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“Why?” Hyacinth asked him, speaking across Silk.
Auk told him, “Let ’em jaw about the money first. If you don’t, they’ll keep going back to it.”
“Wise man!” Oreb exclaimed.
Silk rapped the table. “Which will it be, the airship or your accounts? Personally I’d prefer to deal with Generalissimo Oosik’s complaints against Generalissimo Siyuf, and General Mint and Colonel Bison’s. It’s usually best, I’ve found, to consider minor matters first and get them out of the way. Otherwise they cloud everyone’s thinking, as Auk says.”
“We knew you’d stolen our money,” Loris told him, “but we also knew it would be useless to protest the theft.”
Maytera Mint declared, “You want to make peace after all.”
“Hardly. But we’re prepared to offer you new terms of surrender, much more liberal terms than those I proposed at Blood’s, which were intended merely as an opening point for negotiations.”
“You said at the time that they were not negotiable,” Silk reminded him.
“Certainly. One always does. You were willing to listen to Potto’s proposal. Will you hear ours as well? Our joint proposal?”
“Of course.”
“Then let me first explain why you should accept it. You assert that you have a strategy that will assure your victory, though you are loath to follow it. You are mistaken, but we are not. We have a strategy of our own, one that will assure your defeat in under a year.”
Oosik said, “Clearly you do not, or you would follow it,” and Silk nodded.
“You have been assisting us with it,” Loris continued, smiling, “for which we are appropriately grateful.”
Potto gri
“We are,” Loris confirmed, “and other weapons as well, needlers mostly. We still have access to several stores of weapons. I hope you will excuse my keeping their locations confidential.”
“Giving them to who?” Bison inquired.
“In a moment. Some preparation is necessary. You were underground not long ago, Colonel. The tu
“I’ve been told the calde went into them from a shrine by the lake, and that General Mint went in from a house north of the city and came out on the Palatine. If those she saw and those he saw belong to the same complex, it’s pretty large.”
Maytera Mint told him, “Much larger than that, according to what I’ve learned from Spider.”
“I want him,” Potto put in. “I want him and the Flier. I offered the airship and you refused it. Name your price.”
Silk sighed. “I said that trivial points tend to obscure discussions. This is just such a point, so let’s dispose of it. Spider is our prisoner. We will exchange him for one of equal value, during this truce or another. Have you a prisoner to offer us? Who is it?”
Potto shook his head. “I will have, soon. Give him back, and you’ll get double value as soon as I have it.”
“No!” Maytera Mint struck the table with her small fist, and Hyacinth’s catachrest thrust his furry little head above the tabletop, saying, “Done bay saw made, laddie.”
“Of course not,” Silk told Potto, “but may I propose an alternative I believe workable?”
“Let’s hear it’
“In a moment. You also want Sciathan.”
“Only temporarily.” Potto giggled. “I’ll pay you a line for every day I keep him over a fortnight, how’s that? Like a library book. I still have a lot more money than you stole.”
Auk declared, “I heard about you from Maytera, and you ain’t taking him.”
“Auk speaks for me as well,” Silk said, “and for all of us. Sciathan is a free individual—”
“A free man,” Loris amended.
“Precisely. He is not mine to give or keep. He is here in this palace as my guest, and nothing more — nothing less, I ought to say. If you believe he’s under restraint, ask him.”
Remora tossed back his lank black hair. “’Sacred unto Pas are the life and property of the stranger you welcome.’”
“Furthermore, he would disappoint you. He’s been beaten and interrogated already by Generalissimo Siyut who hoped to learn how the Fliers’ propulsion modules operate. Councillor Lemur killed Iolar, who was another Flier, for the same reason; I shrove Iolar before he died. Since Lemur himself died soon after, you may not be aware of it. Are you?”
Loris shrugged. “We were aware of his capture, of course. What Lemur learned from him died with Lemur, unfortunately.”
“Lemur learned nothing from him; that was why Lemur killed him. I discussed the propulsion modules with Sciathan today. He freely conceded that their principle is important; that it would be valuable to our city or any other is obvious; but he doesn’t have it, and neither did Iolar.
“The scientists who make them remain in Mainframe, safe from capture. The Fliers who use them are kept ignorant of the principle, for reasons they understand and approve. It’s an elementary precaution, one that you and your fellow councillors ought to have anticipated. It would have been anticipated, surely, by anyone not blinded by the itch for power. If you want to find out how they operate, you might capture one of those the Trivigauntis have and take it apart; but I doubt that I could tell leaf from root.”
“Naturally you couldn’t.” Potto giggled. “Have you got one? Name your price for Spider. A hundred cards? I want to hear it, and the price of the propulsion module, too, if you’ve got one.”
“We don’t. Councillor Loris, Councillor Lemur told me that he was a bio, not a chem. Are you?”
“Certainly.”
“Despite the marble bookend you crushed at Blood’s?”
“This is not my natural body. Physically, I’m on our boat, well out of your reach. This body,” Loris touched his black velvet tunic, “is a chem, if you like. To simplify matters, I won’t object to your calling it that. I manipulate it from my bed, making it move and speak as I did when I was younger.”
Maytera Mint told Silk, “I explained all this, I think.”
“Yes, you did, Maytera; I’m very grateful. Spider should be grateful as well.”
“If it gets me loose,” Spider grunted.
“It very well may. From what General Mint has reported, counterintelligence has been your chief concern. I’m not so naive as to think that your organization — what remains of it — could not be put to other uses, however; and I noticed that Councillor Potto wanted you back when he was pla
Potto said, “I do anyhow. He’s valuable to us.”
“Clearly. Primarily in frustrating spies?”
Loris said, “Primarily, yes.”
“Spider, General Mint says you’re a decent man, a patriot in your way. If I were to release you to Councillor Potto, as you wish, would you be willing to give me your solemn promise that in so far as our forces are concerned, you would confine your activities entirely to counterintelligence? By ‘our forces’ I intend those headed by Generalissimo Oosik and Auk — not only the Guard, but General Mint’s volunteers, including those commanded by her through Colonel Bison.”
Spider licked his lips. “If Councillor Potto don’t tell me I can’t, yeah, I will.”
Potto raised a hand. “Wait. I think I heard something fu
Auk gri
Sciathan stood up. “We must! If the Cargo will not leave the Whorl, Pas will drive everyone out as one drives a bear from a cave. He will starve and afflict Crew and Cargo until we go.”
Loris’s icy blue eyes twinkled. “A rain of blood. The Chrasmologic Writings speak of such things, I’m told.”
Remora nodded solemnly. “Ah — worse, Councillor. Plagues, hey? Famine, er, likewise.”
“Listen to me!” Sciathan s excited tenor cracked. “If a landing craft leaves, even one, Pas will wait for more. But if none leave everyone will be driven out. Do you understand now? We Crew have a craft ready, but so much Crew ca