Comely Kypris, who has been so kind to us here on Sun Street, is
the author of that language, by which lovers may converse with
bouquets. My own nameflower, mint, signifies virtue. I have always
chosen to think of it as directing me toward the virtues proper to a
holy sibyl. I mean charity, humility, and--and all the rest. But
_virtue_ is an old word, and the Chrasmologic Writings tell us
that it first meant strength and courage in the cause of right."
They stood in awed silence listening to her; she herself listened
for the buzz gun, but it had ceased to sound if it had ever really
sounded at all.
"I haven't much of either, but I will do the best I can in the fight to
come." She looked for the presenter, intending to say something
about courage in the face of death, but he had vanished into the
crowd, and his son with him. The empty cage lay abandoned in the
street.
"For all of us," she told them, "victory!" What silver voice was this,
ringing above the crowd? "We must fight for the goddess! We will
win with her help!"
How many remained. Sixty or more? Maytera Mint felt she had
not strength enough for even one. "But I have sacrificed too long.
I'm junior to my dear sib, and have presided only by her favor." She
handed the sacrificial knife to Maytera Marble and took the second
rabbit from her before she could object.
A black lamb for Hierax after the rabbit; and it was an indescribable
relief to Maytera Mint to watch Maytera Marble receive it and
offer it to the untenanted gray radiance of the Sacred Window; to
wail and dance as she had so many times for Patera Pike and Patera
Silk, to catch the lamb's blood and splash it on the altar--to watch
Maytera cast the head into the fire, knowing that everyone was
watching Maytera too, and that no one was watching her.
One by one, the lamb's delicate hoofs fed the gods. A swift stroke
of the sacrificial knife laid open its belly, and Maytera Marble
whispered, "Sib, come here."
Startled, Maytera Mint took a hesitant step toward her; Maytera
Marble, seeing her confusion, crooked one of her new fingers.
"Please!"
Maytera Mint joined her over the carcass, and Maytera Marble
murmured, "You'll have to read it for me, sib."
Maytera Mint glanced up at the senior sibyl's metal face.
"I mean it. I know about the liver, and what tumors mean. But I
can't see the pictures. I never could."
Closing her eyes, Maytera Mint shook her head.
"You must!"
"Maytera, I'm afraid."
Not so distant as it had been, the buzz gun spoke again, its rattle
followed by the dull boom of slug guns.
Maytera Mint straightened up; this time it was clear that people
on the edge of the crowd had heard the firing.
"Friends! I don't know who's fighting. But it would appear--"
A pudgy young man in black was pushing through the crowd,
pracfically knocking down several people in his hurry. Seeing him,
she knew the intense relief of passing responsibility to someone else.
"Friends, neither my dear sib nor I will read this fine lamb for you.
Nor need you endure the irregularity of sacrifice by sibyls any
longer. Patera Gulo has returned!"
He was at her side before she pronounced the final word,
disheveled and sweating in his wool robe, but transported with
triumph. "You will, all you people--everybody in the city--have a
real augur to sacrifice for you. Yes! But it won't be me. Patera Silk's
back!"
They cheered and shouted until she covered her ears.
Gulo raised his arms for silence. "Maytera, I didn't want to tell
you, didn't want to worry you or involve you. But I spent most of
the night going around writing on walls. Talking to--to people.
Anybody who'd listen, really, and getting them to do it, too. I took
a box of chalk from the palaestra. _Silk for calde! Silk for
calde! Here he comes!_"
Caps and scarves flew into the air. "_SILK FOR CALDE!_"
Then she caught sight of him, waving, head and shoulders
emerging from the turret of a green Civil Guard floater--one that
threw up dust as all floaters did, but seemed to operate in ghostly
silence, so great was the noise.
"_I am come?_" the talus thundered again. "_In the service of Scylla!
Mightiest of goddesses! Let me pass! Or perish!_" Both buzz guns
spoke together, filling the tunnel with the wild shrieking of ricochets.
Auk, who had pulled Chenille flat when the shooting began,
clasped her more tightly than ever. After a half minute or more the
right buzz gun fell silent, then the left. He could hear no answering
fire.
Rising, he peered over the talus's broad shoulder. Chems littered
the tunnel as far as the creeping lights illuminated it. Several were
on fire. "Soldiers," he reported.
"Men fight," Oreb amplified. He flapped his injured wing uneasily.
"Iron men."
"The Ayuntamiento," Incus cleared his throat, "must have called
out the _Army_." The talus rolled forward before he had finished, and
a soldier cried out as its belts crushed him.
Auk sat down between Incus and Chenille. "I think it's time you
and me had a talk, Patera. I couldn't say much while the goddess
was around."
Incus did not reply or meet his eyes.
"I got pretty rough with you, and I don't like doing that to an
augur. But you got me mad, and that's how I am."
"Good Auk!" Oreb maintained.
He smiled bitterly. "Sometimes. What I'm trying to say, Patera, is
I don't want to have to pitch you off this tall ass. I don't want to have
to leave you behind in this tunnel. But I will if I got to. Back there
you said you went out to the lake looking for Chenille. If you knew
about her, didn't you know about me and Silk too?"
Incus seemed to explode. "How can you sit here talking about
_nothing_ when _men_ are _dying_ down there!"
"Before I asked you, you looked pretty calm yourself."
Dace, the old fisherman, chuckled.
"I was _praying_ for them!"
Auk got to his feet again. "Then you won't mind jumping off to
bring 'em the Pardon of Pas."
Incus blinked.
"While you're thinking that over," Auk frowned for effect and felt
himself grow genuinely angry, "maybe you could tell me what your
jefe wanted with Chenille."
The talus fired, a deafening report from a big gun he had not
realized it possessed; the concussion of the bursting shell followed
without an interval.
"You're _correct_." Incus stood up. His hand trembled as he jerked a
string of ranling jet prayer beads from a pocket of his robe. "You're
right, because Hierax has _prompted_ you to recall _me_ to my duty.
I--I _go_."
Something glanced off the talus's ear and ricocheted down the
tunnel, keening like a grief-stricken spirit. Oreb, who had perched
on the crest of its helmet to observe the battle, dropped into Auk's
lap with a terrified squawk. "Bad fight!"
Auk ignored him, watching Incus, who with Dace's help was
scrambling over the side of the talus. Behind it, the tunnel stretched
to the end of sight, a narrowing whorl of spectral green varied by fires.
When he caught sight of Incus crouched beside a fallen soldier,
Auk spat. "If I hadn't seen it... I didn't think he had the salt." A