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“Yeah, all that stuff. Well, I sort of thought, hey, this is interesting, so I talked to Violet some myself.” Chenille sounded apologetic.
“Sure,” Hyacinth said. “Why shouldn’t you?”
“So it pops out that the Trivigauntis caught a Flier. Maybe you don’t know about this, Hy, but I do because I was there when Patera found out. Remember, Patera?”
Silk smiled ruefully. “Yes. It was something that I had hoped to discuss with Generalissimo Siyuf over di
“Only you didn’t know they killed three, did you? Three Fliers. That’s what Siyuf said, Violet says.”
“No.” Silk pursed his lips. “I certainly did not know that. I thought only one had landed, for whatever reason, and the Trivigauntis had him. You’re correct, Chenille, this is serious as well as unpleasant.”
“I haven’t even gotten to the worst stuff yet, Patera. Violet figured it might be good to know where this Flier was. You know, something somebody might pay to know.”
“She’ll be rewarded if she’s entitled to it, and it sounds to me as though she is.”
“Only she told Orchid, and Orchid didn’t try to hold out for money, she just wanted me to tell you, and say where I got it. Then Violet lets out she spotted you and Hy at Ermine’s. It was when she’d just got there herself and that’s how I knew where to find you.”
“That’s not so bad, surely.”
“It’s where they put this Flier, Patera.” Chenille gulped. “He’s in our Juzgado, and Siyuf’s moving her headquarters there. They’re taking it.”
Silk sat in stu
“And Violet spilled something about me and Auk, Patera, just making conversation, she says, with Siyuf. She says as soon as she said Auk’s name Siyuf wanted to know all about him. I think maybe that was why she was so nice to me last night at di
The formidable breasts heaved again. “So the Juzgado’s the main thing for you, Patera, but Auk’s the main thing for me and I’m scared. Not for me, but for him.”
The little catachrest sprang onto the dressing table for a better view of Hyacinth. “Shop, itty laddie! Wise rung?”
She wiped her eyes. “It was just such a short honeymoon, that’s all, Tick.”
Sciathan opened his eyes as the key squealed in the lock, then resolutely closed them. The newcomer was twice his height and three or four times his weight, brawny, dirty, and bearded. This freezing cell had been a haven of peace for the past few hours, Sciathan reflected; the interlude was over, and troubles of a new kind had begun.
Outside the warder said, “I can get you clean sheets if you want ’em.”
“Fetch my prog,” the newcomer rumbled. As the iron door swung inward: “You upstairs! You hungry?”
“I am not.” Sciathan turned his face to the shiprock wall. “Thank you very much.
“I am.” The newcomer seated himself heavily on the lower bunk. “Shaggy hungry and shaggy tired. I been hungry so long I forgot I’m hungry. I’m just sort of empty. I was up shaggy late last night and up shaggy early this morning, and between times I slept on the floor. It was a stone floor, too, but I was so shaggy tired it felt better than this.”
He lay down, his position attested by the creaking of the bunk straps. “This’s the easiest I’ve had it all week.”
“A pleasant sleep to you,” Sciathan suggested politely.
“Oh, I ain’t going to sleep. I slept on the floor anyhow, like I said, and I got eating to do.” The newcomer chuckled, “How ’bout you? Have a good night?”
Sciathan risked a quick look over the side at the big man below. “I have rested more comfortably.”
“Somebody’s been dusting your dial, too, so I’m better off than you.”
Ten minutes or more crawled by until curiosity tweaked Sciathan. “You are Vironese? You are of this city?”
“Born on Wine Street,” the newcomer declared sleepily. “You’re scared I’m Trivigaunti, I guess. Been three or four days since I shaved is all. I been too busy.”
“I, myself, am a stranger here,” Sciathan ventured.
“Yeah, Peeper told me.
At once Sciathan was on guard. “Who is Peeper?”
“Out there with the keys. He’s sort of a friend of mine. I been in a couple times, and it helps. I got gelt, too. That always helps. We’re not going to pluck, anyhow.”
“I understand you,” Sciathan said, and fell silent.
“People think it’s a nickname, like, ’cause he looks in to make sure we’re not chilling each other.” The newcomer yawned. “But it’s his right tag. A peeper’s a kind of a little frog. They’re frogs mostly in his family, I guess, and toads and such. Twig him coming? Smells dimber.”
Sciathan sniffed. “It smells good, the first good odor I have smelled in this place.”
“Beef brisket and noodles. They got some kind of a sour cream sauce they put on it. Sour cream and red peppers dried and pounded up, butter, and some other stuff, I guess.”
The warder’s keys rattled against the cell door; outside it, the warder himself said, “Here’s your lunch.”
“My breakfast,” the newcomer told him. “I ate something sometime yesterday, some kind of a fruit, I forget what.” The key squeaked in the lock, and the newcomer chuckled as though the squeak amused him.
“I did the best I could with what you give me,” the warder declared. “I said who it was for and you were real hungry, and half a card but make it good. I’ve seen you eat, only I doubt you can wrap yourself around all this.”
“I mean to try.” The newcomer sat up.
“This big one here—” A faint chime sounded as the warder lifted the lid from a covered dish; Sciathan, watching from the corner of his eye, saw a cloud of fragrant steam waft toward the ceiling. “Your beef brisket and the noodles, enough for three’s what he said. Then this little one’s extra sauce.”
There was a somewhat softer chime, followed by an aroma indescribably delicious. Sciathan sat up in time to see the warder lift the lid from a third dish.
“This here’s pickled cabbage. He says you like it.”
The newcomer rubbed his big hands together. “Yeah, I do.”
“Good and hot, he says, and it’ll stay hot a long time. Only it’s about as good cold, so if you can’t finish you can keep it to eat later.” The warder paused. “Hoppies didn’t rough you up much.”
“You’re a hoppy yourself,” the newcomer told him.
“They don’t think so.”
“Sure you are. You just don’t get the green clothes.” The newcomer craned his neck to look up at Sciathan. “Remember what I said about his name? It’s ’cause his whole family’s hoppies, just about. They want their sprats to be hoppies, too, so they give ’em those names, Peeper and like that.”
The warder said, “I got a brother named Buffo and he’s a hoppy all right, but not me.”
“Pardon.” Sciathan leaned over the edge of the upper bunk to look at the laden tray that held the newcomer’s meal. “I do not understand.”
“He’s foreign,” the warder informed the newcomer. “They got queer ways in Urbs and places like that.”
The newcomer was unwrapping napkins to reveal a loaf as long as Sciathan’s arm. “What’s itching you, Upstairs? You figure they don’t feed everybody this good?”
The warder laughed.
“Your food was not prepared here.”
The newcomer shook his head. “There’s a place over on the other side of Cage Street. Peeper went over there for me and told ’em what I wanted, then after he locked me up he went back and got it. I fronted him a card, and he gets half for doing it for me. That’s how we do here.”
“You have just arrived,” Sciathan objected. “There could not be time to prepare so much.”
“He was in the hot room,” the warder explained, “only they made it easy for him, it looks like, and they let me come in to see if he wanted anything.”
“They know me, too,” the newcomer said.
Sciathan glanced at the snowflakes drifting down beyond the small, barred window, and drew his blanket about his shoulders. “It is warmer in there?”