Villus inquired, 'What kind of chops, Patera? Mutton or pork?'
'We will let him decide that.'
Silk watched as the two dashed off, then unlocked the garden gate and stepped inside. The grass had been sadly trampled, just as Maytera Marble had said; even in the last dying gleam of day that was apparent, as was the damage to Maytera's little garden. He reflected philosophically that in a normal year the last produce from the garden would have come weeks before in any event.
'Patera!'
It was Maytera Rose, leaning from a window of the cenoby and waving, an offense for which she would have reprimanded Maytera Marble or Maytera Mint endlessly.
'Yes,' Silk said. 'What is it, Maytera?'
'Did they come back with you?'
He hobbled to the window. 'Your sibs? No. They were going to walk back together, so they said. They should be here soon.'
'It's past time for supper,' Maytera Rose asserted. (The assertion was manifestly untrue.)
Silk smiled. 'Your supper should be here shortly, too, and may Scylla bless your feast.' He turned away, still smiling, before she could question him further.
There was a package wrapped in white paper and tied with white string on the kitchen doorstep of the manse. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands before opening the door. Oreb, who from the scattered drops had been drinking from his cup, was on the kitchen table. ' 'Lo, Silk.'
'Hello, yourself.' Silk got out the paring knife.
'Cut bird?'
'No, I'm going to open this. I'm too tired-or too lazy-to pick apart these knots, but if I cut them I should be able to save most of the string anyway. Did you kill that rat I threw away, Oreb?'
'Big fight!'
'I suppose I ought to congratulate you, and thank you as well. All right, I do.' Unwrapping the white paper exposed a collection of odorous meat scraps. 'This is cat's meat, Oreb. Having had a bucket of it dumped on my head once, I'd know it anywhere. Scleroderma promised us some, and she's made good her promise already.'
'Eat now?'
'You may, if you wish. Not me. But you ate a good deal of that rat you killed. Don't tell me you're still hungry!'
Oreb only fluttered his wings and cocked his head inquiringly.
'I'm not at all sure that so much meat is good for you.'
'Good meat!'
'As a matter of fact it isn't.' Silk pushed it toward the bird, 'But if I keep it, it will only get worse, and we have no means of preserving it. So go ahead, if you like.'
Oreb snatched a piece of meat and managed to carry it, half flying and half jumping, to the top of the larder.
'Scylla bless your feast, too.' For the two thousandth time it occurred to Silk that a feast blessed by Scylla ought logically to be offish, as the Chrasmologic Writings hinted it had originally been. Sighing, he took off his robe and hung it over the back of what had been Patera Pike's chair. Eventually he would have to carry the robe upstairs to his bedroom, brush it, and hang it up properly; and eventually he would have to remove the manteion's copy of the Writings themselves from the robe's big front pocket and restore it to its proper place.
But both could wait, and he preferred that they should. He started a fire in the stove, washed his hands, and got out the pan in which he had fried tomatoes the day before, then filled the old pot Patera Pike had favored with water from the pump and set it on the stove. He was contemplating the kettle and the possibility of mate or coffee when there was a tap at the Silver Street door.
Unbarring it, he took from Villus a package similar to the one he had found on the step, though much larger, and fumbled in his pocket for the promised half bit.
'Patera . . .' Villus's small face was screwed into an agony of effort.
'Yes, what is it?'
'I don't want nothing.' Villus extended a grimy hand, displaying five shining bits, small squares sheared from so many cards.
'Are those mine?'
Villus nodded. 'He wouldn't take 'em.'
'I see. But the butcher gave you these chops anyway; you certainly didn't wrap this package. And now, since he would not accept money from me-I shouldn't have told you to tell him the meat was for me-you feel that you should not either, as a boy of honor and piety.'
Villus nodded solemnly.
'Very well, I certainly won't make you take it. I owe your mother a bit, however; so give four back to me and give the fifth to her. Will you do that?'
Villus nodded again, handed over four bits, and vanished into the twilight.
'These chops are neither yours nor mine,' Silk told the bird on the larder as he closed the Silver Street door and lifted the heavy bar back into place, 'so leave them alone.'
Large as his pan was, the chops filled it. He sprinkled them'with a minute pinch of precious salt and set the pan on the stove. 'We are made plutocrats of the supernatural,' he informed Oreb conversationally, 'and that to a degree that's almost embarrassing. Others have money, as Blood does, for example. Or power, like Councillor Lemur. Or strength and courage, like Auk. We have gods and ghosts.'
From the top of the larder, Oreb croaked, 'Silk good!' 'If that means you understand, you understand a great deal more than I. But I try to understand, just the same. Plutocrats of the supernatural do not need money, as we've seen-though they get it, as we've also seen. Strength and courage hasten to assist them.' Silk dropped into his chair, the cooking fork in one hand and his chin in the other. 'What they require is wisdom. No one understands gods or ghosts, yet we have to understand them: Lady Kypris today, Patera at the top of the stairs last night, and all the rest of it.'
Oreb peered over the edge of the larder. 'Bad man?'
Silk shook his head. 'You may perhaps object that I've omitted Mucor, who is not dead and thus cannot be a ghost, and certainly is not a god. She behaves almost exactly like a devil, in fact. Which reminds me that we have those too, or one at any rate-that is to say, poor Teasel has or had one. Doctor Crane thinks she was bitten by some sort of bat, but she herself said it was an old man with wings.'
The chops were beginning to sputter. Silk got up and prodded one experimentally with his fork, then lifted another to study its browning underside. 'Speaking of wings, what do you say we begin with the simplest puzzle? I mean yourself, Oreb.'
'Good bird!'
'I dare say. But not so good that you can fly with that bad wing, though I saw you do it last night just before I saw Mucor, and watched her vanish. That is suggestive-'
'Patera?' Steel knuckles rapped the door to the garden.
'Just a moment, Maytera, I have to turn your chops.' To Oreb, Silk added, 'I didn't include Mucor because I won't call what she does supernatural. I freely admit that it appears to be. I may be the only man in Viron who would scruple to call it that.'
With the fork still in his hand, he threw wide the door.
'Good evening, Maytera. Good evening, Kit. May all the gods be with you both. Are those my vegetables?'
Kit nodded, and Silk accepted the big sack and laid it on the kitchen table. 'This seems like a great deal to get for three bits. Kit, as high as prices are now. And there are bananas in there, too-I smell them. They're always very dear.'
Kit remained speechless. Maytera Marble said, 'He was standing in the street, Patera, afraid to knock. Or rather, I think he may have knocked very softly, and you failed to hear him. I took him into the garden, but he wouldn't give up that huge bag.'
'Very properly,' Silk said. 'But, Kit, I wouldn't bite you for bringing me vegetables, particularly when I asked
