by Gene Wolfe
“I was given nothing.” The woman in the bed licked her lips, watching for his reaction. “I took what you’re calling a philtre before the first ones got here.”
“Rust?” Silk was on his knees beside the bed, groping for the clothing he had kicked beneath it. Fear was draining from him, and he felt immensely grateful for it. Lion-hearted Sphigx still favored him—nothing could be more certain.
“No.” She was scornful. “Rust doesn’t do this. Don’t you know anything? On rust I’d have itched to kill them all, and I might’ve done it, too. Beggar’s root’s what they call it, and it turns a terrible bore into a real pleasure.”
“I see.” Wincing, Silk pulled out his ruined tunic and his second-best robe.
“Want me to give you some? I’ve got a lot more, and it only takes a pinch.” She swung amazingly long legs over the side of the bed. “It’s a lot more expensive than rust, and a lot harder to find, but I’m in a generous mood. I usually am—you’ll see.” She favored Silk with a sidelong smile that made his heart leap.
He stood up and backed away.
“They call it beggar’s root because it makes you beg. I’m begging now, just listen to me. Come on. You’ll like it.”
Silk shook his head.
“Come sit next to me.” She patted the rumpled sheet. “That’s all I’m asking for—right now, anyway. You were here in bed with me a minute ago.”
He tried to pull his tunic over his head and failed, discovering in the process that even the slightest movement of his right arm was painful.
“You’re the one that they were looking for, aren’t you? Aren’t you glad that I didn’t tell them anything? You really ought to be, Musk can be awfully mean. Don’t you want me to help you with that?”
“Don’t try.” He retreated another step.
Sliding off the bed, she picked up his robe. She was completely naked; he closed his eyes and turned away.
She giggled, and he was suddenly reminded of Mucor, the mad girl. “You really are an augur. He called you Patera—I’d forgotten. Do you want your little hat back? I stuck it under my pillow.”
The uses to which Patera Pike’s calotte might be put if it remained with her flashed through Silk’s mind. “Yes,” he said. “Please, may I have it back?”
“Sure, I’ll trade you.”
He shook his head.
“Didn’t you come here to see me? You don’t act like it, but you knew my name.”
“No. I came to find Blood.”
“You won’t like him, Patera.” Hyacinth grinned again. “Even Musk doesn’t like him, not really. Nobody does.”
“He has my sympathy.” Silk tried to raise the tunic again, and was deterred by a flash of pain. “I’ve come to show him how he can be better liked, and even loved.”
“Well, Patera, I’m Hyacinth, just like you said. And I’m famous. Everybody likes me, except you.”
“I do like you,” Silk told her. “That is one of the reasons I won’t do what you want. It’s a rather minor one, actually, but a real reason nonetheless.”
“You stole my azoth, though, didn’t you, Patera? I can see the end of it poking out of that rope.”
Silk nodded. “I intend to return it. But you’re quite right, I took it without your permission, and that’s theft. I’m sorry, but I felt I’d better have it. What I’m doing is extremely important.” He paused and waited for remonstrances that did not come. “I’ll see that it’s returned to you, and your needier as well, if I get home safely.”
“You were afraid of the guards, weren’t you? There in my bed. You were afraid of that one with Musk. Afraid that he’d kill you.”
“Yes,” Silk admitted. “I was terrified, if you want the truth; and now I’m just as terrified of you, afraid that I’ll give in to you, disgrace my calling, and lose the favor of the immortal gods.”
She laughed.
“You’re right.” Silk tried to put on his tunic again, but his right forearm burned and throbbed. “I’m certainly not brave. But at least I’m brave enough to admit it.”
“Wait just a minute,” she said. “Wait right here. I’m going to get you something.”
He glimpsed the balneum through the door she opened. As she closed it behind her, it occurred to him that Patera Pike’s calotte was still in the bed, under her pillow; moved by that weak impulse which turns back travelers to retrieve trifles, he rescued it and put it on.
She emerged from the balneum, naked still, holding out a gold cup scarcely larger than a thimble, half filled with brick-colored powder. “Here, Patera. You put it into your lip.”
“No. I realize that you mean well, but I’d rather be afraid.”
She shrugged and pulled forward her own lower lip. For a moment it made her ugly, and Silk felt a surge of relief. After emptying the little cup into the hollow between lip and gum, she grinned at him. “This is the best money can buy, and it works fast. Sure you don’t want some? I’ve got a lot.”
“No,” he repeated. “I should go. I should have gone before now, in fact.”
“All right.” She was looking at the gem in the hilt of the azoth again. “It’s mine, you know. A very important man gave it to me. If you’re going to steal it, I ought to at least get to help you. Are you sure you’re a real augur?”
Silk sighed. “It seems that I may not be much longer. If you’re serious about wanting to help me, Hyacinth, tell me where you think Blood is likely to be at this hour. Will he have retired for the night?”
She shook her head, her eyes flashing. “He’s probably downstairs saying good-bye to the last of them. They’ve been coming all night, commissioners and commissioners’ flunkies. Every once in a while he sends a really important one up here for me. I lost count, but there must have been six or seven of them.”
“I know.” Silk tried to push the hilt of the azoth more deeply into the coil of rope. “I’ve lain between your sheets.”
“You think I ought to change them? I didn’t think men cared.”
Silk knelt to fish his broad-brimmed straw hat from beneath the bed. “I doubt that those men do.”
“I can call a servant.”
“They’re busy looking for me, I imagine.” Silk tossed the hat onto the bed and readied himself for one last try at his tunic.
“Not the maids.” She took his tunic from him. “You know, your eyes want to look at me. You ought to let them do it.”
“Hundreds of men must have told you how beautiful you are. Would you displease the gods to hear it once more? I wouldn’t. I’m still young, and I hope to see a god before I die.” He was tempted to add that he might well have missed one by a second or less when he entered her chambers, but he did not.
“You’ve never had a woman, have you?”
Silk shook his head, unwilling to speak.
“Well, let me help you get this on, anyway.” She held his tunic as high as she could stretch while he worked both arms into the sleeves, then snatched her azoth from the rope coiled around his waist and sprang toward the bed.
He gaped at her, stunned. Her thumb was upon the demon, the blade slot pointed at his heart. Backing away, he raised both hands in the gesture of surrender.
She posed like a duelist. “They say the girls fight like troopers in Trivigaunte.” She parried awkwardly twice, and skewered and slashed an imaginary opponent.
By that time he had recovered at least a fraction of his composure. “Aren’t you going to call the guards?”
“Don’t think so.” She lunged and recovered. “Wouldn’t I make a fine swordsman, Patera? Look at these legs.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
She pouted “Why not?”
“Because one must study swordsmanship, and practice day after day. There is a great deal to learn, or so I’ve been told. To speak frankly, I’d back a shorter, less attractive woman against you, assuming that she was less attracted to admiration and those bottles in your balneum, too.”
Hyacinth gave no sign of ha
ving heard. “If you really can’t do what I want—if you won’t, I mean—couldn’t you use this azoth instead? And kiss me, and pretend? I’d show you where I want you to put the big jewel, and after a while you might change your mind.”
“Isn’t there an antidote?” To prevent her from seeing his expression, he crossed the room to the window and parted the drapes. There was no one around the dead bird on the terrace now. “You have all those herbs. Surely you must have the antidote, if there is one.”
“I don’t want the antidote, Patera. I want you.” Her hand was on his shoulder; her lips brushed his ear. “And if you go out there like you’re thinking, the cats’ll tear you to pieces.”
The blade of the azoth shot past his ear, fifty cubits down to the terrace to slice the dead bird in two and leave a long, smoking scar across the flagstones. Silk flinched from it. “For Pas’s love be careful!”
Hyacinth whirled off like a dancer as she pressed the demon again. Shimmering through the bedchamber like summer heat, the azoth’s illimited discontinuity hummed of death, parting the universe, slitting the drapes like a razor and dropping a long section slabbed from wall and window frame at Silk’s feet.
“Now you have to,” she told him, and came at him with a sweeping cut that scarred half the room. “Say you will, and I’ll give it back.”
As he dove through the window, the azoth’s humming blade divided the stone sill behind him; but all the fear he ought to have felt was drowned in the knowledge that he was leaving her.
* * *
Had he struck the flagstones head first, he would have been spared a great deal of pain. As it was, he turned head over heels in midair. There was only a moment of darkness, like that a bruiser knows when he is knocked to his knees. For what might have been seconds or minutes, he lay near the divided body of the white-headed one, hearing her voice call to him from the window without comprehending anything it said.
When at last he tried to stand, he found that he could not. He had dragged himself to within ten paces of the wall, and shot two of the horned cats Mucor called lynxes, when a guard in silvered armor took the needler from his hand.
After what seemed a very long time, unarmored servants joined him; these carried torches with which they kept the snarling lynxes at bay. Supervised by a fussy little man with a pointed, iron-gray beard, they rolled Silk onto a blanket and carried him back to the villa.
THE BARGAIN
“It isn’t much,” the fussy little man said, “but it’s mine for as long as he lets me have it.”
“It” was a moderately large and very cluttered room in the north wing of Blood’s villa, and the fussy little man was rummaging in a drawer as he spoke. He snapped a flask under the barrel of a clumsy-looking gun, pushed its muzzle through one of the rents in Silk’s tunic, and fired.
Silk felt a sharp pain, as though he had been stung by a bee.
“This stuff kills a lot of people,” the fussy little man informed him, “so that’s to see if you’re one of them. If you don’t die in a minute or two, I’ll give you some more. Having any trouble breathing?”
Clenching his teeth against the pain in his ankle, Silk drew a deep breath and shook his head.
“Good. Actually, that was a minimal dose. It won’t kill you even if you’re sensitive to it, but it’ll take care of those deep scratches and make you sick enough to tell me I mustn’t give you any more.” The fussy little man bent to stare into Silk’s eyes. “Take another deep breath and let it out.”
Silk did so. “What’s your name, Doctor?”
“We don’t use them much here. You’re fine. Hold out that arm.”
Silk raised it, and the bee stung again.
“Stops pain and fights infection.” The fussy little man squatted, pushed up Silk’s trousers leg, and put the muzzle of his odd-looking gun against Silk’s calf.
“It didn’t operate that time,” Silk told him.
“Yes, it did. You didn’t feel it, that’s all. Now we can take that shoe off.”
“My own name is Patera Silk.”
The fussy little man glanced up at him. “Doctor Crane, Silk. Have a good laugh. You’re really an augur? Musk said you were.”
Silk nodded.
“And you jumped out of that second-floor window? Don’t do that again.” Doctor Crane untied the laces and removed the shoe. “My mother hoped I’d be tall, you see. She was tall herself, and she liked tall men. My father was short.”
Silk said, “I understand.”
“I doubt it.” Doctor Crane bent over Silk’s foot, his pinkish scalp visible through his gray hair. “I’m going to cut away this stocking. If I pull it off, it might do more damage.” He produced shiny scissors exactly like those Silk had found in Hyacinth’s balneum. “She’s dead now, and so’s he, so I guess it doesn’t matter.” The ruined stocking fell away. “Want to see what he looked like?”
The absence of pain was intoxicating; Silk felt giddy with happiness. “I’d love to.” He managed to add, “If you care to show me.”
“I can’t help it. You’re seeing him now, since I look exactly like him. It’s our genes, not our names, that make us whatever we are.”
“It’s the will of the gods.” Silk’s eyes told him that the little physician was probing his swollen right ankle with his fingers, but he could feel nothing. “Your mother was tall; and if you were tall as well, you would say that it was because she had been.”
“I’m not hurting you?”
Silk shook his head. “I don’t resemble my own mother in the least; she was small and dark. I have no idea what my father looked like, but I know that I am the man that a certain god wished me to be before I was born.”
“She’s dead?”
Silk nodded. “She left us for Mainframe a month before I was designated.”
“You’ve got blue eyes. You’re only the second—no, the third person I’ve ever seen with them. It’s a shame you don’t know who your father was. I’d like to have a look at him. See if you can stand up.”
Silk could and did.
“Fine. Let me take your arm. I want you up there on that table. It’s a nice clean break, or anyway that’s what it looks like, and I’m going to pin it and put a cast on it.”
They were not planning to kill him. Silk savored the thought. They were not planning to kill him, and so there might still be a chance to save the manteion.
* * *
Blood was slightly drunk. Silk envied him that almost as much as his possession of the manteion. As though Blood had read his thoughts, he said, “Hasn’t anybody brought you anything, Patera? Musk, get somebody to bring him a drink.”
The handsome young man nodded and slipped out of the room, at which Silk felt somewhat better.
“We’ve got other stuff, Patera. I don’t suppose you use them?”
Silk said, “Your physician’s already given me a drug to ease the pain. I doubt that it would be wise to mix it with something else.” He was very conscious of that pain, which was returning; but he had no intention of letting Blood see that.
“Right you are.” Blood leaned forward in his big red leather chair, and for a moment Silk thought that he might actually fall out of it. “The light touch with everything—that’s my motto. Always has been. Even with that enlightenment of yours, a light touch’s best.”
Silk shook his head. “In spite of what has happened to me, I cannot agree.”
“What’s this!” Grinning broadly, Blood pretended to be outraged. “Did enlightenment tell you to come out here and break into my house? No, no, Patera. Don’t try to tell me that. That was greed, the same as you’d slang me for. Your tin sibyl told you I’d bought your place—which I have, and everything completely legal—so you figured I’d have things worth taking. Don’t tell me. I’m an old hand myself.”
“I came here to steal our manteion back from you,” Silk said. “That’s worth taking, certainly. You took it legally, and I intended to take it from you, if I could, in any way I coul
d.”
Blood spat, looked around for his drink, and finding the tumbler empty dropped it on the carpet. “What did you think you could do, nick the shaggy deed out of my papers? It wouldn’t mean a shaggy thing. Musk’s the buyer of record, and all he’d have to do is pay a couple of cards for a new copy.”
“I was going to make you sign it over to me,” Silk told him. “I intended to hide in your bedroom until you came, and threaten to kill you unless you did exactly as I ordered.”
The door opened. Musk entered, followed by a liveried footman with a tray. The footman set the tray on an inlaid table at Silk’s elbow. “Will that be all, sir?”
Silk took the squat, water-white drink from the tray and sipped. “Yes, thank you. Thank you very much, Musk.”
The servant departed; Musk smiled bitterly.
“This’s getting interesting.” Blood leaned forward, his wide, red face redder than ever. “Would you really have killed me, Patera?”
Silk, who would not have, felt certain he would not be believed. “I hoped that it wouldn’t be necessary.”
“I see. I see. And it never crossed your mind that I’d yell for some friends in the City Guard the minute you left? That I wouldn’t even have had to use my own people on you, because the Guard would do their work instead?” Blood laughed, and Musk concealed his smile behind his hand.
Silk sipped again, wondering briefly whether the drink was drugged. If they wanted to drug him, he reflected, they would have no need of subterfuge. Whatever it was, the drink was very strong, certainly. Drugged or undrugged, it might dull the pain in his ankle. He ventured a cautious swallow. He had drunk brandy already tonight, the brandy Gib had given him; it seemed a very long time ago. Surely Blood would make no charge for this drink, whatever else he might do. (Not once in a month did Silk drink anything stronger than water.)
“Well, didn’t you?” Blood snorted in disgust. “You know, I’ve got a few people working for me that don’t think any better than you do, Patera.”