Nightside the Long Sun

The crackling tinder would not wait, rats or no rats. Silk chose a few likely-looking splits, carried them (once nearly falling) inside, and positioned them carefully. No doubt the rat was gone by now, but he fetched Blood’s stick from its place in the corner anyway, pausing by the Silver Street window to study the indistinct, battered head at the end of the sharply angled handle. It seemed to be a dog’s, or perhaps …

He rotated the stick, holding it higher to catch the grayish daylight.

Or perhaps, just possibly, a lioness’s. After a brief uncertainty, he decided to consider it the head of a lioness; lionesses symbolized Sphigx, this was her day, and the idea pleased him.

Lions were big cats, and big cats were needed for rats, vermin too large and strong themselves for cats of ordinary size to deal with. Without real hope of success, he rattled the stick along the top of the larder. There was a flutter, and a sound he did not at once identify as a squawk. Another rattle, and a single black feather floated down.

It occured to Silk then that a rat might have carried the dead bird there to eat. Possibly there was a rat hole in the wainscotting up there, but the bird had been too large to be dragged through it.

He paused, listening. The sound he had heard had not been made by a rat, surely. After a moment he looked in the waste bin; the bird was no longer there.

If his ankle had been well, he would have climbed up on the stool; as things (and he himself) stood, that was out of the question. “Are you up there, bird?” he called. “Answer me!”

There was no reply. Blindly, he rattled Blood’s stick across the top of the high larder again; and this time there was a quite unmistakable squawk. “Get down here,” Silk said firmly.

The bird’s hoarse voice replied, “No, no!”

“I thought you were dead.”

Silence from the top of the larder.

“You stole my tomato, didn’t you? And now you think I’ll hurt you for that. I won’t, I promise. I forgive you the theft.” Silk tried to remember what night choughs were supposed to eat in the wild. Seeds? No, the bird had left the seeds. Carrion, no doubt.

“Cut me,” the bird suggested throatily.

“Sacrifice you? I won’t, I swear. The Writings warned me the sacrifice would be ineffectual, and I shouldn’t have tried one after that. I’ve been punished very severely by one of your kind for it, believe me. I’m not such a fool as to try the same sacrifice again.”

Silk waited motionless, listening. After a second or two, he felt certain that he could hear the bird’s stealthy movements above the crack of whips and rumble of cartwheels that drifted through the window from Silver Street.

“Come down,” he repeated.

The bird did not answer, and Silk turned away. The fire in the stove was burning well now, yellow flame leaping from the cook hole. He rescued his frying pan from the sink, wiped it out, poured the remaining oil into it—shaking the last lingering drop from the neck of the cruet—and put the pan on the stove.

His tomatoes would be greasy if he put them into the oil while it was still cold, unpleasantly flavored if he let the oil get too hot. Leaning Blood’s stick against the door of the larder, he gathered up the stiff green slices, limped over to the stove with them, and distributed them with care over the surface of the pan, rewarded by a cloud of hissing, fragrant steam.

There was a soft cluck from the top of the larder.

“I can kill you whenever I want, just by banging around up there with my stick,” Silk told the bird. “Show yourself, or I’ll do it.”

For a moment a long crimson bill and one bright black eye were visible at the top of the larder. “Me,” the night chough said succinctly, and vanished at once.

“Good.” The garden window was open already; Silk drew the heavy bolt of the Silver Street window and opened it as well. “It’s shadeup now, and it will be much brighter soon. Your kind prefers the dark, I believe. You’d better leave at once.”

“No fly.”

“Yes, fly. I won’t try to hurt you. You’re free to go.”

Silk watched for a moment, then decided that the bird was probably hoping that he would lay aside Blood’s stick. He tossed it into a corner, got out a fork, and began turning the tomato slices; they sputtered and smoked, and he added a pinch of salt.

There was a knock at the garden door. Hurriedly, he snatched the pan from the fire. “Half a minute.” Someone was dying, surely, and before death came desired to receive the Pardon of Pas.

The door opened before he could hobble over to it, and Maytera Rose looked in. “You’re up very early, Patera. Is anything wrong?” Her gaze darted about the kitchen, her eyes not quite tracking. One was pupilless, and as far as Silk knew, blind; the other a prosthetic creation of crystal and fire.