"We both know you could, that you needn't always be Fava. How did you appear to the Duko?"

"Like I do now."

Without in the least desiring to, I pictured her as she must have appeared that night, her wig still upon her head, her arms, widened and lengthened to wings, straining the loose cotton stuff of her sleeves.

Torda was leaning forward to study her. I said, "In bright sunlight you might be able to make out her scales-it's why she carries a parasol. In this room I don't believe you will, unless your eyes are a great deal better than most."

"I've never seen one up close before."

"You're not seeing one now. Fava, would you like to show Torda – and Mora-your natural shape?"

"If you make me, I suppose I'll have to."

"I won't. I asked whether you would like to."

She shook her head.

"They can make themselves look very much like us, as you see, " I told Torda. "They think like us as well. There is a stain of evil in them, however. Perhaps I should say that there is a streak in them that appears evil to human beings like us, an undertone of black malignancy with roots in their reptilian nature."

Fava began, "We feel-"

I raised my hand. "Think before you speak."

She nodded. "I was going to say that we feel the things we do are right, exactly as you and Mora feel that the things you do are right, even when they're wrong."

"That malignant stain kept you from informing Inclito, who has housed you and been kind to you, as well as causing you to offer your services to the Duko. I hope to equalize matters a little, if I can."

"I'll help you, " Fava declared.

Mora asked her, "Was that all it was? You threw away the jewels, you said. Is it just that you don't like us?"

"I like you" Fava told her.

I said, "If you really do, you will want to leave her for her sake. You have done a great deal of good here, I believe. You're beginning to do harm however, and it will only grow worse. Remember please that in a week or a month I will be gone, but Mora and Torda will still be here, and both know.

"Mora, you must understand that however much Fava may have liked you-I'm not qualified to pass on that-she resented the other human beings with whom she came in contact, not only your father and grandmother, but Torda and Onorifica, and all the people she met in Blanko."

Mora nodded reluctantly.

"She envied their humanity, and soothed her feelings by doing what she did, proving to herself that she had the power to destroy them-but we have very little time. The obvious question, Fava. Why didn't the Duko attack when you told him about the ammunition shortage?"

"He should have!"

"I agree, but he didn't. Why didn't he?"

"He said he wanted to train his people better, and get the crop in."

I nodded, wondering as I still do exactly how far

I could trust her. "And hire more mercenaries, I'm sure."

"That's right, and equip everybody better for winter fighting."

I nodded again. "Does it snow here? I suppose it must."

Mora offered, "It snows a lot more up in the High Hills, and that's where my father wants to meet them."

"No doubt. Fava, when you told the Duko about Inclito's influence, how he had persuaded the town to fight outside its walls, it would be natural for him to order you to kill him-or so I would suppose. Blanko would certainly be much weaker without Inclito. Did he do that?"

"Yes, " Fava said. "I wouldn't do it."

What power was in those words, I cannot say; but as she spoke them I felt once more the stillness of the steaming air between the colossal trees, dripping with moisture and thick with the smell of vegetable decay. Oreb surely felt it, too. Again and again he exclaimed, "Bad place! Bad place!, " sounding half frantic with fear.

"He'd want me to kill you, too, Incanto." Her fangs came out, for her kind, like ours, appears about to eat when it is pleased. "If I were to go back there tonight, I know he'd tell me to. I wouldn't do that, either."

Mora and Torda were staring at her, Mora's slack jaw and open mouth rendering her less attractive than ever.

"I want you to go back to him, " I said, and felt that she and I were sitting together on the damp, fecund soil. A moth with wings the size of dinner plates fluttered above the dark, stagnant pool between us, displaying staring eyes upon its wings before it fluttered up and up to vanish into the vaulted ceiling formed by the lowest limbs.

"You said you wanted to help me set things right here." I told Fava. "This is how you can do it. Tell Duko Rigoglio that Inclito is about to marry a woman from Novella Citta, and that both Novella Citta and Olmo have agreed to support his counterattack on Soldo once the war has begun. Will you do that?"

Fava nodded; her fangs had disappeared.

"If you do, and if you leave here today and do not return, you will have my friendship-for whatever that's worth. I won't reveal your nature to Inclito, or tell him that you have nearly bled his mother to death."

Torda grasped my arm and pointed at die idiot-faced, long-legged thing that had fallen from the tree under which we sat; its wrinkled, hairless hide was the brownish pink of human skin, and although it seemed stunned, its blunt tail probed the ground like a blind worm. "Don't worry, " I told her. "They eat leaves, are not good to eat themselves, and are perfectly helpless and harmless. It would never have left its tree if it weren't looking for a mate." At the sound of my voice it lifted its head and stared at me, its eyes as dull as ever and its mouth working.

Fava leaned forward to admire her own face, studying her reflection in the water as she might have in a slab of polished jet. "Back in Grandecitta, where I lived as a girl-do you mind if I'm older now, Mora? It's been so hard staying young for you while I dined with your grandmother. I kept having to stop on the way to Duko Rigoglio's palace, or on the way back, to find another child. Incanto said I had no trouble finding food, and I heard him say once that we prey upon the poor as if it were an accusation. It's really just that we look for houses that aren't very solid and are poorly defended."

Mora gasped. "Are you doing this? Is this…? Is it where you come from?"

Fava nodded. "But I'm not doing it." For a second her mouth opened as widely as a human mouth can, I would guess because she believed she was retracting her fangs. "Incanto is, I'm sure. How do you manage it, Incanto?"

I shook my head.

"Back in Grandecitta, it was fashionable to credit witches and fortune-telling, and all sorts of humbug. If you didn't consult a Strega at least once a month, when your period came, you pretended you had and made the charm yourself to show your friends. I did that sometimes, and so did they I'm sure. Charms against the pain, and for love and good luck. When I remember them now, it seems to me that they never helped anyone, though they may have hurt a few of us."

Her face had become the smooth but delicately wrinkled one of a woman who had been beautiful thirty years ago. "I hope yours aren't like that, Incanto, " she added. "Aren't we all friends here? If we are, anything that harms any of us hurts all of us. I hope you agree."

I said nothing because I was watching Mucor, who had coalesced from a shimmer on the dark surface. "There you are, Silk. There you are, Horn. I've been looking everywhere for you. Babbie came back without you, and Grandmother's worried."

"Tell her I found an eye for her, " I said. "I'll bring it as soon as I can."

There was a knock at the door, and a hoarse, muffled voice outside it.

Mucor had turned her death's-head grin toward Torda. "Are you sure you want to marry him? Silk will help you."

The door opened, and for a moment I saw the fat, middle-aged face of the cook, stupid with shock.