awkwardly at Sand. "Precisely. Ah--to the point. For my sake,
General. If I must, um, officiate, the--ah--holy and um,
self-sacrificing. Sole responsibility. Do you follow me? Criminal
penalties, hey? Religious, likewise. Removed from the--ah--active
clergy."
    His wheezing breath seemed to fill the manteion. "But for
him--ah--highest god. For Pas!" He jerked at the trigger.
    "Not like that, Your Eminence. There's a safety, and if you hold it
that way the recoil will cripple you. Or so I'm assured." She positioned
the slug gun in his hands. "Grasp it firmly, tight against your shoulder,
Then it will merely push you backwards. If you hold it loosely and try
to keep it away, it will fly back and strike you like a club."
    Sand said, "In the head, Patera. That's the best."
    "I am augur here," Remora told him, and fired.
    The crash of the shot was deafening in the enclosed space of the
manteion. Sand rose; for an instant Maytera Mint could not see where
the slug had hit him. Spinning to face the Sacred Window, he threw
up both arms. There was an uncanny sound that might have been a
cry of pain or harsh laughter. Black liquid spurted from his throat,
spattering the clean black habit she had just put on.
    And the Holy Hues began before Sand fell.
    She blinked and stared, then blinked again. Not one face but two
crowded the Window, one gaping and gasping, the other radiant with
power and majesty, just--and more than just--pitiless and nurturing.
"My faithful people," intoned Twice-headed Pas, "receive the blessing
of your god."
    "_I see him!_" From the voice she thought it must be Spider, although
she could not be sure.
    Pas's was thunder and a destroying wind. "Carry this most noble
of my soldiers to the Grand manteion. I shall speak--"
    Both his faces faded. Tawny yellows and iridescent blacks filled
the Window on Mainframe. Serpents writhed across it as scorpions
scuttled over their backs; behind them all, Spider and Maytera Mint,
Eland and Remora, Slate, Shale, and Schist saw the agonized face of
Echidna.
    Pas returned as if Echidna had never been. "There our prophet
Auk will restore him to us."

                  Chapter 11 -- Lovers

As the floater rose, Hossaan said, "I've a dozen things to tell you,
Calde. I know there won't be time for all of them. It's only four
streets."
    "I know where it is," Silk snapped. "Hurry!" Xiphias laid a hand
on his arm. "Easy, lad!"
    Hossaan glanced at the small mirror above his head, and his eyes
met Silk's. "So I'm going to tell the most important one first. You
think there won't be anybody at the Grand Manteion when Hy gets
there, and you're afraid she'll leave."
    "Yes!"
    "That's not right. I told you I had to talk to General Mint on your
glass, and that was what made me late." Heeling like a close-hauled
boat, the floater swerved around a gilded litter with eight bearers.
    "I said we'd discuss it later."
    "Right. Only because of what she said, I thought it might be smart
to have a look at the Grand Manteion. There's three augurs in there
and a couple thousand people."
    "Did you see Hyacinth?"
    Hossaan shook his head. "But I could've missed her pretty easily,
Calde. She's not as tall as the redhead, and there was a bunch of
women with animals."
    Oreb muttered, "No cut."
    "She's probably still outside, Calde. If she was climbing the
Palatine when Mucor said she was, she can't have gotten to the
Grand Manteion yet."
    Xiphias asked, "Why's everybody there, lad?"
    "There's been another theophany--there must have been. Do you
know about Pas appearing to His Cognizance?"
    "No, lad! Never heard about it!"
    "I have," Hossaan said. "There's a rumor, anyhow. Do you think
that's brought them?"
    Silk shook his head. "It was Molpsday, and would be stale news
now." Half to himseif he added, "What does it mean, when a dead
god rises?"
    No one answered him. The floater sped on.

A surging crowd filled Gold Street. "Stop!" Silk ordered Hossaan.
"No! Higher if you can. I saw her. Turn around."
    "Near us, Calde?" They rose, blowers racing.
    "Cut!" Oreb exclaimed. "Cut cat!"
    "Two or three streets down the slope. Turn!"
    The floater darted forward instead. "Your bird's right," Hossaan
told Silk. "It would take too long to get through that mob, but we
can duck down here--" He swerved onto a steep and narrow street
bordered by high walls. "And cut across to Gold so we come up behind
her. We'll be moving with them, and that will make it a lot faster."
    Silk drew breath and exhaled. The aching weakness in his chest was
fading, but it seemed to him that he had not filled his lungs properly
for days. "You told Horn that your name was Willet, Willet. Also you found
clothing--somewhere in the Calde's Palace, I suppose--similar
to the waiters', so that you could help them serve."
    "I like to be useful, calde."
    "I know you do, and it may be useful for you to tell me
why you did those things before we locate Hyacinth--if we
do. You say you have a dozen items to relate. That should be
the next."
    Still steering their floater expertly, Hossaan glanced over his
shoulder at Xiphias.
    "If Master Xiphias and Maytera Marble can't be trusted, no one
can. If I explain your actions--I believe I can, you see--will you
tell me whether I'm correct?"
    They spun around a corner as though it were an eddy. "I'm afraid
not. General Mint says Siyufs surrounded the Juzgado. That's why
I thought I ought to check on the Grand Manteion."
    "Where was she, and how did she learn of it?"
    "I don't know, calde. She didn't say, and I didn't ask. She said
one of Oosik's officers told her. Oosik had told him to try and get
in touch with her."
    Xiphias said, "He left when Willet here was handing out those
appetizers, lad! Another waiter fetched him, remember?"
    "Later than that--after I had asked Mucor to find out to which
manteion Hyacinth was bringing her offering."
    Their floater tacked on Gold, pushing through chattering
pedestrians.
    "You know what she looks like," Silk muttered. "She had on a black
coat, and was carrying a large rabbit, I believe."
    "Cat talk," Oreb informed him. "Talk bad."
    "The bird's right, lad! The skinny girl said it talks!" Before Xiphias
had finished speaking, their floater was slowing and stopping; the
canopy slid into its back and sides.
    For the space of a breath, Silk thought there had been a mistake.
The hurrying young woman with something orange-furred tucked
under her arm seemed too tall and too slender until she turned with
their cowling nudging her leg, and he saw her face.
    "Hyacinth!" He stood up by reflex, and for a moment he was half
outside the floater (and she more than half in it) as they kissed.

When that kiss ended, they lay face-to-face on the soft leather seat, she
crowded against its back and he practically falling off, with Xiphias
standing over them and waving his saber to force passersby to keep
their distance. They sat up, but their hands would not part. "I was
afraid you were dead," Silk confessed.
    And Hyacinth, "I shaggy near was, and I--but I..." Her eyes
swam with tears. "Can't we put up the top?"
    "I don't know how."
    "I do." She freed her hand, and with a flurry of skirt and ruffled
underskirt, and a flash of legs and spike-heeled scarlet shoes, was
in Hossaan's seat. Xiphias ducked, and the canopy flowed up and
darkened until it was nearly opaque.
    She wiped her eyes. "Now I'm coming back. Catch me." She rolled
over the back of the front seat so that Silk had to, and lying in his
arms kissed him again. With no need of speech, her kiss said, _Beat
me, shame and starve me. Do as you want with me, but don't leave me_.
I'll never do those things, he thought, and tried to make his own kiss
tell her so.
    When they parted, he gasped, "Where do we start?"
    She smiled. "That WAS the start. I love you. Let's start from there.
I haven't felt this way since--since you jumped out my window."
    He laughed, and she turned to Xiphias. "This time I know you
from a rat. You teach sword fighting, and I want lessons. Do you
always go around with him?"
    "Much as I can, lass!"
    Silk asked her, "Where have you been? I've had people searching
everywhere."
    "In a horrible old building in the Orilla, with a soldier as big as
this floater watching me for Auk. You must know Auk, he says he
knows you. Tartaros turned me loose."
    Hyacinth grinned like a twelve-year-old. "You believe in the gods,
but you won't believe that. I don't, and I know it happened. Do you
mind if I don't call you darling?"
    Silk shook his head. "Not in the least."
    "I've called too many men that. I'll find something else, something
good enough, but it may take a while." She turned back to Xiphias.
"There's jump seats that fold down out of the back of that one. You'd
be more comfortable."
    "Feel better outside, lass! Know how to get this plagucy door
open?"
    She laid her hand on his. "You stay in here or we'll get all naked
and sweaty, and weobught to do that someplace nicer. Where's the
driver?"
    "Hunting!" Xiphias jerked down a seat, sat, and contrived to sheath
his saber. "Hunting your cat with Silk's bird!"
    "That's right, I dropped Tick, and he cost five cards."
    Silk said, "When you got free--and I'll be grateful to Tartaros
forever--you should have come to me."
    Hyacinth shook her head.
    "I understand. You didn't know where I was, either."
    "No, you don't. I did. I knew exactly where you were. At the
Juzgado or the calde's Palace. Everybody I asked wanted to talk
about you, and everybody said one place or the other. But I looked,
well, like every other slut in the Orilla, only worse, and I stank. I
couldn't wash, or only a little. I tried, but when the water's dirtier
than your face it doesn't help much. I wanted perfume and powder,
and a comb to hold my hair, except I had to wash it first and dry it.
I tried to go back to Blood's. Do you know about Blood?"
    "About your trying to go back there? No."
    "And clean clothes, clean underwear and a bunch of other things.
You know what I'd look like without all this stuff?"
    "Yes," Silk declared. "Like Kypris herself."
    "Thanks. Like a boy, only with tits down to my waist. You saw
me naked."
    Silk felt his face flush. "They weren't. Not nearly."
    "That's the trouble with big ones," Hyacinth explained to Xiphias.
"The bigger they are the lower they go, unless you've got something
to hold them up. Will that make it hard for me to sword-fight?"
    "Will if they bounce, lass! But there's ways! Think I don't know
'em, long as I've been at it?"
    "I put myself in your hands, Master Xiphias." She gave him a sly,
sidelong smile, then brushed Silk's cheek with a kiss. "I was going
to see about lessons that time I came to meet you, I mean before I
found out it was so bad here, before we left Blood's. When we got
out of bed I said wouldn't I be a good sword-fighter, and you said
you'd back a dell with shorter legs that wasn't so fond of her looks,
or something like that. So I thought I'd learn and surprise you."
    He nodded, speechless.
    "I'm a good dancer, I really am, and I never had lessons, so I think
with lessons I could learn. Only it's a long way to Blood's and Auk
took my money, and I looked like a slut, so I turned around and
went to Orchid's. She loaned me gelt and let me wash and, you
know, fix up. But she says Blood's for ice. This was only about, oh,
before I went to the market. Did you know? That Blood was dead?
Since Phaesday, she says."
    "Yes. I killed him." Hyacinth's eyes widened, and Silk felt pride,
coupled with a deep shame in it. "I killed him with a sword Master
Xiphias had loaned me, and destroyed the sword in the process.
I'd rather not discuss the details. I understand why you wanted to
return, or at least I believe--"
    "All my things are out there! My clothes, my jewelry, everything
I've got!"
    "Also, you thought your driver would have gone back there, I'm
certain. I also understand why you went to Orchid's; you anticipated
help from her, and you received it. I went there myself for the
same reason a few days ago, and I was helped as well--I found
Chenille there. Which brings me to a point I ought to have raised
sooner. What was the soldier's name? The one who watched you
for Auk?"
    "Hammerstone." Two tiny lines had appeared on Hyacinth's
forehead. "It was Corporal Hammerstone, and he had stripes on
his arm like a happy corporal, but painted on. All of a sudden
you're worried, I can see it. What is it?"
    "It would take an hour to explain it all." Silk shrugged. "I'll try to
be brief. I love you very, very much."
    "I love you, too!"
    "Because I do, I have something to lose, someone--you--I must
protect. Most men live their entire lives like this, I suppose, but I'm
not accustomed to it."
    "I'm sorry. I'll try to help. I really will."
    "I know you will. You'll put yourself at risk, and that worries me
more than anything else."
    There was a tap on the canopy.
    "You see, I've forgotten some of my obligations already. I promised
Chenille I'd help her find Auk, and Auk took you from me. Do you
know where he is, or where this Corporal is? Patera Incus is anxious
to locate him, I know."
    Xiphias interjected, "Don't you think that's that Willet outside
knocking, lad?"
    "Let him in, please."
    "I don't know how to work this soggy door!"
    "Then that will give us a little more time. You'll solve it soon,
I'm sure."
    Hyacinth giggled. "You've been around people like me too much.
That's what Auk says about houses. And I know where he is, too,
or anyway I know where he was, at a reedy old manteion on Sun
Street. Was that yours? That's what somebody said when we were
going over there."
    "It was." Silk found that he was smiling. "It's old and run down,
just as you say; but I used to love it, or thought I did. In a way I
suppose I still do."
    Scarcely visible on the other side of the darkened canopy, Hossaan
tapped again. This time his taps were followed by a series of
sharper ones.
    "That's where Kypris came to your Window? Orchid told me. It
was at Orpine's funeral, she said. I knew Orpine, and I wish I'd been
there. I've got a shrine for Kypris..." Hyacinth paused, teeth nibbling
her full lower lip. "Or I did. Is the house really wrecked? That's what
Orchid said."
    Silk recalled Blood's villa as he had seen it during his rescue. "It's
badly damaged, certainly."
    "If it was just damaged we've got to go there!"
    He gestured toward the canopy. "Even with Willet outside knocking?
Willet used to be one of Blood's drivers. You must know him--he
drove you to the city so that you could meet me at Ermine's."
    "That's wonderful! He can take us."
    Xiphias exclaimed. "Think I've got it! Want me to let him
in, lad?"
    Silk nodded, and the door opened. Hossaan reached through it
to unlatch the one in front, and Oreb shot past him to land upon
Silk's shoulder, a-flutter with excitement and indignation. "Bad cat!
Cut cat!"
    Hossaan slid into the driver's seat as the orange-and-white animal
he held spat, "Add word!"
    "He led us quite a chase, Hy," Hossaan said, "but we got him in
the alley trying to wriggle through a hole."
    "You're bleeding!"
    "He put up a fight. If somebody else will hold him, I'll get out the
aid kit."
    "Add, add word!" the little orange-and-white catachrest reiterated.
"Pack! Itty laddie, peas dun lit am kilt may!"
    "She won't, for an hour or two at least," Silk told him. "Willet, I
want you to take us out to Blood's and help us collect Hyacinth's
belongings." For a moment, Silk paused to gaze upon Hyacinth.
"Then to the Prolocutor's Palace." As the floater slid forward, he
added, "We may well need weapons, but we'd have to go back to
the calde's Palace, and we can't afford that. I'd never get away."
    Xiphias accepted the small catachrest from Hossaan. "I've my
sword, lad!"
    Silk nodded absently as the song of the blowers strengthened to a
muted roar. "Let's hope it will suffice."

"We might have these drinks I wish in the bar, perhaps," Siyuf
told Chenille, "but in my lodging would be more nice, do you not
think also?"
    "I had three with dinner." By intent, Chenille spoke too loudly.
"If I'm going to start falling down and taking off my clothes,
I'd a whole lot rather do it in private." She. looked around
Ermine's sellaria with interest. "Only we've got to get a room,
don't you?"
    "My staff has arrange this for me while I watch our parade with
your friend the calde." Siyuf stopped a liveried waiter. "My lodging
will be up the big stairs, I think? Number seventy-nine?"
    He shook his head. "We don't have a room seventy-nine at Ermine's,
General."
    "Generalissimo. Wait, I will show you." While Chenille smiled and
strove to appear innocent, Siyuf fished a key from her pocket.
    "Ah!" The waiter nodded. "Number seven nine. That's a double
room, we call it the Lyrichord Room, Generalissimo. On your right
at the top of the Grand Staircase. You can't miss it."
    "A room you say. More, I understood."
    The waiter lowered his voice confidentially. "Our suites are four,
five, or six rooms, depending. We call them rooms for convenience.
Your room, the Lyrichord Room on account of the instrument in
the music room, is a double suite with eleven rooms and three baths,
besides balconies and so forth. Three bedrooms, sellaria, cenatiuncula
for formal dining, breakfast cosy, drawing room--"
    She waved him to silence. "You have here a wine waiter, one good
and knowing?"
    "The sommelier, Generalissimo. He's at the Calde's Palace just
now, I believe."
    "I come from there. He too, I think. Send him to me when he
arrive."
    Siyuf turned away, motioning to Chenille. "Men are so stupid, do
you think also? It is what renders them less than attractive, even the
most fine. One thing, better I had say, one thing from many. Men
are duty. So we are taught in my home. Girls are pleasure."
    Chenille nodded meekly, blinking to show that she was assimilating
this information. "In Trivigaunte, you mean? That's where your
home is? I still can't get used to liking somebody from someplace
so far away."
    "This is natural. I have a house there bigger than this Ermine of
your Viron's, the house which was my mother's. Also outside our
city, a farmhouse made large for rest and educating my horses. For the
hunt two houses also, one in a cave where is more cool. Do you perhaps
hunt? I will show it to you. You will be very delighted I think, but
there are places where you could not stand so straight, perhaps."
    "I'd like to learn. Only I thought all of you were east of here.
The calde, I call him Patera, said something about tents out there.
Anyway, it's really nice you've got this suite too, only I never would
have guessed."
    Arms linked, they started up the broad staircase. "I have my tent
outside your city, and my headquarters, which I bring closer soon.
Also this is convenient, as we see. I have good hunting there, so
perhaps I will not have to take you home to teach. Already we kill
three wing people and catch one also."
    "Four Fliers?" In her astonishment Chenille forgot to sound
admiring. "I didn't think anybody could."
    Siyuf laughed. "Nine years in Trivigaunte another kill a wing person,
but she does not catch the round thing on the back that push forward.
I forget this word."
    "I have no idea."
    "By this we put wings on my pterotroopers. This time it is me that
kill and I have catch the things that push also, but he does not yet
tell me how it go."
    Siyuf moistened her lips, and for the first time Chenille felt
frightened. "Not yet he will not tell. But soon. He is like all men
stupid, and not fine even but small and thin. We take his clothes
and do other things until he is our friend. This is not confusing to
you, I hope?"
    "I think I get it."
    "We take the clothes, and look, he is nothing. I have five husbands,
all are more fine. Perhaps you would like him? When we have finish,
I will give him to you."
    "Oh, no! I don't want him, Siyuf."
    "Good."
    "I really don't like men at all, except Petera and one other one."
    They had reached the top of Ermine's sweeping and richly carpeted
Grand Staircase. Siyuf glanced to her right and down at her key.
"My husbands I like sometimes, but so one like a hound. For me,
tall girls and strong over all else. I enjoy, you see, at first a certain
resistance."

Maytera Marble paused to stare at the strange procession crossing
Manteion Street; although it was some distance away, Maytera Rose's
legacy had improved her eyes out of reckoning. In the streetlights'
glow, she saw a large and rough-looking man, accompanied by a
smaller man so thin that he seemed a mere assemblage of sticks.
After them, three soldiers, large and handsome like all soldiers, two
of whom appeared to be carrying a fourth. Behind the soldiers, a tall
augur and--and...
    "Sib! Oh, sib! General, General Mint! It's me, sib!" In her joy Maytera
Marble actually sprang into the air. The diminutive sibyl walking
beside the tall augur looked around, and her mouth dropped open.
    Maytera's eyes were not the only things Maytera Rose's legacy had
improved; Maytera Marble dashed up Manteion Street as though
winged, and Oreb himself could not have covered the distance more
rapidly. Her good hand clutching her coif, she shot between the rough
men, collided with the leading soldier with a clang and a fluster of
elided apologies, and threw her arms about Maytera Mint.
    "It's you, it's really you! We've been so worried! You don't know!
You can't, and when Patera said you were all right I thought that's
just when it happens, when everyone's saying the danger's over,
that's when they get killed, and, and--oh, Hierax! Oh, Scylla!
Oh, Thelxiepeia! I simply couldn't stand it. You were the light of
my existence, sib. I know I never told you but you were, you were!
If I'd had to live by myself in the cenoby with just Maytera Rose
and that chem I couldn't have stood it. We'd have gone mad!"
    Maytera Mint was laughing and hugging her and trying to lift
her off the ground, which was so ridiculous that Maytera Marble
exclaimed, "Stop, sib, before you hurt yourself!" But it really did not
matter at all. Maytera Mint was right there, laughing, and was the
same dear Maytera Mint but better because she was the Maytera
Mint who had come back from Tartaros knew where and there was
no mother and daughter, no grandmother and granddaughter half
so close as they, and no child or grandchild half so dear.
    "I'm happy to be back, Maytera," Maytera Mint declared when she
could stop laughing. "I hadn't really known how happy till now."
    "Where have you been? Dear, dear sib, dear girl! Patera said they'd
got you, they had you in some horrible place under the city, and then
they didn't, you were with soldiers, but the generalissimo, not the fat
one, the other one, said you were dead and--oh, sib! I missed you so
much! I wanted you to meet Chenille. I still do, because Chenille's
been a second granddaughter to me, but nobody, nobody in the whole
whorl can ever mean as much to me as you!"
    The tall augur said, "The--ah--all Viron. Feels as you do, eh,
Maytera? Just look at them."
    Already heads were turning and people pointing.
    "You--ah--speak to them, General? Or, um, I myself--"
    Maytera Mint waved both hands and blew the onlookers half a
dozen kisses; then the silver trumpet sounded, the trumpet that
Maytera Marble had heard in Sun Street on that never to be
forgotten Hieraxday when the Queen of the Whorl had manifested
during her final sacrifice, ringing from every wall and cobble like a
call to battle: "I am General Mint! His Eminence and I have been down
in the tunnels where the Ayuntamiento's hiding, and Pas himself has
given us instructions. We're going to the Grand Manteion! All of you
are going there, too, aren't you?" She pointed with a wide gesture that
was like the unsheathing of a sword.
    There were cheers, and several voices shouted, "_Yes!_"
    "Lord Pas's prophet, Auk, will be there. We know, because Lord
Pas told us. Please! Do any of you know him?"
    A giant, taller even than Remora, waved. He held a ram under his
left arm, and a tame baboon trotted after him as he pushed through
the crowd; Maytera Marble thought that she had never seen so big
a bio, a bio nearly as big as a soldier.
    "I do." His voice was like the thudding of a bass drurn. "I know you,
too, General. Know you a dog's right, anyhow, but me an' Auk's a
old knot." Legs like two pillars devoured the distance between them
with swinging strides.
    For a second time, Maytera Mint's small face went blank with
surprise. "Gib! You're Gib! We charged the floaters on Cage Street
together!"
    "Pure quill, General." The giant dropped to one knee, eliciting an
enraged bleat from the ram. "I'm Gib from the Cock, an' I was tryin'
to stick by you, but that sham horse couldn't keep up. Too much
weight's what Kingcup says. Then he took a slug an' down we went."
He held up his free arm to show a cast, then touched the ridge above his
eyes with the fingertips protruding from it. "So I can't salute like I'd like
to, but Bongo here can. Salute the General lady, Bongo. Salute!"
    The baboon rose on his hind legs, his forepaw seeming to shade
startlingly human eyes.
    Maytera Mint demanded, "But you know Auk, Gib? I mean Pas's
prophet named Auk?"
    Maytera Marble sensed her uncertainty. "She knows a man called
Auk who went to our palaestra; but I don't believe she's sure he's
the one Pas--Pas told you about this Auk, sib?"
    "Yes!" Maytera Mint nodded so hard her short brown hair danced.
"Just now, a few minutes ago, down in a chapel under the Palace. He
came to the Window there, Maytera, and all of us could see him, even
Spider and Eland. It was wonderful!"
    The soldier carrying the feet of the fourth soldier said, "He talked
about our sergeant. We gave him to Pas."
    The third soldier objected, "He gave himself, that's how it was.
Now Pas wants him fixed. Not 'cause he don't want him but 'cause
we need him. Pas don't want to scrap him."
    The augur tossed back a lock of lank black hair. "It--ah--gave.
Sense of the word, hey? I myself--"
    Maytera Mint was not to be distracted. "Do you know Auk the
Prophet, Gib? Yes or no!"
    "Sure do, General."
    "Describe him!"
    "He's part owner in my place, he's maybe forgot but he is. Pretty
big cully." Gib waved his cast toward the larger of the rough-looking
men. "Bout like him, only not so old. Got more hair than he needs
an' ears that stick out of it anyhow."
    "A strong, forthright jaw!" She was fairly dancing with anxiety and
impatience.
    "That's him, General. You could hang your washing on it." Gib
chuckled, the laughter of a happy ogre hiding in his barrel chest. "I
was wantin' to say he looks like Bongo here. Auk's my ol' knot an'
wouldn't mind. Maybe you would of, though, an' maybe the god
that's tapped him. Tartaros is what he says."
    "This, er, hiatus, General..."
    Maytera Mint nodded vigorously. "He's right, Gib. Stand up. You
needn't address me as if I were a child, just because I'm not tall."
    She trotted forward, drawing the giant behind her like a magnet.
"Let's see... You don't know anybody here except me. Neither does
poor Maytera, whom I ought to have introduced. Or have you been
introduced to His Eminence, Maytera?
    "Your Eminence, this is my senior and my dearest friend, Maytera
Marble. Maytera, this is His Eminence the Coadjutor, Putera
Remora."
    Maytera Marble, hurrying after them, paused long enough to bow
in approved fashion.
    "An honor, eh? For me, Maytera. For me. Very much so. Um--privilege.
We begin our acquaintance under the most--ah--propitious           
circumstances. You, um, concur?"
    "Decidedly, Your Eminence!"
    Maytera Mint never broke stride. "This is Gib, as you heard, a
friend of Auk's and a comrade-in-arms of mine. The soldier with
his slug gun pointed at our prisoners--Slate, you really don't need
to do that. They're not going to run."
    She glanced back at Maytera Marble. "Where was I? Oh, yes. That's
Acting Corporal Slate. I've put him in charge of his fellow soldiers
till Great Pas, as he promised, restores Sergeant Sand to us by Auk's
agency."
    Catching up to her, Maytera Marble ventured, "That must be poor
Sergeant Sand they're carrying?"
    "That's right, and Schist and Shale are carrying him. Our
prisoners--they're friends now, friends of mine at least, and His
Eminence's too, I'd say--are Spider and Eland." She had reached the
milling crowd before the Grand Manteion and stood on tiptoe in the hope
of catching a glimpse of Auk.

Xiphias had found a candle and lit it; Silk drew Hossaan away from
its light and out into the darkness of the corridor. "Master Xiphias
can help her look--hold the light, at least, which is all she needs.
You and I have things to talk about."
    "Good man!" Oreb assured Silk.
    "I employed you--knowing you are an agent of the Rani's--because
you Trivigauntis are our allies. You realize that, I'm sure."
    "Certainly, Calde."
    "You owe nothing to Viron, and nothing to me. But if you want
to remain, you'll have to be more forthcoming than you've been
thus far."
    "Only because the old man was listening, Calde. I know you trust
him, and you probably can. But I'm not you. I try not to trust
anybody more than I've got to."
    "I understand. Do they trust you? I mean the officials to whom
you report."
    There was a momentary silence; it was too dark for Silk to see
Hossaan's face, but he sensed that it would have done little good.
Then Hossaan said, "No more than they have to, Calde. I don't mind,
though. I'm used to it."
    "I'm not. No doubt I must become used to it, too; but I'm finding
that difficult. You're deceiving them. That was the reason you had
Horn--and others, no doubt--call you Willet, the name you had
used here. That was also why you helped serve dinner. You wanted
to show someone at my table that you had penetrated my household--someone
who would recognize you at once. Isn't that correct?"
    Hossaan's only answer was an eerie silence. On Silk's shoulder,
Oreb croaked and fluttered uneasily.
    "That person will assume, of course, that I am not aware you're a
Trivigaunti--"
    "Let's not dodge words, Calde. I'm a spy. I know it and you've
known it since you spotted me on the boat."
    "You will be applauded and rewarded."
    Hossaan started to speak, but Silk cut him off. "I'm not finished.
While you took us out here, I was thinking about your deception
and your position as my driver. Please don't tell me that your lie
is essentially the truth because I'm the only one who knows and
you intend to inform your superiors that I do. It would only be a
further lie."
    "All right, I won't."
    "Then I say this. You may tell your superiors everything you learn.
I've assumed that you would from the start, and since I haven't the
least intention of betraying the Rani, it can do Viron no harm. But
you must afford me the same courtesy Doctor Crane did--you must
tell me everything I want to know about what you're doing and
reporting. In return, I'll keep your secret."
    A second crept by, then two. "All right, Calde. But I've always
been willing to tell you whatever you needed to know."
    "Thank you. Earlier I asked whether Generalissimo Siyuf or General
Saba knew you by sight. You said neither did, and I believed you." For
a moment, it seemed to Silk that something stealthy moved through
the darkness. He paused to listen, but heard only the sudden flapping
of wings as Oreb launched himself from his shoulder.
    "I ask again--was it the truth? Does either know you?"
    "It is, Calde. I've never spoken with them, and I doubt that they
know what I look like, either one of them."
    "There was someone at my dinner who does. Who was it?"
    "Colonel Abanja. Didn't you ask what she does on Siyuf's staff?
She intelligence officer."
    "Do you report to her?"
    "I will now, probably. You still don't see--"
    Soft candlelight had appeared in Hyacinth's doorway. Oreb
announced, "Cat come!" from Xiphias's shoulder.
    Silk asked, "How are you faring, Master Xiphias?" 
    The old man shook his head. "Not a thing, lad! Want a bit of silver
chain? Ring worth half a card?"
    "No, thank you."
    "Me neither! But we found 'em! Think she'd keep 'em? Threw 'em
on the floor! Fact!"
    Oreb confided, "Girl cry."
    "You shouldn't have left her in the dark," Silk muttered.
    "Chased me out, lad! Candle and all!"
    Feeling the pressure of Hossaan's hand on his back, Silk said,
"You're right, of course, Willet. I must go in to her. I don't know
that I can help, but I must try."
    Alone, he walked down the dark corridor and turned into the darker
doorway of what had been Hyacinth's suite. Here there had been a
dressing table inlaid with gold and ivory, wardrobes crammed with
expensive gowns and coats, and a summonable glass. Only darkness
remained, and the melancholy sweetness of spilled perfume. One door
had led to Hyacinth's balneum, Silk reminded himself, another to her
bedchamber. In vain, he tried to recall which was to the left and which
to the right, although with her sobs to guide him he did not really
need to know. By touch, he located the correct door and found that
it was open.
    After that, there was nothing for it but to walk in, with the ghost
of the Patera Silk that he had been.

"_Halt!_" The voice was male, accompanied by the rattle of sling swivels
and the click of the safety; Siyuf's intelligence officer raised her hands
while trying to make out the sentry in the cloud-dimmed skylight. "I
am Colonel Abanja, in the Rani's service."
    Whispering. There were two or more sentries, clearly. "Advance
and give the password."
    Abanja moved forward slowly, hands still in the air. If these nervous
men were from the Calde's Guard, they were (or at least ought to be)
disciplined troopers. If they were General Mint's volunteers, they
might fire without warning.
    "Halt in the name of the Rani!"
    Abanja stopped again and identified herself a second time. Somewhere
behind her, a voice hissed, "They're shaggy shook up, lady. I
wouldn't stand between 'em."
    "Thank you," she murmured. "That's good advice, I'm sure."
    A lanky trooper of the Companion Cavalry stepped from a shadow;
Abanja was happy to see that the muzzle of her slug gun was lowered.
"You must give to me our password also, Colonel."
    "Boraz." Now she would see whether this trooper's lack of familiarity
with the Common Tongue, with its implication of aristocracy, was real
or feigned.
    "You can pass, sir."
    Feigned.
    "_Halt!_" It was the calde's men again. Abanja said, "I've already
halted for you once."
    "Do you have our password?"
    Inwardly, she sighed. "I didn't know one was required. I have to
speak with the officer in charge of our detachment."
    "You can't go in the Juzgado without our password."
    "Then you must give it to me."
    Another whispered conference. "It's against regulations, Colonel."
    Her eyes were adapting to the darkness; both male sentries were
visible to her now, skylight gleaming on their waxed armor. "If it's
against regulations to give it to me, you can't expect me to know
it." She spoke to the cavalry trooper. "Go get her. You have my
permission to leave your post."
    Too softly for the men to overhear, the voice behind Abanja hissed,
"There's a nice place, Trotter's. A street down 'n turn west. We can
have a drink. Tell these hoppies to send her when she comes."
    Abanja shook her head.
    "Lady, you need me worse'n I need you."
    Without looking around Abanja murmured, "Do I? I hadn't
realized it."
    "I could of got you in without a hitch. Shag, I still will. Tell 'em
_Charter_. This's for free."
    "Sentry!" Abanja called. "I remember your password now. Your
calde told me at dinner."
    Both advanced with leveled slug guns. "Give it."
    She smiled. "Unless someone's changed it without notifying your
calde, it's Charter."
    "Pass, friend."
    "Thank you again," Abanja murmured.
    The hiss was scarcely audible. "Back room. Name's Urus."

"All g-gone." Slowly, Hyacinth's sobs had subsided into sniffles. "All
the times. All that smiling. Cream and lotion. Beggar's root and
rust, do this and do that. N-nothing left." The sobs returned. "Oh,
K-k-kypris! Have pity!"
    Silk muttered, "I think perhaps she already has."
    "Bake here shop!" It was the catachrest. "Cuss-cuss."
    He did, kissing Hyacinth's ear and the nape of her neck, and when
she raised her face to his, her lips.
    "Niece! Mow cuss!" The little catachrest attempted a smacking that
emerged between the intended kiss and a squall.
    The third cuss was not yet over. When it was, Hyacinth said, "Wipe
your face. I got snot all over you."
    "Tears." Silk took out his handkerchief.
    "B-both. I was crying so hard my nose ran. Don't think I can't cry
pretty when I w-want to."
    "Itty laddie, done! Shop!"
    "I've got certain things I think about, and here it comes. Know
what I had when I left h-home?"
    He shook his head, then said, "What was it?" realizing that she
could not have seen the motion.
    "Two gowns M-Mother made and her umbrella. She didn't have
a-anything else to give me, so she gave me that. A big green umbrella. I
kept it for years, and I don't know what happened to it. H-Here's what
I've got now. The clothes I've got on and a gown Orchid promised
to get cleaned, Tick here, and one card. But I owe her seven. That's
w-way too much for what I got, but what could I say?"
    Silk stood. "That you'll repay her later. You can say that again,
too."
    "Y-y-you know..." A stifled sob. "You're learning, you really are.
Listen, I'm not through crying about all this yet. I'll cry m-m-more--cry
some m-more..."
    "Shop!"
    "Tonight. Before I go to sleep. I just about always cry then, and
when I'm asleep, too, s-sometimes. Well, by Thelx!"
    "What is it?" Silk inquired.
    "Go stand in the doorway. Shut it behind you. Don't ask, do
it quick."
    He did, and heard voices in the dark: "Tick? Tick, are you still
in here?" "Puck Tuck ape no!" "All right, quit pulling my skirt."
"Nod heavey." "Did I say why I got him? You can open the door
again. I was going to give him to Kypris and ask her to give
me you."
    Once more, Silk was speechless.
    "The market was closed, but some animal culls are always in there,
and I gave the watchman a card to let me in and got Tick. The cull
said talking animals are the best."
    "So I've been told--by the same seller, I'm sure."
    "I had a string around his neck, and I held it while I was looking
for my things. Sometimes I held it in my teeth. When I got to crying
I put my foot on it, but he got it off. Untied it or got it up where he
could bite it, I guess."
    "Nod rum."
    "No, you didn't run, and I know you knew what I was going to do,
'cause you kept on begging me not to." To Silk, Hyacinth added, "Then
everybody was going to that big manteion uphill, so I did, too."
    "I understand."
    "But when he got loose he didn't beat hoof. Why not, Tick?"
    "Say wharf laddie."
    "I guess." Abandoning Tick, she addressed Silk. "What I'm trying
to say is I know you're really religious. I'm not, but you could
teach me."
    He could not escape the thought that it would be better if she
taught him. "I'm far from being the best possible teacher, but I'll
try if you wish it."
    "You said we'd go to the Prolocutor's when we were done here.
If it was for me, we don't have to."
    He smiled. "You're not going to offer Tick?"
    "I will if you want me to."
    Tick protested, "New!"
    "I see no point in it." Something large and soft pressed Silk's
leg; he groped for it in the dark, but there was nothing there.
"You want me to teach you. The gods--this is what I've found--aren't
greatly influenced by our gifts. When they give us what
we ask--" The soft pressure resumed, practically pushing him off
his feet.
    "What is it?"
    "That's what I was wondering myself, but now I believe I know.
Oreb tried to tell me out in the hall; and I should have guessed when
he flew the first time I heard it. Mucor calls them lynxes. There's one
in the room with us."
    "Are they like bats?" Hyacinth sounded alarmed.
    "They're cats."
    "Have--something touched me. As big as a big dog."
    "That's it; but there's no point in my describing them, when you
could see this one for yourself." Silk raised his voice. "Master Xiphias,
bring your candle, please."
    "Are they the big cats the talus used to let out at night?" Hyacinth
sounded more frightened than ever.
    "Mucor controls them, to her benefit and ours." Silk tried to sound
reassuring. "I'd imagine that this one would like us to bring it to the
Calde's Palace, where she is."
    There was a muted yowl, far too deep and reverberant to have
proceeded from Tick.

Abanja glanced around Trotter's, which seemed deserted except for
an old man asleep at a table and a fat man washing earthenware
mugs. "Barman?"
    "Yeah, sister. You need a drink?"
    She shook her head. "I'm addressed as Colonel. Since I want
something, you may call me sister. When you want something from
me, call me Colonel. You might get it if you do."
    The fat man looked up. "Hey, I'll call you Colonel right now,
sister."
    "Though I don't think so. You have a patron named Urus."
    "Couple, anyhow," the fat man said. "Three I can lay hand to, only
one got the pits."
    "Urus is in your back room, and he's expecting me. Show me
where it is."
    "Nobody's in my back room, sister."
    "Then I'll wait there for him. That yellow bottle." She pointed. "I
take it that's sauterne?"
    The fat man shrugged. "S'posed to be."
    "Bring it, and two clean glasses."
    "I got some that's better, only it's twenty-seven bits. That up there's
sixteen."
    "Bring it. You keep accounts for patrons? Start one for me. My
name is Abanja."
    "You mean you'll pay later? Sister, I don't--put that thing
away!"
    "You men." Abanja smiled as she stepped behind the bar. "How are
you to face lances if one small needler terrifies you? Get the good
sauterne and the glasses. Are you going to send for the Calde's Guard
when you leave me? They won't arrest an officer of the Rani's, but I
don't think my friend Urus will like it."
    "I never do that, sister."
    "Then it won't be necessary for me to have you arrested when they
come. Nor will I have to shoot you. I admit I had thought about it."
Abanja smiled more broadly, amused by the clinking of the glasses
in the fat man's hand. "Lead the way. If you don't misbehave, you
have no reason to be frightened."
    With her needler in his back, he pushed aside the dirty green curtain
that had concealed the entrance to a dark and narrow hall. She said,
"You know, I think I understand this Trotter's of yours. Are you
Trotter?"
    He nodded.
    "Your courts meet in the Juzgado, and this is where the accused
drink before they go there. Or if they're discharged. It's empty because
your courts are not in session."
    "The back room's empty, too." Trotter had stopped before a door.
He gulped. "You can wait if you want to, only I close--"
    She shook her head.
    "When you leave. After that, all right? If anybody called Urus comes
in, I'll tell him you're here." Trotter opened the door and gaped at the
filthy, bearded man at the table inside.
    With exaggerated politeness, Urus rose and pulled out a chair for
Abanja. As she sat, Trotter mumbled, "I forgot the calde let 'em out.
A lot can't hardly walk."
    "I sprung myself," Urus told him. "Get me somethin' to eat. Put it
on her tab."
    Still smiling, Abanja nodded.
    When the door had closed behind Trotter, Urus said, "Thanks for
gettin' the bottle 'n standin' me a meal. You're the dimber damber,
lady." His voice became confidential. "What I got to tell you is I'm
all right too. You treat Urus brick 'n he'll treat you stone. Ain't you
goin' to put your barker up?"
    "No. Trotter didn't know you were in here."
    "He'd of wanted me to drink, 'n I didn't have the gelt. Lily
with you, see? Yeah, I been in the pits. I just got out. Yeah,
I'm flat. Only you need me, lady, so you're goin' to give me ten
cards--"
    She laughed.
    "'Cause I'm goin' to tell you a lot. Then I'm goin' to find out a
lot more, 'n you 'n me'll knot up again, see?"
    "Open that and pour yourself as much as you want," she told him.
"I feel sorry for you, so I'm giving you a drink, and food if the barman
has any."
    "You know who Spider is?"
    "Should I?"
    "Shag yes. You got spies here. Spider knows 'em all. He knows
me, too, only he don't know I'm workin' for you."
    "You aren't. Not yet. To whom does this Spider report, assuming
that he exists?"
    "Councillor Potto. He's Potto's right hand. You ever hear of Guan?
How 'bout Hyrax? Sewellel? Paca?"
    Abanja looked thoughtful. "Some of those names may be familiar
to me."
    "They're dead, all of 'em, 'n I know what happened to 'em. Spider
was their jefe, 'n he ain't. I know where he is 'n what he's doin'. I
could bring you. I don't scavy you'd want me to, only I could. You
twig they nabbed General Mint?"
    "She's free now." Abanja holstered her needler. "That's what I've
been told."
    "You don't cap to it."
    "I believe what I see."
    Urus grinned. "Pure keg, lady. All right, it's the lily, she's loose. I
could show her to you 'n throw in Spider, 'cause they're together.
Only I'm like you, see? 'N what I want to see's gelt."
    Abanja took a card from her card case and pushed it toward Urus,
across the stained and splintered old table.

With a furtive glance into the next room, Chenille tapped the surface
of the glass with her forefinger. A floating gray face appeared. "Yes,
madame."
    "Keep your voice down, all right?" Chenille herself was whispering.
"There's somebody asleep in the big bed."
    "Generalissimo Siyut madame. She is well within my field of
view."
    "That's right, and you wouldn't want to wake her up, would you?
So keep it down."
    "I shall, madame. I suggest, however, that you close the door. It
would provide additional security, madame."
    Chenille shook her head, her raspberry curls bobbing. "I got to know
if she's waking up. Pay attention. You know the Calde's Palace?"
    "Certainly, madame."
    "I've asked three or four times on the glass there, see? He let me,
the calde did, I'm a friend of his. What I want to know is are you
the same one? The monitor I talked to there?"
    "No, madame. Each glass has its own, madame, though I can utilize
others, and consult their monitors if need be."
    "That's good, 'cause he couldn't find Auk for me, ever, and I saw this
glass of yours when me and Generalissimo Siyuf came in, and I've been
wanting to try it ever since, only not where she could hear 'cause I'm
looking for Auk. I know there's a lot of Auks. You don't have to tell me
that. The one I want's the one that lives in the Orilla, the one they call
Auk the Prophet now. Real big, not too bad looking, broken nose--"
    "Yes, madame. I have located him. It was a matter of no difficulty,
the word _prophet_ being a sufficient clue. Do you wish to speak
with him?"
    "I--wait. If I speak to him, he can see me, right?"
    Like a floating bottle disturbed by a ripple, the gray face bobbed
in nothingness. "You might postpone your conversation until you
are dressed, madame. If you prefer."
    "That's all right. Just tell me where he is."
    "In the Grand Manteion, madame. It is two streets north and one
west, or so I am informed."
    "Yeah, I know. Listen, he's there now? Auk's there right now, in
the Grand Manteion?"
    "Correct, madame."
    "Is he all right? He's not dead or anything?"
    "He appears somewhat fatigued, madame. Otherwise I judge him
in excellent health. You do not care to converse?"
    "I think it would be better if he didn't know about me and the
generalissimo. Better if I don't shove it at him, anyhow, and even if
I close the door he's bound to want to know what I'm doing here."
    The gray face nodded sagely. "Prudent, madame."
    "Yeah, I think so. Wait up, I got to think."
    "Gladly, madame." For nearly a minute, there was no sound in the
Lyrichord Room save Siyuf's hoarse respiration.
    At last Chenille announced, "This is going to be one tough job for
you, Monitor."
    "We thrive upon adversity, madame."
    "Good, I've got some for you. I want to get word to a lady named
Orchid. Get her, or get anybody that might be able to get a message
to her. What time is it?"
    "Two twenty-one, madame. It is Phaesday morning, madame.
Shadeup is less than four hours distant."
    "That's what I was afraid of. If you can't do it, just tell me. I won't
blame you a bit."
    "I shall make the utmost effort, madame, but Orchid is also a widely
employed appellation. Additional information may be of assistance."
    "Sure. This Orchid's got a yellow house. It's on Lamp Street.
Music runs right in back, and there's a pastry shop across the street.
Across Lamp Street, I mean. She's a big fat woman, I guess forty or
forty-five."
    "That is sufficient, madame, I have identified her. There is a glass
in her private apartments, and she is preparing for bed in the room
beyond. Shall I summon her to her glass?"
    "I know that glass and it doesn't work."
    "To the contrary, madame, it is fully operational, though it was
out of service for... eighteen years. Would you care to speak with
Orchid?"
    Chenille nodded, and in half a minute saw Orchid standing in front
of her own glass in lacy black pantaloons and a hastily assumed
peignoir. "Chen! How'd you get this thing turned on?"
    "Never mind, it just is. Orchid, I need a favor, only there'll be
something for you. Maybe a card. Maybe more."
    Orchid, who had been eyeing the rich furnishings of the Lyrichord
Room, nodded. "I got my ears up."
    "All right, you see the mort in doss in the next room? She's the
Trivigaunti's generalissimo. Her name's Siyuf."
    "You always were lucky, Chen."
    "Maybe. The thing is, I got to beat the hoof. Is Violet riding
pretty light?"
    Orchid shrngged, plump shoulders rising and falling like pans of
dough. "Pretty much. You know how it is, Chen. Where are you?"
    "Ermine's. This's Room Seven and Nine, get it? It's a double room,
so seven and nine too. Right at the top of the big stairs. Siyuf likes
tall dells, she would've given me five easy. Five's nothing to her.
Violet ought to get more if she soaps her. Tell her to come uphill
and play spoons, tell Siyuf she's my pal and I told her what a nice
time I'd had, so she thought she'd drop by and party. I'll leave the
door unlocked when I go out." Chenille's voice hardened. "Only I get
half. Don't think you're going to wash me down."
    "Sure thing, Chen."
    "The way I'm set with the calde--" groping the carpet at her feet,
Chenille found her bandeau, "I ought to be able to throw something
your way pretty often. Only don't try to wash me, Orchid. The word
from me could shut you down."

Under her breath, Hyacinth asked, "Do you really want to go through
with this?"
    It seemed too foolish to require a reply, but Silk nodded. "Your
Cognizance, you and His Eminence, with Patera Jerboa and Patera
Shell, are more than sufficient, surely."
    From Echidna's dark chapel behind the ambulatory, Maytera
Marble called, "Just one moment more, please, Patera. Patera Incus
is working as quickly as he can, and--and..."
    Like a rumble of thunder, Hammerstone's deeper voice added,
"She wants to be there, and there's another reason. Hold on, Calde.
Patera's about finished."
    Hyacinth whispered, "We really don't have to. We could just go
somewhere and do it all night. It doesn't matter to me, honest." Tick
added, "Goo no!" from her arms.
    "I've revoked your vow of chastity," Quetzal said; it was impossible
to say whether he had overheard her. "You're still an augur. Is
that clear?"
    "Perfectly, Your Cognizance."
    Remora smiled in a way he meant to be reassuring. "Can't, eh?
Not even Quetzal. Indelible, hey?"
    The Prolocutor himself nodded. "I could enjoin you from augural
duties, but you'd still be an augur, Patera Calde."
    "I understand, Your Cognizance."
    "I'm not doing it. You're relieved of the requirements. You need
not say the office and sacrifice, but you can if you want to. You
can and should wear the robe. Our citizens have chosen an augur,
believing the gods chose for them. We must keep it so. We must
sustain their faith. If necessary, we must justify it."
    He glanced at Maytera Mint, who said, "Your Cognizance is
wondering whether I retain mine after Pas failed to appear. I don't
know, and it may be weeks before I do. Years, even. I wish Bison
were here."
    Spider nodded. "Me, too."
    Spokesman for his master, Oreb croaked, "Do now!"
    Hoping his bird had been understood, Silk said, "You told me what
took place, General, but I'm afraid I wasn't listening as closely as I
should have been. I couldn't think beyond my need to obtain His
Cognizance's permission and persuade Hyacinth to accept me. Did
Pas actually say that he would grant you a second theophany when
you got here?"
    "I..." Maytera Mint sighed, her face in her hands. "To tell you
the truth, I don't remember. I thought so."
    Slate put in, "No, he didn't, sir. He said you take the sarge to the
Grand manteion, 'cause my prophet Auk's there and I mean to tell
him how to fix him up. He didn't say nothing about right away."
    Remora nodded.
    Auk said, "He told me he'd teach me, and he will. Only he ain't
yet." Auk cleared his throat. "This was as queer for me as for Maytera.
Worse, when I had to watch what it did to her. Pas had us fetch Patera
Jerboa there--that's Hammerstone and me, and Patera Incus. All
right we did, only nothing's happened yet. I had all my people up
here and they're not here any more, so I guess you know what they
think about me after this."
    Oreb sympathized. "Poor man!"
    "Only that don't matter." Defiantly, Auk looked around at the
rest of the impromptu wedding party. "They still think more of me
than what I do myself. It's what they think about the Plan, and
that's what's hardest, harder even than Maytera. But I'm sticking.
If everybody goes, that's all right, only not me. I'm here, like Pas
said, and I'm sticking."
    From deep within the vast nave, far from the light of the dying
altar fire, a voice rumbled, "This's my fault, Calde." A man taller
even than Auk rose, and as he did a misshapen figure sprang to the
top of the pew before him.
    From his position behind and to the right of Quetzal and Remora,
old Patera Jerboa quavered, "My son..."
    "Probably you don't remember me, Calde, only I gave you one on the
house once, 'cause you said Pas for Kalan. I'm Gib from the Cock."
    Silk nodded and smiled. "Of course I remember you, Gib; though
I admit I didn't expect to meet you here, and I thought we'd met
everyone. Have you been praying?"
    "Tryin', anyhow." Gib strode down a side aisle, his tame baboon
leaping from one pew to the next.
    Auk said, "Muzzle it, Gib. You didn't do anything."
    Silk nodded again. "If by 'fault' you mean this delay, the fault
certainly isn't yours, Gib. If anyone is at fault, I am the person. I
should have acted much more expeditiously to have Maytera's hand
repaired."
    Tick said, "Ale rat, nod rung." And Hyacinth, "You always blame
yourself. Do you really think you're the only one in the whorl that
makes mistakes?"
    "I tagged along after Auk when he went to your place over on
Sun," Gib explained. "Me an' him's a old knot. I'd got Bongo here
when I broke my flipper, see, Calde? I can't pluck proper. He'll do
for anybody I say. I figured to sell him when it was fixed."
    "I believe I'm beginning to understand," Silk said.
    "Then Auk says to fetch animals, so I fetched him. Bongo here,
that is. Then comin' up here I thought maybe--"
    Jerboa's trembling hand motioned him to silence. "It was I, Calde.
I--" his thin old voice trembled and broke, "have an aversion to
offering them. Just an old fool."
    "It isn't, Patera," said a sibyl who seemed at least as old. "Calde,
they remind him of children. I don't feel that way, but I know how
he feels. We've talked about it."
    Patera Shell stepped forward. "Someone brought one once for
Thelxiepeia, Calde, a little black monkey with a white head. Patera
had me offer it."
    Silk cleared his throat. "In your youth--I understand, Patera
Jerboa. Or at least I believe I do. Let us say that I understand as
much as I need to. You dissuaded Gib."
    "While we were walking--" Jerboa coughed. "It's a long, long way.
He helped me along. He's a kind man, Calde. A good man, though
he doesn't look it. I asked him to refrain for my sake. He said he
would, and left us to buy a ram. I offered it for him tonight."
    Gib said, "Only I think that's why Pas won't come. They kill stuff
at weddin's, don't they? So you--"
    "_Auk!_" Silk recognized Chenille's voice before he saw her. "Auk, is
this a wedding?" Holding up her skirt, she sprinted down an aisle.
"Hello, Putera! Hi, Hy! Congrats! Are you going to marry them, Your
Cognizance?"
    Quetzal did not reply, smiling at Hammerstone and Maytera Marble
as they emerged from Echidna's chapel. She knelt before him. "I begged
your predecessor, Your Cognizance..."
    Quetzal's hairless head bobbed upon his long, wrinkled neck. "My
predecessor no longer holds the baculus, Maytera."
    "I begged him to. I implored him, but he wouldn't. I should tell
you that."
    Maytera Mint looked down at her in amazement.
    "Your Eminence, you said a moment ago, I overheard you, that
not even His Cognizance can unmake an augur. It's true, I know.
But--but..."
    "Their vow, eh?" Remora spoke to Silk. "Not indelible, hey? Not
as--ah--serious."
    Quetzal inquired, "Do you want me to free you from your vow,
Maytera? Yes or no will suffice."
    "Yes, but I really ought--"
    "To explain. You're right. For your own peace of mind, you must.
You've good sense, Maytera, I've seen that. Doesn't your good sense
tell you I'm not the one to whom you owe your explanation? Stand,
please. Tell your sib Maytera Mint. Also Maytera Wood and her
sibs. Be brief."
    As Maytera Marble got to her feet, Hammerstone said, "We knew
each other a long time ago. You remember, Calde? I told you before
you gave me the slip. Her name was Moly then."
    Maytera Marble spoke to Maytera Mint and the other sibyls in
a voice so soft that Silk could scarcely hear her. "I was the maid,
the sibyls' maid, when the first bios moved into the city. I got our
cenoby ready for them, and in those days I used to look like--like
Dahlia, I nearly said, sib, but you never knew Dahlia. Like Teasel,
a little." She laughed nervously. "Can you imagine me looking like
Teasel? But I did, then."
    Still staring, Maytera Mint managed to nod.
    "There were six then. Six sibyls on Sun Street. I didn't have a room,
you see. I don't really need one. But there were never more than six,
and as time went on, fewer. Five and then four, then three. And then--and
then only two, as it was with us, dear, dear sib, after I died."
    The youngest sibyl from Brick Street started to object, glanced
around at the others, and thought better of it.
    Maytera Marble displayed a string of yellowed prayer beads. "Just
Maytera Betel and I. These were hers. They're ivory." She lifted her
head, a smile and a plea. "The chain is silver. She was a fine, fine
woman."
    "Girl cry," Oreb informed Silk, although no tears streaked Maytera
Marble's smooth metal face.
    "We couldn't do it all. There was just the two of us and young
Patera Pike. And ever so many children, and so Maytera called--called
upon..."
    Hammerstone explained, "She drafted Moly."
    "Upon me. I knew arithmetic. You've got to, to keep any sort of
house. How much to buy for so many, and how much you can spend,
that sort of thing. I kept a--a diary, I suppose you call it, to practice
my hand, which was really quite good. So I could teach the youngest
their sums and letters, and I did. Some parents complained, and
There wasn't any reason not to. I put my hand on the Writings and
promised, and Maytera and Maytera Rose witnessed it and kissed
me, and--and then I got new clothes."
    She looked at Hammerstone, begging his understanding. "A new
name, too. I couldn't be Moly any more once I was a sibyl, or even
Maytera Molybdenum. We all take new names, and you were gone.
I hadn't seen you in years and years."
    "He _slept_," Incus told her. "He was so _ordered_."
    "Yeah, I did," Hammerstone confirmed. "For me a order's a order.
Always has been. Only now Patera says it's all right. If he'd of said
no--" Slate slapped him on the backplate, the clang of his hand
startingly loud in the religious hush of the Grand Manteion.
    Xiphias nudged Silk. "Double wedding, lad!"
    "Your Cognizance must think this terribly strange," Maytera Marble
ventured.
    "Perfectly natural," Quetzal assured her.
    "We--we're not like bios about this. It matters terribly to you how
old somebody is. I know, I've seen it."
    "Her and me are really about the same age," Hammerstone confided.
"Only I slept so much."
    "What matters to us is--is whether we can." Maytera Marble
raised her right hand to show Quetzal the weld that had reattached
it, and moved her fingers. "My hand's well again, and I've got a lot
of replacement parts, and I can. So we're going to. Or at least we
want to, if--if Your Cognizance--"
    "You are released," Quetzal told her. "You are a laywoman again,
Molybdenum."
    "Like a story, right, lass?" Xiphias edged toward Hyacinth and spoke
in a tone he intended as confidential. "Must be the end! Everybody
getting married! Need another ring!"

                  Chapter 12 -- I'm Auk

It was, Silk thought, no time to be wakeful.
    Or more persuasively, no time to sleep. Careful not to awaken
Hyacinth, he rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his
head. How many times had he daydreamed of a night like this, and
thrust the dream away, telling himself that its reality could never be
his? Now...
    No, it was no time to sleep. As quietly as he could, he slipped from
their bed to bathe and relieve himself. Hyacinth, who wept before
sleep, had wept that night; he had wept too--had wept in joy and
pain, and in joy at his pain. When tears were done and their heads
rested on one pillow, she had said that no man had ever wept with
her before.
    Two floors below them, their reflected images knelt in the fishpond
at Thelxiepeia's feet, subsistent but invisible. There she would weep
for him longer than they lived. He lowered his naked body into a
rising pool, warm and scarcely less romantic.
    Ermine's, Silk discovered when he rose from it, provided everything.
Not merely soap, water, towels, and an array of perfumes and scented
powders, but thick, woolly robes: one pale and possibly cream or pale
yellow, and a longer, darker one that might have been blue had he
dared clap and rouse the dim sparks that circled one another on the
ceiling.
    After drying himself, he put on the longer robe and tied its
belt, returned to their bedroom, and covered Hyacinth's perfect,
naked body with infinite gentleness. Then, standing outside
upon air, watched himself do it, a darker shadow with tousled
hair pulling up sheet and blanket to veil his sleeping wife's
long, softly rounded legs and swelling hips--Horn and Nettle
huddled in a musty bed in a small, chill room in the Calde's
Palace.
    --Patera Pike cutting the throat of a speckled rabbit he himself
had bought.
    --a ragged child weeping on a mattress of straw.
    --a blind god metamorphosed from a blind man who remained a
blind man still, and was struck.
    --a man scarcely larger than the child lying naked on the ground,
his stark ribs and emaciated face black with bruises, his arms chained
around a tent pole.
    --a madman among tombs, howling that the sun would die.
    --Violet embraced by Siyuf in the room below.
    --Auk asleep on his back before the smoking, unpurified altar of
the Grand Manteion.

"_Auk? Auk?_"
    He sat up blinking, and rubbed his eyes. Chenille slept at his side,
her head pillowed on muscular arms, her skirt hiked to her knees.
Sergeant Sand slept in death at the foot of the Sacred Window;
about him lay Pateras Jerboa, Incus, and Shell, Incus face up and
snoring.
    On the farther side of the lofty marble ambion, Spider and Eland
slept as well, watched by three soldiers; Slate nodded in friendly
fashion and touched his forehead. In the third row of pews, Maytera
Mint knelt in prayer.
    "Somebody call me?" Auk asked Slate softly.
    Slate's big steel head swung from side to side. "I'd of heard. Must
of been a dream."
    "I guess." Auk lay down again; he was as tired as he could ever
remember being, and it was good not to have been called.

Sciathan soared above a leafless plain at sunset. Far ahead, Aer flew
a little higher and a little faster. He called to her aloud, knowing
somehow that her helmcom was out or had been turned off. She
looked back, and he glimpsed her smile, the roses in her cheeks,
and a tendril of flaxen hair that had escaped her helmet. _Aer!_ he
called. _Aer, come back!_ But she did not look back at him again, and
his PM was overheating. Moment by moment, over a long hour of
flight, he watched her dwindle into the dark sky ahead.
                            *  *  *
"_Auk? Auk!_"
    He sat up stiffly, conscious that he had slept for hours. The great
arched windows of the Grand Manteion, which had been featureless
sheets of black by night, showed vague tracings now--gods, animals,
and past Prolocutors half visible.
    He stood, and Maytera Mint looked up from her vigil at the scrape
of his boots on the floor. Leaving the sanctuary, he knelt beside her.
"Did you call me? I thought I heard you."
    "No, Auk."
    He considered that, rubbing his chin. "You been awake all this
time, Mother?"
    "Yes, Auk." (A tiny spark of happiness appeared in her red-rimmed
eyes; it warmed him like a blaze.) "You see, Auk, I swore I would
wait here in prayer until Pas came, or shade up. I'm keeping
that vow."
    "You've kept it already, Mother. Look at those windows." He
gestured. "I was so tired I lay down with my boots on, see? I bet
you were just as tired, but you haven't slept a wink. You know what
I'm going to do?"
    "No, Auk, how could I?"
    "I'm going to lay down again and sleep some more. Only first I'm
going to take off my boots. Now you lay down and sleep too, or I'm
going to make a fuss and wake up everybody. The job's done. You
did it just like you promised."

Hyacinth woke and went to the open window to examine her ring
in the faint gray light of morning--a tarnished silver ring like a
rose with a woman's tiny face at its heart, framed by petals. She
had bought it because a clerk at Sard's had said it resembled
her, never guessing that she was buying her own wedding ring.
She had worn it once or twice, tossed it into a drawer, and
forgotten it.
    It didn't really look like her at all, she decided. The woman in the
rose was older, at once more come-on and more... She groped for
a word. Not just pretty.
    Though Silk thought her beautiful, or said he did.
    She kissed him as he slept, went into the dressing room, and tapped
the glass.
    "Yes, madame."
    "Show me exactly the way I look right now. Oh, gods!"
    Her own face, puffy-eyed and retaining traces of smeared cosmetics,
said, "You are actually quite attractive, madame. If I might
suggest--"
    She waved the suggestion away. "Now look at this face in my ring.
See it? Make me look just a tiny little like that."
    For a few seconds she studied the result, turning her head left, then
right. "Yes, that's good. Hold that." She picked up the hairbrush and
began a process that Tick the catachrest watched approvingly.

"_Auk? Auk!_"
    He sat up and stared at the Sacred Window. The voice had come
from there--this time he was certain of it. He got up, grasping
his hanger to keep the brass fip of the scabbard from rattling on
the floor, and padded across the sanctuary. Shell and Incus were
clearly sound asleep, but Jerboa's eyes were not quite closed. Old
people didn't need much sleep, Auk reminded himself.
    He squatted beside Jerboa. "It's all right, I wasn't going to nip
your case or anything, Patera. Is that what you thought? Anything
you got you can keep."
    Jerboa did not reply.
    "Only somebody over here's been calling me. Was that you? Like
when you were dreaming, maybe?"
    Shell grunted something unintelligible and turned his head away,
but Jerboa did not stir. Suddenly suspicious, Auk picked up Jerboa's
left hand, then slid his own under Jerboa's tunic.
    He rose, wiping his hands absently on his thighs; it would be
well, certainly, to move the old man's body to some private spot.
The sibyls were sleeping in the sacristy; that, at least, was where
Maytera Mint had gone when he had persuaded her to lie down
for an hour or two, and Auk thought he recalled old Maytera
Wood and the others--sibyls whose names he had not learned--going
in there at about the time he had stretched himself on the
terrazzo floor.
    Squatting again, he picked up the old augur's body and carried it
to the ambulatory. Schist straightened up as they came into view.
"He dead?"
    "Yeah," Auk whispered. "How'd you know?"
    Schist's steel shoulders rose and fell with a soft clank. "He looks
dead, that's all."
    Shale asked, "How's Pas supposed to get his part back if he's dead?"
    Without answering, Auk carried the body into the chapel of Hierax
and laid it on the altar there.
    Slate inquired, "You goin' back to sleep?"
    "Shag, I don't know." Auk discovered that he was wiping his hands
again and made himself stop. "I think maybe I'll fetch my boots and
walk around outside a little."
    "I thought maybe you could wake the rest of 'em up." Slate waited
longer for his reply than a bio would have, then asked, "What you
lookin' at over there? Must be shaggy interesting."
    "Him."
    Slowly, Slate clambered to his feet. "Who?"
    "Him." Auk turned away impatiendy, striding toward the Sacred
Window. "This soldier. He got it in the autofunction coprocessor,
see?" Auk knelt beside Sergeant Sand. "Only his central could handle
that stuff if it had to. There's lots of redundancy there. His voluntary
coprocessor could, even."
    He fumbled for his boot knife, discovered that he was not wearing
his boots, and got it. "Look alive, Patera!" He shook Incus's shoulder.
"I need that gadget you got."

"Up!" A boot prodded the captive Flier's ribs. "Reveille an hour ago.
Didn't you hear it?"
    Blinking and shivering, Sciathan sat up.
    "You speak the Common Tongue well," the uniformed woman
looming over him said. "Answer me!"
    "Better than most of us, yes." Sciathan paused, struggling to clear
his brain of sleep. "I did not hear it, that word you used. I know I
did not since I heard nothing. But if I heard it, I would not know
what it was."
    The woman nodded. "I did that to establish a point. Any question
I ask, you are to answer. If you do, and I like your answer, you may
get clothes or something to eat. If you don't, or I don't, you'll wish
you'd been killed, too." She clapped. "Sentry!"
    A younger and even taller woman ducked through the door of
the tent and stood stiffly erect, her gun held vertically before her
left shoulder. "Sir!"
    The first woman gestured. "Get him off that pole and lock the chain
again. I'm taking him to the city." As the younger woman slung her
gun to fumble for the key, the older asked, "Do you know my name?
What is it?"
    He shook his head; a smlle might have helped, but he could not
summon one. "My name is Sciathan. I am a Flier."
    "Who questioned you yesterday, Sciathan?"
    "First Sirka." His hands were free. He held them out so that the
younger woman could refasten his manacles.
    "After that."
    "Generalissimo."
    "Generalissimo Siyuf," the older woman corrected him. "I was there.
Do you remember me?"
    He nodded. "You did not speak to me. Sometimes to her."
    "Why did your people attack Major Sirka's troopers?"
    Here it was again. "We did not."
    She struck his ear with her fist. "You tried to take their weapons.
One escaped, three were killed, and you were captured. Why did you
break your wings?"
    "It is what we do."
    "How did you disable your propulsion module?"
    He shrugged, and she struck him on the mouth. He said, "We
cannot do it. Mechanisms have been proposed, but would increase
weight."
    She smiled, surprising him. "Aren't you going to lick that? My
rings tore your lip."
    He shrugged again. "If you want me to."
    "Get him a rag he can tie around his waist," she ordered the taller,
younger woman. Turning back to him, she said, "I'm Colonel Abanja.
Why did you attack Sirka's troopers?"
    "Because they were shooting at us." He could not actually remember
that, but it seemed plausible. "I made a face. I do not know why."
    "Did you now?" For a fraction of a second Abanja's eyes widened.
"What kind of face?"
    He was able to smile when he reflected that this was vastly
preferable to talking about the propulsion modules. "With lips
back."
    "You don't know why you did that. Perhaps I do. Are you saying
we shot your people because you grimaced? You yourself weren't
shot at all."
    "Aer saw it and screamed. They shot her then. We tried to take
their guns so they could not shoot."
    Abanja stepped closer, peering down at him. "She screamed because
you made a face? Most people wouldn't believe that, but I might, and
perhaps Generalissimo Siyuf might. Let's see you make a face like
that for me."
    "I will try," he said, and did.
    The click of booted heels announced the younger woman's return.
When Abanja turned toward her, she held up a scrap of cotton sheeting
that had been used to clean something greasy. "Will this do, sir?"
    Abanja shook her head. "Get the coveralls he was wearing. Bring
a winter undershirt and a blanket, and tell the cooks to give you
something he can eat on horseback."
    She returned to Sciathan. "Stop grinning, it's making your lip bleed.
You came here looking for a Vironese, a man. That's what Sirka told
us. You gave his name, and it was one I think I heard last night. Say
it again for me."
    "Auk," Sciathan said. "His name is Auk."

Sergeant Sand's arm stirred, then struck the floor of the Grand
Manteion hard enough to crack it. Chenille shouted a warning.
"Don't worry," Auk told her, "just a little static, like. I got it fixed
already."
    Behind him, a voice he did not recognize said, "I only wish Patera
Shell could watch. He'll be _so_ disheartened when we tell him what
he missed."
    "So will His Eminence," Maytera Mint murmured. "But it's his
fault for going back to the Palace, if that can be called a fault.
We're certainly not going to wait to carry out Pas's instructions,
nor would His Eminence want us to. You didn't see Pas, Auk? Are
you certain?"
    "No, Maytera, I ain't." Auk squinted, still bent over his work.
"Cause he must've showed me this stuff some way, after I talked
to you, probably." Inspiration struck. "Want to know what I think,
Maytera?"
    "Yes! Very much!"
    "I think it was you keeping your promise the way you did that
swung it. I think he was asking himself if we were worth all the
trouble he was taking, till then. Wait a minute, I got to tie in his
voluntary."
    Auk made the last connection and leaned back, easing aching
muscles. "Think you could fetch one of those holy lamps over here,
Patera? I'm going to need more light."
    Incus scurried away.
    "Patera Shell is hoping to engage a deadcoach to return Patera's
body to our manteion." The owner of the unknown voice proved to
be a young and pretty sibyl. "Maytera said nothing would be open,
but he said they _would_ be by the time he got there, or if they weren't
he'd wait. It was a great temptation, Maytera admitted this to me, to
ask His Cognizance to permit Patera's final sacrifice to take place
right here in the Grand Manteion, since he ascended to Mainframe
from here. But the faithful of our quarter would _never_--"
    Incus, returning, knelt beside Auk. "Is this _sufficient?_ I can pull up
the _wick_, should _more light_ be needed." He held up a flame-topped
globe of cut crystal.
    "That's dimber," Auk told him. "I can see the place and the register,
and that's all I got to see." Delicately, he eased the point of his knife
into Sand's cranium. "Muzzle it, everybody. I got to think." He counted
under his breath.
    And Sand spoke, making Maytera Mint start. "V-fifty-eight, zero.
V-fifty-eight, one. V-fifty-nine, zero. V-fifty-nine, one.
    "Those are _voluntary_ coprocessor inputs," Incus explained in an
awed whisper. "He's _enabling_ them."
    When Auk showed no sign of having heard, the young sibyl from
Brick Street whispered, "I simply can't believe that your Maytera--she
was, I mean. That Molybdenum and that soldier are going to do
all this, and where are they going to buy these coprocessor things?"
    "They must _make_ them, Maytera," Incus explained, "and I shall
assist them." Maytera Mint shushed him.
    Auk returned his knife to his boot. "Don't froth, Maytera. He's
all right. He just don't know it yet."
    As if on cue, Sand raised his head and stared around him.
    "Hold that right there," Auk told him. "I got to put your skull plate
back. How was Mainframe?"
    The crack-crack-crack of a needler was followed by a savage
snarl, more shots, and the boom of a slug gun. In the
choir high above them, a nephrite image of Tartaros fell with
a crash.

"Is that warm?" Abanja asked as she watched Sciathan pull on his
flight suit.
    Smiling was easy now. "Not as warm as I wish, sometimes."
    "Then you better put the undershirt over it. It's wool and should
be a lot warmer than that thing. Once you're on your horse you can
wrap the blanket around you." She fingered the needler in her holster.
"Can you ride?"
    "I never have."
    "That's good," Abanja told him. "It may save your life."
    In the cutting wind outside, two bearded men held a pair of restive
horses. Abanja said, "That's mine," and to Sciathan's relief pointed
to the larger. "The other one's yours. Let's see you mount."
    She watched him for five minutes while the bearded men struggled
to contain their mirth. At last she said, "You really can't ride, or you're
a marvelous actor," and ordered them to help him. As they lifted him
into the seat, she swung herself up and onto her own tall horse with a
practiced motion that seemed almost miraculous. "Now let me explain
something." She leveled her index finger. "It's two leagues to the city,
and when we're halfway you're liable to think that all you've got to
do to get away is clap your heels to that horse."
    He shook his head. "I will not."
    "I could chain you to your saddle, like you were chained to that
pole. But if you fell, you'd probably be dragged to death, and I don't
want to lose you. So listen. If you start that horse galloping, you're
going to fall and you could be killed. If you're not I'll catch you,
and I'll make you wish you'd died. Don't say I didn't warn you." She
slapped her horse with its own control straps, and it stalked away a
great deal faster than Sciathan had ever wanted a horse to go.
    "I will not ride quicker than you," he promised.
    For a moment it appeared he would not ride at all. Then one of the
bearded men shouted, "_Hup!_" and struck the horse with something that
made a popping sound, and he felt that he was being blown about by
the wildest gale in the _Whorl_.
    Abanja pulled up and looked back at him. "Another thing. This is
a good horse. Yours isn't. Yours is old, a common remount nobody
wants. Your horse couldn't gallop as fast as mine if a lion were
after it."
    Shaken too hard to nod, he clutched his blanket.
    "If you're fooling me--if you really can ride, and you gallop off
when you see your chance--I'll shoot your horse. It's not easy to
bring down an animal as big as a horse with a needler, but half a
dozen ought to do it. I'll try not to hit you, but I can't promise."
    He gasped, "You are a kind woman."
    "Don't count on it." After a moment she laughed. "It's just that
you may be useful. Certainly it will be useful for you to show Siyuf
what you showed me. I take it women aren't kind among your
people."
    "Oh, no!" He hoped his shock showed in his face. "Our women are
very kind."
    "That Aer who screamed, wasn't that a woman? You said, _her_.
Stand in the stirrups if you're getting bounced."
    He tried. "Yes, a woman. A kind woman."
    "You loved her." There was a note in Abanja's voice he had not
heard before.
    "Very much. If I may say this, Mear loved Sumaire also. In the
tent last night I thought about them. How stupid I was! I did not
know they loved until they died."
    "Mear, was that the woman who killed the troopers?"
    For the first time since his capture, Sciathan felt like laughing.
"Mear is a man's name. It was Sumaire who killed the women with
guns, and they killed her."
    "Just trying to take away their weapons."
    Aer had been shot before Sumaire killed the troopers, but arguing
would be worse than useless. Sciathan remained silent.
    "She was your leader?" Abanja slowed her horse.
    "Thank you." He was genuinely grateful. "We do not fly like that.
Each flies for himself. Sumaire was the best at _gleacaiocht_, the best
at fighting with hands and feet. I do not know your word."
    "I saw her body," Abanja told him, "but I didn't measure it. I wish
I had. The blonde?"
    By now Sciathan was able to shake his head. "Dark hair.
Like yours."
    "The little one?"
    He nodded, recalling how cheerful Sumaire had always been, most
cheerful when storms roared up and down the hold. When Mainframe
had needed information and not excuses, it had sent Sumaire.
    It would send her no more.
    "Answer me!"
    "I am sorry. I did not intend to be rude." Unconsciously, Sciathan
looked down the unpaved track and over the wind-scoured fields,
seeking something that would render his loss bearable. "The small
one, yes. Smaller than Aer."
    "But taller than you."
    He looked at Abanja in some astonishment.
    "Was she smaller?"
    "Yes, much." He considered. "The top of Aer's head came to my
eyes. I think the top of Sumaire's head would have come to Aer's
eyes, or lower. To my mouth or chin."
    "Yet she killed troopers a long cubit taller."
    "She was a fine fighter, one who taught others when she was not
flying."
    Abanja looked thoughtful. "What about you? Do you know this
kind of fighting? I forget the word you used?"
    "_Gleacaiocht_. I know something, but I am not as quick and skillful
as Sumaire was. Few are."
    When Abanja said nothing, he added. "We all learn it. We cannot
carry weapons as you do. Even a small knife would be too heavy."
Now that he was no longer being shaken so much, he had begun to
feel the cold. He shook out the rough blanket he had held onto so
desperately and wrapped himself in it as she had suggested, contriving
a hood for his head and neck.
    "In that case you can't carry food or water, can you?"
    "No, only our instruments--" He had been on the point of saying
"and our PMs." He substituted, "and ourselves."
    "Have you seen our pterotroopers? Troopers with wings who fly
out of the airship?"
    "I have not seen these. I was told, and I have seen your airship if
it is what I think."
    "You can see it now." Abanja pointed. "That brown thing catching
the sun above the housetops. Our pterotroopers carry slug guns and
twenty rounds, but no rations or water. We tried field packs, but they
left them behind whenever they could."
    "Yes," Sciathan said.
    "You would too, you mean. So would I, I suppose, though I've
never flown. I doubt that our wings are much better than yours,
and they may not be as good. I hadn't thought about how you'd
fight, but I should have. Do you have to break your wings if you're
forced down? You said that."
    He nodded. "We must."
    "The others didn't. We've got them. Siyuf is sending a pair back to
Trivigaunte for study, the blond woman's wings and her propulsion
module. Is that what you call it?"
    "In the Common Tongue? Yes."
    "What about in your language?"
    He shrugged. "It does not matter."
    Abanja stopped her horse and drew her weapon. "It does to you,
mannikin, because I'll shoot if you don't answer. What do you
call it?"
    He chose the least revealing word. "The _canna_."
    "Her _canna_. You don't know how they work, you say."
    "I do not. Shoot me and end it."
    Again; her smile surprised him. "Shoot you? I've hardly started on
you. Who makes them?"
    "Our scientists. I do not know the names."
    "You have scientists."
    "That may not be the correct term." He had said too much, and
knew it. "Makers. Mechanics. Is that not what it means?"
    "Scientists," Abanja said firmly, then changed the subject with an
abruptness that startled him. "You loved Aer. Were you planning to
be married?"
    "No, she was a Flier."
    "Fliers don't marry? Here the holy women don't, which seems
pointless to us."
    "Marriage is so that there shall be children, new Fliers, in the next
generation." He was floundering. "I do not talk of you or, or--" He
pointed. "People in the house upon this small hill. But for us, for
Crew, it is for children. A Flier woman cannot, because she could
not fly. She may when she no longer flies. Some give up wings for
marriage." He hesitated, remembering. "They are not happy soon."
    "But you can marry. Are you?"
    "Yes. One wife." If he had succeeded in this, he would have been
given one more at least, and perhaps as many as four; he thrust the
thought aside.
    "But you loved Aer. She must have been handsome when she was
alive, I could see that. Did she love you?"
    He nodded slowly. "When she was alive, I wondered. She did not
like to say. She is dead, and I know she did."

"I know this must mean a whole lot to you, Patera, and I really am
sorry." Chenille's face, framed by the metal margins of the glass, was
almost comically apologetic.
    "Why?" Silk seated himself in the low-backed chair facing it. "Because
my egg will get cold? The kitchen here will send up another if I want
it, I feel sure."
    "We all got together," Chenille drew breath, her formidable breasts
heaving like capsized boats. "That's Auk and me, and General Mint
and Sandy and the other soldiers, and Spider and Patera Incus, and
those sibyls. Maytera Wood and Maytera Maple, and the rest of
them. I don't remember who most of them are."
    "I doubt that it matters," Silk told her. "What were you getting
together about?"
    "Everything, but especially the shooting. So much's been--oh,
hi, Hy! I'm sorry about this, truly I am, only Patera said you were
finished and having breakfast."
    "Bird eat," Oreb announced from Hyacinth's shoulder; Tick countered
with, "Ma durst, due add word!" She hushed them, setting Silk's
plate and the toast rack before him. "Hi, Chen. Did you and Auk get
married too?"
    "We talked about it, but we want Patera to do it, so just Moly and
her soldier."
    "I know that soldier," Hyacinth positioned Silk's egg cup, "and I
know your Auk, too. Kypris's kindness on both of you. You're going
to need it."
    "Auk's all right." Chenille winked. "You've got to know how to
handle him."
    Silk cleared his throat. "You mentioned shooting, and that sounds
very serious. Who was shot?"
    "Eland. Only I'd better start at the beginning, Patera--"
    He raised his hand. "One question more, before you do. Who is
Eland?"
    "This cull General Mint nabbed when she was down in the tunnels
where me and Auk were."
    Oreb whisfied. "Bird see!"
    "Yeah. Oreb, too. She had these culls, Spider and Eland, and the
soldiers were watching them for her. Spider's the fat cull, and the
skinny one was Eland, only he's dead."
    Silk's forefinger drew small circles on his cheek. "I said I would
ask only one question, but I'd like a point verified as well. When
you listed those who participated in your impromptu conference,
did you include Sergeant Sand?"
    "That's the pure quill, Patera. Auk brought him back, just like
General Mint says Pas said he would."
    "I see. I ought to have had more faith in Pas, though at the time
it appeared to me that Maytera Mint had originally had more than
enough for both of us, and had been disappointed."
    "Yeah, Auk was too. He got all these culls sold on him and said Pas
would come, so after the animals were used up and Pas never did, they
cleared out. Except Gib. Then when you and Hy went, and Moly and
Hammerstone, Gib did too. I said I'd start at the beginning. I guess
I have already."
    Silk nodded. "Tell me everything, please."
    "When you and Hy went, the old man sort of followed you. Master
Xiphias, only I don't think he went home. I think he's probably
hanging around there to watch out for you. Then His Cognizance
and the augur that talked to us that time in your manse left. Maybe
it would be easier if I said who didn't, who was still there."
    "Go ahead."
    "I'll try not to make it so long. Auk stuck, so I did too. We slept on
the floor and didn't do anything. Everybody from Brick Street stayed,
and Patera Incus, like I said, and General Mint and the soldiers, only
Sandy was dead, and those culls the soldiers were watching. I think
that's everybody.
    "It was a soldier shooting that woke me up, Slate his name is. There
was somebody way up in the balcony, and he'd shot Eland. Patera
Incus said Pas for him. Slate saw him up there and took a shot at
him, only he doesn't think he got him. He broke a beautiful statue,
is all. Auk went up there with him to look, and they brought back
a great big dead cat. I thought it was Gib's baboon at first, but it
wasn't. It was spotted, sort of like a big house cat only with a little
beard and a little shon tail."
    Hyacinth said, "We brought it in the floater," to which Tick added,
"Add cot!" "I was sort of scared of it," Hyacinth continued, "but Silk
said it wouldn't hurt us, and it didn't."
    He put down his cup. "His name was Lion, and he belonged to
Mucor. We stopped at the Calde's Palace and let him out, thinking
he would go to her; it's only a few streets from the Grand Manteion, of
course. Am I to take it that Lion was with the person who shot Eland,
and that this Slate hit Lion when he tired at Eland's murderer?"
    Chenille shook her head, her raspberry curls dancing. "It wasn't a
slug gun that did for it, it was a needler. We think when it saw this
cully shoot Eland it went for him and he shot it, too. Auk says he
heard it before Slate shot, and a needler shooting four or five times
up there. That's what got everybody worked up, mostly. That and
Pas, only nobody saw him, and Auk bringing back Sandy. Only
Sandy's kind of mixed up, on account of being dead."
    "I would like to speak to him," Silk said. "I will, at the first
opportunity. Before you proceed, did you know Eland, other than
as a prisoner of Maytera Mint's? Did you, Hyacinth?"
    Both said they had not.
    "Since Maytera Mint captured him, I assume he was one of our
citizens who remained loyal to the Ayuntamiento. If that's the case,
he may have been shot by someone who considered that treachery; but
there are a dozen other possibilities. What took place after that?"
    "Did I tell you the old augur from Brick Street's dead? He'd gone
to Mainframe when I woke up, only he wasn't shot or anything. It
looked like he'd just gone to sleep."
    "When Pas came," Silk murmured.
    "I guess it could've been, yeah. Auk says Pas showed him that stuff
about Sandy, only he doesn't remember seeing him."
    Silk broke the corner of a slice of toast, and dipped it into his egg.
"Others have been visited by gods, though they did not see them.
Patera Jerboa was safeguarding a fragment of Pas--or so Hyacinth
and I were told."
    Hyacinth said, "Something's bothering you. What is it?"
    Much as Sciathan was just then shrugging in response to a question
from Abanja, Silk shrugged. "I was thinking that the fragment of Pas
which Patera Jerboa was safeguarding may have been responsible for
his long life, and that its retrieval may have been responsible in his
death--not because Pas willed it, but simply because that fragment
of Pas was no longer present to maintain him in life."
    Silk put the egg-soaked toast into his mouth, chewed it reflectively,
and swallowed. When neither woman spoke, he said, "After that,
logically enough, I began to wonder which god it is who maintains
the rest of us. I believe I can guess, but we have other things to
talk about. Naturally you were agitated, Chenille. No doubt all of
you were.
    "That's right, and General Mint said we ought to find you and
tell you, only we thought you'd come here. The sibyls from Brick
Street--"
    "Wait. You're at the Calde's Palace?"
    "Right. We thought you and Hy probably came here, so we walked
over, except the sibyls. They stayed to watch the old man's body, and
there's a deadcoach supposed to come. Only you and Hy weren't here.
I went in here where this glass is because I thought the monitor would
probably know where you went."
    Hyacinth exclaimed, "It couldn't!"
    "Last night Hyacinth instructed our monitor not to reveal our
whereabouts to anyone," Silk explained. He looked to her for
confirmation, and she nodded vigorously.
    "It didn't, Violet told me. See, the one here couldn't find you, so
I tried to figure out where you'd go, you and Hy. You're not going
to like this, Patera."
    "I won't be angry, I promise."
    "The first place I thought of was back to Sun Street, that
little three cornered house where I waited for you. Only the
monitor where the sibyls live didn't think you were around."
Chenille hesitated, unwilling to meet Silk's eyes. "So then I
thought where could they have gone? It was still pretty early.
It was about the time the market opens when we came over
here."
    He said, "I can think of one other place, though I can't imagine
why you suppose I might be insulted because you thought of it as
well--my rooms in the Juzgado. I slept there before we reopened
the Calde's Palace."
    Chenille shook her head again, the dance of her fiery hair wilder
than ever. "I knew you wouldn't go there, Patera. You wouldn't want
somebody bothering you like I am now, so it would be the very last
place. Only I thought maybe Orchid's, and it couldn't hurt to try. I
figured she'd be asleep, but I could ask the monitor and maybe go
down there and get something at the little bakery across the street
and wait for you and Hy to come out. So I tried, only Orchid was
awake. You remember Violet?"
    "Of course."
    "She sort of spent some time with Generalissimo Siyuf last night.
Not at Orchid's but up there at Ermine's. Orchid was kind of lathered
about that because it was Siyuf, so she got up and waited for Violet
to hear how it went."
    Hyacinth put in, "And would she want somebody for tonight,
maybe somebody new, and did she have any friends who might
want somebody, and did you remember to tell her we're available
for private parties. I can imagine."
    "Yeah, all that stuff. Well, I sort of thought, hey, this is interesting,
so I talked to Violet some myself." Chenille sounded apologetic.
    "Sure," Hyacinth said. "Why shouldn't you?"
    "So it pops out that the Trivigauntis caught a Flier. Maybe you
don't know about this, Hy, but I do because I was there when Patera
found out. Remember, Patera?"
    Silk smiled ruefully. "Yes. It was something that I had hoped to
discuss with Generalissimo Siyuf over dinner."
    "Only you didn't know they killed three, did you? Three Fliers.
That's what Siyuf said, Violet says."
    "No." Silk pursed his lips. "I certainly did not know that. I thought
only one had landed, for whatever reason, and the Trivigauntis had
him. You're correct, Chenille, this is serious as well as unpleasant."
    "I haven't even gotten to the worst stuff yet, Patera. Violet figured
it might be good to know where this Flier was. You know, something
somebody might pay to know."
    "She'll be rewarded if she's entitled to it, and it sounds to me as
though she is."
    "Only she told Orchid, and Orchid didn't try to hold out for money,
she just wanted me to tell you, and say where I got it. Then Violet lets
out she spotted you and Hy at Ermine's. It was when she'd just got
there herself and that's how I knew where to find you."
    "That's not so bad, surely."
    "It's where they put this Flier, Patera." Chenille gulped. "He's in
our Juzgado, and Siyuf's moving her headquarters there. They're
taking it."
    Silk sat in stunned silence.
    "And Violet spilled something about me and Auk, Patera, just
making conversation, she says, with Siyuf. She says as soon as she
said Auk's name Siyuf wanted to know all about him. I think maybe
that was why she was so nice to me last night at dinner. Violet thinks
Auk's mixed up with this Flier somehow, and now the Trivigauntis
are looking for him."
    The formidable breasts heaved again. "So the Juzgado's the main
thing for you, Patera, but Auk's the main thing for me and I'm
scared. Not for me, but for him."
    The little catachrest sprang onto the dressing table for a better
view of Hyacinth. "Shop, itty laddie! Wise rung?"
    She wiped her eyes. "It was just such a short honeymoon, that's
all, Tick."

Sciathan opened his eyes as the key squealed in the lock, then resolutely
closed them. The newcomer was twice his height and three or four
times his weight, brawny, dirty, and bearded. This freezing cell had
been a haven of peace for the past few hours, Sciathan reflected; the
interlude was over, and troubles of a new kind had begun.
    Outside the warder said, "I can get you clean sheets if you
want 'em."
    "Fetch my prog," the newcomer rumbled. As the iron door swung
inward: "You upstairs! You hungry?"
    "I am not." Sciathan turned his face to the shiprock wall. "Thank
you very much.
    "I am." The newcomer seated himself heavily on the lower bunk.
"Shaggy hungry and shaggy tired. I been hungry so long I forgot
I'm hungry. I'm just sort of empty. I was up shaggy late last night
and up shaggy early this morning, and between times I slept on the
floor. It was a stone floor, too, but I was so shaggy tired it felt better
than this."
    He lay down, his position attested by the creaking of the bunk
straps. "This's the easiest I've had it all week."
    "A pleasant sleep to you," Sciathan suggested politely.
    "Oh, I ain't going to sleep. I slept on the floor anyhow, like I said,
and I got eating to do." The newcomer chuckled, "How 'bout you?
Have a good night?"
    Sciathan risked a quick look over the side at the big man below.
"I have rested more comfortably."
    "Somebody's been dusting your dial, too, so I'm better off
than you."
    Ten minutes or more crawled by until curiosity tweaked Sciathan.
"You are Vironese? You are of this city?"
    "Born on Wine Street," the newcomer declared sleepily. "You're
scared I'm Trivigaunti, I guess. Been three or four days since I shaved
is all. I been too busy."
    "I, myself, am a stranger here," Sciathan ventured.
    "Yeah, Peeper told me.
    At once Sciathan was on guard. "Who is Peeper?"
    "Out there with the keys. He's sort of a friend of mine. I been in
a couple times, and it helps. I got gelt, too. That always helps. We're
not going to pluck, anyhow."
    "I understand you," Sciathan said, and fell silent.
    "People think it's a nickname, like, 'cause he looks in to make sure
we're not chilling each other." The newcomer yawned. "But it's his right
tag. A peeper's a kind of a little frog. They're frogs mostly in his family,
I guess, and toads and such. Twig him coming? Smells dimber."
    Sciathan sniffed. "It smells good, the first good odor I have smelled
in this place."
    "Beef brisket and noodles. They got some kind of a sour cream
sauce they put on it. Sour cream and red peppers dried and pounded
up, butter, and some other stuff, I guess."
    The warder's keys rattled against the cell door; outside it, the
warder himself said, "Here's your lunch."
    "My breakfast," the newcomer told him. "I ate something sometime
yesterday, some kind of a fruit, I forget what." The key squeaked
in the lock, and the newcomer chuckled as though the squeak
amused him.
    "I did the best I could with what you give me," the warder declared.
"I said who it was for and you were real hungry, and half a card but
make it good. I've seen you eat, only I doubt you can wrap yourself
around all this."
    "I mean to try." The newcomer sat up.
    "This big one here--" A faint chime sounded as the warder lifted
the lid from a covered dish; Sciathan, watching from the corner of
his eye, saw a cloud of fragrant steam waft toward the ceiling. "Your
beef brisket and the noodles, enough for three's what he said. Then
this little one's extra sauce."
    There was a somewhat softer chime, followed by an aroma
indescribably delicious. Sciathan sat up in time to see the warder
lift the lid from a third dish.
    "This here's pickled cabbage. He says you like it."
    The newcomer rubbed his big hands together. "Yeah, I do."
    "Good and hot, he says, and it'll stay hot a long time. Only it's
about as good cold, so if you can't finish you can keep it to eat later."
The warder paused. "Hoppies didn't rough you up much."
    "You're a hoppy yourself," the newcomer told him.
    "They don't think so."
    "Sure you are. You just don't get the green clothes." The newcomer
craned his neck to look up at Sciathan. "Remember what I said about
his name? It's 'cause his whole family's hoppies, just about. They want
their sprats to be hoppies, too, so they give 'em those names, Peeper
and like that."
    The warder said, "I got a brother named Buffo and he's a hoppy
all right, but not me."
    "Pardon." Sciathan leaned over the edge of the upper bunk to look at
the laden tray that held the newcomer's meal. "I do not understand."
    "He's foreign," the warder informed the newcomer. "They got queer
ways in Urbs and places like that."
    The newcomer was unwrapping napkins to reveal a loaf as long as
Sciathan's arm. "What's itching you, Upstairs? You figure they don't
feed everybody this good?"
    The warder laughed.
    "Your food was not prepared here."
    The newcomer shook his head. "There's a place over on the other
side of Cage Street. Peeper went over there for me and told 'em what
I wanted, then after he locked me up he went back and got it. I
fronted him a card, and he gets half for doing it for me. That's how
we do here."
    "You have just arrived," Sciathan objected. "There could not be
time to prepare so much."
    "He was in the hot room," the warder explained, "only they made
it easy for him, it looks like, and they let me come in to see if he
wanted anything."
    "They know me, too," the newcomer said.
    Sciathan glanced at the snowflakes drifting down beyond the small,
barred window, and drew his blanket about his shoulders. "It is warmer
in there?"
    Both big men laughed, and the newcomer said, "It's where they ask
you questions, only they're pretty easy on everybody today, I figure."
    "On myself as well. It may be so. It will be worse the next time, I
am sure."
    The newcomer was spreading butter over a quarter of the long
loaf. He said, "They have you in the hot room today?"
    The warder shook his head.
    "I do not think the hot room. I was questioned on a horse by
Abanja, which was not as bad as I feared. Afterward here by Siyuf,
Abanja, and others whose names are not known to me. It was worse
then. Siyuf is a hard woman."
    "That's this Trivigaunti that's taking over," the warder explained
to the newcomer. "Generalissimo Siyuf, and she's got the calde doing
everything she says."
    "They're supposed to be here helping us out," the newcomer
protested.
    "They're helping themselves, if you ask me."
    The newcomer raised his buttered quarter-loaf. "Here, try some,
Upstairs. You hear what we just said?"
    "Thank you. I could not fail to do so."
    "Well, that's why the hoppies made it easy for me. They ain't sure
where they stand yet."
    "This is your police? Vironese police?"
    "Yeah. Only all of a sudden they're working for the Rani, maybe.
They don't know, and neither do we."
    The warder cleared his throat. "Anyhow, it's all here. Red in the
bottle, and here's your tumbler on top. There's pigs' feet, too, in the
square dish, and lots of other stuff. Yell if you want anything."
    "I sure will," the newcomer told him, and chuckled as the iron door
closed behind him. "Keep a sharp eye on me, Peeper. Make sure I
don't get out."
    "This is good bread," Sciathan said. "Very good. I thank you for
it."
    "Sure." The newcomer was heaping noodles and brisket onto
his plate.
    "I wish that I could repay you. I have no means."
    The newcomer looked up at him. "You been in clink before?"
    "Last night. My arms were chained about a pole, and I was made to
sleep upon the ground. There was grass, not as hard as your floor, I
am certain."
    "Only a lot colder. Had to be. I was pretty warm, even on
the floor."
    "Cold, yes." Sciathan took another bite of bread; it was soft and
white, with a thick brown crust that required chewing.
    "I had my mort with me, too, and she kept me warm. You say you
ate already?"
    It was a moment before Sciathan was able to swallow. "On a horse.
A slice of gray meat between bread, bread not as good as this. We
had spoken about the Common Tongue, Abanja and I, this language
in which you and I converse. She said that my meat was also common
tongue, which she thought amusing."
    "Wait a minute." The newcomer poured the extra sauce from its
small side dish into his plate. "Want me to put you some noodles
in here? You'll have to eat 'em with your fingers. We only got the
one fork."
    "I should not." Sciathan wrestled against temptation. "I must tell
you there have been many, many days on which I have eaten less
than the gray meat. Always we eat little, and often we do not eat
at all." He swallowed again, this time only his own saliva. "But, yes.
I would like these noodles very much, and it will not trouble me to
eat them with my fingers."
    "You got it." The newcomer forked noodles into the sauce dish.
"You know, I been wondering why you're so weedy, and I hear the
rice is bad in Palustria. You come looking for food?"
    "Eating makes one heavy." The concept was so simple and so basic
that Sciathan had trouble formulating it. "One no longer flies well. I
am a Flier. That is your term."
    The newcomer gave him a sceptical look. "They don't never come
down, and they're spies anyhow, everybody says."
    "I am not a spy. Even Siyuf does not think that."
    "Then you better muzzle that clatter about being a Flier. Somebody
might believe you." The newcomer passed the sauce dish up to
Sciathan, "I put a little bit of smoked turtle on top there for you.
They give me a little bit of that, too, smoked turtle and onions. If
it makes you too thirsty, we can get Peeper to fetch water."
    "I have never eaten this." Sciathan dipped up the brown concoction
with two fingers and tasted it. "It is delicious."
    "Maybe I ought to try some myself."
    "I have spoken of becoming heavy," Sciathan muttered, "but why
should I not? My wings will not fly again."
    The newcomer peered at him. "You really are a Flier, huh? They
go up in the big airship and catch you?"
    Sighing, Sciathan shook his head. "We landed to question them.
I knew that it would be hazardous." More swiftly than a conjuror's
transformation, his wizened face twisted to display a corpse's rictus.
"Hello, Auk."
    "Hi. You really can do this. Jugs and Patera swore you could, but
I guess I didn't believe 'em."
    "Do you need help?"
    "Nah." Finding the empty stare that had become Sciathan's unsettling,
the newcomer returned to his plate. "Tell 'em it's going fine,
and I'll give a signal when I know which one." He mopped up sauce
with a piece of beef hoping she would be gone before he finished.
"I'll send Peeper to fetch something, too. Be better to get him out
of the way."
    "So hungry, this tiny man."
    The newcomer chewed brisket into submission. "He's got more
meat on him than you."
    "I'd like some soup. I'll ask Grandmother."
    "Do that," the newcomer said.
    Sciathan blinked and grabbed, discovering that the sauce dish was
about to slide off his lap. He made himself breathe deeply. "This is
not expected."
    The newcomer nodded without looking up. "What's that?"
    "When one flies too high, one grows faint. Now too I felt faintness.
Could your food be drugged?"
    "No," the newcomer said.
    "You spoke to me several times. I replied, but I do not recall what
you said, or what I said."
    "Doesn't matter."
    Sciathan finished his smoked turtle and started in on his noodles.
"I have no reason to trust you. You might be a spy."
    "Sure."
    "I have received good food from you, for which I thank you very
much. It is better to be spied upon than beaten."
    "You can say that again."
    "There is nothing I know that I have not told Siyuf and Abanja.
Why am I confined?"
    The newcomer lifted the lid of another dish. "You like cheese? He
gave me some of that, too."
    "I have eaten more than suffices already. I have not even finished
the bread you gave."
    "Here." The newcomer offered a blue-streaked, whitish lump. "Try
some of this with it."
    "Thank you. We make good cheese in my home, but I have not
eaten any in a long while."
    "Now you listen up, Upstairs." The newcomer poured four fingers of
brandy into his tumbler. "These Trivigauntis you talk about, Abanja
and Siyuf? I never seen either one of 'em. I don't know 'em from
dirt, but I know about this place here, and the hot room, and the
courts and beaks, and all that. If you want to tell me what you did
and what's going on with you, I just might be able to scavy you a
couple answers. If you don't want to, dimber here. Only don't ask
me stuff I don't know, why'm I confined and that clatter."
    "You desire to know my crime. I have done nothing wrong."
    "Then if they're keeping you here, it's 'cause they're afraid of what
you'd do if you got out. What's that?"
    "I would resume my searching for the man called Auk. That is all.
They know this."
    "You going to chill him when you find him?"
    Sciathan leaned over the side of his bunk to look down at the
newcomer. "Is this equivalent to _kill?_ The softer sound instead of
the hard sound at the top of the mouth?"
    "Yeah. It's what this holy sibyl that taught us would say was a
alternate pronunciation."
    "No, I would not chill him. I would tell the masters of the airship
above this city that they must take me, with this man Auk and those
he chooses, to Mainframe."
    "Wait up." The newcomer cleaned his ear with the nail of one
forefinger. "To Mainframe? I ain't sure I heard you right. Say
it again."
    "I am from Mainframe. This is where we live, we Crew. It is our
director, it shelters us and we repair it as it directs, when repairs are
needed."
    "A real place." The newcomer sipped brandy.
    "Mainframe is where we live. Viron is where you live."
    "If you live there, why are you shaggy flying over here all the time
making it rain?"
    "Because Mainframe directs it. It is the director of the _Whorl_, not
ours alone. If rain did not fall, you Cargo would perish. Or if too
much falls. Mainframe has many sources of data. We are one, not
the least."
    "You want some red?" The newcomer offered his tumbler. "You
still feel like fainting, it might be good for you."
    "No, thank you."
    "All right, what's this about cargo? Like on a boat?"
    "You people, the animals, and the plants. It is the same as a boat,
yes, because we are in a boat, we as well as you."
    "We're the cargo?" Staring up at Sciathan, the newcomer tapped
his own chest. "Me, and everybody I know?"
    "That is it with precision." Sciathan nodded emphatically. "Abanja
and Siyuf also. So you see that I would not chill Auk. It is our duty
to preserve the Cargo, not to chill it."
    "Mainframe told you to do this?"
    "To preserve the Cargo? Yes, always." Sciathan's voice dropped.
"It is increasingly difficult. The sun no longer responds well, not even
so well as in my father's day. Heat accumulates, another difficulty,
because the cooling no longer functions efficiently. Mainframe may
be compelled to blow out the sun. Is that how you say it? Interrupt
its energy. It has warned us, and we have done what we can to
be ready."
    The newcomer put down his tumbler. "You're getting me dizzy
enough without this." He rose, stepping to the small barred opening
in the iron door. "Hey! Peeper!"
    "You think that I am deceiving you. You will seek to have me
removed."
    The newcomer turned to face him. "Cost me two cards to get this
pad, and now I scavy you're cank. It's getting too hot, you said. The
whole whorl's getting too hot."
    Sciathan nodded. "There are other difficulties, but that is worst."
    "So you're going to shut off the cooling--"
    "No, no! The sun. Until the _Whorl_ can be cooled. I will not do
this, you must understand. I could not. Mainframe must, if it must
be done. It will be a terrible darkness."
    "Cause the whorl's getting too hot." The newcomer strode to the
window. "You take a look out there. That's snow."
    "You will not credit me." Sciathan sighed, studying the newcomer's
coarse, bearded face for some sign of belief "I cannot condemn you,
but you have fed me and been kind. I would not deceive you. It was
difficult to make the winter this year. Mainframe struggled, and we
flew many sorties."
    "It had to make winter. Mainframe had to make it?" The newcomer
pointed to the window. "I always figured winter was just natural."
    "Nature is a useful term for processes that one does not understand,"
Sciathan told him wearily. "Once already the sun has blown out
because Mainframe was trying to make this winter. This was not
intended."
    "Yeah. I heard about that." The newcomer sounded less argumentative.
"Then the sun came back, only real bright for a minute. It set
fire to some trees and stuff. A cull I know asked Patera about it.
Calde Silk. He said it was another god talking and he knew which
one, only he didn't say."
    "It was not a god," Sciathan asserted. "It was the sun's restarting.
Restarting must be at maximum energy."
    "Anyhow, that's not why you're here." The newcomer pulled his
tunic over his head, revealing a red wool undershirt that he removed
as well. "Mainframe told you to find this cully Auk."
    The warder's face appeared in the opening in the door. "What
you need?"
    "I want you to go to Trotter's for me," the newcomer told him, and
handed him two cards. "You tell him any friends of mine that come
in, the first one's on me. Have him tell 'em I'll be back real soon, and
I'll see 'em at the Cock. You got it? You got to go straight away."
    "Sure. You too hot in there?"
    "I got a itch is all. You tell Trotter, then maybe I'll have another
little job for you."
    When the warder had gone, Sciathan began, "Is it known here...
I do not wish to offend religious sensibilities."
    "You won't," the newcomer told him, "cause I ain't got any. I got
religion, and that's different."
    "Is it known that all the gods are Mainframe?" Sciathan awaited
an explosion with some anxiety; when it did not come, he added,
"Equally is Mainframe all gods. Mainframe in its aspect of darkness,
which in this tongue is termed Tartaros, issued my instructions."
    After knotting its sleeves around one of the bars, the newcomer
pushed his undershirt out the window. "You know, I wish you'd told
me that sooner, Upstairs."
    He picked up his fork, bending its tines with powerful fingers.
"What's your right tag, anyhow?"
    "I am Sciathan. And you?"
    "I ain't going to tell you, Sciathan. Later I will, only not now, cause
I scavy it might slow us down. You know where the keyhole is in this
door? About where it is, anyhow?"
    Sciathan nodded.
    "Dimber. Look here. See how I twisted the one funny and bent the
other two up out of the way? I want you to stick your arm through
the peephole there. I could maybe do it if I was to rub butter on my
arm, but you can do it easy. Sort of feel around for the keyhole with
your kate, that's the funny-looking one. When you find it, stick your
kate in and twist."
    Sciathan accepted the fork. "You are saying this will open the
door. You cannot know it."
    "Sure I do. I seen the key when he was letting me in, and I know
how these locks work. I know how everything works soon as I see
it, so get cracking. I don't want to keep 'em waiting outside."
    Slowly, Sciathan nodded again. "Then you will be free, and I free
to pursue my search for Auk, but clothed as I am, and ignorant of
the customs of this city."
    "We're going to take care of you," the newcomer told him
briskly. "Clothes and everything, and we'll teach you how to act,
all right? Do it!"
    Standing on tiptoe, he was able to thrust his arm through the space
between two bars. The strangely bent tine scratched the door for the
lock plate, then scratched the lock plate for the keyhole. "I am fearful
that I may drop it," he told the newcomer, "but I will try to --" He had
felt the bolt retract. "It is unlock!"
    "Sure." As Sciathan withdrew his arm, the newcomer pushed the
door open. "Come on. There's a couple mort troopers on the outside
door already, so we best bing. Wrap that blanket so they can't see
your kicks."
    He led Sciathan along the corridor and down a stair to a massive
iron door. "They ought to of had 'em inside too," he whispered, "only
they figured it was all rufflers and upright men, so nothing would
happen. It don't matter what's afoot, it gets queered when some cully
figures nothing's going to happen."
    "I understand this," Sciathan told him; and wanted to add:
_Yesterday that was I_.
    "Only that's the way I'm figuring too, 'cause I got to. They'll have
slug guns out there, and if we beat hoof they'll pot us sure. So we're
going to walk easy going out, and just keep going till we're 'cross
the street. And maybe nothing will happen. If they holler or say
something, don't you stop or even look back at 'em. You got it?"
    "I will try. Yes."
    "Dimber." The newcomer pressed his ear to the iron door. "Long
as you do, you don't have to worry. We'll take care of the rest."
    There followed a lengthy silence; at last the newcomer said, "Pretty
quiet out there. Get set."
    The motion of the door seemed much too quick as Sciathan
stepped, half blinded by winter sunlight, through the doorway at
the newcomer's side. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed the
towering woman whose thick sand-colored greatcoat his blanket
brushed.
    The wide street was freezing mud, rutted by the wheels of carts
and wagons, and almost empty. Snowflakes whirled before his eyes,
a few sticking to their lashes.
    "You two!" a woman's voice bawled. "_Halt!_"
    So fast that it seemed sure to strike them, a black vehicle swooped
toward them, roaring like a storm. He was airborne once more, out
of control and without wings. For an instant he saw the startled
face of a man in black with whom he collided full tilt, after which
something huge and heavy struck his back.
    A bang--like a slamming door--and the roar mounted to a deafening
crescendo. Acceleration pushed him backward into two obstacles he
did not at first realize were the shins of the man in black. As though
by some mysterious device of Mainframe's, the roar was muffled;
above and behind him the newcomer growled, "Just the one shot.
Pretty good."
    A new voice, that of the man in black, said, "Even one is
too many."
    And then, as the pale hands of the man in black and the muscular
hands of the newcomer lifted him onto a padded seat, "Welcome to
Our Holy City of Viron, in the names of its people, its patroness, the
Outsider, and all the other gods. I'm sorry we couldn't do this with
less violence and more ceremony. Are you hurt? I'm Calde Silk."
    Sciathan wiped his month with his fingers, finding to his surprise
that it was not bleeding. "I am somewhat bruised, but from blows
and not from this escaping. I am Sciathan." Beyond their enchanted
tranquility, snow swirled and homely blank-faced buildings raced like
camels. He blinked, looking from this pale Cargo to the newcomer
and back. "Are we safe?"
    "For the time being at least," the pale Cargo called Calde Silk
assured him.
    "I am your prisoner, instead of that of the tall women?"
    Calde Silk shook his head. "Of course not. You may come and go
as you wish."
    The newcomer added, "Anyhow, we like you."
    Sciathan smiled; it was very good now to smile, he found. "Then
I am free to search again?"
    "Yeah," the newcomer told him, "only it ain't going to take you
long. I'm Auk."

                  Chapter 13 -- Making Peace

"Good man!" Oreb assured everyone at the table.
    "This is Sciathan." Silk indicated the tiny man on his left. "Sciathan
landed near the Trivigaunti camp on Thelxday, with four of his fellow
Fliers--I believe while the parade was still in progress. The Trivigauntis
shot three of them and captured him. One escaped."
    Potto nodded, his round, cheerful face minored in the waxed and
polished wood. "And he escaped yesterday with your help. I won't
congratulate you on that operation, just on its success. We could
have managed it much better."
    Halfway down the table, Spider concurred. "Shag, yes!"
    "It was hastily improvised," Silk admitted. "We knew only that
Sciathan had come to find Auk; we couldn't even guess why he wanted
him. Fortunately Generalissimo Oosik was able to get through to the
Guardsmen on duty in the Juzgado--"
    Loris interrupted. "They've been replaced."
    "That's good. I'm glad nothing worse was done to them. On
Generalissimo Oosik's instructions, they pretended that they had
arrested Auk, and he was able to bribe a turnkey to put him in
Sciathan's cell. Quite frankly, we thought it likely that Auk would
leave him there after he had talked to him, at least for the time
being. We were extremely reluctant to worsen our relations with the
Trivigauntis."
    Silk scanned the faces beyond Hyacinth's. Maytera Mint looked
angry; Bison, beside her, angrier still. Oosik, eager and expectant,
a slug gun across his lap; he had wanted both councillors killed,
and might conceivably have a subordinate stationed somewhere to
kill them.
    "If things had gone as we expected," Silk continued, "the rest would
have been easy. Auk would have been escorted out by Guardsmen,
and Siyuf's sentries would have assumed that he had been questioned
and was being released.
    Auk himself said, "Only I couldn't. We got to get to Mainframe.
That's him and me and everybody that's going with me." He glanced
at Quetzal and Remora, seeking support.
    Potto smiled more broadly than ever. "I congratulate you again on
the outcome. It was all we could wish for and more. Just the same,
our enemies retain four propulsion modules, and three undamaged
pairs of wings."
    Hyacinth said loudly, "You're the enemy!"
    Maytera Mint shook her head. "They were the enemy, up to
Thelxday night. Now we've been betrayed, and we're no longer
sure. I doubt that the Trivigauntis are either. We're all Vironese
here, everybody except the Flier. If Councillor Loris is really here
to make peace, we ought to welcome it."
    She closed her eyes. "I do. Echidna, forgive me!" On the other side
of the table, Remora nodded emphatically.
    Silk asked, "Have you come to make peace, Councillor Loris?
Councillor Potto?"
    "Our azoths have been confiscated." Potto giggled. "I was searched!
Me! It was absolutely hilarious, but calling this a peace conference is
funnier."
    "I didn't say it was a peace conference," Maytera Mint snapped,
"I implied it could become one. It should, if there's any chance for
peace. As for taking your weapons, His Eminence and I went to
parlay without any, and you know what you did to us. Because of
that, this parley is being held on our ground with us armed and you
disarmed. I will insist upon the same arrangements for any future
parleys as well."
    Loris snarled, "Your troops are melting away as we speak!" to which
Potto added, "It was worth it to see your face, my dear young General,
when I threatened you with the teapot. I'd do it again, just for that.
But you have no right--"
    Oosik interrupted him, drawing his needler and holding it up. "Here
is one of my weapons. It will kill me, or General Mint, or even Calde
Silk. Do you want it?" He laid it on the polished tabletop between
them, and gave it a push that sent it past the middle of the table.
    While Silk counted three beatings of his heart, no one spoke. Potto
stared at the needler before him, and at last shook his head.
    "Then do not complain to us about your weapons," Oosik
told him.
    Silk rapped for order. "Like you, Generalissimo, I do not believe
that Councillor Potto is entitled to complain about the loss of his
weapons. We are entitled to complain about the projected loss of ours,
however, and I'm not at all sure that Councillor Potto--although
he is inclined to be proud of his information--knows about that.
Councillor Loris seems to be less than current with regard to General
Mint's volunteers."
    He addressed Potto directly. "Councillor Loris said they were
melting away. Colonel Bison reports that they've melted altogether.
We had to hurry it, and hurry it we did. Do you know why?"
    Loris said, "He doesn't, but he'll never admit it. I'm not so
pigheaded. Why, Calde?"
    Silk nodded to Bison, who said, "Generalissimo Siyuf has ordered
the Guard to collect our peoples' slug guns and store them in the
Juzgado." Bison leaned forward, his eyes on Loris and his face tense.
"It was exactly--exactly!--the right order to split the Guard and our
people, and she didn't even try to route it through Generalissimo
Oosik. She sent it to the individual officers in command of the
brigades."
    Potto put in, "Except Brigadier Erne."
    "Except for Erne. That's right. We were lucky, in that the brigadiers
wanted to clear those orders with Generalissimo Oosik. He countermanded
them, naturally. Now we've dispersed our people so that it
will be impossible for the Trivigauntis to disarm them themselves."
    Potto's giggle mounted to a shrill laugh. He slapped his thigh.
"You can't use them against us unless you call them up again. And
you won't dare call them up because your friends from Trivigaunte
will disarm them. You're in a pickle!"
    Maytera Mint told him, "Yours is worse."
    She glanced at Silk, who told Potto, "We have a strategy, you see--one
that you cannot frustrate. The Trivigauntis are preparing to
mount a vigorous offensive against you. You know that, I'm sure."
    Loris nodded.
    "I listened to Generalissimo Siyuf outline her plans last night, and
I've been thinking about our options all day. In order to win, all
that we have to do now is sit back and let them carry out those
plans. She is a rigid disciplinarian, and she's never been down in
those tunnels. Furthermore,  a she's not greatly concerned about the
lives of her troops, especially her infantry, which consists largely of
conscripts."
    Silk leaned back, his fingers joined in a pointed tower. "As I said,
all we have to do is to let her do as she plans. There will be a terrible
war of attrition, fought underneath the city between foreigners and
soldiers most of the men and women who live in it have scarcely seen.
In the end, one side or the other will triumph, and it won't make
much difference which it is, since the winner will be too weak to
resist General Mint's horde when we reassemble it. Either way, we'll
be masters of the city. And either way, you will both be dead."
    Potto sneered. Loris said smoothly, "A few minutes ago somebody
was saying we're all Vironese here, with a single exception. Was it
you, General? You, whose troops are to complete the destruction
once Viron's army has defeated the Trivigauntis for you?"
    "Yes," she told him. "It was.
    Silk said, "There are at least three major objections to the strategy
I have just outlined, Councillor, though I do not doubt that it would
succeed--that it will, if we choose to employ it. You've voiced the
first yourself: it entails the destruction of Viron's army. The second
is that it will take at least half a year, and very possibly several years;
either would be too long, as we'll explain in a moment. The third
is that there is one part of Siyuf's force that we must have, and it
is exactly the part that would almost certainly escape us. I refer to
General Saba's airship.
    "Sciathan, will you please tell these councillors what you told me?"
    The Flier nodded, his small, pinched face solemn. "We of Mainframe,
we Crew, were visited by the god you call Tartaros. It was the morning
of the day on which I was captured."
    Auk put in, "Right after he left me, see?"
    "His instructions were urgent. We were to find this man Auk,"
Sciathan pointed, "and bring him and his followers to Mainframe,
so that they can leave the _Whorl_ to journey to a short-sun
sphere outside." Sciathan turned to Silk. "They do not believe
me."
    "They need only believe that I believe you," Silk told him, "as I do.
Continue."
    "This very wise man Calde Silk has spoken to you of the airship,
the great vessel that flies without wings, stirring the air with wooden
arms. The god also spoke to us of this airship. We were to employ it
to carry back this man who is my friend now, and those who wish
to accompany him."
    Profound conviction lent intensity to Sciathan's voice. "It cannot
be accomplished otherwise. No, not though a god should demand it.
He cannot fly as we do, nor can the others who wish to accompany
him. For them to walk or ride animals would consume many months.
There are mountains and deserts, and many swift rivers."
    "We'd need enough bucks with slug guns and launchers to fight
our way past anybody that tried to stop us," Auk added. "We ain't
got them." Seeing Chenille enter with a tray, he inquired, "What you
got there, Jugs? Tea and cookies?"
    She nodded, "Maytera thought you might like something. She's
busy with Stony and Patera, so Nettle and I baked."
    "There is too much eating here," Sciathan protested in a whisper,
"also, too much drinking. Behold that one." He indicated Potto
with a nod.
    "I agree," Silk said, accepting a cup of tea, "but we must consider
hospitality."
    "In short," Loris was saying, "you want us to help you take over
the airship. I won't argue about your reason for wanting it, though
I might if I thought we could do it. I doubt that we can."
    Potto rocked from side to side, bubbling with mirth. "I might.
Yes, I might! Silk, I'll make you an offer on behalf of my cousins
and myself, but you'll have to trust me."
    Maytera Mint shook her head, but Silk told her, "This is progress,
whether we accept it or not. Let's hear it."
    "I'll seize the airship for you within a month, capturing as many of
the technicians who operate it as possible. I'll turn them over to you
after they've agreed to cooperate with you in every way." He tittered.
"They will, I promise you, when I've had them for a few days. Ask
the general there."
    He turned to Chenille, who was serving Remora. "May I have a
cup of your tea, my dear? I can't drink it, but I like the smell."
    Maytera Mint snorted.
    "I do, my dear young General. You think I'm mocking you, when
I'm simply indulging the only pleasure of the flesh left to me." As
Chenille poured, he added, "Thank you very, very much. Five bits?
Would that be acceptable?"
    Chenille stared. "Is this... I don't--"
    Silk said, "Councillor Potto is merely using you to make a point,
Chenille. He prefers to make his points in the most objectionable way
possible, as General Mint and I can testify. What is it, Councillor?"
    "That even trivial things are seldom free." Potto smiled. "That there
is a price to pay, even when it's a trivial price. Want to hear mine for
the airship?"
    Silk nodded, feeling Hyacinth's hand tighten about his,
    Loris said, "I've no idea what he has in mind, but I'm going to
attach one of my own first. You're to do nothing to interfere with
us during the month specified. No attacks on any position of ours,
including Erne's."
    Silk said, "We wouldn't, of course--if we accepted. But it's your
cousin's price that concerns me."
    "Two men." Potto held up two fingers. "I want to borrow one and
keep the other. Can't you guess which they are?"
    "I believe so. Perhaps I should have made it clear that I haven't
the least intention of accepting. Even if you had offered to do it for
nothing, as a gesture of goodwill, I still could not have accepted."
    Auk started to protest, but Silk cut him off. "Let me say this once
and for all, not just to you, Auk, and not just to these councillors; but
to everyone present. Trivigaunte is our ally. There has been friction
between us, true. I daresay that there is always friction in every
alliance, even the small and simple alliance of husband with wife."
    Hyacinth's lips brushed his cheek.
    "I did not ask the Rani to send us help, but I welcomed it with
open arms when she did. I have no intention of turning against her
and her people now, because of a little friction. Maytera Marble often
tells me things she's learned from watching children's games, and I
received the greatest lesson of my life during one such game; now I
want to propose a game for us. Let us pretend for a few minutes that
I'm Generalissimo Siyuf. Will all of you accept that, for the sake of
the game?"
    His eyes went from face to face. "Very well, I am Siyuf. I understand
that some of you are nursing grievances in spite of my long and swift
march to your rescue, and in spite of the aid I brought you. Let me
hear them now. There is not one I cannot dispose of."
    Loris said, "I hope you're not so deep in your part as to
shoot me."
    Silk smiled and shook his head.
    "Very well then, Generalissimo Siyuf. I have a complaint, exactly as
you said. I'm speaking as the presiding officer of the Ayuntamiento,
the legitimate government of this city. You and your troops are
interfering in our internal affairs. That is an act of war."
    Silk heaved a sigh, and his gaze strayed to Chenille, who was
pouring tea for Maytera Mint. "Councillor, your government was
never legitimate, because it was established by murdering your lawful
calde. I can't say which of you ordered his murder, or whether you
acted jointly. For the purposes of discussion, let's assume it was
Councillor Lemur, and that he acted alone. You nevertheless--"
    "I didn't intend to get into this," Loris protested. His craggy face
was grim.
    "You introduced the subject yourself when you referred to yours
as the legitimate government, Councillor. I was about to say that
though you searched for the adopted son Calde Tussah had named
as his successor, as your duty required, you did not hold elections
for new councillors, as your Charter demands. My ally Calde Silk
governs because the people of your city wish it, and so his claim
is better than yours. Aid given by a friendiy power is not an act of
war. How could it be? Are you saying that we of Trivigaunte attacked
your city? It welcomed us with a parade."
    Silk waited for a response; when none came, he said, "You have
already heard that I know the contents of your previous calde's will.
I found a copy in your Jurgado. Let me say, too, that in my opinion
the adopted son you searched for with so much diligence did not
exist. Calde Tussah invented this son to draw your attention from
an other child, an illegitimate child who may or may not have been
born before his death. If she had already been born, referring to an
adopted _son_ was doubly misleading, as he doubtless intended it to
be." Silk sipped his tea. "Don't go, Chenille."
    Potto sprang to his feet. "You!"
    "Did you kill my father, Councillor?" Chenille's dark eyes flashed.
"The real one? I don't know, but I don't think it was really Councillor
Lemur. I think it was you!"
    Oosik raised his slug gun, telling Potto to sit down.
    "If you did and evidence can be found," Silk continued, "you will
have to stand trial. So far we have none."
    "Are you Silk or Siyuf?" Potto demanded.
    "Silk at present. I'll resume the game in a moment. Your Cognizance,
will you speak? I ask it as a favor." Upon Silk's shoulder, Oreb fluttered
uneasily.
    "If you want me to, Patera Calde." Quetzal's glittering gaze was
fixed on Potto. "Not many of us knew Tussah. Patera Remora did,
and Loris. Did you, Generalissimo?"
    Oosik shook his head. "Twenty years ago I was a captain. I saw
him several times, but I doubt that he knew my name."
    "He knew mine, eh?" Remora cleared his throat. "I had, er, was
coadjutor in those--um--happier days. Ah--mother still living, eh,
General? It, um, sufficient in itself, hey? Though there were other
favorable circumstances."
    Chenille, who had stopped pouring tea, murmured, "I wish I knew
more about him."
    "I, um, disliked him, I confess," Remora told her. "Not hatred, you
understand. And there were times, eh? But I was, er, substantially
alone in it. Wrong, too, eh? Wrong. I, um, concede it now. Loud,
brawling, vigorous, and I was--um--determined, quite determined
secretly, to be offended. But he, er, put the city first. Always did,
and I--ah--accorded insufficient weight to it."
    "He wouldn't flatter my then coadjutor, Patera Calde," Quetzal
explained. "He flattered me, however. He flattered me by confiding
in me. He never married. Are you both aware of that?"
    Silk and Chenille nodded.
    "Clergy take a vow of chastity. Even with its support, chastity is
too severe for many. He confided to me, as one friend to another,
that his housekeeper was his mistress."
    "Not--ah--under the Seal, eh?"
    Quetzal's hairless head swayed on its long neck. "I don't and won't
speak of shriving, though I shrove him once or twice. This was at
dinner, one at which only he and I were present. If he were alive
I wouldn't speak of it. He's dead and can't speak for himself. He
introduced the woman to me. He asked me to take care of her should
he die.
    Chenille said, "If that was my mother, you didn't."
    "I did not. I couldn't find her. Though she was good-looking
in her way, she was an ignorant woman of the servant class. I
know she disliked me, and I think she was afraid of me. She
was guilty of adultery weekly, and unable to imagine forgiveness for it."
    Silk said, "You searched for her as soon as you heard Calde Tussah
was dead?"
    "I did, Patera Calde. Not as thoroughly as I should, since she was
alive and I failed to find her."
    Loris said, "I remember her now. The gardener's wife. She oversaw
the kitchen and the laundry. A virago."
    Quetzal nodded frigidly. "She was the type he admired, and he was
the type she did."
    Auk began, "This gardener cully--"
    "A marriage of convenience, performed by my prothonotary in five
minutes. There would have been talk if Tussah had a single woman in
this palace. His gardener wasn't intelligent, though a good man and
a hard worker. He was proud to be seen as married, as a man who'd
won the love of an attractive woman. I imagine she dominated him
completely. I thought they would look for new employment when
Tussah died, and I planned to make places for them on our staff. They
didn't. I know now, thanks to Patera Calde, that they became beggars.
At the time I assumed they'd known something about Tussah's death,
and had been silenced."
    Chenille said, "We sold watercress. But if somebody wanted to give
us money, we took it. I used to ask for money, too, and run errands. Do
little jobs." She swallowed. "After a while I found out there were things
men would give me half a card for. It was a fortune to us, enough food
for a week." She stared at her listeners, challenging them.
    Loris smiled. "Blood will tell, they say."
    "Blood won't," Silk declared. "Blood's dead--I killed him. But if
Blood were alive, he might tell you that it was good business to
give rust, at first, to the young women at Orchid's, and to sell it
to them afterward--to keep them in constant need of money, and
thus keep them there for as long as he and Orchid let them stay.
The Ayuntamiento let him bring rust and other drugs into our city,
in return for what I must call criminal services."
    Hyacinth said, "I use it sometimes, and I've been telling myself that
if Chen can kick it so can I, and I hope it's true. But it's hard, don't
ever believe anybody who says it's not.
    Quetzal gave Loris a lipless smile. "Blood does tell, my son." "Watch
out!" Oreb advised; it was not clear to which he spoke.
    Maytera Mint asked, "Do you know why they didn't try to find
another situation, Calde?"
    "I don't; but I believe I can guess. Chenille's mother had recently
given birth to the calde's child, or if she had not, she was carrying
that child--and it was her child, too. She must have guessed, or known,
that the calde had been murdered. At that time, the Ayuntamiento
was searching everywhere for the adopted son mentioned in the
calde's will; and she would have supposed, as I believe most people
did, that it would kill him if it found him. She needn't have been an
educated woman, or an imaginative one, to guess what would happen
to another child of the calde's, if it learned that she existed."
    Silk filled his lungs, feeling a twinge from his wounded chest.
"We've gotten far off the subject, but since we're here, let's finish
what we've begun. Calde Tussah left a substantial estate. I have it
now as trustee for his daughter; I'll turn it over to Chenille as soon
as she reaches twenty, the legal age of maturity."
    "Good girl!" Oreb assured everyone.
    Loris told Silk, "That will have to be adjudicated by the courts,
I'm afraid."
    He shook his head. "Our government is sorely in need of funds,
Councillor. We have a war to prosecute, in addition to all the
usual civic expenses; and we gave each of General Mint's troopers
two cards, as well as his or her weapon, before we sent them
home."
    Loris said, "You're generous with the taxpayers' money."
    "In order to do it, we've taken control of the Fisc; the city assumes
responsibility for inactive accounts, and for the accounts in trust, such
as Calde Tussah's. We've sequestered the accounts of the members
of the Ayuntamiento, as you know. Do you want to talk about
it now?"
    Sciathan said, "We must speak more of the airship. It is urgent.
This Potto says he will get it, but in one month. We have a few days
at most. Not more."
    "Why?" Hyacinth asked him, speaking across Silk.
    Auk told him, "Let 'em jaw about the money first. If you don't,
they'll keep going back to it."
    "Wise man!" Oreb exclaimed.
    Silk rapped the table. "Which will it be, the airship or your accounts?
Personally I'd prefer to deal with Generalissimo Oosik's complaints
against Generalissimo Siyuf, and General Mint and Colonel Bison's.
It's usually best, I've found, to consider minor matters first and get
them out of the way. Otherwise they cloud everyone's thinking, as
Auk says."
    "We knew you'd stolen our money," Loris told him, "but we also
knew it would be useless to protest the theft."
    Maytera Mint declared, "You want to make peace after all."
    "Hardly. But we're prepared to offer you new terms of surrender,
much more liberal terms than those I proposed at Blood's, which
were intended merely as an opening point for negotiations."
    "You said at the time that they were not negotiable," Silk
reminded him.
    "Certainly. One always does. You were willing to listen to Potto's
proposal. Will you hear ours as well? Our joint proposal?"
    "Of course."
    "Then let me first explain why you should accept it. You assert that
you have a strategy that will assure your victory, though you are loath
to follow it. You are mistaken, but we are not. We have a strategy of
our own, one that will assure your defeat in under a year."
    Oosik said, "Clearly you do not, or you would follow it," and Silk
nodded.
    "You have been assisting us with it," Loris continued, smiling, "for
which we are appropriately grateful."
    Potto grinned. "We're giving away slug guns too!"
    "We are," Loris confirmed, "and other weapons as well, needlers
mostly. We still have access to several stores of weapons. I hope you
will excuse my keeping their locations confidential."
    "Giving them to who?" Bison inquired.
    "In a moment. Some preparation is necessary. You were underground
not long ago, Colonel. The tunnels are extensive, are you
aware of it? You saw not a thousandth part of them."
    "I've been told the calde went into them from a shrine by the lake,
and that General Mint went in from a house north of the city and
came out on the Palatine. If those she saw and those he saw belong
to the same complex, it's pretty large."
    Maytera Mint told him, "Much larger than that, according to what
I've learned from Spider."
    "I want him," Potto put in. "I want him and the Flier. I offered the
airship and you refused it. Name your price."
    Silk sighed. "I said that trivial points tend to obscure discussions.
This is just such a point, so let's dispose of it. Spider is our prisoner.
We will exchange him for one of equal value, during this truce or
another. Have you a prisoner to offer us? Who is it?"
    Potto shook his head. "I will have, soon. Give him back, and you'll
get double value as soon as I have it."
    "No!" Maytera Mint struck the table with her small fist, and
Hyacinth's catachrest thrust his furry little head above the tabletop,
saying, "Done bay saw made, laddie."
    "Of course not," Silk told Potto, "but may I propose an alternative
I believe workable?"
    "Let's hear it'
    "In a moment. You also want Sciathan."
    "Only temporarily." Potto giggled. "I'll pay you a line for every
day I keep him over a fortnight, how's that? Like a library book. I
still have a lot more money than you stole."
    Auk declared, "I heard about you from Maytera, and you ain't
taking him."
    "Auk speaks for me as well," Silk said, "and for all of us. Sciathan
is a free individual--"
    "A free _man_," Loris amended.
    "Precisely. He is not mine to give or keep. He is here in this palace
as my guest, and nothing more--nothing less, I ought to say. If you
believe he's under restraint, ask him."
    Remora tossed back his lank black hair. "'Sacred unto Pas are the
life and property of the stranger you welcome.'"
    "Furthermore, he would disappoint you. He's been beaten and
interrogated already by Generalissimo Siyut who hoped to learn
how the Fliers' propulsion modules operate. Councillor Lemur killed
Iolar, who was another Flier, for the same reason; I shrove Iolar
before he died. Since Lemur himself died soon after, you may not
be aware of it. Are you?"
    Loris shrugged. "We were aware of his capture, of course. What
Lemur learned from him died with Lemur, unfortunately."
    "Lemur learned nothing from him; that was why Lemur killed him.
I discussed the propulsion modules with Sciathan today. He freely
conceded that their principle is important; that it would be valuable
to our city or any other is obvious; but he doesn't have it, and neither
did Iolar.
    "The scientists who make them remain in Mainframe, safe from
capture. The Fliers who use them are kept ignorant of the principle, for
reasons they understand and approve. It's an elementary precaution,
one that you and your fellow councillors ought to have anticipated.
It would have been anticipated, surely, by anyone not blinded by the
itch for power. If you want to find out how they operate, you might
capture one of those the Trivigauntis have and take it apart; but I
doubt that I could tell leaf from root."
    "Naturally you couldn't." Potto giggled. "Have you got one?
Name your price for Spider. A hundred cards? I want to hear
it, and the price of the propulsion module, too, if you've got
one."
    "We don't. Councillor Loris, Councillor Lemur told me that he
was a bio, not a chem. Are you?"
    "Certainly."
    "Despite the marble bookend you crushed at Blood's?"
    "This is not my natural body. Physically, I'm on our boat, well out
of your reach. This body," Loris touched his black velvet tunic, "is a
chem, if you like. To simplify matters, I won't object to your calling
it that. I manipulate it from my bed, making it move and speak as
I did when I was younger."
    Maytera Mint told Silk, "I explained all this, I think."
    "Yes, you did, Maytera; I'm very grateful. Spider should be grateful
as well."
    "If it gets me loose," Spider grunted.
    "It very well may. From what General Mint has reported,
counterintelligence has been your chief concern. I'm not so naive
as to think that your organization--what remains of it--could not
be put to other uses, however; and I noticed that Councillor Potto
wanted you back when he was planning to seize control of General
Saba's airship."
    Potto said, "I do anyhow. He's valuable to us."
    "Clearly. Primarily in frustrating spies?"
    Loris said, "Primarily, yes."
    "Spider, General Mint says you're a decent man, a patriot in
your way. If I were to release you to Councillor Potto, as you
wish, would you be willing to give me your solemn promise that
in so far as our forces are concerned, you would confine your
activities entirely to counterintelligence? By 'our forces' I intend
those headed by Generalissimo Oosik and Auk--not only the Guard,
but General Mint's volunteers, including those commanded by her
through Colonel Bison."
    Spider licked his lips. "If Councillor Potto don't tell me I can't,
yeah, I will."
    Potto raised a hand. "Wait. I think I heard something funny. Does
your friend Auk have a private horde now?"
    Auk grinned. "The best thieves in the whole city, the ones that's
going with me and Sciathan. A month for the airship, you said. I
figure we might nab it a whole lot sooner."
    Sciathan stood up. "We must! If the Cargo will not leave the _Whorl_,
Pas will drive everyone out as one drives a bear from a cave. He will
starve and afflict Crew and Cargo until we go."
    Loris's icy blue eyes twinkled. "A rain of blood. The Chrasmologic
Writings speak of such things, I'm told."
    Remora nodded solemnly. "Ah--worse, Councillor. Plagues, hey?
Famine, er, likewise."
    "Listen to me!" Sciathan s excited tenor cracked. "If a landing craft
leaves, even one, Pas will wait for more. But if none leave everyone
will be driven out. Do you understand now? We Crew have a craft
ready, but so much Crew cannot be spared so early in the Plan. For this
reason Tartaros has readied Auk for us, and we must have them!"
    "Me and my knot," Auk explicated.
    Chenille added, "That's me. I hope you don't mind that I stayed
to listen, Patera. But when Auk goes, I go too."
    "With my blessing," Potto chortled. "Oh, yes! Very much so. I'll be
delighted to lose my accuser, and have the enemy lose its airship."
    He turned to Silk. "Will Spider be free to act in any way we choose
against your cherished allies? That's what it sounded like. You didn't
expect me to miss that, did you?"
    "No." Silk's expression was guarded. "But if you had, I would have
mentioned it to him. You may not be aware of it, but Maytera Mint left
the tunnels with two other prisoners. One was a convict named Eland.
Eland was murdered yesterday morning in the Grand Manteion."
    "A mystery!" Potto clapped his pudgy hands like a happy child. "I
love them!"
    "I don't. I try to clear them up when I can, and I've been trying to
clear up this one. My first thought was that this man Eland had been
killed by some old enemy, most plausibly someone who had attended
the sacrifice there the previous night and had seen him. I asked Auk
to find out who that enemy might be, and had one of General Skate's
officers inquire as well."
    Silk shifted his attention from Potto to Spider. "The harder they
looked, the less probable it appeared. Eland had not been a thief,
as I had assumed, but a horse trainer who had killed his employer
in a fit of rage. Presumably there was some public sympathy for
him, since he was not executed. Auk could find nobody who knew
of anyone who bore him a murderous grudge."
    Maytera Mint asked, "Did you consider Urus, Calde?"
    "We did, but we quickly dismissed him. Eland had been a useful
subordinate in the tunnels, where Urus would have had any number
of opportunities to kill him in complete safety. Why wait? Why run
the risk of being shot by Acting Corporal Slate, as the killer very
nearly was? Besides, I've gotten a sketchy description of the killer,
and if it's even roughly correct, he was neither dirty nor dressed in
rags. I'll tell you later how I obtained it."
    "Got to protect his sources," Spider explained. "That's how it is,
Maytera."
    "Most of Eland's friends and relatives had assumed he was dead
long ago," Silk continued, "yet someone with a needler had quite
deliberately climbed into the choir of the Grand Manteion to shoot
him. Why? After I'd turned over the question for an hour or two, it
occurred to me that someone might have made a mistake--that he
might have intended to shoot another person entirely, and mistaken
Eland for that person. Chenille here was able to tell me in considerable
detail how everyone present had been dressed, and Auk and Spider
appeared to be the only possibilities."
    Eyeing Spider, Oreb whistled.
    "There were a number of sibyls present. All wore habits, and could
be dismissed at once. So could Patera Incus and the body of Patera
Jerboa--both were robed in black, as I am. No one could mistake a
man for Chenille, and so on. If an error had been made, the intended
victim was clearly Auk or Spider."
    Auk said, "I don't think he was shooting at me."
    "Neither do I," Silk told him. "You were near the altar, and thus
somewhat nearer the killer. Furthermore, you were in a relatively
well lit area. Spider and Eland were in a chapel behind the sanctuary,
a more distant area as well as a more dimly lit one. I would guess that
the killer had been given a verbal description of Spider, and had been
told that he was being guarded by soldiers."
    Silk turned back to Spider. "Were you and Eland awake when he
was shot?"
    Spider nodded.
    "Were you standing up?"
    Spider shook his head. "We were sittin' on the floor. That soldier
wouldn't let us get up unless we had a reason."
    "There you have it." Silk shrugged. "At least, you have as much as
I do. Sitting would tend to conceal the difference in size. Slate was
guarding both of you, and from what I've heard, neither of you had
been given an opportunity to wash and change clothes, as General
Mint and Patera Remora did. In the dim light of the chapel, the killer
may not have seen you at all. Or he may simply have felt that Eland
corresponded more closely to the description he had been given.
    "The question then became, who would want to kill Spider?
Plausibly, the Ayuntamiento or the Trivigauntis. The first because
he knows a great deal about its espionage and counterespionage
activities, and about the tunnels under the city, information that he
might pass on to Generalissimo Oosik, to General Mint, or to me."
    "I'd know about it. I'd have ordered it." Potto giggled. "I didn't."
    Silk nodded. "And you could easily have found an assassin who
knows Spider by sight, I would think. The Trivigauntis are our allies--but
they are Spider's enemies, and he is said to know a great deal
about their spies in Viron." He fell silent.
    Maytera Mint said, "You can't be sure this is true."
    "No, I can't; but I believe it very well may be. We stole a prisoner
from Generalissimo Siyuf. Is it absurd to suppose that she might try
to kill one we had? Since that may have been the case, it would be
manifestly unjust to limit Spider's activities with regard to Siyuf and
her horde."
    "They went after me, so I can go after them," Spider said.
    "Exactly."
    Hyacinth touched Silk's arm. "I don't understand. Are we for them
or against them?"
    Maytera Mint was staring at Silk. "I feel this is almost ancient
history, but before all this started--before poor Maytera Rose passed
on, I felt that I understood you, just as I felt I understood myself. In
the past ten days or so you've become somebody else, somebody I don't
understand at all, and so have I. You're married now, I witnessed the
ceremony, and I'm thinking about marrying too."
    A change in her expression told Silk that Bison's hand had
found hers.
    After a moment of silence she added, "You've lost your faith, or
most of it, I think. What's happened to us?"
    Potto laughed loudly.
    Quetzal, seated between Oosik and Loris at the other end of the
table, murmured, "Circumstances have changed, Maytera. That's all,
or nearly all. There is an essential core at the center of each man and
woman that remains unaltered no matter how life's externals may be
transformed or recombined. But it's smaller than we think."
    Silk nodded his agreement.
    "If I--ah--permitted." Remora pushed back the errant lock of lank,
black hair. "The General and I were companions in, um, adversity.
The--ah--spirit. The inalterable core, as His Cognizance has, um,
finely. The spirit that survives even death. It grows when trod upon,
like the dandelion. I have learned it, eh? So may you, if
you--um--reflect."
    He stared down at his long, bony hands. "Wouldn't have killed
Spider, hey? In those tunnels? Would've, er, failed. But I wish now
I had tried, or very nearly. And here, eh? No longer coadjutor. Got
my own manteion, hey? After all these years. Moved in today."
    He spoke to Silk. "I, er, necessary that I talk to you about it,
eh, Calde? Sun Street. Accounts and so on. When we're, um, we've
adjourned."
    Silk managed to say, "Gladly, Patera."
    "Stripped of, er, power. That's the expression. Smaller, outside,
growing, inside. I--ah--feel it." He held up the gammadion he wore;
it was of plain iron.
    As much to cover his embarrassment as her own, Maytera Mint
asked Silk, "You said everything Siyuf's done since her horde arrived
could be defended, and she's our ally, and yet you're letting Spider
go? Free to attack her and the rest of the Trivigauntis in any way
Potto chooses?"
    Potto rocked with merriment. "Be her again, Silk, and you can
shoot yourself."
    He shook his head. "I'm not being asked to defend Siyuf's actions
now, but my own. I have changed, I suppose, General, as you say;
but I don't think I've changed as much as you may imagine. The
faith I had, I had learned as one learns other lessons--from reading
and lectures and my mother's example and conversation. I'm in
the process, I believe, of replacing it with new faith gained from
experience--from circumstances, as His Eminence says. You have
to wreck the old structure, or so it seems to me, before you can build
the new one; otherwise, it's always getting in the way."
    He held out his hand to Hyacinth, who took it.
    "We're married, as you say. I don't believe my mother ever was.
Did I tell you that?"
    Maytera Mint shook her head.
    "I told Maytera Marble, I'm sure. I know now, or think I know,
how--how I came to be, as a result of something that happened to
me in the tunnels, or at least underground. You don't understand
me, I know."
    "Certainly I do! You don't have to talk about that, Calde, or
anything. But I certainly wasn't asking about that."
    Silk shook his head. "You don't, you merely suppose you do.
Councillor Potto, here's a mystery for you. Can you solve it? I've
lied about it once already tonight, I warn you; and I'll lie again if
I must."
    Maytera Mint objected, "You don't tell lies, Patera."
    Silk shook his head. "We all do when we must. When we're asked
about something we heard in shriving, for example. We say we don't
know. This is something I have to lie about, at least until it no
longer matters, simply because everyone would think I lied if I told
the truth."
    Maytera Marble's voice surprised him. "Not I, Patera."
    He turned in his chair to look at her.
    "Chenille brought in tea and cookies, the ones she and Nettle baked,
and she never came back. Horn seems to have disappeared, too. I
thought something might be wrong."
    "A great many things are, Moly," Silk told her, "but we're trying
to set a few right. Do you remember what I told you about my
enlightenment? I saw Patera Pike praying, praying so very hard year
after year for help for his manteion, remember?"
    She nodded.
    "Until the Outsider spoke in his heart, telling him his prayer was
granted. When I had seen that, I waited, waited full of expectation,
to see what help would be sent to him."
    Maytera Marble nodded. "I remember, Patera."
    "It arrived, and it was me. That was all it was. Me. Laugh,
Councillor."
    Potto did not oblige.
    "But for a moment, ever so briefly, I saw myself as Patera Pike had
seen me then. It was a humbling experience. Better, it was a salutary
one. I'm emboldened by thememory now, when I find myself having to
reckon with councillors and generalissimos, people whose company is
alien to me, and whose opposition I find terrifying."
    Maytera Marble nodded, "As they find yours, Patera."
    "I doubt it." Shaking his head, Silk addressed Loris. "We're prepared
to offer you a very good bargain, Councillor--an exceptional one.
Spider has promised he'll confine himself to counterespionage as
regards our forces if we will release him. We ask no oath on the
Writings, no ceremony of that kind; a man's word is good or it isn't,
and General Mint has indicated that his is. In exchange, we ask only
your present self. I emphasize _present_--the Councillor Loris here
with us. You can divert your consciousness to another such body as soon
as we're through conferring, and I assume that you will; it won't be
a violation of our bargain. Do you agree to the exchange?"
    "No," Loris said. "I have no second body available."
    Potto exclaimed, "I will!"
    "I'm afraid not, Councillor. When you have a prisoner of similar
importance, an exchange can be effected. Until then, Spider must
remain with us. Councillor Loris, are you certain you won't
reconsider?"
    Loris shook his head--then stared at Remora, who was seated to
Potto's right.
    Quetzal murmured, "He has these fits occasionally, poor fellow. I
think Patera Calde witnessed one last week."
    "I did, shortly before my bride and I were reunited at Ermine's."
Longing to embrace her, Silk tore his gaze from Hyacinth's.
    "They're coming, Silk." Remora announced in a flattened voice. "A
colonel and a hundred cavalry troopers."
    Oreb whistled sharply.
    "Thank you. Auk, I'm afraid this means we have very little time.
You and Sciathan must leave at once by a side door. Your followers
are meeting at the Cock? Warn them that Trivigaunti patrols may
search for them. Chenille had better go with you; otherwise they're
liable to take her to get you."
    Loris stood. "We'd better leave, too."
    "Not with us," Auk snapped. "Out the front, if you're going. C'mon,
Upstairs. C'mon, Jugs."
    Potto rose, giggling. "He doesn't share Silk's love for you, Cousin
Loris."
    Silk motioned for both to sit again. "You have come under a flag
of truce. They'll respect that, surely."
    "So did we," Maytera Mint told him.
    He ignored it. "You and Colonel Bison are affronted now because
Generalissimo Siyuf wished to confiscate the weapons you gave
your troopers. If she were here, she might explain that she acted
in support of our government, the one opposed to the Ayuntamiento
that Echidna ordered you to establish and that you have established.
She probably feels sure, as General Saba and Chenille did Thelxday
night, that once freed of the restraint of discipline your troopers will
use their weapons to overturn it. Remember that, when we talk to
these Trivigauntis."
    Silk addressed Oosik. "You, Generalissimo, are piqued because
Generalissimo Siyuf bypassed you and Skate, issuing orders to the
commanders of the brigades."
    Oosik nodded, his face grim.
    "Bear in mind that when she tried to collect those weapons she
was doing what you would have, had you not been restrained by
my orders; and that she's shown clearly that she thinks it useless to
try to suborn your loyalty."
    "I--er, um?" Remora gaped at Quetzal's vacated chair.
    "His Cognizance has left us," Silk explained. I suppose he went
with Auk. You dozed off for a moment, I believe.
    "Councillor Loris, Councillor Potto, you said you'd come to demand
my surrender, with new terms. Let's not trouble about the terms now.
Explain briefly, if you will, how you know that we and our allies will
be defeated.
    Loris nodded. "Briefly, as you ask. Siyuf's been sending patrols
into the countryside to forage for food. They take whatever our
people have and leave promissory notes in which our people have
no confidence. Notes that are almost certainly valueless, in fact. Our
farmers have begun hiding what food they have and organizing bands
to resist--"
    Oosik interrupted him. "You gave your permission, Calde, at the
parade. I was thunderstruck."
    Hyacinth said, "You think you're terribly clever, don't you, Oosie.
What would you have done?"
    Oosik started to speak, but thought better of it.
    "He would have told Generalissimo Siyuf that she'd have to buy
what our farmers brought her--or so I imagine." Silk shrugged. "They
wouldn't have brought enough, or nearly enough, and they wouldn't
have accepted promises to pay later. Soon she would have had to send
out patrols, as she's doing now, or shut her eyes to the fact that unit
commanders were foraging for themselves. In either case, we would
have had to stop them, or anyway we would have had to try. Within a
short time we'd have been fighting Trivigauntis in the streets. I hoped
to prevent that, or at least postpone it; but I'm afraid that I gained
very little time for us, and it may be that I gained none at all."
    "We could have sent out foraging parties of our own," Bison
suggested.
    Maytera Mint shook her head. "Then the farmers would have hated
us instead of them. If they must hate somebody, it's far better that
they hate Siyuf and her Trivigauntis."
    "The point," Loris interposed, "is that they're beginning to resist.
You've helped them, and we're helping them more."
    Potto grinned at Silk. "Cementing their loyalty to us, you see. We're
the government of the good old days, coming up out of the ground
with armloads of slug guns, and giving them away." He tittered. "We
get food aplenty for our bios. It's mostly chems with us down below,
and they don't need it."
    "We estimate that fifteen thousand of General Mint's fifty thousand-odd
were countryfolk," Loris continued. "They're armed now, thanks
to you. We've armed another four thousand thus far, and we continue
to distribute arms. This sibyl--"
    "I'm a laywoman again," Maytera Marble told him.
    "This officious laywoman once boasted that though others might
be tempted to lie, her figures were accurate. So are mine. Inside of
three months, Siyuf will be unable to feed her troops, to say nothing of
her horses, mules, and camels. Having no alternative, she'll return to
Trivigaunte. By then half the city will have abandoned your rebellion.
We came to inform you of that, and demand that you restore our
personal accounts."
    "And keep your hands off the Fisc," Potto subjoined.
    "That will be guaranteed by their surrender." Loris looked around
the table, a councillor so rich in wisdom and experience that even
Maytera Mint was inclined to accept everything that he said. "Would
you care to hear our terms?"
    "No." Silk paused, listening to the sounds of hurrying feet in the
foyer. "We haven't time. I accept. We surrender. We can discuss
terms when we have more leisure. That was why I hoped you'd
remain, Councillor. It would have facilitated--"
    At that moment I burst into the room. "They're coming, Calde,
like you said. A couple of hundred, some on horses."
    "Thank you, Horn." Silk smiled sadly. "They'll knock, I
believe--at least I hope they will. If they do, delay them as long as you
can, please."
    Potto was on his feet again. "We accept your surrender. Let's go,
Cousin!"
    Maytera Marble stepped into their path. "Let me remind you of
what I told you at my son's. Calde Silk's surrender is valid and
binds everyone. Patera Silk's means nothing at all. Do you accept
him as Calde? For life?"
    The door to the kitchen flew open then, and Hossaan strode in with
a needler in each hand; behind him came a dozen women brandishing
slug guns. "That life may be short," he told Silk. "It will be, unless you
get your hands up. The rest of you, too."
    One by one Hyacinth, Silk, Remora, Potto, Spider, and Horn
complied, Maytera Marble and Bison raising their hands last, and
together. Silk said, "You realize, I hope, that this is fundamentally a
misunderstanding, a falling out among friends. It can be smoothed
over, and soon will be."
    "Spread out," Hossaan told the women who had entered with him.
"Each cover a prisoner." He smiled at Silk, a smile that did not reach
his hooded eyes. "I hope you're right, Calde. On the personal level,
I like you and your wife. I'm carrying out Colonel Abanja's--"
    The crack of a needler cut him off. Ragged fire from the slug guns
ended in a choking cloud of plaster dust and an ear-splitting roar as
most of the west wall fell, severed from its foundations by the azoth
Silk had received from Doctor Crane and given to Maytera Mint.

                  Chapter 14 -- The Best Thieves in the Whorl

"Patera?" Horn inquired softly. "Calde?"
    Silk sat up. "What is it?"
    "Nettle's asleep. Just about everybody is, but I knew you weren't.
I could see your eyes."
    Silk nodded, the motion almost invisible in the darkness of the
freezing tent. "You're right, I wasn't; and you're afraid, as we all
are, and want reassurance. I'll reassure you as much as I can, though
that isn't very much."
    "I have some questions, too."
    Silk smiled, his teeth flashing in the gloom. "So do I, but you can't
answer mine. I may be able to answer a few of yours. I'll try."
    Nettle whispered, "I'm not asleep. Horn thought I was, but I was
pretending so he'd sleep." Horn took her hand as she said, "I've got
a question too."
    "Reassurance first," Silk told them. "You may need it more than
you realize. It's quite unlikely that Generalissimo Siyuf will have you
executed or even imprisoned. Hossaan--that's Willet's real name,
he's a Trivigaunti--knows that you and Horn were at the palace
to help Moly. Besides, you're hardly more than children. Siyuf's a
harsh woman, but not a cruel one from what I've seen; she wouldn't
command the loyalty she does if she were. I can only guess, but I
believe that you and Horn will be questioned and released."
    Horn asked, "Is there anything you don't want us to tell?"
    "No, tell them everything. Nothing you can say can harm Hyacinth
or Moly or me. Or Patera Remora and Patera Incus, or even Spider.
Nor can anything you say harm you. The better they understand your
place in all this, the more likely it is that you'll be set free once they've
learned all they can from you--or so it seems to me."
    In a whisper, Nettle asked, "Does this mean we've failed, Patera?"
    "Of course not. I'm not sure what you're asking about  whether
you're afraid we've failed as human beings--"
    "Failed the gods."
    "No." There was resolution in Silk's voice. "How old are you?"
    "Fifteen."
    "I'm eight years older. It seems an enormous separation to me, as
no doubt it does to you. How does it appear to His Cognizance, do
you think?"
    Horn said, "Like nothing. His Cognizance was an old, old man
when we were born."
    "When I was, too. Consider then how young we must appear to Pas,
who built the whorl--or to the Outsider, who shaped our forebears
from the mud of the Short-Sun Whorl." Silk fell silent, listening to
the slow pacing of the sentries outside, and Remora's soft snores.
    "Since the Outsider began us, let us begin with him. I've never seen
him, except in a dream, and even then I couldn't see his face clearly;
but he's seen me from the beginning--from before my own beginning
in fact. He knows me far better than I know myself, and he chose
me to perform a small task for him. I was to save our manteion
from Blood.
    "Blood is dead. Musk, who was the owner of record and who
I once considered worse than Blood, is dead too. Patera Remora
over there is the new augur on Sun Street--I believe that may be
the Outsider's way of telling me the task is done. You both helped
do it, and I'm sure he's grateful, as I am."
    Horn muttered, "We didn't do anything, Patera."
    "Of course you did--but listen. I may be wrong, wrong about
having saved our manteion, and wrong about the sign. I may fail
after all; I can't be sure. But I can be sure of this--he will forgive
me if I fail, and he would surely forgive you. I know him more than
well enough to be certain of that."
    Nettle said, "I was mostly thinking about Echidna. I saw her, when
she talked to Maytera Mint, I was there."
    "So was I. Echidna told her to destroy the Alambrera. It has been
destroyed, and the convicts have been freed. I freed them."
    "Yes, but--"
    "Echidna also ordered the destruction of the Ayuntamiento. It is
still in existence, if you like, but consider: Lemur, who headed it so
long, is dead; so is Loris, who succeeded him."
    "Maytera says that wasn't really him," Nettle objected. "She says
Maytera Mint said Potto just works the councillors that we see, like
you'd work a puppet."
    Silk chuckled, a small, cheerful sound in the darkness. "Like the
wooden man that Horn had when you were small."
    "Yes, Patera."
    "That's true, I'm sure; and I'm equally sure that at one time it
was true of all five councillors. Before Doctor Crane killed Lemur,
however, we learned that the real Lemur had died some time before--years
before, probably. The manipulated body had become Lemur,
the only Lemur in existence, though it thought itself still manipulated
by the corpse in Lemur's bed. Do you follow this, Horn? Nettle?"
    Nettle said, "I think so, Patera."
    "When I had time to think about that, which wasn't until Doctor
Crane and I had been pulled out of the water, I wondered about
the other councillors. If Councillor Loris had remained with us as I
asked, and if he had found it impossible to divert his consciousness
to another chem, I would have known--and we would have held the
presiding officer of the Ayuntamiento. As it was, I would guess that
Loris himself knew before he came to treat with us; if he hadn't, he
wouldn't have snatched up the needler Generalissimo Oosik offered
to Councillor Potto and begun firing. He understood Generalissimo
Siyuf well enough to realize that she would have him executed on
some pretense, and knew he had his life to lose like any other man. In
the event, he lost it sooner; but he had the satisfaction of a combatant's
death, which may have meant something to him."
    "One of those women shot him?"
    Maytera Marble's voice reached them out of the darkness, spectrally
reminiscent of old Maytera Rose's. "Yes. I watched it. I saw him fall."
    Silk told her, "I've been expecting you to join us, Moly. I would
have invited you, but I wasn't sure where you were, and it wouldn't
do to go stumbling around waking up people."
    "Certainly not, Patera."
    Nettle said, "I'm glad you're here, Maytera. I want to ask something.
Everybody says we run things in Trivigaunte. The Rani's a woman
and so's Generalissimo Siyuf. I saw her. So who were the women that
Willet let in, the ones that shot Councillor Loris? Why did they take
orders from him?"
    Maytera Marble sniffed. "You've a great deal to learn, Nettle.
Doesn't Horn do what you tell him, sometimes, even when he doesn't
want to?"
    "I don't believe I can improve on that," Silk said, "but I'll enlarge
upon it a trifle. They are spies, of course--agents of the Rani's,
as Hossaan himself is. I'm reasonably sure that they're Vironese as
well. Hossaan has told me that he and Doctor Crane were the only
Trivigauntis in the ring they built up here, and I believe he was telling
the truth."
    Horn began another question, but Silk stopped him. "I ought to
tell you that before I went into the tunnels by the lake I saw someone
ahead of me. Later I saw footprints, and still later I came across the
body of someone who Hammerstone told me had been a woman."
    "Don't even talk about that place," Nettle said, "every time I hear
about it, it sounds so awful."
    "It is. But if I may talk about the dead woman, I would imagine
she traveled here from Trivigaunte from time to time, probably in
the guise of a trader. Chenille carried messages to a woman in the
market, and the dead woman I found may well have been the same
person. Hossaan wouldn't have counted her as a part of Doctor
Crane's ring, since she wasn't subject to Doctor Crane's orders.
I'd imagine she stayed here no more than a few weeks--a month
at most--when she came."
    "Does anybody know about him?" Nettle inquired. "About
Hammerstone? Is he, you know, all right?"
    Maytera Marble murmured, "You want to know if I'm a widow so
soon. I don't know, but I doubt it. He was away searching for materials
when Willet and his women came in, but he might have saved us all if
he'd been there. He would certainly have saved Patera Incus and me,
and the daughter we had begun to build, if he could.
    Horn said, "There were two hundred Trivigauntis coming, Maytera.
Patera had me out in the street watching for them. They would've
killed Hammerstone, unless he gave up."
    "We'll never know." Maytera Marble seated herself beside Nettle.
    "He may rescue you still," Silk told Maytera Marble. "He may well
rescue us all. From what I've seen of him, he will surely try, and that
worries me--but I'd like to return to Nettle's question.
    "Because women have more power than men in Trivigaunte, Nettle,
most people would expect that most or all of the Rani's agents would
be women--that's as good a reason for employing men as I can think
of. But it would be natural for male agents from Trivigaunte to recruit
women here. Women would be more sympathetic to their point of
view--Hyacinth said something like that when we first met--and
men from Trivigaunte would naturally seek out courageous, assertive
women like the ones among whom they had lived at home.
    "We all tend to generalize too much, I'm afraid. If most augurs
are pious and naive, for example, we imagine that every augur
is, though if we were to reflect we would see immediately that it
cannot be true. In the same way, there are bound to be bold men
in Trivigaunte and brave and forceful women here--in fact there is
a fine example of the latter sitting with us now. As for those women
following Hossaan's instructions, it really doesn't matter if they were
Vironese or Trivigauntis. If they wouldn't obey, they would have
been of no value to Doctor Crane and Hossaan, and would have
been eliminated long ago."
    "I want to ask about something else, Calde, but I'm afraid Maytera
will be mad at me."
    "That's the risk you run, Nettle dear."
    Horn said, "Tell me and I will."
    "No. If those women could spy and shoot a coundilor, I can do
this. Calde, I was listening at the door. Maytera caught me and
made me quit, but when she went to work on her child again I
came back."
    "I'm not angry," Maytera Marble told her, "but you should be angry
with yourself. It was wrong, and you knew it."
    Silk said, "It hardly matters now."
    "Yes, it does. Because I heard something fight at the end, and it's
why I got up when I heard you talking to Horn. You--you just... Gave up. The
councillor they shot? Loris? He was talking about giving away slug guns..."
    "And I said that we could discuss terms later. That we surrendered."
    "Uh-huh."
    Horn objected, "We were winning. Everybody said so."
    "Horn, he said _they_ were, because the farmers would fight the
Trivigauntis and they'd have to leave. Then the Calde said all right
we give up, we'll settle the arrangements when we've got more time.
Only Maytera said he had to be calde, because if he wasn't it wouldn't
mean anything."
    "Patera Silk has never been vindictive, dear."
    "I know, Maytera, and I know that word, but I don't know what
you mean by it. Didn't you want to kill the councillors, Calde?"
    "Of course not. As far as our insunection is concerned, what I've
always wanted to do is end it. I want peace, and a reunited Viron.
Echidna ordered Maytera Mint to destroy the Ayuntarniento and
return the city to Scylla. Haven't you ever thought about what that
last instruction meant, Nettle?"
    "Not enough, I guess."
    "Then think now." Silk's fingers groped for Ins ambion. "Returning
to Scylla means returning to our Charter Scylla wrote it, and no
quantity of prayers and sacrifices would be a convincing demonstration
of loyalty as long as we violate it. The Charter demands
an Ayuntamiento. Did you know that?"
    Horn said, "I did, Patera."
    "From that, it's clear Echidna does not want us to do away with
the institution of the Ayuntamiento. There can be nothing wrong,
surely, with a board of advisors elected at three-year intervals,
which is what the Ayuntarniento is intended to be--a council of
experienced men and women to whom the calde can turn in time
of trouble. Echidna was demanding that the present and quite
clearly illegitimate Ayuntamiento be dissolved, a demand entirely
in harmony with her implied demand that our government return
to the Charter.
    "That being the case, the way to peace was clear, as I had seen from
the beginning. I would remain as calde as long as the people wanted it. I
could declare the present Ayuntamiento ended, announce an election,
and urge everyone to support the surviving members of the previous
Apintamiento. Those who still favored their cause would vote for
them as well, and they would be reelected. Would have been, to be
realistic."
    "You sound so sad, Calde." Nettle shivered, snuggling against Horn.
"It might happen yet."
    "Yes, it may. I was thinking of the time at Blood's when Councillor
Loris presented a list of demands to Moly and me."
    "Absurd demands," Maytera Marble declared.
    "Extreme demands, certainly. He wanted hostages from the Rani,
and he would have put Generalissimo Oosik and the other high-ranking
officers on trial. I defied him."
    "You offered to resign, too," Maytera Marble said. "You were very
brave, Patera."
    "I was very stupid, very tired, and very frightened. If I hadn't been,
I would have realized that the thing to do was to agree, stop the
fighting, and go to work on the details. Have you ever talked with
the clerks in the Juzgado, Nettle?"
    "No, Calde."
    "I have. I made it a point to, because I knew Hyacinth's father was
a head clerk; she hates him, yet she will always be his daughter. I
located him, and wliile we were talking about reforming the Fisc he
said that the devils are in the details.
    Silk chuckled, cheered by the memory. "Later, one of the officers of
the Fisc made the same remark; and I recalled what we were taught in
the schola--that the malice of devils is such that they destroy even evil
people. My teachers didn't really believe in them, as Patera Pike did;
but I believe that what they said was true, and that what Hyacinth's
father and the official from the Fisc said was true as well.
    "MI right, let the Ayuntamiento accommodate the devils. Peace
would mean that nine-tenths of Siyufs horde could go home.
Thousands of innocent women would be spared horrible deaths
in the tunnels, we could buy enough food for those who remained
here, and the Ayuntamiento's chief weapon would be snatched from
its hands--let it give our farmers slug guns, those guns would only
make us stronger."
    "You were going to win by giving up?"
    Silk shook his head. "No one wins by giving up, Nettle, though many
fights are not worth winning. I was going to gain what I wanted--peace--by
persuading my enemy that he gained by letting me have
it, which happened to be the truth. I still hope to do it, though the
prospect isn't bright at the moment."
    Horn said, "General Mint and Colonel Bison got away. So did
Generalissimo Oosik." Nettle added, "The fat councillor did, too, I
think. Is there going to be peace now because of what you said?"
    "I don't know, but I doubt it." Silk sighed. "It will depend mostly
on the Trivigauntis; and as long as they hold us, Generalissimo Oosik
and General Mint are liable to regard them as enemies as bad as the
Ayuntamiento, if not worse.
    Maytera Marble sniffed. "I don't see why they want us."
    "His Cognizance is fond of giving short and long answers," Silk told
her. "In this case, he'd probably say that the short answer was that
Siyuf has a bad conscience. She came to Viron as an ally, ostensibly,
but with the secret hope of making it dependent upon Trivigaunte -
a servant city."
    "Did she actually say that, Patera?"
    "Of course not; but she was quick to believe that we were plotting
against her, and people who always suspect they're being cheated are
generally trying to cheat. When General Mint and Patera Remora
tried to treat with the Ayuntamiento, Siyuf feared we'd come to an
agreement unfavorable to Trivigaunte. By taking our Juzgado, she
showed clearly that she intended to govern Viron. Today--though
that's yesterday now, I suppose--I made the mistake of telling
Councillor Loris that he and Potto could confer in person with
us, since that was what they wanted. I thought it was safe, because
Hossaan would report everything we said to Colonel Abanja, and I
was resolved to say nothing that Siyuf could object to.
    "I don't think you did, Calde, except there at the end."
    "Thank you. There at the end it no longer rnattered. Horn and
Mucor had told me the Trivigauntis were on their way, and I knew
I'd overplayed my hand just by letting the councillors into the Calde's
Palace. Unfonunately, Hossaan overplayed his as well. If he and his
spies had simply kept us from leaving until the troopers arrived,
something might have been gained. I doubt it, but it might have
been. As things are, a great deal has been lost--peace first of all.
Peace is always a great deal, but now it's more urgent than ever,
because of Pas's threat."
    Silk wiped his eyes. "Having saved our manteion, I tried to save
Viron and the whorl, Nettle; and now all I can do is sit here
crying."
    "That's a awfully bigjob for just one man, Calde, saving the whorl.
Do you really think Pas is going to destroy us?"
    As if he had not heard her, Silk said, "We were talking about
those who escaped, and no one mentioned Oreb. Did he get out?
Did anyone see him?"
    A horse voice croaked, "Bird here!"
    "Oreb! I should've known. Come down here."
    Wings beat in the darkness, and Oreb landed with a thump.
    "His Cognizance reminded me once that there are people who love
birds so much they cage them, and others who love them so much i
they free them. Then he said that Echidna and the Seven were
people of the first kind, and Pas a person of the second kind. When
I bought Oreb, he was in a cage; and when I freed him I smashed
that cage--never thinking that it might have seemed a place of refuge
to him."
    "Horn said, "I never thought of the whorl being a cage."
    "I never had either, until the Outsider showed me what lies
outside it."
    "Maybe Auk and Chenille can steal General Saba's airship, Calde,
and take Sciathan back to Mainframe like he wants."
    "Good man," Oreb informed them. "Man fly."
    "He is, Oreb, in both senses, I believe. So is Auk, and even Chenille
is a very competent person in her way. But to tell you the truth I have
no confidence in them at all when it comes to this--less than I would
have in Potto and Spider, if anything. Frankly, I've never imagined
that there was any way to get Auk and his followers to Mainframe
other than getting General Saba and her crew to fly them there.
    "That was another reason for wanting peace, and in fact it was the
most pressing one--as long as there was war, Siyuf would want to
keep the airship here. It couldn't be used in the tunnels, of course, but
eventually the Aytintamiento would have to send troops to the surface
if it hoped to win, and the airship would be a terrible adversary.
    "With the war ended, it might--I say might--have been possible
to persuade her to do what we wanted. Now we'll have to wait for
it to end, I'm afraid, or at least for Pas to do whatever he plans to
do first to drive humanity out. I can think of a dozen possibilities,
none pleasant."
    Silk awaited another question, but even Oreb was silent. At length
he said, "Now let's sleep if we can. We'll have a trying day tomorrow,
I'm afraid."
    "Ah--Calde?" Remora's nasal voice floated out of the darkness.
    "Yes, Patera. I'm sorry we woke you. We tried to keep our
voices down."
    "I have listened with great, um, edification. Sorry I did not wake
sooner, eh? But there is one, um, point. Eland, eh? I knew him. You
said--ah--"
    "I said I had a vague description of his killer. Vague from our point
of view, anyway. I believe it was Hossaan, whom you may have met
as Willet, my driver. I won't tell you at present how I obtained it.
Let us sleep, Patera."
    "Good girl," Oreb confided.
    "Add cot end add word," Tick commented sleepily from his place
at Hyacinth's side.

Staring up at the still-distant airship, Silk clenched his teeth, determined
equally that the icy wind that whipped his robe would not make
them chatter and that the airship would not make him gape, though so
immense a flying structure seemed less an achievement than a force of
nature. Ever so slowly, it edged its vast, mummy-colored bulk across
the gray midday sky, lost at times among low clouds dark with snow,
always reappearing nearer the winter-wet meadow where he and his
companions waited under guard.
    Maytera Mint's grip on his arm tightened, and she uttered a sound
like a raindrop falling into a scrub bucket, then another, and another.
He turned from his contemplation of the airship to her. "Why are you
making that noise, Maytera?"
    Hyacinth whispered, "She's crying. Let her alone."
    "Wise girl!" Oreb approved.
    "You won't be able to take your bird, Calde." Dismounting and
dropping her reins, Saba strode over to them, her porcine face
sympathetic and severe. "I'm sorry, but you can't." She indicated
Hyacinth with her riding crop. "You had some sort of animal too,
girly. Where is it?"
    "A c-catachrest," Hyacinth told her through chattering teeth. "I
gave him a little of my food this morning and sent him away."
    Silk said, "You'll have to leave, Oreb. Fly back to the place where
you were caught if you can."
    "Good Silk!"
    "Good bird too, but you must go. Go back to the Palustrian
Marshes, that's where the man in the market said you came from."
    "Bird stay," Oreb announced, then squawked and took wing as
Saba cut at him with her quirt.
    "Sorry, Calde, I didn't try to hit it. Have a nice breakfast?"
    "Baked horse-fodder," Hyacinth told her.
    "Horde bread, you mean. We turn little girls like you into troopers
with it."
    Silk said, "I had assumed that we would be questioned by
Generalissimo Siyuf."
    Behind him, Incus began, "We are holy _augurs_. You _cannot_
simply--" He was jointed by Remora, and Remora by Spider.
    "Quiet!" Saba snapped. "I'll have the lot of you flogged. By Sphigx,
I'll flog you myself!" She counted them, her lips twitching. "Eight,
that's right."
    She raised her voice. "You're going up in my airship. The calde said
he'd like to see it, and he's going to. So are the rest of you, as soon
as they drop the '_ishsh_. We're taking you home so the Rani and her
ministers can have a look at you, but anybody who gives us trouble
might not get there. She might sort of fall off first. Understand? If
you--if..."
    Seeing Saba's eyes sink and grow dull, Silk took his arm from
Hyacinth's shoulders. "Can you and I walk a step or two, General?
I'd like a word with you in private."
    Saba's head nodded like a marionette's. "I've been in here all
morning, Silk. She thinks you won't come back."
    "I see." He drew Saba aside. "But she isn't going to kill us, or she
wouldn't have threatened to. I'm not worried about myself, Mucor;
the Outsider will take care of me in one way or another. I'm worried
about Hyacinth, and about you."
    "Grandmother will take care of her, Silk."
    "At the moment, Hyacinth's taking care of her; but no doubt you're
right. With your grandrnother gone, however, there's no one to take
care of you."
    Saba laughed, a mirthless noise that made Silk shudder even as
he worried that the watching troopers had heard it. "I'm going with
you, Silk, way up in the air. The man who broke his wings is there
already."

"You can't! Can't you understand? You absolutely cannot!" Assistant
Day Manager Feist trotted at Sand's side, snapping and yelping.
    "It's right up there, Sarge." Hammerstone waved toward the sentries
before Siyufs door. "See the twist troopers? Got to be it." The "twist
troopers" in question were moving the safety catches of their slug
guns to the <font size=2>FIRE</font> position.
    Ignoring them, Sand grasped the front of Feist's tunic and
separated his highly polished shoes from Ermine's three-finger-thick
stair runner. "You say we can't go barging in, right?"
    Feist gasped and choked.
    "Fine, we've got it. So you're going first. You've got to talk your
way past those girls and get inside."
    Sand paused at the top of the stair, displaying Feist to the sentries
while covering them with his slug gun, gripped in one hand like a
needler. "When you get in, tell the Generalissimo we got big news
to trade real cheap, and if--"
    The intricately-carved sandalwood door of the Lyrichord Room
had opened; a tall and strikingly handsome brunette in a diaphanous
gown peered out. "Hi. You want to see Generalissimo Siyuf?"
    "You got it, Plutonium." Sand strode toward the door, as an
afterthought tossing Feist over the ornate railing. "You tell her the
First Squad, First Platoon, Company 'S,' Army of Viron's here.
You got all that?"
    The handsome young woman nodded. "Close enough, Soldier. I'm
Violet."
    "Sergeant Sand, pleased. You tell her we won't take much of her
time and we aren't asking much, and she'll be shaggy glad she
talked to us."
    "Wait a minute, she's getting dressed." The door closed.
    "What do you think?" Slate asked Hammerstone. "She goin' to
see us?"
    "One way or the other," Hammerstone told him; almost too swiftly
for the eye to follow, his hands shot out, grasped the barrels of the
sentries' slug guns, and crushed them.

At length, when repeated knockings had produced no result, Maytera
Marble's friend Scleroderma employed the butt of her new needler to
pound the rearmost door of the Calde's Palace. A second floor window
flew open with a bang, and a cracked male voice called, "Who's there?
Visitor? Want to see the Calde? So do I!"
    "I'm here to see Moly," Scleroderma announced firmly. "I'm going
to. Is she all right?"
    "Mollie? Mollie? Good name! Fish name! Relative of mine? Don't
know her! Wait."
    The window slammed down. Scleroderma dropped her needler into
the pocket of her winter coat, drawing the coat so tightly about her
that for a moment it appeared buttonable.
    The door flew open. "Come in! Come in! Cold out there! In here,
too! Wall's down! Terrible! No Mollie. You mean Mucor? She's here,
skinny girl! Know her?"
    "I certainly do, she's Moly's granddaughter. Maybe--"
    "Won't talk," the lean old man who had opened the door declared.
"Asked about Mollie. She talk to you? Not to me! Upstairs! Want to
see her? Maybe she will!"
    Scleroderma, whose weight gave her a pronounced aversion to
stairs, shook her head emphatically as she pushed the door shut
behind her. "She'll catch her death up there, the poor starved little
thing. You bring her down here right away." Waddling after him
through the scullery and into the kitchen, she called to the old
man's fast-vanishing back, "I'll build a fire in the stove and start
her dinner."

High above the Trivigaunti airship, Oreb eyed the cage-like enclosure
swinging below it. The question, as Oreb saw it, was not whether he
should rejoin Silk, but when. It might be best to wait until Silk was
alone. It might also be best to find something to eat first. There
was always food at the big house on the hill, but Oreb had a score
to settle.
    Bright black eyes sharper than most telescopes examined the good
girl pressing herself against Silk without result, then scanned the
orderly rows of pointed houses. The target sighted, Oreb began a
wingover that quickly became a dive.

"You," Pterotrooper Nizam told her new pet, "are going to have to
be as quiet as a mouse in this barracks bag."
    "Ess, laddie."
    "As quiet as _two_ mice. As soon as we get aboard--"
    A red-and-black projectile shot between them with a rush of wind
and a hoarse cry. The new pet bared small teeth and claws in fury.
"Add, add word! Laddie, done by scarred."

Sand's soldiers filled the Lyrichord Room's luxurious sellaria with
polite clankings as Siyuf returned his salute. "I have hear of you,
Sergeant. Why do you come?"
    "You got a couple prisoners--", he began.
    "More than this."
    "Two I'm talking about. This's Corporal Hammerstone."
    Hammerstone stiffened to attention.
    "He's married, only you got his wife and his best buddy. We want
'em back, and what we got to tell you's worth ten of 'em. So here's
what I say. We tell you, and we leave it up to you, sir. If you don't
think it's worth it, say so and we'll clear off. If you do, give 'em
back. What do you say?"
    Siyuf clapped her hands; when the monitor appeared in her glass
she said, "Get Colonel Abanja.
    "To begin, Sergeant, I do not know that I hold the wife or the
friend of this soldier. Violet my darling, bring for me the list that
was last night from Colonel Abanja."
    Violet grinned and winked at Hammerstone. "Sure thing."
    "The wife, the friend, they are soldiers also?"
    Hammerstone said, "No, sir. My wife's a civilian. Her name's Moly.
She's no bigger'n you, sir, maybe smaller. My friend's a bio, a augur,
His Eminence Patera Incus. People think he's the coadjutor. Really
he's the Prolocutor, only people don't know yet."
    The monitor's face gained color, reshaping itself to become that
of Siyuf's intelligence officer.
    "There is here too much of warlockery, Colonel. You see here
soldiers, marvels we should have in museums but here fight us, and
for us also. They are come to offer a bargain. Am I not a woman of
honor?"
    Violet nodded enthusiastically and Abanja said, "You are indeed,
Generalissimo."
    "Just so. I do not cheat, not even these soldiers. So I must know.
Do we have the holy man Incus? Violet, my darling, read the names.
How many now, Colonel?"
    "Eighty-two, sir. There were some other holy men besides the calde,
and I suppose this might be one of them." Abanja leafed through papers
below the field of her glass.
    Leaning over Violet's shoulder, Hammerstone pointed with a finger
thrice the size of hers.
    "I don't really read so good," she whispered. "What's that second
word? It can't--Sweetheart, there's a Chenille in here. Is that the
Chen we know?"
    Abanja looked up. "The paramour of the Vironese who was plotting
to steal our airship, sir. She was seated across the table from me at
that dinner at the calde's residence."
    Hammerstone said, "It says, 'Maytera Marble a holy woman,' on
here, sir. That's my wife, Moly. Patera's here, too. You got them
all right."
    "Then you must give me your information," Siyuf told Sand. "If it
is worth their freedom, I will free them as soon as I can. I do not
say at once. At once may not be possible. But as soon as is possible.
You do not betray your city when you do this?"
    Sand shook his head. "Help it, is what we figure. See, if you're
smart you'll let the calde go when we tell you. And with us, it's him.
He's the top of the chain of command, and we know you got him."
    "Sir, the airship..." Abanja's face was agitated.
    Siyuf motioned her to silence. "We speak of that later, Colonel.
First I must learn what this soldier knows."
    She turned back to Sand. "I will release your calde, you say. I do
not say this. With regard to Calde Silk, I give no promise. You do
not bargain for him; I notice this."
    "Because we know you wouldn't, sir. You'd say you were going to
keep him, and dismissed. But you'll let him go if you're smart. It'll
be better for us and better for you, too. You're going to, is what we
think. Only we want to see to it Hammerstone's wife and his buddy
get loose too."
    Sand hesitated, glancing at Abanja's face in the glass, then back
to Siyuf. "The insurrection's over. That's what we're here to tell you,
sir. Give us your word on Moly and Patera What'shisnarne--"
    "Incus," Hammerstone prompted.
    "And Patera Incus, and we'll give you the details. Have we
got it?"
    "I will release both as soon as I am able. Have I not said? Bring
to me the image of the sole great goddess, and I swear on it. There
is not one here, I think."
    "Your word's good enough for us, sir." Sand glanced at Harnmerstone,
who nodded.
    "All right. You want me to tell you, or you want to ask questions, sir?"
    "First I ask one question. Then you tell, and after I ask more if I
wish. When I am satisfied, I give the order, and if there is a place
to which you wish them brought, we will do it. But not more than
a day's travel.
    Hammerstone said, "The Calde's Palace. That's where me and
Moly have been living." Shale asked, "You got any problem with
that, sir?"
    "No. This is within reason. My question. You say I will let go
your calde, the head of your government. I do not think so, so I
am curious. Why do you say this?"
    "Cause out of all the people you got to deal with here, he's the
one that likes you the most," Hammerstone told her. "I know him
pretty well. Me and Sarge picked him up one time on patrol, and I
shot the bull with him before he gave me the slip. Then too, I been
living in his palace like I said, and I heard a lot from Moly."
    "I helped Councillor Potto interrogate him the next time we got
him," Sand said, "so I know him pretty well too. He's big for peace.
He was trying to stop the insurrection before you got here."
    For a second or more, Siyuf studied Sand as if she hoped to find a
clue to his thoughts in his blank metal face. "You have kill this man
Potto. After, I suppose? This Mint tells. But you have not kill him
well. He is now back."
    "I been dead too," Sand told her, and Violet gasped. "I could give
you the scoop on that, but it'd take a while."
    "Rather I would hear of the end of the insurrection. This you
proposed."
    "Good here. Last night there was a confab at the Calde's
place. None of us were there, but we heard from General Mint.
Your people tried to grab everybody, only four made it out,
and Councillor Loris is K. The ones that gave you the slip
was her and Colonel Bison, and the Generalissimo and Councillor Potto."
    "I know of this." Siyuf delivered a withering glance to Abanja's
image in the glass.
    Schist said, "Tell her about surrendering, Sarge. That's pretty
important."
    "Yeah, he did. The calde did. Maybe you don't know that, sir. It
was before your people came in."
    Siyuf nodded. "Colonel Abanja have report this. She has had
an informant in your calde's household, a most praiseworthy
accomplishment."
    Abanja said, "Thank you, Generalissimo."
    "So the four that got clear put their heads together, see? Our
generalissimo, he'd come in a Guard floater, and they piled in and
took off, Councillor Potto too. Naturally he said, well, your calde's
called quits so we're in charge again. Councillor Loris's dead so I'm
the new presiding officer. You're working for me, and if you do what
I say maybe I won't shoot you."
    Schist interjected, "He figured they all had it coming, I guess.
What we figure is, not just them. He'll probably stop Sarge's works
real good."
    Violet said, "_Ah!_" and Siyuf laughed. "Shadeup, after so long a
night. Potto is not friend to this soldier who not one month past
shoot him. Potto has the... What is this word?"
    "He'll have it in for him."
    Sand nodded. "But he can't hand out anything that I can't take. I
been dead already, just like I said. You want to talk about me, or
you want to hear the rest?"
    Hammerstone said, "They went around quite a bit, to hear Colonel
Bison tell it. Only there was one thing they didn't have any trouble
with. Tell 'em, Sarge."
    "You foreigners, sir." Sand leveled his huge forefinger at Siyuf.
"Councillor Potto's mean as a bad wrench, and he hates you worse'n
dirt in his pump. General Mint, she hates Councillor Potto, but you're
number two on her list."
    "She is the central, to be sure. The sole woman." Siyuf looked
thoughtful. "Colonel, what is it you say of this?"
    In the glass, Abanja's image shrugged. "It doesn't run counter to
any information I have, Generalissimo."
    "You have leave off two, Sergeant. What of those?"
    "I didn't leave 'em out, sir," Sand protested, "I hadn't got to 'em
yet. Colonel Bison's General Mint's man. If she says spit oil, he says
how far?"
    "I grasp this. Proceed."
    "We haven't seen Generalissimo Oosik, but Corporal Slate here
chewed things over with his driver this morning, the one that brought
him and got them clear. Tell her, Slate."
    "He brought a slug gun to the meetin', sir," Slate began. "That's
what his driver says, 'n he says he don't usually have nothin' but a
needler 'n his sword, see? So who was that for? Then when they was
talkin' in back--you know how them armed floaters are laid out, sir?
There's no wall or nothin' between the seats up front and the back,
so he tuned in. General Mint said somethin' about how Councillor
Loris was the head of the Ayuntamiento, and it was Generalissimo
Oosik that said he was dead. He thinks maybe Generalissimo Oosik
did it himself, he seemed so happy about it."
    Sand looked from Violet to Abanja, then at Siyuf. "Only Councillor
Potto's got it in for him, and he knows it. He was like a brigadier back
before the insurrection, so he had to be one of the Ayuntamiento's
floor bolts. But when Calde Silk came along, he went over right away
and got made head of the whole host of Viron. He knows Councillor
Potto, so he's got to know how pissed off he is about that."
    Siyuf, who had been slouching in her chair, straightened up. "You
desire me to set free your calde to save your Viron, so much is plain.
I do not care about your Viron."
    Violet said, "I do, a little. Besides, I know his wife."
    "You're thinking it's going to go back the way it was," Sand told
Siyuf. "Them in the tunnels and us on top. Stuff it. Like we say,
there's one thing they're together on."
    He paused and Abanja said, "That we must return to our own city,
I'm sure. He's probably right, Generalissimo."
    "I am, only you're not. What they're saying, all four of them, is
that they can't let you go back. Or won't. To start off, they don't
think you'll go."
    Sand wanted for Siyuf to speak, but she did not.
    "So they're thinking let's take care of this, wipe 'em out--that's
you, sir--before they can get reinforcements from Trivigaunte."
    Hammerstone declared, "The calde wouldn't do that, or I don't
think so, sir. They're getting set now, getting General Mint's troopers
together again, and lining up the Guard and getting the Army into
position. If we weren't detached, we'd be with it this minute. You
got maybe a day, maybe two. But if you let the calde go, he'll put
a lid on it."
    "You are wise," Siyuf said. "I agree. Colonel Abanja, you have our
friend Calde Silk? Bring him to my Juzgado, I meet him there. This
holy woman Marble, and the holy man, also. Saba's airship have
not depart?"
    "I'm afraid it left an hour ago, Generalissimo," Abanja sounded
regretful. "I'll contact General Saba on the glass, however, and convey
your request that she return to Viron."
    Hammerstone edged closer, his hard features and scratched paint 
incongruous among so much satin, porcelain, and polished rosewood.
"We don't want a request. We want a order. Tell them to turn
around!"
    "This I cannot do," Siyuf explained. "When the airship has leave
Viron, it come under control of our War Minister in Trivigaunte.
She will send it back, I think, when I ask."
    "Get her now. Tell her!"
    "This I cannot either. Monitor, this is sufficient of Abanja. She
know what she is to do."
    Siyuf turned back to Sand and Hammerstone. "Abanja must speak
to General Saba, then Saba to our War Minister. While they speak
I must make prepares for this attack. It may be we attack first. This
we see."
    As Abanja's face faded to gray, Violet murmured, "I'd help if I
could, only--"
    "Sure, Plutonium." Slinging his slug gun, Sand stooped, grasped an
astonished Siyuf about the waist, and tossed her headfirst onto his
broad steel shoulder. "You come too. You can keep her company."
    Shale caught Violet's arm. "You make one more for us to trade,
see? That don't ever hurt."

Sitting crosslegged on one of the ridiculous bladders that served as
mattresses aboard the airship, Silk found it almost impossible to
remain upright without holding onto the swaying, whispering bamboo
grill that substituted for a floor. "You're wonderfully cheerful," he told
Auk. "I admire it more than I can say. Cheerfulness is a sacred duty."
He swallowed. "A cheerful agreement with the will of the gods is
a--a--"
    "I been sick already," Auk told him. "Had the dry heaves, too.
Worst thing since I busted my head down in the tunnels."
    The Flier smiled impishly. "I heard no cheerful agreement to the
wishes of Mainframe at that time, however. Cursing is not a new
thing to me, and my own tongue is a superior vehicle to this Common
Tongue we speak. But never have I heard curses such as that."
    Face down and miserable behind Auk, Chenille muttered, "Just
don't talk about it, all right?"
    "I do not. Instead I talk of cursing, a different thing. Should I say
in this Common Tongue, may your pubic hair grow longer than your
lies and become entangled in the working of a mill, it is but laughable.
In my own tongue, it soars to the sun and leaves each hearer awed. Yet
the cursing of Auk was new to me, grand and hideous as the birth of
devils."
    Silk managed to smile. "I have been sick, actually. I was sick in
the cage that swings so horribly in the wind, and we were so tightly
packed into it that I couldn't help soiling myself and Hyacinth, and
Patera Remora, too; they bore it with such fortitude and good will
that I felt worse."
    Hyacinth smiled as she sat down beside him. "You didn't get a
whole lot on me, but you filled up one of his shoes. If you're feeling
better now, you should take a look around. Gib showed me, and it's
pretty interesting."
    "Not yet." Silk found his handkerchief and wiped his nose.
    "It's not like the Juzgado at all, no bars on the windows."
    "Sure." Auk winked. "We can climb right out."
    "I opened one and looked outside. Not long, because it's so cold.
I wish you could see better through the white stuff."
    "That's sheep's hide stretched and scraped till it's real thin," Auk
told her. "When you get it the way you want it, you rub fat on it,
and it lets the daylight in. They use it in the country 'cause they can
make it themselves, but glass costs. It's a lot lighter, too, so that's
why they got it here.
    "See, Patera, even with this as big as it is, everything's got to be real
light, 'cause it's lifting the guns and those charges they blew up the
Alambrera with, and food and water, and palm oil for the engines.
That's going to make it easy for us."
    "To do what?"
    Gib sat down so violently that Silk feared the grill would give way.
"To hook it, Patera. We got to. Only I wish I had Bongo here. He'd
be abram about this place."
    Chenille groaned. "You're all abram. Me, too."
    "This ain't bad," Auk told her. "See, Patera, after they loaded us
on in the city, it had to go northeast to get you, lousewise into the
wind. It was doing this." He illustrated with gestures. "We all got
pretty sick. Only now--"
    "I did not," Sciathan objected. "I am accustomed to the vagaries
of winds."
    "Me neither," Hyacinth told Auk. "I never have been."
    "You weren't on it then. This is nicer, 'cause there's a north wind
and we're heading south. That's why you can't hear the engines much.
They don't have to work hard."
    "We're out over the lake," Hyacinth told Silk, who felt (but did
not say) that it would be a blessing if the airship crashed into
the water.
    "Thing is, Patera, Terrible Tartaros is setting this lay up for us.
It's like we got somebody inside. The fat councillor said they'd do
it in a month, remember? Then I said I got the best thieves in the
city, we can do it quicker. I was thinking two or three weeks, 'cause
we'd have to get clothes like these troopers' and get pals up so they
could pull up the rest--"
    Spider joined the group around Silk, sliding across the woven
bamboo as he shook his head.
    "You got a better way? Dimber here. I don't say mine's best, just
that's how I was thinking. The queer was it'd have to be mostly morts,
likely all morts. Wouldn't be rum, finding morts that wouldn't up tail
if there was a row up here."
    "We'd be too sick." Chenille sat up, pale under her tan.
    Silk began, "If this is indeed the hand of Tartaros--"
    "Got to be. What I was saying, I was figuring maybe three weeks,
and the fat one maybe a month. Then Upstairs here says we only
got a couple days."
    Sciathan nodded.
    "Tartaros heard it and he says, Auk needs a hand. Willet, you tell
the Trivigauntis Auk's knot's going to be at the Cock. They nab us
and haul us up. How long was it? Under a day. So right there's the
difference between a god and a buck like me. Twenty-one to one."
    For a moment there was silence, fined by the distant talk of the
other prisoners, the whispered complaints of the bamboo, the almost
inaudible hum of the engines, and a hundred nameless groanings
and creakings. Silk said, "They have slug guns, Auk. And needlers,
I suppose. You--we--have nothing."
    "Wrong, Patera. We got Tartaros. You watch."
    Chenille stood up; sitting at her feet, Silk found himself a trifle
shocked by her height. She said, "I'm feeling better, I guess. Want
to show me around, Hy? I'd like to see it."
    "Sure. Wait till you look outside."
    He made himself stand. "May I come? I'll try not to..." He groped
for words, reminding himself of Remora.
    "Puke," Chenille supplied.
    "See their beds?" Hyacinth kicked the side of a bladder. "There's
four rows, and twenty-five in a row, so this gondola's meant for a
hundred pterotroopers. Gondola's what you call this thing we're in,
Gib says."
    Silk nodded.
    "Look through the floor and you can see the guns. Their floor's
got to be solid, I guess, so it's iron or anyhow some kind of a metal.
There's three on each side, and the barrels stick out through those
holes. That's why it's so cold here, it comes up through the floor."
    "How do you get them open?" Chenille was wresting with the
fastenings of a port.
    Silk  rapped the wall with his knuckles. "Wood."
    "You've got to pull out both pins, Chen. You're right, they're
wood, bent like on a boat, but really thin."
    Chenille slid back the frame of greased parchment to reveal what
looked like a snow-covered plain bright with sun.
    "There's another gondola ahead of ours," Hyacinth told her, "and
two in back. You can see them if you stick your head out. I don't
know why they don't just have one big, long one."
    "It would break, I imagine," Silk told her absently. "This airship
must bend a good deal at times." He looked out as she had suggested,
peering above him as well as to left and right.
    "Remember when we were up in the air in that floater? I was scared
to death." Her thigh pressed his with voluptuous warmth, and his
elbow was somehow pushing her breast. "But you weren't scared at
all! This is kind of like that."
    "I was terrified." Silk backed away, fighting with all his strength
against the thoughts tugging at his mind.
    Chenille put her head through the port as he had; she spoke and
Hyacinth said, "Because we're blowing along, or that's what I think.
Going with it, you can't feel anything."
    Chenille retreated. "It's beautiful, really beautiful, only I can't see
the lake. You said we were over it, but I guess the fog's too thick.
I was hoping to see the place Auk and me bumped out to, that little
shrine." She turned to Silk. "Is this how the gods see everything?"
    "No," he said. The gods who were in some incomprehensible fashion
contained in Mainframe saw the whorl only through their Sacred
Windows, he felt sure, no matter what augurs might say.
    His sweating hands fumbled the edge of the open port.
    Through Windows and the eyes of those whom they possessed,
although Tartaros could not even do that, Auk said; born blind,
Tenebrous Tartaros could never see.
    Over the snowy plain the long sun stretched from Mainframe to
the end of the whorl--a place unimaginable, though the end of the
whorl must come very soon.
    Through Sacred Windows and other eyes, and perhaps through
glasses, too. No, certainly through glasses when they chose, since
Kypris had spoken through Orchid's glass, had manifested the Holy
Hues in Hyacinth's glass while Hyacinth slept.
    "The Outsider," he told Chenille. "I think the Outsider must be able
to see the whorl this way. The rest of the gods can't--not even Pas.
Perhaps that's what's wrong with them." A shoelace had knotted, as
it always did when he tried to take off his shoes quickly. He jerked
the shoe off anyway.
    Hyacinth asked, "What are you doing?"
    "Earning you, I hope." He pulled off his stockings and stuffed them
into the toes of his shoes, recalling the chill waters of the tunnels and
Lake Limna.
    "You don't have to earn me! You've already got me, and if you
didn't I wouldn't charge you."
    He had her, perhaps, but he had not deserved her--he despaired
of explaining that. "Doctor Crane and I shared a room at the lake.
I doubt that I've mentioned it."
    "I don't care what you did with him. It doesn't matter."
    "We did nothing. Not the way you mean." Memories flooded back.
"I don't believe he was inclined that way; certainly I'm not, though
many augurs are. He told me you'd urged him to give me the azoth,
and said something I'd forgotten until now. He said, 'When I was
your age, it would have had me swinging on the rafters.'"
    Hyacinth told Chenille, "Half the time I don't understand a thing
he says."
    She grinned. "Does anybody?"
    "One does, at least. I looked out the window of that room just as
we've been looking out this opening." Silk put his foot on its edge and
stepped up and out, holding the upper edge to keep from falling. "I
was afraid the Guard would come."
    He had feared the Civil Guard, and had been willing to try to pull
himself up onto the roof of the Rusty Lantern to escape it; yet very
little had been at stake: if he had been taken, he would have been
killed at worst.
    The roof of the gondola was just out of reach; but the side slanted
inward, as the sides of large boats did.
    Much, much more was at stake now, because Auk's faith might kill
them all. How many pterotroopers were on this airship? A hundred?
At least that many, and perhaps twice that many.
    Hyacinth was looking out at him, saying something he could not
understand and did not wish to hear; her hand or Chenille's grasped
his left ankle. Absently, he kicked to free it as he waited, gauging the
rhythm of the airship's slight roll.
    Auk and his followers would wait, biding their time until shadelow
probably, if shadelow came before the airship reached Trivigaunte--break
the hatch that barred them from its body, climb the rope ladder
through the canvas tube that he could just glimpse, and strike with a
rush, breaking necks and gouging out eyes...
    At the next roll. It was useless to wait. Hyacinth would have
called for help already; Auk and Gib would grapple his legs and
pull him inside.
    He jumped, caught the edge of the top of the gondola, and to his
delight found it a small coaming. In some remote place, someone
was screaming. The noise entered his consciousness as he scrambled
frantically up the clinker-laid planks, hooking his leg over the coaming
when the slow roll favored him most.
    A final effort, and he was up, lying on the safe side of the coaming
and almost afraid to look at it. Rolling onto his back put half a cubit
between him and the edge; he pressed his chest with both hands and
shut his eyes, trying to control the pounding of his heart.
    Almost he might have been on top of Blood's wall, with its embedded
sword blades at his shoulder. Almost, except that a fall from Blood's
wall would have been survivable--he had survived one, in fact.
    He sat up and wiped his face with the hem of his robe.
    How foolish he had been not to take off his robe and leave it with
his shoes! The gondola had been cold, the draft from the port colder
still; and so he had kept his robe, and never so much as considered that
he might have lightened himself by some small amount by discarding
it. Yet it was comforting to have it now, comforting to draw its soft
woolen warmth around him while he considered what to do next.
    Stand up, though if he stood he might fall. Muttering a prayer to
the Outsider, he stood.
    The top of the gondola was a flat and featureless deck, painted
mummy-brown or perhaps merely varnished. Six mighty cables
supported the gondola, angled out and stabbing upward into the
airship's fabric-covered body. Forward, the canvas tube snaked up
like an intestine; aft was a hatch secured with lashings, a hatch that
would return him to the gondola--that would, equally, permit those
inside it to leave. Once again he pictured the stealthy advance and
wild charge, a score of young pterotroopers dead, the rest firing,
disorganized at first.                  
    Soon, shouted orders would render them a coherent body. A few
Vironese would have weapons by then, and they might kill more
pterotroopers; but they would be shot down within a minute or two,
and the rest shot as well. Auk and Chenille and Gib would die, and
with them Horn and Nettle and even poor Maytera Marble, who
called herself Moly now. And not long after that, unless he and
Hyacinth were lucky indeed--
    "Hello, Silk."
    He whirled. Mucor was sitting on the deck, her shins embraced by
her skeletal arms; he gasped, and felt the pain of his wound deep in
his chest.
    She repeated her greeting.
    "Hello." Another gasp. "I'd nearly forgotten you could do this.
You did it in the tunnel, sitting on the water--I should have
remembered."
    She bared yellow teeth. "Mirrors are better. Mirrors scare more.
This isn't, is it? I'm just here."
    "It was certainly frightening to hear your voice." Silk sat too, grateful
for the chance.
    "I didn't mean to. I wanted to talk to you, but not where there
were so many people."
    He nodded. "There would have been a riot, I suppose."
    "You were worried about me with so many people gone. My
grandfather came to see if I was all right. The old man and
the fat woman are taking care of me. He wanted to know where
Grandmother and the little augur went, and I told him."
    _My grandfather_ was Hammerstone, clearly; Silk nodded and smiled.
"Does the old man have a beard and jump around?"
    "A little beard, yes."
    Xiphias in that case, not His Cognizance; no doubt the fat woman
was a friend of Xiphias's, or a servant.
    "I've been eating soup.
    "That's very good--I'm delighted to hear it. Mucor, you possessed
General Saba, and there's something that you can tell me that's
very, very important to me. When does she expect us to arrive in
Trivigaunte?"
    "Tonight."
    Silk nodded, he hoped encouragingly. "Can you tell me how long
after shadelow?"
    "About midnight. This will float over the city, and in the morning
they'll let you down."
    "Thank you. Auk intends to try to take control of this airship and
fly it to Mainframe."
    Mucor looked pleased. "I didn't know that."
    "He won't be able to. He'll be killed, and so will others I like. The
only way that I've been--" He heard voices and paused to listen.
    "They're in there." Mucor looked over her shoulder at the dangling
canvas tube.
    "Going down into the gondola? Can they hear us?"
    "They haven't."
    He waited until he heard the hatch thrown back. "What do
they want?"
    "I don't know."
    His forefinger traced small circles on his cheek. "When you go,
will you try to find out, please? It may be important, and I would
be very, very grateful."
    "I'll try."
    "Thank you. You can fly, I know. You told me so in that big
room underground where the sleepers are. Have you been all over
this airship?"
    "Most of it, Silk."
    "I see. The only way that I could think of to stop Auk from trying
to take it and being killed was to disable it some way--that was
why I climbed up here, and you may be able to tell me how to do
it. In a moment I'm going to try to tear the seam of that tube and
climb up."
    "There's a trooper up there."
    "I see. A sentry? In any case, I must find a way to open the seam
first. I should have gotten new glasses; I could have broken them and
cut it with a piece of glass. But Mucor," Silk made his tone as serious
as he could to emphasize the urgency of his request, "you've given
me another way now, at least for the time being. Will you possess
General Saba again for me?"
    She was silent, and as seconds crept by he realized that she had
not understood. "The fat woman," he said, but Mucor would surely
confuse that with the woman Xiphias had found to care for her.
"The woman that you frightened in the Calde's Palace. She spilled
her coffee, remember? You talked to me through her before Hyacinth
and I went into the cage."
    "Oh, her."
    "Her name is General Saba, and she's the commander of this airship.
I want you to possess her and make her turn east. As long as it's going
in the direction that Auk--"
    Mucor had begun to fade. For a second or two a ghostly image
remained, like a green glimmer upon a pool; then it was gone and
he was alone.
    Condemning himself, he rose again. There had been half a dozen
things--eight or ten, and perhaps more--he should have asked.
What was taking place in Viron? Was Maytera Mint alive? What
were Siyuf's plans? The answers had melted into the fabled city of
lost opportunities.
    He walked forward to the tube and examined it. The canvas was
thinner than he had feared, but looked strong and nearly new. His
pockets yielded only his new prayer beads and a handkerchief, the
only items that his captors had let him retain. He detached an arm
of Pas's voided cross and tried to tear the canvas with it, but its
sharpest corner slipped impotendy along the surface. Many men, he
reminded himself angrily, carried small knives for just such occasions
as this--although any such knife would presumably have been taken
from him.
    Even if he had possessed a knife, there was a sentry at the top of
the ladder. If he was able to poke a hole in the canvas and enlarge
it enough to climb through, he would almost certainly be captured
or killed by that sentry when he emerged from the tube. Saba had no
doubt worried that her prisoners might break one of the hatches; but
a single pterotrooper there would be able to hold her position until
she exhausted her ammunition, and her shots would have brought
reinforcements long before then. Saba's prisoners had not escaped
through either hatch--not yet. But Saba's logic confined him as
though he had been its object.
    Shaking his head, he crossed the deck of the gondola to the nearest
cable. Woven of many ropes, it was as thick as a young tree, and its
surface was rougher than the bark of many. Still more significantly,
its angle, here where it was bent through a huge ringbolt, slanted
noticeably off the vertical.
    Removing his robe, he put it over his shoulder and tied it at his
waist. Once he had finished praying and begun to climb, he found
it relatively easy; as a boy he had climbed trees and poles far more
difficult. The key was to fix his eyes on the surface of the cable,
never stealing even a glance at the snowy plain of cloud so achingly
far below.
    He had boasted of his climbing to Horn, while conceding only that
he had climbed less adroitly than a monkey; it was time to make good
that boast...
    Gib missed the companionship of his trained baboon--what would
Bongo think, if Bongo could see him crawling upward with chattering
teeth and sweating palms? Could baboons laugh?
    The airship was, just possibly, turning ever so slightly to its left.
To look down was death, but to look up?
    The whir of the engines sounded louder, but of course he was
somewhat nearer them. He reminded himself sharply that he had
not yet climbed far...
    The airship's southward course must necessarily have put its long
axis across the great golden bar of the sun. If he looked up--if he risked
it, and it was not much risk, surely, he might be able to catch sight of the
sun to one side of the vast hull from which the gondola hung...
    Momentarily, he halted to rest the aching muscles in his thighs,
and glanced upward. Scarcely ten cubits overhead, the cable entered
the monstrous belly of the airship proper; beyond the opening, he
glimpsed the beam to which it was attached.

"Done try, laddie."
    "Tick!" Hyacinth stared, blinking away tears. "Tick, how in the
whorl--"
    Auk handed him to her. "Came in through the window, didn't you,
cully? A dimber cat burglar, ain't you?"
    "My see, wears she putty laddie?" Tick explained. "An Gawk sees,
hue comb wit may. Den my--add word!"
    "Lo, girl." flapping in advance of Silk, Oreb ignored the little
catachrest. "Lo, Auk."
    Auk swore. Hyacinth dropped Tick (who landed on his feet) and
Silk embraced her.

To him, so lost in the ecstasy of her kiss that he scarcely knew that
her right leg had twined about his left, or that her loins ground his,
Horn's distant shout meant less than nothing.
    "_So what?_" Auk inquired from the West Pole. "_Let 'em come_."
    After what seemed an eternity of love, something tapped Silk's arm
and Hyacinth backed away.
    "Calde Silk!" The harsh voice belonged to a gaunt, hard-faced
Trivigaunti officer of forty or more; he blinked, certain that he
should recognize her.
    "You're Calde Silk. Let's not waste time in evasions."
    "Yes, I am." She had clicked into place in his memory, her hand
around a wineglass, her back straight as a slug-gun barrel. "Major
Hadale, this is my wife, Hyacinth. Hyacinth, my darling, may I
present Major Hadale? She's one of General Saba's most trusted
officers. Major Hadale consented to join me for dinner Thelxday,
before we were reunited."
    Oreb eyed Hadale apprehensively. "Good girl?"
    The major herself addressed the lieutenant on her right. "You
were in here an hour ago looking for him. Are you saying he wasn't
here then?"
    "No, sir." The lieutenant's face was set like stone. "He was not. I'm
familiar with his appearance, and I examined every prisoner in this
gondola. He was not present."
    Hadad turned to a trooper with a slug gun. "How long have you
been on post?"
    Silk began, "If I may--"
    "In a moment. How long, Matar?"
    The trooper had stiffened to attention. "Almost my whole watch,
sir."
    Auk spoke into Silk's ear; but if Silk heard him--or anything--he
gave no indication of it. "You're going to ask her if anyone left this
gondola," he told Hadale. "She'll say no, and then I suppose you'll
call her a liar, or the lieutenant will. Can't we--"
    "Before we came down here I asked if she'd seen anybody," Hadale
interrupted. "She said she did. She saw a Vironese holy man. He went
down into this gondola, and he had an order from General Saba that
let him. Is that right, Matar?"
    "Yes, sir."
    Silk fished a folded paper from his pocket. "Here it is. Do you
want to see it?"
    "No!" Angrily, Hadale took it from him. "I want to keep it. I intend
to. Calde, you were careful to remind me that I've been your guest.
You welcomed me and fed me well. That puts me in an uncomfortable
position." She glanced at the crowd that had formed around them.
"Get out of here! Go to the other end of the gondola, all of you."
    Auk smiled and shook his head. Sciathan tugged the sleeve of
Silk's robe. "Now you wish it? If not, you must stop it."
    "You're right, of course." Silk raised both hands. "Auk! All of you!
Go to the other end. You're very brave, and there are only three of
them; but there are at least a hundred others on this airship." He
took Hyacinth's hand.
    "Go 'way!" Oreb seconded him.
    Maytera Marble added her voice to theirs, the crisp tones of a
teacher bringing her classroom to order. "Hear that bird? He's a
night chough, sacred to Tartaros. Trust Tartaros!"
    "_I_ speak for the _gods_." Incus stood on tiptoe, making wide
gestures. "We must _obey_ the calde, whom the _immortal_ gods
have chosen for all of us."
    "Thank you," Silk told the little Flier. "Thank you very much.
Moly--thank you. Thank you, Your Eminence."
    Hadale exhaled, a weary sigh that recalled Maytera Marble. "And I
thank you, Calde. They wouldn't have succeeded, but there would've
been a lot of killing. By Scarring Sphigx, I don't like this! A few days
ago, we were drinking toasts."
    "I like it less," Silk told her. "I propose that we put an end to it.
May I speak with General Saba?"
    Hadad shook her head. "Lieutenant, you and Matar go over there
and keep an eye on those people. They may try to jump you. Shoot
if they do."
    Silk watched them go. "I'd imagine you've got a glass on this airship.
If you won't let me speak with General Saba, may I use it to speak to
your generalissimo?"
    "No." Hadad paused to listen. "We just lost an engine."
    "The second one," Hyacinth told her. "That was what Auk whispered
to my husband, that the first one had stopped. I've been paying
attention to them ever since."
    "Auk's the man who was talking to my wife and me when you
came," Silk explained. "I apologize for not introducing you."
    "I should be in the cockpit, they'll be going crazy up there. Calde,
are you doing this?"
    "Good man!" Oreb assured Hadale. "Good Silk!"
    She gave him a look intended to fry him. "Your bird's an oracle
of Tartaros, so if he says you're good that settles it. Don't you know
that many of us don't believe in Tartaros, Calde? We have a faction
that teaches that Sphigx is the only true god, and Pas and the rest
are just legends. A lot of us believe it."
    Silk nodded, looking at the dangling ladder behind her. "I can
sympathize with that--no doubt it's nearer the truth than many of
our beliefs. May I offer a suggestion, Major?"
    "I've got one, too, but let's hear yours. What is it?"
    He showed her his hands. "We're unarmed. You may search us if
you wish; and we won't attack you--we'll swear to that by Sphigx
or any other god you choose. If you were to hand your needler to
Hyacinth or me, we wouldn't employ it against you--though of
course I'm not asking you to do anything of the kind. That said,
I suggest we go to the place from which this airship is commanded.
Where the tiller is, or whatever you call it. Is that the cockpit?"
    Hadale nodded, her eyes suspicious.
    "First, because we'd like to see it--that's a selfish reason, I admit,
but we would. Second, because they may need you there, you're
clearly anxious to go, and we can talk there as well as anywhere.
Third--"
    Hadale pointed to the dangling ladder. "That's enough. All right.
You two first, and stay in front."

"So," Siyuf began as she sat down in the wooden chair the round-faced
stranger pulled out for her, "are we today at war? I hope you are
lose, General Mint." Without evident curiosity, her quick, dark eyes
surveyed the spartan room, and the snow-splotched drill field and
leaden sky beyond its windows.
    Oosik nodded as he took his seat. "That was a point we planned
to discuss, Generalissimo. Events have overtaken us."
    "Trivigaunte declared war on Viron an hour ago," Maytera Mint
said briskly. "We feel we owe it to you to explain the situation. Our
calde thinks you care nothing for the lives of your troops. He's told me
so. I'm doing something here that's quite foreign to me, I'm assuming
he's wrong. If he isn't, no harm will be done by this meeting. If he
is," she smiled, "some good may come of it. Are your troopers' lives
precious to you?"
    The elevation and decline of Siyuf's epaulets was scarcely visible.
"Valuable is certain. Precious we must speak about, I think. Do you
know how greatly I have desire to meet you, Mint? Do they tell this?
Is Bison to sit in one of these empty chairs? He know of this."
    A new voice exclaimed, "So do I! I vouch for her, my dear young
general. She's expressed the wish many times.
    Siyuf turned to the fat man who had come in. "You I know from
a picture. You are Potto of the Ayuntamiento, that would make war
on my city. You have win, I think, if we are at war."
    Potto sat gingerly, unsure of the strength of his chair. "If only a
declaration were all it took!"
    "I'm Councillor Newt," the round-faced stranger explained, "the
newest member of the Ayuntamiento." He offered his hand.
    She accepted it. "I am your prisoner Siyuf."
    "Not a badly treated one, I hope."
    Potto giggled. "A very well treated one, so far, Cousin. Since
you're a councillor now, I've appointed you an honorary cousin.
Do you mind?"
    Oosik cleared his throat. "Perhaps I should outline the entire
situation, Generalissimo."
    "We are at war, you say. I believe this. I therefore give my name
and rank. These alone, no other fact. Do you desire to exchange me?
I will go."
    Maytera Mint said, "We do, very much."
    "Then I will fight you, after. It is to be regretted, but it is so, You
cannot make me answer your questions--"
    Potto giggled again.
    "No more can I make you to answer mine. I ask anyway. Do you
fight me together, Mint? Or do you fight each other also? When I
return to my horde, it would be good that I know this."
    "Viron's reunited. It's been our calde's dearest wish, and I'm
delighted to say we've realized it."
    Potto rocked with mirth. "Wait till he finds out we're on the same
side! I can't wait to see his face."
    "He'll be radiant with joy. If you understood him as I do, you'd
know it." Maytera Mint spoke to Siyuf, "Let me explain, because all
this hinges on your understanding what your troops are up against.
We've not only made peace among ourselves, but given the city a
new government. There are two main provisions to our agreement.
One is that ours is a Charterial government, which means there must
be a calde and an Ayuntamiento. We agree mutually that calde
Silk is--"
    "My prisoner," Siyuf interrupted.
    "Hardly." Oosik leaned forward, his elbows upon the old deal table,
his bass voice dominating the room. "He may be a prisoner of your
city. We don't know that yet. It is one of the things we need to
discuss."
    Siyuf looked back to Maytera Marble. "You wish to tell me of the
Charter of your city, before this man have interrupt you. I find this
of interest."
    "I think it's vital. If we're to secure the favor of the gods, we have
to govern according to the Charter they gave us. We've been trying
from the start. Now we've succeeded."
    "I would ask who it is who rule this government, but you say Silk,
who is not here. Who is commander here? You?"
    Maytera Mint shook her head. "In military affairs, my own superior,
Generalissimo Oosik. In civil, Councillor Potto, the Presiding Officer
of the Ayuntamiento."
    "In this case you are not needed," Siyuf told her, and turned to
Newt. "Neither you, I think. Yet both sit at this table where is one
chair more. You take our custom that each bring a subordinate? Is
that the explanation I require? You for Potto, Mint for Oosik, Violet
for me, perhaps? I do not think this I have say."
    "I'm breaking in," Newt told her. "I'm the new boy." He sounded
anything but humble.
    "I'm here," Maytera Mint explained, "because we think you may
listen to a woman when you won't really hear a man."
    Oosik rumbled, "You've the quickest mind I know. You are present
because we are likely to succeed because you are here."
    "I'm less apt to kill him, too," Potto confided.
    "He's only joking," Newt assured Siyuf.
    "Not, I hope. You are a new councillor, you say. Where is it they
find you?"
    Maytera Mint said, "In the Juzgado. Councillor Newt was a
commissioner there, the one who bought supplies for the calde's
Guard, made out the payroll, and so forth." She paused.
    "When I began, when Echidna called me her sword, I thought all
we had to do was fight. I'm learning that fighting is the smallest part
of it, and in some ways the easiest."
    Smiling, Siyuf nodded.
    "Quite often it's the other things that count most. You have to
get supplies to the people who need them, and not just ammunition
but food and bedding, and warm clothes. At any rate, part of our
agreement was an acknowledgement by all of us that the Charter
demands an Ayuntamiento."
    Potto made her a seated bow.
    "But not _just_ an Ayuntamiento, an elected one with a full compliment
of councillors. We can't hold elections because of the state things are
in, so we've promised them after a year of peace. Meanwhile the
present members will continue to serve, with Councillor Potto as
Presiding Officer. New councillors are to be appointed as necessary
by the calde, or in his absence by a de facto board of those who have
his confidence. It consists of the current Ayuntamiento, including
Councillor Newt now, with Generalissimo Oosik, His Cognizance,
and me. I wanted a woman councillor--"
    "You will not have her," Siyuf put in. "They are all men."
    "So we appointed Kingcup. She's not here because she's out explaining
all this to our people. I felt we needed--" Maytera Mint groped for
words. "An ordinary woman with extraordinary gifts. Kingcup's from
a poor family, but she built a successful livery stable from scratch, so
she's used to managing. Besides, she's the bravest woman in Viron."
    Oosik muttered, "No one but you would say that, General."
    She brushed the compliment aside. "So Kingcup for the people and
Newt for the Juzgado."
    "With such as these you prepare to fight me," Siyuf mused, "but
I am not there. This is sad. I beat you, I think. Does my General
Rimah beat you also? I do not know. She is a good officer. You ask
of love for my horde. Why is this?"
    "Because we hope that you will want to preserve it," Oosik told her,
"as I want to preserve the Guard. There has been some skirmishing
already. If we fight in earnest, your horde will be destroyed and my
Guard decimated." Maytera Mint added, "To say nothing of what
will happen to our city," and Oosik nodded.
    "We wish victory. None but cowards count life more high."
Maytera Mint started to speak, but Oosik silenced her with a
gesture. "I am confident General Rimah is an able officer. You're
not the sort to tolerate anything less. There is a gulf, however, between
an able officer and an exceptional leader. The ranks sense it at once,
and the public almost as quickly. I will not ask if you care about your
troops. We're too close for that, you and I, so close I can hear my own
voice in everything you've said. You long for victory, and you know,
as I do, that it would be more probable if you were in command of
your troops. Wouldn't you agree that for any other--"
    Potto interrupted. "A subject of the Rani's."
    "That for another citizen of your city," Oosik continued, "to prevent
you from resuming your place would be treason? It is not an idle
question."
    "You think someone does this? I wish to know."
    "Let me." Maytera Mint's small, not uncomely face shone with
energy and resolve. "You want to fight me, Siyuf, because of what
you've heard about me. I don't want to fight you, and in fact it's
the last thing I want. I want peace. I want to end this foolish fighting
and let everybody in our city and yours go back to their proper lives.
But it's been clear ever since your spies tried to arrest us that as long
as you have our calde there can be no peace. I'm going to assume
you understand that, because if you don't there's no use talking."
    "I am captive also." Siyuf touched her chest.
    "Exactly! You've saved me a lot of time. We've got you, but in a
very important way we don't want you, since your city will fight to
get you back. Clearly the sensible thing is to exchange you for our
calde. Peace would be possible then, but if we still couldn't make
peace, you and I would be fighting each other, which is what you
want. Now if--"
    Siyuf made a quick motion, the gesture of one accustomed to instant
obedience. "I have pledged to your Sand that I will free Incus the holy
man and Marble. She is your friend?"
    "Yes, she is." Maytera Mint glanced at Oosik, but he did not speak.
"You cheated Sergeant Sand and Corporal Hammerstone. You know
you did. You knew those prisoners were already on your airship when
you promised to let them go."
    "Over this we fight a duel, perhaps, if I am free. It may still be so.
I did not know, Mint. If you have deal with Saba and her airship as
I, you know that what is to be at shadeup may not be until midday,
or not this day or the next. Let me go. I get them again and free
them. Calde Silk also."
    For a second or two Maytera Mint studied her with pursed lips.
"All right, I'll accept that. I apologize."
    Potto tittered.
    "But your airship doesn't seem to have reached Trivigaunte yet.
Does that bother you?"
    Siyuf shook her head. "Tonight, or I think the morning."
    Oosik rumbled, "Suppose I were to say tomorrow afternoon,
Generalissimo. Your knowledge, I contend, is not so deep as you
pretend. Tomorrow afternoon!"
    Siyuf shrugged. "If you say. Perhaps."
    "In that case I proffer a further supposition. Not before shadelow
next Phaesday. What would you say to that?"
    "That you are a fool. The airship could be here once more in such
a time."
    "Just so." Oosik wound his white-tipped mustache about his finger.
"We have contacted Trivigaunte by glass, Generalissimo. We have
spoken to your Minister of War. We have explained how things stand
here, and offered to exchange you for Calde Silk."
    "They won't," Newt declared. "Won't do it or even talk about it,
by Scylla! We invite your comments."
    "I offer what is better. Let me speak with her."
    Potto roared, slapping his thigh. "This is too, too rich! My dear
young General, you're not even smiling. How do you do it?" He
turned back to Siyuf, speaking across the empty chair. "You already
have, and it didn't help a bit."
    "I have not. Abanja for me, perhaps."
    Maytera Mint said, "We think it's politics. By we I mean
Generalissimo Oosik and I. The internal politics of your city.
We'd like confirmation of that, and some suggestions about what
to do about it."
    "If this you say is true..." Siyuf shrugged again.
    Oosik muttered, "Every city has its feuds, Generalissimo."
    "Mine also. Our War Minister, you do not say her name. This is
Ljam? A scar here?" Siyuf touched her upper lip.
    Newt and Maytera Mint nodded.
    "This is not possible. My city have politics, as your generalissimo
say. Feuds, plottings, hatreds. Of these very many. But Ljam is with
me most near. If I fail here she fail also. You understand? Lose her
ministry, perhaps her head."
    Oosik regarded Siyuf through slitted eyes. "You're saying it is
impossible for her to betray you, Generalissimo?"
    "She cannot unless she is betray herself!"
    Potto sang, "I told you! I told you!"
    "He thinks your airship's wrecked, or it's gone off course somehow."
Maytera Mint looked somber. "Naturally they won't say so, and
Generalissimo Oosik and I thought it was more likely they were
playing some game, though Councillor Potto received a report
implying it's gone. Now it seems he must be right. This is truly
unfortunate."
    "But we're going to let you go anyhow," Potto told Siyuf. "Isn't
that nice of us?" He bounced from his chair and went to the door
calling, "You can send them in!"
    It was opened by a soldier; and Violet and a second Siyuf entered,
Violet with her arm linked with the second Siyuf's. She stared at the
first in open-mouthed amazement.
    "You'll have to go now, my dear young strumpet," Potto told
her. "We don't want you, though I'm sure many do. Have a seat,
Generalissimo. I'll be with you in a half a moment."
    "I am to sit beside this bio?" the second Siyuf inquired. "This I do
not like. You say you send me to my horde, I think. When is it you
do this?"
    "You'll escape," Newt explained to the first Siyuf. "Or rather,
she will."

"Too much warlockery for me." Hadale dropped into one of the
cockpit's black-leather seats. "Too much in your city, and too much
on our airship now that you're here. People at home say you're all
warlocks, but I discounted it. I should have tripled everything. You're
a warlock, Calde, and I'd call you the chief warlock if I hadn't met the
old man who sat between our generalissimo and General Saba."
    "She refers to His Cognizance," Silk told Hyacinth; awed
and delighted, he tried to stare at everything at once. "Like a
conservatory..."
    Oreb croaked, "Bad thing" as Tick squirmed in Hyacinth's grasp.
"Add word, dew!"
    "Three engines gone." Hadad peered morosely through the nearest
rectangle of glass at the parting clouds and the rocky sand scape that
they revealed. "What do you want? Surrender? I'll shoot you first and
take my chances with the desert."
    "Then we don't want it," Hyacinth declared.
    "We don't in any case," Silk said, "and I'm no warlock; the
truth is that I'm hardly an augur any more--I certainly don't
feel like one."
    "General Saba told me the other day that you read about our
advance in sheepguts. Do you deny it?"
    "No, though it isn't true. Denying it would waste time, so you may
believe it if you like. There are five engines still in operation. Is that
enough to keep us in the air?"
    The navigator looked up from her charts, then returned to them;
Hadale pointed to the ceiling. "None are needed to keep us up, the
gas does it. Are we going to lose all our engines?"
    Silk considered. "I can't promise that. I hope so."
    "You hope so."
    "No shoot," Oreb advised Hadale nervously. "Good man."
    "It was what I intended." For a moment, Silk allowed his eyes to
feast on Hyacinth's loveliness. "The risk that gave me most concern
was that Hyacinth might be killed as a result of what I was doing;
I hoped it wouldn't happen, and I'm very glad it won't. I betrayed
my god for her--I was horribly afraid that it would recoil on me,
as such things do."
    She brought his hand to the soft warmth of her thigh. "You betrayed
the Outsider for me? I'd never ask you to do that."
    Hadale turned to the pilot, "We've still got five?"
    The pilot nodded. "Can't make much headway against this wind
with five, though, sir."
    Hyacinth asked, "Aren't we going south anyway? Isn't the wind
blowing us south to Trivigaunte? Somebody said something like
that."
    "It's blowing us south," Hadale told her bitterly, "but not to
Trivigaunte. We turned east for about an hour before the first
one quit."
    "Veering north-northwest, sir," the pilot reported.
    Having freed himself from Hyacinth's grasp, Tick stood on his
hind legs to pat Hadale's knee. "Rust Milk, laddie. Milk bill take
hit hall tight."
    "He says you can trust my husband," Hyacinth interpreted. "He's
right, too, and I don't think you ought to pay too much attention
to what my husband says about betraying a god. He--oh, I don't
know how to explain! He's forever blaming himself for the wrong
things. He's sorry for holding me too tight when I wish he'd hold
me tighter. See?"
    "Your catachrest's an oracle of our goddess, so I have to trust him
implicitly. Is that it?"
    "I didn't say that." Hyacinth sat down. "I guess I would have,
though, if I thought you'd believe it. Maybe it's right, and she isn't
telling us."
    "Hat's shoe!" Tick exclaimed.
    Silk smiled. "I take it that General Saba's no longer in charge.
Where is she?"
    "In her bunk, with three troopers to watch her. I won't ask how
you drove her mad. I'm sure you wouldn't tell me."
    "I didn't." He leaned over the crescent-shaped instrument panel for
a better view of the desert below. "I arranged for her to be possessed,
that's all. You saw the same thing at our dinner. Are you in charge
now? There's no one over you?"
    "The War Minister. In a moment I'm going to have to report this
situation to her."
    "No talk," Oreb advised.
    "By 'this situation' you mean--"
    "Three engines out. I've told her about Saba turning east already.
I had to. I was hoping you'd agree to repair the engines before I had
to report them, too. That's why I let you come up here. Will you?"
    "I can't." Silk took the seat next to Hyacinth's. "Nor would I if
I could. We'd be back where we began, with Auk's people trying
to seize control, and everyone--all of us, I mean--dying. I said I
betrayed the Outsider because that was how I felt--"
    "Wind's due west now, sir," the pilot reported.
    "Course?"
    "East by south, sir. We might try dropping down."
    "Do it." Hadale considered. "A hundred and fifty cubits." She turned
back to Silk. "You were afraid we'd crash. We may. It's dangerous to
fly that low in weather as windy as this. If a downdraft catches us,
we could be finished. But the wind won't be as strong down there."
    Hyacinth gasped, and Silk said, "I can feel the airship descend. I
rode in a moving room once that felt like this."
    "You want to go east. That was how you had General Saba
steering us."
    He nodded, and smiled again. "To Mainframe. Auk wants to carry
out the Plan of Pas, and the Outsider wants it, too, which is why I felt
I was betraying him when I did what I did to your engines. But letting
Auk try to take your airship wouldn't have achieved anything, and
this was the only way I could think of to prevent him."
    "So now that we don't have enough engines to fight the wind,
you're working your magic on that."
    Silk shook his head. "I can't. All that I can do is pray, which isn't
magic at all, but begging. I've been doing it, and perhaps I've been
heard."
    He drew a deep breath. "You want your engines back in operation,
Major. You want to preserve this airship, and to deliver me to your
superiors in Trivigaunte; the rest of your prisoners don't matter
greatly, as you must know. I do."
    Slowly, Hadale nodded.
    "We can do all that, if only you'll cooperate. Take us to Mainframe,
as Pas commands and the Outsider wishes. Auk and his people can
leave the whorl and thus begin carrying out the Plan. Hyacinth and
I will return--"
    "Shut up!" Hadale cocked her head, listening.
    The pilot said, "Number seven's quit, sir." The absence of all emotion
in her voice conveyed what she felt.
    "Take her up fast. Just below the cloud cover."
    Hyacinth asked Silk, "Won't the wind be stronger there?"
    Hadale was on her feet, scanning the desert below. "A lot stronger,
but I'm going to set her down and try to fix the engines. Even
if we can't, we won't be blowing farther from Trivigaunte. We
want a big level stretch to land on, and an oasis, if we can
find one."
    "No land!" Oreb advised sharply; Hyacinth began, "If you'll go to
Mainframe like he--"
    Hadale whirled. "He can't fix them. He admits it."
    Silk had risen, too; almost whispering, he said, "You must have
faith, Major."
    "All right, I've got faith. Slashing Sphigx, succor us! Meanwhile I
need a place to set us down on."
    "I said I couldn't repair your engines. I said it because it's the truth.
I should have added--as I do, now--that if only we were doing the
gods' will instead of opposing it, a way to repair them--"
    "Sir!" The pilot pointed.
    "I see them. Can you get us over there?"
    "I think so, sir. I'll try."
    Silk leaned forward, squinting. Hyacinth said, "Something like ants,
but they're leagues and leagues away."
    "That's a caravan," Hadale told Silk, "could be one of ours. Even
if it isn't, they'll have food and water, and a few of us can ride to
the city to guide a rescue party."
    "I just hope they're friendly," Hyacinth murmured.
    Rubbing her hands, Hadale looked ten years younger. "They will
be soon. I've got two platoons of pterotroopers on board."

                  Chapter 15 -- To Mainframe!

"Silk say." Settling on Auk's extended wrist, Oreb whistled sharply
to emphasize the urgency of his message. "Say Auk!"
    "All right, spill it."
    Matar prodded Auk's ribs with the muzzle of her slug gun. "The
lieutenant says for you to stop leaning out of this port. She's afraid
you'll jump out."
    Auk withdrew his head and arm. "Not me. I could, though. With
our gun deck--that what you call it?"
    Both Matar and Chenille nodded.
    "Shaggy near on the ground like this, it's maybe eight cubits. That's
sand down there, too, so it'd be candy."
    Matar was studying Oreb. "Where did you find that bird? I thought
your calde had it."
    "Girls go," Oreb reported hoarsely. "Say Auk."
    "He just flew down and lit on me," Auk explained. "Me and him's
a old knot." Gently, he stroked Oreb with his forefinger.
    Chenille told Matar, "We were together down in the tunnels under
our city. It was pretty rough."
    "It _was_, my daughter." Incus joined the group. "It was
_there_, however, that _I_ received the divine _favor_ of
Surging _Scylla_, our patroness."
    From her seat at the front of the gondola, the lieutenant called,
"What are you talking about back there?"
    "Tunnels, sir." Matar was a lean young woman two fingers smaller
than most.
    "_There_," Incus elucidated, "I learned to load and _shoot_ a
needler." He approached the lieutenant, his plump face wreathed in smiles.
"It is an _accomplishment_ of which very few augurs _indeed_ can
boast. I had a most excellent _teacher_ in my faithful _friend_
Corporal Hammerstone."
    "Girls go," Oreb repeated. "Camels. Girl take."
    "Matar!" the lieutenant called. "Get over here." Matar hurried
to obey.
    Maytera Marble caught Auk's sleeve. "There's something else," she
whispered. "That little cat creature Patera's wife had is back."
    Auk nodded absently. "He's got word from Silk, I'll lay."
    "Something about milk and mammals," she explained, "and strong
twine off caramels. I can't quite make out what it's so excited about.
Gib has it."
    "That's camels in a caravan," Auk said under his breath. "I saw 'em,
and I saw troopers going after 'em. Now I got to take the dell and
her jefe before that flash little butcher does it and nabs the credit."
    The flat crack of a needler came from the front of the gondola; a
woman screamed.

Silk had been watching two distant Trivigauntis probe the desert
sand for soil with enough cohesion to hold a mooring stake. As the
faint thuddings of the heavy maul reached the cockpit, he turned to
the pilot. "Could we take off without untying those ropes?"
    "The mooring lines?" The pilot shook her head.
    "That's unfortunate. It might have saved lives." He sat down beside
Hyacinth again and took her hand, listening to the moan of a winter
wind that raised sand devils in the distance.
    "We ought to have half a dozen more," the pilot told him. "We
will, too, pretty soon. We use twenty-four at home."
    "You have five already." The number suggested Hyacinth's five
fingers; Silk raised them to his lips, kissing them and the cheap and
foolish ring that had been the only ring they had. His padded leather
seat lifted sharply beneath him, a forceful upward push like that of
Blood's floater rising from the grassway. "Feel that?" the pilot said.
    Hyacinth pointed. "Something flashed way over there." She swung
wide the pane they had opened for Tick.
    "Don't do that," the pilot told her. "We've got plenty of cold air
in here already."
    Silk put his own finger to his lips. Almost beyond the edge of
hearing, faint, irregular booms filled the intervals between the blows
of the maul. "They're firing," he informed the pilot. "I know the sound
from the fighting in our city."
    Then the gondola heaved beneath them again, faster than the
moving room had ever moved, and wilder even than Oosik's
armed floater--rocked and shook them as it soared into the
air.
    Nearer than the besieged caravan, a slug gun boomed, loud among
the gondola's tormented creaks and groans. Reeling, the pilot jerked
out her needler. Hyacinth knocked it from her hand and rammed
both thumbs into her eyes, kicking savagely at her knees until both
she and the pilot fell.

"What are you doing?" Auk inquired.
    "Dropping ballast." Silk pointed. "If you'll look down there, you
should see something like smoke falling from under the rear
gondola."
    Auk thrust his head and shoulders through the opening left by a
shot-out pane of glass. "Yeah."
    "That's desert sand," Hyacinth explained. "They started shoveling
more on as soon as we got down, and the pilot told us about it. You
can make this go up with the engines, or pull it down with them.
That's what we did when we landed. But if you want to fly high up
for a long while, the easiest way's to drop sand like he's doing."
    Chenille said, "This floor's about level now."
    Silk nodded, pointing toward the bubble in a horizontal tube on
the instrument panel.
    Auk took the seat nearest him. "If you want me to, I can get
somebody else to do this. Even that pilot. I'd have one of ours sit
here to watch her."
    "She's blind," Silk told him. He threw a lever on the instrument
panel. "Hyacinth blinded her. I saw it."
    "She's just got sore eyes, Patera. She'll be dandy."
    Hyacinth sat on Silk's left. "You like this, don't you?"
    "I love it--and I'm terrified by it at the same time. I'm afraid
I'm going to kill us all; but the pilot or another Trivigaunti
might do so intentionally, and I certainly won't. But..." His
voice trailed away.
    "Even if we had a pilot we could trust, you'd want to."
    He cleared his throat. "We do have a pilot we can trust--me. I'm
not very experienced as yet, but there must have been a time when
that woman wasn't either."
    Chenille sat down next to Hyacinth. "You poke her glims?"
    Hyacinth nodded. "She was going to shoot us, Chen."
    "No shoot!" Oreb sailed into the cockpit.
    "Right," Hyacinth told him. "That's what I thought, but we had
shooting anyway when Auk's culls fought it out with the troopers
watching the general."
    "Only Patera's still sort of bothered by what you did to her. I
can tell."
    Silk glanced at Chenille. "Am I so transparent as that?"
    "Sure." She grinned. "Listen, Patera. Do you think us dells at
Orchid's were always really polite? Do you think we always said
please and thank you, and excuse me, Bluebell, but that gown you've
got on looks a whole lot like one of mine?"
    "I don't know," Silk admitted. "I would hope so." From his shoulder,
Oreb eyed him quizzically.
    "You think I'm rough because I'm big, and you think those dells
from Trivigaunte are because they don't wear makeup, and they
had needlers and slug guns. I never had to fight a lot at Orchid's
because I was the longest dell there. You know where Hyacinth
comes on me?"
    "I believe I do, yes."
    "Without those heels she always wears, the top of her head doesn't
even hit my shoulder. She's beautiful, too, like you always say. The
whole time she lived there, she was the best-looking dell Orchid had,
and Orchid would tell you so herself. You know who looks the most
like Hy now? It's Poppy, and Poppy looks like Hy about as much
as a sham card looks like a lily one. You know how that is? They
look the same till you look hard, but when you do you know it's
not even close. The gold in the sham one looks brassy, and it feels
greasy. You look at Hy, at her eyes and nose. Look at her chin.
Just look! The first couple weeks I knew her I couldn't see her chin
without feeling like a toad in the road." The huskiness that affects
women's voices when they speak of matters of genuine importance
entered Chenille's. "Poppy's cute, Patera. Hy's real gold."
    "I know."
    "So just about everybody hated her." Chenille coughed. "I nearly
did myself. The second or third day--"
    "Second," Hyacinth interjected.
    "She came to the big room with a mouse under both eyes. Orchid
threw a fit. But you know what?"
    Silk shook his head; Hyacinth said, "That's plenty, Chen," and he
swiveled his seat to face Chenille. "Please tell me. I promise you that
I won't hold it against her, whatever it is."
    "No talk," Oreb croaked.
    "I was going to tell you what happened next, but I'll skip it. She
doesn't want me to, and she's probably right. Only she learned fast.
She had to, or she'd of been killed. A couple days after that I saw
a dell shove her, and Hy tripped her and wrapped her with a chair.
A lot of the other dells saw it too, and they left her alone. Are you
wanting to ask something?"
    Silk said, "No."
    "I kind of thought you were, that you were about to ask me if Hy
and I ever got into it."
    Hyacinth shook her head.
    "If I could've worn her clothes, maybe we would. Or if she could've
worn mine. We weren't a knot, either, I'd be lying if I said we were. For
one thing, she wasn't there long enough. I didn't like her a whole lot,
even, but there were things I liked about her. I told you one time."
    Auk said, "Sitting in that thing they got for the grapes back at
your manteion, Patera. I was there."
    Silk nodded. "Yes, I remember. I could tell you what you said,
Chenille, almost word for word--not because my memory's
remarkable, but because Hyacinth is so important to me."
    He turned away to scan the instrument panel and the cloud-smeared
sky, then turned to Auk. "As a favor, would you please bring
Sciathan?"
    "Sure." Auk rose. "Only I got to talk to you about those engines,
see? I need you to tell me what you did to 'em, and if we're going
to lose any more."
    "I'll get him," Hyacinth said, and left the cockpit before Silk could
stop her.
    Chenille leaned nearer Silk. "She thinks you ought to be proud of
her. I do too."
    He nodded.
    "Only you're not, and it hurts. The first time you saw her she had
a azoth, and you had to jump out the window to get away. Isn't that
right? Moly told me."
    "It was terrifying," Silk admitted. Although he was not perspiring,
he wiped his face with the hem of his robe. "The azoth cut through
a stone windowsill. I don't believe I will ever forget it."
    Auk said, "You think she was just some village chit after that,
Patera?"
    "No. No, I didn't. I knew exactly what she was."
    He was silent then until Sciathan came into the cockpit and bowed,
saying, "Do you desire to speak to me, Calde Silk?"
    "Yes. Have you flown an airship like this one?"
    "Never. I have flown with my wings many times, but we crew have nothing
like this save the _Whorl_ itself, and that is flown by Mainframe,
not by us."
    "I understand. Just the same, you know a great deal about updrafts
and downdrafts and storms; more than I'll ever learn. I've been flying
this airship since a gust dispatched for our benefit by Molpe--or the
Outsider, as I prefer to believe--returned us to the air. Now I want to
leave the controls for a while. Will you take my place? I'd be extremely
grateful."
    The Flier nodded eagerly. "Oh, yes! Thank you, Calde Silk. Thank
you very much!"
    "Then sit here." Silk left his seat, and Sciathan slid into it. "There
are no reins, nor is there a wheel one turns, as there is in a floater.
One steers with the engines. Do you understand?"
    Sciathan nodded, and Auk cleared his throat.
    "A west wind is carrying us toward Mainframe. We could fly faster,
but it may be wise to conserve fuel. These dials give the speeds of all
eight engines; as you see, four are no longer operating."
    As quickly as he could, Silk outlined what he had learned of the
functions of the levers and knobs on the panel; as soon as the Flier
seemed to comprehend, Silk turned to Auk. "You wanted to know
what I did to the engines. I did very little. I climbed up there into
the cloth-covered body."
    Auk said, "Sure. I knew you must of."
    "Most of the space--it's enormous--is occupied by rows of huge
balloons. There are bamboo walkways and wooden beams."
    "I been on some."
    "Yes, of course; you'd have had to in the fighting. What I was
going to say is that there are tanks and hoses, too. I'd found a clamp,
a simple one such as a carpenter might use."
    Silk paused to glance at the bird on his shoulder. "It was then that
Oreb joined me; I'd just picked it up. Anyway I put it on a hose,
I suppose a fuel hose, and screwed it closed as tightly as I could. I
doubt that it stopped the flow entirely, but it must have reduced it
very considerably. It shouldn't be hard to find when you know what
to look for."
    Auk rubbed his chin. "Don't sound like it."
    "For my conscience's sake, I should tell you that I lied to Major
Hadale--or anyway, I came very close to lying. She asked whether
I could repair the engines; and I said, quite honestly I believe, that
I could not. One speaks of repairs when a thing is broken. To the
best of my knowledge, the engines we've lost aren't; but if they were,
I wouldn't have the faintest notion how they might be repaired--thus
I told her truthfully that repairing them was beyond my power. It was
not a lie, though I certainly intended it to deceive her. If I'd said I
might be able to set them in motion again, she would have had me
beaten, I imagine, to compel me to do it."
    Without turning toward them, Sciathan nodded vigorously.
    "I'll ask Patera Incus to shrive me later today. Will you excuse me
now? I... I would like very much to be alone."
    As he left the cockpit, Auk told his back, "Get him to tell you how
he charmed the slug gun."

A flimsy door of canvas stretched over a bamboo frame was all that
separated the cockpit from a narrow aisle lined with green-curtained
cubicles. Hearing a familiar voice, Silk pushed aside the curtain on
his right.
    The cubicle seemed overfilled by a bunk, a small table, and a stool;
Nettle occupied the stool, holding a needler, and Saba smiled in a
way that Silk found painful from the bunk.
    "Poor girl," Oreb muttered.
    Silk traced the sign of addition in the air. "Blessed be you, General
Saba, in the Sacred Name of Pas, Father of the Gods, in that of
Gracious Echidna, His Consort, in those of their Sons and their
Daughters alike, in that of the Overseeing Outsider, and in the
names of all other gods whatsoever, this day and forever. So
say I, Silk, in the name of their youngest, fairest child, Steely
Sphigx, Goddess of Hardihood and Courage, Sabered Sphigx, the
glad and glorious patroness of General Saba and General Saba's
native city."
    "Gracious of you, Calde. I thought you'd come to gloat."
    Nettle shook her head. "You don't know him."
    "I came--or at least. I left the cockpit--to escape my friends,"
Silk told Saba. "I had no more than stepped out when I heard you and
looked in. 'When neither our fellows nor our gods spoil our plans,
we spoil them ourselves.' I read that when I was a boy, and I've
learned since how very true it is."
    Nettle said, "She was telling me about Trivigaunte, Calde. I don't
think I'd want to live there, but I'd like to see it."
    "We go in for towers." Saba smiled. "We say it's because we build
such good ones, but maybe we build good ones because we build
so many of them. Towers and whitewash, and wide, clean streets.
Your city looks," she paused, searching for a telling word, "squatty,
like a camp. Squatty and dirty. I know you love it, but that's how it
looks to us."
    Silk nodded. "I understand. The interiors of our houses are clean,
I believe, for the most part; but our streets are filthy, as you say. I
was trying to do something about it, and a great many other things,
when I was arrested."
    "Not by me," Saba told him. "I didn't order it."
    "I never thought you did."
    "But you were talking to the enemy without telling us. If--" Saba's
voice broke, and Oreb croaked in sympathy.
    "We each have our sorrows." Silk let the green curtain fall behind
him. "I won't ask you to palliate mine, but I may be able to ease
yours. I'll try. What were you about to say?"
    "I started to say I'd put in a word for you back home, that's all.
Because we'll get you again when we get back this airship. If Siyuf's
not running your city yet, she soon will be." Saba chuckled wryly.
"Then I remembered where I stand. I'd forgotten, talking to this girl.
I'm the general who went crazy and turned the airship east when it
ought to have been headed home. That's what Hadale told them at
the Palace, that I'd gone crazy. They'll think it was treachery and
she was covering for me."
    "You weren't insane," Silk told her. "You were possessed by Mucor,
at my urging. You were possessed in the same way at my dinner. Others
must have told you about it--Major Hadale, particularly, since she
is your subordinate."
    "I didn't want to hear it. Is Hadale your prisoner too?"
    Silk shook his head. "She left the airship with most of your
pterotroopers to capture a caravan. That let Auk and Gib and their
friends overcome the rest."
    Nettle held up her needler. "We fought too, Horn and me both.
We'd fought hoppies already for General Mint, but a lot of Auk's
people had never fought before. Hardly any of the women." To
Saba she added, "Your pterotroopers were good, but our hoppies
were better. You couldn't panic them."
    "I'm sure you acquited yourself creditably," Silk told her. "I,
unfortunately, did not. Hyacinth knocked a needler from the pilot's
hand and subdued her. I picked it up and held it, feeling an utter
fool. I couldn't fire for fear of hitting Hyacinth, and with the needler
in my hand I couldn't think of anything else to do. Then someone
back here started shooting. Slugs came into the cockpit, and it was
only by the favor of a god that all three of us weren't killed."
    Silk paused, reflecting. "Have I thanked you, General, for your
obvious goodwill? I should, and I do. I'll see to it that you're not
mistreated, of course."
    Saba shrugged. "That man Auk said I could stay in here, which
was nice of him. Those were my jailers that almost shot you. I like
this girl better."
    She fell silent, and Silk found himself listening to the hum of the
engines.
    "My pterotroopers fought alongside Mint's when we were the only
Trivigauntis in Viron, Calde. We fought beside your Guard to get
you out of that place outside the city, too. If I said I was planning
to put in a good word for you already when we left Viron, would
you believe it?"
    "Of course."
    "I wasn't, but I should have been. I was thinking about covering
my own arse, as if that mattered."
    "Don't torment yourself, General, I beg you." Silk pushed back the
curtain that served the cubicle as a door. "In the second gondola there
was a hatch toward the rear that opened onto the roof. Is there a
similar hatch here?"
    "Sure. I'll show you, if it's all right with her."
    "That won't be necessary." Silk stepped back and let the curtain
fall.
    A rope ladder rolled and tied at the ceiling marked the hatch.
Pulling a cord released the ladder. The light wooden hatch was held
shut by a simple peg-and-cord retainer. Silk removed the peg, threw
back the hatch, and climbed out onto the open, empty deck.
    With a glad cry Oreb left his shoulder, racing the length of the
gondola, shooting ahead of the airship until he was nearly lost to
Silk's myopic vision, wheeling and soaring.
    More circumspectly, Silk followed until he stood at the gondola's
semicircular prow, the toes of the scuffed old shoes he had never
found time to replace hanging over the aching void. He looked down
at them, seeing them as if he had never seen them before, noting as
items new and strange small cracks in their leather, and the ways
in which the shoes had shaped themselves to his feet. Beside his
left shoe there was a brass socket set into the deck. Presumably a
flagpole would be put in it when the airship took part in military
ceremonies in Trivigaunte.
    Even more probably, similar sockets ringed the entire deck. Light
poles would support railings of rope, used perhaps when dignitaries
stood where he was standing now, bemedaled women in gorgeous
uniforms waving to the populace below. It was even possible that
the Rani herself had stood upon this very spot.
    He recalled then that he had wished for flags to be raised on this
airship to signal the approach of Siyuf's horde. The signalmen (who
would more plausibly have been signalwomen) would have kept watch
from here with telescopes, would have run their flags up one of the
immense cables from which the gondola hung. Below them--
    Some minute motion of the gondola, some response to a tiny
variation in the wind, nearly caused him to lose his balance; he
came very close to putting his right foot forward to regain it, and
would have fallen if he had, ending the persistent pain in its ankle.
    It would not have been such a bad thing, perhaps, to have fallen.
If one did not dread death, it would be an experience of unparalleled
interest; to fall from such a height as this, a height greater than that
of the loftiest mountain, would provide ample time for observation,
prayer, and reflection, surely.
    Eventually his body would strike the ground, probably in some
unpeopled spot. His spirit would return to the Aureate Path, where
once he had encountered his mothers and fathers; his bones would
not be found--if they were found at all--until Nettle's children
were grown. To the living he would not die but disappear, a source
of wonder rather than sorrow. All men died, and all died very quickly
in the eyes of the Outsider. Few died so well as that.
    He peered upward to study the Aureate Path as it stretched before
the airship's blunt nose, and again felt himself--very slightly--lose
balance. If his parents waited there for him, they were not to be seen
by the eyes of life.
    One father had been Chenille's father as well. He, Silk, who had
possessed no family save his mother, had gained a sister now. Although
neither Chenille nor Hyacinth nor any other woman could take his
mother's place. No one could.
    Recalling the unmarked razor he had puzzled over so often, he
fingered his stubbled cheeks. He had not shaved in well over a day;
no doubt his beard was apparent to everyone. It was better, though,
to know to whom the razor had belonged.
    He looked down at his shoes again. Beneath them, Sciathan sat
at the controls, steering a structure a hundred times larger than the
Grand Manteion with the touch of a finger. There was no Sacred
Window on the airship--that would have been almost impossible--but
there was a glass somewhere. Idly Silk found himself wondering
where it was. Not in the cockpit, certainly, nor in Saba's cubicle. Yet
it would almost have to be in this gondola, in which the Rani's officers
ate and slept, and from which they steered her airship. Perhaps in the
chartroom; he had climbed to this deck from that chartroom without
seeing it--but then he had been occupied with his thoughts.
    Too much so to do anything to relieve Saba's depression. Yes,
too self-centered for that. Saba and her pterotroopers might be
outnumbered at present, but--
    Hands upon his shoulders. "_Don't jump, Calde!_"
    He took a cautious step backward. "I hadn't intended to," he said,
and wondered whether he lied.
    He turned. Horn's pale face showed very clearly what Horn
thought. "I'm sorry I frightened you," Silk told him, "I didn't know
you were there."
    "Just come away from the edge, please, Calde. For me?"
    To soothe Horn, he took a step. "You can't have been up here
when I came--I would have seen you. You weren't on the roof of
our old gondola either, because I looked back at it. Nettle told you
I asked about a hatch, of course."
    "A little farther, Calde. Please?"
    "No. This is foolish; but to reassure you, I'll sit down." He did,
spreading his robe over his crossed legs. "You see? I can't possibly
fall from here, and neither can you, if you sit. I need someone to
talk to."
    Horn sat, his relief apparent.
    "When I was in the cockpit, I wanted to leave it in order to
pray--that was what I told myself, at least. But when I was up here alone
and might have prayed to my heart's content, I did not. I contemplated my
shoes instead, and thought about certain things. They weren't foolish
things for the most part, but I feel very foolish for having thought so
much about them. Are you going with Auk when he leaves the whorl?
That's what he's going to do, you know. The Crew, as Sciathan calls
the people of his city, have some of the underground towers Mamelta
showed me--intact underground towers--and they're going to give
Auk one. I forget what Mamelta called them."
    "You never told me about towers, Calde."
    Silk did, striving unsuccessfully to make his description concise.
"That isn't all I can recall, but that's all that's of importance, I
believe, and now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever told
anyone, except for Doctor Crane while we were fellow-captives, and
Doctor Crane is dead."
    "I never even got to see him," Horn said. "I wish I had because
of the way you talk about him. Is the underwater boat like this
airship?"
    "Not at all. It's all metal--practically all iron, I'm certain.
There's a hole at the bottom, too, through which the Ayuntamiento can launch
a smaller boat. You'd think that would sink the big one, wouldn't
you? But it didn't, and we got away through that hole, Doctor Crane
and I." Silk paused, lost in thought. "There are monstrous fish in the
lake, Horn, fish bigger than you can imagine. Chenille told me that
once, and she's quite correct."
    "You wanted to know if I was going with Auk. Nettle and me,
because either way we'd do it together."
    "Yes, of course."
    "I don't think so. He hasn't asked us, but I don't think Nettle would
want to if he did. There's my father and mother back home, and my
brothers and sisters, and Nettle's family."
    "Of course," Silk repeated.
    "I like Chenille. I like her a lot. But Auk's not what I call a good
man, even if Tartaros did choose him to enlighten. You remember
what I told you about him that time? He's still the same, I think. The
people he's got with him aren't much better, either. He calls them
the best thieves in the whorl, did you know that, Calde? Because of
stealing this airship."
    "They're not all thieves," Silk said, "though Auk may like to
pretend they are. Most are just poor people from the Orilla and
our own quarter. I doubt that many real thieves have the sort of
faith something like this requires." He fell silent, by no means sure
that he should say more.
    "What is it, Calde?"
    "I doubt that all of them will go. Chenille will, I think, though she
would be a wealthy woman in Viron; but I wouldn't be in the least
surprised to see more than a few of the others hold back."
    "You're not going, are you, Calde?"
    Silk shook his head. "I would like to. I don't believe Hyacinth
would, however; and these are Auk's people when all is said and
done. Not mine."
    "Then Nettle and me will come home with you and Hyacinth.
Moly wants to go back, too. She wants to find her husband and
get back to building their daughter. And there's Patera Incus and
Patera Remora."
    Silk nodded. "But we will not be numerous enough to keep the
Trivigauntis we have on board from reclaiming their airship, even
so. Had you thought of that, Horn? Not unless a great many of
Auk's followers desert him at the last moment. It had just occurred
to me when you laid hold of my shoulders."
    Horn frowned. "Can we leave the Trivigauntis in Mainframe, Calde?
I can't think of anything else we can do."
    "I can. Or at least, I believe I have, which gave me a very good reason
not to step off the edge. Perhaps I needed one more than I knew."
Noticing Horn's expression, he added, "I'm sorry if I distress you."
    Horn swallowed. "I want to tell you something, sort of a secret.
I haven't told anybody yet except Nettle. I know you won't laugh,
but please don't tell anybody else."
    "I won't, unless I believe it absolutely necessary."
    "You know the cats' meat woman? She comes to sacrifice just about
every Scylsday."
    Silk nodded. "Very well."
    "She likes Maytera. Moly, I mean. She came to see her one time
at the palace. I wouldn't have thought she'd walk all the way up the
hill, but she did. They were sitting in the kitchen, and the cats' meat
woman--"
    "Scleroderma," Silk murmured. His eyes were on the purple slopes
of far-away mountains. "It's a puffball--it grows in forests."
    "She was the one that held General Mint's horse for her before
she charged the floaters in Cage Street," Horn continued. "She told
Moly, and naturally Moly wanted to know all about it, so they talked
about that and the fighting, and how Kypris came to our manteion
for the funeral. Then she said she was writing all about it, writing
down everything that had happened and how she'd been right in the
middle of all the most important parts."
    Silk tried not to smile, but failed.
    "So she wants her grandchildren to be able to read about everything,
and how she met you when you were just out of the schola, and how she
walked up to the Calde's Palace and they let her right in. I thought it
was pretty funny too."
    "I think it heart-warming," Silk told him. "We may laugh--I
wouldn't be surprised if she laughed herself--and yet she's right.
Her grandchildren are still small, I imagine, and though they've
lived in these unsettled times themselves, they won't remember much
about them. When they're older, they'll be delighted to have a history
written by their own grandmother from the perspective of their family.
I applaud her."
    "Well, maybe I should of thought like that too, Calde, but I didn't.
To tell the truth, I got kind of mad."
    "You didn't play some trick on her, I hope."
    "No, but I started thinking about what had happened and if she'd
really been in the middle like she said. Pretty soon I saw she hadn't at
all, but you'd been there more than anybody, more even than General
Mint. And what Scleroderma said about meeting you when you got
out of the schola? Well, I met you then too. You used to come into
our class and talk to us, and naturally I'd see you helping Patera
Pike at sacrifice. So I decided I'm going to write down everything
I can remember as soon as I get some paper. I'll call it Patera Silk's
Book, or something like that."
    "I'm flattered." This time Silk succeeded in suppressing his smile.
"Are you going to write about this, too? Sitting up here talking
to me?"
    "Yes, I am." Horn filled his lungs with the still, pure air. "And
that's another reason for you not to jump off. If you did, I'd have
to end it right here." He rapped the deck with his knuckles. "Right
up here, and then maybe I'd wonder a little about why you did,
and then it would be over. I don't think that would be a very good
ending."
    "Nor would it be," Silk agreed.
    "But that's the way you were thinking of ending it. You were
standing too close to the edge to of been thinking about anything
else. Whats the trouble, Calde? Something's--I don't know. Hurt
you somehow, hurt you a lot. If I knew what it was, maybe I could
help, or Nettle could."
    Without rising, Silk turned away; after a moment, he slid across
the varnished wood so that he could let his legs dangle over the edge.
"Come here, Horn."
    "I'm afraid to."
    "You aren't going to fall. Feel how smooth the motion of the airship
is. Nor am I going to push you off. Did you think I might? I won't, I
promise."
    Face down, Horn crept forward.
    "That's the way. It's such a magnificent view, perhaps the most
magnificent that either of us will ever see. When you mentioned your
class, you reminded me that I'm supposed to be teaching you--it's one
of my many duties, and one that I've neglected shamefully since you
and I talked in the manse. As your teacher, it's my pleasure as well
as my duty to show you things like this whenever I can--and to make
you look at them as well, if I must. Look! Isn't it magnificent?"
    "It's like the skylands," Horn ventured, "except we're a little closer
and it's daytime."
    "A great deal closer, and the sun has already begun to narrow.
We haven't much time left in which to look at this. A few hours
at most."
    "We could again tomorrow. We could look out of one of those
windows. All the gondolas have them."
    "This airship may crash tonight," Silk told him, "or it may be forced
to land for some reason. Or the whorl below us might be hidden by
clouds, as it was when I looked out of one of the windows earlier
today. Let's look while we can."
    Horn crept a finger's width nearer the edge.
    "Down there's a city bigger than Viron, and those tiny pale dots are
its people. See them? They look like that, I believe, because they're
staring up at us. In all probability, they've never seen an airship, or
seen anything larger than the Fliers that can fly. They'll speculate
about us for months, perhaps for years."
    "Is it Palustria, Calde?"
    Silk shook his head. "Palustria doesn't even lie in this direction, so
it's certainly not Palustria. Besides, I think we've gone farther than
that already. We were hoisted up early this morning, and we've been
flying south or east ever since. A well-mounted man can ride there
in less than a week."
    "I've never seen off-center buildings like those," Horn ventured.
"Besides, there aren't any swamps. Everybody says Palustria's in the
middle of swamps."
    "They've turned them into rice fields, or so I'm told--if not all of
them at least a large part of them, no doubt the part closest to their
city. Their rice crop's failed this year because of the drought. They
say it's the first time the rice crop's failed in the entire history of
Palustria." For a while Silk sat in silence, staring down at the foreign
city below.
    "Can I ask you something, Calde?"
    "Certainly. What is it?"
    "Why isn't it windier up here? I've never been up on a mountain,
but Maytera read something about that to us one time, and it said
it was real windy just about all the time. Looking down, it seems like
we're going fast. It's not taking us very long at all to go over this,
and it's big. So the wind ought to be in our faces."
    "I asked our pilot the same thing," Silk told him, "and I was ready
to kick myself for stupidity when she told me. Look there, up and
out, and you can see one of the engines that's still running. Notice
how slowly it's turning? You can almost make out the wooden arms;
but when the engines were going fast, those were just a blur, a shimmer
in front of each engine."
    "Like a mill."
    "Somewhat; but while the arms of a windmill are turned by the
wind, these are turned by their engines to create a wind that will
blow us wherever we wish. They're making very little wind at present--just
enough to keep us from tumbling about. We're being carried
by a natural wind; but because we're blown along by it, like a dry
leaf or one of those paper streamers the wind tore off our victory
arch, it seems to us that the air is scarcely moving."
    "I think I understand. What if we turned around and tried to go
the other way?"
    "Then this still air would at once become a gale."
    The smooth wooden deck on which Silk was sitting tilted, seeming
almost to fall away from under him.
    "_Patera!_"
    He felt Horn clutch his robe. The sound of the remaining engines
rose. "I'm all right," he said.
    "You could've slid off! I almost did."
    "Not unless the gondola were to slope much more steeply." A
vagrant breeze ruffled Silk's straw-colored hair.
    "What happened?" From the sound of Horn's voice; he was far
from the edge now, perhaps halfway to the hatch.
    "The wind increased, I imagine. The new wind would have reached
our tail first; presumably it lifted it."
    "You still want to die."
    The plaintive note in Horn's voice was more painful than an
accusation. "No," Silk said.
    "Won't you tell me what's wrong? Please, Calde?"
    "I would if I could explain it." The city was behind them already,
its houses and fields replaced by forbidding forests. "I might say that
it's an accumulation of small matters. Have you ever had a day when
everything went amiss? Of course you have--everyone has."
    "Sure," Horn said.
    "Can you come a little closer? I can scarcely hear you."
    "All right, Calde.
    "I also want to say that it has to do with the Plan of Pas; but that
isn't quite right. Pas, you see, isn't the only god who has a plan. I've
just understood this one, perhaps while I was still in the cockpit, as
it's called, guiding this airship and thinking--when I didn't have to
think much about that--about Hyacinth's overpowering our pilot.
Or perhaps only when I was talking with General Saba, just before I
came up here. It might be fair to say that I understood in the cockpit,
but that the full import of what I had understood had come only when
I was talking with Nettle and General Saba."
    "I think I get it."
    "On the other hand, I could say that it was about facts that the
Outsider confided on my wedding night. You see, Horn, I was
enlightened again then. Nothing I learned at the schola had prepared
me for the possibility of multiple enlightenments, but clearly they can
and do take place. Which would you like to hear about first?"
    "The little things going wrong, I guess. Only please come back here
with me, Patera. You said it was hard to hear me. Well, I can hardly
hear you."
    "I'm perfectly safe, Horn." Silk discovered that he was grasping
the edge of the deck; he forced himself to relax, placing his hands
together as if in prayer. "We might begin anywhere, but let us begin
with Maytera Marble. With Moly, as she asks us to call her now.
Do you think her name was really Moly--Molybdenum--before she
became a sibyl? Honestly."
    "That's what she says, Calde." Horn was moving closer; Silk heard
the faint scrub of his coat and trousers against the planking.
    "I don't. She hasn't told me she's lying, but I hope she will soon."
    "I--I don't think so, Calde." Horn's tones grew deeper as he
asserted his opinion. "She's really careful about that kind of thing."
    "I know she is. That's why it's such a torment to her. I'm going
to ask Patera Incus to shrive me. I hope that it will lead her to
ask him--or Patera Remora, though Incus would be better--to do
the same."
    "I still--"
    "Why are there so few chems now, Horn? There the Plan of Pas
has clearly gone awry. He made them both male and female, and
clearly intended them to reproduce and so maintain their numbers--perhaps
even increase them. Let us assume that he peopled our whorl
with equal numbers of each sex, which would seem to be the logical
thing for him to do. What went wrong?" It was becoming colder,
or Silk more sensitive to the cold. He drew his thick winter robe
about him.
    "I don't know, Calde. The soldiers sleep a lot, and naturally they
can't, you know, build anybody then."
    "Ours do, at least. Most of the soldiers in most other cities are
dead. Most have been dead for a century or longer. Pas should have
made female soldiers, like the troopers from Trivigaunte. He didn't,
and that was clearly an error."
    "You shouldn't say things like that, Patera."
    "Why not, if I think them true? Would Pas like me better if I were
a coward? Some male chems were artisans and farm laborers, from
what I know of them, and a few were servants--butlers and so forth.
But most were soldiers, and the soldiers fought for their cities and
died, or slept as Hammerstone did. The female chems, who were
largely cooks or maids, wore out and died childless. Nearly every
soldier must have courted a cook or a maid, three hundred years
ago. And nearly every such cook and maid must have loved a soldier.
How likely is it that such a couple would be reunited by chance after
centuries?"
    "It could happen." Horn sounded defiant.
    "Of course it could. All sorts of unlikely things can, but they
rarely do. Something has been troubling her ever since she and
Hammerstone were married, and I believe I know what it is. Let's
leave it at that."
    "Even if you're right," Horn said, "that's not a very good reason
to want to die."
    "I disagree, but let's move on. In the cockpit, I realized that Chenille
and Hyacinth had fought when both of them were at Orchid's--she
was the woman who paid for the funeral at which Kypris spoke to
us, not that it matters. My sister--"
    "I didn't know you had a sister, Calde.
    Silk smiled. "Forget I said that, please; it was a slip of the tongue.
I was about to say that Chenille blacked Hyacinth's eyes, which isn't
surprising since she's considerably larger and stronger. Nor do I blame
her. If Hyacinth has forgiven her, and she clearly has, I can do no less.
But they lied about it, both of them, and I found it very painful. I can't
prove they lied, Horn; but if you'd been there, you would have caught
the lie just as I did. Hyacinth identified an incident to which Chenille
was about to refer before Chenille specified it. That could only mean
that Chenille was much more closely involved than she pretended."
    A wide river dotted with ice divided the forest below. Silk leaned
forward to study it. "You'll say that what I've told you is not a good
reason to die. Again, I disagree."
    "Calde...?"
    "Yes. What is it?"
    "You don't look like her. Like Chenille. She's got that red hair, but
it's dyed. Underneath her hair's dark, I think. Your eyes are blue, but
hers are brown, and like you said she's real big and strong. You're
tall and pretty strong, but..."
    "You need not proceed, Horn, if it embarrasses you."
    "What I mean is she'd be a lot like Auk if she was a man. You'd
be a better runner, but--but..."
    "We are alike in certain ways, I suppose."
    "That's not it." Horn was less at ease than ever. "Since you've been
calde everybody talks about the old one. Then last night before those
women came you were talking about his will. Nettle told me, and this's
her idea, really. He said he had an adopted son, and this son was
going to be the next one. What Nettle says is he didn't say to make
it happen, he just said it would. Is that right?"
    Silk nodded. "'Though he is not the son of my body, my son will
succeed me.'"
    "Chenille's his real daughter, Nettle told me that too. And you're
the next calde. So if she's your sister--"
    "We will go no further with this, Horn. It has nothing to do with
our topic."
    "All right. I won't tell anybody."
    "There are so many lies in the whorl that it's not likely anyone
would credit you if you did. May I instance one more? Hyacinth
subdued our pilot, Hyacinth alone. I mentioned it."
    "Yes, Calde."
    "I've been trying to think of an enlightening analogy for you, but
I can't. Suppose I were to say that it was like seeing Patera Incus
overpower Auk. The analogy would be flawed because I've never
supposed that Patera Incus could not fight, only that he would fight
badly. I had imagined Hyacinth would be helpless in the face of
violence; she spoke of taking fencing from Master Xiphias once, yet
I never..."
    "I can't hear you. Can't you turn around this way?"
    "No. Come closer." Silk found Horn's hand and drew him nearer
the edge.
    "Nobody thought you could fight either, Calde."
    "I know, and they had almost convinced me of it. That was a part
of the reason I broke into Blood's--I needed to prove I wasn't
the milksop everyone took me for. Nor was I, though I was badly
frightened most of the time."
    "Maybe that's how Hyacinth felt about the pilot." Greatly daring,
Horn sat up, his legs stretched before him and his feet on the edge
of the deck. "Hyacinth's real girly when you're around. We got lots
of it this morning. She smiles whenever you look at her and holds on
like she can't stand up. She wants you to like her. Calde, you know
that big cat Mucor's got?"
    Silk was staring down at a mountain valley, following the snowy
rush of a young river over red stones. "You mean Lion?"
    "I don't know the name, but Lion sounds like a boy. This was a
girl cat, I think, kind of gray, with long pointed ears and a little
short tail. I saw it one time when I brought up Mucor's dinner. It
really liked her. It would rub up against her and smile. Cats can
smile, Calde."
    "I know."
    "It kept putting its paw in Mucor's lap so she'd pet it, but it wasn't
too sure about me. It showed me its teeth, pulling its lips back without
making any noise. I was pretty scared."
    "So was I, Horn. I shot two of those horned cats once; I'm very
sorry for that now." Silk leaned forward again. "Look at that cliff,
Horn. Can you see it?"
    "Sure, I saw it just a minute ago. I don't think I could climb it,
but I'd like to try."
    Horn made himself speak more loudly. "I know what Hyacinth
seems like to you, Calde, but she seems a lot like Mucor's cat to
Nettle and me. She's respectful to Moly, though."
    Silk glanced over his shoulder. "You're right, there is a great
deal of good in Hyacinth, though I would love her even if there
were none."
    Horn shook his head. "I was going to say she sort of hits it off
with Hammerstone. He can be awful rough."
    "Yes, I'm well aware of it."
    "He likes Moly and Patera Incus, so he's nice to them. But he
treats Nettle and me like sprats, and with other people he's like Auk.
Hyacinth won't give him half a step, and once when she got mad she
called him all kinds of names. I thought I knew all those. I learned
most of that stuff when I was little, but she had some I never heard.
If the pilot pulled a needler on Mucor, what do you think her cat
would do?"
    "Come here," Silk told him. "Sit with me. Are you afraid I'll take you
with me if I jump? I'm not going to, and I'd like you beside me."
    "I'm still pretty scared."
    "You would have climbed that cliff, given the chance. You would
be no more dead falling from here."
    "All right." Gingerly, Horn edged forward until his legs dangled
over the abyss of air. Oreb settled on his shoulder.
    "As I said, I've neglected my duty to teach you. Now I can actually
show you part of the Plan. I find it enlightening, and you may, too.
See the city ahead? The mountains we crossed isolate it from the
west. Soon we'll see what isolates it from the east; and if we were
to turn north or south, we'd come upon barriers there as well. Some
are more formidable than others, of course."
    "Their houses are like people, Calde. Look, there's Pas, with the
two heads. Even the little ones are like people lying down, see? The
thatch makes it look like they've got blankets."
    "Good place." Oreb bobbed on Horn's shoulder.
    "It is," Silk agreed, "but if we weren't used to seeing Pas pictured
like this, we'd think this image the more horrible--and it is
horrible--for being so large. I won't ask if you've lain with a woman,
Horn; it's too personal a matter to broach save in shriving, and I know you
too well to shrive you. Should you wish to be shriven, I hope you'll
go to Patera Remora."
    "All right."
    "I had not until my wedding night. Indeed, it remains my only such
experience. You needn't tell me that Hyacinth has lain with scores of
men. I knew it and was acutely conscious of it; so was she. I can't
say what our experience meant to her, and perhaps it meant little or
nothing. To me it was wonderful. Wonderful! I came to her as one
starving. And yet--"
    Still very frightened, Horn jerked his head. "I know."
    "Good. I'm glad you understand. There was a taint that came from
neither Hyacinth nor me, but from the act itself. After two hours, or
about that, I rested. We had done what men and women do more than
once, and more than twice. I was happy, exhausted, and soiled. I felt
that Echidna, particularly, was displeased; and I doubt that I would
have had the courage if I had not rejected her in my heart after her
theophany. You were there, I know."
    Horn nodded again. "She's a very great goddess, Calde."
    "She is. Great and terrible. It may be that I was wrong to reject
her--I won't argue the point. I only say that I had, and felt as I
did. As I've said, the Outsider enlightened me a second time then.
I won't tell you all that he told me--I couldn't. But one thing was
that he created Pas. The Seven, as everyone knows, are the children
of Pas and Echidna; it had never occurred to me to wonder whence
they themselves came. Why do you think Pas built barriers between
our cities, Horn?"
    The sudden question caught him off guard. "To keep them from
fighting, Calde?"
    "Not at all. Not only do they fight, but he knew that they would; if
he hadn't, he wouldn't have provided them with armies. No, he erected
mountains and dug rivers and lakes so they could not combine against
him. More specifically, so they couldn't combine against Mainframe,
the home he was to set over them."
    "Did the Outsider tell you that, Calde?"
    Silk shook his head. "Hammerstong did, and Hammerstone is right.
The Outsider, as he showed me, has no reason to fear our leaguing
against him. We've done it innumerable times, just as we betray him
daily as individuals. His fear--he is afraid for our sake, not his
own--is that we may come to love other things more than we love him.
When I was at your manteion on Sun Street, foolish people used to
ask me why Pas or Scylla permitted some action that they regarded
as evil, as if a god had to sign a paper before a man could be struck
or a child fall ill. On my wedding night, the Outsider explained why
it is that he permits what people call evil at all--not this theft or
that uncleanness, but the thing itself. It serves him, you see. It hates
him, yet it serves him, too. Does this make sense to you, Horn?"
    "Like a mule that kicks whenever it gets a chance."
    "Exactly. That mule is harnessed like the rest and draws the
wagon, however unwillingly. Given the freedom of the whorl--and
even of those beyond it--evil directs us back to the
Outsider. I told you I rejected Echidna; I thought I did it because
she is evil, but the truth is that I did it because he is better.
A child who burns its hand says the fire's bad, as the saying
goes; but the fire itself is saying, 'Not to me, child. Reach out
to him.'"
    "I think I see. Calde, I'm getting pretty cold."
    "Fish heads?" Oreb inquired.
    Silk nodded. "We'll go in soon, so you and Oreb will be warm
and can get something to eat; but first, have you been looking at
our whorl, Horn? This is winter wheat below us, I believe. See how
the sunlight plays on it, how it ripples in the wind, displaying every
conceivable shade of green?"
    "You still haven't told me--maybe I shouldn't ask you--"
    "Why I was tempted to jump? It's obvious, isn't it?"
    Oreb squawked, "Look out!"
    Already, Horn was sliding from the edge of the deck; the face he
turned toward Silk displayed Mucor's deathly grin.

"You know where Silk is?" Auk stepped into the cockpit and shut the
flimsy door behind him.
    Sciathan pointed to the ceiling, his urchin face all sharp _V_'s.
"Upstairs, which is what you call me. I saw shoes and stockings,
and the legs of trousers at the top." He gestured toward the slanted
pane before him. "The trousers were black, the shoes and stockings
the same, the legs too long for the smallest augur. The tallest, I think,
would not do this."
    "They ain't there any more." Auk bent, craning his neck to peer
upward. "I ought to tell you, too. Number Seven ought to work if
you start it."
    Sciathan flicked two switches and nodded appreciatively as a needle
rose. "You have removed his clamp."
    "There was more to it than that. We're working on Number Five
now. They got 'em out on booms, see?"
    "I have observed this. In a moment I shall tell you what else I have
observed."
    "Only you can haul the booms in to fix the engines. It's a pretty
good system. We had to yank the heads and beat on the pistons
some, but we didn't hurt 'em much. What'd you see?"
    "Another seated beside Silk. It is hazardous to sit thus."
    "You said it."
    "The other was almost chilled..." Sciathan paused, his head cocked.
"Calde Silk comes now to General Saba's cabin. I hear his voice."
    Leaving the cockpit, Auk saw that Saba's curtain was drawn back.
Silk stood where it had hung, and a perspiring Horn had crowded
into the cubicle beside Nettle.
    "--don't know how to put this, exactly," Silk was saying. "I ought
to have given that more thought while I was up on the roof a moment
ago." He glanced over his shoulder. "Hello, Auk. I'm glad you're here;
I was going to send Nettle for you. We're about to return her airship
to General Saba."
    Oreb bobbed in assent as Auk stared.
    "I don't mean, of course, that we're not going to take you to
Mainframe--you and Sciathan, and the rest. We are. Or rather,
she is; Hyacinth and I will accompany her, with Nettle, Horn, His
Eminence, Patera Remora, and Moly."
    Saba grinned at Auk. "I don't understand this either, but I
like it."
    "Of course you do," Silk told her, "and so will Auk. We all should,
because it will help every one of us."
    He turned back to Auk. "A small ceremony at which you return
General Saba's sword might be appropriate. Would you like that?"
    Auk shook his head.
    "It wasn't taken from her, in any event. It's still in that box at the
foot of her bed, she tells me."
    Nettle displayed her needler. "Can I put this up?"
    Auk snapped, "Keep it!"
    "A very small ceremony, then--here and now. Would you get out
your sword for me, General? I'll give it to Auk, who will give it back
to you. You should wear it thereafter. It will hearten your troopers,
I'm confident."
    Auk declared, "We're not giving the slug guns back."
    "Not now, at least. That will depend upon whether there are arms on
the craft the Crew provides you, though I imagine there will be."
    Horn mopped his forehead. "Nobody understands this except you,
Calde."
    "It's simple enough. Neither General Saba nor I desire a war between
Viron and Trivigaunte. We Vironese have seized this airship, the pride
of its city."
    Horn looked to Nettle, who said, "They'd seized as."
    "Exacily. Another reason for war, which General Saba and I wish
to prevent. The solution is obvious--our freedom for the airship."
    "We're free now!"
    "Nobody can be truly free without peace. Consider the alternative.
When we returned to Viron, Generalissimo Siyuf would try to
recapture this airship by force, while General Mint and Generalissimo
Oosik tried to prevent her; it would cost five hundred lives the first
day--at least that many, and perhaps more."
    Saba told Nettle, "You're going to have to wait a little before you
get a tour of Trivigaunte. When he wanted to know if I'd take you
home if I got my airship back, I was too surprised to say anything.
But I will, and let Auk here and the rabble we loaded first out at
Mainframe, if that's what he wants." She bent over her footlocker.
"Some of you are afraid I'm going to cross you. All of you, except
your Calde, most likely."
    Auk grunted.
    She straightened up, holding a sharply curved saber with a
gem-studded hilt. "This is the sword of honor the Rani awarded
me last year, and I'm proud of it. Maybe I haven't worn it as much
as I ought to for fear something might happen to it."
    Oreb whistled, and Nettle told Saba, "It's beautiful!"
    Saba smiled at Auk. "The girl let me keep it. I told her about it,
and she said leave it where it is, Auk won't mind."
    He muttered, "I'd like mine back. That Colonel's got it."
    "If you come back with us, I'll try to get it for you."
    "No cut!" Oreb hopped from Silk's shoulder to Saba's to examine
the sword more closely.
    She drew it and took a half step backward, holding it at eye level
with both hands grasping the blade. "By this sword I swear that as
long as Calde Silk's on my airship, I'll do whatever he tells me, and
when I land him and his friends at their city it will be as passengers,
and not prisoners."
    Silk nodded. "On the terms you have described, General, we return
command to you."
    "You're going to let me talk to the Palace on the glass and tell
them what we're doing?"
    "If you choose to. You are in command."
    Saba lowered her sword. "Then if I break my oath, you can take
this and break it."
    She led them through the gondola to the airy compartment from
which Silk had climbed to the deck. It held cabinets, a sizable table,
and two leather seats; there was a glass on the wall, next to the door.
"This is the chartroom," Saba told Silk, "the nerve center of my airship,
where our navigational instruments and maps are. There's a speaking
tube that runs through officers' quarters to the cockpit. Do you know
about those? Like a glass, but only to the one place and all you can
do is talk."
    "This's where you ought to be," Auk said, but Silk shook
his head.
    Saba pointed. "Right up there's the hatch. We go up to take the
angle between the ship and the sun, mostly. Now it should be zero."
She swallowed. "I'll check it as soon as I talk to the Palace."
    Horn touched Silk's arm. "Don't go back, Calde. Please?"
    Auk asked, "You were up there, huh? Somebody nearly got killed
is what I heard."
    "He was going to jump off," Horn told Auk. "I grabbed him and I
guess I got him back, only I don't remember, just sort of wrestling,
and the roof gone, and music." Puzzled, he stared at Silk. "Someplace
down there was having a concert, I guess."
    "I saw the evil in the whorl," Silk explained. "I thought I knew
it, when I actually had no idea. A few days ago, I began to see it
clearly."
    He waited for someone to speak, but no one did.
    "An hour ago, I saw it very clearly indeed; and it was horrible.
What was worse was that instead of focusing on the evil in myself,
as I should have, I gave my attention to the evil in others. I would
have told you then that I saw a great deal in Horn, for example. I
still do."
    "Calde, I never said--"
    "That was utterly, utterly wrong. I don't mean that the evil isn't
there--it is, and it always will be because it is ineradicable; but
seeing it alone, not merely Horn's evil but everyone else's too, did
something to me far worse than anything Horn himself would ever
do, I'm sure--it blinded me to good. Seeing only evil, I wanted with
all my heart to reunite myself with the Outsider. That would itself
have been an evil act, but Horn saved me from it."
    "I'm so glad." Nettle looked at Horn with shining eyes.
    "Just by coming up on the roof of this gondola, really. For Horn's
sake, I won't go there again, though it's such a marvelous thing to
stand in the sky smiling down at the whorl that I find it difficult
to renounce it; merely by standing there, I came to understand how
Sciathan feels about flying."
    Auk cleared his throat. "I want to tell you about that clamp. All
right if I do it now, before she talks to 'em back in Trivigaunte?"
    "You found it, I assume."
    "Yeah, only that wasn't a fuel hose. It was a lube hose."
    Saba's eyes opened wide, "_What!_"
    Auk ignored her. "The clamp cut the flow to where they got hot
and seized. It didn't show on the gauge up front 'cause it just measures
tank temperature. The tank was all right and the pump was running,
but there wasn't much getting through. We got Number Seven busted
loose, and maybe we can fix the rest."
    "They'll never be as good as they were." Saba sounded disgusted.
    "They weren't anyhow," Auk told her. "I made a couple little
improvements already."
    Oreb eyed them both. "Fish heads?"
    "I feel the same way myself," Silk announced. "If I'm to live after
all, I'd like something to eat."
    Saba stepped to the glass and clapped; it grew luminous, as the
monitor's gray face coalesced. At once dancing flecks of color
replaced it--peach, pink, and an etherial blue that deepened until
it was nearly black.
    Silk fell to his knees; for him the sunlit chartroom and its occupants
vanished.
    "Silk?" The face in the glass was innocent and sensual, preternaturally
lovely. "Silk, wouldn't you like to be Pas? We'd be together
then... Silk."
    He bowed his head, unable to speak.
    "They can scan you at Mainframe. As I was scanned, Silk, with
him. He held my hand..."
    Silk found that he was staring up at her; she smiled, and his spirit
melted.
    "You'll go on with your life. Silk. Just as it is. You'd be Pas too.
And he would be you. Look..."
    The face lovelier than any mortal woman's dispersed like smoke.
In its place stood a bronze-limbed man with rippling muscles and
two heads.
    One was Silk's.

                  Chapter 16 -- Exodus from the Long Sun

They floated in an infinite emptiness lit by a remote, spool-shaped
black sun: Sciathan the Flier, Patera Incus and Patera Remora, the old
woman who called herself Moly, Nettle and Horn, the calde's wife, and
the calde. The shrinking red dot that was the lander winked out.
    "Good-bye, Auk my noctolater." The speaker seemed near, though
there was a note in his voice that had traveled far; it was a man's
voice, deep, and heavy with sorrow.
    "Good-bye, Auk," Silk repeated; until he heard his own voice, he
did not realize he had spoken aloud. "Good-bye, sister. Good-bye,
Gib. Farewell."
    Maytera Marble murmured, "Heartbroken. Poor General Mint will
be simply heartbroken."
    "He goes to a better place than any you have seen."
    "I _disliked_ him, though the harlot _Chenille_ was not devoid
of _pre-eminent qualities. Notwithstanding_, I feel _bereft_..."
    So softly that Silk supposed that only he could hear her, Hyacinth
inquired, "Is that where? Those little dots?"
    "To one or the other," the god replied. "The blue whorl or the green.
Auk's lander cannot carry them to both."
    "Auk--ah. Devoted to you, eh? As we, um, all. He was, er, reformed?
Devout. If you are not, um, hey?"
    There was no reply. The distant sparks faded. Hyacinth gripped
Silk's arm, pointing to the black, spool-shaped sun behind them,
from which light streamed. "What _is_ that? Is it--is it...? The
lander came out of it."
    "That is our _Whorl_" Sciathan wiped his eyes.
    "That little thing?"
    Already the little thing was fading; Silk relaxed. "You liked Auk,
didn't you? So did I. If I live as long as His Cognizance, I won't forget
meeting him in the Cock, sipping brandy while I tried to make out his
face in the shadows."
    "When I saw Aer die, I did not weep. That pain was too deep for
weeping. Auk is not dead, but no one will call me Upstairs any more.
I weep for that."
    "Wish that he stated, um, unequivocally, eh?" Remora had already
activated his propulsion module and was drifting toward the circular
aperture. "Is--um--Great Pas satisfied? Is this adequate? Sufficient?"
    Silk and Hyacinth followed him. Silk said, "If he were, we Cargo
would return to our herds and fields. Auk has bought us a brief
respite, that's all. Pas will not be satisfied until the last person in
the whorl has gone. It has served its purpose."
    They emerged into the penumbra, shade that seemed blinding light
after the darkness. "I don't see how Tartaros showed us the whorl
from outside," Hyacinth murmured. "There can't be an eye out there,
can there?" When Silk did not reply, "I don't like not walking. My
thighs are getting fat, I can feel it."
    Maytera Marble overtook them. "They can't be, dear, you don't
eat anything. I'm worried about you."
    "I don't like people seeing up my gown, either. I know it sounds
silly, but I don't. Every time I feel like somebody's looking up there
my thighs swell up and never go back down."
    "There is no _up_," Incus called as he accelerated toward them,
"nor is there _any down_. All is a realm of _light_."
    "The, um, deceased." Remora glanced back at him, vaguely worried.
"How shall we explain that, Your Eminence? The, um, faithful, eh?
They expect the--ah--dear decedent."
    "Do you desire a visitation by your dead?" Sciathan asked.
    Silk said flimly, "No." Hyacinth's jaw dropped, and for a moment
her sculptured face looked foolish.
    Silk decelerated to allow Sciathan to catch up. "I speak only for
myself. I've met mine, and know and love them. The temptation to
rejoin them would be too great. I know your offer was well intended
but no, I do not."
    "There is no physicality," the little Flier explained. "Mainframe
recreates them and beams the data to one's mind."
    "Moly, would you escort Hyacinth back to the airship for me,
please? I have to confer with Sciathan." Silk took the Flier's arm.
    Horn asked, "Can we come?" Silk hesitated, then shook his head;
Oreb launched himself from Horn's shoulder to flap after them
upside down.

One by one the pilot was testing the engines; Horn counted as each
coughed, roared to life, and declined to a hum.
    Nettle asked, "Aren't you going to knock?"
    He would have preferred that she do it, but could not say so. "What on?"
    "On the frame, I guess. They're pretty solid."
    Silk pushed the curtain to one side as Horn raised his fist. "Hyacinth
isn't here. Were you looking for me?"
    Both nodded.
    "Very well, what can I do for you?"
    Horn cleared his throat. "You promised me you wouldn't go up
on the roof again, Calde. Remember?"
    "Of course. I've kept my promise."
    "Me and Nettle have been up there," Horn said, and Oreb applauded
with joyful wings.
    Nettle said, "It's not scary when you can float." Her eyes appealed
to Horn, who added, "We want you to go up with us."
    "You're releasing me from my promise?"
    Horn nodded. "Yeah."
    "Say yes, Horn." Silk looked thoughtful. "You bear the repute of
your palaestra."
    "Yes, Calde. Calde, is Patera Remora really going to be our new
augur?"
    "No." Absentmindedly, Silk glanced around the cubicle for his
propulsion module before remembering that he had returned it. "He
cannot become your new augur, since he is augur there already. He'll
take up his duties when we get home. How do you keep from floating
away? That might not be frightening, I'll allow; but I would think it
serious."
    "Bird save!"
    "Yes, if I'm adrift you must tow me to safety."
    "There's supplies in the last gondola," Horn explained as Silk pushed
off from the doorway. "We found a coil of rope in there. The table in
the chartroom's bolted down, so we tie onto the legs."
    "It's better than having that thing on your back," Nettle told Silk.
"You just float around without having to worry about anything.
When you're tired of it, you pull yourself in."
    Horn added, "But I don't get tired of it."
    "There's something you want me to see." They had floated through
the officers' sleeping quarters; Silk stopped, bulging the canvas
partition, and opened the door to the messroom.
    "Just--just everything you can see from out there."
    "Something to ask, in that case."
    In the chartroom, Silk knotted the finger-thick line about his waist
in accordance with Horn's instructions and pushed off from the table,
out through the open hatch.
    The airship had revolved, whether from the torque of its engines or
the pressure of some passing breeze, until Mainframe stood upright
as a wall, its black slabs of colossal mechanism jutting toward them
and its Pylon an endless bridge that dwarfed the airship and vanished
into night.
    Horn gestured. "See, Calde? We don't have to sit on the edge, but
we can go over there if you want to. Way, way down you can see
the Mountains That Look At Mountains, I guess. It's kind of blue
at first, then so bright you can't be sure."
    Nettle emerged from the hatch. "I still don't understand what
Mainframe is, Calde. Just all those things with the lights running
over them? And why do they have roofs here if it can't rain? How
would they get the rain to come down?"
    "This is Mainframe," Silk told her. "You are seeing it."
    "The big square things?"
    "With what underlies its meadows and lawns; Mainframe is
dispersed among them all. Imagine millions of millions of tiny
circuits like those in a card--billions of billions, actually. The
warmth of each is less than the twinkle of a firefly; but there are
so many that if they were packed together their own heat would
destroy them. They would become a second sun. As things are it
is always summer here, thanks to those circuits."
    "That's what you call the little wiggly gold lines in card?" Nettle
inquired. "Circuits? They don't do anything."
    "They would, if they were returned to their proper places in a
lander. We will have to return some ourselves soon."
    Horn was watching Silk narrowly. "Did Sciathan tell you all that?"
    "Not in so many words, but he said enough to let me infer the rest.
What was it you wanted to ask?"
    "A whole bunch of stuff. You know, Calde, for my book. Is it all
right if I call you Calde?"
    "Of course. Or Patera, or Silk, or even Patera Calde, which is what
His Cognizance calls me. As you like."
    "I heard Chenille tell Moly that when she was Kypris she made
you call her Chenille anyway. It must have seemed funny."
    Nettle said, "I'm not writing a book, Calde, but I've got stuff I
want to ask, too. I'm helping Horn with his, I guess. I'll have to,
probably. Did you make the dead people come back and talk to us
like they did?"
    "Mainframe did that, Nettle." Silk smiled. "Believe me, I'm unable
to compel it to do anything. I asked Sciathan to ask it on our
behalf, but he explained that it was unnecessary. Mainframe knows
everything that takes place here; as soon as I formulated my request,
Mainframe took it under consideration. I'm delighted that it was
granted, immensely grateful."
    "But not back home." Nettle waved vaguely at the deck some ten
cubits below. "It doesn't hear everything there."
    "No, it doesn't; but it discovers more than I would have believed.
Since Echidna's theophany, I've assumed the gods knew only what
they saw and heard through Sacred Windows and glasses, which
seems to be very near the truth. Those are Mainframe's principal
sources, too; but it has others--the Fliers' data, for example."
    Horn said, "I've got a tough one, Calde. I'm not trying to show
you up or anything.
    "Of course not. What is it?"
    "Tartaros told Auk the short sun whorl would be like ours, only
there wouldn't be any people, or no people like us. Auk told Chenille,
and I asked her. She said it means there'll be grass and rocks and
flowers, only not like we're used to. Why is that?"
    Nettle shook her head in disbelief. "That's not hard at all. Because
Pas picked them out for us to make it easy."
    "Or difficult," Silk muttered.
    "I don't understand."
    "Suppose there were no plants or animals--we'll leave the rocks
aside. Auk's lander is stocked with seeds and embryos, as you saw.
He'll be able to grow whichever ones he wants; and if the whorl he
chooses had none of its own, those would be the only plants and
animals with which he would have to deal. As things are, he'll have
a much more interesting time of it--as well as a much harder one."
    The hum of their engines deepened, and the three of them drifted
toward the prow of the second gondola until the ropes that united
them with the first were taut. "We're under way," Horn announced.
Oreb agreed: "Go home!"
    "As soon as we're gone, I don't think I'll believe I was here." Nettle
sighed. "Grandma came for a talk. I said stay with me and we'll take
you back, but she said she couldn't."
    "Patera Remora's mother came to see him," Horn told Silk. "He's
been smiling at everybody. He told her he had his own manteion now,
and he'd sacrifice and shrive and bring the Peace, and wouldn't have
to work in the Palace any more. And she said it's what she'd wanted
for him all the time."
    "Hyacinth's mother visited her, too."
    Nettle looked surprised. "I didn't think her mother was dead,
Calde."
    "Neither did Hyacinth."
    Hand over hand they pulled themselves forward again, until they
were standing on the deck, although standing very lightly; Silk freed
himself from the loop of rope.
    Nettle said, "Calde, you never did answer my question about the
roofs. And I wanted to know why the shade's so close here, and we
can't see the sun."
    "The Pylon makes it," Horn declared, "or anyhow it shoots it into
the sky. Isn't that right, Calde? Then the sun burns it but instead of
smoke it turns into air. If the Pylon didn't shoot out more, the shade
would burn up and there'd be daylight all the time. Only Mainframe
would fry, because it's so close. The sun starts at the top of the Pylon
and goes all the way to the West Pole."
    "Long way," Oreb elaborated.
    "We, too, have a long way to go," Silk said, addressing neither
Horn nor Nettle, "but at last we've begun."
    "I understand about the roofs now," Nettle said.
    He looked around at her. "Do you? Tell me."
    "We  used to go to the lake every summer when I was little. Then... I
don't know, something happened, and it seemed like we never
had enough money."
    "Taxes went up after the old calde died," Horn told her. "They went
up a lot."
    "Maybe that was it. Anyway, one year when I was nine or ten we
waited till everybody else had gone home, and went when it was
cheaper, and after that we never went any more."
    Silk nodded.
    "It would be nice, sometimes, in the afternoons, and we'd swim,
but it was pretty cold in the morning. One morning I got up when
everybody else was still asleep and walked to the lake just to look
at it. I think I knew this was the last year, and we wouldn't come
any more. Maybe we were going home that day."
    "This isn't about roofs," Horn said; but Silk put a finger to
his lips.
    "The lake was all covered with ghosts, white shapes coming up out
of the water and reaching for the air, getting bigger and stronger all
the time. I was thinking about ghosts a lot then, because Gam had, you
know, gone to Mainframe, the one I talked to today. We were supposed
to say she was in Mainframe, but we didn't think it meant anything.
Aren't you going to say that it wasn't really ghosts, Horn?"
    He shook his head.
    "It wasn't, it was fog. There was an old lady fishing off the pier, and
I guess she liked me because when I asked she said there was water in
the air over the lake, and when it got cold enough it came together and
made tiny little drops that take a long, long while to fall, and that was
what you saw. I'd never wondered where fog came from before then."
    "Fog good."
    "That's right, you're a marsh bird. Don't they come from Palustria,
Calde? The swamps around there?"
    Silk nodded. "I believe so."
    "What I was going to say was that the fog got thicker and thicker that
day, and got everything wet. So if they have a lot of fogs here... We're
not hardly there, though, any more. But you know what I mean. Only
you wouldn't want it inside, so you'd have roofs, and they do."
    Horn said, "The fountains get the grass wet, too, like it does at
home on a windy day. It's not as much as you'd think, because
there's a thing that sucks in air at the bottom and takes the water
out for the pump. If they shut that off, it would water everything."
    Silk tossed aside his rope and watched it settle to the deck. "We
have weight once more."
    "Yeah, I know. I mean yes."
    "I should consider this better before I speak, Horn, but I find it
exhilarating. When we arrived and could float--could fly, after a
fashion, after Sciathan secured propulsion modules for us--I found
that exhilarating as well. I'm contradicting myself, I suppose."
    Horn looked to Nettle, who said, "I don't think so."
    "It's not easy for me to sort out, and even less easy for me to explain.
Sciathan is a Flier, in love with flight and pardonably proud of his
wings and his special status among the Crew. Until we got here, I
was confident that I understood his feelings."
    Horn looked puzzled. "Everybody flies here, Calde."
    "Exactly. They have to, and we flew in the same way. Or floated. 
_Floated_ may be the better term. It's easy, so much so that all three
of us floated here without modules; but we floated under a lowering
shade that never brought night or rose to bring a new day."
    "It's getting to be daylight here." Horn gestured toward the sky-filling
brown bulk of the airship.
    "We've reached the foothills of the Mountains That Look At
Mountains," Silk said, "and if we had tried to float this far, we'd
have settled to the ground. But Sciathan flies over these hills, and
across the mountains, too--or soars from valley to valley, if he
chooses."
    "Bird fly!"
    "Yes. Sciathan flies like Oreb here, or the eagle that brought down
poor Iolar. I had a taste of that when I piloted this airship." For a
moment Silk's smile was radiant.
    Saba's head emerged from the hatch. "Hello, Calde! Going to take
a reading?"
    "I wouldn't know how."
    She swung herself easily onto the deck. "I do, and I've got the
protractor so I can show you. It's early yet, but I wanted to climb
up here while it didn't take so much lifting." She chuckled. "I heard
you talking about flying. I command a thousand pterotroopers, but I
can't fly like they do. Neither could you, we're both too heavy. Even
this girl would have to lose a little to be much good."
    "I was about to explain to Horn and Nettle that while wings are
wonderful--and they are, truly, truly wonderful--feet are wonderful
too. Doctor Crane, if he were still alive, could amputate my legs, and
then I'd be light enough to fly the way your troopers do, and perhaps
even as Sciathan does; but as much as I envy them, I wouldn't want
him to. It would be marvelous to fly as they do, so it's not surprising
that we envy them; but imagine how much someone without legs
must envy us."
    "I don't have to imagine. Some of my dearest friends have lost
their legs."
    Horn asked, "Are you going to be pilot some on the way back, Calde?
You like it so much I think you ought to. You were good at it, too."
    Saba said, "For somebody without training, he was better than
good. He'll be taking over in four hours."
    Horn looked relieved.
    "When we're past the mountains," Silk told him, and walked forward
to the prow of the gondola.
    Saba trotted after him. "I wouldn't do that, Calde. We still haven't
got all the altitude we want, and mountains can give you some tricky
winds."
    "I'll be fine; but you must remain where you are."
    Behind Saba, Nettle called, "Horn's afraid you're going to jump,
Calde. That's all it is"
    "I'm not."
    "When General Saba said you were going to be the pilot, he felt
a lot better, because he thought you wouldn't want to miss it. We
both did."
    Looking down upon the green and rising slopes far below, where
hillside meadows yielded to forested heights, Silk smiled. "You don't
have to worry. I love life and Hyacinth too much to jump. Besides, if
I jumped I wouldn't be able to wrestle with your questions, Nettle--though
that might be good for both of us. Have you more?"
    "I was going to ask you about the mountains." Timorously, she
edged past Saba to grasp Silk's hand. "It scares me to look at them.
You know how lampreys look in the market? Those round mouths
with rings and rings of teeth? These look like that to me, under us
and up in the skylands too. Only a million times bigger."
    "Were you going to ask me why they exist? Because Pas built them
to guard Mainframe; but that's sheer speculation. I don't know any
more than you do."
    "If anybody lives there. And--and why there's snow on the tops.
The tops are closer to the sun, so they ought to be warmer."
    "I don't believe that the sun heats air," Silk told her absently, "not
much, and perhaps not at all. If it did, the sun's heat couldn't reach
us. If you think about it, you'll soon realize that sunlight doesn't
illuminate air either; we could see air if it did, and we can't."
    Behind Silk, Horn said, "No kind of light does then."
    "Correct, I'm sure. The warmth of the sun heats the soil and the
waters, and they in return warm the air above them. Up here where
there are only widely separated peaks, the air must be cold of necessity.
Hence, snow; and in the Mountains That Look At Mountains, snow
has weight enough to fall."
    Silk paused, considering. "I never asked Sciathan who lived in the
mountains, or whether anyone did. I've seen no cities, but I would
think a few people must, people who fled the cities or were driven
out. It must be a wild and lawless place; no doubt many like it for
just that reason."
    From the hatch Hyacinth called, "Silk, is that you?" and he turned
to smile at her.
    "I've been looking all over for you, but nobody'd seen you. Oh,
hello, General." As gracefully as ever, Hyacinth stepped from the
ladder onto the deck. "Hi, sprats. Got a better view from up here?
It's bigger, anyway."
    "You can leave me to my own devices now," Silk told Horn.

It was snowing in Viron, a hard fall that converted misery to unrelieved
wretchedness, snow that rendered every surface slippery and made
every garment damp, and rushed into Maytera Mint's eyes each time
she faced the wind.
    "We have done what we can, My General." Under stress of weather,
the captain stood beside, not before, her. Both had their coat collars
turned up against the wind and cold; his uniform cap was pulled
over his ears like her striped stocking cap, his right arm inadequately
immobilized by a bloodstained sling.
    "I'm sure you have, Colonel, They'll start dying in a few hours,
I'm afraid, just the same."
    "I am not a colonel, My General."
    "You are, I just promoted you. Now show me you deserve it. Find
them shelter."
    "I have tried, My General. I shall try again, though every house in
this quarter has been burned." He was not a tall man, yet he seemed
tall as he spoke.
    That about the houses had been unnecessary, Maytera Mint
thought, and showed how tired he was. She said, "I know."
    "This was your own quarter, was it not? Near the Orilla?"
    "It was, and it is."
    "I go. May I say first that I would prefer to fight for you and the
gods, My General? Viron must be free!"
    She shivered. "What if you lose that arm, Colonel?"
    "One hand suffices to fire a needler, My General."
    She smiled in spite of her determination not to. "Even the left?
Could you hit anything?"
    He took a step backward, saluting with his uninjured arm. "When
one cannot aim well, one closes with the enemy."
    He had vanished into the falling snow before she could return
his salute. She lowered the hand that had not quite gotten to her
eyebrow, and began to walk among the huddled hundreds who had
fled the fighting.
    I would know every face, she thought, if I could see their faces.
Not the names, because I've never been good with names. Dear Pas,
won't you let us have even a single ray of sun?
    Children and old people, old people and children. Did old people
not fight because they were too feeble? Or was it that they had, over
seventy or eighty years, come to appreciate the futility of it?
    Something caught at her skirt. "Are they bringing food?"
She dropped to one knee. The aged face might almost have been
Maytera Rose's. "I've ordered it, but there's very little to be had. And
we've very few people we can spare to look for it, wounded troopers
mostly."
    "They'll eat it themselves!"
    Perhaps they will, Maytera Mint thought. They are hungry, too,
I'm sure, and they've earned it. "Somebody will bring you something
soon, before shadelow." She stood up.
    "Sib? Sib? Mama's over there, and she's real cold."
    She peered into the pale little face. "Perhaps you could find wood
and start a fire. Someone must have an igniter."
    "She won't..." The child's voice fell away.
    Maytera Mint dropped to one knee again. "Won't what?"
    "She won't take my coat, Maytera. Will you make her?"
    Oh, my! Oh, Echidna! "No. I cannot possibly interfere with so
brave a woman," There was something familiar about the small face
beneath the old rabbit-skin cap. "Don't I know you? Didn't you go
to our palaestra?"
    The child nodded.
    "Maytera Marble's group. What's your name?"
    "Villus, Maytera." A deep inhalation for words requiring boldness.
"I was sick, Maytera. I got bit by a big snake. I really did. I'm
not lying."
    "I'm sure you're not, Villus."
    "That's why she won't, so tell her I'm well!" The small coat stood
open now, displaying what appeared to be an adult's sweater, far
too large.
    "No, Villus. Button those again before you freeze." Her own fingers
were fumbling with the buttons as she spoke. "Find wood, as I told
you. There must be a little left, even if it's charred on the outside.
Make a fire."
    As she stood, the wind brought faint boomings that might almost
have been thunder. Distant, she decided, yet not distant enough. It
probably meant the enemy had broken through, but it would be worse
than futile for her to rush back knowing nothing. Bison would send 
a messenger with news and a fresh horse. These two... "Are you
all right?"
    "We'll keep." An old man's voice, an old man with his arm around a
woman just as old. The old woman said, "We're not hurt or anything."  
"We been talking about that." (The man again.) "We'd stay warmer
moving around." "We were pretty tired when we got here."
    "I'm trying to get you some food," Maytera Mint told them.
    "We could help, couldn't we, Dahlia? Help pass it out, or anything
you want done."
    "That's good of you. Very good. Do either of you have an
igniter?"
    They shook their heads.
    "Then you might look for one, ask other people. I set a little boy
to gathering fuel a moment ago. If we could build a few fires, that
would help a great deal."
    "All this burned." The old man made an unfocused gesture with
his free hand. "Should be coals yet." His wife confirmed, "Bound to
be, snow or no snow." "I smell smoke." Sniffing, he struggled to stand,
and Maytera Mint helped him up. "I'll have a look," he said.
    Here I am, Maytera Mockorange. I am the sibyl I dreamed of
becoming, moving among sufferers and helping them, though I have
so little help to give.
    She visualized Maytera Mockorange's severe features. The girl who
would soon assume the new name _Mint_ had yearned for renunciation
and pictured herself walking through the whorl she would give up like
a blessing; Maytera Mockorange had warned her of missed meals and
meager food, of hard beds and hard thankless work. Of year after year
of loneliness.
    They had both been right.
    Maytera Mint fell to her knees with folded hands and bowed head.
"O Great Pas, O Mothering Echidna, you have given me my heart's
desire." A feeling she had never known thrilled her: her body alone
knelt in the snow; her spirit was kneeling among violets, baby's breath,
and lily-of-the-valley, in a bower of roses. "I have won life's battle. I
am complete. End my life today, if that is your pleasure. I shall rush
into the arms of Hierax exulting."
    "_We tried, Maytera_."
    It had been a woman's voice to her left, and its words had not
been addressed to her. To another sibyl then? Maytera Mint got to
her feet.
    "_Cold_," the woman was saying, "_and there's not a scrap of flesh on
her poor bones_."
    Three--no, four people. Two fat people sitting in the snow, with
a starved face between the round, ruddy ones. The figure in black
bending over them was the sibyl, clearly. What had been that young
one's name? "Maytera? Maytera Maple? Is that you?"
    "No, sib." She straightened up, turning her head farther than seemed
possible, eyes glowing in a tarnished metal face. "It's me, sib. It's
Maggie."
    "It--it--I--oh, sib! Moly!" And they were hugging and dancing
as they had on the Palatine. "Sib, sib, SIB!"
    Another distant boom.
    "Moly! Oh, oh, Moly! May I call you Maytera Marble, just once?
I've missed you so!"
    "Be quick. I'm about to become an abandoned woman."
    "You, Moly?"
    "Yes. I am." Maytera Marble's voice was firm as granite. "And don't
call me Moly, please. It's not my name. It never was. My name's
Magnesia. Call me Maggie. Or Marble, if it makes you happy.
My husband will--never mind. Have you met my granddaughter,
sib? This is she, but I don't think she'll talk right now. You must
excuse her."
    "Mucor?" Maytera Mint knelt beside the emaciated girl. "Our calde
described you to me, and I'm an old friend of your grandmother's."
    "Wake up." Mucor's pinched face grinned without meaning. "Break
it." There was no hint of intelligence in her stare. She said nothing
further, and the silence of the snow closed about them until the fat woman
ended it by saying, "This's my husband, General. Shrike's his name."
    "Scleroderma! Scleroderma, I didn't recognize you."
    "Well, I knew _you_ right off. I said that's General Mint and I held
her horse when she charged them on Cage Street, I did, and if you'd
gone like you ought to you'd know her too."
    The fat man tugged the brim of his hat.
    "I went up to the Calde's Palace to see Maytera, only she wasn't home
and half the wall down, so I've been taking care of her granddaughter
ever since, poor little thing. Did those bad women carry you off,
Maytera? That's what I heard."
    "You'd better call me Maggie," Maytera Marble said, and pulled
her habit over her head.
    "Maytera!"
    "I am not a sibyl any more," the slender, shining figure declared. "I
have become an abandoned woman, as I warned you I would." She
dropped the voluminous black gown over Mucor's head, and pulled
it down around her. "Put your arms into the sleeves, dear. It's easy,
they're wide."
    "There was a old man that helped me with her," Scleroderma
explained, "but he went to fight, then the bad women came and
we had to scoot."
    If it had not been for the shock of seeing Maytera Marble nude,
Maytera Mint would have smiled.
    "I think it means he's dead, but I hope not. Aren't you cold,
Maytera?"
    "Not a bit." Maytera Marble straightened up. "This is much cooler
and more comfortable, though I'm sure I'll miss my pockets." She
turned to Maytera Mint. "I've been consorting with other abandoned
women, a dozen at least. I'm afraid it's rubbed off."
    Maytera Mint swallowed and coughed, wanting to bat the snowflakes
away, to sit down with a mug of hot tea, to awaken and find
that this little pewter-colored creature was not the elderly sibyl she
had thought she knew. "Did they capture--"
    With nimble fingers, Maytera Marble wound the long top of
Maytera Mint's blue-striped stocking cap about her neck like a
scarf. "This way, dear, then you won't be so cold, that's what it's
for. You tuck the end in your coat." She tucked it. "And the tassel
keeps it from coming out. See?"
    "These women!" Maytera Mint had spoken more loudly than she
had intended, but she continued with the same vehemence, telling
herself, I _am_ a general after all. "Are you referring to enemy
troopers or Willet's spies?"
    "No, no, no. Dear Chenille, who's really quite a nice girl in her
way, and the calde's wife. She's no better than she ought to be if
you know what I mean. And the women our thieves brought. They
were more interesting than the poor women, though the poor women
were interesting too. But the thieves' women didn't mind taking their
clothes off, or not very much. Dear Chenille actually enjoys it, I'd
say. Her figure's prettier than her face, so I find it understandable."
Scleroderma said, "So's yours, Maytera," and her husband nodded
enthusiastically.
    Another explosion punctuated the sentence. Cocking her head,
Maytera Mint decided it had been nearer than the last; there had
been something portentous about the sound.
    "...Cognizance told us," Scleroderma finished.
    Maytera Mint asked, "Did you say His Cognizance?" Then, before
anyone could answer, put her finger to her lips.
    The stammering popping reports seemed to come from above her
head. They were followed after an interval by the remote crash
of shells.
    "What is it, General?" Scleroderma asked.
    "I heard guns. A battery of light pieces. You don't often hear the
shots, just the whine of the shells and the explosions. These are near,
so they may be ours."
    Maytera Marble took Mucor's hand and got her to her feet. "Will
you excuse us? I want to take her to the fire."
    "Fire?" Maytera Mint looked around.
    "Right over there. I just saw it. Come along, darling."
    Scleroderma and Shrike were getting to their feet as well, not swiftly
but with so much effort, scrambling, and grunting that they gave the
impression of frantic action.
    The messenger should be here by now, Maytera Mint told herself,
and stepped in front of Scleroderma. "You said His Cognizance was
here? You must tell me before you go. But before you do, have you
seen a mounted trooper leading another horse?"
    Scleroderma shook her head.
    "But His Cognizance was here?"
    The fat man said, "Stopped an' had a chat, nice as anybody. I
wouldn't of known, only the wife, she knows all that. Goes twice,
three times most weeks. Just a little man older'n my pa. Had on a
plain black whatchacallit, like any other augur." He paused, his eyes
following Maytera Marble and Mucor. "Crowd around any harder,
an' they'll shove somebody in."
    "You're right." Maytera Mint trotted through the snow to the fire.
"People! This little fire can't warm even half of you. Collect more
wood. Build another! You can light it from this one." They dispersed
with an alacrity that surprised her.
    "Now then!" She whirled upon Scleroderma and Shrike. "If His
Cognizance is here, I must speak to him. As a courtesy, if for no
other reason. Where did he go?"
    Shrike shrugged; Scleroderma said, "I don't know, General," and
her husband added, "Said we'd have to leave this whorl, then the
Calde come an' got him. First time I ever seen him."
    "Calde Silk?"
    Scleroderma nodded. "He didn't know _him_ either."
    The Trivigauntis had released their prisoners, as General Saba
had promised; no other explanation made sense, and it was vitally
important. Maytera Mint looked around frantically for the messenger
Bison would surely have dispatched minutes ago.
    "He was lookin' for the calde," Shrike explained, "only it was Calde
Silk what found _him_."
    "There aren't as many as there were." Maytera Mint stood on tiptoe,
blinking away snow.
    "You told 'em to go find wood, General."
    "_General! General!_" Beneath the shouted words, she heard the
stumbling clatter of a horse ridden too fast across littered ground.
"This way!" She waved blindly.
    Scleroderma muttered, "Just listen to those drums. Makes me want
to go myself."
    "Drums?" Maytera Mint laughed nervously, and was ashamed of
it at once. "I thought it was my heart. I really did."
    Through the snow, Bison's messenger called, "_General?_"
She waved as before, listening. Not the cadent rattle of the thin cylindrical
drums the Trivigauntis used, but the steady _thumpa-thumpa-thump_ of
Vironese war drums, drums that suggested the palaestra's
big copper stew-pot whenever she saw them, war drums beating out the
quickstep used to draw up troops in order of battle. Bison was about to
attack, and was letting both the enemy and his own troopers know it.
    "General!" The messenger dismounted, half falling off his rawboned
brown pony. "Colonel Bison says we got to take it to 'em. The airship's
back. Probably you heard it, sir."
    Maytera Mint nodded. "I suppose I did."
    "They been droppin' mortar bombs on us out of it all up and down
the line, sir. Colonel says we got to get in close and mix up with 'em
so they can't."
    "Where is he? Didn't you bring a horse for me?"
    "Yes, sir, only the calde took it. Maybe I shouldn't of let him,
sir, but--"
    "Certainly you should, if he wanted it." She pushed the messenger
out of her way and swung into the saddle. "I'll have to take yours.
Return on foot. Where's Bison?"
    "In the old boathouse, sir." The messenger pointed vaguely through
the twilit snow, leaving her by no means certain that he was not as
lost as she felt.
    "Good luck," Scleroderma called. And then, "I'm coming."
    "You are not!" Maytera Mint locked her knees around the hard-used
pony, heedless of the way the saddle hiked her wide black skirt past
her knees. "You stay right here and take care of your husband. Help
Maytera--I mean Maggie--with the mad girl." She pointed to the
messenger, realizing too late that she was doing it with the hilt of
her azoth. "Are you certain he's in the boathouse? I ordered him to
stay back and not get himself killed."
    "Safest place, sir, with them bombs droppin' on us."
    A floating blur resolved itself into two riders in dark clothing
upon a single white horse. A familiar voice shouted, "Go! Follow
that officer--he'll take you to shelter. Get away from that fire!"
    The voice was Silk's. As she watched in utter disbelief he galloped
through the fire. For a moment she hesitated; then the boom of slug
guns decided her.

"I like this part though," Hyacinth whispered, hugging Silk tighter
than ever, "just don't let it trot again."
    He did not, but lacked the breath to say so. Reining up, he shielded
his eyes with the right hand that snatched at the pommel whenever he
was distracted; the group he had glimpsed through the snow might
be a woman with children, and probably was. Gritting his teeth, he
slammed his heels into the white gelding's flanks. It was essential not
to trot--trotting shook them helpless. More essential not to lose the
stirrups that fought free of his shoes whenever they were not gouging
his ankles. The gelding slipped in the snow; for an instant he was sure
    Behind him, Hyacinth shrieked, "_Up, stand up! That way!_" She
sounded angry; and briefly and disloyally, he wished that she possessed
the clarion voice that Kypris had bestowed upon Maytera Mint--though
it would have been still more useful to have it himself.
    "My Calde!" A snow-speckled figure had caught the bridle.
    "Yes, what is it?"
    "All are within, My Calde. They are gone. You must too, before
you die."
    He shook his head.
    "But a few remain, I swear. I shall send them. You must compel
him, Madame."
    Then the captain was running and the gelding trotting after him,
and they were being shaken as if by a terrier.
    "Here is the entrance, My Calde. I regret I cannot assist you and
your lady to dismount."
    Too shaken even to think of disobeying, Silk slid from the gelding's
back and helped Hyacinth down. The captain pointed to a deep crater
almost at his feet; its bottom gleamed with greenish light.
    Too sharply for comfort, Silk recalled the grave he had been shown
in a dream. "We got to ride on a deadcoach the first time," he told
Hyacinth. It was difficult to keep his voice casual. "That was a lot
more comfortable, but there was dust instead of snow." She stared
at him.
    "You must climb down." The captain pointed again. "The climb is
somewhat difficult. Several have fallen, though none were injured
seriously." He produced a needler, fumbling the safety with his left
thumb.
    Silk said, "You're about to join the fighting."
    "Yes, My Calde. If you permit it."
    Silk shook his head. "I won't. I have a message for you to give to
General Mint. Do you know where Hyacinth and I are going?"
    "Into this tunnel below the city, My Calde, to preserve yourself for
Viron, as is proper."
    Hyacinth smoothed her gown. "We're supposed to leave the whole
whorl with thousands and thousands of cards. If we get to whatever
it is, we'll be rich." She spat into the snow.
    "I've taken all the funds I could out of the fisc," Silk explained, "and
His Cognizance has emptied the burse--the Chapter's funds. I'm telling
you this so you can tell General Mint what's become of us, and what's
happened to the money. Do you know which Siyuf you're fighting?"
    A voice called, "_Calde!_"
    "Is that you down there, Horn?"
    "Yes, Calde." Horn climbed toward him, his feet loosening stones
that rattled down the slope to fall into the tunnel.
    "Go back down," Silk told him.
    "My Calde, we have been so fortunate as to chance upon this refuge
opened for the defenseless by the enemy's bombs. I thank the good
gods for it. You and your lady must employ it as well. Her airship
cannot but see the fire."
    Horn caught Silk's hand and joined them.
    "As for this boy," the captain finished, "I shall procure a weapon
for him."
    "If we're going we'd better go," Hyacinth declared.
    "You inquire concerning the two Siyufs, My Calde. I have heard
only rumors. Are they true?"
    "I spoke to General Mint on a glass before we returned," Silk told
him. "One of the councillors--Tarsier, I imagine--has altered a
chem to look like Siyuf. She was supposed to mend relations between
Trivigaunte and Viron, or see to it that the Trivigauntis lost if she could
not. She appears to have chosen to occupy Siyuf's place permanently
and conquer Viron for herself instead. Generalissimo Oosik has freed
the real Siyuf in the hope--"
    The final words were lost in an explosion. Silk found himself half in
the crater, with Horn beside him and Hyacinth clinging and sobbing.
After a few seconds he managed to gasp, "That was too near. Near
enough to ring my ears."
    "Where's the captain?" Horn asked. From the bottom, Nettle
shouted, "_Horn!_"
    "I don't know." Silk raised his head to look around. "I can't see
him, or--are those horses?"
    "Our horse." Hyacinth staggered but managed to stand. "It must
have been killed."
    "Unless the captain mounted it and rode away. In either case, we'd
better go."
    She glared at him; then turned abruptly and slid down the
slanting wall of the crater, pushing past Nettle and vanishing into
the tunnel.
    Horn caught Silk's arm. "You were sort of waiting here with the
captain, Calde. Like you didn't want to."
    "Because I wasn't sure all the people who fled the battle had gotten
inside."
    Silk coughed and spat. "That explosion blew dirt into my mouth.
I suppose it was open, as it usually is--I shouldn't talk so much. At
any rate, I wanted to tell him I was resigning my office, and General
Mint is to succeed me. Don't feel you have to chase after him with
the message."
    Nettle called, "I'm going inside with Hyacinth. Are you coming?"
    "In a minute," Horn told her. "No, Calde, I won't. But I promised
His Cognizance I'd find you and bring you down there, and I'm
going to as soon as .. ." He paused, shamefaced.
    "What is it, Horn?"
    "It's a long way, he says, to the big cave where the people are asleep
in bottles, and when we get there we'll have to wake them up. Maybe
we'd better get going."
    "No, Horn." With the air of one who intends to remain for some
time, Silk seated himself on the edge of the crater. "I asked Mucor
to awaken the strongest man she could find and have him break the
cylinder before the gas inside it killed him. If I could break one with
Hyacinth's needler as easily as I did, I'd think a very strong man might
break one from within with his fists. They'll be coming to meet us -
or at least I hope they will--and may be able to show us a shorter
route to the belly of the whorl, where the landers are."
    He studied Horn with troubled eyes. "Now, why did you stop me
from following Hyacinth? What is it?"
    "Nothing, Calde."
    Like noisy spirits, troopers on horseback thundered past, their
faces obscured and their clothing dyed black by the snow.
    "Those were Trivigauntis, I believe," Silk said. "I don't know whether
that's good or bad. Bad, I suppose. If I say it myself--tell you what I
believe you were about to say--will you at least confess I'm right?"
    "I don't want to, Calde.
    "But you will, I know. You were going to tell me why you and
Nettle took me up on the roof of the gondola, where General Saba
and Hyacinth joined us, pretending that they hadn't--"
    "I was going to tell you about falling off the time before, Calde.
You said you tried to kill yourself and I stopped you, but it was the
other way. I started to slide off on purpose. I don't know what got
into me, but you grabbed me. You were just about killed too, and
now I remember. I'd be dead if it weren't for you."
    Silk shook his head. "If I hadn't acted foolishly, you wouldn't
have been in danger at all; I provoked your danger and very nearly
occasioned your death.".
    He sighed. "That wasn't what you came so close to telling me,
however. Hyacinth had been in General Saba's cabin, though both
pretended they had not been together. The walls of those cabins are
cloth and bamboo, and you and Nettle were afraid I'd overhear them
and realize they were doing the things that women do, at times, to
provide each other pleasure."
    Seeing Horn's expression, he smiled sadly. "Did you think I didn't
know such things occur? I've shriven women often, and in any event
we were taught about them--and worse things--at the schola. We're
far too innocent for our duties when we leave it, I'm afraid; but our
instructors ready us for the whorl as well as they can." He looked
down at the object that Horn was offering him. "What is that?"
    "Your needler, Calde. It used to be the pilot's, I guess. Hyacinth
knocked it out of her hand, you said, and you picked it up. You must
have left it there in the cockpit, because the Flier found it there and
gave it to me."
    Silk accepted it, tucking it into his waistband. "You want me to
kill Hyacinth with it. Is that the plan?"
    "If you want to." Wretchedly, Horn nodded.
    "I don't. I won't. I'm taking this because I may need it--I've
been down there, and I may have to protect her. Haven't I told you
about that?"
    "Yes, Calde. On the airship for my book."
    "Good, I won't have to go over it again. Now listen. You feel that
Hyacinth has betrayed me, and unnaturally. I want you to at least
consider, as I do, that Hyacinth herself may feel differently. Isn't it
possible--in fact, likely--that she feared that General Saba might
regain her airship in fact as well as in name? That in that case it
would be well for us--for Hyacinth and me, and every Vironese on
board--if she were as friendly toward us as we could render her?"
    Horn nodded reluctantly. "I guess so, Calde."
    "Furthermore, Hyacinth knew that I meant to return General
Saba's airship when we returned to the city. May not Hyacinth
have considered that General Saba might at some future date be a
good and strong friend to Viron?"
    Through the break in the tunnel wall, Hyacinth called, "Aren't you
coming down?"
    "Soon," Silk told her. "We're not finished here."
    "Calde, she's the one dropping mortar bombs on us. General Saba
is. That's her up there in the airship right now."
    "It is indeed; but she's dropping them because she's been ordered
to, as any good officer would. I doubt very much that Hyacinth
cherished any hope of suborning General Saba from her duty; but
there are many times when an officer, particularly a high-ranking
one, may exercise discretion. Hyacinth tried, I believe, to do what
she could to make certain any such decisions would favor us--more
specifically, my government."
    "But we're going. You said so on the airship, and before we found
this way, we were going to have to walk all the way to the Juzgado.
On the Short Sun Whorl, it won't matter whether General Saba likes
us or not, will it?"
    "No. But Hyacinth could not have known aboard the airship that
we would be leaving this soon, and she may even have hoped that
we would not leave at all. I think she did."
    "I see." Horn nodded; and when Silk did not speak again, he said,
"Calde, we'd better go."
    "Soon, as I said. There's one more thing--no, two. The first is that
whatever that act might mean to me, or to you, or even to General
Saba, it meant next to nothing to Hyacinth; she has performed
similar ones hundreds of times with any number of partners. With
Generalissimo Oosik, for example."
    "I didn't know that."
    "No. But I do--he told me. When she had to leave the house of the
commissioner who had obtained her from her father--I don't even
know which it was--she lived for a time with a captain. Eventually
they quarreled and separated."
    "You don't have to tell me all this, Calde."
    "Yes, I do. Not for your book--which you will probably never
complete or even begin--but for guidance in your own life. Who
was that captain? Would you care to guess?"
    Horn shook his head.
    "I think I can. He was very formal with her, but I saw his
eyes--particularly when he stopped our horse. I don't believe he meant
much to her; he was a protector and provider when she needed one. She
meant a great deal to him, however--no doubt she always will."
    Horn whispered, "She's climbing back up," and pointed.
    Silk scrambled halfway down the crater to meet and assist her. "I
won't say I'm not delighted to see you--I'm always overjoyed to see
you, Hyacinth, you know that. But Horn and I were about to join
you down there."
    Entering the crater from the tunnel, Nettle called, "You wouldn't
believe all the people down here, Calde. Half the quarter. Marrow
the greengrocer, and Shrike the butcher, and even the new augur
that was with us on the airship. Moly's here, and he's making her
wear his robe. The Prolocutor made everybody sit down."
    Horn offered his hand to Hyacinth, and the other to Silk. "My
mother, and my brothers and sisters. That's what I care about,
only..." Something caught in his throat. "Only that sounds like
I don't care about my father."
    "But you do," Hyacinth muttered. "I know how it is."
    "Yeah, I guess so. He made me work in the shop every day after
palaestra, and--and we'd fight about that, and lots of other stuff."
    "I understand."
    "I'm the oldest," Horn said, as though that accounted for
everything.
    Silk called, "If half the quarter's down there, what about our
manteion? The congregation, I mean, the people who came to
sacrifice on Scylsday and the children from the palaestra?"
    "They're just about all here," Nettle told him. "Not some of the
men, they're off fighting for General Mint. But, oh, Goldcrest and
Feather and Villus, and my friend Ginger. Wait, let me think. Teasel
is, and her sisters and brothers and her mother. And Asphodella and
Aster. And Kit--he's Kerria's little brother, and she's there too. And
Holly and Hart. He's wounded. And the catsmeat woman, and that
old man that sells ices in the summer, and a whole lot more."
    Silk nodded, then smiled at Hyacinth. "I've done it--saved it from
the dissolution of the whorl. Or at least I will have when we reach
the new one. I was to save our manteion; and that is the manteion, all
of those people coming together to worship. The rest was trimming,
very much including me."
    Hyacinth could not look at him.
    "When you came back up, I was explaining to Horn that in the
end it is only love that matters. The Outsider once told me that
though he's not Kypris, she cannot help becoming him. The more
she becomes a goddess of love in truth, the more they will unite--it
was before we met in Ermine's by the goldfish pool." He smiled
again. "Where Thelx holds up a mirror."
    Hyacinth nodded; and Horn saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
He asked, "Did you really see him there, Calde? The Outsider?"
    "Yes, in a dream, standing upon the water. I had only this left
Horn, and there's no reason I shouldn't say it now, or that
Hyacinth and Nettle shouldn't hear it. It is that love forgets injuries.
I know that Hyacinth would never betray me, just as you know that
Nettle would never betray you; but if she did--if she did a thousand
times--I would still love her."
    Almost violently, Hyacinth pushed herself away from the crater.
"I can't listen to any more of this. I don't want to, and I won't." She
stood up.
    Silk said, "Then let us go," and began to climb down to the break
in the tunnel wall.
    "I'm not going!" Hyacinth shouted. Her lovely face was savage.
"You told me about that place, and I've seen it, and it's horrible!
All the landers are broken, you said, not like Auk's, and you're
just hoping to fix them. And you're giving up the whole city!" She
turned and dashed away, vanishing in the swirling snow before she
had taken five strides.
    Silk tried to scramble back, but in his haste set off a slide that
carried him almost to Nettle, who followed him when he began to
climb again.
    When he reached the surface and started after Hyacinth, Horn and
Nettle went with him. A bomb burst near enough to shake the earth
beneath their feet, and he stopped. "You have to go, both of you,
and you must go together."
    His eyes flashed even in that snowy twilight. "Nettle, do you
understand? Do you, Horn? I'll find her, and enough cards to repair
another lander. Get down there, find His Cognizance, and tell him.
We'll meet you at the landers, if we can."
    Nettle took Horn's hand, and Silk said, "Make him go. By force, if
you must." He offered her his needler, but she drew her own, the one
that had been Saba's. He nodded, put his back in his waistband, and
disappeared into the snow like a ghost. Overhead, the harsh voice of
his bird sounded again and again: "_Silk? Silk? Silk?_"

For a score of poundings of their hearts, Nettle and Horn stood
together, staring after him and wondering what the future held for
them; until at length they smiled as one, she gave him Saba's needler,
and hand-in-hand they returned to the crater and scrambled down to
the opening that a bomb had made in the tunnel wall, and went into
the tunnel, where Horn's mother was waiting for them.

                          My Defense

With the account you have now read, I had intended to conclude
_The Book of Silk_, for we never saw him again. I am adding this
continuation in response to criticisms and questions directed to us
by those who read the earlier sections, sections which Nettle has
corrected, and transcribed in a hand clearer than mine.
    Many of you urge me to tell the story in my proper person, relating
only what I saw, and in effect making myself my own hero. I reply
that any of you might write such an account. I invite you to do so.
    My purpose is not (as you wish) merely to describe the way in
which we who were born in Viron reached Blue, but to recount the
story of Patera Silk, who was its calde at the time we left and was
the greatest and most extraordinary man I have known. As I have
indicated, I had planned to call my account _The Book of Silk_, and
not Starcrossers' Landfall or any of the other titles (many equally
foolish) that have been suggested. In the event, it has become known
as _The Book of the Long Sun_, because it is much read by young people
who do not recall our Long Sun Whorl, or were born after Landing
Day. I do not object. You may call it what you wish as long as you
read it.
    To our critics, I say this: Patera Silk was personally known to Nettle
and me; I recall his look, his voice, and his gait to this day, and when
young I was punished for imitating him too well, as you have read.
Nettle knew him as well as I.
    We knew Maytera Marble (who also employed the names Moly,
Molybdenum, Maggie, and Magnesia, the last being her original name)
at least as well. Until we reached our teens, she was our instructress in
the palaestra on Sun Street, as Maytera Mint and Maytera Rose were
subsequently. Silk loved her and confided in her; in fact, I have often
thought that she had been given the child she longed for, although
she was not conscious of it. She in turn confided in us during the
time we worked in the Calde's Palace under her direction, during
the time we were together on the airship, and during our passage
through the abyss, and here on Blue. To prevent confusion, I have
called her Maytera Marble throughout my account. There was never
a more practical woman, nor a better one.
    On the flight to Mainframe, we had many opportunities to see and
hear Auk, though he was not generally communicative. Chenille, with
whom we had worked at the Calde's Palace, often spoke of him as
well. Silk did not, as some readers assume, confide to us the content
of Auk's shriving, although he told me that he had shriven him upon
meeting him in the Cock. That Auk had kicked a man to death was
known throughout the quarter, and it seems probable that it was one
of the offences of which he was shriven. Chenille confided to Nettle
that he had struck her on two occasions, and described them.
    More than one reader has taxed me with whitewashing Auk's
character. It is more probable that I have painted it too dark; I
disliked him, and even after so many years have found it hard to
treat him fairly. As I have tried to make clear, he was a big man and
an extremely strong one, far from handsome, with a beard so heavy
that he appeared unshaven even when he had just shaved; although
he was said to be courageous and a free spender, few besides Silk,
Chenille, and Gib ever spoke well of him.
    If I found it hard to be fair to Auk, I found it harder still to be
fair to Hyacinth, whose extraordinary beauty was at once her blessing
and her curse. She had little education, far too much vanity, and a
savage temper. When Nettle was present, she displayed herself to me,
posing, bending over to exhibit her decolletage, raising her skirt to
adjust her hose, and so forth. In Nettle's absence, she cursed me if I
so much as glanced at her. She saw all human relationships in terms
of money, power, and lust, and understood Silk less well than Tick
understood her.
    Very few of us, I would say, have known such a woman as General
Mint; and it is almost impossible to convey an accurate impression of
her to those who have not. She was small, with a smooth little face, a
sharp nose, and a dart of brown hair that divided her forehead almost
to the eyebrows. In conversation her voice was the soft and timorous
one we recalled from her classroom; but when the need for quick,
decisive action arose, the little sibyl was cast off immediately. Her
glance was fire and steel then, and at the sound of her voice wounded
troopers who had seemed too weak to stand snatched up weapons
and joined the advance. Unless restrained by her subordinates, she
led her troops in person, striding boldly ahead of the boldest and
never slackening her pace as she shouted encouragement to those
behind her. If it had not been for Bison and Captain Serval, she
would certainly have been killed by the second day.
    As a tactician, she understood better than most the need for a
simple workable plan which could be put into effect before conditions
changed; that and the astounding loyalty she inspired were the keys to
her success. Although she is better known as General Mint, I have
titled her Maytera, just as I have referred to her sib as Maytera
Marble throughout my account. Fewer than I had expected have
found fault with Silk's assertion that she took her warlike character
from the Goddess of Love, although it seems implausible to me.
Nettle suggests that many women, thus inspired by love of their city
and their gods, might exhibit the same dauntless courage. Certainly
love will face the inhumi at midnight, as we say now.
    Although neither of us spoke to Blood, both of us saw and heard
him when he visited the manteion, and saw him and Musk when
they offered their white rabbits. Blood's conversations with Silk and
Maytera Marble were detailed to us by them; they, I would guess,
saw more good in him than Nettle or I would have.
    Neither of us ever saw Doctor Crane, but Maytera Marble had
met him and liked him, as Silk had. Chenille, who had known him
intimately, said that he looked on injury and illness as a butcher looks
on pigs and steers; and I have tried to convey something of that. From
what Silk said of him, he believed in Sphigx no more than any other
god, and had her reality been proven to him, he would only have
turned from ridiculing those who credited it to ridiculing her.
    I have taken Incus's character from Remora's description and our
own observations during the flight to Mainframe. He was physically
unimpressive, and perhaps for that reason frequently impelled to
assert his importance, but not lacking in courage. On the airship I
watched him 'enchant' a slug gun by slipping his finger behind the
trigger, then snatch it from the trooper as she struggled to fire it.
    Many readers have demanded that I include an account of our
passage through the tunnels to the lander and our flight through
the abyss. Again I invite them to pen their own, as Scleroderma
did. (Her grandson has it and permits visitors to copy it.) I intend
to say no more here than is necessary to illuminate the character of
the inhumu Nettle and I knew as Patera Quetzal, His Cognizance
the Prolocutor of Viron. No doubt many will object to my writing
_character_ in such a context, urging that a monster of that kind can
no more have character than a hus; but those who trap hus and tame
them have told me they differ at least as much as dogs.
    To us Quetzal was not an inhumu, but a venerable old man, wise and
compassionate, Silk's supporter and steadfast friend. When Nettle and
I returned to the tunnel it was to him that we brought Silk's message.
When they had heard it, many wanted to return to the surface to
look for Silk and help him search for Hyacinth. Quetzal forbade it,
pointing out that it was contrary to Silk's own instructions, and led
us down the tunnel in the direction of the lake.
    Then I remembered something that Remora had told me on the
airship: how Quetzal had vanished when Spider forced him into the
cellar of Blood's ruined villa. When we had walked a long way down
the tunnel and even the hardiest had grown weary, and Quetzal himself
had fallen behind nearly all of our straggling company, I was able to
ask about it.
    "Walk beside me, my son." He put a hand on my shoulder; I recall
how light and boneless it felt through the thin jacket I wore, as if he
had laid a strip of soft leather beside my neck. "I can't keep up any
more. Will you support me? You're young and strong. Patera Calde
likes you, did you know that?"
    I said I hoped he did, and that he had always been kind to me.
    "He likes you. He speaks of you warmly, and of you, my child.
You're both good children. Good children, I say. But men and women
with children are children to me. No fool like an old man! You women
are wiser when you're old, my child. You're grown, both of you. I
doubt you know it, but you are."
    We thanked him.
    "I can hardly get along. Like the fat woman. Can't leave her, can
we? Can't leave them back there, and she's too heavy to carry." He
was wearing an ordinary augur's robe; but he bore the baculus, his
rod of office, which he used as a staff.
    I said that we would have to stop soon for Scleroderma's sake,
and many others, and offered to go ahead if he would tell me what
to look for.
    "I want you to sleep, my son." He seemed to suck his gums and
reconsidered. "No, to keep watch. Can you stay awake?"
    I assured him that I could.
    "Good. Someone must, and I can't. I'm always nodding off, ask
young Remora. I can't keep up this pace myself, but I have to keep
urging everybody to walk faster. What tricks the gods play! Have
you a weapon, my child?"
    Nettle shook her head; I explained that she had brought a needler
from the airship but had given it to me, and offered to return
it to her.
    "Keep it. Keep it! You'll need it when you stand guard." He turned his
head. He had a long and very wrinkled neck that would have betrayed
his true nature at once had I known then of the hooded inhumi. As it
was, I was suddenly frightened because there was nothing of warmth
or kindness in his look. It was as though I were seeing a mask, or
the features of a corpse propped erect. He said, "You won't shoot
me, will you?"
    Naturally I assured him that I would not.
    "Because I'll walk. I always do. They see me around the Palace all
night long. They say it's my spirit, that I step out of my skin and
walk all night. Do you believe it, my child?"
    Nettle nodded. "If Your Cognizance says so."
    "I don't." I had the impression that he was leaning most of his
weight upon my shoulder, yet he was certainly not heavy. "Never
believe such stuff. I can't sleep, and so I wander about dazed and
tired, that's all. My son, would you tell those in front to go faster?
I haven't the breath."
    I shouted, "His Cognizance says we must walk faster!" or something
of the kind.
    "Thank you. Now we can stop. Let the fat woman and her man
catch up." He turned, motioning to them urgently.
    Nettle whispered, "We're in danger down here. We must be, or he
wouldn't be in such a hurry."
    She had spoken in my ear, and I myself had hardly heard her, yet
Patera Quetzal (as I thought of him) said, "We are, my daughter, but
I don't know how much. When you don't know, you have to act as
though it were great."
    Wishing to return to my question, I asked him, "Were you in very
much danger from Spider, Your Cognizance?"
    He shook his head, not as a man does, turning it from side to side,
but swaying it while holding it nearly upright. "From him? None.
No, a lot, since he would have wasted my time. I'd a lot to do, so I
left." He laughed, an old man's high-pitched cackle. "Vanished in the
darkness. Is that what young Remora told you? He told somebody
that, I know. Want to know how to do it?"
    He turned his back and raised his black robe to cover his head,
standing with his hands and the baculus out of sight in front of
him. That stretch of tunnel was as well lit by the creeping green
lights the first settlers brought as any, yet he seemed almost to have
disappeared, baculus and all. I said, "I see, Your Cognizance. I mean,
I don't."
    Scleroderma and her husband caught up with us then, she waddling
very slowly and dolefully, he limping in a way that showed how his
feet hurt. Nettle told them that Quetzal was worried about them.
    "I'm worried about him," Scleroderma said, and holding onto her
husband and me as though we were a couple of trees lowered herself
to the shiprock floor and kicked off her shoes. Her husband said,
"You sprats walk too fast. How's His Cognizance supposed to keep
up?" He sat down beside his wife and pulled off his as well.
    Recalling that Quetzal had been concerned for their safety, I
motioned for Nettle to sit and sat down myself. Scleroderma said
accusingly, "I heard you yell at them in front, trying to get them to
go faster."
    I explained that Quetzal had instructed me to, and Nettle asked,
"Where is he? He was here with us a minute ago.
    "Up ahead," Shrike told her. "Haven't seen him in quite a while."
    We rested for perhaps an hour, during which Nettle and I worried
that we were becoming permanently separated from the rest. For a long
way, however, it was impossible for our route to diverge from theirs;
the tunnel ran nearly straight, slanting gently, and in fact pleasantly,
downward. At length we came upon a side tunnel; but we found a note
there signed by Hart, saying that His Cognizance had instructed him
to write it, that they would follow the main tunnel, and that anyone
who found the note was to leave it to direct others.
    After another half league or so, we heard a baby crying and faint
snores; and soon we caught up with our friends from the quarter
and my mother, brothers, and sisters, all of them sound asleep.
Scleroderma and her husband lay down at once, and I got Nettle
to lie down as well, telling her to sleep if she could. She had no
more than pillowed her head on my jacket than she was sleeping
as soundly as Scleroderma.
    I sat down, took off my shoes and rubbed my feet, and tried to
decide what I ought to do. I had promised Quetzal I would stay
awake, and I recalled very clearly what Silk had told me about the
dog-like creatures the soldiers called gods and the convicts bufes. But
I was tired and hungry, and longed to rest; and though Quetzal had
asked me to protect the company, which by then numbered more
than four hundred, he had said nothing about anyone's protecting
me while I slept an hour or two.
    After turning the matter over for what seemed a very long while
in the dilatory fashion in which I weigh problems when I'm fatigued,
I decided I would watch faithfully until someone woke, charge him
or her to take my place, and sleep myself.
    Then it almost seemed that I was asleep already, because it seemed
that I could hear the soft sigh of wings, as if a big owl were flying
along the tunnel a considerable distance from where I sat. I sat up
straight and listened with all my might, but heard nothing more. Soon
afterward, it struck me that Quetzal had said he often had difficulty
sleeping. Thinking he might watch for me if he were wakeful, I
stood up and padded among the sleepers looking for him; but he
was not there.
    I cannot describe the consternation I felt. Over and over I told
myself that I must surely be mistaken, that someone had lent him
a blanket or coat that covered his black robe; and so I peered into
the same faces that I had peered into a few minutes before, until I
sincerely believe that I could have described everyone present and
said where each of them lay. We had among us a dozen infants, a
large contingent of children, and a good many women; but not more
than forty men, including Patera Remora and Shrike. I told myself
very firmly then that a woman or even a girl could guard us as well
as I could. She would only have to wake me if danger threatened.
    Eventually it occurred to me to ask myself what Silk would have
done in my situation. Silk would have prayed, I decided, and so I
knelt, folded my hands and bowed my head, and implored the Outsider
to take pity on my plight and cause one at least of those sleeping around
me to wake up, very carefully specifying that a woman or a girl would
be entirely acceptable to me.
    When I raised my head, someone was sitting up in the midst
of the sleepers; when I saw her dark and deathly eyes, I knew
at once the mocking fashion in which the Outsider had answered
my prayer. "Mucor," I called softly. "Please come over here and talk
to me."
    Her face floated upward like a ghost's and seemed almost to drift
along the tunnel; she was wearing a sibyl's black gown.
    "Mucor," I inquired, "where is your grandmother? She was here
before." Very tardily it had occurred to me that Maytera Marble
rarely slept, and would be the ideal person to relieve me so that
I could.
    "Gone," Mucor said. I expected to get nothing more out of her,
having learned at the Calde's Palace how seldom she spoke. But after
a few seconds she added, "She went with the man who isn't there."
    It was encouraging, but there seemed little use in asking who the
man who wasn't there was. I asked instead if she would send her spifit
to learn where her grandmother was and whether she was in need of
help. Mucor nodded, and we sat side-by-side in silence for what I
felt sure was at least a quarter-hour. I was nearly asleep when she
said, "She's carrying him. Crying. She'd like somebody to come."
    "Your grandmother?"
    I must have spoken more loudly than I had intended, because
Nettle sat up and asked what was wrong.
    Mucor pointed down the tunnel, saying, "Not far."
    Nor was she. We had hardly lost sight of our friends when we met
Maytera Marble, more or less dressed in an augur's robe so long it
swept the tunnel floor, with Quetzal in her arms. Her face could not
display emotion, as I have tried to make clear; but every limb expressed
the most heart-rending anguish. "He's been shot," she told us. "He won't
let me do anything to stop the bleeding." Her voice was agonized.
    As slowly as a flower's, Quetzal's face turned toward us; it was
terrible, not merely swollen or sunken, but misshapen, as if death's
grip had crushed his chin and cheekbones. "I am not bleeding," he
said. "Do you see blood, my children?"
    I suppose we shook our heads.
    "You can't stop my bleeding if I'm not bleeding."
    I offered to carry him, but Maytera Marble refused, saying he
weighed nothing. Later I was to find that she was not far wrong;
I had lifted younger brothers who weighed more.
    Nettle asked who had shot him.
    "Troopers from Trivigaunte." He tried to smile, achieving only a
grimace. "They're down here now, my child. They were digging
trenches east of the city looking for a tunnel near the surface, and
found one. They think Silk's with us." He gasped. "But they'd try to
stop us anyway. Sphigx commands it."
    I said, "We have to do the will of Pas."
    "Yes, my son. Never forget what you just said."
    By that time we had nearly reached the sleepers. Nettle ran ahead
and woke up Remora, knowing that where there is no doctor an
augur makes the best substitute; but Quetzal would not let him see
his wound. "I'm an old man," he said. "I'm ready to die. Let me go
fast." Yet he did not die until the following day, when we had begun
to cross the abyss.
    Remora brought him the Peace, and when it was over Quetzal
gave him his gammadion, saying, "Your turn now, Patera. You were
cheated by Scylla, but you'll have to guide the Chapter in the Short
Sun Whorl."
    (So it came to be. Although there are many other holy men here,
His Cognizance Patera Remora heads what people from other cities
call the Vironese Faith. I am adding this note because I know that
not all of my readers came from Viron, and as Nettle's copies are
themselves copied, still more will be unfarniliar with the Chapter.)
    But I am running ahead of my account. When Quetzal would no
more answer our questions than permit us to treat his wound, we
asked Maytera Marble what had happened.
    "I was lying awake," she said, "thinking things over. How we'd seen
Mainframe, and about dear Chenille and Auk, and Patera Silk and
Hyacinth. Wondering, too, whether my husband was still alive, and,
well, various things.
    "I saw His Cognizance get up and start down the tunnel, so I
told Mucor not to worry, I'd be back soon, and went after him
and asked where he was going. He said he was afraid there might
be danger ahead, so since he couldn't sleep he was going to see. I
said he shouldn't risk himself like that, that he should send Macaque
or one of the other boys."
    She broke down at that point, sobbing uncontrollably, and cried for
so long that many of her listeners left to talk among themselves; but
Nettle and I stayed, with Remora, Scleroderma, and a few others.
    When she had regained her self-possession, she continued, "I wanted
him to send someone else. He ordered me to go back, and I said thanks
be to Pas that I'm a laywoman now and don't have to obey, because I'm
not going to let you run off alone like this, Your Cognizance, and get
killed. I'm going with you. He said he knew these tunnels because he'd
come down here alone to make the Ayuntarniento talk to him when
they didn't want to, and he knew the dangers. But I wouldn't leave."
    Nettle said, "This isn't your fault, Maggie. I don't know how
it happened, but I know you, and it can't be." The rest of us
seconded her.
    Maytera Marble shook her head. "After we'd walked a long, long
way we came to a crossing where four tunnels met. I asked which
way we were going, and he said he was turning right, but I had to
go back. Then he went into the right-hand tunnel. It was the darkest,
the one he went into was. I followed him, and for a little while I saw
him up ahead, but he wouldn't slow down. We were both practically
running. Then I really did run as fast as I could, but I lost sight of
him. I walked on and on, and there were these tunnels off to the side
but I always kept to the one I was in. Then there was a big iron door
and I couldn't go any farther, so I went back. I got to the place--"
    She choked and sobbed. "Where the tunnels crossed, and I could
hear him walking. Not the way he had been when I'd been following
him, but slowly, stumbling every step or two. He was a long way off,
but I had good ears and I gave them to Marble."
    Nettle looked puzzled; I signaled her not to speak.
    "So I ran some more." Maytera Mint looked up at us, and it seemed
worse to me than any weeping that her eyes were not full of tears.
"He'd fallen down when I got there. He was bleeding terribly, like
the animals do after the augur pulls his knife out, but he wouldn't
let me look at it, so I carried him."
    We ourselves carried him after that, carrying him in our arms like
a child because we had no poles from which to make a stretcher.
He directed us, for he knew where the Trivigauntis were, and down
which tunnel the sleepers were coming.
    (I will say nothing of our brush with the Trivigauntis; it has been
talked about until everyone is tired of listening. Shrike, Scleroderma,
and I had needlers, as did certain others. Scleroderma risked her life
to get our wounded to safety; and as the fighting grew hotter, she was
wounded and wounded again, but she continued to nurse us when
her skirt was stiff with her own blood.
    (She has been dead for years now; I very much regret that it has taken
me so long to pay her this well-deserved tribute. Her grandchildren
are very proud of her and tell everyone that she was a great woman
in Viron. Nobody in Viron thought her a great woman, only a short
fat woman who trudged from house to house selling meat scraps, an
amusing woman with a joke for everyone, who had dumped a bucket
of scraps over Silk while he sat with her on a doorstep because she
felt he was patronizing her. But the truth is that her grandchildren
are right, and we in Viron were wrong. She was a very great woman,
second only to General Mint. She would have ridden with General
Mint if she could, and she fought the Guard in Cage Street and
nursed the wounded afterward, and fought fires that night when it
seemed the whole city might burn. In the end, she and Shrike lost
their home and their shop, all that they possessed, to the fire that
swept our quarter. Even then, she did not despair.)
    Quetzal had brought hundreds of cards from the Burse. He had
already entrusted most of them to Remora, and he gave him the
rest when we reached the landers. Some of us had thought that he
had refused to have his wound bandaged for fear his cards would be
stolen, but when they had been turned over to the sleepers, he still
refused.
    With the sleepers, we filled two landers. It was thought best to
have some of them on each, because they knew much more about
their operation than any of us did. As has been told many times, the
monitor who controlled our lander appeared in the glasses, displayed
Blue and Green to us, and asked which was our destination. No one
knew, so we consulted Quetzal, although he was too weak almost
to speak.
    He asked to be carried to the cockpit, as we called that part of our
lander which Silk had called the nose. The monitor there displayed
both whorls to him, as it had to Remora, Marrow, and me; and he
chose Green, and choosing died. Remora then personally carried his
body back to the small sickbay; it was no easy task, because our
engines were firing as never before, not even when we had left the
Long Sun Whorl. As it chanced, there was a glass in this sickbay,
I suppose to advise those who cared for the sick.
    There was a woman named Moorgrass on board whose trade it
had been to wash the bodies of the dead, and perfume them, and
prepare them for burial. Remora asked her to wash and prepare
Quetzal's, and Maytera Marble and Nettle volunteered to help her.
I shall never forget their screams.
    We did not know then that the inhumi live on Green, nor that
they fly to Blue when the whorls are in conjunction, nor that they
drink blood, nor even how they change their shapes. Or in fact
anything about them. Yet everyone who saw Quetzal's body was
deeply disturbed; and Marrow and I urged that we come here to
Blue instead of going to Green as he had advised.
    Remora heard us out; but when we had finished, he affirmed his
faith in Patera Quetzal, whose coadjutor he had been for so many
years, and declared that we would remain on the course he had
recommended. It was not until three days later, when it had become
apparent to anyone who went into the cockpit that we were really
on course to Blue, that we learned that the monitor had overruled
him. No one questions its decision now.

Here I close my defense, having (as I hope) satisfied the demands
of my critics. Whether I have or have not, having compromised my
principles more than I wished. I repeat that I set out to tell Silk's
story, and no other.
    It may be that he is dead, having been killed in the Long Sun
Whorl. It may also be that he and Hyacinth later boarded a lander
that carried them to Green, and died there.
    But it also may be that he is still alive, and in my heart I feel that
he is, either in the Long Sun Whorl or as I hope--on another part
of this Short Sun Whorl we call Blue. The years will have changed
him as they change all of us; I can only describe him as he looked
on that overheated summer afternoon when he snatched the ball
from my hand as I was about to score, a man well above avenge
height, with a clear, somewhat pale complexion, bright blue eyes,
and straw-colored hair that would never lie flat. A slender man, but
not a slow or a weak one. He will have a scar upon his back where
the needle left it, and may have faint scars on his right arm, left by
the beak of the vulture Mucor called the white-headed one.
    My own name is Horn. My wife Nettle and I live with our sons
on Lizard Island, toward the tail, where we make and sell such
paper as this. We will be grateful to anyone who brings us word
of Patera Silk.

                         Afterward

Horn wiped the point of his quill with a scrap of soft leather and
corked the ink that he and his wife had concocted from soot and
sap, pushed back his chair, and stood. It was done. It was done at
last, and now perhaps the ghost of the boy he had been would leave
him in peace.
    Outside, the short sun's fiery rim had touched the sea. A golden
road--an Aureate Path--stretched westward across the whitecaps
toward a new Mainframe that almost certainly did not exist. He
walked to the beach where Hoof and Hide were playing and asked
where Sinew was.
    "Hunting," Hide declared; Hoof added, "Over on the big island,
Father." Hoofs wide, dark eyes showed plainly how deeply he was
impressed.
    "He should be home by this time."
    Nettle called from the kitchen window as he spoke.
    "Go inside." When the twins objected, he gave each a push in the
direction of the sturdy walls.
    From the summit of the tor, he had a clear view of the strait. Still,
a half-minute passed before he could be certain of the coracle, lifted
upon distant waves only to vanish from sight.
Night had come already to the eastern sky, scattering the short suns
of other whorls across its black velvet. Soon Green would rise, almost
a second sun, yet baleful as a curse; it had brought a succession of
storms and monstrous tides--
    There!
    Horn watched and waited until he was sure the faint gleam was
actually moving against its glittering backdrop. Within that point of
light he had been born, and had grown almost to manhood. Within
that point of light Sinew had been conceived, in all probability, in
the Calde's Palace. It did not seem possible.
    Almost too quickly to be noticed, something dark flitted between
Horn and the whorl that had been his; and he shuddered.