Part 7 (1/2)

Silk feigned to consider, glancing up at the sun once more, then around him at the dusty, teeming market. Green-s.h.i.+rted Guardsmen were plying the b.u.t.ts of their slug guns as they threaded the crowd, no doubt in pursuit of die lounging youth he had noticed earlier.

”This bird's stolen property, too, isn't he?” Silk said. ”Otherwise you wouldn't have been keeping him under your table with the catachrest. You talked of threatening the poor wretch who sold you that. Roll him over to Hoppy, isn't that what you said, my son?”

The seller would not meet Silk's eyes.

42 Gene Wolfe

”I'm no flash cull, but I've learned a little cant since I've been at my manteion. It means you threatened to inform on him to the Guard, doesn't it? Suppose that I were to threaten you in the same way now. That would be no more than just, surely.”

The seller leaned closer to Silk, as he had before, his head turned to one side as if he himself were a bird, though possibly he was merely conscious of the garlic that freighted his breath. ”It's just to make 'em think they're gettin' a. bargain, Patera, I swear. Which you are.”

The hour for the palaestra's a.s.sembly was striking when Silk returned with the night chough. A hurried sacrifice, he decided, might be worse than none, and the live bird would be a ruinous distraction. The manse had doors on Sun and Silver Streets, but he kept them bolted, as Patera Pike had. He let himself in by the garden gate, and trotted down the graveled path between the west wall of the manteion and the sickly fig tree, swung left between the grape arbor and Maytera Marble's herb garden, and took the manse's disintegrating steps two at a time. Opening the kitchen door, he set the birdcage on the shaky wooden table, pumped vigorously until the water gushed forth clear and cold, and left a full cup within easy reach of the big bird's crimson beak. By then he could hear the students trooping into the manteion. Smoothing his hair with a damp hand, he darted off to address them at the conclusion of their day. The low door at the rear of the manteion stood open for ventilation. Silk strode through it, up a short stair whose treads had been sloped and hollowed by the hastening feet of generations of augurs, and into the dim sanctum behind the Sacred Window. Still thinking of the market and the morose black bird he had left in the kitchen of the manse, fumbling mentally for something of real significance that he might say to seventy-three students whose ages ranged

NlGHTSIDE THE LONG SUN

43.

from eight to almost sixteen, he verified power and scanned the Sacred Window's registers. All were empty. Had Great Pas actually come to this very Window? Had any G.o.d, ever? Had Great Pas, as Patera Pike had averred so often, once congratulated and encouraged him, urging him to prepare, to stand ready for the hour (soon to come, or so Pas had appeared to intimate) when this present whorl would vanish, would be left behind?

Such things seemed impossible. Testing connections with an angled arm of the voided cross he wore, Silk prayed for faith; and then-stepping carefully across a meandering primary cable whose insulation was no longer to be relied upon-drew a deep breath, stepped from behind the Window, and took his place at the chipped ambion that through so many such a.s.semblies had been Patera Pike's.

Where slept Pike now, that good old man, that faithful old servant who had slept so badly, who had nodded off for a moment or two-only a moment or two-at each meal they had shared? Who had both resented and loved the tall young acolyte who had been thrust upon him after so many years, so many slow decades of waiting alone, who had loved him as no one had except his mother?

Where was he now, old Patera Pike? Where did he sleep, and did he sleep well there at last? Or did he wake as he always had, stirring in the long bedroom next to Silk's own, his old bed creaking, creaking? Praying at midnight or past midnight, at shadeup with the skylands fading, praying as Viron extinguished its bonfires and its lanterns, its many-branched candelabras, praying as they were forfeited to the revealed sun. Praying as day's uncertain shadows reappeared and resumed their accustomed places, as the mom-ing glories flared and the long, white trumpets of the night silently folded themselves upon themselves.

Sleeping beside the G.o.ds, did old Patera Pike waken no longer to recall the G.o.ds to their duties?

44 Gene Wolfe

NlGHTSIDE THE LONG SuN

45.

Erect at Patera Pike's ambion, beside the luminous gray vacuity of the Sacred Window, Silk took a moment to observe the students before he began. All were poor, he knew; and for more than a few the noon meal that half a dozen mothers had prepared in the palaestra's kitchen had been the first of the day. Yet most were almost clean; and all- under the sharp gaze of Maytera Rose, Maytera Marble, and Maytera Mint-were well behaved.

When the new year had begun, he had taken the older boys from Maytera Mint and given them to Maytera Rose: the reverse of the arrangement Patera Pike had inst.i.tuted. As he ran his eyes over them now, Silk decided it had been unwise. The older boys had, for the most part, obeyed timid Maytera Mint out of an odd, half-formed chivalry, enforced when necessary by leaders like Horn; they had no such regard for Maytera Rose, and she herself imposed an inflexible and merciless order that might very well be the worst possible example to give the older boys, young men who would so soon (so very, very quickly) be maintaining order in families of their own.

Silk turned from the students to contemplate the images of Pas and his consort, Echidna: Twice-Headed Pas with his lightnings, Echidna with her serpents. It was effective; the murmur of young voices faded, dying away to an expectant hush. At the back of the manteion, Maytera Marble's eyes gleamed like violet sparks beneath her coif, and Silk knew that those eyes were on him; however much she might approve of him, Maytera Marble did not yet trust him to speak from the ambion without making a fool of himself.

”There will be no sacrifice today, at this a.s.sembly,” he began, ”though all of us know that there should be.” He smiled, seeing that he had their interest. ”This month began the first year for eleven of you. Even so, you probably know by now that we rarely have a victim for our a.s.sembly.

”Perhaps some of you are wondering why I've mentioned

it today. It's because the situation on this particular day is somewhat different-there will be a sacrifice, here in this manteion, after you have gone home. All of you, I feel quite certain, recall the lambs.”

About half nodded.