important) and the peculiar teardrop shape that was the cross section of a wing that could fly.
There were steps in the hall outside, and Silk held his breath. Crane had told him to unbar the door only to three quick taps, but it did not matter. The Guard would come, would search this inn and every other inn, beyond question, as soon as the Ayuntamiento chose a new Presiding Officer and that Presiding Officer decided there was a chance that he and Crane (and even poor Mamelta, for the new Presiding Officer could not be sure that Mamelta was dead either) might have survived. Crane had defended the cost of this room in the best inn in Limna by saying that the Guard would be less ready to disturb them if they appeared rich; but spurred by urgent orders from the Ayuntamiento, the Guard would not hesitate to disturb anyone, no matter how rich.
The steps faded away and were gone.
Silk had sat up and pulled off his new red tunic before he fully realized that he had resolved to shave. Rising, he jerked the bellpull vigorously and was rewarded by a distant drumroll on the stairs. Two days' beard might disguise him, but it would also mark him as someone requiring a disguise, and the Outsider could not reasonably object to his shaving, something that he did every day. If he were arrested, well and good. There would be no further rioting and loss of life; and he would be arrested as himself-as Silk, the man others called calde, and not as some skulking fugitive.
'Soap, towels, and a basin of hot water,' he told the deferential maid who answered his ring. 'I'm going to get rid of all this right now.' She had brought the aroma of the kitchen with her, and one whiff of it woke his hunger. 'I'll have a sandwich or something, too. Whatever you can prepare quickly. Mate or tea. Put everything on our bill.'
Crane had rung for more towels and fresh shaving water as soon as he bustled in. 'I'll bet you thought I'd deserted you,' he said as he arranged them on the washstand.
Silk shook his head and, finding the action practically painless, fingered the lump left by Potto's fist. 'If you hadn't returned, I'd have known you were under arrest. Do you intend to shave off your beard? I hope you don't mind my borrowing your razor.'
'No, not a bit.' Crane eyed himself in the luxuriously large mirror. 'I think I'd better whack away the best part of it, anyhow.'
'Most men in your position would have shaved first and sent their report afterward. Do you think those fishermen who rescued us will tell the Guard, if they're questioned?'
'Uh-huh.' Crane slipped out of his tunic.
'Then the Guard will know enough to look for us here, in Limna.'
'They'd look here anyhow. This is the most likely spot, if we lived.'
'I suppose so. You gave those fishermen a card? A card must be a great deal of money to a fisherman.'
'They saved our lives. Besides, the captain will go to Viron to buy something, and his sailors will get drunk. If they're drunk enough, they won't be questioned.'
Silk nodded again, knowing that Crane could see him in the mirror. 'I can't tell you how surprised I was to find that the driver who had taken me home from Blood's was one of the crew. He's become a fisherman, it seems.' Crane turned to stare at Silk, his face lathered and the razor in his hand. 'I keep underestimating you. Every time I do, I tell myself that's the last time.' He waited for a reply, then turned back to the mirror. 'Thanks for keeping it to yourself until we were alone.'
'I thought he seemed familiar, but we were in the harbor before I placed him. He tried to keep his face turned away from me, and it gave me a good view of the back of his head; and that had been what I'd seen, mostly, when he took me to my manteion. I'd been sitting behind him.'
Crane dabbed at one sidebum with the razor. 'Then you knew.'
'I didn't really understand until just now, when I was thinking about what a good spy you are-how valuable you must be to your city.'
Crane chuckled. 'We're soaping each other's beards, it seems.'
'I didn't really understand about the fishing boat until we changed clothes in that alley,' Silk told him. 'Before that I was simply mystified; but someone aboard that fishing boat, the captain or more plausibly the driver who had taken me home, had given you several cards.' 'You saw there was no money belt. I've been kicking myself ever since and hoping you hadn't noticed.'
'When Chenille told you about that commissioner...'
'Simuliid.'
'Yes, Simuliid. When Chenille told you he'd gone to the lake to meet with members of the Ayuntamiento, you came here yourself to investigate. I know you did, because I spoke to a young couple you befriended. If you didn't have somebody here already, you decided then that you should have someone all the time; and you hired the captain and his boat. I'd imagine they were to keep an eye on the Pilgrims' Way. The path runs along the edge of the cliffs in places, and anyone on it could be seen easily from a boat on that part of the lake. I won't inform on him or you now, of course; yet I'm curious. Is the captain Vironese?'
'Yes,' Crane told him. 'Not that it matters.'
'You're not shaving. I didn't intend to interrupt you.'
Crane turned to face him again. 'I'd rather give you my complete attention. I hope you realize I've been working for you as well as for my city. Working to put you in power because it might head off a war.'
'I don't want power,' Silk told him, 'but it would be iniquitous not to thank you for everything you've done- for saving my life, too, when it would have been safer for you to have left me in the water.'
'If you really feel like that, are you willing to formalize our alliance? Viron's Ayuntamiento's going to kill us if it gets hold of us again. I'm a spy, and you've become a major threat to its power. You realize that, don't you?'
Reluctantly, Silk nodded. 'Then we'd better stand back to back, or we'll lie side by side. Tell me everything you know, and I'll tell you anything else you want to know. My word on it. You've got no particular reason to trust it, but it's better than you think. What do you say?'
'It's hardly fair to you, Doctor. The things that I've guessed will be of no particular value to you; but you may have information that will be extremely valuable to me.'
'There's more. You do everything you can to see to it that my people and I aren't picked up, and to free us if we are. I promise we'll do nothing to injure your city. You realize, don't you, that you may have to run if you want to keep breathing? If we can't make you calde, we'll at least give you a place to go. Not because we're overflowing with kindness, but because you'll be a focus for discontent as long as you're alive. You need us now, and you may need us a lot-more in a few days.'
'You'll answer all my questions openly and honestly?'
'I said so, didn't I? Yes. You've got my word on all of it. We'll put you in power if we can, and you'll keep the peace when we do and not go after us. Now I want your word. Have I got it?'
Slowly, Silk nodded. He extended his hand. Crane laid aside his razor, and he and Silk joined hands.
'Now tell me what you learned about my operation.'
'Very little, really. Hyacinth's working for you, of course. Isn't she?'
Crane nodded.
'That's why I'm doing this.' Silk had taken his beads from his pocket; he pulled them through his fingers as he spoke. 'Turning against my city, I mean. That burst vein in my brain-I don't feel up to arguing with you about it, you see. Not yet, because it might make us enemies again. It wants me to save the manteion, and so I must if I can; but I myself want to save Hyacinth. You must think that's foolish, too.'
'I'm trying to save her myself,' Crane told him. 'And the men on the fishing boat who saved us both from drowning. All of them are my people. I feel responsible for them. By Tartaros, I am responsible for them. If it wasn't for that, I'd have told you about the boat when we picked you up. But what if you were caught and talked? Those three men would be killed, and they're mine.'
Silk nodded again. 'I feel like that about the people who come to sacrifice at our manteion. You would proba- bly say that they're only porters and thieves and washer-women, but they are our manteion, really. The buildings and even our Sacred Window could be replaced, just as I could; they can't.' He stood and went to the window.
'As I said, Doctor, I was thinking about how important you were, and how silly I'd been not to realize it earlier. You must be fifty at least.'
