Nightside the Long Sun Read Online Free

crooked, discolored teeth; and Silk, suddenly and without in the least willing it, saw more vividly than he had ever seen the man before him the hungry, frightened, scheming youth who had been Blood a generation before.
    â€œAnd if you don’t gibbe yourself, Patera.”
    â€œGibbe?”
    â€œIf you’ve got no objections. Don’t feel like you’re stepping over his line.”
    â€œI see.” Silk cleared his throat. “I’ve no objection, but no very satisfactory answer for you, either. That’s why I snatched my three cards from your hand, and it’s why I need them, too—or a part of it. It may be only that he has a task for me. He does, I know, and I hope that that’s all it is. Or, as I’ve thought since, perhaps it’s because he means to destroy me, and felt he owed this to me before he struck. I don’t know.”
    Blood dropped to his seat in the passenger compartment, mopping his face and neck with his scented handkerchief, as he had before. “Thanks, Patera. We’re quits. You’re going to the market?”
    â€œYes, to buy him a fine victim with these cards you’ve given me.”
    â€œPaid you. I’ll have left your manteion before you get back, Patera. Or anyhow I hope I will.” Blood dropped into the floater’s velvet seat. “Get the canopy up, Grison.”
    Silk called, “Wait!”
    Blood stood again, surprised. “What is it, Patera? No hard feelings, I hope.”
    â€œI lied to you, my son—misled you at least, although I didn’t intend to. He—the Outsider—told me why, and I remembered it a few minutes ago when I was talking with a boy named Horn, a student at our palaestra.” Silk stepped closer, until he was peering at Blood over the edge of the half-raised canopy. “It was because of the augur who had our manteion when I came, Patera Pike. A very good and very holy man.”
    â€œHe’s dead, you said.”
    â€œYes. Yes, he is. But before he died, he prayed—prayed to the Outsider, for some reason. And he was heard. His prayer was granted. All this was explained to me, and now I owe it to you, because it was part of our bargain.”
    â€œThen I may as well have it explained to me, too. But make it as quick as you can.”
    â€œHe prayed for help.” Silk ran his fingers through his careless thatch of straw-colored hair. “When we—when you pray for his help, to the Outsider, he sends it.”
    â€œNice of him.”
    â€œBut not always—no, not often—of the sort we want or expect. Patera Pike, that good old man, prayed devoutly. And I’m the help—”
    â€œLet’s go, Grison.”
    The blowers roared back to life. Blood’s black floater heaved uneasily, rising stern first and rocking alarmingly.
    â€œâ€”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