Litany of the Long Sun (53 page)

She said, "I'm coming with you. How about you, Auk?"

The big man shook his head. "I've been up all night, like I told you. But I'll tell you what. Let me get a little sleep, and I'll meet you in Limna where the wagons stop. Say about four o'clock."

"You needn't put. yourself out like that, Auk."

"I want to. If you've got something by then, I might be able to help you get more. Or maybe I can turn up something myself. There's good fish places there, and I'll spring for dinner and ride back to the city with you."

Chenille hugged him. "I always knew how handsome you were, Hackum, but I never knew how sweet you are. You're a real dimberdamber!"

Auk grinned. "To make a start, this's my city, Jugs. It's not all gilt, but it's all I got. And there's a few friends in the Guard. When you two have washed down this buck Crane, what do you plan to do with him?"

Silk said, "Report him, I'd think."

Chenille shook her head. "He'd tell about the money, and they'd want it. We might have to kill him ourselves. Didn't you augurs send sprats to Scylla in the old days?"

"That could get him tried for murder, Jugs," Auk told her. "No, what you want to do is roll this Crane over to Hoppy. Only if you're going to queer it, you'd be better off doing him. They'll beat it out of you, grab the deck and send you with him. It'd be a lily grab on you, Jugs, 'cause you helped him. As for the Patera here, Crane saw to his hoof and rode him to Orchid's in his own dilly, so it'd be candy to smoke up something."

He waited for them to contradict him, but neither did.

"Only if you go flash, if you roll him over to some bob culls with somebody like me to say Pas for you, we'll all be stanch cits and heroes too. Hoppy'll grab the glory while we buy him rope. That way he'll hand us a smoke smile and a warm and friendly shake, hoping we'll have something else to roll another time. I've got to have pals like that to lodge and dodge. So do you two, you just don't know it. You scavy I never turned up the bloody rags, riffling some cardcase's ken? You scavy I covered 'em up and left him be? Buy it, I washed him if he'd stand still. And if he wouldn't, why, I rolled him over."

Silk nodded. "I see. I felt that your guidance would be of value, and I don't believe that Chenille could call me wrong. Could you, Chenille?"

She shook her head, her eyes sparkling. "That's rum, 'cause I'm not finished yet. What's this hotpot's name, Jugs?"

"Simuliid."

"I'm flash. Big cully, ox weight, with a mustache?"

She nodded.

"Patera and me ought to pay a call, maybe, when we get back from the lake. How's your hoof, Patera?"

"Much better today," Silk said, "but what have we to gain from seeing the commissioner?"

Oreb cocked his head attentively and hopped up into the grapevines again.

"I hope we won't. I want a look around, 'specially if you and Jugs go empty at the lake. Maybe those councillors live way out there like you say, Patera. But maybe, too, there's something out there that they wanted to show off to him, or that he had to show off to them. You hear kink talk about the lake, and if you and Jugs plan to fish for this Crane cull, you might want bait. So we'll pay this Simuliid a call, up on the hill tonight. Plate to me, bait to you, and split the overs."

Oreb hopped onto the back of the old wooden seat. "Man come!"

Nodding, Silk rose and parted the vines. A thick-bodied young man in an augur's black robe was nudging shut the side door of the manteion; he appeared to be staring at something in his hands.

"Over here," Silk called. "Patera Gulo?" He stepped out of the arbor and limped across the dry, brown grass to the newcomer. "May every god favor you this day. I'm very pleased to see you, Patera."

"A man in the street, Patera"-Gulo held up a dangling, narrow object sparkling with yellow and green-"he simply-we-he wouldn't-"

Auk had followed Silk. "Mostly topaz, but that looks like a pretty fair emerald." Reaching past him, he relieved Gulo of the bracelet and held it up to admire.

"This lady's Chenille, Patera Gulo." By a gesture, Silk indicated the arbor, "and this gentleman is Auk. Both are prominent laypersons of our quarter, exceedingly devout and cherished by all of the gods, I feel sure. I'll be leaving with them in a few minutes, and I rely on you to deal with the affairs of our manteion during my absence. You'll find Maytera Marble-in the cenoby there-a perfect fisc of valuable information and sound advice."

"A man gave it to me!" Gulo blurted. "Just a minute ago, Patera. He simply pressed it into my hand!"

"I see." Silk nodded matter-of-factly as he reassured himself that the azoth beneath his tunic was indeed there. "Return that to Patera Gulo, please, Auk."

"You'll find our cashbox under my bed, Patera. The key is underneath the carafe on the nightstand. Wait a moment." He took the diamond anklet from his pocket and handed it to Gulo. "Put them in there and lock them up safely, if you will, Patera. It might be best for you to keep the key in your pocket. I should return about the time that the market closes, or a little after."

"Bad man!" Oreb proclaimed from the top of the arbor. "Bad man!"

"It's your black robe, Patera," Silk explained. "He's afraid he may be sacrificed. Come here, Oreb! We're off to the lake. Fish heads, you silly bird."

In a frantic flurry of wings, the injured night chough landed heavily on Silk's own black-robed shoulder.

LAKE LIMNA

"W
hat was it you said, my son?" Silk dropped to one knee to bring his face to the height of the small boy's own. "Ma says ask a blessing." His attention seemed equally divided between Silk and Oreb.

"And why do you wish it?"

The small boy did not reply.

"Isn't it because you want the immortal gods to view you with favor, my son? Didn't they teach you something about that at the palaestra? I'm sure they must have."

Reluctantly, the small boy nodded. Silk traced the sign of addition over the boy's head and recited the shortest blessing in common use, ending it with, "In the name of their eldest child, Scylla, Patroness of this, Our Holy City of Viron, and in that of the Outsider, of all gods the eldest."

"Are you really Patera Silk?"

None of the half dozen persons waiting for the holobitwagon to Limna turned to look, yet Silk was painfully aware of a sudden stiffening of postures; Lake Street, although it was far from quiet, seemed somehow quieter.

"Yes, he is," Chenille announced proudly.

One of the waiting men stepped toward Silk and knelt, his head bowed. Before Silk could trace the sign of addition, two more had knelt beside the first.

He was saved by the arrival of the wagon-long-bodied, gaily painted, surmounted by a jiggling old patterned canvas canopy, and drawn by two weary horses. "One bit," boomed the driver, vaulting from his post. "A bit to Limna. No credit no trade, everybody sits in the shade."

"I've got it," Chenille said.

"So do I," Silk told her in his most inflexible tone, and hushed several passengers who tried say that Patera Silk ought to ride free. When he pocketed Silk's bits, the driver said, "You'll have to get off if anybody complains about the bird," and was startled by a chorus of protests.

"I don't like this," Silk told Chenille as they found places on one of the long, outward-facing benches. "People have been writing things on walls, and I don't like that, either."

The driver cracked his whip, and the wagon lurched ahead.

" 'Silk for Caldé…?' Is that what you mean, Silk? A good idea."

"That's right." He extracted his beads from his pocket. "Or rather, it's wrong. Wrong as concerns me, and wrong as it concerns the office of Caldé. I'm not a politician, and no inducement that you could name would ever persuade me to become one. As for the caldeship, it's become nothing more than a popular superstition, a purely historical curiosity. My mother knew the last Caldé, but he died shortly after I was born."

"I remember him. I think?" `Without looking at her, Silk told her miserably, "If you meant half what you've said, you can't possibly recall him, Comely Kypris. Chenille's four years younger than I am." "Then I'm thinking about… someone else. Aren't you worried? Silk? Traveling with somebody like me? All of these people know who you are."

"I hope that they do, Great Goddess, and that they're thoroughly disillusioned now-that without dishonoring my sacred calling I save my life."

A particularly vicious jolt threw Silk against the woman on his right, who apologized profusely. When he had begged her pardon instead, he began the prayer of the voided cross. "Great Pas, designer and creator of the whorl, lord guardian and keeper of the Aureate Path-" The path across the sky that was the spiritual equivalent of the sun, he reminded himself. Sacrifices rose to it, and so were brought in the end to Mainframe, where both the sun and the Path began, at the east pole. The spirits of the dead walked that glorious road, too, if not weighted with evil, and it was asserted in the Chrasmologic Writings that the spirits of certain holy theodidacts had at times abandoned the shapen mud of their corporeal bodies and-joining the crowding, lowing beasts and the penitent dead-journeyed to Mainframe to confer for a time with the god who had enlightened them. He himself was a theodidact, Silk reminded himself, having been enlightened by the Outsider. He had finished the voided cross and (he counted them by touch) four beads already. Murmuring the prescribed prayers and adding the name of the Outsider to them all, he willed himself to leave his body and this crowded street and unite with the hastening traffic of the Aureate Path.

For an instant it seemed that he had succeeded, though it was not. the sun's golden road that he saw, but the frigid black emptiness beyond the whorl, dotted here and there with gleaming sparks.

"Talking of writing on walls, Silk. Silk? Look there. Open your eyes."

He did. It was a poster, badly but boldly printed in red and black, so new that no one had yet torn it or scrawled an obscene drawing over it, which in this quarter probably meant that it had been up less than an hour.

STRONG YOUNG MEN

WILL BE WELCOMED IN

THE NEW PROVISIONAL RESERVE BRIGADE

Have YOU Wished to Become a GUARDSMAN?

The Reserve Brigade Will Drill Twice Weekly

Will Receive PAY and UNIFORMS

Will Receive FIRST CONSIDERATION

for

TRANSFER TO THE REGULAR FORMATIONS

Apply

THIRD BRIGADE HEADQUARTERS

Colonel Oosik, Commanding

"YOU DON'T THINK the kite tired him too much?"

It was not the first time Blood had asked the question, and Musk had tired of saying no. This time he said, "I told you. Aquila's a female." The huge hooded bird on his wrist baited as he spoke, whether at the sound of her name, or at that of his voice, or by mere coincidence. Musk waited for her to slake before he finished the thought. "Males don't get this big. For Molpe's sake listen sometime."

"All right-all right. Maybe a smaller one could fly higher."

"She can do it. The bigger they are, the higher they fly. You ever see a sparrow fly any higher than that bald head of yours?" Musk spoke without looking at the fleshy, red-faced man to whom he spoke, his eyes upon his eagle or on the sky. "I still think we should've let Hoppy in."

"If they bring it back, in a week they'll have done it themselves."

"They fly high, way up close to the sun. If we get one, he could come down anywhere."

"We've got three floaters with three men in each floater. We've got five on highriders."

With his free hand, Musk lifted his binoculars. Though he knew there was nothing there, he scanned the clear vacancy overhead.

"Don't point those things at the sun. You could blind yourself." It was not the first time Blood had said that, either.

"He could come down anywhere in the whorl. You heard where the kite came down, and it was on a shaggy string, for Molpe's sake. You think that it's got to be close to a road because you travel on them." It was a long speech for Musk. "If you'd hunted with my hawks a couple of times, you'd know different. Most of the whorl's not anywhere near any shaggy road. Most of the whorl's twenty, thirty, fifty stades from a shaggy road."

"That's good," Blood said. "What I'm afraid of is some farmer peeping to Hoppy." He waited for Musk to speak again; when Musk did not, he added, "They can't really get up near the sun. The sun's a lot hotter than any fire. They'd be burned to death."

"Maybe they don't bum." Musk lowered his binoculars. "Maybe they're not even people."

"They're people. Just like us."

"Then maybe they got needlers."

Blood said, "They won't carry anything they don't have to carry."

"I'm shaggy glad you know. I'm shaggy glad you asked them."

Aquila adjusted the position of one huge talon with a minute jingle of hawk bells as Musk lifted his binoculars again.

"There's one!" Blood said unnecessarily. "Are you going to fly her?"

"I don't know," Musk admitted. "He's a long ways off, the yard."

Blood trained his own binoculars on the flier. "He's coming closer. He's headed this way!"

"I know. That's why I'm watching him."

"He's high."

Musk struggled to speak in the bored and bitter tones he had affected since childhood. "I've seen them higher." The thrill of the hunt was upon him, as sudden as a fever and as welcome as spring.

"I told you about that big gun they built. They shot at them for a month, but shells don't go straight up there, and they couldn't get them high enough anyway."

Musk let his binoculars drop to his chest. He could see the flier clearly now, silhouetted against the silver mirror that was Lake Limna, mounting into the sky on the other side of the city.

"Wait for him to get closer," Blood said urgently.

"If we wait much longer, he'll be farther by the time she gets up there."

"What if-"

"Stand back. If she goes for you, you're dead." With his free hand Musk grasped the crown of scarlet plumes and snatched the hood. "Away, hawk!"