got a few men, too, and some slug guns. Most of the women--the
other women, I ought to say--are working in the fire companies.
You were surprised to find me in command, but General Mint's a woman.'
'I am surprised at that, as well,' Silk told her.
'Men want to fight a male officer. Besides, the women of
Trivigaunte are famous troopers, and we women of Viron are in no
way inferior to them!'
Recalling Doctor Crane, Silk said, 'I'd like to believe that our
men are as brave as theirs, as well.'
The young woman was shocked. 'They're slaves!'
'Have you been there?'
She shook her head.
'Neither have I. Surely then it's pointless for us to discuss their
customs. A moment ago you called me Calde. Did you mean
that...?'
'Lieutenant. I'm Lieutenant Liana now. I used the title as a
courtesy, nothing more. If you want my opinion, I think you're who
you say you are. An augur wouldn't lie about that, and there's the
bird. They say you've got a pet bird.'
'Silk here,' the bird informed her.
'Then do as I ask. Do you have a white flag?'
'For surrender?' Liana was offended. 'Certainly not!'
'To signal a truce. You can make one by tying a white rag to a
stick. I want you to wave it and call to them, on the other side. Tell
them there's an augur here who's brought the pardon of Pas to your
wounded. That's entirely true, as you know. Say he wants to cross
and do the same for theirs.'
'They'll kill you when they find out who you are.'
'Perhaps they won't find out. I promise you that I won't volunteer
the information.'
Liana ran her fingers through her tousled hair; it was the same
gesture he used in the grip of indecision. 'Why me? No, Calde, I
can't let you risk yourself.'
'You can,' he told her. 'What you cannot do is maintain that
position with even an appearance of logic. Either I am calde or I am
not. If I am, it is your duty to obey any order I give. If I'm not, the
life of the calde is not at risk.'
A few minutes later, as she and a young man called Linsang
helped him up the barricade, Silk wondered whether he had been
wise to invoke logic. Logic condemned everything he had done since
Oosik had handed him Hyacinth's letter. When Hyacinth had
written, the city had been at peace, at least relatively. She had no
doubt expected to shop on the Palatine, stay the night at Ermine's,
and return--
'No fall,' Oreb cautioned him.
He was trying not to. The barricade had been heaped up from
anything and everything: rubble from ruined buildings, desks and
counters from shops, beds, barrels, and bales piled upon one
another without any order he could discern.
He paused at the top, waiting for a shot. The troopers behind the
sandbag redoubt had been told he was an augur, and might know of
the Prolocutor's letter by this time. Seeing Oreb, they might know
which augur he was, as well.
And shoot. It would be better, perhaps, to fall backward toward
Liana and Linsang if they did--better, certainly, to jump that way if
they missed.
No shot came; he began a cautious descent, slightly impeded by
the traveling bag. Oosik had not killed him because Oosik had taken
the long view, had been at least as much politician as trooper, as
every high-ranking officer no doubt had to be. The officer commanding
the redoubt would be younger, ready to obey the orders of
the Ayuntamiento without question.
Yet here he was.
Once invoked, logic was like a god. One might entreat a god to
visit one's Window; but if a god came it could not be dismissed, nor
could any message that it vouchsafed mankind be ignored, suppressed,
or denied. He had invoked logic, and logic told him that he
should be in bed in the house that had become Oosik's temporary
headquarters--that he should be getting the rest and care he needed
so badly.
'He knew I'd go, Oreb.' Something closed his throat; he coughed
and spat a soft lump that could have been mucus. 'He'd read her
letter before he came in, and he's seen her.' Silk found that he could
not, even now, bring himself to mention that Oosik had lain with
Hyacinth. 'He knew I'd go, and take his problem with me.'
'Man watch,' Oreb informed him.
He paused again scanning the sandbag wall but unable to
distinguish, at this distance, rounded sandbags from helmeted
heads. 'As long as they don't shoot,' he muttered.
'No shoot.'
This stretch of Gold Street had been lined with jewelers, the
largest and richest shops nearest the Palatine, the richest of all
clinging to the skirts of the hill itself, so that their patrons could
boast of buying their bangles 'uphill.' Most of the shops were empty
now, their grills and bars torn from their fronts by a thousand arms,
their gutted interiors guarded only by those who had died defending
or looting them. Beyond the redoubt, other richer shops waited, still
intact. Silk tried and failed to imagine the children over whose
recumbent bodies he had stepped looting them. They would not, of
course. They would charge, fight, and very quickly die at Liana's
order, and she with them. The looters would follow--if they
succeeded. This body (Silk crouched to examine it) was that of a boy
of thirteen or so; one side of his face had been shot away.
He had not been on Gold Street often; but he was certain that it
had never been this long, or half this wide.
Here a trooper of the Guard and a tough-looking man who might
have been the one who had questioned him after Kypris's
theophany lay side-by-side, their knives in each other's ribs.
'Patera!' It was the rasping voice that had answered Liana's hail.
