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`Because they didn't belong to me And because they wereare-art, and to wantonly destroy art is always evil But, Pig" He halted

"Auld Pig's yer pal, bucky"

"I know That is what makes this so very hard You were blind when you left your home in the Mountains That Look at Mountains So you told me"

"When he left na braithrean Aye"

"You cah you are blind"

"Aye, bucky Ho, he had so to ask a favor, one I have no right to ask It is so I will always reproachto ask it just the saht you here I know that You wouldn't be in this ruined quarter if it were not for ht not be in Viron at all"

"H'out wi' h'it, bucky"

"I thought I was going to-to show you where I used to live The rew up My father's shop Where those things once stood I would tell you so about them, what they-those places meant to 's face "Instead, I' a rooht to say, together or separately The inn is Ermine's, and it's on a hill, the Palatine, in the center of the city Would you be willing tosmiled "That h'all, bucky?"

"I'll join you there, I swear, before shadelow But I want to-I roped for hi the sheathed sword " 'Tis h'all right, bucky Needed one Dinna fash yerself Terturned away

"I'll rejoin you, I pro, please, but tell hi, Oreb Help him"

Oreb croaked unhappily, but flew

Hison the knobbed staff, and watched theht, the bigover the few badly dressedunwontedly s man's shoulder, its dabs of scarlet the only spots of color in the ruined landscape of blacks and grays

Slowly, ever so slowly, the tap-tap-tapping of the brass-tipped scabbard faded The big man stopped a passerby and spoke, too distant already to be overheard The passerby answered, pointing up Silver Street toward the , it seemed likely, to inform the blind man who had stopped hiress resuray

He himself turned then and strode rapidly away, the bare wooden tip of his staff striking at the rutted surface of the street with every step, rapping stones and splattering ed brown trousers

Here the children had played, taking Maytera's clotheslines for juo, the sad, halfstarved little girls with the black bangs, with the long black pigtails braided with scraps of bright yarn To Blue, and soely, dead

This fire-blackened shiprock wall, these e s, had been the cenoby's once While the whorl slept Maytera had knelt, not to pray but to scrub this stone step so black with ash indistinguishable from mud Maytera Mint had dressed and undressed in there, in a darkened room behind a locked door and drawn blinds, had inal bed with an old oilcloth tablecloth, knowing that thebelly of her ceiling

That ceiling would sag noroof on which Maytera had cliaunti airship was all leak now, and the broad, dark door of sturdy oak that Maytera Rose had barred each night before the last thread of sun vanished had been burned long ago-whether for firewood or in the fire that had swept the quarter when the ith Trivigaunte began scarcely o into the cenoby now, and no one wanted to

The stone wall that had separated the garden froate and rusted padlock were gone Inside, weeds and blackberry bra the blackened stuh of their arbor remained to sit on He sat, leaned back, and shut his eyes; and in time a youthful sibyl sat down across from him, extracted a recorder from one of the voluan to play

Sun Street had taken him to the market, and Manteion Street to the Palatine Here was the Calde's Palace, its fallen wall repaired with new mortar and stones that almost matched

"Patera Patera?" The voice was soft yet thick-oddly wrong He looked around, not so ur she addressed

"Patera Patera Silk?"

He stepped back and scanned the s The shadow of a head and shoulders showed at one on the topmost floor "Mucor?" He tried to keep his voice lohile h to be heard fifty or sixty cubits overhead

"She's not here She's not here, Patera"

It's the bird, he thought The bird makes her think I'ht that Oreb was gone, that he had sent Oreb aith Pig

"Please "

He had not heard the rest, yet he knehat he had been asked to do The ed them with the heavy brass knocker, each blow as loud as the report of a slug gun

There was no answering sound fro wearily down the balustraded steps to the street The high as empty now, and the thick, soft voice (female but not feminine) silent He squinted up at the motionless sun The shade was al He had told-had pro, but Ermine's was only two or three streets away

He had just crossed the first when fingers, thin but hard and strong, closed on his elbow He turned to see a slight, stooped figure no larger than a child,"Please Please, Patera Please, won't you talk to Please won't you talk toof sootten ht not have been a sob "Have you forgotten unhappy Olivine Have you forgotten unhappy Olivine, Patera?"

There was soh, hunched shoulders Pity alotten you, Olivine" It was not a lie, he told hiet what one had not known

"You'll bless You'll bless me?" There was joy in the voice from the sackcloth "Sacrifice, the way you used Sacrifice, the way you used to? Father's gone Father's gone away He's been gone a long, long ti ti him after her, back toward the Calde's Palace "There's a There's a woht help her, obviously Soht be able to cure whatever disease afflicted the pathetic figure before him "A oman," he hazarded

"Oh Oh, yes! Oh, I hope Oh, I hope so!"