Nightside the Long Sun

OREB AND OTHERS

Teasel lay upon her back, with her mouth open and her eyes closed. Her black hair, spread over the pillow, accentuated the pallor of her face. Bent above her as he prayed, Silk was acutely conscious of the bones underlying her face, of her protruding cheekbones, her eye sockets, and her high and oddly square frontal. Despite the mounting heat of the day, her mother had covered her to the chin with a thick red wool blanket that glowed like a stove in the sun-bright room; her forehead was beaded with sweat, and it was only that sweat, which soon reappeared each time her mother sponged it away, that convinced him that Teasel was still alive.

When he had swung his beads and chanted the last of the prescribed prayers, her mother said, “I heard her cry out, Patera, as if she’d pricked her finger. It was the middle of the night, so I thought she was having a nightmare. I got out of bed and went in to see about her. The other children were all asleep, and she was still sleeping, too. I shook her shoulder, and she woke up a little bit and said she was thirsty. I ought to’ve told her to go get a drink herself.”

Silk said, “No.”

“Only I didn’t, Patera. I went to the crock and got a cup of water, and she drank it and closed her eyes.” After a moment Teasel’s mother added, “The doctor won’t come. Marten tried to get him.”

Silk nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”

“If you’d talk to him again, Patera…”

“He wouldn’t let me in last time, but I’ll try.”

Teasel’s mother sighed as she looked at her daughter. “There was blood on her pillow, Patera. Not much. I didn’t see it till shadeup. I thought it might have come out of her ear, but it didn’t. She felt so cold.”

Teasel’s eyes opened, surprising them both. Weakly, she said, “The terrible old man.”

Her mother leaned forward. “What’s that?”

“Thirsty.”

“Get her more water,” Silk said, and Teasel’s mother bustled out. “The old man hurt you?”

“Wings.” Teasel’s eyes rolled toward the window before closing.

They were four flights up, as Silk, who had climbed all four despite his painful right ankle, was very much aware. He rose, hobbled to the window, and looked out. There was a dirty little courtyard far below, a garret floor above them. The tapering walls were of unadorned, yellowish, sunbaked brick.

Legend had it that it was unlucky to converse with devils; Silk asked, “Did he speak to you, Teasel? Or you to him?”

She did not reply.

Her mother returned with the water. Silk helped her to raise Teasel to a half-sitting position; he had expected some difficulty in getting her to drink, but she drank thirstily, draining the clay cup as soon as it was put to her lips.

“Bring her more,” he said, and as soon as Teasel’s mother had gone, he rolled the unresisting girl onto her side.

When Teasel had drunk again, her mother asked, “Was it a devil, Patera?”

Silk settled himself once more on the stool she had provided for him. “I think so.” He shook his head. “We have too much real disease already. It seems terrible…” He left the thought incomplete.

“What can we do?”

“Nurse her and feed her. See she gets as much water as she’ll drink. She’s lost blood, I believe.” Silk took the voided cross from the chain around his neck and fingered its sharp steel edges. “Patera Pike told me about this sort of devil. That was—” Silk shut his eyes, reckoning. “About a month before he died. I didn’t believe him, but I listened anyway, out of politeness. I’m glad, now, that I did.”

Teasel’s mother nodded eagerly. “Did he tell you how to drive it away?”

“It’s away now,” Silk told her absently. “The problem is to prevent it from returning. I can do what Patera Pike did. I don’t know how he learned it, or whether it had any real efficacy; but he said that the child wasn’t troubled a second time.”

Assisted by Blood’s stick, Silk limped to the window, seated himself on the sill, and leaned out, holding the side of the weathered old window frame with his free hand. The window was small, and he found he could reach the crumbling bricks above it easily. With the pointed corner of the one of the four gammadions that made up the cross, he scratched the sign of addition on the bricks.

“I’ll hold you, Patera.”

Teasel’s father was gripping his legs above the knees. Silk said, “Thank you.” He scratched Patera Pike’s name to the left of the tilted X. Patera Pike had signed his work; so he had said.

“I brought the cart for you, Patera. I told my jefe about you, and he said it would be all right.”

After a moment’s indecision, Silk added his own name on the other side of the X. “Thank you again.” He ducked back into the room. “I want you both to pray to Phaea. Healing is hers, and it would appear that whatever happened to your daughter happened at the end of her day.”

Teasel’s parents nodded together.

“Also to Sphigx, because today’s hers, and to Surging Scylla, not only because our city is hers, but because your daughter called for water. Lastly, I want you to pray with great devotion to the Outsider.”

Teasel’s mother asked, “Why, Patera?”

“Because I told you to,” Silk replied testily. “I don’t suppose you’ll know any of the prescribed prayers to him, and there really aren’t that many anyway. But make up your own. They’ll be acceptable to him as long as they’re sincere.”

As he descended the stairs to the street, one steep and painful step at a time, Mucor spoke behind him. “That was interesting. What are you going to do next?”

He turned as quickly as he could. As if in a dream, he glimpsed the mad girl’s death’s-head grin, and eyes that had never belonged to Teasel’s stooped, hard-handed father. She vanished as he looked, and the man who had been following him down the stairs shook himself.

“Are you well, Marten?” Silk asked.

“I went all queer there, Patera. Don’t know what come over me.”

Silk nodded, traced the sign of addition, and murmured a blessing.

“I’m good enough now, or think I am. Worryin’ too much about Sel, maybe. Rabbit shit on my grave.”

In the past, Silk had carried a basin of water up the stairs to his bedroom and washed himself in decent privacy; that was out of the question now. After closing and locking both, he covered the Silver Street window with the dishrag and a dish towel, and the garden window (which looked toward the cenoby) with a heavy gray blanket he had stored on the highest shelf of the sellaria closet against the return of winter.

Retreating to the darkest corner of the kitchen, almost to the stair, he removed all his clothing and gave himself the cold bath he had been longing for, lathering his whole body from the crown of his head to the top of his cast, then sponging the suds away with clean, cool water fresh from the well.

Dripping and somewhat refreshed, yet so fatigued that he seriously considered stretching himself on the kitchen floor, he examined his discarded clothing. The trousers, he decided, were still salvageable: with a bit of mending, they might be worn again, as he had worn them before, while he patched the manteion’s roof or performed similar chores. He emptied their pockets, dropping his prayer beads, Blood’s two cards, and the rest on the scarred old kitchen table. The tunic was ruined, but would supply useful rags after a good laundering; he tossed it into the wash basket on top of his trousers and undershorts, dried those parts of himself that had not been dried already by the baking heat of the kitchen with a clean dish towel, and made his way up to bed. If it had not been for the pain in his ankle, he would have been half asleep before he passed the bedroom door.

His donkey was lost in the yellow house. Shards of the tumbler Blood broke with Hyacinth’s golden needler cracked under the donkey’s hooves, and a horned owl as big as a Flier circled overhead awaiting the moment to pounce. Seeing the double punctures the owl had left half concealed in the hair at the back of Teasel’s neck, he shuddered.

The donkey fastened its teeth in his ankle like a dog. Though he flailed at it with Sphigx’s walking stick, it would not let go.

Mother was riding Auk’s big gray donkey sidesaddle—he saw her across the skylit rooftops, but he could not cry out. When he reached the place, her old wooden bust of the caldé lay among the fallen leaves; he picked it up, and it became the ball. He thrust it into his pocket and woke.

His bedroom was hot and filled with sunlight, his naked body drenched with sweat. Sitting up, he drank deeply from the tepid water jug. The rusty cash-box key was still in its place and was of great importance. As he lay down again, he remembered that it was Hyacinth whom he had locked away.

A black-clad imp with a blood-red sword stood upon his chest to study him, its head cocked to one side. He stirred and it fled, fluttering like a little flag.

Hard dry rain blew through the window and rolled across the floor, bringing with it neither wind nor respite from the heat. Silk groaned and buried his perspiring face in the pillow.

It was Maytera Marble who woke him at last, calling his name through the open window. His mind still sluggish with sleep, he tried to guess how long he had slept, concluding only that it had not been long enough.

He staggered to his feet. The busy little clock beside his triptych declared that it was after eleven, nearly noon. He struggled to recall the positions of its hands when he had permitted himself to fall into bed. Eight, or after eight, or possibly eight-thirty. Teasel, poor little Teasel, had been bitten by an owl—or by a devil. A devil with wings, if it had come in through her window, and thus a devil twice impossible. Silk blinked and yawned and rubbed his eyes.

“Patera? Are you up there?”

She might see him if he went near the window. Fumbling in a drawer for clean underclothes, he called, “What is it, Maytera?”

“A doctor! He says he’s come to treat you! Are you hurt, Patera?”

“Wait a moment.” Silk pulled on his best trousers, the only pair that remained, and crossed the room to the window, twice stepping painfully on pebbles.

Maytera Marble waited in the little path, her upturned face flashing in the hot sunshine. Doctor Crane stood beside her, a shabby brown medical bag in one hand.

“May every god favor you both this morning,” Silk called down politely.

Crane waved his free hand in response. “Sphigxday and Hieraxday, remember? That’s when I’m in this part of town! Today’s Sphigxday. Let me in!”

“As soon as I get dressed,” Silk promised.

With the help of Blood’s lioness-headed walking stick, he hobbled downstairs. His arm and ankle seemed more painful than ever; he told himself firmly that it was only because the palliating effects of the drug Crane had given him the night before—and of the potent drinks he had imprudently sampled—had worn off.

Limping and wincing, he hurried into the kitchen. The heterogeneous collection of items he had left on the table there was rapidly transferred to his clean trousers, with only momentary hesitation over Hyacinth’s gleaming needler.

“Patera?”

His blanket still covered the garden window; resisting the temptation to pull it down, he lurched painfully into the sellaria, flung open the door, and began introductions. “Maytera, this is Doctor Crane—”

Maytera Marble nodded demurely, and the physician said, “We’ve already met. I was tossing gravel through your window—I was pretty sure it was yours, since I could hear you snoring up there—when Marble discovered me and introduced herself.”

Maytera Marble asked, “Did you send for him, Patera? He must be new to our quarter.”

“I don’t live here,” Crane explained. “I only make a few calls here, two days a week. My other patients are all late sleepers,” he winked at Silk, “but I hoped that Silk would be up.”

Silk looked rueful. “I was a late sleeper myself, I’m afraid, today at least.”

“Sorry I had to wake you, but I thought I might give you a ride when we’re through—it’s not good for you to walk too much on that ankle.” By a gesture Crane indicated the sellaria. “I’d like to have you sitting down. Can we go inside?”

Maytera Marble ventured, “If I might watch you, Patera? Through the doorway…?”

“Yes,” Silk said. There should be ample opportunity to speak with Crane in private on the way to the yellow house. “Certainly, Maytera, if you wish.”

“I hadn’t known. Maytera Rose told Maytera Mint and me at breakfast, though she didn’t seem to know a lot about it. You—you were testy with her, I think.”

“Yes, very much so.” Silk nodded sadly as he retreated into the sellaria, guilt overlaying the pain from his ankle. Maytera Rose had been hungry, beyond question, and he had turned her away. She had been inquisitive too, of course; but she could not help that. No doubt her intentions had been good—or at least no doubt she had told herself they were, and had believed it. How selflessly she had served the manteion for sixty years! Yet only this morning he had refused her.

He dropped into the nearest of the stiff old chairs, then stood again and shifted it two cubits so that Maytera Marble could watch from the doorway.

“All right if I put my bag on this little table here?” Crane stepped to his left, away from the doorway. There was no table there, but he opened his bag, held up a shapeless dark bundle so that Silk could see it (though Maytera Marble could not), dropped it on the floor, and set his bag beside it. “Now then, Silk. The arm first, I think.”

Silk pushed up his sleeve and held out his injured arm.

Bright scissors Silk recalled from the previous night snipped away the bandages. “You probably think your ankle’s worse, and in a way it is. But there’s an excellent chance of blood-poisoning here, and that’s no joke. Your ankle’s not going to kill you—not unless we’re playing in the worst sort of luck, anyway.” Crane scrutinized the wounds under a tiny, brilliant light, muttered to himself, and bent to sniff them. “All right so far, but I’m going to give you a booster.”

To keep his mind from the ampule, Silk said, “I’m very sorry I missed our prayers this morning. What time is it, Maytera?”

“Nearly noon. Maytera Rose said you had to—is that a bird, Patera?”

Crane snapped, “Don’t jerk like that!”

“I was thinking of—of the bird that did this,” Silk finished weakly.

“You could have broken off the needle. How’d you like me fishing around in your arm for that?”

“It is a bird!” Maytera Marble pointed. “It hopped back that way. Into your kitchen, I suppose, Patera.”

“That’s the stairwell, actually,” Silk told her. “I’m surprised it’s still here.”

“It was a big black bird, and I think one of its wings must be broken. It wasn’t exactly dragging it but it wasn’t holding it right either, if you know what I mean. Is that the bird—? The one that—?”

“Just sit quietly,” Crane said. He was putting a fresh bandage on Silk’s arm.

Silk said, “No wonder it didn’t fly,” and Maytera Marble looked at him inquiringly.

“It’s the one that I’d intended to sacrifice, Maytera. It had only fainted or something—had a fit, or whatever birds do. I opened the kitchen window for it this morning so it could fly away, but I suppose I must have broken its wing when I was poking around on top of the larder with my walking stick.”

He held it up to show her. It reminded him of Blood, and Blood reminded him that he was going to have to explain to Maytera Marble—and if he was not extremely lucky, to Maytera Rose and Maytera Mint as well—exactly how he had received his injuries.

“On top of the larder, Patera?”

“Yes. The bird was up there then.” Still thinking of the explanation the sibyls would expect, he added, “It had flown up there, I suppose.”

Crane pulled a footstool into place and sat on it. “Up with your tunic now. Good. Shove your waistband down just a bit.”

Maytera Marble turned her head delicately away.

Silk asked, “If I’m able to catch that bird, will you set its wing for me?”

“I don’t know much horse-physic, but I can try. I’ve seen to Musk’s hawks once or twice.”

Silk cleared his throat, resolved to deceive Maytera Marble as little as possible without revealing the nature of his visit to the villa. “You see, Maytera, after I saw—saw Maytera Mint’s friend, you know who I mean, I thought it might be wise to call on Blood. Do you remember Blood? You showed him around yesterday afternoon.”

Maytera Marble nodded. “Of course, Patera. How could I forget?”

“And you had spoken afterward, when we talked under the arbor, about our buildings being torn down—or perhaps not torn down, but our having to leave. So I thought it might be wise for me to have a heart-to-heart talk with the new owner. He lives in the country, so it took me a good deal longer than I had anticipated, I’m afraid.”

Crane said, “Lean back a little more.” He was swabbing Silk’s chest and abdomen with a blue solution.

Maytera Marble nodded dubiously. “That was very good of you, Patera. Wonderful, really, though I didn’t get the impression that he—”

Silk leaned back as much as he could, pushing his hips forward. “But he did, Maytera. He’s going to give me—to give us, I ought to say—another month here at least. And it’s possible that we may never have to go.”

“Oh, Patera!” Maytera Marble forgot herself so far as to look at him.

Silk hurried on. “But what I wanted to explain is that a man who works for Blood keeps several large birds as pets. I suppose there are several, at least, from the way that he and Blood talked about them.”

Crane nodded absently.

“And he’d given this one to Blood,” Silk continued. “It was dark, of course, and I’m afraid I got too close. Blood very graciously suggested that Doctor Crane come by today to see to my injuries.”

“Why, Patera, how wonderful of him!” Maytera Marble’s eyes positively shone with admiration for Silk’s diplomatic skills, and he felt himself blush.

“All part of my job,” Crane said modestly, replacing the stopper in the blue bottle.

Silk swallowed and took a deep breath, hoping that this was the proper moment. “Before we leave, Doctor, there’s something I must bring up. A moment ago you said you would treat that injured bird if I was able to catch it. You were gracious about it, in fact.”

Crane nodded warily as he rose. “Excuse me. Have to get my cutter.”

“This morning,” Silk continued, “I was called to bring the forgiveness of the gods to a little girl named Teasel.”

Maytera Marble stiffened.

“She’s close to death, but I believe—I dare to hope that she may recover, provided she receives the most basic medical attention. Her parents are poor and have many other children.”

“Hold your leg out.” Crane sat down on the footstool again and took Silk’s foot in his lap. The cutter buzzed.

“They can’t possibly pay you,” Silk continued doggedly. “Neither can I, except with prayers. But without your help, Teasel may die. Her parents actually expect her to die—otherwise her father wouldn’t have come here before shadeup looking for me. There are only two doctors in this quarter, and neither will treat anyone unless he’s paid in advance. I promised Teasel’s mother I’d do what I could to get her a doctor, and you’re the only real hope I have.”

Crane looked up. There was something in his eyes, a gleam of calculation and distant speculation, that Silk did not understand. “You were there this morning?”

Silk nodded. “That was why I got to bed so late. Her father had come to the cenoby before I returned from my talk with Blood, and when Maytera Rose saw that I had come home, she came and told me. I went at once.” The memory of green tomatoes stung like a hornet. “Or almost at once,” he added weakly.

Maytera Marble said, “You must see her, Doctor. Really you must.”

Crane ignored her, fingering his beard. “And you told them you’d try to get a doctor for whatshername?”

Hope blossomed in Silk. “Yes, I did. I’d be in your debt till Pas ends the whorl, and I’d be delighted to show you where she lives. We could stop there on the way.”

Maytera Marble gasped. “Patera! All those steps!”

Crane bent over the cast again; his cutter whined and half of it fell away. “You’re not going to climb a lot of stairs if I have anything to say about it. Not with this ankle. Marble here can show me—”

“Oh, yes!” Maytera Marble was dancing with impatience. “I’ve got to see her. She’s one of mine.”

“Or you can just give me the address,” Crane finished. “My bearers will know where it is. I’ll see to her and come back here for you.” He removed the rest of the cast. “This hurt you much?”

“Not nearly as much as worrying about Teasel did,” Silk told him. “But you’ve taken care of that, or at least taken care of the worst aspect of it. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

“I don’t want your thanks,” Crane said. He rose again, dusting particles of the cast from his trousers legs. “What I want is for you to follow my instructions. I’m going to give you a remedial wrapping. It’s valuable and reusable, so I want it back when your ankle’s healed. And I want you to use it exactly as I tell you.”

Silk nodded. “I will, I promise.”

“As for you, Marble,” Crane turned to look at her, “you might as well ride along with me. It’ll save you the walk. I want you to tell this girl’s parents that I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart, because I don’t want to be pestered night and day by beggars. It’s a favor to Silk—Patera Silk, is that what you call him? And it’s a one-time thing.”

Maytera Marble nodded humbly.

The little physician went to his bag again and produced what looked like a wide strip of thin yellow chamois. “Ever see one of these?”

Silk shook his head.

“You kick them.” Crane punted the wrapping, which flew against the wall on the other side of the room. “Or you can just throw it a couple of times, or beat something smooth, like that footstool.” He retrieved the wrapping, juggling it. “When you do, they get hot. You woke it up by banging it around. You follow me? Here, feel.”

Silk did. The wrapping was almost too hot to touch, and seemed to tingle.

“The heat’ll make your ankle feel better, and the sonic—you can’t hear it, but it’s there—will get the healing process going. What’s more, it’ll sense the break in your medial malleolus and tighten itself enough to keep it from shifting.” Crane hesitated. “You can’t get them any more, but I’ve got this one. Usually I don’t tell people about it.”

“I’ll take good care of it,” Silk promised, “and return it whenever you ask.”

Maytera Marble ventured, “Shouldn’t we be going?”

“In a minute. Wrap it around your ankle Patera. Get it fairly tight. You don’t have to tie it or anything—it’ll hold on as long as it senses the broken bone.”

The wrapping seemed almost to coil itself about Silk’s leg, its heat intense but pleasant. The pain in his ankle faded.

“You’ll know when it’s stopped working. As soon as it does, I want you to take it off and throw it against the wall like I showed you, or beat a carpet with it.” The physician tugged at his beard. “Let’s see. Today’s Sphigxday. I’ll come back on Hieraxday, and we’ll see. Regardless, you ought to be walking almost normally a week from now. If I don’t take it Hieraxday, I’ll pick it up then. But until I do, I want you to stay off that ankle as much as you can. Get a crutch if you need one. And absolutely no running and no jumping. You hear me?”

Silk nodded. “Yes, of course. But you told Blood it would be five—”

“It’s not as bad as I figured, that’s all. A simple misdiagnosis. Your head augur … What do they call him, the Prolocutor? Haven’t you noticed that when he gets sick I’m not the one he sends for? Well, that’s why. Now and then I make a mistake. The sort of doctors he has in never do. Just ask them.”

Maytera Marble inquired, “How does it feel, Patera?”

“Marvelous! I’m tempted to say as though my ankle had never been injured, but it’s actually better than that. As if I’d been given a new ankle, a lot better than the one I broke.”

“I could give you dozens of things that would make you feel better,” Crane told him, “starting with a shot of pure and a sniff of rust. This will really make you better, and that’s a lot harder. Now, what about this bird of yours? If I’m going to have to doctor it, I’d like to do it before we go. What kind of bird is it?”

“A night chough,” Silk told him.

“Can it talk?”

Silk nodded.

“Then maybe I can catch it myself. Maytera, would you tell my bearers to come around to Sun Street? They’re on Silver. Tell them you’ll be coming with me, and we’ll leave in a minute or two.”

Maytera Marble trotted away.

The physician shook his finger at Silk. “You sit easy, young man. I’ll find him.”

He vanished into the stairwell. Soon, Silk heard his voice from the kitchen, though he could not make out what was being said. Silk called, “You told Blood that it would take so long to heal so that I’d get more time, didn’t you? Thank you, Doctor.”

There was no response. The wrapping was still hot, and oddly comforting. Under his breath Silk began the afternoon prayer to Sphigx the Brave. A fat, blue-backed fly sizzled through the open doorway, looked around for food, and bumped the glass of the nearer Sun Street window.

Crane called from the kitchen, “You want to come here a minute, Silk?”

“All right.” Silk stood and walked almost normally to the kitchen door, his right foot bare and the wrapping heavy about his ankle.

“He’s hiding up there.” Crane pointed to the top of the larder. “I got him to talk a little, but he won’t come down and let me see his wing unless you promise he won’t be hurt again.”

“Really?” Silk asked.

The night chough croaked from the top of the larder, and Crane nodded and winked.

“Then I promise. May Great Pas judge me if I harm him or permit others to do so.”

“No cut?” croaked the bird. “No stick?”

“Correct,” Silk declared. “I will not sacrifice you, or hurt you in any other fashion whatsoever.”

“Pet bird?”

“Until your wing is well enough for you to fly. Then you may go free.”

“No cage?”

Crane nudged Silk’s arm to get his attention, and shook his head.

“Correct. No cage.” Silk took the cage from the table and raised it over his head, high enough for the bird to see it. “Now watch this.” With both hands, he dashed it to the floor, and slender twigs snapped like squibs. He stepped on it with his good foot, then picked up the ruined remnant and tossed it into the kindling box.

Crane shook his head. “You’re going to regret that, I imagine. It’s bound to be inconvenient at times.”

With its sound wing flapping furiously, the black bird fluttered from the top of the larder to the table.

“Good bird!” Crane told it. He sat down on the kitchen stool. “I’m going to pick you up, and I want you to hold still for a minute. I’m not going to hurt you any more than I have to.”

“I was a prisoner myself for a while last night,” Silk remarked, more than half to himself. “Even though there was no actual cage, I didn’t like it.”

Crane caught the unresisting bird expertly, his hands gentle yet firm. “Get my bag for me, will you?”

Silk nodded and returned to the sellaria. He closed the garden door, then picked up the dark bundle that Crane had displayed to him. As he had guessed, it was his second-best robe, with his old pen case still in its pocket; it had been wrapped around his missing shoe. Although he had no stocking for his right foot, he put on both, shut the brown medical bag, and carried it into the kitchen.

The bird squawked and fluttered as Crane stretched out its injured wing. “Dislocated,” he said. “Exactly like a dislocated elbow on you. I’ve pushed it back into place, but I want to splint it so he won’t pop it out again before it heals. Meanwhile he’d better stay inside, or a cat will get him.”

“Then he must stay in on his own,” Silk said.

“Stay in,” the bird repeated.

“Your cage is broken,” Silk continued severely, “and I certainly don’t intend to bake in here with all the windows shut, merely to keep you from getting out.”

“No out,” the bird assured him. Crane was rummaging in his bag.

“I hope not.” Silk pulled the blanket from the garden window, threw it open, and refolded the blanket.

“What time are you supposed to meet Blood at the yellow house?”

“One o’clock, sharp.” Silk carried the blanket into the sellaria; when he returned, he added, “I’m going to be late, I imagine; I doubt that he’ll do anything worse than complain about it.”

“That’s the spirit. He’ll be late himself, if I know him. He likes to have everybody on hand when he shows up. I doubt if that’ll be before two.”

Stepping across to the Silver Street window, Silk took down the dishrag and the dish towel and opened it as well. It was barred against thieves, and it occurred to him that he was caged in literal fact, here in this old, four-room manse he had taught himself to call home. He pushed away the thought. If Crane’s litter had been on Silver Street, it was gone now; no doubt Maytera Marble had performed her errand and it was waiting on Sun Street.

“This should do it.” Crane was fiddling with a small slip of some stiff blue synthetic. “You’ll be ready to go when I get back?”

Silk nodded, then felt his jaw. “I’ll have to shave. I’ll be ready then.”

“Good. I’ll be running late, and the girls get cranky if they can’t go out and shop.” Crane applied a final strip of almost invisible tape to keep the little splint in place. “This will fall right off after a few days. When it does, let him fly if he wants to. If he’s like the hawks, you’ll find that he’s a pretty good judge of what he can and can’t do.”

“No fly,” the bird announced.

“Not now, that’s for sure. If I were you, I wouldn’t even move that wing any more today.”

Silk’s mind was elsewhere. “It’s diabolic possession, isn’t it? At the yellow house?”

Crane turned to face him. “I don’t know. Whatever it is, I hope you have better luck with it than I’ve had.”

“What’s been happening there? My driver and I heard a scream last night, but we didn’t go inside.”

The little physician laid a finger to his nose. “There are a thousand reasons why a girl might scream, especially one of those girls. Might have been a stain on her favorite gown, a bad dream, or a spider.”

A tiny needle of pain penetrated the protection of the wrapping; Silk opened the cabinet that closed the kitchen’s pointed north corner and got out the stool Patera Pike had used at meals. “I doubt that Blood wants me to exorcise his women’s dreams.”

Crane snapped his medical bag shut. “No one except the woman herself is really occupying the consciousness of what people like you choose to call a ‘possessed’ woman, Silk. Consciousness itself is a mere abstraction—a convenient fiction, actually. When I say that a man’s unconscious, I mean no more than that certain mental processes have been suspended. When I say that he’s regained consciousness, I mean that they’ve resumed. You can’t occupy an abstraction as if it were a conquered city.”

“A moment ago you said the woman herself occupied it,” Silk pointed out.

With a last look at the injured bird, Crane rose. “So they really do teach you people something besides all that garbage.”

Silk nodded. “It’s called logic.”

“So it is.” Crane smiled, and Silk discovered to his own surprise that he liked him. “Well, if I’m going to look in on this sick girl of yours, I’d better scoot. What’s the matter with her? Fever?”

“Her skin felt cold to me, but you’re a better judge of diseases than I.”

“I should hope so.” Crane picked up his bag. “Let’s see—through the front room there for Sun Street, isn’t it? Maybe we can talk a little more on our way to Orchid’s place.”

“Look at the back of her neck,” Silk said.

Crane paused in the doorway, shot him a questioning glance, then hurried out.

Murmuring a prayer for Teasel under his breath, Silk went into the sellaria and shut and bolted the Sun Street door, which Crane had left standing open. As he passed a window, he caught sight of Crane’s litter. Maytera Marble reclined beside the bearded physician, her intent metal face straining ahead as though she alone were urging the litter forward by sheer force of thought. While Silk watched, its bearers broke into a trot and it vanished behind the window frame.

He tried to recall whether there was a rule prohibiting a sibyl from riding in a man’s litter; it seemed likely that there was, but he could not bring a particular stricture to mind; as a practical matter, he could see little reason to object as long as the curtains were up.

The lioness-headed walking stick lay beside the chair in which he had sat for Crane’s examination. Absently, he picked it up and flourished it. For as long as the wrapping functioned he would not need it, or at least would need it very little. He decided that he would keep it near at hand anyway; it might be useful, particularly when the wrapping required restoration. He leaned it against the Sun Street door, so that he could not forget it when he and Crane left for the yellow house.

A few experimental steps demonstrated once again that with Crane’s wrapping in place he could walk almost as well as ever. There seemed to be no good reason for him not to carry a basin of warm water upstairs and shave as he usually did. He re-entered the kitchen.

Still on the table, the night chough cocked its head at him inquiringly. “Pet hungry,” it said.

“So am I,” he told it. “But I won’t eat again until after midday.”

“Noon now.”

“I suppose it is.” Silk lifted a stove lid and peered into the firebox; for once a few embers still glowed there. He breathed upon them gently and added a handful of broken twigs from the ruined cage, reflecting that the night chough was clearly more intelligent than he had imagined.

“Bird hungry.”

Flames were flickering above the twigs. He debated the need for real firewood and decided against it. “Do you like cheese?”

“Like cheese.”

Silk found his washbasin and put it under the nozzle of the pump. “It’s hard, I warn you. If you’re expecting nice, soft cheese, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“Like cheese!”

“All right, you can have it.” A great many vigorous strokes of the pump handle were required before the first trickle of water appeared; but Silk half filled his basin and set it on the stove, and as an afterthought replenished the night chough’s cup.

“Cheese now?” the night chough inquired. “Fish heads?”

“No fish heads—I haven’t got any.” He got out the cheese, which was mostly rind, and set it next to the cup. “You’d better watch out for rats while I’m away. They like cheese too.”

“Like rats.” The night chough clacked its crimson beak and pecked experimentally at the cheese.

“Then you won’t be lonely.” The water on the stove was scarcely warm, the twigs beneath it nearly out. Silk picked up the basin and started for the stair.

“Where rats?”

He paused and turned to look back at the night chough. “Do you mean you like them to eat?”

“Yes, yes!”

“I see. I suppose you might kill a rat at that, if it wasn’t too big. What’s your name?”

“No name.” The night chough returned its attention to the cheese.

“That was supposed to be my lunch, you know. Now I’ll have to find lunch somewhere or go hungry.”

“You Silk?”

“Yes, that’s my name. You heard Doctor Crane use it, I suppose. But we need a name for you.” He considered the matter. “I believe I’ll call you Oreb—that’s a raven in the Writings, and you seem to be some sort of raven. How do you like that name?”

“Oreb.”

“That’s right. Musk named his bird after a god, which was very wrong of him, but I don’t believe that there could be any objection to a name from the Writings if it weren’t a divine name, particularly when it’s a bird’s name there. So Oreb it is.”

At his washstand upstairs, he stropped the big, bone-handled razor that had waited in his mother’s bureau until he was old enough to shave, lathered his face, and scraped away his reddish-blond beard. As he wiped the blade clean, it occurred to him, as it did at least once a week, that the razor had almost certainly been his father’s. As he had so many times before, he carried it to the window to look for some trace of ownership. There was no owner’s name and no monogram, not even a maker’s mark.

As often in this weather, Maytera Rose and Maytera Mint were enjoying their lunch at a table carried from the cenoby and set in the shade of the fig tree. When he had dried his face, Silk carried the basin back to the kitchen, poured out his shaving water, and joined the two sibyls in the garden.

By a gesture, Maytera Rose offered him the chair that would normally have been Maytera Marble’s. “Won’t you join us, Patera? We’ve more than enough here for three.”

It stung, as she had no doubt intended. Silk said, “No, but I ought to speak with you for a moment.”

“And I with you, Patera. I with you.” Maytera Rose began elaborate preparations for rising.

He sat down hurriedly. “What is it, Maytera?”

“I had hoped to tell you about it last night, Patera, but you were gone.”

A napkin-draped basket at Silk’s elbow exuded the very perfume of Mainframe. Maytera Marble had clearly baked that morning, leaving the fruit of her labor in the cenoby’s oven for Maytera Mint to remove after she herself had left with Crane. Silk swallowed his saliva, muttered, “Yes,” and left it at that.

“And this morning it had quite escaped my mind. All that I could think of was that awful man, the little girl’s father. I will be sending Horn to you this afternoon for correction, Patera. I have punished him already, you may be sure. Now he must acknowledge his fault to you—that is the final penalty of his punishment.” Maytera Rose paused to render her closing words more effective, her head cocked like the night chough’s as she fixed Silk with her good eye. “And if you should decide to punish him further, I will not object. That might have a salutary effect.”

“What did he do?”

The synthetic part of Maytera Rose’s mouth bent sharply downward in disgust; as he had on several similar occasions, Silk wondered whether the aged, disease-ridden woman who had once been Maytera Rose was still conscious. “He made fun of you, Patera, imitating your voice and gestures, and talking foolishness.”

“Is that all?”

Maytera Rose sniffed as she extracted a fresh roll from the basket. “I would say it was more than enough.”

Maytera Mint began, “If Patera himself—”

“Before Patera was born, I endeavored to inculcate a decent respect for the holy calling of augur, a calling—like that of we sibyls—established by Our Sacred Scylla herself. I continue that effort to this day. I try, as I have always tried, to teach every student entrusted to my care to respect the cloth, regardless of the man or woman who wears it.”

“A lesson to us all.” Silk sighed. “Very well, I’ll talk to him when I can. But I’m leaving in a few minutes, and I may not be back until late. That was what I wanted to tell you—to tell Maytera Mint particularly.”

She look up, a question in her melting brown eyes.

“I’ll be engaged, and I can’t say how long it may take. You remember Auk, Maytera. You must. You taught him, and you told Maytera Marble about him yesterday, I know.”

“Oh, Patera, I do indeed.” Maytera Mint’s small, not uncomely face glowed.

Maytera Rose sniffed, and Maytera Mint dropped her eyes again.

“I spoke to him last night, Maytera, very late.”

“You did, Patera?”

Silk nodded. “But I’m forgetting something I should tell you. I’d seen him earlier that evening, and shriven him. He’s trying, quite sincerely I believe, to amend his life.”

Maytera Mint looked up again, her glance bright with praise. “That’s truly wonderful, Patera!”

“It is indeed; and it’s far more your doing, and Patera Pike’s, than it is mine. What I wanted to say, Maytera, is that when I last spoke with him, he indicated that he might come here today. If he does, I’m sure he’ll want to pay his respects to you.”

He waited for her to confirm it. She did not, sitting with folded hands and downcast eyes.

“Please tell him that I’m anxious to see him. Ask him to wait, if he can. I doubt that he’ll come before supper. If I haven’t returned, tell him that I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

Spreading rich yellow butter on another golden roll, Maytera Rose said, “Last night you had gone already by the time Horn had finished working for his father. I’ll tell him that he’ll have to wait, too.”

“I’m certain you will, Maytera. Thank you both.” Silk stood up, wincing when he put too much weight on his injured ankle. For a formal exorcism he would need the Chrasmologic Writings from the manteion, and images of the gods—of Pas and Scylla particularly. And of Sphigx the patroness of the day. The thought reminded him that he had never completed her prayers; hardly the way to gain favor.

He would take the triptych his mother had given him; her prayers might follow it. As he tramped upstairs again, more conscious of his ankle than he had been since before Crane’s visit, he reflected that he had been trained only in dealing with devils who did not exist. He recalled how startled he had been when he had realized that Patera Pike credited them, and even spoke with gruff pride of personal efforts to frustrate them.

Before he reached the top of the stair, he regretted leaving Blood’s walking stick in the sellaria. Sitting on his bed, he unwound the wrapping; it was distinctly cool to the touch. He dashed it against the wall as violently as he could and replaced it, then removed his shoe and put on a clean stocking.

Blood would meet him at the yellow house on Lamp Street. Musk, or someone as bad as Musk, might come with Blood. Silk folded up the triptych, laid it in its baize-lined teak case, buckled the straps, and pulled out its folding handle. This and the Writings, which he would have to get before he left; Pas’s gammadion was about his neck already, his beads in his pocket. It might be prudent to take a holy lamp, oil, and other things as well. After considering and rejecting half a dozen possibilities, he got the key from beneath his water jug.

With the young eagle on his gauntleted left arm, Musk stood on the spattered white pavement by Scylla’s fountain and looked about him, his head as proudly poised, and his back as straight, as any Guardsman’s. They were watching from the deep shade of the portico: Blood, Councillor Lemur and his cousin Councillor Loris, Commissioner Simuliid, and half a dozen others. Mentally, Musk shook the dice cup.

The eagle had been trained to wrist and to the lure. It knew his voice and had learned to associate it with food. When he removed its hood, it would see the fountain, flowing water in a countryside in which water of any kind was now a rarity. The time had come for it to learn to fly—and he could not teach it that. It would return for the lure and the hackboard. Or it would not. Time to throw the dice.

Blood’s voice came to him faintly through the plashing of the fountain. “Don’t rush him.”

Someone had asked what he was waiting for. He sighed, knowing he could not delay much longer. To hold on to this moment, in which the bird that he might never see again was still his.

The sky was empty or seemed so, the skylands invisible behind the endless, straight glare of the sun. Fliers, if there were any, were invisible too. Above the tops of the trees on the other side of the wall, distant fields curved upward, vanishing in a blue haze as they mounted the air. Lake Limna seemed a fragment of mirror set into the whorl, like a gaud into a cheap picture frame.

Time to throw.

As though it knew what was about to happen, the young eagle stirred. Musk nodded to himself. “Come back to me,” he whispered. “Come back to me.”

And then, as if somebody else (an interfering god or Blood’s mad daughter) controlled it, his right arm went up. Self-willed, his hand grasped the scarlet-plumed hood and snatched it away.

The young eagle lifted its wings as though to fly, then folded them again. He should have worn a mask, perhaps. If the eagle struck at his face now, he would be scarred for life if he was not killed; but his pride had not permitted it.

“Away, Hawk!” He lifted his arm, tilting it to tip the bird into the air. For a split second he thought it was not going to fly at all.

The great wings seemed to blow him back. Slowly and clumsily it flew, its wingtips actually brushing the lush grass at every downstroke—out to the wall and left, past the gate and left again up the grassway. For a moment he thought it was returning to him.

Into the portico, scattering the watchers there like quail. If it turned right at the end of the wing, mistook the cat pen for the mews—

Higher now, as high as the top of the wall, and left again. Left until it passed overhead, its wings a distant thunder. Higher now, and higher still, still circling and climbing, riding the updraft from the baking lawn and the scorching roofs. Higher the young eagle rose and higher, black against the glare, until it, like the fields, was lost in the vastness of the sky.

When the rest had gone Musk remained, shading his eyes against the pitiless sun. After a long while, Hare brought him binoculars. He used them but saw nothing.