lucky, he would be recognized and shot. If he was not, he would find
Thelxiepeia's image and wait until Ermine's closed, for even
Ermine's must close sometime. An immensely superior servant
would inform him icily that he would have to leave. He would stand,
and look about him one last time, and try to hold the servant in
conversation to gain a few moments more.
After that, he would have to go. The street would be gray with
morning and very cold. He would hear Ermine's door shut firmly
behind him, the snick of the bolt and the rattle of the bar. He would
look up and down the street and see no Hyacinth, and no one who
could be carrying a message from her.
Then it would be over. Over and dead and done with, never to
live again. He would recall his longing as something that had once
occupied an augur whose name chanced to be his, Silk, a name not
common but by no means outlandish. (The old calde, whose bust his
mother had kept at the back of her closet, had been--what? Had he
been Silk, too? No, Tussah; but tussah was another costly fabric.)
He would try to bring peace and to save his manteion, fail at both,
and die.
'Go in?'
He wanted to say that they were indeed going in, but found
himself too dismayed to speak. A man with a pheasant's feather in
his hat and a fur cape muttered, 'Pardon me,' and shouldered past.
A footman in livery (presumably the supercilious servant envisioned
a few seconds before) opened the door from inside.
Now. Or not at all. Leave or send a message. Preserve the illusion.
'Are you coming in, sir?'
'Yes,' Silk said. 'Yes, I am. I was wondering about my pet,
though. If there are objections, I'll leave him outside.'
'None, sir,' A faint, white smile touched the footman's narrow
lips like the tracery of frost upon a windowpane. 'The ladies not
infrequently bring animals, sir. Boarhounds, sir. Monkeys. Your
bird cannot be worse. But, sir, the door...'
It was open, of course. The night was chill, and Ermine's would
be comfortably warm, rebellion or no rebellion. Silk climbed the
steps to the green door, discovering that Liana's barricade had been
neither higher nor steeper.
'This is your first visit to Ermine's, I take it, sir?'
Silk nodded. 'I'm to meet a lady here.'
'I quite understand, sir. This is our anteroom, sir.' There were
sofas and stiff-looking chairs. 'It is principally for the removal of
one's outer garments, sir. They are left in the cloakroom. You may
check your bag there, if you so desire. There is no hospitality here in
the anteroom, sir, but one can observe all the guests who enter or depart.'
'Good man?' Oreb studied the footman through one bright, black
eye. 'Like bird?'
'Tonight, sir,' the footman leaned nearer Silk, and his voice
became confidential, 'I might be able to fetch you some refreshment
myself, however. We've little patronage tonight. The unrest.'
'Thank you,' Silk said. 'Thank you very much. But no.'
'Beyond the anteroom, sir, is our sellaria. The chairs are rather
more comfonable, sir, and there is hospitality as well. Some
gentlemen read.'
'Suppose I go into your seilaria and turn to the right,' Silk
inquired, 'where would I be then?'
'In the Club, sir. Or if one turns less abruptly, in the Glasshouse,
sir. There are nooks, sir. Benches and settees. There is hospitality,
sir, but it is infrequent.'
'Thank you,' Silk said, and hurried away.
Strange to think that this enormous room, a room that held fifty
chairs or more, with half that many diminutive tables and scores of
potted plants, statues, and fat-bellied urns, should be called by the
same name as his musty little sitting room at the manse. Swerving to
his right he wound among them, worrying that he had turned too
abruptly and feeling that he walked in a dream through a house of
giants--while politely declining the tray proffered by a deferential
waiter. All the chairs he saw were empty; a table with a glass top
scarcely bigger than the seat of a milking stool held wads of
crumpled paper and a sheet half covered with script, the only signs
of human habitation.
A wall loomed before him like the face of a mountain, or more
accurately, like a fog bank through rents in which might be glimpsed
scenes of unrelated luxury that were in truth its pictures. He veered
left, and after another twenty strides caught sight of a marble arch
framing a curtain of leaves.
It had been as warm as he had expected in the sellaria; passing
through the arch he entered an atmosphere warmer still, humid, and
freighted with exotic perfumes. A moth with mauve-and-gray wings
larger than his palms fluttered before his face to light on a purple
flower the size of a soup tureen. A path surfaced with what seemed
precious stones, narrower even than the graveled path through the
garden of his manteion, vanished after a step or two among vines
and dwarfish trees. The music of falling water was everywhere.
'Good place,' Oreb approved.
It was, Silk thought. It was stranger and more dream-like than the
sellaria, but more friendly and more human, too. The sellaria had
been a vision of opulence bordering on nightmare; this was a gentler
one of warmth and water, sunshine and lush fertility, and though
this glass-roofed garden might be used for vicious purposes, sunshine
and fertility, water and warmth were things in themselves
good; their desirability could only be illustrated more clearly by the
proximity of evil. 'I like it,' he whispered to Oreb. 'Hyacinth must
too, or she wouldn't have told me to meet her here, where all this
would surely dim the beauty of a woman less lovely.'
The sparkling path divided. He hesitated, then turned to his right.
A few steps more, and there was no light save that from the skylands
floating above the whorl. 'His Cognizance would like this as much as
we do, I believe, Oreb. I've been in his garden at the Palace, and
this reminds me of it, though that's an open-air garden, and this
