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“You got the lily there, Terrible Tartaros.”
“Therefore you are liable to be impatient.”
“Not me. I been fired and cold up on the roof, when they were looking with dogs.”
“Be warned. This time the prize is greater.”
Auk shouldered their way through the crowd, halted at the door of the boarded-up shop that had been his destination, and put down the bags he carried. “Listen up, all you culls.”
The crowd hushed.
“I don’t know what you want, but I know what I want. I want to leave this stuff with the dell inside. She’s hungry, and some cullys in the market gave me this for her. If you want to see me, you’ve done it. If you want to hear me, you’ve done that, too. If it’s something else, let me give her these and we’ll talk about it.”
A voice from the crowd called, “We want you to sacrifice!”
“You’re abram. I’m no augur.” Auk pounded on the warped door. “Hammerstone! Look alive in there!”
The door opened; at the sight of the towering soldier, the crowd fell silent. “This ain’t one of the Ayuntamiento’s,” Auk shouted hastily. “He’s working for the gods like I am, only when we were corning here…” He tried to remember when they had come; although he vividly recalled watching Hammerstone free himself from tons of shattered shiprock, he could not shut his mind upon the day. “It was when the Alambrera gave up. Anyway all these trooper culls were taking shots at him, so we figured it was better for him to pull it in.”
Behind him Hammerstone hissed. “Ask if Patera’s here.” It was like receiving confidences from a thunderhead.
“Patera Incus!” Auk shouted. “We’re looking for this real holy augur named Patera Incus. Somebody said something about a sacrifice. Is Patera Incus out there?”
Voices from the back of the crowd: “You do it!”
From behind Hammerstone, Hyacinth inquired urgently, “Is there food in those? I want it.”
Tartaros whispered, “Tell them you will,” by some miracle overcoming the clamor of the crowd.
Auk was so surprised he turned to look. “What the shaggy — I mean yeah, dimber, Terrible Tartaros. Anything.” Passing both sacks to Hammerstone, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “I’ll sacrifice. You got it!”
“When?” Four men lifted a terrified brown kid over their heads; its unhappy bleats were visible, although inaudible.
“Now, Auk my noctolater.”
“Now!” Auk repeated.
A thin man whose coat and hat had once been costly asked, “You say you’re doing the gods’ will. Will a god appear?”
Auk waited for assurance from the blind god at his side, but none was forthcoming.
Others took up the question. “Will a god come?”
“What do you think?” Auk challenged them, and a hundred arguments broke out at once.
From behind Hammerstone’s green bulk, Hyacinth inquired, “Where’re we going to do it?”
“I thought you were eating.”
“She is,” Hammerstone rumbled. “I can hear her.”
The noise grew as fifty men and a dozen loud-voiced women shouted demands. Auk muttered, “Terrible Tartaros, you better tell me what to tell ’em or we could have a problem here.”
“Have I not, Auk my noctolater? You are to sacrifice, to me or to whatever god you wish.”
Auk turned to Hammerstone. “Get out of the door. I got to tell both of you, and I ain’t going to talk to her through you.”
The soldier emerged into the street, evoking another awed silence. Revealed, Hyacinth chewed and gulped, wiping her hands on her soiled gown. “That was a nectarine, I think, and I think I swallowed the pit. I can’t remember spitting it out. Maybe I chewed it up. Thelx, was it good!”
“You take care of this stuff,” Auk told her, “I got to go to Sun Street.”
“I’m coming!”
Auk shook his head. “I ain’t no augur—”
Tattaros whispered, “Bring the soldier and the woman.”
“But I got to sacrifice. Scalding Scylla wanted me to, too. She was going to make me give her Dace, probably.”
“I’ll need a coat and a bath, makeup — don’t you hit me! if you hit me again I’ll — I’ll—”
“You’re coming all right,” Auk told her, “and we’re going now.” He strode into the crowd. “Listen here! Slap a muzzle on it, you culls. Listen up!”
Hammerstone fired his slug gun into the air.
“No god’s coming! You want me to sacrifice, we’ll go over to Sun Street and do it right. Only no god!” Under his breath he added, “You couldn’t see one anyhow, you cank cullys.”
They followed him through the narrow street nonetheless, cowed by him more than by the menacing soldier beside him who never relaxed his hold on the shivering, disheveled young woman in the red silk gown.
From the highest step of Silk’s manteion, Auk addressed them again. “I told you there ain’t going to be a god. You jerk me around, don’t you? Sacrifice right this minute! Show us a god, Auk! All your clatter. You think you could jerk me around like you do if I could jerk the gods around? I can’t. Neither can you. What I’m telling you is, it’s time.”
He drew his brass-mounted hanger. “I can cut your goats with this. That’s nothing. Can I cut myself out of the whorl? That’s what matters. Think about it. Nobody but you can make you think, not even gods.”
“Sacrifice!” someone shouted.
“Not even the gods!” Auk bellowed. “Only they can snuff you if you don’t, see? Or just leave you to die, ’cause this whorl’s finished! Tartaros told me!”
The crowd stirred.
“Ever see a dead bitch in the street? And her pups still trying to suck? That’s you! And that’s me!” Over his shoulder Auk added, “Open these doors, Hammerstone.”
The soldier hooked a finger as thick as a crowbar through one wrought iron handle and rattled the door until it seemed it must leave its hinges. “It’s locked.”
“Then bust it down. We’ll use the wood.”
Hammerstone released the door and drew back his fist, but Hyacinth exclalined, “Wait! Somebody’s coming!”
In a moment Auk heard the rattle and squeak of the old iron lock, and the solid thunk as the bolt slid back. He grasped the handle and pulled.
“Patera!” Hammerstone knelt as a father does to embrace a boy who does not like being lifted, and hugged Incus in arms that could have splintered the ribs of a bull.
Even Auk smiled. “Hi, Patera. Where you been?”
Hyacinth, torn between the opportunity for flight and the deliverance she sensed was almost at hand, nudged Auk. “Is this him? The one Hammerstone talks about all the time?”
“Yeah. You want to argue with him? Me neither.”
Pointing to Incus he a
From Hammerstone’s embrace, Incus protested, “Auk, my son!”
“We got to, Patera. You like for lots of people to see you sacrifice? I got you three or four hundred here. Hammerstone, loosen up or you’ll chill him.”
Speaking so quickly her racing words flashed past like frightened li
Auk clapped a hand over her month. “She goes on like that quite a bit, Patera, and we ain’t got time for it all. Let him go, Hammerstone. Get him inside there and up to the altar. You can carry him, I guess, if it makes you feel better.”