Violet said, “I do, a little. Besides, I know his wife.”

“You’re thinking it’s going to go back the way it was,” Sand told Siyuf. “Them in the tunnels and us on top. Stuff it. Like we say, there’s one thing they’re together on.”

He paused and Abanja said, “That we must return to our own city, I’m sure. He’s probably right, Generalissimo.”

“I am, only you’re not. What they’re saying, all four of them, is that they can’t let you go back. Or won’t. To start off, they don’t think you’ll go.”

Sand wanted for Siyuf to speak, but she did not.

“So they’re thinking let’s take care of this, wipe ’em out — that’s you, sir — before they can get reinforcements from Trivigaunte.”

Hammerstone declared, “The calde wouldn’t do that, or I don’t think so, sir. They’re getting set now, getting General Mint’s troopers together again, and lining up the Guard and getting the Army into position. If we weren’t detached, we’d be with it this minute. You got maybe a day, maybe two. But if you let the calde go, he’ll put a lid on it.”

“You are wise,” Siyuf said. “I agree. Colonel Abanja, you have our friend Calde Silk? Bring him to my Juzgado, I meet him there. This holy woman Marble, and the holy man, also. Saba’s airship have not depart?”

“I’m afraid it left an hour ago, Generalissimo,” Abanja sounded regretful. “I’ll contact General Saba on the glass, however, and convey your request that she return to Viron.”

Hammerstone edged closer, his hard features and scratched paint incongruous among so much satin, porcelain, and polished rosewood. “We don’t want a request. We want a order. Tell them to turn around!”

“This I cannot do,” Siyuf explained. “When the airship has leave Viron, it come under control of our War Minister in Trivigaunte. She will send it back, I think, when I ask.”

“Get her now. Tell her!”

“This I cannot either. Monitor, this is sufficient of Abanja. She know what she is to do.”

Siyuf turned back to Sand and Hammerstone. “Abanja must speak to General Saba, then Saba to our War Minister. While they speak I must make prepares for this attack. It may be we attack first. This we see.”

As Abanja’s face faded to gray, Violet murmured, “I’d help if I could, only—”

“Sure, Plutonium.” Slinging his slug gun, Sand stooped, grasped an astonished Siyuf about the waist, and tossed her headfirst onto his broad steel shoulder. “You come too. You can keep her company.”

Shale caught Violet’s arm. “You make one more for us to trade, see? That don’t ever hurt.”

Sitting crosslegged on one of the ridiculous bladders that served as mattresses aboard the airship, Silk found it almost impossible to remain upright without holding onto the swaying, whispering bamboo grill that substituted for a floor. “You’re wonderfully cheerful,” he told Auk. “I admire it more than I can say. Cheerfulness is a sacred duty.” He swallowed. “A cheerful agreement with the will of the gods is a — a—”

“I been sick already,” Auk told him. “Had the dry heaves, too. Worst thing since I busted my head down in the tunnels.”

The Flier smiled impishly. “I heard no cheerful agreement to the wishes of Mainframe at that time, however. Cursing is not a new thing to me, and my own tongue is a superior vehicle to this Common Tongue we speak. But never have I heard curses such as that.”

Face down and miserable behind Auk, Chenille muttered, “Just don’t talk about it, all right?”

“I do not. Instead I talk of cursing, a different thing. Should I say in this Common Tongue, may your pubic hair grow longer than your lies and become entangled in the working of a mill, it is but laughable. In my own tongue, it soars to the sun and leaves each hearer awed. Yet the cursing of Auk was new to me, grand and hideous as the birth of devils.”

Silk managed to smile. “I have been sick, actually. I was sick in the cage that swings so horribly in the wind, and we were so tightly packed into it that I couldn’t help soiling myself and Hyacinth, and Patera Remora, too; they bore it with such fortitude and good will that I felt worse.”

Hyacinth smiled as she sat down beside him. “You didn’t get a whole lot on me, but you filled up one of his shoes. If you’re feeling better now, you should take a look around. Gib showed me, and it’s pretty interesting.”

“Not yet.” Silk found his handkerchief and wiped his nose.

“It’s not like the Juzgado at all, no bars on the windows.”

“Sure.” Auk winked. “We can climb right out.”

“I opened one and looked outside. Not long, because it’s so cold. I wish you could see better through the white stuff.”

“That’s sheep’s hide stretched and scraped till it’s real thin,” Auk told her. “When you get it the way you want it, you rub fat on it, and it lets the daylight in. They use it in the country ’cause they can make it themselves, but glass costs. It’s a lot lighter, too, so that’s why they got it here.

“See, Patera, even with this as big as it is, everything’s got to be real light, ’cause it’s lifting the guns and those charges they blew up the Alambrera with, and food and water, and palm oil for the engines. That’s going to make it easy for us.”

“To do what?”

Gib sat down so violently that Silk feared the grill would give way. “To hook it, Patera. We got to. Only I wish I had Bongo here. He’d be abram about this place.”

Chenille groaned. “You’re all abram. Me, too.”

“This ain’t bad,” Auk told her. “See, Patera, after they loaded us on in the city, it had to go northeast to get you, lousewise into the wind. It was doing this.” He illustrated with gestures. “We all got pretty sick. Only now—”

“I did not,” Sciathan objected. “I am accustomed to the vagaries of winds.”

“Me neither,” Hyacinth told Auk. “I never have been.”

“You weren’t on it then. This is nicer, ’cause there’s a north wind and we’re heading south. That’s why you can’t hear the engines much. They don’t have to work hard.”

“We’re out over the lake,” Hyacinth told Silk, who felt (but did not say) that it would be a blessing if the airship crashed into the water.

“Thing is, Patera, Terrible Tartaros is setting this lay up for us. It’s like we got somebody inside. The fat councillor said they’d do it in a month, remember? Then I said I got the best thieves in the city, we can do it quicker. I was thinking two or three weeks, ’cause we’d have to get clothes like these troopers’ and get pals up so they could pull up the rest—”

Spider joined the group around Silk, sliding across the woven bamboo as he shook his head.

“You got a better way? Dimber here. I don’t say mine’s best, just that’s how I was thinking. The queer was it’d have to be mostly morts, likely all morts. Wouldn’t be rum, finding morts that wouldn’t up tail if there was a row up here.”

“We’d be too sick.” Chenille sat up, pale under her tan.

Silk began, “If this is indeed the hand of Tartaros—”

“Got to be. What I was saying, I was figuring maybe three weeks, and the fat one maybe a month. Then Upstairs here says we only got a couple days.”

Sciathan nodded.

“Tartaros heard it and he says, Auk needs a hand. Willet, you tell the Trivigauntis Auk’s knot’s going to be at the Cock. They nab us and haul us up. How long was it? Under a day. So right there’s the difference between a god and a buck like me. Twenty-one to one.”

For a moment there was silence, fined by the distant talk of the other prisoners, the whispered complaints of the bamboo, the almost inaudible hum of the engines, and a hundred nameless groanings and creakings. Silk said, “They have slug guns, Auk. And needlers, I suppose. You — we — have nothing.”

“Wrong, Patera. We got Tartaros. You watch.”

Chenille stood up; sitting at her feet, Silk found himself a trifle shocked by her height. She said, “I’m feeling better, I guess. Want to show me around, Hy? I’d like to see it.”