Nightside the Long Sun

“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.”

Silk said, “Then I would not have died for nothing,” and felt Musk’s fingers behind his ears again.

Blood shook his head, and the contingent agony halted, poised at the edge of possibility. “Then too, we just bought your place so that might make some people think of us. Did you tell anybody you were coming?”

Here it was. Silk was prepared to lie if he must, but preferred to dodge if he could. He said, “You mean one of our sibyls? No, nothing like that.”

Blood nodded, and the danger was past. “It could get somebody’s attention anyway, and I can’t be sure who’s seen you. Hy has, and talked with you and so on. Probably even knows your name.”

Silk could not remember, but he said, “Yes, she does. Can’t you trust her? She’s your wife.”

Musk tittered behind him. Blood roared, his free hand slapping his thigh.

Silk shrugged. “One of your servants referred to her as his mistress. He thought that I was one of your guests, of course.”

Blood wiped his eyes. “I like her, Patera, and she’s the best-looking whore in Viron, which makes her a valuable commodity. But as for that—” Blood waved the topic aside. “What I was going to say is I’d rather have you as a friend.” Seeing Silk’s expression, he laughed again.

Silk strove to sound casual. “My friendship’s easily gained.” This was the conversation he had imagined when he had spied on the villa from the top of the wall; frantically he searched for the smooth phrases he had rehearsed. “Return my manteion to the Chapter, and I’ll bless you for the rest of my life.” A drop of sweat trickled from his forehead into his eyes. Fearing that Musk might think he was reaching for a weapon if he got out his handkerchief, he wiped his face on his sleeve.

“That wouldn’t be what I’d call easy for me, Patera. Thirteen thousand I’ve laid out for your place, and I’d never see a card of it again. But I’ve thought of a way we can be friends that will put money in my pocket, and I always like that. You’re a common thief. You’ve admitted it. Well, so am I.” Blood rose from his chair, stretched, and seemed to admire the rich furnishings of the room. “Why should we, two of a kind, circle around like a couple of tomcats, trying to knife each other?”

Musk stroked Silk’s hair; it made him feel unclean, and he said, “Stop that!”

Musk did.

“You’re a brave man, Patera, as well as a resourceful one.” Blood strode across the room to study a gray and gold painting of Pas condemning the lost spirits, one head livid with rage while the other pronounced their doom. “If I had been sitting where you are, I wouldn’t have tried that with Musk, but you tried it and got away with it. You’re young, you’re strong, and you’ve got a couple of advantages besides that the rest of us haven’t. Nobody ever suspects an augur, and you’ve had a pretty fair education—a better education than mine, I don’t deny that. Tell me now, as one thief to another, didn’t you know down in the cracks of your guts that it was wrong to try to steal my property?”