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.Carrying two cups of the fragrant black brew, Morgan stepped carefully between piles of photos and transcripts and handed me one.It was nicely warm in my hand.She peered around the room.Rok had occasionally grumbled about the mess, but Morgan would just dump whatever inconvenienced her off a seat or a table, though she was careful to put it in an appropriate spot.One-handed, she shifted the treasurer’s photos off a chair and slumped them against a pile of transcripts of interviews with his associates.She plunked down in the chair and shoved some files aside to set her cup down on the table.I sipped appreciatively at the coffee.Remembered belatedly to mutter, “Thanks.”Morgan chuckled.I could hear Rok stirring in the other room, and the shower went on.“You getting anywhere?” Morgan asked.“Dunno yet,” I muttered.“Maybe.”Morgan nodded, got up with her coffee, abandoning any attempt at conversation.She knew what I was like at times like this.“Parade’s at ten,” she said, heading for their room.“Ceremony is at four,” I said.I had my dress tunic already laid out on my bed.“I already told Roth we might not make the parade.You go without me if you want.”Morgan laughed.She knew I hated parades.She said something else as she vanished into the room she shared with Rok, but I didn’t catch it.I was already back to my contemplation of the Beast’s calendar.When the Beast takes his first victim, the fishing boat captain, Summersend is five weeks away.It’s not quite first quarter past the full moon, a Thursday.It would have been bright that night, the three-quarter moon shining off the water.The Beast walks onto the boat and kills him there.Eight days later he takes the teacher, Juan Castro.The weather was bad that night, no view of the last quarter moon.Castro was killed in an enclosed bridge between two of the college buildings.Private, like the boat, and indoors.Fitch, the guardsman, is taken the night before the dark moon, a Sunday night.He’s on patrol, apparently gets dragged into the shelter of a tramway station.This is a little bolder, more exposed.He’s taking his victim off the street, not coming to him in a place he thinks of as secure.Then nothing for almost two weeks, the whole of the waxing moon, until two days before full, a Monday.That’s when Suzi Mascarpone of the Harlot’s Guild gets taken in the street, out in the open, and Auden attempts to capture the Beast.The timing blows the “waning moon, baneful magic” connection all to hell.Two days later, the Beast walks into the guard’s wardroom and kills the chief.Moon’s just past full, waning again, one week to Summersend.If you’re looking for baneful magic, you usually look at the waning moon first.But could the Beast be running on the sun instead? Midsummer is the equivalent of the full moon, while Summersend is the equivalent of a moon in its first waning quarter.I wondered what, if anything, we could expect of the Beast on Summersend.The Summersend ceremony commenced at four P.M., but it was already feeling like sunset in the square, shadowed as it was by the tall buildings on all sides.Central Square was a wide open plaza in front of the main entrance to the CA Tower.For the city’s Summersend celebration the big fountain in the center of the plaza had been emptied of water and a huge Corn Guy had been set up in it.At least, I assumed it was a Corn Guy.The figure must have been twenty-five or thirty feet tall, but as we entered the plaza that afternoon it was still shrouded by what appeared to be a parachute.On the side of the square opposite the CA Tower a temporary stage had been set up, hung with speakers and sound equipment, but it was empty at the moment, and the crowd’s attention was focused on the steps of the CA Tower, where Roth, Weldt, Gage, and several other city officials were gathered, along with the three of us, and the priests and ministers of the city’s major churches and temples.Among the black robes and suits of the more conservative denominations I saw Thudisar Tyburn in his pale-blue over-robe, a woman in the orange robes of a Buddhist monk, and the representative of the Church of the King in his formal white spangled jumpsuit.Between the tower steps and the fountain with the shrouded Guy stood a huge cart filled with produce: bundles of corn, wheat, baskets of fruit and vegetables, and of fresh fish on beds of ice.I knew that beneath this pile would be dozens of financial statements and year-end reports, representing the less tangible fruits of the city’s harvest.Speeches were made, of course, though there was nothing particularly memorable about any of them, and certainly no mention made of the predations of the killer we were calling the Beast.I didn’t think the Beast would appear and wreak havoc at the public Blessing ceremony.That wasn’t his style.But even though it was unlikely he’d appear, he was clearly on everyone’s mind.Everywhere you looked there were tight mouths, haunted eyes.When the appropriate time came, city guards moved the closest of the crowd back, the priests and ministers ranged out in a circle around the Harvest Barrow, holding their hands out toward it, and the entire crowd seemed to hold its breath as I stepped forward to pronounce the Blessing of the Harvest.I had never performed the blessing for a crowd as large as this, nor had I ever used a microphone to do so, but I didn’t feel particularly nervous.I wasn’t quite prepared, however, for what followed.At the end of the Blessing the assembled community traditionally joins in a tone, and the crowd assembled in Central Square did so with great enthusiasm.I’d never heard a tone chanted by a crowd that large, and I could feel their joined voices vibrating through the pavement beneath my feet.For a moment I wondered if the vibration might actually cause some damage to the structures around, it was so loud, and then I realized that was silly.Bay City had been celebrating Summersend in just this way for many years; surely there was no danger of such a thing.There were probably outdoor concerts that had a higher decibel level.What I was really reacting to, I reflected, was the intensity of emotion the crowd put into their tone [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]