Without much confidence, Ratepe said that the better inns were on the western side of the plaza. Xantcha, who hadn't eaten since the previous night in Narjabul, was game, though she had to grab Ratepe's arm again to keep him from striking off through the middle of the plaza.
"Forget you ever knew this place, all right? Pay attention to what you see, not what you remember," she advised as they headed north, toward the sea and the palace.
They were on the cobblestones near the Red-Stripe barracks, doing their best not to attract attention, when the temple gongs rang out. This time Xantcha expected the worst and would have bolted for any shadow large enough to contain the sphere if Ratepe hadn't held her back.
"There's a procession every night," he said. "That's what everyone's here for, what they're supposed to be here for. The high priests march the Book around and put it on the dais until midnight."
Xantcha noticed the hulking white-draped platform in the middle of the plaza for the first time. "Every night?" she asked, thinking of tomorrow night when the spiders would scream.
Ratepe nodded.
She nodded, too, seeing to the heart of his requests. "You've been thinking about this from the moment Urza started talking about exposing the sleepers with the Glimmer Moon! So, why, exactly, put shatter spiders on the altar?"
"Because the Book won't be there when the altar's destroyed. I figured it would shame the Shratta, whatever's left of them and I wanted the Shratta shamed at the same time the Red-Stripes were exposed. I didn't expect Red- Stripes to be leading the procession."
He cocked his head toward the temple where what he'd described was happening: the same eight armed men they'd seen earlier marched at the head of a short parade whose
focal point was an ornately shrouded litter bearing Avohir's holy book. The tome's container was borne on the shoulders of four priests, at least one of whom reeked oil. Xantcha glanced up at the sky.
The Glimmer Moon had risen, but though she knew the habits of the larger moon and its phases, she'd always regarded the smaller moon as a nuisance, sometimes there, sometimes not, never welcome. She didn't know if it rose earlier or later each day and wasn't completely clear on the whole "striking its zenith" moment that Urza was counting on.
"They just carry the Book out to the dais and then carry it back at midnight? A couple thousand paces. You're not hoping for something to happen while they're carrying it, are you?" If Ratepe had wanted to shame the Shratta, she couldn't imagine anything more effective than having a sleeper collapse while the holy book's litter was sitting on his shoulder.
"No," Ratepe replied, but before he could specify which question he'd answered, the nearest palace gate swung open. More armed and armored Red-Stripes emerged.
A sleeper marched in the second octet. He passed so close that Xantcha was sure she knew which of the eight it was: a cleanshaven young man, not apparently much older than Ratepe and not handsome either. His mouth and nose were too big for his face, his eyes too small. When he turned and stared, Xantcha's blood cooled. She forced her head to remain still and her eyes to lose focus. He might not be able to tell she'd been watching him. Xantcha held her breath, too, though that surely was too late. When the octet had passed, she started walking again.
The dais was still unburdened when they reached the western plaza where the guild inns, each a little fortress, stood behind their closed-gate walls. Ratepe handled the negotiations with the guild guards while Xantcha watched the procession go round and round the plaza. The joint guild of barbers and surgeons had a room behind the kitchen for which they wanted an exorbitant amount of copper and silver but not in any of the forms Xantcha or Ratepe carried it. Fortunately-but not, she suspected, coincidentally- there was a money changers' booth butted up against the barber's watchtower.
"Festival robbery," Ratepe said dramatically as he collected the devalued worth of a golden ring. "Tabarna shall hear of this!"
"Avohir, he knows," the money changer replied, pointing to the lead seals dangling from a silk ribbon overhead.
The room behind the kitchen had been let to another traveler. They wound up in a dust-choked garret that Xantcha was sure had been home to a flock of pigeons earlier in the day.
"The food will be good," Ratepe promised once they'd claimed their quarters.
"Don't say another word. You've been wrong about everything else. If you keep quiet now, the meal may at least be edible!" She was jesting, resorting to the rough humor that worked well on the Ohran Ridge and floundered here in the city.
But the food was good. They devoured roast lamb with sweet herbs, a thick grainy paste that tasted of nuts and
saffron, honey-glazed bread, and an overflowing jug of the berry wine served only for the Festival of Fruits. It wasn't worth the silver they'd paid for it, but it was good nonetheless, and they hauled the remaining wine up to the top of the stairs when they were finished.
The garret overhung a blind alley, but a bit of acrobatics put them on the roof and gave them one of the better views of the plaza that Pincar had to offer. A breeze stirred the humid air, making it pleasant. In the plaza, Avohir's book remained open on the dais. Red-Stripes stood guard while priests took turns reciting Shratta verses from memory-or so Ratepe said. Their voices didn't reach the top of the guild inn.
The crowd had thinned, and what remained had settled in around ten or fifteen campfires scattered across the cobblestones. Red-Stripes stood guard outside the palace and the temple. Xantcha wondered who held the allegiance of the men who guarded the inns. Not that it mattered overmuch. The sky was open to her sphere if they had to get away in a hurry.
"This is a good place," she decided. "We can see everything that's important, and there's nothing to block the sphere if we need it. We'll watch tomorrow night from here."
They stayed on the roof until the temple gongs sounded again at midnight and the Red-Stripes escorted the huge holy book into Avohir's sanctuary.
"What do they do if it rains?" Xantcha asked as they swung and slipped back to the garret.
If the roof had been pleasant, their rented room was a prison. Leaving the windows open had attracted swarms of buzzing, biting insects without improving the air. The excuse for a bed smelled as if its last occupant had been a corpse, and a summertime corpse at that. Xantcha seriously considered yawning out the sphere, if only for Ratepe's sake. She'd breathed Phyrexian air, the ultimate standard by which foul air should be judged, and survived without a wheeze or cough. Poor Ratepe was sneezing himself inside out and short of breath. In the end they dragged the best of the blankets up to the roof and bedded down beneath the stars.
The day they'd been waiting for began before dawn with more gongs clanging from the temple as the Festival of Fruits started its fourth day. When the city gates opened, the tent encampments disgorged their pilgrims who were, on the whole, far less hardened than the men who'd held sway in the plaza at night. There were children and flower sellers and all the other things Ratepe remembered from his own childhood. He coaxed Xantcha out of the garret for bowls of berries and a second visit to Avohir's great sanctuary.
The line of petitioners waiting for Avohir to dry their tears was prohibitively long and the cloister passage to the priests' quarters and, ultimately, the crypt where she'd confronted Gix was closed off and guarded by the burliest Red-Stripes she'd seen since arriving in the city. They glistened with oily sweat, but they weren't Phyrexian.