'I brought it,' Blood admitted. He fished a folded paper from an
inner pocket of his tunic.
'Good. My manteion, for three cards.'
Blood crossed the room to an inlaid escritoire; after a time,
Mucor stood as well, her mouth working silently as though she were
pronouncing the labored scratchings of Blood's pen.
'I'm not much of a scholar,' he said at length, 'but here you are,
Patera. I had to sign for Musk, but it should be all right. I've got his
power of advocacy.'
The ink was not yet dry; Silk waved the deed gently as he read.
'Fine.' He took three of Remora's cards from his pocket and handed
them to Blood.
'You're to do everything in your power to end the fighting
without further loss of life,' he told Blood, 'and so am I. If I'm calde
when it's over, as you obviously expect, you will be prosecuted for
any crimes you may have committed, in accordance with the law.
No unfair advantage will be taken beyond that which I just took.
That's a large concession, but I make it. I warn you, however, that
nothing that you may have done will be overlooked, either. If you're
found guilty on any charge, as I expect that you will be, I'll ask the
court to take into consideration whatever assistance you've rendered
our city in this time of crisis. Am I making myself clear?'
Blood glowered. 'You extorted that property from me. You took
it under false pretences.'
'I did.' Silk nodded agreement. 'I committed a crime to right the
wrong done to the people of our quarter by an earlier one. Why
should men like you be free to do whatever you wish whenever you
wish, guaranteed that you yourself will never be victimized? You
may, if you choose, complain about what I've done when peace has
been restored. You have a witness in the person of your mother.'
He gave the lynx a last pat before pushing him away. 'I wouldn't
advise you to call your adopted daughter, however. She's not
competent to testify, and she might tell the court about the nativity
of her pets.'
'You had better not ask me to testify, either, Bloody,' Maytera
Marble told him. 'I'd have to tell the judge that you tried to bribe
our calde.'
'They're coming,' Mucor announced to Silk. 'Councilior Loris has
finished talking to Councillor Tarsier through the glass. They've
decided to kill you and send your body back with the woman that
killed Musk.'
Silk froze, his eyes on Blood.
Oreb squawked, 'Watch out!'
Instinctively, Maytera Marble reached out to her son, a plea for
forgiveness and understanding.
His grip on the azoth tightened, and the shimmering horror that
was its blade divided the cosmos, leaving Maytera Marble on one
side and the hand she had held out to him on the other. It dropped
to the carpet as the hideous discontinuity swung up, showering them
with plaster and sundered lath. Silk shouted a warning; absurdly, he
tried to shield her from Blood's downward cut with Xiphias's cane.
Its thin wooden casing exploded in blazing splinters; but the
azoth's blade sprang back from the double-edged steel blade the
casing had concealed, having notched it to the spine.
It seemed to Silk then that his arm moved of itself--that he
merely watched it, a spectator fully as horrified as she, and fully as
separated from his arm's acts. As the door flew in with a crash, that
arm swung the ruined blade.
From behind Sergeant Sand and a second soldier equally soldier
large, Potto barked, '_Shoot him?_'
The notched blade slid forward, penetrating Blood's throat as
readily as the manteion's old bone-handled sacrificial knife had ever
entered that of a ram.
'Shoot the calde?' Sand's hand caught the other soldier's slug gun.
Blood's knees buckled as the light left his eyes. The double-edged
blade, scarlet to within a hand's breadth of the notch with Blood's
own blood, retreated from his throat.
'Yes, the calde!'
For a moment it seemed to Silk that Maytera Marble should have
knelt to catch Blood's blood; perhaps it seemed so to her as well, for
she crouched, her remaining hand extended to her son as he fell.
Silk turned, the sword still in his hand. Sand's slug gun was no
longer pointed at him, if it had ever been. Sand fired, and the
second soldier a fraction of a second after him. Potto fell, his
cheerful face slack with surprise.
'Take this, Patera.' Maytera Marble was pressing Blood's azoth
into his free hand. 'Take it before I kill you with it.'
He did, and she took Xiphias's ruined sword from him, and with
its crook wedged between her small black shoes, contrived to wipe
its blade with a big handkerchief that she shook from her sleeve.
There was a clash of heels and a crash of weapons as Sand and the
second soldier saluted. Soldiers and men in silvered armor peering
around them began to salute as well. Silk nodded in response, and
when that seemed inadequate traced the sign of addition the air.
Epilogue
It had been hastily erected, Calde Silk reflected, studying the
triumphal arch that spanned the Alameda--very hastily. But surely
this new generalissimo from Trivigaunte would understand the
situation, would realize the difficulties they had labored under in
organizing a formal welcome in a city still at war with what remained
of its Ayuntamiento, and make allowances.
Now, this wind.
It stirred yellow dust from the gutters, whistled among the
chimneys, and shook the ramshackle arch until it trembled like an
aspen. Flowers covering the arch would have been nice, but that
