I smiled again, trying to reassure her. "Long ago I was the friend of someone who became a sort of god, an aspect of Pas. He gave me a lot of information and advice, and all of it was valuable. But wise as he was, he taught me no magic. He couldn't have, even if he had considered such a thing desirable."

"Like tonight, sir."

I thought she was referring to Fava's story. "Strange things happen, Onorifica. Nevertheless, it is no explanation to call them magic." There was a tap at the windowpane, and I got up and opened the window to let Oreb in.

"Good girl?" He eyed the good girl (who seemed on the verge of fainting) doubtfully.

"A very good girl, " I assured him.

"I told him we shouldn't with you in the house, " the good girl blurted, showering me with crumbs.

"Bad thing, " Oreb warned me.

I started to ask whom she intended by "him, " thinking that there might be an inhumu here, then realized the true state of affairs. Speaking very softly I said, "The friend to whom I referred was spied upon once when he was shriving a young woman. He told me that because the young woman had kept her voice very low, the spy had learned little or nothing." More loudly I concluded, "We should do the same."

"Yes, Master Incanto." From her expression, Onorifica had not the least idea what I was talking about.

"You happened to pass my room tonight on your way back to the kitchen, and very kindly asked whether I needed anything. And I, without in the least meaning to, frightened you by asking where you slept. Isn't that so?"

She seemed almost afraid to move her head, but managed a nod.

"I have no business interfering in my host's affairs, save those in which he has asked my help, and no business interfering in yours at all."

In a hoarse whisper she asked, "Are you going to do anything to me?"

"Punish you? I can't. And wouldn't if I could. He's given you a ring, anyway."

"Only we're not, you know, sir, married."

"You couldn't be, since there are no proper augurs here. My wife and I were united by Patera Remora, who is an augur, so we're really married. Without one, giving a ring is about as much as anyone can do. You might have a child, however. Have you thought about that?"

The fear vanished and she glowed. "I want one, sir. He'll take care of us. I know him."

I rose. I cannot have been impressive in Inclito's borrowed nightshirt, but she seemed impressed. To further impress her, I grasped my staff. Oreb hopped from my shoulder to the angled handle. "I don't have an augur's power to forgive wrongdoing, " I told Onorifica, "but I can bless you, and I will. By Great Pas's generosity, anyone may bless." I traced the sign of addition in the air, and asked Pas and the Outsider to look with favor upon her and any children she might bear.

When I finished, she rose smiling. "Thank you, sir. Can I-would you like anything else?"

"Only a couple of very minor items, " I told her. "You were going to tell me what the coachman had learned in town. What was it?"

"Everybody's afraid of you, sir." She licked her fingers. "They won't go near the shop where you're staying when you're there, only when you're gone they all come wanting to hear about you, only he won't tell them anything unless they buy. Cook'll be after me the same way, sir."

"I understand. What do you plan to tell her?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Nothing at all?"

"Well, maybe something." She smiled again, and for the first time I felt that I understood why Inclito was attracted to her. "But not very much."

I said, "That would be wise, I'm sure. But before you return to the kitchen, would you please find the other maid-wake her up if you must-and tell her I need to speak to her?"

"Yes, Master Incanto. Right away."

"And on your way out, you might ask Fava to come in. She's waiting in the hall, or she was."

As soon as I had spoken, Fava entered. Less boldly, Mora shuffled behind her. Both were in their nightdresses.

6

The Guessing Game

There are times when enlightenment comes suddenly, as it did on the ball court; I never think of these sudden illuminations without recalling my second night on Green. I had spent most of the broiling day searching for the gifts I had received from the Neighbor, and had thrown up the task as hopeless. I was ready to justify the worst things that Sinew had ever said or thought by leaving him and the men who had been with us in the lander to their fate. I set off down the river, that river of death that was a sewer when it ran under the City of the Inhumi, determined to put as much distance between myself and its horrors as I could.

For half that night I made my way cautiously through the darkness along its banks, somewhat cheered when the flying dot of sapphire that was Blue crossed the sky, but infinitely saddened by the sight of the faint, unsteady spark that was the Whorl. I should have been up there searching out Viron and its calde, when insteadI was going to write something about tramping along the riverbank. The truth (which I have only just recalled) is that for a long time after I caught sight of the Whorl among the crowding stars I did not. I sat sweating on a log instead, swatting insects and watching the reflections of those stars on the smooth, oily flow that had succeeded the foaming flood that had carried me so far from the City. At times it seemed to me that a thousand inhumi must have been lurking beneath the water, and that the points of light I saw were their glittering eyes, softened by ripples; but every few minutes a dark shape would pass among them like a floating log, and I would realize yet again that it was we, not they, who populated the water.

Nor was that all I saw. Great hairless beasts, on two legs and four, and six, came to the river to drink or to course our floating corpses as bears pursue fish, and I recalled the strangely named bear with which He-pen-sheep had exchanged blood, and wondered whether such bears sought carrion beside the rivers of Shadelow.

Most vividly I remember the enormous snake I saw swimming swiftly upriver, a snake whose head was as big as a man's coffin and of the same shape. It held up its head and looked around it as it swam, and its head was higher than mine would have been if I had stood upon the log. I was seated, as I wrote a moment ago; I remained completely motionless, and it passed by me. For a long time after the head was out of sight up the river, I watched the progress of its great body, and listened to the gentle slap of the waves that its long, slow curvings created.

Then there was nothing left to do but to stand up and walk again. As I think back on that night, it seems to me that I cannot have taken a hundred steps before I caught sight of the light, shining forth from the mud at the edge of the water. Incredulous,

I went down the bank to it and picked it up, and squatted to wash it off. I had given it up for good, and now held it in my hand as before. Many strange things have befallen me, in the Long Sun Whorl, on Green, and here upon this smiling whorl of Blue; but none have ever seemed more miraculous than that did at that moment. Once I slid from the prow of the Trivigaunti airship, and had begun the half-league fall to the ground below when Silk seized and saved me. That is the only thing to which I can liken the finding of the light.

While I was washing it in the shallows, I discovered that it floated, and in fact floated as high and buoyantly as a cork, something I surely ought to have anticipated from its sensation of perfect weightlessness. Floating as it did, it had naturally been carried much farther by the flood than I had; with that sudden insight, the illumination of which I spoke, I realized what a fool I had been to search for it for hours near the spot where I myself had been cast up by the water. Furthermore, that my sword, which could not possibly have floated at all, must necessarily be much nearer the point where I had dropped it than the point where I had struggled out of the river and lain panting on the bank, vomiting foul water-that it was quite likely, in fact, that it was still beneath the overarching pavements of the City.