Lake of the Long Sun

Chapter 13. THE CALDE SURRENDERS

"Patera? Oh, Patera!"

Maytera Marble was waving from the front steps of the old manteion on Sun Street. Two troopers in armor stood beside her; their officer, in dress greens, indulgently exhibited his sword to little Maytera Mint. Gulo hurried forward. The officer glanced up. "Patera Silk? You are under arrest." Gulo shook his head and explained. Maytera Marble sniffed, a sniff of such devastating power and contempt that it burned to dust all the pleasure the young officer had enjoyed from Maytera Mint's wide-eyed admiration. "Take Patera Silk away? You can't! Such a holy-"

A soft snarl came from the crowd that had been clustered about Gulo. Gulo was not an imaginative man, yet it seemed to him that an unseen lion was awakening; and the prayers he had chanted each Sphigxday were not nonsensical after all.

"Don't fight!" Maytera Mint returned the officer's sword and raised her hands. "Please! There's no need."

A stone flew, striking the helmet of one of the troopers. A second whizzed past Maytera Marble's head to thump the door, and the trooper who had been hit fired, his shot followed by a scream. Maytera Mint dashed down the steps into the crowd.

The trooper fired again, and his officer slapped down the muzzle of his slug gun. "Open these," the officer told Gulo. "We had better go inside." More stones flew as they fled into the manteion. The trooper who had been hit fired twice more as Maytera Marble and the other trooper swung its heavy door shut, his shots so closely spaced that they might almost have been one. There was an answering rattle of stones.

"It is the heat." The officer spoke confidently and even smiled. "They will forget now that we are out of sight." He sheathed his sword. "This Patera Silk is popular."

Maytera Marble nodded. And then, "Patera!" "I have to go." Gulo was sliding back the bolt. "I-I shouldn't have gone in here at all." He struggled to re- member the other sibyl's name, failed, and concluded lamely, "She was right."

The officer snatched at his robe an instant too late as Gulo slipped out; angry yells invaded the manteion, then muted as the troopers shut the door and bolted it again. Faintly, the officer could hear Gulo shouting, "People! People!"

"They won't hurt him, Maytera." He paused to listen, his head cocked. "I do not like arresting . . ."

He let the apology trail away, having realized that he no longer had her attention. Her metal face mirrored faint hues: lemon, pink, and sorrel. Following the direction of her gaze, he saw the swirling color of the Sacred Window and knelt. The dancing hues created patterns he could not quite distinguish, glyphs, figures, and landscapes half formed, a face that swam, melted, and coalesced before the goddess spoke in a tongue he almost understood, a language that he too had known in a long-past life in an unimaginable place at an inconceivable time. In this, he was a maggot; her utterance proclaimed that he had once been a man, though the memories she woke were perhaps no more than the dead thoughts of the man he devoured. I will, Great Goddess. I will. He will be safe with us. Behind and above him he heard the chem talking to the fat augur. "A god came while you were outside, Patera. Honored us without a sacrifice. There was no one to inter- pret. I'm so terribly sony you missed it-" And the augur, "I didn't, Maytera. Not all of it."

The officer willed them to be quiet. Her divine voice still strummed in his ears, far and sweet; and he knew what she desired him to do.

To breach the surface of the lake as Silk did, to rise from suffocation and see afresh the thin, bright streak of the sun and draw one's first breath, was to be reborn. He was not a strong swimmer, and indeed was hardly a swimmer at all; yet exhausted as he was, he managed to stay afloat on the long, slow swell, kicking spasmodically, dimly fearful that each kick might draw the attention of the huge fish.

There was a distant shout, followed by the clamor of a pan wildly beaten; he ignored both until the swell heaved him high enough to see the worn brown sails.

Three half-naked fishermen pulled him onto their boat. "There's someone else," he gasped. "We've got to find him."

"They already have!" And Crane was grinning at him.

The tallest and most grizzled of the fishermen slapped him on the back. "Gods look out for augurs. That's what my paw used to tell, Patera."

Crane nodded sagely. "Augurs and fools."

"Yes, sir. Them, too. Next time you go sailin', you take a sailor. Let's hope we can find your woman."

The thought of the great fish filled Silk's mind, and he shuddered. "It's good of you to look, but I'm afraid . . ."

"Couldn't reach her, Patera?"

"No, but- No."

"Well, we'll haul her out if we see her."

Silk stood; at once the rolling of the boat cost him his footing, and he found himself sitting on piled nets.

"Stay where you are and rest," Crane muttered. "You've been through a lot. So've I. But we've gotten a thorough washing, and that's good. Lots of isotopes released when a chem blows." He held up a gleaming card. "Captain, could you find us something to eat? Or a little wine?"

"Let me put her about, sir, and I'll see what's left."

"Money belt," Crane whispered, noticing Silk's puzzled look. "Lemur made me turn out my pockets but never patted me down. I promised them a card to take us back to Limna."

"That poor woman," Silk said to no one in particular, "three hundred years, for that." A black bird was perched in the rigging of a distant boat; seeing it, Silk recalled Oreb, smiled, and reproached himself for smiling.

Guiltily he glanced about him, hoping that his unseemly levity had passed unnoticed. Crane was watching the captain, and the captain, the largest sail. One sailor stood in the bow with a foot upon the bowsprit. The other, grasping a rope connected to the long stick (Silk could not recall its name, if he had ever known it) that spread the sail, appeared to be waiting for a signal from the captain-the back of his head seemed uncannily familiar. As Silk altered his position to get a better view of it, he realized that the nets on which he sat were dry.

Crane had bought Silk a red tunic, brown trousers, and brown shoes to replace the black ones he had kicked off in the lake. He changed in a deserted alley, throwing his robe, his torn tunic, and his old trousers behind a pile of refuse. "I got Hyacinth's needler back," he said, "and my gammadion and my beads; but not my glasses or any of my other possessions. Perhaps that's a sign."

Crane shrugged. "They were probably in Lemur's pocket." He had a new tunic and new trousers, too, and he had bought a razor. Glancing toward the mouth of the alley, he added, "Keep your voice down."

"What did you see?"

"Couple of Guardsmen."

"The Ayuntamiento will surely think we're dead," Silk objected. "Until they leam otherwise, we have no reason to fear the Guard."

Crane shook his head.

"If they thought we might have survived, they could have come to the surface and looked for us, couldn't they?"

"Not without telling everybody on the lake abouttheir underwater boat. How do those fit?"

"They're a trifle large." Silk looked down at himself, wishing that he had a mirror. "Their boat must have come to the surface to collect poor lolar."

"You're thin," Crane told him. "No, they sent up that little one we saw. They couldn't send it after us because that compartment down in the keel would've flooded again as soon as they undogged the hatch."

"It flooded when we opened the one in the floor," Silk murmured.

"That's right. I'd opened the air valve as far as it would go, but it hadn't had much time to build up pressure after you and the woman vented it coming down. Naturally a lot of water came in. It cut down the air space and pushed the pressure up to the water pressure, so the water flowed out again almost right away."

Silk hesitated, then nodded. "But if they open the upper hatch-the one in the corridor-the compartment will flood again, won't it?" "Sure. Water would rise into the rest of the boat, too. Which is why they couldn't send their little boat after us. I can't imagine how they'll shut the boat door when they can't get into the compartment to do it, but no doubt they'll figure out something."

Silk leaned against a wall and removed Crane's wrapping from his ankle. "I'm not a sailor, but if it were up to me, I'd go far out in the lake, where there wasn't much chance of being seen-or perhaps into the cave Lemur mentioned when you asked how he had gotten your bag."

"I wish I hadn't lost that." Crane fingered his beard. "I'd had it twenty years."

Recalling his pen case, Silk said, "I know how you must feel, Doctor." He flogged the wall with the wrapping.

"Suppose they did go back into their cave. They'd still have the problem. That underwater boat's too big to drag up on shore."

"But they could tilt it," Silk said. "Shift everything to one side and force all the water out of the floats on the other. They might even be able to pull it over with a cable attached to the side of the cave."

Crane nodded, still watching the mouth of the alley. "I suppose so. Are you ready?"

When Crane had gone, Silk opened the window. Their room was on the third floor of the Rusty Lantern, and provided a magnificent view of the lake, as well as a refreshing breeze. Leaning across the sill, Silk looked down into Dock Street. Crane had wanted to get out of sight, or so he had said; but he had called for pen and paper as soon as they had taken this room, and gone out into the street again, leaving Silk behind, after scribbling a not very lengthy note. Looking up and down Dock Street now, Silk decided that if it did no harm for Crane to go out again, it could surely do none for him to study the street from a window this high.

Limna was peaceful, the innkeeper had said; but there had been rioting in the city the night before, rioting put down harshly by the Guard. "Silk's men," the innkeeper had told them wisely. "They're the ones stirring it up, if you ask me."

Silk's men.

Who were they? Deep in thought, Silk stroked his cheek, feeling two days' beard beneath his fingertips. The men who had chalked up his name, no doubt. There were some in the quarter who would do that and more, beyond doubt, and even assert that they were acting under his direction. Not for the first time, it occurred to him that some of them might be the men who had knelt in Sun Street for his blessing when he had told Blood he had been enlightened-men so desperate that they would accept any leader who appeared to have the favor of the gods.

Even himself.

Two Guardsmen in mottled green conflict armor were coming up Dock Street with slug guns at the ready. They were showing themselves, clearly, in the hope that the sight of them by day would prevent disturbances tonight-would prevent men with clubs and stones, and hangers like Auk's and a few needlers, from fighting troopers in armor, armed with slug guns. For a moment Silk considered calling out to them, telling them that he was Patera Silk, and that he was ready to give himself up if that would end the fighting. The Ayuntamiento could hardly kill him without a trial if he surrendered publicly; it would have to try him, and even if he could not prove his innocence he would have the satisfaction of declaring it.

The manteion was not yet safe, however. He had promised to save it if he could, and it was in more danger than ever now. Musk had given him how long? A week? Yes, one week from Scylsday. But had Musk really been speaking for Blood as he had claimed, or for himself? Legally, the manteion was Musk's: to give himself up now would be to turn his manteion over to Musk.

Something deep in Silk's being recoiled at the thought. To Blood, perhaps, if it could not be helped. But never, surely never, to someone-to . . . Why, the very possibility had moved the Outsider to enlighten him in order to prevent it. He would kill Musk if-

If there was no other way, and he could bring himself to do it. He turned away from the window and stretched himself on his bed, recalling Councillor Lemur and the way Lemur had died. As Presiding Officer of the Ayuntamiento, Lemur had been calde, in fact if not in name; and Crane had killed him. It had been Crane's right to do that, perhaps, since Lemur had intended to execute Crane without a trial.

And yet a trial would have been a mere formality. Crane was a spy and had admitted it-a spy from Palustria. Had Crane then really had the right to kill Lemur? And did that matter?

Belatedly, it struck Silk that the note that Crane had written so hurriedly had almost certainly been a message to the government of his city-to the calde of Palustria, or whatever they called him. To the prince-president. Crane would have described the Ayuntamiento's underwater boat (Crane had considered it extremely important) and the peculiar teardrop shape that was the cross section of a wing that could fly.

There were steps in the hall outside, and Silk held his breath. Crane had told him to unbar the door only to three quick taps, but it did not matter. The Guard would come, would search this inn and every other inn, beyond question, as soon as the Ayuntamiento chose a new Presiding Officer and that Presiding Officer decided there was a chance that he and Crane (and even poor Mamelta, for the new Presiding Officer could not be sure that Mamelta was dead either) might have survived. Crane had defended the cost of this room in the best inn in Limna by saying that the Guard would be less ready to disturb them if they appeared rich; but spurred by urgent orders from the Ayuntamiento, the Guard would not hesitate to disturb anyone, no matter how rich.

The steps faded away and were gone.

Silk had sat up and pulled off his new red tunic before he fully realized that he had resolved to shave. Rising, he jerked the bellpull vigorously and was rewarded by a distant drumroll on the stairs. Two days' beard might disguise him, but it would also mark him as someone requiring a disguise, and the Outsider could not reasonably object to his shaving, something that he did every day. If he were arrested, well and good. There would be no further rioting and loss of life; and he would be arrested as himself-as Silk, the man others called calde, and not as some skulking fugitive.

"Soap, towels, and a basin of hot water," he told the deferential maid who answered his ring. "I'm going to get rid of all this right now." She had brought the aroma of the kitchen with her, and one whiff of it woke his hunger. "I'll have a sandwich or something, too. Whatever you can prepare quickly. Mate or tea. Put everything on our bill."

Crane had rung for more towels and fresh shaving water as soon as he bustled in. "I'll bet you thought I'd deserted you," he said as he arranged them on the washstand.

Silk shook his head and, finding the action practically painless, fingered the lump left by Potto's fist. "If you hadn't returned, I'd have known you were under arrest. Do you intend to shave off your beard? I hope you don't mind my borrowing your razor."

"No, not a bit." Crane eyed himself in the luxuriously large mirror. "I think I'd better whack away the best part of it, anyhow."

"Most men in your position would have shaved first and sent their report afterward. Do you think those fishermen who rescued us will tell the Guard, if they're questioned?"

"Uh-huh." Crane slipped out of his tunic.

"Then the Guard will know enough to look for us here, in Limna."

"They'd look here anyhow. This is the most likely spot, if we lived."

"I suppose so. You gave those fishermen a card? A card must be a great deal of money to a fisherman."

"They saved our lives. Besides, the captain will go to Viron to buy something, and his sailors will get drunk. If they're drunk enough, they won't be questioned."

Silk nodded again, knowing that Crane could see him in the mirror. "I can't tell you how surprised I was to find that the driver who had taken me home from Blood's was one of the crew. He's become a fisherman, it seems." Crane turned to stare at Silk, his face lathered and the razor in his hand. "I keep underestimating you. Every time I do, I tell myself that's the last time." He waited for a reply, then turned back to the mirror. "Thanks for keeping it to yourself until we were alone."

"I thought he seemed familiar, but we were in the harbor before I placed him. He tried to keep his face turned away from me, and it gave me a good view of the back of his head; and that had been what I'd seen, mostly, when he took me to my manteion. I'd been sitting behind him."

Crane dabbed at one sidebum with the razor. "Then you knew."

"I didn't really understand until just now, when I was thinking about what a good spy you are-how valuable you must be to your city."

Crane chuckled. "We're soaping each other's beards, it seems."

"I didn't really understand about the fishing boat until we changed clothes in that alley," Silk told him. "Before that I was simply mystified; but someone aboard that fishing boat, the captain or more plausibly the driver who had taken me home, had given you several cards." "You saw there was no money belt. I've been kicking myself ever since and hoping you hadn't noticed."

"When Chenille told you about that commissioner..."

"Simuliid."

"Yes, Simuliid. When Chenille told you he'd gone to the lake to meet with members of the Ayuntamiento, you came here yourself to investigate. I know you did, because I spoke to a young couple you befriended. If you didn't have somebody here already, you decided then that you should have someone all the time; and you hired the captain and his boat. I'd imagine they were to keep an eye on the Pilgrims' Way. The path runs along the edge of the cliffs in places, and anyone on it could be seen easily from a boat on that part of the lake. I won't inform on him or you now, of course; yet I'm curious. Is the captain Vironese?"

"Yes," Crane told him. "Not that it matters."

"You're not shaving. I didn't intend to interrupt you."

Crane turned to face him again. "I'd rather give you my complete attention. I hope you realize I've been working for you as well as for my city. Working to put you in power because it might head off a war."

"I don't want power," Silk told him, "but it would be iniquitous not to thank you for everything you've done- for saving my life, too, when it would have been safer for you to have left me in the water."

"If you really feel like that, are you willing to formalize our alliance? Viron's Ayuntamiento's going to kill us if it gets hold of us again. I'm a spy, and you've become a major threat to its power. You realize that, don't you?"

Reluctantly, Silk nodded. "Then we'd better stand back to back, or we'll lie side by side. Tell me everything you know, and I'll tell you anything else you want to know. My word on it. You've got no particular reason to trust it, but it's better than you think. What do you say?"

"It's hardly fair to you, Doctor. The things that I've guessed will be of no particular value to you; but you may have information that will be extremely valuable to me."

"There's more. You do everything you can to see to it that my people and I aren't picked up, and to free us if we are. I promise we'll do nothing to injure your city. You realize, don't you, that you may have to run if you want to keep breathing? If we can't make you calde, we'll at least give you a place to go. Not because we're overflowing with kindness, but because you'll be a focus for discontent as long as you're alive. You need us now, and you may need us a lot-more in a few days."

"You'll answer all my questions openly and honestly?"

"I said so, didn't I? Yes. You've got my word on all of it. We'll put you in power if we can, and you'll keep the peace when we do and not go after us. Now I want your word. Have I got it?"

Slowly, Silk nodded. He extended his hand. Crane laid aside his razor, and he and Silk joined hands.

"Now tell me what you learned about my operation."

"Very little, really. Hyacinth's working for you, of course. Isn't she?"

Crane nodded.

"That's why I'm doing this." Silk had taken his beads from his pocket; he pulled them through his fingers as he spoke. "Turning against my city, I mean. That burst vein in my brain-I don't feel up to arguing with you about it, you see. Not yet, because it might make us enemies again. It wants me to save the manteion, and so I must if I can; but I myself want to save Hyacinth. You must think that's foolish, too."

"I'm trying to save her myself," Crane told him. "And the men on the fishing boat who saved us both from drowning. All of them are my people. I feel responsible for them. By Tartaros, I am responsible for them. If it wasn't for that, I'd have told you about the boat when we picked you up. But what if you were caught and talked? Those three men would be killed, and they're mine."

Silk nodded again. "I feel like that about the people who come to sacrifice at our manteion. You would proba- bly say that they're only porters and thieves and washer-women, but they are our manteion, really. The buildings and even our Sacred Window could be replaced, just as I could; they can't." He stood and went to the window.

"As I said, Doctor, I was thinking about how important you were, and how silly I'd been not to realize it earlier. You must be fifty at least."

Crane turned back to the mirror and washed the dried foam from his beard. "Fifty-six."

"Thank you. So you've been a spy for a long time, and you're likely to be of high rank. Besides you're a doctor, and that in itself would make you important to your city's government. They wouldn't just send you off to Blood's by yourself. Hyacinth's Vironese. I know that because I've spoken with someone who knew her when she was younger. But my driver is from your own city, or so I would guess. Was he your second in command?"

"That's right." Crane was lathering his beard for the second time, plying the big boar's-hair brush with sweeping strokes.

"Blood told Musk to have a driver bring a floater around for me; but you had anticipated that, and when you left us you told your second in command to be ready. You'd brought me the azoth, of course, and there was a chance that whoever drove me might see it."

"You're right." Crane scraped a little hair from one cheek. "I also wanted him to get a look at you and become acquainted. I thought it might be useful later. I could say now that it has been."

"I suppose I ought to be flattered." Silk leaned out of the window, peering upward. "The important point, I'd say, is that in order to act as he did-I mean today-your second in command must have known not only that you had been captured, but that you had been taken to the lake. It would even appear that he knew precisely where the Ayuntamiento's underwater boat was when we were swept out of it, since he had your fishing boat so accurately positioned that he and the fishermen were able to pick you up as soon as you came to the surface. You can't have gotten out of the underwater boat much before I did; nor can you have reached the surface much faster. I wasn't in the water very long, yet you were already in the boat when I was rescued, and there had been time for your second in command to pass you some money. He would have been prepared for that, because he would've known that your possessions had been taken from you. Even if he was the person who brought your medical bag to Lemur-"

"He wasn't. He'd left Blood's earlier. In a way that was too bad. He might've been able to slip something useful past them."

"I was about to say that even if he had learned that you were at the lake because he brought your bag, or overheard the order that another driver do it, he had to have had some further means of locating you. I've been trying to imagine what that means might be, and the only things. I can think of are that he can send forth his spirit like Mucor, or that you're carrying a very small glass, or at least some device of that kind. You promised to answer my questions. Will you tell me whether I'm correct, and how they failed to find it?"

"Because it's in here." Crane tapped his chest. "Eight years ago I had bypass surgery. We took the opportunity to implant a gadget that sends a half-second signal every two minutes. It tells anyone who's listening how my heart's doing, and the direction of the signal lets them find me. So if you're ever in need of rescue again, just kill me."

He grinned. "While I'm still among the living, can I ask why you're so interested in that window?"

"I've been wondering whether we could get out of here if we had to-if the Guard began breaking down the door, for example. I could re-ach the edge of the roof and pult myself up, I believe."

"I couldn't. When I was your age I might have." Crane went back to his shaving.

"Can't you fly?"

Crane chuckled. "I wish I could." "But that's what you reported to the prince-president, isn't it? That shape Lemur showed us? How fliers fly?"

"You're wrong there. I didn't."

Silk turned away from the window. "A secret with so much military value? Why not?"

"I wish I could tell you, I really do. But I can't. It wasn't included in our agreement. I hope you realize that. I swore I'd tell you everything you wanted to know about my organization and our operation. I can tell you what was in my report. My report was a part of the operation, I admit."

"Go on."

"But it didn't go to the prince-president of Palustria. Did you really think I'd tell that maniac Lemur the truth? You did, I know. But I'm not you."

"I hope you're not about to say that you're not a spy at all, Doctor."

"No, I'm a spy all right. What do you think of this? Or should I shave it all off?"

"I'd remove it all."

"I was afraid you were going to say that." Reluctantly, Crane pared away another patch of beard. "Aren't you going to ask who I spy for? It's Trivigaunte."

"The women?"

Crane chuckled again. "In Trivigaunte they'd say, 'The men?' Viron's dominated by men, like most other cities. Do you think the Ayuntamiento's got no female spies? It's got all it wants, I guarantee you."

"Naturally our women are loyal."

"Admirable." Crane turned to face Silk, gesturing with his razor. "So are men in Trivigaunte. We're not slaves. If anything we're better off than your women are-here."

"Is this the truth?"

"Absolutely. The truth, and nothing over."

"Then tell me what was in your report."

"I will," Crane wiped his razor. "It was pretty short. You saw me write it so you know that already, or you ought to. I reported that the Ayuntamiento was onto me, that I'd been picked up and had killed Councillor Lemur while making my escape. That they'd brought down a flier but lost the PM in the lake. That I'd found their headquarters, a boat in Lake Limna that sails under the water. I claimed the reward our Rani's offered for that."

Grinning more broadly than ever, Crane continued, "And I'll get it, too. When I go back to Trivigaunte I'll be a rich man. But I said I wasn't going to leave yet because I thought there was a good chance that Silk might unseat the Ayuntamiento. I'd rescued him from them, he had reason to be grateful to me, and I thought a change in government here was worth any risk."

"I am grateful to you," Silk said. "Very much so, as I've told you already. Was that all?"

Crane nodded. "That's the lot, pretty much exactly as I wrote it down. Now I want you to explain to me how you knew Hyacinth was working for me. Did she say so?"

"No. I looked at the engraving on this needler." Silk look it from his pocket. "It has hyacinths all over it, but here on the top there's a tall bird-a heron, I thought- standing in a pool; when I realized that it could be a crane instead of a heron, I knew you must have had it engraved for her." He opened the breech. "I hope that the water hasn't ruined it."

"Let it dry out before you try to shoot. Oil it first, and it should be all right. But the fact that I presented Hy with a fancy needler can't have been the only thing that tipped you off. Any old fool with a crush on a beautiful woman might have given her something like that."

"That's true, of course; but she kept the azoth in the same drawer. Do you still have it, by the way?"

Crane nodded.

"So it seemed likely that it had been given her by the same person, since she wouldn't want you to see it if you hadn't given it to her. An azoth's worth several thousand cards; thus if you'd given her one, you were clearly more than you seemed. Furthermore, you passed it to me while you were examining me in Blood's presence. I didn't believe the man you were pretending to be would have dared to do that."

Crane chuckled again. "You're so shrewd, I'm beginning to doubt your innocence. Sure you're not of my trade?"

"You're confusing innocence with ignorance, though I'm ignorant in many ways as well. Innocence is something one chooses, and something one chooses for the same reason one chooses any other thing-because it seems best."

"I'll have to think about that. Anyhow, you're wrong about me giving Hy the azoth. Somebody'd searched my room a couple of days before. They didn't find it, but I asked Hy to keep it for me to be on the safe side." "When you put it in my waistband-" "I said that there was a goddess up there who liked you, sure. She brought it to me and said we had to figure out a way of getting it to you, because she thought Blood was going to have Musk kill you. When she came in she thought she'd find me patching you up, but I'd finished with you and sent you in to Blood. Musk came to get me while we were talking it over, so I tipped Hy a wink and took the azoth with me, figuring I'd have a chance to slip it to you."

"But she came to you and asked you to do it?"

"That's right," Crane said, "and if that makes you feel good, I don't blame you. When I was your age, it would've had me swinging on the rafters."

"If does. I don't deny it." Silk gnawed his lip. "As a favor-a very great favor-may I see the" azoth again, please? Just for a minute or two? I don't intend to harm you with it, or even project the blade, and I'll return it the moment you ask. I just/want to look at it again, and hold it!"

Crane took the azoth from his waistband and handed it to him.

"Thank you. While I had it, it bothered me that there were no hyacinths on it; but I understand that now. This demon, is it a bloodstone?"

"That's right. It was meant to be a present for Blood. Our Rani gave me a nice bit of money in case it looked like we ought to buy him, and one of our khanums threw in that azoth for an extra goodwill gift. He's got a couple already, but back then we hadn't found that out yet."

"Thank you." Silk revolved the azoth in his hands. "If I'd known that this was yours and not Hyacinth's, I wouldn't have returned with Mamelta to search those devilish tunnels for it. She and I would not have been overtaken by Lemur's soldiers, and she wouldn't have died."

"If you hadn't gone back, you might have been picked up anyhow," Crane told him. "But Lemur wouldn't have had that azoth, and without it I couldn't have killed him. By this time you and I would both be dead. Your woman friend, too, most likely."

"I suppose so." For what he believed to be the final time, Silk pressed his lips to the gleaming silver hilt. "I feel that it's brought me only bad luck; yet if I hadn't had it, the talus would have killed me." With some reluctance, he handed it back to Crane.

That night, as Silk lay in his rented bed whispering to a strange ceiling, the tunnels involved themselves in all his thoughts, their dim, tangled strands looping underneath everything. Was that lofty chamber in which the sleepers waited in their fragile tubes beneath him now, as he waited - for sleep? It seemed entirely possible, since that chamber had not been far from the ash-choked tunnel, and its ashes had fallen from the manteion here in Limna. No doubt his own manteion on Sun Street was above just such a tunnel, as Hammerstone had implied.

How horribly cramped those tunnels had seemed, always about to close in and crush him! The Ayuntamiento hadn't built them-could not have built them. The tunnels were far older, and workmen digging new foundations struck them now and then, and wisely reclosed the holes in tunnel walls that they had made by accident.

But who had made the tunnels, and what had been their purpose? Maytera Marble recalled the Short Sun. Did she remember the tunnels, the digging of the tunnels, and the uses of the tunnels as well?

Their room, which should have been cool, was over-warm-hotter than his bedroom in the manse, which was always too warm, always baking, though both its windows, the Silver Street window and the garden window, stood wide open, their thin white curtains flapping in a hot wind that did nothing to cool the room. All the while Doctor Crane waited outside with Maytera Marble, throwing chips of shiprock from the tunnels through his window to tell him that he must go back for Hyacinth's silver azoth.

Like smoke, he rose and drifted to the window. The dead flier floated there, his last breath bubbling from nose and mouth. Everyone drew a final breath eventually, not knowing it for the last. Was that what the flier had been trying to say?

The door burst open. It was Lemur. Behind him waited the monstrous black, red, and gold face of the fish that had devoured the woman who slept in the glass tube, the tube in which he himself now slept beside Chenille, who was Kypris,,who was Hyacinth, who was Mamelta, with Hyacinth's jet-black hair, which the fish had and would devour, snap, snap, snap, snapping monstrous jaws. ...

Silk sat up. The room was'wide and dark and silent, its warm, humid air retaining ihe memory of the sound that had awakened him. Crane stirred in the other bed.

It came again, a faint tapping, a knock like the rapid ticking of the little clock in his room in the manse.

"The Guard." Silk could not have explained how he knew.

Crane muttered, "Probably just a maid wanting to change the beds."

"It's still dark. The middle of the night." Silk swung his legs to the floor.

The lapping resumed. An annoyed Guardsman with a slug gun stood in the middle of Dock Street, scarcely visible in the cloud-dimmed sunlight. He waved as he caught sight of Silk at the window, then came to attention and saluted.

"It is the Guard," Silk said. By an effort of will, he kept his tone conversational. "I'm afraid they have us."

Crane sat up. "That's not a Guardsman's knock."

"There's one outside, watching our window." Silk slid back the bolt and swung the door wide. A uniformed captain of the Civil Guard saluted, the click of polished boot heels as sharp as the snap of the great fish's jaws. Behind the captain, another armored trooper saluted like the first, his flattened hand across the barrel of his slug gun.

"May every god favor you," Silk said, not knowing what else to say. He stood aside. "Would you like to come in?" "Thank you, My Calde."

Silk blinked.

They stepped over the threshold, the captain negligently elegant in his tailored uniform, the trooper immaculate in waxed green armor.

Crane yawned'. "You haven't come to arrest us?"

"No, no!" the captain said. "By no means. I've come to warn you-to warn our calde particularly-that there are others who will arrest him. Others who are searching for him even as we speak. I take it that you are Doctor Crane, sir? There are warrants for you both. You stand in urgent need of protection, and I have arrived. I am sorry to have disturbed your sleep, but delighted that I found you before the others did."

Silk said slowly, "This is happening because of an ill-considered remark of Councillor Lemur's, I believe."

"I know nothing of that, My Calde."

"Some god overheard him-I believe I can guess which. What time is it, Captain?"

"Three forty-five. My Calde."

"Too early to start back to the city, then. Sit-no, first bring the trooper who's watching our window inside. Then I want you to sit down, all three of you, and tell us what's been happening in Viron."

"It might be better to leave him where he is, My Calde, if we wish the others to believe I am arresting you."

"And now you've made the arrest." Silk picked up his trousers and sat on the bed to put them on. "Doctor Crane and I have been subdued and disarmed, so the man outside is no longer needed. Bring him in."

The captain motioned to the trooper, who strode to the window and gestured; the captain himself took a chair.

Silk slapped Crane's wrapping against the bedpost. "You addressed me as calde. Why did you do that?"

"Everyone knows, My Calde, that there is supposed to be a calde. The Charter, written by Our Patroness and Lord Pas himself, says so plainly-yet there has been no calde in twenty years."

Crane said, "But everything's gone along pretty well, hasn't it? The city's quiet?"

The captain shook his head. "Not really, Doctor." He glanced toward his trooper, then shrugged. "There was more rioting last night, and houses and shops were burned. An entire brigade was scarcely enough to defend the Palatine. Unbelievable! It gets a little worse each year. The heat has iT/ade things very bad this year, and the high prices in the market. . ." He shrugged again. "If the Ayuntamiento had asked my opinion, I would have advised buying up staples-corn and beans, the foods of the poor-and reselling them below cost. They did not ask, and I shall write my opinion in their blood."

Unexpectedly, the trooper said, "A goddess spoke to us, Calde."

The captain smoothed his thin mustache. "That is so, My Calde. We were signally honored yesterday at your manteion, where now the gods speak again."

Silk wound the wrapping about his ankle. "One of you understood her?" "We all did, My Calde. Not in the way that I understand you, and not in the way that you yourself would beyond doubt have understood her. Yet she told us plainly that what we had been ordered to do was blasphemy, that you are accounted sacred. By the favor of the goddess, your acolyte returned as she spoke. He can relate her message in her own words. The substance was that the immortal gods are displeased with our unhappy city, that they have chosen you to be our calde, and that all who resist you must perish. My own men-"

As if on cue, there was a knock at the door; the trooper opened it to admit his comrade.

"These men," the captain continued, "were ready to kill me if I insisted we carry out our orders, My Calde. I had no intention of doing so, however, you may be sure."

Silk received this in silence. When the captain had finished speaking, Silk pulled on his red tunic.

The trooper who had just come in glanced at his captain; he nodded, and the trooper said, "Everybody can see there's something wrong. Pas is holding back the rain, and there's all this heat. One crop after another's failing. My father had a good big pond, but we pumped it dry to water the corn. Now it's stayed dry all summer, and he was lucky to get ten quintals."

The captain cocked his head toward the trooper who had spoken as if to say you see the difficulties with which I must deal. "There is talk of digging canals from the lake, My Calde, but it will take years. Meanwhile the skies are locked against us, and every manteion in the city is silent except yours. Long before the goddess spoke, it was clear that the gods are displeased witli us. Many of us feel that it is equally obvious why. Are you aware. My Calde, that people all over the city have been chalking 'Silk for Calde' on walls?"

Silk nodded.

"Tonight my men and I have been doing a bit of chalking of our own. We write, 'Silk is Calde.' "

Crane chuckled dryly. "They mean the same thing, don't they, Captain? 'Silk will be killed if caught.' "

"Let us be grateful that it has not occurred, Doctor."

"I'm grateful, I can tell you that." Crane threw aside his sweat-soaked sheet. "But gratitude won't get the calde into theJuzgado. Can you suggest a place where we could hide until that's attended to?"

"I'm not going to hide," Silk told him. "I'm going back to my manteion."

Crane's eyebrow went up, and the captain stared.

"In the first place, because I want to consult the gods. In the second, because I have to tell everyone that we must overthrow the Ayuntamiento by peaceful means, if we can."

The captain stood up. "But you agree that it must be overthrown, don't you, My Calde? Peacefully if it can be done peacefully, but by force if force is required?"

Silk hesitated.

"Remember Iolar," Crane muttered.

"All right," Silk said at last. "New councillors must replace those presently in the Ayuntamiento, but it's to be accomplished without bloodshed if possible. You three have indicated that you're ready to fight for me. Are you ready to accompany me to my manteion as well? If some- one comes to arrest me, you can tell them I'm under arrest already, just as you were going to do here. You might say you returned me to my manteion so I could collect my belongings. A courtesy like that, extended to an augur, wouldn't be out of place, would it?"

"It will be very dangerous, My Calde," the captain said grimly.

"Anything we do will be dangerous, Captain. What about you, Doctor?"

"Here I shaved my beard, and you're going to go back to the quarter where everybody knows you."

"You can begin on a new one today."

"Then how could I refuse?" Crane grinned. "There's no way to get rid of me, Calde. You couldn't scrape me off of your shoes."

"I was hoping you'd say something like that. Captain, have you been searching for me all night? That's what it sounded like."

"Since the goddess favored us, My Calde. First in the city, then here because your acolyte said you'd gone here."

"Then all three of you ought to have something to eat before we leave, and so should Doctor Crane and I. Could you send one of your troopers down to wake up the inn- keeper? Tell him we'll pay for everything, but we must eat and go as soon as possible."

A look sent one of the troopers hurrying out.

Crane asked, "Do you have a floater?"

The captain's face fell. "Only horses. One must be a colonel at least to authorize a floater. My Calde, it might be possible to commandeer a floater for you here. I will make the attempt."

Silk said, "Don't be ridiculous. A floater for your prisoner! I'll walk in front of your horse with my hands tied. Isn't that how you do it?"

Reluctantly, the captain nodded. "However-"

Crane sputtered, "He's lame! You must've noticed it. He has a broken ankle. He can't possibly walk from here to Viron."

"There is a Guard post here, My Calde. I could procure an additional horse there, perhaps."

Recalling his ride to Blood's villa with Auk, Silk said, "Donkeys. It must be possible to rent donkeys here, and I can have Horn or one of the other boys bring them back. An augur and a man of the doctor's age might be permitted to ride donkeys, I'd think."

The first gray light of shadeup had filled the streets of Limna before they were ready to leave. Silk was still murmuring the morning prayer to High Hierax as he mounted the young white donkey one of the troopers held for him, and put his hands behind his back for the other to tie.

"I'll make this real loose, Calde," the trooper told him apologetically. "Loose enough so it won't hurt, and you can shake it off whenever you want to."

Silk nodded without interrupting his prayer. It seemed strange to pray now in a red tunic, though he had frequently prayed in colored clothes before he entered the schola. He would change at the manse, he told himself; he would put on a clean tunic and his best robe. He was a poor speaker (in his own estimation), and people would make fun of him if he wasn't habited like an augur. There would have to be a lot of people, too\As many as he and the three sibyls-and, yes, of course, the students from the palaestra-could get together. When he spoke... In the manteicm or outside? When he spoke, he-

The captain had mounted his prancing charger. "If you are ready, My Calde?"

Silk nodded. "It's occurred to me that you might easily turn this pretended arrest into a real one, Captain. If you do, you'll have nothing to fear from me-or from the gods, I believe."

"Hierax have my bones if I intend any such treachery, My Calde. You may take the reins whenever you wish." Though Silk could not recall kicking it, his donkey was ambling forward. After a moment's reflection, he concluded that the trooper who had tied his hands had probably prodded it from behind.

Crane was studying the black cloud banks rolling across the lake. "Going to be a dark day." He urged his donkey forward to keep up with Silk's. "The first one in quite a while. At least we won't have to fry on these things in the sun."

Silk asked how long he thought the ride would take. "On these? Four hours, minimum. Don't donkeys ever run?"

"I saw one run across a meadow when I was a boy," Silk said. "Of course it had no man on its back."

"That fellow just finished tying my hands, and my nose itches already."

They trotted up Shore Street, past theJuzgado in which the helpful woman who had admired Oreb had mentioned Scylla's shrine and the Pilgrims' Way, past Advocate Vulpes's gaudy signboard with its scarlet fox. Vulpes would wonder why he had not given the captain his card, Silk thought-assuming that Vulpes saw him and recognized him in his new clothes. Vulpes would protest that criminals arrested in Limna should not be returned to the city to deprive them of his services.

Vulpes's card had been lost with so many other things when he had been searched-with his keys to the mante- ion, now that he came to think of them. Possibly Lemur, who had gotten Hyacinth's needler, the azoth, and his gammadion and beads from Councillor Potto, had taken Vulpes's card as well, though it would do Lemur no good in the court to which he had gone. . . .

Silk looked up, and Limna had vanished behind them. The road wound among low, sandy hills that must have been islets and shallows even when the lake was much larger. He turned in his saddle for a final glimpse of the village, but behind the captain and the two troopers on their horses saw only the steely blue waters of the lake.

"This must be about the time Chenille used to arrive as a child," he told Crane. "She used to look for the water at shadeup. Did she ever tell you about it?"

"That would have been earlier than this."

A falling drop of water darkened the hair of the white donkey's neck; another splashed Silk's own rather less tidy hair, wet but astonishingly warm.

"Good thing this didn't come a little earlier," Crane said, "not that I like it anytime."

Silk heard the rattle of shots an instant after he saw Crane stiffen. Behind him, the captain shouted, "Get down!" and something else, words drowned by the boom of a trooper's slug gun.

The rope about Silk's wrists, which had been about to fall off a moment before, seemed to tighten as soon as he tried to free his hands from it.

"Calde! Get down!"

He dove from the saddle into the dust of'the road. By a seeming miracle, one hand was free. The roar of a floater was followed by a longer coarse, dry rattles, the sound of an immense child hurrying a lath along the bars of a cage.

He scrambled to his feet. Crane's hands were free, too; he put them about Silk's neck as Silk helped him off his donkey. More shots. The captain's charger screamed-a horrible sound-reared and plunged into them, knocking them both into the ditch.

"My left lung," Crane muttered. Blood trickled from his mouth.

"All right." Silk pushed up Crane's tunic and tore it in a single motion.

"Azoth."

The booms of slug guns were followed by the greater boom of thunder, as if the gods were firing and dying too. Pale drops the size of pigeons' eggs splattered the dust.

"I'm going to bandage you," Silk said. "I don't think it's fatal. You're going to be all right."

"No good." Crane spat blood. And then, "Pretend you're my father." A torrent of rain engulfed them like a wave.

"I am your father, Doctor." Silk pushed a wadded rag into the hot and pulsing cavity that was Crane's wound and tore a long strip from Crane's tunic to hold it in place.

"Calde. Take the azoth." Crane put it into his hands, and died. "All right."

Bent above him, the useless strip of rag in his hands, Silk watched him go, saw the shudder that convulsed him and the upward rolling of his eyes, felt the final stiffening of his limbs and the relaxation that followed, and knew that life had gone, that the great and invisible vulture that was Hierax at such moments had swooped through the driving rain to sei/.e Crane's spirit and tear it free from Crane's body-that he himself, kneeling in the mud, knelt in the divine substance of the unseen god. As he watched, Crane's wound ceased to throb with blood; in a second or two, the rain had washed it white.

He put Crane's azoth into his own waistband and took out his beads. "I convey to you, Doctor Crane, the forgiveness of all the gods. Recall now the words of Pas, who said, 'Do my will, live in peace, multiply, and do not disturb my seal. Thus you shall escape my wrath.' "

Yet Pas's seal had been disturbed many times; he him- self had scraped up the remains of one such seal. Embryos, mere flecks of rotten flesh, had lain among the remains of another. Was Pas's seal to be valued more than the things it had been intended to protect? (Thunder crashed.) Pas's wrath had been loosed upon the whorl.

" 'Go willingly,' " (Where?) " 'and any wrong that you have ever done shall be forgiven.' "

The floater was nearer, the roar of its blowers audible above the roaring of the storm.

"O Doctor Crane, my son, know that this Pas and all the lesser gods have empowered me to forgive you in their names. And I do forgive you, remitting every crime and wrong. They are expunged." Streaming water, Silk's beads traced the sign of subtraction. "You are blessed."

There was no more shooting. Presumably the captain and both troopers were dead. Would the Guard let him bring them the Pardon of Pas before he was taken away?

"I pray you to forgive us, the living." Silk spoke as quickly as he could, racing words his teachers at the schola would never have approved. "I and many another have wronged you often, Doctor, committing terrible crimes against you. Do not hold them in your heart, but begin the life that follows life in all innocence, all these\wrongs forgiven."

A slug gun boomed three times in rapid succession, very near. The buzz gun rattled again, and mud erupted a hand's breadth from Crane's head.

The effectual point: "In the name of all the gods you are forgiven forever, Doctor Crane. I speak here for Great Pas-" So many in the Nine, each with an honorific. Silk was seized by the feeling that none of them really mattered, not even Hierax, though Hierax was surely present. "And for the Outsider and all lesser gods."

He stood.

A muddy figure crouching behind a dead horse shouted, "Run, My Calde! Save yourself!" then turned to fire again at the Guard floater bearing down on them.

Silk raised his hands, the rope that had not bound him still dangling from one wrist. "I surrender!" The azoth in his waistband seemed a lump of lead. He limped forward as fast as he could, slipping and sliding in the mud while rain pelted his face. "I'm Calde Silk!" Lightning flared across the sky, and for an instant the advancing floater seemed a talus with tusks and staring, painted eyes. "If you have to shoot someone, shoot me!"

The mud-smeared figure dropped its slug gun and raised its hands as well.

The floater halted, the air blasting from its blowers raising a secondary rain of muddy water.

"They fired upon us from ambush, My Calde." As though by a trick, the muddy figure spoke with the captain's voice. "We die for you and for Viron."

A hatch below the turret opened, and an officer whose uniform was instantly soaked with rain vaulted out.

"I know," Silk said. "I'll never forget you." He tried to recall the captain's name, but if he had ever heard it, it was gone, like the name of the trooper with the long, serious brown face, the one whose father's pond had gone dry.

The officer strode toward them, halted, and drew his sword with a flourish. Heels together and head erect, he saluted with it as though upon the drill field, holding it vertically before his face. "Calde! Thank Hierax and all the gods that I was able to rescue you!"