"You see me." The gigantic speaker sounded faintly pleased.

"Yes. You could see me before."

Slowly the great face descended. Slowly it rose, as a large boat might have in a long swell.

"Like Oreb. Oreb can see even when it seems to me that there's no light at all."

There was no reply, and he wondered whether the godling had heard him. "Oreb's eyes are larger than mine," he continued gamely, "though Oreb is so much smaller. Your eyes seem very small to me, but that's only because they are small in proportion to your face. Each must be the size of Oreb's head."

Rain fell like a lash.

"You speak too fast, holy one," the godling rumbled.

And it must seem to you that we move very fast as well, he reflected. That we dart about like squirrels or rabbits.

"Are you in danger, holy one? I will protect you."

"No." He held up the light, his sodden tunic clinging to his arm. This was better-far better-than the sewer on Green.

"Are you in need, holy one? I will supply you."

"That is good of you." He struggled to make himself heard.

"Bird here!" Oreb landed heavily on his head, and every limb jerked with terror. "Wet wet!" A fine spray of water joined the rain as Oreb shook himself and fluttered his wings.

"Getting in under the fingers, aren't you?"

"Good bird! Good Silk!"

Suddenly contrite, he spoke slowly to the godling. "You've made a shelter for me, and even let Oreb share it. Am I-are we keeping you out in this?"

Again the rumble seemed slightly amused, although he could not be sure he was not imagining it. "I do not suffer, holy one." There was pause in which the huge face, lit faintly from below, regarded him. "Are you in need?"

"No." It was still difficult for him to speak.

"The rest are to stay," the godling rumbled. Its breath, hot, moist, and fetid, pierced the wind; and lightning flashed as it spoke, starkly revealing colorless skin splashed with inky shadows. "Enough have gone. Tell the rest to stay. That is what I have come to tell you. Silk says it."

We have made the experiment, and the experiment has failed. That is the truth, so that is how I must look at it. All my planning-I shall be honest: all my scheming-has gone for nothing. I must devise a new approach.

When I was in Blanko, Fava and I found that when my mind was joined with hers we, and anyone else who was in our company, could travel in spirit. We went to Green; and later Jahlee, the Duko, Hide, and I, with some others, went to the great city of the Red Sun Whorl. We were able to, I believe, because the Duko had been there previously. Let me think.

I am going to write down everything-even the smallest details. Perhaps something will suggest itself, either when I am writing or when I read this over tomorrow.

I persuaded Beroep to take me across the street to Cijfer's. It was a serious violation of the law, he said; he and Aanvagen might lose their boats and even their house if the law found out. We waited until long after shadelow, when the street was almost empty. I was muffled in a thick twill boat cloak with a hood. It is dark gray, and reminds me of Olivine's giving me my augur's robe; what a strange whorl it is, in which we become someone else by putting on new clothes! The prisoner Horn disappeared as soon as Beroep draped him in this exceedingly voluminous cloak, replaced by the nameless captain of a nameless boat. In all the time I sailed with Babbie and Seawrack, I had no such cloak. Now I have no boat, but am equipped for one. No doubt it will soon appear.

In the same way, rubies and red and purple silk made me Rajan of Gaon. We are but the paper; our clothes are the ink.

Across the street we went, with Oreb flying well in advance so that his company would not betray my identity, and to make certain Cijfer would put out the lamps and open her door the moment we arrived.

She had and did. We hurried inside. "My servants away I have sent, Mysire Horn. This you say, and this I have done."

"Come bird!" Oreb was fluttering up the stairwell already. We ran after him-or at any rate Cijfer and I ran, and Beroep labored behind us, puffing and groaning. Up a flight-then another-and into the locked and bolted little bedroom whose window I had studied with Vadsig, and which has been constantly in my thoughts. It seemed as dark, almost, as Blood's villa; I nearly stumbled over the chair to which Cijfer directed me.

"A candle now you wish, Mysire Horn? The shutters closed are. No one can see."

It occurred to me that no one could see me well enough to recognize me even if they had been open, and I recalled Silk's saying that Mucor thought her spirit could not leave her room unless the window was open. I resolved to open the shutters of Jahlee's room, and did afterward, although nothing came of it.

Beroep arrived at the same time Cijfer brought the candle. He would have bent over Jahlee if I had permitted it. I ordered him away with a gesture that I hope brooked no argument, and he dropped gasping into the chair. It was only then, after Beroep had sat down, that I understood how it was that Cijfer served as Jahlee's jailer for so long without realizing that she was an inhuma: the sheet had been drawn up nearly to the top of her wig. "Good thing?" Oreb inquired when I lifted it.

I replaced the sheet, telling him to be quiet. "You've covered her face," I remarked to Cijfer. "May I ask why?"

"So silent she is, mysire. So cold. Like dead your poor daughter is. Seeing her so I do not like."

Not dead," Beroep gasped, "she is?"

"No. She's in a coma-from which I intend to rouse her." I felt confident of my ability to do it, and made the declaration as certain as I could. What if Jahlee, who was been buried alive in Gaon, were buried alive a second time here in Dorp? Who would rescue her then?

"My house the ghosts will leave, mysire, if up she wakes?"

I told Cijfer I was sure of it, and ordered them out; she left obediently and he reluctantly. And what more is there to tell?

Nothing, really.

I sat with her all night, thinking of Green-its ruined city, its swamps and jungles, the rice fields of the villagers, the abandoned tower in the cliff, and the derelict lander in which I died rose before my mind not once or twice but twenty or thirty times; and as far as I am capable of it, I explored their every corner, leaf, and crevice. Two floors below me, where Beroep was talking to Cijfer and drinking the white brandy they relish here, plates fell from a shelf and Cijfer shrieked in dismay. That was a little after midnight, and was far more activity than I myself saw. I opened the shutters and closed them after half an hour during which the room became unbearably cold. I moved the candle from place to place. I poked the fire and fed it fresh wood. I pulled down the sheet and kissed Jahlee's cheek, and took her hand (very clearly the hand of an inhuma) from under the bedclothes and clasped it between my own. It was as cold as ice-no dead woman's could have been colder. In time I warmed it, but Jahlee never stirred.

I prayed again and again, imploring the help of the Outsider and every other god, told my beads, and recalled ten thousand things, from my mother's kindnesses when I was a boy to the way Pig looked and spoke when he rejoined Hound and me at the fire in Blood's villa. I listened to Oreb, and talked to him-mostly to caution him to say nothing about what we were doing. And at last, when I could no longer bear his chatter, I opened the shutters again and sent him out to look for Babbie, something I very much regret now, because he has not returned.

Dawn came and with it Beroep, rather drunk, to tell me that he could risk my absence from his house no longer. So here I sit, having accomplished nothing. But what more could I have done? I wish now that I had thought to cut my arm and smeared Jahlee's lips.