She nodded.

"Still-still! – you would see the child you had known as Fava lying in her bed. Her face would appear shrunken, its full cheeks pale and not so full. Yet still Fava, a human being of about your own age."

"She got a lot older just before she went away, " Mora said hesitantly. "Like Grandmother."

"Because so much of her food had been taken from your grandmother while she slept. Foolish people think that they will see the marks of the fangs, and there will be blood on the sheets. The truth is that the marks are small and white, and do not bleed. An inhumu's fangs are round, you see, and the wounds made by all such round things close themselves, unless they are very large. In addition, I imagine that Fava was wise enough to bite your grandmother in a place where she couldn't see her wounds – on her back, perhaps, or on the backs of her legs.

"You would see Fava lying there dead, exactly as you had always known her. Then you would blink away tears, or look aside for a moment; and when you looked back at her, you would see something that did not look human at all, a beast dressed like a girl, its scaly face painted and powdered, and its hair a wig. Around New Viron, farmers like your father put up lay figures to frighten birds. Do they do that here, too?"

She nodded again.

"Have you ever seen one from a distance when you were out riding, and thought it a real person?"

"I think I understand, but I still don't understand how you took us to Green before breakfast."

"Because the illusion was there, and was strong-when I looked at Fava I saw a girl, though I knew better. She was impressing her reality upon my mind, just as the Duko wants to impress the governmental system of his town upon Blanko. But something in my mind seized the links Fava had forged between the three of us and herself, shouting its own reality, which was and is mine. There were bugles and trumpets all along the road, Mora, and the crash and rattle of marching men with slug guns. All of that was exactly as Duka Fava had intended, but the men were not hers."

"I think I understand, " Mora said slowly.

"I hope so. I don't believe I can explain it any better than I have."

"Can I ask about the sacrifice? What you saw in the bull?"

"You may, of course. But I doubt that I can tell you more now than I did then."

"You said one wouldn't go. Does it mean that only one letter will, or-"

"I suppose so."

"Or are you just saying that either Rimando or Eco is going to stay here?"

"That's a good question." For a few seconds I was at a loss, trying to recall exactly what intimations I had received from the bull's entrails.

"Did you see whether the letters would be delivered?"

I shook my head. "I saw nothing about the letters. It's actually very rare for anyone to see anything concerning an object, as apart from a human being. I saw signs I took to represent the names of the messengers-that is to say, I saw a thorny branch, which I took to represent Rimando, in a dome, which I took to represent Eco. Only a single line departed from there, directed toward an O, which I took to be the sign for Olmo."

"Eco has the letter for Olmo. Rimando's is for Novella Citta. Is he going to get scared tonight? Too scared to go?"

"I have no way of knowing. If you're asking whether I saw anything of that kind in the victim, I did not. What about you? You've talked to him in private, and you're practically a woman, as I've said before. What do you think?"

"I don't think so. He said that it wasn't really going to be very dangerous, just a long, tiring ride. He wants me to suggest to Papa to let him keep his horse for a reward."

"I see. Are you going to do it?"

"I don't think so, " she repeated. "You say I talked to Rimando, just the two of us. You wanted to talk to Torda like that yourself."

"I didn't intend to imply that there was anything wrong with your speaking to him, only that you had, and were likely to have more insight into his character than I do."

"You told Torda what she was supposed to do when she sacrificed our bullock. What else did you tell her?"

"Good girl, " Oreb declared. "Bird hear."

Mora smiled.

"I think he means that you should be told everything I told Torda, " I said. "He's probably right. You realize, I hope, that I can't tell you anything she told me."

"All right."

I sighed and leaned back in my chair, sorry to see the friendly relationship I had built up with Mora destroyed. "I acted against your interests, if you like."

"You mean you want Papa to marry her."

"If he wants to, yes."

"So I won't get the farm. I'll never be mistress of this house or rich. I know you think I'm rich now, but it doesn't do me any good."

"You think it does not."

"I know it doesn't. I'm not just the biggest girl in my class. There's more to it."

"I realize that."

"Do you know what I'm scared of? Really, really scared of? I want to say what I've been so scared of all my life, but it wouldn't be the truth. What I've been so scared of for the past year?"

"Not Fava, obviously, and not the war. That more inhumi would come? No." I shook my head. "What was it?"

"That I'd meet some man and think he loved me, and after we were married I'd find out he just loved this place, loved the idea that someday Papa would die and he'd be rich."

Her hands (large hands for a girl her age) tightened, grasping her legs above the knee. "I saw it start tonight. This was the first time ever. But I know-I know-"

Two big tears escaped her deep-set eyes to course down her broad cheeks; I left my chair to crouch beside hers, my arm around her shoulders.

"I know it's going to go on and on and on… " Suddenly she turned on me, a fledgling hawk. "I'll kill him! You can make me promise anything you want, but I'll kill him just the same. What did you tell Torda?"

"The same things anyone in my position would." I stood up and returned to this sturdy, leather-covered chair in which I sit writing. "That I thought she loved your father and that he loved her; but that sullenness and sulking would never win him, no more than demanding that he marry her had made him marry her. That if she were cheerful and smiling instead, and asked for nothing, he would certainly give her a great deal and might even give her what she wanted."

"Would that work for me?"

I shrugged. "It might, if you were to find a man of the right sort, and had an opportunity to be around him for extended periods. It may not work for Torda – I don't know. And if the man is of the wrong sort it will not work at all for any woman."

"I ought to go now, " Mora said pensively. "I ought to get a little sleep, but it will be hard with Fava gone."

"You certainly should if you intend to rise early and see the messenger off, " I agreed.

"Just one?"

I nodded. "I think so."

"Well, I don't. But I ought to get to bed anyhow. When you and your wife-and your little son, is that right? Were on… What did you call it?"

"I probably said the Lizard. Lizard Island, off the coast."

"You lived by hunting rock goats?"

"Yes. And by fishing."

"Well, I'd rather live like that with a man who loved me, and live in a little tent of skins, than live here by myself or with a man who didn't. Why are you smiling like that?"

"Because after racking my brain for four long days I've finally realized who you and your father remind me of. I knew-I felt, at least-that I had met you both before. I won't tell you because the names would mean nothing to you."

"Were they good people?"

"Very good people." Without my willing it, my voice grew softer. I myself heard it with surprise. "People are always asking me to predict events to come, Mora. Usually I say that I can't, because it's so seldom I can. I try, as you've seen; but it's very doubtful stuff, like my prediction concerning Eco and Rimando."