Read Online Nightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe - Free Book Online

though they had been molded of some tough polymer, they appeared almost normal. Her left eye, with which she had been born, seemed at once mad and blind, bleared and festering.
    While trying to avoid that eye, and wishing (as he so often had since coming to the manteion) that replacements were still available, Silk shifted the night chough from his left hand to his right. “Thank you, Maytera Rose, Maytera Marble, Maytera Mint. Thank you. We’ll do much better next time, I feel certain.” He had slipped off his sacrificial gauntlets; the hated bird felt warm and somehow dusty in his perspiring hands. “In the palaestra, in five minutes or so, Maytera Marble.”

Chapter 3
    T WILIGHT
    â€œIn here, Patera!”
    Silk halted abruptly, nearly slipping as the wet gravel rolled beneath his shoes.
    â€œIn the arbor,” Maytera Marble added. She waved, her black-clad arm and gleaming hand just visible through the screening grape leaves.
    The first fury of the storm had passed off quickly, but it was still raining, a gentle pattering that settled like a benediction upon her struggling beds of kitchen herbs.
    We meet like lovers, Silk thought as he regained his balance and pushed aside the dripping foliage, and wondered for an instant whether she did not think the same.
    No. As lovers, he admitted to himself. For he loved her as he had loved his mother, as he might have loved the older sister he had never had, striving to draw forth the shy smile she achieved by an inclination of her head—to win her approval, the approbation of an old sibyl, of a worn-out chem at whom nobody, when he had been small and there had been a lot more chems around, would ever have troubled to glance twice, whom no one but the youngest children ever thought interesting. How lonely he would have been in the midst of the brawling congestion of this quarter, if it had not been for her!
    She rose as he entered the arbor and sat again as he sat. He said, “You really don’t have to do that when we’re alone, sib. I’ve told you.”
    Maytera Marble tilted her head in such a way that her rigid, metal face appeared contrite. “Sometimes I forget. I apologize, Patera.”
    â€œAnd I forget that I should never correct you, because I always find out, as soon as it’s too late, that you were right after all. What is it you want to talk to me about, Maytera?”
    â€œYou don’t mind the rain?” Maytera Marble looked up at the overarching thatch of vines.
    â€œOf course not. But you must. If you don’t feel like walking all the way to the palaestra, we could go into the manteion. I want to see if the roof still leaks, anyway.”
    She shook her head. “Maytera Rose would be upset. She knows that it’s perfectly innocent, but she doesn’t want us meeting in the palaestra, with no one else present. People might talk, you know—the kind of people who never attend sacrifices anyway, and are looking for an excuse. And she didn’t want to come herself, and Maytera Mint’s watching the fire. So I thought out here. It’s not quite so private—Maytera can see us through the windows of the cenoby—and we still have a bit of shelter from the rain.”
    Silk nodded. “I understand.”
    â€œYou said the rain must make me uncomfortable. That was very kind of you, but I don’t feel it and my clothes will dry. I’ve had no trouble drying the wash lately, but it takes a great deal of pumping to get enough water to do it in. Is the manse’s well still good?”
    â€œYes, of course.” Seeing her expression, Silk shook his head. “No, not of course. It’s comforting to believe as children do that Pas won’t resist his daughter’s pleas in our behalf much longer, and that he’ll always provide for us. But one never knows, really; we can only hope. If we must have new wells dug, the Church will have to lend us the money,