"You haven't even seen anything, Patera. We're not as bad as you think."

Silk shook his head. "I don't think you bad at all, Orchid, and neither do the G.o.ds. If they thought you bad, nothing that you could do would dismay them. They detest all the evil that you do-and all that I do-because they see in us the potential to do good."

"Well, I've been Uiinking maybe they sent this devil to get even with us." Orchid whistled again. "What's keeping that girl!"

"The G.o.ds do not send us devils," Silk told her, "and indeed, they destroy them wherever they meet them, deleting them from Mainframe. That, at least, is the legend. It's in the Writings, and I have them here in my bag. Would you like me to read the pa.s.sage?" He reached for his gla.s.ses.

"No. Just tell me so I can understand it."

"All right." Silk squared his shoulders. "Pas made the whorl, as you know. When it was complete, he invited his queen, their five daughters and their two sons, and a few friends to share it with him. However-"

From the other side of the sun-bright doorway, someone screamed in terror.

Orchid lunged out of her chair with praiseworthy speed. Limping a little and repeating to himself Crane's injunction against running, Silk trailed after her, walking as quickly as he could.

The courtyard was lined with doorways on both floors. As he searched for the source of the disturbance, it seemed to him that whole companies of young women in every possible stage of undress were popping in and out of them, though he paid them little attention.

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The dead woman lay halfway up a flight of rickety steps thrown down like a ladder by the sagging gallery above; she was naked, and the fingers of her left hand curled about the hilt of a dagger jutting from her ribs below her left breast. Her head was angled so sharply in Silk's direction that it almost appeared that her neck was broken. He found her oddly contorted face at once horrible and familiar.

Against all his training, he covered that face with his handkerchief before beginning to swing his beads.

It quieted the women somewhat, although the dagger, the wound it had made, and the blood that had so briefly spurted from that wound were still visible.

Orchid shouted, "Who did this? Who stabbed her?" and a puffy-eyed brunette, nearly as naked as the woman sprawled on the steps, drawled, "She did, Orchid-she killed herself. Use your head. Or if you won't, use your eyes."

Kneeling on a blood-spattered step just below the dead woman's head, Silk swung his beads, first forward-and-back, then side-to-side, thus describing the sign of addition. "I convey to you, my daughter, the forgiveness of all die G.o.ds. Recall now the words of Pas, who said, 'Do my will, live in peace, multiply, and do not disturb my seal. Thus you shall escape my wrath. Go willingly, and any wrong that you have ever done shall be forgiven.' O my daughter, know that this Pas and all the lesser G.o.ds have empowered me to forgive you in their names. And I do forgive you, remitting every crime and wrong. They are expunged." With his beads, Silk traced the sign of subtraction. "You are blessed." Bobbing his head nine times, as die ritual demanded, he traced the sign of addition.

A female voice breathed curses somewhere to his right, blasphemy following obscenity. "Hornbuss Pas s.h.a.g you Pas wh.o.r.emaster Pas hornswallow 'Chidna sick-licker Pas ..." It sounded to Silk as though the speaker did not know

250 Gene Wolfe

what she was saying, and might well be unaware that she was speaking at all.

"I pray you to forgive us, the living," he continued, and once again formed the sign of addition with his beads above the dead woman's handkerchief-shrouded head. "I and many another have wronged you often, my daughter, committing terrible crimes and numerous offences against you. Do not hold them in your heart, but begin the life that follows life in innocence, all these wrongs forgiven." He made the sign of subtraction again.

A statuesque girl spat; her tightly curled hair was the color of ripe raspberries. "What are you doing that for? Can't you see she's stiff? She's dead, and she can't hear a s.h.a.ggy word you're saying." At die final phrase her voice cracked, and Silk realized that it was she whom he had heard swearing.

He gripped his beads more tightly and bent lower as he reached die effectual point in the liturgy of pardon. The sun beating down upon his neck might have been the burning iron hand of Twice-Headed Pas himself, crushing him to earth while ceaselessly demanding that he perfectly enunciate each hallowed word and execute every sacred rubric faultlessly. "In the name of all the G.o.ds, you are forgiven forever, my daughter. I speak here for Great Pas, for Divine Echidna, for Scalding Scylla . . ." Here it was allowable to halt and take a fresh breath, and Silk did so. "For Marvelous Molpe, for Tenebrous Tartaros, for Highest Hierax, for Thoughtful Thelxiepeia, for Fierce Phaea, and for Strong Sphigx. Also for all lesser G.o.ds."

Briefly and inexplicably, die glaring sun might almost have been the swinging, smoking lampion in the c.o.c.k, Silk whispered, "The Outsider likewise forgives you, my daughter, for I speak here for him, too."

After tracing one final sign of addition, he stood and turned toward the statuesque young woman with the rasp-

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berry hair, to his considerable relief, she was clothed. "Bring me something to cover her with, please. Her time in this place is over."

Orchid was questioning the puffy-eyed brunette. "Is this her knife?"

"You ought to know." Fearlessly, the brunette reached beneath the railing to pull the long dagger from the wound. "I don't think so. She'd have showed it to me, most likely, and I've never seen it before."

Crane came down the steps, stooped over the dead woman, and pressed his fingers to her wrist. After a second or two, he squatted and laid an ausculator to her side.

(We acknowledge this state we call death with so much reluctance, Silk thought, not for the first time. Surely it can't be natural to us.)

Withdrawing the dagger had increased the seepage from the wound; under all the shrill hubbub, Silk could hear the dead woman's blood dripping from the steps to the crumbling brick pavement of the courtyard, like the unsteady ticking of a broken clock.

Orchid was peering nearsightedly at the dagger. "It's a man's. A man called Cat." Turning to face the courtyard, die shouted, "Shut up, all of you! Listen to me! Do any of you know a cull named Cat?"

A small, dark girl in a torn chemise edged closer. "I do. He comes here sometimes."

"Was he here last night? How long since you've seen him?"

The girl shook her head. "I'm not sure, Orchid. A month, maybe."

The corpulent woman waddled toward her, holding out die dagger, the younger women parting before her like so many ducklings before a duck. "You know where he lives? Who's he get, usually?"

"No. Me. Orpine sometimes, if I'm busy."

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Crane stood up, glanced at Silk and shook his head, and put away his ausculator.

Blood's bellow surprised them all. "What's going on here?" Thick-bodied and a full head taller than most of the women, he strode into the courtyard with something of the air of a general coming onto a battlefield.

When Orchid did not answer, the raspberry-haired girl said wearily, "Orpine's dead. She just killed herself." She had a clean sheet under her arm, neatly folded.

"What for?" Blood demanded.

No one replied. The raspberry-haired girl shook out her sheet and pa.s.sed a comer up to Crane. Together, they spread the sheet over the dead woman.

Silk put away his beads and went down the steps to the courtyard. Half to himself he muttered, "She didn't-not forever. Not even as long as I."

Orchid turned to look at him. "No, she didn't. Now shut up."

Musk had taken the dagger from her. After scrutinizing it himself, he held it out for Blood's inspection. Orchid explained, "A cully they call Cat comes here sometimes. He must've given it to her, or left it behind in her room."