Nightside the Long Sun

DINNER ON AUK

Hers was the most beautiful face that Silk had ever seen. It hovered behind the glass in Orchid’s sellaria, above a suggestion of neck and shoulders; and its smile was at once innocent, inviting, and sensual, the three intermingling to form a new quality, unknown and unknowable, desirable and terrifying.

“I’ve been watching you … Watching for you. Silk? Silk. What a lovely name! I’ve always, always loved silk, Silk. Come to me and sit down. You’re limping, I’ve seen you. Draw up a chair to the glass. You mended our broken Window, mended it a little bit, anyway, and that’s part of this house now, you said, Silk.”

He had knelt, head bowed.

“Sit down, please. I want to see your face. Aren’t you paying me honor? You should do what I ask.”

“Yes, O Great Goddess,” he said, and rose. This wasn’t Echidna, surely; this goddess was too beautiful, and seemed almost too kind. Scylla had eight, or ten, or twelve arms; but he could not see her arms. Sphigx—it was Sphigxday—

“Sit down. There’s a little chair behind you, Silk. I can see it. It was very nice of you to mend our terminal.”

Her eyes were of a color he had never seen before, a blue so deep that it was almost black, without being truly black or even dark, their lids so heavy that she seemed blind.

“I would have revealed myself to you then, if I could. I could see and hear you, but not that. There’s no power for the beam, I think. It still won’t light. So disappointing. Perhaps you can do something more?”

He nodded, speechless.

“Thank you. I know you’ll try. In mending that, you mended this, I think. It’s dusty.” She laughed, and her laughter was the chiming of bells far away, bells cast of a metal more precious than any gold. “Isn’t it funny? I could break that window. By making the right sound. And holding it until the glass broke. Because I could hear you outside reading something. You didn’t stop the first time I called. I suppose you didn’t hear me?”

He wanted to run but shook his head instead. “No, Great Goddess. I’m terribly sorry.”

“But I can’t wipe the glass. Wipe this glass for me, Silk. And I’ll forgive you.”

“If you’ll—My handkerchief has blood on it, Great Goddess. Perhaps in there—”

“I won’t mind. Unless it’s still wet. Do as I asked. Won’t you, please?”

Silk got out his handkerchief, stained with Orpine’s blood. At each step he took toward the glass, he felt that he was about to burst into flames or dissolve into the air like smoke.

“I watched him kill a thousand once. Men, mostly. It was in the square. I watched from my balcony. They made them kneel facing him, and some still knelt when they were dead.”

It seemed the depth of blasphemy to whisk his ragged, bloodstained handkerchief up and down those lovely features, which when the dust was gone seemed more real than he. Not Molpe; Molpe’s hair fell across her face. Not—

“I wanted to faint. But he was watching me from his balcony. Much higher up, with a flag over the thing there. The little wall. I was staying at his friend’s house then. I saw so much then. It doesn’t bother me any more. Have you sacrificed to me today? Or yesterday? Some of those big white bunnies, or a white bird?”

The victims identified her. “No, Kypris,” Silk said. “The fault is mine; and I will, as soon as I can.”

She laughed again, more thrilling than before. “Don’t bother. Or let those women do it. I want other services from you. You’re lame. Won’t you sit down now? For me? There’s a chair behind you.”

Silk nodded and gulped, finding it very difficult to think of words in the presence of a goddess, harder still when his eyes strayed to her face. He struggled to recall her attributes. “I hurt my ankle, O Great Goddess Kypris. Last night.”

“Bouncing out of Hyacinth’s window.” Her smile grew minutely wider. “You looked like a big black rabbit. You really shouldn’t have. You know, Silk? Hy wouldn’t have hurt you. Not with that big sword or any other way. She liked you, Silk. I was in her, so I know.”

He took a deep breath. “I had to, Gentle Kypris, in order to preserve the anipotence by which I behold you.”

“Because Echidna lets you see us in our Sacred Windows, then. Like a child.”

“Yes, Gentle Kypris; by her very great kindness to us, she does.”

“And am I the first, Silk? Have you never seen a god before?”

“No, Gentle Kypris. Not like this. I had hoped to, perhaps when I was old, like Patera Pike. Then yesterday in the ball court—And last night. I went into that woman’s dressing room without knocking and saw colors in the glass there, colors that looked like the Holy Hues. I’ve still never seen them, but they told us—we had to memorize the descriptions, actually, and recite them.” Silk paused for breath. “And it seemed to me—it has always seemed to me, ever since I used the glass at the schola, that a god might use a glass. May I tell them about this at the schola?”

Kypris was silent for a moment, her face pensive. “I don’t think … No. No, Silk. Don’t tell anybody.”

He made a seated bow.

“I was there last night. Yes. But not for you. Only because I play with Hy sometimes. Now she reminds me of the way I used to be, but all that will be over soon. She’s twenty-three. And you, Silk? How old are you?”

“Twenty-three, Gentle Kypris.”

“There. You see. I prompted you. I know I did.” She shook her head almost imperceptibly. “All that abstinence! And now you’ve seen a goddess. Me. Was it worth it?”

“Yes, Loving Kypris.”

She laughed again, delighted. “Why?”

The question hung in the silence of the baking sellaria while Silk tried to kick his intellect awake. At length he said haltingly, “We are so much like beasts, Kypris. We eat and we breed; then we spawn and die. The most humble share in a higher existence is worth any sacrifice.”

He waited for her to speak, but she did not.

“What Echidna asks isn’t actually much of a sacrifice, even for men. I’ve always thought of it as a token, a small sacrifice to show her—to show all of you—that we are serious. We’re spared a thousand quarrels and humiliations, and because we have no children of our own, all children are ours.”

The smile faded from her lovely face, and the sorrow that displaced it made his heart sink. “I won’t talk to you again, Silk. Or at least not very soon. No, soon. I am hunted…” Her perfect features faded to dancing colors.

He rose and found that he was cold in his sweat-soaked tunic and robe, despite the heat of the room. Vacantly, he stared at the shattered window; it was the one he had opened when he had spoken with Orchid. The gods—Kypris herself—had prompted him to throw it open, perhaps; but Orchid had closed it again as soon as he left, as he should have known she would.

He trembled, and felt that he was waking from a dream.

An awful silence seemed to fill the empty house, and he remembered vaguely that it was said that haunted houses were the quietest of all, until the ghost walked. Everyone was outside, of course, waiting on Lamp Street where he had left them, and he would be able to tell them nothing.

He visualized them standing in their silent, straggling line and looking at one another, or at no one. How much had they overheard through the window? Quite possibly they had heard nothing.

He wanted to jump and shout, to throw Orchid’s untasted goblet of brandy out the window or at the empty glass. He knelt instead, traced the sign of addition, and rose with the help of Blood’s stick.

Outside, Blood demanded to know who had summoned him. Silk shook his head.

“You won’t tell me?”

“You don’t believe in the gods, or in devils, either. Why should I tell you something at which you would only scoff?”

A woman whose hair had been bleached until it was as yellow as Silk’s own, exclaimed, “That was no devil!”

“You must keep silent about anything you heard,” Silk told her. “You should have heard nothing.”

Blood said, “Musk and Bass were supposed to have found every woman in the place and made them come to this ceremony of yours. If they missed any of them, I want to know about it.” He turned to Orchid. “You know your girls. Are they all here?”

She nodded, her face set. “All but Orpine.”

Musk was staring at Silk as though he wanted to murder him; Silk met his eyes, then turned away. Speaking loudly to the group at large, he said, “We’ve never completed our third circuit. It is necessary that we do so. Return to your places, please.” He tapped Blood’s shoulder. “Go back to your place in the procession.”

Orchid had kept the Writings for him, her finger at the point at which he had stopped reading. He opened the heavy volume there and began to pace and read again, a step for each word, as the ritual prescribed: “Man, himself, creates the conditions necessary for advance by struggling with and yielding to his animal desires; yet nature, the experiences of the spirit, and materiality need never be. His torment depends upon himself, yet the effects of that torment are always sufficient. You must consider this.”

The words signified nothing; the preternaturally lovely face of Kypris interposed itself. She had seemed completely different from the Outsider, and yet he felt that they were one, that the Outsider, who had spoken in so many voices, had now spoken in another. The Outsider had cautioned him to expect no help, Silk reminded himself as he had so many times since that infinite instant in the ball court; he felt that he had received it nevertheless, and was about to receive more. His hands shook, and his voice broke like a boy’s.

“… has of all merely whorlly intellectual ambition and aspiration.”

Here was the door of the derelict manteion, with Pas’s voided cross fresh and bright above it in black paint that had not yet dried. He closed the Writings with a bang and opened the door, led the way in and limped up the steps to the stage that had once been a sanctuary.

“Sit down, please. It doesn’t matter whom you sit with, because we won’t be long. We’re almost finished.”

Leaning on Blood’s walking stick, he waited for them to get settled.

“I am about to order the devil forth. I see that the last person in our procession—Bass, I suppose—shut the door behind him. For this part of the ceremony it should be open.” Providentially, he remembered the thin woman’s name. “Crassula, you’re sitting closest. Will you open it for us, please?

“Thank you. Since you were one of the possessed, it might be well to begin this final act of exorcism with you. Do you have a good memory?”

Crassula shook her head emphatically.

“All right. Who does?”

Chenille stood up. “I do, Patera. Pretty good, and I haven’t had a drop since last night.”

Silk hesitated.

“Please?”

Slowly, Silk nodded. This was to be a meritorious act, of course; he could only hope that she was capable. “Here’s the formula all of us will use: ‘Go, in the names of these gods, never to return.’ Perhaps you’d better repeat it.”

“Go, in the names of these gods, never to return.”

“Very good. I hope that everyone heard you. When I’ve finished, I’ll point to you. Pronounce your own name loudly, then recite the formula—‘Go in the names of these gods, never to return.’ Then I’ll point out the next person, the woman beside you, and she is to say her own name and repeat the formula she’ll have just heard you use. Is there anyone who doesn’t understand?”

He scanned their faces as he had earlier, but found no trace of Mucor. “Very well.”

Silk forced himself to stand very straight. “If there is anything in this house that does not come in the name of the gods, may it be gone. I speak here for Great Pas, for Strong Sphigx, for Scalding Scylla…” The sounding names seemed mere words, empty and futile as the sighings of the hot wind that had blown intermittently since spring; and he had not been able to make himself pronounce that of Echidna. “For the Outsider, and for Gentle Kypris. I, Silk, say it! Go, in the names of these gods, never to return.”

He pointed toward the woman with the raspberry-colored hair, and she said loudly, “Chenille! Go, in the names of these gods, never to return!”

“Mezereon. Go, in the names of these gods, never to return.”

Orchid spoke after the younger women, in a firm, clear voice. After her, Blood positively thundered—there was, Silk decided, a broad streak of actor in the man. Musk was inaudible; Silk could not help but feel that he was calling to devils, rather than casting them out.

Silk waited on the uppermost of the three steps as he pointed to Bass, who stammered as he pronounced his own name and rumbled out the formula.

Silk started down the steps, hurrying despite his pain.

Doctor Crane, the final speaker, said, “Crane. Go, in the names of these gods, never to return. And now—”

Silk slammed shut the door to Music Street and shot the bolt.

“—I’ve got to go myself. I’m late already. Stay off that ankle!”

“Good-bye,” Silk told him, “and thank you for the ride and your treatment.” He raised his voice. “All of you may leave. The exorcism is complete.”

Suddenly very weary, he sat down on the second step and unwound the wrapping. All the young women had begun to talk at once. He flailed the dull red tiles of the floor with the wrapping, and then, recalling Crane, flung it as hard as he could against the nearest wall.

A hush fell as the chattering women streamed out into the courtyard; by the time he had replaced the wrapping, he thought himself alone; he looked up, and Musk stood before him, as silent as ever, his hands at his sides.

“Yes, my son. What is it?”

“You ever see how a hawk kills a rabbit?”

“No. I spent all but one year of my boyhood here in the city, I’m afraid. Did you wish to speak to me?”

Musk shook his head. “I wanted to show you how a hawk kills a rabbit.”

“Very well,” Silk said. “I’m watching.”

Musk did not respond; after half a minute or more Silk rose, gripping Blood’s stick. The long-bladed knife seemed to come from nowhere—to appear in Musk’s hand as though called forth by a nod from Pas. Musk thrust, and Silk felt an explosion of pain in his chest. He staggered and dropped the walking stick; one heel struck the step behind him, and he fell.

By the time that he was able to pull himself up, Musk was gone. Hyacinth’s azoth was in Silk’s hand, though he could not recall drawing it. He stared at it, dropped it clattering to the floor, clutched his chest, then opened his robe.

His tunic showed no tear, no blood. He pulled it up and touched the spot gingerly; it was inflamed and very painful. A single drop of darkly crimson blood appeared on the surface and trickled away.

He let his tunic fall again, and picked up the azoth to examine its pommel, running his fingers across the faceted gem there. That was it, and there had been no miracle. Musk had reversed his knife with a motion too swift to be seen as he had thrust, striking hard with its pommel, which must itself be in some fashion pointed or sharply angled.

And he himself, Patera Silk, the Outsider’s servant, had been ready to kill Musk, believing that Musk had killed him. He had not known that he could come so easily to murder. He would have to watch his temper, around Musk particularly.

The gem, which he had supposed colorless, caught a ray of sunlight from the god-gate in the roof and flashed a watery green. For some reason, it reminded him of her eyes. He put it to his lips, his thoughts full of things that could never be.

To spare his broken ankle, he had waited until Moorgrass had finished washing and dressing the body, so that he might ride back to the manteion in Loach’s wagon.

They would need a coffin, and ice. Ice was very costly, but having accepted a hundred cards from Orchid, he could not refuse her daughter ice. Mutes could be engaged easily and cheaply. On the other hand—

Loach’s wagon lurched to a stop, and Silk looked up in surprise at the weather-stained facade of his own manteion. Loach inquired, “Lay her on the altar for now, Patera?”

He nodded; it was what they always did.

“Let me help you down, Patera. About my pay—”

The fisc was closed, of course, and would not open at all on Scylsday. “See me after sacrifice tomorrow,” Silk said. “No, on Molpsday. Not before then.” The icemongers might cash Orchid’s draft for him if he bought enough ice, but there was no point in relying on that.

Auk came out of the mantion, waved, and wedged the door open; the sight of him snapped Silk out of his calculations. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he called. “There was a death.”

Auk’s heavy, brutal face took on what seemed intended as an expression of concern. “Friend of yours, Patera?”

“No,” Silk said. “I didn’t know her.”

Auk smiled. He helped Loach carry Orpine’s shrouded body inside, where a new coffin, plain but sturdy-looking, waited on a catafalque.

Maytera Marble rose from the shadows, the silver gleam of her face almost ghostly. “I arranged for these, Patera. The man you sent said that we’d require them. They can be returned, if they’re not suitable.”

“We’ll need a better casket tomorrow.” Silk fumbled in his pockets, and at length produced Orchid’s draft. “Take this, please. It’s payable to bearer. Get ice, half a load of ice, and see if they’ll cash it for you. Flowers, too. Arrange for a grave, if it’s not too late.”

A tiny, but abrupt and uncoordinated, movement of her head as she glanced at the draft betrayed Maytera Marble’s surprise.

“You’re right.” Silk nodded as she looked up at him. “It’s a great deal. I’ll get the victims in the morning, a white heifer if I can find one, and a rabbit for Kypris—several, I ought to say. And a black lamb and a black cock for Tartaros; I pledged those last night. But we must have the ice tonight, and if you could take care of it, Maytera, I would be exceedingly grateful.”

“For Kypris the—? All right, Patera. I’ll try.” She hurried away, the rapid taps of her footfalls like the soft rattle of a snare drum. Silk shook his head and looked about for Loach, but Loach had already left, unobserved.

Auk said, “If there’s ice left in Viron, she’ll find it. She teach you, Patera?”

“No. I wish now that she had—she and Maytera Mint. But I should have asked her to arrange for mutes. Well, it can be taken care of tomorrow. Can we talk here, Auk, or would you prefer to go to the manse?”

“Have you eaten yet, Patera? I was hoping you’d have a bite of supper with me while you told me what happened last night.”

“I couldn’t pay my share, I’m afraid.”

“I asked you, Patera. I wouldn’t let you pay if you wanted to. But you listen here.” Auk’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m in this as much as you are. It was me that helped you. I got a right to know.”

“Of course. Of course.” Silk sank wearily into a seat near the catafalque. “Sit down, please. It hurts my ankle to stand. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. To tell the truth, I need to tell someone—to talk all of it over, and other things, too. Everything that happened today. And I’d like very much to go to dinner with you. I’m beginning to like you, and I’m terribly hungry; but I can’t walk far. Much as I appreciate your generosity, perhaps we should dine together some other night.”

“We don’t have to leg it over to the Orilla. There’s a nice place right down the street. They got the tenderest, juiciest roasts you ever cut on the side of your flipper.” Auk grinned, showing square, yellow teeth that looked fully capable of severing a human hand at the wrist. “Suppose I was to buy an augur—one that really needed it—a dimber uphill dinner. Whatever he wanted. That’d be a meritorious act, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose so. Nevertheless, you must consider that he may not deserve one.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Auk strolled to the coffin and pulled down the shroud. “Who is she?”

“Orchid’s daughter Orpine. That was nicely done, but you knew her, I’m sure.”

“Her daughter?” Leaving Orpine’s body, Auk took Silk’s arm. “Come on, Patera. If we don’t get over there, we’ll have to eat in the public room.”

Musk had caught sight of his eagle before he stepped out of the floater. She was at the top of a blasted pine, silhouetted against the brightening skylands.

She was looking at the hackboard, Musk knew. She could see the hackboard more clearly from half a league away than he had ever seen the palms of his own hands. She would be ravenous by now, like a falcon (as Musk reminded himself) an eagle would have to learn to fly before it could learn to hunt. Apparently, she had not yet gone after lambs, though she might tomorrow—it was his greatest fear.

He circled the villa. The meat bound to the hackboard had been there all day; it was nearly dry now, and blanketed with flies. He kicked the board to dislodge them before he brought out the lure and a bag of cracked maize.

The lure whistled as he spun it on its five-cubit line.

“Ho, hawk! Ho, hawk!”

Once he imagined that he heard the faint jingle of her bells, though he knew it was impossible. He scattered maize nearly to the wall, then returned to the hackboard and swung the lure again while he waited. It was late—perhaps too late. It would be dark very soon, and when it was she would not fly.

“Ho! Ho, hawk!”

As well as Musk could judge, the eagle on the remote snag had not stirred so much as a feather; but a plump brown wood weaver was settling on the cropped grass near the wall to peck at the maize.

He dropped the lure and crouched, his needler gripped with both hands and his left elbow braced on his left knee. It would be a long shot, in poor light.

The wood weaver fell, fluttered up, cannoned into the wall, and fell again. Before it could fly a second time, he had it. Back at the hackboard, he loosened the nose in the lure line and let the red-and-white lure fall to the ground. With the noose tight about the wood weaver’s right leg, he twirled it, producing a fine and almost invisible shower of blood.

“Ha, hawk!”

The wide wings spread. For a moment Musk, watching the eagle, still twirling the dying wood weaver in its ten-cubit circle, felt that he more than possessed it.

Felt that he himself was the great bird, and was happy.

“You seen what they wrote on that wall, Patera.” Auk sat down, having chosen a chair from which he could watch the door. “Some sprat from the palaestra, like you say. But I’d talk to them about it, if I was you. Could be trouble.”

“I’m not responsible for every boy who finds a piece of chalk.” This eating house had seemed remote indeed to Silk, though it was almost in sight of his manteion. He lowered himself into the capacious armchair the host was holding for him and looked around him at the whitewashed shiprock walls. Their private dining room was smaller even than his bedroom in the manse, still crowded after a waiter had removed two superfluous chairs.

“All of them good and thick,” Auk said, answering the question Silk had not asked, “and so’s the door. This was the Alambrera back in the old days. What do you like?”

Silk scanned the neatly lettered slate. “I’ll have the chops, I think.” At eighteen cardbits, the chops were the least expensive meal; and even if there were in fact only a single chop, this dinner would be his most bountiful meal of the week.

“How’d you get over the wall?” Auk asked when the host had gone. “Have any trouble?”

And so Silk told the whole story, from the cutting of his horsehair rope by a spike to his ride back to the city in Blood’s floater. Auk was roaring with laughter when the waiter brought their dinners, but he had grown very serious by the time Silk reached his interview with Blood.

“You didn’t happen to mention me any time while you were talking to him?”

Silk swallowed a luscious mouthful of chop. “No. But I very foolishly tried to speak with you through the glass in Hyacinth’s boudoir, as I told you.”

“He may not find out about that.” Auk scratched his chin thoughtfully. “The monitors lose track after a while.”

“But he may,” Silk said. “You’ll have to be on guard.”

“Not as much as you will, Patera. He’ll want to know what you wanted to talk to me about, and since you didn’t, he can’t get it from me. What are you going to tell him?”

“If I tell him anything at all, I’ll tell him the truth.”

Auk laid down his fork. “That I helped you?”

“That I knew you were concerned about my safety. That you had warned me about going out so late at night, and that I wanted to let you know I had not come to harm.”

Auk considered the matter while Silk ate. “It might go, Patera, if he thinks you’re crazy enough.”

“If he thinks I’m honest enough, you mean. The best way to be thought honest is to be honest—or at any rate that’s the best that I’ve ever found. I try to be.”

“But you’re going to try to steal twenty-six thousand for him, too.”

“If that’s what I must do to save our manteion, and I can get it in no other way, yes. I’ll be forced to choose between evils, exactly as I was last night. I’ll try to see that no one is hurt, of course, and to take the money only from those who can well afford to lose it.”

“Blood will take your money, Patera. And have a good laugh over it.”

“I won’t let him take it until he furnishes safeguards. But there’s something else I ought to tell you about. Did I mention that Blood wanted me to exorcise the yellow house?”

“Orchid’s place? Sure. That’s where that girl Orpine lived, only I never knew she was Orchid’s daughter.”

“She was.” There was butter and soft, fresh bread in the middle of the table; Silk took a slice and buttered it, wishing that he might take the whole loaf home to the manse. “I’m going to tell you about that, too. And about Orpine, who died possessed.”

Auk grunted. “That’s your lay, Patera, not mine.”

“Possession? It’s really no one’s now. Perhaps there was a time when most augurs believed in devils, as Patera Pike certainly did. But I may be the only augur alive who believes in them now, and even now I’m not certain that I believe in them in the same sense he did—as spirits who crept into the whorl without Pas’s permission and seek to destroy it.”

“What about Orpine? Was she really Orchid’s daughter?”

“Yes,” Silk said. “I spoke to Orchid about her and she admitted it. Practically boasted of it, in fact. What was Orpine like?”

“Good-looking.” Auk hesitated. “I don’t feel right talking about this stuff to you, Patera. She could be a lot of fun, because she didn’t care what she did or what anybody thought about it. You know what I mean? She would’ve made more money if she’d been better at making people think she liked them.”

Silk chewed and swallowed. “I understand. I wanted to know because I’ve been wondering about personalities, and so on—whether there’s a particular type of person who’s more prone to be possessed than another—and I never saw Orpine alive. I had been talking to her mother; we heard a scream and hurried outside, and found her lying there on the stair. She had been stabbed. Someone suggested that she might have stabbed herself. Her face—Have you ever seen a possessed person?”

Auk shook his head.

“Neither had I until this morning, shortly before I saw Orpine’s body.” Silk patted his lips with his napkin. “At any rate, she was dead; but even in death it seemed that her face was not quite her own. I remember thinking that there was something horrible about it, and a good deal that was familiar, as well. At first, the familiar part seemed quite easy. After I’d thought about it for a moment—the eyes and the shape of her nose and lips and so on—I realized that she looked rather like Orchid, the woman I’d just been speaking to. I asked her about it afterward, and she told me that Orpine had been her daughter, as I said.”

“Maybe I should’ve known, too,” Auk said, “but I never guessed. Orpine was a lot younger.”

Silk shrugged. “You know a great deal more about women than I do, I’m sure. Perhaps I saw as much as I did mostly because I know so little about them. When one knows little about a subject, what one sees are apt to be the most basic things, if one sees anything at all. What I wanted to say, however, was that even the horrible element in her face was familiar.”

“Go on.” Auk refilled his wineglass. “Let’s hear it.”

“I’m hesitating because I’m fairly certain you won’t believe me. Orpine reminded me of someone else I had been talking with not long before—of Mucor, the mad girl in Blood’s villa.”

Auk laid aside his fork, the steaming beef on its tines still untasted. “You mean the same devil had taken ’em both over, Patera?”

Silk shook his head. “I don’t know, but I felt that I ought to tell you. I believe that Mucor has been following me in spirit. And I am coming to believe that she can, in some fashion, possess others, just as devils—and the gods, for that matter—are said to do at times. This morning I felt sure that I had glimpsed her in the face of an honest working man; and I think that she was possessing Orpine when Orpine died. Later I recognized her in another woman.

“If I’m correct, if she can really do such things and if she has been following me, you’re running a substantial risk just by sitting with me at this table. I’m very grateful for this truly remarkable dinner, and even more grateful for your help last night. Furthermore, I’m hoping to ask you a few questions before we separate; and all of that puts me heavily in debt to you. I was too tired—and too hungry, I suppose—to consider the danger to which I was subjecting you when we spoke in the manteion. Now that I have, I feel obliged to warn you that you too may suffer possession if you remain in my company.”

Auk grinned. “You’re an augur, Patera. If she was to grab hold of me while we’re sitting here, couldn’t you make her beat the hoof?”

“I could try; but I have only one threat to use against her, and I’ve used it. You’re not leaving?”

“Not me. I think I’ll have another dumpling instead, maybe with a little of this gravy on it.”

“Thank you. I hope you won’t regret it. You haven’t yet commented on my somewhat uneven performance last night. If you’re afraid I might be insulted, I assure you that you could not be more severe with me than I’ve already been with myself.”

“All right, I’ll comment.” Auk sipped his wine. “In the first place, I think if you can raise even a thousand, you’d better make sure Blood signs the manteion over to you before you cough up your goldboys. You were going on about safeguards a minute ago. I don’t think you ought to trust in any safeguards except the deed, signed and witnessed by a couple dimber bucks who got nothing to do with Blood.”

“You’re right, I’m sure. I’ve been thinking much the same thing.”

“You better. Don’t trust him, even if something that he does makes you think you can.”

“I’ll be very careful.” Silk’s chops were bathed in a piquant, almost black sauce he found unspeakably delicious; he wiped some from his plate with another slice of bread.

“And I think you’ve probably found your true calling.” Auk grinned. “I don’t think I could’ve done much better, and I might not’ve done as good. This was your first time, too. By number ten I’ll be begging to come along, just to watch you work.”

Silk sighed. “I hope there won’t be a tenth, for both our sakes.”

“Sure there will. You’re a real son of Tartaros. You just don’t know it yet. Third or fourth, or whatever it is, I want to see what it is a dimber bucko like you needs a hand from me on. You want to go back to Blood’s tonight and get your hatchet?”

Silk shook his head ruefully. “I won’t be able to work on the roof until my ankle’s healed, and it’s more than half finished anyway. Do you recall what I said about Hyacinth’s needler?”

“Sure. And the azoth. A nice azoth ought to bring a couple thousand cards, Patera. Maybe more. If you want to sell it, I can steer you to somebody who’ll give you a lily price.”

“I can’t, because it isn’t mine. Hyacinth intended to lend it to me, I’m sure. As I told you, I had told her that I was borrowing those weapons, and I promised that I would return them when I no longer required them. I feel certain she would not have sent the azoth to me by Doctor Crane if I had not said that earlier.”

When Auk did not reply, Silk continued miserably, “Two thousand cards, if I actually received that much, would be an appreciable fraction of the twenty-six thousand that we require. More than five percent, in fact. You’ll laugh at me—”

“I ain’t laughing, Patera.”

“You should. A thief who can’t bring himself to steal! But Hyacinth trusted me. I cannot believe that the—that any god would wish me to betray a friendless woman’s trust.”

“If she lent it to you, I wouldn’t sell it either,” Auk told him. “Just to start out, she’s there in Blood’s house, and if you’ve got yourself a friend on the inside, that’s not anything you want to fight clear of. You got any notion why this doctor would take on something as risky as that for her?”

“Perhaps he’s in love with her.”

“Uh-huh. It could be, but I’ll bet he’s got some kind of lock. It’d be worth your while to find out what it is, and I’d like to hear about it when you do. I’d like to see this azoth you got from her, too. Suppose I come around tomorrow night. Would you let me see it?”

“You may look at it now, if you like.” Silk pulled the azoth from beneath his tunic and passed it across the table to Auk. “I brought it to Orchid’s today because I feared I might require some sort of weapon.”

Auk whistled softly, then held the azoth up, admiring the play of light along its gleaming grip. “Twenty-eight hundred easy. Might bring three thousand. Whoever gave it to her probably paid five or six for it.”

Silk nodded. “I believe I may have some idea who that was, although I don’t know where he could have gotten that much money.” Auk regarded him quizzically, but Silk shook his head. “I’ll tell you later, if it appears that I may be correct.”

He held out his hand for the azoth, which Auk returned with a final grunt of admiration.

“I want to ask you about Hyacinth’s needier. Blood took out the needles before he gave it back to me. Can you tell me where I might buy more without a brevet?”

“Sure, Patera. No problem at all. Have you got that with you, too?”

Silk took Hyacinth’s engraved needier from his pocket and passed it to Auk.

“The smallest they make. I know ’em.” He returned the needier and rose. “Listen, can you get by without me for a minute? I got to—you know.”

“Of course.” Silk directed his attention to his chops; there had been three, and hungry though he was, he had thus far eaten only the first. He attacked the second without neglecting the tender dumplings, buttered squash with basil, and shallots in oil and vinegar that the eating house had provided (apparently at no additional charge) to accompany them.

Mere worry, mere concern, would not save the manteion. It would be necessary to devise a plan, and that plan need not necessarily involve stealing twenty-six thousand cards. Enlisting the sympathy of some magnate might do as well, for example, or …

Silk was discovering that he had devoured his third and final chop without realizing he had finished the second when Auk returned.