Nothing. Thelxiepeia provided the best protection from devils, according to the Writings, but this was Phaea’s day, not hers. Silk petitioned Phaea, Thelxiepeia, and for good measure Scylla, in quick succession before saying, “I take it you don’t want to talk to me, but I need to talk to you. I need your help, whoever you are.”
In Blood’s ballroom, the orchestra had struck up “Brave Guards of the Third Brigade.” Silk had the feeling that no one was dancing, that few if any of Blood’s guests were even listening. Outside, the talus waited at the gate, its steel arms unnaturally lengthened, both its hands upon the ring.
Turning his back on the window, Silk scanned the room. A shapeless mass in a corner (one that he had not traversed when he had felt his way along the walls to the door) might conceivably have been a huddled woman. With no very great confidence he said, “I see you.”
He crossed to the dark shape in the corner and nudged it with the toe of his shoe, then crouched, put aside his hatchet, and explored it with both hands—a ragged blanket and a thin, foul-smelling mattress. Picking up his hatchet again, he rose and faced the empty room. “I’d like to see you,” he repeated. “But if you won’t let me—if you won’t even talk to me any more—I’m going to leave.” As soon as he had spoken, he reflected that he had probably told her precisely what she wanted to hear.
He stepped to the window. “If you require my help, you must say so now.” He waited, silently reciting a formula of blessing, then traced the sign of addition in the darkness before him. “Good-bye, then.”
Before he could turn to go, she rose before him like smoke, naked and thinner than the most miserable beggar. Although she was a head shorter, he would have backed away from her if he could; his right heel thumped the wall below the window.
“Here I am. Can you see me now?” In the dim skylight from the window her starved and bloodless face seemed almost a skull. “My name’s Mucor.”
Silk nodded and swallowed, half afraid to give his own, not liking to lie. “Mine’s Silk.” Whether he succeeded or was apprehended, Blood would learn his identity. “Patera Silk. I’m an augur, you see.” He might die, perhaps; but if he did his identity would no longer matter.
“Do you really have to talk with me, Silk? That’s what you said.”
He nodded. “I need to ask you how to open that door. It doesn’t seem to be locked, but it won’t open.”
When she did not reply, he added. “I have to get into the house. Into the rest of it, I mean.”
“What’s an augur? I thought you were a boy.”
“One who attempts to learn the will of the gods through sacrifice, in order that he may—”
“I know! With the knife and the black robe. Lots of blood. Should I come with you, Silk? I can send forth my spirit. I’ll fly beside you, wherever you go.”
“Call me Patera, please. That’s the proper way. You can send forth your body, too, Mucor, if you want.”
“I’m saving myself for the man I’ll marry.” It was said with perfect (too perfect) seriousness.
“That’s certainly the correct attitude, Mucor. But all I meant was that you don’t have to stay here if you don’t wish to. You could climb out of this window very easily and wait out there on the roof. When I’ve finished my business with Blood, we could both leave this villa, and I could take you to someone in the city who would feed you properly and—and take care of you.”
The skull grinned at him. “They’d find out that my window opens, Silk. I wouldn’t be able to send my spirit any more.”
“You wouldn’t be here. You’d be in some safe place in the city. There you could send out your spirit whenever you wanted, and a physician—”
“Not if my window was locked again. When my window is locked, I can’t do it, Silk. They think it’s locked now.” She giggled, a high, mirthless tittering that stroked Silk’s spine like an icy finger.
“I see,” he said. “I was about to say that someone in the city might even be able to make you well. You may not care about that, but I do. Will you at least let me out of your room? Open your door for me?”
“Not from this side. I can’t.”
He sighed. “I didn’t really think you could. I don’t suppose you know where Blood sleeps?”
“On the other side. Of the house.”
“In the other wing?”
“His room used to be right under mine, but he didn’t like hearing me. Sometimes I was bad. The north addition. This one’s the south addition.”
“Thank you,” Silk stroked his cheek. “That’s certainly worth knowing. He’ll have a big room on the ground floor, I suppose.”
“He’s my father.”
“Blood is?” Silk caught himself on the point of saying that she did not resemble him. “Well, well. That may be worth knowing, too. I don’t plan to hurt him, Mucor, though I rather regret that now. He has a very nice daughter; he should come and see her more often, I think. I’ll mention it forcefully, if I get to talk with him.”
Silk turned to leave, then glanced back at her. “You really don’t have to stay here, Mucor.”
“I know. I don’t.”
“You don’t want to come with me when I leave? Or leave now yourself?”
“Not the way you mean, walking like you do.”
