“No, not Blood.” Orchid rose heavily. “I’ll pay it, Patera. How much?”
Silk compelled himself to be scrupulously honest. “I should tell you that we often bury the poor, and sometimes they have no money at all. The generous gods have always seen to it—”
“I’m not poor!” Orchid flushed an angry red. “I been pretty flat sometimes, sure. Hasn’t everybody? But I’m not flat now, and this’s my sprat. The other girl, I had to—Oh, shag you, you shaggy butcher! How much for a good one?”
Here was opportunity. Not merely to save the manteion the cost of Orpine’s burial, but to pay for earlier graves bought but never paid for; Silk jettisoned his scruples to seize the moment. “If it’s really not inconvenient, twenty cards?”
“Let’s go into the bedroom, Patera. That’s where the book is. Come on.”
She had opened the door and vanished into the next room before he could protest. Through the doorway he could see a rumpled bed, a cluttered vanity table, and a chaise longue half buried in gowns.
“Come on in.” Orchid laughed, and this time there was real merriment in the sound. “I bet you’ve never been in a woman’s bedroom before, have you?”
“Once or twice.” Hesitantly, Silk stepped through the doorway, looking twice at the bed to assure himself that no one lay dying there. Presumably Orchid thought of it as a place for rest and lust, and possibly even for love. Silk could only too easily imagine his next visit, in ten years or twenty. All beds became deathbeds at last.
“Your mama’s. You’ve gone into your mama’s bedroom, I bet.” Orchid plumped herself down before the vanity table, swept a dozen colored bottles and jars aside, and elevated an ormolu inkstand to the place of honor before her.
“Oh, yes. Many times.”
“And looked through her things when she was out of the house. I know how you young bucks do.” There were twenty bedraggled peacock quills at least wilting in the rings of the ormolu inkstand. Orchid selected one, then wrinkled her nose at it.
“I can sharpen that for you, if you like.” Silk got out his pen case.
“Would you? Thanks.” Revolving on the vanity stool, she handed the peacock quill to him. “Did you ever try on her underwear?”
Silk looked up from the quill, surprised. “No, I never even thought of it. I did open a drawer once and peep into it, though. I felt so bad about it that I told her the next day. Do you have something to catch the shavings?”
“Don’t worry about them. You had a nice mama, huh? Is she still alive?”
Silk shook his head. “Would you prefer a broad nib?” Orchid did not reply, and he, contemplating the splayed and frowzy one before him, decided to give her one anyway. A broad nib used more ink, but she would not mind that; and broad nibs lasted longer.
“Mine died when I was little. I guess she was nice, but I really don’t remember her very well. When somebody’s dead, Patera, can they come back and see people they care about, if they want to?”
“It depends on what is meant by see.” With the slender blade of the long-handled penknife, Silk sliced yet another whitish sliver from the nib. He was accustomed to goose and crow quills; this was larger than either.
“Talk to them. Visit with them a while, or just let them see you.”
“No,” Silk said.
“Just no? Why not?”
“Hierax forbids it.” He returned the quill to her and snapped his pen case shut. “If he did not, the living would live at the direction of the dead, repeating their mistakes again and again.”
“I used to wonder why she never came to see me,” Orchid said. “You know, I haven’t thought about that in years, and now I’ll think about Orpine, hoping that Hierax will let her out once or twice so I can see her again. Have a seat there on the bed, Patera. You’re making me jittery.”
Reluctantly, Silk smoothed the canary-colored sheet and sat down.
“A minute ago, you said twenty cards. That’s about as cheap as they come, I bet.”
“It would be modest,” Silk admitted, “but certainly not contemptible.”
“All right, what about fifty? What would she get for that much?”
“Gods!” He considered. “I can’t be absolutely sure. A better sacrifice and a much better casket. Flowers. A formal bier with draperies. Perhaps a—”
“I’ll make it a hundred,” Orchid announced. “It will make me feel better. A hundred cards, and everything the best.” Orchid plunged her quill into the inkwell.
Silk opened his mouth, closed it again, and put his pen case away.
“And you can say that I was her mother. I want you to say it. What do you call that thing where they stand up and talk in the manteion?”
“The ambion,” Silk said.
“Right. I never told them here, because I knew—we both knew—what sort of things the other girls would say about her, and me too, behind our backs. You tell them tomorrow. From the ambion. And put it on her stone.”
Silk nodded. “I will.”
With florid sweeps of her quill, Orchid was writing the draft. “Tomorrow, right? When’ll it be?”
“I had thought at eleven.”
“I’ll be there, Patera.” Orchid’s face hardened. “We all will.”
Silk was still shaking his head as he closed Orchid’s door behind him. Chenille was waiting in the hall outside; he wondered whether she had been eavesdropping, and if so how much she had heard.
She said, “You wanted to talk to me?”
“Not here.”
“I waited in my room. You never came, so I came over here to see what was up.”
“Of course.” Orchid’s draft for a hundred cards was still in his hand; he folded it once and thrust it into the the pocket of his robe. “I told you I’d be there in a few minutes, didn’t I? We were a great deal longer than that, I’m afraid. I can only apologize.”
“You still want to talk in my room?”
Silk hesitated, then nodded. “We must speak privately, and I’d like to see where it is.”
SUMMONED
“What Orchid’s got used to be for the owner and his wife,” Chenille explained. “Then their sprats had rooms close to theirs, then upper servants, then maids, I guess. I’m about halfway on the inside. That’s not so bad.”
Turning left, Silk followed her down the musty hallway.
“Half look out on the court like mine does. That’s not as good as it sounds, because they have big parties in there sometimes and it gets pretty noisy unless you stay till the end, and usually I don’t. You take those drunks up to your room and they get sick—then you never get the smell out. Maybe you think it’s gone, but wait for a rainy night.”
They turned the corner.
“Sometimes they chase the girls along the gangways and make lots of noise. But the outside rooms on this side have windows on the alley. There’s not much light, and it smells bad.”
“I see,” Silk said.
“So that’s not so good either, and they have to have bars on their windows. I’d rather hang on to what I’ve got.” Chenille halted, pulled a key on a string from between ample breasts, and opened a door.
“Are the rooms beyond yours vacant?”
“Huh-uh. I don’t think there’s an empty room in the place. She’s been turning them away for the last month or so. I’ve got a girlfriend that would like to move in, and I’ve got to tell her as soon as somebody goes.”
“Perhaps she might occupy Orpine’s room.” Chenille’s was less than half the size of Orchid’s bedroom, with most of its floorspace taken up by an oversized bed. There were chests along the wall, and an old wardrobe to which a hasp and padlock had been added.