The hallway didn’t remain empty. Women came out of the place like bees out of a hive, pouring out of doors and down stairways. As Jory and the Luzes walked down the corridors, the women of Thrasis came after, a buzzing swarm of them. By the time they reached the central courtyard, the women surrounded them on all sides in a murmurous throng, all crouched and staring at them as though they had been angels made of fire.
“Are you captive here?” Jory asked gently.
“We are the daughters of the Prophet,” several murmured, turning their heads to glance at one another from behind the wings of their basket helmets.
“But are you captive here?”
“We follow the destiny of women,” said one in a puzzled voice. “This is our fitting place.”
“I ask again, are you captive here?”
“Oh, by my breasts and womb, yes, we are captive here,” cried a shrill voice. “I am Haifazh, and this is my daughter Shira, and no matter what these other cooing doves may say, yes, we are prisoners and slaves, and I am sick of it if they are not.”
Jory smiled. “Well then, Haifazh, it is to you that I bring my news, though any others who listen may hear it or not, as they choose. I bring you word of a way that opens for the women of Thrasis.”
She spoke briefly. Some of the women fled, their hands thrust into their helmets to cover their ears, shutting out the heresy, stopping just within earshot to listen again. Others stayed close, punctuating Jory’s discourse with little shrieks. Haifazh herself listened intently and wordlessly to it all.
When she had finished speaking, Jory took Haifazh by the hand and asked, “Are there women who go between the towers and the bowers of the town?”
“Midwives,” said Haifazh. “And inspectors for the auctioneers.”
“You will be sure they hear this news.”
“They will already have heard,” said Haifazh. “There are no secrets in the world of women. We have too few amusements to let any opportunity pass.”
The three travelers went on to the other towers, staying a time at each, and returned to the Dove early in the evening, where Zasper was waiting impatiently.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“To the towers, where I said I was going,” Jory told him. “We found a few rebellious souls. Rebellion invites intervention, don’t you think? Not that Nela would agree (poor Nela), though Bertran might. So, we’ve been carrying the gospel to the women of Thrasis. Once those things that followed us get across the water, the women will be the first victims. I can imagine the god of Thrasis made manifest, given flesh and bone! The women would die like flies—not that they don’t already.”
“And what might your gospel be, Jory?”
Jory smiled on him, a bittersweet smile. “To the imprisoned, I speak the gospel of flight, Zasper Ertigon. As I think your friend Fringe remarked, ‘You have to leave people a way out.’”
“Well, whatever you’ve been preaching, come aboard. Your interference in Thrasis has upset the populace; there are more guards arriving on the shore every moment; and the captain wishes to anchor in deeper water, where we are less at risk.”
As they boarded the ship, Curvis summoned them to the place where he and Danivon sat on the deck, their eyes fixed on the pocket munk on Curvis’s knee.
“Has it done something interesting?” asked Jory.
“Listen,” Danivon directed. “Perhaps it will say it again.”
The munk was chewing its way around a cracker. When it had made the remnant perfectly round, it thumped it with a tiny paw and asked conversationally, “Where are we?”
It was Bertran’s voice, very weak and sad.
Cafferty started to say something, but was silenced by a gesture from Curvis.
“In a cave,” said the munk in Fringe’s voice. “In a damned hole.” Fringe sounded all right. Angry, if anything.
The munk took up another cracker and started eating its way around it.
“The mate to this one was in Bertran’s pocket when we performed in Derbeck,” rumbled Curvis. “He didn’t give it back to me, afterward—we were all thinking of other things. When he was taken, the munk went with him.”
“And this one reads the other’s mind?” asked Latibor.
“I’ve always assumed so,” said Danivon. “Hears what the other hears, at least.”
“It was part of the act,” said Curvis. “To have the one recite what the other heard. It made people believe we had actually magicked the little beasts through space.”
“Will it work in reverse?” asked Jory.
They stared at her.
“Will the one with Bertran say what this one hears? We could try a message of hope and reassurance, at least,” she said.
“Lies, you mean,” said Danivon bitterly.
“Not necessarily. You are going to try to rescue them, aren’t you?”
They stared at one another, then at the widening strip of water as the sailors pushed them away from the shore.
Zasper said, “She’s right. Hope is never a lie. Hope could keep her alive. All three of them alive.”
And when they had put sufficient distance between themselves and the shore, he drew them close, all of them, and in that huddle told them what he had not dared tell them ashore—all that he had learned from Boarmus, all that Boarmus had learned in City Fifteen.
When he had done, Jory and Asner went away from the others, their faces pale and drawn, to sit muttering together against the wheelhouse. Danivon, however, fastened on the item of most concern to him.
“So Fringe could be anywhere,” he cried in anguish. “Anywhere a Door could reach!”
Zasper put a finger to his lips, counseling quiet. “Don’t yell. Sound travels over water, and they may hear you from the shore. No, Fringe couldn’t be just anywhere. We know from what the munk said that she’s in a cavern. Moving anything over distance takes large-scale installations. The dinks in City Fifteen postulate a network tiny enough to have gone undiscovered. We’re dealing with localized effects, Danivon!”
“Tiny
