The dais was still unburdened when they reached the western plaza where the guild inns, each a little fortress, stood behind their closed-gate walls. Ratepe handled the negotiations with the guild guards while Xantcha watched the procession go round and round the plaza. The joint guild of barbers and surgeons had a room behind the kitchen for which they wanted an exorbitant amount of copper and silver but not in any of the forms Xantcha or Ratepe carried it. Fortunately-but not, she suspected, coincidentally- there was a money changers' booth butted up against the barber's watchtower.
"Festival robbery," Ratepe said dramatically as he collected the devalued worth of a golden ring. "Tabarna shall hear of this!"
"Avohir, he knows," the money changer replied, pointing to the lead seals dangling from a silk ribbon overhead.
The room behind the kitchen had been let to another traveler. They wound up in a dust-choked garret that Xantcha was sure had been home to a flock of pigeons earlier in the day.
"The food will be good," Ratepe promised once they'd claimed their quarters.
"Don't say another word. You've been wrong about everything else. If you keep quiet now, the meal may at least be edible!" She was jesting, resorting to the rough humor that worked well on the Ohran Ridge and floundered here in the city.
But the food was good. They devoured roast lamb with sweet herbs, a thick grainy paste that tasted of nuts and
saffron, honey-glazed bread, and an overflowing jug of the berry wine served only for the Festival of Fruits. It wasn't worth the silver they'd paid for it, but it was good nonetheless, and they hauled the remaining wine up to the top of the stairs when they were finished.
The garret overhung a blind alley, but a bit of acrobatics put them on the roof and gave them one of the better views of the plaza that Pincar had to offer. A breeze stirred the humid air, making it pleasant. In the plaza, Avohir's book remained open on the dais. Red-Stripes stood guard while priests took turns reciting Shratta verses from memory-or so Ratepe said. Their voices didn't reach the top of the guild inn.
The crowd had thinned, and what remained had settled in around ten or fifteen campfires scattered across the cobblestones. Red-Stripes stood guard outside the palace and the temple. Xantcha wondered who held the allegiance of the men who guarded the inns. Not that it mattered overmuch. The sky was open to her sphere if they had to get away in a hurry.
"This is a good place," she decided. "We can see everything that's important, and there's nothing to block the sphere if we need it. We'll watch tomorrow night from here."
They stayed on the roof until the temple gongs sounded again at midnight and the Red-Stripes escorted the huge holy book into Avohir's sanctuary.
"What do they do if it rains?" Xantcha asked as they swung and slipped back to the garret.
If the roof had been pleasant, their rented room was a prison. Leaving the windows open had attracted swarms of buzzing, biting insects without improving the air. The excuse for a bed smelled as if its last occupant had been a corpse, and a summertime corpse at that. Xantcha seriously considered yawning out the sphere, if only for Ratepe's sake. She'd breathed Phyrexian air, the ultimate standard by which foul air should be judged, and survived without a wheeze or cough. Poor Ratepe was sneezing himself inside out and short of breath. In the end they dragged the best of the blankets up to the roof and bedded down beneath the stars.
The day they'd been waiting for began before dawn with more gongs clanging from the temple as the Festival of Fruits started its fourth day. When the city gates opened, the tent encampments disgorged their pilgrims who were, on the whole, far less hardened than the men who'd held sway in the plaza at night. There were children and flower sellers and all the other things Ratepe remembered from his own childhood. He coaxed Xantcha out of the garret for bowls of berries and a second visit to Avohir's great sanctuary.
The line of petitioners waiting for Avohir to dry their tears was prohibitively long and the cloister passage to the priests' quarters and, ultimately, the crypt where she'd confronted Gix was closed off and guarded by the burliest Red-Stripes she'd seen since arriving in the city. They glistened with oily sweat, but they weren't Phyrexian.
"I can't believe they're all gone but that one I scented last night with the litter," Xantcha mused when Ratepe had finished taking her on a brief tour of the
sanctuary. "Maybe Gix had pulled the sanctuary sleepers back. It doesn't take much practice to be a bully like a Red-Stripe, but a priest has to do things right."
"You put the spiders where they live-"
"I'd feel better if I'd seen that they were still in place."
"We'll find out soon enough," Ratepe replied with the sort of fatalism Xantcha herself usually brought to any discussion.
They were on the temple porch, looking down at the plaza from a different angle and gazing north at an afternoon storm. There was time for one more bowl of berries before the storm swept over the palace. Xantcha was indifferent to sweets, but Ratepe would have eaten himself sick. She saw what they did with Avohir's book when it rained. A team of priests who'd obviously worked together before scrambled to get the great book closed and covered with a bleached sail.
"It's going to get wet and ruined sooner or later," she pointed out as she and Ratepe climbed the five flights of narrow, rickety stairs to the garret.
"Sooner."
"But isn't it too precious to be mistreated like that?"
"It used to be there was a new Book every five years. I think the one they've got is maybe older than that. But it's not any one specific copy of the Book that matters, it's the idea of Avohir's book and the wisdom it contains. When a new Book's brought into the temple, the old one is cut up and passed out. Some people say if you burn a piece of the Book on New Year's Day, you'll have a better year, but some people-my father, for one-kept his scraps in a special box." Ratepe fell silent and stared out the window at the rain.
"Lost?" Xantcha asked.
"We brought it with out of the city. I didn't even think about it after the Shratta." He went back to staring.
"Should I buy a duck?" Xantcha asked, quite serious.
"A duck?"
"Six days after the Festival of Fruits, you'll be nineteen. I made sure I remembered. You said your mother roasted a duck."
"We'll see after tonight."
The festival crowds never recovered from their afternoon soaking. Hundreds of Efuands had returned to their tents beyond the walls, and the rowdy, mean-spirited element took over the plaza long before the midsummer sun was ready to set. Xantcha and Ratepe were spotted standing on the roof, silhouetted by the sun. The innkeeper, a man as burly as the sanctuary Red-Stripes reminded them in no uncertain terms that they'd rented the garret. For an additional two silver bits they rented the roof as well. The innkeeper offered to send up supper and another jug of berry wine.
Xantcha had had her fill of berries. They ate with the other guests in the commons, another leisurely, overpriced meal, then retreated to the roof for the spectacle. The western sky was blazing, and there were two brawls in the plaza, one strictly among the revelers, the other between the revelers and what appeared to be a cornered pair of Red-Stripes. A different, more strident set of gongs was