As Silk approached the entrance to the north wing, an officer in the uniform of the Guard emerged from an archway at the end of the corridor. The door nearest Silk stood half open; he stepped inside and shut it softly behind him.
He found himself facing a windowless pentagonal drawing room furnished in magnificent chryselephantine. For a moment he waited with his back to the corridor door, listening as he had listened so often that night. When he heard nothing, he crossed the thick carpet and opened one of the drawing room"s ivory-encrusted doors.
This was a boudoir, larger and even more oddly shaped. There were wardrobes, two chairs, a rather tawdry shrine of Kypris whose smoldering thurible filled the room with the sweetness of frankincense, and a white dressing table before a gla.s.s whose pearlescent glow appeared to intensify as he entered. When he shut the door behind him, a swirl of colors danced across the gla.s.s. He fell to his knees.
"Sir?"
Looking up, Silk saw that the gla.s.s held only the gray face of a monitor. He traced the sign of addition. "Wasn"t there a G.o.d? I saw . . ."
"I am no G.o.d, sir, merely the monitor of this terminal. What may I do to serve you, sir? Would you care to critique your digitally enhanced image?"
Disconcerted, Silk stood. "No. I-No, thank you." He struggled to recall how Auk had addressed the monitor in his gla.s.s. "I"d like to speak to a friend, if it isn"t too much trouble, my son." That had not been it, surely.
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The floating face appeared to nod. "The friend"s name, please? I will attempt it."
"Auk."
"And this Auk lives where?"
"In the Orilla. Do you know where that is?"
"Indeed I do, sir. However, there are . . . fifty-four Auks resident there. Can you supply the street?"
"No, I"m afraid I have no idea." Suddenly weary, Silk drew out the dressing table"s somewhat soiled little stool and sat down. "I"m sorry to have put you to so much trouble. But if you"re-"
"There is an Auk in the Orilla with whom my master has spoken several times," the monitor interrupted. "No doubt he is the Auk you want. I will attempt to locate him for you."
"No," Silk said. "This Auk lives in what used to be a shop. So it must be on a shopping street, I suppose, with a lot of other stores and so on. Or at least on a street that used to have them." Remembering it, he recalled the thunder of the cartwheels. "A street paved with cobblestones. Does that help?"
"Yes. That is the Auk with whom my master speaks, sir. Let us see whether he is at home."
The monitor"s face faded, replaced by Auk"s disordered bed and jar of slops. Soon the image swelled and distorted, becoming oddly rounded. Silk saw the heavy wooden chair from which he had shriven Auk and beside which he had knelt when Auk shrived him. He found it heartening, somehow, to know that the chair was still there.
"I fear that Auk is unavailable, sir. May I leave a message with my similitude?"
"I-yes." Silk stroked his cheek. "Ask him, please, to tell Auk that I appreciate his help very, very much, and that if nothing happens to me it will be my great pleasure to tell Maytera Mint how kind he was. Tell him, too, that he"s
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specified only one meritorious act thus far, while the penance he laid upon me called for two or three-for two at least. Ask him to let me know what the others should be." Too late, it occurred to Silk that Auk had asked that his name not be mentioned to the handsome boy who had spoken though Blood"s gla.s.s. "Now then, my son. You referred to your master. Who is that?"
"Blood, sir. Your host."
"I see. Am I, by any chance, in Blood"s private quarters now?"
"No, sir. These are my mistress"s chambers."
"Will you tell Blood about the message I left for-for that man who lives in the Orilla?"
The monitor nodded gravely. "Certainly, sir, if he inquires."
"I see." A sickening sense of failure decended upon Silk. "Then please tell Auk, also, where I was when I tried to speak to him, and warn him to be careful."
"I shall, sir. Will that be all?"
Silk"s head was in his hands, "Yes. And thank you. No." He straightened up. "I need a place to hide, a good place, and weapons."
"If I may say so, sir," remarked the monitor, "you require a proper dressing more than either. With respect, sir, you are dripping on our carpet."
Lifting his right arm, Silk saw that it was true; blood had already soaked dirough the strip of black cloth he had torn from his tunic a few minutes earlier. Crimson rivulets trickled toward his elbow.
"You will observe, sir, that this room has two doors, in addition to that through which you entered. The one to your left opens upon the balneum. My mistress"s medicinal supplies are there, I believe. As to-"
Silk had risen so rapidly that he had knocked over the
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stool. Darting through the left-hand door, he heard nothing more.
The balneum was larger than he had antic.i.p.ated, with a jade tub more than big enough for the naked G.o.ddess at the head of the staircase and a separate water closet. A sizable cabinet held a startling array of apothecary bottles, an olla of violet salve that Silk recognized as a popular aseptic, a roll of gauze, and gauze pads of various sizes. A small pair of scissors cut away the blood-soaked strip; he smeared the ragged wound that the white-headed one"s beak had left in his forearm with the violet salve, and at the second try managed to bandage it effectively. As he ruefully took stock of his ruined tunic, he discovered that the bird"s talons had raked his chest and abdomen. It was almost a relief to wash and salve the long, b.l.o.o.d.y scratches, on which he could employ both his hands.
Yellowish encrustations were forming on his robe where he had wiped away his spew. He took it off and washed it as thoroughly as he could in the lavabo, wrung it out, smoothed it as well as he could, pressed it between two dry towels, and put it back on. Inspecting his appearance in a mirror, he decided that he might well pa.s.s a casual examination in a dim light.
Returning to the boudoir, he strewed what he took to be face powder over the clotted blood on the carpet.
The monitor watched him, unperturbed. "That is most interesting, sir."
"Thank you." Silk shut the powder box and returned it to the dressing table.
"Does the powder possess cleansing properties? I was unaware of it."
Silk shook his head. "Not that I know of. I"m only masking these, so visitors won"t be unsettled."
"Very shrewd, sir."
Silk shrugged. "If I could think of something better, I"d
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