'Yes, sir. Them, too. Next time you go sailin', you take a sailor. Let's hope we can find your woman.'
The thought of the great fish filled Silk's mind, and he shuddered. 'It's good of you to look, but I'm afraid . . .'
'Couldn't reach her, Patera?'
'No, but- No.'
'Well, we'll haul her out if we see her.'
Silk stood; at once the rolling of the boat cost him his footing, and he found himself sitting on piled nets.
'Stay where you are and rest,' Crane muttered. 'You've been through a lot. So've I. But we've gotten a thorough washing, and that's good. Lots of isotopes released when a chem blows.' He held up a gleaming card. 'Captain, could you find us something to eat? Or a little wine?'
'Let me put her about, sir, and I'll see what's left.'
'Money belt,' Crane whispered, noticing Silk's puzzled look. 'Lemur made me turn out my pockets but never patted me down. I promised them a card to take us back to Limna.'
'That poor woman,' Silk said to no one in particular, 'three hundred years, for that.' A black bird was perched in the rigging of a distant boat; seeing it, Silk recalled Oreb, smiled, and reproached himself for smiling.
Guiltily he glanced about him, hoping that his unseemly levity had passed unnoticed. Crane was watching the captain, and the captain, the largest sail. One sailor stood in the bow with a foot upon the bowsprit. The other, grasping a rope connected to the long stick (Silk could not recall its name, if he had ever known it) that spread the sail, appeared to be waiting for a signal from the captain-the back of his head seemed uncannily familiar. As Silk altered his position to get a better view of it, he realized that the nets on which he sat were dry.
Crane had bought Silk a red tunic, brown trousers, and brown shoes to replace the black ones he had kicked off in the lake. He changed in a deserted alley, throwing his robe, his torn tunic, and his old trousers behind a pile of refuse. 'I got Hyacinth's needler back,' he said, 'and my gammadion and my beads; but not my glasses or any of my other possessions. Perhaps that's a sign.'
Crane shrugged. 'They were probably in Lemur's pocket.' He had a new tunic and new trousers, too, and he had bought a razor. Glancing toward the mouth of the alley, he added, 'Keep your voice down.'
'What did you see?'
'Couple of Guardsmen.'
'The Ayuntamiento will surely think we're dead,' Silk objected. 'Until they leam otherwise, we have no reason to fear the Guard.'
Crane shook his head.
'If they thought we might have survived, they could have come to the surface and looked for us, couldn't they?'
'Not without telling everybody on the lake abouttheir underwater boat. How do those fit?'
'They're a trifle large.' Silk looked down at himself, wishing that he had a mirror. 'Their boat must have come to the surface to collect poor lolar.'
'You're thin,' Crane told him. 'No, they sent up that little one we saw. They couldn't send it after us because that compartment down in the keel would've flooded again as soon as they undogged the hatch.'
'It flooded when we opened the one in the floor,' Silk murmured.
'That's right. I'd opened the air valve as far as it would go, but it hadn't had much time to build up pressure after you and the woman vented it coming down. Naturally a lot of water came in. It cut down the air space and pushed the pressure up to the water pressure, so the water flowed out again almost right away.'
Silk hesitated, then nodded. 'But if they open the upper hatch-the one in the corridor-the compartment will flood again, won't it?' 'Sure. Water would rise into the rest of the boat, too. Which is why they couldn't send their little boat after us. I can't imagine how they'll shut the boat door when they can't get into the compartment to do it, but no doubt they'll figure out something.'
Silk leaned against a wall and removed Crane's wrapping from his ankle. 'I'm not a sailor, but if it were up to me, I'd go far out in the lake, where there wasn't much chance of being seen-or perhaps into the cave Lemur mentioned when you asked how he had gotten your bag.'
'I wish I hadn't lost that.' Crane fingered his beard. 'I'd had it twenty years.'
Recalling his pen case, Silk said, 'I know how you must feel, Doctor.' He flogged the wall with the wrapping.
'Suppose they did go back into their cave. They'd still have the problem. That underwater boat's too big to drag up on shore.'
'But they could tilt it,' Silk said. 'Shift everything to one side and force all the water out of the floats on the other. They might even be able to pull it over with a cable attached to the side of the cave.'
Crane nodded, still watching the mouth of the alley. 'I suppose so. Are you ready?'
When Crane had gone, Silk opened the window. Their room was on the third floor of the Rusty Lantern, and provided a magnificent view of the lake, as well as a refreshing breeze. Leaning across the sill, Silk looked down into Dock Street. Crane had wanted to get out of sight, or so he had said; but he had called for pen and paper as soon as they had taken this room, and gone out into the street again, leaving Silk behind, after scribbling a not very lengthy note. Looking up and down Dock Street now, Silk decided that if it did no harm for Crane to go out again, it could surely do none for him to study the street from a window this high.
Limna was peaceful, the innkeeper had said; but there had been rioting in the city the night before, rioting put down harshly by the Guard. 'Silk's men,' the innkeeper had told them wisely. 'They're the ones stirring it up, if you ask me.'
Silk's men.
Who were they? Deep in thought, Silk stroked his cheek, feeling two days' beard beneath his fingertips. The men who had chalked up his name, no doubt. There were some in the quarter who would do that and more, beyond doubt, and even assert that they were acting under his direction. Not for the first time, it occurred to him that some of them might be the men who had knelt in Sun Street for his blessing when he had told Blood he had been enlightened-men so desperate that they would accept any leader who appeared to have the favor of the gods.
Even himself.
Two Guardsmen in mottled green conflict armor were coming up Dock Street with slug guns at the ready. They were showing themselves, clearly, in the hope that the sight of them by day would prevent disturbances tonight-would prevent men with clubs and stones, and hangers like Auk's and a few needlers, from fighting troopers in armor, armed with slug guns. For a moment Silk considered calling out to them, telling them that he was Patera Silk, and that he was ready to give himself up if that would end the fighting. The Ayuntamiento could hardly kill him without a trial if he surrendered publicly; it would have to try him, and even if he could not prove his innocence he would have the satisfaction of declaring it.
The manteion was not yet safe, however. He had promised to save it if he could, and it was in more danger than ever now. Musk had given him how long? A week? Yes, one week from Scylsday. But had Musk really been speaking for Blood as he had claimed, or for himself? Legally, the manteion was Musk's: to give himself up now would be to turn his manteion over to Musk.
Something deep in Silk's being recoiled at the thought. To Blood, perhaps, if it could not be helped. But never, surely never, to someone-to . . . Why, the very possibility had moved the Outsider to enlighten him in order to prevent it. He would kill Musk if-
If there was no other way, and he could bring himself to do it. He turned away from the window and stretched himself on his bed, recalling Councillor Lemur and the way Lemur had died. As Presiding Officer of the Ayuntamiento, Lemur had been calde, in fact if not in name; and Crane had killed him. It had been Crane's right to do that, perhaps, since Lemur had intended to execute Crane without a trial.
And yet a trial would have been a mere formality. Crane was a spy and had admitted it-a spy from Palustria. Had Crane then really had the right to kill Lemur? And did that matter?
Belatedly, it struck Silk that the note that Crane had written so hurriedly had almost certainly been a message to the government of his city-to the calde of Palustria, or whatever they called him. To the prince- president. Crane would have described the Ayuntamiento's underwater boat (Crane had considered it extremely
