A chain or more ahead, Auk chuckled. “Kill yourself, Patera? Yeah, it could be a good idea. Keep it in mind, depending. You won’t tell Blood about me?”
“I’ve sworn,” Silk reminded him. “I would never break that oath.”
“Good.” Auk turned away again, his posture intent as his eyes sought to penetrate the shadows.
Clearly Auk had been less than impressed by his mention of suicide, and for a moment Silk resented it. But Auk was right. How could he serve any god if he set out determined to resign his task if it became too difficult? Auk had been correct to laugh; he was no better than a child, sallying forth with a wooden sword to conquor the whorl—something that he had in fact done not too many years ago.
Yet it was easy for Auk to remain calm, easy for Auk to mock his fears. Auk, who had no doubt broken into scores of these country villas, was not going to break into this one, or even to assist him in doing it. And yet, Silk reminded himself, Auk’s own position was by no means impregnable.
“I would never violate my solemn oath, sworn to all the gods,” Silk said aloud. “And besides, if Blood were to find out about you and have you killed—he didn’t strike me as the type who kill men themselves—there would be no one to help me escape him.”
Auk cleared his throat and spat, the sound unnaturally loud in the airless stillness of the forest. “I’m not going to do a shaggy thing for you, Patera. You can forget about that. You’re working for the gods, right? Let them get you out.”
Almost whispering, because he was saddened by the knowledge, Silk said, “Yes, you will, Auk.”
“Sneeze it!”
“Because you couldn’t ever be certain that I wouldn’t tell, eventually. I won’t, but you don’t trust me. Or at least not that much.”
Auk snorted.
“And since you’re a better man than you pretend to be, the knowlege that I—not I particularly perhaps, but an augur who had been a companion of sorts, if only for this one night—required your help would devour you, even if you denied it a hundred times or more, as you very probably would. Thus you’ll help me if you can, Auk, eventually and possibly quite quickly. I know you will. And because you will, it will go much better for me if Blood doesn’t know about you.”
“I’d crawl a long way in for a while, maybe, but that’s all. Maybe go see Palustria for a year or three till Blood was gone or he’d forgotten about me. People ain’t like you think, Patera. Maybe you studied a long time, but there’s a lot that you don’t know.”
Which was true enough, Silk admitted to himself. For whatever inscrutable reasons, the gods thrust bios into the whorl knowing nothing of it; and if they waited until they were so wise as to make no mistakes before they acted, they waited forever. With sudden poignancy Silk wished that he might indeed wait forever, as some men did.
And yet he felt certain that he was right about Auk, and Auk wrong about himself. Auk still returned at times to talk with little Maytera Mint; and Auk had killed a man that evening—a serious matter even to a criminal, since the dead man had friends—because that man had been about to kill the big man called Gib. Auk might be a thief and even a murderer; but he had no real talent for murder, no innate bent toward evil. Not even Blood had such a bent, perhaps. He, Silk, had seen someone who did in Blood’s glass, and he promised himself now that he would never again mistake mere dishonesty or desperation for it again.
“But I know you, Auk,” he said softly. He shifted his weight in the vain hope of finding a more comfortable spot on the crude saddle. “I may be too trusting of people in general, as you say; but I’m right about you. You’ll help me when you think that I require it.”
Auk made a quick, impatient gesture, barely visible in the gloom. “Be quiet there, Patera. We’re getting pretty close.”
If there had ever been a real path, they were leaving it. With seeing feet, the donkeys picked their way up a rock-strewn hillside, often unavoidably bathed in the eerie skylight. At the top, Auk reined up and dismounted; Silk followed his example. Here the faintest of night breezes stirred, as stealthy as a thief itself, making away with the mingled scents of post oak and mulberry, of grass and fern withered almost to powder, of a passing fox, and the very essence of the night. The donkeys raised their long muzzles to catch it, and Silk fanned himself with his wide straw hat.
“See them lights, Patera?” Auk pointed toward a faint golden glimmer beyond the treetops. “That’s Blood’s place. What we did was circle around behind it, see? That’s what we been doing ever since we got off the main road. On the other side, there’s a big gate of steel bars, and a grass-way for floaters that goes up to the front. Can you see that black line, kind of wavy, between us and the house?”
Silk squinted and stared, but could not.
“That’s a stone wall about as high as that little tree down there. It’s got big spikes on top, which I’d say is mostly for show. Could be if you threw your rope up there and caught one, you could climb up the wall—I don’t know that anybody’s ever tried it. Only Blood’s got protection, understand? Guards, and a big talus that I know about for sure. I don’t know what else. You ever done anything like this before, Patera?”
Silk shook his head.
“I didn’t think so. All right, here’s all that’s going to happen, probably. You’re going to try to get over that wall, with your rope or whatever, only you’re not going to make it. Along about shadeup, you’re going to start hiking back to the city, feeling worse than shit in the street and thinking that I’m going to laugh myself sick at you. Only I’m not. I’m going to sacrifice ’cause you came back alive, understand? A black ram to Tartaros, see? A good big one, at your manteion the day after tomorrow, you got my word on that.”
Auk paused for breath.
“And after my sacrifice is over, I’m going to make you swear you’ll never try anything this stupid ever again. You think you can make Blood swear to give back your manteion, which you can’t. And you think he’ll stick with whatever he swore to afterward, which he wouldn’t, not for every god in Mainframe. But I can make you swear, Patera, and I’m going to—see if I don’t. And I know you’ll stick. You’re the kind that does.”
Silk said gratefully, “This is really very good of you, Auk. I don’t deserve it.”
“If I was really good I wouldn’t have hired us these donkeys, Patera. I’d have hiked out here with you and let you tire yourself—that way you’d come back that much quicker.”
Troubled, Auk paused, running his fingers through his hair. “Only if you do get inside, it’d be all queer if you was tired. You don’t work when you’re fagged out, not in my trade, only when you’re cold up and full of jump. Only I’ve done a hundred or more, and I wouldn’t try to solve this one for a thousand goldboys. Good-bye, Patera. Phaea smile on you.”
“Wait a moment.” Silk took him by the sleeve. “Haven’t you been inside that house? You said you had.”
“A couple of times on business, Patera. I don’t know anything much about it.”
“You said that I was certain to be caught, and I’ll concede that you may very well be correct. Nevertheless, I don’t intend to be caught; and if I am, I will have failed the Outsider, the god who has sent me, just as I will have failed him if I don’t make the attempt tonight. Can’t you see that? Haven’t you ever been caught yourself, Auk? You must have been.”
Auk nodded reluctantly. “Once, Patera, when I was just a sprat. He winnowed me out. By Phaea’s sow, I thought he was going to kill me. And when he was through, he kicked me out into the street. That was right in our quarter. I’ll show you the house sometime.”