Musk moaned. His tunic was smoking; his eyes seemed ready to
start from their sockets.
An old woman tittered.
Surprised, Silk looked for her and from her death's-head grin
knew who watched through her eyes. 'Go home, Mucor.'
The old woman tittered again.
'Divine Echidna!' Maytera Marble concluded. 'By fire set us free.'
'Release him, Echidna,' Silk snapped.
Musk's silk tunic was burning; so were Maytera Marble's sleeves.
'Release him!'
The perverse self-forged discipline of the Orilla broke at last;
Musk screamed and continued to scream, each pause and gasp
followed by a scream weaker and more terrible. To Silk, tugging
futilely at Maytera Marble's relentless arms, those screams seemed
the creakings of the wings of death, of the black wings of High
Hierax as he flapped down the whorl from Mainframe at the East
Pole.
Musk's needler spoke twice, so rapidly it seemed almost to
stammer. Its needles scarred Maytera Marble's cheek and chin, and
fled whimpering into the sky.
'Don't,' Silk told Villus. 'You might hit me. It won't do any good.'
Villus started, then stared down in astonishment at the dusty
black viper that had fastened upon his ankle.
'Don't run,' Silk told him, and turned to come to his aid,
thereby saving himself. A larger viper pushed its blunt head from
Maytera Marble's collar to strike at his neck, missing by two
fingers' width.
He jerked the first viper off Villus's ankle and flung it to one side,
crouching to mark the punctures made by its fangs with the sign of
addition, executed in shallow incisions with the point of the
sacrificial knife. 'Lie down and stay quiet,' he told Villus. When
Villus did, he applied his lips to the bleeding crosses.
Musk's screams ceased, and Maytera Marble faced them, her
blazing habit slipping from her narrow shoulders; in each hand she
brandished a viper. 'I have summoned these children to me from the
alleys and gardens of this treacherous city. Do you not know who I am?'
The familiarity of her voice left Silk feeling that he had gone mad.
He spat a mouthful of blood.
'The boy is mine. I claim him. Give him to me.'
Silk spat a second time and picked up Villus, cradling him in his
arms. 'None but the most flawless may be offered to the gods. This
boy has been bitten by a poisonous snake and so is clearly
unsuitable.'
Twice Maytera Marble waved a viper before her face as if
whisking away a fly. 'Are you to judge that? Or am I?' Her burning
habit fell to her feet.
Silk held out Villus. 'Tell me why Pas is angry with us, O Great Echidna.'
She reached for him, saw the viper she held as if for the first time,
and raised it again. 'Pas is dead and you a fool. Give me Auk.'
'This boy's name is Villus,' Silk told her. 'Auk was a boy like this
about twenty years ago, I suppose.' When she said nothing more, he
added, 'I knew you gods could possess bios like us. I didn't know
you could possess chems as well.'
Echidna whisked the writhing viper before her face. 'They are
easier what mean these numbers? Why should we let you...? My
husband...'
'Did Pas possess someone who died?'
Her head swiveled toward the Sacred Window. 'The prime
calcula... His citadel.'
'Get away from that fire,' Silk told her, but it was too late. Her
knees would no longer support her; she crumpled onto her burning
habit, seeming to shrink as she fell.
He laid Villus down and drew Hyacinth's needler. His first shot
took a viper behind the head, and he congratulated himself; but the
other escaped, lost in the scorching yellow dust of Sun Street.
'You're to forget everything you just overheard,' he told Villus as
he dropped Hyacinth's needler back into his pocket.
'I didn't understand anyway, Patera.' Villus was sitting up, hands
tight around his bitten leg.
'That's well.' Silk pulled her burning habit from under Maytera
Marble.
The old woman tittered. 'I could kill you, Silk.' She was holding
the needler that had been Musk's much as Villus had, and aiming it
at Silk's chest. 'There's councillors at our house now. They'd like that.'
The toothless old man slapped the needler from her hand with his
dripping slab of raw beef, saying sharply, 'Don't, Mucor!' He put his
foot on the needler.
As Silk stared, he fished a gammadion blazing with gems from
beneath his threadbare brown tunic. 'I ought to have made my
presence known earlier, Patera, but I'd hoped to do it in private.
I'm an augur too, as you see. I'm Patera Quetzal.'
Auk stopped and looked back at the last of the bleared green lights.
It was like leaving the city, he thought. You hated it--hated its nasty
ugly ways, its noise and smoke and most of all its shaggy shitty itch
for gelt, gelt for this and gelt for that until a man couldn't fart
without paying. But when you rode away from it with the dark
closing in on you and skylands you never noticed much in the city
sort of floating around up there, you missed it right away and pulled
up to look back at it from just about any place you could. All those
tiny lights so far away, looking just like the lowest skylands after the
market closed, over where it was night already.
From the black darkness ahead, Dace called, 'You comin'?'
'Yeah. Don't get the wind up, old man.'
He still held the arrow someone had shot at Chenille; its shaft was
bone, not wood. A couple long strips of bone, Auk decided,
running his fingers along it for the tenth or twelfth time, scarfed and
glued together, most likely strips from the shin bone of a big animal
or maybe even a big man. The nock end was fletched with feathers
