wouldn't think about it. But when I was bumping out to the
shrine, up on those high rocks, stuff started coming back. About
being Kypris, I mean."
Incus sighed. "_Scylla_ mentioned it, my daughter, so I did know.
Sharing your _body_ with the _goddess of love!_ How I _envy_ you!
It must have been _wonderful!_"
"I guess it was. It wasn't nice. It wasn't fun at all. But the more I
think, the more I think it really was wonderful in a abram sort of
way. I'm not exactly like I used to be, either. I think when they left,
the goddesses must have left some crumbs behind, and maybe they
took some with them, too."
She picked up the launcher, running her fingers along the pins
protruding from its magazine. "What I started to say was that after
the talus got hit I saw I'd been wrong about things fitting, my dagger
and all that. This stuff isn't really like shoes at all. The smaller
somebody is, the bigger a shiv she needs. Scylla left that behind, I
think, or maybe something I could use to see it myself.
"Anyway, Auk here plucks a dimber needler, but I doubt he
needs it much. If I lived the way he does, and I chose to do, I'd need
it just about every day. So I found this launcher gun, and it's bigger.
It was empty, but I found another one with the barrel flat where the
talus had gone over it, and it was full. Stony showed me how you
load and unload them."
Auk said, "I think I'll get something myself, a slug gun, anyhow.
There's probably a bunch of 'em lying around."
Incus shook his head and reached for Auk's waist. "You'd better
allow me to take your needler this time, my son."
At once Auk's arms were pinned from behind by a grip that was
quite literally of steel.
With evident distaste, Incus lifted the front of Auk's tunic and
took his needler from his waistband. "This wouldn't harm Corporal
Hammerstone, but it would _kill_ me, I suppose." He gave Auk a
toothy smile. "Or _you_, my son."
"No shoot," Oreb muttered; it was a moment or two before Auk
understood that he was addressing Chenille.
"If you see him with a _slug gun_, Corporal, you're to take it from
him and break it _immediately_. A slug gun or any other such
weapon."
"_Ahoy! Ahoy there!_" The old fisherman was shouting and waving,
silhouetted by orange flames from the burning talus. "_He says he's
dyin'! Wants to talk to us!_"
Silk lifted himself until he could sit almost comfortably upon the
turret, then waved both hands. His face was smeared with the mud
of the storm, mud that was cracking and falling away now; the gaudy
tunic that Doctor Crane had brought him in Limna was daubed with
mud as well, and he wondered how many of those who waved and
cheered and jumped and shouted around the floater actually
recognized him.
_SILK FOR CALDE!_
_SILK FOR CALDE!_
Was there really to be a calde again, and was this new calde to be
himself? Calde was a title that his mother had mentioned occasionally,
a carved head in her closet.
He looked up Sun Street, then stared. That was, surely, the
silver-gray of a Sacred Window, nearly lost in the bright sunshine--a
Window in the middle of the street.
The wind carried the familiar odor of sacrifice--cedar smoke,
burning fat, burning hair, and burning feathers, the mixture stronger
than that of hot metal, hot fish-oil, and hot dust that wrapped
the floater. Before the silver shimmer of the Window, a black sleeve
slid down a thin arm of gray metal, and a moment later he caught
sight of Maytera Marble's shining, beloved face below the waving,
flesh-like hand. It seemed too good to be true.
"_Maytera!_" In the tumult of the crowd he could scarcely hear his
own voice; he silenced them with a gesture, arms out, palms down.
"_Quiet! Quiet, please!_"
The noise diminished, replaced by the troubled bleating of sheep
and the angry hissing of geese; as the crowd parted before the
floater, he located the animals themselves.
"Maytera! You're holding a viaggiatory sacrifice?"
"Maytera Mint is! I'm helping!"
"Patera!" Gulo was back, trotting alongside the floater, his black
robe fallow with dust. "There are dozens of victims, Patera! Scores!"
They would have to sacrifice alternately if the ceremony were not
to be prolonged till shadelow--which was what Gulo wanted, of
course; the glory of offering so many victims, of appearing before so
large a congregation. Yet he was not (as Silk reminded himself
sharply) asking for more than his due as acolyte. Furthermore, Gulo
could begin immediately, while he, Silk, would have to wash and
change. "Stop," he called to the driver. "Stop right here." The floater
settled to the ground before the altar.
Silk swung his legs from the turret to stand at the edge of the deck
before it, admonished by a twinge from his ankle.
"_Friends!_" A voice he felt he should recognize at once, shrill yet
thrilling, rang from the walls of every building on Sun Street. "This is
Patera Silk! This is the man whose fame has brought you to the
poorest manteion in the city. To the Window through which the
gods look upon Viron again!"
The crowd roared approval.
"Hear him! Recall your holy errand, and his!"
Silk, who had identified the speaker at the fourth word, blinked
and shook his head, and looked again. Then there was silence, and
he had forgotten what he had been about to say.
An antlered stag among the waiting victims (an offering to
Thelxiepeia, the patroness of divination, presumably) suggested an
approach; his fingers groped for an ambion. "No doubt there are
many questions you wish to ask the gods concerning these unsettled
times. Certainly there are many questions I need to ask. Most of all,
I wish to beg the favor of every god; and most of all to beg Stabbing
Sphigx, at whose order armies march and fight, for peace. But
before I ask the gods to speak to us, and before I beg their favor, I
must wash and change into suitable clothes. I've been in a battle,
you see--one in which good and brave men died; and before I
return to our manse to scrub my face and hands and throw these
clothes into the stove, I must tell you about it."
They listened with upturned faces, eyes wide.
"You must have wondered at seeing me in a Guard floater. Some
of you surely thought, when you saw our floater, that the Guard
intended to prevent your sacrifice. I know that, because I saw you
drawing weapons and reaching for stones. But you see, these
Guardsmen have endorsed a new government for Viron."
There were cheers and shouts.
"Or as I should have said, a return to the old one. They wish us to
have a calde--"
"_Silk is calde!_" someone shouted.
"--and a return to the forms laid down in our Charter. I
encountered some of these brave and devout Guardsmen in Limna,
and because I was afraid we might be stopped by other units of the
Guard, I foolishly suggested that they pretend I was their prisoner.
Many of you will have anticipated what happened as a result. Other
Guardsmen attacked us, thinking that they were rescuing me." He
paused for breath.
"Remember that. Remember that you must not assume that every
Guardsman you see is our enemy, and remember that even those