"How did the Duko pay you, Fava, for the information you brought him? What did he give you?"

"Nothing!" She hesitated. "Jewelry, mostly. Jewelry and cards. I gave them away or threw them away."

"I can imagine-gold is heavy stuff. Since you didn't want the Duko's jewels or his cards, what did you want? You must have wanted something."

She shook her head. "Nothing."

"I know, you see, or at least I think I do; and

I'll tell Mora if you don't. It will sound far worse from me."

"You know everything, don't you!"

"Certainly I don't know as much as I need to. I intend to consult the gods again, if I can persuade Mora's father to give me a lamb-"

"No cut!"

"Not you, silly bird. If Inclito will let me have a lamb or something of the kind to sacrifice, I'd like to consult the Outsider. Him, particularly, and perhaps the Mother, the Vanished People's sea goddess, though as far as I know the war brewing here has no connection with the sea."

"Then you'll pretend the gods told you, " Fava declared.

"Certainly not. The gods won't tell people who do that sort of thing anything."

"We've been waiting for it, " Mora explained listlessly. "Some kind of magic or enchantment. We were afraid, but we wanted to see it."

I nodded, and admitted that when I was her age

I would have felt the same way.

Fava said, "Do we still want to talk to him about what we came to see him about, Mora? It will sound inane after all this."

"I don't care, " Mora told her. "If you want to."

"Then I won't."

"I think we need to finish talking about your spying first, " I said. "Mora will feel better when that's over, and so will I. While you were out of the room, I said that if the three of us-Mora, Torda, and I-could keep a secret, there was no reason for anybody else to know. Can you think of one?"

"Not if you can't."

"I can't. You're an intelligent young woman. Can you summarize everything you've told the Duko for me? Briefly, we haven't a lot of time."

"I think so. First there was the ammunition problem. Blanko had a lot of slug guns left over after the last war, but not much ammunition for them. Inclito was able to buy some in Aspis, and he got people from there to come here and show our people how to make it, so now there's a shop making ammunition in Blanko, and the town buys it from them as fast as they can turn it out.

"Then there was a lot of talk about fortifying. Some people wanted to make the town wall thicker and higher, and build more towers, but where was the money coming from? Naturally Inclito was against all that, and so were all the other farmers. He wanted to use the money, or as much as there was, to hire troopers who'd protect everybody, and that was the way it was decided after the farmers said they were going to start taking their produce someplace else."

Mora put in, "My father went around to a lot of the neighbors to get them to do that, and got some of them to go around like he was."

"I see."

"And I told him about you, " Fava continued, "after you came here the first night. Inclito thinks you're a man called Silk he read about-"

"Good Silk, " Oreb assured us.

"In some book. Only I don't think the people in books are ever really real."

"Nor do I, " I told her.

"And that was the last one, two nights ago. I said you were supposed to be this very powerful witch who'd cast spells on him and Soldo so Blanko would win, and I thought there might even be some truth in it. That was because of the story you told us the first night. Then you told that other one tonight, and you got inside mine and started changing things. I told Mora this morning, and she said we should just go and see you and ask how you did it, as friends. I said you were her friend, not mine, but if she wanted to I'd come along."

"He's going to let you go, " Mora told her. "He could get Papa to kill you twice over. You couldn't have a better friend than that."

"Yes, I could. I do."

"Before we talk about stories-"

From my shoulder Oreb repeated, "Talk, talk."

"Before we discuss those, I have a few questions about your reports, Fava. How many times have you gone to Soldo to talk to Duko Rigoglio?"

She muttered to herself, counting on her fingers. "Nine."

Torda burst out, "She said she went there night before last, Incanto. That can't possibly be true. She was here when you and the master went back to town, and here next morning for breakfast."

I nodded. "But let's pretend we think it's true, for the present."

"Nobody can ride that fast!"

"Thing fly!" Oreb demonstrated, circling the room. "Bad thing!"

"Come back, you silly bird.

"I was about to say, Fava, that you must surely have gained some information of value to Inclito on all those trips. How did you give it to him?"

"I couldn't, or not very much. He would have known."

"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.

"B-b-breakfast... "

The colossal trees were fading as the small but comfortable bedroom my host had provided returned.

"Breakfast is on the table. The-the, uh... "

Oreb appeared to shrink. "Good place!" He practically crowed it.

And then, "Fish heads?"

Chapter 10

Untamed Talents

Mora, Oreb and I went in to breakfast then. No doubt Torda went to her morning duties, whatever they were; I did not see her again until shortly before I sacrificed. Fava must have gone to Soldo, if she has not set off to gather more of her kind to hunt me down. Wherever she went, she certainly was not at breakfast with us today.

Here I ought to jump ahead to dinner. The two young men who were to carry the letters I had written for Inclito ate with us, and we were all much too interested in talking to them for anybody to suggest the story game. One was raised in Blanko; his name is Rimando  -  it means "delay, " he tells me, and was given him because his mother carried him for almost ten months.

"If I'd known that, " said Inclito, "I'd never have accepted you. You'll be half the morning just getting the saddle blanket on."