The emissaries remained on the wagon, which was promptly transformed into a mobile stage as soon as the procession reached the Square of a Thousand Drops. Workers came running and lowered the sides at one end and set up ladders after securing the six wheels.

  It was a good place to get a good view of the festivities and to expose oneself to the curious gaze of the people. The five worms (trying to describe them otherwise to the man on the street was a lost cause) had finally earned the sympathy of those who saw them: Once one got used to their appearance, how could one honestly dislike these soft, harmless-looking, defenseless creatures? The Zerafians swayed calmly in the cool air, unable to stand upright without constantly adjusting their center of gravity, and their side mouths resembled wide, crescent-shaped smiles. They made chattering noises, like babies. They were just so funny.

  The precious cylinder containing the fragment of Zerafia was guarded among them and, for good measure, watched from a distance by several guards. We don't want any trouble, Attan Ze told himself.

  The opera performance was still going on. The repertoire had become increasingly difficult for connoisseurs and admirers of contemporary music. Not much of the audience was left in the bleachers, but the singing crickets were screaming louder than ever, clinging to the set with their paws and improvising melodramatic movements that threatened to topple the silhouettes on the stage. Finally, a red curtain rose like a balloon, was torn away by the wind, crawled low over the people in the square for about twenty yards, and then flew away forever.

  Attan Ze followed it with his gaze until he could catch a glimpse of it, a tiny dot up there against the ashen sky, and then he kept imagining it floating, thanks to the currents above Faspath, as if carried by an invisible river eastward, toward the Center.

  Everything came from the Center and returned to it.

  In what order?

  The clatter of the square was his anchor to reality, and Attan Ze clung to it as to a peak, to be brought back to the ground, however reluctantly, in the midst of an audience waiting for his word.

  The singing crickets finished their performance disheveled, greeted the applause with sullen reluctance, and then immediately jumped away and mingled with the crowd, which confusedly held back its enthusiasm for fear of stepping on the performers. In an instant they were gone, the bright green of their bodies camouflaged against the blue of the tiles.

  Even before the workers dismantled the set, the mayor stepped onto the stage and cut them off on the stepladder.

  “Citizens!” he greeted, to thunderous applause. “Friends! Let us all enjoy the festivities together, which take on a very special meaning this year. For the first time in the history of our two cities, we have among us the guests of Zerafia, who have come...”

  A second round of applause forced him to stop. But the roar of the fervent applause did not quite cover the rumble of the metal pipes dropped by the workers behind the mayor.

  But his crystalline voice rose to reach every distant corner, amplified by the resonance he could control in his own throat.

  “...come to cement the friendship that has now existed between us for decades! In recent days, very slanderous rumors have been circulating against our friends and allies...”

  What was the need to rush everything and interrupt his speech? he wondered annoyed as the scenery was pulled away behind him. Had they rented the curtains by the hour?

  “But we have never doubted. We are certain that all suspicion will soon vanish from the minds of even the wariest. It is wise to never let our guard down, but there are other dangers we must guard against, and to have a friend by our side is a great fortune, the most important gift we could receive from the Rift!”

  This concession to the beliefs of the Palvi monks would earn him much criticism from a section of the City Committee that frowned upon mixing politics with mysticism. But Attan Ze was sincere in his eagerness to represent every small group of citizens, and though he abhorred any kind of excess, he shared some of the sect's beliefs. A man is allowed to have his beliefs, he thought; it was not natural to ask him to renounce them.

  He bowed and took his leave, applauding the audience in turn.

  “Have fun!”

  How nice it would be to become invisible now, he thought as he descended back to the square. Not to avoid his fellow citizens, but to walk undisturbed among them, to wander aimlessly and without thought. Instead, he could never hide. Everyone's eyes, though fueled by admiration and trust, weighed on him like ballast, pinning him to the ground and choking his breathing.

  Well, to the gommite, he laughed to himself as he planted a foot on one of the mirrored tiles.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  He had to reach the wagon of the emissaries, but he moved slowly. He felt, rather than saw, the competent presence of the two guards assigned to his security, who followed him, staying a few paces to the left and right as he made his way through the crowd.

  An astonished murmur reached his ear, and at first Attan Ze thought it had to do with a small family quarrel over the cotton candy vendor's cart. He watched distractedly as the children and the adult waved the pink mass, the little ones trying to get them out of their hair, while the father kept rebuking someone who had run off behind the cart.

  “But look, is it turning green?” a female voice said loudly, not with the tone of good news, but rather with a veil of worried curiosity.

  His pleasant numbness vanished in an instant. Attan Ze became alert again, ready to quicken his pace and see with his own eyes what was turning green.

  His thoughts had instinctively flown to the emissaries, the object of everyone's attention and curiosity.

  He ran as far as his hooves slipping on the stone and the crowd, which was too thick even for him, would allow.

  And yes, he had to admit as soon as he was in front of the stage, it was indeed the cylinder they were talking about. The oily liquid in which Zerafia's fungoid piece was stored had changed color, had become murky with an unhealthy greenish glow. As Attan Ze stared at it in disbelief, it changed sharply to an even more unpleasant shade, a grayish-brown streaked with particles that thickened the liquid. And was the fragment withering at the sight, or was it his catastrophic imagination? Had something contaminated it?

  The emissary at the center of the group stood erect and waggled excitedly.

  “Friends!” he called, his voice an uncertain and strange trumpeting sound. “Friends...”

  The others had crouched down, slowing their movements, flattening themselves against the wagon as if to give the speaker every ounce of their energy.

  No. Oh no, what had happened? Whose fault was it?

  There was nothing the mayor could do but watch and listen, his legs growing as heavy as boulders and his breath holding in his throat. Watching and listening to this final horror.

  “Friends, t h a n k s,” the worm creature spelled out again, with obvious difficulty. It faltered at the sight.

  The contents of the cylinder were stained black, the lump had dissolved like a grain of salt in water.

  “Thank you,” was the Zerafian's last word.

  It sagged like a long empty sock, just like its companions. Their soft bodies dissolved in a pool of liquid, a gray slime that dried to a foam on the floorboards of the wagon.

  The first was an old woman who gurgled shrilly, an animal howl that ignited the spark of panic that hung in the air like an explosive gas. Terror blazed through the square, and the whistles of the city guards were drowned in the clamor, inaudible and useless.

  Attan Ze was pushed and shoved on all sides, struggling to stay upright and in place; his bodyguards fought hard to catch up with him, cutting through the crowd that rushed like a herd in the opposite direction. Even the Pipers were disturbed by the commotion and flew far away, groaning with reed roars that were immediately mimicked by the painful cries of the Swallows.

  But not everyone was fleeing the scene of horror. One human was still there, firmly in place. A balding man, wearing an old-fashioned brown suit and a yellow flower in his buttonhole, leaning forward, pale and sweaty, to stare at the cylinder, a useless container of useless slop.

  The bodyguards shielded the mayor, ready to isolate him in a square yard of security amid the chaos and shouting. But so, he was a prisoner; instead, he wanted to engage, to see, to understand, to touch.

  Attan Ze Kosh broke free of the suffocating care of the two men with a lunge forward.

  “Excellency, no! This may be an assassination attempt!”

  The hoofed feet froze as they slipped.

  An assassination attempt!

  He had not thought of that.

  Could it be that these helpless looking creatures had deceived him so much? That they had come with the terrible intention of killing themselves in the midst of their enemies, taking everyone with them? And in doing so, they had spewed a deadly poison into Nelatte's air...

  The brown-clad man fell to his knees, as if unconscious.

  A pang of fear froze the mayor in mid-step.

  But then he saw the man cover his face with his hands, his shoulders jerking. A groan escaped from behind interlocked fingers.

  “No,” he declared. “It's not an attack.”

  The reality was far worse.

  Followed closely by the guards, the mayor came within a few paces of the wagon. He stepped regretfully on the whitish gruel that had been the emissaries, still dripping on the plaza floor, but he had to understand.

  The man turned to him with a desperate, mad look, his mouth still moving without making a sound, his face wet with tears. Finally, he pointed to the car, the cylinder, the floor.

  “They're gone,” he murmured. “They're dead.”

  Of course they were. You could see they were dead.

  But the man insisted.

  “They're all dead.”

  And the mayor nodded. He could not deny the truth that danced before his eyes. The emissaries had not been poisoned and had not killed themselves, nor was their tragic end the result of anything that had happened there and then. The explanation lay four hundred miles to the west in the Rift.

  The shard had immediately followed the fate of the mother fungus.

  The stranger sobbed uncontrollably.

  “Zerafia is no more.”