Nightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe Page B

mentioning.
    The steep and broken stairs stank of urine; Silk held his breath as he groped down them, not much helped by the faint yellow radiance from the open door. Stepping to one side just beyond the doorway, he stood with his back to the wall and surveyed the low room. No one appeared to pay the least attention to him.
    It was larger than he had expected, and less furnished. Mismatched deal tables stood here and there, isolated, but surrounded by chairs, stools, and benches equally heterodox on which a few silent figures lounged. Odious candles fumed and dribbled a sooty wax upon some (though by no means all) of these tables, and a green and orange lampion with a torn shade swung in the center of the room, seeming to tremble at the high-pitched anger of the voices below it. The backs of jostling onlookers obscured what was taking place there.
    â€œHornbus, you whore!” a woman shrieked.
    A man’s voice, slurred by beer yet hissing swift with the ocher powder called rust, suggested, “Stick it out your skirt, sweetheart, an’ maybe she will.” There was a roar of laughter. Someone kicked over a table, its thud accompanied by the crash of breaking glass.
    â€œHere! Here now!” Quickly but without the appearance of haste, a big man with a hideously scarred face pushed through the crowd, an old skittlepin in one hand. “OUTside now! OUTside with this!” The onlookers parted to let two women with dirty gowns and disheveled hair through.
    â€œOutside with her! ” One woman pointed.
    â€œOUTside with both.” The big man caught the speaker expertly by the collar, tapped her head almost gently with the skittlepin, and shoved her toward the door.
    One of the watching men stepped forward, held up his hand, and gestured in the direction of the other woman, who seemed to Silk almost too drunk to stand.
    â€œHer, too,” the big man with the skittlepin told her advocate firmly.
    He shook his head.
    â€œHer too! And you!” The big man loomed above him, a head the taller. “OUTside!”
    Steel gleamed and the skittlepin flashed down. For the first time in his life, Silk heard the sickening crepitation of breaking bone; it was followed at once by the high, sharp report of a needier, a sound like the crack of a child’s toy whip. A needier (momentarily, Silk thought it the needier that had fired) flew into the air, and one of the onlookers pitched forward.
    Silk was on his knees beside him before he himself knew what he had done, his beads swinging half their length in sign after sign of addition. “I convey to you, my son, the forgiveness of all the gods. Recall now the words of Pas—”
    â€œHe’s not dead, cully. You an augur?” It was the big man with the scarred face. His right arm was bleeding, dark blood oozing through a soiled rag he pressed tightly against the cut.
    â€œIn the name of all the gods you are forgiven forever, my son. I speak here for Great Pas, for Divine Echidna, for Scalding Scylla, for—”
    â€œGet him out of here,” someone snapped; Silk could not tell whether he meant the dead man or himself. The dead man was bleeding less than the big man, a steady, unspectacular welling from his right temple. Yet he was surely dead; as Silk chanted the Final Formula and swung his beads, his left hand sought a pulse, finding none.
    â€œHis friends’ll take care of him, Patera. He’ll be all right.”
    Two of the dead man’s friends had already picked up his feet.
    â€œâ€¦ and for Strong Sphigx. Also for all lesser gods.” Silk hesitated; it had no place in the Formula, but would these people know? Or care? Before rising, he finished in a whisper: “The Outsider likewise forgives you, my son, no matter what evil you did in life.”
    The tavern was nearly empty. The man who had been hit with the skittlepin groaned and stirred. The drunken woman was kneeling beside him just as Silk had knelt