Gentle did his best to draw from her a little more information on this woman Tishalulle, but she either knew very little or was unprepared to vouchsafe further insights in her father’s presence. Gentle suspected the latter. As he left, however, she asked him quietly if he would come and visit her again, and he said he would.
He found Pie in their cell, with a guard on the door. The mystif looked grim.
“N’ashap’s revenge,” it said, nodding towards the guard. “I think we’ve outstayed our welcome.”
Gentle recounted his conversation with Aping and the meeting with Huzzah.
“So the law prohibits proprieties, does it? That’s a piece of legislation I hadn’t heard about.”
“The way she talked about the Cradle Lady—”
“Her mother, presumably.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She’s frightened and she wants her mother. Who can blame her? And what’s a Cradle Lady if not a mother?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Gentle said. “I’d supposed there might be some literal truth to what she was saying.”
“I doubt it.”
“Are we going to take her with us or not?”
“It’s your choice, of course, but I say absolutely not.”
“Aping said he’d help us if we took her.”
“What’s his help worth, if we’re burdened with a child? Remember, we’re not going alone. We’ve got to get Sco-pique out too, and he’s confined to his cell the way we are. N’ashap has ordered a general clamp-down.”
“He must be pining for you.”
Pie made a sour face. “I’m certain our descriptions are on their way to his headquarters even now. And when he gets an answer he’s going to be a very happy Oethac, knowing he’s got a couple of desperadoes under lock and key. We’ll never get out once he knows who we are.”
“So we have to escape before he realizes. I just thank God the telephone never made it to this Dominion.”
“Maybe the Autarch banned it. The less people talk, the less they can plot. You know, I think maybe I should try and get access to N’ashap. I’m sure I could persuade him to give us a freer rein, if I could just talk with him for a few minutes.”
“He’s not interested in conversation, Pie,” Gentle said. “He’d prefer to keep your mouth busy some other way.”
“So you simply want to fight your way out?” Pie replied. “Use pneuma against N’ashap’s men?”
Gentle paused to think this option through. “I don’t think that’d be too clever,” he said. “Not with me still weak. In a couple of days, maybe we could take them on. But not yet.”
“We don’t have that long.”
“I realize that.”
“And even if we did, we’d be better avoiding a face-to-face conflict. N’ashap’s troops may be lethargic, but there’s a good number of them.”
“Perhaps you should see him, then, and try to mellow him a little. I’ll talk to Aping and praise his pictures some more.”
“Is he any good?”
“Put it this way: As a painter he makes a damn fine father. But he trusts me, with us being fellow artists and all.”
The mystif got up and called to the guard, requesting a private interview with Captain N’ashap. The man mumbled something smutty and left his post, having first beaten the bolts on the door with his rifle butt to be certain they were firmly in place. The sound drove Gentle to the window, to stare out at the open air. There was a brightness in the cloud layer that suggested the suns might be on their way through. The mystif joined him, slipping its arms around his neck.
“What are you thinking?” it said.
“Remember Efreet’s mother, in Beatrix?”
“Of course.”
“She told me she’d dreamt about me coming to sit at her table, though she wasn’t certain whether I’d be a man or a woman.”
“Naturally you were deeply offended.”
“I would have been once,” Gentle said. “But it didn’t mean that much when she said it. After a few weeks with you, I didn’t give a shit what sex I was. See how you’ve corrupted me?”
“My pleasure. Is there any more to this story, or is that it?”