they'll shoot anyone they find doing either.'
She rose. 'We'll go Captain. I want to see how you've arranged
this. I've a great deal to learn and very little time to learn it in.'
Horn and Nettle, he with a captured slug gun and she with a
needler, had stationed themselves outside the street door.
'Horn, go in the house and find yourself a bed,' Maytera Mint
told him. 'That is an order. When you wake up, come back here and
relieve Nettle if she's still here. Nettle, I'm going around the
Alambrera with the captain. I'll be back soon.'
The wind that chilled her face seemed almost supernatural
after so many months of heat; she murmured thanks to Molpe,
then recalled that the wind was fanning the fires Bison feared,
and that it might--that in some cases it most certainly would--spread
fire from shop to stable to manufactory. That there was a
good chance the whole city would burn while she fought the
Ayuntamiento for it.
'The Ayuntamiento. They aren't divine, Captain.'
'I assure you, I have never imagined that they were, My
General.' He guided her down a crooked street whose name she
had forgotten, if she had ever known it; around its shuttered store
fronts, the wind whispered of snow.
'Since they aren't,' she continued, 'they can't possibly resist the
will of the gods for long. It is Echidna's will, certainly. I think we
can be sure it's Scylla's too.'
'Also that of Kypris,' he reminded her. 'Kypris spoke to me, My
General, saying that Patera Silk must be calde. I serve you because
you serve him, him because he serves her.'
She had scarcely heard him. 'Five old men. Four, if His Cognizance
is right, and no doubt he is. What gives them the courage?'
'I cannot guess, My General. Here is our first post. Do you see it?'
She shook her head.
'Corporal!' the captain called. Hands clapped, and lights kindled
across the street; a gleaming gun barrel protruded from a second-floor
window. The captain pointed. 'We have a buzz gun for this
post, as you see, My General. A buzz gun because the street offers
the most direct route to the entrance. The angle affords us a
longitudinal field of fire. Down there,' he pointed again, 'a step or
two more, and we could be fired upon from an upper window of the
Alambrera.'
'They could come down this street, straight across Cage, and go
into the Alambrera?'
'That is correct, My General. Therefore we will not go farther.
This way, please. You do not object to the alley?'
'Certainly not.'
How strange the service of the gods was! When she was only a
girl, Maytera Mockorange had told her that the gods' service meant
missing sleep and meals, and had made her give that response each
time she was asked. Now here she was; she hadn't eaten since
breakfast, but by Thelxiepeia's grace she was too tired to be hungry.
'The boy you sent off to bed.' The captain chuckled. 'He will
sleep all night. Did you foresee that, My General? The poor girl will
have to remain at her post until morning.'
'Horn? No more than three hours, Captain, if that.'
The alley ended at a wider steet. Mill Street, Maytera Mint told
herself, seeing the forlorn sign of a dark coffee shop called the Mill.
Mill Street was where you could buy odd lengths of serge and tweed cheaply.
'Here we are out of sight, though not hidden from sentries on the
wall. Look.' He pointed again. 'Do you recognize it, My General?'
'I recognize the wall of the Alambrera, certainly. And I can see a
floater. Is it yours? No, it can't be, or they'd be shooting at it, and
the turret's missing.'
'It is one of those you destroyed, My General. But it is mine now.
I have two men in it.' He halted. 'Here I leave you for perhaps three
minutes. It is too dangerous for us to proceed, but I must see that all
is well with them.'
She let him trot away, waiting until he had almost reached the
disabled floater before she began to run herself, running as she had
so often pictured herself running in games with the children at the
palaestra, her skirt hiked to her knees and her feet flying, the fear of
impropriety gone who could say where.
He jumped, caught the edge of the hole where the turret had
been, pulled himself up and rolled over, vanishing into the disabled
floater. Seeing him, she felt less confident that she could do it too.
Fortunately she did not have to; when she was still half a dozen
strides away, a door opened in its side. 'I did not think you would
remain behind, My General,' the captain told her, 'though I dared
hope. You must not risk yourself in this fashion.'
She nodded, too breathless to speak, and ducked into the floater.
It was cramped yet strangely roofless, the crouching Guardsmen
clearly ill at ease, trained to snap to attention but compressed by
circumstance. 'Sit down,' she ordered them, 'all of you. We can't
stand on formality in here.'
That word _stand_ had been unwisely chosen, she reflected. They
sat anyway, with muttered thanks.
'This buzz gun, you see, My General,' the captain patted it, 'once
it belonged to the commander of this floater. He missed you, so it is
yours.'
She knew nothing about buzz guns and was curious despite her
fatigue. 'Does it still operate? And do you have,' at a loss, she
waved a vague hand, 'whatever it shoots?'
'Cartridges, My General. Yes, there are enough. It was the fuel
that exploded in this floater, you see. They are not like soldiers,
these floaters. They are like taluses and must have fish oil or
palm-nut oil for their engines. Fish oil is not so nice, but we employ
it because it is less costly. This floater carried sufficient ammunition
for both guns, and there is sufficient still.'
'I want to sit there.' She was looking at the officer's seat. 'May I?'
'Certainly, My General.' The captain scrambled out of her way.
The seat was astonishingly comfortable, deeper and softer than
