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returned the sword to its owner. "Thank you, sir. It's a beautiful weapon."
    He bowed. "It's yours anytime you need it, Maytera, and a hard hand to hold it."
    At the altar, Maytera Marble had poised the shallow bowl of polished brass that caught falling light from the sun. A curl of smoke arose from the splintered cedar, and as Maytera Mint watched, the first pale, almost invisible flame.
    Holding up her long skirt, she trotted down the steps to face the Sacred Window with outstretched arms. "Accept, all you gods, the sacrifice of this holy sibyl. Though our hearts are torn, we, her siblings and her friends, consent. But speak to us, we beg, of times to come, hers as well as ours. What are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured."
    Maytera Mint's mind went blank-a dramatic pause until she recalled the sense, though not the sanctioned wording, of the rest of the invocation. "If it is not your will to speak. we consent to that, too." Her arms fell to her sides.
    From her place beside the altar, Maytera Marble signaled the first presenter.
    "This fine white he-goat is presented to…" Once again, Maytera Mint's memory failed her.
    "Kypris," Maytera Marble supplied.
    To Kypris, of course. The first three sacrifices were all for Kypris. who had electrified the city by her theophany on Scylsday. But what was the name of the presenter?
    Maytera Mint looked toward Maytera Marble, but Maytera Marble was, strangely, waving to someone in the crowd.
    "To Captivating Kypris, goddess of love, by her devout supplicant-?"
    "Bream," the presenter said.
    "By her devout supplicant Bream." It had come at last, the moment she had dreaded most of all. "Please, Maytera, if you'd do it, please…?" But the sacrificial knife was in her hand, and Maytera Marble raising the ancient wail, metal limbs slapping the heavy bombazine of her habit as she danced.
    He-goats were supposed to be contumacious, and this one had long, curved horns that looked dangerous; yet it stood as quietly as any sheep, regarding her through sleepy eyes. It had been a pet, no doubt, or had been raised like one.
    Maytera Marble knelt beside it, the earthenware chalice that had been the best the manteion could afford beneath its neck.
    I'll shut my eyes, Maytera Mint promised herself, and did not. The blade slipped into the white goat's neck as easily as it might have penetrated a bale of white straw. For one horrid moment the goat stared at her, betrayed by the humans it had trusted all its life; it bucked, spraying both sibyls with its lifeblood, stumbled, and rolled onto its side.
    "Beautiful," Maytera Marble whispered. "Why, Patera Pike couldn't have done it better himself."
    Maytera Mint whispered back, "I think I'm going to be sick," and Maytera Marble rose to splash the contents of her chalice onto the fire roaring on the altar, as Maytera Mint herself had so often.
    The head first, with its impotent horns. Find the joint between the skull and the spine, she reminded herself. Good though it was, the knife could not cut bone.
    Next the hooves, gay with gold paint. Faster! Faster! They would be all afternoon at this rate; she wished that she had done more of the cooking, though they had seldom had much meat to cut up. She hissed, "You must take the next one, sib. Really, you must!"
    "We can't change off now!"
    She threw the last hoof into the fire, leaving the poor goat's legs ragged, bloody stumps. Still grasping the knife, she faced the Window as before. "Accept, O Kind Kypris, the sacrifice of this fine goat. And speak to us, we beg, of the days that are to come. What are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured." She offered a silent prayer to Kypris, a goddess who seemed to her since Scylsday almost a larger self. "Should you, however, choose otherwise…"
    She let her arms fall. "We consent. Speak to us, we beg, through this sacrifice."
    On Scylsday, the sacrifices at Orpine's funeral had been ill-omened to say the least. Maytera Mint hoped fervently for