On the Razor's Edge

by Michael Flynn

  Gidula, of course, maintained a stricter watch around his own compound and, since she could not depend on Eglay Portion’s neglect, Ravn remained in the detection-shadow and put Sèan Beta down well north of the picket line and close to the low blue ridge that marked the northern edge of the great valley. There Domino Tight jumped from the hovering vessel wearing his shenmat and carrying on his back a rucksack containing a number of useful devices. Méarana watched him set off at a run and marveled that the sedge and the clover barely rustled at his passing. He was not yet out of sight when Ravn raised the ship on its gravitics and banked away to the north-northwest. She circled out and up over the Ablation Mounts and came in on the Forks on the standard southwestward approach, picking up the air corridor at Jasding STC and requesting advance clearance from Gidula’s own control tower.

  “I understand,” Méarana said as they came in to the autoguidance slot and Ravn relinquished control. “You circled all the way around to give Domino time to get to Gidula’s stronghold on foot.”

  Ravn removed her comm. harness and turned in her pilot’s seat. “You are mistaken. My sweet Domino awaits the infiltration team in San Jösing on Dao Chetty.”

  Méarana understood again.

  * * *

  After Ravn had landed at the Mount Lefn pad and the tugs had drawn the monoship into the Cliffside hangars, she dressed in her best finery to stroke Gidula’s vanity for spectacle. But instead of Gidula’s comet or a noncommittal black, she dressed cap-a-pie in her own colors: coral, a black snake twisted. She donned a coral shenmat and, in place of a brassard, a steel armband in the form of a snake circling her biceps. She unrolled the serpent banner and co-opted a planetfallman to carry it. Her boots were thick and steel shod, and she crowned herself with a black “fisherman’s” cap, pinned to the peak of which was a copper ring-badge repeating the snake motif. In the cap’s band she inserted a single eagle’s feather.

  “One must look pretty for Gidula,” she told the harper. “Eglay Portion will likely hold the bridge and dare me to pass him. I will draw the fight out as long as I can, then let him think he won.”

  “Draw it out to give time for—”

  “For the physical exercise.” Ravn turned and put a finger to Méarana’s lips. “The world was fortunate when you followed not your mother’s art. Your thoughts too often tumble from your brainpan directly onto your lips.”

  “Should I wait on board?”

  The Shadow clapped her hands together. “Ooh, noo, noo, sweet. Dress to your nines, or even your tens, for you moost make splendid entrance with me. I am a Shadow of the Names and moost have a retinue. One poor planetfallman to carry my banner, and you to sing my praises. How silly I would look doing all three myself!”

  “But won’t that be dangerous?”

  “For you to be in the Confederation at all is dangerous. You will be, as we say, ‘in my gift.’ No one may act against you without my permitting. Play me a suitable introit on your harp. They do not know the instrument well here, so you may entrance them with my entrance. Soomething booth oominous and playfool.”

  Méarana gave a half smile. “I suppose I can manage that.”

  Ravn patted her on the cheek. “Of course you can. I have heard you practicing your saga of Donovan and Ravn. Remember, though, the snake strikes for the heel.”

  * * *

  Domino Tight had assumed the guise of a pack peddler. By a combination of suasion, threat, and credit balance, he had acquired wares in a general store. Here, at the mountain’s foot, Gidula was only a rumor; the Forks, only a place to avoid. Yet there was some desultory traffic thither.

  As Jack-a-Mount Peddler, an identity he had crafted during the hop from Dao Chetty, he secured a courtesy ride from an intercity coaster that dropped him off at a farming village just before turning east onto the Ketchell Guide-rail and shifting off manual. This furnished his pocket with a genuine coaster ticket. He had already altered his face through clever art and, by a small stone in his shoe, had instituted a minor limp.

  The limp was the excuse for the exoskeleton, which he had altered to resemble an ordinary prosthesis. He set off at a walk along the foot-road, a broad swath so anciently trod that at times pieces of old asphalt had been revealed by erosion. When he was certain he was unobserved, he kicked into overdrive and proceeded at a blur.

  Now that the Shadow War had escalated, Gidula’s people might be more wary of who they allowed into the Forks. He had heard that Ekadrina was back on Dao Chetty, and that meant that by now every Shadow in the Triangles must know about the fight on Yuts’ga.

  Publicly, the Old One had maintained a façade of neutrality. Some of the loyalists must know, or at least suspect, otherwise, but Gidula had kept clear of overt action. True, he had rescued Geshler Padaborn from Ekadrina, and had the Sèanmazy’s testimony for it, but a wise man might say that he had also rescued Ekadrina from Gesh, and had the Sèanmazy’s testimony for that, as well. And so, while the Forks was not exactly undefended, its best defense was Gidula’s deceit.

  This was also Domino Tight’s best offense. There would be no expectation of attack, at least not of the sort of attack he proposed to mount. Pack peddlers were a common thing among the farming villages surrounding the Forks, and such a peddler would need a license from the Forks Adminstrative Center. Domino Tight had a series of such licenses in his scrip, as genuine as artful forgery could make them, documenting a journey along the northern tier of settlements. There were no roads up that way. No wonder he limped.

  He slowed down as he came to a turn in the foot-road and was surprised to see two men ahead of him. They had stepped off the road into a clearing and were heating some water for tea with an irradiator. They were dressed in brown robes with hoods thrown over their heads. As Domino Tight drew abreast at a normal pace, he saw that the man standing was solidly built, with a square jaw. He had a walking staff but did not lean upon it. Dusty-red hair straggled from beneath his brown cowl. A whitened scar graced his left cheek.

  “Bless you, my son,” the man said, though he was no older than Domino Tight. “May the grace of Existence Himself be upon you. Is this truly the foot-road to Old Flea?”

  Domino Tight recollected the map of the eastern coast of the Northern Mark. “Why, sorely it be, and a sore journey you are having afore yourself, your destiny being some twenty leagues distant.”

  The man in the cowl shrugged. “What is, is.”

  “You will find it needful to transit the Forks,” Domino Tight told him, as any honest pack peddler might.

  “If a village welcome us, someone will open his house and we will be fed, and so will they. But if a village do not, then we shake the dust of her streets from our sandals and proceed.”

  Domino Tight did not know what to make of that, so he said, “It is the holdfast of a Shadow of the Names.”

  “Ah! Who then more needful of being fed?”

  “You speak in riddles, snor. I be but a poor peddler of useful but inexpensive wares, benamed Jack-a-Mount.” He held out his right hand, dusted it on his traveler’s cloak, and held it out again.

  The stranger took it briefly. It seemed a limp grip, though the hand had calluses. “They call me Brother Aum. I am a philosopher by trade.”

  “A curious trade. Be there much profit in it?”

  “A great deal, but the investment is hard. Would you share a cup with us? It is the hour for prayer.”

  The philosopher’s assistant held forth a ceramic cup with steaming tea. A delightful aroma, but … Domino checked the sun’s position. He had to hurry if he was to reach the Kojj Hill line while the pasdarm was in progress. Ravn had planned to ground an hour before local sunset. “No, snor. I be honored for the offer, ah, Brother, but I must be in the Forks before the License Bureau closes or I lose a full day’s sales.”

  “Let your road then be your prayer, and your feet its recitation. Remember, son,” and he made a sign over Domino’s head, “Existence exists, and cannot not exist. He exists as the whole w
ide world, of all the stars and all the galaxies and all the flowers and animals. He exists in the history of men from the oldest days, when we first knew the difference between good and evil to the present day, when we pretend that we do not. And He exists here,” and he touched Domino lightly on the breast.

  The day was cool, but the sun shone with peculiar intensity. It was possible the philosopher was sunstruck. Domino Tight laughed and gathered his backpack to a more comfortable position. “That be a knife cut on your cheek, Brother Aum. You were in the world before you went out of it.”

  The philosopher smiled and touched the scar. “All wisdom begins with sense experience, Jack-a-Mount, and I learned a great deal from it. It is the custom among some native Terrans to fight with sabers purely for the purpose of exchanging scars.”

  He had not exactly admitted acquiring the scar in that manner, and he had avoided the claim of being Terran. Domino Tight was an expert on wounds, having both sustained and administered a fair number of them. That was not a saber cut on the cheek of Brother Aum.

  But whatever shameful past the philosopher was covering up—a life as a brigand? A cutpurse?—it was none of Domino Tight’s concern; nor would it have been of Jack-a-Mount. So he bid the man a cordial adieu and set off ahead of them while they finished their cup of tea. Once out of sight, he quickened his pace once more.

  * * *

  The delay at the picket line was nominal. The watchman was not even a magpie, all those being gathered at the Iron Bridge for the welcoming pasdarm. Domino Tight inserted his identification stick into the reader’s orifice, watched it display green with no sign of inner doubt, chatted with the watchman who inspected the pots, pans, and paraphernalia in his backpack, and made no complaint about repacking everything. He offered up his belt knife, but the watchman waved him off. “A li’l sticker like that won’t take you far ’mong the gentry of the Forks,” he said. And Jack-a-Mount replied that so long as he could reach the License Bureau in time to start his rounds of the villages in the morning he did not care even to meet any of the gentry.

  “There’s a hostel at the foot of the Enramdon Cut,” the watchman said. “Caters to you folk. Got easy access to Summary Hill and Huonshrid Hill, and you can rent goo-goos there, too.”

  The Shadow thanked him and stepped through the gate, only to hear the alarum sound. This, he had not counted on, and he wondered what substances he might have on him that would set the system off. He stepped back, but the watchman only asked him to try again.

  The second time triggered no alarm, and with a wave back to the watchman Jack-a-Mount Peddler continued down the southern face of the hill, humming a popular walking song. When he turned the corner and passed through a wooded section he was brought up short by a sharp knife. In this he took a keen interest.

  Not a Shadow, he thought, for had it been, the distance between the edge and the throat would have been considerably narrower. A cutpurse of the sort the philosopher warned against? If so, the man had made a grave tactical error.

  “Silence becomes us both,” a voice whispered in Domino Tight’s ear. The knife vanished from his throat and he turned to see who had held it. “Well met, Deadly One,” the short, bristly man said, “for when last we met, you were not so well.” He wore a baggy jacket and shorts with many pockets.

  The Shadow recalled the boon this man had done him in Cambertown, when an ambush by the Pendragon’s mums had blown away his magpies and shattered his body. Asking no price, this man has given quietus to the informer who had set Domino up and a medical regeneration packet to ease his pain. Apparently, the price was now to be mentioned. “Well met, Hound. Do you have a name?”

  The bristly man grinned, and Domino saw that his teeth had been sharpened. “You don’t know me? Pity. I am called Gwillgi. And you are called Domino Tight.”

  “You crossed the picket line when I passed through the gate,” said Domino Tight. “So the watchman thought I had triggered the alarm by some malfunction.”

  “It was a long, lonely time waiting for a traveler to cross through, and I had just about decided to chance a bolder move when fortune presented me with your presence. You are remarkably hale for a man that detonation had reduced to bony rubble.”

  “I had … excellent nursing.”

  “It is about that which we might talk one day.”

  “You are bold, to step into Gidula’s stronghold, Gwillgi Hound. Why should I not turn you over to Gidula’s people? You would not like Number Two, I assure you.”

  “Why not? Three reasons. Because I gave you aid when you were injured. Because I held a knife to your throat and forbore to slice. Because you no more wish to be noticed here than I.” He waved off Domino’s answer. “You resort to disguise to enter this place. Yet in the Shadow War, you and Gidula are allies.”

  “What do you know of—”

  “I am the League’s unofficial observer. Just now I have an interest in a League citizen who has been co-opted into your squabble.”

  That surprised Domino Tight and he said, “The harper? But…”

  Gwillgi hesitated. “Yes, the harper.”

  But the hesitation had told Domino Tight all that was needful. Gwillgi had not known of the harper, and the list of Peripherals in the affair was rather short. Gwillgi had been following Donovan.

  Before Domino could speak, Gwillgi held a palm up to his lips and guided him into the brush behind the trees. “Someone follows.”

  Up near the crest of the hill, Domino Tight made out the figures of two men in robes. “Oh, an itinerant philosopher. We met earlier on the trail.”

  “Deadly One, you know I am here and I know I am here. That is already too many for my comfort.”

  Domino Tight understood and remained concealed while the philosopher passed. He was discussing some point of metaphysics with his acolyte and the Shadow caught only portions of it.

  “… and for that reason we see the towardness of nature. Consider the blossoming of the flowers which attract the insects.” The philosopher pointed with his staff. “Or the bristling wild boar that lurks in the brush. Or the birds that eat the seeds and drop them on fertile ground. Therefore, since there is no intellect in nature…”

  The philosopher passed around the bend in the road and so from sight and sound. Domino Tight shook his head. “I suppose all philosophers are a little mad.”

  Gwillgi’s smile was grim. “Mad perhaps, but not boring. Now tell me that this is not just any harper, but the harper, and that you are here to rescue her and not to assassinate her. It may be that you and I can work together for a short time and so prosper both our happinesses.”

  Domino Tight knew he was not at the top of his game. His experiences with the Gayshot Bo had unnerved him to some small degree, and if he could not have a Shadow at his back a Hound would do. Especially if the Hound believed there was a debt of gratitude between them.

  “Agreed, then, Gwillgi Hound.” And Domino clasped hands with his sworn enemy.

  * * *

  Méarana was no Hound, not even a Pup, but her mother had taught her a few things. So while she played during the pasdarm she could see that Ravn and Eglay Portion were each pulling their punches. It was not a fight “to the bone,” as the Shadow had told her, but only an exhibition intended to display their prowess. Nonetheless, she maintained in her music the fiction of strenuous combat, the harp strings singing of triumph and tragedy and close calls.

  Only once did she strike a false note, and that was when she noticed her father among the spectators at the far end of the Iron Bridge. He was dressed in a blue-and-green shenmat and stared at her with a face of stone.

  After the mock combat there was a buffet and Méarana moved uneasily among Gidula’s staff. She herself wore a coral brassard with the Black Snake on it, and theoretically that meant she was on Ravn’s staff. Méarana kept trying to find Donovan in the press, but every time she moved in his direction someone would engage her in conversation or inadvertently block her progress while they pluc
ked food or drink from the tables. Several lesser magpies asked her about the strange instrument she had played and she admitted that it was a Peripheral clairseach. They confessed it souded exotic but not unpleasant. But others, with lower numbers on their brassards, stared at her with curious and mocking expressions on their faces.

  One large magpie wearing blue and green and a bold numeral 1 on his brassard approached and whispered while they selected fruits from the buffet. “He says to tell you that you are a fool.” Then the man was gone.

  She knew Donovan had sent the man. No one else called her a fool with quite that nonchalance. But her father now wore the shenmat of a Shadow, and had at least one magpie of his own. What sort of prisoner was he? Had she indeed come on a fool’s errand?

  Only near the end of the buffet did Donovan manage to reach her side. He spoke without preamble. “How did Ravn snatch you?”

  Méarana smiled ruefully. “It was my idea to come rescue you.”

  Donovan shook his head, as if his hearing had gone awry. “Then you are a bigger fool than I thought.” He took her arm. “What made you think you could rescue me?”

  “Because I thought she would follow.”

  Donovan stared at her. His lips quirked a little. Then he turned his head and said, “I hope the recording of the pasdarm was satisfactory.” His finger moved in a certain sign that he had taught her years before on Jehovah. Be careful what you say aloud.

  Méarana looked around, saw the recorders and the parabolic microphones by which Gidula would eavesdrop. Donovan made the hand-sign for first-and-last, and indicated Ravn. “She going to set up a concert for you here? Do you think anyone will come?”

  She. Come? Meaning, was her mother in fact following?

  “Two concerts, maybe. Here I don’t have a following. I’ve a song series about the Shadow War. And the clairseach is an instrument they’ve not seen.” Two. Following. I’ve. Seen.

  “Ah,” said Donovan buigh, nodding. “Close quarters I suppose, on your trip. I wish Ravn had left you behind.”