On the Razor's Edge

by Michael Flynn

  Any fool can hope, her mother had told Méarana once, when success lies in view. It takes genuine courage to hope when matters seem most hopeless.

  * * *

  Khembold Shadow Darling—no, Confederals placed office-titles last—Khembold Darling Shadow came to fetch her two days after her father had abandoned her among sullen strangers. He came about midmorn on market day, and the Great Square was bustling with activity. Farmers and craftsmen called out greetings from their booths and pavilions and offered wonderful bargains. One man in a brown robe cried out, “Ho, everyone that desires wisdom, let him draw near and take it at our hands, for it is wisdom that we have for sale! Come to the lecture hall tonight!”

  On Dangchao such markets were housed under one roof, carefully proctored by the Wardens for cleanliness, and prices were posted, not chaffered over. Buying and selling here seemed more of a sport, much more like the Starport Sarai on Jehovah than the city markets at Port Kitchener. Of course, this was only a citadel, deliberately remote, sutlered by its own outlying villages, and she supposed that what cities the Earth might possess were better furnished than this.

  A little ways to the south and east, on the Great Green, an itinerant theatrical troupe had set up in the amphitheater; and as she and Khembold passed by, a Queen (by her masque and tiara) was excoriating a large warrior as “… you great lump, you kraken off the moor…” At which the warrior cringed and tripped over himself, to the delight of the audience.

  Inside the Administration center, Khembold led her to the communications directorate, where magpies and clerks sat by. “Gidula left instructions that we are to simulate his continued presence here,” Khembold explained. “By now, the Names may know his standing in the Revolution, and if they know he has departed for Dao Chetty, they may anticipate the play he is unfolding and take measures against him. For that reason, take care in what you say. We don’t know that They listen, but neither do we know otherwise.”

  “In what I say?”

  “Here is the communicator. Sit here and wear this helmet. Be aware that Messages Sendable will monitor the call for quality purposes.”

  “Meaning, I don’t spill the beans.”

  “Spill the beans?”

  “A Terran expression my father taught me.”

  Khembold shook his head in irritation. “Mention no names at all. Not the Old One, not your own, especially not Padaborn.”

  When she donned the helmet she found herself in a virtual room with Donovan buigh. His image perched on an ordinary hard chair in a room plain and undecorated. A chronometer floated in midair behind him, set to zero; and a signboard read: INBOUND MESSAGE STREAM.

  “Fudir!” she cried, using one of his less-public names.

  But of course he did not hear her. He was far upsystem on the crawl, near one of the gas giants—known for some unknown but ancient reason as Wood-star. He had started talking some time ago and his words and image were just now reaching the Forks. The image, which had been frozen until she logged in, began to move and speak.

  The first thing, Méarana told herself, is to establish that it is a live image and not a sim. She waited for him to say something no one else could possibly know.

  “I am just calling to tell you everything is fine and the trip is so far without incident. Everyone is excited, of course. But I’m curious to learn how much has changed in the twenty-five years since I’ve seen the place. I may not be able to find my way around, and I thought, ‘That can’t be good.’ But I hope I do because so many folks are depending on me. By the way, you can begin answering whenever you like. You can’t interrupt me, and that way I’ll receive your responses that much sooner. So feel free to comment on anything I’ve been saying. If you talk over me, you can always back up and replay.”

  That can’t be good had been a tagline used by Teddy Nagarajan, a Wildman who had died defending their escape from Oorah Mesa on Enjrun. No one else who had been there had survived. She nodded. It was Donovan.

  Méarana chatted as if they were in fact sitting together in a cheerless room. It was a curiously one-sided discourse. Given the time lag, it seemed as if they were talking past each other. Donovan would speak, she would answer, but Donovan did not respond to her answers. It would be hours before he could.

  “By the way,” Donovan said, “give your escort my special thanks for conducting you safely.”

  The scarred man was multilayered and few of his sentences had but one nut within its shell. His “special thanks” would be some sort of rebuke to Ravn for dragging his daughter into this peril. The harper had not seen Ravn since she and Gidula had gone to the Nose, but the very fact of the request had to mean that the Shadow was not aboard the slider, either.

  And that was Méarana’s second reason for good cheer. She had spent the evening trying to reassemble everything that had happened to her; and as was often the case when you took something apart and put it back together there was a piece left over.

  Domino Tight.

  * * *

  Donovan talked for an hour straight while saying little, a skill he had learned in the Bar of Jehovah. In the course of the monologue, he conveyed several warnings and bits of advice, couched in Aesopic allusions to various shared experiences. Neither code nor cipher, it was impossible for outsiders to break. Méarana responded in like manner but was not nearly as optimistic in her glosses as Donovan seemed to be.

  Yes, if Ravn was not on the slider, then she was somewhere nearby, her twin goals of rescuing Donovan and assassinating Gidula now thwarted by circumstance. And Khembold Darling had spoken of his admiration for Geshler Padaborn and had shown by various gestures and words that he was watching over her. But if Mother was truly close behind, taking care of Méarana might take second place to capturing Bridget ban. The garrison was expecting her. She would walk into a trap. The harper’s one consolation was that her mother had walked into traps before and knew how to do so with grace and style.

  * * *

  Afterward Khembold escorted Méarana back to her assigned quarters. On the Great Square, the auditorium announced a public lecture for the coming evening: “Implications of Potency and Act for Being as Such.” A small group of villagers were chaffering with the philosopher, who stood in sandals and a long brown robe at the open door. His hood shadowed his features, but he glanced up as the harper walked past.

  “Be of good cheer, sister!” he called. “I hope to see you tonight!”

  Good cheer, indeed, she thought, and realized a third reason. Krakens did not come off moors!

  “Perhaps,” murmured Khembold when they had reached the door, “I might come in with you for a time. There are things you need to know about how matters stand here.”

  * * *

  The sun had gone down and Ravn’s arm had gone numb. Gidula’s shuttles had soared off to rendezvous in orbit at Gidula’s slider. Good-bye, Donovan, she thought as they rose. I suppose we shall not be such good friends now.

  No one would be coming up to the Nose to look over the edge in the expectation of a dangling Ravn. Or rather, those who did expect it would not be disposed to come. She amused herself for a moment with the list of those who might be in the Old One’s confidence. The list was a curiously short one, Gidula not being widely known for his trust, and most of those were to have been left behind to staff the Forks.

  With her right foot, Ravn felt out another ledge to relieve the strain on her left. But the thin shelf crumbled under her and her arm twisted. The cliff was limestone and sandstone and unaccustomed to such strenuous duty. Rock fragments clattered and bounced on their way to the river, where a narrow shelf marked the track of an ancient road. A road paved of bones now, she supposed, but she did not look down to confirm this deduction.

  How many others had Gidula tumbled off this cliff? And what had Magpie One done to earn the Old One’s disfavor? Or had it been the Old One who had earned the magpie’s disfavor? Perhaps there had been some disagreement over loyalties. Judging by how long One had been on “d
etached duty,” he had been removed about the time Gidula began planning the assault on the Secret City.

  Was it true, as she had heard, that Donovan had given Five a name? And did he realize the significance of the act? Likely so. Donovan knew more than he let show and played a deep game, deeper perhaps than even Gidula suspected.

  But delivering the harper to the Forks had put Donovan off that game. Dancing nimbly around threats against himself, he had been caught by threats to his daughter. Certainly Donovan had understood Gidula’s tacit warning.

  Everyone had been underestimating Gidula. Dawshoo had treated him as a wise counselor, but past his prime; Oschous and Manlius had openly mocked him. But there was play in the old limbs yet. It was clear to Ravn now that he had violated the traditions of kaowèn precisely because he had known it would drive her to attempt his assassination and so provide him with a traditional excuse for her summary execution. And free him of an affection that might bind him in the future. That he had allowed her to dangle here rather than daze her and watch her fall was a mark of his cruelty.

  And his confidence that she could not climb up.

  How justified was that confidence? She was rock bound at three points. The small ledge that supported her left foot; her right fist jammed into a crack in the rock; and the cable whose pistol-end she clenched in her left fist. She thumbed the reel and the cable taughtened as it tried to haul her up. But the piton slipped and a shower of stones pelted her. The rock in which the spike was embedded was no more secure than any other spot on the rotten cliff face. It would hold, but not hold her entire weight.

  If she could not climb up, then might she climb down? But the sun was low, casting the face of the cliff in shadow. It was hard to see where hand or foot might nestle.

  There was a way down. It was fast and certain, but it was also final.

  * * *

  A face peered over the lip of the Nose silhouetted against the westering sky.

  “That was hardly a textbook assassination,” it said.

  “Gwillgi Hound!” said Ravn. “What game are you playing?”

  The Hound rubbed his mustache with the side of his finger. “If I lifted you up, it might be only that I was inclined to throw you back down.”

  “You once gave succor to Domino Tight.”

  “Domino Tight did not place Méarana ban Bridget into the hands of our sworn enemies.”

  Domino Tight’s face appeared next to Gwillgi’s. “Pay him no mind. He is only entertaining you while I finish anchoring the rescue line.”

  “His wit o’erwhelms me,” said Ravn. “Domino Tight, my sweet … What are you doing here! You were to guard Méarana after I had left with Gidula and the others!”

  “You didn’t leave with Gidula and the others,” the other Shadow pointed out. “Gwillgi Hound was right. I have seen better assassinations. Beside, Khembold Darling has charge of your harper; and Gwillgi tells me that Khembold is a devotee of Geshler Padaborn.” A cable with a loop in the end snaked over the cliff and dangled by her free foot. She slid her boot into the stirrup and, pulling her arm from the crack, she wrapped it around the cable with no little relief.

  “Who told Gwillgi that?” The two men at the top of the Nose began hauling her up. Ravn started to twist but used her other hand to steady herself against the cliff.

  “Donovan himself,” said the Hound, “when he and I met in Prizga.”

  “Ooh, Doonoovan was a busy buoy, I see. But he is deceived. Khembold’s father was one of those who betrayed the Rising. And the son has no more scruples. Believe me. When the Old One told him to ‘take care of’ the harper, Khembold knew what was required of him. Once he had secured Donovan’s submission, Gidula had no more use for her. She will live only so long as need be to maintain that submission, which means for so long as Donovan might reasonably expect to contact her from the ship and receive a living answer.”

  “Then,” said Domino Tight with a grunt as he pulled Ravn over the top of the Nose, “we have several days while they crawl up to the coopers.”

  Ravn staggered to her feet, stumbled a bit from the pain in her left leg. “Maybe. Donovan has too many genuine partisans aboard ship. An open break would mean a large war in a small space. If Donovan suspects the harper harmed, he may sacrifice all for wild vengeance. Oh, Domino, you should have let me dangle—or even fall—and not abandoned the plans we laid.”

  “Can I let a gozhiinyaw fall to her death if I can stop it? I thought that—”

  “Yes, yes, and if I had thought the same, I would have done the same. Come, we can only play the game from where we stand now—and hope that Khembold toys with her first.”

  The three of them set off at a jog, pacing one another. Gwillgi laughed. “He may find the toys a little sharper than he expects.”

  But Ravn shook her head. “He knows about the hideout knife she keeps up her sleeve.”

  * * *

  Méarana was her mother’s daughter. There are no dangerous weapons, little one, Bridget ban had once told her. But there are dangerous men. And in the hands of a dangerous man, anything may be a weapon.

  Little Méarana had drunk it all in wide-eyed. Perhaps even so long ago, her mother had esteemed a time when enemies might strike at her through the child.

  A glass bottle, smashed across the edge of a countertop, could provide knives enough to cut a throat.

  She had but stepped within with Khembold close behind when the insectile Number Two rose from the enveloping chair in the sitting room and said with impatience, “Well, has he made his call?”

  Khembold did not answer immediately but gave Méarana a shove in the small of the back, sending her fully into the sitting room. He followed, carefully closing the door. “He did, and his get assured him that all was well.”

  “That should keep him until Gidula has what he wants. The Old One will find some technical difficulty to prevent a second call, and after that they’ll be in the tubes.”

  Number Two stood between her and the glass bottle. She might not have realized Méarana’s intended use of it, but the harper knew she could not go through Two to seize the bottle. Every plan is complicated by the presence of the enemy.

  These rooms might be her coffin. She faced Khembold. “You forget that I am in the gift of Ravn Olafsdottr. I do not take orders from you, any more than you take orders from a mere magpie.” This with a jerk of her head toward Number Two.

  “Oh,” said that worthy from behind her scrolling goggles. “I think I will enjoy this.”

  Khembold took Méarana by the arm and pulled her aside. “Gidula gave me the task,” he told Two. “I need no help.” Then, to Méarana, “Ravn Olafsdottr has played her role, and has exited stage down.” He laughed. “I will be glad when the pretense is over. The harvest promises much bounty.”

  Number Two made a gesture of impatience. “Get on with it. We’ve no more use for it.”

  “Ah,” said Méarana in a catlike voice she had heard her mother use. “But Khembold might have one more use.” She reached out and touched his arm.

  The Shadow grinned and winked at Number Two. “It may be right.”

  “It may simply want you close enough to use those toad-stickers it wears up its sleeve.”

  Khembold’s smile broadened. “I don’t think it’s foolish enough to try that.”

  Méarana did not think herself that foolish, either. She had seen Ravn at exercise catch knives thrown at her and did not suppose Khembold any less talented.

  Taking the initiative, she unfastened her blouse and let it slide down, revealing that her bare arms bore no arms. “What need have I for blades when Gidula has given me his word?”

  Khembold shrugged. “Gidula is not here to break it.” He studied her. “The blouse was a good start, but you’ve promised more than that.”

  Méarana unfastened her pants and kicked them off. She wore ankle boots but left them on. Khembold Darling licked his lips.

  “Get on with it,” said Number Two. “And watch out
for stupid kicks.”

  “You heard her,” Méarana murmured.

  “Don’t fret, Six-eyes,” the Shadow snapped. “Gidula said to wait until the call had been finished, but he never put an upper bound on it. Go away. I don’t need you for this.”

  “Oh, but I was looking forward to the pain,” the magpie said.

  “I promise to hurt it for you.” He took Méarana’s arm and shoved her into the bedroom.

  “It’s not the same when someone else does it,” Two complained as she followed.

  “Then you can have it when I’m done,” the Shadow told the magpie. “There’s no need to destroy the goods right off, is there? We can maximize utility. See how long it lasts.”

  Number Two snorted. “That’s what the little whore is counting on.”

  “It thinks it wants to delay things, but soon enough it will wish matters had ended more quickly.” Khembold chuckled and turned to Méarana, who had lain out on the bed. His lip curled as he placed his weapons belt beyond Méarana’s reach. “Do you really think your body will buy me off?”

  Méarana smiled sadly. “No, but it might buy me two more minutes.”

  Number Two could not contain a burst of laughter. Khembold turned red and climbed atop the harper, and smacked her open palmed across the face. He was not wearing a shenmat, and there were useful flaps in his clothing that he could open. He paused and took himself in hand.

  “I’m going to enjoy this.”

  “Oh. So am I,” the harper assured him. She stretched her arms above her head and caressed the strings of her harp.

  The door to the apartment chimed.

  Number Two scowled. “I left orders,” she said.

  “Then it may be important,” said Khembold. “Go check. Don’t worry. I’ll leave enough for you to hurt.”

  The magpie hissed impatiently and returned to the sitting room. She checked the door’s security scanner. “It’s that wandering philosopher!” she said.

  In the bedroom, Khembold frowned and turned his head.