"This may be a replacement-it looks a little newer than the others. If so, that's very likely the reason her lion was reduced to a bit of jewelry. The augur here may have hoped that vandals would take her for a minor goddess."

"Good god?" Oreb inquired.

His master shrugged. "I wouldn't say so, but she's no worse than the Seven as a whole. She's reputed to be brave, at least, and in the course of my life I've found that people who possess one virtue usually have several. One can imagine an individual who's admirably brave, yet grasping, unscrupulous, drunken, envious, cruel, lewd, violent and all the rest of that sad catalogue; but one never actually meets with such a monster-or at least, I haven't."

Pig said, "Thank yer kindly, bucky."

He was taken aback. "You can't mean that seriously. I haven't known you long, but no one who's been in your company for an hour could suppose you were a mass of vices. You're generous, kind, and good-natured, Pig; and I could easily rattle off a dozen more virtues-patience and tenacity, for example."

"Guid a' yer."

Hound cleared his throat and seemed almost to choke. "I want to say that Horn speaks for me, too. I couldn't have said it as well as he did, but I feel the same way." There was an embarrassed silence.

"Shall we go on to the next? I'm anxious to get to it, I admit."

"The woman holding the snakes? I wanted to ask something else about Sphigx, but I've forgotten what it was."

"She's actually a rather interesting figure. When I was a boy, I considered her the least attractive of the Nine, and there's some truth in that; but she's by no means the least complex. One can think of her as the mirror image of her sister Phaea. If that is the case, then Phaea is Sphigx's mirror image as well, which makes her the goddess of peace. The title suits her even though she doesn't get it, at least in Viron."

Pig touched Sphigx's image again, finding the medallion. "They fight, bucky? Sounds like they Nought ter."

"No." Leaning on his staff, he studied the image. "Despite the swords she holds, Sphigx is not merely the goddess of war, as I should have made clear. She also governs obedience, courage, watchfulness, and hardihood-all of the virtues that a trooper must have, even cleanliness and order. I mentioned that Phaea was the physicians' goddess, the goddess of healing. I used to know a Doctor Crane from Trivigaunte-this was before they went to war with us. He was a tough, brave little man; and he would tell us in no uncertain terms how much a good diet and clean hands have to do with health and healing. We have need of both Phaea and her sister, you see. One way to put that is that they need each other."

Straightening up, he turned back to Hound, smiling. "Have you remembered what you wanted to ask?"

Hound shook his head.

"Then I have a question for you. When you said that many of Stabbing Sphigx's images had been smashed, I assumed you meant by angry Vironese who saw them as symbols of Trivigaunte. A moment ago, it occurred to me that the vandals might have been Trivigauntis themselves. Statues like this are prohibited in the City of Trivigaunte and its territories, supposedly by her order, as are pictures of her; and I suppose that a deeply religious Trivigaunti might be tempted to destroy them wherever she found them. Was that what happened?"

"Mostly in the city, I think. In the Grand Manteion."

Pig chuckled. "Both sides breakin' 'em?"

Hound nodded with a rueful smile. "I'd heard that about the Trivigauntis, I suppose because they did it there. And I hoped Horn could tell us why they wanted to. That was what I was meaning to ask, what I forgot for a minute. Can you, Horn?"

He stared off into the dimness of the shuttered manteion, where a single bar of sunlight had stabbed the dusty air.

"Silk talk!"

"Oreb means me, I'm afraid." He turned back to them. "Who am I to resist a bird's demands? They wanted to because they thought it was what their goddess wanted, of course; but you understand that, surely. The real questions are whether she did, and if so why she did." He fell silent again, his clear blue eyes lost in thought.

"If she did not, then her supposed demand is presumably a lie put forth by the Chapter of Trivigaunte-whatever it's called-or the Rani's government. If that is the case, they probably say what they do to separate their people more firmly from those of other cities. Have I mentioned that there is a Trivigaunti town south of New Viron? There is."

Hound said, "I didn't know that."

"There's been a certain degree of mixing, which some on both sides have sought to prevent-Trivigaunti women marrying Vironese, and Vironese women marrying Trivigaunti men."

"Feel sorry fer ther four," Pig said.

"So do I, in a way; yet I doubt that they're much more-or much less-discontented than other couples.

"At any rate, their custom of refusing to picture the gods clearly isolates the people of Trivigaunte. This manteion would appear blasphemous to them; more importantly, so would the home of any pious person in Viron. My friend Auk, who was what is called a common criminal though he was an uncommon man, had a picture of Scylla tacked to his wall. But I am drifting away from the subject.

"If Sphigx herself issued the prohibition, I think it most likely she acted from pride or shame. She may have felt that no representation we could make could do her justice. I have seen Kypris-"

Pig's hand closed upon his elbow, its thick, pointed nails almost painful.

"Long ago, and I would defy any artist to picture a woman equally lovely. Silk's wife, Hyacinth, was dazzlingly beautiful as a young woman-but even she was not as beautiful as that."

Pig's grip relaxed.

"Or Sphigx may be ashamed of her followers, or of accepting worship at all. None of the other gods seems to feel like that, yet it would be much to their credit if they did."

Hound stared at him. "But… "

"But they are the gods. Is that what you would like to say? That's true. They are our gods-here, at least-and if they demand our worship, we must give it to them or perish. Do you see that niche over there?"

"Yes," Hound said. "It's empty."

Oreb croaked harshly, and his master went to it. "There is a sense in which you're wrong. In that sense, it is the Outsider's. Pig, do you want to put your hand in it? It will do you no harm."

"Nae. "

"Good. Hound, do you understand why this empty niche is the Outsider's? Why it is his now, although it may originally have been intended for one of the Nine? Possibly even for Pas?"

"Because no one knows what he looks like? I think you said something about that once."

"That's one reason, at least, though there are others. I don't mean that he is as the women of Trivigaunte believe Sphigx to be. There is no harm in our trying to make pictures of him, in showing him as a wise and noble man, for example, or as the night sky we see on Blue, a great darkness spangled with points of light. There's no harm, that is to say, unless we come to believe that he actually looks like the thing we've pictured. Then this representation is best."

Hound drew a deep breath. "But this is the way they show Sphigx!"

Later, when they had left Hound at Gold Street and were making their way to the Sun Street Quarter, Pig asked, "Nae folk h'in these hooses, bucky?"

Oreb answered for him. "No man! No girl!"

His master sighed. "After we had gone through the house in which Hound and Tansy used to live, I asked Hound when we would reach the inhabited parts of the city. I spoke softly, I suppose, and perhaps you were too preoccupied to hear us; but he said that we were already there, that the street down which we walked was one of those that had not yet been abandoned. I began counting houses then, and it seemed to me that there were five empty ones for each in which someone appeared to be living."