On the Razor's Edge

by Michael Flynn

  “I had no chance earlier,” he said. “I hight Khembold Darling. It is an honor to meet you at last, Deadly One.” Then, dropping his voice, he murmured, “My father was with you in the Rising.”

  Donovan allowed as he was pleased to meet him, but he wondered quietly how, if Khmebold’s father had been a rebel, Khembold himself was still among the quick. But then it was not impossible for some to have escaped notice in the aftermath.

  “Eglay is a good ’un,” the ship’s captain went on in a normal tone, and he settled his siggy to face the contestants. “Not much for him to do here but spar and practice. Staff does all the drudge. Two times in three, he’ll knock me down. Don’t underestimate his youth and vigor. You and I are both older men, and just off a long and wearying journey. And you have sparred with Ekadrina.”

  “It was more than sparring. We should both be dead.”

  “What a man should be and what a man is often depends on the man.”

  Donovan grunted. “Well, Eglay may have youth and vigor on his side, but we have old age and treachery.”

  Number Four was already down. The crowd cheered and Eglay strode in a circle with his arms stretched upward. Then he reached down and helped the magpie to his feet and they embraced briefly. A medic ran forth to tend to the magpie’s wounds. Number Two, as Queen of the pasdarm, graced Eglay and his opponent with an absent smile. Donovan wondered if the paraperceptic were even capable of giving her full attention to anything.

  Gidula’s Number Three magpie had stepped forward. Khembold sighed. “My turn next. After months sitting in the pilothouse of a starslider.” They watched Three spar gracefully with the seneschal. He was fast and agile and landed a few good blows that in context could have been telling, but he was betrayed by the boundaries of the ring and the Judge blew him offsides. Cornered, he ran out of wiggle room and fell as if poleaxed. The medics carried him off on a floater.

  Khembold sighed. “Eglay could be taken down a peg. Well, I can put on a decent show.” He siggied to the end of the bridge, touched the banner with his staff, and leapt off his scooter. He and his colleague bowed to each other and Khembold launched a whirling side-kick as they rose from the bow.

  But Eglay had been ready for just such a play and danced away from it.

  Donovan stopped watching. Silky, he thought, give us plenty of juice. Brute, are we up to this? Our body, I mean.

  Ya want we should fight, or take a dive?

  Donovan considered the matter. “Fudir?” he muttered.

  The Fudir rubbed their hands on their pants. “I don’t think Gidula set this up so we could take a dive.”

  Ya think Gidula set it up, then, not this Eglay?

  Gidula’s conflicted, the young man said. He wants what he thinks we know, but he doesn’t want Geshler Padaborn hale and whole and idolized. He can’t have us killed. Too many people know we’re in his jurisdiction and some of his own magpies might turn on him. He wants to cripple and humiliate us without obvious assault, so a nice, friendly bout to lull us and an “accidental” rabbit punch that the other rebels can believe.

  “Sir?” Pyati tugged his sleeve. “Are you all right?”

  Donovan shrugged him off. “Any more senior magpies?”

  Five tried to look modest and failed. “Eglay’s good. Last time, he beat Khembold and went through eight top magpies before he went down. He’s not unbeatable. Last year, Khembold and he wrangled for a good quarter clock before Khembold won, and another time Number One got him with a surprise move.”

  “I’d wondered if there were a Magpie One Gidula.”

  “Detached assignment, I was told,” Pyati said. “He’s about ready for his own name. I could soften Eglay up before you take him.”

  “No. I’m hungry.”

  Pyati looked at him. “Meaning…?”

  “I have to get past Eglay to reach the buffet table.”

  His magpie chuckled. “Oh, well said! Oop. You sooner get your chance than later. Khembold twisted a little too much on that right, and left himself open. Fare well, master.”

  The last remark was called out as Donovan coasted forward on his siggy to the edge of the bridge, where he dismounted. The festive crowd gathered there cheered his appearance, though the Brute’s keen ear picked out a hubbub of questions about his identity and even more questions on the odds. Gidula sat upon his ebony throne, leaned forward with his arms resting on his knees and a look of curious indifference on his face. As King of the pasdarm, he could show no favoritism. Number Two, on a lesser throne beside him, was as usual preoccupied with a half-dozen different matters, but with one slice of her attention she watched him approach Eglay Portion.

  Eglay was slightly the worse for wear. As good as he was in the arts martial, a certain amount of damage was inevitable. What sort of honor was it, Donovan wondered, that drove these people to make such gorgeous spectacles of themselves for no other purpose than to inflict mutual injury? Eglay’s right eye was puffed and he favored his left leg.

  Gidula spoke. “You have not dressed to honor the occasion, Geshler Padaborn.”

  “What?” Donovan replied. “These are my dining clothes. Is there no banquet following?”

  Eglay sucked in his breath. “Bow the honors, then, so the Lady may wave her kerchief.”

  “Let the gods wave the kerchief,” the Fudir told him. “When the breeze next snaps the pasdarm banner, that will be our signal.”

  The idea was novel, but Donovan saw its immediate appeal in the brightening eye of Eglay Portion, and heard it in the sighs of the magpies gathered round. “Nobly said,” Donovan heard one comment. “Place it in Fate’s hand.”

  Eglay nodded and faced the pasdarm banner, but Donovan watched the spruces on the side of Mount Lefn. The wind was from the south this day, and he awaited the ripple in the needles that signaled a breeze coming toward the bridge. With the other eye, he watched the banner.

  “Hit the juice, Silky,” the Fudir murmured, and the Silky Voice, back in the hypothalamus, sent adrenaline coursing through him. The chattering crowd, the rippling river, the birds in flight seemed to slow. He caught a motion in the trees to the right, where the river made a slight bend and ancient and vine-grown stone pillars rose from the water. The shiver crawled through the trees and the Sleuth gauged its speed and said, Three, two, one, take it, Brute.

  And Donovan lashed out just as the pasdarm banner snapped. When he completed his turn, he found Eglay prostrate on the ground.

  The crowd fell momentarily silent, as if they too had been stunned by the move. Then the voices began. “Geshler struck prematurely.” But another said, “No, but it was on the very spur of the moment.” “I hardly saw the kick.” “Did his hand move?” And then a great roar of approval parted their lips. It was not that they enjoyed seeing Eglay brought down, but that he had been brought down so smartly. It had been, in its own way, a work of art.

  Donovan stood over Eglay and extended a hand. “At a later time,” he told his opponent quietly, “we will meet when you have not been wearied beforehand by so many others.”

  Eglay took the hand and Donovan pulled him to his feet. A very short moment then lasted a very long time as the seneschal evaluated the man who had beaten him.

  Perhaps Gidula had told Eglay to break Padaborn, had told him of his terrible injuries and long recovery, and intimated that a victory would be simple. Perhaps, as the Fudir and the Inner Child suspected, he had even been told to land blows beyond the bylaws of the pasdarm. But the fight had been to the first fall and he could not now move against Padaborn without seeming small in the eyes of his colleagues. Finally he said, “Teach me how you did that.”

  He reached to embrace Donovan, and Khembold, seeing this, limped forward so that the three of them joined in a fraternal embrace. This brought the crowd to a fever pitch of ecstasy, and Donovan knew he had made another friend on Gidula’s staff.

  From the look on Gidula’s face, he knew it, too.

  VI. ONE OF THE PLEASANTEST THINGS IN L
IFE

  Gidula’s compound—the Forks—was a quiet campus consisting of a hundred buildings clustered on the flat space in the fork of the rivers. These included private dwellings, barracks, commercial buildings, an athletic complex, administrative offices, as well as koi ponds and water-channels and tree-shaded garden-parks. The buildings wore soft autumnal shades that blended with the terrain. Once every twelveday, trucks with fresh produce choppered down from the villages on the surrounding heights to a farmers’ market. Anything not provided locally came from Ketchell, the nearest city. While not entirely self-sufficient, the compound did produce most of her own basics. Maintenance sheds, machine shops, a forming shop for plastics and another for ceramics, and various other workshops lined the small creek that wound through the gap between Summary and Kojj Hills to empty into the Tware upstream of the Lye. All of this was carried out by a remarkably small staff, nominally directed by Eglay Portion.

  Gidula gave Donovan the liberties of the Forks, and the scarred man spent the better part of two months in nature hikes, faux hunting, and research in the Administration building library before he made his move.

  The Old One, for his part, caught up on his correspondences, and couriers exchanged cryptic messages with Oschous and Big Jacques at Old Eighty-two, with Manlius and Dawshoo in the Century Suns, and with Domino Tight in a safe house in San Jösing. The worlds of the Triangles were close spaced, no more than a few days apart by superluminal tube, so it was practical for messengers to speed back and forth among them.

  The other conspirators were under deep cover, yet Gidula lounged openly at his main stronghold. The Fudir wondered about that for a while, until Eglay told him that Gidula’s reputation was one of meddlesome neutrality. Even at the Battle of the Warehouse, he had acted to break up the fight, not to support either side. Ekadrina could testify that he had rescued her as well as Padaborn. Past his fighting prime, he gave quiet advice to the Revolution, but this was not known to anyone save the inner circle who had met at Henrietta. Even so, his magpies kept wary watch—on approaching air traffic, on ground-cars, and on peddlars and others who arrived by shank’s mare. There was a surprising amount of traffic, but it was a lonely outpost, Eglay said, and traveling companies of players and other entertainers were always welcome. As were deliveries of simulations and other games. To guard against “system twisters,” nothing was ever sipped off the stream but must be delivered and tested in cartridge form.

  There was a continual round of exercises, both physical and mental, by which the Deadly Ones maintained their acumen. Donovan discovered that he could manage his fights in such a way as to make his opponents look good. He even contrived to lose a bout or two on occasions when he thought he might do so in safety. He also nurtured his relationships with the staff. The Fudir could be an engaging personality when he turned on the charm, and both the Silky Voice and the young man could empathize with cooks and gardeners every bit as well as with magpies, couriers, and Shadows.

  The scarred man sought to win magpies and others in key positions, changing black stones for white, surrounding Gidula with his own people. He was not so foolish as to suppose that, should a break come with Gidula, most of his newfound friends would go anywhere than with their first loyalties, but some of them he judged as fairly won over, and he knew that Gidula must worry on it some. Pyati was his for a certainty, and so also Seventeen and several others.

  By the same token, Two would never be his, never be anyone’s but Gidula’s. And Two, he had begun to think, was the single most dangerous magpie on Gidula’s staff, with the possible exception of the still-absent Number One. Possibly more dangerous than Eglay and Khembold, who were full-ranked Shadows. Donovan sometimes watched the others work out, and had sat in the bleachers of the pleshra while Two had defeated four midranked magpies in rapid order, including two in a single bout. And the whole time, Inner Child knew, a part of Two’s multifacted attention had been kept on him, where he sat in an upper tier. He began to wonder if there was more to Number Two than simple paraperception. He had gotten hints last year from Oschous that there were others who had undergone the operation that had formed his inner multitude.

  She might be one of us, the Sleuth hazarded.

  “For some values of the term ‘us,’” Donovan responded.

  * * *

  The weather was brisk: frosty in the morning, but warming up toward the afternoon. On several occasions, Gidula took him out on faux hunts on the reserve atop the northern heights. They were driven in a quadwheeler up Kojj Hill to the Nose and then over the Outer Ridge. From there, the hunting reserve rolled flat to the distant blue ridge that marked the northern marge of a great valley. Here and there, coppices of spruce and larch and bushy thickets along the streams broke the monotony. The game was primarily beeshun and elk on the plain, and moose in the thickets.

  At the crest of the Nose, Gidula halted the hunting party and, while his magpies stood about pointedly looking elsewhere for imaginary threats, he stumped heavily to where the hill fell off abruptly to the waters of the Tware. Gidula removed his hunting cap and held it in both hands while he gazed northward up the mist-shrouded river and the wind through the funnel of the gap whipped his clothing. After a few moments of this, he made a hidden sign with his right hand, knelt, and, gathering up a bit of gravel from the ground, tossed it chattering over the side.

  Gidula returned to the vehicle and, closing the door, tapped the driver on the shoulder, and they continued over the Outer Ridge. Gidula did not explain why they had stopped and by this signal Donovan knew better than to ask.

  Soon enough, the outriders located a moose, and Gidula, as host, graciously deferred to his guest. The scarred man passed on an offer to implant a niplip, a locator beacon, in the creature. What was the point of hunting if you did not actually have to hunt? Instead, he gave the Sleuth his head and let him cut for sign while the Pedant compared footprints and scat with sundry memories of catalogs, lists, and databases. They followed the moose into a stand of tall, cathedral trees, through whose needle leaves the sunlight was sifted like flour. The floor was clear of underbrush and the morning birds scolded his approach. Moss and tiny yellow and violet flowers carpeted the rocks, and a chill mist hugged the ground. Every outline seemed softened by the morn.

  He came across a human footprint and studied it for some seconds before scuffing it out with his boot. Later, he reached a break in the trees and found a meadow of short, dark grasses and large, mossy boulders enclosed by spruce on three sides. Overhead, branches wove a canopy. A stream trickled through the meadow, accumulating in small pools that promised, when the spring rains came, to soak the meadow into swamp. He saw the ski-marks of a lander in the mud near one of the pools and filed the information away.

  He spied the moose near the opening at the farther end of the meadow and crept closer, going to his belly and wriggling behind a deadfall of trees. He tested the wind (he was downwind) and raised himself up to the edge of the fallen trunk and painted the moose with his spot rifle and—

  * * *

  —and he peers above the parapet of a ruined building, his hands choking his spot rifle. Stone lion heads gape from the cornices beside him. Bolt tanks flank the triton fountain in the rubble-littered plaza below. Bullets sing off the plasteel and he ducks back down. The assault has failed. The Protector’s flag still flies over Coronation House.

  He rolls to another position, estimates where the closest tank must be, then pops up and “paints” the tank with his spot rifle and ducks back down before the chatterguns walk in on him. He waits, but nothing happens.

  “The Protectors must have sanded the satellite,” he says. “Our submunitions didn’t lock on to the painter!”

  There is no answer. He looks around. The parapet is empty save for the dead.

  The sky turns white and the building shudders. He feels a tingling even through the insulation of his shenmat. The bolt tank has fired. It will be several minutes while it recharges. But of course there are fo
ur tanks, one at each intersection, and they will take turns. Across the plaza the Chancellery flashes and the walls fall in upon themselves as the building comes down. Another post lost. How much longer can he hold the Education Ministry?

  A young woman touches him on the shoulder. She is young, hardly more than a girl, unarmored, uninsulated, barefoot amidst the broken glass and masonry that litter the rooftop. She wears a Doric chiton and seems too delicate even to live on this world, let alone in the hell it has become.

  There is a way out of this, she tells him, and her voice is like a melody.

  * * *

  Donovan rolled back panting behind the fallen tree trunk.

  A memory, said the Sleuth. But when and where?

  “And whose?” the Fudir added.

  “Pollyanna?” Donovan said. “You were there, on the rooftop. What was that?”

  I don’t know, the girl in the chiton answered. It was muscle memory. It was the heft of the rifle, the motions of our body, that evoked it. Ask the Brute.

  But the Brute only shrugged.

  “A genuine memory?” Donovan proposed. “Or a false one, implanted by suggestion after all those interrogations, the recordings played while we slept?”

  When the people around you continually tell you things about yourself, you eventually begin to “remember” them.

  And thank you for that tidbit, Pedant. I think the memory was real. We were in the Secret City during Padaborn’s Rising.

  “But false memory or real,” demanded the Fudir, “which of us had it?”

  Who cares? said the Brute, and he whipped his spot rifle over the deadfall, ran his sights up the middle of the foreleg, and painted the moose just about one-third of the way into the body. The anatomist watching remotely through the sights ruled both shoulders broken, with a high probability that the heart had been pierced as well. The moose would have buckled and fallen.