Nightside the Long Sun

THE CAT WITH THE RED-HOT TAIL

Lamp Street was familiar and safe once more, stripped of the mystery of night. Silk, who had walked it often, found that he recognized several shops, and even the broad and freshly varnished door of the yellow house.

The corpulent woman who opened it in response to Crane’s knock seemed surprised by his presence. “It’s awfully early, Patera. Just got up myself.” She yawned as if to prove it, only tardily concealing her mouth. Her pink peignoir gaped in sympathy, its vibrant heat leaving the bulging flesh between its parted lips a deathly white.

The air of the place poured past her, hot and freighted with a hundred stale perfumes and the vinegar reek of wasted wine. “I was to meet Blood here at one o’clock,” Silk told her. “What time is it?”

Crane slipped past them into the reception room beyond.

The woman ignored him. “Blood’s always late,” she said vaguely. She led Silk through a low archway curtained with clattering wooden beads and into a small office. A door and a window opened onto the courtyard he had imagined the night before, and both stood open; despite them, the office seemed hotter even than the street outside.

“We’ve had exorcists before.” The corpulent woman took the only comfortable-looking chair, leaving Silk an armless one of varnished wood. He accepted it gratefully, dropping his bag to the floor, laying the cased triptych across his thighs, and holding Blood’s lioness-headed stick between his knees.

“I’ll have somebody fetch you a pillow, Patera. This is where I talk to my girls, and a hard chair’s better. It keeps them awake, and the narrow seat makes them think that they’re getting fat, which is generally the case.”

The memory of his fried tomatoes brought Silk a fresh pang of guilt, well salted with hunger. Could it be that some god spoke through this blowsy woman? “Leave it as it is,” he told her. “I, too, need to learn to love my belly less, and my bed.”

“You want to talk to all the girls together? One of the others did. Or I can just tell you.”

Silk waved the question aside. “What these particular devils may have done here is no concern of mine, and paying attention to their malicious tricks would risk encouraging them. They are devils, and unwelcome in this house; that is all I know, and if you and—and everyone else living here are willing to cooperate with me, it is all I need to know.”

“All right.” The corpulent woman adjusted her own chair’s ample cushions and leaned back. “You believe in them, huh?”

Here it was. “Yes,” Silk told her firmly.

“One of the others didn’t. He said lots of prayers and had the parade and all the rest of it anyway, but he thought we were crazy. He was about your age.”

“Doctor Crane thinks the same,” Silk told her, “and his beard is gray. He doesn’t phrase it quite as rudely as that, but that’s what he thinks. He thinks that I’m crazy too, of course.”

The corpulent woman smiled bitterly. “Uh-huh, I can guess. I’m Orchid, by the way.” She offered her hand as though she expected him to kiss it.

He clasped it. “Patera Silk, from the manteion on Sun Street.”

“That old place? Is it still open?”

“Yes, very much so.” The question reminded Silk that it soon might not be, although it was better not to mention that.

“We’re not now,” Orchid told him. “Not until nine, so you’ve got plenty of time. But tonight’s our biggest night, usually, so I’d appreciate it if you were finished by then.” At last noticing his averted eyes, she tugged ineffectually at the edges of the pink peignoir.

“It should take me no more than two hours to perform the initial rites and the ceremony proper, provided I have everyone’s cooperation. But it may be best to wait until Blood arrives. He told me last night that he would meet me here, and I feel sure that he will wish to take part.”

Orchid was eyeing him narrowly. “He’s paying you?”

“No. I’m performing this exorcism as a favor to him—I owe him much more, really. Did he pay the other exorcists you spoke of?”

“He did or I did, depending.”

Silk relaxed a little. “In that case, it’s not to be wondered at that their exorcisms were ineffectual. Exorcism is a sacred ceremony, and no such ceremony can be bought or sold.” Seeing that she did not understand, he added. “They cannot be sold—my statement is true in the most literal sense of its words—because once sold the ceremony loses all its sacred character. What is sold is then no more than a profane mummery. That is not what we will carry out here today.”

“But Blood could give you something, couldn’t he?”

“Yes, if he wished. No gift affects the nature of the ceremony. A gift is given freely—if one is given at all. The point upon which the efficacy of the ceremony turns is that there must be no bargain between us; and there is none. I would have no right to complaint if a promised gift were not forthcoming. Am I making this clear?”

Orchid nodded reluctantly.

“In point of fact, I expect no gift at all from Blood. I owe him several favors, as I said. When he asked me to do this, I was—as I remain—eager to oblige.”

Orchid leaned toward him, the peignoir yawning worse than ever. “Suppose this time it works, Patera. I could give you something, couldn’t I?”

“Of course, if you choose. However, you will owe me nothing.”

“All right.” She hesitated, considering. “Sphigxday’s our big night, like I said—that’s why Blood comes around, usually, today. To check up on us before we open up. We’re closed Hieraxday, so not then either. But come in any other day and I’ll give you a pass. How’s that?”

Silk was stunned.

“You know what I mean, right, Patera? Not me. I mean with any of the girls, whoever you want. If you’d like to give her a little something for herself, that’s all right. But you don’t have to, and there won’t be anything to the house.” Orchid considered again. “Well, a card in a cart, huh? All right, that’s a lay a month for a year.” Seeing his expression she added, “Or I can get you a boy if you’d rather have that, but let me know in advance.”

Silk shook his head.

“Because if you do, you don’t get to see the gods? Isn’t that what they say?”

“Yes.” Silk nodded. “Echidna forbids it. One may see the gods when they appear in our Sacred Windows. Or one may be blessed by children of the body. But not both.”

“Nobody’s talking about sprats, Patera.”

“I know what we’re talking about.”

“The gods don’t come any more anyhow. Not to Viron, so why not? That last time was when I was—wasn’t even born yet.”

Silk nodded. “Nor I.”

“Then what do you care? You’re never going to see one anyway.”

Silk smiled ruefully. “We’re getting very far from the subject, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know.” Orchid scratched her head and examined her nails. “Maybe. Or maybe not. Did you know that this place used to be a manteion?”

Stunned again, Silk shook his head.

“It did. Or anyhow, some of it did, the back part on Music Street. Only the gods didn’t come around very much any more, even if they still did it once in a while back then. So they closed it down, and the ones that owned this house then bought it and tore down the back wall and joined the two together. Maybe that’s why, huh? I’ll get Orpine to show you around. Some of the old stuff’s still back there, and you can have it if there’s anything you want.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Silk said.

“I’m a nice person. Ask anybody.” Orchid whistled shrilly. “Orpine’ll be along in a minute. Anything you want to know, just ask her.”

“Thank you, I will. May I leave my sacra here until I require them?” The prospect of separation from his triptych made Silk uneasy. “Will they be safe?”

“Your sack? Better than the fisc. You could leave that box thing, too. Only I’ve been wondering, you know about the old manteion in back. We call it the playhouse. Could that be why it’s happening?”

“I don’t know.”

“I asked one of the others and he said not. But I kind of wonder. Maybe the gods don’t like some of the stuff we do here.”

“They do not,” Silk told her.

“You haven’t even seen anything, Patera. We’re not as bad as you think.”

Silk shook his head. “I don’t think you bad at all, Orchid, and neither do the gods. If they thought you bad, nothing that you could do would dismay them. They detest all the evil that you do—and all that I do—because they see in us the potential to do good.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking maybe they sent this devil to get even with us.” Orchid whistled again. “What’s keeping that girl!”

“The gods do not send us devils,” Silk told her, “and indeed, they destroy them wherever they meet them, deleting them from Mainframe. That, at least, is the legend. It’s in the Writings, and I have them here in my bag. Would you like me to read the passage?” He reached for his glasses.

“No. Just tell me so I can understand it.”

“All right.” Silk squared his shoulders. “Pas made the whorl, as you know. When it was complete, he invited his queen, their five daughters and their two sons, and a few friends to share it with him. However—”

From the other side of the sun-bright doorway, someone screamed in terror.

Orchid lunged out of her chair with praiseworthy speed. Limping a little and repeating to himself Crane’s injunction against running, Silk trailed after her, walking as quickly as he could.

The courtyard was lined with doorways on both floors. As he searched for the source of the disturbance, it seemed to him that whole companies of young women in every possible stage of undress were popping in and out of them, though he paid them little attention.

The dead woman lay halfway up a flight of rickety steps thrown down like a ladder by the sagging gallery above; she was naked, and the fingers of her left hand curled about the hilt of a dagger jutting from her ribs below her left breast. Her head was angled so sharply in Silk’s direction that it almost appeared that her neck was broken. He found her oddly contorted face at once horrible and familiar.

Against all his training, he covered that face with his handkerchief before beginning to swing his beads.

It quieted the women somewhat, although the dagger, the wound it had made, and the blood that had so briefly spurted from that wound were still visible.

Orchid shouted, “Who did this? Who stabbed her?” and a puffy-eyed brunette, nearly as naked as the woman sprawled on the steps, drawled, “She did, Orchid—she killed herself. Use your head. Or if you won’t, use your eyes.”

Kneeling on a blood-spattered step just below the dead woman’s head, Silk swung his beads, first forward-and-back, then side-to-side, thus describing the sign of addition. “I convey to you, my daughter, the forgiveness of all the gods. Recall now the words of Pas, who said, ‘Do my will, live in peace, multiply, and do not disturb my seal. Thus you shall escape my wrath. Go willingly, and any wrong that you have ever done shall be forgiven.’ O my daughter, know that this Pas and all the lesser gods have empowered me to forgive you in their names. And I do forgive you, remitting every crime and wrong. They are expunged.” With his beads, Silk traced the sign of subtraction. “You are blessed.” Bobbing his head nine times, as the ritual demanded, he traced the sign of addition.

A female voice breathed curses somewhere to his right, blasphemy following obscenity. “Hornbuss Pas shag you Pas whoremaster Pas hornswallow ‘Chidna sick-licker Pas…” It sounded to Silk as though the speaker did not know what she was saying, and might well be unaware that she was speaking at all.

“I pray you to forgive us, the living,” he continued, and once again formed the sign of addition with his beads above the dead woman’s handkerchief-shrouded head. “I and many another have wronged you often, my daughter, committing terrible crimes and numerous offences against you. Do not hold them in your heart, but begin the life that follows life in innocence, all these wrongs forgiven.” He made the sign of subtraction again.

A statuesque girl spat; her tightly curled hair was the color of ripe raspberries. “What are you doing that for? Can’t you see she’s stiff? She’s dead, and she can’t hear a shaggy word you’re saying.” At the final phrase her voice cracked, and Silk realized that it was she whom he had heard swearing.

He gripped his beads more tightly and bent lower as he reached the effectual point in the liturgy of pardon. The sun beating down upon his neck might have been the burning iron hand of Twice-Headed Pas himself, crushing him to earth while ceaselessly demanding that he perfectly enunciate each hallowed word and execute every sacred rubric faultlessly. “In the name of all the gods, you are forgiven forever, my daughter. I speak here for Great Pas, for Divine Echidna, for Scalding Scylla…” Here it was allowable to halt and take a fresh breath, and Silk did so. “For Marvelous Molpe, for Tenebrous Tartaros, for Highest Hierax, for Thoughtful Thelxiepeia, for Fierce Phaea, and for Strong Sphigx. Also for all lesser gods.”

Briefly and inexplicably, the glaring sun might almost have been the swinging, smoking lampion in the Cock. Silk whispered, “The Outsider likewise forgives you, my daughter, for I speak here for him, too.”

After tracing one final sign of addition, he stood and turned toward the statuesque young woman with the raspberry hair; to his considerable relief, she was clothed. “Bring me something to cover her with, please. Her time in this place is over.”

Orchid was questioning the puffy-eyed brunette. “Is this her knife?”

“You ought to know.” Fearlessly, the brunette reached beneath the railing to pull the long dagger from the wound. “I don’t think so. She’d have showed it to me, most likely, and I’ve never seen it before.”

Crane came down the steps, stooped over the dead woman, and pressed his fingers to her wrist. After a second or two, he squatted and laid an ausculator to her side.

(We acknowledge this state we call death with so much reluctance, Silk thought, not for the first time. Surely it can’t be natural to us.)

Withdrawing the dagger had increased the seepage from the wound; under all the shrill hubbub, Silk could hear the dead woman’s blood dripping from the steps to the crumbling brick pavement of the courtyard, like the unsteady ticking of a broken clock.

Orchid was peering nearsightedly at the dagger. “It’s a man’s. A man called Cat.” Turning to face the courtyard, she shouted, “Shut up, all of you! Listen to me! Do any of you know a cull named Cat?”

A small, dark girl in a torn chemise edged closer. “I do. He comes here sometimes.”

“Was he here last night? How long since you’ve seen him?”

The girl shook her head. “I’m not sure, Orchid. A month, maybe.”

The corpulent woman waddled toward her, holding out the dagger, the younger women parting before her like so many ducklings before a duck. “You know where he lives? Who’s he get, usually?”

“No. Me. Orpine sometimes, if I’m busy.”

Crane stood up, glanced at Silk and shook his head, and put away his ausculator.

Blood’s bellow surprised them all. “What’s going on here?” Thick-bodied and a full head taller than most of the women, he strode into the courtyard with something of the air of a general coming onto a battlefield.

When Orchid did not answer, the raspberry-haired girl said wearily, “Orpine’s dead. She just killed herself.” She had a clean sheet under her arm, neatly folded.

“What for?” Blood demanded.

No one replied. The raspberry-haired girl shook out her sheet and passed a corner up to Crane. Together, they spread the sheet over the dead woman.

Silk put away his beads and went down the steps to the courtyard. Half to himself he muttered, “She didn’t—not forever. Not even as long as I.”

Orchid turned to look at him. “No, she didn’t. Now shut up.”

Musk had taken the dagger from her. After scrutinizing it himself, he held it out for Blood’s inspection. Orchid explained, “A cully they call Cat comes here sometimes. He must’ve given it to her, or left it behind in her room.”

Blood sneered. “Or she stole it from him.”

“My girls don’t steal!” As a tower long subverted by a hidden spring collapses, Orchid burst into tears; there was something terrible, Silk felt, in seeing that fat, indurated face contorted like a heartsick child’s. Blood slapped her twice, forehand and backhand, without effect, though both blows echoed from the walls of the courtyard.

“Don’t do that again,” Silk told him. “It won’t help her, and it may harm you.”

Ignoring him, Blood pointed to the still form beneath the sheet. “Somebody get that out of sight. You there. Chenille. You’re plenty big enough. Pick her up and carry her to her room.”

The raspberry-haired woman backed away, trembling, the roughed spots on each high cheekbone glaring and unreal.

“May I see that, please?” Deftly, Silk took the dagger from Musk. Its hilt was bleached bone; burned into the bone with a needle and hand-dyed, a scarlet cat strutted with a tiny black mouse in its jaws. The cat’s fiery tail circled the hilt. Following the puffy-eyed brunette’s example, Silk reached under the railing and retrieved his handkerchief from beneath the sheet. The slender, tapering blade was highly polished, but not engraved. “Nearly new,” he muttered. “Not terribly expensive, but not cheap either.”

Musk said, “Any fool can see that,” and took back the dagger.

“Patera.” Blood cleared his throat. “You were here. Probably you saw her do it.”

Silk’s mind was still on the dagger. “Do what?” he asked.

“Kill herself. Let’s get out of this sun.” With a hand on Silk’s elbow, Blood guided him into the spotted shade of the gallery, displacing a chattering circle of nearly naked women.

“No, I didn’t see it,” Silk said slowly. “I was inside, talking to Orchid.”

“That’s too bad. Maybe you want to think about it a little more. Maybe you saw it after all, through a window or something.”

Silk shook his head.

“You agree that this was a suicide, though, don’t you, Patera? Even if you didn’t see it yourself?” Blood’s tone made his threat obvious.

Silk leaned back against the spalled shiprock, sparing his broken ankle. “Her hand was still on the knife when I first saw her body.”

Blood smiled. “I like that. In that case, Patera, you agree that there’s no reason to report this.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want to if I were in your place.” To himself, Silk reluctantly admitted that he felt sure the dead woman had been no suicide, that the law required that her death by violence be reported to the authorities (though he had no illusions about the effort they would expend upon the death of such a woman), and that if he were somehow to find himself in Blood’s place he would leave it as rapidly as possible—though neither honor nor morality required him to say any of these things, since saying them would be futile and would unquestionably endanger the manteion. It was all perfectly reasonable and nicely reasoned; but as he surveyed it, he felt a surge of self-contempt.

“I think we understand each other, Patera. There are three or four witnesses I could produce if I needed them—people who saw her do it. But you know how that is.”

Silk forced himself to nod his agreement; he had never realized that even passive assent to crime required so much resolution. “I believe so. Three or four of these unhappy young women, you mean. Their testimony would not carry much weight, however; and they would be apt to presume upon your obligation afterward.”

Under Musk’s direction, a burly man with less hair even than Blood had picked up the dead woman’s body, wrapping it in the sheet. Silk saw him carry it to the door beyond the entrance to Orchid’s office, which Musk opened for him.

“That’s right. I couldn’t have put it better myself.” Blood lowered his voice. “We’ve been having way too much trouble here as it is. The Guards have been in here three times in the past month, and they’re starting to talk about closing us down. Tonight I’ll have to come up with some way to get rid of it.”

“To dispose of that poor woman’s body, you mean. You know, I’ve been terribly slow about this, I suppose because these aren’t the sort of people I’m accustomed to. She was Orpine, wasn’t she? One of these women mentioned it. She must have had the room next to Orchid’s office. Musk and another man have taken her body there, at any rate.”

“Yeah, that was Orpine. She used to help out Orchid now and then, running the place.” Blood turned away.

Silk watched him stride across the courtyard. Blood had called himself a thief the night before; it struck Silk now that he had been wrong—had been lying, in fact, in order to romanticize what he really did, though he would steal, no doubt, if given an opportunity to do so without risk; he was the sort of person who would consider theft clever, and would be inclined to boast of it.

But the fact was that Blood was simply a tradesman—a tradesman whose trades happened to be forbidden by law, and were inescapably colored by that. That he himself, Patera Silk, did not like such men probably meant only that he did not understand them as well as his own vocation required.

He strove to reorder his thoughts, shifting Blood (and himself as well) out of the criminal category. Blood was a tradesman, or a merchant of sorts; and one of his employees had been killed, almost certainly not by him or even under his direction. Silk recalled the pictured cat on the dagger; it reminded him of the engraving on the little needler, and he took it out to re-examine. There were golden hyacinths on each ivory grip because it had been made for a woman called Hyacinth.

He dropped it back into his pocket.

Blood’s name … If the dagger had been made for him, the picture on its hilt would have shown blood, presumably: a bloody dagger of the same design, perhaps, or something of that sort. The cat had held a mouse in its jaws, and mice thus caught by cats bled, of course; but he could recall no blood in the picture, and the captive mouse had been quite small. He was no artist, but after putting himself in the place of the one who had drawn and tinted that picture, he decided that the mouse had been included mostly to indicate that the cat was in fact a cat, and not some other cat-like animal, a panther for example. The mouse had been a kind of badge, in other words.

The cat itself had been scarlet, but hardly with blood; even a large mouse would not have bled as much as that, and the cat had presumably been tinted to indicate that it was somehow burning. Its upright tail had actually been tipped with fire.

He took a step away from the wall and was punished by a flash of pain. On one knee, he pulled down his stocking and unwound Crane’s wrapping, then flogged the guiltless wall he had just deserted.

When the wrapping was back in place, he went into the room next to Orchid’s cramped office. It was larger than he had expected, and its furnishings were by no means devoid of taste. After glancing at a shattered hand mirror and a blue dressing gown he picked up from the floor, he uncovered the dead woman’s face.

He found Blood in a private supper room with Musk and the burly man who had carried Orpine’s body, discussing the advisability of keeping the yellow house closed that night.

Uninvited, Silk pulled up a chair and sat down. “May I interrupt? I have a question and a suggestion. Neither one should take long.”

Musk gave him an icy stare.

Blood said, “They’d better not.”

“The question first. What’s become of Doctor Crane? He was out there with us a moment ago, but when I looked for him after you left I couldn’t find him.”

When Blood did not answer, the burly man said, “He’s checking out the girls so they don’t give anybody anything he hasn’t got already. You know what I mean, Patera?”

Silk nodded. “I do indeed. But where does he do it? Is there some sort of infirmary—”

“He goes to their rooms. They got to undress and wait in their rooms until he gets there. When he’s through with them, they can go out if they want to.”

“I see.” Silk stroked his cheek, his eyes thoughtful.

“If you’re looking for him, he’s probably upstairs. He always does the upstairs first.”

“Fine,” Blood said impatiently. “Crane’s gone back to work. Why shouldn’t he? You’d better do the same, Patera. I still want this place exorcised, and in fact it needs it now more than ever. Get busy.”

“I am about my work,” Silk told him. “This is it, you see, or at least it’s a part of it, and I believe that I can help you. You spoke of disposing of that poor girl’s—of Orpine’s—body. I suggest that we bury it.”

Blood shrugged. “I’ll see about doing something—she won’t be found, and she won’t be missed. Don’t worry about it.”

“I mean that we should inter it as other women’s bodies are interred,” Silk explained patiently. “There must be a memorial sacrifice for her at my manteion first, of course. Tomorrow’s Scylsday, and I can combine the memorial service with our weekly Scylsday sacrifice. We’ve a man in the neighborhood who has a decent wagon. We’ve used him before. If none of these women are willing to wash and dress their friend’s body, I can provide one who will take care of that as well.”

Grinning, Blood thumped Silk on the arm. “And if some shaggy hoppy sticks his nose in, why we didn’t do anything irregular. We had an augur and a funeral, and buried the poor girl in respectable fashion—he’s intruding on our grief. You’re a real help, Patera. When can you get your man here?”

“As soon as I return to my manteion, I suppose, which will be as soon as I’ve exorcised this house.”

Blood shook his head. “I want to get her out of here. What about that sibyl I talked to yesterday? Couldn’t she get him?”

Silk nodded.

“Good.” Blood turned to the handsome young man beside him. “Musk, go down to the manteion on Sun Street and ask for Maytera Marble—”

Silk interrupted. “She’ll probably be in the cenoby. The front door’s on Silver Street, or you could go through the garden and knock at the back.”

“And tell her there’s going to be a funeral tomorrow. Have her get this man with the wagon for you. What’s his name, Patera?”

“Loach.”

“Get Loach and his wagon, or if he’s not available, get somebody else. You don’t know what happened to Orpine. A doctor’s looked at her, and she’s dead, and Patera here is going to take care of the funeral for us, and that’s all you know. Get the woman, too. I don’t think any of these sluts could face up to it.”

“Moorgrass,” Silk put in.

“Get her. You and the woman ride in the wagon so you can show this cully Loach where it is. If the woman has to have anything to work with, see that she brings it with her. Now get going.”

Musk nodded and hurried away.

“Meantime you can get back to your exorcism, Patera. Have you started yet?”

“No. I’d hardly arrived when this happened, and I want to find out a great deal more about the manifestations they have experienced here.” Silk paused, stroking his cheek. “I said that I’d just arrived, and that is true; but I’ve had time enough to make one mistake already. I told Orchid that I didn’t care what the devils—or perhaps I should say the devil, because she spoke as though there were only one—had been up to. I said it because it was what they taught us to say in the schola, but I believe it may be an error in this case. I should speak with Orchid again.”

The burly man grunted. “I can tell you. Mostly it’s breakin’ mirrors.”

“Really?” Silk leaned forward. “I would never have guessed it. What else?”

“Rippin’ up the girls’ clothes.”

The burly man looked toward Blood, who said, “Sometimes they’re not as friendly as we’d like them to be to the bucks. The girls aren’t, I mean. A couple times one’s talked crazy, and naturally the buck didn’t like it. Maybe it was just nerves, but the girls got hurt.”

“And we don’t like that,” the burly man said. “I got both those culls pretty good, but it’s bad for business.”

“You have no idea what may be doing this?”

“Devils. That’s what everybody says.” The burly man looked toward Blood again. “Jefe?”

“Ask Orchid,” Blood told Silk. “She’ll know. I only know what she tells me, and if an exorcism makes everybody feel better…” He shrugged.

Silk rose. “I’ll speak to Orchid if I can. I realize she’s upset, but I may be able to console her. That, too, is a part of my work. Eventually, I’d like a talk with Chenille as well. That’s the tall woman with the fiery hair, isn’t it? Chenille?”

Blood nodded. “She’s probably gone by now, but she’ll be back around dinner. Orchid’s got a walk-up upstairs over the big room out front.”

Chenille opened the door to Orchid’s rooms and showed Silk in. Still wearing the pink peignoir, Orchid was sitting on a wide green-velvet couch in the big sellaria, her hard, heavy face as composed as it had been when they had talked in the cramped office downstairs.

Chenille waved toward a chair. “Have a seat, Patera.” She herself sat down next to Orchid and put her arm around her shoulders. “He says Blood sent him up to talk to us. I said all right, but he’ll probably come back later if you’d rather.”

“I’m fine,” Orchid told her.

Looking at her, Silk could believe it; Chenille herself seemed more in need of solace.

“What do you want, Patera?” Orchid’s voice was harsher than he remembered. “If you’re here to tell me how she’s gone to Mainframe and all that, save it till later. If you still want somebody to show you around my place, Chenille can do it.”

There was a glass on the wall to the left of the couch. Silk was watching it nervously, but no floating face had yet appeared. “I’d like to speak with you in private for a few minutes, that’s all.”

To Chenille he added, “I was going to say that it would give you a chance to get dressed—so many of you here are not—but I see that you’re dressed already.”

“Go out,” Orchid said. And then, “It was nice of you to worry about me, Chenille. I won’t forget this.”

The tall girl rose, smoothing her skirt. “I was going to look for a new gown, before this happened.”

“I have to speak to you, too,” Silk told her, “and this should only take a few minutes. You can wait for me, if you prefer. Otherwise, I would appreciate it very much if you came to my manteion this evening.”

“I’ll be in my room.”

Silk nodded. “That will be better. Please pardon me for not rising; I injured my ankle last night.” He watched Chenille as she went out, waiting until she had closed the door behind her.

“Nice-looking, isn’t she?” Orchid said. “Only she’d bring in more if she wasn’t so tall. Maybe you like them that way. Or is it the hips?”

“What I like hardly matters.”

“Good hips, nice waist for a girl as big as she is, and the biggest boobs in the place. Sure you won’t change your mind?”

Silk shook his head. “I’m surprised you didn’t mention her kind disposition. There must be a great deal of good in her, or she wouldn’t have come here to comfort you.”

Orchid stood up. “You want a drink, Patera? I’ve got wine and whatnot in the cabinet here.”

“No, thank you.”

“I do.” Orchid opened the cabinet and filled a small goblet with straw-colored brandy.

“She seemed quite depressed,” Silk ventured. “She must have been a close friend of Orpine’s.”

“Chenille’s a real rust bucket, to hand you the lily, Patera, and they’re always pretty far down anytime they’re straight.”

Silk snapped his fingers. “I knew I’d heard that name before.”

Orchid resumed her seat, swirled her brandy, inhaled its aroma, and balanced the goblet precariously on the arm of the couch. “Somebody told you about her, huh?”

“A man I know happened to mention her, that’s all. It doesn’t matter.” He waved the question away. “Aren’t you going to drink that?” After he had spoken, he realized that Blood had asked the same question of him the previous night.

Orchid shook her head. “I don’t drink until the last buck’s gone. That’s my rule, and I’m going to stick to it, even today. I just want to know it’s there. Did you come here to talk about Chen, Patera?”

“No. Can we be overheard here? I ask for your sake, Orchid, not for my own.”

She shook her head again.

“I’ve heard that houses like this often have listening devices.”

“Not this one. And if it did, I wouldn’t have any in here.”

Silk indicated the glass. “The monitor doesn’t have to appear to overhear what is said in a room, or so one’s given me to understand. Does the monitor of that glass report to you alone?”

Orchid had the brandy goblet again, swirling the straw-colored fluid until it climbed the goblet to the rim. “That glass has never worked for as long as I’ve owned this house, Patera. I wish it did.”

“I see.” Silk limped across the room to the glass and clapped his hands loudly. The room’s lights brightened, but no monitor answered his summons. “We have a glass like this in Patera Pike’s bedroom—I mean in the room that he once occupied. I should try to sell it. I would think that even an inoperable glass must be worth something.”

“What is it you want with me, Patera?”

Silk returned to his chair. “What I really want is to find some more tactful way of saying this. I haven’t found it. Orpine was your daughter, wasn’t she?”

Orchid shook her head.

“Are you going to deny her even in death?”

He had not known what to expect: tears, or hysteria, or nothing—and had felt himself ready for them all. But now Orchid’s face appeared to be coming apart, to be losing all cohesion, as if her mouth and her bruised and swollen cheeks and her hard hazel eyes no longer obeyed a common will. He wanted her to hide that terrible face in her hands; she did not, and he turned his own away.

There was a window on the other side of the couch. He went to it, parted its heavy drapes, and threw it open. It overlooked Lamp Street, and though he would have called the day hot, the breeze that entered Orchid’s sellaria seemed cool and fresh.

“How did you know?” Orchid asked.

He limped back to his chair. “That’s what’s wrong with this place, not enough open windows. Or one thing, anyhow.” Wanting to blow his nose, he took out his handkerchief, saw Orpine’s blood on it just in time, and put it away hastily.

“How did you know, Patera?”

“Don’t any of the others know? Or at least guess?”

Orchid’s face was still out of control, afflicted with odd, almost spastic twitchings. “Some of them have probably thought about it. I don’t think she ever told anybody, and I didn’t treat her any better than the rest.” Orchid gulped air. “Worse, whenever there was any difference. I made her help me, and I was always yelling at her.”

“I’m not going to ask you how this happened; it’s none of my affair.”

“Thanks, Patera.” Orchid sounded as though she meant it. “Her father took her. I couldn’t have, not then. But he said—he said—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Silk repeated.

She had not heard. “Then I found her on the street, you know? She was thirteen, only she said fifteen and I believed her. I didn’t know it was her.” Orchid laughed, and her laughter was worse than tears.

“There’s really no need for you to torment yourself like this.”

“I’m not. I’ve been wanting to tell somebody about it ever since Sphigx was a cub. You already know, so it can’t do any harm. Besides, she’s—she’s—”

“Gone,” Silk supplied.

Orchid shook her head. “Dead. The only one alive, and I’ll never have any more now. You know how places like this work, Patera?”

“No, and I suppose I should.”

“It’s pretty much like a boarding house. Some places, the girls are pretty much like in the Alambrera. They don’t hardly ever let them out, and they take all their money. I was in a place like that once for almost two years.”

“I’m glad that you escaped.”

Orchid shook her head again. “I didn’t. I got sick and they kicked me out—it was the best thing that ever happened to me. What I wanted to say, Patera, is I’m not like that here. My girls rent their rooms, and they can go anytime. About the only thing they can’t do is bring in a buck without his paying. Are you with me?”

“I’m not sure I am,” Silk admitted.

“Like if they meet him outside. If they bring him back here, he has to pay the house. So do those that come here looking. Tonight, we’ll have maybe fifty or a hundred come. They pay the house, and then we show them all the girls that aren’t busy, downstairs in the big room.”

“Suppose that I were to come,” Silk said slowly. “Not dressed as I am now, but in ordinary clothes. And I wanted a particular woman.”

“Chenille.”

Silk shook his head. “Another one.”

“How about Poppy? Little girl, pretty dark.”

“All right,” Silk said. “Suppose I wanted Poppy, but she didn’t want to take me to her room?”

“Then she wouldn’t have to,” Orchid said virtuously, “and you’d have to pick somebody else. Only if she did that very often, I’d kick her out.”

“I see.”

“Only she wouldn’t, Patera. Not to you. She’d jump at you. Any of these girls would.”

Orchid smiled, and Silk, confronted by the effect of her bruises, wanted to strike Blood. Hyacinth’s azoth was under his tunic—he thrust the thought away.

Orchid had seen and misinterpreted his expression; her smile vanished. “I didn’t get to finish telling you about Orpine, Patera. All right if I go on about her?”

Silk said, “Certainly, if you wish.”

“I found her on the street, like I told you. That’s something I do sometimes, go around looking for somebody if I’ve got an empty room. She said her name was Pine—you don’t hardly ever get a straight name out of them—and she was fifteen, and it never hit me. It just didn’t.”

“I understand,” Silk said.

“Somebody dusted her dial, you know what I mean? So I said, listen, lots of girls live with me, and nobody lays a finger on them. You come along, and we’ll give you a good hot meal, free, and you’ll see. So she said she didn’t have the rent money, like they always do, and I said I’d trust her for the first month. That’s what I always say.

“After she’d been here nearly a year, she ducked out of the big room. I said what’s wrong, and she said her father had come in and he’d made her do certain things for him when she was little, and that was why she’d run out on him. You know what I mean, Patera?”

Silk nodded, his fists clenched.

“She told me his name, and I went out and looked at him again, and it was him. So then I knew who she was, and by and by I told her all about it.” Orchid smiled; it seemed strange to Silk that the identical word should indicate her earlier expression as well.

“I’m glad I did it now. Real glad. I told her not to expect any favors, and I didn’t give her any. Or at least, not very often. What I did, though—what I did—”

Silk waited patiently, his eyes averted.

“What I did was start having cake on the birthdays, so we could have it on hers. And I called her Orpine instead of Pine, and pretty soon everybody did.” Orchid daubed at her eyes with the hem of the pink peignoir. “All right, that’s it. Who told you?”

“Your faces, to begin with.”

Orchid nodded. “She was beautiful. Everybody said so.”

“Not when I saw her, because there was something in her face that didn’t belong there. Still it struck me that her face was a younger version of your own, although that could have been coincidence or my imagination. A moment later I heard her name—Orpine. It sounds a great deal like yours, and it seemed to me that it was such a name as a woman named Orchid might choose, especially if she had lost an earlier daughter. Did you? You don’t have to tell me about it.”

Orchid nodded.

“Because orpines, which only sound like orchids, have another name. Country people call them live-forevers; and when I thought of that other name, I said, more or less to myself, that she had not; and you agreed. Then when Blood suggested that she might have stolen the dagger that killed her, you burst into tears and I knew. But to tell you the truth, I was already nearly certain.”

Orchid nodded slowly. “Thanks, Patera. Is that all? I’d like to be alone for a little while.”

Silk rose. “I understand. I wouldn’t have disturbed you if I hadn’t wanted to let you know that Blood’s agreed that your daughter should be buried with the rites of the Chapter. Her body will be washed and dressed—laid out, as the people who do it say—and carried to my manteion, on Sun Street. We’ll hold her service in the morning.”

Orchid stared at him incredulously. “Blood’s paying for this?”

“No.” Silk actually had not considered the matter of expenses, though he knew only too well that some of those connected with the final offices of the dead could not be avoided. His mind whirled before he recalled Blood’s two cards, which he had set aside for the Scylsday sacrifice in any event. “Or rather, yes. Blood gave me—gave my manteion, I should say, a generous gift earlier. We’ll use that.”

“No, not Blood.” Orchid rose heavily. “I’ll pay it, Patera. How much?”

Silk compelled himself to be scrupulously honest. “I should tell you that we often bury the poor, and sometimes they have no money at all. The generous gods have always seen to it—”

“I’m not poor!” Orchid flushed an angry red. “I been pretty flat sometimes, sure. Hasn’t everybody? But I’m not flat now, and this’s my sprat. The other girl, I had to—Oh, shag you, you shaggy butcher! How much for a good one?”

Here was opportunity. Not merely to save the manteion the cost of Orpine’s burial, but to pay for earlier graves bought but never paid for; Silk jettisoned his scruples to seize the moment. “If it’s really not inconvenient, twenty cards?”

“Let’s go into the bedroom, Patera. That’s where the book is. Come on.”

She had opened the door and vanished into the next room before he could protest. Through the doorway he could see a rumpled bed, a cluttered vanity table, and a chaise longue half buried in gowns.

“Come on in.” Orchid laughed, and this time there was real merriment in the sound. “I bet you’ve never been in a woman’s bedroom before, have you?”

“Once or twice.” Hesitantly, Silk stepped through the doorway, looking twice at the bed to assure himself that no one lay dying there. Presumably Orchid thought of it as a place for rest and lust, and possibly even for love. Silk could only too easily imagine his next visit, in ten years or twenty. All beds became deathbeds at last.

“Your mama’s. You’ve gone into your mama’s bedroom, I bet.” Orchid plumped herself down before the vanity table, swept a dozen colored bottles and jars aside, and elevated an ormolu inkstand to the place of honor before her.

“Oh, yes. Many times.”

“And looked through her things when she was out of the house. I know how you young bucks do.” There were twenty bedraggled peacock quills at least wilting in the rings of the ormolu inkstand. Orchid selected one, then wrinkled her nose at it.

“I can sharpen that for you, if you like.” Silk got out his pen case.

“Would you? Thanks.” Revolving on the vanity stool, she handed the peacock quill to him. “Did you ever try on her underwear?”

Silk looked up from the quill, surprised. “No, I never even thought of it. I did open a drawer once and peep into it, though. I felt so bad about it that I told her the next day. Do you have something to catch the shavings?”

“Don’t worry about them. You had a nice mama, huh? Is she still alive?”

Silk shook his head. “Would you prefer a broad nib?” Orchid did not reply, and he, contemplating the splayed and frowzy one before him, decided to give her one anyway. A broad nib used more ink, but she would not mind that; and broad nibs lasted longer.

“Mine died when I was little. I guess she was nice, but I really don’t remember her very well. When somebody’s dead, Patera, can they come back and see people they care about, if they want to?”

“It depends on what is meant by see.” With the slender blade of the long-handled penknife, Silk sliced yet another whitish sliver from the nib. He was accustomed to goose and crow quills; this was larger than either.

“Talk to them. Visit with them a while, or just let them see you.”

“No,” Silk said.

“Just no? Why not?”

“Hierax forbids it.” He returned the quill to her and snapped his pen case shut. “If he did not, the living would live at the direction of the dead, repeating their mistakes again and again.”

“I used to wonder why she never came to see me,” Orchid said. “You know, I haven’t thought about that in years, and now I’ll think about Orpine, hoping that Hierax will let her out once or twice so I can see her again. Have a seat there on the bed, Patera. You’re making me jittery.”

Reluctantly, Silk smoothed the canary-colored sheet and sat down.

“A minute ago, you said twenty cards. That’s about as cheap as they come, I bet.”

“It would be modest,” Silk admitted, “but certainly not contemptible.”

“All right, what about fifty? What would she get for that much?”

“Gods!” He considered. “I can’t be absolutely sure. A better sacrifice and a much better casket. Flowers. A formal bier with draperies. Perhaps a—”

“I’ll make it a hundred,” Orchid announced. “It will make me feel better. A hundred cards, and everything the best.” Orchid plunged her quill into the inkwell.

Silk opened his mouth, closed it again, and put his pen case away.

“And you can say that I was her mother. I want you to say it. What do you call that thing where they stand up and talk in the manteion?”

“The ambion,” Silk said.

“Right. I never told them here, because I knew—we both knew—what sort of things the other girls would say about her, and me too, behind our backs. You tell them tomorrow. From the ambion. And put it on her stone.”

Silk nodded. “I will.”

With florid sweeps of her quill, Orchid was writing the draft. “Tomorrow, right? When’ll it be?”

“I had thought at eleven.”

“I’ll be there, Patera.” Orchid’s face hardened. “We all will.”

Silk was still shaking his head as he closed Orchid’s door behind him. Chenille was waiting in the hall outside; he wondered whether she had been eavesdropping, and if so how much she had heard.

She said, “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Not here.”

“I waited in my room. You never came, so I came over here to see what was up.”

“Of course.” Orchid’s draft for a hundred cards was still in his hand; he folded it once and thrust it into the the pocket of his robe. “I told you I’d be there in a few minutes, didn’t I? We were a great deal longer than that, I’m afraid. I can only apologize.”

“You still want to talk in my room?”

Silk hesitated, then nodded. “We must speak privately, and I’d like to see where it is.”