something less than a year. The first had borne him three nimble, light-boned children, however, and the third, five as cheerful and active as crickets, of whom the younger girl was his favorite, tiny, laughing-eyed Dreoilin. 'I can see the wings of her,' he sometimes told her mother; and her mother, who could not, always happily agreed. He had been flying for eighteen years.
His increased speed had cost him altitude. He upped the thrust again and tried to climb, but the temperature of the air was falling a bit, and the air with it in the daylight downdraft of the big lake. There would be a corresponding updraft once he got over land again, and he resolved to take it as high as it would take him. He would need every cubit of altitude he could scrape up when he reached those distant thunderheads.
He did not see the eagle again until it was almost upon him, flying straight down, the enormous thrust of its wings driving it toward the land below far faster than any falling stone until, at the last possible split second, it folded its wings, spun in the air, and struck him with its talons, double blows like those of a giant's mailed fists.
Perhaps it stunned him for a moment. Certainly the wild whirl of earth and sky did not disorient him; he knew that his left wing was whole and sound, that the other was not, and that his PM did not respond. He suspected that he had half a dozen broken ribs and perhaps a broken spine as well, but he gave little attention to those. With a superb skill that would have left his peers openmouthed, could they have witnessed it, he turned his furious tumble into a controlled dive, jettisoned the PM and his instruments, and had halved his rate of descent before he hit the water.
'Did you see that splash!' Chenille rose from her seat in the holobit wagon as she spoke, shading her eyes against the sunglare from the water. 'There are some monster fish in the lake. Really huge. I remember-I haven't been out here since I was a little girl. . . . Or anyhow, I don't think I have.'
Nodding, Silk ducked from under the canopy to glance at the sun. Unveiled by clouds moving from east to west, that golden blaze streaking the sky was-he reminded himself again-the visible symbol of the Aureate Path, the course of moral probity and fitting worship that led Man to the gods. Had he strayed? He had felt no willingness in himself to offer Crane in sacrifice, though a goddess had suggested it.
And that, surely, was not what the gods expected from an anointed augur.
'Fish heads?' Oreb tugged at Silk's hair.
'Fish heads indeed,' he told the bird, 'and that is a solemn promise.'
Tonight he would help Auk rob Chenille's commissioner. Commissioners were rich and oppressive, battening upon the blood and sweat of the poor; no doubt this one could spare a few jewels and his silver service. Yet robbery was wrong at base, even when it served a greater good.
Though this was Molpsday, he murmured a final prayer to Sphigx as he returned his beads to his pocket. Sphigx above all would understand; Sphigx was half lioness, and lions had lo kill innocent creatures in order to eat-such was the inflexible decree of Pas, who had given to every creature save Man its proper food. As he completed the prayer, Silk bowed very slightly to the ferocious, benevolent face on the handle of Blood's walking stick.
'We used to come here to pick watercress,' Chenille said. 'Way over on that side of the lake. We'd start out before shadeup and walk here, Patera. I don't know how many times I've watched for the water at the first lifting. If I couldn't see it, I'd know we had a long way to go yet. We'd have paper, any kind of paper we could find, and we'd wet it good and wrap our watercress in it, then hurry back to the city to sell it before it wilted. Sometimes it did, and that was all we had to eat. I still won't eat it. I buy it, though, pretty often, from little girls in the market. Little girls like I was.'
'That's very good of you,' Silk told her, though he was already planning.
'Only there isn't much these days, because so many of the best cress creeks have gone dry. I never eat it anyway. Sometimes I feed it to the goats, you know? And sometimes I just throw it away. I wonder how many of the ladies that used to buy it from me did the same thing.'
The woman next to Silk said, 'I make sandwiches. Watercress and white cheese on rye bread. I wash it thoroughly first, though.'
Silk nodded and smiled.
'It makes a fine hot weather lunch.'
Speaking across Silk, Chenille asked her, 'Do you have friends here in Limna?'
'Relations,' the woman said^ 'My husband's mother lives out here. She thinks the pure air off the lake is good for her. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our relations could be our friends, too?'
'Oh, wouldn't it, though! We're looking for a friend. Doctor Crane? A small man, around fifty, rather dark? He has a little gray beard . . . ?'
'I don't know him,' the woman said grimly, 'but if he's a doctor and he lives in Limna, my mother-in-law does. I'll ask her.'
'He just bought a cottage here. So that he can get away from his practice, you know? My husband's helping him move in, and Patera's promised to bless it for him. Only I can't remember where it is.'
The man on her left said, 'You can ask at the Juzgado, on Shore Street. He'll have had to register the transfer of deed.'
'Is there a Juzgado here, too?' Chenille asked him. 'I thought that was just in the city.'
'Just a small one,' the man told her. 'Some local cases are tried there, and they hold a handful of petty prisoners. There's no Alambrera here-those with long sentences are sent back to Viron. And they take care of the tax rolls and property records.'
By this time the holobit wagon they rode was trundling along a narrow, crooked, cobbled street lined with tottering two- and three-storied wooden houses, all with high, peaked roofs and many a weathered silver-gray from lack of paint. Silk and Chenille, with the man who knew about the Juzgado and the woman who made watercress sandwiches, were on the landward side of the long wagon; but Silk, looking over his shoulder, could catch occasional glimpses of dirty water and high-pooped, single-masted fishing boats between the houses.
'I haven't been here since I was just a sprat myself,' he told Chenille. 'It's odd to think now that I fished here fifteen years ago. They don't use shiprock like we do, do they? Or mud brick, either.' The man on Chenille's left said, 'It's too easy to cut trees on the banks and float the logs to Limna.'
'I see. I hadn't considered that-although I should have, of course.'
'Not many people would,' the man said; he had opened his card case, and he extracted a pasteboard visiting card as he talked. 'May I give you this, Patera? Vulpes is my name. I'm an advocate, and I've got chambers here on Shore Street. Do you understand the procedure if you're arrested?'
Silk's eyebrows shot up. 'Arrested? Moipe defend us! I hope not.'
'So do I.' Vulpes lowered his voice until Silk could barely hear him above the street noises and the squeaking of the wagon's axels. 'So do we all, I think. But do you understand the procedure?'
Silk shook his head.
'If you give them the name and location of an advocate, they have to send for him-that's the law. If you can't give them a name and the location, however, you don't get one until your family finds out what's happened and engages somebody.'
'I see.'
'And, 'Vulpes leaned in front of Chenille and tapped Silk's knee to emphasize his point, 'if you're here in Limna, somebody with chambers in Viron won't do. It has to be somebody local. I've known them to wait, when they knew someone might be coming here soon, so as to make the arrest here for exactly that reason. I want you to put that in your pocket, Patera, so that you can show it to them if you have to. Vulpes, on Shore Street, right here in Limna, at the sign of the red fox.'
At the word fox, the wagon creaked to a stop, and the driver bawled, 'Everybody off! Rides back to Viron at four, six, and eight. You get 'em right here, but don't dare be late.'
Silk caught him by the sleeve as he was about to enter the barn. 'Will you tell me something about Limna, Driver? I'm not at all familiar with it.'
'The layout, you mean?' The driver pinched his nostrils thoughtfully. 'That's simple enough, Patera. It's not no great big place like Viron. The main thing you got to hang on to is where we are now, so you'll know where to go to catch your ride back. This here's Water Street, see? And right here's pretty close to the middle o' town. There's only three streets that amount to much-Dock, Water, and Shore. The whole town curls around the bay. It's shaped kind o' like a horseshoe, only not bent so much. You know what I'm tellin' you? The inside's Dock Street-
