Salica inquired rather timidly, "Why don't you believe in the gods?" Rimando snorted, and she gave me a pleading glance.

"You see, " I told her, "as soon as you silence me, you find that you require my speech."

Eco tried to restore harmony. "I think I'd prefer not to know. It was a private sacrifice, they say. Let it stay private."

"I'm of your mind, " I told him. "The interesting question isn't what I read in the entrails of this young bull. An augur with sufficient imagination can read whatever you like in the entrails of whatever beasts you choose, and predictions made at sacrifice fail at least as often as they succeed-more often, in my experience."

Rimando asked, "Is one of us to die? Which one?"

"No, " Mora told him. "There wasn't anything like that."

"Nor is the interesting question why Rimando doesn't believe in gods, " I continued. "It is why anyone should. Why didn't Fava believe in the Vanished People, Mora? The answer may prove enlightening." -

"Because they have vanished. She knew that they were here once. I mean she'd seen the things people show that they say were theirs, things that have been dug up, you know. And last year one of Father's hands found a little statue when he cleaned out our well."

"I'd like to see it."

Inclito glanced up from his plate. "I'll show you right after dinner."

"Only she said they were gone, and that was why they're called the Vanished People. If they were still here, we'd know all about them and see them every day."

I nodded. "Anything that's seldom seen is assumed to belong to the remote past, even when it was last seen yesterday."

Rimando began, "I want to know-"

"Of course you do. This is my fault; I may have misread the gods' message, and in fact I probably did. I thought it said that only one of you would set out in the morning."

Inclito broke the silence that followed by picking up the small bell beside his mother's plate and ringing it. A smiling Torda appeared at once, and he told her, "I'd like a little horseradish. Would you ask Decina for some, please? I know it's not your job."

"I'll grate some for you myself, sir. I know right where it is."

Rimando cleared his throat. "It didn't say which one of us wouldn't go?"

"I don't know, " I told him. "Quite possibly that was written there as well, but if so I was too obtuse to read it."

Mora said, "Wouldn't the gods know you couldn't, and not bother writing it?"

I shrugged.

"You want to ask why I don't believe in the gods, all of you, " Rimando declared, "but you're afraid to ask me, or too polite."

"Not at all, " I told him. "By this time you should have seen enough of our host to know that though he is extremely brave, he is never polite."

Inclito dropped his knife and fork, and roared with laughter.

"He has many excellent qualities. He's both intelligent and shrewd, for example, a rare combination. Mora, you love your father, I know. What is it you like so much about him?"

From his place on the hearth, Oreb croaked loudly, "Good man!"

"He is." Mora nodded. "But that's not why I love him. It's hard to explain."

"Do you want to try?"

"I think so. It's that he loves whatever he's doing. He made me a house for my doll when I was small, and he loved doing that, just like he loved building onto this house and then building more, or putting up a new barn. I played with his dollhouse, and you know how children are. After a while it didn't look as nice, so he fixed it for me and repainted it, and he loved doing that, even when he'd been working hard all day."

Torda returned from the kitchen with a saucer of horseradish and a spoon. Inclito took it from her and dumped half of it onto his plate, then held out the rest to us.

Only Eco accepted. "Your daughter mentioned a little statue, you were going to show it to Incanto. I'd like to see it myself. Would that be all right?"

"Absolutely, " Inclito told him. "There are some other things, too."

"In Gaon they've got a cup that belonged to their rajan, the one that disappeared."

Inclito nodded.

"The Vanished People are supposed to have given it to him, and it certainly looks like some work of theirs I've seen. They say it cures the sick, and they keep it in the temple of their goddess."

Mora came in as I was writing cures. "Not in my nightgown this time, " she said, and tapped her riding boots with her quirt.

"Nor with Fava, " I remarked. "I like this much better." more." She paused. "I've been out in the stable just now with "But with the same questions she and I had last night, and Rimando. He wanted to see about his horse, see that it was comfortable and had enough water. Only when he got me out there he had a thousand questions, just like me."

She seemed to expect me to smile, so I did.

"I couldn't answer most of them, but when I got back to my room and started to undress for bed"

"You became curious yourself, " I suggested.

"I was already. That's why Fava and I came last night. But I need somebody to talk to. That used to be Fava, but she's gone now."

"What about your father and your grandmother?"

"It wouldn't be like talking to Fava. Or to you."

She sat in silence for a few seconds while I finished the sentence I had begun when she knocked, and wiped my pen.

"That man Eco talked about, the man down south who was looking for his father. Do you have a son?"

I nodded.

"Because you thought he might be looking for you. That's the way it seemed to Rimando, and it seemed like that to me, too."

I asked whether she thought Rimando attractive.

"That has nothing to do with it."

Oreb croaked a warning: "Look out!"

"Of course it does. You went to the stable with him."

"I wanted to see their horses, that's all. Did you see them when they came?"

I shook my head.

"They've got wonderful horses, both of them. A chestnut for Eco and a bay for Rimando. Father got two of the richest men in Blanko to contribute a horse apiece. I'd like to know how he does that."

"So would I."

"Uh huh. You don't know anything, do you, Incanto?"

"At least, I know how little I know."

"Did you really think that could have been your son looking for his father down south?"

"No." It required a good deal of resolve to tell the truth. "I didn't think it could possibly be. But I hoped it was."

"I think the father that he said he was looking for would have been younger than you are. He didn't sound a lot like you, either."

I nodded.

"You don't know who it was?"

"I have no idea – none. You'll want to know whether Eco's description would fit my son. No, it would not. My son's name is Sinew."

"That's what you said."

"It is. He may be calling himself something else – I have no way of knowing. But the young man Eco talked about didn't sound like my son. You indicated that you came with many of the same questions you and Fava had last night; this cannot have been one of them. What are they?"

She waved their questions aside. "You wrote those letters."

"The ones that Rimando and Eco are going to carry to Olmo and Novella Citta? Yes, I did. I wrote them with your father's permission, and he read them before he signed them. Do you want to know what was in them?"

Mora shook her head. "Rimando's is in his saddlebag. I could go out to the stable right now and read it if I wanted to. I could, but I'd have to break the seal. Does that bother you? That I could read it?"

"Not in the slightest."

"All right." She leaned forward, her brutal, girlish face intent. "For just a minute, this morning just before Decina came, we were someplace else. Fava and I were, I think, and I asked Torda about it and she said she was too. Was that Green?"

I nodded again.

"You did it to turn me against Fava."