“I’ve got twenty Guardsmen looking for her,” he told Oreb. “That’s not enough, since they didn’t find her, but it’s all we could spare with the Fourth Brigade holding out on the north side, and the Ayuntamiento in the tunnels.”

Mention of the tunnels made Oreb croak unhappily.

At what amounted to a dead run, the litter swayed, yawed, and swerved off Sun Street onto Lamp. Leaning out Silk said, “Music Street — I thought I made it clear. A block east.”

The head bearer’s head bobbed as before.

“If twenty Guardsmen can’t find her, Oreb, I certainly can’t; and last night I didn’t. We didn’t, I ought to say. So we need help, and I cant hink of three places — no, four — where we may get it. Today we’re going to try them all Most of the fires are out, and Maytera Mint and Oosik can actually fight better without me in the way; so although the physician says I should be in bed, and I’m not supposed to have a minute to myself, I intend to take as many hours as necessary.”

Yawing as before, the litter turned onto a still narrower street that Silk did not recognize.

“It’s up to the gods, I’m afraid. I don’t trust them — not even the Outsider, who seems to trust me — but they may smile on us yet.”

“Find girl?”

He had lost his desire to talk, but the intensity of his emotions drove the words forth. “What did he want with her!” As he spoke, the litter sped past a shop with a zither and a dusty bassoon in its window.

But Calde Silk of Viron did not see them.

“This is the kitchen?” Maytera Mint looked around her in surprise. It was the largest that she had ever seen.

“There are, ah, alternatives,” Remora ventured. “Still entire, eh? Equally, hum, unsigned by Sabered Sphigx.”

“I find it cozy,” Potto declared. “For one thing, there’s food, though your troops, my dear young General, made off with a lot.