Lake of the Long Sun

Chapter 4. THE PROCHEIN AMI

Silk rose as silently as he could, irresistibly reminded of his failure to surprise Musk and Chenille earlier. Leaving Blood's walking stick beside his chair, he crossed the room to the Sun Street door, snatched the heavy bar out of its fittings and (retaining the bar in his left hand for use as a weapon if necessary) jerked the door open.

The tall, black-robed man waiting in the street beyond the step did not appear in the least surprised. "Did my presence here-ah-disturb you, Patera?" he inquired in a reverberant, nasal voice. "I strove to be discreet and - um-unobtrusive. Do you follow me? Subdued, eh? Not so skillful about it, perhaps. I'd reached your door before I heard the-ah lady's voice."

Silk leaned the bar against the wall. "I know that it's somewhat irregular, Your Eminence -" "Oh, no, no, no! You have your reasons, I'm certain, Patera." The black-robed man bowed from the waist. "Good evening, my dear. Good evening, and may every god be with you this night." He favored Silk with a toothy smile that. gleamed even in the glimmering light from the sky-lands. "I took great care to stand well out of the-ah-zone of-um-listening, Patera. Audibility? Earreach. Beyond the-ah-carry of the lady's voice. I could hear voices, I confess, save when a cart passed, if you follow me. But not one word you said. Couldn't make out a single thing, hey?" He smiled again. "Sweet Scylla, bear witness!"

Silk left the manse to stand upon its doorstep. "I'm exceedingly soRRy that I was so abrupt, Your Eminence. We heard-I should say we were told-"

"Perfectly proper. Patera." One hand flipped up in a gesture of dismissal. "Quite, quite correct."

"-that there was someone outside, but not who-" Silk took a deep breath. "Your business must be urgent, or it wouldn't have brought you out so late, Your Eminence. Won't you come in?"

He held the door, then barred it again when the black-robed man had entered. "This is our sellaria, I'm afraid. The best room we have. I can offer you water and-and bananas, if you'd like some." He recalled that he had not yet explored Kit's sack. "Perhaps some other sort of fruit, as well."

The black-robed man waved Silk's fruit away. "You were advising this young lady, weren't you. Patera? Not shriving her, I hope. Not yet at least, though I didn't understand a word. I'd recognize the-ah-cadence of the Pardon of Pas, or so I fancy, having performed it so many, many times myself. The litany of Sacred Names, hey? Speak here for Great Pas, for Divine Echidna, for Scalding Scylla, and the rest. And I heard nothing like that. Nothing at all."

Chenille, who had followed Silk to the door and stood behind him in the doorway, inquired, "You're an augur, too, Patera?"

The black-robed man bowed again, then held up the voided cross he wore; its gold chain gleamed like the Aureate Path itself in the dingy little sellaria. "I am indeed, my dear. One quite, quite capable of discretion, or I should not be where I am today, eh? So you've nothing to fear, not that I overheard a single word you said."

"I'm confident that I can trust you implicitly, Patera. I was about to say that Patera Silk and I are liable to be quite some time. I can go somewhere else and come back in an hour or two-however much time you estimate that you may require."

Silk stared at her, astonished.

"Such a lady as you, my dear? In this quarter? I would not-ah-will not hear of it. Not for a single instant! But perhaps I might have a word with Patera now, eh? Then I'll be on my way."

"Of course," Chenille told him. "Please disregard, me completely, Your Eminence."

He was more than half a head taller than Silk (though Silk was nearly as tall as Auk) and at least fifteen years his elder. Thin, coal-black hair spilled down his forehead; he tossed his head to keep it out of his eyes as he spoke. "It is Patera Silk, hey? I don't believe I've had the-ah-pleasure, Patera. I'm a perfect stranger, eh? Or nearly. Near as makes no matter. I wish it weren't so. Wish that-ah-that we met now as old acquaintances, eh? Though I did you a bad turn, eh? Couple of years ago. I admit it. I acknowledge it. No question about, it, but I've got to do what's best for the Chapter, eh? The Chapter's our mother, after all, and bigger than any man. I'm Remora."

He turned his smile on Chenille. "This young beauty may prefer to maintain an-ah-ah-discreet anonymity, eh? That might be the prudent course, hey? However she prefers, and no offense taken."

Chenille nodded. "If you don't object, Patera."

"No, no, indeed not." Remora's hand waved negligently. "Indeed not. Why I-ah-advise it myself."

Silk said, "You attended my graduation, Your Eminence. You were on the dais, to the right of our Prelate. I don't expect you to remember me."

"Oh, but I do! I do! Won't you sit, my dear? I do indeed, Silk. You received honors, after all, eh? Never forget the sprats that get those. You were quite the huskiest cub the old place could show that year. I recall remarking to Quetzal-the Prolocutor, my dear, and I ought to have said His Cognizance. Remarking afterward that you ought to have gone into the arena, eh? So we-ah-ah-sent you there. Yes, we did! Merely a jest, to be sure. I was-um-I am responsible. My fault, all of it. That you were sent here, I mean. To this quarter, this manteion. I suggested it." With a sidelong glance at the wreckage of the table upon which Musk had fallen, Remora lowered his lanky body into Silk's reading chair. "I urged it-sit down, Patera-and dear Quetzal quite agreed."

"Thank you, Your Eminence." Silk sat. "Thank you very much. I couldn't have gone to a better place." "Oh, you don't mean it. I can't blame you. Not at all, eh? Not at all. You've had a miserable time of it. I-ah-we know that, Quetzal and I. We realize it. But poor old - um-your predecessor. What was his name?"

"Pike, Your Eminence. Patera Pike."

"Quite right. Patera Pike. What. if we'd sent poor old Pike one of those rabbity little boys, ell? Killed and eaten him on the first day, in this quarter, eh? You know it now, Patera, and I knew it then. So I suggested to Quetzal that we send you, and he saw the logic of it straight off. Now here you are, hey? All alone. Since Pike left for-ah-purer climes? You've done a fine, fine job of it, too, Patera. An - ah-exceptional job. I don't think that's too strong an expression."

Silk forced himself to speak. "I would like to agree, Your Eminence." The words came singly and widely spaced, as heavy as waystones. "But this manteion has been sold. You must know about that. We couldn't even pay taxes. The city seized the property; I assume that the Chapter was notified, though I was not. The new owner will certainly close the manteion and the palaestra, and he may well tear them both down."

"He's worked hard, my dear," Remora told Chenille. "You don't live in the quarter, eh? So you can't know. But he has. He has."

Silk said, "Thank you, Your Eminence. You're very kind. I wish, though, that there were no need for your kindness. I wish I had made a success of this manteion, somehow. When I thanked you for assigning me here, I wasn't being polite. I don't really love this place-these cramped old, run-down buildings and so forth, though I used to try to make myself believe I did. But the people - We have a great many bad people here. That's what everyone says, and it's true. But the good ones have been tried by fire and remained good in spite of everything that the whorl could throw against them, and there's nothing else like them in the whorl. And even the bad ones, you'd be surprised-"

At that moment, Oreb fluttered into Chenille's lap with Musk's knife in his beak.

"Hey? Extraordinary! What's this?"

"Oreb has a dislocated wing," Silk explained. "I did it by accident, Your Eminence. A physician put the bone back in the socket yesterday, but it hasn't healed yet."

Remora waved Oreb's woes aside. "But this dagger, hey? Is it yours, my dear?"

Chenille nodded without a trace of a smile. "I threw it to illustrate a point that I was making to Patera Silk, Your Eminence. Now Oreb's kindly returned it to me. He likes me, I think."

Oreb whistled.

"You threw it? I don't want-ah-intend to appear skeptical, my dear-"

Chenille's hand flicked in the direction of the cabinet, and the wainscotting above its top boomed like a kettledrum. With its blade half buried in oak. Musk's knife did not even vibrate.

"Oh! O you gods!" Remora rose and went to examine the knife. "Why, I'd never- This is really most-ah-um - most . . ." He grasped the hilt and tried to pull the knife out, but was forced to work it back and forth. "There's only the single scar here, one-um-hole in the wood."

"I thought Patera Silk would prefer that I mark his wall as little as possible," Chenille told him demurely.

"Hah!" Remora gave a snort of triumph as he succeeded in freeing the knife; he returned it with a profound bow. "Your weapon, my dear. I knew that this quarter is said to be-ah-rough? Tough. Lawless. And I observed the broken table. But I hadn't realized . . . Patera, my - ah-our admiration for you was already very great. But it's-um-mine's now, well . . ." He seated himself again. "That's what I was about to remark, Patera. You may possibly imagine that we-um-Quetzal and I-"

His attention shifted to Chenille. "As this good augur knows, I am His Cognizance's-ah-prochain ami, my dear. Doubtless you are already familiar with the-ah- um-locution. His adjutant, as they would say it in the Guard. His coadjutor, hey? That's the-ah-formal official phraseology, the most correct usage. And I was about to say that we have been following Patera's progress with attention and admiration. He has had difficulties. Oh, indeed! He has encountered obstacles, eh? His has been no easy field to plow, no-um-quiet pasture, this manteion, poor yet dear to the immortal gods."

Chenille nodded. "So I understand. Your Eminence." "He ought to have come to us for-ah-assistance, eh? He ought to have appealed, frankly and fbrthrightly, to His Cognizance and to me. Ought to have laid his case before us, so to speak. Do you follow me? But we, still more, hey? We still more ought, to have proffered our assistance without any of that. Yes, indeed! Proffered the ready assistance of the Chapter, and-ah-more. Much more. And much sooner than this."

"I couldn't get in to see you," Silk explained somewhat dryly. "Your prothonotary kindly informed me that a crisis was occupying all your attention."

Remora wheezed. "Doubtless one was, Patera. Frequently it seems that my sole task, my-ah-entire duty consists of wrestling with an unending-um-onrushing and-ah-remorseless torrent of continually worsening - crises."

Blowers roared to the west, louder and louder as an armed Civil Guard floater roared along Sun Street. Remora paused to listen.

"It's our-ah-invariable policy with young augurs, Patera, as you must understand, to-ah-permit them to try their wings. To observe their first flights, as it were, from a distance. To thrust them rudely from the nest, if I may say it. You follow me? It is an examination you have passed very-um-creditably indeed."

Silk inclined his head. "I'm gratified, Your Eminence, although thoroughly conscious that I'm not entitled to such praise. This may be the best opportunity I'll have, however, to report-I mean informally-the very great honor that was accorded to our troubled manteion today by the-"

"Troubled did you say, Patera? This manteion?" Remora smiled all difficulties away. "It has been-ah- um-well, sold, as you say. But the sale is only a legality, eh? You follow me? A mere contrivance or-ah-stratagem of old Quetzal's, actually. The new owners-ah. The name is-the name . . ."

"Blood," Silk supplied.

"No, that's not it. Something more common, hey?"

Chenille murmured, "Musk?"

"Quite, quite correct. Musk, indeed. Rather a foolish name, hey? If I may put it so. Infants do not, as a rule, smell half so-ah-sweet. But this Musk has paid your taxes. That's how he got it. You follow me? For the taxes and some trifling amount over. These buildings are in need of-ah-refurbishing, eh? As you pointed out yourself, Patera. We'll let him do it, hey? Why not? Let him bear the expense, and not the burse, eh? Eventually he'll donate everything to us again. Give it all back to the Chapter, eh? A meritorious act."

Chenille shook her head. "I doubt-"

"We have ways, my dear, as you'll see. Dear old Quetzal has, most particularly. He's very good at it. His-ah- um-consequence as the Prolocutor of the Chapter. And his influence with the Ayuntamiento, eh? He has plenteous-ah-standing there even yet, never doubt it. An arsenal of pressures that he-ah-that we can, and will, exert in any such an eventuality as-ah-this present instance. As yours here on Sun Street, Patera."

Silk said, "Musk is no more than the owner of record, Your Eminence. Blood controls this property, and Blood is threatening to tear down everything."

"Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You'll see, Patera." Remora flashed his toothy smile again. "It will not occur- ah-come to pass. No fear. No fear at all. Or if it should, the old structures will be replaced with better ones. That would be the best way, eh? Rebuilt in a better style, and upon a more-ah-commodious scale. I must remember to speak to Quetzal about it tomorrow when he has had his beef tea."

Remora inclined his head toward Chenille. "He's quite fond of beef tea, is old Quetzal. Doubtless Patera knows. These things get bandied about, you know, among us. Like a bunch of-um-washerwomen, eh? Gossip, gossip. But dear old Quetzal should eat more, hey? I'm forever after him about it. A man can't live on beef tea and air, hey? But Quetzal does. Feeble, though."

He glanced at the clock above the sellaria's diminutive fireplace. "What I-ah-ventured out to inform you of, Patera Silk- You see, my dear, I'm terribly selfish. Yes, even after half a lifetime spent in the pursuit of-ah-sacrosanctity. I wished to inform him myself. Patera, you shall no longer labor alone. I said-um-earlier, eh? I assured you that your struggles had not gone unnoticed, hey? But now I can say more, as I-ah-most certainly shall. As I do. An acolyte, a youthful augur who only in the springtide of this very year completed his studies with honors-um. As you yourself did, Patera. I-ah-we are very aware of that. With a prize, I was about to say, for hierologics will arrive in the morning. You yourself shall know the joy of leading this promising neophyte down the very paths that you yourself have traversed with so much credit. You have two bedrooms, I believe, upstairs here? Please have the less-ah-vantaged prepared to receive Patera Gulo."

Remora rose and extended his hand. "It has been a great pleasure, Patera. A pleasure and an honor much, much too long delayed. And denied. Self-denial, indeed, and self-denial must have an end, hey?"

Silk rose with the assistance of Blood's walking stick, and they shook hands solemnly.

"My dear, I'm sorry to have disrupted your own interview with your-ah-spiritual guide. With this devout young augur. I do apologize. Our little tete-a-tete cannot have been of much interest to you, yet-"

"Oh, but it was!" Chenille's smile might well have been sincere.

"Yet it was brief at least. Ah-succinct. And now my blessing upon you, whatever your troubles may be." Remora traced the sign of addition in the air. "Blessed be you in the Most Sacred Name of Pas, Father of the Gods, in that of Gracious Echidna, His Consort, in those of their Sons and their Daughters alike; this day and forever, in the name of their eldest child, Scylla, Patroness of this, Our Holy City of Viron." "The new owner," Silk informed Remora with some urgency, "insists that any moneys above the operating expenses of the manteion must be turned over to him. In light of what transpired today at sacrifice-Your Eminence simply cannot have remained unaware of it-"

Remora grunted as he set aside the heavy bar. "You have a good deal here in need of repair, Patera. Or replacement.' Or-ah-augmentation. Items which this Musk will not-um-exert himself to rehabilitate. Your own-ah- um-wardrobe, eh? That would be a fair beginning. You might do-um-much. Many things. As for the rest, you tote up your own accounts, I take it? Doubtless you can discover many good uses for this-ah-merely presumptive surplus. And you have bon-owed various sums, I believe. So I'm-ah-we, His Cognizance and I, have been given to understand."

The door clicked shut behind him.

Oreb whistled. "Bad man."

Chenille put out her arm, and the bird hopped onto it "Not really, Oreb. Only a man deeply in love with his own cleverness."

A slight smile played about the comers other mouth as she spoke to Silk. "All that for a single manifestation by a merely minor goddess. For one not numbered among the Nine-didn't you say something like that in the manteion? I think I remember that."

Silk dropped the bar into place and turned to reply, but she raised a hand. "I know what you intend to say, Patera. Don't say it. My name is Chenille. That is to be a given, not subject to debate or qualification. You're to call me Chenille, even when we're alone. And you're to treat me as Chenille."

"But-" "Because I am Chenille. You don't really grasp these things, no matter how much you may have studied. Now sit down. Your leg hurts, I know."

Silk dropped into his chair.

"There was something else you wanted to say-not that other, which isn't really true. What is it?" "I'm afraid that it may offend you, but it isn't intended to offend." He hesitated and swallowed. "Chenille, you . . . you talk very differently at different times. Yesterday at Orchid's, you spoke like a young woman who had grown up in the streets, who couldn't read but who had picked up a few phrases and some sense of grammatical principles from better-educated people. Tonight, before His Eminence came, you used a great deal of thieves' cant, as Auk does. As soon as His Eminence arrived, you became a young woman of culture and education."

Her smile widened. "Do you want me to justify the way I speak to you, Patera? Hardly the request of a gentleman, much less a man of the cloth."

Silk sat in silence for a time, stroking his cheek. Oreb hopped from Chenille's wrist to her shoulder, then to the top of the battered library table next to Silk's chair.

At length Silk said, "If you had spoken to His Eminence as you spoke to me, he would have assumed that I had hired you for the evening or something of that kind. To save me from embarrassment, you betrayed your real nature to me. I wish I knew how to thank you properly for that, Chenille."

"You pronounce my name as though it were a polite lie. I assure you, it's the truth."

Silk asked, "But if I were to use another name-we both know which-wouldn't that be the truth as well?"

"Not really. Far less than you believe, and it would lead to endless difficulties."

"You're more beautiful tonight than you were in Orchid's house. May I say that?"

She nodded. "I wasn't trying then. Or not much. Not well. Men think it's all bones and makeup. But a lot is ... Certain things I do. My eyes and my lips. The way I move. The right gestures. You do it too, unconsciously. Silk. I like to watch you. When you don't know I'm watching." She yawned and stretched until it seemed that her full breasts would split her gown. "There. That wasn't very beautiful, was it? Though he used to love it when I yawned, and kiss my hand. I did it sometimes. Just to give him pleasure. Such delight. Silk, I'm going to have to have a place to sleep tonight. I love your name, Silk. I've been wanting to say it all night. Most names are ugly. Will you help me?"

"Of course," he said. "I am your slave."

"Chenille."

He swallowed again. "I'll help you all I can, Chenille. You can't sleep here, but I feel sure we can find something better."

Suddenly she was again the woman he had met at Orchid's. "We've got to talk about that, but there are other things to talk about first. You do realize why that awful man came? Why you're getting an acolyte? Why that awful man and this Prolocutor are going to try to take your manteion back from Blood?"

Silk nodded gloomily. "I'm naive at times, I admit; but not that naive. Once I was on the point of suggesting that he drop the pretense."

"He would have turned nasty, I'm sure." "So am I." Silk drew a deep breath and exhaled with mingled relief and disgust. "That acolyte's being sent to keep an eye on me. I'd like to find out how he's spent the summer."

"You think he may be a protege of Remora's? Something of that kind?"

Silk nodded. "He's probably been an assistant to his prothonotary. Not the prothonotary himself, because I've met him and his name isn't Gulo. If I can talk with some other augurs who were in the same class, they may be able to tell me."

"So you intend to spy on the spy." Chenille smiled. "At least your manteion's safe."

"I doubt that. In the first place, I don't have a great deal of confidence in His Cognizance's ability to manipulate Blood. Less, anyway, than His Eminence has, or says that he has. Everyone knows the Chapter doesn't have the influence in the Ayuntamiento that it once had, although Lady Kypris's theophany today may help considerably. And . . ."

"Yes? What is it now?" Chenille was stroking Oreb's back. Stretching out his neck, the bird rubbed her arm with his crimson beak.

"In the second, if they can manipulate Blood I won't be here much longer. I'll be transferred, most likely to some administrative position, and this Patera Gulo will take over everything."

"Urn-hum. I'm proud of you." Chenille was still looking at the bird. "Then my little suggestion is still of interest to you?"

"Spying on Viron?" Silk gripped Blood's lioness-headed stick with both hands as if he intended to break it.

"No! Not unless you order me to do it. And, Chenille - you really are Chenille? Now?"

She nodded, her face serious.

"Then, Chenille, I can't allow you to continue to do it either. All questions of loyalty aside, I can't let you risk your life like that."

"You're angry. I don't blame you, Silk. Though it's better to be cold. He . . . You call him Pas. Someone said once that he was always in a cold fury. Not always, Silk."

She licked her lips. "It wasn't true. But almost. And he came to rule the whole-whorl. Our whorl, bigger than this. So fast. All in a few years. No one could believe it."

Silk said, "I don't think I'm very good at cold furies, but I'll try. I was going to ask what will happen if we succeed? Suppose that we get twenty-six thousand cards from Doctor Crane to hand over to Blood. I doubt that it's even possible, but suppose we do. What good would it do anybody except Blood?"

Silk fell silent for a time, his face in his hands. "I should want to do good to Blood, of course, as I should want to do good to everyone. Even when I broke into his house to try to make him give my manteion back, I did it in part to keep him from staining his spirit by converting the property to a bad purpose. But getting money for him that he doesn't need isn't going to do him any good, and it may even do him harm."

Oreb dropped onto Silk's shoulder, startling him into looking up; as he did, Oreb caught a lock of his straying hair and tugged at it.

"He knows what you're feeling," Chenille said quietly. "He would like to make you laugh, if he can."

"He's a good bird-a very good bird. This isn't the first time he's come to me of his own accord."

"You would take him with you, wouldn't you? Even if you were sent to that administrative position? Silk. It isn't against some rule for augurs to keep pets?"

"No. They're permitted."

"So everything wouldn't be lost, even then." Chenille floated from her chair to slip behind his own. "I could . . . Supply some trifling comfort, too. Now, Silk. If you wish it."

"No," he repeated.

Silence refilled the little sellaria. After two minutes or more had passed, he added, "But thank you anyway. Thank you very much. What you said shouldn't make me feel better; but it does, and I'll always be grateful to you."

"I'll take advantage of your gratitude, you know."

He nodded soberly. "I hope you do. I want you to."

"You don't like girls like me."

"That isn't so." Pie fell silent for a moment to think about it. "I don't like what you do-the kinds of things that go on every night at Orchid's-because I know they do everyone involved more harm than good, and injure all of us eventually. I don't dislike you or Poppy or the others; in fact, I like you. I even like Orchid, and every god"-He would have stopped, but it was already too late-"knows I felt sorry for her this afternoon."

She laughed softly. "All the gods don't know. Silk. . . . One does. Two. You think those men don't many, because they have us. Most are married already, and shouldn't be."

He nodded reluctantly. "You've seen how young most of us are. What do you think happens to us?"

"I've never considered it." He wanted to say that many probably perished like Orpine; but she had stabbed Orpine.

"You think we all turn into Orchids, or use too much rust and die in convulsions. Most of us marry, that's all. You don't believe me, but it's the truth. We marry some buck who always asks for us. Silk."

She was stroking his hair. Inexplicably he felt that if he were to turn around he would not see her; that these were the ringers of a phantom.

"You said you wouldn't. Silk. Because you wanted to see a god. To someone. Yesterday? And now?"

"Now I don't know," he admitted.

"You're afraid I'll laugh. You'll be clumsy. All men are. Silk. Patera. You're frightened of my laughter."

"Yes, I am."

"Would you kill me? Silk? For fear that I might laugh? Men do that."

He did not reply at once. Her hands were where Musk's had been, yet he knew they would bring no pain. He waited for her to speak again, but heard only the distant crackle of the dying fire in the kitchen stove and the rapid tick of the clock on the mantel. At last he said, "Is that why some men strike women, in love? So they won't laugh?"

"Sometimes."

"Does Pas strike you?"

She laughed again, a silver flood, whether at Pas or at him he could not have told. "No. Silk. He never strikes anyone. He kills ... or nothing."

"But not you. He hasn't killed you." He was conscious again other mingled perfumes, the mustiness of her gown.

"I don't know." Her tone was serious, and he did not understand.

Oreb whistled abruptly, hopping from Silk's shoulder to the tabletop. "She here! Come back." He hopped to the shade of the broken reading lamp, fluttering from there to the top of the curio cabinet. "Iron girl!"

Silk nodded and rose, limping to the garden door.

Chenille murmured, "I didn't mean, by the way, that we should spy on Viron for Crane. I don't think I'll be doing it anymore myself. What I meant to suggest was that we get your money from Crane."

She yawned again, covering her mouth with a hand larger than most women's. "He seems to have a lot. To control a lot, at least. So why shouldn't we take it? If you were the owner of this manteion, it would be awkward to transfer you, I'd think."

Silk gawked at her.

"Now you expect me to have an elaborate plan. I don't. I'm not good at them, and I'm too tired to think anymore tonight anyway. Since you won't sleep with me, you think about it. And I will, too, when I get up."

"Chenille-"

Maytera Marble's steel knuckles tapped the door.

"It's that mechanical woman of yours, like Oreb said. What is it they called them? Robota? Robotniks? There used to be a lot more."

"Chems," he whispered as Maytera Marble knocked again.

"Whatever. Open the door so she can see me, Silk." He did so, and Maytera Marble regarded the tall, fiery-haired Chenille with considerable surprise.

"Patera has been shriving me," she told the sibyl, "and now I need someplace to stay. I don't think he wants me to sleep here."

"You . . . ? No, no!" Although it was impossible, Maytera Marble's eyes appeared to have widened.

Silk interposed, "I thought that you-and Maytera Rose and Maytera Mint-might put her up in the cenoby tonight. You have vacant rooms, I know. I was about to come over and ask. You must have read my mind, Maytera."

"Oh, no. I was just bringing back your plate, Patera." She held it out. "But-but . . ."

"You'd be doing me an enormous favor." He accepted the plate. "I promise that Chenille won't give you any trouble, and perhaps you, and Maytera Rose and Maytera Mint, may be able to advise her in ways that I, a man, cannot-though if Maytera Rose is not willing, Chenille will have to stay elsewhere, of course. It's getting late, but I'll try to find a family that will open its home to her."

Maytera Marble nodded meekly. "I'll try, Patera. I'll do my best. Really, I will."

"I know," he assured her, smiling.

Leaning against the doorjamb with the plate in his hand, he watched the two women, Maytera Marble in her black habit and Chenille in her black gown, alike yet so very unlike as they walked slowly along the little path. When they had nearly reached the door of the cenoby, the second, lagging behind, turned to wave.

And it seemed to Silk at that moment that the face he glimpsed was not Chenille's, and not a conventionally good-looking face at all but one of breathtaking loveliness.

Hare was waiting outside the floater shed. "Well, it's finished," Hare said.

"Will it fly?"

Hare shrugged. He had noticed the bruise on Musk's jaw, but was too wise to mention it.

"Will it fly?" Musk repeated.

"How'd I know? I don't know anything about them."

Musk, a head shorter, advanced a step. "Will it fly? This's the last time."

"Sure." Hare nodded, tentatively at first, then more vigorously. "Sure it will."

"How the shag do you know, putt?"

"He says it will. He says it'll lift a lot, and he's been making them for fifty years. He ought to know."

Musk waited, not speaking, his face intent, his hands hovering near his waist.

"It looks good, too." Hare took a half step backward. "It looks real. I'll show you." Musk nodded almost reluctantly and motioned toward the side door. Hare hurried to open it.

The shed was too new to have the creeping greenish sound-activated lights that the first settlers had brought with them or, just possibly, had themselves known how to make. Beeswax candles and half a dozen lamps burning fish" oil illuminated its cavernous interior now; there was a faint, heavy odor from the hot wax, a fishy reek, and dominating both a stronger and more pungent smell of ripe bananas. The kite builder was bent above his creation, adjusting the tension of the almost invisible thread that linked its ten-cubit wings.

Musk said, "I thought you said it was finished. All finished, you said."

The kite builder looked up. He was smaller even than Musk; but his beard was gray-white, and he had the shaggy brows that mark the penultimate season in man's life. "It is," he said. His voice was soft and a trifle husky. "I was trimming."

"You could fly it now? Tonight?"

The kite builder nodded. "With a wind."

Hare protested, "She won't fly at night, Musk."

"But this. This'll fly now?"

The kite builder nodded again.

"With a rabbit? It'll carry that much?"

"A small rabbit, yes. Domestic rabbits get very large. It wouldn't carry a rabbit that big. I told you." Musk nodded absently and turned to Hare. "Go get one of the white ones. Not the littlest one, the next to littlest, maybe. About like that."

"There's no wind."

"A white one," Musk repeated. "Meet us on the roof."

He motioned to the kite builder. "Bring it and the wire. Anything you're going to need."

"I'll have to disassemble it again, then reassemble it up there. That's going to take at least an hour. Could be more."

"Give me the wire," Musk told him. "I'll go up first. You stay down here and hook it up. I'll pull it up. Hare can show you how to get up there."

"You haven't let out the cats?"

Musk shook his head, went to the bench, and got the reel. "Come on."

Outside, the night hung hot and still. No leaf stirred in the forest beyond the wall.

Musk pointed. "Stand right over there, see? Where it's three floors. I'll be up on that roof." The kite builder nodded and went back to the floater shed to crank open the main door, three floaters wide. When he picked it up, the new kite felt heavy in his hands; he had not weighed it, and now he tried to guess its weight: as much as the big fighting kite he'd built when he was just starting, with the big black bull on it.

And that wouldn't fly in any wind under a gale. He carried the new kite along the white stone path, then across the rolling lawn to the spot that Musk had pointed out. There was no sign of Hare and no dangling wire. Craning his neck, the kite builder peered up at the ornamental battlement, black as the bull against the mosaic gaiety of the skylands. There was no one there.

Some distance behind him, the cats were pacing nervously in their pen, eager for their time of freedom. He could not hear them, yet he was acutely conscious of them, their claws and amber eyes, their hunger and their frustration. Suppose that the talus were to free them without waiting for Musk's order? Suppose that they were free already, slinking through the shrubbery, ready to pounce?

Something touched his cheek.

"Wake up down there!'' It was Musk's husky, almost feminine voice, calling from the roof.

The kite builder caught the wire and fastened the tiny snap hook at its end to the kite's yoke, then stepped back to admire his work as his kite swiftly mounted the dressed stone, his kite like a man smaller and slighter than almost any actual man, with a dragonfly's gossamer wings.

Hare was coming over the lawn with something pale in his arms. The kite builder called, "Let me see that," and trotted to meet him, taking the white rabbit from him and holding it up by its ears. "It's too heavy!"

"This is the one he said to bring," Hare told him. He retrieved the rabbit.

"It can't lift one that big."

"There's no wind anyhow. You coming up?"

The kite builder nodded.

"Come on, then."

Entering the original villa by a rear door, they climbed two flights of stairs and clattered up the iron spiral that Silk had descended two nights before; Hare threw open the trap door. "We had a big buzzard up here," Hare said. "We called him Hierax, but he's dead."

Somewhat out of breath, the kite builder felt obliged to chuckle nonetheless.

They crossed the tiles and scrambled up onto the roof of the wing, the kite builder holding the docile rabbit again and passing it to Hare when Hare had attained the higher roof, accepting a hand as he himself scrambled up.

Musk was sitting on the battlement, practically hidden by the kite. "Show a little life. I've been waiting for an hour. Are you going to have to run with it?"

"I'll hold the spool," the kite builder said. "Hare can run with it. But it won't fly without a wind."

"There's wind," Musk told him.

The kite builder moistened his forefinger and held it up; there was indeed some slight stir here, fifty cubits above the ground. "Not enough," he said.

"I could feel it," Musk told him. "Feel it trying to go up."

"Naturally it wants to." The kite builder could not and would not conceal his pride in his craft. "Mine all do, but there's not enough wind."

Hare asked, "You want me to tie the rabbit on?"

"Let me see him." Musk, too, lifted the rabbit by its ears, and it squealed in protest. "This is the little one. You putt, you brought the little one."

"I weighed 'em. There's two lighter than this, I swear."

"I ought to drop it off. Maybe I ought to drop you off, too."

"You want me to get them? I'll show them to you. It'll only take a minute."

"What if it gets threshed and goes off? We haven't got any more this little. What'll we use in the morning?" Musk returned the rabbit to Hare.

"Two of them, by Scylla's slime. By any shaggy gods you want to name. I wouldn't lie to you."

"That's not a rabbit, it's a shaggy rat."

A passing breeze ruffled the kite builder's hair, like the fingers of an unseen goddess. He felt that if he were to turn quickly he might glimpse her: Moipe, goddess of the winds and all light things, Moipe, whose suitor he had been all his life. Moipe, make your winds blow for me. Don't shame me, Moipe, who have always honoredyou. A brace of finches for you, I swear.

Musk snapped, "Tie it on," and Hare knelt on the sun-soft tar, whipping the first cord around the unfortunate rabbit and tying it cruelly tight.

"Split along!"

"Cooler. I can't see a shaggy thing I'm doing here. We should've brought a lantern." "So it can't fall out."

Hare rose. "All right. It won't." He took the kite from Musk. "Should I hold it over my head?" The kite builder nodded. He had picked up the reel of wire; now he moistened his finger again. "Want me to run down that way?" "No. Listen to me. You have to run toward me, into the wind-into whatever wind there is, anyway. You're running so that the wind will feel stronger to the kite than it really is. If we're lucky, that false wind will lift it enough to get it up to where the wind really is stronger. Go down that way, all the way to the comer. I'll reel out as you walk down, and reel in as you run back. Any time the kite wants to lift out of your hands, toss it up. If it starts to fall, catch it." "He's from the city," Musk explained. "They don't fly them there."

The kite builder nodded absently, watching Hare.

"Hold it by the feet, as high as you can get it. Don't run until I tell you to."

"It looks real now," Musk said, "but I don't know if it looks real enough. It'll be daylight and sunshine, and they can see a shaggy scut better than we can. Only they don't always know real from fake. They don't think about it like we do."

"All right," the kite builder called. "Now!"

Hare ran, long-legged and fast, the kite's wings moving, stroking the air a trifle at every stride as though it would fly like a bird if it could. Halfway along the long roof he released it, and it rose.

Moipe! O Moipe!

At twice Hare's height it stalled, hung motionless for an instant, dipped until it nearly touched the roof, lifted again to head height, and fell lifeless to the tar. "Catch it!" Musk screamed. "You're supposed to catch it! You want to bust its shaggy neck?"

"You're worried about your rabbit," the kite builder told him, "but you've got more, and you could buy a dozen tomorrow morning. I'm worried about the kite. If it's broken it could take two days to mend it. If it's broken badly, I'll have to start over."

Hare had picked up the kite. "The rabbit's all right," he called across the roof. "Want to try again?"

The kite builder shook his head. "That bowstring's not tight enough. Bring it here."

Hare did.

"Hold it up." The kite builder knelt. "I don't want to put it down on this tar."

"Maybe we could tow it behind one of the floaters," Hare suggested.

"That would be riskier even than this. If it went down, it would be dragged to rags before we could stop." By touch alone, he loosened the knot. "I wanted to put a tumbuckle in this," he told Musk. "Maybe I should have." "We'll try it again when you've got it right," Musk said. "There might be a wind in the morning." "I'm going to fly Aquila in the morning. I don't want to be wondering about this."

"All right." The kite builder stood, wet his forefinger again, and nodded to Hare, pointing.

This time the enormous kite lifted confidently, though it seemed to the kite builder that there was no wind at all. Fifteen, twenty, thirty cubits it soared-then dipped - swooped abruptly with a terrified squeal from its passenger, and struggled to climb again, nearly stalling.

"If it gets down below the roof, the house'll kill the wind."

"Exactly right." The kite builder nodded patiently. "The very same thought had occurred to me earlier."

"You're pulling it down! What are you doing that for? It was going to fly that time."

"I need to slack off the lower bridle line," the kite builder explained. "That's the string going from the feet to the yoke."

To Hare he called, "Coming down! Catch it!" "All right, that's enough!" Musk's needler was in his hand. "We'll try again in the morning. We'll try it again when there's more wind, and it had better fly and fly good when we do. Are you listening to me, old man?"

Hare had the kite now; the kite builder released the reel crank. "About that much." He indicated the distance with his fingers. "Didn't you see it dive? If it dove like that into this roof, or into the ground, it could be completely wrecked."

While Hare held the kite up, the kite builder loosened the lower bridle siring and let it out the distance he had indicated. "I thought that I might have to do this," he explained, "so I left a little extra here."

Musk told Hare, "We won't risk it again tonight."

"Be quiet." The kite builder's fingers had stopped, the bridle string half-retied. Far away he had heard the murmur of the dry forest, the shaking of raddled old leaves and the rubbing a million dry twigs upon a million more. He turned his head blindly, questing.

"What is it?" Hare wanted to know.

The kite builder straightened up. "Go to the other comer this time," he said.

"It had better not break." Musk slipped his needler beneath his tunic.

"If it breaks, I'll be safe," the kite builder remarked. "You couldn't repair it, and neither could he."

"If it flies you'll be safer," Musk told him grimly.

Two chains and more away, Hare could hear their voices. "All right?"

Automatically the kite builder glanced down at his reel. The trees had fallen silent now, but he felt Moipe's phantom ringers in his hair. His beard stirred. "NOW!"

Hare held onto the huge kite until he was halfway across the roof, and loosed it with an upward toss. Immediately it shot up fifty, then sixty cubits; there it paused, as though gathering strength.

"Up," Musk muttered. "Away hawk!"

For a full two minutes, the kite soared no higher, its transparent wings almost invisible against the skylands, its human body as black as the shade, the rabbit a writhing dot upon its chest. At last the kite builder smiled and let out more wire. It climbed confidently, higher and higher, until it seemed that it would be lost among tessellated fields and sparkling rivers on the other side of the whorl. "Is that enough?" the kite builder asked. "Shall I bring it down?" Musk shook his head.

Hare, who had joined them to watch the kite, said, "Looks good, don't it? Looks like the lily thing."

"I want my money," the kite builder told Musk. "This is what we agreed upon. I've built it, you've approved it, and it will carry a rabbit."

"Half now," Musk whispered, still watching the kite. "I don't approve until Aquila goes for it. I'm still not sure it's going to look right to her."

Hare chuckled. "Poor little bunny! I bet it don't even know where it's got to. I bet it's lonesome way up there."

Musk contemplated the distant rabbit with a bitter smile. "It'll get some company in the morning." The mounting wind fluttered his embroidered tunic and pushed a long strand of curling hair across his handsome forehead.

The kite builder said, "If you don't think that it will deceive your eagle, tell me what changes you'd like me to make. I'll try to have them finished by morning."

"It looks good now," Musk conceded. "It looks exactly like a real flier holding a rabbit."

Inched, tossing and turning, Silk drove the deadcoach through a dark and ruined dreamscape, the land of the dead still a land of the living. The wind was blowing and blowing, fluttering all the yellow-white curtains of all the bedroom windows, fluttering the velvet hangings of the deadcoach like so many black flags; like the slashed poster on Sun Street with old Councillor Lemur's eyes gouged out, his nose and his mouth dancing, dancing in the wind; like the kind face of old Councillor Loris cut away and blowing down the gutter; like Maytera Rose's wide black habit, heavy with hemweights and death but. fluttering anyway while the tall black plumes bent and swayed, while the wind caught the black lash of Silk's dancing whip, so that when he intended to whip one black horse he whipped the other. The unwhipped black horse lagged and lagged, dogged and dogged it, snorted at the billowing yellow dust but was never whipped. He should have been for cheating his brother who sweated and lunged at the harness though his flanks were crusted with yellow dust that the white foam had already dyed black.

In the deadcoach Orpine writhed naked and white, Silk's old torn cotton handkerchief falling from her face, always falling but never fallen, always slipping but never slipped, though the wind whistled against the glass and carried dust through every crack. While whipping the wrong horse, always the wrong horse, Silk watched her clawing Chenille's dagger, saw her claw and pull at it though it was wedged between her ribs, saw her clawing like a cat at the red cat with the fiery tail, at the fine brass guard all faceted with file work. Her face beneath the slipping handkerchief was stained with her blood, forever the face of Mucor, of Blood's crazed daughter. There were sutures in her scalp and her brown hair was shaved away, her black hair shaved by Moorgrass, who had washed her body and shaved half her head so that the stitches showed and a drop of blood at each stitch though her full breasts leaked milk onto the black velvet. The grave awaited her, only the grave, one more grave in a whorl of graves where so many lay already watched over by Hierax, God of Death and Calde of the Dead, High Hierax the White-Headed One with her white spirit in his claws because the second one had been a brain surgeon, for whom if not for her?

Nor did Silk, alone in the padded black-leather driver's seat, know what any of these things meant, but only that he was driving to the grave and was late as usual. He always came to a grave too late and too soon, driving nightside in a dark that was darker than the darkest night, on a day that was hotter than the hottest day, so that it burned the billowing dust as an artist's earths are burned in an artist's little furnace, glowing gold in the heat, the black plumes billowing while he whipped the wrong horse, a sweating horse that would die at the grave if the other did not pull too. And where would Orpine lie, with the dead black horse in her grave?

"Hi-yup!" he shouted, but the horses did not heed him, for they were at the grave and the long sun gone out, burned out, dead forever until it kindled next time. "Too deep," Chenille told him standing by the grave. "Too deep," the frogs echoed her, frogs he had caught as a boy in the year that he and his mother had gone to the country for no reason and come back to a life no different, the frogs he had loved and killed with his love. "Too deep!" and the grave was too deep, though its bottom was lined with black velvet so that the sand and the cold clay would never touch her. The cold, sinking waters of underground streams that were sinking every year it seemed would never wash Orpine, would not rot her back to trees and flowers, never wash off Blood's blood nor wet the fiery cat with the black mouse in its jaws, nor the golden hyacinths. Never fill the golden pool in which the golden crane watched golden fish forever; for this was no good year for golden fish, nor even for silver ones.

"Too deep!"

And it was too deep, so that the yellow dust would never fill it and the velvet at the bottom was sprinkled with sparks that might flicker at last but hadn't flickered yet as Maytera Marble told him pointing, and by the light of that one 'there she was young again, with a face like Maytera Mint's and brown gloves like flesh covering her hard-working steel fingers.

"Too long!" he told the horses, and the one that never pulled at all lunged and plunged and put his back into it, pulling for all he was worth, though the wind was in his teeth and the night darker than any night could be, with never a patch of skylands showing. The long road under- ground was buried forever in the billowing dust and all this blowing brush.

"Too long!"

Hyacinth sat beside him on the padded leather seat; after a time he gave her his old, bloodstained handkerchief to cover her nose and mouth. Though the wind bayed like a thousand yellow hounds, it could not blow their creaking, shining, old deadcoach off of this road that was no road at all, and he was glad of her company.