“Fool! She knew it not.”
Billy shrugged. “Now my shadow hunts me, also, for I did nothing to punish her. For this reason did I attach myself to you, and in your protection flee my station on Harpaloon. Listen, and I will tell thee something. There is a struggle in the Lion’s Mouth.’ the lamp that was lit has flared again.’ Agent hunts agent.’ the names that were not forgotten have been remembered.’”
“What is that to us, but an occasion to cheer each side in turn?”
“The woman at the park had sympathy for that remembrance. So hath I. My shadow does not. Should he find thee, he will kill thee.”
“He will try.” Donovan held the knife in throwing position. “As you damn near did.”
Billy closed his eyes and let out his breath. He sensed that he would live the day. “I feared a trap, and threw without thought. Who else knows of me?”
Donovan laughed. “Am I a fool? They all know. Captain Barnes. The whole crew. I told them before I arranged this meeting.”
“What then is to be our resolution?”
“Doest thou truly reject Those of Name?”
“I do.”
“And all Those works?”
“I do. I have trawled the League for others of like sympathy, dispatching them back to the Confederation, there to aide in Their overthrow. But my usefulness is now at an end, and I flee myself for my life.”
Donovan nodded. “Give thanks to whichever gods please thee that thou livest this day for the morrow.”
“Let me not question my fortune, good or ill, nor tempt the gods, but why extend my life for even one hour longer? Is there not a scripture that sayeth, ‘Better safe than sorry’?”
Donovan grinned. “We are in the Wild, boy. And another scripture saith,’ the enemy of mine enemy is my friend.’ Another good eye, another skilled pair of hands, would not be unwelcome—provided the eyes may be trusted and the hands not turn against us. And this trust will be proofed not by thy word, but by thy self-interest. For in the Wild ‘We must all hang together lest we hang separately.’”
When Teodorq Nagarajan returned to his quarters in the “village,” he sensed another presence waiting in the darkened room, and fell to a crouch without turning on the light. His eyes searched for that shadow within the shadows that did not belong.
“Just tell us one thing, Teddy,” said a voice that had grown familiar to him.
Teodorq grinned and rose and turned on the lights. He tucked his nine back in its holster. “Yuh sure gave me a start, boss.” The dazer in Donovan’s hand worried him, but the scarred man held the weapon pointed to the ceiling, so he didn’t worry too much.
“Just tell us one thing, Teddy,” Donovan said again. “Did you provide the drug she used?”
“Sure. It’s the potion we drink when we go on visionquests to learn our true self.”
Donovan grunted. “It works.” He clicked the safety on and returned his weapon to its resting place. “You can put the thong back on the knife, too. Your answers were too guileless. You really thought you were doing us a favor.”
Teodorq shrugged. “I couldn’t let her go into the Free Worlds with only him to protect her.”
“You’re a loyal man, Teddy.”
He shrugged. “She’s paying me.”
“Teddy, we have one more call to make. Contact Sofwari and tell him the team will meet in half an hora, on the Green.”
“You want me to tell Billy, too?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
An important quality of a harper’s art is the ability not to miss a beat. But when Méarana of Dangchao finished freshening up and returned from the vanity to the sitting room of her quarters to find Donovan buigh sitting in the big blue padded chair that she had taken as her favorite, it required all of her mastery to maintain her rhythm.
“You keep turning up,” she said, “like a bad ducat.”
“And you keep leaving us behind; so it evens up.”
“After a while, one tires of dragging and pushing and prodding. Had ye not dragged your heels…”
“Are you going to offer us a drink? I thought you might have a bottle of uiscebeatha in your room.”
“Harp, clothing, weapons, and uisce. The four essentials.”
“I get by without the harp. In a pinch, I can get by without the clothing.”
There was a cold-well in the suite’s galley and Méarana produced from it a bottle of Gatmander vawga, called Shining Moon. “Will this do? It’s been aging since at least last week.”
Donovan said, “You better watch that stuff. Someone could dope it with gods-know-what and you’d never taste it.”
Méarana had been pouring two drinks and at that she spilled on the counter. “That wasn’t a fair shot.”
“Because it hit the target?”
“No.” She attacked the spill with a cloth. “Because it wasn’t necessary.” She carried the two glasses in either hand and gave one to Donovan.
The scarred man lifted his glass as if for a toast, but Méarana simply twisted hers in her hands, staring down into it. “To the quest,” he said.
“There’s no need to mock.”
“Who’s mocking? It may be hopeless, but aren’t those the sort of things that needs cheering on? Isn’t that what you always say? Anyone can cheer a winner.” He tossed back half his drink in a single swallow.
Méarana took a sip and drank no more. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Leaving me on Gatmander? We’re sure it did. And as it turned out, it was.”
The harper cocked her head. “There’s something different about you.” She found the second chair and sank into it. “I don’t know why that should surprise me. You have more differences than any man I know. You came up in the luggage boat, of course.”
“Of course. The pilot was greatly surprised. Most of his luggage has little to say.”
Méarana would not look at him. “Almost, I wish you hadn’t made it on board.” When Donovan made no response, she turned to face him. “Because if you hadn’t, I might have been able to forget. Now every time I see you, I’ll remember what I did.”
“We all have our sins,” said the scarred man. “Sometimes, it’s good to remember them.” He paused, and added, “I remember some rather good ones.”
She could not prevent the laugh from breaking forth. But it was a trick and it made her angry. “Why did you come? This journey is hard enough without your constant pessimism.”
“You can’t sip this stuff,” Donovan said to his vawda. “There’s no point in lingering over the taste. It hasn’t any. Just toss it back and let it hit like a hammer.”
“You have odd ideas of fun.” She studied her glass and then took the hard swallow he had recommended.
“You stocked this stuff. If we had to guess, you did it for its analgesic effect.”
“You didn’t have to guess,” she reminded him. She set her glass aside and crossed her legs. “You haven’t told me why you scrambled aboard the Blankets and Beads.”
“There are…all sorts of reasons.”
“Try a few.”
“Well, to find out what happened to your mother, for one.”
“We had that reason from the beginning, and you were eager to quit back then. And don’t bring up the weapon she was trying to find. Same objection.”
“We promised Zorba we would take care of you.”
“So you are here under duress?”
Donovan closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. Silence gathered, and Méarana could hear the faint whisper of the air recirculator and, outside her cabin, the murmur of distant voices on the green. Then he took a deep breath and said, “Because…I am your father.”
The harper’s expression did not change. “Is this the part where I go all warm and gooey?”
“We didn’t think you would take the news so well.”
“It’s not even news. Why do you think I came looking on Jehovah? Mother had told me everything about my father but h
is name. He was strong, she told me, and wise, and deep down, a good man. Can you imagine the shock it was to find you?”
“Did she mention that we were handsome?”
She leaned half out of her chair. “Don’t make a mockery of this, Donovan! I won’t have it!”
“What did you expect after twenty years? We never knew you existed. She cut us off.”
“And what did you expect? You ran out on her and took the Dancer for yourself. How do you think she felt?”
“You know why I did what I did.”
“But she did not. She never knew. She went on her last mission thinking that the man she once loved had betrayed her without a backward glance. You never called at Dangchao.”
“You saw what Those did to us. Would you have welcomed that wreck?”
“I saw what you made of yourself. If Those broke you, they had your willing help.”
Donovan struck the arm of the chair with his fist. His empty glass wobbled from the impact and fell to the floor. “Then why did you come to Jehovah? Why did you drag us onto this mad venture?”
All the anger drained out of her, and Méarana sank back into her chair. “Because I wanted a father and a mother. I wanted both, but I would have settled for either one. Not to raise me. God, it’s far too late for that. But to find the man that my mother once loved…? That might have been worth the effort.”
Donovan reached down and picked up his empty glass from the floor. He set it this time on the side table. “Did you find him?”
“I caught a glimpse of him once in the Corner of Jehovah, on the rim of a rusted-out fountain. I bought him a cheap meal.”
The scarred man all but smiled at the memory. “You’ll never find what never was.”
“I’m not such a fool as that. I’ve always looked for what might yet still be.” Then she cocked her head. “Your eyes,” she said. “They’re stilled.”
“Yes.”
She said nothing for a while, but folded her hands under her chin and studied him. For a long time, she had hesitated to call him “father,” at first from uncertainty, later from a more profound uncertainty. Now she was content to wait. It was a title that must be earned.
The rapping on the door interrupted the silence before it could fall, and when Méarana told the door to open Teodorq Nagarajan stuck his head in. “They’re waiting for us, boss.”
Donovan pointed to Méarana with a tilt of his head. “She’s the boss.”
Teodorq shifted his expectant gaze from Donovan to the harper with no change in his expression. Méarana rose.
“Let’s not keep them waiting.”
Teodorq nodded and left. Donovan rose and offered his arm to his daughter. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go find your mother.”
XII IN THE REMNANTS OF EMPIRE
Blankets and Beads entered stationary orbit above Enjrun and Méarana gathered her team in the conference room so Captain Barnes could brief them on conditions below. D.Z. unrolled a holomap on the table and they gathered around the topography that emerged. Miniature mountains loomed over green floodplains. Matchstick cities sat on earthen mounds. Captain Barnes handed out earwigs.
“The noor jessen,” she explained, “once ruled this whole region.” Her arms swept across the alluvial plain, the neighboring forestlands, and the northern foothills. “So most everybody south of the Kobberjobble Mountains will savvy the loora noor jesser. We’ve loaded the lingo into these earwigs, so yuh shouldn’t have trouble being understood’ til yuh get to ‘bout here.” She pointed to the foothills. “Once yer in the high-up hills yuh’ll need to hire local translators. Enjrunii don’t take ducats or Gladiola Bills, but if yuh deposit some hard currency with the Resident, he’ll fix yuh up with enough silver or gold for expenses.”
“We’ll put you down here,” said D.Z., pointing with his light-pen, “at Nuxrjes’r, our regular trade stop. The name means something like ‘the place where the river can be crossed.’ You can call it ‘Riverbridge’—or ‘Noor Jesser’ if you’re disinclined to cough up the necessary phlegm. It’s the southernmost point where native technology can bridge the river. The east-west pack caravans connect with the north-south river traffic.
“Nuxrjes’r got rich from the tolls, and eventually got an Empire from the riches. Then, depending on who tells the tale, she grew either too greedy or too tempting, or both, and the barbarians moved south from Kobberjobbles and east from the Blistering Badya. By the time the Bonregarde found its way into the Burnt-Over District, the old Nuxrjes’r Empire had fragmented into a dozen successor states and a rump imperium, ruled variously by barbarian warlords or soi disant counts, depending on which day of the week it was.
“Bonregarde’s, lander put all their postimperial squabbles into perspective. The warlords and counts patched up a truce and agreed that River-bridge would be a neutral city governed by a Board of Dūqs and everyone would smile for the off-worlders.”
“That was about three generations ago,” Captain Barnes said. “So far, the truce seems to be holding, though the makeup of the Board can change sudden-like. Y’might say they moved the fightin’ from outdoors to indoors. But the trade consortium made it real clear that if trouble gets out of hand we stop a-comin’. So the Resident is like an impartial referee. He enforces commercial regs, negotiates deals, and judges disputes among the Dūqs.”
Teodorq spoke up. “If this was World, there’d be a lot of resentment boiling underneath. I don’t know if these noor jessers got honor or not, but judging what I saw back in Varucciyam, they’ll wanna either kiss your ass or cut your throat—or maybe both. Not much in between.”
The First Officer wagged his light-pen at Teddy. “Hear him,” he told the others. “His folk are more advanced than the Enjrunii, but he’s closer to their way of thinking. Everyone down there will be kissy-kissy on the surface, but everything depends on what they think they can get away with. And the farther north and west you go, the less kissy-kissy they’ll be.”
Captain Barnes said, “Yuh’ll meet with the Resident first. His name is Oodalo Bentsen. He’ll see yuh git outfitted proper.” Her pen swiped through the northern mountains. “The noor jessers tell us the parking stone jewelry comes from ‘upriver,’ which means these here mountains. The Kobberjobbles.”
The holographic projection displayed a broad corduroy of high-peaked crags and deep valleys through which the upper reaches of the Aríidnux’r wound like a hungry boa constrictor. “The noor jessers call that stretch of river the Multawee, which they tell me means ‘twisted.’”
Méarana spoke up. “Why not put us down where the jewelry comes from?”
D.Z. pointed into the map. “Because we don’t know were that is. We deal only with the Dūqs in Riverbridge. Where they get the jewelry from, they don’t say.”
The pilot, Wild Bill, snorted. “As if we had time to flit around the planet.”
D.Z. said, “Men accustomed to treachery will see it everywhere.”
Inevitably, eyes turned toward Billy Chins, who flushed and protested. “When Billy ever do such? One time, name him! Ask Donovan. I come to you be safe from shadow.”
“Scared of his own shadow,” murmured Teddy.
Billy turned to him and wagged a finger. “You be scare, too, if you know’ em, the shadows. Maybe now she no catch up; but who can say? Billy good fella, good man in fight. Stick by you. You see him!”
Sofwari raised a hand. “What about pickup? If you don’t know where we’ve gone…”
“Yuh’ll have yer beacons,” Barnes told them. “They handshake with our satellites and keep yuh located. After we finish our business here, we heigh off to Ōram and Zhenghou Shuai. We’ll pick you up when we backtrack. Don’t lose yer beacons, or we’ll never find yuh.”
They discussed a few more items regarding equipment, local mores, and terrain. Then D.Z. turned off his light-pen and tucked it in his blouse pocket. “Anything to add, Captain?”
Barnes pushed her lips out and shook her head slowly. “No, but Do
novan, would yuh be good enough to stay for a few minutes?”
The others filed out. Méarana gathered her notes, capped her pocket brain, but remained seated. Barnes looked from her to Donovan, who said, “Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of her.”
The captain shrugged. “Have it your way. There’s a bottle of Megranomic kurutakki in the cabinet, aged fifteen years in oak casks. I been saving it for a special occasion.”
Donovan, who had risen at the implied request to fetch the drink, paused half out of his chair. “And this is a special occasion? Because you don’t expect to see us again?”
“I won’t lie and say I’m optimistic. Best O’ luck and everything; but…Like we told yuh, them hill tribes can be a might peckish. Pour us three, ‘Kalim,’ and be generous.”
Donovan had poised the bottle over the first glass. Now he straightened and grinned at her. “I wondered if you recognized me.”
“Didn’t at first; but it come to me, bye and bye. Or should I call you ‘Fudir’?”
Méarana suddenly understood. “Maggie Barnes! Of course! You were January’s astrogator.”
“He told yuh about that? That was in a different life. I didn’t have these silver streaks back then, I tell yuh, let alone the cap’n’s rings. But as I recollect, this man here, he come aboard New Angeles with phony papers. We coulda lost our license, so this ain’t exactly old comrades well-met! Smuggling that O’Carroll fellow back to New Eireann to restart the civil war, that didn’t sit right with me, either.”
“That’s not exactly how it was,” Donovan suggested.
“Wasn’t it? Well, that was near twenty year since, and it don’t matter no more; so let’s drink to it. I won’t ask what phony pretense yer up to now. I’d say yuh was lying about being on Kennel business, except that Méarana here says yuh are, and her, I trust.”
Donovan handed out three glasses. He lifted his and said, “To Amos January!”
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