Part 23 (1/2)

Excrement.

He dropped it and wiped his fingers on the floor. Some animal was penned in this room and might be present now, as frightened of him as he was of it-if it was not already stalking him. Not one of the horned cats, surely, they were apparendy freed to roam the grounds at night. Something worse, then. Something more dangerous.

Or nothing. If there was an animal in the room, it was a silent one indeed. Even a serpent would have hissed by now, surely.

Silk got to his feet as quietly as he could and inched along the wall, his right hand grasping his hatchet, the fingers of his left groping what might have been splintered paneling.

A corner, as empty as the whole room seemed to be. He took a step, then another. If there were pictures, or even furniture, he had thus far failed to encounter them.

Another step; pull up the right foot to the left now. Pausing to listen, he could detect only his own whistling breath and the faint tinklings of the distant orchestra.

His mouth felt dry, and his knees seemed ready to give way beneath him; twice he was forced to halt, bracing his trembling hands against the wall. He reminded himself that he was actually in Blood's villa, and that it had not been as difficult as he had feared. The task to follow would be much harder he would have to locate Blood without

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being discovered himself, and speak with him for some time in a place where they could talk without interruption. Only now was he willing to admit that it might prove impossible.

A second corner.

This vertical molding was surely the frame of a door; the pale rectangle of the window he had opened was on the opposite side of the room. His hand sought and found the latch. He pushed it down; it moved freely, with a slight rattle; but the door would not open.

”Have you been bad?”

He jerked the hatchet up, about to strike with deadly force at whatever might come from the darkness-about to kill, he told himself a moment later, some innocent sleeper whose bedchamber he had entered by force.

”Have you?” The question had a spectral quality; he could not have said whether it proceeded from a point within arm's reach or wafted through the open cas.e.m.e.nt.

”Yes.” To his own ears, the lone syllable sounded high and frightened, almost tremulous. He forced himself to pause and clear his throat 'Tve been bad many times, I'm afraid. I regret them all.”

”You're a boy. I can tell.”

Silk nodded solemnly. ”I used to be a boy, not so long ago. No doubt Maytera R-No doubt some of my friends would tell you that I'm a boy still in many respects, and they may well be right.”

His eyes were adjusting to the darker darkness of the room, so that the skylight that played across the roof of the conservatory and the grounds in the distance, mottled though it was by the diffused shadows of broken clouds, made them appear almost sunlit. The light spilling through the open window showed clearly now the precise rectangle of flooring on which he had knelt, and dimly the

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empty, unclean room to either side. Yet he could not locate the speaker.

”Are you going to hurt me with that?”

It was a young woman's voice, almost beyond question. Again Silk wondered whether she was actually present. ”No,” he said, as firmly as he could. He lowered the hatchet. ”I will do you no violence, I swear.” Blood dealt in women, so Auk had said; now Silk felt that he had a clearer idea of what such dealings might entail. ”Are you being kept here against your will?”

”I go whenever I want. I travel. Usually I'm not here at all.”

”I see,” Silk said, though he did not, in either sense. He pushed down the latchbar again; it moved as readily as it had before, and the door remained as stubborn.

”I go very far, sometimes. I fly out the window, and no one sees me.”