Nightside the Long Sun

NEW WEAPONS

A whole whorl swam beneath Silk’s flying, beclouded eyes—highland and tableland, jungle and dry scrub, savannah and pampa. The plaything of a hundred idle winds, buffeted yet at peace, he sailed over them all, dizzy with his own height and speed, his shoulder nudged by storm cloud, the solitary Flier three score leagues below him a darting dragonfly with wings of lace.

A black dragonfly that vanished into blacker cloud, into distant voices and the odor of carrion …

Silk choked on his own spew and spat; terror rose from the wheeling scene to foot him like a falcon, its icy talons in his vitals. He had blinked, and in that single blink the whorl had rolled over like a wind-tumbled basket or a wave-tossed barrel. The drifting skylands were up and the uneven, unyielding surface on which he lay, down. His head throbbed and spun, and an arm and both legs burned.

He sat up.

His mouth was wet with slime, his black robe discolored and stinking. He wiped them clumsily with numbed hands, then wiped his hand on his robe and spat again. The gray stone of the battlement had been crowding his left shoulder. The bird he had fought, the “white-headed one” of Mucor’s warning, was nowhere to be seen.

Or perhaps, he thought, he had only dreamed of a terrible bird. He stood, staggered, and fell to his knees.

His eyes closed of themselves. He had dreamed it all, his tortured mind writhing among nightmares—the horrible bird, the horned beasts with their incandescent stares, the miserable mad girl, his dark rope reaching blindly again and again for new heights, the silent forest, the burly burglar with his hired donkeys, and the dead man sprawled beneath the swinging, hanging lamp. But he was awake now, awake at last, and the night was spent—awake and kneeling beside his own bed in the manse on Sun Street. It was shadeup and today was Sphigxday; already he should be chanting Stabbing Sphigx’s morning prayer.

“O divine lady of the swords, of the gathering armies, of the swords…”

He fell forward, retching, his hands on the still-warm, rounded tiles.

The second time he was wiser, not attempting to stand until he was confident that he could do so without falling. Before he gained his feet, while he lay trembling beside the battlement, dawn faded and winked out. It was night again, Phaesday night once more—an endless night that had not yet ended and might never end. Rain, he thought, might wash him clean and clear his head, and so he prayed for rain, mostly to Phaea and Pas, but to Scylla as well, remembering all the while how many men (men better than himself) were imploring the gods as he did, and for better reasons: how long had they been praying, offering such small sacrifices as they could, washing Great Pas’s images in orchards of dying trees and in fields of stunted corn?

It did not rain, or even thunder.

Excited voices drifted to him from somewhere far away; he caught the name Hierax repeated over and over. Someone or something had died.

“Hierax,” Feather had replied at the palaestra a week or two before, fumbling after some fact associated with the familiar name of the God of Death. “Hierax is right in the middle.”

“In the middle of Pas and Echidna’s sons, Feather? Or of all their children?”

“Of their whole family, Patera. There’s only the two boys in it.” Feather, also, was one of a pair of brothers. “Hierax and Tartaros.”

Feather had waited fearfully for correction, but he, Patera Silk, had smiled and nodded.

“Tartaros is the oldest and Hierax is the youngest,”

Feather had continued, encouraged.

Maytera’s cubit stick tapped her lectern. “The older, Feather. And the younger. You said yourself that there were only two.”

“Hierax…” said someone far below the other side of the battlement.

Silk stood up. He head still throbbed, and his legs were stiff; but he did not feel as though he were about to gag again. The chimneys (they all looked the same now) and the beckoning trapdoor seemed an impossible distance away. Still reeling and dizzy, he embraced a merlon with both arms and peered over the battlement. As if it belonged to someone else, he noted that his right forearm was oozing blood onto the gray stones.

Forty cubits and more below, three men and two women were standing in a rough circle on the terrace, all of them looking down at something. For a slow half minute at least, Silk could not be certain what it was. A third woman pushed one of the others aside, then turned away as if in disgust. There was more talk until one of the armored guards arrived with a lamp.

The bird, Mucor’s white-headed one, lay dead upon the flagstones, appearing smaller than Silk could have imagined, its unequal wings half spread, its long white neck bent back at an unnatural angle. He had killed it. Or rather, it had killed itself.

One of the men around the dead bird glanced upward, saw Silk watching him, pointed, and shouted something Silk could not understand. Rather too late (or so he feared), he waved as though he were a member of the household and retreated up the steep slope of the roof.

The trapdoor opened upon the dim and lofty attic he had glimpsed earlier, a cobwebbed cavern more than half filled with musty furniture and splintering crates. Feeble lights kindled at the muted clank of his foot upon the first iron step; he had hardly descended to the second when one winked out. It was a promising place in which to conceal himself, but it would no doubt be the first to be searched should the man on the terrace raise the alarm. Silk had rejected it by the time he reached the bottom of the spiraling steps, and with a pang of regret hurried straight to the wider wooden stair and ran down them to the upper floor of the original villa.

Here a narrow, tapestry-covered door opened onto a wide and luxuriously furnished corridor not far from a balustraded staircase up which cultured voices floated. A fat, formally dressed man sat in an elaborate red velvet and gilt armchair a few steps from the top of the staircase. His arms rested on a rosewood table, and his head upon his folded arms; he snored softly as Silk passed, jerked to wakefulness, stared uncomprehendingly at Silk’s black robe, and lowered his head to his arms again.

The stair was thickly carpeted, its steps broad, and its slant gentle. It terminated in a palatial reception hall, in which five men dressed much like the sleeper stood deep in conversation. Several were holding tumblers, and none seemed alarmed. Some distance beyond them, the reception hall ended with wide double doors—doors that stood open at present, so that the soft autumn night itself appeared as a species of skylit hanging in Blood’s hall. Beyond any question, Silk decided, those doors represented the principal entrance to the villa; the portico he had studied from the wall would be on the other side; and indeed when he had surveyed the scene below him for a moment—not leaning across the balustrade as he had so unwisely leaned across the battlement to stare down at the flaccid form of the white-headed one, but from the opposite side of the corridor, with his back against the nude, half again life-sized statue of some minor goddess—he could just make out the ghostly outlines of the pillars.

Unbidden, the manteion’s familiar, fire-crowned altar rose before him as he stared at the open doors: the altar, the manse, the palaestra, and the shady arbor where he had sometimes chatted too long with Maytera Marble. Suppose that he were to walk down this staircase quite normally? Stroll through that hall, nodding and smiling to anyone who glanced toward him. Would any of them stop him, or call for guards? It seemed unlikely.

His own hot blood trickling down his right arm wet his fingers and dripped onto Blood’s costly carpet. Shaking his head, Silk strode swiftly past the stair and seated himself in the matching red armchair on the other side. As long as his arm bled, he could be tracked by his blood: down the spiral stair from the roof, down the attic stair, and along this corridor.

Parting his robe, he started a tear above the hem of his tunic with his teeth and ripped away a strip.

Could not the blood trail be turned to his advantage? Silk rose and walked rapidly along the corridor, flexing his wrist and clenching his right hand to increase the bleeding, and entered the south wing by a short flight of steps; there he halted for a moment to wind the strip about his wound and knot it with his teeth just as Gib, the big man in the Cock, had. When he had satisfied himself that it would remain in place, he retraced his steps, passing the chair in which he had sat, the stairhead, the sleeper, and the narrow tapestry-covered door leading to the attic. Here, beyond paired icons of the minor deities Ganymedia and Catamitus, wide and widely spaced doors alternated with elaborately framed mirrors and amphorae overfilled with hothouse roses.

As Silk approached the entrance to the north wing, an officer in the uniform of the Guard emerged from an archway at the end of the corridor. The door nearest Silk stood half open; he stepped inside and shut it softly behind him.

He found himself facing a windowless pentagonal drawing room furnished in magnificent chryselephantine. For a moment he waited with his back to the corridor door, listening as he had listened so often that night. When he heard nothing, he crossed the thick carpet and opened one of the drawing room’s ivory-encrusted doors.

This was a boudoir, larger and even more oddly shaped. There were wardrobes, two chairs, a rather tawdry shrine of Kypris whose smoldering thurible filled the room with the sweetness of frankincense, and a white dressing table before a glass whose pearlescent glow appeared to intensify as he entered. When he shut the door behind him, a swirl of colors danced across the glass. He fell to his knees.

“Sir?”

Looking up, Silk saw that the glass held only the gray face of a monitor. He traced the sign of addition. “Wasn’t there a god? I saw…”

“I am no god, sir, merely the monitor of this terminal. What may I do to serve you, sir? Would you care to critique your digitally enhanced image?”

Disconcerted, Silk stood. “No. I—No, thank you.” He struggled to recall how Auk had addressed the monitor in his glass. “I’d like to speak to a friend, if it isn’t too much trouble, my son.” That had not been it, surely.

The floating face appeared to nod. “The friend’s name, please? I will attempt it.”

“Auk.”

“And this Auk lives where?”

“In the Orilla. Do you know where that is?”

“Indeed I do, sir. However, there are … fifty-four Auks resident there. Can you supply the street?”

“No, I’m afraid I have no idea.” Suddenly weary, Silk drew out the dressing table’s somewhat soiled little stool and sat down. “I’m sorry to have put you to so much trouble. But if you’re—”

“There is an Auk in the Orilla with whom my master has spoken several times,” the monitor interrupted. “No doubt he is the Auk you want. I will attempt to locate him for you.”

“No,” Silk said. “This Auk lives in what used to be a shop. So it must be on a shopping street, I suppose, with a lot of other stores and so on. Or at least on a street that used to have them.” Remembering it, he recalled the thunder of the cartwheels. “A street paved with cobblestones. Does that help?”

“Yes. That is the Auk with whom my master speaks, sir. Let us see whether he is at home.”

The monitor’s face faded, replaced by Auk’s disordered bed and jar of slops. Soon the image swelled and distorted, becoming oddly rounded. Silk saw the heavy wooden chair from which he had shriven Auk and beside which he had knelt when Auk shrived him. He found it heartening, somehow, to know that the chair was still there.

“I fear that Auk is unavailable, sir. May I leave a message with my similitude?”

“I—yes.” Silk stroked his cheek. “Ask him, please, to tell Auk that I appreciate his help very, very much, and that if nothing happens to me it will be my great pleasure to tell Maytera Mint how kind he was. Tell him, too, that he’s specified only one meritorious act thus far, while the penance he laid upon me called for two or three—for two at least. Ask him to let me know what the others should be.” Too late, it occurred to Silk that Auk had asked that his name not be mentioned to the handsome boy who had spoken though Blood’s glass. “Now then, my son. You referred to your master. Who is that?”

“Blood, sir. Your host.”

“I see. Am I, by any chance, in Blood’s private quarters now?”

“No, sir. These are my mistress’s chambers.”

“Will you tell Blood about the message I left for—for that man who lives in the Orilla?”

The monitor nodded gravely. “Certainly, sir, if he inquires.”

“I see.” A sickening sense of failure decended upon Silk. “Then please tell Auk, also, where I was when I tried to speak to him, and warn him to be careful.”

“I shall, sir. Will that be all?”

Silk’s head was in his hands. “Yes. And thank you. No.” He straightened up. “I need a place to hide, a good place, and weapons.”

“If I may say so, sir,” remarked the monitor, “you require a proper dressing more than either. With respect, sir, you are dripping on our carpet.”

Lifting his right arm, Silk saw that it was true; blood had already soaked through the strip of black cloth he had torn from his tunic a few minutes earlier. Crimson rivulets trickled toward his elbow.

“You will observe, sir, that this room has two doors, in addition to that through which you entered. The one to your left opens upon the balneum. My mistress’s medicinal supplies are there, I believe. As to—”

Silk had risen so rapidly that he had knocked over the stool. Darting through the left-hand door, he heard nothing more.

The balneum was larger than he had anticipated, with a jade tub more than big enough for the naked goddess at the head of the staircase and a separate water closet. A sizable cabinet held a startling array of apothecary bottles, an olla of violet salve that Silk recognized as a popular aseptic, a roll of gauze, and gauze pads of various sizes. A small pair of scissors cut away the blood-soaked strip; he smeared the ragged wound that the white-headed one’s beak had left in his forearm with the violet salve, and at the second try managed to bandage it effectively. As he ruefully took stock of his ruined tunic, he discovered that the bird’s talons had raked his chest and abdomen. It was almost a relief to wash and salve the long, bloody scratches, on which he could employ both his hands.

Yellowish encrustations were forming on his robe where he had wiped away his spew. He took it off and washed it as thoroughly as he could in the lavabo, wrung it out, smoothed it as well as he could, pressed it between two dry towels, and put it back on. Inspecting his appearance in a mirror, he decided that he might well pass a casual examination in a dim light.

Returning to the boudoir, he strewed what he took to be face powder over the clotted blood on the carpet.

The monitor watched him, unperturbed. “That is most interesting, sir.”

“Thank you.” Silk shut the powder box and returned it to the dressing table.

“Does the powder possess cleansing properties? I was unaware of it.”

Silk shook his head. “Not that I know of. I’m only masking these, so visitors won’t be unsettled.”

“Very shrewd, sir.”

Silk shrugged. “If I could think of something better, I’d do it. When I came in, you said that you weren’t a god. I knew you weren’t. We had a glass in the—in a palaestra I attended.”

“Would you like to speak to someone there, sir?”

“Not now. But I was privileged to use that glass once, and it struck me then—I suppose it struck all of us, and I remember some of us talking about it one evening—that the glass looked a great deal like a Sacred Window. Except for its size, of course; all Sacred Windows are eight cubits by eight. Are you familiar with them?”

“No, sir.”

Silk righted the stool and sat down. “There’s another difference, too. Sacred Windows don’t have monitors.”

“That is unfortunate, sir.”

“Indeed.” Silk stroked his cheek with two fingers. “I should tell you, then, that the immortal gods appear at times in the Sacred Windows.”

“Ah!”

“Yes, my son. I’ve never seen one, and most people—those who aren’t augurs or sibyls, particularly—can’t see the gods at all. Although they frequently hear the voice of the god, they see only a swirl of color.”

The monitor’s face flushed brick red. “Like this, sir?”

“No. Not at all like that. I was going to say that as I understand it, those people who can see the gods first see the swirling colors as well. When the theophany begins, the colors are seen. Then the god appears. And then the colors reappear briefly as the god vanishes. All this was set down in circumstantial detail by the Devoted Caddis, nearly two centuries ago. In the course of a long life, he’d witnessed the theophanies of Echidna, Tartaros, and Scylla, and finally that of Pas. He called the colors he’d seen the Holy Hues.”

“Fascinating, sir. I fear, however, that it has little to do with me. May I show you what it is I do, sir? What I do most frequently, I should say. Observe.”

The monitor’s floating face vanished, replaced by the image of a remarkably handsome man in black. Although the tunic of the man in the glass was torn and white gauze showed beneath it, Silk did not recognize this man as himself until he moved and saw the image move with him.

“Is that…?” He leaned closer. “No. But…”

“Thank you, sir,” his image said, and bowed. “Only a first attempt, although I think it a rather successful one. I shall do better next time.”

“Take it away, please. I am already too much given to vanity, believe me.”

“As you wish, sir,” his image replied. “I intended no disrespect. I merely desired to demonstrate to you the way in which I most frequently serve my mistress. Would you care to see her in place of yourself? I can easily display an old likeness.”

Silk shook his head. “An old unlikeness, you mean. Please return to your normal appearance.”

“As you wish, sir.” In the glass, Silk’s face lost its blue eyes and brown cheeks, its neck and shoulders vanished, and its features became flatter and coarser.

“We were speaking of the gods. No doubt I told you a good deal that you already knew.”

“No, sir. I know very little about gods, sir. I would advise you to consult an augur.”

“Then let’s talk about monitors, my son. You must know more than most about monitors. You’re a monitor yourself.”

“My task is my joy, sir.”

“We’re fortunate, then, both of us. When I was at—in the house of a certain man I know, a man who has a glass like this one, he clapped his hands to summon the monitor. Is that the usual method?”

“Clapping the hands or tapping on the glass, sir. All of us much prefer the former, if I may be excused for saying it.”

“I see.” Silk nodded to himself. “Aren’t there any other methods?”

“We actually appear in response to any loud sound, sir, to determine whether there is something amiss. Should a fire be in progress, for example, I would notify my master or his steward, and warn his guests.”

“And from time to time,” Silk said, “you must look into this room although no one has called you, even when there has been no loud sound. Isn’t that so?”

“No, sir.”

“You don’t simply look in to make certain everything’s all right?”

“No, sir. My mistress would consider that an invasion of her privacy, I’m sure.”

“When I entered this room,” Silk continued, “I did not make any sound that could be called loud—or at least none that I’m aware of. Certainly I didn’t clap my hands or tap on this glass; yet you appeared. There was a swirl of color, then your face appeared in the glass. Shortly afterward you told me you weren’t a god.”

“You closed the door, sir.”

“Very gently,” Silk said. “I didn’t want to disturb your mistress.

“Most considerate, sir.”

“Yet the sound of my shutting that door summoned you? I would think that in that case almost any sound would do, however slight.”

“I really cannot say what summoned me, sir.”

“That’s a suggestive choice of words, my son.”

“I concede that it may be, sir.” The monitor’s face appeared to nod. “Such being the case, perhaps I may proffer an additional suggestion? It is that you abandon this line of inquiry. It will not reward your persistence, sir. Prior to entering the balneum, you inquired about weapons, sir, and places of concealment. One of our wardrobes might do.”

“Thank you.” Silk looked into the nearest, but it was filled almost to bursting with coats and gowns.

“As to weapons, sir,” the monitor continued, “you may discover a useful one in my lowest left drawer, beneath the stockings.”

“More useful than this, I hope.” Silk closed the wardrobe.

“I am very sorry, sir. There appear to have been many purchases of late of which I have not been apprised.”

Silk hardly heard him—there were angry and excited voices in the corridor. He opened the door to the drawing room and listened until they faded away, his hand upon the glass latchbar of the boudoir door, acutely conscious of the thudding of his heart.

“Are you leaving, sir?”

“The left drawer, I think you said.”

“Yes, sir. The lowest of the drawers to your left. I can guarantee nothing, however, sir. My mistress keeps a small needier there, or perhaps I should say she did so not long ago. It may, however…”

Silk had already jerked out the drawer. Groping under what seemed to be at least a hundred pairs of women’s hose, his fingers discovered not one but two metal objects.

“My mistress is sometimes careless regarding the safety catch, sir. It may be well to exercise due caution until you have ascertained its condition.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” Silk muttered as he gingerly extracted the first.

It was a needler so small that it lay easily in the palm of his hand, elaborately engraved and gold plated; the thumb-sized ivory grips were inlaid with golden hyacinths, and a minute heron scanned a golden pool for fish at the base of the rear sight. For a moment, Silk too knew peace, lost in the flawless craftsmanship that had been lavished upon every surface. No venerated object in his manteion was half so fine.

“Should that discharge, it could destroy my glass, sir.”

Silk nodded absently. “I’ve seen needlers—I saw two tonight, in fact—that could eat this one.”

“You have informed me that you are unfamiliar with the safety catch, sir. Upon either side of the needier you hold, you will observe a small movable convexity. Raised, it will prevent the needier from discharging.”

“This,” Silk said. Like the grips, each tiny boss was marked with a hyacinth, though these were so small that their minute, perfect florets were almost microscopic. He pushed one of the bosses down, and the other moved with it. “Will it fire now?”

“I believe so, sir. Please do not direct it toward my glass. Glasses are now irreplaceable, sir, the art of their manufacture having been left behind when—”

“I’m greatly tempted nevertheless.”

“In the event of the destruction of this glass I should be unable to deliver your message to Auk, sir.”

“In which case there’d be no need of it. This smooth bar inside the ring is the trigger, I suppose.”

“I believe that is correct, sir.”

Silk pointed the needier at the wardrobe and pressed the trigger. There was a sharp snap, like the cracking of a child’s whip. “It doesn’t seem to have done anything,” he said.

“My mistress’s wardrobe is not a living creature, sir.”

“I never thought it was, my son.” Silk bent to examine the wardrobe’s door; a hole not much thicker than a hair had appeared in one of its polished panels. He opened the door again. Some, though not all, of the gowns in line with the hole showed ragged tears, as if they had been stabbed with a dull blade a little narrower than his index finger.

“I should use this on you, you know, my son,” he told the monitor, “for Auk’s sake. You’re just a machine, like the scorer in our ball court.”

“I am a machine, but not just a machine, sir.”

Nodding mostly to himself, Silk pushed up the safety catch and dropped the little needler into his pocket.

The other object hidden under the stockings was shaped like the letter T. The stem was cylindrical and oddly rough, with a single, smooth protuberance below the crossbar; the crossbar itself seemed polished and slightly curved, and had upturned ends. The entire object felt unnaturally cold, as reptiles often do. Silk extracted it from the stockings with some difficulty and examined it curiously.

“Would it be convenient for me to withdraw, sir?” the monitor asked.

Silk shook his head. “What is this?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

He regarded the monitor narrowly. “Can you lie, under extreme provocation, my son? Tell an untruth? I know a chem quite well; and she can, or so she says.”

“No, sir.”

“Which leaves me not a whit the wiser.” Silk seated himself on the stool again.

“I suppose not, sir.”

“I think I know what this is, you see.” Silk held the T-shaped object up for the monitor’s inspection; it gleamed like polished silver. “I’d appreciate confirmation, and some instructions on how to operate it.”

“I am afraid I cannot assist you, sir, although I would be glad to receive your own opinion.”

“I think it’s an azoth. I’ve never actually seen one, but we used to talk about them when I was a boy. One summer all of us made wooden swords, and sometimes we pretended they were azoths.”

“Charming, sir.”

“Not really,” Silk muttered, scrutinizing the flashing gem in the pommel of the azoth. “We were as bloodthirsty as so many little tigers, and what’s charming about that? But anyway, an azoth is supposed to be controlled by something called a demon. If you don’t know about azoths, you don’t know anything about that, I suppose.”

“No, sir.” The monitor’s floating face swung from side to side, revealing that there was no head behind it. “If you wish to conceal yourself, sir, should you not do so at once? My master’s steward and some of our guards are searching the suites on this floor.”

“How do you know that?” Silk asked sharply.

“I have been observing them. I have glasses in some of the other suites, sir.”

“They began at the north end of the corridor?”

“Yes, sir. Quite correct.”

Silk rose. “Then I must hide in here well enough to escape them, and get into the north wing after they’ve left.”

“You haven’t examined the other wardrobe, sir.”

“And I don’t intend to. How many unsearched suites are there between us?”

“Three, sir.”

“Then I’ve still got a little time.” Silk studied the azoth. “When I made my sword, I left a nail sticking out, and bent it. That was my demon. When I twisted it toward me, the blade wasn’t there any more. When I twisted it away from me, I had one.”

“I doubt, sir—”

“Don’t be too sure, my son. That may have been based on something supposedly true that I’d heard. Or I may have been imitating some other boy who’d gotten hold of a useful fact. I mean a fact that would be useful to me now.”

The roughened stem of the T was the grip, obviously; and the crossbar was there to prevent the user’s hand from contacting the blade. Silk tried to revolve the gem in the pommel, but its setting kept it securely in place.

The bent-nail demon of his toy sword had been one of those that had held the crosspiece; he felt certain of that. There was an unfacetted crimson gem (he vaguely remembered having heard a similar gem called a bloodstone) in the grip, just behind one of the smooth, tapering arms of the guard. It was too flat and much too highly polished to turn. He gripped the azoth as he had his wooden sword and pressed the crimson gem with his thumb.

Reality separated. Something else appeared between the halves, as a current divides a quiet pool. Plaster from the wall across the room fell smoking onto the carpet, revealing laths that themselves exploded in a shower of splinters with the next movement of his arm.

Involuntarily, he released the demon, and the azoth’s blade vanished.

“Please be more careful with that, sir.”

“I will.” Silk pushed the azoth into the coiled rope about his waist.

“If it should be activated by chance, sir, the result might well be disastrous for you as well as others.”

“You have to press the demon below the level of the grip, I think,” Silk said. “It should be difficult for that to happen accidentally.”

“I profoundly hope so, sir.”

“You don’t know where your mistress got such a weapon?”

“I did not even know she possessed it, sir.”

“It must be worth as much as this whole villa. More, perhaps. I doubt that there are ten of them in the city.” Silk turned toward the wardrobe and selected a blue winter gown of soft wool.

“They have left the suite they were searching earlier, sir. They are proceeding to the next.”

“Thank you. Will you leave when I tell you to go?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“I ought to destroy your glass.” For a second, Silk stared at the monitor. “I’m tempted to do it. But if a god really visited it when I arrived…” He shrugged. “So I’m going to tell you to go instead, and cover your glass with a gown. Perhaps they won’t notice it. Did they question the glasses in the other suites?”

“Yes, sir. Our steward summoned me to each glass. He is directing the searchers in person, sir.”

“While you were here talking to me? I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I can, sir. One strives to best utilize lulls in the conversation, pauses, and the like. It is largely a matter of allocation, sir.”

“But you didn’t tell them where I was. You can’t have. Why not?”

“He did not inquire, sir. As they entered each suite, he asked whether there was a stranger present.”

“And you told them there wasn’t?”

“No, sir. I was forced to explain that I could not be certain, since I am not perpetually present.”

“Blood’s steward—is that the young man called Musk?”

“Yes, sir. His instructions take precedence over all others, except my master’s own.”

“I see. Musk doesn’t understand you much better than I do, apparently.”

“Less well, perhaps, sir.”

Silk nodded to himself. “I may remain in this suite after you’ve gone. On the other hand, I may leave, too, as soon as you’re no longer here to watch what I’m doing. Do you understand what I’ve just told you?”

“Yes, sir,” the monitor said. “Your future whereabouts will be problematical.”

“Good. Now vanish at once. Go wherever it is that you go.” Silk draped the glass, covering it completely in a way that he hoped would seem merely careless, and opened the door to his right.

For the space of a heartbeat, he thought the spacious, twilit bedchamber unoccupied; a faint moan from the enormous bed at its center revealed his mistake.

The woman in the bed writhed and keened aloud from the depths of her need. As he bent over her, something within him reached out to her; and though he had not touched her, he felt the thrill of touch. Her hair was as black as the night chough’s wings, and as glossy. Her features, as well as he could judge in the uncertain glow, exquisite. She groaned softly, as though she knew he was looking down on her, and rolling her head upon her pillow, kissed it without waking.

Beyond the boudoir, the drawing room door opened.

He tore off his black robe and straw hat, ducked out of his torn tunic, kicked all three far under the big bed, and scrambled in, shoes and all. He was drawing up the gold-embroidered oversheet when he heard the door through which he had entered the boudoir open.

Someone said distinctly, “Nothing in here.”

By then his thumb had found the safety catch. He sat up, leveling the needier, as the searchers entered.

“Stop!” he shouted, and fired. By the greatest good luck, the needle shattered a tall vase to the right of the door. The report brought the bedchamber’s lights to their brightest.

The first armored guard halted, his slug gun not quite pointing at Silk; and the black-haired woman sat up abruptly, her slightly tilted eyes wide.

Without looking at her, Silk grated, “Go back to sleep, Hyacinth. This doesn’t concern you.” Faintly perfumed, her breath caressed his bare shoulder, deliriously warm.

“Sorry, Commissioner,” the guard began, uncertainly. “I mean Patera—”

Too late, Silk realized that he was still wearing the old, blue-trimmed calotte that had once been Patera Pike’s. He snatched it off. “This is unforgivable. Unforgivable! I shall inform Blood. Get out!” His voice was far too high, and mounting toward hysteria; surely the guard must sense how frightened he was. In desperation, he brandished the tiny needler.

“We didn’t know—” The guard lowered his slug gun and took a step backward, bumping into the delicate-looking Musk, who had stepped through the boudoir behind him. “We thought everybody had— Well, just about everybody’s already gone.”

Silk cut him off. “Out! You’ve never seen me.”

It had been (as he decided as soon as he had said it) the worst thing he could possibly have said, since Musk had certainly seen him only a few hours earlier. For an instant he felt certain that Musk would pounce upon it.

Musk did not. Silencing the sputtering guard with a shove, Musk said, “The outside door should’ve been locked. Take your time.” He turned on his heel, and the guard shut the boudoir door quietly behind them.

Trembling, Silk waited until he heard the corridor door close as well before he kicked away the luxurious coverings and got out of the bed. His mouth was parched, and his knees without strength.

“What about me?” the woman asked. As she spoke, she pushed aside the oversheet and the red silk sheet, revealing remarkably rounded breasts and a small waist.

Silk caught his breath and looked away. “All right, what about you? Do you want me to shoot you?”

She smiled and threw her arms wide. “If it’s the only thing you can do, why, yes.” When Silk did not reply, she added, “I’ll keep my eyes open, if that’s all right with you. I like to see it coming.” The smile became a grin. “Make it fast, but make it last. And make it good.”

Both had spoken softly, and the lights were no longer glaring; Silk kicked the bed to re-energize them. “You have been given a philtre of some sort, I think. You’ll feel very differently in the morning.” Pushing up the safety catch, he dropped her needier back into his pocket.

“I was given nothing.” The woman in the bed licked her lips, watching for his reaction. “I took what you’re calling a philtre before the first ones got here.”

“Rust?” Silk was on his knees beside the bed, groping for the clothing he had kicked beneath it. Fear was draining from him, and he felt immensely grateful for it. Lion-hearted Sphigx still favored him—nothing could be more certain.

“No.” She was scornful. “Rust doesn’t do this. Don’t you know anything? On rust I’d have itched to kill them all, and I might’ve done it, too. Beggar’s root’s what they call it, and it turns a terrible bore into a real pleasure.”

“I see.” Wincing, Silk pulled out his ruined tunic and his second-best robe.

“Want me to give you some? I’ve got a lot more, and it only takes a pinch.” She swung amazingly long legs over the side of the bed. “It’s a lot more expensive than rust, and a lot harder to find, but I’m in a generous mood. I usually am—you’ll see.” She favored Silk with a sidelong smile that made his heart leap.

He stood up and backed away.

“They call it beggar’s root because it makes you beg. I’m begging now, just listen to me. Come on. You’ll like it.”

Silk shook his head.

“Come sit next to me.” She patted the rumpled sheet. “That’s all I’m asking for—right now, anyway. You were here in bed with me a minute ago.”

He tried to pull his tunic over his head and failed, discovering in the process that even the slightest movement of his right arm was painful.

“You’re the one that they were looking for, aren’t you? Aren’t you glad that I didn’t tell them anything? You really ought to be, Musk can be awfully mean. Don’t you want me to help you with that?”

“Don’t try.” He retreated another step.

Sliding off the bed, she picked up his robe. She was completely naked; he closed his eyes and turned away.

She giggled, and he was suddenly reminded of Mucor, the mad girl. “You really are an augur. He called you Patera—I’d forgotten. Do you want your little hat back? I stuck it under my pillow.”

The uses to which Patera Pike’s calotte might be put if it remained with her flashed through Silk’s mind. “Yes,” he said. “Please, may I have it back?”

“Sure, I’ll trade you.”

He shook his head.

“Didn’t you come here to see me? You don’t act like it, but you knew my name.”

“No. I came to find Blood.”

“You won’t like him, Patera.” Hyacinth grinned again. “Even Musk doesn’t like him, not really. Nobody does.”

“He has my sympathy.” Silk tried to raise the tunic again, and was deterred by a flash of pain. “I’ve come to show him how he can be better liked, and even loved.”

“Well, Patera, I’m Hyacinth, just like you said. And I’m famous. Everybody likes me, except you.”

“I do like you,” Silk told her. “That is one of the reasons I won’t do what you want. It’s a rather minor one, actually, but a real reason nonetheless.”

“You stole my azoth, though, didn’t you, Patera? I can see the end of it poking out of that rope.”

Silk nodded. “I intend to return it. But you’re quite right, I took it without your permission, and that’s theft. I’m sorry, but I felt I’d better have it. What I’m doing is extremely important.” He paused and waited for remonstrances that did not come. “I’ll see that it’s returned to you, and your needier as well, if I get home safely.”

“You were afraid of the guards, weren’t you? There in my bed. You were afraid of that one with Musk. Afraid that he’d kill you.”

“Yes,” Silk admitted. “I was terrified, if you want the truth; and now I’m just as terrified of you, afraid that I’ll give in to you, disgrace my calling, and lose the favor of the immortal gods.”

She laughed.

“You’re right.” Silk tried to put on his tunic again, but his right forearm burned and throbbed. “I’m certainly not brave. But at least I’m brave enough to admit it.”

“Wait just a minute,” she said. “Wait right here. I’m going to get you something.”

He glimpsed the balneum through the door she opened. As she closed it behind her, it occurred to him that Patera Pike’s calotte was still in the bed, under her pillow; moved by that weak impulse which turns back travelers to retrieve trifles, he rescued it and put it on.

She emerged from the balneum, naked still, holding out a gold cup scarcely larger than a thimble, half filled with brick-colored powder. “Here, Patera. You put it into your lip.”

“No. I realize that you mean well, but I’d rather be afraid.”

She shrugged and pulled forward her own lower lip. For a moment it made her ugly, and Silk felt a surge of relief. After emptying the little cup into the hollow between lip and gum, she grinned at him. “This is the best money can buy, and it works fast. Sure you don’t want some? I’ve got a lot.”

“No,” he repeated. “I should go. I should have gone before now, in fact.”

“All right.” She was looking at the gem in the hilt of the azoth again. “It’s mine, you know. A very important man gave it to me. If you’re going to steal it, I ought to at least get to help you. Are you sure you’re a real augur?”

Silk sighed. “It seems that I may not be much longer. If you’re serious about wanting to help me, Hyacinth, tell me where you think Blood is likely to be at this hour. Will he have retired for the night?”

She shook her head, her eyes flashing. “He’s probably downstairs saying good-bye to the last of them. They’ve been coming all night, commissioners and commissioners’ flunkies. Every once in a while he sends a really important one up here for me. I lost count, but there must have been six or seven of them.”

“I know.” Silk tried to push the hilt of the azoth more deeply into the coil of rope. “I’ve lain between your sheets.”

“You think I ought to change them? I didn’t think men cared.”

Silk knelt to fish his broad-brimmed straw hat from beneath the bed. “I doubt that those men do.”

“I can call a servant.”

“They’re busy looking for me, I imagine.” Silk tossed the hat onto the bed and readied himself for one last try at his tunic.

“Not the maids.” She took his tunic from him. “You know, your eyes want to look at me. You ought to let them do it.”

“Hundreds of men must have told you how beautiful you are. Would you displease the gods to hear it once more? I wouldn’t. I’m still young, and I hope to see a god before I die.” He was tempted to add that he might well have missed one by a second or less when he entered her chambers, but he did not.

“You’ve never had a woman, have you?”

Silk shook his head, unwilling to speak.

“Well, let me help you get this on, anyway.” She held his tunic as high as she could stretch while he worked both arms into the sleeves, then snatched her azoth from the rope coiled around his waist and sprang toward the bed.

He gaped at her, stunned. Her thumb was upon the demon, the blade slot pointed at his heart. Backing away, he raised both hands in the gesture of surrender.

She posed like a duelist. “They say the girls fight like troopers in Trivigaunte.” She parried awkwardly twice, and skewered and slashed an imaginary opponent.

By that time he had recovered at least a fraction of his composure. “Aren’t you going to call the guards?”

“Don’t think so.” She lunged and recovered. “Wouldn’t I make a fine swordsman, Patera? Look at these legs.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

She pouted “Why not?”

“Because one must study swordsmanship, and practice day after day. There is a great deal to learn, or so I’ve been told. To speak frankly, I’d back a shorter, less attractive woman against you, assuming that she was less attracted to admiration and those bottles in your balneum, too.”

Hyacinth gave no sign of having heard. “If you really can’t do what I want—if you won’t, I mean—couldn’t you use this azoth instead? And kiss me, and pretend? I’d show you where I want you to put the big jewel, and after a while you might change your mind.”

“Isn’t there an antidote?” To prevent her from seeing his expression, he crossed the room to the window and parted the drapes. There was no one around the dead bird on the terrace now. “You have all those herbs. Surely you must have the antidote, if there is one.”

“I don’t want the antidote, Patera. I want you.” Her hand was on his shoulder; her lips brushed his ear. “And if you go out there like you’re thinking, the cats’ll tear you to pieces.”

The blade of the azoth shot past his ear, fifty cubits down to the terrace to slice the dead bird in two and leave a long, smoking scar across the flagstones. Silk flinched from it. “For Pas’s love be careful!”

Hyacinth whirled off like a dancer as she pressed the demon again. Shimmering through the bedchamber like summer heat, the azoth’s illimited discontinuity hummed of death, parting the universe, slitting the drapes like a razor and dropping a long section slabbed from wall and window frame at Silk’s feet.

“Now you have to,” she told him, and came at him with a sweeping cut that scarred half the room. “Say you will, and I’ll give it back.”

As he dove through the window, the azoth’s humming blade divided the stone sill behind him; but all the fear he ought to have felt was drowned in the knowledge that he was leaving her.

Had he struck the flagstones head first, he would have been spared a great deal of pain. As it was, he turned head over heels in midair. There was only a moment of darkness, like that a bruiser knows when he is knocked to his knees. For what might have been seconds or minutes, he lay near the divided body of the white-headed one, hearing her voice call to him from the window without comprehending anything it said.

When at last he tried to stand, he found that he could not. He had dragged himself to within ten paces of the wall, and shot two of the horned cats Mucor called lynxes, when a guard in silvered armor took the needler from his hand.

After what seemed a very long time, unarmored servants joined him; these carried torches with which they kept the snarling lynxes at bay. Supervised by a fussy little man with a pointed, iron-gray beard, they rolled Silk onto a blanket and carried him back to the villa.