On the Razor's Edge

by Michael Flynn

  A moment later, light streamed from the slit windows and the spaces around the door. The door buckled and the windows bulged and splintered. Then the roof sagged and smoke began to rise.

  “A good thing,” said Ravn Olafsdottr from her position prone to the ground, “that these buildings are blast fast. Automatics extinguish fires in short order.” She rose and brushed herself off. “Gayshot Bo thought to protect her reluctant lover from Hounds, but provide now rationale for your daughter’s disappearance. Smuggle-out easy now.”

  Others were coming, attracted by the noise of the explosion. Little Hugh had faded into the shadows of the night—to return as if part of the curious crowd. Gwillgi had vanished entirely. Only Bridget ban—the actress, Gloriana—had remained.

  Ravn looked about. “Where is Méarana?” And then she saw that Bridget ban stared with murderous intensity at the ruined apartment. “No! Say that we did not leave her behind!”

  But the Red Hound shook her head. “If it was the Gayshot Bo’s intention to get rid of the Hounds, she succeeded only in drawing them onward. She took Lucia with her.”

  Ravn was not accustomed to the harper’s base name and it took a moment for her to recognize it for what it was. “Did she? Or did Méarana grab hold of her?”

  Bridget ban turned on her. “And why would she do that?”

  “You forget why she came with me to begin with. Now you must follow her to Dao Chetty, and so rescue Donovan buigh before Gidula disposes of him as well.”

  Bridget ban closed her eyes and sighed. “Och, Donovan. What am I to do with that man?”

  XIII. THE RAZOR’S EDGE

  Flowing water-murmur of the tumbling river

  Fills the cloudless overarching sky with whisper

  Most comforting: continuo to contrapuntal

  Insect-twitter. Sweet music for the foul refrain

  As through the rancid womb of night

  Dread slaughter creeps to penetrate

  The long-sought cavities of Secret City.

  Reveals then the overgazing moon

  A score of darkened ghosts for gore engarbed.

  Throats already destined for the knife do at

  This very toll now guzzle sweet sure wine,

  Laugh, or sing lewd songs to lusty flesh.

  And many—those that hold the rods of rule—

  Their eyes now clogged in wrested slumber

  Will not open come the morn.

  The dawn will herald red; so much is sure.

  All else is hazard “on the razor’s edge.”

  Clocks keep muted hours, luring morning near.

  And some, their senses heightened by the two-moon sky,

  In terrored sleep do fitful turn, and know not why.

  The River Zyu—the River of Pearls—is named for its supposedly milky color, though this far down from the Chalky Mountains the waters are more tea than milk. The Secret City sits upon bluffs high on the right bank, pinkish in the afternoon sun, surrounded by massive walls more intimidating than defensive and by the houses and businesses of those who bask in the proximity of power. On the left bank, massive apartment blocks squat in uniform ranks on lowlands more directly open to the river’s whims. One block, named “Sugar Cane City,” rises on a tract formerly given over to industrial cane processing.

  “There it is,” said Little Jacques, the pale pigmy who conned the modest pleasure boat that traveled slowly up the stream. Donovan and Gidula looked where he pointed. The magpies with them looked everywhere else. All were dressed in festive river-garb: broad-brimmed sun-hats, water-singlets, flotation belts. The river was a favored playground for those who could afford to play.

  “Seems different,” Donovan said as he studied the manicured esplanade along the waterfront.

  “Not too different, I hope,” answered Gidula. Little Jacques smiled without turning around.

  “Put in over there,” Donovan suggested. “Take it slow and watch for underwater obstacles. There were piers here once, and the pilings might linger underwater.”

  Little Jacques said to no one in particular, “I love it when you remember things.”

  “I love it,” said Gidula more privately, “when you remember things.”

  “Sometimes memory needs a stimulus.”

  “Yes,” said Gidula, sitting back once more. “I know.”

  The sign read: NO PLEASURECRAFT DOCKING. Gidula and Donovan jumped ashore while Little Jacques and the magpies stayed in the boat. Donovan shaded his eyes and peered across the river.

  “Well?” said Gidula.

  “The old sugar plant stood here, and the bank was overgrown with volunteer cane.” He strode north along the esplanade about twenty paces, paused. “Here. I think. When I came ashore, I could still see my point of exit under the bluffs.” He turned his powerglasses across the river and upstream. The bank there was an impenetrable thicket of rhododendron, sassafrass, hazelwood, and Chinese elm. Donovan lowered the glasses. He would have to tell them about the steam tunnels sooner or later, and it looked as if later had come.

  “They assumed I used my power-zoot to cross the river as quickly as possible, and so searched along the southern side of the Secret City. They never imagined that a man fleeing for his life would drift lazily with the current for a time. But I knew my destination, and there was no point coming ashore upstream of here. My betrayer knew the destination, too, and guessed where I might come ashore. I don’t know why they never came back to question me further.”

  Gidula sighed. “The Names decided that the uprising ‘never happened,’ so it was an embarrassment to have about those who remembered putting it down.”

  “Ah. False consciousness.” Donovan placed the glasses in the carry-case. “Most of the city center was in ruins. How did they explain that?”

  Gidula stepped back into the boat. “Urban renewal.”

  * * *

  Gidula and Donovan put on a dumb show in case anyone in the sheep pens was gazing in boredom, awe, or envy toward the gleaming towers of Secret City. They disembarked on the right bank to relieve themselves only to have their boat lose power and drift with the current. They scrambled through the brush to catch it. Haha! The discomfiture of the wealthy is ever a source of amusement to the sheep. No need to inform authorities of anything so droll.

  Donovan edged inland as he scrambled downstream; and before too long, he found the crumbling exit of a steam tunnel. Gidula, caught in a tangle of rhododendrons, did not notice; so Donovan pressed on—and came upon a second opening! He had tallied six tunnels before he decided he could not plausibly have overlooked them all, and finally informed Gidula. “I don’t know which I came out of,” Donovan said. “They must underrun the entire city of Old New Jösing. If I explore each, I should have a good idea which served the Secret City.”

  “We’ll come back later with the others,” Gidula said. “We don’t want the Protectors to wonder about activity along the riverbank.” He was not about to let Donovan roam a warren of tunnels in which he might not be found again. “Steam tunnels … Who would have thought it?”

  Donovan ignored him. “The system fell into disuse; MHD plants were redeployed. New construction sealed over the accessways. Once the drainage tunnels were out of sight, they soon passed out of mind.”

  Gidula clicked Little Jacques, who was finally able to restart his boat and pick them up.

  “And, Old One? ‘Sealed over’ means exactly that. I had to chop through a subbasement wall to gain access. You’ll need drills, poppers, thermastics…”

  Gidula patted him gently on the shoulder. “If you could exit, we can enter.”

  * * *

  Shadows and their magpies gathered that evening in shenmats and wearing the tools of their profession. They had tuned the skins to black in honor of the night. At the entrance of each tunnel, they pinged a fix off the satellite, then inside the tunnels where the positioning network was inaccessible they tracked their pathways by dead reckoning off micro-gyros. By superimposing the D/R t
races over ground-level maps, they determined that two of the six tunnels led under the Secret City. Donovan and Pyati scouted up each one. Oschous and his own Number One went with him.

  The first one was it. But Donovan withheld judgment until checking the second. Then he went back to double-check the first, proceeding uphill until the party came to an ancient flight of stone steps off the tunnel-side, blocked at the top by a deadfall of rubble. Donovan lowered himself on the second step. Pyati went a little farther up-tunnel while Black Horse One kept watch on their backtrail, creating a bracket within which their masters could talk.

  Oschous sat beside him on the step, and stroked the fur on his protruding chin. “So. Is this the place?”

  “We broke a hole through a subbasement wall. I suppose when they brought the building down the rubble plugged the hole.”

  Oschous examined the tumbled avalanche of stone and tile. Then he studied the dead reckoning map. “Officially, there was never a building above here. They leveled the site and infilled with dirt. If we dug through, we’d emerge in a park and frighten some late-night lovers. But now that we have a second fix we can figure out where the tunnel system abuts the Residences.” He clapped Donovan on the shoulder. “Well done, Gesh!”

  Donovan shrugged.

  “What ho! Why so glum, comrade?”

  “Because my usefulness to Gidula is now at an end.”

  Oschous made a Brotherhood sign with his left hand. “But not thy usefulness to us.”

  Donovan no longer believed Oschous a Brotherhood member, or that the Brotherhood this side of the Rift was not utterly compromised. But neither did Donovan believe that Oschous was ready to dispose of him. The young man in the chlamys thought “the Fox” planned to use him against Gidula—which was fair enough, considering. Donovan leaned toward Oschous. “Be thou not too sanguine that thy battle plan and the Old One’s intentions wend the same path.”

  Oschous flicked his hand, as against a fly. “Gidula doth hold but one vote of three. Yea, a wise counselor, but Dawshoo’s voice and mine count for more.”

  Was Oschous serious? A dazer could fire twelve pulses between rechargings. Those were votes enough. “Remember that this play did hatch from his egg, and it doth place our leadership in places of Gidula’s desiring.”

  Oschous said nothing for a moment, then tapped his positioner and stood. He dropped the Tongue. “Let’s return to the others.”

  * * *

  They calibrated their dead reckoners just inside the tunnel entrance and sent teams out to map the tunnel network. “To maintain surprise,” Oschous told them, “our kill teams must emerge simultaneously at their strike points. Targets must not be given time to spread word. Find exit points closest to—preferably directly into—the Residences.”

  “Not the Offices?” asked Domino Tight.

  “No,” said Gidula, “for in the morning we will have a problem.”

  “In the morning?” one of the magpies asked.

  “Surely. When the Confederation awakes, she will need a government. We do not want to wreck the machinery, only replace the operators. The Names have grown indolent. You will find them at home, wrapped in luxuries, not pulling night shift in the Offices. I’ve marked the Residences on the overmaps.”

  “You haven’t marked all of them,” Manlius Metataxis complained. “Where is the Technical Name? Or the Second Name? Where is the Masked One?”

  “Yes,” said Donovan. “I should have thought the Secret Name would head the list.”

  “This is the list provided us by Domino Tight’s source within the Secret City. Some Names favor our struggle. Those we may spare—and later control. So, stick to your target lists.”

  Donovan did not miss the silent exchanges among the Shadows. In for a fenny, in for a yoon. Why spare any Names?

  “We will take two hours to expedite target acquisition,” said Dawshoo. “Leave repeaters at all tunnel intersections. If you cannot find direct access to a Residence, pick a nearby site with reasonable ground access and we will shift the tempo to give you time to enter your kill zones. Remember: you may encounter Protectors. Is that understood?”

  “No, Grandmother,” piped Little Jacques. “What was that part about sucking eggs, again?” The others laughed.

  “Eglay,” said Gidula, “by me. Pyati, do you go with Manlius. Gesh, wait you here. Too valuable you are to hazard on mere reconnaissance.”

  Pyati glanced at Donovan, who brushed his lips and flashed two fingers for an instant where Gidula could not see. Pyati relayed the signal to the other four Padaborn magpies. Eglay Portion came over to him and embraced him. “Don’t kiss me,” Donovan warned. “It’s been done before.”

  Gidula, hearing the comment, frowned in incomprehension, but Eglay Portion understood. “Which,” he whispered.

  “Watch,” Donovan replied. “Play Two.”

  Gidula turned. “Do you, good Domino, sit sentry then with our bold Padaborn. Take care of him, that we shall call on him as needed.”

  The man with the lyre brassard was the only senior conspirator Donovan had not met before. He nodded. “Yes, Deadly One.”

  * * *

  After the recon teams had departed, Donovan and the other Shadow squatted in the dark, visible to one another only as ghostly images on night-vision goggles. By all accounts, Tight had done yeoman’s work at the warehouse and was a friend of Ravn Olafsdottr; but right now, Donovan was not feeling especially friendly toward Ravn.

  After a long silence, Donovan with his shy-side hand unfastenend the loop on the knife scabbard at the back of his belt. “Do you think you can?” he said.

  “Can what?”

  “Take care of me?”

  “Oh.” Domino Tight made a great show of placing both his hands in plain sight. “Let me put it this way. Gidula gave the same instructions to Khembold Darling to ‘take care of’ your daughter.”

  Donovan’s heart froze over, and he half-rose from his squat. “Khembold would not…!”

  “Would. Tried. Failed.”

  Donovan drew a breath and eased back down. “What … happened?”

  “Your daughter strangled him with a harp string and Ravn Olafsdottr shot him in the head, so he is a twice-dead man.”

  Donovan smiled as a wolf smiles, but not without a little relief. “That’s my girl…” Ravn had been playing her own game. But … “How can you know what happened on Terra?”

  While Domino Tight summarized the events at the Forks, the scarred man consulted the young man in the chlamys, who responded that while body language was difficult to read in night vision, voice-stress analysis showed sincerity. Of course, pathological liars could also sound sincere. Nevertheless, Donovan refastened the knife-loop. “Your inability to describe the philosopher’s assistant convinces me,” Donovan said. “I know the Man That No One Sees. And I knew Gwillgi to be nearby—and that the harper’s mother would come. I had not thought she would bring friends. So, she is safe now, Méarana is?”

  “Well,” said Domino Tight, “that is where it begins to grow complicated.”

  * * *

  The two of them left the tunnel for the riverbank. It was fully night now and the Minor Moon was rising steadily in the east. In another day it would overtake the Major Moon. A Dao Chettian countryman could tell time with fair precision by the relative positions of the two moons. The north wind smelled of fish and of methane vapors from the mantle subjection wells northeast of the city.

  “Do you really think they are walking into a trap?” said Domino Tight.

  “I think they will succeed in assassinating just those Names Gidula wishes dead, at which point their luck will sour.”

  “My … special friend … thought the purge could be done without undue bloodshed.”

  “Your friend is that most dangerous of creatures: a ruthless naïf. This fight is among the Names; it is others’ blood they meant to shed. Is this the spot where you kill me?”

  “Yes, and your body goes into the river over there. The
frawtha—the ‘official truth’—will be that you stepped outside for fresh air, a Protector river patrol spotted you, and, rather than lead them to us, you dove into the river to draw them away.”

  “Brave and noble to the end.”

  “Gidula wants you dead, not your legend.”

  The scarred man laughed and tossed his head. “The irony is that Padaborn was not so heroic. He betrayed me.”

  Domino Tight looked at him. “You’re not Padaborn? Ah. Now a few things make sense.”

  “I am happy for you.”

  “No. You see, there were rumors that Padaborn had buckled under threat of torture, and then they tortured him anyway in case he had forgotten to tell them anything, and when they were done there was not enough of him left to bother with. He was with the smoke. But I dismissed those stories as propaganda, because other rumors held that he had escaped and was in clever concealment—‘in the one place no one will look.’ So when Gidula announced he had located you, him in the Periphery … It gave us all heart.”

  “But…,” suggested Donovan. A night bird swooped across the face of the river and the moons-light revealed a two-shadowed fish rising in the claws of something large.

  “Yes. My ‘special friend’ took your daughter and me to her Residence; and there, for whatever reason of her own, she told us … You see, Padaborn won—by proxy. After his Rising, a faction calling themselves the Committee of Names Renewed declared that the best way to prevent a future Rising was to address the real abuses that the Paderbornians had complained of. Not everything, understand. They thought they could file and trim around the edges, what they called fairezdroga. So there was a…”

  “Coup d’état.”

  “Yah. They made a sweep of the Old Guard: forced some into retirement, imprisoned others, encouraged the remainder to a life of sloth and indolence, and cut deals with those they thought they could deal with. Of course, what the Committee learned was that if you cut and trim around the edges to save what you can, you will trim too much for the Old Guard and not enough for the Reformers.”

  The Fudir knew astonishment. “And no one knew this was happening?”