Litany of the Long Sun Read Online Free
expect. Patera Pike, that good old man, prayed devoutly. And I'm the help-"
"Let's go, Grison."
The blowers roared back to life. Blood's black floater heaved uneasily, rising stern first and rocking alarmingly.
"-the Outsider sent to him, to save the manteion and its palaestra" Silk concluded. He stepped back, coughing in the billowing dust Half to himself and half to the shabby crowd kneeling around him, he added. "I am to expect no help from him. I am help."
If any of them understood, it was not apparent. Still coughing, he traced the sign of addition and muttered a brief formula of blessing, begun with the Most Sacred Name of Pas, Father of the Gods, and concluded with that of his eldest child, Scylla, Patroness of this, Our Holy City of Viron.
AS HE NEARED THE MARKET, Silk reflected on his chance encounter with the prosperous-looking man in the floater. Blood, his driver had called him. Three cards was far, far too much to pay for answers to a few simple questions, and in any case one did not pay augurs for their answers; one made a donation, perhaps, if one was particularly grateful. Three full cards, but were they still there?
He thrust a hand into his pocket; the smooth, elastic surface of the ball met his fingers. He pulled it out, and one of the cards came with it, flashing in the sunlight as it fell at his feet.
As swiftly as he had snatched the ball from Horn, he scooped it up. This was a bad quarter, he reminded himself, though there were so many good people in it Without law, even good people stole: their own property vanished, and their only recourse was to steal in turn from someone eke. What would his mother have thought, if she had lived to learn where the Chapter had assigned him? She had died during his final year at the schola, still believing that he would be sent to one of the rich manteions on the Palatine and someday become Prolocutor.
"You're so good-looking," she had said, raising herself upon her toes to smooth his rebellious hair. "So tall! Oh, Silk, my son! My dear, dear son!"
(And he had stooped to let her kiss him.) My son was what he had been taught to call laymen, even those three times his own age, unless they were very highly placed indeed; then there was generally some title that could be gracefully employed instead, Colonel or Commissioner, or even Councilor, although he had never met any of the three and in this quarter never would-though here was a poster with the handsome features of Councilor Loris, the secretary of the Ayuntamiento: features somewhat scarred now by the knife of some vandal, who had slashed his poster once and stabbed it several times. Silk felt suddenly glad that he was in the Chapter and not in politics, though politics had been his mother's first choice for him. No one would slash or stab the pictured face of His Cognizance the Prolocutor, surely.
He tossed the ball into his right hand and thrust his left into his pocket. The cards were still there: one, two, three. Many men in this quarter who worked from shadeup to dark-carrying bricks or stacking boxes, slaughtering, hauling like oxen or trotting beneath the weighty litters of the rich, sweeping and mopping-would be fortunate to make three cards a year. His mother had received six, enough for a woman and a child to live decently, from some fund at the fisc that she had never explained, a fund that had vanished with her life. She would be unhappy now to see him in this quarter, walking its streets as poor as many of its people. She had never been a happy woman in any case, her large dark eyes so often bright with tears from sources more mysterious than the fisc, her tiny body shaken with sobs that he could do nothing to alleviate. ("Oh, Silk! My poor boy! My son!") He had at first called Blood sir, and afterward, my son, himself scarcely conscious of the change. But why? Sir because Blood had been riding in a floater, of course; only the richest of men could afford to own floaters. My son afterward. "The
"Let's go, Grison."
The blowers roared back to life. Blood's black floater heaved uneasily, rising stern first and rocking alarmingly.
"-the Outsider sent to him, to save the manteion and its palaestra" Silk concluded. He stepped back, coughing in the billowing dust Half to himself and half to the shabby crowd kneeling around him, he added. "I am to expect no help from him. I am help."
If any of them understood, it was not apparent. Still coughing, he traced the sign of addition and muttered a brief formula of blessing, begun with the Most Sacred Name of Pas, Father of the Gods, and concluded with that of his eldest child, Scylla, Patroness of this, Our Holy City of Viron.
AS HE NEARED THE MARKET, Silk reflected on his chance encounter with the prosperous-looking man in the floater. Blood, his driver had called him. Three cards was far, far too much to pay for answers to a few simple questions, and in any case one did not pay augurs for their answers; one made a donation, perhaps, if one was particularly grateful. Three full cards, but were they still there?
He thrust a hand into his pocket; the smooth, elastic surface of the ball met his fingers. He pulled it out, and one of the cards came with it, flashing in the sunlight as it fell at his feet.
As swiftly as he had snatched the ball from Horn, he scooped it up. This was a bad quarter, he reminded himself, though there were so many good people in it Without law, even good people stole: their own property vanished, and their only recourse was to steal in turn from someone eke. What would his mother have thought, if she had lived to learn where the Chapter had assigned him? She had died during his final year at the schola, still believing that he would be sent to one of the rich manteions on the Palatine and someday become Prolocutor.
"You're so good-looking," she had said, raising herself upon her toes to smooth his rebellious hair. "So tall! Oh, Silk, my son! My dear, dear son!"
(And he had stooped to let her kiss him.) My son was what he had been taught to call laymen, even those three times his own age, unless they were very highly placed indeed; then there was generally some title that could be gracefully employed instead, Colonel or Commissioner, or even Councilor, although he had never met any of the three and in this quarter never would-though here was a poster with the handsome features of Councilor Loris, the secretary of the Ayuntamiento: features somewhat scarred now by the knife of some vandal, who had slashed his poster once and stabbed it several times. Silk felt suddenly glad that he was in the Chapter and not in politics, though politics had been his mother's first choice for him. No one would slash or stab the pictured face of His Cognizance the Prolocutor, surely.
He tossed the ball into his right hand and thrust his left into his pocket. The cards were still there: one, two, three. Many men in this quarter who worked from shadeup to dark-carrying bricks or stacking boxes, slaughtering, hauling like oxen or trotting beneath the weighty litters of the rich, sweeping and mopping-would be fortunate to make three cards a year. His mother had received six, enough for a woman and a child to live decently, from some fund at the fisc that she had never explained, a fund that had vanished with her life. She would be unhappy now to see him in this quarter, walking its streets as poor as many of its people. She had never been a happy woman in any case, her large dark eyes so often bright with tears from sources more mysterious than the fisc, her tiny body shaken with sobs that he could do nothing to alleviate. ("Oh, Silk! My poor boy! My son!") He had at first called Blood sir, and afterward, my son, himself scarcely conscious of the change. But why? Sir because Blood had been riding in a floater, of course; only the richest of men could afford to own floaters. My son afterward. "The
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