In the Lion's Mouth

by Michael Flynn

“Since three days,” said Big Jacques, finding a bench to sit upon, which he angled to take in the room. “You be a hard man to track down, Domino Tight.”

  “I should be an impossible man to track down,” he answered. “What brings you?”

  Big Jacques rumbled. One always knew when he was about to essay a joke, for he laughed peremptorily at his own wit. “Why, my ship done brought me.” Then, unable to contain himself, he slapped the table, causing the accouterments to dance. Domino Tight snatched his schooner up before it could topple, and returned a smile as broad as the humor.

  There is a stereotype held in the minds of most, even of those moderately keen, of an inverse relationship between the size of the body and the size of the mind. Big Jacques knew that and played to the stereotype. The duller his opponents believed him, the greater the edge he had in playing them.

  “We missed you at the facemeet on Henrietta,” Jacques added. “You shoulda seen it. Dawshoo told us the Cause was lost and we should just give up. I think he said that so we’d all cry up nay. You shoulda seen old Gidula’s face! And Dawshoo’s too, when half the room started to walk out.”

  “Hunh. Dawshoo’s a galah.” Domino Tight took a pull from his schooner while Jacques signaled to the tavern-keeper for a drink of his own. “I’m going to guess,” Tight said when he put the schooner down, “that Oschous rallied the troops.”

  “Oh, he did, for sure. That face of his would have gone white if it hadn’t been all covered with red fuzz. Dawshoo oughta watch his back. There may be some discussion on who should lead us, once the Names are ousted. My money’s on Oschous.”

  “Gidula, I think. Oschous actually believes in the Cause. That’s not good for a revolutionary.”

  Jacques rumbled once more. “Near as I can figure, I’m doing pretty much the same crap I was doing before. Just a different target list, is all.”

  “So, why one and not the other?” Domino Tight asked from genuine curiosity. He had never decided whether Big Jacques had hidden depths or no depth at all.

  “Oh, the quality o’ the targets, of course. Takes more skill, more practice, more craft. ‘The knife grows dull when the target is soft.’ You move your man here yet?”

  “Not yet. Pendragon’s on-world protecting him.”

  “The hell, you say! How did he know we were going to move the Talker?”

  Domino Tight shrugged. “‘Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.’ Just makes it a bigger challenge. The target’s night soil; just a matter of time.”

  Big Jacques nudged him with a forefinger. “There. Y’see? ‘A bigger challenge.’ But you may as well fold the play. If Pendragon’s mother-henning your target, he’s probably figured why he was in the cross-hairs in the first place. Whole point of moving our man into the Comm Center is that they don’t know we done it.”

  “Oh, half a dozen cadre move up the ladder if the top dog’s capped. Might not be obvious which we wanted moved. Tell me, Jacques. We chance-met here, or have you looked me up ’cause we’re cobber?”

  “Bone homey, we call it where I come from,” said Big Jacques. The tavern-keeper brought him a large stein of uncertain content. The big man grumbled about something he called a demitasse and tossed it off in a single gulp. “Nah, just a call of the courtesy,” he continued when the tavern-keeper had gone off to draw five more steins. “I’ll be sending magpies out and your guys might cross paths with mine. Don’t want no misunderstandings.” He handed the smaller man a bubble case. “That’s got the dance card for our FOFs. The identifier changes randomly, but that’ll keep your guys in sync so they can know Friend or Foe. I’d appreciate the same info from you, ’cause while my main interest is that your boys don’t pot my boys, I don’t really want mine potting yours, either.”

  “Bad for morale,” said Domino Tight.

  Both Shadows took a moment to download the codes through their own intranets. “Who’s your date, Big Guy, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Ekadrina Sèanmazy.”

  Domino Tight’s magpies had been whispering the latest intel in his left earwig. He touched pause. “Ekadrina? She’s on-world?”

  “Not yet. She went to Ashbanal for the pasdarm. But she’ll be stopping here to check with Pendragon on her way to Dao Chetty. She may have sent some of her magpies on ahead. You ain’t seen any taijis drifting around have you?”

  Domino Tight shook his head. “That … could send things up a gum tree. Ekadrina is a big bite to chew on. You have the teeth for it?”

  Jacques grinned wide. “Who else you think could take her?”

  “Oschous.”

  “Might could be. But we don’t put our brains on the block. Gidula too, in his prime; which you might have noticed, he ain’t. Maybe Dawshoo; and notice the ‘maybe’.”

  “Manlius?”

  “Not even a maybe. Only one who thinks he could is Manlius.”

  “There was Geshler Padaborn once,” mused Domino Tight, “but she took him down in the end.”

  Jacques finished another stein. He smiled, as if to himself. “Sure, after he was already a prisoner, and had escaped her cordon.”

  Domino Tight nodded. “Speaking of the pasdarm, how did that play out? Which one retired, Epri or Manlius?”

  “You have a way of asking things … Don’t know. Message packets ain’t caught up yet. I come here direct from Henrietta, but Oschous, Dawshoo, and them went to Ashbanal to collect Manlius. Which reminds me. They’ll be looking you up soon. Big play coming, and you’re the man for it. Or one of them. Seven Shadows in the play.”

  “Seven!”

  “And our flocks too, I guess.”

  “What’s the play? I suppose you already know, being in the Inner Circle and all.”

  “Yeah, I got it writ down somewhere. I’ll let you know.”

  Domino Tight grimaced. “Well, I always did like surprises. Who else is in? Can you tell me that?”

  “Oh, beside you and me, there’s, lessee…” He counted on his fingers. “My copain, Little Jacques—I hit ’em high, he hits ’em low—Oschous himself, Ravn, Manlius … Oh, and Padaborn.”

  “Padaborn!”

  “Yeah. Padaborn’s back. Showed up on Henrietta just after most of us left, courtesy of your old friend, Ravn Olafsdottr. She tracked him down over in the League, bagged him up, and brought him back.”

  The curly-haired Shadow finished his schooner. “How … interesting. Ekadrina know?”

  Jacques grinned. “That’s the problem with the Long Tall One. You never know what she knows.”

  “Padaborn…” said Domino Tight. “The greatest of the Shadows … He’ll give the Cause a new life.”

  “If you believe in the Cause.”

  “Well, if Ravn could bag Padaborn and haul his sorry ass back over this side of the Rift, he isn’t half the man he used to be.”

  “Way I hear it, he’s four or five times the man he used to be. But they tell me he knows the way in.”

  “In where?”

  Big Jacques gazed at the ceiling with pursed lips. Domino Tight made a sour face.

  “Oh. By the way,” Jacques added, “you know someone in the Secret City, doncha?”

  Domino Tight nodded. “Tina Zhi. She works in the Gayshot Bo.”

  “Yeah, those smoochin’ good looks of yours draws ’em in like a landing grid, especially the geeka girls in the Tech Ministry. She knows her way around there, don’t she? The Secret City? Maybe has maps and floor plans and crap. Knows where each of the Names lives. Staff sizes.”

  Domino Tight smiled crookedly. “Maybe. But of course you can’t actually tell me what the play is.”

  Big Jacques spread his arms. “I didn’t tell you, did I? See what you can get from her.” He pushed himself to his feet and whistled, and five of the patrons in the bar stood, too. “Well, see ya ’round, Curly.”

  “Or not.”

  The Big Shadow left by the front, preceded and followed by his magpies. “Never leave by the way you came” was a maxim of t
he Abattoir. Domino Tight’s Number Two magpie had been sitting at the bar. Now she came by the booth. “I don’t even have to guess who that was,” she said. “How’s the analysis going?”

  “I’m running a time series now.” His instrument pinged and, without missing a beat, he said, “I’ve just finished running a time series.” He glanced at the plot superimposed on a map of Cambertown. “Root! No wonder it took so long. The barycenter is nonstationary. Our bird is on the wing. He must have twigged, because it looks like he’s probing for us. Tell the flock to fall back on refuge…” He struck a random number generator. “… three.”

  The magpie chirped. “Just like a pasdarm,” she said. “With a planet-sized arbor.”

  A toss of the head gathered the other two magpies in the tavern. The banty man turned and for a moment locked eyes with Domino Tight before he professed interest in the engravings on the walls. “Out the back,” Tight told the magpies. “Standard formation. Taverner, what does your surveillance say?”

  It was not a nice neighborhood. The man behind the bar checked his screens. “Alley-the rear empty be-presently…”

  They each pulled dazers from their belts and tugged their hoods up over their heads. The tavern-keeper pretended not to notice. Just another day in the Seventh District.

  Standard formation meant Number Five and Number Fourteen would go out first—one breaking to the left, one to the right—and Number Two would go out last as a rear-guard. But at the last moment, Number Two tugged Domino Tight by the shoulder and pushed out past him.

  And that meant that when the Shadow came out last, he had a perfect view of his Number Two magpie as she was shot down from ambush. Dispersal armor could dissipate the pulse, attenuate the load density; but not if the shot was in the face. Two fell backward, her face blackened, her eyes melted, her lips and tongues blistered and congealed. Domino Tight used her toppling body for a momentary shield and broke left, away from the main boulevard. He tumbled into a protective doorway.

  “Got the bitch!” cried Number Five, who shared the doorway. “She was over behind the trash bins. No escape. Suicide mission.” He glanced at his master. “Shoulda been you coming out third. Two had good instincts.”

  “Aye. ‘Always do the unexpected.’ See that she’s tagged for pickup. She’ll go in the Rose Garden. Assassin have a second?”

  “Don’t they always? Might have flown if he thought the primary succeeded. That’s ‘you’ lying on the alley over there.”

  “Good theory. Test it.”

  Number Five stepped out of the doorway, but with his face averted.

  The pulse took him on the armor and he convulsed and dropped. From the other side, Number Fourteen spotted the backup and sliced him up with a flechette gun.

  Domino Tight tugged on Five’s leg while Fourteen went to blacklight the two assassins. “You all right, mate?”

  “Y-yes,” said Five. “Just j-jangled. Dispersal armor b-better than n-nothing, but n-not all that much b-better.”

  The Shadow laughed. He had used that line himself.

  “Pendragon’s chrysanthemum,” Fourteen told him over the link. “Both of them. Tag ’em for pickup?”

  Domino Tight glanced at Number Two’s body. “No. Strip their identifiers. If Pendragon’s magpies think they’ll never sleep in the Rose Garden, they may hesitate to do his bidding.”

  Fourteen looked at him from across the alley. “If we start pulling their identifiers, they’ll stat pulling ours,” he pointed out. “‘The dead take no sides,’” he quoted. “Everyone agreed on that chapter from the onset. They’re dead once, master. Why kill them a second time? What more can they do?”

  Domino Tight sighed and wondered at the wisdom of a war fought with rules. “Very well, tag them.” Then he opened the link. “Listen, my flock,” he said. “The mum has found the lyre. Two has retired the service. Continue shifting. Who’s watching the crosshairs?”

  “One and Twelve,” came the answer.

  Domino Tight sighed again. Another agreed chapter was “Don’t spook the sheep.” Removing the Yuts’ga Talker was supposed to be a tragic accident. If it looked like assassination, the sheep-cops started asking cui bono. “One. Twelve,” he said. “Move the target. But move his protectors first.”

  “Ah, so that is how to suck an egg!” That was One answering. Close enough to winning a name to treat with her master as an equal.

  “Do it.” Domino Tight closed the link. “Right,” he told the others. “Let’s blow this place.”

  At that point, he learned that the dead did sometimes take sides. Both assassins had worn dead-man’s packs, and when the timers ran out the blasts took Domino Tight and Number Five and left no trace of Number Fourteen but a thin film of oil on the paving.

  “Not exactly what I meant,” murmured Domino Tight before darkness took him.

  * * *

  Big Jacques set up a command center in an old warehouse along the River Cola in the Fourteenth District of Cambertown. He was the sentimental sort and saw no reason to site a potential combat zone in an area frequented by the sheep. “We’re supposed to keep things on the q.t.,” he reminded his flock.

  When he had his equipment set up and linked to the string of microsatellites he had strewn in orbit on his arrival, he took reports from his flock. Seven would take the ship to the forward libration point, near the ruins of an old Commonwealth habitat. One had remained at Inbound to follow Ekadrina when once she had appeared.

  Two, who was monitoring planetary news distributors, said, “That a good idea, boss, leaving One up there? What if she spots him? We should bushwhack her at Arrival Groundside. She won’t be expecting you.”

  Big Jacques leaned back on the shipping crate he had appropriated for a seat and linked his hands behind his head. “First off, One has one of those baby faces that blends right in with the sheep. Looks innocent.”

  “No one’s that innocent.”

  “Said he looked it; didn’t say he was. Second off, a bushwhack at Arrivals ain’t artistic. Thing that griped me most about the Life was hunting down all those sheep. A corrupt governor, an uppity businessman, an ambitious swoswai. All they do is whine and cower when you corner ’em. What sport, that? Third off, Yuts’ga’s got five spaceports. Where do we set up the ambush?”

  “She’ll come down here, won’t she?” the magpie asked. “At Number Three. I mean, she’s coming to meet with Pendragon, and he’s set up here in Cambertown.”

  “Yeah, and so’s Curly. Getting crowded. But maybe she comes down at Spaceport Two and takes skimmers over here. Main Rule of Arrivals?”

  Two sighed. “‘Never the obvious.’”

  “Yeah.” Big Jacques looked around his command center and wondered if he was being too obvious about using isolated locations. “Six,” he said, “take a couple of the boys and set up a dummy command center somewhere else. Somewhere I might have chosen. No, don’t tell me where ’less I got need-to-know. Keep an eye on the dummy from a sniper nest and see if anyone shows an interest. Make it a little more obvious than here. Use the playbook. Funnel all the comm traffic through there, but keep the link between here and the dummy site deep in the black. Two: Nothing goes in and out of here except through the funnel.”

  For a few moments bustle engulfed the warehouse as the subteam formed up, commandeered equipment, and departed. Two watched them go, then flipped up his data goggles. “Think Six is ready to solo?”

  “Were you? If the ruse works, it works. If not…” The big man shrugged.

  “If the ruse works,” said Two, “Lady Ekadrina and her whole flock could come down on them.”

  “That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

  “Master, we are in rebellion. We are not getting paid.”

  “Oh, yeah. Then we’re doing this for honor. Hey, drop the kid a message and remind him to have his boys sneak in and out of the center now and then. Foot traffic, you know.”

  “Nasty job,” said Two, “when the prey is just as able to pot
you. Give me the low hanging fruit any day.”

  “That’s how you get soft, Two.”

  “Hold one…” Two held a hand to his ear, listened, then flipped down his goggles and started scanning the planetary network. “What was the name of that tavern where Lord Domino … The Mountain Dragon? The news dispensers here say there was an explosion there. Power cell overload or something.”

  Big Jacques grunted. “Or something. Body count?”

  “Ah … The sheep are being assured that the tavern itself was undamaged and will be serving Bartholomew Black as usual in the morning. No mention of bodies.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Local bobs are investigating and the Riff of Yuts’ga is flying in from Great Hardwick in case there are Confederal implications.”

  “In case.”

  “Does the Riff know we’re on-world?”

  “Not if you ain’t told him.” Jacques tapped his comm box. “My skinny tells me the Yutsgar Riff is a loyalist. So Pendragon maybe gave him a heads-up.”

  “And…” Number Two listened again. “… Number One reports Lady Ekadrina’s ship entering parking orbit.”

  Jacques considered that. “I hate coincidences.”

  * * *

  Domino Tight felt a numbness all over his body, as if he had been sealed away from the outside world and nothing in it could touch him anymore. His head, lolling to the side, saw nothing but the back door of the tavern and the boneless body of Five. Something sharp had been accelerated by the explosion and protruded slightly from the back of the man’s head, and Domino Tight could see enough of it to be glad he could see no more. His ears rang, and sounds also seemed far away, beyond the barrier encasing him.

  But his vision had brightened, and with it, his spirits. Some of his colleagues liked to talk about “a life unworthy of life,” but when presented with the thing itself, Domino Tight found it always worthy enough.

  The tavern door opened, and the banty man stepped into the alleyway. Oh, yes, he was in the Life! Look at the way he stepped, at the way his topaz eyes sought out threats, at the ready manner in which his dazer hunted out hidey-holes and snipers’ nests. And only when satisfied, did he step clear and to the side of Domino Tight.