In the Lion's Mouth

by Michael Flynn

  “I said there were two paths,” said Dawshoo Yishohrann. “But we can blaze a third. We do not merely press on. We break through! We have been fighting our colleagues, the ones who remained slaves to the regime. The time has come to attack the Names themselves, to lay siege to the Secret City. Victory, or death!” He spread his arms wide. Grand gambles required grand words and grand gestures.

  There was a moment of silence. Then Big Jacques struck the table once more and the table, big as it was, shuddered.

  “Victory, or death!”

  The cry was taken up around the room, by a few at first, then by all. Some, Dawshoo noted, called on victory; but others, and by no means the fewer, called on death.

  * * *

  After the meeting, they broke into small groups and each group discussed what would be needed for the planned offensive. Dawshoo, Oschous, and Gidula circulated among them, collecting and collating their ideas, encouraging their thinking. “Don’t stop with the obvious,” Oschous told them. “The mad ideas are the best.”

  When they broke for lunch, Dawshoo excused himself and crossed town, where he stealthed into the governor’s compound by an unexpected route and waited in Mashdasan’s office until the swoswai returned from his own lunch. The governor, when he saw the Shadow occupying his desk, hesitated an instant at the door. Then he allowed the door to slide closed behind him and hung his cap casually on the hat tree. Dawshoo admired the sangfroid. Whatever their cognitive shortfalls, the boots did not lack for bravery.

  “Well?” the swoswai said. He stood, awkwardly, before his own desk. He did not waste time blustering or asking for identification. He knew what he faced.

  “Stop trying to listen.”

  Mashdasan thrust chin and chest forward. “You don’t think we’d learn anything?”

  “On the contrary, I am very much afraid that you might.” Dawshoo paused, then added, “You ought to fear that, too. The man who knows things makes of himself a target for all. One side may destroy him to silence what the other side would destroy him to hear. What man is so foolish as to place his generative organ in the buzz saw? Wiser, he is to know nothing.”

  The swoswai’s hand had moved protectively at Dawshoo’s pithy image, but he checked the motion. “I could order this planet destroyed, and all of you with it,” he said. Now came the bluster. He was compelled to say something of the sort, Dawshoo knew, because he knew he was afraid and did not want to know that.

  Dawshoo shrugged. “And I could order you destroyed. It would last longer and hurt more, and it would certainly be less impersonal. But I bear you no ill will, Swoswai. I would regard that passage no more happily than you, and so, we both having the same objective, some accommodation might be reached.”

  The governor swallowed. “Some may ask later why I did not listen. I have my duties.”

  He was answered by a guileless smile. “Perhaps you did not suspect who we were.”

  “Then I would have been a blind man.”

  “Then perhaps your devices were detected and disabled. No one can fault you for being bested by the likes of us. We found all four this morning.”

  The swoswai blinked. Then he nodded. “Perhaps we will continue to hide them and you will continue to find them.”

  Dawshoo understood his meaning. The motions would be gone through, but the military would restrain themselves. He rose from behind the governor’s desk and, as he circled it to the right, the swoswai edged around to the left. Seated once more in his proper place, Mashdasan seemed to grow more confident. “I will have my men show you out,” he said, reaching for the summoner.

  But Dawshoo demurred. “Don’t trouble yourself. I will leave the way I came.” As he faded toward the door, Mashdasan bent over his reports. “Oh, one thing,” the governor added just before the Shadow touched the door plate. He looked up from the desk. “We only planted three.”

  * * *

  In the afternoon, the group meetings produced success trees and idea boxes. The trees detailed the sequences of contingent events required to ensure a successful operation. The boxes listed on their stubs the essential features an operation must possess—facilities, assets, materials, time lines, and so forth—and along the rows multiple alternatives for each. Dawshoo turned copies of these over to Oschous and Gidula, who would generate random combinations of alternatives as a way of seeding their own creativity.

  “Nothing too pedestrian,” he warned them. “A coup is as much an art form as it is a decapitation. Future generations should admire the craft of our blow, and not merely the cause in which it was struck. Besides, anything too ordinary has already been anticipated. Our erstwhile colleagues will have analyzed the failure modes of their defenses. We must identify some unexpected weakness; some blind spot in their foresight.”

  When Oschous Dee Karnatika smiled he resembled a fox. He belonged to that race of men whose faces bore a fine, red, downy fur. The magicians of the old Commonwealth had in their pride toyed with the genes of men; and what they had learned before consequence brought them low was that genes were like a dangling mobile. If you jiggled one of them, others jiggled in response, and often in surprising and undesired ways. Dee Karnatika’s ancestors had been engineered for enhanced cleverness and—on the broad average—successfully so. The price had been paid in face fuzz and protruding lower facial process, so that their fellow men recognized them immediately as the clever sort and responded with increased wariness. So does yin excite its yang.

  “Gidula and me, we’ll work the problem separately. Then score each of our plans against the goals and objectives and hybridize what we can. We may go several rounds before we come up with something invulnerable. Do you want a plan before we leave the planet?”

  “A fisherman impatient catches naught. Hasten slowly, my friend.”

  The Fox struck his breast in salute and left the meeting room, leaving Dawshoo with Gidula. A few moments passed in silence. Then the old man said, “Oschous is a clever man. Far more clever than I. He will devise a good plan.”

  “So will you. His will be clever; yours will be wise. The child born of their mating will be the superior to both.” First Speaker paused and looked away. “How clever is he, do you think?”

  Gidula hesitated and cocked his head. “Is there a problem?”

  “Mashdasan told me that MILINTEL planted but three bugs.”

  “Ah.” The old man tugged on his beard. “And we found four.”

  “Yes. Who planted the fourth bug?”

  “Mashdasan. He lied. He wanted to upset you.”

  “If so, a point for him. But it seems more clever than his wont. What if he spoke truly?”

  “I could visit him tonight and learn.”

  Dawshoo shook his head. “No. We have a truce, an understanding. If we break it, the garrison will take revenge. They have not our talent for retail mayhem, but for wholesale they do well enough.”

  “You think perhaps an agent-in-place is here on Henrietta and we were misfortunate enough to meet here in his lap?”

  “That, or a colleague of ours still embraces the Names.”

  “Twenty years is a long time for undercover work. Pretend too long and … can it remain pretense?” Gidula thought about the matter and walked to the window, where he looked out over the harbor. Gulls shrieked over the naval craft and pleasure boats. “If a Deadly One had planted the fourth bug,” he said finally, “would Little Jacques have found it so easily?”

  “You think we were meant to find it.”

  Gidula nodded and Dawshoo scowled. “We should have swept the room yesterday, then we could have discussed this at dinner last night.”

  “Perhaps the intention was to sow uncertainty in our hearts.”

  “Ha! That’s like hauling dirt to a Terran ghetto. Uncertainty is nothing we have in short supply. Yes, Little Jacques, what is it?”

  The Shadow had appeared by the meeting room door. He was a small man and could fit into spaces a normal man might not. His ancestors had once been ca
lled pygmies, but there was something in him of the dwarf, as well. And no natural pygmies had been so pale.

  “Message for you, Beak,” he said, extending a packet.

  Dawshoo detested the nickname, but he tolerated its use by his companions lest he appear haughty. He glanced at the seal and saw it came from SkyPort Rietta. He broke it open and removed the flimsy, read it, and smiled.

  “It’s Olafsdottr,” he told Gidula. “She’s brought us a present.”

  The old Shadow pursed his lips. “So. The long shot pays off.”

  “Maybe. I need to inspect the goods first.”

  Little Jacques smiled. “I love opening presents.”

  CENGJAM GAAFE: THE THIRD INTERROGATORY

  Méarana plucks a diminished seventh on her harp. “So,” she says. “The extra bug was ‘the discord note.’”

  “How nice to hear of the enemy,” Graceful Bintsaif adds, “picking themselves apart.”

  Bridget ban says nothing, but sips her coffee and watches the Shadow through lowered lids. Méarana plays a goltraí, something sad but hopeful. She uses her sky-voice, so that the keening appears to emanate from a far corner of the sitting room. Olafsdottr glances briefly in that direction before realizing the trick, then listens for a time in silence.

  Bintsaif, finding no reaction to her jibe, shrugs and settles back and the Shadow, as if sensing that motion, turns abruptly toward her and jabs a finger in her direction. The junior Hound flinches, but only a little. Olafsdottr grins. “Do not be too happy, turtle egg,” she says, “oover the misfortune of oothers.” Then switching to Manjrin, she adds, “Fates deplore happiness. Seek always balance.”

  “Is that why Dawshoo took such a desperate gamble?” Bridget ban asks. “By courting disaster, did he hope the Fates would award him success?”

  “Never good, gamble with Fates. They load dice. You have never been married, have you? Any of you.”

  A moment of silence ensues. No one speaks.

  “Ooh, it is a chancy thing at best, this marriage thing; and one ill-advised for those in our profession. It is a deep union, I am told; deeper than pair-bond contracts, for it is a mingling of the hearts and not only a meeting of the minds. It has a sort of life of its own; and so may have a sort of death. It is a fragile thing—a spark in a blustery wind—and wants constant vigil to keep alight. Yet, even with the best of wills, even with a common intent, it does not always survive. It is always sad,” she says, lifting once more her coffee to her lips, “to see what began in hope to end in strife.”

  When she sets it down again, her face is more sober than at any time since entering Clanthompson Hall, not excepting the moment when she had found two guns and a knife aimed at her heart. “Our confraternity is closely knit. More so, I think, than your Kennel. We trace our ‘ancestry’ through those who taught us. The students of a common master count themselves as brothers. We know our teacher’s teacher, and his before. We train and practice together in the Abattoir, deep within the Lion’s Mouth. In this struggle that now consumes us, I have killed my brother. So, Graceful Bintsaif, do not rejoice that he chose one path and I another. For I do not.”

  She turns once more to face the junior Hound. “Do not celebrate the failure of hope, even if it be the hopes of your enemies. The Confederation bore much fruit, and some of it was bitter and some of it was sour; but it salvaged much that was good from the wreckage of the Commonwealth, and there were times in our history that will shine whenever men gather and sing of the past. Even when your dog has gone mad and you must put it down, you still recall the bounding puppy that you raised.”

  Méarana notices her mother’s grimace. Bridget ban too had once owned a dog and had carried out that dread and terrible service. The harper wonders if Olafsdottr knows that and has used the imagery to a purpose.

  “I recognize perhaps half of the agents your tale has mentioned,” the Hound says. “Oschous and Dawshoo, I do not know; but of the others, I have fought two, and thought one no longer quick. Do you have the names of all?”

  “No.”

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “No.”

  “I could compel your telling.”

  “No.”

  Bridget ban had leaned forward as she pressed her guest. Now she leans back again into her chair, and sets her coffee cup aside. “The Two Jacques were in it for the game when I knew them, though I encountered only the Dwarf. They would serve any master, could they but test their lives against their skills. But Gidula struck me as a faithful servant of the Names. What turned him to treason?”

  The Shadow retreats behind her grin, spreads her hands in ignorance. “Who can say what stone on life’s path sent them stumbling off?”

  “And you. The Shadow we knew a case of years ago did not chafe under Those of Name. What stone lay in your own path? That, you can surely say.”

  Méarana awaits an answer, but she does not think it forthcoming. The Shadow will tell her tale in her own way, and not to the tempo her host would set.

  Olafsdottr lifts her cup. “My coffee has grown cold,” she says.

  Bridget ban leans forward again. “I want to know,” she says implacably, “why devoted servants of long-time tyranny turn against their masters.”

  The Confederal Shadow smiles. “And that kenning’s grasp, would not we all. And in the course embrace the tyrants’ fall.”

  IV. HENRIETTA: THE SECOND COUNTERARGUMENT

  While iron hands hold tight the leash, obedience is less command

  Than ’tis constraint. What chance is there to turn and bite?

  What fate impends, but clammy death? Fatality, the common taint,

  So why the knife provoke? Better far to suss the wind and wait.

  Yet time does worry all and loosens tight-drawn bands. Housebroke,

  Sheep all bleat in dazed confusion, unaware of shepherds’ dampened fury.

  But sheepdogs’ eyes do track, and sense their chance. While leash-bound, sweet;

  Slip sour when once they feel the slack.

  Tentative, they prance and sniff

  The figure comatose, not quite sure the fearful thing is dead,

  Or playing only possum so to learn which trusted men their fealty would toss.

  What stays that first hard bite but awe? The thing has lasted all this long

  That mere continuation pleads its case,

  And none can vision what might take its place.

  Olafsdottr and the scarred man landed by shuttle at Port Rietta, just ahead of a winter storm. They left Sèan Beta in orbit, to be cleaned and refitted in the Navy Yards and taken into the Service. The scars of Olafsdottr had healed well during the transit, though her smile had taken on a subtle lopsidedness that she found roguish.

  Donovan was less well pleased. He had conducted his abductor to her destination; but her ends were not his own, and he had been dissuaded from turning right about to heigh for the League only by the impossibility of that prospect. The entry into Henrietta Roads had been facilitated by Olafsdottr’s particular identity signal, her “fu.” Leaving would invite fleet action.

  “Don’t suppose I’ve joined you,” he muttered as the two of them stood waiting on an open platform for a rail pod at the Port Terminus. Sullen, gray clouds were piling up like dirty laundry in the western sky, and Donovan clapped his arms around himself. “Buy me a snow cloak, would you? I didn’t get a chance to pack before I left.”

  “The pods will be heated and the trip into Riettiecenter will not take long.”

  Donovan shivered dramatically. “What I did for you, you owe me least a cloak.”

  Olafsdottr checked their queue number and the ready-board, and sighed concession. “This way.” They left the pod platform, losing their place in line, and retraced their steps to the concourse of shops immediately inside the terminal. “There’s a shuvan high-guy right over here,” she told him.

  “An autovendor? Isn’t there a custom tailor? If I’m going to be kidnapped, I’ll be kidnapped in
style.”

  “No,” said Olafsdottr, “you won’t. The tong will give you later whatever you truly need.”

  Donovan snorted. “Oh, good. I didn’t know what I truly needed; so I’m glad of some strangers to tell me. But at least you offered to give me some tongue.”

  Olafsdottr scowled. “I do not understand your humors, Donovan.”

  “Tongue. There’s an ancient Terran language that…”

  Olafsdottr stopped dead and pulled Donovan aside from the flow of pedestrian traffic. “Listen to me, Donovan,” she whispered. “Do not present yourself as a Terran here, ever. Terrans are jidawn, ‘regulated people.’ Do you understand? It is not here like in your Periphery. Terrans have not the respect and honor they have out there.” Olafsdottr overrode Donovan’s bitter laugh. “Do you understand?”

  The scarred man pulled his arm from her grip. “Sure. The good news is: I’m out of the frying pan. I take it the ‘tong’ is your little group.”

  “It means ‘a Togethering.’”

  “So the earwig tells me.” Donovan tapped the device nestled in his right ear. “But I imagine there are lots of Togethers for all sorts of purposes. If I had to guess—and my Confederal is rusty—I’d guess ‘Gaagjawn tong bũpun.’ Revolution-together-partner.”

  Olafsdottr hissed and pressed him against the wall of the confectioner’s shop. “Fool! Some things must never speak aloud.”

  “Must make for lively craic. If you think I jabber too much, maybe you should just send me back home.”