Gene Wolfe: Nightside the Long Sun

Silk stared at him, rubbed his wrist, and at last spat at the old man’s feet. “You cheated. You said I couldn’t hit with my stick, but you hit me with yours.”

“I did! Oh, yes!” The old man flung it into the air and parried it as it fell. “But aren’t I sorry? Isn’t my heart torn? Overflowing with remorse? Oh, it is, it is! I weep! Where would you like to be buried?”

Auk said quietly, “There ain’t any rules, Patera, not when we fight. Somebody lives, somebody dies. That’s all there is.”

Silk started to speak, thought better of it, swallowed, and said, “I understand. If I’d considered something that happened this afternoon more seriously—as I should have before now—I would have understood sooner. You’re right, of course, sir. You’re both right.”

“Where did you study?” Xiphias asked. “Who’s your old master?”

“No one,” Silk told him truthfully. “We used to fence with laths when I was a boy, sometimes; but I’d never held a real foil before.”

Xiphias cocked a bushy eyebrow at him. “Like that, eh? Or perhaps you’re still angry because I tricked you?” He hopped over to Blood’s fallen walking stick, snatched it up (practically falling himself) and tossed it to Silk. “Want to hit me back? Punish me for trying to save you? Do your worst!”

“Of course not. I’d rather thank you, Xiphias, and I do.” Silk rubbed the crusted bruise Musk had left on his ribs. “It was a lesson I needed. When may I come for my next?”

While the old man was considering, Auk said, “He’ll be a good contact for you, Patera. He’s a master-of-arms, not just of the sword. He was the one that sold the boy your needles, see?”

“Mornings, afternoons, or evenings?” Xiphias inquired. “Would evenings be all right? Good! Can we say Hieraxday, then?”

Silk nodded again. “Hieraxday after shadelow, Master Xiphias.”

Auk brought the old man his prosthetic leg and helped him keep his balance while he closed its socket about his stump.

“You see,” Xiphias asked, tapping it with his foil, “that I’ve earned the right to do what I did? That I was cheated once myself? That I paid the price when I was as young and strong as you are today?”

Outside, in the hot, silent street, Auk said, “We’ll find you a litter before long, Patera. I’ll pay ’em, but then I’ll have to get going.”

Silk smiled. “If I can fight with that marvelous old madman on this ankle, I can certainly walk home on it. You may leave me now, Auk, and Pas’s peace go with you. I won’t try to thank you for everything you’ve done for me tonight. I couldn’t, even if I talked until morning. But I’ll repay you whenever I get the chance.”

Auk grinned and clapped him on the back. “No hurry, Patera.”

“Down this little street—it’s String Street, I know it—and I’ll be on Sun Street. A few steps east, and I’ll be at the manteion. You have business of your own to attend to, I’m certain. And so good night.”

He took care to stride along normally until Auk was out of sight, then permitted himself to limp, leaning on Blood’s stick. His bout with Master Xiphias had left him drenched with sweat; fortunately the night wind had no edge to it.

Autumn was nearly over. Was it only yesterday that it had rained? Silk assured himself that it was. Winter was almost upon them, though there was only that shower to prove it. The crops were in—meager crops, most peasants said, hardly worth the work of harvest; the parched dead of summer seemed to last longer each year, and this year the heat had been terrible. As it still was, for that matter.

Here was Sun Street; wide though it was, he had almost missed the turning. The funeral tomorrow—Orpine’s final rites, and very likely her first as well. He recalled what Auk had said about her and wished that he had known her, as perhaps Hyacinth had. Had Maytera been able to cash Orchid’s draft? He would have to find out—perhaps she had left him a note. He wouldn’t have to tell her to sweep the manteion. Could rue still be had cheaply in the market? No, could rue be had at any price? Almost certainly, yes. And …

And there was the manse, with the manteion beyond it; but he had barred the Sun Street door.

He hobbled diagonally across Sun Street to the garden gate, unlocked and opened it, and locked it again carefully behind him. As he went along the narrow path to the manse, where no one slept or ate or lived except himself, voices floated into the garden through the open window. One was harsh, rising almost to a shout, then sinking to a mutter. The other, speaking of Pas and Echidna, of Hierax and Molpe and all the gods, was in some odd fashion familiar.

He paused for a moment to listen, then sat down on the old worn step. It was—surely it was—his own.

“… who makes the crops to shoot forth from dirt,” said this second voice. “You sprats have all seen it, and you’d think it wonderfully wonderful if you hadn’t.”

It was his talk at manteion from Molpsday, or rather a parody of it. But perhaps he had really sounded like that, had sounded that foolish. No doubt he sounded that foolish still.

“Thus when we see the trees dancing in the breeze we are to think of her, but not only of her, of her mother, too, for we would not have her without her mother, or the trees, or even the dance.”

He had said that, surely. Those had been his precise words—that babble. The Outsider had not only spoken to him, but had somehow split him in two: the Patera Silk who lived here and was speaking now in the musty sellaria, and he himself, Silk the failed thief—Silk the foe and tool of Blood, Silk who was Auk’s friend, who had in his waistband an azoth lent him by a whore and her trumpery needler in his pocket.

Silk who longed to see her again.

The harsh voice: “Silk good!”

Perhaps. But was it that Silk or this one, himself? Was it this one, with Hyacinth’s azoth in its hand, drawn unconsciously? This Silk who feared and hated Musk, and ached to kill him?

Of whom was he afraid? That other Silk would not have harmed a mouse, had postponed getting the ratsnake he needed again and again, visualizing the suffering of—rats. And yet it would be a fearful thing to meet that Silk whom he had been, and was a fearful thing to meet him now, in voice and memory. Had he truly become someone else?

He tore open the heavy, paper-wrapped packet Auk had put into his hand, dropping several needles. More filled the open breech of the needler like water, he released the loading knob and the breech closed. The needler would fire now if he needed it.

Or perhaps would not.

Patera Silk, and Silk nightside. He found that he, the latter, was contemptuous of the former, though envious, too.

His own voice echoed from the manse. “In the names of all the immortal gods, who give us all we have.”

Strange gifts, at times. He had saved this manteion, or had at least postponed its destruction; now, hearing the voice of its augur, he knew that it had never really been worth saving—though he had been sent to save it. Grim-faced, he rose, thrust the azoth back into his waistband and dropped the needler into his pocket again with what remained of the packet of needles, and dusted the back of his robe.

Everything had changed because he himself was changed. How had it happened? When he climbed Blood’s wall? When he had entered the manteion to get the hatchet? Long ago, when he had helped force the window, with the other boys? Or had Mucor laid some spell on him, there in her filthy, lightless room? Mucor was one who might lay spells, if any did; Mucor was a devil, in so far as devils were. Was it she who had drunk poor Teasel’s blood?

“Mucor,” Silk whispered. “Are you here? Are you still following me?” For a moment he seemed to hear an answering whisper, as the night wind stirred the dry leaves of the fig tree.