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“She’s a real help, that girl. She does everything I tell her to and looks for more. There are times when I have to hold her back, Patera.”
“Now I understand. You were afraid I wouldn’t invite her, that I’d ask her to wait on table or something. She’s invited — or she will be as soon as I see her. I want her, and your granddaughter and Master Xiphias; I sent Horn to tell him.”
“I teach arithmetic.” Maytera Marble sighed. “And now I want to count on my fingers. What’s worse, I can’t. Only up to five, and we had six with Generalissimo Oosik and all those foreign officers. You and His Cognizance make eight. The old fencing master nine. Chenille, ten. Mucor and me, twelve. If you’re going to invite anybody else, you’d better make it two, Patera. Thirteen at table’s not lucky. I don’t know why, but you’re supposed to bring somebody in off the street if you have to, to make fourteen.”
Silk stood up. “No, that should be all. Now come with me. I asked Hossaan to bring the floater, and I think I heard it a moment ago.”
“Where…? I can’t go away, Patera. Not with company for di
Silk had anticipated that; he imagined himself arguing with Siyuf and was firm. “Of course you can. You’re going to. Go get your hand.”
“No. No.” Maytera Marble’s one functioning hand gripped the arm of her chair so tightly that the upholstery rose like dough between its metal fingers. “You don’t understand. You’re a good man. Too good, to tell the truth. Too good to me, as you always have been. But I’ve a thousand things to do between now and di
“Eight. I do understand, Maytera, and that’s why we’re going to that shop the valet — what was his name?”
“Marl. Patera, I can’t.”
“Exactly. You can’t because you have only one hand. You have to tell Chenille, for the most part, and get her to do it. So we’re going to get your right hand reattached. As you say, there’s a lot to be done, and with two hands you’ll be able to do twice as much as Chenille, instead of half as much.”
Without waiting for her to reply, he strode to the door. “I’ll be outside; I want to ask Hossaan why their generalissimo speaks the way she does. We’ll expect you in five minutes, with your hand.” As he stepped into the reception hall, he added, “You and Chenille, and your granddaughter Bring her, too.”
Maytera Marble’s last wailing “Patera…” was cut off by the closing of the door. Gri
The outer door swung toward him before he could open it, and Hossaan stepped inside with Oreb perched on his shoulder. “Your bird was out there, Calde. I guess he couldn’t find a window open, so I brought him in.”
“Girls fly,” Oreb aoaked, fluttering. “Bird see.”
“Yes, and just in time, silly bird. Come here.”
Oreb hopped to Silk’s wrist. “Men perch!”
“He’s been flying up to the airship,” Silk explained. “By now he probably understands it a great deal better than I do. They lower people from it in a thing like an oversized birdcage, and bring people and supplies up; that seems to interest him.” He hesitated, then waved toward a long divan. “Let’s sit down for a moment. There’s something I want to ask you.”
“Sure thing, Calde.”
“We could do this in your floater, but I have the feeling there’d be somebody wanting to talk to me, and I don’t want to be interrupted. Did you see the parade?”
Hossaan nodded. “I was keeping an eye on you up on that stand, Calde, in case you wanted me.”
“Good. Then you saw me talking to Generalissimo Siyuf and General Saba. Do you know either of them, by the way?”
“Personally, you mean, Calde? No, I don’t. I know what they look like.”
“You haven’t spoken to them.”
Hossaan shook his head.
“But you’ve traveled. You’re from Trivigaunte originally?”
“Yes, Calde. I was born there. You’d be a fool to take anything I tell you at face value. You realize that, I’m sure.”
“Good man!” Oreb defended him. “Men fly. Perch!”
“Of course. I understand that your primary loyalty must be to your native city.”
“It is. And you’re right. I’ve traveled more than most men ever do. I can tell you about some of the places I’ve been, if you like, but I can’t always tell you what I was doing there.”
Silk nodded thoughtfully. “Here in Viron, we sometimes say that someone speaks Vironese, as if it were a separate language. It isn’t, of course. It’s just that we have certain idiomatic expressions that aren’t used, as far as I know, in other cities. There are words we pronounce differently as well. I know very little about other cities, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they have peculiarities of their own.”
“That’s right. I think I know what you’re going to ask me, but go on.”
“Is there any reason you shouldn’t tell me about it?”
“Not a one.”
“All right. I was going to say that there actually are other languages, languages quite different from ours. Latin, for example, and French. We have French and Latin books, and there are passages in the Writings in those languages, which makes them of interest to scholars and even to ordinary augurs like me. Presumably there are cities in which those languages are spoken just as we speak Vironese here.”
“The Common Tongue,” Hossaan said. “That’s what travelers generally call it, and it’s what we call it in Trivigaunte.”
“I see.” Silk’s forefinger traced small circles on his cheek. “In that case you, from your foreign perspective, would say that both Viron and Palustria, for instance, speak the Common Tongue? Palustrian is similar enough to Vironese that one might have to listen to a speaker for several minutes to determine his native city. Or so I was taught at the schola.”
“You’ve got it, Calde.”
“Very well then. I can imagine a foreign city in which another language is spoken, Latin let us say. And I can easily imagine one like Palustria, where the Common Tongue is spoken; I can’t prove it, but I suspect that there may be more differences between the speech of a Vironese of the upper class and a beggar or a bricklayer than there are between an ordinary merchant from Viron and a like merchant from Palustria. What I ca
Hossaan nodded, but said nothing.
“Men fly!” Oreb a
“Great Pas guide us!” Maytera Marble was coming down the staircase with Chenille and Mucor. “What’s gotten into your bird, Patera?”
“I don’t know,” said Silk — who thought, however, that he did. “Hossaan, he came to you while you were waiting in the floater, is that right?”
“He landed on the back of the seat, Calde, and started tailing. I couldn’t understand him at first.”
“Yet another language, or at least another way of speaking the Common Tongue.” Silk smiled wryly. “What did he say?”
“’Bird out, bird out, Silk in.’ Like that, Calde.”
Silk nodded. “Go out and wait for us. Put the canopy up. I don’t know how long the wait will be, and there’s no point in your freezing.”
As Hossaan left, Chenille asked, “Aren’t we going, Patera?”
“In a moment. Step into the library, please, everybody. Oreb, where are the flying men and flying girls who perched?”
Oreb hopped to a corner occupied by a fat-bellied vase and rapped it sharply with his beak.
“Northeast, Mucor,” Silk muttered. “Did you see that?”
Her skull-like face turned toward him as a pale funeral lily lifts its blossom to the sun. “Flying, Silk?”
“Fliers, I believe. The people who fly on wings made of something that looks like gauze.”