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He peered upward to study the Aureate Path as it stretched before the airship’s blunt nose, and again felt himself — very slightly — lose balance. If his parents waited there for him, they were not to be seen by the eyes of life.
One father had been Chenille’s father as well. He, Silk, who had possessed no family save his mother, had gained a sister now. Although neither Chenille nor Hyacinth nor any other woman could take his mother’s place. No one could.
Recalling the unmarked razor he had puzzled over so often, he fingered his stubbled cheeks. He had not shaved in well over a day; no doubt his beard was apparent to everyone. It was better, though, to know to whom the razor had belonged.
He looked down at his shoes again. Beneath them, Sciathan sat at the controls, steering a structure a hundred times larger than the Grand Manteion with the touch of a finger. There was no Sacred Window on the airship — that would have been almost impossible — but there was a glass somewhere. Idly Silk found himself wondering where it was. Not in the cockpit, certainly, nor in Saba’s cubicle. Yet it would almost have to be in this gondola, in which the Rani’s officers ate and slept, and from which they steered her airship. Perhaps in the chartroom; he had climbed to this deck from that chartroom without seeing it — but then he had been occupied with his thoughts.
Too much so to do anything to relieve Saba’s depression. Yes, too self-centered for that. Saba and her pterotroopers might be outnumbered at present, but -
Hands upon his shoulders. “Don’t jump, Calde!”
He took a cautious step backward. “I hadn’t intended to,” he said, and wondered whether he lied.
He turned. Horn’s pale face showed very clearly what Horn thought. “I’m sorry I frightened you,” Silk told him, “I didn’t know you were there.”
“Just come away from the edge, please, Calde. For me?”
To soothe Horn, he took a step. “You can’t have been up here when I came — I would have seen you. You weren’t on the roof of our old gondola either, because I looked back at it. Nettle told you I asked about a hatch, of course.”
“A little farther, Calde. Please?”
“No. This is foolish; but to reassure you, I’ll sit down.” He did, spreading his robe over his crossed legs. “You see? I can’t possibly fall from here, and neither can you, if you sit. I need someone to talk to.”
Horn sat, his relief apparent.
“When I was in the cockpit, I wanted to leave it in order to pray — that was what I told myself, at least. But when I was up here alone and might have prayed to my heart’s content, I did not. I contemplated my shoes instead, and thought about certain things. They weren’t foolish things for the most part, but I feel very foolish for having thought so much about them. Are you going with Auk when he leaves the whorl? That’s what he’s going to do, you know. The Crew, as Sciathan calls the people of his city, have some of the underground towers Mamelta showed me — intact underground towers — and they’re going to give Auk one. I forget what Mamelta called them.”
“You never told me about towers, Calde.”
Silk did, striving unsuccessfully to make his description concise. “That isn’t all I can recall, but that’s all that’s of importance, I believe, and now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone, except for Doctor Crane while we were fellow-captives, and Doctor Crane is dead.”
“I never even got to see him,” Horn said. “I wish I had because of the way you talk about him. Is the underwater boat like this airship?”
“Not at all. It’s all metal — practically all iron, I’m certain. There’s a hole at the bottom, too, through which the Ayuntamiento can launch a smaller boat. You’d think that would sink the big one, wouldn’t you? But it didn’t, and we got away through that hole, Doctor Crane and I.” Silk paused, lost in thought. “There are monstrous fish in the lake, Horn, fish bigger than you can imagine. Chenille told me that once, and she’s quite correct.”
“You wanted to know if I was going with Auk. Nettle and me, because either way we’d do it together.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I don’t think so. He hasn’t asked us, but I don’t think Nettle would want to if he did. There’s my father and mother back home, and my brothers and sisters, and Nettle’s family.”
“Of course,” Silk repeated.
“I like Chenille. I like her a lot. But Auk’s not what I call a good man, even if Tartaros did choose him to enlighten. You remember what I told you about him that time? He’s still the same, I think. The people he’s got with him aren’t much better, either. He calls them the best thieves in the whorl, did you know that, Calde? Because of stealing this airship.”
“They’re not all thieves,” Silk said, “though Auk may like to pretend they are. Most are just poor people from the Orilla and our own quarter. I doubt that many real thieves have the sort of faith something like this requires.” He fell silent, by no means sure that he should say more.
“What is it, Calde?”
“I doubt that all of them will go. Chenille will, I think, though she would be a wealthy woman in Viron; but I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to see more than a few of the others hold back.”
“You’re not going, are you, Calde?”
Silk shook his head. “I would like to. I don’t believe Hyacinth would, however; and these are Auk’s people when all is said and done. Not mine.”
“Then Nettle and me will come home with you and Hyacinth. Moly wants to go back, too. She wants to find her husband and get back to building their daughter. And there’s Patera Incus and Patera Remora.”
Silk nodded. “But we will not be numerous enough to keep the Trivigauntis we have on board from reclaiming their airship, even so. Had you thought of that, Horn? Not unless a great many of Auk’s followers desert him at the last moment. It had just occurred to me when you laid hold of my shoulders.”
Horn frowned. “Can we leave the Trivigauntis in Mainframe, Calde? I can’t think of anything else we can do.”
“I can. Or at least, I believe I have, which gave me a very good reason not to step off the edge. Perhaps I needed one more than I knew.” Noticing Horn’s expression, he added, “I’m sorry if I distress you.”
Horn swallowed. “I want to tell you something, sort of a secret. I haven’t told anybody yet except Nettle. I know you won’t laugh, but please don’t tell anybody else.”
“I won’t, unless I believe it absolutely necessary.”
“You know the cats’ meat woman? She comes to sacrifice just about every Scylsday.”
Silk nodded. “Very well.”
“She likes Maytera. Moly, I mean. She came to see her one time at the palace. I wouldn’t have thought she’d walk all the way up the hill, but she did. They were sitting in the kitchen, and the cats’ meat woman—”
“Scleroderma,” Silk murmured. His eyes were on the purple slopes of far-away mountains. “It’s a puffball — it grows in forests.”
“She was the one that held General Mint’s horse for her before she charged the floaters in Cage Street,” Horn continued. “She told Moly, and naturally Moly wanted to know all about it, so they talked about that and the fighting, and how Kypris came to our manteion for the funeral. Then she said she was writing all about it, writing down everything that had happened and how she’d been right in the middle of all the most important parts.”
Silk tried not to smile, but failed.
“So she wants her grandchildren to be able to read about everything, and how she met you when you were just out of the schola, and how she walked up to the Calde’s Palace and they let her right in. I thought it was pretty fu
“I think it heart-warming,” Silk told him. “We may laugh — I wouldn’t be surprised if she laughed herself — and yet she’s right. Her grandchildren are still small, I imagine, and though they’ve lived in these unsettled times themselves, they won’t remember much about them. When they’re older, they’ll be delighted to have a history written by their own grandmother from the perspective of their family. I applaud her.”