“Older than you look, I suppose,” Silk ventured. What guess would flatter Blood? It would not do to say something ridiculous. “Forty-five, possibly?”
“I’m forty-nine.” Blood raised his tumbler in a mock toast. “Nearly fifty.” Musk’s fingers had twitched as Blood spoke, and Silk knew with an absolute certainty he could not have defended that Blood was lying: that he was at least five years older. “And not a part in my body that isn’t my own, except for a couple teeth.”
“You don’t look it.”
“Listen, Patera, I could tell you—” Blood waved the topic aside. “Never mind. It’s late. How much did I say? In a month? Five thousand?”
“You said a substantial sum,” Silk reminded him. “I was to bring you as much as I could acquire, and you would decide whether it was enough. Am I to bring it here?”
“That’s right. Tell the eye at my gate who you are, and somebody will go out and get you. Musk, have a driver come around out front.”
“For me?” Silk asked. “Thank you. I was afraid I’d have to walk—that is, I couldn’t have walked, with my leg like this. I would have had to beg rides on farm carts, I’m afraid.”
Blood grinned. “You’re a thirteen thousand card profit to me, Patera. I’ve got to see you’re taken care of. Listen now. You know how I said those sibyls of yours weren’t to come out here and bother me? Well, that still goes, but tell that one—the old one, what’s her name?”
“Maytera Rose,” Silk supplied.
“Her. You tell Maytera Rose that if she’s interested in getting another leg or something, and can raise the gelt, I might be able to help her out. Or if she’s got something like that she’d like to sell, maybe to help you out. She won’t get a better price anywhere.”
“My thanks are becoming monotonous, I’m afraid,” Silk said. “But I must thank you again, on Maytera’s behalf and in my own.”
“Forget it. There’s getting to be quite a market for those parts now, even the used ones, and I’ve got a man who knows how to recondition them.”
Musk’s sleek head appeared in the doorway. “Floater’s ready.”
Blood stood, swaying slightly. “Can you walk, Patera? No, naturally you can’t, not good. Musk, fetch him one of my sticks, will you? Not one of the high-priced ones. Grab on, Patera.”
Blood was offering his hand. Silk took it, finding it soft and surprisingly cold, and struggled to his feet, acutely conscious of the object Crane had put into his waistband and of the fact that he was accepting help from the man he had set out to rob. “Thank you yet again,” he said, and clenched his teeth against a sharp flash of pain.
As his host, Blood would want to show him out; and if Blood were in back of him, Blood might well see the object under his tunic. Wishing mightily for the robe he had left behind in Hyacinth’s bedchamber, half incapacitated by guilt and pain, Silk managed, “May I lean on your arm? I shouldn’t have had so much to drink.”
Side by side they staggered into the reception hall. Its wide double doors still let in the night; but it was a night (or so Silk fancied) soon to be gray with shadeup. A floater waited on the grassway, its canopy open, a liveried driver at its controls. The most eventful night of his life was nearly over.
Musk rattled the cast on Silk’s ankle with a battered walking stick, smiled at his wince, and put the stick into his free hand. Silk discovered that he still detested Musk, though he had come, almost, to like Musk’s master.
“… floater’ll take you back there, Patera,” Blood was saying. “If you tell anyone about our little agreement, it’s cancelled, and don’t you forget it. A high stack next month, and I don’t mean a few hundred.”
The liveried driver had left the floater to help. In a moment more, Silk was safely settled on the broad, cushioned seat behind the driver’s, with Doctor Crane’s chilly, angular mystery again gouging at his back. “Thank you,” he repeated to Blood. “Thank you both.” (He hoped that Blood would take his phrase to include Musk as well as Blood himself, though he actually intended Blood and the driver.) “I do appreciate it very much. You mentioned our agreement however. And—and I would be exceedingly grateful…” Tentatively, he put out his hand, palm up.
“What is it now, for Phaea’s sake?”
“My needler, please. I hate to ask, after all you’ve done, but it’s in your pocket. If you’re not still afraid I might shoot you, may I have it back?”
Blood stared at him.
“You want me to bring you several thousand cards—I presume that’s what you mean when you speak of a substantial sum. Several thousand cards, when I can scarcely walk. The least you can do is return my weapon, so that I’ve something to work with.”
Blood giggled, coughed, then laughed loudly. Perhaps only because Silk heard it in the open air for the first time that night, Blood’s laughter seemed to him almost the sound that sometimes rose, on quiet evenings, from the pits of the Alambrera. He was forced to remind himself again that this man, too, was loved by Pas.
