Free Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers Page B

himself not to let his chagrin show.
    “Liquor’s another thing we have to sacrifice,” the shepherd told him. “You’re lucky it was still full, and that the sister here says you were sober when she picked you up this morning. Still, liquor and a musical instrument, both on one novitiate.” He shook his head thoughtfully. “What’s your name again?”
    “Joe Wiley,” said Rivas at random. “Uh, no, sorry, I mean Brother Boaz.”
    “And how old are you?”
    “I… forget.”
    The shepherd nodded, then smiled. “Did you like taking the sacrament?”
    Rivas closed his eyes and inhaled the fumes of the lost whiskey. “Oh, yes sir.”
    “Good, because I’m going to set up a special treat for you. Most people only get to take it once a day at the very most, but we’re going to let you have it twice today, isn’t that great? I think you’ll be able to talk to me more… frankly, afterward. How does that sound?” Before Rivas could answer, the shepherd added, “Oh, and we’ll have you sitting down, so you won’t fall and hurt yourself this time.”
    Rivas widened his eyes. “I’d love it,” he said. Then he whispered, “But won’t everybody else be jealous ?”
    “Naw. It’ll be our little secret. Follow me.”
    He led Rivas across the dirt to a door in the stadium wall, and through it and down a dim corridor to a room with a bolt on the outside of the door. “Sorry there’s no window or lamp,” he told Rivas, “but you’ve got the Lord Jaybush watching over you now, so there’s no need to be scared of the dark. There’s a chair in there—find your way to it and sit down.”
    Rivas hesitated. Once again, he thought, I could knife him and run. Easier now than before. But, once again, that would blow my cover.
    Do I really want Urania back this much?
    “Yes,” he sighed, and stepped into the room. The door was instantly slammed shut behind him, the buffet of air pressure letting him know that the room was indeed windowless, and very small, too. A tool storage room once, probably. A moment later he heard the bolt clank solidly home.
    After a bit of cautious shambling and groping, his split thumb collided agonizingly with the promised chair, and he sat down. Okay, he told himself, let’s get one thing straight, there’s no way you’re going to take that damned sacrament again. Don’t even consider worrying about that. I’ll kill the jaybush if I have to… but maybe I can whistle him out, and then sprawl on the floor, so that when he regains consciousness he’ll think he already gave it to me. He pursed his lips and in a simultaneously hesitant and hasty gunning rhythm, whistled the first six notes of Peter and the Wolf —the bright adventurous tune sounding constricted and out of place in these surroundings—and then, satisfied, he sat back to wait.
    He remembered how he had come to discover this special property of music, and of Peter and the Wolf in particular.
    In the hills north of the Seal Beach Desolate the Jaybird band he was with had followed a column of smoke until they found, broken up and still burning and scattered across one of the little dry riverbeds, the remains of a Santa Anan merchant caravan. The raiders, whoever they’d been—probably the self-styled modern hooters, who had to ride weirdly customized bicycles instead of the fabled motorcycles ridden by their historical namesakes but did still carry the dreaded hooter swords, painstakingly slotted to produce a loud hooting when whirled in the air at high speed—had taken everything of particular value, but the Jaybirds had lots of time and would be content with meager pickings. They rooted and scrabbled patiently among the blood-spattered wreckage, and came away with a modest haul of metal pieces and wire… but Rivas came across a pelican, miraculously unbroken.
    And so for a few minutes the nineteen-year-old Rivas forgot the ruin around him and treated the sprawled corpses to a few of the old melodies he’d