On Blue's waters

On Green, I met a man who could not see the inhumi. They were there, but his mind would not accept them. You might say that his sight recoiled in horror from them. In just the same way, my own interior sight refuses to focus upon matters I find agonizing. In Ermine’s I dreamed that I had killed Silk. Is it possible that I actually tried once, firing Nettle’s needier at him when he disappeared into the mist? Or that I did not really give him mine?

(I should have told Sinew that the needier I was leaving with him had been his mother’s. It was the one she had taken from General Saba and given to me outside the entrance to the tunnels, and I have never seen a better one. Later, of course, I did.)

More pain, but this I must put down. For my own sake, I intend to make it as brief as possible-just a paragraph or two, if I can.

When I returned to the sloop, I found that I had been robbed, my cargo chests broken into and my paper gone, with much cordage and a few other things that I had brought from Lizard.

Before I had left to go to Marrow’s, I had asked the owner of the boat tied up beside mine, a man I had attended palaestra with, to watch the sloop for me. He had promised he would. Now I went to speak to him. He could not meet my eyes, and I knew that it was he himself who had robbed me. I fought him and beat him, but I did not get my paper back.

After that, bruised and bleeding, I sought help from Gyrfalcon, Blazingstar, and Eschar, but received none. Eschar was away on one of his boats. Gyrfalcon and Blazingstar were both too busy to see me.

Or so I was told by their clerks.

I received a little help from Calf, who swore that it was all he could give, and none at all from my other brothers; in the end I had to go back to Marrow, explain the situation, and beg to borrow three cards. He agreed, took my bond for the amount plus eight percent, then tore it up as I watched. I owe him a great deal more than the three cards and this too-brief acknowledgment.

When I had refitted I put out, sailing south along the coast, looking for something that had been described to me as a rock with a haystack on it.

While I had talked with Marrow before I was robbed, I had considered how I could learn something that His Cognizance had been unwilling to tell me when we had conferred the day I made port. Eventually I realized that Marrow was more than acute enough to see through any sleight of mine; the only course open to me was to ask him outright, which I did.

“The girl’s still alive,” he said, stroking his chin, “but I haven’t seen or heard tell of the old sibyl in quite a time.”

“Neither have I,” I told him, “but I should have. She was here in town, and I was out on Lizard, mostly, and it always seemed possible I would run across her someday when I brought paper to the market.” Full of self-recriminations I added, “I suppose I imagined that she would live forever, that she would always be here if I wanted her.”

Marrow nodded. “Boys think like that.”

“You’re right. Mine do, at least. When you’re so young that things have changed very little during your lifetime, you suppose that they never will. It’s entirely natural, but it is a bad mistake and wrong even in the moral sense more often than not.”

I waited for his comment, but he made none.

“So now… Well, I’m going to look for Silk, and he’s far away if he’s alive at all. And it seems even more wrong for me to leave without having seen Maggie. She’s no longer a sibyl, by the way.”

“Yes, she is.” Marrow was almost apologetic. “Our Prolocutor’s made her one again.”

“He didn’t tell me that.” (In point of fact, he had flatly refused to tell me anything about her.) “Did you know I talked to him?”

Marrow nodded.

“That was what I wanted to learn, or the principal thing. I wanted to find out what happened to her and Mucor, but he wouldn’t tell me or even say why he wouldn’t. You must know where they are, and he concedes that they’re still alive.”

“I’ve heard talk from the people I do business with, that’s all. I don’t keep track of everybody, no matter what people may think.” Marrow folded both hands on his stick, and regarded me for a long moment before he spoke again. “I doubt I know as much as he does, but she wanted to help out here, teaching the children like she used to. That was why he made her a sibyl again, and she used to mop and dust and cook for him. Only he wouldn’t let the crazy girl in the house.”

I smiled to myself. It would not have been easy to keep Mucor out.

“There was some trouble about her anyhow. About the crazy granddaughter.”

He waited for me to speak, so I nodded. Mucor had often thrown food and dishes at Netde and me when we had cared for her.