“Yeah, to fix up a lander.” Auk smiled at the thought. “I guess you did.”

“That is well. Your mind is mending. Steal food, if you wish, Auk, and more cards where you can.”

As their litter jogged down Sun Street Chenille said, “I’d like you to shrive me. Will this take long enough?”

“That will depend on how much you have to tell me.” Silk was acutely aware of her hip pressing his own. He recalled a rule forbidding sibyls from riding in a litter with a man; he was beginning to feel that there should be another — strictly enforced — against augurs riding with women. “Certainly it would be more regular to do it in the manteion, where we would not be pressed for time.”

“You know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid of some goddess getting in me again. You don’t know about Scylla, do you?”

“I’ve spoken with Patera Incus. He told me that Scylla had possessed you — it was one of the reasons I was anxious to find you — and that she, through you, had appointed him Prolocutor.”

Chenille nodded, the motion of her head almost ghostly in the tightly curtained litter. “I remember that a little. Only he talked about it so much after she let me go that I can’t be sure exactly what I said. Auk could tell you.”

“I’ll ask when we find him; but the Prolocutorship is a concern of the Chapter’s, not the civil government’s. In other words, I have no more say in the matter than any other member of the clergy, and none at all as calde. Was Auk the only other person present?”

“Dace, but he’s dead.”

“I see. I refrained from asking Patera about witnesses. As I said, it’s a matter that concerns me only as one augur among many. It may be that I’ll no longer be an augur at all when the matter comes before the clergy.”

Silk was silent for a moment, his eyes vague. “If what Patera reports is true, and I’m inclined to credit him, it’s unfortunate that Scylla didn’t make her wish known at a time when other augurs, or sibyls, were present. Most of the—”

Chenille interrupted. “I wouldn’t mind if it was Kypris again. It might be nice. Only Scylla was really rough. That’s how I lost my gown and my good jade necklace, I’d go out to the lake and look for it, only I’m pretty sure somebody’s found it by this time. Anyway, isn’t there someplace where we could do it besides in the manteion? Kypris got me when I was in there, and Scylla when I was in her shrine at the lake. I’m going to try to stay away from places like that for a while.”

“I see. If you don’t look at the Sacred Window, you can’t be possessed — so Kypris implied, at least.” Too late, Silk recalled that there was no Window in Scylla’s shrine. “It may be that there are other means, of course,” he finished lamely, “or that only she is limited in that fashion.”

“Don’t you bucks ever get possessed?”

“Certainly we do. In fact, it’s much more usual, or so the Chrasmologic Writings imply. Men are normally possessed by male gods, such as Pas, Tartaros, Hierax, and the Outsider, or such minor male gods as Catamitus. That is true of enlightenment as well. I myself was enlightened by the Outsider, not Pas, though it would appear that common report attributes my enlightenment to Pas.” Silk forbore mentioning that Pas was dead.

“The reason I was asking—”

Their litter stopped, lowered gently to an uneven surface. Oreb pushed the curtain aside with beak, and was gone.

“I’ll be here a while,” Silk told the head bearer. “It might be best if I were to pay you now.”

The head bearer made an awkward bow with one eye on his men, who were helping Chenille out of the litter. “We’ll wait, Calde. No trouble.”

Silk got out his cardcase. “May I give you something so you can refresh yourselves while you wait?”

“We’ll be all right.” The head bearer backed away.

“As you wish.”

The garden gate was unlocked; Silk opened it for Chenille. “I was afraid you’d give them too much,” she whispered as she passed. “They’d get drunk.”

That explained the head bearer’s refusal, Silk decided as he reclosed the gate; it would not do for the bearers of the calde’s litter to be drunk. He made a mental note to allow for the propensity of the lowest classes to drink too much.

“Is anybody here?” Chenille looked about her at the arbor and the wells, the berry brambles and wilted tomato vines under the windows of the manse, the seared fig and the leafless little pear, and the spaded black soil that had been Maytera Marble’s struggling garden.

“At the moment? I can’t say. I assume that Patera Gulo’s still off fighting — or at any rate off watching what’s left of Erne’s brigade. Maytera Marble’s probably in the cenoby; we’ll find out when I’ve shriven you.”

“You won’t hold us long with a handful of men,” Maytera Mint told Spider. “Colonel Bison has five hundred.”

Spider chuckled. He was, as she had concluded a half-hour before, rather too well suited to his name, a man who made her think of a fat, hairy spider watching its web in a dirty corner.

Quetzal said, “He’s taking us down into the tunnels.”

Spider opened a door as Quetzal spoke, revealing a flight of rough steps descending into darkness. “You know about those, old man?”

“I just came up from them. Did you hear me tell Potto I’d talked to Loris?”

“Councillor Potto to you.” Spider gestured with a needler; he was two full heads taller. “Now get down there before I kick you down.”

“I can’t walk fast, my son.” Quetzal tottered toward the steps. “I’ll delay you and the others.”

There had been a note in his quavering old voice that gave Maytera Mint a surge of irrational confidence. “The Nine avenge wrongs done to augurs and sibyls,” she warned Spider, “and their vengeance is swift and terrible. What they might do to someone who maltreats the Prolocutor, I shudder to think.”

Spider grinned, showing remarkably crooked teeth. “That’s lily, General. So don’t you shove him down and run. Stir it, now. The tall cully behind you, and me behind him. We’re all going to wait nice till Councillor Potto and my knot fetch along his dead body.”

She started down the steps, one hand on a wooden rail that seemed both grimy and insecure. Behind her, Remora said, “This is where, ah, the calde, eh? The cellar, in which, um — “

“Sergeant Sand,” she told him. The dull gleam that had been Quetzal’s hairless head had disappeared into the darkness; she quickened her pace, although the steps were steep and high, and she was afraid of falling. “Sergeant Sand held the calde down here for six hours or more. He told me about it.”

Remora bumped her from behind. “Sorry! Ah — pushed.”

“Keep moving,” Spider growled.

The sound of their voices had kindled a dull green light some distance down the steps; in the dimness she could make out ranked shelves of dusty jars, and what seemed to be abandoned machinery. Involuntarily she murmured, “He’s gone.”

Spider heard her. “Who is?”

“His Cognizance.” She halted, speaking over her shoulder. “Look for yourself. He should be on the stair in front of me, but he’s not.” At the last words, the bright bird called hope sang in her heart.

“There you are!” Maytera Marble exclaimed as Silk emerged from the chilly privacy of the vine-draped arbor. “There’s a man here looking for you, Patera. I said you weren’t here, but he says you’ve got a litter on Sun Street.”

Silk sighed. “It’s been like this since Phaesday. No doubt it’s extremely urgent.”

“That’s just what he said, Patera.” Maytera Marble nodded vigorously, her metal face luminous in the gray daylight. “And it must be. He came in a floater.”

Chenille’s smile turned to a stare. “Hello, Maytera. What happened to your hand?”

“How good of you to ask!” She displayed her stump of arm. “My hand’s fine, my daughter. I’ve got it in a drawer, wrapped up in a clean towel. It’s the rest of — we should go, Patera. He’s waiting for you in front of the cenoby. He came in through the garden and knocked at your manse. I thought he was looking for Patera Gulo.”