Calde of the Long Sun

Chapter 9 -- Victory

Xiphias, it transpired, had gone to the Palace, bringing back one

of Remora's fine robes. It fit Silk surprisingly well, although it

carried in its soft fabric a suggestion of somber luxury he found

detestable. "They won't know you outside of this, lad," Xiphias

said. He, shaking his head, wondered how they could possibly

know him in it.

Oosik returned. "I have had more lights mounted on your floater,

Calde. There will be a flag on its antenna as well. Most will be on

you, two on the flag." Without waiting for a reply, he asked the

surgeon, "Is he ready?"

"He shouldn't walk far," the surgeon said.

"I can walk around the city if need be," Silk told them.

Hyacinth declared, "He should lie down again till it's time to go,"

and to please her, he did.

Within half a minute, it seemed, Xiphias and the surgeon were

lowering him into a litter. Hyacinth walked beside him as she had

when the waiters had carried him out of the Glasshouse, and it

seemed to him that his mother's garden walked with her; from the

other side, Quetzal asperged him with benedictions, his robe of

mulberry velvet contributing the mingled smells of frankincense and

something else to the cool and windy dark. At his ears, the

_frou-frou-frou_ of Hyacinth's skirt and the _whish-shish_

of Quetzal's robe sounded louder than the snap of Oosik's flag. Troopers

saluted, clicking their heels. One knelt for Quetzal's blessing.

"It would be better," Oosik said, "if you did not have to be carried

into the floater, Calde. Can you do it?"

He could, of course, rising from the litter with the help of

Xiphias's cane. A volley of shots crackled in the distance; it was

followed by a faint scream, rarefied and unreal. "Men fight," Oreb

commented.

"Some do," Silk told him. "That's why we're going."

The entry port let spill a sallow light; the surgeon was crouching

inside to help him in. "Blood's floater was open," Silk remarked,

remembering. "There was a transparent canopy--a top that you

could see through almost as well as air--but when it was down, you

could stand up."

"You can stand in this, too," the surgeon said, "right here." He

steered Silk toward the spot. "See? You're under the turret here."

Straightening up, Silk nodded. "I rode in one of these yesterday--on the

outside, when the rain stopped. It wasn't nearly as roomy as this." Corpses,

including Doctor Crane's, had taken up most of the space inside.

"We took out a lot of ammo, Calde," the trooper at the controls

told him.

Silk nearly nodded again, although the trooper could not see his

head. He had found the ladder he recalled, a spidery affair of metal

rods, and was climbing cautiously but steadily toward the open

hatch at the top of the turret.

"Bad thing," Oreb informed him nervously. "Thing shine."

To his own astonishment Silk smiled. "This buzz gun, you

mean?" It was dull black, but the open breech revealed bright

steel. "They won't shoot us with it, Oreb. They won't shoot

anyone, I hope."

The surgeon's voice floated up from below. "There's a saddle for

the gunner, Calde, and things to put your feet in."

"Stirrups." That voice had been Oosik's, surely.

Silk swung himself onto the leather-covered seat, almost but not

quite losing his grip on Xiphias's cane. There were officers on

horseback around the floater, and what seemed to be a full company

of troopers standing at ease half a street behind it. The footman who

had admitted him to Ermine's was watching everything from his

station by the door; Silk waved to him with the cane, and he waved

in return, his grin a touch of white in the darkness.

It's going to rain again, Silk thought. I don't believe we've had a

morning this dark since spring.

Quetzal's head rose at his elbow. "I'm going to be besides you,

Patera Calde. They're finding a box for me to stand on."

With as much firmness as he could muster, Silk said, "I can't

possibly sit while your Cognizance stands."

A hatch opened at the front of the floater; Oosik's head and

shoulders emerged, and he spoke to someone inside.

Quetzal touched Silk's hand with cold, dry fingers that might have

been boneless. "You're wounded, Patera Calde, and weaker than

you think. Stay seated. That is my wish." His head rose to the level

of Silk's own.

"As Your Cognizance desires." With both hands on the rim of the

hatch, Silk heaved up his unwontedly uncooperative body. For an

instant the effort seemed too great; his heart pounded and his arms

shook; then one foot found a corner of the box on which Quetzal

stood, and he was able to hoist himself up enough to sit on the

coaming of the open turret hatch. "The gunner's seat remains for

Your Cognizance," he said.

The floater lifted beneath them, gliding forward. Louder than the

roar of its engine, Oosik's voice seemed to reach into every street in

the city: "_People of Viron! Our new calde is coming among you as we

promised. At his side is His Cognizance the Prolocutor, who has

confirmed that Calde Silk has the favor of all the gods. Hail him!

Follow him!_"

Brilliant white lights glared to left and right, less than an arm's

length away, more than half blinding him.

"Girl come!" Oreb exclaimed.

A black civilian floater had nosed between their floater and the

troopers, and was pushing through the mounted officers. Hyacinth

stood on its front seat beside the driver; and while Silk watched

open mouthed, she stepped over what seemed to be a low invisible

barrier, and onto the waxed and rounded foredeck. "Your stick!" she

called.

Silk tightened the handle, leaned as far back as he dared, and held

it out to her; the civilian floater advanced until its cowling touched

the back of the floater upon which he rode.

And Hyacinth leaped, her scarlet skirt billowing about her bare

legs in the updraft from the blowers. For an instant he was certain

she would fall. Then she had grasped the cane and stood secure on

the sloping rear deck of his floater, waving in triumph to the

mounted officers, most of whom waved in return or saluted. As the

floater in which she had come turned away and vanished into the

twilight beyond the lights on their own, Silk recognized the driver

who had returned him to his manse Phaesday night.

Hyacinth gave him a mischievous grin. "You look like you've seen

a ghost. You didn't expect company, did you?"

"I thought you were inside. I should've--I'm sorry, Hyacinth.

Terribly sorry."

"You ought to be." He had to put his ear to her lips to hear her,

and she nipped and kissed it. "Oosie sent me away. Don't tell him

I'm up here."

Lost in the wonder of her face, Silk could only gasp.

Quetzal raised the baculus to bestow a benison, although Silk

could see no one beyond the glare that enveloped the three of them

except the mounted officers. The roar of their floater was muted

now; an occasional grating hesitation suggested that its cowling was

actually scraping the cobbles.

"You said you took a floater," Silk told Hyacinth. "I thought you

meant that you just, well, took it."

"I wouldn't know how to make one go." Sitting, she edged nearer,

grasping the coaming of the turret hatch. "Would you? But that

driver's my friend, and I gave him a little money."

They rounded a corner, and innumerable throats cheered from

the dimness beyond the lights. Someone shouted, "We've gone over

to Silk!"

A thrown chrysanthemum brushed his cheek, and he waved.

Another voice shouted, "Live the calde!" It brought a storm of

cheering, and Hyacinth waved and smiled as if she herself were that

calde, evoking a fresh outburst. "Where are we going? Did Oosie

tell you?"

"To the Alambrera." Silk had to shout to make himself heard.

"We'll free the convicts. The Juzgado afterward."

A jumble of boxes and furniture opened to let them pass--Liana's

barricade.

Beside him, Quetzal invoked the Nine: "In the name of Marvelous

Molpe, you are blessed. In the name of Tenebrous Tartaros..."

They trust the gods, Silk thought, all these wretched men; and

because they do, they have made me their leader. Yet I feel I can't

trust any god at all, not even the Outsider.

As if they had been chatting over lunch, Quetzal said, "Only a fool

would, Patera Calde."

Silk stared.

"Didn't I tell you that I've done everything I could to prevent

theophanies? Those we call gods are nothing more than ghosts.

Powerful ghosts, but only because they entailed that power to

themselves in life."

"I--" Silk swallowed. "I wasn't aware that I had spoken aloud,

Your Cognizance. I apologize; my remark was singularly inappropriate."

Oreb stirred apprehensively on his shoulder.

"You didn't, Patera Calde. I saw your face, and I've had lots of

practice. Don't look at me or your young woman. Look at the

people. Wave. Look ahead. Smile."

Both waved, and Silk tried to smile as well. His eyes had adjusted

to the lights well enough now for him to glimpse indistinct figures

beyond the mounted officers, many waving slug guns just as he

waved the cane. Through clenched teeth he ventured, "Echidna told

us Pas was dead. Your Cognizance confirmed it."

"Dead long ago," Quetzal agreed, "whoever he really was, poor

old fellow. Murdered by his family, as was inevitable." Deftly he

caught a bouquet. "Blessings on you, my children. Blessings,

blessings... May Great Pas and the immortal gods smile upon you

and all that you own, forever!"

"Silk is calde! Long live Silk!"

Hyacinth told him happily, "We're getting a real tour of the city!"

He nodded, feeling his smile grow warm and real.

"Look at them, Patera Calde. This is their moment. They have

bled for this."

"Peace!" Silk called to the shadowy crowds, waving the cane.

"Peace!"

"Peace!" Oreb confirmed, and hopped up onto Silk's head flapping

his wings. The day was brightening at last, Silk decided, in spite

of the storm-black cloud hanging over the city. How appropriate

that shadeup should come now--peace and sunlight together! A

cheering woman waved an evergreen bough, the symbol of life. He

waved in return, meeting her eyes and smiling, and she seemed

ready to swoon with delight.

"Don't start throwing flowers to yourself," Hyacinth told him with

mock severity. "They'll be blaming you soon enough."

"Then let's enjoy this while we can." Seeing the woman with the

bough had recalled one of the ten thousand things the Outsider had

shown him--a hero riding through some foreign city while a

cheering crowd waved big fan-like leaves. Would Echidna and her

children kill the Outsider too? With a flash of insight, he felt sure

they were already trying.

"Look! There's Orchid, throwing out the house."

A light directed at the flag showed her plainly, leaning so far from

the second-story window through which Kypris had called to him

that it seemed she might fall any moment. They were floating down

Lamp Street, clearly; the Alambrera could not be far.

As Hyacinth blew Orchid a kiss, something whizzed past Silk's

ear, striking the foredeck like a gong. A high whine and a booming

explosion were followed by the rattle of a buzz gun. Somebody

shouted for someone to come down, and someone inside the floater

caught his injured ankle and pulled.

He looked up instead, to where something new and enormous

that was not a cloud at all filled the sky. Another whine, louder,

mounting ever higher, until Lamp Street exploded in front of them,

peppering his face and throwing something solid at his head.

Oosik shouted, "Faster!" and disappeared down his hatch, slamming

it behind him.

"Inside, Patera Calde!"

He scooped Hyacinth into his arms instead, dropping the cane

into the floater. It was racing now, careering along Lamp Street and

scattering people like chaff. She shrieked.

Here was Cage Street, overlooked by the despotic wall of the

Alambrera. Hanging in the air in front of it was a single trooper with

wings--a female trooper, from the bulge at her chest--who leveled a

slug gun. He slid off the coaming and dropped, still holding

Hyadnth, onto the men below.

They sprawled in a tangle of arms and legs, like beetles swept into

a jar. Someone stepped on his shoulder and swarmed up the spidery

ladder. The turret hatch banged shut. At the front of the floater

Oosik snapped, "Faster, Sergeant!"

"We're getting a vector now, sir."

Silk tried to apologize, to tug Hyacinth's scarlet skirt (about

which Hyacinth herself seemed to care not a cardbit) over her

thighs, and to stand in a space in which he could not possibly have

stood upright, all at once. Nothing succeeded.

Something struck the floater like a sledge, sending it yawing into

something else solid; it rolled and plunged and righted itself, its

straining engine roaring like a wounded bull. Reeking of fish, a wisp

of oily black smoke writhed through the compartment.

"_Faster!_" Oosik shouted.

The turret gun spoke as if in response, a clatter that went on and

on, as though the turret gunner were intent on massacring the whole

city.

Scrambling across Xiphias and the surgeon, Silk peered over

Oosik's shoulder. Fiery red letters danced across his glass:

VECTOR UNACCEPTABLE.

Something banged the slanted foredeck above their heads, and

the thunder of the engine rose to a deafening crescendo; Silk felt

that he had been jerked backwards.

Abruptly, their motion changed.

The floater no longer rocked or raced. The noise of the engine

waned until he could distinguish the high-pitched song of the

blowers. It ascended to an agonized scream and faded away. A red

light flared on the instrument panel.

For the second time in a floater, Silk felt that he was truly

floating; it was, he thought, like the uncanny sensation of the

moving room in which he had ridden with Mamelta.

Behind him, Hyacinth gasped. A strangely-shaped object had

risen from Oosik's side. Before Silk recognized it, it had completed

a leisurely quarter revolution, scarcely a span in front of his nose. It

was a large needler, similar to the one in his own waistband; and it

had bobbed up like a cork, unimpelled, from Oosik's holster.

"Look! Look! They're picking us up!" Hyacinth's full breasts

pressed his back as she stared at the glass.

He plucked Oosik's needler out of the air and returned it to its

holster. When he looked at the glass again, it showed a sprawling

pattern of crooked lines, enlivened here and there by crimson

sparks. It looked, he decided, like a city in the skylands, except that

it seemed much closer. Intrigued, he undogged the hatcheover over

Oosik's seat and threw it back. As he completed the motion, both

his feet left the floor; he snatched at the hatch dog, missed it by a

finger, and drifted up like Oosik's needler until someone inside

caught his foot.

The pattern he had seen in the glass was spread before him

without limit here: a twilit skyland city, ringed by sunbright brown

fields and huddled villages; and to one side, a silver mirror anchored

by a winding, dun-colored thread Oreb fluttered from his shoulder

as he gaped and disappeared into the twilight.

"We're flying." Incredulity and dismay turned the words to a sigh

that dwindled with the black bird. Silk coughed, spat congealed

blood, and tried again. "We are flying upside down. I see Viron and

the lake, even the road to the lake."

Quetzal spoke from inside the floater. "Look behind us, Patera

Calde."

They were nearer now, so near that the vast dark belly of the

thing roofed out the sky. Beneath it, suspended by cables that

appeared no thicker than gossamer, dangled a structure like a boat

with many short oars; Silk's lungs had filled and emptied before he

realized that the oars were the barrels of guns, and half a minute

crept by before he made out the blood-red triangle on its bottom.

"Your Cognizance..."

"You don't understand why they're not shooting at us." Quetzal

shook himself. "I imagine it's only that they haven't noticed us yet.

A wind is forcing them to hold their airship parallel to the sun, so

they're peering down at a dark city. At the moment our floater's

presenting its narrowest aspect to them. But we're turning, and soon

they'll be looking straight down at us. Let's duck inside and shut the

hatch."

The glass showed Lake Limna now. Watching its shoreline creep

from one corner to the other, Silk thought of Oosik's needler; their

floater seemed to be tumbling through the sky in the same dilatory

fashion.

Clinging to him, Hyacinth whispered, "You're not afraid at all,

are you? Are we up terribly high?" She trembled.

"Of course I am; when I was out there, I was terrified." He

examined his emotional state. "I'm still badly frightened; but

thinking about what's happening--how it can possibly have come

about except by a miracle--keeps my mind off my fear." Watching

the glass, he tried to describe the airship.

"Pulling us up, lad! That's what she said! Think we could cut it?"

"There's nothing to cut; if there were, they'd know where we were

and shoot us, I believe. This is something else. Was it you who held

my foot, by the way? Thank you."

Xiphias shook his head and indicated the surgeon.

"Thank you," Silk repeated. "Thank you very much indeed,

Doctor." He grasped the operator's shoulder. "You said we were

getting a vector. Exactly what does that mean?"

"It's a message you get if you float too fast, My Calde, either north

or south. You're supposed to slow down. The monitor's supposed to

make you if you don't, but that doesn't work any more on this

floater."

"I see." Silk nodded, encouragingly he hoped. "Why are you

supposed to slow down?"

Oosik put in, "Going too fast north makes you feel as if someone

were shoveling sand on you. It is not good for you, and makes

everyone in the floater slow to react. Going south too fast makes

you giddy. It feels like swimming."

Almost too softly to be heard, Quetzal inquired, "Do you know

the shape of the whorl, Patera Calde?"

"The whorl? Why, it's cylindrical, Your Cognizance."

"Are we on the outside of the cylinder, Patera Calde? Or on the

inside?"

"We're inside, Your Cognizance. If we were outside, we'd fall

off."

"Exactly. What is it that holds us down? What makes a book fall if

you drop it?"

"I can't remember the name, Your Cognizance," Silk said, "but it's

the tendency that keeps a stone in a sling until it is thrown."

Hyacinth had released him; now her hand found his, and he

squeezed it. "As long as the boy keeps twirling his sling, the stone in

it can't fall out. The Whorl turns--I see! If the stone were a--a

mouse and the mouse ran in the direction the sling was going, it

would be held in place more securely, as though the sling were being

twirled faster. But if the mouse were to run the other way, it would

be as if the sling weren't twirling fast enough. It would fall out."

"Gunner!" Oosik was staring at the glass. "Your gun should bear."

As he flicked off his own buzz gun's safety, the red triangle crept

into view.

"Trivigaunte," Hyacinth whispered. "Sphigx won't let them make

pictures of anything. That mark's on their flag."

Auk stood, unable for a moment to recall where he was or why he

had come. Had he fallen off a roof? Salt blood from his lips trickled

into his mouth. A man with arms and legs no thicker than kindling

and a face like a bearded skull dashed past him. Then another and

another.

"Don't be afraid," the blind god whispered. "Be brave and act

wisely, and I will protect you." He took Auk's hand, not as Hyacinth

had put her own hand into Silk's a few minutes before, but as an

older man clasps a younger's at a crisis.

"All right," Auk told him. "I ain't scared, only kind of shook up."

The blind god's hand felt good in his own, big and strong, with long

powerful fingers; he could not think of the blind god's name and was

embarrassed by his failure.

"I am Tartaros, and your friend. Tell me everything you see. You

may speak or not, as you wish."

"There's a big hole with smoke coming out in the middle of the

wall," Auk reported. "That wasn't there before, I'm pretty sure.

There's some dead culls around besides the ones Patera killed and

the one I killed. One's a trooper, like, only a mort it looks like. Her

wings broke, I guess, maybe when she hit the ground. Everything's

brown, the wings and pants and a kind of a bandage, like, over her

boobs."

"Brown?"

Auk looked more closely. "Not exactly. Yellowy-brown, more

like. Dirt color. Here comes Chenille."

"That is well. Comfort her, Auk my noctolater. Is the airship still

overhead?"

"Sure," Auk said, implying by his tone that he did not require a

god to coach him in such elementary things. "Yeah, it is." Chenille

rushed into his arms.

"It's all right, Jugs," he told her. "Going to be candy. You'll see.

Tartaros is a dimber mate of mine." To Tartaros himself, Auk

added, "There's this hoppy floater that's falling in the pit, only slow,

while it shoots. That's up there, too. And there's maybe a couple

hundred troopers like the dead mort flying around, way up."

The blind god gave his hand a gentle tug. "We emerged from a

smaller pit into this one, Auk. If you see no other way out, it would

be well to return to the tunnel. There are other egresses, and I know

them all."

"Just a minute. I lost my whin. I see it." Releasing Chenille, Auk

hurried over, jerked his hanger from the mire, and wiped the blade

on his tunic.

"_Auk_, my son--"

He shooed Incus with the hanger. "You get back in the tunnel,

Patera, before you get hurt. That's what Tartaros says, and he's

right."

The floater was descending faster now, almost as though it were

really falling. Watching it, Auk got the feeling it was, only not

straight down the way other things fell. Until the last moment, it

seemed it might come to rest upright; but it landed on the side of its

cowling and tumbled over.

Something much higher was falling much faster, a tiny dot of

black that seemed almost an arrow by the time it struck the ruined

battlement of the Alambrera's wall, which again erupted in a gout of

flame and smoke. This time masses of shiprock as big as cottages

were flung up like chaff. Auk thought it the finest sight he had seen

in his life.

"Silk here!" Oreb announced proudly, dropping onto his shoulder.

"Bird bring!" A hatch opened at the front of the fallen floater.

"Hackum!" Chenille shouted. "Hackum, come on! We're going

back in the tunnel!"

Auk waved to silence her. The wall of the Alambrera had taken

its death blow. As he watched, cracks raced down it to reappear as

though by magic in the shiprock side of the pit. There came a growl

deeper than any thunder. With a roar that shook the ground on

which he struggled to stand, the wall and the side of the pit came

down together. Half the pit vanished under a scree of stones, earth,

and shattered slabs. Coughing at the dust, Auk backed away.

"Hole break," Oreb informed him.

When he looked again, several men and a slender woman in

scarlet were emerging from the overturned floater; its turret gun,

unnaturally canted but pointing skyward, was firing burst after burst

at the flying troopers.

"Return to the woman," the blind god told him. "You must protect

her. A woman is vital. This is not."

He looked for Chenille, but she was gone. A few skeletal figures

were disappearing into the hole from which he and she had emerged

into the pit. Men from the floater followed them; through the

billowing dust he could make out a white-bearded man in rusty

black and a taller one in a green tunic.

"Silk here!" Oreb circled above two fleeing figures.

Auk caught up with them as they started down the helical track;

Silk was hobbling fast, helped by a cane and the woman in scarlet.

Auk caught her by the hair. "Sorry, Patera, but I got to do this."

Silk's hand went to his waistband, but Auk was too quick--a push

on his chest sent him reeling backward into the lesser pit.

"Listen!" urged the blind god beside Auk; he did, and heard the

rising whine of the next bomb a full second before it struck the

ground.

Silk looked down upon the dying augur's body with joy and regret.

It was--had been--himself, after all. Quetzal and a smaller,

younger augur knelt beside it, with a woman in an augur's cloak and

a third man nearly as old as Quetzal.

Beads swung in sign after sign of addition: "I convey to you,

Patera Silk my son, the forgiveness of all the gods."

"Recall now the words of Pas--"

It was good; and when it was over, he could go. Where? It didn't

matter. Anywhere he wished. He was free at last, and though he

would miss his old cell now and then, freedom was best. He looked

up through the shiprock ceiling and saw only earth, but knew that

the whole Whorl was above it, and the open sky.

"I pray you to forgive us, the living," the smaller augur said, and

again traced the sign of addition, which could not--now that he

came to think of it--ever have been Pas's. A sign of addition was a

cross; he remembered Maytera drawing one on the chalkboard

when he was a boy learning to do sums. Pas's sign was not the cross

but the voided cross. He reached for his own at his neck, but it was

gone.

The older augur: "I speak here for Great Pas, for Divine Echidna,

for Scalding Scylla."

The younger augur: "For Marvelous Molpe, for Tenebrous Tartaros,

for Highest Hierax, for Thoughtful Thelxiepeia, for Fierce

Phaea, and for Strong Sphigx."

The older augur: "Also for all lesser gods."

The shiprock gave way to earth, the earth to a clearer, purer air

than he had ever known. Hyacinth was there with Auk; in a slanting

mass of stones, broken shiprock rolled and slid to reveal a groping

steel hand. Glorying, he soared.

The Trivigaunti airship was a brown beetle, infinitely remote, the

Aureate Path so near he knew it could not be his final destination.

He lighted upon it, and found it a road of tinsel down a whorl no

bigger than an egg. Where were the lowing beasts? The spirits of the

other dead? There! Two men and two women. He blinked and

stared and blinked again.

"Oh, Silk! My son! Oh, son!" She was in his arms and he in hers,

melting in tears of joy. "Mother!" "Silk, my son!"

The Whorl was filth and stink, futility and betrayal; this was

everything--joy and love, freedom and purity.

"You must go back, Silk. He sends us to tell you."

"You must, my lad." A man's voice, the voice of which Lemur's

had been a species of mockery. Looking up he saw the carved brown

face from his mother's closet.

"We're your parents." He was tall and blue-eyed. "Your fathers

and your mothers."

The other woman did not speak, but her eyes spoke truth.

"You were my mother," he said. "I understand."

He looked down at his own beautiful mother. "You will always be

my mother. Always!"

"We'll be waiting, Silk my son. All of us. Remember."

* * *

Something was fanning his face.

He opened his eyes. Quetzal was seated beside him, one long,

bloodless hand swinging as regularly and effortlessly as a pendulum.

"Good afternoon, Patera Calde. I would guess, at least, that it may

be afternoon by now."

He lay on dirt, staring up at a shiprock ceiling. Pain stabbed his

neck; his head, both arms, his chest, both legs, and his lower torso

ached, each in its separate, painful way.

"Lie quietly. I wish I had water to offer you. How are you

feeling?"

"I'm back in my dirty cage." Too late, he remembered to add _Your

Cognizance_. "I didn't know it was a cage, before."

Quetzal pressed down on his shoulder. "Don't sit up yet, Patera

Calde. I'm going to ask a question, but you are not to put it to the

test. It is to be a matter for discussion only. Do you agree?"

"Yes, Your Cognizance." He nodded, although nodding took

immense effort.

"This is my question. We are only to speak of it. If I were to help

you up, could you walk?"

"I believe so, Your Cognizance."

"Your voice is very weak. I've examined you and found no broken

bones. There are four of us besides yourself, but--"

"We fell, didn't we? We were in a Civil Guard floater, spinning

over the city. Did I dream that?"

Quetzal shook his head.

"You and I and Hyacinth. And Colonel Oosik and Oreb. And..."

"Yes, Patera Calde?"

"A trooper--two troopers--and an old fencing master that

someone had introduced me to. I can't remember his name, but I

must have dreamed that he was there as well. It's too fantastic."

"He is some distance down the tunnel now, Patera Calde. We

have been troubled by the convicts you freed."

"Hyacinth?" Silk struggled to sit up.

Quetzal held him down, his hands on both shoulders. "Lie quietly

or I'll tell you nothing."

"Hyacinth? For--for the sake of all the gods! I've got to know!"

"I dislike them, Patera Calde. So do you. Why should either of us

tell anyone anything for their sake? I don't know. I wish I did. She

may be dead. I can't say."

"Tell me what happened, please."

Slowly, Quetzal's hairless head swung from side to side. "It would

be better, Patera Calde, for you to tell me. You've been very near

death. I need to know what you've forgotten."

"There's water in these tunnels. I was in them before, Your

Cognizance. In places there was a great deal."

"This is not one of those places. If you have recovered enough to

grasp how ill you are and keep a promise, I'll find some. Do you

remember blessing the crowds with me? Tell me about that."

"We were trying to bring peace--peace to Viron. Blood had

bought it--Musk, but Musk was only a tool of Blood's."

"Had bought the city, Patera Calde?"

Silk's mouth opened and closed again.

"What is it, Patera Calde?"

"Yes, Your Cognizance, he has. He, and others like him. I hadn't

thought of that until you asked. I'd been confusing the things."

"What things, Patera Calde?"

"Peace and saving my manteion. The Outsider asked me to save

it, and then the insurrection broke out, and I thought I would have

saved it if only I could bring peace, because the people made me

calde, and I would save it by an order." For a second or two, Silk lay

silent, his eyes half closed. "Blood--men like Blood--have stolen

the city, every part of it except the Chapter, and the Chapter has

resisted only because you are at its head, Your Cognizance. When

you're gone..."

"When I die, Patera Calde?"

"If you were to die, Your Cognizance, they'd have it all. Musk

actually signed the papers. Musk was the owner of record--the man

whose body we burned on the altar, Your Cognizance. I remember

thinking how horrible it would be if Musk were the real owner and

clenching my teeth--puffing myself up with courage I've never

really had and telling myself over and over that I couldn't allow it to

happen."

"You're the only man in Viron who doubts your courage, Patera

Calde."

Silk scarcely heard him. "I was wrong. Badly mistaken. Musk

wasn't the danger, was never the danger, really. There are scores of

Musks in the Orilla, and Musk loved birds. Did I tell you that, Your

Cognizance?"

"No, Patera Calde. Tell me now, if you wish."

"He did. Mucor told me he liked birds, and he'd brought her a

book about the cats she carried for Blood. When he saw Oreb, he

said I'd gotten him because I wanted to be friends, which wasn't

true, and threw his knife at him. He missed, and I believe he

intended to miss. Blood, with his money and his greed for more, has

done Viron more harm than all the Musks. Everything I've done has

been trying to pry bits of the city from Blood. I was trying to save

my manteion, I said; but you can't save just one manteion--I can't

save our quarter and nothing else. I see that now. And yet I like

Blood, or at least I would like to like him."

"I understand, Patera Calde."

"Little pieces--the manteion, and Hyacinth and Orchid, and Auk,

because Auk matters so much to Maytera Mint. Auk..."

"Yes, Patera Calde?"

"Auk pushed me, Your Cognizance. We had been together in the

floater, Hyacinth and I. Your Cognizance, too, and--and others.

We were coming down, and Colonel Oosik--"

"You've made him Generalissimo Oosik," Quetzal reminded Silk

gently.

"Yes. Yes, I did. He passed me the ear, and I talked to the

convicts, telling them they were free, and then we hit the ground.

We opened a hatch and Hyacinth and I climbed out--"

"I'm satisfied, Patera Calde. Promise me you won't try to stand

until I come back, and I'll look for water."

Silk detained him, clasping one boneless, bloodless hand. "You

can't tell me what's happened to her, Your Cognizance?"

Again Quetzal's head swung from side to side, a slow and almost

hypnotic motion.

"Then Auk has her, I don't know why, and I must get her back

from him. What happened to me, Your Cognizance?"

"You were buried alive, Patera Calde. When the floater crashed,

some of us climbed out. I did, as you see, and you and your young

woman, as you say. The fencing master, too, and your physician.

I'm sure of those. The convicts were running to a hole in the ground

to escape the shooting and explosions. Do you remember them?"

This time Silk was able to nod without much difficulty, although

his neck was stiff and painful.

"There was a ramp down the side of the hole, and a break in this

tunnel at the bottom. The fencing master and I ducked through.

Almost at once there was another explosion, and the hole fell in

behind us. We were lucky to have gotten in. Do you know my

coadjutor's prothonotary, Patera Calde?"

"I've met him, Your Cognizance. I don't know him well."

"He's here. I was surprised to see him, and he to see me. There is

a woman with him called Chenille who says she knows you. They

went into the tunnel yesterday, at Limna. They had been trying to

reach the city."

"Chenille, Your Cognizance? A tall woman? Red hair?"

"Exactly so. She's an extraordinary woman. Soon after the

explosion, the convicts attacked us. They were friendly at first, but

soon demanded we give them Patera and the woman. We refused,

and Xiphias killed four. Xiphias is the fencing master. Am I making

myself clear?"

"Perfectly, Your Cognizance."

"We tried to dig our way out and found you. We thought you

were dead, and Patera and I brought you the Peace of Pas.

Eventually we stopped digging, having realized that the effort

was hopeless. For a dozen men with shovels and barrows, two

days might be enough."

"I understand, Your Cognizance.

"By then I was exhausted, though I had dug less than the woman.

The others left to look for another way out. She and Patera are

famished, and they have a tessera that they believe will admit them

to the Juzgado. They promised to return for your body and me. I

prayed for you after they had gone."

"Your Cognizance distrusts the gods."

"I do." Quetzal nodded, his hairless head bobbing on its long neck.

"I know them for what they are. But consider. I believe in them. I

have faith. You mentioned your quarter. How many there really

believe in the gods? Half?"

"Less than that, I'm afraid, Your Cognizance."

"What about you, Patera Calde? Look into your heart."

Silk was silent.

"I'll give you my thoughts, Patera Calde. This young man

believes, and he loves the gods even after seeing Echidna. I too

believe, though I distrust them. He would want me to pray for him,

and that's my office. I've done it often, hoping I wouldn't be heard.

This time it's possible one will restore him, to prove she's not at bad

as I think."

Faint yet unmistakable, the crack of a needler echoed down the tunnel.

"That will be Patera, Patera Calde. We've been lucky in the

matter of weapons. Xiphias has a sword, and had a small needler he

said was yours. You left it on your bed, and he took charge of it for

you. He gave it to the woman. We found a large one in your

waistband. Patera took it, surprising me again. Our clergy have

hidden depths."

In spite of pain and weakness, Silk smiled. "Some do, perhaps,

Your Cognizance."

"Last night before you saw me in the alley, Patera Calde. I met

your acolyte, young Gulo. He is most embarrassed."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Your Cognizance."

"You shouldn't be. His uncle is a major in the Second Brigade.

One uncle of many. Were you aware of it?"

"No, Your Cognizance. I don't know much about Patera."

"Neither do I, though he was one of our copyists until my

coadjutor sent him to you. He commands several thousand now. It's

a great responsibility for someone so young. More join every hour,

he tells me, because they know he's your acolyte."

Silk managed to swallow. "I hope he won't waste their lives, Your

Cognizance."

"So do I. I asked if it was hard. He said he discussed each

operation with those who would have to fight. He finds them

sensible, and he knows something of war from his uncle's table talk.

He fights in the front rank afterward, he says."

"Your Cognizance mentioned that he was embarrassed."

"So he is, Patera Calde." Quetzal shook himself, lifting one

corner of his mouth by the thickness of a thread. "He has

captured his uncle. Our clergy have hidden depths. The older

man is humiliated. It's an awkward situation, I'm afraid, but I

was amused."

"So am I, Your Cognizance. Thank you."

Quetzal rose. "We'll find our own amusing, when we find our way

out. May I look for water?"

"Of course, Your Cognizance."

"You won't try to stand until I'm back? Give me your word,

Patera Calde."

Silk sat up.

"Please, Patera--"

"I have to go with you, Your Cognizance. I have to find water,

wash, and drink, so I can do whatever I can for Viron and Hyacinth.

You've got nothing to carry water in, and all four of you couldn't

possibly carry me far."

"You've been suffocated, Patera Calde," Quetzal bent over him.

"We merely thought you dead, and I shouldn't have hinted at a

miracle. No god can turn back death, and if they could, no god

would to please us. You were still alive when we dug you out. You

revived naturally--"

Unaided, Silk staggered to his feet. "I had a cane, Your Cognizance.

Master Xiphias gave it to me. I didn't need it then, or at least

not much. Now I do."

Quetzal offered him the baculus. "Use this."

"Never, Your Cognizance. Councillor Lemur called me--No, I won't."

The tunnel behind them was nearly choked with earth; a trampled

path led Silk to an opening in the wall. "Is this where you found me,

Your Cognizance? In there?"

"Yes, Patera Calde. But if your young woman is in there, she is

surely dead by now."

"I realize that." Silk put his head through the opening, "and I

believe she's in the pit with Auk, anyway; but Master Xiphias values

that cane, I need it, and it's probably very close to the place where

you found me." He began to work his shoulders through.

"Be careful, Patera Calde."

The wall was shiprock, little more than a cubit thick. Beyond it

lay a cavity hollowed from the tumbled soil that seemed utterly

dark. When Silk tried to stand, he found his head capped by a rough

dome; earth and small stones showered him invisibly. "This could

collapse any moment," he told the swaying figure in the tunnel.

"So it could, Patera Calde. Come out, please."

His questing fingers had come upon stubby protuberances he

assumed were roots. Exploring his pockets, he discovered the cards

Remora had given him and used one to scrape away the soil. One

root wore a ring. He cleared away more soil until he could get a firm

grip on the hand, tugged, dug farther, and tugged again.

"There are new sounds in this tunnel, Patera Calde. You had

better leave that place."

"I've found someone, Your Cognizance. Somebody else." Silk

hesitated, unwilling to trust his judgement. "I don't think it's

Hyacinth. The hand is too big."

"Then it doesn't matter whose it is. We must go."

Getting a firm grip on the arm, Silk heaved with all the strength

that remained to him, and was rewarded by a cataract of earth and a

dead man's embrace.

I'm robbing a grave, he thought, spitting grit and wiping his eyes.

Robbing this man's grave from below--stealing his grave as well as

his body.

It should have been at least as amusing as Gulo's uncle the major,

but was not. Holding onto the jagged edge of the opening in the

tunnel wall, he succeeded in pulling his own partially buried body

free. Back in the tunnel (suddenly very glad of its cold, sighing airs

and watery lights) he was able to extract the corpse from the loose

soil that had reclaimed it. Quetzal was nowhere to be seen.

"He's gone to look for water," Silk muttered. "Perhaps water could

revive you the way something revived me," but the dead man's ears

were stopped with earth. As he cleaned the pitiful face, Silk added,

"I'm sorry, Doctor."

He searched his pockets again; his beads were not there, left

behind with his own worn and dirty robe at Ermine's. It seemed a

very long time ago.

He wriggled back into the dark cavity beyond the tunnel wall.

Hyacinth had bathed him in their bedroom at Ermine's, undressing

him, and scrubbing and drying him bit by bit. He ought to have been

embarrassed (he told himself); but he had been too exhausted to

feel anything beyond vague satisfaction, a weak pleasure at finding

himself the object of so beautiful a woman's attention. Now all her

concern had been undone, and Remora's fine robe, scarcely worn, ruined.

"You returned me to life, Outsider," Silk murmured as he

resumed digging, "I wish you'd cleaned me up, too." But the

Outsider had doubtless been, as Doctor Crane had maintained, no

more than a vein's bursting.

Or had Doctor Crane--who had thought himself, or at any rate

called himself, an agent of the Rani--been in truth an agent of the

Outsider? Doctor Crane had made it possible for him to proceed in

his attempt to save the manteion despite his broken ankle; and

Doctor Crane had freed him when he had been taken by the

Ayuntamiento. It was conceivable, even likely, that Doctor Crane's

scepticism had been a test of faith.

Had he passed?

Weighing that question, he dug harder than ever, making the

dark, evil-smelling earth fly. If he had, he would almost certainly be

tested again, after this surrender to doubt.

The card struck something hard. At first he assumed it was a

stone, but it was too smooth; another half minute's work bared the

new find: a slender hook. As soon as he grasped it to pull it free, he

knew that he had found the silver-banded cane Xiphias had brought

to Ermine's for him.

Without warning, brilliant light flooded the cavity. He turned

away from it, covering his eyes.

"I see you in there. Come on out."

There was something familiar about the harsh voice, but it was

not until its owner said, "Put your hands where I can see them," that

Silk recognized it as Sergeant Sand's.

Sitting the white stallion in the middle of Fisc Street, Maytera Mint

surveyed the advancing ranks. Every one of those soldiers would be

worth three of her best, but they were few. Hearteningly few, and

the troopers from Trivigaunte had come. Just a few hundred now,

but thousands more were on the way.

"Fire and fall back," she called softly, adding under her breath,

"Gracious Echidna, grant that I be heard by our people but not by

those soldiers." Then, a trifle louder, "Not too quickly. But not too

slowly, either. This isn't the time to impress me. Don't get yourselves

killed."

The first level metal rank was practically within slug-gun range.

She wheeled her stallion and cantered off, hearing the firing break

out behind her, the _whiz...bang!_ of missiles and the dull booming

of slug guns.

Someone cried out.

I told them to, she reminded herself. I emphasized it in the briefing.

Yet she knew the wound had been real. She reined in the stallion

and turned to look again: behind the soldiers, Rook's blocking force

was straggling into position. Too early, she thought. Far too early.

You never appreciated men like Bison and the captain--men who

helped you make plans and carried them out--until you got

something like this.

One long cable had been looped around each pillar of the Corn

Exchange; it was not taut yet, nor should it have been. She risked a

glance up at the towering facade, another at Wool and his bullock

men, motionless in the shadows half a street away. He and they

stood ready beside their animals, waiting for her signal.

The bullock men trusted her. So did the ragged men and women

who were shooting and retreating as she had taught them. Shooting

and dying, because they had trusted a weak woman--trusted her

because Brocket had taught her to ride when she was a child.

She clapped heels to the stallion's sides. He had been used long

and hard yesterday, yet he surged forward, a foaming wave of

strength. Patera Silk's azoth was in her hand; she thumbed the

demon.

Seeing its terrible blade split the sky, Wool's bullock men

prodded their animals. The cable tightened, a slithering monster of

steel and silence, Echidna's greatest serpent.

The soldiers halted and faced about at a loud command, their

officer having seen Rook's force and detected the trap. They would

have to attack in earnest now, but her own voice (she told herself)

was incapable of launching troops against the enemy. Her voice

would not inspire anyone, so her person must. She neck-reined the

stallion, and the silver trumpet that was her voice in fact echoed

from every wall.

Five chains away, the blade of the azoth wrecked a fusion

generator, and the soldier whose heart it had been died.

Forward! Past her own disorderly line. Another soldier down,

and another! Forward!

The stallion stumbled, crying out like a man in pain.

A half-dozen soldiers dashed forward. The stallion fell, too weak

to stand; it seemed to her that the street itself had struck her, casting

all its clods and ridges at her at once. Steel hands laid hold of her,

and bios wrestled with chems in a desperate foolish fight. A woman

three times her size swung a wrecking bar. The soldier she struck,

struck her with the butt of his slug gun; she fell backward and did

not rise.

Maytera Mint struggled in a soldier's grasp. The azoth was gone--

No! Was under her shoe. He lifted her, his arms clamping her like

tongs; she stamped on the azoth with all her strength, and its lancing

point sheared off his foot. Smoking black fluid spurted from the

stump of his leg, slippery as so much grease. They fell, and his grip

weakened.

She tore herself away, stooping for the azoth, and ran, nearly

falling again, pursued with terrifying speed until the facade of the

Corn Exchange frowned above her and she whirled to cut down a

soldier whose blazing, arcing halves tumbled at her feet. "Run! Run!

Save yourselves!"

Her people streamed past in full flight, though to her, her voice

was a powerless wail.

"Hierax, accept my spirit." The azoth blade struck the first pillar,

and it shattered like glass. Another, and the facade seemed to hang

in air, an ominous cloud of grimy brick.

A soldier leveled his slug gun, firing an instant before her blade

split his skullplate. She felt the slug tear her habit, smelled the

powder smoke, and fled, slashing wildly at a third pillar without

breaking stride--stopped and turned back, hot tears streaming.

"You gods, for _twenty years!_ Now let me go!"

The weightless, endless blade came up. The weightless, endless

blade came down. And the facade of the Corn Exchange was

coming down too, falling like a picture, nearly whole and almost

maintaining its graceless design as it fell, its stone sills falling neither

faster nor slower than its tons of brick and timber. Her right hand,

still clutching the azoth, had begun the sign of addition when Rock

grabbed her from behind and dashed away with her.