there.
“I fear that Auk is unavailable, sir. May I leave a message with my similitude?”
“I—yes.” Silk stroked his cheek. “Ask him, please, to tell Auk that I appreciate his help very, very much, and that if nothing happens to me it will be my great pleasure to tell Maytera Mint how kind he was. Tell him, too, that he’s specified only one meritorious act thus far, while the penance he laid upon me called for two or three—for two at least. Ask him to let me know what the others should be.” Too late, it occurred to Silk that Auk had asked that his name not be mentioned to the handsome boy who had spoken though Blood’s glass. “Now then, my son. You referred to your master. Who is that?”
“Blood, sir. Your host.”
“I see. Am I, by any chance, in Blood’s private quarters now?”
“No, sir. These are my mistress’s chambers.”
“Will you tell Blood about the message I left for—for that man who lives in the Orilla?”
The monitor nodded gravely. “Certainly, sir, if he inquires.”
“I see.” A sickening sense of failure decended upon Silk. “Then please tell Auk, also, where I was when I tried to speak to him, and warn him to be careful.”
“I shall, sir. Will that be all?”
Silk’s head was in his hands. “Yes. And thank you. No.” He straightened up. “I need a place to hide, a good place, and weapons.”
“If I may say so, sir,” remarked the monitor, “you require a proper dressing more than either. With respect, sir, you are dripping on our carpet.”
Lifting his right arm, Silk saw that it was true; blood had already soaked through the strip of black cloth he had torn from his tunic a few minutes earlier. Crimson rivulets trickled toward his elbow.
“You will observe, sir, that this room has two doors, in addition to that through which you entered. The one to your left opens upon the balneum. My mistress’s medicinal supplies are there, I believe. As to—”
Silk had risen so rapidly that he had knocked over the stool. Darting through the left-hand door, he heard nothing more.
The balneum was larger than he had anticipated, with a jade tub more than big enough for the naked goddess at the head of the staircase and a separate water closet. A sizable cabinet held a startling array of apothecary bottles, an olla of violet salve that Silk recognized as a popular aseptic, a roll of gauze, and gauze pads of various sizes. A small pair of scissors cut away the blood-soaked strip; he smeared the ragged wound that the white- headed one’s beak had left in his forearm with the violet salve, and at the second try managed to bandage it effectively. As he ruefully took stock of his ruined tunic, he discovered that the bird’s talons had raked his chest and abdomen. It was almost a relief to wash and salve the long, bloody scratches, on which he could employ both his hands.
Yellowish encrustations were forming on his robe where he had wiped away his spew. He took it off and washed it as thoroughly as he could in the lavabo, wrung it out, smoothed it as well as he could, pressed it between two dry towels, and put it back on. Inspecting his appearance in a mirror, he decided that he might well pass a casual examination in a dim light.
Returning to the boudoir, he strewed what he took to be face powder over the clotted blood on the carpet.
The monitor watched him, unperturbed. “That is most interesting, sir.”
“Thank you.” Silk shut the powder box and returned it to the dressing table.
“Does the powder possess cleansing properties? I was unaware of it.”
Silk shook his head. “Not that I know of. I’m only masking these, so visitors won’t be unsettled.”
“Very shrewd, sir.”
Silk shrugged. “If I could think of something better, I’d do it. When I came in, you said that you weren’t a god. I knew you weren’t. We had a glass in the—in a palaestra I attended.”
“Would you like to speak to someone there, sir?”
“Not now. But I was privileged to use that glass once, and it struck me then—I suppose it struck all of us, and I remember some of us talking about it one evening—that the glass looked a great deal like a Sacred Window. Except for its size, of course; all Sacred Windows are eight cubits by eight. Are you familiar with them?”
“No, sir.”
Silk righted the stool and sat down. “There’s another difference, too. Sacred Windows don’t have monitors.”
“That is unfortunate, sir.”
“Indeed.” Silk stroked his cheek with two fingers. “I should tell you, then, that the immortal gods appear at times in the Sacred Windows.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, my son. I’ve never seen one, and most people—those who aren’t augurs or sibyls, particularly—can’t see the gods at all. Although they frequently hear the voice of the god, they see only a swirl of color.”
The monitor’s face flushed brick red. “Like this, sir?”
“No. Not at all like that. I was going to say that as I understand it, those people who can see the gods first see the swirling colors as well. When the theophany begins, the colors are seen. Then the god appears. And then the colors reappear briefly as the god vanishes. All this was set down in circumstantial detail by the Devoted Caddis, nearly two centuries ago. In the course of a long life, he’d witnessed the theophanies of Echidna, Tartaros, and Scylla, and finally that of Pas. He called the colors he’d seen the Holy Hues.”
