Читаем Nightside the Long Sun полностью

“For Kypris the—? All right, Patera. I’ll try.” She hurried away, the rapid taps of her footfalls like the soft rattle of a snare drum. Silk shook his head and looked about for Loach, but Loach had already left, unobserved.

Auk said, “If there’s ice left in Viron, she’ll find it. She teach you, Patera?”

“No. I wish now that she had—she and Maytera Mint. But I should have asked her to arrange for mutes. Well, it can be taken care of tomorrow. Can we talk here, Auk, or would you prefer to go to the manse?”

“Have you eaten yet, Patera? I was hoping you’d have a bite of supper with me while you told me what happened last night.”

“I couldn’t pay my share, I’m afraid.”

“I asked you, Patera. I wouldn’t let you pay if you wanted to. But you listen here.” Auk’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m in this as much as you are. It was me that helped you. I got a right to know.”

“Of course. Of course.” Silk sank wearily into a seat near the catafalque. “Sit down, please. It hurts my ankle to stand. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. To tell the truth, I need to tell someone—to talk all of it over, and other things, too. Everything that happened today. And I’d like very much to go to dinner with you. I’m beginning to like you, and I’m terribly hungry; but I can’t walk far. Much as I appreciate your generosity, perhaps we should dine together some other night.”

“We don’t have to leg it over to the Orilla. There’s a nice place right down the street. They got the tenderest, juiciest roasts you ever cut on the side of your flipper.” Auk grinned, showing square, yellow teeth that looked fully capable of severing a human hand at the wrist. “Suppose I was to buy an augur—one that really needed it—a dimber uphill dinner. Whatever he wanted. That’d be a meritorious act, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose so. Nevertheless, you must consider that he may not deserve one.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Auk strolled to the coffin and pulled down the shroud. “Who is she?”

“Orchid’s daughter Orpine. That was nicely done, but you knew her, I’m sure.”

“Her daughter?” Leaving Orpine’s body, Auk took Silk’s arm. “Come on, Patera. If we don’t get over there, we’ll have to eat in the public room.”

Musk had caught sight of his eagle before he stepped out of the floater. She was at the top of a blasted pine, silhouetted against the brightening skylands.

She was looking at the hackboard, Musk knew. She could see the hackboard more clearly from half a league away than he had ever seen the palms of his own hands. She would be ravenous by now, like a falcon (as Musk reminded himself) an eagle would have to learn to fly before it could learn to hunt. Apparently, she had not yet gone after lambs, though she might tomorrow—it was his greatest fear.

He circled the villa. The meat bound to the hackboard had been there all day; it was nearly dry now, and blanketed with flies. He kicked the board to dislodge them before he brought out the lure and a bag of cracked maize.

The lure whistled as he spun it on its five-cubit line.

“Ho, hawk! Ho, hawk!”

Once he imagined that he heard the faint jingle of her bells, though he knew it was impossible. He scattered maize nearly to the wall, then returned to the hackboard and swung the lure again while he waited. It was late—perhaps too late. It would be dark very soon, and when it was she would not fly.

“Ho! Ho, hawk!”

As well as Musk could judge, the eagle on the remote snag had not stirred so much as a feather; but a plump brown wood weaver was settling on the cropped grass near the wall to peck at the maize.

He dropped the lure and crouched, his needler gripped with both hands and his left elbow braced on his left knee. It would be a long shot, in poor light.

The wood weaver fell, fluttered up, cannoned into the wall, and fell again. Before it could fly a second time, he had it. Back at the hackboard, he loosened the nose in the lure line and let the red-and-white lure fall to the ground. With the noose tight about the wood weaver’s right leg, he twirled it, producing a fine and almost invisible shower of blood.

“Ha, hawk!”

The wide wings spread. For a moment Musk, watching the eagle, still twirling the dying wood weaver in its ten-cubit circle, felt that he more than possessed it.

Felt that he himself was the great bird, and was happy.

“You seen what they wrote on that wall, Patera.” Auk sat down, having chosen a chair from which he could watch the door. “Some sprat from the palaestra, like you say. But I’d talk to them about it, if I was you. Could be trouble.”

“I’m not responsible for every boy who finds a piece of chalk.” This eating house had seemed remote indeed to Silk, though it was almost in sight of his manteion. He lowered himself into the capacious armchair the host was holding for him and looked around him at the whitewashed shiprock walls. Their private dining room was smaller even than his bedroom in the manse, still crowded after a waiter had removed two superfluous chairs.