Lake of the Long Sun

Chapter 3. COMPANY

Though he had been in the old cemetery often, Silk had never ridden the deadcoach before-or rather, as he told himself sharply, the deadcoach had been Loach's wagon. They always walked behind it in procession, as custom demanded, on the way there; and Loach nearly always invited him to ride back to the quarter, sitting beside Loach on the weathered gray board that was the driver's seat.

This was a real deadcoach, however, all glass and black lacquered wood, with black plumes and a pair of black horses, the whole rented for a staggering three cards from the maker of Orpine's casket. Silk, who had scarcely been able to limp along by the time they reached the cemetery, had been relieved when the liveried driver had offered him a ride, and utterly astonished to find that the deadcoach seat had a back, both seat and back stylishly upholstered in shiny black leather, like a costly chair. The seat was very high as well, which afforded him a fresh perspective on the streets through which they passed.

The driver cleared his throat and spat expertly between his horses. "Who was she. Patera? Friend of yours?"

"I wish I could say she was," Silk replied. "I never met her. Her mother's a friend, however, or so I hope. She paid for this fine coach of yours, as well as a great many other things, so I owe her a great deal." The driver nodded companionably. "This is a new experience for me," Silk continued, "my second in three days. I'd never ridden in a floater; but I did the day before yesterday, when a gentleman very kindly had one of his take me home. And now this! Do you know, I almost like this better. One sees so much more from up here, and one feels-I really can't say. Like a councillor, perhaps. Is this what you do every day? Driving like this?"

The driver chuckled. "An' curry the horses, an' feed an' water, an' muck out an' so on an' such like, an' takin' care T of the coach. Waxin' an' polishin', an' keepin' everythin' clean, an' greasin' the wheels. Them that rides in back don't complain more'n once. Mebbe less. But their relations does, sayin' it sounds so dismal an' all. So I keeps 'em greased, which ain't nearly so hard as all the waxin' an' washin'." "I envy you," Silk said sincerely. "Oh, it's not no bad life, long as you rides up front. You get the rest of the day off, do you, Patera?"

Silk nodded. "Provided that no one requires the Pardon of Pas."

The driver extracted a toothpick from an inner pocket.

"But if somebody does, you got to go, don't you?"

"Certainly." "An' before we ever loaded her in, you'd done for how many pigeons an' goats and such like?"

Silk paused, counting. "Altogether, fourteen including the birds. No, fifteen in all, because Auk brought the ram he'd pledged. I had forgotten it for a moment, although its entrails indicated that I-never mind."

"Fifteen, an' one a ram. An' you done for the lot, an' read 'em, an' cut 'em up, I bet." Silk nodded again.

"An' marched out to the country on that bad leg, readin' prayers an' so forth the whole way. Only now you get to pull your boots off, unless somebody's decided to leave. Then you don't. Have a easy time of it, don't you, you augurs? 'Bout like us, huh?"

"It isn't such a bad life," Silk said, "as long as one gets to ride back."

They both laughed.

"Somethin' happen in there? In your manteion?"

Silk nodded. "I'm surprised that you heard about it so quickly."

"They were talkin' 'bout it when I got there, Patera. I ain't religious. Don't know nothin' 'bout gods an' don't want to, but it sounded interestin'."

"I see." Silk stroked his cheek. "In that case, what you know is fully as important as what I know. I know only what actually transpired, while you know what people are saying about it, which may be at least as important."

"What I was wonderin' was why she come after nobody for so long. Did she say?"

"No. And of course I could not ask her. One does not cross-examine the gods. Now tell me what the people outside the manteion were saying. All of it."

It was practically dark by the time the driver reined up in front of the garden gate. Kit and Villus, who had been playing in the street, were full of questions: "Did a goddess really come, Patera?" "A real goddess?" "What'd she look like?" "Could you see her really good?" "To talk to?" "Did she tell things, Patera?" "Could you tell what she said?" "What'd she say?"

Silk raised his hand for silence. "You could have seen her, too, if you'd come to our sacrifice as you should have." "They wouldn't let us." "We couldn't get in." "I'm very sorry to hear that," Silk told them sincerely. "You would have seen Comely Kypris just as I did, and most of the people who attended-there must have been five hundred, if not more-could not. Now listen. I know you're anxious to have your questions answered, just as I would be in your place. But I'm going to have to talk a great deal about the theophany in the next few days, and I don't want to go stale. Besides, I'll have to tell all of you in the palaestra, in a lot of detail, and you'll be bored if you have to listen to all of it twice."

Silk crouched to bring his own face to the level of the quite dirty face of the smaller boy. "But, Kit, there's a lesson in this, for you especially. Only two days ago, you asked me whether a god would actually come to our Window. Do you remember that?"

"You said it would be a long time, but it wasn't." "I said it might be, Kit, not that it would be. You're fundamentally quite right, however. I did think it would be a long time, probably decades, and I was badly mistaken; but the thing I wanted to point out was that when you asked your question all the other students laughed. They thought it was very funny. Remember?" Kit nodded solemnly.

"They laughed as though you'd asked a foolish question, because they thought it a foolish question. They were even more mistaken than I, however; and that must be plain even to them now. Yours was a serious and an important question, and you erred only in asking of someone who knew very little more than you did. You must never let yourself be turned aside from life's serious and important questions by ridicule. Try not to forget that."

Silk fumbled in his pocket. "I want you boys to run an errand for me. I'd go myself, but I can hardly walk, much less run. I'm going to give you, Villus, five bits. Here they are. And you, Kit, three. You, Kit, are to go to the greengrocer's. Tell him the vegetables are for me, and ask him to give you whatever is best and freshest, to the amount of three bits. You, Villus, are to go to the butcher. Tell him I want five bits worth of nice chops. I'll give each of you," Silk paused, ruminating, "a half bit when you bring me your purchases."

Villus inquired, "What kind of chops, Patera? Mutton or pork?"

"We will let him decide that."

Silk watched as the two dashed off, then unlocked the garden gate and stepped inside. The grass had been sadly trampled, just as Maytera Marble had said; even in the last dying gleam of day that was apparent, as was the damage to Maytera's little garden. He reflected philosophically that in a normal year the last produce from the garden would have come weeks before in any event.

"Patera!"

It was Maytera Rose, leaning from a window of the cenoby and waving, an offense for which she would have reprimanded Maytera Marble or Maytera Mint endlessly.

"Yes," Silk said. "What is it, Maytera?"

"Did they come back with you?"

He hobbled to the window. "Your sibs? No. They were going to walk back together, so they said. They should be here soon."

"It's past time for supper," Maytera Rose asserted. (The assertion was manifestly untrue.)

Silk smiled. "Your supper should be here shortly, too, and may Scylla bless your feast." He turned away, still smiling, before she could question him further.

There was a package wrapped in white paper and tied with white string on the kitchen doorstep of the manse. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands before opening the door. Oreb, who from the scattered drops had been drinking from his cup, was on the kitchen table. " 'Lo, Silk."

"Hello, yourself." Silk got out the paring knife.

"Cut bird?"

"No, I'm going to open this. I'm too tired-or too lazy-to pick apart these knots, but if I cut them I should be able to save most of the string anyway. Did you kill that rat I threw away, Oreb?"

"Big fight!"

"I suppose I ought to congratulate you, and thank you as well. All right, I do." Unwrapping the white paper exposed a collection of odorous meat scraps. "This is cat's meat, Oreb. Having had a bucket of it dumped on my head once, I'd know it anywhere. Scleroderma promised us some, and she's made good her promise already."

"Eat now?"

"You may, if you wish. Not me. But you ate a good deal of that rat you killed. Don't tell me you're still hungry!"

Oreb only fluttered his wings and cocked his head inquiringly.

"I'm not at all sure that so much meat is good for you."

"Good meat!"

"As a matter of fact it isn't." Silk pushed it toward the bird, "But if I keep it, it will only get worse, and we have no means of preserving it. So go ahead, if you like."

Oreb snatched a piece of meat and managed to carry it, half flying and half jumping, to the top of the larder.

"Scylla bless your feast, too." For the two thousandth time it occurred to Silk that a feast blessed by Scylla ought logically to be offish, as the Chrasmologic Writings hinted it had originally been. Sighing, he took off his robe and hung it over the back of what had been Patera Pike's chair. Eventually he would have to carry the robe upstairs to his bedroom, brush it, and hang it up properly; and eventually he would have to remove the manteion's copy of the Writings themselves from the robe's big front pocket and restore it to its proper place.

But both could wait, and he preferred that they should. He started a fire in the stove, washed his hands, and got out the pan in which he had fried tomatoes the day before, then filled the old pot Patera Pike had favored with water from the pump and set it on the stove. He was contemplating the kettle and the possibility of mate or coffee when there was a tap at the Silver Street door.

Unbarring it, he took from Villus a package similar to the one he had found on the step, though much larger, and fumbled in his pocket for the promised half bit.

"Patera . . ." Villus's small face was screwed into an agony of effort.

"Yes, what is it?"

"I don't want nothing." Villus extended a grimy hand, displaying five shining bits, small squares sheared from so many cards.

"Are those mine?"

Villus nodded. "He wouldn't take 'em."

"I see. But the butcher gave you these chops anyway; you certainly didn't wrap this package. And now, since he would not accept money from me-I shouldn't have told you to tell him the meat was for me-you feel that you should not either, as a boy of honor and piety."

Villus nodded solemnly.

"Very well, I certainly won't make you take it. I owe your mother a bit, however; so give four back to me and give the fifth to her. Will you do that?"

Villus nodded again, handed over four bits, and vanished into the twilight.

"These chops are neither yours nor mine," Silk told the bird on the larder as he closed the Silver Street door and lifted the heavy bar back into place, "so leave them alone."

Large as his pan was, the chops filled it. He sprinkled them'with a minute pinch of precious salt and set the pan on the stove. "We are made plutocrats of the supernatural," he informed Oreb conversationally, "and that to a degree that's almost embarrassing. Others have money, as Blood does, for example. Or power, like Councillor Lemur. Or strength and courage, like Auk. We have gods and ghosts."

From the top of the larder, Oreb croaked, "Silk good!" "If that means you understand, you understand a great deal more than I. But I try to understand, just the same. Plutocrats of the supernatural do not need money, as we've seen-though they get it, as we've also seen. Strength and courage hasten to assist them." Silk dropped into his chair, the cooking fork in one hand and his chin in the other. "What they require is wisdom. No one understands gods or ghosts, yet we have to understand them: Lady Kypris today, Patera at the top of the stairs last night, and all the rest of it."

Oreb peered over the edge of the larder. "Bad man?"

Silk shook his head. "You may perhaps object that I've omitted Mucor, who is not dead and thus cannot be a ghost, and certainly is not a god. She behaves almost exactly like a devil, in fact. Which reminds me that we have those too, or one at any rate-that is to say, poor Teasel has or had one. Doctor Crane thinks she was bitten by some sort of bat, but she herself said it was an old man with wings."

The chops were beginning to sputter. Silk got up and prodded one experimentally with his fork, then lifted another to study its browning underside. "Speaking of wings, what do you say we begin with the simplest puzzle? I mean yourself, Oreb."

"Good bird!"

"I dare say. But not so good that you can fly with that bad wing, though I saw you do it last night just before I saw Mucor, and watched her vanish. That is suggestive-"

"Patera?" Steel knuckles rapped the door to the garden.

"Just a moment, Maytera, I have to turn your chops." To Oreb, Silk added, "I didn't include Mucor because I won't call what she does supernatural. I freely admit that it appears to be. I may be the only man in Viron who would scruple to call it that."

With the fork still in his hand, he threw wide the door.

"Good evening, Maytera. Good evening, Kit. May all the gods be with you both. Are those my vegetables?"

Kit nodded, and Silk accepted the big sack and laid it on the kitchen table. "This seems like a great deal to get for three bits. Kit, as high as prices are now. And there are bananas in there, too-I smell them. They're always very dear."

Kit remained speechless. Maytera Marble said, "He was standing in the street, Patera, afraid to knock. Or rather, I think he may have knocked very softly, and you failed to hear him. I took him into the garden, but he wouldn't give up that huge bag."

"Very properly," Silk said. "But, Kit, I wouldn't bite you for bringing me vegetables, particularly when I asked you to do it."

Kit extended a grubby fist.

"I see. Or at least, I think I may. He wouldn't take the money?"

Kit shook his head.

"And you were afraid that I'd be angry about that-as to tell the truth I am, somewhat. Here, give it to me."

Maytera Marble inquired, "Who wouldn't take your money, Patera? Marrow, up the street?"

Silk nodded. "Here, Kit. Here's the half bit that I promised you. Take it, close the gate after you, remember what I told you, and don't be afraid."

"I'm afraid," Maytera Marble announced when the boy was gone. "Not for myself, but for you, Patera. They don't like anyone to be too popular. Did Kind Kypris promise to protect you? What will you do if they send the Guard for you?"

Silk shook his head. "Go with them, I suppose. What else could I do?"

"You might not come back."

"I'll explain that I have no political ambitions, which is the simple truth." Silk drew his chair nearer the doorway and sat down. "I wish I could invite you in, Maytera. Will you let me bring the other chair out for you?"

"I'm fine," Maytera Marble said, "but your ankle must be very painful. You walked a long way today."

"It's not really as bad as it was yesterday," Silk said, feeling the wrapping. "Or perhaps I'm getting a second wind, so to speak. A great many things happened Phaesday, and they took place very fast. First there was the very great thing I told you about while we were sitting in the arbor during the rain, then Blood's coming here, then meeting Auk and riding out to Blood's villa, hurting my ankle, and talking to Blood. Then on Sphixday, bringing the Pardon of Pas to poor little Teasel, Orpine's death and an exorcism, and Orchid's wanting to have Orpine's final sacrifice fhere. I wasn't accustomed to so much happening so rapidly."

Maytera Marble looked solicitous. "No one could expect you to be, Patera."

"Last. night I was just beginning to find my feet, if I may put it like that, when several other things took place. And today, Kypris favored us-the first manteion in Viron to be so favored in over twenty years. If-"

Maytera Marble interrupted him. "That was wonderful. I'm still trying to come to terms with it, if you know what I mean, trying to integrate it into my operating parameters. But it just-you know, Patera, this business with Marrow, for instance. I saw "Back to the Charter!' painted on the side of a building. And then this, at our manteion. Do be careful!"

"I will," Silk promised. "As I was trying to explain, I've gotten my mental equilibrium back. I've done what you said you were trying to do-gotten all of it worked into my operating whateveryoucallums, my way of thinking. While we were following the deadcoach, I had time to sort things out. It gave me an opportunity to weigh my own impressions against the Writings as I read them. Do you recall the passage that begins, 'Sovereign nature, which governs the whole, will soon change all the things you see, and from their substance make other things, and again still other things from the substance of them, in order that the whorl may be ever new'?

"In the context other last sacrifice, it meant no more than that Orpine would grow up again as grass and flowers, of course. And yet, that passage struck home to me particularly, as though it had been put there for me, specifically, to read today. I wish I could learn to say things to other people that would affect them half as much as that passage affected me. I realized as I read it that the peaceful life here that I'd imagined I had, the life that I'd hoped would continue without interruption and almost without incident until I was old, had been nothing of the sort-that it had been no more than the current state of things in an endless flux of states. My final year in the schola, for example-"

"Did you say something about those chops being for me when I knocked, Patera? You meant that they would save me all the work of preparing the main course, and I appreciate it very much. They smell delicious. I feel certain Maytera Rose and Maytera Mint will enjoy them immensely."

Silk sighed. "You're telling me it's time to turn them again, aren't you?"

"No, Patera. Time to take them up-to put them on a platter. You've turned them once already."

He hobbled off to the stove. Oreb had been at the cat's meat while he had been talking with Kit and Maytera Marble; it was scattered over the table, with addenda on the floor. The undersides of the chops were a deep, golden brown. Silk piled them on the largest plate in the cupboard, draped them with a clean cloth, and carried them to Maytera Marble on the other side of the threshold.

"Thank you very, very much, Patera." She peeped beneath the cloth. "Oh, my! Aren't they marvelous! You've saved at least three for yourself, I hope."

Silk shook his head. "I had chops last night when Auk bought my dinner, and I really don't care for meat." She made him a tiny bow. "I must hurry off before they get cold." "Maytera?" He hobbled after her, down the graveled path toward the cenoby. The burning line of the sun was completely obscured by the shade now; the night air hung still and dry and hot, like one driven by fever to the border of death.

"What is it, Patera?"

"You said those chops smelled delicious. Do things - does food really smell good to you, Maytera? You can't eat it."

"But I can cook it, and I do," she reminded him gently, "so naturally I know when something smells good."

"I was thinking only of Maytera Rose, and that was wrong of me. I should have gotten something all three of you could enjoy." Silk paused, groping futilely for words that would not be inadequate. "I'm really terribly sorry, and I'll try to find a way to make up for it."

"I do enjoy this, Patera. It gives me great pleasure to be the one to take this good food to my sibs. Now please go back to the manse, where you can sit down. I hate seeing you in pain."

He hesitated, wanting to say more, nodded, and turned back. Turning seemed to twist his ankle inside the rapidly loosening wrapping, bringing pain so sharp he nearly cried out. Wincing, he grasped the arbor, then a convenient limb of the little pear tree.

There was a distant knock.

He would have halted to listen if he had not been halted already. Another knock, a trifle louder, and beyond question from his left, from Sun Street. The front door of the manse was on Sun Street-the cenoby had no door on Sun Street at all.

He meant to shout for the visitor to wait, but he did not shout, immobilized with surprise. A shadow (very faint because the lights there had darkened almost to extinction) had flitted across the curtains of his bedroom. Someone up there was going to answer that knock-someone, so at least it seemed, who had watched him limp down the path in pursuit of Maytera Marble.

All of the manse's windows facing the garden were wide open. Through them he heard the swift rattle of feet on the crooked stairs; and then, unmistakably, the bar being lifted from the door on Sun Street and the creaking of the hinges as that door opened; there was an indistinct murmur of voices-not friendly voices, or so they sounded.

It was strange how little pain his ankle gave him now. He opened the sellaria door as quietly as he could, but both turned to face him at once, one smiling, one glaring.

"Here he is," Chenille announced. "You can tell him yourself, whatever it is."

Musk snarled and shoved her aside. Catlike, he stalked across the sellaria to seat himself in Silk's reading chair. Silk cleared his throat. "Although I have no desire to appear inhospitable, I must ask both of you what you're doing here."

Musk sneered; Chenille endeavored to look demure, almost successfully. "I wasn't-really I wasn't-up to walking that far behind the deadcoach. Not in these sham shoes. And Orchid hadn't said we had to go to the grave. She just said for us to come to Orpine's rites, and I'd done it. Some of the others didn't even come."

Silk said, "Go on."

"That was all that you said I had to do, too. I mean, to come and pray, and I'd done it."

"Women are not to set foot in this manse," Silk told her harshly. Musk was sitting in his chair, and he refused as a matter of principle to take one of the others. "Excuse me for a moment."

In the kitchen, his pot of water was boiling vigorously; he added a good-sized split to the firebox and found Blood's walking stick in a comer.

When he stepped back into the sellaria, Chenille said, "You say that. I'm not supposed to be in here, but I didn't know that. I wanted to talk to you back in your manteion, when you were fastening down the lid of the coffin, but it didn't seem like the best time or the best place, with that chem woman watching us. I was going to wait for you there, but you never came back. After a couple hours, I went into your garden looking for a drink of water and found this cute little house. I played with your pet bird for a while, and then . . . Well, I'm afraid I lay down and went to sleep."

Silk nodded, half to himself. "I know you use rust, and you must drink heavily sometimes, too. When you were telling me you had a good memory yesterday during the exorcism, you said that you hadn't had a drop that day. Were you drinking here?"

"I wouldn't bring a bottle to Orpine's funeral!"

Musk snickered. He had drawn his knife and was scraping his fingernails.

"Perhaps not," Silk conceded. "And if you had, I would have seen it, unless it was a very small one. But you would have brought money, and there are a dozen places within an easy walk that would sell you beer or brandy, or anything else you wanted."

Musk said, "How much did Orchid give you?"

"Ask her. She knows you, and no doubt she's afraid of you-most women seem to be. I'm sure she'll tell you."

"A lot, that's what I heard. Lots of flowers and enough livestock to keep every god in Mainframe fed for a week. That much. This whore's in your bed and you're scratching to pump what she's there for, you putt."

Chenille ran her hands down her gown. "Look at me, I'm dressed. Would I be dressed?"

Silk rapped the floor with Blood's walking stick. "This is senseless! Be quiet, both of you. Chenille, you say you wish to talk with me. I tried to talk to you this afternoon in the manteion, but you would not reply."

She had a trick of staring down at his feet with a half smile, as if she found his scuffed black shoes amusing; he had a sudden presentiment that he could come to know it only too well. "Explain yourself," he said, "or leave at once."

"I couldn't talk with you just then, Patera. I had so much thinking to do! That was why I waited. You know, to make amends, kind of like Musk said. Only I want to talk to you too, when we're alone."

"I see. And what about you, Musk? Have you come for a private talk, as well? I warn you, I have some sharp things to say to you."

Musk's face showed a flicker of surprise; for an instant the point of his knife paused in its patrol of his nails. "I can tell you now. Blood sent me."

Silk nodded. "So I had assumed." "He gave you how long? Four weeks? Some dog puke like that?"

Silk nodded. "Four weeks, at the end of which I was to produce a substantial sum; when I did so, we were to confer again."

Musk rose as lithely as one of the beasts Mucor called lynxes. He held his knife level, its blade flat and its point aimed at Silk's chest, reminding Silk forcibly of the warning he had read in the entrails of Auk's ram. "That doesn't go, not anymore. You get a week for everything. One week!"

From the top of the dusty cabinet of curios beside the stair, Oreb croaked, "Poor Silk?"

"We had an agreement," Silk said.

"You want to see what your shaggy agreement's worth?" Musk spat at Silk's feet. "You got a week for everything. Maybe. Then we come."

"Bad man!"

The long knife flashed the length of the sellaria, to stick quivering in the wainscotting over the cabinet. Oreb gave a terrified squawk, and one black feather drifted toward the floor.

"You got yourself a turd bird," Musk whispered, "to make us dimber hornboys, didn't you? Well, up lamp! There's not a hawk I'd feed your turd bird to, and if you're warm to keep it you'd better teach it to shut its flap."

Chenille grinned. "If you're going to throw knives at him, you'd better be good enough to hit him. Missing's not so impressive."

Musk swung at her, but Silk caught his wrist before the blow landed. "Don't be childish!"

Musk spat in his face, and the carved hardwood handle of the walking stick caught Musk beneath the jaw with the hard, incisive rap of a mason's maul. Mask's head snapped back; he staggered backward, smashing a small table as he fell.

"Ah!" It was Chenille, her eyes bright with excitement, and her face intent.

Musk lay still for a second or two that seemed a great deal longer; his eyes opened, gazing for a protracted moment at nothing. He sat up.

Silk raised the stick. "If you've a needler, this is the time to pluck it."

Musk glowered at him, then shook his head. "All right. Was that your message? That I have a week in which to pay Blood his twenty-six thousand?" With his free hand, Silk got his handkerchief and wiped Musk's spittle from his face.

Scarcely parting his lips, Musk rasped, "Or less." Silk lowered the walking stick until he could lean on it. "Was there anything else?"

"No." Laboriously, Musk got to his feet, a hand braced against the wall.

"Then I have something to say to you. Orpine's rites were held today. You knew her, clearly, and both of you were working for Blood, directly or indirectly. You knew that she had died. You did not attend her rites, nor did you provide a beast for sacrifice. When her grave was closed, I asked Orchid whether she had received any expression of regret from you or Blood. She said very forcibly that she had not. Do you dispute that?"

Musk said nothing, though his eyes flickered toward the Sun Street door. "Did you send anything or say anything? Don't try to go just yet. I don't advise it."

Musk met Silk's stare with his own. "Possibly you believed that Blood had said something or done something in both your names. Was that it?"

Musk shook his head, the faded lights of the sellaria gleaming on his oiled hair.

"Very well then. You are a member of our human race. You have shirked your human duty, and it is mine to remind you of it-to teach you how a man acts, if you don't know it already. The lesson won't be quite so easy next time, I warn you." Silk strode past him to the Sun Street door and opened it. "Go in peace."

Musk left without a word or a backward glance, and Silk closed the door behind him. As he was fitting the bar into place, he felt Chenille's swift kiss on the nape of his neck. "Don't do that!" he protested.

"I wanted to do it, and I knew you wouldn't let me kiss your face. He did have a needler, you know." "I surmised it. So do I. Won't you please sit down? Anywhere. My ankle hurts, and I can't sit until you do."

She took the stiff wooden chair in which Horn had sat the night before, and Silk dropped gratefully into his usual seat. Crane's wrapping was noticeably cold now; he unwound it and flogged the hassock with it. "I've tried doing this more often," he remarked, "but it doesn't seem to have much effect. I suppose this thing's got to cool before it will heat up again."

Chenille nodded.

"You said that you wished to speak with me. May I ask you a question first?"

"You can ask," Chenille told him. "I don't know if I'll be able to answer it. What is it?"

"When we were in the manteion-when I was securing the lid of Orpine's casket-you indicated that she had been a spy, and refused to speak again when I asked what you meant. A few minutes ago, I was warned by one of our sibyls that I was at risk because a few people in our quarter seem to be trying to thrust me into politics. If I have performed the funeral rites of a spy, and when it becomes known, my risk will be substantially increased, and thus-"

"I didn't, Patera! Orpine wasn't a spy. I was talking about myself-talking like I was somebody else. It's a bad habit I have."

"About yourself?"

She nodded vigorously. "You see, Patera, until then I hadn't really realized what was happening-what I'd been doing. Then while I was sitting through the funeral it was like I'd been struck by lightning. It's really awfully hard to explain."

Silk rewrapped his ankle. "You've been spying on our city? On Viron? Don't try to evade or prevaricate, please, my daughter. This is an extremely serious matter."

Chenille stared at his shoes.

After a long moment had passed, Oreb poked his head over the edge of the curio cabinet. "Man go?"

"Yes, he's gone," Chenille said. "But he may come back, so you have to be careful."

The night chough bobbed his head and began to wrestle with Musk's knife, tugging the pommel with his beak, then perching on the handle and pushing against the wainscotting with one scarlet foot. Chenille watched, apparently amused-though perhaps, Silk thought, merely glad of any distraction. He cleared his throat. "I said that I wanted to ask you just one question, and have already asked several, for which I apologize. You indicated that you wanted my advice, and I said, or at least I implied, that you might have it. What is it you wish to discuss?"

"That's it," she said, turning from the busy bird to Silk. "I'm in trouble, just like you said. I'm not sure how much you're in, Patera, but I'm in one shaggy lot more. If the Guard ever finds out what I've been doing, I'll most likely be shot. I've got to have a place to stay where he can't find me, to start with, because if he does I'll be in that much deeper. I don't know where I can stay, but I'm not going back to Orchid's tonight."

"He?" For an instant Silk shut his eyes; when he opened them again, he asked, "Doctor Crane?" Chenille's eyes widened. "Yes. How did you know?" "I didn't. It was nothing more than a guess, and now I suppose I should be gratified because I was right. But I'm not."

"Was it because he came to my room yesterday while you and I were talking?"

Silk nodded. "For that and other reasons. Because he gave you a dagger, as you told me yesterday. Because he saw you first, out of all the women at Orchid's, and sometimes gave you rust. He might have examined you before the others simply as a favor to you, so that you could go out sooner, as you implied when I asked about it yesterday. But it seemed clear that it could also have been because he expected to get something of value from you; and information of some sort was one possibility."

Silk paused, rubbing his cheek. "Then too, you had that dagger concealed on your person when you encountered Orpine. Most women who carry weapons carry them at night, or so I've been told; but Blood, at least, expected you back at Orchid's for dinner. Later you yourself told me that you expected to work very hard at Orchid's in the evening."

"Women like me that have to go out nightside need some kind of weapon, Patera, believe me." "I do. But you weren't going to be out after dark, so you were going into some other danger, or thought you were. That the man who had given you your dagger was the man who was sending you into danger seemed a reasonable guess. Do you want to tell me where you were going?"

"To take a- No. Not yet, anyhow." She leaned forward, sincere and deeply troubled, and at that moment he would have sworn she was ignorant of her own beauty. "All this is wrong. I mean it's right-all the facts are right-but it doesn't seem like it really was. It makes it seem like I'm really from another city. I'm as Vironese as you are. I was bom right here, and I used to sell watercress around the market when I wasn't much bigger than that stool you got your foot up on."

Silk nodded, wondering whether she realized how much he wanted to touch her. "I believe you, my daughter. If you wish me to know the truth, however, you must tell me. How did it appear to you at the time?"

"Crane was a friend, just like I said yesterday. He was nice, and he brought me things, when he didn't have to. You remember about the bouquet of chenille? Little stuff like that, but nice. Most of the girls like him, and sometimes I gave him a free one. He's got a thing for big girls. He sort of laughs about it."

Silk said, "He's sensitive about his height; he told me so the first time we met. It may be that a tall woman makes him feel taller. Go on."

"So that's how it's been with us ever since I moved into Orchid's place. He didn't say, I want you to do some spying, so promise to sell out your city and I'll give you a uniform. We were talking a couple months ago, four or five of us in the big room when Crane was there. There were jokes about what he does when he looks us over. About the checkups. You know the kind of thing?" "I don't," Silk admitted wearily, "though I can readily imagine."

"Somebody let it drop that a commissioner had been in, and Crane kind of whistled and asked who hooked him. I said it was me, and he wanted to know if he gave me much of a tip. Then later, when he was looking me over, he wanted to know if this commissioner happened to mention the calde."

Silk's eyebrows shot up. "The calde?"

"That's the way I felt, Patera. I said no, he didn't, and I thought the calde was dead. Crane said, yeah, sure, he is. But when we were done and I was getting dressed, he said that if this commissioner or anybody else ever said anything about the calde or the Charter, he'd like for me to tell him about it, or if he said anything about a councillor. Well, he had said something about councillors-"

"What was it?" Silk asked.

"Just that he'd gone out to the lake to see a couple of them, Tarsier and Loris. I went oh! and ah! the way you're supposed to, but I didn't think it sounded like it was very important. Crane just sort of stopped when I told it. You know what I mean?"

"Certainly."

"Then when I was dressed and going out, he was coming out of Violet's room and he passed me this folded up paper. He stuck it-you know, Patera-right down here. When I was alone I pulled it out and looked, and it was a bearer draft for five cards, signed by some cull I never even heard of. I thought probably itwas no good, but I was going up that way anyhow, so I took it to the fisc and they gave me five cards for it, no who are you or how'd you get hold of this at all. Just like that, five cards slap on the counter." Chenille paused, waiting for his reaction. "How often do you think I snaffle a dimber five-card tip like that, Patera?"

He shrugged. "Since you've entertained a commissioner, once a month, perhaps."

"Not counting that one, I've got two in my whole life and that's lily. At Orchid's the cully's forked ten bits to get in and look at the dells, and then he's got to pay me a card-I've got to split with Orchid-unless it's somebody like that commissioner. He gets in free and gets it free, because nobody wants trouble. The best of everything and keep telling him how good he is, and usually he don't tip, either. From the ones that pay, I get a card like I said. That's for all night if they want it. So if the first one does and he won't tip, I clear half a card for the whole night."

Silk said, "I know people who don't get half a card for a week's hard work."

"Sure you do. Why do you think we do it? But what I'm saying is that in a good week, with tips, I might clear four or five. Maybe six. Only if it is, next week'll be two or three every time. So here I've got as much as I'd make in a good week, just for telling Crane something this commissioner said. Real candy! You're going to tell me I should've known, but I didn't think much about it back then, and that's lily." Chenille paused again, as if anticipating an accusation. Silk murmured, "So that was how it began. What about the rest, my daughter?"

"Since then I've passed along maybe six or eight other things and taken things to a couple people for him dayside. Then if a commissioner or maybe a colonel-somebody like that, you know?-comes in, I'm really nice to them and I don't work them for tips and presents or anything like the other dells would. It's got to where they ask for me when I'm not around."

The night chough stirred uneasily on top of the curio cabinet, his head cocked inquiringly and his long, crimson beak half open.

"So ever since I saw Orpine on ice, I've been thinking." Chenille drew her chair nearer Silk's and lowered her voice. "You've got to fork twenty-six thousand to Blood if you want to hang onto this place? That's what Musk said." Silk's head inclined less than a finger's width. "All right, then. Why don't you-why don't you and me get it from Crane, Patera?"

"Man here," Oreb warned them. "Out there." Chenille glanced up at him apprehensively. "There now," Oreb insisted. "No knock."