by Gene Wolfe
"Wait for him to get closer," Blood said urgently.
"If we wait much longer, he'll be farther by the time she gets up there."
"What if-"
"Stand back. If she goes for you, you're dead." With his free hand Musk grasped the crown of scarlet plumes and snatched the hood. "Away, hawk!"
This time there was no hesitation. The eagle's immense wings spread, and she sprang into the air with a whirlwind roar that for a moment frightened even Musk, flying hard at first, laboring to gain the thermal from the roof, then lifting, rising, and soaring, a jet black, heraldic bird against the sun-blind blue of the open sky.
"Maybe the rabbit filled her up."
Musk laughed. "That baby bunny? It was the littlest we had. That only made her strong." For the second time since they had met, he took Blood's hand.
And Blood, desperately happy but pretending that nothing had occurred, inquired as calmly as he could, "You think she sees him?"
"Shag yes, she sees him. She sees everything. If she went straight for him she'd spook him. She'll get above him and come down at him out of the sun." Unconsciously Musk rose upon his toes, so as to be, by the thickness of three fingers, nearer his bird. "Just like a goose. Just like he was a big goose. They're born knowing it. You watch." His pale, handsome face was wreathed in smiles; his devil's eyes glittered like black ice. "You just watch her, old cully shagger."
IOLAR SAW THE eagle far below him to the north, and put on speed. The front, marked by a line of towering clouds, was interesting and might even be important; but the front was two hundred leagues off, if not more, and might never reach this parched and overheated region. The index was a hundred fifteen here, a hundred nine over much of the sun's length; with the seasonal adjustment-he checked the date mentally-a hundred and eighteen here.
He had forgotten the eagle already.
He was a small man by any standard, and as thin as his own main struts; his eyes were better than average, and most of those who knew him thought him introverted and perhaps a trifle cold-blooded. He seldom spoke; when he did, his talk was of air masses and prevailing winds, of landmarks by day and landmarks by night, of named solar reaches unrecognized (or only grudgingly recognized) by science, and of course of wings and flightsuits and instruments and propulsion modules. But then the talk of all fliers was like that. Because he was so near the ideal, both physically and mentally, he had been permitted three wives, but the second had left him after something less than a year. The first had borne him three nimble, light-boned children, however, and the third, five as cheerful and active as crickets, of whom the younger girl was his favorite, tiny, laughing-eyed Dreoilin. "I can see the wings of her," he sometimes told her mother; and her mother, who could not, always happily agreed. He had been flying for eighteen years.
His increased speed had cost him altitude. He upped the thrust again and tried to climb, but the temperature of the air was falling a bit, and the air with it in the daylight downdraft of the big lake. There would be a corresponding updraft once he got over land again, and he resolved to take it as high as it would take him. He would need every cubit of altitude he could scrape up when he reached those distant thunderheads.
He did not see the eagle again until it was almost upon him, flying straight down, the enormous thrust of its wings driving it toward the land below far faster than any falling stone until, at the last possible split second, it folded its wings, spun in the air, and struck him with its talons, double blows like those of a giant's mailed fists.
Perhaps it stunned him for a moment. Certainly the wild whirl of earth and sky did not disorient him; he knew that his left wing was whole and sound, that the other was not, and that his PM did not respond. He suspected that he had half a dozen broken ribs and perhaps a broken spine as well, but he gave little attention to those. With a superb skill that would have left his peers openmouthed, could they have witnessed it, he turned his furious tumble into a controlled dive, jettisoned the PM and his instruments, and had halved his rate of descent before he hit the water.
"DID YOU SEE that splash!" Chenille rose from her seat in the holobit wagon as she spoke, shading her eyes against the sunglare from the water. "There are some monster fish in the lake. Really huge. I remember-I haven't been out here since I was a little girl… Or anyhow, I don't think I have."
Nodding, Silk ducked from under the canopy to glance at the sun. Unveiled by clouds moving from east to west, that golden blaze streaking the sky was-he reminded himself again-the visible symbol of the Aureate Path, the course of moral probity and fitting worship that led Man to the gods. Had he strayed? He had felt no willingness in himself to offer Crane in sacrifice, though a goddess had suggested it.
And that, surely, was not what the gods expected from an anointed augur.
"Fish heads?" Oreb tugged at Silk's hair.
"Fish heads indeed," he told the bird, "and that is a solemn promise."
Tonight he would help Auk rob Chenille's commissioner. Commissioners were rich and oppressive, battening upon the blood and sweat of the poor; no doubt this one could spare a few jewels and his silver service. Yet robbery was wrong at base, even when it served a greater good.
Though this was Molpsday, he murmured a final prayer to Sphigx as he returned his beads to his pocket. Sphigx above all would understand; Sphigx was half lioness, and lions had lo kill innocent creatures in order to eat-such was the inflexible decree of Pas, who had given to every creature save Man its proper food. As he completed the prayer, Silk bowed very slightly to the ferocious, benevolent face on the handle of Blood's walking stick.
"We used to come here to pick watercress," Chenille said. "Way over on that side of the lake. We'd start out before shadeup and walk here, Patera. I don't know how many times I've watched for the water at the first lifting. If I couldn't see it, I'd know we had a long way to go yet. We'd have paper, any kind of paper we could find, and we'd wet it good and wrap our watercress in it, then hurry back to the city to sell it before it wilted. Sometimes it did, and that was all we had to eat. I still won't eat it. I buy it, though, pretty often, from little girls in the market. Little girls like I was."
"That's very good of you," Silk told her, though he was already planning.
"Only there isn't much these days, because so many of the best cress creeks have gone dry. I never eat it anyway. Sometimes I feed it to the goats, you know? And sometimes I just throw it away. I wonder how many of the ladies that used to buy it from me did the same thing."
The woman next to Silk said, "I make sandwiches. Watercress and white cheese on rye bread. I wash it thoroughly first, though."
Silk nodded and smiled.
"It makes a fine hot weather lunch."
Speaking across Silk, Chenille asked her, "Do you have friends here in Limna?"
"Relations," the woman said^ "My husband's mother lives out here. She thinks the pure air off the lake is good for her. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our relations could be our friends, too?"
"Oh, wouldn't it, though! We're looking for a friend. Doctor Crane? A small man, around fifty, rather dark? He has a little gray beard…?"
"I don't know him," the woman said grimly, "but if he's a doctor and he lives in Limna, my mother-in-law does. I'll ask her."
"He just bought a cottage here. So that he can get away from his practice, you know? My husband's helping him move in, and Patera's promised to bless it for him. Only I can't remember where it is."
The man on her left said, "You can ask at the Juzgado, on Shore Street. He'll have had to register the transfer of deed."
"Is there a Juzgado here, too?" Chenille asked him. "I thought that was just in the city."
"Just a small one," the man told her. "Some local cases are tried there, and they hold a handful of petty prisoners. There's no Alambrera here-those with long sentences are sent back to Viron. And they take care of the tax rolls and property records."
By this time the holobit wagon they rode was trundling along a narrow, cr
ooked, cobbled street lined with tottering two- and three-storied wooden houses, all with high, peaked roofs and many a weathered silver-gray from lack of paint. Silk and Chenille, with the man who knew about the Juzgado and the woman who made watercress sandwiches, were on the landward side of the long wagon; but Silk, looking over his shoulder, could catch occasional glimpses of dirty water and high-pooped, single-masted fishing boats between the houses.
"I haven't been here since I was just a sprat myself," he told Chenille. "It's odd to think now that I fished here fifteen years ago. They don't use shiprock like we do, do they? Or mud brick, either." The man on Chenille's left said, "It's too easy to cut trees on the banks and float the logs to Limna."
"I see. I hadn't considered that-although I should have, of course."
"Not many people would," the man said; he had opened his card case, and he extracted a pasteboard visiting card as he talked. "May I give you this, Patera? Vulpes is my name. I'm an advocate, and I've got chambers here on Shore Street. Do you understand the procedure if you're arrested?"
Silk's eyebrows shot up. "Arrested? Molpe defend us! I hope not."
"So do I." Vulpes lowered his voice until Silk could barely hear him above the street noises and the squeaking of the wagon's axels. "So do we all, I think. But do you understand the procedure?"
Silk shook his head.
"If you give them the name and location of an advocate, they have to send for him-that's the law. If you can't give them a name and the location, however, you don't get one until your family finds out what's happened and engages somebody."
"I see."
"And, "Vulpes leaned in front of Chenille and tapped Silk's knee to emphasize his point, "if you're here in Limna, somebody with chambers in Viron won't do. It has to be somebody local. I've known them to wait, when they knew someone might be coming here soon, so as to make the arrest here for exactly that reason. I want you to put that in your pocket, Patera, so that you can show it to them if you have to. Vulpes, on Shore Street, right here in Limna, at the sign of the red fox."
At the word fox, the wagon creaked to a stop, and the driver bawled, "Everybody off! Rides back to Viron at four, six, and eight. You get 'em right here, but don't dare be late."
Silk caught him by the sleeve as he was about to enter the barn. "Will you tell me something about Limna, Driver? I'm not at all familiar with it."
"The layout, you mean?" The driver pinched his nostrils thoughtfully. "That's simple enough, Patera. It's not no great big place like Viron. The main thing you got to hang on to is where we are now, so you'll know where to go to catch your ride back. This here's Water Street, see? And right here's pretty close to the middle o' town. There's only three streets that amount to much-Dock, Water, and Shore. The whole town curls around the bay. It's shaped kind o' like a horseshoe, only not bent so much. You know what I'm tellin' you? The inside's Dock Street-that's where the market is. The outside's Shore Street. If you want to go out on a boat, Dock Street's the place, and I can give you a couple good names. If you want to eat, try the Catfish or the Full Sail. The Rusty Lantern's pretty good, too, if you got deep pockets. Stayin' overnight?"
Silk shook his head. "We'd like to get back to the city before dark, if we can."
"You'll want the six o'clock wagon, then," the driver said as he turned away.
When he had gone, Chenille said, "You didn't ask him where the councillors live."
"If neither you nor I nor Auk knew, it can't be common knowledge," Silk told her. "Crane will have had to discover that for himself, and the best thing for us to learn today may well be whom he asked. I doubt that he'll have ridden down on one of the wagons as we did. On Scylsday he had a hired litter."
She nodded. "It might be better if we split up, Patera. You high, and me low."
"I'm not sure what you mean by that."
"You talk to the respectable people in the respectable places. I'll ask around in the drinking kens. When did… Auk? Say he'd meet us here?"
"Four o'clock," Silk told her.
"Then I'll meet you right here at four. We can have a bite to eat. With Auk? And tell each other whatever we've learned."
"You were very skillful with that woman on the wagon," Silk said. "I hope that I can do half as well."
"But it didn't get us anything? Stick with the truth, Patera. Silk? Or close to it… I don't think you'll be terribly good with the… other thing? What're you going to say?"
Silk stroked his cheek. "I was thinking about that on the wagon, and it seemed to me that it will have to depend upon the circumstances. I might say, for example, that such a man witnessed an exorcism I performed, and since I haven't returned to the house that had been afflicted, I was hoping he could tell me whether it had been effective."
Chenille nodded. "Perfectly true… Every bit of it. You're going to be all right. I can see that. Silk?" She had been standing close to him already, forced there by the press of traffic in the street; she stepped closer still, so that the nipples of her jutting breasts pressed the front of his tunic. "You don't love me, Patera. You wouldn't, even if you didn't think I belonged to… Auk? But you love Hy? Don't you? Tell me…"
He said miserably, "I shouldn't. It isn't right, and a man in my position-an augur-has so little to offer any woman. No money. No real home. It's just that she's like the- There are things I can't seem to stop thinking about, no matter how hard I try. Hyacinth is one of them."
"Well, I'm her, too." Swift and burning, Chenille's lips touched his. By the time he had recovered, she was lost among porters and vendors, hurrying visitors and strolling, rolling fishermen.
"Bye, girl!" With his uninjured wing, Oreb was waving farewell. "Watch out! Good luck!"
Silk took a deep breath and looked around. Here at the end nearest Viron, Lake Limna had nurtured a town of its own, subject to the city while curiously detached from it.
Or rather (his first two fingers inscribed slow circles on his cheek), Lake Limna, in its retreat, had drawn a fleck of Viron with it. Once the Orilla had been the lakeshore-or Dock Street, as it was called here. To judge from its name, Shore Street had been the same in its day, a paved prelude to wharves, with buildings on its landward side that overlooked the water. As the lake had continued to shrink, Water Street, on which he stood, had come into being. Still later, twenty or thirty years ago, possibly, Water Street had been left behind like the rest.
And yet the lake was still immense. He tried to imagine it as it must have been when the first settlers occupied the empty city built for them at what was then its northern end, and concluded that the lake must have been twice its present size. Would there come a time, in another three centuries or so, when there was no lake at all? It seemed more likely that the lake would then be half its present size-and yet the time must surely come, whether in six hundred years or a thousand, when it would vanish altogether.
He began to walk, wondering vaguely what the respectable places the goddess wished him to visit were. Or at least which such places would be most apt to yield information of value.
Drawn by boyhood recollections of cool water and endless vistas, he followed a block-long alley to Dock Street. Here half a dozen fishing boats landed silver floods of trout, shad, pike, and bass; here cookshops supplied fish as fresh as the finest eating houses in the city at a tenth the price; and top-lofty inns with gaily painted shutters displayed signboards for those anxious to exchange the conveniences of Viron for zephyrs at the height of summer, and those who, in whatever season, delighted in swimming, fishing, or sailing.
Here, too, as Silk soon discovered, was the fresh poster that he and Chenille had seen before their holobit wagon had left the city, offering "strong young men" an opportunity to become part-time Guardsmen and holding out the promise of eventual full-time employment. As he read it through again, Silk recalled the darkly threatening entrails of the ewe. No one spoke as yet of war-except the gods. Or rather, he reflected, only the gods and this poster spoke of war to those who would listen.<
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The next-to-final line of the poster had been crossed out with black ink, and the phrase at the Juzgado in Limna had been substituted; the new reserve brigade would station a company or two here at the lake, presumably perhaps an entire battalion, if enough fishermen could be persuaded to enlist.
For the first time it struck him that Limna would make an excellent base or staging area for an army moving against the city, offering shelter for many if not all of the enemy troops, assurance against surprise from the south, a ready source of food, and unlimited water for men and animals. No wonder, then, that Crane had been interested to learn that the councillors were here, and that a commissioner had come to confer with them.
"Fish heads!" Oreb fluttered from Silk's shoulder to the ground, then ran with unexpected speed three-quarters the length of a nearby jetty to peck at them.
"Yes," Silk murmured to himself, "fish heads at last, and fish guts, too."
As he strolled down the jetty, admiring the broad blue purity of the lake and the scores of bobbing, heeling craft whose snowy sails dotted it, he meditated upon Oreb's meal.
Those fish belonged to Scylla. Just as serpents belonged to her mother, Echidna, and cats of all kinds to her younger sister, Sphigx. Surging Scylla, the patroness of the city, graciously permitted her worshipers to catch such fish as they required, subject to certain age-old restrictions and prohibitions. Yet the fish-even those scraps that Oreb ate-were hers, and the lake her palace. If devotion to Scylla was still strong in the Viron, as it was though two generations had passed since she had manifested her divinity in a Sacred Window, what must it be here?
Joining Oreb, he sat down upon the head of a convenient piling, removed Crane's almost miraculous wrapping from his fractured ankle, and whipped the warped planks of the jetty with it.
What if Crane wished to erect a shrine to Scylla on the lakeshore in fulfillment of some vow? If Crane could hand out azoths as gifts to favored informers, he could certainly afford a shrine. Silk knew little of building, but he felt certain that a modest yet appropriate and wholly acceptable shrine could be built at the edge of the lake for a thousand cards or less. Crane might well have asked his spiritual advisor-himself-to select a suitable site.