the manteion and leave as quickly as possible.'
'Yes, Patera.' Shell stood, very erect. 'But I won't go back to our
manteion straight away, no matter what the captain says. I--I'm
coming back. Back here to see you and tell you what he said, and try
to do something more for you, if I can. Don't tell me not to, please,
Patera. I'll only disobey.'
To his surprise, Silk found that he was smiling. 'Your disobedience
is better than the obedience of many people I've known,
Patera Shell. Do what you think right; you will anyway, I feel
certain.'
Shell left, and the room seemed empty as soon as he was out the
door. Silk's wound began to throb, and he made himself think of
something else. How proudly Shell had announced his intention to
disobey, while his lip trembled! It reminded Silk of his mother, her
eyes shining with team of joy at some only too ordinary childhood
feat. _Oh, Silk! My son, my son!_ That was how he felt now. These
boys!
Yet Shell was no younger. They had entered the schola together,
and Shell had sat at the desk in front of his own when an instructor
insisted on alphabetical seating; they had been anointed on the same
day, and both had been assigned to assist venerable augurs who
were no longer able to attend to all the demands of their manteions.
Shell, however, had not been enlightened by the Outsider--or
had not had a vein burst in his head, as Doctor Crane would have
had it. Shell had not been enlightened, had not hurried to the
market, had not encountered Blood...
He had been as young as Shell when he had talked to Blood and
plucked three cards out of Blood's hand, not knowing that somewhere
below a monitor was mad and howling for want of those cards--as young
or nearly, because Shell might have done it, too. Again
Silk smelled the dead dog in the gutter and the stifling dust raised by
Blood's floater, saw Blood wave his stick, tall, red faced, and
perspiring. Silk coughed, and felt that a poker had been plunged
into his chest.
Somewhat unsteadily, he crossed the room to the window and raised
the sash to let in the night wind, then surveyed his naked torso in the
minor over the bureau, a much larger one than his shaving mirror
back at the manse.
A dressing half concealed the multicolored bruise left by Musk's
hilt. From what little anatomy he had picked up from the victims he
had sacrificed, he decided that the needle had missed his heart by
four fingers. Still, it must have been good shooting by a mounted man.
With his back to the mirror, he craned his neck to see as much as
possible of the dressing on his back; it was larger, and his back hurt
more. He was conscious of a weak wrongness deep in his chest, and
of the effort he had to make to breathe.
Clothing in the drawers of the bureau: underwear, tunics, and
carelessly folded trousers--under these last, a woman's perfumed
scarf. This was a young man's room, a son's; the couple who owned
the house would have a bedroom on the ground floor, a corner
room with several windows.
Chilled, he returned to the bed and drew up the quilt. The son
had left without packing, otherwise the drawers would be half
empty. Perhaps he was fighting in Maytera Mint's army.
Some part of Kypris had entered her, and that fragment had made
the shy sibyl a general--that, and Echidna's command. For a
moment he wondered what fragment it had been, and whether
Kypris herself had known she possessed it. It was the element that
had freed Chenille from rust, presumably; they would be part and
parcel of the same thing. Kypris had told him she was hunted, and
His Cognizance had called it a wonder that she had not been killed
long ago. Echidna and her children, hunting the goddess of love,
must soon have learned that love is more than perfumed scarves and
thrown flowers. That there is steel in love.
A young woman had thrown that scarf from a balcony, no doubt.
Silk tried to visualize her, found she wore Hyacinth's face, and
thrust the vision back. Blood had wiped his face with a peach-colored
handkerchief, a handkerchief more heavily perfumed than
the scarf. And Blood had said...
Had said there were people who could put on a man like a tunic.
He had been referring to Mucor, though he, Silk, had not known it
then--had not known that Mucor existed, a girl who could dress her
spirit in the flesh of others just as he, a few moments before, had
been considering putting on the clothes of the son whose room this
was.
Softly he called, 'Mucor? Mucor?' and listened; but there was no
phantom voice, no face but his own in the mirror above the bureau.
Closing his eyes, he composed a long formal prayer to the Outsider,
thanking him for his life, and for the absence of Blood's daughter.
When it was complete, he began a similar prayer to Kypris.
Beyond the bedroom door, a sentry sprang to attention with an
audible clash of his weapon and click of his heels.
Shadeup woke Auk, brilliant beams of the long sun piercing his
tasseled awnings, his gauze curtains, his rich draperies of puce
velvet, and the grimed glass of every window in the place, slipping
past his lowered blinds of split bamboo, the warped old boards
someone else had nailed up, his colored Scylla, and his shut and
bolted shutters; through wood, paper, and stone.
He blinked twice and sat up, rubbing his eyes. 'I feel better,' he
announced, then saw that Chenille was still asleep, Incus and Urus
both sleeping, Dace and Bustard sound asleep as well, and only big
Hammerstone the soldier already up, sitting crosslegged with Oreb
on his shoulder and his back against the tunnel wall. 'That's good,
trooper,' Hammerstone said.
'Not good,' Auk explained. 'I don't mean that. Better. Better
than I did, see? That feels better than good, 'cause when you're
feeling good you don't even think about it. But when you feel the
