Meanwhile, she had her vow to Gidula to consider. The Vow of the Raptor was often sealed by kaowèn—her back twinged where she had been striped—but it was customarily done to underline the keeping of it, not to induce the taking of it. Did Gidula—poor, determined Gidula—even realize that he had crossed a line that he himself had drawn?
Two years past, while Ravn had been hunting Donovan in the Periphery, the Old One had learned … something … What that something was Ravn did not know, but the learning of it had induced introspection and worry. The man to whom Ravn had delivered Donovan was a very different man than the one who had sent her forth to fetch him. After Donovan had shown himself sane and integrated in his combat with Ekadrina, Ravn had feared Gidula would execute him as no longer suitable for the play. The plan had always been to raise the rebels’ hopes with the name of Padaborn, then crush them with the reality of the scarred man. But the plan had shifted—to the invasion of the Secret City—and Donovan’s value had changed from brass to gold.
She glanced at foolish, romantic Méarana. Dragging the bait might lure a Hound into the Mouth, even if that were not its main basic function. But the difficulties arose from attracting other hunters beside. She had not wanted to start Ekadrina on this particular scent, and hoped that her suspicions were vain. Yet she had felt herself watched from time to time. If not by Ekadrina’s magpie, then by whom?
And there was something else that Ravn could not quite put a finger on. The harper’s attitude had changed. Fractionally, to be sure, but it ought not to have changed at all.
* * *
Domino Tight was a true believer in the Revolution. It was his strength and his weakness—beyond the obvious weakness of trusting his comrades too greatly. Give him years enough and he might give Oschous a run, a fact of which Oschous was undoubtedly aware. But in the meantime, his zeal burned hot and he imagined a bright day, joy drenched and sunshine filled, if just a trifle vague and rosy, in which every tear would be wiped away. It was a future state worth visioning, and he had not recognized that while all might agree that the present was no longer tolerable, there was no such unanimity on what the future ought to be.
But he and Ravn were gozhiinyaw, blood brothers, and once contact was made it required little to induce him to come with her to Zãddigah-Terra.
“I haff good news,” the Ravn announced after returning to Mamma Kitten’s from a comm. center in Sector Two Under, one the far side of the cooper body in and around which Tungshen was built. “And bad news.”
Méarana, who had spent the better part of the day transcribing notes into the particular code that Clanthompson employed, had delighted to hear the former but worried at the latter. “What is the good news?” she asked.
“My darling Dominoo will be here soon!”
Méarana hesitated only fractionally. “And the bad?”
“My darling Dominoo will be here soon!”
The harper blinked and puckered in thought. “Ah,” she said at last. “That isn’t good, is it?”
The Ravn threw herself onto the tatty old couch that disgraced the center of the common room they shared. Springs complained, fabric tore.
“Light wants a languid seven hours to make the trip. Shoottles want days. Yet Dominoo will meet me this very afternoon! What cause has Dominoo Tight to shoow light his heels?”
“There are two possibilities.”
Ravn cocked an eye at Méarana and planted her chin on her fist. “Which two?”
“One, it’s a trap. You’re being led to meet someone already on Tungshen. Sèanmazy’s magpie, maybe.”
“And the timing is unrealistic because…?”
“He doesn’t know how long it took you to contact Domino and thinks your friend left Dao Chetty back when you sent your first call-worm.”
“Very good. I am assigning that medium probability. And second?”
“Domino Tight came by quondam leap.”
“And that means…”
“… one of the Names, likely this Tina Zhi, knows about the rendezvous.”
“Yays, and that is the bad news of it. What might Domino Tight have told her in passion of pillow-bed? Or what might she have extracted from him? Your mother did teach you three things, maybe even four. We make you Shadow someday soon.”
“No, thanks. I’ll stick with harping.”
“This I assign the higher chance. The call-worm I received referenced elliptically in the form of an allegory a bistro in the Fifth Sector that Domino and I know from old. No one but he and I would associate that particular phrase with that particular place. If my enemies know this, they can only have torn it from Domino’s lips; and if they have done so, then all is lost in any case.”
“Any man might be broken,” Méarana agreed. “But if the Technical Name desired to meddle, she would not have so obviously transported her lover here, and so announce her participation.”
Ravn Olafsdottr contemplated that wisdom, and reluctantly nodded.
* * *
Ravn led Méarana through an intricacy of tunnels and maintenance ways halfway around the habitat to enter from an unlikely angle a commercial mezzanine overlooking the plaza where the meeting was to be. And yes, down below was her sweet Domino Tight sitting at a café table and but lightly disguised in the drab, baggy clothing of a sheep.
She turned away from the rail and ushered Méarana into a store. “You stay here,” Ravn cautioned the harper. “This shop offers entertainments for transients who must lay over for their connecting flight. There are active and passive sims—mojies, they are called here—musics, and suchlike foo-foo. Browse until I come back for you.” Then, arranging with the shopkeeper to keep rogue males from bothering the harper and cautioning him on the many undesirable things that would befall him if he failed, she took a circuitous route to the plaza below, so as to approach Domino from another direction.
She came up behind him in his “four,” but of course he had positioned a reflective vase to reveal such quadrants and, since they were not at enmity, he rose and turned and held out a weaponless hand in greeting.
The weapon, of course, was in his other hand; but he slipped it into its sheath with an economy of motion. They sat across from each other, and neither said anything for a long moment.
Domino Tight was a changed man from the last time Ravn had seen him. There was a haggard look to him that reminded her of trapped animals. Ravn immediately suspected kaowèn—or, worse, duxing kaoda. Had he been caught and turned by Ekadrina or her people? Could both of Méarana’s scenarios be true? Domino and a trap?
Domino Tight spoke first. “You look like your face had an argument with the duroplast.”
“Yayss. And the duroplast loost.” But her gozhiinyaw did not laugh, and Domino Tight was a man known for his humors. “You do not look well,” she told him. “Is the quondam leap so harrowing?”
He shook his head. “Have you ever coupled with a cobra?”
Ravn thought about that, and finally shook her head. “Not to my certain memory.”
“That is what it likens to,” he said.
“You mean coupling with Ti—”
But Domino hushed her. “If I call her name, she … feels it. Somehow. We’re entangled, whatever that means; and she would be at my side in an instant. I don’t know what might happen if someone else says her name in my presence.”
“I had thought her your pleasure.”
“As a clerk in the Gayshot Bo, she was sweet and pliable. But now … Have you ever seen a cat play with a mouse?”
“Of course. Is part of basic training.”
“Well, I’m the mouse. She is insatiable. The things she desires … It is as if normal pleasures have long since withered for her, and so she must seek out the novel and the … creative. Oh, laugh all you want, Ravn. But it wears. And there is always the thought in the back of my mind: What if I cannot perform to her satisfaction? What if I am of no more use to her?” He paused and took the drink that was before him, and it sloshed a little
onto the table. “She seems so young, but she is old, old. Eternal youth? You would think it would pall after the first few lifetimes.”
“Gidula would find the prospect pleasing. Age does not creep upon him; it races toward him on tiger’s feet. He would not mind learning her secret. Ah, but he’ll not have the opportunity. Domino, my sweet. Listen to me. There is something I must do—something I have vowed to do—but I need you to make the play.” And she explained to Domino Tight the nature of her vow.
“Of course I will help. But why move Gidula? He pretends openly to be neutral, but he is one of us.”
Ravn picked up a glass of water that her companion had left untasted. “He pretends openly to be neutral, and pretends covertly to be rebel; but that is of no account. My task is outside the Shadow War. He tortured me to extract a vow I was disinclined to give.”
“And…?”
“The torture should have come afterward.”
“Ah. As when we take the Shadow’s Oath…”
“Exactly so. So that we know, down in the bone, the penalty for breaking it.”
“It seems a delicate point, a matter of mere timing. You would slay Gidula because he missed a beat?”
“If you’ll not help me…” Ravn made as if to push away from the table.
“I’ve already said I would. And—hmm—I suppose that tells me all I need to know about why you must do what you must do. A vow extracted by torture ought not be valid. Come the Revolution, all that oathing goes by the board.”
Ravn sighed. “I suppose it will. Listen. I will give you back your cloaks and drop you onto the tableland north of the Forks. There will be a ceremonial entry—the Old One keeps the ancient troth—then, while everyone is focused on the Iron Bridge, you will slip though the sensors on Kojj Hill and make your way into the stronghold and go to ground until the moment comes. I have maps, with the key locations pricked off. Study them along the way.”
Domino Tight accepted the data slug and it disappeared into his pockets. “Now,” he said, “about the woman you left in the mojy shop…”
Ravn was not surprised he had noticed and apprised the situation. Much could be learned by peering into reflective surfaces. “What about her?”
“Who is that other woman she’s talking to?”
Ravn had been watching Méarana with half an eye, and was aware that others had entered the shop and were walking about the displays. Now she saw the harper deep in conversation with a tubby woman in tight, black curls. “Looks like a transient off the liner. Those are traveling clothes.”
Domino stared into his reflective vase. “She keeps glancing at us.”
“The harper?”
“No, the fat one.”
Ravn focused on the strange woman and, as if that infinitesimal shift had been a signal, the strange woman lifted her eyes and stared at her. The moment of contact was brief, because in it Ravn had leapt from her chair and the woman had turned to fly; but it was long enough for a kind of recognition. She was in the Life.
Ekadrina’s magpie? Without thinking, Ravn whipped an étrier to the balcony and clambered up it. The tubby woman was almost around the corner of the corridor when a spike blossomed from her back and her dull gray coverall began to blacken. A back-glance told Ravn that Domino had been the thrower. Méarana had no trouble blending in with the bleating crowds on the balcony. “Get down and stay down!” Ravn shouted; and the sheep, of course, obeyed. The floorways were carpeted with the backs of transients and shopkeepers.
Blood on the duroplast provided a trail to follow—spinward along the upper level, toward a corner from which all sheep had wisely fled. Ravn halted prudently, then pirouetted across the corner to flatten against the other side. The dance gave her a glimpse of a dim, narrow side corridor where the overhead lamps had failed and had not yet been replaced. The farther recesses of the hallway were shrouded in black, save where the sole surviving lamp spotlighted the body of the fleeing woman, splayed facedown five strides along the corridor.
Never one to take the obvious at face value, Ravn studied the prostrate form until certain it was not moving, and even then approached only by careful incremental steps.
It did no good. An arm from an alcove shoved a dazer to her temple, and the voice behind the arm said, “Don’t move.”
In that instant, Ravn knew she dealt with a Hound. Only the agents of the League withheld their fire at such moments. “I am as a stoone,” she replied, and kept her hands where her ambusher could see them, and waited her chance. For some reason she trembled. The air held a faint musty scent, as if something had crawled up this passage to die. Not the blocky woman. It was too soon for her aromatic contribution to matter. But Ravn suddenly wanted very badly to leave the narrow confines in which she found herself.
“Who are you?” she asked the unseen voice. Her eyes sought the side of her head, as if by sheer torque they could see through her own ear.
The voice chuckled. “Do you truly wish to know?”
It was the sort of thing a Name would say, but Ravn was morally certain that she confronted a Hound. She tried to turn her head the least bit but found herself unable to do so. Fool! she told herself. It is but a Hound! And when has Ravn Olafsdottr feared puppy dogs?
“You are off your manor, I am thinking. The Rift is out the other way.”
“Do not be afraid,” the voice caressed her. “We are not come to your damage. Our interests lie but with one of our citizens whom you have kidnapped. To wit: Méarana Harper. It would please us greatly if you would commit her to us. We will take her home and never more bother you, until some other time.”
Ravn was astonished to feel within herself an ardent desire to please this person. “I weep from gratitude at your forbearance.”
The voice chuckled. “I see I was not misinformed about Ravn Olafsdottr. I sense you will not turn your hostage over to us…”
“What point in bringing her this far if I do not take her a little farther? When she has once served her purpose, you may have her.”
She heard hesitation in the silence of the voice.
Then, horrifyingly, the voice spoke again, this time from her other side.
“No, don’t turn. It might startle me, and my companion’s fate does not fill me with thoughts of rainbows and spun sugar. Let it be a truce, then, and well met between you and I.”
“You are no Shadow. How can you call upon the customs of the Abattoir?”
“You would be surprised at what I am, and upon what I can call. Shall it be so? I’d fain take my companion to our ship. There may yet be time to save her. You may keep Méarana for this little while. But be warned. Others are coming for her who will not be so forbearing.”
“What stoops me,” Ravn hazarded, “from infoorming the Tungshen Riff so that he can interdict your ship?” But she knew the answer in the asking, and knew that the other knew as well.
“Not when you yourself move as the fish that swim in the seas. You’d not draw attention to yourself, nor raise a commotion on the habitat. Your friend’s spike was conspicuous enough. We are both best served now by swift and silent departure.”
Ravn had never heard dire necessity turned so artfully into negotiated agreement. It was not in the Hounds of the Ardry to stand by while a colleague lay dying. It was one of their great weaknesses. And so the voice must salvage a truce to rescue her companion, and would “allow” Ravn to keep Méarana—as if her permission had been required.
Yet there was no denying that the voice had induced in Ravn the desire to agree, to give up Méarana. That Ravn knew it had been induced by adroit perfumes and clever pheromones made it no less real an impulse, and she thought that if she had been any less committed to her dangerous course she might have been persuaded. And the voice had made adroit use too of ventriloquism, the darkness, and inattentive blindness to cloud the Shadow’s mind and move unseen in her very presence. That solitary overhead lamp should have warned her. It too neatly framed the body of the squat woman, and that meant
that the other lamps had been disabled scant moments after the woman had fallen where she had. That one bright spot in the darkened corridor had focused her attention, leaving a penumbra of inattention within which the strange Hound had moved.
“I agree,” she said, and then noticed with a sinking heart that the presence beside her had vanished and the body spotlighted by the overhead lamp was gone, with only the blood-trail as evidence that it had ever been there.
Ravn had seldom felt the grip of fear, but she slumped now against the wall of the corridor and trembled. A glance at her timepiece showed that several minutes had passed between the voice’s last words and her own agreement, minutes in which she had stood in a trance, prey to any that might have happened along. Of all the Hounds she had ever encountered, even Gwillgi, this one alone frightened Ravn. And she did not even know her name.
* * *
Ravn returned to the mojy shop to find Méarana sitting on the floor under the watchful guardianship of Domino Tight. The shopkeeper too was there, but the remaining sheep had been allowed to depart.
“I warned you what would happen,” Ravn told the shopkeeper, “if you allowed this woman to be bothered!”
The man ducked his head. “But, Deadly One,” he said.
“But what?”
On the Razor's Edge Page 15