the door above her head. The hall would have to be swept again.
She hadn't been up there, no one had--
A harder tug, and the door inclined reluctantly downward,
exposing a band of darkness. 'Am I going to have to swing on you?'
she asked. Her voice echoed through all the empty rooms, leaving
her sorry she had spoken aloud.
Another tug evoked squeals of protest, but brought the bottom of
the door low enough for her to grasp it and pull it down; the folding
stair that was supposed to slide out when she did yielded to a hard pull.
I'll oil this, she resolved. I don't care if there isn't any oil. I'll cut
up some fat from that bull and boil it, and skim off the grease and strain
it, and use that. Because this _isn't_ the last time. It is _not_.
She trotted up the folding steps in an energetic flurry of black bombazine.
Just look how good my leg is! Praise to you, Great Pas!
The attic was nearly empty. There was never much left when a
sibyl died; what there was, was shared among the rest in accordance
with her wishes, or returned to her family. For half a minute,
Maytera Marble tried to recall who had owned the rusted trunk next
to the chimney, eventually running down the whole list--every sibyl
who had ever lived in the cenoby--without finding a single tin trunk
arnong the associated facts.
The little gable window was closed and locked. She told herself
that she was being foolish even as she wrestled its stubborn catch.
Whatever it was that she had glimpsed in the sky while crossing the
playground was gone, must certainly be gone by this time if it had
ever existed.
Probably it had been nothing but a cloud.
She had expected the window to stick, but the dry heat of the last
eight months had shrunk its ancient wood. She heaved at it with all
her strength, and it shot up so violently that she thought the glass
must break.
Silence followed, with a pleasantly chill wind through the window.
She listened, then leaned out to peer up at the sky, and at last
(as she had planned the whole time, having a lively appreciation of
the difficulty of proving a negative after so many years of teaching
small boys and girls) she stepped over the sill and out onto the thin
old shingles of the cenoby roof.
Was it necessary to climb to the peak? She decided that it was,
necessary for her peace of mind at least, though she wondered what
the quarter would say if somebody saw her there. Not that it
mattered, and most were off fighting anyhow. It wasn't as noisy as it
had been during the day, but you could still hear shots now and
then, like big doors shutting hard far away. Doors shutting on the
past, she thought. The cold wind flattened her skirt against her legs
as she climbed, and would have snatched off her coif had not one
hand clamped it to her smooth metal head.
There were fires, as she could see easily from the peak, one just a
few streets away. Saddle Street or String Street, she decided,
probably Saddle Street, because that was where the pawnbrokers
were. More fires beyond it, right up to the market and on the other
side, as was to be expected. Darkness except for a few lighted
windows up on Palatine Hill.
Which meant, more surely than any rumor or announcement, that
Maytera Mint had not won. Hadn't won yet. Because the Hill would
burn, would be looted and burned as predictably as the sixth term in
a Fibonacci series of ten was an eleventh of the whole. With the
Civil Guard beaten, nothing--
Before she could complete the thought, she caught sight of it, way
to the south. She had been looking west toward the market and
north to the Palatine, but it was over the Orilla... No, leagues
south of that, way over the lake. Hanging low in the southern sky
and, yes, opposing the wind in some fashion, because the wind was
in the north, was blowing cold out of the north where night was new,
because the wind must have come up, now that she came to think of
it, only a few minutes before while she had been in the palaestra
cutting up the last of the meat and carrying it down to the root
cellar. She had come upstairs again and found her hoarded wrapping
papers blown all over the kitchen, and shut the window.
So this thing--this huge thing, whatever it might be--had been
over the city or nearly over it when she had glimpsed it above the
back wall of the ball court. And it wasn't being blown south any
more, as a real cloud would be; if anything, it was creeping north
toward the city again, was creeping ever so slowly down the sky.
She watched for a full three minutes to make sure.
Was creeping north like a beetle exploring a bowl, losing heart at
times and retreating, then inching forward again. It had been here,
had been over the city, before. Or almost over it, when the wind had
risen--had been taken unawares, as it seemed, and blown away over
the lake; and now it had collected its strength to return, wind or no wind.
So briefly that she was not sure she had really seen it, something
flashed from the monstrous dark flying bulk, a minute pinprick of
light, as though someone in the shadowy skylands behind it had
squeezed an igniter.
Whatever it might be, there was no way for her to stop it. It would
come, or it would not, and she had work to do, as she always did.
Water, quite a lot of it, would have to be pumped to fill the wash
boiler. She picked her way back to the gable, wondering how much
additional damage she had done to a roof by no means tight to begin with.
She would have to carry wood in, enough for a big fire in the
stove. Then she could wash the sheets from the bed she had died in
and hang them out to dry. If Maytera Mint came back (and Maytera
Marble prayed very fervently that she would) she could cook
breakfast for her on the same fire, and Maytera Mint might even
bring friends with her. The men, if there were any, could eat in the
garden; she would carry one of the long tables and some chairs out
of the palaestra for them. Luckily there was still plenty of meat,
though she had cooked some for Villus and given more to his family
when she had carried him home.
She stepped back into the attic and closed the window.
