Exodus from the Long Sun

Chapter 6 — In Spider’s Web

“Are we truly, um, abandoned, Maytera? Solitary? Or are there other ears, eh? In this dark and — er — noisome. That’s the question, hum?”

“I don’t know. I have no way of telling. Do you?” The question Maytera Mint herself was debating was whether it would be disrespectful to lie down before Remora did.

“I — ah — no. I have none, I confess.”

“Do you have a secret that would let Potto and the other councillors return to power in defiance of the gods?”

“I would — um — General. Be safer not, eh? Not to speak upon such, er, topics.”

“It certainly would if you had one, Your Eminence. Do you?” She was trying fo forget how thirsty she was.

“Positively not. Not privy to military matters, eh?”

“Neither do I, Your Eminence, so let them listen all they want.” It was ecstasy to take her shoes off; for half a minute she debated taking off her long black stockings, too, but selfcontrol prevailed. “By now Bison’s taken charge. Or someone else has, but probably it’s Bison. He was my best officer, absolutely steady in a crisis but not very imaginative. If he can find somebody a little more creative to advise him, Bison should give the Ayuntamiento a very difficult time.”

“I am, er, suffused with pleasure at the prospect.”

“So am I, Your Eminence. I just hope it’s true.” She leaned back against the wall.

“You will, um, reproach me.”

“Never, Your Eminence.”

“You, or others. One never lacks for, um, critics? Patera Feelers. Faultfinders. You will — um — er — vociferate that as a, um, intermediary I must restrain my partisanship.”

She laid her arms on her knees, and her head upon her arms.

“I rejoin, General, by, er, asseverating that I have done so. And do so, eh? In our, um, current instance and beyond, hey? It is not partisanship but reason, hey? I am a man of peace. I have so, um, declared myself. Under flag of truce, eh? Having consulted Brigadier Erne. Having likewise consulted Calde Silk. Brought the, um, exceedingly significant — hum. You, General. I brought you to discuss, er, armistice. An — ah — feat of diplomacy? Triumph. Is my, er, our persons. Are they respected? They are not!”

“I’m going to stretch out, if that won’t upset you, Your Eminence. I’ll tuck my skirt around my legs.”

“No, no, Mayt — General. I can scarcely make out your, ah, self in this — er — stygian. There is one quarrel that cannot be mediated, hey?”

“We certainly haven’t succeeded in mediating this one.”

“I refer to the quarrel between good and, um, evil. Yes, evil. As a man of the cloth, an augur erstwhile destined, eh? Destined for — ah — greatness. As that, um, augur, fallible, eh? At whiles foolish, eh? Yet sensible of the ultimate, hey? I cannot mediate all quarrels, for I cannot mediate that one. I have set down my name in the lists, eh? Long since. I am for good. I cannot close my eyes to evil. Will not. Both.”

“That’s good.” Maytera Mint closed hers. The only light in the dark, bare room was a long streak of watery green under the door; closing her eyes should have made little difference, yet she found it deeply restful.

“If — er — ah — um — hum,” Remora said; or at least, so she heard him. The facade of the Corn Exchange was falling very slowly, while she waited powerless to move.

She woke with a start. “Your Eminence?”

“Yes, General?”

“Some dreams are sent by the gods.”

“Ah — indubitably.”

“Has anyone ever proposed that all dreams are? That every dream is a message from the gods?”

“I — um. Cannot recollect, eh? I shall devote thought to the, er, query. Possibly. Quite possibly.”

“Because I just had a very commonplace sort of dream, Your Eminence, but I feel that it may have been sent by a god.”

“Unusual? Extraordinary. If I do not presume, hey? No wish to, er, intrude. But I offer my, um, if desired.”

“I dreamed I was standing on the street in front of the Corn Exchange. It was falling on me, but I couldn’t run.”

“I — ah — see.”

“It actually happened a few days ago. We pulled it down with oxen. I could’ve run then, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to die, so I stood there and watched it fall until Rook carried me out of danger. He was nearly killed, as well as I.”

“The — ah — import? I fail to see it, General.”

“A god, I think, was telling me that since I’d chosen to die then, I shouldn’t be afraid of dying now, that nothing they can do to me could be worse than being crushed by that building, which was the way I’d chosen to die not long ago.”

“What god, hey? What god, General? Have you any notion?”

She knew from an alteration in Remora’s voice that he had straightened up. She had, temporarily at least, ransomed him from self-pity; she wished fervently that someone would ransom her. “I haven’t the least idea which god may have favored me, Your Eminence, assuming one did. I don’t recall anything that would furnish a clue.”

“No animals, eh?”

“None, Your Eminence. Just the street, and the falling stones. It was after shadelow, and all I remember is how dark they looked against the skylands.”

“Not, um, Day-Ruling Pas. Sun god, eh? Master of the Long Sun and all that. Tartaros, hum? Night god. Dark stones, dark god. Bats — ah — flittering?”

Maytera Mint rolled her head so that the tip of her sharp little nose made a small arc of negation. “No animals, Your Eminence, as I said. None whatsoever.”

“I shall — ah — prefer. I prefer to, um, suspend? No, table. Table the question, eh? If only for the nonce. In my, er, not inconsiderable experience an, um, signature may be — ah — descried by one who, eh? Shall peer about. Let us peer about, Maytera. What day is this, would you say?”

“Now?”

“Ah — yes. And then, eh? What day did you feel it to be in your, um, envisagement?”

“If you mean the night it happened…?”

“No. Did it, ah, seem to you a particular day, eh? Were you, um, conscious of a — ah — the calendar?”

“No, Your Eminence.

“What day is it now? As we, ah, converse.”

How many times had their captors halted to eat and sleep? Three? Four? “I can’t be sure.” Maytera Mint was beginning to regret mentioning her dream; she let her eyelids fall.

“Guess, General. What day?”

“Hieraxday or Thelxday, I suppose.”

“Bodies, eh? Vultures?”

“No. Just the skylands, the building and the stones.”

“Mirrors, monkeys, deer? Cards, teacups — ah — string? Any colored string? Poultry, nothing of the sort?”

“No, Your Eminence. Nothing of the sort.”

“Space — um — largeness? Skylands, eh? You were — ah — not insensible of them?”

“I knew that they were there, Your Eminence. In fact they seemed significant, though I can’t say how.”

“We, er, progress? Yes, progress. Actually happened, you said? Building fell, eh? You rescued.”

“Yes, it was at the beginning of the fighting. I mean to say, Your Eminence, that it was at what we call the beginning now. At the time we felt we’d been fighting a long while, that those of us who’d been fighting from the start had done a great deal of it.” Maytera Mint paused, reflecting.

“We were like children who have gone to palaestra for the first time the year before. When the next year starts, children like that feel themselves old hands, veterans. They give advice to the new children and patronize them, when the truth is that their own education has scarcely begun.”

Remora grunted assent. “I have observed, um, similar.”

“And now — I mean before we went out to that house where the calde was rescued. Things had quieted down. We had the Fourth penned up, and nobody wanted to go after it right away. We sensed that Erne was wavering, and you confirmed it. The Ayuntamiento was down in these tunnels, and those of us who thought about it saw how difficult it would be to root them out. We dared hope that some other way could be found. That was why I went out there with you.”

She waited for Remora to speak, but he did not.

“People came forward. They would appear, so to speak, to tell us how bravely they’d fought and all they’d done. And I’d think, who are you? Why didn’t I ever notice you before, if you were such a famous fighter? Bison had done everything, taken part in almost every fight.

“And Wool, I’d think. Wool has done a great deal, never shirked, not always saying I’ll do it, General, like Bison, but when we were repulsed and I’d look back and see one person still there, still shooting when the rest had fallen back and there were hoppies — Guardsmen, Your Eminence, troopers of the Civil Guard — close enough to touch, it would be Wool.

“Then I’d remember that Wool was dead, and think where were the ones who rode with me, where was Kingcup who brought us her horses when her horses were all she had? I hope she’s alive, Your Eminence, but I couldn’t locate her, couldn’t find her, and all these new people telling about the wonderful things they’d done, when I didn’t remember them at all. Skink led an attack on the Palatine and had both his less blown off. Where was he? Where was the giant with the gaps in his teeth? I don’t even remember his name, but I remember looking up at them, he must have been twice my height, and wondering who had been big enough to hit him way up there, and what he’d hit him with, and what had happened after he did it.”

“What was his name?”

“The giant, Your Eminence? I can’t recall it. Cat? Or Tomcat, something like that. No, Gib. That was it. Gib. It means a male cat, Your Eminence, so that would make it Snarling Sphigx, the Patroness of Trivigaunte. Cats are hers, cats and lions. But Gib wasn’t in my dream.”

“The man who saved you.”

“Oh, him. It was Rook, but rooks aren’t sacred to any god, are they, Your Eminence? Eagles for Pas. Hawks, too, because hawks are little eagles, or something like them. Thrushes and larks for Molpe, but rooks can’t sing. Poultry for Thelxiepeia, as Your Eminence said a moment ago, but rooks — wait.

“I’ve got it, Your Eminence. I was thinking lists, wasn’t I? Thinking about lists instead of animals and what they look like. And a rook looks like a night chough, like the calde’s pet. The calde got him to give to the god who enlightened him. People think it was Pas, almost everyone seems to think that, but I asked the calde about it and he said it wasn’t, that it was one of the minor gods, the Outsider. I don’t know much about him, Your Eminence. I’m sure you must know much more than I, but night choughs must be sacred to him. Or if they aren’t, they’re associated with him now, because that was the sacrifice the calde chose. Isn’t that correct, Your Eminence?”

Remora did not reply.

Maytera Mint thought of getting up to see whether he had gone. It seemed to her that she had slept even as she spoke aloud; but it was too delicious, far too delicious to lie where she was, with Bison in the other bed snoring softly and Auk to watch over them. “Auk?” she called softly. “Auk?”

Auk would bring them water, would surely bring water if she asked for it, a carafe of cold clear water, fresh from the well, and glasses. More loudly this time: “Auk!”

Yeah, Mother. Right here.

“Auk, my son?”

“Sorry, Patera.” Shivering in the afternoon sunlight, Auk returned his attention to Incus. “Thought I heard something.”

“You desired to speak with me?”

“Right. Back in the manteion you explained what he said.” Auk felt uneasy among the Palatine’s gracious mansions of gray stone; until now he had visited them only to steal.

“I endeavored to explain, certainly. It was my sacred duty to do so, thus I strove to make clear the divine utterances.”

“You were clear as polymer, Patera,” Hammerstone declared loyally. “I felt like I could understand every word Pas ever said before you finished.”

Voices called for them to halt, and they did.

“Bios with slug guns, Patera. I heard them behind us, but I was hoping they wouldn’t mess around.”

Afraid he was about to be arrested, Auk grumbled, “Can’t a man walk uphill any more?”

By then the patrol leader had noted Incus’s black robe. “Sorry, Patera. It’s the soldier. They say some are on our side. Is he one?”

Hammerstone nodded. “You got it.”

“Indeed, my son.” Incus favored the patrol with a toothy smile. “You have my sacred word as an augur and your — well, let us not go into that. You have my sacred word that Corporal Hammerstone longs for the overthrow of the Ayuntamiento, even as I do myself.”

“I’m Sergeant Linsang,” the patrol leader said. “Are you going to the Grand manteion, Patera?”

Incus shook his head. “To the Prolocutor’s Palace, my son. I am a resident thereof” His voice grew confidential. “I have been favored with a theophany. Great Pas himself so favored me. It is not the first, but the second time that I have been thus favored by the gods. You will scarcely credit it, I know, for I scarcely credit it myself. But both my companions were present upon the latter occasion. They will attest to the theophany, I feel quite certain.”

One of Linsang’s troopers raised his slug gun so that it no longer pointed at Auk. “Aren’t you Auk? Auk the prophet?”

“That’s me.”

“He’s been going all over the city,” the trooper explained to Linsang, “telling everybody to get ready for Pas’s Plan. He says Tartaros told him to.”

“He did,” Auk declared stoutly. “Pas wants me to keep on doing it, too. What about you, trooper? Are you set to go? Set to give up on the whole whorl?”

Linsang asked, “What did Pas say? That is if I’m not—”

“It is irregular,” Incus conceded, “but not contrary to the canon. Do all of you desire to hear the words of the Father of the Gods?”

Several assured him that they did.

“And will you,” Incus pursued his advantage, “permit us to proceed upon our sacred errand once you have heard them?”

Linsang’s troopers nodded. They were in their teens, and identifiable as troopers only by their slug guns and bandoliers.

Linsang objected. “I need to get it from this soldier, first. Hammerstone? Is that your name, Corporal?”

“Present and accounted for.” Hammerstone’s own slug gun was pointed at the skylands, its butt on his hip.

“Are you for the Ayuntamiento or the calde?”

“The calde, Sergeant.”

“How do you feel about the Ayuntamiento?”

“If the calde or Patera here said not to shoot them, I wouldn’t do it. If it’s up to me, they’re dead meat.”

One of the troopers ventured, “A soldier killed Councillor Potto. That’s what we heard.”

Hammerstone grinned, his head back and his chin out. “It wasn’t me, but I’ll shake his hand first chance I get.”

“All right.” Linsang grounded his slug gun. “You can go on to the Prolocutor’s Palace, Patera. Them, too. Only tell us what Pas had to say.”

“I fear not.” Incus shook his head. “You would not accept my sacred word, my son, but insisted that Hammerstone speak for himself. As it chanced, though nothing is mere chance to the immortal gods, but a moment previously he had declared that he comprehends the god’s entire message, while my other companion, Auk, wished a fuller exposition.”

Incus turned to the prophet in question. “Is that not so, Auk? Am I not correct?”

“You got it, Patera. Maybe I’m dumb. There’s not many that said so where I could hear ’em, but maybe I am. Only this is important, and some was about me. I got to be sure I got it straight, so I can do what he wants me to.”

“Would that such stupidity as yours were more widespread. The Chrasmologic Writings assert that the wisdom of the immortal gods is but folly in the ears of mortal men. Persevere in your stupidity, and you will be welcomed to Mainframe.” Incus nodded to the big soldier. “Tell us, Hammerstone, my son, and do not fear that you may blunder or omit a sacred injunction. I shall amend any such innocent errors, though I anticipate none.”

“I can’t do it as good as you, Patera, but I’ll give it my best shot. Let me get my thinking works going.” For eight or ten seconds, Hammerstone was as immobile as a statue.

“All right, I got it. It was when that bio was bringing up the pig. First the colors came on, right? Then his face. He started off by blessing everybody and said that everybody that was there ’cause they came with Auk — that was everybody but you, Patera — he blessed twice, once for coming and once for following Auk. Have I got that right?”

Incus nodded. “Admirable, Hammerstone, my son.”

“Then he said he was giving us this theophany ’cause his son told him what was coming down in the manteion we were at, only he didn’t say which son it was.”

“Terrible Tartaros,” Auk assured him.

Incus raised an admonitory finger. “He did not so state.”

“Maybe not, but I’d just been talking to him. That’s who it had to be.”

“He said his son’d given Auk his orders, and they were the right ones. He and his son were going to see to it everybody got the word. We’d been thinking about his Plan like it was way off, when it was already time to move out…”

“Continue, my son.”

“I’m sorry, Patera. That’s when he started talking about me, and I get kind of choked up. It was the greatest moment of my life, right? I mean, if I was to make sergeant or anything like that I’d feel pretty good. But this was Pas. I got his drift and later you explained, and it was like I’d been feeling it was, just exactly. Hearing you say it was just about like I was hearing it all over again from him. I’m thinking there’s a war, and all the good people’s on his side. That’s this son—”

“Terrible Tartaros,” Auk put in.

“And the calde and Auk and naturally you are, Patera… And it’s the side I’m on, too. He said how Auk got hurt when he was underground with us and how hard he’d been working for his Plan, and he was sending somebody from Mainframe to help him out.”

“From the Pole, Corporal. That is the term which the god himself preferred to employ. That Mainframe is at the Pole, I freely concede.”

Auk edged nearer. “To help me out? I’m the cull?”

“Yeah, you’re the one, only I’m supposed to help too. He said he was going to decorate you for what you’ve done soon as you do what he wants you to next. Only here’s where Patera said something I got to say too, so it’ll make sense to these other bios. Pas is us chems’ god. He’s the god of all the digital, nuclear-chemical stuff. You got to buy that if you want to see where Pas’s coming from. Isn’t that right, Patera?”

Incus nodded solemnly.

“’Cause Pas told us what Auk’s decoration’s going to be. Anytime he sees anything like me, he’s going to understand it straight off. How it goes together and what it’s supposed to do, and how. Pas means to stick all the data into Auk, ’cause he’ll need it to carry out the Plan.”

Linsang and his troopers stared at Auk openmouthed. Auk endeavored to appear humble.

“That was when he gave me my direct order, and it wasn’t just ’cause I happened to be around. I never thought anything like this would happen to me. I asked Patera about it back at the manteion, and he says if I hadn’t been the one Pas wanted, I wouldn’t have been there, it would’ve been some other tinpot. But it wasn’t. I’m the one. Patera says it was probably ’cause him and me are, you know, like brothers only closer, and he’s a holy augur, and as soon as he said it I knew it was right.

“Pas needs a soldier, so which one? There’s thousands. Why, the augur’s friend, doesn’t that make sense? The friend of the augur Scylla picked to be the new Prolocutor, that’s the one you need. A god don’t have to think about stuff like that, he just knows. He said, talking to me, Auk might have a little trouble at first. You stick with him and help him over the tough spots. You’re a mechanism, help him out and he’ll help you. So here we are, Patera and me both, and we’re trying to help.”

Linsang asked Incus, “Was that all, Patera?”

“All? I should say it was more than enough, my son. But no. It was not. Let us have the remainder, Hammerstone.”

“He said that a while back, forty years, he said, he knew he was going to die—”

“To die?” Linsang was incredulous.

“That’s what he said. He saw it coming, so he sort of took off little pieces of himself and hid them in various bios where they wouldn’t be found. Then he died, and he’s been dead for quite a while.”

Incus cleared his throat. “All of you, and I, similarly, must comprehend the dificulties under which a god seeking to communicate with human kind labors. He can but speak to us in words mere mortals apprehend. Thus by die, the Father of the Gods indicated his own renewal. That noblest of trees, the goldenshower, is sacred to Great Pas. You cannot be ignorant of so elementary a fact.”

Linsang and several of his troopers nodded.

“Suppose that a forest of goldenshowers could speak to us. Would it not say, ‘That I, the sacred forest, may remain young and strong, my aged trees must fall, though they have endured for centuries. Let young trees spring up in their places. I, the forest, endure.’ Hammerstone?”

“I’m on it, Patera. He said now when his Plan’s starting to move, he’s putting himself back together. He said right now he was his own ghost, Pas’s ghost, but with more of his pieces getting found, he’ll be Pas again. He wants us to help. Auk in particular, but everybody’s supposed to pitch in. We got to find this one particular bio, Patera Jerboa, ’cause he’s got the piece for Viron. There was maybe five or six hundred bios in the manteion, but after Patera’d explained the whole thing to them, there wasn’t one that knew who this Patera Jerboa was or where we could maybe find him.

“So Patera told them not to bunch up, but scatter and start asking people all over, and bring him to Auk when they got him. Then he told Auk the Chapter’s got records about all this stuff, where every augur’s at and what he’s doing there, and they’re in the Palace, and Patera knows where and how to read them. He’s worked with them for years, right Patera? So him and Auk and me started off to take a look, and here we are.”

“The majesty of diction was lacking, Hammerstone, my son, yet the matter was in attendance.” Incus regarded Linsang and his troopers. “What of you? We seek to obey the dictates of the Father of the Seven. Can you assist us? No holy augur can know every other. We are far too numerous. Do you know of a Patera Jerboa? Any of you? Speak.”

No one did.

Shots woke Maytera Mint. At first, as she lay blinking in the darkness, she did not know what the sounds had been; she was hungry and thirsty, vaguely conscious of the cold, and conscious that she had been cold for a long time, shivering as she slept. Her buttocks and shoulder blades, pressed by her slight weight to unyielding shiprock, were numb, her feet freezing.

She sat up. Her room had been the smallest and meanest in the old cenoby on Silver Street, with a ceiling that dripped at every shower; yet it had not been too small or too mean for a window past whose threadbare drape wisps of light crept on even the darkest nights.

Three sharp bangs, unevenly spaced. Pictures falling? She recalled an incident from her childhood: an old watercolor had fallen when its yellowed string rotted through at last, and had taken another picture and a small vase down with it. Once she had heard a horse trying to kick its way out of its stall. The shots had sounded like that.

“Ah, General?”

The voice had been Remora’s; his nasal tones brought it all back to her. “Yes, Your Eminence.”

“You have, um, familiar with the sound of gunfire, hey? During the past — ah — fighting.”

“Yes, Your Eminence. Tolerably so.” Against her will, she found herself wondering how many Remoras there had been, how many augurs and sibyls who had responded to Echidna’s theophany by going to the safest place they could find and staying there. Patera Silk had not. (But then, he wouldn’t.) Patera Silk had been shot in the chest, had been captured, and had contrived, somehow, to turn Oosik and the whole Third Brigade, the act that had done more than any other to determine the course of their insurrection. But how many more -

“Er, General?”

“Yes, Your Eminence. I was considering the matter. The door is thick and rather tightly fitted, and these walls are shiprock. Those factors must have affected the quality of the shots as we heard them.”

“You — ah — believe them shots, eh?”

“I’m putting on my shoes, Your Eminence.” She groped for them in the dark. “If we’re to be taken somewhere—”

“Quite right.” Remora sounded cheerful. “Quetzal, eh? Old Quetzal. His Cognizance, I ought to say.”

More thirsty than ever, Maytera Mint licked her dry lips. “His Cognizance, Your Eminence?”

“Rescue, eh? He’s come for me, er, we. Or — ah — sent somebody. Shrewd, eh? Plays a deep game, old Quetzal. Card sense in both — um — the applicable senses.”

She tried to imagine the elderly Prolocutor fighting, slug gun in hand, against Spider and his spy-catchers, and failed utterly. “I would think Bison’s sent scouts into the tunnels by this time, Your Eminence. If we’re lucky, it may be some of them we heard. But even if they notice this door, they may not be able to get it open.

Another shot, and it was definitely a shot.

“They will notice it, General. I — um — my word on it. My gammadion, eh?”

“Your gammadion, Your Eminence?”

“Not you, ah, sibyls. But we augurs. Holy augurs, eh? Wear Pas’s voided cross. Comes apart. Use to test a Window, hey? Tighten connections, make adjustments, all that sort of, er, operations. Gold, hey? Mine is. Coadjutor, eh? Stones. Not like old Quetzal’s, I, um, but gems. Annethysts, largely. Gold chain. Under my tunic, generally. Out at sacrifice, hey?”

“I’m familiar with them, Your Eminence.”

“I’ve — ah — slipped it beneath the door, Maytera. Push it out, eh? Pull it back in. Moving object, hum? Catches the light, ah, attracts the eye.”

She went to the door (almost tripping over Remora) and rapped it sharply with the heel of one shoe.

“Admirable — ah — admirable. Crude, eh? Yet it — ah!”

The latch outside rattled and the door swung in, impeded by Remora. The burly Spider growled, “What’s that noise?”

The lights in the tunnel were so dim that Maytera Mint did not blink. “I was pounding on the door with my shoe. We heard shots and hoped we’d be freed.”

“Come on.” Spider gestured with the barrel of his needler.

“We, um’ require food,” Remora ventured. “Water or — ah similar, er, potable.”

“You won’t if you don’t get movin’.”

“You don’t dare shoot us,” Maytera Mint declared. “We’re valuable hostages. What would you tell—”

He caught her arm and jerked her through the doorway. “I’m strong, see?”

“I never doubted it.” She tested her shoulder, fearing he had dislocated it.

“Strong as a chem. Not one of them soldiers, maybe, but a regular chem. You with me, sib? So I don’t have to shoot you. There’s twenty, thirty things I could do.” One of Spider’s men was lounging in the tunnel; he held a gleaming slug gun. “I’m ready to try a couple,” Spider continued. “You scavy Councillor Potto’s kettle? Wasn’t anythin’. He was just playin’, he’s like that. I don’t fool. We get lots of spies.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.” Maytera Mint had feared that she would not be allowed to resume her shoe; she tightened the bow and straightened up with an odd little thrill of triumph.

“I learned a lot, workin’ on them. I never seen one so tough I couldn’t get him to tell me anythin’ I wanted to know. That way, and keep movin’.”

“I, er, weak. Thirsty, eh? What one physically — ow!”

Remora had been prodded from behind by the man with the slug gun, who said, “I kicked a dead cull once till he got up and ran.”

“The gods — ah — Pas. Tartaros, eh?” Remora progressed with rapid, unsteady strides, outdistancing Maytera Mint.

“Slow up!”

“I — ah — prayed. Beads. eh? The, um’ general slept.”

“You should have awakened me,” she protested, and got a shove from Spider.

“Never! Wouldn’t, um, consider—” Remora froze until he was prodded from behind. Somewhat nearsighted, Maytera Mint blinked as she tried to peer ahead through the watery light.

“Dead cull,” Spider told her. “One of mine.”

“Was that the shooting we heard?”

Spider pushed her forward. “Yeah.” Another push. “He was watchin’ your door. Sib, you better shaggy learn to drive your shaggy ass or you’re going to learn a shaggy bunch you don’t want to know.”

She whirled, facing him. “I’ve already learned something, but it was something I wanted to know. That I wanted very much to know, in fact.”

He struck her face with the flat of his hand, spinning her around and knocking her down, the blow as loud as the boom of a slug gun. “Pick her up,” he told Remora.

Remora did, carrying her like a child as he staggered down the tunnel. When they reached the corpse, the man with the slug gun caught his arm and ordered him to stop, and he set her on her feet. “You’re cryin’,” Spider told her.

“I am. I shouldn’t,” she wiped her eyes, “because I know our hour will come. Perhaps I should cry for you instead, but that will come later if it comes at all.”

Remora had knelt beside the corpse; he rose shaking his head. “The spirit has, ah, dispensed with its house of flesh.”

The man with the slug gun asked, “You were going to say the words over him?”

“I — ah — so intended. It is too late.”

“He never believed in it.”

Maytera Mint said, “Then I should weep for him. A short life and a violent death in this wretched place. You can write on his stone, here lies one who sought no succor from the gods, and hence received none.”

The man with the slug gun chuckled. “Maybe you can. How about it, Spider?”

“Sure, why not? She can do it while we’re waiting.”

Remora ventured, “May we be seated? My legs, er, flaccid.”

“Go ahead. They’ll be along in a minute.”

“If you mean Bison’s scouts, I feel certain you’re right,” Maytera Mint told him.

He took off his cap and ran a dirty comb through greasy, graying hair. “You figure Bison’s boys chilled him? You’re abram.”

“I doubt that you even know who Bison is.”

“The shag I don’t. I got people all through your knot. You think I don’t?”

“Thank you very much.” She wiped away the last tears with her sleeve. “We appreciate all who come to us.”

He laughed. “You appreciate them? They’re tellin’ us what you do, every move you make.”

“Meanwhile they must work and fight for us, if they’re not to be detected.” She sat down next to Remora. “They would like to rise in our councils, I suppose. To do it, they’ll have to work and fight well.”

“S’pose all you want to,” Spider grunted.

“You are, um, confident it was not one of Colonel Bison’s men — er — persons. Troopers. Who shot this, um?”

“Sure. Sib, how come my culls don’t faze you?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Because we’re hiding nothing. You want to learn our secrets, but they’re only virtue and prudence. His Eminence and I had hoped to arrange a peace in which your spies and you might live. Now there will be none. We—”

“All right! Muzzle it!”

“Will root you out. We’ll go down into this wretched hole and fight, find the underwater boat on which—”

He kicked her.

“You held the calde—”

He kicked her again, and she screamed.

Remora lurched to his feet. “Really, I cannot — simply, ah, will not tolerate this. Kick me, if you like.” Spider pushed him; he staggered, tripped over the corpse, and fell.

“And drop stones on it from the surface or catch it in a net,” Maytera Mint finished. “If you want our plans, there you have them. Your spies can tell you nothing more.”

“You’re one tough little girl.”

“I’m a gross coward,” she told him. “I realized it about an hour after Echidna declared me her sword. We were storming the Alambrera. It might be more accurate to say we were trying to. I — shall I tell you?”

Spider put away his comb. “I’ll break you.”

“You have already. I screamed, didn’t I? What more do you need to complete your triumph? My death?” She threw her arms wide. “Shoot!”

“Another time, maybe.” Spider turned his attention to Remora, who was sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. “You, Patera. Your Eminence. Is that what they call you?”

“You may call me either. Or neither, eh? I should, um, opt for neither, given the choice. I — ah — covet no honors from you.”

“You can die, too, Patera.”

“I, um, well aware. Thinking, hey? Thinking while I, um, bore the general. Not valiant, eh? Not like, er, she.”

“Your Eminence, I am not brave!”

“You are, Maytera — ah — General. Yes, you are. Not, um, sensible of it, conceivably. I — ah — am not. Was a, um, prisoner of Erne’s. I told you, eh?”

“You told me you’d conferred with him, not that you were his prisoner.”

Remora looked toward Spider, seeking his permission; Spider said, “Sure, I’d say we got time.”

“In the, um, Palace, eh? Eating dinner. Warned, eh? By a page. Guardsmen coming. Thought they wanted — ah — consult me. Waited for my sweet. In they tramped, these, er, troopers. Where’s the Prolocutor? That was the, um, term they employed. I endeavored to explain. His Cognizance comes and, ah, departs at his, er, pleasure. Arrested me, hey? Hands bound, all that. Under my robe, eh? I, urn, petitioned that favor, and they, er, condescended. Marched me out.”

Remora paused to swallow. “Frightened, General. Badly frightened. Horribly, er, affrighted. Coward. Questions, eh? Questions, questions. Read, um, statements I never made, eh? Spoke in my own defense. Struck. Said I’d lied. Struck, eh? On and — ah — more of the, er, like treatment.”

Maytera Mint nodded. Her right cheek was beginning to swell, but her eyes were full of sympathy. “I’m sorry, Your Eminence. Truly sorry.”

“Said they’d kill me, eh? Needler at my head. All that. Coward, lost control. Bowels, er, voided. Soiled my clothes. Had to speak to the Brigadier. Said that over and over. I — ah — know him. Knew him, eh? In better days. Yes, in better days. Saw him at last. Truce, eh? Truce, cease-fire. I can, er, bring one about, hey? Calde’s an augur. Let me go. Spoke through glass to — ah — Councillor. Loris. Councillor Loris. He said — urn — let him go. And they — ah — did. Brigadier Erne did. Fellow I’d — ah — chatted with, hey? Ten, twenty, er, occasions. Parties, dinners, receptions. Gossip, prattle over wine. Beaten, wet — um — stinking. But free. Free.”

Spider laughed.

“Back to the Palace, hey? Frightened — ah — terrified. Shooting augurs, eh? Sibyls, too. I, um, didn’t see it. For that thank — ah — Tartaros. Thanked Tenebrous Tartaros for it, for, er, shielding my eyes. But I knew, eh? They told me. Felt the — ah — slug. Needle strike my back a score of times in — er — three streets. Roughly, eh? Roughly three. Dead twenty times. Back to the Palace, washed. Listening all the while. Listening for them. Why, eh? Why listen?” Remora’s bony fingers laced and loosed, knotting and writhing free to form new knots.

“My — ah — rise. Page as a lad. Schola. Augur. My mother, eh? Be Prolocutor someday, eh? Mother, couple aunts. Father, too, hum? Acolyte, desk in the Palace, higher every year or so, hey? Father died. Careful, hey? Careful, worked hard, hey? Always careful, no enemies, hey? Long hours. Aunt died. Work and wait, eh? Coadjutor died. Younger than old Quetzal, hey? Dead at his table, eh? Lying on his — um — documents. Coadjutor, Mother. Old then, eh? Very. But her eyes shone, Maytera. Er, General. Her eyes shone.” Remora’s own were full of tears.

“There is no need for you to torment yourself like this, Your Eminence.”

Spider told the man with the slug gun, “See what’s keepin’ them.” He rose, nodded to Maytera Mint, and walked away, down the tunnel.

“Mother…” Remora coughed, a racking cough deep in his chest. “Sorry. My, um, couldn’t prevent it. Mother dead, hey? Mother dead, General. All dead, then. Mother, father, both, er, sisters. Not Mother’s — ah — her vision. Vision for me. Prolocutor. Why afraid? Beatings. Blows, eh? ’Fraid of them, too. Most of all — ah — her vision.” He fell silent.

Wanting desperately to change the subject, Maytera Mint asked Spider, “Where is that man going? What are we waiting here for?”

“A stretcher.” Spider shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “For him.” He gestured toward the corpse.

“You’re going to carry it away for burial?”

“Cleaned up, hey?” Remora had not been listening. “Lay clothes. Left the Palace. Soon as I could. Went to Ermine’s. Calde might come. I knew. I knew. In the, um, his letter.”

Maytera Mint nodded, supposing that the letter had been addressed to Remora.

“Went to Ermine’s. Drinking den there. Lay clothing so they wouldn’t — ah — shoot. Waited. Porter dropped something in the street. Up like a rabbit. Die, never Prolocutor. Her spirit, eh? Her ghost. Her vision for me.”

“It never occurred to me that you were waiting for a means to carry the body,” Maytera Mint told Spider. “It should have, but I’ve seen so many left lying where they fell.”

He cleared his throat. “We got a place. You’ll see it.”

“Down here?”

“Yeah. Eight, ten chains from here.”

Maytera Mint indicated the corpse. “Did you like him, Spider? You must have.”

“He was all right, and I worked with him ten years.”

“Then you would not object if I covered his face?”

“Nah. Go ahead.”

She did, standing and smoothing the black skirt of her habit, taking short steps to the. side of the corpse, kneeling, and spreading a dirty handkerchief she took from her sleeve over its face. “May Great Pas pardon your spirit.”

“No more — ah — the vision.” Remora was addressing no one. “An, er, administrative post, eh? Finance. Most, er, plausibly. Finance. No.”

“Muzzle it,” Spider told him. “See, sib, there’s this place where they was diggin’ one of these tunnels. They put a big door in it like they did. You seen some.”

Maytera Mint nodded.

“Martyr, hey? No martyrs since, ah—”

“They went fifty, sixty steps in and quit. I don’t know why. Quit in dirt. We’re under the city, and it’s mostly dirt up here.”

“Are we? I thought you were taking us to the lake.”

“Maybe we will, but we’re takin’ you here for now. We meet down here sometimes. Meet with Councillor Potto, and when we get somebody, we generally leave him where you two were. It’s a old storeroom, I guess, but I don’t—” They heard the thunderous boom of a slug gun, attenuated by distance but unmistakable.

“Guan must of shot somethin’,” Spider told Maytera Mint.

“Or he was shot himself.”

“He’s a rough boy. He can take care of himself. What was I talkin’ about?”

“How you bury the other rough boys.” She sighed. “It was interesting. I’d like to hear more about it.”

“Sure.” Spider sat down facing her, his needler still in his fight hand. Settled in his place, he held it up. “I could put this away. You aren’t goin’ to jump me, either of you.”

“I — ah — intend it,” Remora muttered.

“Huh! I don’t think so.” Spider thrust the needler into his coat. “Like I said, sib, there’s a big door, and I got the word for it. Councillor Potto told it to me a long time back. So you go in and where it ends there’s dirt. Down towards the lake, where they run deeper, it’s all rock or shiprock, but up this high there’s a lot of dirt.”

“I understand.”

He touched the shiprock wall. “Behind here’s dirt. I can tell from how it’s made. What we do, when somebody’s chilled up in the city and there’s nobody for them, we bring them down. Or if somebody dies down here. That happened one time.”

Seated again, Maytera Mint nodded toward the corpse.

“Lily. Twice, now. But before, one of my knot got hurt up there and we brought him down, but he died. We dig straight in, like, into the dirt till the hole’s long enough. We got rolls of poly. We lay some poly in the hole and wrap them up in some more, and slide them right in.” He looked at her quizzically, and she nodded.

“Then we put some dirt back to fill the hole, right? And everybody’s got a shiv.” He took a big stag-handled clasp knife from his pocket. “We write the name and some stuff about him on a piece of paper, and we stick it up with his shiv so we don’t dig there again for anybody else.”

“As a memorial, too,” Maytera Mint suggested, “though I doubt that you would admit it.”

“That’s lily, sib, I wouldn’t. It’s just somethin’ for the older bucks like me. When we go in there again we look at them, and then maybe we tell the new culls. Like we used to have cull name of Titi that would put on a gown and pay his face like they do. Not you, sib. You know what I mean, powder and rouge, and all that. Perfume.”

She nodded. “Indeed I do, and I’m not offended in the least. Go on.”

“Give Titi a half-hour, and he’s the best lookin’ mort in the city. He kept his hair kind of long, and he could fix it just a little different and it was a mort’s hair cut short. Not as short as yours, but short, and soon as you saw it you knew it was a mort’s hair. If Titi hadn’t paid his dial, that shaggy hair’d make you abram. You’d be talkin’ to yourself.”

“A person like that must have been of great value to you.”

“Lily, he was. He was a bob cull, too. There was this time when we were workin’ on a knot from Urbs. We knew who they was and what they was after, and was peery a while to see what they done and who they talked to. We do it in our trade all the time. We’d see they found out things Councillor Potto wanted Urbs to know, and we’d foyst in queer, too, fixed so they’d like it. One came fly. Know what I mean, sib?”

“I believe so.”

“We could’ve done for him. Chilled him, you know. But we don’t unless we got to.”

Remora looked up. “Urn — inevocable. No — ah — going back after, eh?”

“Slap on, Patera. That’s her in a egg cup. You know this one, see? He’s a hog grubber, won’t spend. Or he’s one of them that lushes till shadeup and don’t forget a thing. Whatever. Soon as he’s cold, it’s all down the chute, and Urbs’ll send a new cull.

“So what I laid to was to get him nabbed. I got Titi to hook him and go ’round to two, three places so’s to get some to say they seen them. Then Titi went to Hoppy and capped I been ramped. The Urber done it. They got him to go along to finger.

“I knew the ken, so’d Titi, and I was keepin’ him there. I’d planted books goin’, to keep him on top. Not lumb, but lowre enough, you know, to have him sure he’d draw my deck.”

“I — ah — dishonest game? You, er, cheated?” Spider. Did you?”

“Sure thing. But not skinnin’ him. I’d take his gelt and let him win back and more to the bargain. He had to lose swop, or I’d been shy more’n I had. Larger, he’d got to win so he wouldn’t stamp. I’d say haven’t you nicked me proper and push my chair, you know the lay, and he’d say one more hand. I knew Titi was goin’ to have to let the hoppies carry him two or three places ’fore he steered ’em right.

“In they prance, and Titi fingered the Urber and blubbed like two morts, and the hoppies grabbled him and what’s your name, you’re for iron.”

“Rape is a very serious charge,” Maytera Mint protested. “He could have been sent to the pits.”

“Sure thing, but Titi wasn’t goin’ to dock. I wanted him shy of his knot to Pasday, that’s all. Well, he broke and run at Titi. Petal, what’re you doin’ to me, and the rest, and he’s nabbed a flicker and bashes it on the cat ladder.”

“A wine bottle as a weapon, you mean?” This was a foreign whorl to Maytera Mint.

“A glass tumbler, sib, but it’s the same notion.” Spider chuckled. “Titi fans him so hard he’s back across and on my knee if I hadn’t hopped. Knocked over my perch and both down together.

“Now right here’s where my jabber pays. Titi run to him bawlin’ like a calf with the cow in the kitchen, and Hoppy? Never twigged. I was on velvet. Showed me the door. Titi had to stay and cap, which he did, and Hoppy never twigged. I’d like to turn up another, but I’ve never seen any half so fine, not even on boards.”

“Yet he’s dead,” Maytera Mint said pensively. “He’s dead and buried in that place you told us about, because there was no one else who cared enough to bury him. Otherwise we would not be talking about him. How did he die?”

“I was hopin’ you wouldn’t quiz me, sib.”

She smiled. “I’ll withdraw the question if you’ll call me Maytera. Will you do that for me?”

“Sure thing.” Spider’s hand massaged his stubbled jowls. “I’m goin’ to tell you anyhow. Thing is, some culls nicker. All right, it’s abram. But, well…”

“But he was your friend.”

“Nah. I miss him, though. I brought him in. I found him, and I got him in, helped him out of a queer lay he was standin’ and all that, and pretty quick he’s a dimber hand. Everybody knew, all my knot. They stood him wide. You wouldn’t think, and they didn’t to start, but after a while. I told about how he said the Urber ramped him.”

“Yes, you did.”

“A buck tried it, see, Maytera? He got down to shag and twigged Titi’s yard, and did for him on account. Squeezed his pipe for him.”

“That’s sad. I understand perfectly why you dislike it when people laugh. May I ask about him, too?” She gestured toward the corpse. “What was his name?”

“Paca.” While seconds crawled by, Spider stared at the handkerchief-shrouded face. “He was a pretty good all-round cull, know what I say? For jabber or a breakin’ lay or rags-and-tags, any of the jobs we do, smokin’ or liffin’ seal—”

Remora looked up.

“Any game you name, I could name you better. You don’t always know, though, and sometimes that cull’s got his plate full or he’s crank, and Paca could take it. Once in a while he’d big my glimms.”

Spider spoke to Remora. “I was goin’ to ask, Patera, if you’d cap for him. Think you could?”

“Pray for, um, Peccary? Paca. I, er, have. Privately, eh? While we, er, now.”

“When I slide him in,” Spider explained impatiently. “Cut bene whiddes for everybody.”

“I — ah — indeed. Honored.”

“What about Guan?” Maytera Mint inquired. “Aren’t we going to bury him, too? Wouldn’t you like His Eminence to pray for him as well? Perhaps we could make it a group ceremony.

“Guan’s not for ice.”

“Certainly he is.” She sighed. “Where is your stretcher?”

“He’ll be along in a minute.”

“Thirsty, eh? Might we, um, hungry, likewise.”

“So am.I,” Maytera Mint declared. “You have a stretcher somewhere, or so you say, Spider. If there’s food and water there, too, may we not go to it?”

“I, ah—”

“You ate and drank last night, I assume, and this morning. You, Guan, Paca, and the others. We didn’t.”

Spider clambered to his feet. “All right, you two, you got it. Come on. I want to see what’s keepin’ those putts.”

“Ah — water? And, um, something to eat?”

“Sure thing. We got prog and plonk. There’s a well, too. I ought to of let you have some last night. You need a hand up, Patera? How ’bout you, Maytera?”

“I’m fine, thank you, Spider.”

“I — ah — give warning,” Remora said as Spider helped him to stand. “The next, um, instance. Strike the General. Or me. I shall attack, eh? Will. Martyr, hey? Gone but — um, er — commemorated. Unforgotten.”

“He isn’t going to,” Maytera Mint told Remora briskly. “We are past all that hitting and hating with Spider. Don’t you understand, Your Eminence?”

“Come on,” Spider repeated, and started down the tunnel. “You want to eat? I’ll bet you anythin’ they aren’t cold.”

“Um, forbidden.”

“Wagering is contrary to the regulations of the Chapter,” Maytera Mint explained, “but I am prepared to violate them and accept whatever punishment may be meted out to me. I say that they are dead, all of them. The men you sent for the stretcher, and Guan, too. As dead as Paca. Will you take my bet?”

“Sure thing.” Spider had drawn his needler again. “I got a card says I’m right.”

“I don’t want your card. What I want are answers to three questions. You must promise to answer in full. No lies and no evasions. No half truths. What will you have from us if we lose? We haven’t any money, or at least I have none.”

Spider halted, waiting for her. “I donno, sib. Maytera, I mean. That’s better, huh? You call each other sib, though.”

She nodded. “We call one another sib, which is short for sibyl, because maytera is reserved for the sibyl in charge of the cenoby in which we live. There’s only one other sibyl in my cenoby since Maytera Rose passed on, Maytera Marble. She is senior to me, so she is in charge. I will call her Maytera when next we meet, assuming that Maytera Rose has been buried.”

“You, too, huh? Well, I’m sorry, Maytera. Come on, Your Eminence, shake it up.”

“His Eminence has a gold gammadion set with gems,” Maytera Mint confided. “He might be willing to make it my stake in our bet. I’ll try to persuade him.”

Spider shook his head. “I could nab it anytime.”

“Certainly you could, but you would have stolen it. Though Tenebrous Tartaros, whose realm this surely is, is the patron of thieves, I doubt very much that he approves of stealing from augurs, and all the other gods surely condemn it. If you won His Eminence’s gammadion you would have acquired it honesdy, and would have no reason to fear divine retribution.”

“Yeah. But you don’t think I’ll win.”

Maytera Mint shook her head. “No, I don’t. I will not deceive you, Spider. I am as sure as I can be without having seen them that all those men are dead. If you accept my bet, you’ll have to answer my questions, one for each dead man.”

“All right, I’ll tell you what I want, Maytera. But I’m goin’ to call you General. That’s who I want to bet with, the rebel general. Can I do that? Patera does.”

“Certainly. I’d prefer it, in fact.”

“You figure I’m a thief. I can tell by the way you were talkin’ a minute ago. That’s the lily, isn’t it, General?”

“You employ a great deal of cant, Spider, and cant is used principally by thieves. Also by prostitutes, with whom I’ve spoken now and then, but most of them steal when it seems safe.”

“Most everybody will,” Spider told her positively.

“Perhaps. If so, it is small wonder that the gods show us no more affection than they do.”

“Well, I ain’t a thief. I talk like I do ’cause we’re with them a lot. Spies don’t ken with people like you, General, or this other sibyl you call Maytera. She don’t know anythin’ they need, see? You do, but if they were to ken with you, they’d need a shaggy good reason or you’d start thinkin’, why’s he around all the time?” Spider paused for breath.

“You go to some city to look into things, you know, and you want somebody local to help out, what you want’s a thief six to one. When we got to have new blood, that’s where we look, too. Not always, but mostly.”

“I understand, Spider…”

“Out with it.”

“Very well.” Maytera Mint took a deep breath. “Were you a thief previously? Is that how you came to be a spy-catcher?”

He grinned at her, displaying crooked and discolored teeth. “What makes you think you can believe me, General?”

“I’m a good judge of character.”

“I’d lie to you.”

“Indeed you would, and you might do it so skillfully, that I would think you were telling the truth. But you won’t lie to me about this, not here and not now. Were you? It’s none of my affair, and to confess the truth there is a thief I taught when he was a child of whom I’m very fond. His name is Auk.”

“I know him,” Spider said.

“You do? That hadn’t occurred to me, but now that you’ve mentioned it, no doubt you must. Does he — is he one of your knot, as you call it?”

“That’d feague you, huh? He’s not. Auk won’t work for anybody else, and he’s too peppery for my trade anyhow. I wasn’t a thief either. I was a hoppy. You believe that?”

“If you say it’s true, absolutely. May I ask why you left the Calde’s Guard?”

“They callin’ it that again? That’s what it was when I went in, then they changed it. They kicked me out. Let’s not talk about why.”

Remora, who had caught up with them and overheard much of their conversation, muttered, “No, ah, never. Only shriving, hey? There — um — solely.”

“I won’t ask,” Maytera Mint promised.

“Pulled off my stripes and put them on my back. I could show you the scars. Cull called Desmid brought me in. He’s cold. I been catchin’ spies for Viron twenty-two years now. I don’t know how many I’ve nabbed or helped nab, thirty or forty. Could be more, and there’s a lot we don’t want to nab but could anytime we wanted to. I’m tellin’ you ’cause of what I want my end of our bet to be. I’m stickin’ with Councillor Potto, see? Twenty-two years I been workin’ for him, and he took me when I didn’t have two bits or a padken. I’m his man, always will be.”

“In that case, let us hope a peace can be arranged that will permit Councillor Potto to retain his seat.”

Spider nodded. “Sure thing. All right, let’s talk about this bet. First off, these three questions. Suppose you were to ask me who my boys are, the ones you think’s yours. I can’t tell you names. You see that? I won’t lie to you, General, but I won’t tell, either.”

“I understand. I won’t ask you to betray your friends.”

“All right, here’s what I want. If your side wins and you get loose, you don’t nab me and my knot for spyin’ on you, or for holdin’ you like we’re doin’.”

Maytera Mint started to speak, but Spider raised his hand. “That’s not all. You let us keep doin’ what we been doin’ for Viron. You’re goin’ to need us worse than you think. If you do that, I’ll tell what’s gone on before, and give you the files.”

“I can’t. I would accept that bet if I could, cheerfully and without hesitation. But those are matters for the calde and the new Ayuntamiento, not for me.”

“The, um, terms. He, er, designated? Specified yourself General. Not the — ah — reconstituted Ayuntarniento or the calde, hey?”

“But he means our side. The calde, Generalissimo Oosik, and even the Trivigauntis. Don’t you, Spider? For myself, I would give you my word, as I said. In fact, I do, whether I win or lose. But I cannot bind the calde and an Ayuntamiento that does not yet exist.”

“But you’ll promise, General? Personally?”

“Absolutely. I have and I do.”

Spider indicated Remora with a jerk of his thumb. “Have him flash that gaud. Pas’s cross. You can swear on that.”

“If you wish. Will you allow me my three questions, when I win? Full, honest answers?”

“Sure thing. I’ll swear too, if you want.”

“Then it won’t be necessary.”

Remora had produced his gammadion; Maytera Mint laid her hand upon it. “I, General Mint of the Horde of Viron, called by some the rebel or insurgent forces, I who am also Maytera Mint of the Sun Street mantelon, do hereby swear that should we prevail I will not punish nor attempt to punish this man Spider and his subordinates for their activities in collecting intelligence for the Ayuntamiento as presently constituted. I further swear that I will do everything I can to prevent others from so punishing them, short of force. In addition, I will actively support their being retained in their function, that is to say the counterintelligence function, in which they have served our city faithfully. I will do these things whether I win my wager with Spider or lose it.”

She drew breath. “Is that satisfactory?”

“Ought to cover it.”

“Great Pas, bear witness! Ophidian Echidna, whose sword I am, bear witness! Scintillating Scylla, Patroness of Our Holy City of Viron, bear witness!”

“Good enough.” Spider held out his hand. “Have we got a bet? Shake on it.” Solemnly they shook hands, her own small hand enveloped in a thickly muscled one twice its size.

“All right, I’ll tell you right now I got a lock. We’re almost there.” He gestured. “See that side tunnel up ahead? We go in there, and the old guardroom’s only four, five steps. If they were cold, we’d have made them before this.”

She shook her head. “To the contrary, though I wish you were correct. They would have heard our voices and called out.”

A hundred steps brought them to the side tunnel’s entrance. As soon as they turned into it, she caught sight of a man’s feet protruding from a doorway. “That will be Guan,” she murmured.

Spider stopped her, spreading his arms to hold Remora back as well. “That’s Hyrax. I always twig a cully’s shoes, or a mort’s either. Shoes tell more than any kind of kick. A lot know it, but that don’t stop it from bein’ true.”

“Wasn’t the other man with Hyrax, Spider? Where is he?”

“In there.” Spider’s breath rasped in his throat. “Just out of sight, most likely. You don’t shoot a cull soon as you see him through the door, not if he’s comin’ in. You let him get inside. That way you got two tries if he beats hoof.”

He turned to Remora. “You first, Patera. Pull out Pas’s cross and have it where they can see, and hold your hands up. You’re a augur in a robe, not holdin’ a slug gun or anything. They won’t shoot you, or I don’t think they will. Tell them I got the general. Leave us be, or she’s cold.”

Remora looked stricken.

“You wanted to die down here, didn’t you? This’s your chance. Go on before I shoot you myself. They won’t.”

“They must know we’re out here,” Maytera Mint said. “They will have heard us. If not before, they will certainly have heard that.” Spider did not reply; his eyes were on Remora.

“I, er, shall.” Remora backed away, raised his hands, and turned toward the doorway.

“Pas’s gammadion,” Maytera Mint prompted him. “Take it out so they can see it.”

If Remora heard her advice, he ignored it. She watched him pause at the threshold, then step through. There was no shot.

“They used to have soldiers down here awake and ready to go if there was trouble,” Spider told her. His hoarse voice was close to a whisper. “That was before the Guard. That’s what Councillor Potto told me one time, and he ought to know.”

They stood side-by-side in silence after that. There was no sound from the guardroom, no sound from any source save the almost inaudible sigh of the cool wind that filled the tunnel.

At length Spider said, “I should of told him to take a look around in there. I guess he’s doin’ it anyhow.”

“I’m going too.” Maytera Mint started toward the doorway.

“Hornbuss!” Spider caught her arm. “You’re goin’ to do what I say, and I say you can’t.”

“Your Eminence!” she called. “Are you all right?”

For a few seconds her words echoed hollowly from the gray walls, and she felt certain that she and Spider were the only living people within earshot. Then Remora stepped out of the doorway, avoiding the dead man. He held out a bottle of thick, mottled glass. “Water, Maytera! General. Ah — potable. Um, pure, in so far as I can, um, gauge its qualities.”

Spider snapped, “Nobody in there?”

“Not — ah — dead men. Two, in addition to the one you, um, observe in the entrance. Shot with slug guns, I — ah — or, um, both with a single such gun. Quite possibly. Our, ah, companions, oh? Yesterday, likewise earlier. One the, um—”

“Guan.”

“Er, yes. Ah — the name you gave. Furnished? Supplied.” Having come near enough, Remora handed the bottle to Maytera Mint. “He dropped this, I fancy, General. So it appeared, oh? When he — um — attained life’s culmination. Some spilt, eh?”

She was drinking and did not trouble to reply. The water was cool and clean and tasted fresh and unspeakably delicious. All her life she had been taught that Surging Scylla, the water goddess, was first among the Seven; she had not realized either how true or how important that insight was until this moment.