In the Lion's Mouth

by Michael Flynn

  Oschous tried altered states, three times with Donovan’s consent, twice surreptitiously. But Donovan’s fragmented mind frustrated every effort. Whether drugs, hypnosis, or dhyāna, some part of him remained unaffected, so that he was never entirely in flight.

  * * *

  “We could have told you,” the Fudir said in the meditation room after one such session. “We spent twenty years drinking uisce in the Bar on Jehovah, and hardly got a buzz on. We’re like a ship with airtight compartments. Drug or hypnotize one personality, and another remains untouched.” Only once, he remembered, had he ever been affected in his entirety; but this he did not mention. Whatever the Wildman’s potion had been, it was unknown to him.

  He and Oschous arose from the mat and bowed to each other. “Small wonder then Those smashed you,” Oschous suggested. “As a broken vessel, you’ve formidable resistance to the Question. Whole, who could say? There is always kaowèn,” he added in a meditative frame. “It has oft reaped unexpected returns.”

  Donovan’s scalp prickled. “I’m not holding out deliberately,” he ventured.

  Oschous waved a hand. “I know, I know. That’s why I’ve not used it. A man who knows things can be brought to confess them. But a man who knows nothing can also be brought to confess. At some point he would desire more than life itself to tell me what I ask. It need not be the truth; it need only bring him surcease. On such information, we might proceed confidently to our doom.”

  “Then why employ kaowèn at all?”

  Oschous’s ruddy eyebrows climbed his forehead. “But I told you. If a man does know the truth, the confession would be genuine. Really, Gesh, we don’t pith a man on whim, wondering if he might know something. That would be barbaric. We only employ kaowèn if we already know that he possesses the knowledge we want.”

  “Considerate of you.”

  “The sort of men we question don’t merit consideration. Well, perhaps you and I will have better luck next time. We’ll try a different school of meditation. Perhaps that of Gundilap. Memories are holograms. They can never be entirely eradicated. It’s simply a matter of finding the right fragment and reflecting upon it from the right angle.”

  “There is a third possibility,” said Donovan. “I might not remember how Padaborn escaped because I’m not Padaborn.”

  “I hope for your sake that you’re wrong,” the Shadow said gravely. “But I don’t think there’s any mistake. What Those did to Padaborn they didn’t do to many.” He bowed. “Go in peace, Gesh.”

  Donovan opened the door to the corridor, and Ravn was suddenly in his face, shouting, “Run!”

  Donovan started and cried, “Down!”

  Ravn fell to laughing at this splendid joke and after pacifying the somewhat nettled Donovan and sending him off, she and Oschous pondered the involuntary response he had made and wondered at its significance.

  “The Question was in his mind,” Oschous said. “When Padaborn ran at the last, he ran down.”

  But Ravn was unimpressed. “He was last seen on a rooftop. In what other direction could he have run?”

  Donovan, for his part, as he made his way to the suite he had been provided, wondered at Oschous’s own revelation. So, said the Sleuth, there are others like us.

  * * *

  Ashbanal was a fourth-generation world lying in the district called the Karnatika, a cluster of worlds interlocked by a web of short, fast roads known as the Oaks. One of these planets was said to be Oschous’s home world, but he would not say which, nor even whether it was truly said. “When a man enters the Lion’s Mouth,” he told Donovan during the crawl down-system, “his old self dies and with him all old ties. ‘The Abattoir is my home,’ we say, ‘and its Shadows are my family.’”

  Ashbanal had been settled at various removes from Elria, Dunlemor, Habberstap, and New Krakas. Her Desolate Ocean had held few of those elementary prokaryotes from which life built itself, and the ancient terraforming arks had known no easy time in her quickening. Now, however, three continents lay verdant with old growth forest, save near the bays and inlets where the skimmer-boats put in and atop the mesas set aside for the ballistic shuttles. The fourth continent had either failed of terraformation or else had been reserved by the ancient Commonwealth world-planners for mining and extraction, for it was pitted worse than the oldest shield-moon, and giant molecular sieves crawled its surface and minced, swallowed, and sorted its native ores.

  The port on the moon Neb’Qaysar was known as “the Anemone” for the many umbilicals by which the ships attached themselves. Leaving four magpies to secure the ship, Oschous led them through the tunnels inside the moon to the Inbound Customs gate and the drop ports. .

  The boots who inspected their documents seemed amused. “Have fun donn dere,” said the inbound section chief in a guttural Sconsite accent. “Bott doan cut no sheep t’roats, mindja.”

  Dee Karnatika cocked his head in interest.

  The boots were military, feared enough by the commoners, but the chief grew uncomfortable under that cock of interest. He grimaced, tugged at his collar. “Just a lotta youse guys coming by lately, aina.”

  Oschous had not identified himself as a “Deadly One,” but neither was he traveling “under the radar,” and it was neither surprising nor bothersome that the boots had pinged him. There is an aura projected by those whose profession is death. “Just passing through,” he said. “I’ve no official business on Ashbanal.”

  The chief glanced at Olafsdottr, who wagged a thumb at Oschous. “I’m with him.”

  He looked at Donovan.

  The Fudir handed over travel documents no less impressive than the official sort despite being crafted only lately during the slide from Henrietta. “I was heading this way,” he said, “and they gave me a ride.” Which was close enough to the truth to have a nodding acquaintance with it.

  That elicited another shrug. “Hey, our swoswai, he ain’t no dumb mutt. Youse make twenty-four come by here so far. Do whatcha gotta do, but try not to spook da sheep.”

  As they passed through the gate, the magpies exchanged glances with the boots. There was on the one hand the disdain of a skilled craftsman for a common workman and on the other the resentment of a laborer for the professional.

  * * *

  They filed into a groundside shuttle past the ranks of commoners who had been evicted from it to make way for the Shadow and his entourage. The former passengers stood with eyes downcast, though a few glowered in sidelong glances. Donovan sensed an undercurrent of ill feeling toward the Lion’s Mouth by both the military and the commons. In the League, the Hounds were often glamorized by entertainers and admired by the masses; but in the Confederation, the Deadly Ones were only feared. That might work up to a point, but admiration could inspire men to follow, while by fear they could only be driven.

  Oschous and Ravn took two seats in the last row and indicated that Donovan should sit in front of them. The four magpies spaced themselves about the cabin: one by the entry, one by the hatchway to the pilot’s cabin, and two in reserve. Once they had settled in, the copilot walked through the cabin checking that everyone had his safety harness fastened. “We drop hard and we drop fast,” he said by way of explanation.

  said Inner Child

  Hey, said the Brute, we may end up as cinders; but at least we’ll burn up securely fastened to our seats. This did not comfort Inner Child one whit.

  Oschous leaned forward and tapped Donovan on the shoulder. “Stop muttering to yourself and pay attention. Here’s the situation. Manlius tracked Epri to Ashbanal and threw down a pasdarm challenge. Epri cannot leave the planet without fighting Manlius. Everyone has agreed to it.”

  Pas d’armes, said the Pedant. From an old Terran tongue, meaning “a passage of arms.” It is a sort of impromptu tournament, or joust. It is a custom far older than the Commonwealth itself.

  Oh, s
haddap, Pedant.

  “You agreed,” said Donovan. “We’re here under duress.”

  “Listen, Padaborn! All the Lion’s Mouth would keep this struggle of ours sub rosa. Open battle would catch the attention of the military and draw in the boots. We’ve no desire to see pitched battles, bombardments, planets blistered. The League would seize advantage and nip at our border worlds. That bomb on Henrietta was conspicuous enough. We must contain this quarrel of ours, lest worse befall.”

  “It’s not my quarrel, either,” Donovan said. “Don’t expect me to take part.” He turned and faced forward just as the shuttle’s engines kicked in, killing her forward velocity and dropping her toward the planet.

  “I wouldn’t want you in it,” Oschous told him. “Not with the state your mind is in. I can’t risk losing you yet. I swear, I don’t know why Gidula had such hopes.”

  * * *

  The shuttle put them down at Shallumsar, the capital; and the high-speed bullet took them to Nimway, a medium-sized city in the province of Willit Small. There, Oschous placed Donovan in a room of the Hotel Axhlã on the rotting edge of the city and in the charge of one of his magpies.

  Ravn patted him on the cheek before she left with the others for the Isle of Tears. “The magpie will see to your needs,” she assured him. “Doon’t kill him and he woon’t kill you. You are an honored guest and—when once you remember who you are—a leader in our stroogle.”

  “You’re motivating my amnesia,” the Fudir muttered.

  Then Ravn and Oschous were out the door and down the drop well, where they exited on Grandmother Street, magpies first, forming a triangular cordon, then Oschous, then the Ravn. It was evening already and the world’s sun, called Avgar, glowered behind the towers of Margash Nimway on the farther side of the Gennel River. They wore black or violet shenmats dotted with silver tears. Saving Ravn, they wore on their arms red brassards with the black horse of Dee Karnatika. Ravn’s black brassard bore the stylized white comet of Gidula. From their belts and webbing depended a variety of useful devices. Oschous consulted one of these and said, “The arbor is north,” and they turned right up Grandmother toward an abandoned automill.

  They drifted like shades conjured prematurely by the sunset, moving swiftly and with an economy of motion. Few were the Ashbanalis about—dusk was not a friend in this quarter of the city—and those by chance encountered gave the Deadly Ones a wide and sudden berth. One man alone stood his ground and, from the gathering gloom on the corner of Grandmother and Beryl, he watched them as a jackal does a passing pride of lions.

  “Above,” Ravn whispered to Oschous.

  “I saw,” he answered. He consulted his locator once more, but did not change direction.

  Above them another Shadow swung on a tzan-wire from the balcony of an apartment building to the pylon supporting the Beryl Street Elevated. There, he—or she—paused to reel in the wire and watch like a spider from the web of support struts while Oschous and his party passed below. Rebel? Loyalist? One of the dwindling band of neutrals attracted by the pasdarm? Ravn did not know, but the back of her neck prickled as she passed beneath the Elevated. There was a Truce supposed; but the amity within the Lion’s Mouth was long sacrificed on the altar of Manlius’s lusts, and the Truce of a pasdarm seemed a frail reed on which incautiously to lean.

  Oschous made a sign and pointed, and Ravn and the magpies turned their attention to a figure lurking in a doorway, his own magpies arrayed about him in a checkerboard defense: Dawshoo, who had been sucked in half against his will to the rebellion against Those of Name.

  Not that it mattered in the end. Willing or not; eager or reluctant; motives venal or noble. If you cast the die, the price of life was victory. Ravn noted how drawn Dawshoo had grown since she had first known him, a lifetime ago on Dungri’s World when she had been a magpie herself. The Life took it out of one, even under the best of circumstances—and circumstances these past twenty years had not been the best.

  “The arbor has been set up in there,” whispered Dawshoo, nodding toward the abandoned factory. “It’s agreed. The rest of us keep our distance. Prime said…” He hesitated, licked his lips. “Prime said that this will settle the quarrel. If Manlius wins, Prime will call off his fighters. If Epri wins, I’m to do the same.”

  Oschous stiffened. “Was it for Manlius’s pride then that we sold our oaths?”

  “Manlius is my brother-in-arms. I could not stand by while Prime crushed him.”

  “And one thing led to another,” murmured Ravn. “From mighty acorns feeble oaks do grow.”

  Dawshoo shot her a look. “Your lips move, but I hear Gidula’s voice.”

  “And if Epri kills your brother?” demanded Oschous through tightened jaws. “Do we throw aside twenty years of struggle and subversion? Our brothers who have died—and those whom we’ve killed?”

  There was another presence with them: a tall figure cloaked in dun and like Dawshoo wearing the ceremonial skull cap of a senior Shadow. Ekadrina Sèanmazy leaned upon a walking staff as tall as she. Her grin matched that of the skull that crowned her. “As would we,” she told the rebels. “And ours is da bitter side of da wager, since we fought to protect da Names dat you have fought to tear down.” She spoke in a broad Kotyzarmayan accent that clipped her consonants and hardened the endings of her words. Her final S’s hissed; her initial ones buzzed.

  Oschous reared back. “We are the true servants of the Confederation…”

  Ekadrina waved dismissal. “Believe your own propaganda, Karnatika, at your own risk. I told Prime diss was a bad play; but de infighting among us tears his heart and diss can make an end of him, de strife. He cares less upon what terms we make de peace den dat we make him.” In the peculiar dialect of Noytáyshlawn, even abstractions demanded sex.

  Gidula had come silently among them, and took the opportunity to scoff. “Will Prime join us in our struggle against Those of Name when Manlius prevails? Tell us another story. You are more entertaining than most.”

  Ekadrina threw her cloak across her shoulder. She wore, underneath, a fine mesh of spun dispersal armor, and a belt and bandoliers well hung with weaponry. “Da Names can care for demselves,” she said, and added slyly, and not without a certain reserve, “Dere’s word dat some are abroad.”

  Dawshoo started visibly. If the commons and the boots walked in fear of the Shadows, even the Shadows feared Those of Name. “They’ve left the Secret City?”

  “Some. Maybe. What confines Dem? Remember da rumor years ago dat one once fled to da Periphery?” She grinned once more and turned away. “And now, if you will excuse me, I must see to my idiot brudder.”

  When the leader of the loyalist Shadows had gone, Oschous sucked in his breath, expelled it, looked to Dawshoo. “So. There is an agreement. But will they abide by it?”

  Ravn asked the better question. “Will we?”

  * * *

  The building complex had once housed an automill and the floorway was gridded by the lumpish bulks of gutted mill frames. The omni-tooling was long gone, of course, along with the robots—sold off when the mill went under—and most of the fittings had been harvested by the departing owners and then gleaned by scavengers. What remained was as a pencil sketch to a fine painting in oils. Large portions of the roof had blown away in this storm or that over the intervening years. Rust had claimed those metals capable of it; corrosion had tarnished the rest; rot had eaten into its timbers. Only the ceramics and plastics remained unmarked by the years, beyond a patina of grime and the assault of optimistic molds.

  The exposed skeleton served as perches for the gathering of Shadows, though one might search twice to assure oneself that they were there. They embraced their namesakes cast by the setting sun, seemed indeed to be extensions of them, and their motions appeared no more than the natural elongations of the evening.

  The interior had been decorated in gray with touches of gold and silver. A great banner of deep violet hung from the central rafter bearing a single silver t
ear in its field. Flanking it were two others: a sky-blue banner with a white dove and a forest-green banner with a yellow lily. The mons of the combatants, Manlius and Epri. A third banner hung to the side, one that Ravn did not recognize: bloodred with a white cross of the sort called “Maltese.”

  “The Riff of Ashbanal,” Gildula told her as he followed her into the arbor. “He is to be judge of the kill. After all, it’s his planet.”

  Among the spawn of the Abattoir, those Shadows assigned to police a single planet were held in some esteem by those who carried roving commissions. A roving commission usually meant singular assignments and particular targets, in and out, been and gone. A single planet might seem insignificant against the sprawl of the Spiral Arm, but it was large enough when a riff and his magpies must see to the apprehension of criminals, the punishment of treasons, the suppression of dissent, and the purging of corrupt officials, day in and day out. Riffs were marathoners among the sprinting Shadows.

  A loggia had been cleared and a fountain set up from which a punch spiced with licorice and rum flowed across a bed of cleansing stones. Near the fountain, three of the Riff’s magpies played light music on lute, tambour, and viol. Personally played music on antique instruments! Shadows and their magpies stood about deep in conversation and laughter, enmities in abeyance, old friendships briefly renewed, orders and brotherhoods conferring on their particular concerns. Ravn paused to fill a cup. The cups were of frangible ceramic, purple to match the pasdarm flag, and bore the teardrop pattern.

  “I’ve attended pasdarms,” said a magpie at the fountain, “where dozens of banners o’erhung the kill space, and the duels ran all day and through the night.” He wore the taiji of Ekadrina Sèanmazy, yin encircling yang encircling yin, and a numeral that marked him third in her following. He glanced at Ravn’s unnumbered brassard, but made no comment, and sipped his own drink. Yesterday, they might have been sent to kill each other. And tomorrow they might yet be. But for today, there was a Truce, and they were brothers in an ancient rite. “I’ve seen Shadows die in mock-combat,” he confided, “but this is the first I’ve been where the chapters read à outrance.”