“No, I don’t think so.”
She pouted “Why not?”
“Because one must study swordsmanship, and practice day after day. There is a great deal to learn, or so I’ve been told. To speak frankly, I’d back a shorter, less attractive woman against you, assuming that she was less attracted to admiration and those bottles in your balneum, too.”
Hyacinth gave no sign of having heard. “If you really can’t do what I want—if you won’t, I mean—couldn’t you use this azoth instead? And kiss me, and pretend? I’d show you where I want you to put the big jewel, and after a while you might change your mind.”
“Isn’t there an antidote?” To prevent her from seeing his expression, he crossed the room to the window and parted the drapes. There was no one around the dead bird on the terrace now. “You have all those herbs. Surely you must have the antidote, if there is one.”
“I don’t want the antidote, Patera. I want you.” Her hand was on his shoulder; her lips brushed his ear. “And if you go out there like you’re thinking, the cats’ll tear you to pieces.”
The blade of the azoth shot past his ear, fifty cubits down to the terrace to slice the dead bird in two and leave a long, smoking scar across the flagstones. Silk flinched from it. “For Pas’s love be careful!”
Hyacinth whirled off like a dancer as she pressed the demon again. Shimmering through the bedchamber like summer heat, the azoth’s illimited discontinuity hummed of death, parting the universe, slitting the drapes like a razor and dropping a long section slabbed from wall and window frame at Silk’s feet.
“Now you have to,” she told him, and came at him with a sweeping cut that scarred half the room. “Say you will, and I’ll give it back.”
As he dove through the window, the azoth’s humming blade divided the stone sill behind him; but all the fear he ought to have felt was drowned in the knowledge that he was leaving her.
Had he struck the flagstones head first, he would have been spared a great deal of pain. As it was, he turned head over heels in midair. There was only a moment of darkness, like that a bruiser knows when he is knocked to his knees. For what might have been seconds or minutes, he lay near the divided body of the white-headed one, hearing her voice call to him from the window without comprehending anything it said.
When at last he tried to stand, he found that he could not. He had dragged himself to within ten paces of the wall, and shot two of the horned cats Mucor called lynxes, when a guard in silvered armor took the needler from his hand.
After what seemed a very long time, unarmored servants joined him; these carried torches with which they kept the snarling lynxes at bay. Supervised by a fussy little man with a pointed, iron-gray beard, they rolled Silk onto a blanket and carried him back to the villa.
THE BARGAIN
“It isn’t much,” the fussy little man said, “but it’s mine for as long as he lets me have it.”
“It” was a moderately large and very cluttered room in the north wing of Blood’s villa, and the fussy little man was rummaging in a drawer as he spoke. He snapped a flask under the barrel of a clumsy-looking gun, pushed its muzzle through one of the rents in Silk’s tunic, and fired.
Silk felt a sharp pain, as though he had been stung by a bee.
“This stuff kills a lot of people,” the fussy little man informed him, “so that’s to see if you’re one of them. If you don’t die in a minute or two, I’ll give you some more. Having any trouble breathing?”
Clenching his teeth against the pain in his ankle, Silk drew a deep breath and shook his head.
“Good. Actually, that was a minimal dose. It won’t kill you even if you’re sensitive to it, but it’ll take care of those deep scratches and make you sick enough to tell me I mustn’t give you any more.” The fussy little man bent to stare into Silk’s eyes. “Take another deep breath and let it out.”
Silk did so. “What’s your name, Doctor?”
“We don’t use them much here. You’re fine. Hold out that arm.”
Silk raised it, and the bee stung again.
“Stops pain and fights infection.” The fussy little man squatted, pushed up Silk’s trousers leg, and put the muzzle of his odd-looking gun against Silk’s calf.
“It didn’t operate that time,” Silk told him.
“Yes, it did. You didn’t feel it, that’s all. Now we can take that shoe off.”
“My own name is Patera Silk.”
The fussy little man glanced up at him. “Doctor Crane, Silk. Have a good laugh. You’re really an augur? Musk said you were.”
Silk nodded.
“And you jumped out of that second-floor window? Don’t do that again.” Doctor Crane untied the laces and removed the shoe. “My mother hoped I’d be tall, you see. She was tall herself, and she liked tall men. My father was short.”
Silk said, “I understand.”
“I doubt it.” Doctor Crane bent over Silk’s foot, his pinkish scalp visible through his gray hair. “I’m going to cut away this stocking. If I pull it off, it might do more damage.” He produced shiny scissors exactly like those Silk had found in Hyacinth’s balneum. “She’s dead now, and so’s he, so I guess it doesn’t matter.” The ruined stocking fell away. “Want to see what he looked like?”
