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Chenille added, “Like the Trivigaunti pterotroopers, only their wings are longer and look like they’d be lighter.”
The night chough flew to Silk’s shoulder.
“One more question, Oreb. Were there houses where the flying people landed?”
“House now! Quick house!”
Silk took a handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, and draped it over his spread fingers. “Like this?”
“Yes, yes!”
“Sit down, please,” Silk told the three women. “Mucor, as a great favor to me, and your grandmother, too, do you think you could find out what these Fliers are doing?”
When she did not answer, he said, “Search the grazing land north and east of the city, where the Rani’s men are putting up their tents. I believe that may be what he means when he says quick houses. The Fliers will have taken off their wings when they landed, I imagine, and they’ll probably leave at least one of their number to guard them.”
“As Patera says, this is for both of us, Mucor.” Maytera Marble patted her knee. “I don’t know why it’s important, but I’m sure it must be.”
Chenille remarked, “You know, I’ve been wanting to have a look at this ever since that Trivigaunti saw her in the mirror, only now I can’t even tell if she’s doing it. You ought to be chanting and sprinkling perfume on Thelxiepeia’s picture.”
“The miracle — or magic, if that’s what you wish to call it — is in Mucor,” Silk told her.
“Auk believes in the gods, Patera. He’s really religious in his way, and he knows I had Scylla inside ru
“Auk,” Mucor repeated suddenly.
Oreb cocked his head like Maytera Marble. “Where Auk?”
Mucor’s toneless voice seemed to emanate from a forsaken place beyond the universe. “Where Auk is… Silk? Chain my hands. Feet smash strong-wings.”
Chapter 6 — In Spider’s Web
“Are we truly, um, abandoned, Maytera? Solitary? Or are there other ears, eh? In this dark and — er — noisome. That’s the question, hum?”
“I don’t know. I have no way of telling. Do you?” The question Maytera Mint herself was debating was whether it would be disrespectful to lie down before Remora did.
“I — ah — no. I have none, I confess.”
“Do you have a secret that would let Potto and the other councillors return to power in defiance of the gods?”
“I would — um — General. Be safer not, eh? Not to speak upon such, er, topics.”
“It certainly would if you had one, Your Eminence. Do you?” She was trying fo forget how thirsty she was.
“Positively not. Not privy to military matters, eh?”
“Neither do I, Your Eminence, so let them listen all they want.” It was ecstasy to take her shoes off; for half a minute she debated taking off her long black stockings, too, but selfcontrol prevailed. “By now Bison’s taken charge. Or someone else has, but probably it’s Bison. He was my best officer, absolutely steady in a crisis but not very imaginative. If he can find somebody a little more creative to advise him, Bison should give the Ayuntamiento a very difficult time.”
“I am, er, suffused with pleasure at the prospect.”
“So am I, Your Eminence. I just hope it’s true.” She leaned back against the wall.
“You will, um, reproach me.”
“Never, Your Eminence.”
“You, or others. One never lacks for, um, critics? Patera Feelers. Faultfinders. You will — um — er — vociferate that as a, um, intermediary I must restrain my partisanship.”
She laid her arms on her knees, and her head upon her arms.
“I rejoin, General, by, er, asseverating that I have done so. And do so, eh? In our, um, current instance and beyond, hey? It is not partisanship but reason, hey? I am a man of peace. I have so, um, declared myself. Under flag of truce, eh? Having consulted Brigadier Erne. Having likewise consulted Calde Silk. Brought the, um, exceedingly significant — hum. You, General. I brought you to discuss, er, armistice. An — ah — feat of diplomacy? Triumph. Is my, er, our persons. Are they respected? They are not!”
“I’m going to stretch out, if that won’t upset you, Your Eminence. I’ll tuck my skirt around my legs.”
“No, no, Mayt — General. I can scarcely make out your, ah, self in this — er — stygian. There is one quarrel that ca
“We certainly haven’t succeeded in mediating this one.”
“I refer to the quarrel between good and, um, evil. Yes, evil. As a man of the cloth, an augur erstwhile destined, eh? Destined for — ah — greatness. As that, um, augur, fallible, eh? At whiles foolish, eh? Yet sensible of the ultimate, hey? I ca
“That’s good.” Maytera Mint closed hers. The only light in the dark, bare room was a long streak of watery green under the door; closing her eyes should have made little difference, yet she found it deeply restful.
“If — er — ah — um — hum,” Remora said; or at least, so she heard him. The facade of the Corn Exchange was falling very slowly, while she waited powerless to move.
She woke with a start. “Your Eminence?”
“Yes, General?”
“Some dreams are sent by the gods.”
“Ah — indubitably.”
“Has anyone ever proposed that all dreams are? That every dream is a message from the gods?”
“I — um. Ca
“Because I just had a very commonplace sort of dream, Your Eminence, but I feel that it may have been sent by a god.”
“Unusual? Extraordinary. If I do not presume, hey? No wish to, er, intrude. But I offer my, um, if desired.”
“I dreamed I was standing on the street in front of the Corn Exchange. It was falling on me, but I couldn’t run.”
“I — ah — see.”
“It actually happened a few days ago. We pulled it down with oxen. I could’ve run then, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to die, so I stood there and watched it fall until Rook carried me out of danger. He was nearly killed, as well as I.”
“The — ah — import? I fail to see it, General.”
“A god, I think, was telling me that since I’d chosen to die then, I shouldn’t be afraid of dying now, that nothing they can do to me could be worse than being crushed by that building, which was the way I’d chosen to die not long ago.”
“What god, hey? What god, General? Have you any notion?”
She knew from an alteration in Remora’s voice that he had straightened up. She had, temporarily at least, ransomed him from self-pity; she wished fervently that someone would ransom her. “I haven’t the least idea which god may have favored me, Your Eminence, assuming one did. I don’t recall anything that would furnish a clue.”
“No animals, eh?”
“None, Your Eminence. Just the street, and the falling stones. It was after shadelow, and all I remember is how dark they looked against the skylands.”
“Not, um, Day-Ruling Pas. Sun god, eh? Master of the Long Sun and all that. Tartaros, hum? Night god. Dark stones, dark god. Bats — ah — flittering?”
Maytera Mint rolled her head so that the tip of her sharp little nose made a small arc of negation. “No animals, Your Eminence, as I said. None whatsoever.”
“I shall — ah — prefer. I prefer to, um, suspend? No, table. Table the question, eh? If only for the nonce. In my, er, not inconsiderable experience an, um, signature may be — ah — descried by one who, eh? Shall peer about. Let us peer about, Maytera. What day is this, would you say?”
“Now?”
“Ah — yes. And then, eh? What day did you feel it to be in your, um, envisagement?”
“If you mean the night it happened…?”
“No. Did it, ah, seem to you a particular day, eh? Were you, um, conscious of a — ah — the calendar?”