Litany of the Long Sun (45 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is it, Patera?"

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

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

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

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

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

There was a distant knock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silk said, "Go on."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We had an agreement," Silk said.

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

"Bad man!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chenille nodded.