Imagine Viron with neither. As for public observances, how do
you think Pas's murderers would react to our mourning him?'
'We--' Something tightened in Silk's throat. 'We, you and I,
Your Cognizance. Villus and Maytera Marble, all of us are--were
his children too. That is to say, he built the whorl for us. Ruled us
like a father. I...'
'What is it, Patera Calde?'
'I just remembered something, Your Cognizance. Kypris--you
must know there was a theophany of Kypris at our manteion on
Scylsday.'
'I've had a dozen reports. It's the talk of the city.'
'She said she was hunted, and I didn't understand. Now I believe I may.'
Quetzal nodded. 'I imagine she is. The wonder is that they
haven't been able to corner her in thirty years. She can't be a tenth
as strong as Pas was. But it can't be easy to kill even a minor goddess
who knows you're trying to. Not like killing a husband and father
who trusts you. Now you see why I've tried to prevent theophanies,
don't you, Patera Calde? If you don't, I'll never be able to make it
clear.'
'Yes, Your Cognizance. Of course. It's--horrible. Unspeakable.
But you were right. You are right.'
'I'm glad you realize it. You understand why we go on sacrificing
to Pas? We must. I've tried to downgrade him somewhat. Make him
seem more remote than he used to. I've emphasized Scylla at his
expense, but you're too young to have realized that. Older people
complain, sometimes.'
Silk said nothing, but stroked his cheek as he walked.
'You have questions, Patera Calde. Or you will have when you've
digested all this. Don't fear you may offend me. I'm at your disposal
whenever you want to question me.'
'I have two,' Silk told him. 'I hesitate to pose the first, which
verges upon blasphemy.'
'Many necessary questions do.' Quetzal cocked his head. 'This
isn't one, but do you hear horses?'
'Horses, Your Cognizance? No.'
'I must be imagining it. What are your questions?'
Silk walked on in silence for a few seconds to collect his thoughts.
At length he said, 'My original two questions have become three,
Your Cognizance. The first, for which I apologize in advance, is,
isn't it true that Echidna and the Seven love us just as Pas did? I've
always felt, somehow, that Pas loved them, while they love us; and
if that is so, will his death--terrible though it is--make a great deal
of difference to us?'
'You have a pet bird, Patera Calde. I've never seen it, but so I've
been told.'
'I had one, Your Cognizance, a night chough. I've lost him, I'm
afraid, although it may be that he's with a friend. I'm hoping he'll
return to me eventually.'
'You should have caged him, Patera Calde. Then you'd still have him.'
'I liked him too much for that, Your Cognizance.'
Quetzal's small head bobbed upon its long neck. 'Just so. There
are people who love birds so much they free them. There are others
who love them so much they cage them. Pas's love of us was of the
first kind. Echidna's and the Seven's is of the other. Were you going
to ask why they killed Pas? Is that one of your questions?'
Silk nodded, 'My second, Your Cognizance.'
'I've answered it. What's the third?'
'You indicated that you wished to discuss the Plan of Pas with me,
Your Cognizance. If Pas is dead, what's the point of discussing his
plan?'
Hoofbeats sounded faintly behind them.
'A god's plans do not die with him, Patera Calde. He is dead, as
Serpentine Echidna told us. We are not. We were to carry Pas's plan
out. You said he ruled us as a father. Do a father's plans benefit
him? Or his children?'
'Your Cognizance, I just remembered something? Another god,
the Outsider--'
'_Pateras!_' The horseman, a lieutenant of the Civil Guard in
mottled green conflict armor, pushed up his visor. 'Are you--you
there, Patera. The young one. Aren't you Patera Silk?'
'Yes, my son,' Silk said. 'I am.'
The lieutenant dropped the reins. His hand appeared slow as it
jerked his needler from the holster, yet it was much too quick to
permit Silk to draw Musk's needler. The flat crack of the shot
sounded an instant after the needle's stinging blow.
Chapter 5 -- Mail
They had insisted she not look for herself, that she send one of them
to do it, but she felt she had already sent too many others. This time
she would see the enemy for herself, and she had forbidden them to
attend her. She straightened her snowy coif as she walked, and held
down the wind-tossed skirt of her habit--a sibyl smaller and younger
than most, gowned (like all sibyls) in black to the tops of her worn
black shoes, out upon some holy errand, and remarkable only for
being alone.
The azoth was in one capacious pocket, her beads in the other;
she got them out as she went around the corner onto Cage Street,
wooden beads twice the size of those Quetzal fingered, smoothed
and oiled by her touch to glossy chestnut.
First, Pas's gammadion: '_Great Pas, Designer and Creator of the
Whorl, Lord Guardian of the Aureate Path, we_--'
The pronoun should have been _I_, but she was used to saying them
