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Eco had a needier, and was studying each empty, staring window in turn. I told him, "I believe you're right, someone is watching us," and he nodded without speaking.
Jahlee ran long-fingered hands down her slender body. "This is your doing, Raj an, it has to be. Do you like it? I do!"
I shook my head. "You must praise-or blame – Duko Rigoglio. There is a city somewhat like this on Green, but we are not on Green; these houses would be the towers of the Neighbor lords there. Where are we, Your Grandeur?"
"We've come home… To Nessus."
Mora said, "You can't have lived here. Nobody alive now can. Just look at them."
He started to speak, but stopped.
"Big place!" Oreb dropped onto a pile of rubble, looking as he had on Green-a dwarfish man in feathers. Until that moment I had not been aware that he had come with us, far less that he had left us to scout.
"You asked us to free your hands," I told Rigoglio. "They are free. What do you intend to do with them?"
He indicated the house before which we stood. "I would like to search it. May I?"
"For weapons?" Sfido inquired. "I doubt that you'll find a stick."
"For something…" Rigoglio turned to me. "They forced me to board the Whorl and put me to sleep. I told you."
"Poor man!" Oreb studied him through one bright, black eye.
"If I could find something more, something I recognized…
I asked whether he did not recognize the house.
He pointed to the roof. "There were arches up there, and statues under the arches… I-I'm sure of it. They…" He wandered toward the house, bent, and rooted in the rubble banked against its wall.
"I was trapped in a pit in a ruined city of the Vanished People once," I remarked to Mora. "Have I ever told you about that?"
She shook her head.
"I've been thinking about it, and about the City of the Inhumi on Green. Those were ruins left by the Neighbors' ancient race; these were left by ours, I believe-we are as ancient as they, or nearly. How long have these been empty, do you think?"
She shrugged. Eco said, "A hundred years, perhaps."
"Longer than that, I believe."
I went over to watch Rigoglio, and in a moment more found Jahlee clinging to me like the lianas, her body warm and damp with perspiration (as those of inhumi never are), and fragrant with some heavy, cloying scent. Long sorrel hair that proceeded from no wig draped us both like the vines of Silk's arbor.
When I tried to free myself from her, she gri
I suggested that she do it to someone else.
"Your son? He was flirting with me before we came into your bedroom. He isn't very good at it yet-"
Rigoglio straightened up, holding up a broken stone hand about half the size of mine. "Statues," he said. "Up there, underneath the arches. I told you."
"So you did. Statues of whom?"
"I don't-the eponyms."
"And who are they?"
He shook his head. "May I search the house?"
I nodded, then hurried after him. Seeing me run, Sfido shouted, "Stop him!" But I was not afraid that Rigoglio would escape, and in fact I would have welcomed it if it could have been arranged without my culpability. As soon as he left me, I knew that he was going into danger.
Nor was I wrong. Ducking under the lintel, I heard him fall, and his muffled cry. In what must once have been the solaria, he was struggling with a skeletal, nearly naked assailant. I saw the dull gleam of steel and snatched at the filthy wrist as the knife came up.
My fingertips only brushed it.
Rigoglio's gasp as the knife went home was followed at once by the boom of a slug gun, close and deafeningly loud. The skeletal attacker stiffened and shrieked, empty hands raised before his filthy, bearded face.
"Don't shoot him," I told Hide, and was seconded at once by Oreb, who was flying in tight circles above our heads: "No shoot! No shoot! No shoot!"
Looking up at him, I thought for a moment that it was a painted ceiling I saw beyond him; but it was the sky, a clear, star-spotted sky so dark that it seemed practically black; the roof and upper floor of the house had fallen in, leaving only its walls standing.
"I missed him?" Hide sounded disgusted with himself.
"Don'. Don'." Hesitantly, Rigoglio's attacker was getting his feet.
"Man run," Oreb warned us.
"You're right," I told him. "He will run, and Hide will shoot and kill him, and we will have lost him." I caught him by the arm as I spoke.
We tied his hands behind him with what remained of the cords that had bound Rigoglio, Morello, and Terzo, and contrived a hobble for his ankles that allowed him to take small steps. He seemed to have lost the power of speech almost entirely-it is no exaggeration to say that Oreb could talk better-and was so clearly mad that I was very happy indeed that Hide had not killed him. I had seen the tu
Rigoglio was badly wounded, as we found when we had ripped his shirt away. We bandaged him as well as we could with strips torn from it, and I promised that we would let Morello and Terzo carry him as soon as we found materials from which to contrive a stretcher.
He managed to smile as he struggled to his feet. "I can walk, Master Incanto. For a while anyway."
"Leave him here with the boy to guard him," Morello suggested, "while the rest of us look for help."
Mora sheathed her sword. "What if we don't find any?"
"There are more of them here," I told her. "More who are watching us, and listening as we speak. I feel their eyes, as your husband did earlier."
Sfido nudged Eco and whispered, "Having a nice honeymoon?"
Overhearing him Mora said, "It's had its good and bad, but I've got to admit this is the low point so far."
"For which Jahlee, the Duko, and I are all to blame," I told her. "I was about to say that if we were to leave Rigoglio and Cuoio here, they would be attacked-probably as soon as we were well away, certainly after nightfall. No, His Grandeur must come with us, walking if he can, carried if he ca
I had begun walking myself as I spoke, and they followed me, Morello and Terzo beside their Duko to assist him.
"Oreb!"
He dropped to the ground at my feet, neither bird nor dwarf.
"Have you seen people in this place? Not people like this man we've tied up, but normal people, people like us?"
He bobbed his head. "Flock men! Flock girls! See god?"
"No, not there. Lead us to them, please. The Duko requires a physician."
"Big wet! Come bird!" He flew.
One ruined street led to another, and that to a third. Eco and Mora hurried ahead after Oreb; I lagged, staring horrified at that desert of abandonment and decay, and soon got the position I wanted, beside Hide and behind the Duko, Terzo, and Morello.
Jahlee joined me there, naked still save for her long hair. "You did this, didn't you?"
I shook my head.
"I'm not angry, I'm very grateful. You have a wonderful, wonderful father, Cuoio. I'll never be able to repay him for all he's done for me."
Hide nodded, his face guarded.
"But you said it was me and you and Duko Rigoglio, Incanto. I don't think he had anything to do with it, and I know I didn't. I've never lied to you. I hope you know that."
I told her that not being a complete fool I knew nothing of the sort.
"All right, once or twice, maybe, when I had to. Will you lie to me if I ask a straight question?"