Nightside the Long Sun

Yet it was easy for Auk to remain calm, easy for Auk to mock his fears. Auk, who had no doubt broken into scores of these country villas, was not going to break into this one, or even to assist him in doing it. And yet, Silk reminded himself, Auk’s own position was by no means impregnable.

“I would never violate my solemn oath, sworn to all the gods,” Silk said aloud. “And besides, if Blood were to find out about you and have you killed—he didn’t strike me as the type who kill men themselves—there would be no one to help me escape him.”

Auk cleared his throat and spat, the sound unnaturally loud in the airless stillness of the forest. “I’m not going to do a shaggy thing for you, Patera. You can forget about that. You’re working for the gods, right? Let them get you out.”

Almost whispering, because he was saddened by the knowledge, Silk said, “Yes, you will, Auk.”

“Sneeze it!”

“Because you couldn’t ever be certain that I wouldn’t tell, eventually. I won’t, but you don’t trust me. Or at least not that much.”

Auk snorted.

“And since you’re a better man than you pretend to be, the knowlege that I—not I particularly perhaps, but an augur who had been a companion of sorts, if only for this one night—required your help would devour you, even if you denied it a hundred times or more, as you very probably would. Thus you’ll help me if you can, Auk, eventually and possibly quite quickly. I know you will. And because you will, it will go much better for me if Blood doesn’t know about you.”

“I’d crawl a long way in for a while, maybe, but that’s all. Maybe go see Palustria for a year or three till Blood was gone or he’d forgotten about me. People ain’t like you think, Patera. Maybe you studied a long time, but there’s a lot that you don’t know.”

Which was true enough, Silk admitted to himself. For whatever inscrutable reasons, the gods thrust bios into the whorl knowing nothing of it; and if they waited until they were so wise as to make no mistakes before they acted, they waited forever. With sudden poignancy Silk wished that he might indeed wait forever, as some men did.

And yet he felt certain that he was right about Auk, and Auk wrong about himself. Auk still returned at times to talk with little Maytera Mint; and Auk had killed a man that evening—a serious matter even to a criminal, since the dead man had friends—because that man had been about to kill the big man called Gib. Auk might be a thief and even a murderer; but he had no real talent for murder, no innate bent toward evil. Not even Blood had such a bent, perhaps. He, Silk, had seen someone who did in Blood’s glass, and he promised himself now that he would never again mistake mere dishonesty or desperation for it again.

“But I know you, Auk,” he said softly. He shifted his weight in the vain hope of finding a more comfortable spot on the crude saddle. “I may be too trusting of people in general, as you say; but I’m right about you. You’ll help me when you think that I require it.”

Auk made a quick, impatient gesture, barely visible in the gloom. “Be quiet there, Patera. We’re getting pretty close.”

If there had ever been a real path, they were leaving it. With seeing feet, the donkeys picked their way up a rock-strewn hillside, often unavoidably bathed in the eerie skylight. At the top, Auk reined up and dismounted; Silk followed his example. Here the faintest of night breezes stirred, as stealthy as a thief itself, making away with the mingled scents of post oak and mulberry, of grass and fern withered almost to powder, of a passing fox, and the very essence of the night. The donkeys raised their long muzzles to catch it, and Silk fanned himself with his wide straw hat.

“See them lights, Patera?” Auk pointed toward a faint golden glimmer beyond the treetops. “That’s Blood’s place. What we did was circle around behind it, see? That’s what we been doing ever since we got off the main road. On the other side, there’s a big gate of steel bars, and a grass-way for floaters that goes up to the front. Can you see that black line, kind of wavy, between us and the house?”

Silk squinted and stared, but could not.

“That’s a stone wall about as high as that little tree down there. It’s got big spikes on top, which I’d say is mostly for show. Could be if you threw your rope up there and caught one, you could climb up the wall—I don’t know that anybody’s ever tried it. Only Blood’s got protection, understand? Guards, and a big talus that I know about for sure. I don’t know what else. You ever done anything like this before, Patera?”

Silk shook his head.