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“I was, yeah.” From his expression, Spider was relieved as well. “How’d you figure he was in there?”
“From the earth on the spade. There was fresh earth on the blade. Didn’t you notice it?”
He shook his head.
From the guardroom, Schist a
“Good. You’d better walk ahead of us, Spider, and put up your hands again. There are more, you see. They could have rushed you hours ago, but they must have been afraid you’d kill His Eminence and me.”
A hundred thoughts crowded her mind. “Besides, if we let you walk behind us, you might decide that your duty to Councillor Potto compelled you to run. Then this soldier would fire.”
“I’d hit you, too,” Schist said. “I don’t miss much.” He patted Sewellel’s swathed corpse, slung over his left shoulder.
“Can I put my hand down to open the door?”
“Certainly,” Maytera Mint told him; and Schist, “Sure.”
“I ought to explain that I’ve spoken with Private Schist’s sergeant,” Maytera Mint continued as they left the guardroom. “That was on Sphixday, the day after our calde was rescued. His name is Sand, and he has come over to our side, to the calde’s side, with his entire squad. Or rather, with what remains of it, because several were killed by a talus.”
“I know how it feels.”
“I realize you do, Spider. Neither you nor I, nor Sergeant Sand, created war. What I was going to say is that our calde and I, with Sergeant Sand himself and Generalissimo Oosik and General Saba, conferred upon how we might make the best possible use of Schist here and the rest. Of the few soldiers we had. It wasn’t a lengthy debate, because all of us found the answer rather obvious. The soldiers knew these tu
“All right, but how’d you know he was in there from the dirt on my spade?”
“It was fresh, as I said. Still somewhat damp. I asked about the grave that looked most new, and read the date on the paper, and it wasn’t nearly new enough. So somebody else had been burying something. I thought of an ear, as they’re called, or something of the sort, though to the best of my knowledge Sand didn’t have one.” She fell silent, listening to their echoing footsteps.
“Go on,” Spider urged her.
“Eventually I realized that room back there was a better place. A soldier as intelligent as Sand would surely anticipate that we would stop there to eat and talk. He’d want to know what we said, since you might say something that would be of value to him. He was right, because as soon as we arrived I began asking my questions. At any rate, he had Schist hide and listen, and when we left we were going here.”
Already, too soon as it seemed to Maytera Mint, they had passed beneath the great iron door, and Remora was staring at Schist. She called, “It’s all right, Your Eminence! We have been rescued, and Spider is our prisoner.”
The earth around Remora erupted as two more soldiers freed themselves from it.
Chapter 9 — A Piece of Pas
Auk pounded on the door of the old manse on Brick Street with the butt of his needler. Behind him, Incus cleared his throat, a soft and apologetic noise that might have issued from a rabbit or a squirrel. Behind Incus, twenty-two men and women murmured to one another.
Auk pounded again.
“He’s in there, trooper,” Hammerstone declared. “Somebody is, anyhow. I hear him.”
“I didn’t,” Auk remarked, “and I got good ears.”
“Not good enough. Want me to bust the door, Patera?”
“By no means. Auk, my son, allow me.”
Wearily, Auk stepped away from the door. “You think you can knock better than me, Patera, you go right ahead.”
“My knock would be no more effectual than your own, my son, I feel quite confident. Less so, if anything. My mind, however, may yet be of service.”
“Patera’s the smartest bio there is,” Hammerstone told the crowd, “the smartest in the whole Whorl” They edged forward, trying to peer around him.
Incus drew himself up to his full height, which was by no means great. “Blessed be this manse, in the Most Sacred Name of Pass Father of the Gods, in whose name we come. Blessed be it in the name of Gracious Echidna, His Consort, in those of their Sons and their Daughters alike, this day and until Pas’s Plan attains fulfillment, in the name of Scylla, Patroness of this Our Holy City of Viron and my own patroness.”
Hammerstone leaned toward him, reporting in a harsh stage whisper, “They stopped moving around in there, Patera.”
Incus filled his lungs again. “Patera Jerboa! For you we have the highest and holiest veneration. I who speak am like you a holy augur. Indeed, I am more, for I am that augur whom Scintillating Scylla herself has chosen to lead the Chapter of Our Holy City.
“Accompanying me are two laymen who themselves have the greatest of claims to your revered attention, for they are Auk and Hammerstone, the biochemical person and the chemical one, cojoined, selected by Lord Pas himself to execute his will at a holy sacrifice at which I presided, this very—”
The door opened a hand’s breadth, and the pale, affrighted face of Patera Shell appeared. “You — you… Are you really an augur?”
“I am, my son. But if you are Patera Jerboa, the augur of this manteion, you are the wrong Patera Jerboa, one whom we do not seek.”
From behind Hammerstone, the foremost of Auk’s followers declared, “He ain’t no augur! Twig his gipon.”
Incus turned back to address him, one small foot blocking the door. “Oh, but he is, my son. Do I not know my own kind? No mere tunic can deceive me.”
“Yeah,” Auk put in, “he’s a augur right enough, or I never seen one. C’mere, Patera.” Catching Shell’s wrist, he jerked him through the doorway. “What’s your name?”
Shell only stared at him with wide eyes, his mouth opening and shutting.
“He’s Patera Shell, my acolyte,” a
Auk already had. “You’re the cull, all right. You got a Window in your manteion, Patera?”
“It would not be a manteion without one. I’ve—” Jerboa coughed and spat. “I’ve served my Window for sixty-one years. I’d…” He fell silent, sucking his gums as he looked ftom Auk to Incus and back. “Who’s in charge here?”
“I am,” Auk told him, and offered his hand. “I’m what you call a theodidact, Patera. Patera Incus there ought to have told you. I been enlightened by Tartaros. Right now, I’m doing a job for his pa. So’re they.” He jerked his thumb at Hammerstone and Incus, then held out his hand again.
Jerboa clasped it, his own hand dry and cold, with a grip that seemed oddly weak for its size; for a moment his eyes were bright. “I was going to say that I’d like to die in front of my Sacred Window, my son, but you haven’t come to kill us.”