"That's very good of you," Silk told her, though he was already planning.
"Only there isn't much these days, because so many of the best cress creeks have gone dry. I never eat it anyway. Sometimes I feed it to the goats, you know? And sometimes I just throw it away. I wonder how many of the ladies that used to buy it from me did the same thing."
The woman next to Silk said, "I make sandwiches. Watercress and white cheese on rye bread. I wash it thoroughly first, though."
Silk nodded and smiled.
"It makes a fine hot weather lunch."
Speaking across Silk, Chenille asked her, "Do you have friends here in Limna?"
"Relations," the woman said^ "My husband's mother lives out here. She thinks the pure air off the lake is good for her. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our relations could be our friends, too?"
"Oh, wouldn't it, though! We're looking for a friend. Doctor Crane? A small man, around fifty, rather dark? He has a little gray beard . . . ?"
"I don't know him," the woman said grimly, "but if he's a doctor and he lives in Limna, my mother-in-law does. I'll ask her."
"He just bought a cottage here. So that he can get away from his practice, you know? My husband's helping him move in, and Patera's promised to bless it for him. Only I can't remember where it is."
The man on her left said, "You can ask at the Juzgado, on Shore Street. He'll have had to register the transfer of deed."
"Is there a Juzgado here, too?" Chenille asked him. "I thought that was just in the city."
"Just a small one," the man told her. "Some local cases are tried there, and they hold a handful of petty prisoners. There's no Alambrera here-those with long sentences are sent back to Viron. And they take care of the tax rolls and property records."
By this time the holobit wagon they rode was trundling along a narrow, crooked, cobbled street lined with tottering two- and three-storied wooden houses, all with high, peaked roofs and many a weathered silver-gray from lack of paint. Silk and Chenille, with the man who knew about the Juzgado and the woman who made watercress sandwiches, were on the landward side of the long wagon; but Silk, looking over his shoulder, could catch occasional glimpses of dirty water and high-pooped, single-masted fishing boats between the houses.
"I haven't been here since I was just a sprat myself," he told Chenille. "It's odd to think now that I fished here fifteen years ago. They don't use shiprock like we do, do they? Or mud brick, either." The man on Chenille's left said, "It's too easy to cut trees on the banks and float the logs to Limna."
"I see. I hadn't considered that-although I should have, of course."
"Not many people would," the man said; he had opened his card case, and he extracted a pasteboard visiting card as he talked. "May I give you this, Patera? Vulpes is my name. I'm an advocate, and I've got chambers here on Shore Street. Do you understand the procedure if you're arrested?"
Silk's eyebrows shot up. "Arrested? Moipe defend us! I hope not."
"So do I." Vulpes lowered his voice until Silk could barely hear him above the street noises and the squeaking of the wagon's axels. "So do we all, I think. But do you understand the procedure?"
Silk shook his head.
"If you give them the name and location of an advocate, they have to send for him-that's the law. If you can't give them a name and the location, however, you don't get one until your family finds out what's happened and engages somebody."
"I see."
"And, "Vulpes leaned in front of Chenille and tapped Silk's knee to emphasize his point, "if you're here in Limna, somebody with chambers in Viron won't do. It has to be somebody local. I've known them to wait, when they knew someone might be coming here soon, so as to make the arrest here for exactly that reason. I want you to put that in your pocket, Patera, so that you can show it to them if you have to. Vulpes, on Shore Street, right here in Limna, at the sign of the red fox."
At the word fox, the wagon creaked to a stop, and the driver bawled, "Everybody off! Rides back to Viron at four, six, and eight. You get 'em right here, but don't dare be late."
Silk caught him by the sleeve as he was about to enter the barn. "Will you tell me something about Limna, Driver? I'm not at all familiar with it."
"The layout, you mean?" The driver pinched his nostrils thoughtfully. "That's simple enough, Patera. It's not no great big place like Viron. The main thing you got to hang on to is where we are now, so you'll know where to go to catch your ride back. This here's Water Street, see? And right here's pretty close to the middle o' town. There's only three streets that amount to much-Dock, Water, and Shore. The whole town curls around the bay. It's shaped kind o' like a horseshoe, only not bent so much. You know what I'm tellin' you? The inside's Dock Street-that's where the market is. The outside's Shore Street. If you want to go out on a boat, Dock Street's the place, and I can give you a couple good names. If you want to eat, try the Catfish or the Full Sail. The Rusty Lantern's pretty good, too, if you got deep pockets. Stayin' overnight?"
Silk shook his head. "We'd like to get back to the city before dark, if we can."
"You'll want the six o'clock wagon, then," the driver said as he turned away.
When he had gone, Chenille said, "You didn't ask him where the councillors live."
"If neither you nor I nor Auk knew, it can't be common knowledge," Silk told her. "Crane will have had to discover that for himself, and the best thing for us to learn today may well be whom he asked. I doubt that he'll have ridden down on one of the wagons as we did. On Scylsday he had a hired litter."
She nodded. "It might be better if we split up, Patera. You high, and me low."
"I'm not sure what you mean by that."
"You talk to the respectable people in the respectable places. I'll ask around in the drinking kens. When did . . . Auk? Say he'd meet us here?"
"Four o'clock," Silk told her.
"Then I'll meet you right here at four. We can have a bite to eat. With Auk? And tell each other whatever we've learned."
"You were very skillful with that woman on the wagon," Silk said. "I hope that I can do half as well."
"But it didn't get us anything? Stick with the truth, Patera. Silk? Or close to it.... I don't think you'll be terribly good with the . . . other thing? What're you going to say?"
Silk stroked his cheek. "I was thinking about that on the wagon, and it seemed to me that it will have to depend upon the circumstances. I might say, for example, that such a man witnessed an exorcism I performed, and since I haven't returned to the house that had been afflicted, I was hoping he could tell me whether it had been effective."
Chenille nodded. "Perfectly true. . . . Every bit of it. You're going to be all right. I can see that. Silk?" She had been standing close to him already, forced there by the press of traffic in the street; she stepped closer still, so that the nipples of her jutting breasts pressed the front of his tunic. "You don't love me, Patera. You wouldn't, even if you didn't think I belonged to ... Auk? But you love Hy? Don't you? Tell me. ..."
He said miserably, "I shouldn't. It isn't right, and a man in my position-an augur-has so little to offer any woman. No money. No real home. It's just that she's like the- There are things I can't seem to stop thinking about, no matter how hard I try. Hyacinth is one of them."
"Well, I'm her, too." Swift and burning, Chenille's lips touched his. By the time he had recovered, she was lost among porters and vendors, hurrying visitors and strolling, rolling fishermen.
"Bye, girl!" With his uninjured wing, Oreb was waving farewell. "Watch out! Good luck!"
Silk took a deep breath and looked around. Here at the end nearest Viron, Lake Limna had nurtured a town of its own, subject to the city while curiously detached from it.