Nightside the Long Sun (37 page)

“We don't have to leg it over to the Orilla. There's a nice place right down the street. They got the tenderest, juiciest roasts you ever cut on the side of your flipper.” Auk grinned, showing square, yellow teeth that looked fully capable of severing a human hand at the wrist. “Suppose I was to buy an augur—one that really needed it—a dimber uphill dinner. Whatever he wanted. That'd be a meritorious act, wouldn't it?”

“I suppose so. Nevertheless, you must consider that he may not deserve one.”

“I'll keep it in mind.” Auk strolled to the coffin and pulled down the shroud. “Who is she?”

“Orchid's daughter Orpine. That was nicely done, but you knew her, I'm sure.”

“Her
daughter
?” Leaving Orpine's body, Auk took Silk's arm. “Come on, Patera. If we don't get over there, we'll have to eat in the public room.”

*   *   *

Musk had caught sight of his eagle before he stepped out of the floater. She was at the top of a blasted pine, silhouetted against the brightening skylands.

She was looking at the hackboard, Musk knew. She could see the hackboard more clearly from half a league away than he had ever seen the palms of his own hands. She would be ravenous by now, like a falcon (as Musk reminded himself) an eagle would have to learn to fly before it could learn to hunt. Apparently, she had not yet gone after lambs, though she might tomorrow—it was his greatest fear.

He circled the villa. The meat bound to the hackboard had been there all day; it was nearly dry now, and blanketed with flies. He kicked the board to dislodge them before he brought out the lure and a bag of cracked maize.

The lure whistled as he spun it on its five-cubit line.

“Ho, hawk! Ho, hawk!”

Once he imagined that he heard the faint jingle of her bells, though he knew it was impossible. He scattered maize nearly to the wall, then returned to the hackboard and swung the lure again while he waited. It was late—perhaps too late. It would be dark very soon, and when it was she would not fly.

“Ho! Ho, hawk!”

As well as Musk could judge, the eagle on the remote snag had not stirred so much as a feather; but a plump brown wood weaver was settling on the cropped grass near the wall to peck at the maize.

He dropped the lure and crouched, his needler gripped with both hands and his left elbow braced on his left knee. It would be a long shot, in poor light.

The wood weaver fell, fluttered up, cannoned into the wall, and fell again. Before it could fly a second time, he had it. Back at the hackboard, he loosened the nose in the lure line and let the red-and-white lure fall to the ground. With the noose tight about the wood weaver's right leg, he twirled it, producing a fine and almost invisible shower of blood.

“Ha, hawk!”

The wide wings spread. For a moment Musk, watching the eagle, still twirling the dying wood weaver in its ten-cubit circle, felt that he more than possessed it.

Felt that he himself was the great bird, and was happy.

*   *   *

“You seen what they wrote on that wall, Patera.” Auk sat down, having chosen a chair from which he could watch the door. “Some sprat from the palaestra, like you say. But I'd talk to them about it, if I was you. Could be trouble.”

“I'm not responsible for every boy who finds a piece of chalk.” This eating house had seemed remote indeed to Silk, though it was almost in sight of his manteion. He lowered himself into the capacious armchair the host was holding for him and looked around him at the whitewashed shiprock walls. Their private dining room was smaller even than his bedroom in the manse, still crowded after a waiter had removed two superfluous chairs.

“All of them good and thick,” Auk said, answering the question Silk had not asked, “and so's the door. This was the Alambrera back in the old days. What do you like?”

Silk scanned the neatly lettered slate. “I'll have the chops, I think.” At eighteen cardbits, the chops were the least expensive meal; and even if there were in fact only a single chop, this dinner would be his most bountiful meal of the week.

“How'd you get over the wall?” Auk asked when the host had gone. “Have any trouble?”

And so Silk told the whole story, from the cutting of his horsehair rope by a spike to his ride back to the city in Blood's floater. Auk was roaring with laughter when the waiter brought their dinners, but he had grown very serious by the time Silk reached his interview with Blood.

“You didn't happen to mention me any time while you were talking to him?”

Silk swallowed a luscious mouthful of chop. “No. But I very foolishly tried to speak with you through the glass in Hyacinth's boudoir, as I told you.”

“He may not find out about that.” Auk scratched his chin thoughtfully. “The monitors lose track after a while.”

“But he may,” Silk said. “You'll have to be on guard.”

“Not as much as you will, Patera. He'll want to know what you wanted to talk to me about, and since you didn't, he can't get it from me. What are you going to tell him?”

“If I tell him anything at all, I'll tell him the truth.”

Auk laid down his fork. “That I helped you?”

“That I knew you were concerned about my safety. That you had warned me about going out so late at night, and that I wanted to let you know I had not come to harm.”

Auk considered the matter while Silk ate. “It might go, Patera, if he thinks you're crazy enough.”

“If he thinks I'm honest enough, you mean. The best way to be thought honest is to be honest—or at any rate that's the best that I've ever found. I try to be.”

“But you're going to try to steal twenty-six thousand for him, too.”

“If that's what I must do to save our manteion, and I can get it in no other way, yes. I'll be forced to choose between evils, exactly as I was last night. I'll try to see that no one is hurt, of course, and to take the money only from those who can well afford to lose it.”

“Blood will take your money, Patera. And have a good laugh over it.”

“I won't let him take it until he furnishes safeguards. But there's something else I ought to tell you about. Did I mention that Blood wanted me to exorcise the yellow house?”

“Orchid's place? Sure. That's where that girl Orpine lived, only I never knew she was Orchid's daughter.”

“She was.” There was butter and soft, fresh bread in the middle of the table; Silk took a slice and buttered it, wishing that he might take the whole loaf home to the manse. “I'm going to tell you about that, too. And about Orpine, who died possessed.”

Auk grunted. “That's your lay, Patera, not mine.”

“Possession? It's really no one's now. Perhaps there was a time when most augurs believed in devils, as Patera Pike certainly did. But I may be the only augur alive who believes in them now, and even now I'm not certain that I believe in them in the same sense he did—as spirits who crept into the whorl without Pas's permission and seek to destroy it.”

“What about Orpine? Was she really Orchid's daughter?”

“Yes,” Silk said. “I spoke to Orchid about her and she admitted it. Practically boasted of it, in fact. What was Orpine like?”

“Good-looking.” Auk hesitated. “I don't feel right talking about this stuff to you, Patera. She could be a lot of fun, because she didn't care what she did or what anybody thought about it. You know what I mean? She would've made more money if she'd been better at making people think she liked them.”

Silk chewed and swallowed. “I understand. I wanted to know because I've been wondering about personalities, and so on—whether there's a particular type of person who's more prone to be possessed than another—and I never saw Orpine alive. I had been talking to her mother; we heard a scream and hurried outside, and found her lying there on the stair. She had been stabbed. Someone suggested that she might have stabbed herself. Her face—Have you ever seen a possessed person?”

Auk shook his head.

“Neither had I until this morning, shortly before I saw Orpine's body.” Silk patted his lips with his napkin. “At any rate, she was dead; but even in death it seemed that her face was not quite her own. I remember thinking that there was something horrible about it, and a good deal that was familiar, as well. At first, the familiar part seemed quite easy. After I'd thought about it for a moment—the eyes and the shape of her nose and lips and so on—I realized that she looked rather like Orchid, the woman I'd just been speaking to. I asked her about it afterward, and she told me that Orpine had been her daughter, as I said.”

“Maybe I should've known, too,” Auk said, “but I never guessed. Orpine was a lot younger.”

Silk shrugged. “You know a great deal more about women than I do, I'm sure. Perhaps I saw as much as I did mostly because I know so little about them. When one knows little about a subject, what one sees are apt to be the most basic things, if one sees anything at all. What I wanted to say, however, was that even the horrible element in her face was familiar.”

“Go on.” Auk refilled his wineglass. “Let's hear it.”

“I'm hesitating because I'm fairly certain you won't believe me. Orpine reminded me of someone else I had been talking with not long before—of Mucor, the mad girl in Blood's villa.”

Auk laid aside his fork, the steaming beef on its tines still untasted. “You mean the same devil had taken 'em both over, Patera?”

Silk shook his head. “I don't know, but I felt that I ought to tell you. I believe that Mucor has been following me in spirit. And I am coming to believe that she can, in some fashion, possess others, just as devils—and the gods, for that matter—are said to do at times. This morning I felt sure that I had glimpsed her in the face of an honest working man; and I think that she was possessing Orpine when Orpine died. Later I recognized her in another woman.

“If I'm correct, if she can really do such things and if she has been following me, you're running a substantial risk just by sitting with me at this table. I'm very grateful for this truly remarkable dinner, and even more grateful for your help last night. Furthermore, I'm hoping to ask you a few questions before we separate; and all of that puts me heavily in debt to you. I was too tired—and too hungry, I suppose—to consider the danger to which I was subjecting you when we spoke in the manteion. Now that I have, I feel obliged to warn you that you too may suffer possession if you remain in my company.”

Auk grinned. “You're an augur, Patera. If she was to grab hold of me while we're sitting here, couldn't you make her beat the hoof?”

“I could try; but I have only one threat to use against her, and I've used it. You're not leaving?”

“Not me. I think I'll have another dumpling instead, maybe with a little of this gravy on it.”

“Thank you. I hope you won't regret it. You haven't yet commented on my somewhat uneven performance last night. If you're afraid I might be insulted, I assure you that you could not be more severe with me than I've already been with myself.”

“All right, I'll comment.” Auk sipped his wine. “In the first place, I think if you can raise even a thousand, you'd better make sure Blood signs the manteion over to you before you cough up your goldboys. You were going on about safeguards a minute ago. I don't think you ought to trust in any safeguards except the deed, signed and witnessed by a couple dimber bucks who got nothing to do with Blood.”

“You're right, I'm sure. I've been thinking much the same thing.”

“You better. Don't trust him, even if something that he does makes you think you can.”

“I'll be very careful.” Silk's chops were bathed in a piquant, almost black sauce he found unspeakably delicious; he wiped some from his plate with another slice of bread.

“And I think you've probably found your true calling.” Auk grinned. “I don't think I could've done much better, and I might not've done as good. This was your first time, too. By number ten I'll be begging to come along, just to watch you work.”

Silk sighed. “I hope there won't be a tenth, for both our sakes.”

“Sure there will. You're a real son of Tartaros. You just don't know it yet. Third or fourth, or whatever it is, I want to see what it is a dimber bucko like you needs a hand from me on. You want to go back to Blood's tonight and get your hatchet?”

Silk shook his head ruefully. “I won't be able to work on the roof until my ankle's healed, and it's more than half finished anyway. Do you recall what I said about Hyacinth's needler?”

“Sure. And the azoth. A nice azoth ought to bring a couple thousand cards, Patera. Maybe more. If you want to sell it, I can steer you to somebody who'll give you a lily price.”

“I can't, because it isn't mine. Hyacinth intended to lend it to me, I'm sure. As I told you, I had told her that I was borrowing those weapons, and I promised that I would return them when I no longer required them. I feel certain she would not have sent the azoth to me by Doctor Crane if I had not said that earlier.”

When Auk did not reply, Silk continued miserably, “Two thousand cards, if I actually received that much, would be an appreciable fraction of the twenty-six thousand that we require. More than five percent, in fact. You'll laugh at me—”

“I ain't laughing, Patera.”

“You should. A thief who can't bring himself to steal! But Hyacinth trusted me. I cannot believe that the—that any god would wish me to betray a friendless woman's trust.”

“If she lent it to you, I wouldn't sell it either,” Auk told him. “Just to start out, she's there in Blood's house, and if you've got yourself a friend on the inside, that's not anything you want to fight clear of. You got any notion why this doctor would take on something as risky as that for her?”