In the Lion's Mouth

by Michael Flynn

  A confusion of voices roiled the old mill. She heard Dee Karnatika declare that Epri had forfeit. Dawshoo claimed victory for Manlius. Beside her on the rafter, Ekadrina’s courier stroked the butt of her teaser. Perturbed, Ravn backed away into the recesses of the roof struts. This was not right. Something—she knew not what—was seriously awry. A prudent man he might be, and more prone to settle disputes with clever stratagems or distant assassinations, but Epri was no such coward as to desert the field.

  Another Shadow crouched to her left on the same beam as she, panting heavily with excitement and peering with bright eyes at the commotion on the shop floor, where Dawshoo and Manlius argued with Ekadrina and Shadow Prime. She heard Dawshoo call on Prime to honor their bargain.

  A distraction.

  She suddenly knew that the argument on the floor was a distraction, intended to fix everyone’s attention. She looked across, up, down, right, left.

  And the Shadow on her left was not panting from excitement, but from exertion. It was Epri. After escaping Manlius’s death-stroke (somehow!) he had hidden himself the only way possible: by making himself more visible. He had turned on his running lights and joined the spectators, trusting to darkness and unexamined assumptions for his concealment.

  Down below, Oschous Dee Karnatika scanned the galleries. He seemed to be counting spectators.

  Epri specialized in the long shot. At this distance, his marksmanship was deadly and three quick shots would pot Manlius, Dawshoo, and Oschous and virtually decapitate the rebellion.

  Peace at last within the Lion’s Mouth, after twenty years of Shadow War.

  Epri held a dazer double-handed, crouched to fire from the kneeling position. Ravn’s hand dropped to her belt and came away with a stiletto. She threw it side-wristed and impaled Epri’s right hand just as he fired into the press on the floor.

  Cries broke out below. Manlius! Manlius is down! Treachery! No, a legitimate play! Ambush! No, Manlius quit too soon; the pasdarm was still on!

  It was not, Ravn knew. The chapters of the pasdarm gave the players wide latitude; but hiding oneself among the spectators was not one of them. Epri had been forfeit the moment he had climbed into the girders, but if Manlius were slain, the technicality would hardly matter.

  Epri had meanwhile yanked the stiletto from his hand and backhanded it at Ravn. But she had expected the move and had already ducked aside, snatching the knife from the air as it passed and dousing her running lights with the other hand.

  Epri might be second-best, but Ravn knew he was far above her own class. The prudent thing to do was flee and link up with Gidula or Oschous. She was clambering up the strut before the thought was formed and Epri, firing at her left-handed, missed. Someone else in the galleries fired back, perhaps on general principles.

  Fighting had broken out on the floor and in the galleries. Oschous and other rebellious Shadows had returned fire to the locus from which the treacherous shot had come. Then some loyalists, perhaps thinking that the rebels were attacking the gallery, had joined in. The rebels were now pinned down near the middle of the kill space, taking fire from all sides, but protected by their own magpies and allied Shadows among the spectators. One was a former neutral, pushed to take sides by the treachery. Ekadrina and Prime had withdrawn to cover, but both were holding fire and Ekadrina was arguing with Prime. Dawshoo crouched over Manlius, shielding him while he fired at loyalists pinned down behind a conveyor head. A magpie fell from the rafters to strike one of the milling machines and then roll bonelessly over its side. Oschous had Dawshoo’s back, snapping orders over his link, and directing a counterattack. Coherent light flashed here and there among the girders, made visible by the dust raised by the tumult. Projectiles whined and snapped off girders.

  Ravn fired her tzan-wire at an overhead beam and even as it fastened itself she swung across the cavernous open space to land beside the Riff of Ashbanal, who had taken refuge with his magpies behind a stack of corroded drums. He had his teaser out, but had yet to fire it.

  The Riff had not achieved his position through mere politics. A fell fighter in any league, he swung his staff left-handed and nearly knocked Ravn off her footing. But she danced a little away from him, holding both hands to the side weaponless, and blurted, “Appeal the Truce, master! You are neutral and this is your bailiwick. They will listen to you.”

  “Will they? Small weight my word has had ’fore now.”

  “Habits die hard. Your brassard yet commands respect. Call on Oschous and Ekadrina to act as your deputies. There has been dishonor on our House.” She told him of Epri’s foul.

  Stoop studied Ravn for a long moment, during which two more magpies died.

  “Quickly,” Ravn urged him, “before there are too many bodies for a Truce to overlook.”

  The Riff nodded and opened his link. “Deadly Ones!” And his voice echoed across the ruined factory. “There is a Truce in play! That Truce was violated most foully, and charges will be laid at the Courts d’Umbrae on Dao Chetty. Ekadrina Sèanmazy! Oschous Dee Karnatika! I demand an’ require you to enforce the Peace!” He turned and gave Ravn a twisted smile. “Now let’s see how much respect this ol’ badge still commands,” he said quietly. He stepped from concealment, banging the floor of the kill space three times with his staff.

  Silence spread in a pool around him and one by one the combatants stilled. Oschous came to stand beside the Riff and a moment later Ekadrina joined him. Poder holstered his weapon, and took a breath.

  “Metataxis?” he said.

  “A wound,” Oschous replied. “The shot went wild.”

  “Den it was not my brudder who fired,” said Ekadrina. “Epri does not miss.”

  “He does if my stiletto impales his hand,” Ravn said. “He hid himself among the spectators, on the beam beside me. I fouled his aim.”

  “I don’t believe dat!”

  “It was a foul, Sèanmazy,” said the Riff. “The bolt came from the rafters. A violation of the chapters and of the agreement reached beforehand between Dawshoo and our Prime.”

  “Compared to foul deeds already done,” the Long Tall One said, “what matters such a peccadillo?”

  “Manlius is the winner,” Oschous said. “By our agreement…”

  “Da fight was ‘to da blood and to da bone,’” Ekadrina shot back. “I demand habeas corpus. Where is Epri’s body? Widdout it, where is da victory?”

  Oschous bristled, but the Riff held up his hand. “I’m the Judge of the Kill.” Then, in a louder voice, over the links, “Deadly Ones! Hear my rulin’. Manlius Metataxis does not win the pasdarm because he took no bone from Epri Gunjinshow. But neither does Epri win, for though he took blood of Manlius, he took no bone; and the blood was taken by foul. I declare this-here pasdarm null an’ void!” He banged the floor with his staff. “I demand an’ require all concerned to leave this place in peace, the Peace to extend from here to the coopers.” That meant no fighting anywhere in the Ashbanal system.

  “Brave words, Riff!” shouted a voice from the darkness. “But how will you enforce it?”

  The Riff’s own magpies had gathered around him, and exchanged the uneasy glances of neutrals. Then Oschous spoke up. “I will.”

  Ekadrina was less than a beat behind. “And I!” And she held up her own staff horizontal above her head.

  Poder Stoop cocked an eyebrow at Ravn Olafsdottr, and the Ravn shrugged. “They are enemies,” she said for no other ear, “but honorable.”

  The Riff closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. “That’s the worst of it, ain’t it? Right there. That men of honor find honor has driven them to opposin’ sides. If they were corrupt, we could settle all this with a well-cut deal.”

  * * *

  Later, as the friends and enemies of the slain and injured carried out their useful duties, Ravn Olafsdottr and two of Oschous’s magpies turned over a teardrop body that had fallen from the rafters when a “mourning star” had found his throat. The Ravn noted that the cruelty of the Fates had
handed her the corpse of Magpie Three Sèanmazy. She paused in her labor and stared at his contorted face. So surprised he seemed. He could not credit what had happened to him even as it happened. She bent and closed his eyes for him.

  Oschous stood nearby with Sèanmazy herself, who regarded her magpie without expression. “I hope he died well,” was all she said before turning away.

  Oschous leaned to Ravn. “What is it?” he asked.

  Ravn Olafsdottr gestured to the limp and empty corpse. “Tell me it meant something,” she said. “Tell me it mattered.”

  “It mattered to him.”

  “It was supposed to stay in bounds.”

  “What was?”

  “Death. It’s how we face Him. We convince ourselves with these plays that, when we want to, we can contain Him. Here. Within the squared circle. Did he die well? He died stupidly, as a bystander to another’s quarrel. And as a consequence of his own side’s treachery.”

  “All the more reason,” Oschous assured her, “that we overthrow their regime.”

  But Ravn turned away and bent over the body. “Sleep well, Deadly One.” She spoke the formula and bestowed the kiss on the cold and torn lips. He would be carried back to the Abattoir along with the others in Prime’s ship, mulched in the Rose Garden, his name plaqued on the Cöng Sung, the Wall of Honor, but the treachery of this day’s actions would taint the magpie’s death, and few would come to honor him. There was no death worse than a forgotten one, but none were very good.

  Oschous said nothing until she had turned away. “And now the mystery,” he said.

  The Riff’s people were tearing down the arbor, smashing the fountain. The musicians would break their instruments, and Epri’s banner, torn from its hooks would be burned when the building was torched.

  Olafsdottr did not ask what the mystery was. Epri had vanished in plain sight of two score onlookers. If there were another, deeper mystery, she did not want to hear it. For Ekadrina Sèanmazy had given them the answer, in their converse before the fight; and Ravn had detected in the Long Tall One’s confident eyes the selfsame horror she felt in herself.

  The Names were loose.

  CENGJAM GAAFE: THE FIFTH INTERROGATORY

  With the breaking of the true dawn, Mr. Wladislaw introduces a breakfast cart into the sitting room. There are eggs gently boiled and mounted on thrones, a haggard sausage, sautéed mushrooms, and a porridge of oatmeal. Olafsdottr selects an egg at random and regards the giant sausage with considerable suspicion.

  “You will pardon us,” says Bridget ban, “if we restrict the carving of it to Mr. Wladislaw.”

  Olafsdottr grins. “No knives too close to poor Ravn. Afraid, perhaps, she cut self? Well, small individual sausages might be used to poison me; but from this monster, we shall each and all safely eat.”

  Méarana hands an egg cutter to the Shadow, who looks at it curiously until the harper demonstrates how to use it to snip off the small end of the egg.

  “Ooh … You oopen your eggs from the small end,” she says. “No woonder matters pass ill between your League and my Coonfederation.”

  There is apparent humor in the remark, but the nature of it eludes her captors. “The eggs at least are sufficient size,” she continues in Gaelactic. “On the Groom’s Britches, we have eggs the size of grapes, which are eaten whole. The hens have been cultured with various foods to impart diverse flavors to the eggs. They are accounted a delicacy.”

  “Och,” says Bridget ban with a straight face, “our eggs too are the size of our grapes.”

  Ravn blinks, then decides to smile.

  “And was Fa—was Donovan still in his hotel room,” Méarana asks, “when you and Oschous returned from the pasdarm?”

  “Ooh, surely! He was no man’s fool. Where on the planet could he have gone?”

  The Terran Corner, Méarana thinks, but she does not say it aloud. Perhaps there are no such corners in the Confederation.

  “One thing bothers me,” says Graceful Bintsaif.

  “Ah! One thing oonly! How wise you must be!”

  The junior Hound has learned to brush off the jibes. “Epri was there; and then he was not. That offends my sense of seamlessness. The world is not that abrupt.”

  Bridget ban nods. “Inattentive blindness,” she suggests.

  “Yes,” answers Olafsdottr in Confederal Manjrin. “Ancient wisdom, before even time of Commonwealth. Fix attention on one thing—not see others. Gorilla dance through, you not see.” Then, switching back to the Gaelactic, “Sure, I may have been the only one there who noticed the faltering of time, but I saw nothing else beside.”

  “I dinnae hawp it!” Méarana exclaims. “Some gomeral can walk right athwart yer line o’ sight and ye dinnae see them? That’s gae glaikit!”

  Bridget ban sweeps her hair back. “Believe me, darling. ’Tis possible. The conditions must be right—the kill space was dark, the spectators fixated on the combatants—but the ancients demonstrated ‘inattentive blindness’ under looser conditions than that. The trick lies in knowing how to induce it in others. To ‘cloud men’s minds,’ as the saying has it.” To the Ravn, she adds, “I take it there are few Shadows who own that ability.”

  For the first time since she has entered Clanthompson Hall, the serenity of Ravn Olafsdottr falters. “I would have said ‘none.’ But the Names do. The Names have that power.”

  Méarana shudders. “There was a Name on Ashbanal? I thought they never left the Secret City!”

  “Not often,” says Olafsdottr, “and never happily when they do. It is said that one once left the Confederation entirely.”

  “Then,” says Bridget ban, leaning forward, “one of Them intervened—either to save Epri or to assassinate Manlius. Or both.”

  But Olafsdottr shakes her head and, interestingly, Graceful Bintsaif does as well.

  “No, Cu,” says the junior Hound. “Had that been the intent, why not ensure that Manlius was killed within the rules of the … the pasdarm? Dawshoo had pledged to end the rebellion if Manlius fell.”

  “You grow in wisdom, child,” Ravn tells her. “Pasdarm settle nothing. And why Dawshoo agree? Motive of Prime, I grasp. But why Dawshoo? One thing only I see accomplish.”

  Bridget ban snips the end off her egg. “Aye,” she says. “Some of ye were forced to show yourselves openly.”

  Méarana plays an intricate and unresolved chord progression on her harp. One hand picks out a lively geantraí fit to sketch a joust of Shadows while the other hand plays in counterpoint a goltraí to suggest the lurking Name and, overall, the tragic nature of the whole affair. She sings a bit too, using sky-voice and ground-voice to simulate two singers at two points in the room. But she does not feel the conflict, she does not feel the story in her heart the way she felt the story of the Dancer. The players are too remote, too strange, too unfamiliar. Only her father, under guard in the hotel room, unaware of the events in the “arbor,” his well-being subject to the whims of his captors, only he wants to live through her strings.

  And Olafsdottr. She has begun to resolve, a little, in the music. She has begun to live in the mind of Méarana Swiftfingers.

  “Why do you call it an ‘arbor’?” she asks. “An arbor is an artful arrangement of trees.”

  “I do not know, young harper. It is only what it has always been called. The arrangement of trees, we call a kjumuq. But,” and she turns to the Hound, “a Name on the wing explains much. The bomb at the Riettiecenter monorail. Now, he swoops Epri to save at the very point of his defeat. Come, attend! To Fair Yuts’ga next, uneased in mind and very much perplexed.”

  VI. TOWARD YUTS’GA: THE THIRD COUNTERARGUMENT

  From Ashbanal departed, Yuts’ga bound,

  We forward pressed. Or did we flee,

  From that ill-vanishing by which

  The sly Epri did whisk away?

  Harper! Know what doubts devoured us!

  As rats do creep through walls and drains,

  Their fortunes sought through quiet
stealth, to gnaw

  At power, become in one fell mirrored moment

  Those self-same rats ’tween mazes run

  At others’ whims. Had Those wit of our intent?

  Or did Those their own ends pursue,

  Worldines crossing ours by wondrous chance

  Entwined in doubts we plied the streams of space.

  Uncertainty our load, at hell-bent pace.

  Oschous was a clever man, and one bewonted to subtle plays and deep deceptions. But why a Name had intervened to save Epri, he did not fathom. He threw the subject on the table at dinner, the first evening on the crawl.

  One of the magpies brought into the dining room a gravity cart piled high with food, for not merely the six magpies off-duty, but also Ravn, Donovan, and the injured Manlius and four of his magpies were gathered around the broad table. The injury to Metataxis had been a serious one—burns to the shoulder and upper arm and induction shock to his nervous system—but the autoclinic was healing him up nicely. His right arm was immobilized and he had to spend two hours a day in the tank. He had a slight tendency to slur his speech. But he would grow more hale as time passed on. Meanwhile, his ship was coupled to Oschous’s own, and he guested in Black Horse.

  “Perhaps they have a mission,” Ravn suggested, “one for Epri alone to perform, and his untimely death would have hindered it.”

  “I think,” Manlius said, rubbing his shoulder absently, “Those just like that misborn git. Prime’s pet, is what he is.” He stood at the table, his oath as yet undischarged. Oschous had lightened the gravity as a courtesy.