“She said she'd give it a try. She gave me a whole dried squid for it. She said I looked like I needed feeding up.”
“Right? You're learning. That's lunch sorted out at any rate. See, Urn? Told you it would work if we stuck at it.”
“I don't call one dried squid and a box of greasy olives much of a return, master. Not for two weeks' thinking.”
“We got three obols for doing that proverb for old Grillos the cobbler.”
“No we didn't. He brought it back. His wife didn't like the color.”
“And you gave him his money back?” Yes."
“What, all of it?”
“Yes.”
“Can't do that. Not after he's put wear and tear on the words. Which one was it?”
“ `It's a wise crow that knows which way the camel points.' ”
“I put a lot of work in on that one.”
“He said he couldn't understand it.”
“I don't understand cobbling, but I know a good pair of sandals when I wears 'em.”
Om blinked his one eye. Then he looked at the shapes of the minds in front of him.
The one called Urn was presumably the nephew, and had a fairly normal sort of mind, even if it did seem to have too many circles and angles in it. But Didactylos's mind bubbled and flashed like a potful of electric eels on full boil. Om had never seen anything like it. Brutha's thoughts took eons to slide into place, it was like watching mountains colliding; Didactylos's thoughts chased after one another with a whooshing noise. No wonder he was bald. Hair would have burned off from the inside.
Om had found a thinker.
A cheap one, too, by the sound of it.
He looked up at the wall behind the barrel. Further along was an impressive set of marble steps leading up to some bronze doors, and over the doors, made of metal letters set in the stone, was the word LIBRVM.
He'd spent too much time looking. Urn's hand clamped itself on to his shell, and he heard Didactylos's voice say, "Hey . . . there's good eating on one of these things . . .
Brutha cowered.
“You stoned our envoy!” shouted Vorbis. “An unarmed man!”
“He brought it upon himself,” said the Tyrant. “Aristocrates was there. He will tell you.”
The tall man nodded and stood up.
“By tradition anyone may speak in the marketplace,” he began.
“And be stoned?” Vorbis demanded.
Aristocrates held up a hand.
“Ah,” he said, “anyone can say what they like in the square. We have another tradition, though, called free listening. Unfortunately, when people dislike what they hear, they can become a little . . . testy.”
“I was there too,” said another advisor. “Your priest got up to speak and at first everything was fine, because people were laughing. And then he said that Om was the only real God, and everyone went quiet. And then he pushed over a statue of Tuvelpit, the God of Wine. That's when the trouble started.”
“Are you proposing to tell me he was struck by lightning?” said Vorbis.
Vorbis was no longer shouting. His voice was level, without passion. The thought rose in Brutha's mind: this is how the exquisitors speak. When the inquisitors have finished, the exquisitors speak . . .