Nightside the Long Sun

Orchid leaned toward him, the peignoir yawning worse than ever. “Suppose this time it works, Patera. I could give you something, couldn’t I?”

“Of course, if you choose. However, you will owe me nothing.”

“All right.” She hesitated, considering. “Sphigxday’s our big night, like I said—that’s why Blood comes around, usually, today. To check up on us before we open up. We’re closed Hieraxday, so not then either. But come in any other day and I’ll give you a pass. How’s that?”

Silk was stunned.

“You know what I mean, right, Patera? Not me. I mean with any of the girls, whoever you want. If you’d like to give her a little something for herself, that’s all right. But you don’t have to, and there won’t be anything to the house.” Orchid considered again. “Well, a card in a cart, huh? All right, that’s a lay a month for a year.” Seeing his expression she added, “Or I can get you a boy if you’d rather have that, but let me know in advance.”

Silk shook his head.

“Because if you do, you don’t get to see the gods? Isn’t that what they say?”

“Yes.” Silk nodded. “Echidna forbids it. One may see the gods when they appear in our Sacred Windows. Or one may be blessed by children of the body. But not both.”

“Nobody’s talking about sprats, Patera.”

“I know what we’re talking about.”

“The gods don’t come any more anyhow. Not to Viron, so why not? That last time was when I was—wasn’t even born yet.”

Silk nodded. “Nor I.”

“Then what do you care? You’re never going to see one anyway.”

Silk smiled ruefully. “We’re getting very far from the subject, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know.” Orchid scratched her head and examined her nails. “Maybe. Or maybe not. Did you know that this place used to be a manteion?”

Stunned again, Silk shook his head.

“It did. Or anyhow, some of it did, the back part on Music Street. Only the gods didn’t come around very much any more, even if they still did it once in a while back then. So they closed it down, and the ones that owned this house then bought it and tore down the back wall and joined the two together. Maybe that’s why, huh? I’ll get Orpine to show you around. Some of the old stuff’s still back there, and you can have it if there’s anything you want.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Silk said.

“I’m a nice person. Ask anybody.” Orchid whistled shrilly. “Orpine’ll be along in a minute. Anything you want to know, just ask her.”

“Thank you, I will. May I leave my sacra here until I require them?” The prospect of separation from his triptych made Silk uneasy. “Will they be safe?”

“Your sack? Better than the fisc. You could leave that box thing, too. Only I’ve been wondering, you know about the old manteion in back. We call it the playhouse. Could that be why it’s happening?”

“I don’t know.”

“I asked one of the others and he said not. But I kind of wonder. Maybe the gods don’t like some of the stuff we do here.”

“They do not,” Silk told her.

“You haven’t even seen anything, Patera. We’re not as bad as you think.”

Silk shook his head. “I don’t think you bad at all, Orchid, and neither do the gods. If they thought you bad, nothing that you could do would dismay them. They detest all the evil that you do—and all that I do—because they see in us the potential to do good.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking maybe they sent this devil to get even with us.” Orchid whistled again. “What’s keeping that girl!”

“The gods do not send us devils,” Silk told her, “and indeed, they destroy them wherever they meet them, deleting them from Mainframe. That, at least, is the legend. It’s in the Writings, and I have them here in my bag. Would you like me to read the passage?” He reached for his glasses.

“No. Just tell me so I can understand it.”

“All right.” Silk squared his shoulders. “Pas made the whorl, as you know. When it was complete, he invited his queen, their five daughters and their two sons, and a few friends to share it with him. However—”

From the other side of the sun-bright doorway, someone screamed in terror.

Orchid lunged out of her chair with praiseworthy speed. Limping a little and repeating to himself Crane’s injunction against running, Silk trailed after her, walking as quickly as he could.

The courtyard was lined with doorways on both floors. As he searched for the source of the disturbance, it seemed to him that whole companies of young women in every possible stage of undress were popping in and out of them, though he paid them little attention.

The dead woman lay halfway up a flight of rickety steps thrown down like a ladder by the sagging gallery above; she was naked, and the fingers of her left hand curled about the hilt of a dagger jutting from her ribs below her left breast. Her head was angled so sharply in Silk’s direction that it almost appeared that her neck was broken. He found her oddly contorted face at once horrible and familiar.

Against all his training, he covered that face with his handkerchief before beginning to swing his beads.