In the Lion's Mouth

by Michael Flynn

  “At least until he finds his way accidentally into the open part of the ship.”

  She turned to look at Donovan. “You are the cheerful one. How?”

  “He may not know from doors, but he might strike a jamb-plate by dumb luck. Unless you can deactivate … No? Ah, well, it’s a small ship, but there are too many conduits, chambers, channels, cable runs, hollow spaces; too many spaces, openings, gaps, apertures. Eventually, Froggie will find his way through.”

  A relief valve hissed and Donovan jerked, striking a standpipe with his wrench. The clang reverberated though the piping and, on its diminution, they heard the bounding sounds of the Frog Prince stop, then increase in frequency. It was no longer hunting a direction; it had found one. “Quick,” he said, and pushed Olafsdottr on the rear.

  They scrambled now, not bothering with silence. Donovan wondered if the Frog Prince would deduce from the sounds the direction they were headed and cut them off.

  Olafsdottr reached the door and pulled herself through. The gravity grids on the other side were set to normal, so she stumbled, and momentarily blocked the exit. For an instant, Donovan wondered if she would slam the door in his face to ensure her own safety.

  But it had never been her intent to destroy Donovan. And that explained his own earlier hesitations. Had she planned to kill him, he would have had no qualms about striking first. But her goal had been to deliver Donovan hale to Henrietta. That he was disinclined to go there and that whatever befell afterward was bound to be hazardous were not grounds enough to justify a cold-blooded killing.

  Yer just outta practice, the Brute suggested.

  “Hurry, sweet!” said Olafsdottr.

  And to the left Inner Child saw his majesty, the Frog Prince.

  A squat and ugly thing, like a toad, but gleaming of chrome, with great blue piston legs and adhesive grippers, large black-lens eyes, its deep-blue, black-spotted façade gore-spattered with Rigardo-ji’s brains. It leapt atop a conduit three arm’s lengths off facing the scarred man. Its mouth opened wide, and made a long, deep rippling sound.

  The Silky Voice, from her seat in the hypothalamus flooded the scarred man with adrenaline. Time itself seemed to slow.

  Donovan knew that if he turned his back to run through the door, he would be a dead man. His only chance was to face it down. With a wrench. It won’t fire a projectile, said the Sleuth. Trust me. And even the Sleuth’s voice seemed sluggish and drawn out. It will need to leap closer.

  As if on command, the Frog Prince leapt again, and landed on a primary lock valve. Its face bore the fatuous, evil smile of a frog. Once more, its lips opened wide, and inside its jaws, a coil of memory metal unwound and shot forth like a lance of steel. Yes, he heard the Sleuth say, I thought as much. The metaphor is complete.

  Even under normal circumstances, the Brute had been trained to lightning-fast reflexes. With the boost the Silky Voice was providing, he could move faster still. He swung the wrench—as it seemed, through gelatin. The long, sharp tongue arced toward him.

  The wrench connected, and knocked the reddened steel ribbon aside so that it penetrated like a nail into the side of the poultry vat. That’s how it killed the smuggler. There had probably been an instruction: “Kiss to activate.” Rigardo-ji had never had a chance. The steel ribbon would have uncoiled into his mouth and out the back of his head. Likely, he died without ever knowing he was dead.

  The memory metal remembered and recoiled to its rest state. The Frog Prince leapt, pulled along by its own tongue. When it landed, it would tug itself loose and take another lick.

  Donovan turned to the door.

  And Olafsdottr was crowding in, blocking his escape.

  His cry emerged as high-pitched as a bat’s, so far into overdrive was he. Olafsdottr brushed him aside with her right arm. The Frog’s tongue lanced again. She seized the ribbon with her left hand pushing it aside, as she had seized the flying shim during their workout, even as she fired the teaser with her right. She screamed.

  “Serrated!” She released the tongue of steel, which with a lick swiped her across the side as it rewound.

  But a teaser fires a coherent electromagnetic pulse. At certain settings and focuses, it can play havoc with a man’s nervous system. Other settings can fry electronic devices. The Frog Prince flashed and sparked as the induced currents ran along its body and internal circuitry. Its head turned toward Donovan. The mouth opened …

  … and smoke came out.

  The Brute threw the wrench and it spun into the Frog’s visual sensors, shattering them. But by then the bright blue of the Frog’s body was fading with its power source. Donovan found the wrench and used it to beat the machine into scrap.

  * * *

  When Olafsdottr awoke, she was lying on a pallet in the infirmary. Both hands were encased in restoration gloves while regressed cells rebuilt the torn flesh and snapped bones. Her side, where the tongue had swiped it, was likewise bandaged. To inhale sent a stabbing pain through her.

  Donovan sat by the pallet reading a book screen. He looked up when she moved.

  “Rib?” she said.

  He nodded. “Two. And a deep laceration. What possessed you to grab the tongue like that?”

  “I thought only to knock it aside. I did not expect a saw blade.” She raised the two gloves. “My hands?”

  “The left one was badly sliced up. You must have grabbed at it with your right after you dropped the teaser.”

  “I promised Gidula I would deliver you in one piece to Henrietta. Could not let Froggie punch holes through you.” She took another experimental breath. “I must praise your medical skills, sweet.”

  “The meshinospidal did all the work. I just zipped you in the basket and followed the instructions. The automatics took cell samples, regressed them, and applied them in the proper course.”

  “Ooh, but you had noo oobligation to deliver me whole. Or to deliver me at all. Foortunate, then…”

  Donovan shrugged. “Look,” he said, “can we drop the Alabaster accent? We’re past that, I think.”

  “Fortunate, then,” she said more quietly, “you spy Frog Prince in time; or both dead.”

  “Inner Child is paranoid. Makes a good sentry.”

  Olafsdottr sighed. “Must be very wonderful divide attentions so. I was told it had incapacitated you.”

  “It does have its drawbacks sometimes.”

  “How do you plan to explain the corpse to the Megranomese authorities?” she asked. “Or how you came by this ship?”

  “It was his ship. He was giving us a ride. This thing broke out of its box. Missy, if between the two of us we can’t concoct a story to fool a Megranomic copper we should both of us quit the Long Game.”

  Olafsdottr cocked her head sideways. “I thought you had quit.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Almost, you tempt me, sweet. But I am unaccustomed to asking for help.”

  Donovan grinned. “I’ll teach you.”

  The answering smile was almost sad. “Sweet, between the two of us, we defeated a Foreganger killing machine. Tell me you are not the man we need for the struggle.”

  Donovan sat back so that his head rested upon the wall of the little infirmary. He closed his eyes and his breath slowly gusted from him. “I’m not the man you need.”

  “Ah, well, it would have been entertaining to watch developments. How long before we reach the Megranome way station?”

  The scarred man shrugged. “The ’ospidal had you in suspension for five days. We’re out of Megranome space.”

  “Ah. You take me direct to Dangchao, then. Perhaps Bridget ban keep me in clean cage.”

  Donovan rose, wiped his palms on his trousers. “You sleep now, ‘sweet.’ Your hands are too badly cut up to pilot the ship. I don’t have a certificate myself, except as a chartsman; but every chartsman is a pilot in training, and certificates are only for officials. We’ll be on the Tightrope in another two days.”

  Olafsdottr struggled to si
t up, winced at the pain, and slid back prone. “On the Tightrope?”

  The scarred man, at the infirmary door, shrugged. “And don’t ask us why, because there’s not a single one of us knows the answer.”

  CENGJAM GAAFE: THE SECOND INTERROGATORY

  “So,” says Bridget ban, low and drawn out, so that the sibilant slides like a hiss from between her lips, “it was no kidnapping, at all. He went with you of his own free will.”

  The Confederal shrugs and grins. “Not free. Cost great deal.” Then, in Gaelactic, “And what is will, anyway? We are bounced about by the impacts of Fate and where we finally ricochet, that is where we fare. Whether we will to go that way or whether we simply will go that way is a question for metaphysicians, not for one so humble as I.” She sips again at her coffee, which has grown tempered as she unwound her tale.

  “Paint it as you like,” the Hound replies. “He had control of the ship. He had the choice. To bring you here to me, or to proceed into the Confederacy.”

  “A false dichotomy,” says Olafsdottr. “He did both; for here I am. The Fates weave cloth fine as silk.”

  Graceful Bintsaif stirs. “It seems clear to me,” she announces. “Donovan’s old loyalties to the Confederacy reasserted themselves, and he went to answer his masters’ call.”

  The Shadow turns in her seat and smiles at the junior Hound. “It seems clear to you because you are young, if not…” Her eyes flick to the blazon she wears above her left breast. “… if not without some experience. As you grow older, matters become much less clear.”

  “Because eyes age and lose their focus.”

  “And that may be a good thing. Some things best not seen clearly. But what are these ‘loyalties’ you speak of that ‘reasserted themselves’ and drove him to the Confederacy? Are they incorporeal creatures that lurk inside Donovan’s head—as his sundry selves do—awaiting opportunity to pounce and seize control of him? No, I think loyalties are things that a man expresses, not mysterious entities that express a man.”

  Méarana strikes a chord. “There was a tenth Donovan once,” she remembers, “one he confronted and defeated, one that sought oblivion and death.”

  “Ooh, we all seek that, harper, though soome less willingly than oothers. Or perhaps I should say, we all find it in the end, whether we seek it or noot. For whether or noo we seek it, it surely does seek us.”

  The harper’s fingers take the chords into a goltraí, a lament. “So, maybe the Tenth Donovan survived after all and, resurrected, compelled him to his doom.”

  Bridget ban snorts derision. “There was no compulsion, Lucy. You heard her. He chose to join them.”

  “Aye, Mother, I heard her. I dinna ken an I’ve heard the sooth. And in any case, he went to o’erthrow the Names, not to succor them. So whate’er loyalties impelled him, ’tis nae clear that they were loyalties to Those.”

  The Hound pours herself a fresh cup of coffee and replenishes that of Ravn Olafsdottr. “No, it is clear to me to whom his loyalty lay.” She hands the courier the cup, and their eyes lock for a moment before the latter leans back and raises the fresh brew to her lips.

  “But tell me,” Bridget ban continues when Olafsdottr is once more set, “we of the League care mickle for Donovan buigh but muckle for the stirrings of the Confederation. Tell us more about this civil war you say roils the Shadows of the Names.”

  The Shadow flashes her mocking smile. “What should it matter to you whether a great edifice is fallen, save that when whole it once blustered and frightened your sleep? Is it not enough to know that, turned upon itself, it can spare no attentions for you?”

  “When a building close by crumbles, the rubble may strike my own. Bad enough that your masters once sent raiders across the Rift to devil our borderlands. At least there then were Those from whom we could demand redress. But if you are coming apart, a thousand filibusters, a thousand mercenaries may now descend upon us. Bad enough, our own pirates. We’d rather not host yours.”

  The Shadow’s face loses its smile. “Do not hope too fulsomely, Hound. Hope is the cruelest of virtues, for her betrayal strikes more deeply. What is underway is not bongkoy, but chóng jíán, not disintegration but reconstruction.”

  “Are you sure,” asks Bridget ban with a thin smile, “that it is not lam lam?”

  The courier throws back her head and laughs, and even Graceful Bintsaif’s stern façade wavers. Méarana plays an interrogatory note on her harp and asks her question with a glance.

  “Ooh, your moother plays a foony jooke, yngling. We say ‘lam’ it means ‘collapse.’ But also with a change of tone ‘sweet-talk’ or ‘coax.’ She means to say that it was my sweet-talking of Doonoovan buigh that caused his resistance to collapse.”

  Méarana plays aimlessly. She has not yet found the right motifs for the tale. She has a bounding, rollicking, menacing melody for the Frog Prince, but she has not yet captured her father or his captor—or the lam lam.

  “There is one thing I do not understand,” says Graceful Bintsaif.

  “Ooh, there is moor than woon, I’m thinking.”

  The junior Hound colors, but presses ahead. “Why did your rebels want Donovan buigh so badly. What is one more used-up, discarded agent among so many thousands fresher?”

  “Many hands make light the work, but no one pair of hands lightens much. One may as well ask why we needed anyone at all, as in the limit the marginal assistance goes to zero. But…” Olafsdottr shrugs. “… I am but a simple Shadow. I am not told what I need not know.”

  But Méarana has the impression that the Ravn’s duty had been more than mere courier work and that she regards a part of it at least a failure. Aye, a goltraí it would be for this opening section. And two melodies in counterpoint for Olafsdottr’s theme, because for a certainty she had two purposes. But which had failed? The overt one of carrying Donovan into the storm? Or the covert one that remains as yet concealed?

  “Now must I digress,” says Olafsdottr, “and relate some while of such events as earlier befell; for our discord had been long a-building. Hear then while heroes in bold strife contend for twice-ten years among the homes of men.”

  III. HENRIETTA: THE DREAM OF AGAMEMNON

  For far too long contentions lay abate

  For what man dares to speak when all about

  Are doubtful in their loyalties (or far too sure)?

  The wrong word whispered in the wrong-sought ear

  Is death. And death, though destination of us all,

  Is none too dearly sought. Yet grievances do fall

  In never-ending rain and drive bold men to shelter in

  Overhangs of one another’s confidence. So.

  Is confidence betrayed! A body lies in backstreet Cambertown;

  Another, crumpled on his hearthstones, whitely bled; a third

  Bobs bayside in the Farnsworth Sea. Fair knife, garrote,

  Or poison subtle laced within a tempting drink …

  What cares the corpse by which device ’twas made?

  More like by careless word was he betrayed.

  But slowly bonds are built and men learn where their trust

  Lies safe, and lay clandestine plans. And deep

  Within the Secret City, Those of Name do mark

  That first fresh scent of fear.

  And nameless dread on stealthy feet draws near.

  On scattered worlds were here and there strongholds held in rebel hands, strongholds made of discourse, not of stone. Such a redoubt might be an office, a department, an assignment, possessed of those oathbound for the overthrow of the regime. For this war sought not patches of land, but patches of command. Warriors did not storm beachheads, but subverted key positions, bureaus, jurisdictions; and an enemy might be isolated and surrounded by usurping the authority of his boss, by issuing a new procedure, or by infiltrating his department and undermining his efforts.

  Not that there were no bodies. Wars want bodies. Quantity is a detail. The Glancer at the Dumold Fisc, known to
all his friends as a keen outdoorsman, was found dead beside his fuel-depleted dũbuggi in the Great Pan of the Wúdãshwĕy Desert, “having brought insufficient potable water to last the crossing.” This tragedy, suitably mourned by all and sincerely by some, meant that the oversight of the fisc passed to his deputy. And this meant in turn that Certain Expenditures made in the name of the rebellion passed unquestioned. This was neither the first nor the last death dealt retail in that quiet struggle. “The rats gnaw one another in the wainscoting,” the boots muttered. As always, they preferred the wholesale.

  An auditor here, a decoding room there, an intelligence office elsewhere—in such wise did the revolution proceed—by promotion, transfer, and untimely passing. Worms were planted in soft wares, so that loyal men unquestioning went forth to do the biddings of their foes. The Protector of Western Sagzenau was shot down by his own bodyguard, acting in the firm belief that such were their orders from above—and who themselves died before the firing squad believing their executioners suborned.

  It was the worst sort of civil war, for its primary weapon was deceit and its first casualty, trust.

  The Shadows and agents who fought it carefully avoided the pitched battles and guerillas and street-by-street destruction that had marked earlier risings. But there is at least a kind of honesty in storming the barricades—and in defending them. One knows if nothing else where everyone stands. And a head that is “bloodied but yet unbowed” has a certain nobility of cast lacking in that head shaken in incomprehension over an unexpected demotion.