"All right." She was looking at the gem in the hilt of the azoth again. "It's mine, you know. A very important man gave it to me. If you're going to steal it, I ought to at least get to help you. Are you sure you're a real augur?"

Silk sighed. "It seems that I may not be much longer. If you're serious about wanting to help me, Hyacinth, tell me where you think Blood is likely to be at this hour. Will he have retired for the night?"

She shook her head, her eyes flashing. "He's probably downstairs saying good-bye to the last of them. They've been coming all night, commissioners and commissioners' flunkies. Every once in a while he sends a really important one up here for me. I lost count, but there must have been six or seven of them."

"I know." Silk tried to push the hilt of the azoth more deeply into the coil of rope. "I've lain between your sheets."

"You think I ought to change them? I didn't think men cared."

Silk knelt to fish his broad-brimmed straw hat from beneath the bed. "I doubt that those men do."

"I can call a servant."

"They're busy looking for me, I imagine." Silk tossed the hat onto the bed and readied himself for one last try at his tunic.

"Not the maids." She took his tunic from him. "You know, your eyes want to look at me. You ought to let them do it."

"Hundreds of men must have told you how beautiful you are. Would you displease the G.o.ds to hear it once more? I

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wouldn't. I'm still young, and I hope to see a G.o.d before I die." He was tempted to add that he might well have missed one by a second or less when he entered her chambers, but he did not.

"You've never had a woman, have you?"

Silk shook his head, unwilling to speak.

"Well, let me help you get this on, anyway." She held his tunic as high as she could stretch while he worked both arms into the sleeves, then s.n.a.t.c.hed her azoth from the rope coiled around his waist and sprang toward the bed.

He gaped at her, stunned. Her thumb was upon the demon, the blade slot pointed at his heart. Backing away, he raised both hands in the gesture of surrender.

She posed like a duelist. "They say the girls fight like troopers in Trivigaunte." She parried awkwardly twice, and skewered and slashed an imaginary opponent.

By that time he had recovered at least a fraction of his composure. "Aren't you going to call the guards?"

"Don't think so." She lunged and recovered. "Wouldn't I make a fine swordsman, Patera? Look at these legs."

"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, a.s.suming 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

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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,

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when a guard in silvered armor took the needier 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.

Chapter 7.

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."

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