In the Lion's Mouth

by Michael Flynn

  He walked at an eerily canted angle, but the Shadow recognized that as the way his head was resting on the ground. His common sense, that integrated all of his sights and sounds and kinesthesia into a common image, was not yet in sync. The alley smelled orange.

  “Do you wish surcease?” the stranger asked him. He held his dazer to the ready, muzzle pointing straight up.

  Domino Tight tried to speak. “Tina,” he heard someone say, possibly himself, though it sounded like another. And why should he call on the young woman in the Gayshot Bo on far-off Dao Chetty?

  The stranger’s bristles crinkled with his smile. “No one who calls on a woman is yet ready to depart. Quickly, tell me. Are you with the rebels or the loyalists?” He had reached into his pouch and removed a packet of some sort.

  The Shadow gasped, and whispered, “Which do you want me with?”

  The other man laughed— and Domino Tight glimpsed teeth sharper than a man’s ought be. He looked to the right, toward Fishbound Street. “I can’t stay here. The smart move is to leave you, but … I don’t like ambushes. Right after you left, the taverner finished his sentence by adding ‘not’ to the end. He laughed, like he’d done something clever. I took care of that for you, in case you need company on the ferryboat.”

  The stranger opened a tear in Tight’s spun armor and pulled the rip apart. He placed his packet on the chest of Domino Tight; then he struck it hammer-wise with his fist.

  The Shadow felt nothing. His body remained laminated by the concussion, and the blow might as well have struck someone else. But fire ran through his body. A tingling returned to his fingers and toes. “Th-thank you,” he managed to gasp.

  “Don’t be too sure I’ve done you a favor. The booster won’t set your broken bones. You’d best get yourself inside a meshinospidal right soon. For now, adieu.” And the stranger stood, looked all directions, and vanished into the night.

  Domino Tight found he could move his right arm. His right leg was not so fortunate, as he could see that it lay at more angles than knees and ankles could account for.

  What the devil was a meshinospidal? His earwig had not yet resumed functioning; might need to be replaced entirely. It sounded vaguely like …

  He snatched the spent emergency packet from his chest and held it to his still immobile face so that he could see the instructions upon it.

  Printed in Gaelactic.

  His savior had been a Hound of the Ardry.

  Domino Tight laughed. He would take help whence it came and not ask too closely after it. He released the packet and the wind funneled by the alleyway caught it and it tumbled away toward Fishbound Street. “Tina,” he said again.

  And the air rippled and a woman stood before him, having just thrown a cloak back over her shoulder. Her mouth opened in an O and she knelt by his side, probing for his hurts.

  Perhaps he was delusional from the concussion. First a Hound where no Hound ought by rights to be; then a woman appearing from nowhere.

  “Tina!” he managed to say.

  “I told you to call me if you ever found yourself in trouble. You should not have waited so long, my dearest.” Then she unhooked her cloak and spread it over the both of them, and the darkness enveloped Domino Tight once more.

  * * *

  Oschous Dee Karnatika brought Dark Horse into High Yuts’ga Orbit, watching from the command chair in the control room with Ravn and Donovan to either side. Manlius, now hale, had returned to his own ship and was on his way to the Century Suns to meet with Dawshoo. Yuts’ga was a major node on the network of interstellar “tubes” and the number of ships in port was considerable. It was not a difficult docking for all that, as the Long Moon had plenty of facilities, and long-term parking was shifted by valet over to the First Equilibrium point.

  However, no one touches a Shadow’s ship but his trusted magpies. Oschous told Number One to “ping the parking” and see who was on-world.

  Domino Tight and Pendragon Jones. Gidula. Big Jacques.

  “Awfully crowded,” Donovan commented.

  “Yuts’ga is a major node,” said Oschous. “Many pass through.”

  “I thought Big Jacques was tracking Ekadrina,” Ravn said.

  “He was. Either he gave up, or…”

  “Or he didn’t. Is her ship here?”

  “Not overtly.” Oschous dropped the screen to the table. “There’s one other ship that didn’t respond to the ping. Courier, maybe, passing through and traveling dark.”

  “I don’t like this,” Ravn said. “We’re starting to go straight after each other.”

  Oschous swung his seat to look at her. “We’ve turned over glasses ere now. Some on our side; some on theirs. Ekadrina is probably just doing a face-check on Pendragon.”

  “I didn’t mean her. I meant Big Jacques. Sure, sometimes, trying to move or to protect an asset brought us into conflict. But Manlius go after Epri, and now Big Jacques go after Ekadrina, and not in pasdarm.”

  “It’s the way these things work,” cracked the scarred man. “Gentlemen’s agreements require gentlemen to keep them.”

  “Well, Yuts’ga big planet,” Ravn said. “Perhaps not all gone to same district, let alone same township.”

  Oschous Dee grunted. “Don’t tempt the Fates, Ravn. They’ll send them there just to spite you. Number One!”

  “Aye, master?” The magpie in the supervisor’s chair swung to face him.

  “Monitor the channels that Domino Tight and Big Jacques use. Gidula, too. Sift the other channels for sign of Pendragon or Ekadrina. Commandeer the Yutsgar Union’s comsat network, if you must. And look for their personal satellites. Let me know what you catch. I don’t like the way this is developing, and I don’t want to go in blind. Ravn, Gesh, I’ll see you again at lunch. If anything develops before then, I’ll summon you.”

  In the gray and gold corridor outside the control room, Ravn slipped her hand through Donovan’s arm. “Coom, my sweet,” she said, leading him off toward the lounge. “Perhaps we will sit and chat and I will let you have your way with me.”

  Donovan allowed himself to be led. “Don’t be too wishful of that until you know what ‘my way’ is. Do you expect a big rumble down below?”

  “Roomble? Anoother Terran woord? You must mean fight, a passage of arms.” Her teeth showed white against her lips. “Every thing will work oot fine. Once Ooschous pulls Doominoo off task, noo reason he and Pen fight. And Jacques maybe not find Ekadrina befoor she leave. Big woorld, noo?”

  But Donovan shook his head. “No, it will all go to shit, and we will be in the middle of it.”

  “You are sooch cheerful ooptimist … Boot we keep you out of it. You are too valooable to waste on sooch squabblings.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that when you finally do waste me, it will be a really crappy situation.”

  She patted his cheek with her free hand. “When oonly the best are needed.”

  “You know, it’s not like I’m incapable…”

  “Hoosh, my darling. Remember my advice.”

  “Oschous knows. There are no flies on him.”

  “Noo flies? You have the foony way of speaking. Come, in here.”

  The ship’s lounge was broad and circular, decorated in silver and black. On the wall were embedded a shifting array of images: places where Oschous had been, magpies that had been in his service. Game consoles, spool racks, desks, and craft stations stood about the room. Save at the beginning and the end, interstellar journeys consisted primarily of doing nothing. Some of that was taken up in training and exercise, but there was such as thing as overtraining, so everyone in the crew had developed a hobby or interest. Magpie Four Karnatika, for example, was preparing an anthropological study of the Regensthorp Sector; Magpie Six engaged herself in clay sculpture.

  Two magpies were present when Ravn and Donovan entered, one reading a screen, the other playing battle chess on a projection stage. Olafsdottr waved her arms about. “Go! Go, scat! Doonoovan would make passionate loov t
o me, and wishes noo audience.”

  The magpies laughed and one said, “I’d want no audience either, was I him.” But they gathered up their things and left the lounge, still laughing.

  Donovan frowned. “Why did you tell them that…?”

  But Ravn scythed him with an ankle sweep and he fell onto the sofa with Ravn atop him. She wrapped arms and legs around him, and it was like being baled up in wire. He could not move. “What the hell…?”

  “Hush, my sweet,” she whispered in his ear in the Gaelactic. “Listen, and listen. Oschous was bound to learn that you are hale. That could not be helped. But Gidula is the key. Whatever you do—and as long as we lie here on this couch, sweet, you may do whatever you wish—do not let Gidula know your sundry selves have come together. Billy Chins’ last message told him that you were a broken man. That is what he expected when he had me fetch you, and that is what you must show him.”

  Donovan pulled his head back enough to see genuine fear in the eyes of Ravn Olafsdottr. “Why…?” he whispered. But Ravn kissed him to stop the question; then, nuzzling his neck, she whispered again.

  “Do not ask questions for which I cannot yet give you answers. The caution is sufficient unto the day. It is worth your life, and mine.”

  “Will not Oschous tell him…?”

  “Hush. Oschous is clever. Knowledge is power. He does give it away. Mmm, you are good kisser.”

  “When I have to, I can play a role.” Once again, he found his words smothered.

  “Tell me,” Ravn whispered between kisses. “Whatever. Become. Of Billy. Chins.”

  “He retired.”

  Ravn fell still for a moment. “How … sad,” she said.

  “He wasn’t too happy about it, either; but I wasn’t ready to retire myself.”

  “How fortunate for my present pleasures, then,” Olafsdottr said and resumed her caresses. When a time went by with no further warnings, Donovan disengaged.

  “Anything else?”

  “Ooh, my sweet. We must not be too obvious that this roll was only a role; that this ‘seduce’ was but a ruse. Play the game to completion, darling. I told you before that we would become good friends someday. What better day than today?”

  But if no drug could ever completely dull the whole of Donovan buigh, if no rite of meditation could ever completely entrance him, neither could the rush and flow of enzymes entirely engage his mind. The Silky Voice was seduced; but the Fudir stood aside, faithful to the memory of a woman who hated him, and Inner Child, as always, kept watch, and the Sleuth tried to deduce what it all meant.

  Who does she want this conversation kept secret from? he asked the Fudir.

  Oschous. Who else has eyed and eared this vessel? The question is what did she want kept secret from him. Not the condition of our mind. He already knows.

  Oh, that is obvious. What she conceals from our host is that Gidula mustn’t know. And notice what she said.

  Do not ask questions for which I cannot yet give you answers, the Pedant helpfully reminded them.

  Cannot yet give the answers; not that she does not yet know them.

  To a nonnative speaker, the distinction between “cannot’” and “can not” may …

  Shut up, Pedant. How are Donovan and the others doing?

 

  Yes, thought the Fudir. There is more than a peck of trouble here, and it’s not all down on Yuts’ga at all.

  CENGJAM GAAFE: THE SEVENTH INTERROGATORY

  It cannot be said that a woman of deep golden skin can flush, but Bridget ban has turned brass as Olafsdottr chants her seduction of Donovan buigh. Méarana has watched her mother tighten as the Shadow described each loose caress; and she smiles to watch, a little from alarm, but not entirely so. Graceful Bintsaif shows clear signs of distress and her tickler is half out from her holster. There are ways to stop this taunting torrent.

  But Bridget ban cuts the narration short. She stands and trembles, fists clenched by her side. “Faithless dog!” she snarls.

  “Cu,” says Graceful Bintsaif, hoping to assuage her anger. “Did you not hear? He was disengaged. His mind was elsewhere.”

  Bridget ban turns on her underling, waves an arm at the now-silent Shadow who watches, face composed in turn to the three women who interrogate her. “How would she know where his minds were?” the Hound snarls. “He has plenty enough to spare.”

  She holds that pose for a moment of silence which no one dares break. But at the juncture at which the accusatory arm has begun to lower, Ravn Olafsdottr speaks.

  “To whom was he unfaithful?” she asks with a liar’s innocence. “Was there someone perhaps with whom he had once exchanged a troth?”

  Bridget ban makes no answer to this and her golden skin turns almost tin.

  “If I foond soomthing discarded by the wayside,” the Shadow continues in Alabastrine, “am I blamewoorthy if I clean it oop and care for it? Beside,” she adds in Gaelactic, “I’m after promising him help in some small matter, and I have every intention o’ doin’ so. He is a despicable old scoundrel, but he is not without his charms.”

  Méarana wonders if she is the only one who has noticed the precise words of accusation her mother had flung out. Faithless dog? Of the three so entangled, which was the Hound? She bends over her harp to hide her smile, and begins to pluck out the melody of an old Die Bold courtship song. The Fudir had told her once that it was derived from a much older song of Terra, sung to a different purpose. She does not intone the words, but she knows that her mother recognizes them.

  I fled him down the labyrinth of my mind

  And hid from him with running laughter …

  She notes from the posture of her mother’s body that she has turned to glare at her, but she does not raise her head to meet that gaze, lest she herself burst out in laughter. She plays on, half-mocking, half-somber, for such matters are too serious for anything but jest. With the grace and intricacies of her finger work, she demands silence from the others, and receives it until she comes at last to the final unsung lines:

  All you fancied lost I’ve stored for you at home.

  So rise, my darling, clasp my hand, and come.

  Only when she has stilled her strings does Méarana Swiftfingers look her mother in the eye. “Really, Mother, what did you want them to do? Ravn had to tell him something Oschous could not hear, but without making it obvious that she was doing so. Tell me you have never used similar ploys yourself.”

  This last, she adds with a touch of heat that surprises mother and daughter alike, for Bridget ban had once been notorious for such wiles. The silence between them is broken finally by Graceful Bintsaif, who says self-consciously, “There is another mystery here.”

  “Again,” laughs the Shadow, “oonly one.”

  “What was Gw…” She stops at Bridget ban’s gesture.

  But Ravn completes her sentence. “What was Gwillgi Hound doing on Yuts’ga? Ooh, my sweet Doominoo may not knoow him, but thoose toopaz eyes I have seen before, to my great displeasure. It was sweet, what he did, and I can only pray the Fates keep the two of them from facing off in the pasdarm of life. Meanwhile, I cannot suppose that the Kennel has had no hint of our struggle, or that they have not sent observers to sniff around its edges.”

  “He was only observing, then,” says Graceful Bintsaif. It is the dream of every young Hound that she will be sent one day on that most dangerous of quests. Few indeed have made that crossing; fewer still have returned.

  “Ooh, what family engrossed in quarrel welcomes a neighbor’s peep at window?”

  “There’s a deeper mystery,” says Méarana—and she wonders momentarily if Olafsdottr had described her intimacies with such detail in order to distract Bridget ban from it. “That Hounds may spy within the Confederation is no great secret, but that your saga should brook bad art is.”

  “Yes,” says Ravn Olafsdottr with a congratulating smile to the harper, “it is very tr
oubling.”

  “What is?” asks Bridget ban, irritated beyond measure by her guest-prisoner, her daughter, and even her protégé. She has been diverted by her own thoughts, but now reviews what has been said and nods. “Oh. Of course.”

  Olafsdottr’s smile is grim. “Aye. Domino Tight has a lover in the Gayshot Bo on Dao Chetty, and this lover just happens to be in a back alley in Cambertown when he is wounded? Ah, my sweets, that begs too much of chance. The Fates are ne’er inclined to aid romance.”

  VIII. YUTS’GA: JACQUES, IN A BOX

  Domino Tight was neither so clever as Oschous, nor so powerful as Big Jacques. He was neither so agile as Little Jacques, nor so wise as Gidula. What he was, was charming. He could charm, it was said, the skin off a snake. He had, all unwittingly, charmed the Technical Name.

  “Unwitting,” because had he known Tina Zhi’s true nature, he would have run very fast in another direction, in any other direction. The loves of the Names were like their other passions: too vast and too intense for any lesser vessel to contain. It would burn him out, use him up.

  Though it is not clear whether, however fast and far he ran, he could have escaped, because it may have been less his charm than her choice. Charm, after all, depends a great deal on a willingness on the other part to be charmed. Perhaps she saw him one day and was struck by the curl of his hair, where it lay across his brow. Perhaps she simply wondered what life was like outside the Secret City. Or perhaps mere cold calculation moved her. With a Name, you could never tell, and all three might be one. But however it befell, his charm was no less real, and no less effective.

  * * *

  When Domino Tight came to his senses once more, he found himself in a downy bed set upon a flag-stoned patio in a bower of oak and laurel. Birds sang intricate and unfamiliar songs and a dull orange sun was approaching his zenith in an amethyst sky. The breeze was cool and comforting and brought with it a scent of lily and hyacinth. The sheets that draped his naked body were warm, despite their diaphanous weave. Domino Tight considered his body, counted the scars that ornamented it, and found more than his wont.