Exodus from the Long Sun

Chapter 12 — I’m Auk

It was, Silk thought, no time to be wakeful.

Or more persuasively, no time to sleep. Careful not to awaken Hyacinth, he rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head. How many times had he daydreamed of a night like this, and thrust the dream away, telling himself that its reality could never be his? Now…

No, it was no time to sleep. As quietly as he could, he slipped from their bed to bathe and relieve himself. Hyacinth, who wept before sleep, had wept that night; he had wept too — had wept in joy and pain, and in joy at his pain. When tears were done and their heads rested on one pillow, she had said that no man had ever wept with her before.

Two floors below them, their reflected images knelt in the fishpond at Thelxiepeia’s feet, subsistent but invisible. There she would weep for him longer than they lived. He lowered his naked body into a rising pool, warm and scarcely less romantic.

Ermine’s, Silk discovered when he rose from it, provided everything. Not merely soap, water, towels, and an array of perfumes and scented powders, but thick, woolly robes: one pale and possibly cream or pale yellow, and a longer, darker one that might have been blue had he dared clap and rouse the dim sparks that circled one another on the ceiling.

After drying himself, he put on the longer robe and tied its belt, returned to their bedroom, and covered Hyacinth’s perfect, naked body with infinite gentleness. Then, standing outside upon air, watched himself do it, a darker shadow with tousled hair pulling up sheet and blanket to veil his sleeping wife’s long, softly rounded legs and swelling hips — Horn and Nettle huddled in a musty bed in a small, chill room in the Calde’s Palace.

— Patera Pike cutting the throat of a speckled rabbit he himself had bought.

— a ragged child weeping on a mattress of straw.

— a blind god metamorphosed from a blind man who remained a blind man still, and was struck.

— a man scarcely larger than the child lying naked on the ground, his stark ribs and emaciated face black with bruises, his arms chained around a tent pole.

— a madman among tombs, howling that the sun would die.

— Violet embraced by Siyuf in the room below.

— Auk asleep on his back before the smoking, unpurified altar of the Grand Manteion.

“Auk? Auk?”

He sat up blinking, and rubbed his eyes. Chenille slept at his side, her head pillowed on muscular arms, her skirt hiked to her knees. Sergeant Sand slept in death at the foot of the Sacred Window; about him lay Pateras Jerboa, Incus, and Shell, Incus face up and snoring.

On the farther side of the lofty marble ambion, Spider and Eland slept as well, watched by three soldiers; Slate nodded in friendly fashion and touched his forehead. In the third row of pews, Maytera Mint knelt in prayer.

“Somebody call me?” Auk asked Slate softly.

Slate’s big steel head swung from side to side. “I’d of heard. Must of been a dream.”

“I guess.” Auk lay down again; he was as tired as he could ever remember being, and it was good not to have been called.

Sciathan soared above a leafless plain at sunset. Far ahead, Aer flew a little higher and a little faster. He called to her aloud, knowing somehow that her helmcom was out or had been turned off. She looked back, and he glimpsed her smile, the roses in her cheeks, and a tendril of flaxen hair that had escaped her helmet. Aer! he called. Aer, come back! But she did not look back at him again, and his PM was overheating. Moment by moment, over a long hour of flight, he watched her dwindle into the dark sky ahead.

“Auk? Auk!”

He sat up stiffly, conscious that he had slept for hours. The great arched windows of the Grand Manteion, which had been featureless sheets of black by night, showed vague tracings now — gods, animals, and past Prolocutors half visible.

He stood, and Maytera Mint looked up from her vigil at the scrape of his boots on the floor. Leaving the sanctuary, he knelt beside her. “Did you call me? I thought I heard you.”

“No, Auk.”

He considered that, rubbing his chin. “You been awake all this time, Mother?”

“Yes, Auk.” (A tiny spark of happiness appeared in her red-rimmed eyes; it warmed him like a blaze.) “You see, Auk, I swore I would wait here in prayer until Pas came, or shade up. I’m keeping that vow.”

“You’ve kept it already, Mother. Look at those windows.” He gestured. “I was so tired I lay down with my boots on, see? I bet you were just as tired, but you haven’t slept a wink. You know what I’m going to do?”

“No, Auk, how could I?”

“I’m going to lay down again and sleep some more. Only first I’m going to take off my boots. Now you lay down and sleep too, or I’m going to make a fuss and wake up everybody. The job’s done. You did it just like you promised.”

Hyacinth woke and went to the open window to examine her ring in the faint gray light of morning — a tarnished silver ring like a rose with a woman’s tiny face at its heart, framed by petals. She had bought it because a clerk at Sard’s had said it resembled her, never guessing that she was buying her own wedding ring. She had worn it once or twice, tossed it into a drawer, and forgotten it.

It didn’t really look like her at all, she decided. The woman in the rose was older, at once more come-on and more… She groped for a word. Not just pretty.

Though Silk thought her beautiful, or said he did.

She kissed him as he slept, went into the dressing room, and tapped the glass.

“Yes, madame.”

“Show me exactly the way I look right now. Oh, gods!”

Her own face, puffy-eyed and retaining traces of smeared cosmetics, said, “You are actually quite attractive, madame. If I might suggest—”

She waved the suggestion away. “Now look at this face in my ring. See it? Make me look just a tiny little like that.”

For a few seconds she studied the result, turning her head left, then right. “Yes, that’s good. Hold that.” She picked up the hairbrush and began a process that Tick the catachrest watched approvingly.

“Auk? Auk!”

He sat up and stared at the Sacred Window. The voice had come from there — this time he was certain of it. He got up, grasping his hanger to keep the brass fip of the scabbard from rattling on the floor, and padded across the sanctuary. Shell and Incus were clearly sound asleep, but Jerboa’s eyes were not quite closed. Old people didn’t need much sleep, Auk reminded himself.

He squatted beside Jerboa. “It’s all right, I wasn’t going to nip your case or anything, Patera. Is that what you thought? Anything you got you can keep.”

Jerboa did not reply.

“Only somebody over here’s been calling me. Was that you? Like when you were dreaming, maybe?”

Shell grunted something unintelligible and turned his head away, but Jerboa did not stir. Suddenly suspicious, Auk picked up Jerboa’s left hand, then slid his own under Jerboa’s tunic.

He rose, wiping his hands absently on his thighs; it would be well, certainly, to move the old man’s body to some private spot. The sibyls were sleeping in the sacristy; that, at least, was where Maytera Mint had gone when he had persuaded her to lie down for an hour or two, and Auk thought he recalled old Maytera Wood and the others — sibyls whose names he had not learned — going in there at about the time he had stretched himself on the terrazzo floor.

Squatting again, he picked up the old augur’s body and carried it to the ambulatory. Schist straightened up as they came into view. “He dead?”

“Yeah,” Auk whispered. “How’d you know?”

Schist’s steel shoulders rose and fell with a soft clank. “He looks dead, that’s all.”

Shale asked, “How’s Pas supposed to get his part back if he’s dead?”

Without answering, Auk carried the body into the chapel of Hierax and laid it on the altar there.

Slate inquired, “You goin’ back to sleep?”

“Shag, I don’t know.” Auk discovered that he was wiping his hands again and made himself stop. “I think maybe I’ll fetch my boots and walk around outside a little.”

“I thought maybe you could wake the rest of ’em up.” Slate waited longer for his reply than a bio would have, then asked, “What you lookin’ at over there? Must be shaggy interesting.”

“Him.”

Slowly, Slate clambered to his feet. “Who?”

“Him.” Auk turned away impatiendy, striding toward the Sacred Window. “This soldier. He got it in the autofunction coprocessor, see?” Auk knelt beside Sergeant Sand. “Only his central could handle that stuff if it had to. There’s lots of redundancy there. His voluntary coprocessor could, even.”

He fumbled for his boot knife, discovered that he was not wearing his boots, and got it. “Look alive, Patera!” He shook Incus’s shoulder. “I need that gadget you got.”

“Up!” A boot prodded the captive Flier’s ribs. “Reveille an hour ago. Didn’t you hear it?”

Blinking and shivering, Sciathan sat up.

“You speak the Common Tongue well,” the uniformed woman looming over him said. “Answer me!”

“Better than most of us, yes.” Sciathan paused, struggling to clear his brain of sleep. “I did not hear it, that word you used. I know I did not since I heard nothing. But if I heard it, I would not know what it was.”

The woman nodded. “I did that to establish a point. Any question I ask, you are to answer. If you do, and I like your answer, you may get clothes or something to eat. If you don’t, or I don’t, you’ll wish you’d been killed, too.” She clapped. “Sentry!”

A younger and even taller woman ducked through the door of the tent and stood stiffly erect, her gun held vertically before her left shoulder. “Sir!”

The first woman gestured. “Get him off that pole and lock the chain again. I’m taking him to the city.” As the younger woman slung her gun to fumble for the key, the older asked, “Do you know my name? What is it?”

He shook his head; a smlle might have helped, but he could not summon one. “My name is Sciathan. I am a Flier.”

“Who questioned you yesterday, Sciathan?”

“First Sirka.” His hands were free. He held them out so that the younger woman could refasten his manacles.

“After that.”

“Generalissimo.”

“Generalissimo Siyuf,” the older woman corrected him. “I was there. Do you remember me?”

He nodded. “You did not speak to me. Sometimes to her.”

“Why did your people attack Major Sirka’s troopers?”

Here it was again. “We did not.”

She struck his ear with her fist. “You tried to take their weapons. One escaped, three were killed, and you were captured. Why did you break your wings?”

“It is what we do.”

“How did you disable your propulsion module?”

He shrugged, and she struck him on the mouth. He said, “We cannot do it. Mechanisms have been proposed, but would increase weight.”

She smiled, surprising him. “Aren’t you going to lick that? My rings tore your lip.”

He shrugged again. “If you want me to.”

“Get him a rag he can tie around his waist,” she ordered the taller, younger woman. Turning back to him, she said, “I’m Colonel Abanja. Why did you attack Sirka’s troopers?”

“Because they were shooting at us.” He could not actually remember that, but it seemed plausible. “I made a face. I do not know why.”

“Did you now?” For a fraction of a second Abanja’s eyes widened. “What kind of face?”

He was able to smile when he reflected that this was vastly preferable to talking about the propulsion modules. “With lips back.”

“You don’t know why you did that. Perhaps I do. Are you saying we shot your people because you grimaced? You yourself weren’t shot at all.”

“Aer saw it and screamed. They shot her then. We tried to take their guns so they could not shoot.”

Abanja stepped closer, peering down at him. “She screamed because you made a face? Most people wouldn’t believe that, but I might, and perhaps Generalissimo Siyuf might. Let’s see you make a face like that for me.”

“I will try,” he said, and did.

The click of booted heels announced the younger woman’s return. When Abanja turned toward her, she held up a scrap of cotton sheeting that had been used to clean something greasy. “Will this do, sir?”

Abanja shook her head. “Get the coveralls he was wearing. Bring a winter undershirt and a blanket, and tell the cooks to give you something he can eat on horseback.”

She returned to Sciathan. “Stop grinning, it’s making your lip bleed. You came here looking for a Vironese, a man. That’s what Sirka told us. You gave his name, and it was one I think I heard last night. Say it again for me.”

“Auk,” Sciathan said. “His name is Auk.”

Sergeant Sand’s arm stirred, then struck the floor of the Grand Manteion hard enough to crack it. Chenille shouted a warning. “Don’t worry,” Auk told her, “just a little static, like. I got it fixed already.”

Behind him, a voice he did not recognize said, “I only wish Patera Shell could watch. He’ll be so disheartened when we tell him what he missed.”

“So will His Eminence,” Maytera Mint murmured. “But it’s his fault for going back to the Palace, if that can be called a fault. We’re certainly not going to wait to carry out Pas’s instructions, nor would His Eminence want us to. You didn’t see Pas, Auk? Are you certain?”

“No, Maytera, I ain’t.” Auk squinted, still bent over his work. “Cause he must’ve showed me this stuff some way, after I talked to you, probably.” Inspiration struck. “Want to know what I think, Maytera?”

“Yes! Very much!”

“I think it was you keeping your promise the way you did that swung it. I think he was asking himself if we were worth all the trouble he was taking, till then. Wait a minute, I got to tie in his voluntary.”

Auk made the last connection and leaned back, easing aching muscles. “Think you could fetch one of those holy lamps over here, Patera? I’m going to need more light.”

Incus scurried away.

“Patera Shell is hoping to engage a deadcoach to return Patera’s body to our manteion.” The owner of the unknown voice proved to be a young and pretty sibyl. “Maytera said nothing would be open, but he said they would be by the time he got there, or if they weren’t he’d wait. It was a great temptation, Maytera admitted this to me, to ask His Cognizance to permit Patera’s final sacrifice to take place right here in the Grand Manteion, since he ascended to Mainframe from here. But the faithful of our quarter would never—”

Incus, returning, knelt beside Auk. “Is this sufficient? I can pull up the wick, should more light be needed.” He held up a flame-topped globe of cut crystal.

“That’s dimber,” Auk told him. “I can see the place and the register, and that’s all I got to see.” Delicately, he eased the point of his knife into Sand’s cranium. “Muzzle it, everybody. I got to think.” He counted under his breath.

And Sand spoke, making Maytera Mint start. “V-fifty-eight, zero. V-fifty-eight, one. V-fifty-nine, zero. V-fifty-nine, one.

“Those are voluntary coprocessor inputs,” Incus explained in an awed whisper. “He’s enabling them.”

When Auk showed no sign of having heard, the young sibyl from Brick Street whispered, “I simply can’t believe that your Maytera — she was, I mean. That Molybdenum and that soldier are going to do all this, and where are they going to buy these coprocessor things?”

“They must make them, Maytera,” Incus explained, “and I shall assist them.” Maytera Mint shushed him.

Auk returned his knife to his boot. “Don’t froth, Maytera. He’s all right. He just don’t know it yet.”

As if on cue, Sand raised his head and stared around him.

“Hold that right there,” Auk told him. “I got to put your skull plate back. How was Mainframe?”

The crack-crack-crack of a needler was followed by a savage snarl, more shots, and the boom of a slug gun. In the choir high above them, a nephrite image of Tartaros fell with a crash.

“Is that warm?” Abanja asked as she watched Sciathan pull on his flight suit.

Smiling was easy now. “Not as warm as I wish, sometimes.”

“Then you better put the undershirt over it. It’s wool and should be a lot warmer than that thing. Once you’re on your horse you can wrap the blanket around you.” She fingered the needler in her holster. “Can you ride?”

“I never have.”

“That’s good,” Abanja told him. “It may save your life.”

In the cutting wind outside, two bearded men held a pair of restive horses. Abanja said, “That’s mine,” and to Sciathan’s relief pointed to the larger. “The other one’s yours. Let’s see you mount.”

She watched him for five minutes while the bearded men struggled to contain their mirth. At last she said, “You really can’t ride, or you’re a marvelous actor,” and ordered them to help him. As they lifted him into the seat, she swung herself up and onto her own tall horse with a practiced motion that seemed almost miraculous. “Now let me explain something.” She leveled her index finger. “It’s two leagues to the city, and when we’re halfway you’re liable to think that all you’ve got to do to get away is clap your heels to that horse.”

He shook his head. “I will not.”

“I could chain you to your saddle, like you were chained to that pole. But if you fell, you’d probably be dragged to death, and I don’t want to lose you. So listen. If you start that horse galloping, you’re going to fall and you could be killed. If you’re not I’ll catch you, and I’ll make you wish you’d died. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She slapped her horse with its own control straps, and it stalked away a great deal faster than Sciathan had ever wanted a horse to go.

“I will not ride quicker than you,” he promised.

For a moment it appeared he would not ride at all. Then one of the bearded men shouted, “Hup!” and struck the horse with something that made a popping sound, and he felt that he was being blown about by the wildest gale in the Whorl.

Abanja pulled up and looked back at him. “Another thing. This is a good horse. Yours isn’t. Yours is old, a common remount nobody wants. Your horse couldn’t gallop as fast as mine if a lion were after it.”

Shaken too hard to nod, he clutched his blanket.

“If you’re fooling me — if you really can ride, and you gallop off when you see your chance — I’ll shoot your horse. It’s not easy to bring down an animal as big as a horse with a needler, but half a dozen ought to do it. I’ll try not to hit you, but I can’t promise.”

He gasped, “You are a kind woman.”

“Don’t count on it.” After a moment she laughed. “It’s just that you may be useful. Certainly it will be useful for you to show Siyuf what you showed me. I take it women aren’t kind among your people.”

“Oh, no!” He hoped his shock showed in his face. “Our women are very kind.”

“That Aer who screamed, wasn’t that a woman? You said, her. Stand in the stirrups if you’re getting bounced.”

He tried. “Yes, a woman. A kind woman.”

“You loved her.” There was a note in Abanja’s voice he had not heard before.

“Very much. If I may say this, Mear loved Sumaire also. In the tent last night I thought about them. How stupid I was! I did not know they loved until they died.”

“Mear, was that the woman who killed the troopers?”

For the first time since his capture, Sciathan felt like laughing. “Mear is a man’s name. It was Sumaire who killed the women with guns, and they killed her.”

“Just trying to take away their weapons.”

Aer had been shot before Sumaire killed the troopers, but arguing would be worse than useless. Sciathan remained silent.

“She was your leader?” Abanja slowed her horse.

“Thank you.” He was genuinely grateful. “We do not fly like that. Each flies for himself. Sumaire was the best at gleacaiocht, the best at fighting with hands and feet. I do not know your word.”

“I saw her body,” Abanja told him, “but I didn’t measure it. I wish I had. The blonde?”

By now Sciathan was able to shake his head. “Dark hair. Like yours.”

“The little one?”

He nodded, recalling how cheerful Sumaire had always been, most cheerful when storms roared up and down the hold. When Mainframe had needed information and not excuses, it had sent Sumaire.

It would send her no more.

“Answer me!”

“I am sorry. I did not intend to be rude.” Unconsciously, Sciathan looked down the unpaved track and over the wind-scoured fields, seeking something that would render his loss bearable. “The small one, yes. Smaller than Aer.”

“But taller than you.”

He looked at Abanja in some astonishment.

“Was she smaller?”

“Yes, much.” He considered. “The top of Aer’s head came to my eyes. I think the top of Sumaire’s head would have come to Aer’s eyes, or lower. To my mouth or chin.”

“Yet she killed troopers a long cubit taller.”

“She was a fine fighter, one who taught others when she was not flying.”

Abanja looked thoughtful. “What about you? Do you know this kind of fighting? I forget the word you used?”

“Gleacaiocht. I know something, but I am not as quick and skillful as Sumaire was. Few are.”

When Abanja said nothing, he added. “We all learn it. We cannot carry weapons as you do. Even a small knife would be too heavy.” Now that he was no longer being shaken so much, he had begun to feel the cold. He shook out the rough blanket he had held onto so desperately and wrapped himself in it as she had suggested, contriving a hood for his head and neck.

“In that case you can’t carry food or water, can you?”

“No, only our instruments—” He had been on the point of saying “and our PMs.” He substituted, “and ourselves.”

“Have you seen our pterotroopers? Troopers with wings who fly out of the airship?”

“I have not seen these. I was told, and I have seen your airship if it is what I think.”

“You can see it now.” Abanja pointed. “That brown thing catching the sun above the housetops. Our pterotroopers carry slug guns and twenty rounds, but no rations or water. We tried field packs, but they left them behind whenever they could.”

“Yes,” Sciathan said.

“You would too, you mean. So would I, I suppose, though I’ve never flown. I doubt that our wings are much better than yours, and they may not be as good. I hadn’t thought about how you’d fight, but I should have. Do you have to break your wings if you’re forced down? You said that.”

He nodded. “We must.”

“The others didn’t. We’ve got them. Siyuf is sending a pair back to Trivigaunte for study, the blond woman’s wings and her propulsion module. Is that what you call it?”

“In the Common Tongue? Yes.”

“What about in your language?”

He shrugged. “It does not matter.”

Abanja stopped her horse and drew her weapon. “It does to you, mannikin, because I’ll shoot if you don’t answer. What do you call it?”

He chose the least revealing word. “The canna.”

“Her canna. You don’t know how they work, you say.”

“I do not. Shoot me and end it.”

Again; her smile surprised him. “Shoot you? I’ve hardly started on you. Who makes them?”

“Our scientists. I do not know the names.”

“You have scientists.”

“That may not be the correct term.” He had said too much, and knew it. “Makers. Mechanics. Is that not what it means?”

“Scientists,” Abanja said firmly, then changed the subject with an abruptness that startled him. “You loved Aer. Were you planning to be married?”

“No, she was a Flier.”

“Fliers don’t marry? Here the holy women don’t, which seems pointless to us.”

“Marriage is so that there shall be children, new Fliers, in the next generation.” He was floundering. “I do not talk of you or, or—” He pointed. “People in the house upon this small hill. But for us, for Crew, it is for children. A Flier woman cannot, because she could not fly. She may when she no longer flies. Some give up wings for marriage.” He hesitated, remembering. “They are not happy soon.”

“But you can marry. Are you?”

“Yes. One wife.” If he had succeeded in this, he would have been given one more at least, and perhaps as many as four; he thrust the thought aside.

“But you loved Aer. She must have been handsome when she was alive, I could see that. Did she love you?”

He nodded slowly. “When she was alive, I wondered. She did not like to say. She is dead, and I know she did.”

“I know this must mean a whole lot to you, Patera, and I really am sorry.” Chenille’s face, framed by the metal margins of the glass, was almost comically apologetic.

“Why?” Silk seated himself in the low-backed chair facing it. “Because my egg will get cold? The kitchen here will send up another if I want it, I feel sure.”

“We all got together,” Chenille drew breath, her formidable breasts heaving like capsized boats. “That’s Auk and me, and General Mint and Sandy and the other soldiers, and Spider and Patera Incus, and those sibyls. Maytera Wood and Maytera Maple, and the rest of them. I don’t remember who most of them are.”

“I doubt that it matters,” Silk told her. “What were you getting together about?”

“Everything, but especially the shooting. So much’s been — oh, hi, Hy! I’m sorry about this, truly I am, only Patera said you were finished and having breakfast.”

“Bird eat,” Oreb announced from Hyacinth’s shoulder; Tick countered with, “Ma durst, due add word!” She hushed them, setting Silk’s plate and the toast rack before him. “Hi, Chen. Did you and Auk get married too?”

“We talked about it, but we want Patera to do it, so just Moly and her soldier.”

“I know that soldier,” Hyacinth positioned Silk’s egg cup, “and I know your Auk, too. Kypris’s kindness on both of you. You’re going to need it.”

“Auk’s all right.” Chenille winked. “You’ve got to know how to handle him.”

Silk cleared his throat. “You mentioned shooting, and that sounds very serious. Who was shot?”

“Eland. Only I’d better start at the beginning, Patera—”

He raised his hand. “One question more, before you do. Who is Eland?”

“This cull General Mint nabbed when she was down in the tunnels where me and Auk were.”

Oreb whisfied. “Bird see!”

“Yeah. Oreb, too. She had these culls, Spider and Eland, and the soldiers were watching them for her. Spider’s the fat cull, and the skinny one was Eland, only he’s dead.”

Silk’s forefinger drew small circles on his cheek. “I said I would ask only one question, but I’d like a point verified as well. When you listed those who participated in your impromptu conference, did you include Sergeant Sand?”

“That’s the pure quill, Patera. Auk brought him back, just like General Mint says Pas said he would.”

“I see. I ought to have had more faith in Pas, though at the time it appeared to me that Maytera Mint had originally had more than enough for both of us, and had been disappointed.”

“Yeah, Auk was too. He got all these culls sold on him and said Pas would come, so after the animals were used up and Pas never did, they cleared out. Except Gib. Then when you and Hy went, and Moly and Hammerstone, Gib did too. I said I’d start at the beginning. I guess I have already.”

Silk nodded. “Tell me everything, please.”

“When you and Hy went, the old man sort of followed you. Master Xiphias, only I don’t think he went home. I think he’s probably hanging around there to watch out for you. Then His Cognizance and the augur that talked to us that time in your manse left. Maybe it would be easier if I said who didn’t, who was still there.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ll try not to make it so long. Auk stuck, so I did too. We slept on the floor and didn’t do anything. Everybody from Brick Street stayed, and Patera Incus, like I said, and General Mint and the soldiers, only Sandy was dead, and those culls the soldiers were watching. I think that’s everybody.

“It was a soldier shooting that woke me up, Slate his name is. There was somebody way up in the balcony, and he’d shot Eland. Patera Incus said Pas for him. Slate saw him up there and took a shot at him, only he doesn’t think he got him. He broke a beautiful statue, is all. Auk went up there with him to look, and they brought back a great big dead cat. I thought it was Gib’s baboon at first, but it wasn’t. It was spotted, sort of like a big house cat only with a little beard and a little shon tail.”

Hyacinth said, “We brought it in the floater,” to which Tick added, “Add cot!” “I was sort of scared of it,” Hyacinth continued, “but Silk said it wouldn’t hurt us, and it didn’t.”

He put down his cup. “His name was Lion, and he belonged to Mucor. We stopped at the Calde’s Palace and let him out, thinking he would go to her; it’s only a few streets from the Grand Manteion, of course. Am I to take it that Lion was with the person who shot Eland, and that this Slate hit Lion when he tired at Eland’s murderer?”

Chenille shook her head, her raspberry curls dancing. “It wasn’t a slug gun that did for it, it was a needler. We think when it saw this cully shoot Eland it went for him and he shot it, too. Auk says he heard it before Slate shot, and a needler shooting four or five times up there. That’s what got everybody worked up, mostly. That and Pas, only nobody saw him, and Auk bringing back Sandy. Only Sandy’s kind of mixed up, on account of being dead.”

“I would like to speak to him,” Silk said. “I will, at the first opportunity. Before you proceed, did you know Eland, other than as a prisoner of Maytera Mint’s? Did you, Hyacinth?”

Both said they had not.

“Since Maytera Mint captured him, I assume he was one of our citizens who remained loyal to the Ayuntamiento. If that’s the case, he may have been shot by someone who considered that treachery; but there are a dozen other possibilities. What took place after that?”

“Did I tell you the old augur from Brick Street’s dead? He’d gone to Mainframe when I woke up, only he wasn’t shot or anything. It looked like he’d just gone to sleep.”

“When Pas came,” Silk murmured.

“I guess it could’ve been, yeah. Auk says Pas showed him that stuff about Sandy, only he doesn’t remember seeing him.”

Silk broke the corner of a slice of toast, and dipped it into his egg. “Others have been visited by gods, though they did not see them. Patera Jerboa was safeguarding a fragment of Pas — or so Hyacinth and I were told.”

Hyacinth said, “Something’s bothering you. What is it?”

Much as Sciathan was just then shrugging in response to a question from Abanja, Silk shrugged. “I was thinking that the fragment of Pas which Patera Jerboa was safeguarding may have been responsible for his long life, and that its retrieval may have been responsible in his death — not because Pas willed it, but simply because that fragment of Pas was no longer present to maintain him in life.”

Silk put the egg-soaked toast into his mouth, chewed it reflectively, and swallowed. When neither woman spoke, he said, “After that, logically enough, I began to wonder which god it is who maintains the rest of us. I believe I can guess, but we have other things to talk about. Naturally you were agitated, Chenille. No doubt all of you were.

“That’s right, and General Mint said we ought to find you and tell you, only we thought you’d come here. The sibyls from Brick Street—”

“Wait. You’re at the Calde’s Palace?”

“Right. We thought you and Hy probably came here, so we walked over, except the sibyls. They stayed to watch the old man’s body, and there’s a deadcoach supposed to come. Only you and Hy weren’t here. I went in here where this glass is because I thought the monitor would probably know where you went.”

Hyacinth exclaimed, “It couldn’t!”

“Last night Hyacinth instructed our monitor not to reveal our whereabouts to anyone,” Silk explained. He looked to her for confirmation, and she nodded vigorously.

“It didn’t, Violet told me. See, the one here couldn’t find you, so I tried to figure out where you’d go, you and Hy. You’re not going to like this, Patera.”

“I won’t be angry, I promise.”

“The first place I thought of was back to Sun Street, that little three cornered house where I waited for you. Only the monitor where the sibyls live didn’t think you were around.” Chenille hesitated, unwilling to meet Silk’s eyes. “So then I thought where could they have gone? It was still pretty early. It was about the time the market opens when we came over here.”

He said, “I can think of one other place, though I can’t imagine why you suppose I might be insulted because you thought of it as well — my rooms in the Juzgado. I slept there before we reopened the Calde’s Palace.”

Chenille shook her head again, the dance of her fiery hair wilder than ever. “I knew you wouldn’t go there, Patera. You wouldn’t want somebody bothering you like I am now, so it would be the very last place. Only I thought maybe Orchid’s, and it couldn’t hurt to try. I figured she’d be asleep, but I could ask the monitor and maybe go down there and get something at the little bakery across the street and wait for you and Hy to come out. So I tried, only Orchid was awake. You remember Violet?”

“Of course.”

“She sort of spent some time with Generalissimo Siyuf last night. Not at Orchid’s but up there at Ermine’s. Orchid was kind of lathered about that because it was Siyuf, so she got up and waited for Violet to hear how it went.”

Hyacinth put in, “And would she want somebody for tonight, maybe somebody new, and did she have any friends who might want somebody, and did you remember to tell her we’re available for private parties. I can imagine.”

“Yeah, all that stuff. Well, I sort of thought, hey, this is interesting, so I talked to Violet some myself.” Chenille sounded apologetic.

“Sure,” Hyacinth said. “Why shouldn’t you?”

“So it pops out that the Trivigauntis caught a Flier. Maybe you don’t know about this, Hy, but I do because I was there when Patera found out. Remember, Patera?”

Silk smiled ruefully. “Yes. It was something that I had hoped to discuss with Generalissimo Siyuf over dinner.”

“Only you didn’t know they killed three, did you? Three Fliers. That’s what Siyuf said, Violet says.”

“No.” Silk pursed his lips. “I certainly did not know that. I thought only one had landed, for whatever reason, and the Trivigauntis had him. You’re correct, Chenille, this is serious as well as unpleasant.”

“I haven’t even gotten to the worst stuff yet, Patera. Violet figured it might be good to know where this Flier was. You know, something somebody might pay to know.”

“She’ll be rewarded if she’s entitled to it, and it sounds to me as though she is.”

“Only she told Orchid, and Orchid didn’t try to hold out for money, she just wanted me to tell you, and say where I got it. Then Violet lets out she spotted you and Hy at Ermine’s. It was when she’d just got there herself and that’s how I knew where to find you.”

“That’s not so bad, surely.”

“It’s where they put this Flier, Patera.” Chenille gulped. “He’s in our Juzgado, and Siyuf’s moving her headquarters there. They’re taking it.”

Silk sat in stunned silence.

“And Violet spilled something about me and Auk, Patera, just making conversation, she says, with Siyuf. She says as soon as she said Auk’s name Siyuf wanted to know all about him. I think maybe that was why she was so nice to me last night at dinner. Violet thinks Auk’s mixed up with this Flier somehow, and now the Trivigauntis are looking for him.”

The formidable breasts heaved again. “So the Juzgado’s the main thing for you, Patera, but Auk’s the main thing for me and I’m scared. Not for me, but for him.”

The little catachrest sprang onto the dressing table for a better view of Hyacinth. “Shop, itty laddie! Wise rung?”

She wiped her eyes. “It was just such a short honeymoon, that’s all, Tick.”

Sciathan opened his eyes as the key squealed in the lock, then resolutely closed them. The newcomer was twice his height and three or four times his weight, brawny, dirty, and bearded. This freezing cell had been a haven of peace for the past few hours, Sciathan reflected; the interlude was over, and troubles of a new kind had begun.

Outside the warder said, “I can get you clean sheets if you want ’em.”

“Fetch my prog,” the newcomer rumbled. As the iron door swung inward: “You upstairs! You hungry?”

“I am not.” Sciathan turned his face to the shiprock wall. “Thank you very much.

“I am.” The newcomer seated himself heavily on the lower bunk. “Shaggy hungry and shaggy tired. I been hungry so long I forgot I’m hungry. I’m just sort of empty. I was up shaggy late last night and up shaggy early this morning, and between times I slept on the floor. It was a stone floor, too, but I was so shaggy tired it felt better than this.”

He lay down, his position attested by the creaking of the bunk straps. “This’s the easiest I’ve had it all week.”

“A pleasant sleep to you,” Sciathan suggested politely.

“Oh, I ain’t going to sleep. I slept on the floor anyhow, like I said, and I got eating to do.” The newcomer chuckled, “How ’bout you? Have a good night?”

Sciathan risked a quick look over the side at the big man below. “I have rested more comfortably.”

“Somebody’s been dusting your dial, too, so I’m better off than you.”

Ten minutes or more crawled by until curiosity tweaked Sciathan. “You are Vironese? You are of this city?”

“Born on Wine Street,” the newcomer declared sleepily. “You’re scared I’m Trivigaunti, I guess. Been three or four days since I shaved is all. I been too busy.”

“I, myself, am a stranger here,” Sciathan ventured.

“Yeah, Peeper told me.

At once Sciathan was on guard. “Who is Peeper?”

“Out there with the keys. He’s sort of a friend of mine. I been in a couple times, and it helps. I got gelt, too. That always helps. We’re not going to pluck, anyhow.”

“I understand you,” Sciathan said, and fell silent.

“People think it’s a nickname, like, ’cause he looks in to make sure we’re not chilling each other.” The newcomer yawned. “But it’s his right tag. A peeper’s a kind of a little frog. They’re frogs mostly in his family, I guess, and toads and such. Twig him coming? Smells dimber.”

Sciathan sniffed. “It smells good, the first good odor I have smelled in this place.”

“Beef brisket and noodles. They got some kind of a sour cream sauce they put on it. Sour cream and red peppers dried and pounded up, butter, and some other stuff, I guess.”

The warder’s keys rattled against the cell door; outside it, the warder himself said, “Here’s your lunch.”

“My breakfast,” the newcomer told him. “I ate something sometime yesterday, some kind of a fruit, I forget what.” The key squeaked in the lock, and the newcomer chuckled as though the squeak amused him.

“I did the best I could with what you give me,” the warder declared. “I said who it was for and you were real hungry, and half a card but make it good. I’ve seen you eat, only I doubt you can wrap yourself around all this.”

“I mean to try.” The newcomer sat up.

“This big one here—” A faint chime sounded as the warder lifted the lid from a covered dish; Sciathan, watching from the corner of his eye, saw a cloud of fragrant steam waft toward the ceiling. “Your beef brisket and the noodles, enough for three’s what he said. Then this little one’s extra sauce.”

There was a somewhat softer chime, followed by an aroma indescribably delicious. Sciathan sat up in time to see the warder lift the lid from a third dish.

“This here’s pickled cabbage. He says you like it.”

The newcomer rubbed his big hands together. “Yeah, I do.”

“Good and hot, he says, and it’ll stay hot a long time. Only it’s about as good cold, so if you can’t finish you can keep it to eat later.” The warder paused. “Hoppies didn’t rough you up much.”

“You’re a hoppy yourself,” the newcomer told him.

“They don’t think so.”

“Sure you are. You just don’t get the green clothes.” The newcomer craned his neck to look up at Sciathan. “Remember what I said about his name? It’s ’cause his whole family’s hoppies, just about. They want their sprats to be hoppies, too, so they give ’em those names, Peeper and like that.”

The warder said, “I got a brother named Buffo and he’s a hoppy all right, but not me.”

“Pardon.” Sciathan leaned over the edge of the upper bunk to look at the laden tray that held the newcomer’s meal. “I do not understand.”

“He’s foreign,” the warder informed the newcomer. “They got queer ways in Urbs and places like that.”

The newcomer was unwrapping napkins to reveal a loaf as long as Sciathan’s arm. “What’s itching you, Upstairs? You figure they don’t feed everybody this good?”

The warder laughed.

“Your food was not prepared here.”

The newcomer shook his head. “There’s a place over on the other side of Cage Street. Peeper went over there for me and told ’em what I wanted, then after he locked me up he went back and got it. I fronted him a card, and he gets half for doing it for me. That’s how we do here.”

“You have just arrived,” Sciathan objected. “There could not be time to prepare so much.”

“He was in the hot room,” the warder explained, “only they made it easy for him, it looks like, and they let me come in to see if he wanted anything.”

“They know me, too,” the newcomer said.

Sciathan glanced at the snowflakes drifting down beyond the small, barred window, and drew his blanket about his shoulders. “It is warmer in there?”

Both big men laughed, and the newcomer said, “It’s where they ask you questions, only they’re pretty easy on everybody today, I figure.”

“On myself as well. It may be so. It will be worse the next time, I am sure.”

The newcomer was spreading butter over a quarter of the long loaf. He said, “They have you in the hot room today?”

The warder shook his head.

“I do not think the hot room. I was questioned on a horse by Abanja, which was not as bad as I feared. Afterward here by Siyuf, Abanja, and others whose names are not known to me. It was worse then. Siyuf is a hard woman.”

“That’s this Trivigaunti that’s taking over,” the warder explained to the newcomer. “Generalissimo Siyuf, and she’s got the calde doing everything she says.”

“They’re supposed to be here helping us out,” the newcomer protested.

“They’re helping themselves, if you ask me.”

The newcomer raised his buttered quarter-loaf. “Here, try some, Upstairs. You hear what we just said?”

“Thank you. I could not fail to do so.”

“Well, that’s why the hoppies made it easy for me. They ain’t sure where they stand yet.”

“This is your police? Vironese police?”

“Yeah. Only all of a sudden they’re working for the Rani, maybe. They don’t know, and neither do we.”

The warder cleared his throat. “Anyhow, it’s all here. Red in the bottle, and here’s your tumbler on top. There’s pigs’ feet, too, in the square dish, and lots of other stuff. Yell if you want anything.”

“I sure will,” the newcomer told him, and chuckled as the iron door closed behind him. “Keep a sharp eye on me, Peeper. Make sure I don’t get out.”

“This is good bread,” Sciathan said. “Very good. I thank you for it.”

“Sure.” The newcomer was heaping noodles and brisket onto his plate.

“I wish that I could repay you. I have no means.”

The newcomer looked up at him. “You been in clink before?”

“Last night. My arms were chained about a pole, and I was made to sleep upon the ground. There was grass, not as hard as your floor, I am certain.”

“Only a lot colder. Had to be. I was pretty warm, even on the floor.”

“Cold, yes.” Sciathan took another bite of bread; it was soft and white, with a thick brown crust that required chewing.

“I had my mort with me, too, and she kept me warm. You say you ate already?”

It was a moment before Sciathan was able to swallow. “On a horse. A slice of gray meat between bread, bread not as good as this. We had spoken about the Common Tongue, Abanja and I, this language in which you and I converse. She said that my meat was also common tongue, which she thought amusing.”

“Wait a minute.” The newcomer poured the extra sauce from its small side dish into his plate. “Want me to put you some noodles in here? You’ll have to eat ’em with your fingers. We only got the one fork.”

“I should not.” Sciathan wrestled against temptation. “I must tell you there have been many, many days on which I have eaten less than the gray meat. Always we eat little, and often we do not eat at all.” He swallowed again, this time only his own saliva. “But, yes. I would like these noodles very much, and it will not trouble me to eat them with my fingers.”

“You got it.” The newcomer forked noodles into the sauce dish. “You know, I been wondering why you’re so weedy, and I hear the rice is bad in Palustria. You come looking for food?”

“Eating makes one heavy.” The concept was so simple and so basic that Sciathan had trouble formulating it. “One no longer flies well. I am a Flier. That is your term.”

The newcomer gave him a sceptical look. “They don’t never come down, and they’re spies anyhow, everybody says.”

“I am not a spy. Even Siyuf does not think that.”

“Then you better muzzle that clatter about being a Flier. Somebody might believe you.” The newcomer passed the sauce dish up to Sciathan, “I put a little bit of smoked turtle on top there for you. They give me a little bit of that, too, smoked turtle and onions. If it makes you too thirsty, we can get Peeper to fetch water.”

“I have never eaten this.” Sciathan dipped up the brown concoction with two fingers and tasted it. “It is delicious.”

“Maybe I ought to try some myself.”

“I have spoken of becoming heavy,” Sciathan muttered, “but why should I not? My wings will not fly again.”

The newcomer peered at him. “You really are a Flier, huh? They go up in the big airship and catch you?”

Sighing, Sciathan shook his head. “We landed to question them. I knew that it would be hazardous.” More swiftly than a conjuror’s transformation, his wizened face twisted to display a corpse’s rictus. “Hello, Auk.”

“Hi. You really can do this. Jugs and Patera swore you could, but I guess I didn’t believe ’em.”

“Do you need help?”

“Nah.” Finding the empty stare that had become Sciathan’s unsettling, the newcomer returned to his plate. “Tell ’em it’s going fine, and I’ll give a signal when I know which one.” He mopped up sauce with a piece of beef hoping she would be gone before he finished. “I’ll send Peeper to fetch something, too. Be better to get him out of the way.”

“So hungry, this tiny man.”

The newcomer chewed brisket into submission. “He’s got more meat on him than you.”

“I’d like some soup. I’ll ask Grandmother.”

“Do that,” the newcomer said.

Sciathan blinked and grabbed, discovering that the sauce dish was about to slide off his lap. He made himself breathe deeply. “This is not expected.”

The newcomer nodded without looking up. “What’s that?”

“When one flies too high, one grows faint. Now too I felt faintness. Could your food be drugged?”

“No,” the newcomer said.

“You spoke to me several times. I replied, but I do not recall what you said, or what I said.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Sciathan finished his smoked turtle and started in on his noodles. “I have no reason to trust you. You might be a spy.”

“Sure.”

“I have received good food from you, for which I thank you very much. It is better to be spied upon than beaten.”

“You can say that again.”

“There is nothing I know that I have not told Siyuf and Abanja. Why am I confined?”

The newcomer lifted the lid of another dish. “You like cheese? He gave me some of that, too.”

“I have eaten more than suffices already. I have not even finished the bread you gave.”

“Here.” The newcomer offered a blue-streaked, whitish lump. “Try some of this with it.”

“Thank you. We make good cheese in my home, but I have not eaten any in a long while.”

“Now you listen up, Upstairs.” The newcomer poured four fingers of brandy into his tumbler. “These Trivigauntis you talk about, Abanja and Siyuf? I never seen either one of ’em. I don’t know ’em from dirt, but I know about this place here, and the hot room, and the courts and beaks, and all that. If you want to tell me what you did and what’s going on with you, I just might be able to scavy you a couple answers. If you don’t want to, dimber here. Only don’t ask me stuff I don’t know, why’m I confined and that clatter.”

“You desire to know my crime. I have done nothing wrong.”

“Then if they’re keeping you here, it’s ’cause they’re afraid of what you’d do if you got out. What’s that?”

“I would resume my searching for the man called Auk. That is all. They know this.”

“You going to chill him when you find him?”

Sciathan leaned over the side of his bunk to look down at the newcomer. “Is this equivalent to kill? The softer sound instead of the hard sound at the top of the mouth?”

“Yeah. It’s what this holy sibyl that taught us would say was a alternate pronunciation.”

“No, I would not chill him. I would tell the masters of the airship above this city that they must take me, with this man Auk and those he chooses, to Mainframe.”

“Wait up.” The newcomer cleaned his ear with the nail of one forefinger. “To Mainframe? I ain’t sure I heard you right. Say it again.”

“I am from Mainframe. This is where we live, we Crew. It is our director, it shelters us and we repair it as it directs, when repairs are needed.”

“A real place.” The newcomer sipped brandy.

“Mainframe is where we live. Viron is where you live.”

“If you live there, why are you shaggy flying over here all the time making it rain?”

“Because Mainframe directs it. It is the director of the Whorl, not ours alone. If rain did not fall, you Cargo would perish. Or if too much falls. Mainframe has many sources of data. We are one, not the least.”

“You want some red?” The newcomer offered his tumbler. “You still feel like fainting, it might be good for you.”

“No, thank you.”

“All right, what’s this about cargo? Like on a boat?”

“You people, the animals, and the plants. It is the same as a boat, yes, because we are in a boat, we as well as you.”

“We’re the cargo?” Staring up at Sciathan, the newcomer tapped his own chest. “Me, and everybody I know?”

“That is it with precision.” Sciathan nodded emphatically. “Abanja and Siyuf also. So you see that I would not chill Auk. It is our duty to preserve the Cargo, not to chill it.”

“Mainframe told you to do this?”

“To preserve the Cargo? Yes, always.” Sciathan’s voice dropped. “It is increasingly difficult. The sun no longer responds well, not even so well as in my father’s day. Heat accumulates, another difficulty, because the cooling no longer functions efficiently. Mainframe may be compelled to blow out the sun. Is that how you say it? Interrupt its energy. It has warned us, and we have done what we can to be ready.”

The newcomer put down his tumbler. “You’re getting me dizzy enough without this.” He rose, stepping to the small barred opening in the iron door. “Hey! Peeper!”

“You think that I am deceiving you. You will seek to have me removed.”

The newcomer turned to face him. “Cost me two cards to get this pad, and now I scavy you’re cank. It’s getting too hot, you said. The whole whorl’s getting too hot.”

Sciathan nodded. “There are other difficulties, but that is worst.”

“So you’re going to shut off the cooling—”

“No, no! The sun. Until the Whorl can be cooled. I will not do this, you must understand. I could not. Mainframe must, if it must be done. It will be a terrible darkness.”

“Cause the whorl’s getting too hot.” The newcomer strode to the window. “You take a look out there. That’s snow.”

“You will not credit me.” Sciathan sighed, studying the newcomer’s coarse, bearded face for some sign of belief “I cannot condemn you, but you have fed me and been kind. I would not deceive you. It was difficult to make the winter this year. Mainframe struggled, and we flew many sorties.”

“It had to make winter. Mainframe had to make it?” The newcomer pointed to the window. “I always figured winter was just natural.”

“Nature is a useful term for processes that one does not understand,” Sciathan told him wearily. “Once already the sun has blown out because Mainframe was trying to make this winter. This was not intended.”

“Yeah. I heard about that.” The newcomer sounded less argumentative. “Then the sun came back, only real bright for a minute. It set fire to some trees and stuff. A cull I know asked Patera about it. Calde Silk. He said it was another god talking and he knew which one, only he didn’t say.”

“It was not a god,” Sciathan asserted. “It was the sun’s restarting. Restarting must be at maximum energy.”

“Anyhow, that’s not why you’re here.” The newcomer pulled his tunic over his head, revealing a red wool undershirt that he removed as well. “Mainframe told you to find this cully Auk.”

The warder’s face appeared in the opening in the door. “What you need?”

“I want you to go to Trotter’s for me,” the newcomer told him, and handed him two cards. “You tell him any friends of mine that come in, the first one’s on me. Have him tell ’em I’ll be back real soon, and I’ll see ’em at the Cock. You got it? You got to go straight away.”

“Sure. You too hot in there?”

“I got a itch is all. You tell Trotter, then maybe I’ll have another little job for you.”

When the warder had gone, Sciathan began, “Is it known here… I do not wish to offend religious sensibilities.”

“You won’t,” the newcomer told him, “cause I ain’t got any. I got religion, and that’s different.”

“Is it known that all the gods are Mainframe?” Sciathan awaited an explosion with some anxiety; when it did not come, he added, “Equally is Mainframe all gods. Mainframe in its aspect of darkness, which in this tongue is termed Tartaros, issued my instructions.”

After knotting its sleeves around one of the bars, the newcomer pushed his undershirt out the window. “You know, I wish you’d told me that sooner, Upstairs.”

He picked up his fork, bending its tines with powerful fingers. “What’s your right tag, anyhow?”

“I am Sciathan. And you?”

“I ain’t going to tell you, Sciathan. Later I will, only not now, cause I scavy it might slow us down. You know where the keyhole is in this door? About where it is, anyhow?”

Sciathan nodded.

“Dimber. Look here. See how I twisted the one funny and bent the other two up out of the way? I want you to stick your arm through the peephole there. I could maybe do it if I was to rub butter on my arm, but you can do it easy. Sort of feel around for the keyhole with your kate, that’s the funny-looking one. When you find it, stick your kate in and twist.”

Sciathan accepted the fork. “You are saying this will open the door. You cannot know it.”

“Sure I do. I seen the key when he was letting me in, and I know how these locks work. I know how everything works soon as I see it, so get cracking. I don’t want to keep ’em waiting outside.”

Slowly, Sciathan nodded again. “Then you will be free, and I free to pursue my search for Auk, but clothed as I am, and ignorant of the customs of this city.”

“We’re going to take care of you,” the newcomer told him briskly. “Clothes and everything, and we’ll teach you how to act, all right? Do it!”

Standing on tiptoe, he was able to thrust his arm through the space between two bars. The strangely bent tine scratched the door for the lock plate, then scratched the lock plate for the keyhole. “I am fearful that I may drop it,” he told the newcomer, “but I will try to—” He had felt the bolt retract. “It is unlock!”

“Sure.” As Sciathan withdrew his arm, the newcomer pushed the door open. “Come on. There’s a couple mort troopers on the outside door already, so we best bing. Wrap that blanket so they can’t see your kicks.”

He led Sciathan along the corridor and down a stair to a massive iron door. “They ought to of had ’em inside too,” he whispered, “only they figured it was all rufflers and upright men, so nothing would happen. It don’t matter what’s afoot, it gets queered when some cully figures nothing’s going to happen.”

“I understand this,” Sciathan told him; and wanted to add: Yesterday that was I.

“Only that’s the way I’m figuring too, ’cause I got to. They’ll have slug guns out there, and if we beat hoof they’ll pot us sure. So we’re going to walk easy going out, and just keep going till we’re ’cross the street. And maybe nothing will happen. If they holler or say something, don’t you stop or even look back at ’em. You got it?”

“I will try. Yes.”

“Dimber.” The newcomer pressed his ear to the iron door. “Long as you do, you don’t have to worry. We’ll take care of the rest.”

There followed a lengthy silence; at last the newcomer said, “Pretty quiet out there. Get set.”

The motion of the door seemed much too quick as Sciathan stepped, half blinded by winter sunlight, through the doorway at the newcomer’s side. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed the towering woman whose thick sand-colored greatcoat his blanket brushed.

The wide street was freezing mud, rutted by the wheels of carts and wagons, and almost empty. Snowflakes whirled before his eyes, a few sticking to their lashes.

“You two!” a woman’s voice bawled. “Halt!”

So fast that it seemed sure to strike them, a black vehicle swooped toward them, roaring like a storm. He was airborne once more, out of control and without wings. For an instant he saw the startled face of a man in black with whom he collided full tilt, after which something huge and heavy struck his back.

A bang — like a slamming door — and the roar mounted to a deafening crescendo. Acceleration pushed him backward into two obstacles he did not at first realize were the shins of the man in black. As though by some mysterious device of Mainframe’s, the roar was muffled; above and behind him the newcomer growled, “Just the one shot. Pretty good.”

A new voice, that of the man in black, said, “Even one is too many.”

And then, as the pale hands of the man in black and the muscular hands of the newcomer lifted him onto a padded seat, “Welcome to Our Holy City of Viron, in the names of its people, its patroness, the Outsider, and all the other gods. I’m sorry we couldn’t do this with less violence and more ceremony. Are you hurt? I’m Calde Silk.”

Sciathan wiped his month with his fingers, finding to his surprise that it was not bleeding. “I am somewhat bruised, but from blows and not from this escaping. I am Sciathan.” Beyond their enchanted tranquility, snow swirled and homely blank-faced buildings raced like camels. He blinked, looking from this pale Cargo to the newcomer and back. “Are we safe?”

“For the time being at least,” the pale Cargo called Calde Silk assured him.

“I am your prisoner, instead of that of the tall women?”

Calde Silk shook his head. “Of course not. You may come and go as you wish.”

The newcomer added, “Anyhow, we like you.”

Sciathan smiled; it was very good now to smile, he found. “Then I am free to search again?”

“Yeah,” the newcomer told him, “only it ain’t going to take you long. I’m Auk.”