by Gene Wolfe
"Outside with her!" One woman pointed. "OUTside with both." The big man caught the speaker expertly by the collar, tapped her head almost gently with the skittlepin, and shoved her toward the door.
One of the watching men stepped forward, held up his hand, and gestured in the direction of the other woman, who seemed to Silk almost too drunk to stand.
"Her, too," the big man with the skittlepin told her advocate firmly. He shook his head.
"Her too! And you!" The big man loomed above him, a head the taller. "OUTside!"
Steel gleamed and the skittlepin flashed down. For the first time in his life, Silk heard the sickening crepitation of breaking bone; it was followed at once by the high, sharp report of a needier, a sound like the crack of a child's toy whip. A needier (momentarily, Silk thought it the needier that had fired) flew into the air, and one of the onlookers pitched forward.
Silk was on his knees beside him before he himself knew what he had done, his beads swinging half their length in sign after sign of addition. "I convey to you, my son, the forgiveness of all the gods. Recall now the words of Pas-"
"He's not dead, cully. You an augur?" It was the big man with the scarred face. His right arm was bleeding, dark blood oozing through a soiled rag he pressed tightly against the cut
"In the name of all the gods you are forgiven forever, my son. I speak here for Great Pas, for Divine Echidna, for Scalding Scylla, for-"
"Get him out of here," someone snapped; Silk could not tell whether he meant the dead man or himself. The dead man was bleeding less than the big man, a steady, unspectacular welling from his right temple. Yet he was surely dead; as Silk chanted the Final Formula and swung his beads, his left hand sought a pulse, finding none.
"His friends'll take care of him, Patera. He'll be all right."
Two of the dead man's friends had already picked up his feet.
"… and for Strong Sphigx. Also for all lesser gods." Silk hesitated; it had no place in the Formula, but would these people know? Or care? Before rising, he finished in a whisper: "The Outsider likewise forgives you, my son, no matter what evil you did in life."
The tavern was nearly empty. The man who had been hit with the skittlepin groaned and stirred. The drunken woman was kneeling beside him just as Silk had knelt beside the dead man, swaying even on her knees, one hand braced on the filthy floor. There was no sign of the needier that had flown into the air, nor of the knife that the injured man had drawn.
"You want a red ribbon, Patera?"
Silk shook his head.
"Sure you do. On me, for what you done." The big man wound the rag about his arm, knotted it dexterously with his left hand, and pulled the knot tight with his left hand and his teeth.
"I need to know something," Silk said, returning his beads to his pocket, "and I'd much rather learn it than get a free drink. I'm looking for a man called Auk. Was he in here? Can you tell me where I might find him?"
The big man grinned, the gap left by two missing teeth a little cavern in his mirth. "Auk, you say, Patera? Auk? There's quite a few with that name. Owe him money? How'd you know I'm not Auk myself?"
"Because I know him, my son. Know him by sight, I should have said. He's nearly as tall as you are, with small eyes, a heavy jaw, and large ears. I would guess he's five or six years younger than you are. He attends our Scylsday sacrifices regularly."
"Does he now." The big man appeared to be staring off into the dimness of the darkest corner of the room; abruptly he said, "Why, Auk's still here, Patera. Didn't you tell me you'd seen him go?"
"No," Silk began. "I-"
"Over there." The big man pointed toward the corner, where a solitary figure sat at a table not much larger than his chair.
"Thank you, my son," Silk called. He crossed the room, detouring around a long and dirty table. "Auk? I'm Patera Silk, from the manteion on Sun Street."
"Thanks for what?" the man called Auk inquired.
"For agreeing to talk with me. You signaled to him somehow-waved or something, I suppose. I didn't see it, but it's obvious you must have."
"Sit down, Patera,"
There was no other chair. Silk brought a stool from the long table and sat.
"Somebody send you?"
Silk nodded. "Maytera Mint, my son. But I don't wish to give you the wrong impression. I haven't come as a favor to her, or as a favor to you, either. Maytera was doing me a favor by telling me where to find you, and I've come to ask you for another one, shriving."
"Figure I need it, Patera?" There was no trace of humor in Auk's voice.
"I have no way of knowing, my son. Do you?"
Auk appeared to consider. "Maybe so. Maybe not."
Silk nodded-understandingly, he hoped. He found it unnerving to talk with this burly ruffian in the gloom, unable to see his expression.
The big man with the wounded arm set an astonishingly delicate glass before Silk. "The best we got, Patera." He backed away.
"Thank you, my son." Turning on his stool, Silk looked behind him; the injured man and the drunken woman were no longer beneath the lampion, though he had not heard diem go.
"Maytera Mint likes you, Patera," Auk remarked. "She tells me things about you sometimes. Like the time you got the cats' meat woman mad at you."
"You mean Scleroderma?" Silk felt himself flush, and was suddenly glad that Auk could not see him better. "She's a fine woman-a kind and quite genuinely religious woman. I was hasty and tactless, I'm afraid."
"She really empty her bucket over you?"
Silk nodded ruefully. "The odd thing was that I found a scrap of-of cats' meat, I suppose you'd call it, down my neck afterward. It stank."
Auk laughed softly, a deep, pleasant laugh that made Silk like him.
"I thought it an awful humiliation at the time," Silk continued. "It happened on a Thelxday, and I thanked her on my knees that my poor mother wasn't alive to hear about it. I thought, you know, that she would have been terribly hurt, just as I was myself at the time. Now I realize that she would only have teased me about it." He sipped from the graceful little glass before him; it was probably brandy, he decided, and good brandy, too. "I'd let Scleroderma paint me blue and drag me the whole length of the Alameda, if it would bring my mother back."
"Maytera Mint was the nearest to a real mother I ever had," Auk said. "I used to call her that-she let me-when we were alone. For a couple of years I pretended like that. She tell you?"
Silk shook his head, then added, "Maytera Marble said something of the sort. I'm afraid I didn't pay a great deal of attention to it."
"The Old One brought up us boys, and he raised us hard. It's the best way. I've seen a lot that didn't get it, and I know."
"I'm sure you do."
"Every so often I tell myself I ought to stick my knife in her, just to get her and her talk out of my head. Know what I mean?"
Silk nodded, although he could not be certain that the burly man across the table could see it. "Better than you do yourself, I think. I also know that you'll never actually harm her. Or if you do, it won't be for that reason. I'm not half as old as Patera Pike was, and not a tenth as wise; but I do know that"
"I wouldn't take the long end of that bet." Silk said nothing, his eyes upon the pale blur that was Auk's face, where for a moment it seemed to him that he had glimpsed the shadow of a muzzle, as though the unseen face were that of a wolf or bear.
Surely, he thought, this man can't have been called Auk from birth. Surely "Auk" is a name he's assumed.
He pictured Maytera Mint leading the boy Auk into class on a chain, then Maytera Mint warned by Maytera Rose that Auk would turn on her when he was grown. He sipped again to rid himself of the fancy. Auk's mother had presumably named him; the small auks of Lake Limna were flightless, thus it was a name given by mothers who hoped their sons would never leave them. But Auk's mother must have died while he was still very young.
"But not here." Auk's fist struck the table, nearly upsetting it. "I'll come Scylsday, d
ay after tomorrow, and you can shrive me then. All right?"
"No, my son," Silk said. "It must be tonight." "Don't you trust-"
"I'm afraid I haven't made myself entirely clear," Silk interposed. "I haven't come here to shrive you, though I'd be delighted to do it if you wish, and I'm certain it would make Maytera Mint very happy when I told her I had. But you must shrive me, Auk, and you must do it tonight. That is what I've come for. Not here, however, as you say. In some more private place."
"I can't do that!"
"You can, my son," Silk insisted softly. "And I hope you will. Maytera Mint taught you, and she must have taught you that anyone who is himself free of deep stain can bring the pardon of the gods to one who is in immediate danger of death."
"If you think I'm going to kill you, Patera, or Gib over there-"
Silk shook his head. "I'll explain everything to you in that more private place."
"Patera Pike shrove me one time. Maytera got after me about it, so I finally said all right. I told him a lot of things I shouldn't have."
"And now you're wondering whether he told me something of what you told him," Silk said, "and you think that I'm afraid you'll kill me when I tell you that I told someone eke. No, Auk. Patera told me nothing about it, not even that it took place. I learned that from Maytera Marble, who learned it from Maytera Mint, who learned of it from you."
Silk tasted his brandy again, finding it difficult to continue. "Tonight I intend to commit a major crime, or try to. I may be killed, in fact I rather expect it. Maytera Marble or Maytera Mint could have shriven me, of course; but I didn't want either of them to know. Then Maytera Marble mentioned you, and I realized you'd be perfect. Will you shrive me, Auk? I beg it."
Slowly, Auk relaxed; after a moment he laid his right hand on the table again. "You don't go the nose, Patera, do you?"
Silk shook his head. "If this's a shave, it's a close one." "It's not a shave. I mean exactly what I say." Auk nodded and stood. "Then we'd better go somewhere else, like you want. Too bad, I was hoping to do a little business tonight."
He led Silk to the back of the dim cellar room, and up a ladder into a cavernous night varied here and there by pyramids of barrels and bales; and at last, when they had followed an alley paved with refuse for several streets, into the back of what appeared to be an empty shop. The sound of their feet summoned a weak green glow from one corner of the overlong room. Silk saw a cot with rumpled, soiled sheets; a chamber pot; a table that might have come from the tavern they had left; two plain wooden chairs; and, on the opposite wall, what appeared to be a still-summonable glass. Planks had been nailed across the windows on either side of the street door; a cheap colored picture of Scylla, eight-armed and smiling, was tacked to the planks. "Is this where you live?" he asked.
"I don't exactly live anywhere, Patera. I've got a lot of places, and this is the closest. Have a seat. You still want me to shrive you?" Silk nodded.
"Then you're going to have to shrive me first so I can do it right. I guess you knew that. I'll try to think of everything."
Silk nodded again. "Do, please."
With speed and economy of motion surprising in so large a man, Auk knelt beside him. "Cleanse me, Patera, for I have given offense to Pas and to other gods."
His gaze upon the smiling picture of Scylla-and so well away from Auk's heavy, brutal face-Silk murmured, as the ritual required, "Tell me, my son, and I will bring you his forgiveness from the well of his boundless mercy."
"I killed a man tonight, Patera. You saw it. Kalan's his name. Gurnard was set to stick Gib, but he got him…"
"With his skittlepin," Silk prompted softly.
"That's lily, Patera. That's when Kalan come out with his needier, only I had mine out."
"He intended to shoot Gib, didn't he?"
"I think so, Patera. He works with Gurnard off and on. Or anyway he used to."
"Then there was no guilt in what you did, Auk."
"Thanks, Patera."
After that, Auk remained silent for a long time. Silk prayed silently while he waited, listening with half an ear to angry voices in the street and the thunderous wheels of a passing cart, his thoughts flitting from and returning to the calm, amused and somehow melancholy voices he had heard in the ball court as he had reached for the ball he carried in a pocket still, and to the innumerable things the owner of those voices had sought to teach him.
"I robbed a few houses up on the Palatine. I was trying to remember how many. Twenty I can think of for sure. Maybe more. And I beat a woman, a girl called-"
"You needn't tell me her name, Auk."
"Pretty bad, too. She was trying to get more out of me after I'd already given her a real nice brooch. I'd had too much, and I hit her. Cut her mouth. She yelled, and I hit her again and floored her. She couldn't work for a week, she says. I shouldn't have done that, Patera."
"No," Silk agreed.
"She's better than most, and high, wide and handsome, too. Know what I mean, Patera? That's why I gave her the brooch. When she wanted more…"
"I understand."
"I was going to kick her. I didn't, but if I had I'd probably have killed her. I kicked a man to death, once. That was part of what I told Patera Pike."
Silk nodded, forcing his eyes away from Auk's boots. "If Patera brought you pardon, you need not repeat that to me; and if you refrained from kicking the unfortunate woman, you have earned the favor of the gods-of Scylla and her sisters particularly-by your self-restraint."
Auk sighed. "Then that's all I've done, Patera, since last time. Solved those houses and beat on Chenille. And I wouldn't have, Patera, if I hadn't of seen she wanted it for rust. Or anyhow I don't think I would have."
"You understand that it's wrong to break into houses, Auk. You must, or you wouldn't have told me about it. It is wrong, and when you enter a house to rob it, you might easily be killed, in which case you would die with the guilt upon you. That would be very bad. I want you to promise me that you will look for some better way to live. Will you do that, Auk? Will you give me your word?"
"Yes, Patera, I swear I will I've already been doing it. You know, buying things and selling them. Like that"
Silk decided it would be wiser not to ask what sorts of things these were, or how the sellers had gotten them. "The woman you beat, Auk. You said she used rust. Am I to take it that she was an unmoral woman?"
"She's not any worse than a lot of others, Patera. She's at Orchid's place."
Silk nodded to himself. "Is that the sort of place I imagine?"
"No, Patera, it's about the best. They don't allow any fighting or anything like that, and everything's real clean. Some of Orchid's girls have even gone uphill."
"Nevertheless, Auk, you shouldn't go to places of that kind. You're not bad looking, you're strong, and you have some education. You'd have no difficulty finding a decent girl, and a decent girl might do you a great deal of good."
Auk stirred, and Silk sensed that the kneeling man was looking at him, although he did not permit his own eyes to leave the picture of Scylla. "You mean the kind that has you shrive her, Patera? You wouldn't want one of them to take up with somebody like me. You'd tell her she deserved somebody better. Shag yes, you would!"
For a moment it seemed to Silk that the weight of the whole whorl's folly and witless wrong had descended on his shoulders. "Believe me, Auk, many of those girls will marry men far, far worse than you." He drew a deep breath. "As penance for the evil you have done, Auk, you are to perform three meritorious acts before this time tomorrow. Shall I explain to you the nature of meritorious acts?"
"No, Patera. I remember, and I'll do them."
"That's well. Then I bring to you, Auk, the pardon of all the gods. In the name of Great Pas, you are forgiven. In the name of Echidna, you are forgiven. In the name of Scylla, you are forgiven…" Soon the moment would come. "And in the name of the Outsider and all lesser gods, you are forgiven, by the power entrusted to me."
There was no o
bjection from Auk. Silk traced the sign of addition in the air above his head.
"Now it's my turn, Auk. Will you shrive me, as I shrove you?"
The two men changed places.
Silk said, "Cleanse me, friend, for I am in sore danger of death, and I may give offense to Pas and to other gods."
Auk's hand touched his shoulder. "I've never did this before, Patera. I hope I get it right."
'Tell me…" Silk prompted.
"Yeah. Tell me, Patera, so that I can bring you the forgiveness of Pas from the well of bottomless mercy."
"I may have to break into a house tonight, Auk. I hope that I won't have to; but if the owner won't see me, or won't do what a certain god-the Outsider, Auk, you may know of him-wishes him to do, then 111 try to compel him."
"Whose-"
"If he sees me alone, I intend to threaten his life unless he does as the god requires. But to be honest, I doubt that he'll see me at all."
"Who is this, Patera? Who're you going to threaten?"
"Are you looking at me, Auk? You're not supposed to."
"All right, now I'm looking away. Who is this, Patera? Whose house is it?"
"There's no need for me to tell you that, Auk, Forgive me my intent, please."
"I'm afraid I can't, my son," Auk said, getting into the spirit of his role. "I got to know who this is, and why you're going to do it Maybe you won't be running as big of a risk as you think you are, see? I'm the one that has to judge that, ain't I?"
"Yes," Silk admitted.
"And I see why you looked for me, 'cause I can do it better than anybody. Only I got to know, 'cause if this's just some candy, I got to tell you to go to a real augur after you scrape out, and forget about me. There's houses and then there's Houses. So who is it and where is it, Patera?"
"His name is Blood," Silk said, and felt Auk's hand tighten on his shoulder. "I assume that he lives somewhere on the Palatine. He has a private floater, at any rate, and employs a driver for it."
