On the Razor's Edge

by Michael Flynn

  “I have my oon target, sweet. There is a man who left me to dangle on a cliff when he could have killed me. Such kindness demands reciprocity.”

  “And you,” said Bridget ban to Donovan buigh. “I suppose you will hunt down the Secret Name and take your long revenge.”

  But Donovan shook his head. “Revenge is for fools. If the past is to have a hold over me, I would prefer it to be the good times and not the bad. Should he and I meet, only one of us will leave, but I’ll not seek him out. Let Fate decide whether we encounter each other. Defense of the Cache is foremost. Méarana, the point of least immediate danger is with Five and the system monitors. Stay with him. Bridget—”

  “Ochone! ’Tis an ill fork ye hoist me on,” the Red Hound said. “I know where my heart tells me to be. I know where my head tells me I must be. Graceful Bintsaif, go with my daughter and Five Padaborn. Her life is your life.”

  “Aye, Cu.”

  Donovan completed the dispositions. “Remember: active measures, fluid defense. Find long shots and go for the snipe when you can. Booby a few traps. Plant diversions. Hit and run…” He stopped and scanned his small army. “And all the other elementary instructions which none of you need hear.” He held a hand out. “To the blood and to the bone,” he said. The Shadows and the magpies slapped his hand and departed silently to their posts.

  Gwillgi allowed his sharpened teeth to show. “We’re your ace, Donovan. They won’t know that Hounds are on the scene.”

  “Act insofar as you hold that secret as long as possible,” Donovan told the Hounds. “Just remember: whatever ruthlessness you may think you own, the Shadows own ten times more. Their skills are no greater, but their hesitations are less. And of them all, Gidula is the most treacherous. He smiles.”

  * * *

  Greystroke wore coveralls of anycloth. In the lobby, he altered them to resemble a shenmat. Little Hugh watched in dismay. “Ye cannot be serious.”

  But Greystroke showed his teeth. “Easier to blend into a crowd.” He detailed a brassard on his left arm with a symbol hard to discern.

  Matilda of the Night joined them. “Stairwells prepared. Put these filters in your noses to block the effects.”

  Greystroke complied. “You reveal your secrets.”

  “Don’t be a fool. You have no idea what my secrets are. There are four stairwells they can take and only three of us. Let us not all trundle up the same one.”

  “East wing,” said Greystroke.

  “East main,” said Hugh.

  “And I’ll follow whichever west-side team needs pruning most.”

  The three of them were silent for a moment. Then Hugh thrust his hand out. “We’ll meet at the fane.” The other two, after a moment’s hesitation, took it. “Or on the farther shore,” said Matilda of the Night before she faded into the darkness.

  “She’s good,” said Greystroke. Then, to Hugh, “We’ll make it.”

  “As long as she makes it.” He meant Bridget ban.

  “It’s an awful box he’s put her in this time.”

  “It isn’t the Fudir who put her in it, Grey One. Sure, ’tis bad cases all around, but hush now.” And Little Hugh too faded into the darkness of the deserted building to wait. He knew as well as Greystroke and Matilda the risks of operating in the enemy’s rear.

  * * *

  The power is out, Lord Gidula. No lights. The drop-wells are dead.

  The hazards of war, eh, Old One?

  It is that, sire. But a darkened building will attract no attention from elsewhere in the city. Stairs and ladders, then. Comets, with me up the left-hand stairs. Tridents, up the right hand. Lions, odd numbers, the stairs at the east end; even numbers up the ladders in the first drop-well. Crows, odd numbers, west end; even numbers, second drop-well. Clear? Go.

  Little Hugh emerged from concealment after the intruders had swarmed up. Every plan of battle was complicated by the presence of the other side. He whispered into his throat mike, “Three magpies climbing maintenance ladders in each drop-well.” He hoped that Five Padaborn would relay that to whoever needed to know. Otherwise, assets would be inserted behind Domino Tight and Eglay Portion. Then he set off after the ascending tridents. He felt again as he had felt during the guerilla on New Eireann: terribly alive.

  * * *

  Magpie Seven Bhatvik had thought himself third from the rear, but when he glanced over his shoulder on the stairwell he saw no one behind him. This was not a good thing to see, and he shivered a bit with unreasoning fear. He climbed a few more steps, then quickly looked back. He still saw nothing.

  Which was too bad.

  * * *

  “Maintain queue discipline,” murmured Magpie Three Farer to the shenmat-clad figure who had come up beside him on the stairwell. It was the last thing he said.

  * * *

  Four to Double Crow. Gravity grids reactivated in the drop-wells. Featherlight. We can leap the rest of the way up easy.

  Negative, my pretty. Power is intermittent. Do not rely. Repeat: do not rely.

  Good call. Gravity is cycling. Getting heavier … Lighter now … Heavier … Six, Ten, vacate, now! Oh, by the Fates!

  Report, Four. Report.

  Double Crow, this is Ten. Gravity peaked at three ji. Four and Six lost hold of the laddering. They’re jam at the bottom. I’m out of the shaft on the third floor. Dislocated shoulder.

  * * *

  Something was wrong. Big Jacques sensed it before he knew it. A quick gesture, propagated down the line of tridents, brought them all to a halt on the stairwell. Malfunctioning gravity grids in a city in chaos he could understand. But the crows and lions were both reporting missing magpies, and he could not imagine that the unoccasioned dread that had gripped them all on entry to this building had impelled them to run. Some of the Names had the means of inducing such trepidation, although the Secret Name had not thought the Technical Name to be one of them.

  “Count off,” he said, and listened as the numbers ran down the stairs. He did not need One to tell him that the count came up short. Interesting. Every flock but Gidula’s was coming up short. Was the Old One trimming his allies already? He had needed an escort-in-strength to cross the burning city. Did he suppose he needed them no longer?

  A glimmer in Big Jacques’s goggles captured his attention. Something on the wall along the railing. A line of somethings. He recognized pasties—antipersonnel mines—on a wire ignition.

  “Down the well!” he ordered his flock. “It’s a trap!”

  The trident magpies flew down the stairs, rappeling over banisters, trading grace for speed, and a moment later the pasties ignited, sending a sheet of shrapnel across the stairwell. Big Jacques heard grunts of pain, then, below him, a different sort of cry. Flashes of light and the acrid smell of electrical sparks told of a brief, intense firefight two floors below.

  Big Jacques hurried to the scene, found Two down and Five aiming fire systematically into the dark at the bottom of the stairs. “Stalked, Trident,” said Five.

  “How many?”

  “Saw one, but must have been others. Moved Two, Seven, and Twelve.”

  Big Jacques considered that. “Gidula assured us the building would be unguarded. Either Gidula is an optimist or Sèanmazy followed us here after that tussle on Big Fish Street. Could you read the brassard?”

  “No shenmat. Coverall. Protector, maybe? Whoever he was I potted him good. Gone doggo, though. Hunt him down?”

  “Let him bleed out.” Big Jacques contacted Aynia Farer and Phoythaw Bhatvik and told them the building was being defended, numbers unknown. But he did not contact Gidula, who could figure that out for himself.

  * * *

  The explosions in the east end stairwell took out a goodly number of lions, which evened the odds very nearly to six-to-one. Eglay Portion and Four Padaborn had positioned themselves to cover the exit and waited until three lions were through before opening the dance. The invaders were aware now that they were being opposed and returned fire. Daze
rs. A bad hit, but short range. A thrown knife was silent and did not betray its origin. Hard to reload, though. One of the three went down; a second reached an office and burst into it. The door had been triggered and the explosion caught her in the doorway. The third magpie ducked back into the stairwell, and a momentary silence ensued. Eglay Portion tried to think what Aynia Farer would do next.

  “Maybe the trap on the stairway got everyone,” said Four.

  Eglay Portion did not think so, and a moment later a series of explosions suggested that the lions had made their own exit from the stairwell at an unconventional point. They could outflank Eglay’s position now. “Pull back to the second line,” he said.

  But Four pointed, “Here comes one!”

  A shenmat-clad figure slid from the doorway into the corridor and made a sign with his left hand. Eglay blocked Four’s shot. “That’s the pass-sign. It’s that Greystroke fellow.”

  They left cover and retreated up the corridor. Aynia and two magpies came around an unexpected corner. Four stepped between Eglay and the lions and took the brunt of the dazer blast. Return fire drove the lions behind the corner again. Greystroke and Eglay sprinted toward the fane.

  * * *

  Tina Zhi came to the side of Domino Tight as softly as a dream and bearing the same strange weapon that she had brought to the Battle of the Warehouse. “The Secret Name, Big Jacques, five tridents, and a lion who survived Three’s little game with the drop-wells.”

  The magpie with them smiled at the compliment, though he was vexed that one had survived.

  “Big Jacques,” said Domino Tight. “I always liked the Large One.”

  “Like him a little less,” suggested the Technical Name.

  Domino Tight sighed. “He could just as easily be fighting on our side, if he had thought it more fun.”

  “He was fighting on our side.”

  “Don’t remind me,” said Domino Tight.

  Tina Zhi turned the curious U-shaped weapon in her hand. “The Secret Name is wearing sparkle armor. This will deactivate it and leave him vulnerable.”

  Domino Tight nodded. He remembered that from the Battle of the Warehouse. It also meant that, unlike the jump tokens, the sparkle armor was not controlled by a central field. What other secrets had the Technical Name been withholding from the Confederation, even from most of the other Names? Youth, perhaps.

  And why was she now so willing to help ambush one of the leaders of the Old Guard, given that she had been supporting them through the Revolution? Because these intended to violate the sanctity of the Gayshot Bo? He did not believe it was for love of himself. Given how long Tina Zhi must have lived, what novelty could one more mayfly lover provide?

  The Shadows believed the war had started because Shadow Prime had dispatched Epri Gunjinshow to rectify matters after Manlius Metataxis had incestuously coupled with his comrade-in-arms, Kelly Stappelaufer, and which task Epri had accomplished by seducing Kelly himself. It was the sort of story Shadows liked to tell themselves. But when they had wiped the tear away, they also knew that they were fighting to overthrow Names grown overbold. So what they believed and what they knew were at odds, and all that was left was laughter.

  He focused on the darkness of the stairwell. Most of the tridents had escaped the trap. Big Jacques had been too keenly observant. The main stairwell opened on a function space. There was a reception desk, waiting chairs, and several small tables with inquiry portals. Large pots bore broad leafy plants. There were any number of hiding places, all of them far too obvious. “When they sortie from the stairwell,” he told Three and Tina Zhi, “they will scatter in all directions, accepting casualties. They will almost certainly direct fire on the receptionist’s desk, since that is the obvious place for defenders to cover the stairwell.”

  Three had strewn crispies on the steps. He listened now to the sounds from the stairwell. “Time to take our places,” he said. He shot a climbing grapple to the decorative, painted ceiling. Once there, he removed a panel that he had previously prepared, and insinuated himself into the duct space. Shortly, small gunports appeared in the moulding.

  Tina Zhi placed a hand on Domino Tight’s wrist. “It’s too dangerous,” she said.

  Domino Tight finished snapping the titanium exoskeleton into place. He shook out the gossamer cloak that would make him invisible. “What better place to hide than the one place they will not expect—in plain sight?”

  “They are no fools. Someone will realize.”

  “If anyone is left. At short range, I can use my dazer. And Rinty will be coming up behind them. We have them trapped! Hurry, cloak yourself.”

  The reception area became apparently vacant. This might lull Big Jacques—or raise his suspicions.

  The tridents emerged in a fan, shielding both Big Jacques and the Secret Name. Domino counted eight and began to drop magpies with his dazer. Three fired flechettes from above. The Secret Name’s sparkle armor died and he spun about looking for the weapon that had done it. Domino Tight numbed him in the thigh, and he nearly toppled. But Big Jacques maintained his calm.

  “Is that you, old friend? What price this treachery?”

  Domino Tight did not answer. The best way to locate an invisible man is from the sounds he makes.

  “Never did think you jumped in the river. I guess that means Padaborn is here, too.” Big Jacques fired pellets into various quarters of the lobby, on the likely assumption that Domino was in at least one of them. He wasn’t.

  “If the Name was your target, too late. He’s crawled off down the hall until his leg heals.”

  A shower of flechettes rained on the tridents from the ceiling and Big Jacques and the remaining tridents returned fire, bracketing the likely source. A thud in the ductwork signaled success or a ruse. “Boys,” said Jacques, “let’s shift. Pattern G.”

  Only two magpies rose with Big Jacques and they scattered in three directions. One drew a shot from the apparently still-active Three, another, a dazzle from Domino Tight. But Big Jacques learned the power of chance in the affairs of men, for he had taken a serpentine run toward the farther hallway that intersected with Domino Tight.

  The two of them toppled to the floor with the bigger man on top. Dazers flew higgledy-piggledy. Hands punched and poked; knees pistoned. The cloak was ripped aside. Domino Tight wrapped arms around his foe as tight as iron bands.

  But iron bands were nothing to Big Jacques, and he broke free and rolled to his feet. Padaborn Three abandoned silence as he scrambled along the ductwork and punched a hole in the plaster to fire a wire gun at Big Jacques. In his anxiety not to strike Domino Tight, he shot wide; but Jacques took it as an invitation to leave. He kicked Domino in the head and, as he ran into the main hallway, pulled a throwing knife from a scabbard and in a single fluid pirouette pinned Domino Tight through the chest.

  * * *

  Méarana Harper listened to the dim sounds of battle from the floors below, wondering whether she had lured her mother to her death. But Bridget ban was a fixture of the universe, like the mountains and the rivers, like the Rift of Stars that separated the Perseus Arm from its Orion spur. Her mother was very like that Rift, too; her very absence was a sort of presence. And how could an absence ever be lost?

  “This is all my fault,” Méarana said.

  Neither Graceful Bintsaif, who watched and listened to the front hallway, nor Padaborn Five, who sat before the console of view screens and detectors that occupied the middle of the Security Center, turned to answer her.

  “I would say it is the Ravn’s fault,” said the junior Hound. “It was she who maneuvered you into going with her into the Triangles. Your mother followed, and the rest of us followed her.”

  “I could not leave my father without succor.”

  Graceful Bintsaif shook her head. “There is a niggling in the back of my mind that our arrival rather upset the plans of Donovan buigh. The scarred man is like Mary’s lambs. Leave him be and he’ll return.”

  “Listen to the
two of you,” said Five. “None of this involved the Periphery at all. What is happening out there grew in our own gardens, not your fayzukeq personal lives. I see now that Padaborn did his best to delay this day of wrath, and only Gidula’s threat to torture you…” He paused.

  “There,” said the harper. “It is my fault, after all.” But she wasted no time wishing it had all never happened. The time for that wish was a long time ago.

  “Fates!” said Five, rapping a monitor with his knuckle. “We’ve lost Domino Tight as well as the Hound Rinty.”

  Méarana brushed a cheek with her sleeve. As long ago as she could remember, Little Hugh had been a friend of the family. A lover once of her mother, which made him a relative of some sort. And Méarana had lured him here to his wyrd. It was supposed to be simple. She and Ravn and her mother would pluck Donovan as neatly from Gidula’s fortress as a pickpocket removes a purse from an unwary tourista. How they would do this Méarana had had no idea, but she had owned the fantasy so long she had come to believe it.

  It is the young who catch the gliding snake. A Terran proverb her father had once told her. The young do dangerous things from innocence. Well, she was young no longer. Although she might never become any older than she was this night.

  Gidula’s force would not come through the doorway she guarded: the hallway led deeper into the building. If Gidula did assault the control center his Shadows would come through the junior Hound and the Padaborn magpie and so give her a chance to escape. That was why Graceful Bintsaif had posted her here. She already had the escape route marked out in her mind. Down this hall, down a back stairway, across, and … she’d be at the fane. With her father and mother. All of them together at last, if only at the last.

  “Well played!” Five exclaimed, and without turning from her vigilance Graceful Bintsaif said, “How now?”

  “Big Jacques is down. Pyati ambushed him. Oh, he was the best they had. He was good. And Aynia Farer is wounded. I wonder that Gidula does not back off. Over half his force is down.”