Читаем Nightside the Long Sun полностью

“I’m listening, Feather. What is it you want to ask?” But enlightenment was for theodidacts, and he was no holy theodidact—no gaudily painted gold-crowned figure in the Writings. How could he tell these children that in the middle of their game—

“Then what’s the lesson in our winning, Patera?”

“That you must endure to the end,” Silk replied, his mind still upon the Outsider’s teaching. One of the hinges of the ball-court gate was broken; two boys had to lift the gate to swing it, creaking, backward. The remaining hinge would surely break too, and soon, unless he did something. Many theodidacts never told, or so he had been taught in the schola. Others told only on their deathbeds; for the first time he felt he understood that.

“We endured to the end,” Horn reminded him, “but we lost just the same. You’re bigger than I am. Bigger than any of us.”

Silk nodded and smiled. “I did not say that the only object was to win.”

Horn opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again, his eyes thoughtful. Silk took Goldcrest and Villus from his shoulders at the gate and dried his torso, then reclaimed his black tunic from the nail on which he had hung it. Sun Street ran parallel to the sun, as its name indicated, and as usual at this hour it was blazing hot. Regretfully, he pulled his tunic over his head, smelling his own sweat.

“You lost,” he remarked to Villus once the stifling tunic was in place, “when Horn got the ball away from you. But you won when everyone on our team did. What have you learned from that?”

When little Villus said nothing, Feather answered, “That winning and losing aren’t everything.”

The loose black robe followed the tunic, seeming to close about him. “Good enough,” he told Feather.

As five boys shut the court gate behind them, the faint and much-diffused shadow of a Flier raced down Sun Street. The boys glared up at him, and a few of the smallest reached for stones, though the Flier was three or four times higher than the loftiest tower in Viron.

Silk halted, raising his head to stare upward with a long-felt envy he struggled to suppress. Had he been shown the Fliers, among his myriad, leaping visions? He felt he had—but he had been shown so much!

The disproportionate, gauzy wings were nearly invisible in the glare of the unshaded sun, so that it seemed that the Flier flew without them, arms outstretched, feet together, an uncanny figure black against the burning gold.

“If the Fliers are human,” Silk admonished his charges, “it would surely be evil to stone them. If they are not, you must consider that they may be higher than we are in the spiritual whorl, just as they are in the temporal.” As an afterthought he added, “Even if they are spying on us, which I doubt.”

Had they, too, achieved enlightenment, and was that why they flew? Did some god or goddess—it would be Hierax, perhaps, or his father, sky-ruling Pas—teach those he favored the art of flight?

The palaestra’s warped and weathered door would not open until Horn had wrestled manfully with its latch. As always, Silk delivered the smaller boys to Maytera Marble first. “We won a glorious victory,” he told her.

She shook her head in mock dismay, her smooth oval face, polished bright by countless dustings, catching the sunlight from the window. “My poor girls were beaten, alas, Patera. It seems to me that Maytera Mint’s big girls grow quicker and stronger with each week that passes. Wouldn’t you think our Merciful Molpe would make my smaller ones quicker, too? Yet it doesn’t seem she does it.”

“By the time they’re quicker, they’ll be the big girls, perhaps.”

“That must be it, Patera. While I’m only a small girl myself, snatching at every chance to put off the minuends and subtrahends for as long as possible, always willing to talk, never willing to work.” Maytera Marble paused, her work-worn steel fingers flexing the cubit stick while she studied Silk. “You be careful this afternoon, Patera. You must be tired already, after scrambling around up there all morning and playing with the boys. Don’t fall off that roof.”

He grinned. “I’m finished with my repairs for today, Maytera. I’m going to sacrifice after manteion—a private sacrifice.”

The old sib tilted her gleaming head to one side, thus lifting an eyebrow. “Then I regret that my class will not participate. Will your lamb be more pleasing to the Nine, do you think, without us?”

For an instant Silk was tempted to tell her everything there and then. He drew a deep breath instead, smiled, and closed the door.

Most of the larger boys had already gone into Maytera Rose’s room. Silk dismissed the rest with a glance, but Horn lingered. “May I speak with you, Patera? It’ll just take a minute.”

“If it is only a minute.” When the boy said nothing, Silk added, “Go ahead, Horn. Did I foul you? If I did, I apologize—it certainly wasn’t intentional.”

“Is it…” Horn let the question trail away, staring at the splintering floorboards.

“Speak up, please. Or ask your question when I come back. That would be better.”