Darkness and a steady thudding, infinitely reassuring. Knees drawn up, arms bent in prayer. Wordless contemplation, free of the need to eat or drink or breathe.
The tunnel, dark and warm but ever colder. Anguished cries, Mamelta beside him, her hand in his and Hyacinth's tiny needler yapping like a terrier.
How much did they give you? Blows that rocked him.
Ashes, unseen but choking.
"This is the place."
How much did you tell Blood?
A shower of fire. Morning prayers in a manteion in Limna that was perhaps thirty cubits, .yet a thousand leagues away.
"Behind you! Behind you!" Whirl and shoot.
The dead woman's lantern, its candle three-quarters consumed. Mamelta blowing on a glowing coal to light it.
"I am a loyal cit-"
"Councillor, I am a loyal cit-"
Spitting blood.
"Those who harm an augur-"
How much-
Silk's right eye opened, saw a wall as gray as ash, and closed again.
He tried to count his shots-and found himself in the eating house again. "Well, Patera, for one thing mine holds a lot more needles. ... All of them good and thick, this was the Alambrera in the old days." The door opened and Potto came in with their dinners on a tray, Sergeant Sand behind him with the box and the terrible rods.
Back! Back! Kneeling in the ashes, digging with his hands. A god who took five needles and still stood at the edge of the lantern light, snarling, blood and slaver running from its mouth. The boom of a slug gun, loud in the tunnel and very near.
. . . did you give him?
Metal rods jammed into his groin. Sand's arm spinning the crank, his expressionless face washed away by unbearable pain.
He bought your manteion.
"Yes. I'm a-"
Indefinitely? He let you stay indefinitely?
"Yes."
Indefinitely.
"Yes. I don't know . . ."
(Back, oh, back, but the current is too strong.)
Silk's left eye opened. Painted steel, gray as ash. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, his head aching and his stomach queasy. He was in a gray-walled room of modest size, without windows. He shivered. He had been lying on a low, hard, and very narrow cot.
A voice from the edge of memory said, "Ah, you're awake. I need somebody to talk to."
He gasped and blinked. It was Doctor Crane, one hand raised, eyes sparkling. "How many fingers?"
"You? I dreamed ..."
"You got caught, Silk. So did I. How many fingers do you see?"
"Three."
"Good. What day is it?"
Silk had to consider; it was an effort to remember. At last he said, "Tarsday? Orpine's obsequies were on Scylsday; we went to the lake on Molpsday, and I went down. . ."
"Yes?"
"Into these tunnels. I've been down here a long time. It might even be Hieraxday by now."
"Good enough, but we're not in the tunnels."
"The Alambrera?"
Crane shook his head. "I'll tell you, but it'll take some explaining, and I ought to warn you first that they've probably locked us up together hoping we may say something useful. You may not want to oblige them."
Silk nodded and found it a mistake. "I wish I had some water."
"It's all around us. But you'll have to wait till they give us some, if they ever do."
"Councillor Potto hit me with his fist." Silk caressed the swelling on the side of his head gingerly. "That's the last thing that I remember. When you say they, do you mean our Ayuntamiento?"
"That's right." Crane sat down on the cot beside him. "I hope you don't mind. I was sitting on the floor while you were unconscious, and it's cold and hard on the buttocks. Why did you go out to the lake? Mind telling me?"
"I can't remember."
Crane nodded approvingly. "That's probably the best line to take."
"It isn't a line at all. I've-I've had very strange dreams." Silk pushed away terrifying memories of Potto and Sand. "One about a naked woman who had strange dreams too."
"Tch, tch!"
"I talked with a-it doesn't matter. And I vanquished a devil. You won't believe that, Doctor."
"I don't," Crane told him cheerfully.
"But I did. I called on the gods in turn. Only Hierax frightened her."
"A female devil. Did she look like this?" Crane bared his teeth.
"Yes, a little." Silk paused, rubbing his head. "And it wasn't a dream-it's not fading. You know her. You must."
Crane lifted an eyebrow. "I know the devil you drove away? My circle of acquaintances is wide, I admit, but-"
"She's Mucor, Blood's daughter. She can possess people, and she possessed the woman I was with."
Suddenly serious, Crane whistled softly.
"Was it you who operated on her?"
Crane shook his head. "Blood told you?"
"He told me he'd had a brain surgeon in the house before you. When I learned what Mucor could do, I understood-or at least, I think I do. Will you tell me about it?"
Crane fingered his beard, then shrugged. "Can't hurt, I suppose. The Ayuntamiento knows all the important points anyhow, and we've got to pass the time some way. If I do, will you answer a few questions of mine? Honest, complete answers, unless it's something that you don't want them to know?"
"I know nothing that I wouldn't want the Ayuntamiento to leam," Silk declared, "and I've already answered a great many questions for Councillor Potto. I'll tell you anything concerning myself, and anything I know about other people that wasn't learned under the seal."
Crane grinned. "In that case I'll start with the most basic one. Who are you working for?"
"I should have said that I'll answer after you answer my own questions about Mucor. That was the agreement, and I'd like to help her if I can."
The eyebrow went up again. "Including my first one?"
"Yes," Silk said. "Very much including that one. That one first of all. Is Mucor really Blood's daughter? That's what she told me."
"Legally. His adopted daughter. Unmarried men aren't usually allowed to adopt, but Blood's been working for the Ayuntamiento. Were you aware of that?"
Silk remembered in the nick of time not to shake his head. "No. Nor do I believe it now. He's a criminal."
"They don't pay him so many cards, you understand. They let him operate without interference as long as there's no serious trouble at any of his places, and do him favors. This seems to have been one of them. A word to the judge from any of the councillors would have been more than enough, and by adopting her he could control her up to the age of consent."
"I see. Who are her real parents?"
Crane shrugged again. "She doesn't have any. Not in our whorl, anyhow. And whoever they were, they probably met in a petri dish. She was a frozen embryo. Blood paid a good deal for it, I imagine. I know he paid a small fortune to get that brain man you mentioned."
Recalling the bare and filthy room in which he had first encountered Mucor, Silk said bitterly, "A fortune to destroy what he had given so much to get."
"Not really. It was supposed to make her pliable. She was a holy terror, from what I've heard. But when the brain man-he came from Palustria, by the way, which is how we found out what was going on. When he opened up her cranium, he got hit with a new organ." Crane chuckled. "I've read his report. It's in the medical file back at the villa."
"A new organ? What was it?"
"I didn't mean that it wasn't a brain. It was. But it wasn't like anything the brain man had worked on before. It wasn't a human brain for medical purposes, or an animal's brain, either. He had to go by guess and good gods, as they say. And in the end he made a botch of it. He as much as admitted it."