Silk shook his head. “I’m surprised you didn’t mention her kind disposition. There must be a great deal of good in her, or she wouldn’t have come here to comfort you.”
Orchid stood up. “You want a drink, Patera? I’ve got wine and whatnot in the cabinet here.”
“No, thank you.”
“I do.” Orchid opened the cabinet and filled a small goblet with straw-colored brandy.
“She seemed quite depressed,” Silk ventured. “She must have been a close friend of Orpine’s.”
“Chenille’s a real rust bucket, to hand you the lily, Patera, and they’re always pretty far down anytime they’re straight.”
Silk snapped his fingers. “I knew I’d heard that name before.”
Orchid resumed her seat, swirled her brandy, inhaled its aroma, and balanced the goblet precariously on the arm of the couch. “Somebody told you about her, huh?”
“A man I know happened to mention her, that’s all. It doesn’t matter.” He waved the question away. “Aren’t you going to drink that?” After he had spoken, he realized that Blood had asked the same question of him the previous night.
Orchid shook her head. “I don’t drink until the last buck’s gone. That’s my rule, and I’m going to stick to it, even today. I just want to know it’s there. Did you come here to talk about Chen, Patera?”
“No. Can we be overheard here? I ask for your sake, Orchid, not for my own.”
She shook her head again.
“I’ve heard that houses like this often have listening devices.”
“Not this one. And if it did, I wouldn’t have any in here.”
Silk indicated the glass. “The monitor doesn’t have to appear to overhear what is said in a room, or so one’s given me to understand. Does the monitor of that glass report to you alone?”
Orchid had the brandy goblet again, swirling the straw-colored fluid until it climbed the goblet to the rim. “That glass has never worked for as long as I’ve owned this house, Patera. I wish it did.”
“I see.” Silk limped across the room to the glass and clapped his hands loudly. The room’s lights brightened, but no monitor answered his summons. “We have a glass like this in Patera Pike’s bedroom—I mean in the room that he once occupied. I should try to sell it. I would think that even an inoperable glass must be worth something.”
“What is it you want with me, Patera?”
Silk returned to his chair. “What I really want is to find some more tactful way of saying this. I haven’t found it. Orpine was your daughter, wasn’t she?”
Orchid shook her head.
“Are you going to deny her even in death?”
He had not known what to expect: tears, or hysteria, or nothing—and had felt himself ready for them all. But now Orchid’s face appeared to be coming apart, to be losing all cohesion, as if her mouth and her bruised and swollen cheeks and her hard hazel eyes no longer obeyed a common will. He wanted her to hide that terrible face in her hands; she did not, and he turned his own away.
There was a window on the other side of the couch. He went to it, parted its heavy drapes, and threw it open. It overlooked Lamp Street, and though he would have called the day hot, the breeze that entered Orchid’s sellaria seemed cool and fresh.
“How did you know?” Orchid asked.
He limped back to his chair. “That’s what’s wrong with this place, not enough open windows. Or one thing, anyhow.” Wanting to blow his nose, he took out his handkerchief, saw Orpine’s blood on it just in time, and put it away hastily.
“How did you know, Patera?”
“Don’t any of the others know? Or at least guess?”
Orchid’s face was still out of control, afflicted with odd, almost spastic twitchings. “Some of them have probably thought about it. I don’t think she ever told anybody, and I didn’t treat her any better than the rest.” Orchid gulped air. “Worse, whenever there was any difference. I made her help me, and I was always yelling at her.”
“I’m not going to ask you how this happened; it’s none of my affair.”
“Thanks, Patera.” Orchid sounded as though she meant it. “Her father took her. I couldn’t have, not then. But he said—he said—”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Silk repeated.
She had not heard. “Then I found her on the street, you know? She was thirteen, only she said fifteen and I believed her. I didn’t know it was her.” Orchid laughed, and her laughter was worse than tears.
“There’s really no need for you to torment yourself like this.”
“I’m not. I’ve been wanting to tell somebody about it ever since Sphigx was a cub. You already know, so it can’t do any harm. Besides, she’s—she’s—”
“Gone,” Silk supplied.
Orchid shook her head. “Dead. The only one alive, and I’ll never have any more now. You know how places like this work, Patera?”
