“Good shot, sir,” Pyati told Donovan over the link. “Those beasts like to go die in hard places. Always best to drop them where they stand.”
Donovan reflected that that was good advice for more than moose.
* * *
He and Gidula painted five “kills” between them that day, according to the anatomist and the armorer. Gidula announced the sixth a kill-in-fact and brought down what he called a lazarus elk, bearing an enormous spread of antlers. Apparently, the creature had once been extinct and the science-wallahs of the Old Commonwealth had somehow rebooted it. The beast wanted three high-velocity rounds to topple, and Gidula erected a cairn on the spot and burned thereon the offal as an offering to Jana Wogawi, the Goddess of the Hunt. The remainder of the carcass they field-dressed and sent back to the Forks by airtruck, to be butchered and sold at the twelveday market. The head and rack Gidula kept, as a trophy for the Gun Room.
* * *
Betweentimes, Donovan endured multiple interrogations with Gidula. The Old One tried all the same tactics that Oschous had tried, and with all the same results. Yet he must have known those methods had proven futile. So why the Kabuki?
He can’t simply pith us, the Sleuth said. If the memories are truly inaccessible, he will not find them by drilling. And afterward, all hope of obtaining them would be lost.
Beside which, the young man in the chlamys said, you’ve made too many friends. Oschous—and by now Dawshoo—knows Gidula has you, and he’s not ready for an open break with the other two triumvirs. Some of his own people might now turn against him if he pressed kaowèn on “the great Geshler Padaborn.” I could name the magpies that would flock to your side in such a division.
But there were others who hated the Names deeply enough that they would tolerate any means, including kaowèn, to obtain the key to the Secret City. This struck Donovan as odd, even ironic. What was the point of revolution if matters did not revolve and men just as cruel seized the reins?
The question arose obliquely one afternoon when he and Pyati had been sparring in the pleshra. “I don’t mind at the helm a strong arm,” the magpie said while they showered off the grime of combat, “or in the saddle a keen pilot. But when authoritarianism is with decadence tainted, our liberties fade.”
“Can there be liberties under authoritarianism,” said Donovan, “however undecadent they might be?”
Pyati paused while soaping up. “Of course. When the leash is slackly held, and tugged only now and then and for good cause.”
“I’m inclined,” the Fudir replied, “to regard the existence of the leash as sufficient irritant.”
The other nodded, considering the words. “You saw in the League the anarchy that follows when there are no leashes. The Old One names two oppressions of sheep. The first, when power is arbitrary; the second, when there is no power at all. When no man holds the leash, all men hold leashes, and tyranny is petty and irksome and everywhere. Instead of the great laws, we have the niggling nettles of many small laws. The leash is always there, master. What matters is who holds it.”
Donovan rinsed off, ducking his head under the cascade. “Then why,” he said when he emerged, “have you joined the Revolution?”
Pyati seemed surprised by the question. “Why? Because my master has told me. Because wise managers have become petty tyrants. Because they push and prod, but do not lead. Because they have trampled our traditions and have dropped the leash. Revolution is coming, whether we Shadows lead it or not. Better us than chaos.”
Donovan studied his own naked body in the mirror, considered how frail he seemed. He did not attempt to count the scars, for chaos seemed embodied in their very number and placement. One day, he knew, there would be no autoclinic handy to knit them up afterward.
* * *
A Shadow was expected to use his mind as well as his hands, feet, and happenstance bric-a-brac. And so the scarred man’s exercises were more than merely physical. There were simulations, puzzles, scenarios, war games—in which the race went not to the fleet, but to deceit.
And so he had learned—or relearned—a number of plays. Some he had never forgotten. He had used The Little Birdie in the Terran Corner on Jehovah, igniting a rumor-storm with a series of well-placed and well-timed whispers that had culminated in the dismissal of the Jehovan Inspector of the Starport market. Other plays had the quality of the newly remembered. When he finally made his move, he chose The Missing Man, which required the cooperation of several collaborators and the subversion of the compound’s information system.
The essence of The Missing Man was to create the illusion of a presence from the fact of an absence. Donovan knew people who could appear to be absent even when present. Greystroke Hound was a past master of that art. But the real trick was to appear to be present even when not. To accomplish that feat, Donovan chose Pyati and Eglay Portion.
As Magpie One Padaborn, Pyati had to be in on it. He controlled Donovan’s calendar, could cancel appointments, tell people that they “just missed” the boss, and give Donovan’s residence the appearance of being lived in. Beds would be mussed. Meals would be cooked (and consumed). Spools and bubbles would be left about. Eglay Portion was seneschal of the Forks and could game the system in ways that Pyati could not. He could set up exercises, bouts, exits from and reentries to the compound, and create evidence that Padaborn had been in this or that building. That would be tricky because Magpie Two Gidula monitored the system and she was remorselessly attentive.
Donovan could not expect to fool Gidula for very long. At some point, Two would compare visual surveillance data to the building entry logs. But the scarred man did not desire a long tomfoolery. It need only be long enough for him to drop out of sight. The Fudir had chummed the understaff and crossed certain palms with silver. This had secured him a great deal of useful information on places to go in Ketchell.
“I need to get away,” Donovan told his coconspirators by the koi pond. “I need to be by myself, relax, see the sights. If I can get my mind off everything that has happened these past few months, maybe I can remember what the Revolution needs me to remember.” He needed, of course, to give them a reason they could agree with.
Pyati nodded. “A fight with Ekadrina would fuddle any man.”
And it had killed Ravn, Donovan recalled. He remembered his quondam kidnapper capering past him through Oschous’s command post, running out through the burning warehouse to her doom at the hands of the loyalist champion. Suddenly weak in his legs, Donovan lowered himself to the bench. Fish, attracted by his shade, clustered for the expected treats.
“What is it?” Eglay asked him.
“I was thinking on poor Ravn,” the scarred man told him.
Eglay nodded. “A bold colleague,” he agreed.
“You miss her,” said Pyati, sitting beside him.
“I never thought I would. My first thought after she snatched me was how I might slay her and escape. But she died for my sake.”
“I’m sure that was not her plan,” said Eglay.
“Is no big deal, dying,” said Pyati. “It’s something we all do, at least once.”
Donovan grimaced. “At least,” he said.
“Well, you did, no? Technically, you were in the tank for one, two days dead. And here are you, good as new. And Ravn, when we dropped her at Delpaff, was hearty as a kitten.”
Donovan grabbed the magpie’s sleeve. “What? She’s alive?”
Pyati disengaged from the clutching hand. “When last I saw her. Why? Did Gidula say otherwise?”
“That son of a…” But the Pedant recalled that Gidula had said only, Alas, the Ravn is no longer with us and when Donovan had mentioned Ravn’s death the Old One had not corrected him. Oh, Gidula was an exquisite liar! He could spin a fantasy by telling the stone-cold truth.
Eglay too was surprised. “Ravn’s not dead? Gidula has said nothing.”
Pyati shrugged. “She offended him over some matter, and he is not speaking her name until she brings h
im a present.”
Donovan knew what the offense must have been. When she had rushed forth wearing Padaborn’s colors, Ravn had joined the Revolution wholeheartedly—and Gidula was inside the Revolution in order to subvert it.
“Well,” Donovan said, placing a hand on each knee and pushing himself erect. “Perhaps I will have a present for him, too.”
* * *
The three of them departed by aircar the next day, ostensibly to show Donovan the wonders of Ketchell. Pyati assured him that these wonders were not so numerous as to require the entire day, and the fact proved as true as the word. Ketchell was a crescent of low buildings, none more than ten stories high, around a circular harbor formed, according to local folklore by a stone dropped by the god who built the sky-vault. Donovan supposed it a remnant of the Cleansing and spent long moments on the quayside watching the waters break along its rim.
“What was Ketchell called before it was Ketchell?” he asked his companions.
Eglay Portion shrugged. “As far as I know, it was always Ketchell. There are traces of buried ruins farther inland, though, where the shoreline used to be before the ice sucked up all the water. There are supposed to be layers of successive cities there going back to ancient times.”
Donovan wanted very much to visit those ruins, which he took to be those of Ũāvajorque, but he could not spare the time for it now. He and Eglay and Pyati retired to a quayside restaurant where they huddled with other diners around a radiant fireplace and consumed large steaks of a fatty meat and root vegetables cooked nearly to sludge. “City’s not noted for its chefs,” Eglay commented superfluously.
Donovan looked around the dim-lit room. It reminded him a little of Gatmander: cold and lonesome, and despair coating everything like a fine dusting of grit. “This must be some happening place during the winter,” he said.
Eglay shrugged. “We usually bunker up at the Forks. And there isn’t much that is more cheerful than evergreen boughs and hot-rod wine and a roaring fire come Midwinter Eve and a visit from Sĩgyawn Yowshã. But I hear down here in the city the suicide rate always spikes that time of year.”
Donovan wondered that they had not used everyone up by now.
Pyati shrugged. “Usually off-planet, me.”
“They say the ice came on sudden,” Eglay volunteered. He raised a fatty slice of beeshun to his lips and chewed thoughtfully. “Something like,” he said, then swallowed. “Something like the ice caps—you’d think they’d always been there. But the locals tell me it was only a century or two from a nice, pleasant, temperate world to … a wall of white along the north.”
Pyati said, “When did it happen?”
Eglay waved his now-empty fork in spirals and intoned, “‘In the time before my grandfather’s grandfather.’”
Donovan grunted. “Back then, was it? Surely there are records in archives somewhere. This world was civilized longer than any other in the Spiral Arm.”
“Sure, but only the mountains last forever. There’s a town over the other side of the world has a clay brick with writing on it that goes back to prehistoric times. I seen it myself, but it looks like chicken tracks to me, and no one knows how to read it. But there was war and fire and mice and all what have you. There was a long Dark Age when almost nothing was recorded.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Gidula told me that things had been ‘written in the sand.’ He said that meant ‘in silicon.’ It was all digital bits and you needed special machines to read them, and—”
“I can guess the rest,” Donovan said. “New technology. New machines. Pretty soon they couldn’t read the old storage devices, and the media eventually decayed.”
“Crazy people. The sign by the Iron Bridge is about the only thing left from that era. We got the better idea: something works, don’t change it.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
Eglay Portion laughed. “Don’t change that, either. Might get worse.”
* * *
After dinner, Eglay and Pyati flew back to the Forks where, using this stratagem or that, they would create the illusion that Donovan had returned with them. Donovan for his part shook the dust from his feet and went off in search of a foo-doctor whose name he had extracted from the Assistant Undercook of the Common Mess. (He had been surprised at the extent to which the kitchen staff emulated the manners of the Shadows. The Chief of the Cuisine cooked nothing himself but sat in a great chair much like a throne set in the center of the kitchen while others in strict hierarchy cooked, baked, washed, and served—and brought things to him for taste and approval.)
The search took Donovan to a part of town that the touristas would have shunned, had there been any tourists desperate enough to visit Ketchell. Construction standards across the Confederation were unimaginative but solid, yet even plasteel and metaloceramic could take on a decrepit appearance when too little attention was paid to their upkeep. Façades became darker from grime and neglect. Here and there, a splash of color around some doorframe or window or a brightly polished god only served to heighten the general drabness.
The people with whom he mingled were a close and solitary lot, each intent on his or her own personal mission, lifting no eye for a passing stranger but giving the Fudir as if by instinct a wider berth. Not even the body over which they stepped engaged their attentions.
In a few places, the buildings were coming down. A couple were demolition sites with large machines idling on rubble-strewn lots, but most were a more spontaneous and involuntary dismemberment. Where the foundations were exposed, Donovan noted older foundations buried deeper in the ground.
This was a city with a long past, he thought, but a short future.
* * *
He found the promised daforni—what he would have called a “pub”—along the northeast end of the waterfront, where the ground-car wires ended and only walkways penetrated the warren of tumbledown shanties. It was called “The Severed Arm” and above its entrance a well-muscled arm, clench fisted and flexed, extended toward the street. It had once been painted in lifelike colors, something between bronze and tan, but the years of dirt and sea-brine had tarnished it and it seemed now as if gangrene had set in.
When Donovan entered, all activity within ceased and eyes turned toward him. No one came to The Severed Arm by happenstance, and the patrons paused to assess his significance. After allowing time for a sufficient appraisal, Donovan stepped up to the bar, taking a position from which he could watch the entire room. The bartender ignored Donovan until he slapped a five-bayzho coin on the bar. This was a part of Ketchell that preferred its transactions manual and untraceable.
“ grizhdahl o’uizhgy, borva.” He employed the Late Murkan dialect still used in parts of the Northern Mark continent. The “please” seemed to amuse the bartender, but he feigned a lack of understanding, so the Fudir ordered the whiskey in Manjrin. “In clean glass,” he added.
The bartender set a tumbler down, and the amber fluid sloshed over the rim and spattered the bar top. “It’s alcohol,” he said. “Sanitizes the glass.”
The Fudir lifted the glass and, as he sipped, mentioned a name.
The bartender shook his head. “Never heard ’f him.”
Before he could turn away, the Fudir said, in the accents and rhythms of Old Eighty-two, “He should be grieved to hear so.”
It was an unlooked-for retort and surprise stayed the bartender’s motion. “How so?”
“The thing that he does, he must do. Else they will come here on the seek, to this very place, disturbing the peace of mind of many.”
The bartender laid a thick forearm on the table and leaned upon it. “And if he does do it?”
“Then those whom they will seek will be gone from this place, never to brighten its precincts again, never to trouble you the more.”
“That end may be reached,” the bartender suggested, “with less effort and greater profit.” He smiled, but his teeth were like the line of northern ice astride the far horizo
n.
No, said the Brute, it could not.
The bartender looked into his eyes for a moment, then shrugged. “Ah. The Terran Foo-lin! Him I may know.”
“There are many Foo-lins,” the Fudir allowed. “A man might not know them all.”
The bartender reached under the bar. “Art thou a Terran, also?” he asked in the Tongue.
The Fudir might have happily assented to this, but Inner Child seized control.
The bartender relaxed infinitesimally. “I asked if you was a Terran.”
“This is Terra, no? Are not all here Terrans?”
“This world is called Zãddigah.”
“That only means ‘New Earth’ in the old Cant.”
“If it does, then new it is. I will explain because you are an Eighty-second and so, ignorant. The Old Terrans left this world to wander off among the stars. Our ancestors came from worlds nearby, and we inherited the earth. A remnant of the Terrans also remained who preserved old ways—as if they were still the lords of all creation—until they learned their new place on the New Earth. Across the Rift are some who style themselves Terrans, and they would come here if they could and seize our homes, save that our faithful boots prevent them.” He reached into a pocket and produced a flat, dull metallic disk. “Here. This sigil will direct you to the man called Foo-lin. But go wary of him.”
“He is a Terran, you say.”
“He is. He worships the vanished Commonwealth like all his tribe, but he at least knows it has vanished. Go now, before you draw your pursuers to this place.”
* * *
The disk lighted with an arrow that directed Donovan toward the storied Foo-lin. Much of the scarred man followed it, while his remainder kept watch on shadows and alleys. The expected ambush came less than five blocks from The Severed Arm.
Three men whom Inner Child had noticed earlier slipping out the rear of the daforni leapt dagger drawn upon him. Surely, a man who sought the service of Foo-lin would carry much portable money on his person, for Foo-lin was among those who shunned the traceable sort.
But the Brute had been waiting for the moment and at the first squeak from Inner Child—as a shadow moved within a shadow—he swung into a kick, disarming the first and breaking his arm. The second man he dispatched with a backhand fist and the third by driving his bunched knuckles into the man’s solar plexus.
On the Razor's Edge Page 9