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dinner? Impossible! A minute drop of blood seemed to have seeped out of the bone. "Plate gained by violence," she announced to the presenter, "but if the goddess has a second message for me, I am too ignorant to read it."
    Maytera Marble whispered, "The next presenter will be my son, Bloody."
    Who was Bloody? Maytera Mint felt certain that she should recognize the name. "The plate will be gained in conjunction with the next presenter," she told the giver of the doves. "I hope the goddess isn't saying you'll take from him."
    Maytera Marble hissed, "He's bought this manteion, sib."
    She nodded without comprehension. She felt hot and sick, crushed by the scorching sunlight and the heat from the blaze on the altar, and poisoned by the fumes of so much blood, as she bent to consider the dove's left shoulder blade.
    Linked rings, frequently interrupted.
    "Many who are chained in our city shall be set free," she announced, and threw the dove into the sacred fire, startling a little girl bringing more cedar. An old woman was overjoyed to receive the second dove.
    The next presenter was a fleshy man nearing sixty; with him was a handsome younger one who hardly came to his shoulder; the younger man carried a cage containing two white rabbits. "For Maytera Rose," the older man said. "This Kypris is for love, right?" He wiped his sweating head with his handkerchief as he spoke, releasing a heavy fragrance.
    "She is the goddess of love, yes."
    The younger man smirked, pushing the cage at Maytera Mint.
    "Well, roses stand for love," the older man said, "I think these should be all right.
    Maytera Marble sniffed. "Victims in confinement cannot be accepted. Bloody, have him open that and hand one to me."
    The older man appeared startled.
    Maytera Marble held up the rabbit, pulling its head back to bare its throat. If there were a rule for rabbits, Maytera Mint had forgotten it; "We'll treat these as we did the doves," she said as firmly as she could.
    The older man nodded.
    Why, they do everything I tell them, she reflected. They accept anything I say! She struck off the first rabbit's head, cast it into the fire, and opened its belly.
    Its entrails seemed to melt in the hot sunshine, becoming a surging line of ragged men with slug guns, swords, and crude pikes. The buzz gun rattled once more, somewhere at the edge of audibility, as one stepped over a burning rabbit.
    She mounted the steps again, groping for a way to begin. "The message is very clear. Extraordinarily clear. Unusual."
    A murmur from the crowd.
    "We-mostly we find separate messages for the giver and the augur. For the congregation and our city, too, though often those are together. In this victim, it's all together."
    The presenter shouted. "Does it say what my reward will be from the Ayuntamiento?"
    "Death." She stared at his flushed face, feeling no pity and surprised that she did not. "You are to die quite soon, or at least the presenter will. Perhaps your son is meant."
    She raised her voice, listening to the buzz gun; it seemed strange that no one else heard it. "The presenter of this pair of rabbits has reminded me that the rose, our departed sib's nameflower, signifies love in what is called the language of flowers. He is right, and Comely Kypris, who has been so kind to us here on Sun Street, is the author of that language, by which lovers may converse with bouquets. My own nameflower, mint, signifies virtue. I have always chosen to think of it as directing me toward the virtues proper to a holy sibyl. I mean charity, humility, and-and all the rest. But virtue is an old word, and the Chrasmologic Writings tell us that it first meant strength and courage in the cause of right."
    They stood in awed silence listening to her; she herself listened for the buzz gun, but it had ceased to sound if it had ever really sounded at all.
    "I haven't much of either, but I will do the best I can in the fight to come." She looked for the presenter, intending to say something about