“I did not ask,” said the woman, quietly.
Urson huffed.
“Little thief,” the woman said. “Little four arms. What is your name?”
Silence, and the dark eyes narrowed.
“I can make you tell me,” and she raised her hand to her throat again.
Now the eyes opened wide, and the boy pushed back against Urson’s belly.
Geo reached toward the boy’s neck where a ceramic disk hung from a leather thong. Glazed on the white enamel was a wriggle of black with a small dot of green for an eye at one end. “This will do for a name,” Geo said. “No need to harm him. Snake is his symbol; Snake shall be his name.”
“Little Snake,” she said, dropping her threatening hand, “how good a thief are you?” She looked at Urson. “Let him go.”
“And miss thrashing his backside?” objected Urson.
“He will not run away.”
Urson released him, and four hands came from behind the boy’s back and began massaging one another’s wrists. But the dark eyes watched her until she repeated, “How good a thief are you?”
With only a second’s indecision, he reached into his clout and drew out what seemed another leather thong similar to the one around his neck. He held up the fist from which it dangled, and the fingers opened slowly to a cage.
“What is it?” Urson asked, peering over Snake’s shoulder.
The woman gazed forward, then suddenly stood straight. “You …” she began.
Snake’s fist closed like a sea-polyp.
“You are a fine thief, indeed.”
“What is it?” Urson asked. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Show them,” she said.
Snake opened his hand, and on the dirty palm, in coiled leather, held by a clumsy wire cage, was a milky sphere the size of a man’s eye, lucent through the shadow.
“A very fine thief indeed,” repeated the woman in a low voice tautened strangely from its previous brittle clarity. She had pulled her veil aside now, and Geo saw, where her hand had again raised to her throat, the tips of her slim fingers held an identical jewel, only this one in a platinum claw, hung from a wrought gold chain.
Her eyes, unveiled, black as obsidian, raised to meet Geo’s. A slight smile lifted her pale mouth and then fell again. “No,” she said. “Not quite so clever as I thought. At first I believed he had taken mine. But clever enough. Clever enough. You, schooled in the antiquity of Leptar’s rituals, are you clever enough to tell me what these baubles mean?”
Geo shook his head.
A breath passed her pale mouth now, and though her eyes still fixed his, she seemed to draw away, blown into some past shadow by her own sigh. “No,” she said. “It has all been lost, or destroyed by the old priests and priestesses, the old poets.
“Freeze the drop in the hand
and break the earth with singing.
Hail the height of a man
and also the height of a woman.The eyes have imprisoned a vision …”
She spoke the lines almost reverently. “Do you recognize any of this? Can you tell me where they are from?”
“Only one stanza of it,” said Geo. “And that in a slightly different form.” He recited:
“Burn the grain speck in the hand
and batter the stars with singing.
Hail the height of a man,
and also the height of a woman.”
“Well,” said the woman. “You have done better than all the priests and priestesses of Leptar. What about this fragment? Where is it from?”
“It is a stanza of the discarded rituals of the Goddess Argo, the ones banned and destroyed five hundred years ago. The rest of the poem is completely lost,” explained Geo. “I found that stanza when I peeled away the binding paper of an ancient tome that I found in the Antiquity Collection in the Temple Library at Acedia. Apparently a page from an even older book had been used in the binding of this one. I assume these are fragments of the rituals before Leptar purged her litanies. I know at least my variant stanza belongs to that period. Perhaps you have received a misquoted rendition; for I will vouch for the authenticity of mine.”
“No,” she said, almost regretfully. “Mine is the authentic version. So, you too, are not that clever.” She turned back to the boy. “But I have need of a good thief. Will you come with me? And you, poet, I have need of one who thinks so meticulously and who delves into places where even my priests and priestesses do not go. Will you come with me?”
“Where are we going?”
“Aboard that ship,” she said, smiling toward the vessel.
“That’s a good boat,” said Urson. “I’d be proud to sail on her, Geo.”
“The captain is in my service,” the woman told Geo. “He will take you on. Perhaps you will get a chance to see the world, and become the man you wish to be.”
Geo saw that Urson was beginning to look uneasy, and said, “My friend goes on whatever ship I do. This we’ve promised each other. Besides, he is a good sailor, while I have no knowledge of the sea.”
“On our last journey,” the woman explained, “we lost men. I do not think your friend will have trouble getting a berth.”
“Then we’ll be honored to come,” said Geo. “Under whose service shall we be, then, for we still don’t know who you are?”
Now the veil fell across her face again. “I am a high priestess of the Goddess Argo. Now, who are you?”
“My name is Geo,” Geo told her.
“Of the Earth, then, your name,” she said. “And you, Urson, the bear. And Lamio, the little Snake. I welcome you aboard our ship.”
Just then, from down the street, came the captain and the mate, Jordde. They emerged from the diagonal of shadow that lanced over the cobbles, slowly, heavily. The captain squinted out across the ships toward the horizon, the copper light filling his deepening wrinkles and burnishing the planes of flesh around his gray eyes. As they approached, the priestess turned to them. “Captain, I have three
