Nightside the Long Sun tbotls-1

by Gene Wolfe

  Nothing. Thelxiepeia provided the best protection from devils, according to the Writings, but this was Phaea’s day, not hers. Silk petitioned Phaea, Thelxiepeia, and for good measure Scylla, in quick succession before saying, “I take it you don’t want to talk to me, but I need to talk to you. I need your help, whoever you are.”

  In Blood’s ballroom, the orchestra had struck up “Brave Guards of the Third Brigade.” Silk had the feeling that no one was dancing, that few if any of Blood’s guests were even listening. Outside, the talus waited at the gate, its steel arms unnaturally lengthened, both its hands upon the ring.

  Turning his back on the window, Silk scanned the room. A shapeless mass in a corner (one that he had not traversed when he had felt his way along the walls to the door) might conceivably have been a huddled woman. With no very great confidence he said, “I see you.”

  “To fourteen more my sword I pledged,” sang the violins with desperate gaiety. Beardless lieutenants in brilliant green dress uniforms, twirling smiling beauties with plumes in their hair—but they were not there, Silk felt certain, no more than the mysterious young woman whom he himself was trying to address was here.

  He crossed to the dark shape in the corner and nudged it with the toe of his shoe, then crouched, put aside his hatchet, and explored it with both hands—a ragged blanket and a thin, foul-smelling mattress. Picking up his hatchet again, he rose and faced the empty room. “I’d like to see you,” he repeated. “But if you won’t let me—if you won’t even talk to me any more—I’m going to leave.” As soon as he had spoken, he reflected that he had probably told her precisely what she wanted to hear.

  He stepped to the window. “If you require my help, you must say so now.” He waited, silently reciting a formula of blessing, then traced the sign of addition in the darkness before him. “Good-bye, then.”

  Before he could turn to go, she rose before him like smoke, naked and thinner than the most miserable beggar. Although she was a head shorter, he would have backed away from her if he could; his right heel thumped the wall below the window.

  “Here I am. Can you see me now?” In the dim skylight from the window her starved and bloodless face seemed almost a skull. “My name’s Mucor.”

  Silk nodded and swallowed, half afraid to give his own, not liking to lie. “Mine’s Silk.” Whether he succeeded or was apprehended, Blood would learn his identity. “Patera Silk. I’m an augur, you see.” He might die, perhaps; but if he did his identity would no longer matter.

  “Do you really have to talk with me, Silk? That’s what you said.”

  He nodded. “I need to ask you how to open that door. It doesn’t seem to be locked, but it won’t open.”

  When she did not reply, he added. “I have to get into the house. Into the rest of it, I mean.”

  “What’s an augur? I thought you were a boy.”

  “One who attempts to learn the will of the gods through sacrifice, in order that he may—”

  “I know! With the knife and the black robe. Lots of blood. Should I come with you, Silk? I can send forth my spirit. I’ll fly beside you, wherever you go.”

  “Call me Patera, please. That’s the proper way. You can send forth your body, too, Mucor, if you want.”

  “I’m saving myself for the man I’ll marry.” It was said with perfect (too perfect) seriousness.

  “That’s certainly the correct attitude, Mucor. But all I meant was that you don’t have to stay here if you don’t wish to. You could climb out of this window very easily and wait out there on the roof. When I’ve finished my business with Blood, we could both leave this villa, and I could take you to someone in the city who would feed you properly and—and take care of you.”

  The skull grinned at him. “They’d find out that my window opens, Silk. I wouldn’t be able to send my spirit any more.”

  “You wouldn’t be here. You’d be in some safe place in the city. There you could send out your spirit whenever you wanted, and a physician—”

  “Not if my window was locked again. When my window is locked, I can’t do it, Silk. They think it’s locked now.” She giggled, a high, mirthless tittering that stroked Silk’s spine like an icy finger.

  “I see,” he said. “I was about to say that someone in the city might even be able to make you well. You may not care about that, but I do. Will you at least let me out of your room? Open your door for me?”

  “Not from this side. I can’t.”

  He sighed. “I didn’t really think you could. I don’t suppose you know where Blood sleeps?”

  “On the other side. Of the house.”

  “In the other wing?”

  “His room used to be right under mine, but he didn’t like hearing me. Sometimes I was bad. The north addition. This one’s the south addition.”

  “Thank you,” Silk stroked his cheek. “That’s certainly worth knowing. He’ll have a big room on the ground floor, I suppose.”

  “He’s my father.”

  “Blood is?” Silk caught himself on the point of saying that she did not resemble him. “Well, well. That may be worth knowing, too. I don’t plan to hurt him, Mucor, though I rather regret that now. He has a very nice daughter; he should come and see her more often, I think. I’ll mention it forcefully, if I get to talk with him.”

  Silk turned to leave, then glanced back at her. “You really don’t have to stay here, Mucor.”

  “I know. I don’t.”

  “You don’t want to come with me when I leave? Or leave now yourself?”

  “Not the way you mean, walking like you do.”

  “Then there’s nothing I can do for you except give you my blessing, which I’ve done already. You’re one of Molpe’s children, I think. May she care for you and favor you, this night and every night.”

  “Thank you, Silk.” It was the tone of the little girl she had once been. Five years ago, perhaps, he decided; or perhaps three, or less than three. He swung his right leg over the windowsill.

  “Watch out for my lynxes.”

  Silk berated himself for not having questioned her more. “What are those?”

  “My children. Do you want to see one?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do, if you want to show him to me.”

  “Watch.”

  Mucor was looking out the window, and Silk followed her gaze. For half a minute he waited beside her, listening to the faint sounds of the night; Blood’s orchestra seemed to have fallen silent. Ghost-like, a floater glided beneath the arch, its blowers scarcely audible; the talus let down the gate smoothly behind it, and even the distant rattle of the chain reached them.

  A section of abatjour pivoted upward, and a horned head with topaz eyes emerged from beneath it, followed by a big, soft-looking paw.

  Mucor said, “That’s Lion. He’s my oldest son. Isn’t he handsome?”

  Silk managed to smile. “Yes, he certainly is. But I didn’t know you meant the horned cats.”

  “Those are their ears. But they jump through windows, and they have long teeth and claws that can hurt worse than a bull’s horns.”

  “I imagine so.” Silk made himself relax. “Lynxes? Is that what you call them? I’ve never heard of the name, and I’m supposed to know something about animals.”

  The lynx emerged from the abatjour and trotted over to stand beneath the window, looking up at them quizzically. If he had bent, Silk could have touched its great, bearded head; he took a step backward instead. “Don’t let him come up here, please.”

  “You said you wanted to see them, Silk.”

  “This is close enough.”

  As if it had understood, the lynx wheeled. A single bound carried it to the top of the battlement surrounding the conservatory roof, from which it dived as though into a pool.

  “Isn’t he pretty?”

  Silk nodded reluctantly. “I found him terrifying, but you’re right. I’ve never seen a lovelier animal, though all Sabered Sphigx’s cats are beautiful. She must be very proud of him
.”

  “So am I. I told him not to hurt you.” Mucor squatted on her heels, folding like a carpenter’s rule.

  “By standing beside me and talking to me, you mean.” Gratefully, Silk seated himself on the windowsill. “I’ve known dogs that intelligent. But a—lynx? Is that the singular? It’s an odd word.”

  “It means they hunt in the daytime,” Mucor explained. “They would, too, if my father’d let them. Their eyes are sharper than almost any other animal’s. But their ears are good, too. And they can see in the dark, just like regular cats.”

  Silk shuddered.

  “My father traded for them. When he got them they were just little chips of ice inside a big box that was little on the inside. The chips are just like little seeds. Do you know about that, Silk?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” he said. For an instant he thought that he felt the hot yellow gaze of the lynx behind him; he looked quickly, but the roof was bare. “It’s supposed to be against the law, though I don’t think that’s very strictly enforced. One could be placed inside a female animal of the correct sort, a large cat I’d imagine, in this case—”

  “He put them inside a girl.” Mucor’s eerie titter came again. “It was me.”

  “In you!”

  “He didn’t know what they were.” Mucor’s teeth flashed in the darkness. “But I did, a long while before they were born. Then Musk told me their name and gave me a book. He likes birds, but I like them and they like me.”

  “Then come with me,” Silk said, “and the lynxes won’t hurt either of us.”

  The skull nodded, still grinning. “I’ll fly beside you, Silk. Can you bribe the talus?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It takes a lot of money.”

  There was a soft scraping from the back of the room, followed by a muffled thump. Before the door swung open, Silk realized that what he had heard was a bar being lifted from it and laid aside. Nearly falling, he slid over the sill, and crouched as Mucor’s window shut silently above his head.

  For as long as it took him to run mentally through the formal praises of Sphigx, whose day was about to dawn (or so at least he felt), he waited, listening. No sound of voices reached him from the room above, though once he heard what might have been a blow. When he stood at last and peeped cautiously through the glass, he could see no one.

  The panes that Lion had raised with his head yielded easily to Silk’s fingers; as they rose, a moist and fragrant exhalation from the conservatory below invaded the dry heat of the rooftop. He reflected that it would be simple now—much easier than he had thought—to enter the conservatory from above, and the trees there had clearly supported Lion’s considerable weight without damage.

  Silk’s fingertips described slow circles on his cheek as he considered it. The difficulty was that Blood slept in the other wing, if Mucor was to be believed. Entering here, he would have to traverse the length of the villa from south to north, finding his way though unfamiliar rooms. There would be bright lights and the armored guards he had seen in Auk’s glass and on the highriders, Blood’s staff and Blood’s guests.

  Regretfully Silk let down the movable section of the abatjour, retrieved his horsehair rope, and untied the rough limb that had served him so well. The merlons crowning the roof of the south annex would not have cutting edges, and a noose would make no dangerous noise. Three throws missed before the fourth snared a merlon. He tugged experimentally at the rope; the merlon seemed as solid as a post; drying his hands on his robe, he started up.

  He had reached the roof of the wing and was removing his noose from the merlon when Mucor’s spectral voice spoke, seemingly in his ear. There were words he could not quite hear, then, “… birds. Watch out for the white-headed one.”

  “Mucor?”

  There was no reply. Silk looked over the battlement just in time to see the window close.

  Although it was twenty times larger, this roof had no abatjour, and was in fact no more than a broad and extremely long expanse of slightly sloping tar. Beyond the parapet at its northern end, the lofty stone chimneys of the original structure stood like so many pallid sentries in the glimmering skylight. Silk had enjoyed several lively conversations with chimney sweeps since arriving at the manteion on Sun Street, and had learned (with many other things) that the chimneys of great houses were frequently wide enough to admit the sweep employed to clean and repair them, and that some had interior steps for his use.

  Walking softly and keeping near the center so that he could not be seen from the ground, Silk walked the length of the roof. When he was near enough to look down on it, he saw that the more steeply pitched roof of the original structure was tiled rather than tarred. Its tall chimneys were clearly visible now; there were five, of which four appeared to be identical. The fifth, however—the chimney farthest but one from him—boasted a chimney pot twice the height of the rest, a tall and somewhat shapeless pot with a pale finial. For a moment, Silk wondered uneasily whether it could be the “white-headed one” Mucor had warned him against, and resolved to examine it only if he could not gain entry to any of the others.

  Then another, more significant, detail caught his eye. The corner of some low projection, dark and distinct, could be seen beyond the third chimney, its angular outline in sharp contrast to the rounded contours of the tiles, and its top a cubit or so higher than theirs. He moved a few steps to his left to see it better.

  It was, beyond question, a trapdoor; and Silk murmured a prayer of thanks to whatever god had arranged a generation ago that it should be included in the plan of the roof for his use.

  Looping his rope around a merlon, he scrambled easily down onto the tiles and pulled the rope down after him. The Outsider had indeed warned him to expect no help; yet some other god was certainly siding with him. For a moment Silk speculated happily on which it might be. Scylla, perhaps, who would not wish her city to lose a manteion. Or grim and gluttonous Phaea, the ruler of the day. Or Molpe, since—No, Tartaros, of course. Tartaros was the patron of thieves of every kind, and he had prayed fervently to Tartaros (as he now remembered) while still outside Blood’s wall. Moreover, black was Tartaros’s color; all augurs and sibyls wore it in order that they might, figuratively if not literally, steal unobserved among the gods to overhear their deliberations. Not only was he himself clothed entirely in black, but the tarred roofs he had just left behind had been black as well.

  “Terrible Tartaros, be thanked and praised most highly by me forever. Now let it be unlocked, Tartaros! But locked or not, the black lamb I pledged shall be yours.” Recalling the tavern in which he had met Auk, he added in a final burst of extravagance, “And a black cock, too.”

  And yet, he told himself, it was only logical that the trapdoor should be precisely where it was. Tiles must break at times—must be broken fairly frequently by the violent hailstorms that had ushered in every winter for the past few years; and each such broken tile would have to be replaced. A trapdoor giving access to the roof from the attic of the villa would be much more convenient (as well as much safer) than a seventy-cubit ladder. A ladder of that size would very likely require a whole crew of workmen just to get it into place.

  He tried to hurry across the intervening tiles to the trapdoor, but their glazed, convex, and unstable surfaces hindered him, quite literally at every stride. Twice tiles cracked beneath his impatient feet; and when he had nearly reached the trapdoor, he slipped unexpectedly and fell, and saved himself from rolling down the roof only by clutching at the rough masonry of the third chimney.

  It was reassuring to note that this roof, like those of the wings and the conservatory, was walled with ornamental battlements. He would have had a bad time of it if it had not been for the chimney; he was glad he had escaped it. He would have been shaken and bruised, and he might well have made enough noise to attract the attention of someone inside the villa. But at the end of that ignominious fall he would not have dropped from the edge of the roof to his death. Those blessed batt
lements (which had been of so much help to him ever since he had dashed from the wall across the grounds) were, now that he came to think of it, one of the recognized symbols in art of Sphigx, the lion-goddess of war; and Lion had been the name of Mucor’s horned cat—of the animal she called her lynx, which had not harmed him. Taking all that into account, who could deny that Fierce Sphigx favored him also?

  Silk caught his breath, made sure of his footing, and let go of the chimney. Here, not a hand’s breadth from the toe of his right shoe, was the thing that he had slipped on—this blotch on the earthen-red surface of the roof. He stooped and picked it up.

  It was a scrap of raw skin, an irregular patch about as large as a handkerchief from the pelt of some animal, still covered with coarse hair on one side and slimy with rotting flesh and rancid fat on the other, reeking with decay. He flung it aside with a snort of disgust.

  The trapdoor lifted easily; below it was a steep and tightly spiraled iron stair. A more conventional stairway, clearly leading to the upper floor of the original villa, began a few steps from the bottom of the iron one. Briefly he paused, looking down at it, to savor his triumph.

  He had been carrying his horsehair rope in an untidy coil, and had dropped it when he slipped. He retrieved it and wound it around his waist beneath his robe, as he had when he had set out from the manteion that evening. It was always possible, he reminded himself, that he would need it again. Yet he felt as he had during his last year at the schola, when he had realized that final year would actually be easier than the one before it—that his instructors no more wished him to fail after he had studied so long than he himself did, and that he would not be permitted to fail unless he curtailed his efforts to an almost criminal degree. The whole villa lay open before him, and he knew, roughly if not precisely, where Blood’s bedchamber was located. In order to succeed, he had only to find it and conceal himself there before Blood retired. Then, he told himself with a pleasant sensation of virtue, he would employ reason, if reason would serve; if it would not …