Litany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  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 needier 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.

  Chapter 7

  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 could."

  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 be 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."

  Silk returned his drink to the tray. "I was going to make you sign a confession. It was the only thing I could think of, so it was what I planned."

  "Me? Confess to what?"

  "It didn't matter." Fatigue had enfolded Silk like a cloak. He had never known that a chair could be as comfortable as this one, a chair in which he could sleep for days. "A conspiracy to overthrow the Ayuntamiento, perhaps.

  Something like that." Recalling certain classroom embarrassments, he forced himself to breathe deeply so that he would not yawn; the faint throbbing in his foot seemed very far away, driven beyond the fringes of the most remote Vironese lands by the kindly sorcery of the squat tumbler. "I would have given it to one of my-to another augur, one I know well. I was going to seal it, and make him promise to deliver it to the Juzgado if anything happened to me. Something like that."

  "Not too bad." Blood took Hyacinth's little needier from his waistband, thumbed off its safety catch, and aimed it carefully at Silk's chest.

  Musk frowned and touched Blood's arm.

  Blood chuckled. "Oh, don't worry. I only wanted to see how he'd behave in my place. It doesn't seem to bother him much." The needler's tiny, malevolent eye twitched to the right and spat, and the squat tumbler exploded, showering Silk with shards and pungent liquor.

  He brushed himself with his fingers. "What would you like me to sign over to you? I'll be happy to oblige. Give me the paper."

  "I don't know." Blood dropped Hyacinth's gold-plated needier on the stand that had held his drink. "What have you got, Patera?"

  "Two drawers of clothing and three books. No, two; I sold my personal copy of the Writings. My beads-I've got those here, and I'll give them to you now if you like. My old pen case, but it's still in my robe up in that woman's room. You could have somebody bring it, and I'll confess to climbing onto your roof and entering your house without your permission, and give you the pen case, too."

  Blood shook his head. "I don't need your confession, Patera. I have you."

  "As you like." Silk visualized his bedroom, over the kitchen in the manse. "Pas's gammadion. That's steel, of course, but the chain's silver and should be worth something. I also have an old portable shrine that belonged to Patera Pike. I've set it up on my dresser, so I suppose you could say it's mine now. There's a rather attractive triptych, a small polychrome lamp, an offertory cloth, and so on, with a teak case to carry them in. Do you want that? I had hoped-foolishly no doubt-to pass it on to my successor."

  Blood waved the triptych aside. "How'd you get through the gate?"

  "I didn't. I cut a limb in the forest and tied it to this rope." Silk pointed to his waist. "I threw the limb over the spikes on your wall and climbed the rope."

  "We'll have to do something about that." Blood glanced significantly at Musk. "You say you were up on the roof, so it was you that killed Hierax."

  Silk sat up straight, feeling as if he had been wakened from sleep. "You gave him the name of the god?"

  "Musk did. Why not?"

  Musk said softly, "He was a griffon vulture, a mountain bird. Beautiful. I thought I might be able to teach him to kill for himself."

  "But it was no go," Blood continued. "Musk got angry with him and was going to knife him. Musk has the mews out back."

  Silk nodded politely. Patera Pike had once remarked to him that you could never tell from a man's appearance what might give him pleasure; studying Musk, Silk decided that he had never accorded Patera Pike's sagacity as much respect as it had deserved.

  "So I said that if he didn't want him, he could give him to me," Blood continued, "and I put him up there on the roof for a pet."

  "I see." Silk paused. "You clipped his wings."

  "I had one of Musk's helpers do it," Blood explained, "so he wouldn't fly off. He wouldn't hunt anyhow."

  Silk nodded, mostly to himself. "But he attacked me, I suppose because I picked up that scrap of hide. We were next to the battlement, and in the excitement of the moment he-I will not call him Hierax, Hierax is a sacred name-forgot that he could no longer fly."

  Blood reached for the needier. "You're saying I killed him. That's a shaggy He! You did it."

  Silk nodded. "He died by misadventure while fighting with me; but you may say that I killed him if you like. I was certainly trying to."

  "And you stole this needier from Hyacinth before she drove you through the window with her azoth-must be about a thirty-cubit drop. Why didn't you shoot her?"

  "Would you have," Silk inquired, "if you had been in my place?"

  Blood chuckled. "And fed her to Musk's birds."

  "What I have done to you already is surely much worse than anything that Hyacinth did to me; I say nothing of what I intended to do to you. Are you going to shoot me?" If he lunged, Silk decided, he might be able to wrestle the little needier from Blood in spite of his injured leg; and with the muzzle to Blood's head, he might be able to force them to let him go. He readied himself, calculating the distance as he edged forward in his chair.

  "I might. I might at that, Patera." Blood toyed with the needier, palming it, flipping it over, and weighing it in his hand; he seemed nearly sober now. "You understand-or I hope you do, anyway-that we haven't committed any kind of a crime, not a one of us. Not me, not Musk here, not any of my people."

  Silk started to speak, then decided against it.

  "You think you know about something? All right, I'll guess. Tell me if I'm wrong. You've been talking with Hy, and so you think she's a whore. One of our guests tonight gave her that azoth. Quite a little present, plenty good enough for a councillor. Maybe she bragged on some of her other presents, too. Have I hit the target?"

  Silk nodded guardedly, his eyes on the needier. "She'd had several… Visitors."

  Blood chuckled. "He's blushing, Musk. Take a look at him. Yes, Patera, I know. Only they didn't pay, and that's what matters to the law. They were my guests, and Hy's one of my houseguests. So if she wants to show somebody a good time, that's her business and mine, but none of yours. You came out here to get back your manteion, you tell me. Well, we didn't take it away from you." Blood emphasized his point with the needier, jabbing at Silk's face. "If we're going to talk about what's not legal, we've got to talk about what's legal, too. And legally you never did own it. It belonged to the Chapter, according to the deed I've got. Isn't that right?"

  Silk nodded.

  "And the city took it from the Chapter for taxes owed. Not from you, because you never had it. Back last week that was, I think. Everything was done properly, I'm sure. The Chapter was notified and so on. They didn't tell you?

  "No." Silk sighed, and forced himself to relax. "I knew that it might happen, and in fact I warned the Chapter about it. I was never informed that it had happened."

  "Then they ought to tell you they're sorry, Patera, and I hope they will. But that's got nothing to do with Musk and me. Musk bought your manteion from the city, and there was nothing irregular about it. He was acting for me, with my money, but there's nothing illegal about that either, it's just a business matter between him and me. Thirteen thousand cards we paid, plus the fees. We didn't steal anything, did we? And we haven't hurt you-or anybody-have we?"

  "It will hurt the entire quarter, several thousand poor families, if you close the manteion."

  "They can go somewhere else if they want to, and that's up to the Chapter anyhow, I'd say." Blood gestured toward the welts on Silk's chest with the needier. "You got hurt some, and nobody's arguing about that. But you got banged up fighting my pet bird and jumping out a window. Hy was just defending herself with that azoth, something she's got every right in the whorl to do. You aren't planning to peep about her, ar
e you?"

  "Peep?"

  "Go crying to the froggies."

  "I see. No, of course not."

  "That's good. I'm happy to hear you being reasonable. Just look at it You broke into my house hoping to take my property-it's Musk's, but you didn't know that. You've admitted that to Musk and me, and we're ready to swear to it in front of a judge if we have to."

  Silk smiled; it seemed to him a very long time since he had last smiled. "You aren't really going to have me killed, are you, Blood? You're not willing to take the risk."

  Blood's finger found the trigger of the needier. "Keep on talking like that and I might, Patera."

  "I don't believe so. You'd have someone else do it, probably Musk. You're not even going to do that, however. You're trying to frighten me before you let me go."

  Blood glanced at Musk, who nodded and circled behind Silk's chair. Silk felt the tips of Musk's fingers brush his ears.

  "If you go on talking to me like you have been, Patera, you're going to get hurt. It won't leave any marks, but you won't like it at all. Musk has done it before. He's good at it."

  "Not to an augur. Those who harm an augur in any way suffer the displeasure of all the gods."

  The pain was as sudden as a blow, and so sharp it left Silk breathless, an explosion of agony; he felt as though his head had been crushed.

  "There's places behind your ears," Blood explained. "Musk pushes them in with his knuckles."

  Gasping for air, his hands to his mastoids, Silk could not even nod.

  "We can do that again and again if we have to," Blood continued. "And if we finally give up and go to bed, we can start over in the morning."

  A red mist had blotted out Silk's vision, but it was clearing. He managed, "You don't have to explain my situation to me."

  "Maybe not. I'll do it whenever I want to, just the same. So to get on with this-you're right, we'd just as soon not kill you if we don't have to. There's three or four different reasons for that, all of them pretty good. You're an augur, to start with. If the gods ever paid any attention to Viron, they quit a long time ago. Myself, I don't think there was ever anything in it except a way for people like you to get everything they wanted without working. But the Chapter looks after you, and if it ever got out that we did for you-I mean just talk, because they'd never be able to prove anything-it would get people stirred up and be bad for business."