You can look, but don't touch.'
Although pain prevented Auk from enjoying the joke, he managed,
'Not till I pay, huh?'
She grinned wickedly, making him feel better. 'Maybe not even
then. Listen here, Patera. You too, Stony. Can I tell all of you what
I've been thinking?'
'Smart girl!' Oreb assured them.
Incus nodded; Auk shrugged and said, 'I'm not getting up for a
while yet. C'mere, bird.'
Oreb hopped onto his shoulder. 'Bad hole!'
Chenille nodded. 'He's right. We heard some real funny noises
while I was back there looking for something to shoot, and there's
probably more soldiers farther on. There's more lights up that way
too though, and that might help.'
Hammerstone said, 'Not if we want to dodge their patrols.'
'I guess not. But the thing is, Oreb could say what he did about
anyplace down here, and he wouldn't be wrong. Auk, what I was
going to tell you is I used to have a cute little dagger that I strapped
onto my leg. It had a blade about as long as my foot, and I thought it
was just right. I thought your knife or your needler or whatever
should fit you, like shoes. You know what I'm saying?'
He did not, but he nodded nevertheless.
'Remember when I was Scylla?'
'It's whether you remember. That's what I want to know.'
'I do a little bit. I remember being Kypris, too, maybe a little
better. You didn't know about that, did you, Patera? I was. I was
them, but underneath I was still me. I think it's like a donkey feels
when somebody rides him. He's still him, Snail or whatever his
name is, but he's you, too, going where you want to and doing what
you want to do. And ifhe doesn't want to, he gets kicked till he does
it anyhow.'
Oreb cocked his head sympathetically. 'Poor girl!'
'So pretty soon he gives up. Kick him and he goes, pull up and
he stops, not paying a lot of attention either way. It was like that
with me. I wanted rust really bad, and I kept thinking about it
and how shaggy tired I was. And all at once it was like I'd been
dreaming. I was in a manteion in Limna, then up on an altar in a
cave and fit for sod. And I didn't remember anything. or if I did I
wouldn't think about it. But when I was bumping out to the
shrine, up on those high rocks, stuff started coming back. About
being Kypris, I mean.'
Incus sighed. '_Scylla_ mentioned it, my daughter, so I did know.
Sharing your _body_ with the _goddess of love!_ How I _envy_ you!
It must have been _wonderful!_'
'I guess it was. It wasn't nice. It wasn't fun at all. But the more I
think, the more I think it really was wonderful in a abram sort of
way. I'm not exactly like I used to be, either. I think when they left,
the goddesses must have left some crumbs behind, and maybe they
took some with them, too.'
She picked up the launcher, running her fingers along the pins
protruding from its magazine. 'What I started to say was that after
the talus got hit I saw I'd been wrong about things fitting, my dagger
and all that. This stuff isn't really like shoes at all. The smaller
somebody is, the bigger a shiv she needs. Scylla left that behind, I
think, or maybe something I could use to see it myself.
'Anyway, Auk here plucks a dimber needler, but I doubt he
needs it much. If I lived the way he does, and I chose to do, I'd need
it just about every day. So I found this launcher gun, and it's bigger.
It was empty, but I found another one with the barrel flat where the
talus had gone over it, and it was full. Stony showed me how you
load and unload them.'
Auk said, 'I think I'll get something myself, a slug gun, anyhow.
There's probably a bunch of 'em lying around.'
Incus shook his head and reached for Auk's waist. 'You'd better
allow me to take your needler this time, my son.'
At once Auk's arms were pinned from behind by a grip that was
quite literally of steel.
With evident distaste, Incus lifted the front of Auk's tunic and
took his needler from his waistband. 'This wouldn't harm Corporal
Hammerstone, but it would _kill_ me, I suppose.' He gave Auk a
toothy smile. 'Or _you_, my son.'
'No shoot,' Oreb muttered; it was a moment or two before Auk
understood that he was addressing Chenille.
'If you see him with a _slug gun_, Corporal, you're to take it from
him and break it _immediately_. A slug gun or any other such
weapon.'
'_Ahoy! Ahoy there!_' The old fisherman was shouting and waving,
silhouetted by orange flames from the burning talus. '_He says he's
dyin'! Wants to talk to us!_'
Silk lifted himself until he could sit almost comfortably upon the
turret, then waved both hands. His face was smeared with the mud
of the storm, mud that was cracking and falling away now; the gaudy
tunic that Doctor Crane had brought him in Limna was daubed with
mud as well, and he wondered how many of those who waved and
cheered and jumped and shouted around the floater actually
recognized him.
_SILK FOR CALDE!_
_SILK FOR CALDE!_
Was there really to be a calde again, and was this new calde to be
himself? Calde was a title that his mother had mentioned occasionally,
a carved head in her closet.
He looked up Sun Street, then stared. That was, surely, the
silver-gray of a Sacred Window, nearly lost in the bright sunshine--a
Window in the middle of the street.
The wind carried the familiar odor of sacrifice--cedar smoke,
burning fat, burning hair, and burning feathers, the mixture stronger
than that of hot metal, hot fish-oil, and hot dust that wrapped
the floater. Before the silver shimmer of the Window, a black sleeve
