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“That you are a fool. The airship could be here once more in such a time.”
“Just so.” Oosik wound his white-tipped mustache about his finger. “We have contacted Trivigaunte by glass, Generalissimo. We have spoken to your Minister of War. We have explained how things stand here, and offered to exchange you for Calde Silk.”
“They won’t,” Newt declared. “Won’t do it or even talk about it, by Scylla! We invite your comments.”
“I offer what is better. Let me speak with her.”
Potto roared, slapping his thigh. “This is too, too rich! My dear young General, you’re not even smiling. How do you do it?” He turned back to Siyuf, speaking across the empty chair. “You already have, and it didn’t help a bit.”
“I have not. Abanja for me, perhaps.”
Maytera Mint said, “We think it’s politics. By we I mean Generalissimo Oosik and I. The internal politics of your city. We’d like confirmation of that, and some suggestions about what to do about it.”
“If this you say is true…” Siyuf shrugged again.
Oosik muttered, “Every city has its feuds, Generalissimo.”
“Mine also. Our War Minister, you do not say her name. This is Ljam? A scar here?” Siyuf touched her upper lip.
Newt and Maytera Mint nodded.
“This is not possible. My city have politics, as your generalissimo say. Feuds, plottings, hatreds. Of these very many. But Ljam is with me most near. If I fail here she fail also. You understand? Lose her ministry, perhaps her head.”
Oosik regarded Siyuf through slitted eyes. “You’re saying it is impossible for her to betray you, Generalissimo?”
“She ca
Potto sang, “I told you! I told you!”
“He thinks your airship’s wrecked, or it’s gone off course somehow.” Maytera Mint looked somber. “Naturally they won’t say so, and Generalissimo Oosik and I thought it was more likely they were playing some game, though Councillor Potto received a report implying it’s gone. Now it seems he must be right. This is truly unfortunate.”
“But we’re going to let you go anyhow,” Potto told Siyuf. “Isn’t that nice of us?” He bounced from his chair and went to the door calling, “You can send them in!”
It was opened by a soldier; and Violet and a second Siyuf entered, Violet with her arm linked with the second Siyuf’s. She stared at the first in open-mouthed amazement.
“You’ll have to go now, my dear young strumpet,” Potto told her. “We don’t want you, though I’m sure many do. Have a seat, Generalissimo. I’ll be with you in a half a moment.”
“I am to sit beside this bio?” the second Siyuf inquired. “This I do not like. You say you send me to my horde, I think. When is it you do this?”
“You’ll escape,” Newt explained to the first Siyuf. “Or rather, she will.”
“Too much warlockery for me.” Hadale dropped into one of the cockpit’s black-leather seats. “Too much in your city, and too much on our airship now that you’re here. People at home say you’re all warlocks, but I discounted it. I should have tripled everything. You’re a warlock, Calde, and I’d call you the chief warlock if I hadn’t met the old man who sat between our generalissimo and General Saba.”
“She refers to His Cognizance,” Silk told Hyacinth; awed and delighted, he tried to stare at everything at once. “Like a conservatory…”
Oreb croaked, “Bad thing” as Tick squirmed in Hyacinth’s grasp. “Add word, dew!”
“Three engines gone.” Hadad peered morosely through the nearest rectangle of glass at the parting clouds and the rocky sand scape that they revealed. “What do you want? Surrender? I’ll shoot you first and take my chances with the desert.”
“Then we don’t want it,” Hyacinth declared.
“We don’t in any case,” Silk said, “and I’m no warlock; the truth is that I’m hardly an augur any more — I certainly don’t feel like one.”
“General Saba told me the other day that you read about our advance in sheepguts. Do you deny it?”
“No, though it isn’t true. Denying it would waste time, so you may believe it if you like. There are five engines still in operation. Is that enough to keep us in the air?”
The navigator looked up from her charts, then returned to them; Hadale pointed to the ceiling. “None are needed to keep us up, the gas does it. Are we going to lose all our engines?”
Silk considered. “I can’t promise that. I hope so.”
“You hope so.”
“No shoot,” Oreb advised Hadale nervously. “Good man.”
“It was what I intended.” For a moment, Silk allowed his eyes to feast on Hyacinth’s loveliness. “The risk that gave me most concern was that Hyacinth might be killed as a result of what I was doing; I hoped it wouldn’t happen, and I’m very glad it won’t. I betrayed my god for her — I was horribly afraid that it would recoil on me, as such things do.”
She brought his hand to the soft warmth of her thigh. “You betrayed the Outsider for me? I’d never ask you to do that.”
Hadale turned to the pilot, “We’ve still got five?”
The pilot nodded. “Can’t make much headway against this wind with five, though, sir.”
Hyacinth asked, “Aren’t we going south anyway? Isn’t the wind blowing us south to Trivigaunte? Somebody said something like that.”
“It’s blowing us south,” Hadale told her bitterly, “but not to Trivigaunte. We turned east for about an hour before the first one quit.”
“Veering north-northwest, sir,” the pilot reported.
Having freed himself from Hyacinth’s grasp, Tick stood on his hind legs to pat Hadale’s knee. “Rust Milk, laddie. Milk bill take hit hall tight.”
“He says you can trust my husband,” Hyacinth interpreted. “He’s right, too, and I don’t think you ought to pay too much attention to what my husband says about betraying a god. He — oh, I don’t know how to explain! He’s forever blaming himself for the wrong things. He’s sorry for holding me too tight when I wish he’d hold me tighter. See?”
“Your catachrest’s an oracle of our goddess, so I have to trust him implicitly. Is that it?”
“I didn’t say that.” Hyacinth sat down. “I guess I would have, though, if I thought you’d believe it. Maybe it’s right, and she isn’t telling us.”
“Hat’s shoe!” Tick exclaimed.
Silk smiled. “I take it that General Saba’s no longer in charge. Where is she?”
“In her bunk, with three troopers to watch her. I won’t ask how you drove her mad. I’m sure you wouldn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t.” He leaned over the crescent-shaped instrument panel for a better view of the desert below. “I arranged for her to be possessed, that’s all. You saw the same thing at our di
“The War Minister. In a moment I’m going to have to report this situation to her.”
“No talk,” Oreb advised.
“By ‘this situation’ you mean—”
“Three engines out. I’ve told her about Saba turning east already. I had to. I was hoping you’d agree to repair the engines before I had to report them, too. That’s why I let you come up here. Will you?”
“I can’t.” Silk took the seat next to Hyacinth’s. “Nor would I if I could. We’d be back where we began, with Auk’s people trying to seize control, and everyone — all of us, I mean — dying. I said I betrayed the Outsider because that was how I felt—”
“Wind’s due west now, sir,” the pilot reported.
“Course?”
“East by south, sir. We might try dropping down.”
“Do it.” Hadale considered. “A hundred and fifty cubits.” She turned back to Silk. “You were afraid we’d crash. We may. It’s dangerous to fly that low in weather as windy as this. If a downdraft catches us, we could be finished. But the wind won’t be as strong down there.”
Hyacinth gasped, and Silk said, “I can feel the airship descend. I rode in a moving room once that felt like this.”
“You want to go east. That was how you had General Saba steering us.”
He nodded, and smiled again. “To Mainframe. Auk wants to carry out the Plan of Pas, and the Outsider wants it, too, which is why I felt I was betraying him when I did what I did to your engines. But letting Auk try to take your airship wouldn’t have achieved anything, and this was the only way I could think of to prevent him.”