Blood’s voice came to him faintly through the plashing of the fountain. “Don’t rush him.”
Someone had asked what he was waiting for. He sighed, knowing he could not delay much longer. To hold on to this moment, in which the bird that he might never see again was still his.
The sky was empty or seemed so, the skylands invisible behind the endless, straight glare of the sun. Fliers, if there were any, were invisible too. Above the tops of the trees on the other side of the wall, distant fields curved upward, vanishing in a blue haze as they mounted the air. Lake Limna seemed a fragment of mirror set into the whorl, like a gaud into a cheap picture frame.
Time to throw.
As though it knew what was about to happen, the young eagle stirred. Musk nodded to himself. “Come back to me,” he whispered. “Come back to me.”
And then, as if somebody else (an interfering god or Blood’s mad daughter) controlled it, his right arm went up. Self-willed, his hand grasped the scarlet-plumed hood and snatched it away.
The young eagle lifted its wings as though to fly, then folded them again. He should have worn a mask, perhaps. If the eagle struck at his face now, he would be scarred for life if he was not killed; but his pride had not permitted it.
“Away, Hawk!” He lifted his arm, tilting it to tip the bird into the air. For a split second he thought it was not going to fly at all.
The great wings seemed to blow him back. Slowly and clumsily it flew, its wingtips actually brushing the lush grass at every downstroke—out to the wall and left, past the gate and left again up the grassway. For a moment he thought it was returning to him.
Into the portico, scattering the watchers there like quail. If it turned right at the end of the wing, mistook the cat pen for the mews—
Higher now, as high as the top of the wall, and left again. Left until it passed overhead, its wings a distant thunder. Higher now, and higher still, still circling and climbing, riding the updraft from the baking lawn and the scorching roofs. Higher the young eagle rose and higher, black against the glare, until it, like the fields, was lost in the vastness of the sky.
When the rest had gone Musk remained, shading his eyes against the pitiless sun. After a long while, Hare brought him binoculars. He used them but saw nothing.
THE CAT WITH THE RED-HOT TAIL
Lamp Street was familiar and safe once more, stripped of the mystery of night. Silk, who had walked it often, found that he recognized several shops, and even the broad and freshly varnished door of the yellow house.
The corpulent woman who opened it in response to Crane’s knock seemed surprised by his presence. “It’s awfully early, Patera. Just got up myself.” She yawned as if to prove it, only tardily concealing her mouth. Her pink peignoir gaped in sympathy, its vibrant heat leaving the bulging flesh between its parted lips a deathly white.
The air of the place poured past her, hot and freighted with a hundred stale perfumes and the vinegar reek of wasted wine. “I was to meet Blood here at one o’clock,” Silk told her. “What time is it?”
Crane slipped past them into the reception room beyond.
The woman ignored him. “Blood’s always late,” she said vaguely. She led Silk through a low archway curtained with clattering wooden beads and into a small office. A door and a window opened onto the courtyard he had imagined the night before, and both stood open; despite them, the office seemed hotter even than the street outside.
“We’ve had exorcists before.” The corpulent woman took the only comfortable-looking chair, leaving Silk an armless one of varnished wood. He accepted it gratefully, dropping his bag to the floor, laying the cased triptych across his thighs, and holding Blood’s lioness-headed stick between his knees.
“I’ll have somebody fetch you a pillow, Patera. This is where I talk to my girls, and a hard chair’s better. It keeps them awake, and the narrow seat makes them think that they’re getting fat, which is generally the case.”
The memory of his fried tomatoes brought Silk a fresh pang of guilt, well salted with hunger. Could it be that some god spoke through this blowsy woman? “Leave it as it is,” he told her. “I, too, need to learn to love my belly less, and my bed.”
“You want to talk to all the girls together? One of the others did. Or I can just tell you.”
Silk waved the question aside. “What these particular devils may have done here is no concern of mine, and paying attention to their malicious tricks would risk encouraging them. They are devils, and unwelcome in this house; that is all I know, and if you and—and everyone else living here are willing to cooperate with me, it is all I need to know.”
“All right.” The corpulent woman adjusted her own chair’s ample cushions and leaned back. “You believe in them, huh?”
Here it was. “Yes,” Silk told her firmly.
“One of the others didn’t. He said lots of prayers and had the parade and all the rest of it anyway, but he thought we were crazy. He was about your age.”
“Doctor Crane thinks the same,” Silk told her, “and his beard is gray. He doesn’t phrase it quite as rudely as that, but that’s what he thinks. He thinks that I’m crazy too, of course.”
The corpulent woman smiled bitterly. “Uh-huh, I can guess. I’m Orchid, by the way.” She offered her hand as though she expected him to kiss it.
He clasped it. “Patera Silk, from the manteion on Sun Street.”
