With his cup, Quetzal gestured toward the nearest window. 'We
suffer a change in weather, Patera.'
'An, um, profound one, Your Cognizance.'
'We must acclimate ourselves to it. That's why I asked if young
Incus swam. If you can reach him, tell him to strike out boldly. Have
I made myself clear?'
Remora nodded again. 'I will, um, strive to render the Chapter's
wholehearted endorsement of an--ah--lawful and holy government
apparent, Your Cognizance.'
'Then go. Compose that letter.'
'If the Alambrera doesn't--ah--hey?'
There was no indication that Quetzal had heard. Remora left his
chair and backed away, at length closing the door behind him.
Quetzal rose, and an observer (had there been one) might have
been more than a little surprised to see that shrunken figure grown
so tall. As if on wheels, he glided across the room and threw open
the broad casement that overlooked his garden. admitting pounding
rain and a gust of wind that made his mulberry robe stand out
behind him like a banner.
For some while he remained before the window, motionless,
cosmetics streaming from his face in rivulets of pink and buff, while
he contemplated the tamarind he had caused to be planted there
twenty years previously. It was taller already than many buildings
called lofty; its glossy, rain-washed leaves brushed the windowframe
and now even, by the width of a child's hand, sidled into his
bedchamber like so many timid sibyls, confident of welcome yet
habitually shy. Their parent tree, nourished by his own efforts, was
of more than sufficient size now, and a fount of joy to him: a
sheltering presence, a memorial of home, the highroad to freedom.
Quetzal crossed the room and barred the door, then threw off his
sodden robe. Even in this downpour the tree was safer, though he
could fly.
The looming presence of the cliff slid over Auk as he sat in the bow,
and with it a final whistling gust of icy rain. He glanced up at the
beetling rock, then trained his needler on the augur standing to the
halyard. 'This time you didn't try anything. See how flash you're
getting?' The storm had broken at shadeup and showed no signs of
slackening.
Chenille snapped, 'Steer for that,' and pointed. Chill tricklings
from her limp crimson hair merged into a rivulet between her full
breasts to flood her naked loins.
At the tiller, the old fisherman touched his cap. 'Aye, aye,
Scaldin' Scylla.'
They had left Limna on Molpsday night. From shadeup to
shadelow, the sun had been a torrent of white fire across a dazzling
sky; the wind, fair and strong at morning, had veered and died away
to a breeze, to an occasional puff, and by the time the market
closed, to nothing. Most of that afternoon Auk had spent in the
shadow of the sail, Chenille beneath the shelter of the half deck; he
and she, like the augur, had gotten badly sunburned just the same.
Night had brought a new wind, foul for their destination.
Directed by the old fisherman and commanded to hold ever closer
by the major goddess possessing Chenille, they had tacked and
tacked and tacked again, Auk and the augur bailing frantically on
every reach and often sick, the boat heeling until it seemed the
gunnel must go under, a lantern swinging crazily from the masthead
and crashing into the mast each time they went about, going out half
a dozen times and leaving the three weary men below in deadly fear
of ramming or being rammed in the dark.
Once the augur had attempted to snatch Auk's needler from his
waistband. Auk had beaten and kicked him, and thrown him over
the side into the churning waters of the lake, from which the old
fisherman had by a miracle of resource and luck rescued him with a
boathook. Shadeup had brought a third wind, this out of the
southeast, a storm-wind driving sheet after gray sheet of slanting
rain before it with a lash of lightning.
'Down sail!' Chenille shrieked. 'Loose that, you idiot! Drop the
yard!'
The augur hurned to obey; he was perhaps ten years senior to
Auk, with protruding teeth and small, soft hands that had begun to
bleed almost before they had left Limna.
After the yard had crashed down, Auk turned in his seat to peer
forward at their destination, seeing nothing but rainwet stone and
evoking indignant squawks from the meager protection of his legs.
'Come on out,' he told Silk's bird. 'We're under a cliff here.'
'No out!'
Dry by comparison though the foot of the cliff was, and shielded
from the wind, it seemed colder than the open lake, reminding Auk
forcibly that the new summer tunic he had worn to Limna was
soaked, his baggy trousers soaked too, and his greased riding boots
full of water.
The narrow inlet up which they glided became narrower yet,
damp black rock to left and right rising fifty cubits or more above
the masthead. Here and there a freshet, born of the storm,
descended in a slender line of silver to plash noisily into the quiet
water. The cliffs united overhead, and the iron mast-cap scraped stone.
'She'll go,' Chenille told the old fisherman confidently. 'The
ceiling's higher farther in.'
'I'd 'preciate ter raise up that mains'l ag'in, ma'am,' the old
fisherman remarked almost conversationally, 'an' undo them reefs.
It'll rot if it don't dry.'
Chenille ignored him; Auk gestured toward the sail and stood to
the halyard with the augur, eager for any exercise that might warm
him.
Oreb hopped onto the gunnel to look about and fluff his damp
feathers. 'Bird wet!' They were gliding past impressive tanks of
white-painted metal, their way nearly spent.
'A _Sacred Window!_ It _is!_ There's a Window and an altar
