In the Lion's Mouth

by Michael Flynn

  “The fight will be no different,” Ravn told him, “only shorter. Dispersal armor is forbidden. And a purposed kill looks much the same as the accidental sort.”

  Above them, Gidula’s comet banner unfurled on the sidelines, drawing the eyes of Magpie Three Sèanmazy. “The Old One,” he whispered. “’Tis a grand show, is it not?” His eyes roamed the banners on high, naming them, reciting their own famous passages at arms. “There! Lime, a lion. That’s Aynia Farer, and … yellow, two crows! Phoythaw Bhatvik, Ekadrina’s adviser. Crimson, a black horse. Oschous Dee Karnatika himself! Oh, there are great names here today … Did you witness the pasdarm, O Deadly One,” her chance companion asked, moist-eyed, “where the Hatborden fought Billy Chins? That was on Whitefield, Tobruk’s Sun. Aye! Was there e’er such noble courage shown? E’er such skill shown in gunplay or the knife? At the end of it, they exchanged their personal sidearms and pledged to fight again, when next the Fates allowed, though they never did. The entire set was taken to the Abattoir and displayed for a year and a day in the temple.” A sip from the spiced rum. “I hope he dies well.”

  Ravn Olafsdottr did not ask him which combatant he expected to die. “The great game of the beautiful life,” she murmured. She emptied her cup, placed it upended on the sideboard, as was the custom, and prepared to leave for a perch in the rafters. But Magpie Three Sèanmazy held her arm, a gesture in other contexts potentially fatal.

  “I didn’t catch that.”

  “The great game of the beautiful life,” she said. “Why do you think we wear silver tears on our shenmats when we attend these affairs? Why do you think we decorate the kill space so gaily and discuss so avidly the art with which a stroke or a shot or a move was made? It is because within this space, within the ‘squared circle,’ it all has meaning. There is closure. There are rules, and within those rules the better warrior wins. Outside the arbor, it is not so orderly, not so pretty. Death is never according to the rules, and never the reward only of the less proficient. Much of the time, there is never even a reason; only a moment of carelessness. No one will stop to record our last brave words. Our final enemy will walk away and leave us to bleed out in some back alley. Or some natural disaster will fell us, and no one will ever know. The Hatborden died in an aftershock on Jasmine during the cleanup; and Billy Chins disappeared in the League, and none know where or why.”

  The magpie had colored under these words. “Then why do you continue in the service?”

  Olafsdottr shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

  “When your final enemy leaves you to bleed out,” he said, “pray that it be a Hound and not a brother Shadow.”

  Ravn made a sign against Fate. “May it be so, save that the Hound lies bleeding.”

  That lightened the other’s countenance. The Shadows might be in civil war among themselves, but they could agree about their enemies across the Rift of stars. “Well said, sister!” And they parted on a more amicable note.

  Ravn studied the banners hanging in the dead air of the ruin. She thought about raising her own, but as she was presently attached to Gidula’s section, that would be unseemly.

  On her way into the rafters, she caught up with Gidula. “He grew angry,” the Old One said, “because he knew you spoke truth.”

  She did not ask him how he had overheard her conversation. “Truth has oft that effect.” Ravn reached up and hauled herself onto an angle brace, where she nestled. Around her, others found perches and vantage points. Some deployed recorders of various sorts. Both combatants were highly rated, and the contest promised to be instructive as well as entertaining.

  Directly forward, across the kill space, the one-time management offices had been broken open into a sort of balcony and decorated as the Isle of Tears. From it deployed the banner of Shadow Prime, the only banner in the Lion’s Mouth that was plain black, without icon or adornment. Prime stood above it, pretending a sort of neutrality, Father of the Lion’s Mouth, Judge of the Abattoir, benign mentor to all here present—but whose sentiments were subtly known: a loyalist by long indoctrination and by special affection for both Epri and Ekadrina. His hair was grayer and his face more drawn than when last Ravn had seen him.

  And what if his two favored students had chosen the other path? Ravn wondered. What if they had gone into rebellion? Would Prime, from love of them, have rallied the whole of the Lion’s Mouth to the overthrow of the Names? Did his loyalty lie with the Names or with his “children”?

  And there, a flash of white in the darkness beside him, the “pale princess” Kelly Stapellaufer, whose all too plastic affections had started the whole chain of events. The only one present garbed in white, her banner alone was not flown. Deprived in this venue of her own identity, she was simply “the Lady of the Secret Island” for whose affections the two Shadows would contest.

  Of the three Deadly Ones caught up in the wretched affair, Ravn Olafsdottr found no sympathy for any of them, least of all for Kelly. Manlius had let his rod rule his mind. One day it would kill him; for a man cannot be a Shadow and harbor affections. Epri had at least been following orders when he broke them up, though in following those orders he had committed the same crime. But it seemed to Ravn that Kelly Stapellaufer had seduced first one, then the other, and so, whatever other motives had since accumulated, had brought the Lion’s Mouth down into this quiet, desperate civil war.

  “What say you?” asked Gidula, who had come silently to Ravn’s side. He had followed her gaze and found the object of it. “Which does she truly prefer? Did she resent Manlius’s attentions from the beginning and use Epri to exact a vengeance on him? Or, once Epri’s captive, did she find her cupid in convenience?”

  Ravn affected disinterest. “She no longer matters. All of their grievances have been tumbled under a milliard others. She was the spark, not the explosion. This fight will settle nothing.”

  “You think Prime will not honor the chapters?”

  “Does the dynamite care if the match that lit its fuse has been extinguished?” Her teeth showed briefly in the night. But then Ravn realized that she was talking to empty space. Absently, she fingered his sigil on her brassard and waited. The Old One had strange humors. In the watching crowd she saw taijis, doves, lilies, and other mons and arms and logos.

  Poder Stoop, the Riff of Ashbanal, stepped forward into the open space on the floor below. Poder wore a white surcoat with a red sash to mark him as the Judge of the Kill. So far as Olafsdottr knew, he was neutral in the war. Whoever won would need order maintained on Ashbanal, and that meant a riff and his deputies.

  Beside him stood Epri Gunjinshow and Manlius Metataxis and two of the Riff’s magpies. All but Epri bore grim countenances. Epri smiled and waved to supporters in the audience. He did not turn to look at Kelly. Both combatants wore ceremonial golden shackles around their ankles as a sign that they were bound to fight each other. Manlius, it was said, had pledged not to eat sitting down until he had slain his foe. Ravn did not know what pledges Epri had made, but she was certain they were every bit as extravagant.

  It would not be fair to say that silence fell, for the gathered Shadows had made little in the way of sound. But the silence deepened when the Riff raised his staff horizontally above his head.

  “Honored Father.” He bowed low toward Shadow Prime. Then, over the network that encompassed the arbor he said to the assembly, “Deadly Ones, hear me. These are the chapters of the Pasdarm of the Isle of Tears. It has been agreed, each and several, that the matter of Manlius Metataxis and Epri Gunjinshow will be settled after the ancient traditions of our Guild. Despite the rulin’ of the Courts d’Umbrae that both Manlius and Epri have equally transgressed our Laws and that the slate was therefore wiped clean between them, our two brothers have persisted in their feud, and in doin’ so have sown dissension in our ranks. An’ this dissension bein’ the greater evil,” the Riff continued, “our Father and our senior brothers—Dawshoo Yishohrann and Ekadrina Sèanmazy—have sponsored this-here pasdarm.” He allowed hi
s gaze to travel around the impromptu gallery while a light patter of applause and tapping of roof beams rattled the old building.

  “Heh,” whispered Gidula. “He wishes no doubt as to where the blame lies, does he?”

  A plague on both your houses. “He straddles the fence,” Ravn told her section leader. “Matters always seem different from the gallery than they do in the blood and the sand.”

  Gidula smiled. “A neutral, yes, but is he a loyalist neutral or a rebel neutral? I wonder if he realizes that the time for safe neutrality is passing…”

  On the floor, Poder had finished the by-laws and intoned the ritual preface. “Brothers! À outrance! To the blood an’ to the bone!” Then he struck the floor of the automill sharply with his staff of office and the boom reechoed through the empty caverns of the building. The Lady of the Isle of Tears threw a single black rose from the catwalk. The Riff’s magpies struck the golden shackles from the fighters’ ankles and led their charges to their randomly-chosen starting points on the factory floor.

  “Best we illuminate ourselves,” Gidula whispered as, “lest one combatant or the other mistake us for his opponent.”

  Ravn flipped her night goggles into place and, as she did so, noticed others throughout the building flickering into the pale green glow that marked them as spectators. Golden beams of light sprang up, resembling ropes or fences and marking the bounds of the kill space. She glanced once more at the roost where Prime had stood and noticed that the Lady had vanished, unable perhaps to watch her lover slain. Whichever of the two that might be.

  On the old manufacturing floor, neither Epri nor Manlius was such a fool as to step forward. No one emerged victor from a joust of Shadows by offering himself as a target. From her perch high above, however, Ravn was able to pick out both men as they moved cautiously behind cover of the rusting hulks of machinery probing for each other’s location. Their starting positions had by chance been set in the same quadrant of the space, and not terribly far from each other. Ravn wondered if the Riff, hoping for a quick end, had rigged the draw. If so, the play had failed, for the two were unknowingly moving away from each other. Suppressed amusement rippled through the gallery.

  Manlius was the larger of the two, supple and well muscled. He moved like a panther. If it came to close combat, the advantage would be his. Epri was more slender, more graceful—a dancer—and owned the clearer eye. At longer distance, where aim outweighed strength, he would hold the edge. The Riff had chosen the venue well. The combination of obstacles and lines of sight gave both men a play to their advantage.

  “I will enjoy your dissection, Epri,” Manlius called out.

  And Epri whipped a shot with his tickler in the direction of the voice.

  Mentally, Ravn deducted a point from both men’s score. There had been no wagering permitted on this pasdarm, since it had not been joined for sport; but she had made her own bets with herself. Manlius should not have wasted breath taunting his opponent. And Epri’s hasty shot showed him nervous and on edge. The likelihood that Manlius would be anywhere in the vicinity of his voice was small to the point of vanishing.

  And to a man wearing the proper night filters, as Manlius certainly was, the small spark of the tickler’s discharge marked Epri’s location as surely as Manlius’s voice had not.

  Clever. She notched Manlius up half a point. Dawshoo’s brother did not fire at the spot thus revealed, because it was improbable that Epri had remained in it. But he worked his way closer to where he thought Epri had gone. The best way to track a quarry was to follow his mind, to go to where he would be and not to where he had been.

  The combat proceeded as delicately as a ballet, and like a ballet it remained on point. Both Shadows floated silently from cover to cover, seeking always that advantageous position above and behind the opponent. Manlius stalked Epri, moving closer each time to his opponent’s shifting location. Epri evaded, probing with exploratory fire, circling the perimeter of the kill space. The opening gambits, as always, probed for the other’s position and sought out his strategy; but the spectators waited expectantly for the endgame, when Manlius’s greater strength would prevail—and made quiet side bets whether Epri would pot him before that could happen.

  Epri threw an I-ball on a high arc and its spinning cameras sent an image of the kill space to him, stabilized and integrated by his suit’s processors. It must have caught Manlius’s location, because Epri hurled a multibomb in that direction. Its explosion jarred, even through the ear filters everyone wore. Secondary munitions seared the five places Manlius might have leapt to—but Manlius had run to a sixth.

  “He ought to try the Spider,” said a magpie who perched nearby and wore the two crows of Phoythaw Bhatvik. “Let the slut come to him.”

  Ravn made no reply. When Shadow stalked Shadow, setting up a sniper’s nest was suicide. Your opponent would more likely locate your nest before crossing its lines of fire.

  Early on, Manlius had strewn “crispies” in one of the intersections. This eventually paid off when Epri passed through the intersection and stepped on them. Passive munitions were forbidden by the chapters, but Manlius had set crispies only for the distinctive crunching sound they made when stepped upon. He had naturally logged the location into one of his hand-bombs and let fly when he heard the signal. But Epri, at the first crunch had fled down an aisle picked at random and leaped to one side, and atop one of the machines.

  Ravn deducted points from both: Epri for being so incautious as to tread upon such an obvious alarm; Manlius for placing it at an intersection. Had he placed the crispies in the middle of an aisle, Epri would have had fewer escape routes and he could have more easily bracketed them. Of course, in a pasdarm à outrance, one could win on points and still lie dead at the end.

  A splinter of shrapnel had found Epri’s calf as he pulled himself up and over the machine. The assembly roared, “Blood!” Though the blood was minor and once the shrapnel had been pulled out, the shenmat closed up the wound. Ravn deducted further points because at the roar, Manlius had paused to preen, and so lost the initiative.

  The second time Epri tried the trick with the I-ball, Manlius shot it from the air on the fly, earning an appreciative murmur from even Epri’s partisans. Then Manlius rolled his own I-balls down the aisles of the factory floor, one after the other, grasping the layout of the kill space from a more pedestrian angle. They were harder to pot on the roll, but also less panoramic in their harvested images. Epri deduced from the several paths of the balls the intersection from which they had been rolled; but before he could home in on it, Manlius had gone.

  And so it continued, as patiently as a chess match. Now and then, the combatants caught sight of one another and guns would snap and knives or whistle-trees would fly. More often, indirect fire sought out grid squares where the opponent might lurk. Once, a cry from the sidelines indicated that a spectator had been slow to move from the line of fire. Manlius grinned at the sound, and at first Ravn wondered at his misplaced glee.

  But then she saw what Manlius had noticed. The shifting spectators, illuminated as they were, gave him a vector by which to locate his foe! For those directly in the line of fire would drift off to either side, leaving a space devoid of lights. If he drew a line between himself and that bull’s-eye in the gallery, he would find Epri somewhere along it.

  Manlius closed the distance on cat’s feet before Epri should notice the similar gap in Manlius’s six and realize its significance. He reached an old gutted machine and swung to its top as if weightless, plucking a throwing star from his belt. The crowd sucked in its breath and Epri, crouching below Manlius, heard the intake and, though not understanding its precise significance, pulled a dazer from its scabbard and peered around the corner of the next machine.

  But this was a personal grudge and feelings ran high. Manlius paused a moment to savor his victory and in that savor lost the sauce.

  A voice cried out, “Epri! Your seven!”

  Manlius let fly—and Epri ro
lled aside, loosing behind him a hasty dazer bolt. The star skittered along the composite flooring, clattering into the darkness. Sparks danced along the seams of the machine on which Manlius had lately poised.

  “Who called out?” demanded Dawshoo in the darkness. “A violation!”

  Manlius had launched himself after Epri, unwilling to surrender his advantage at close quarter combat; but Epri avoided his grip and completed a double roll. His dazer came up and Manlius kicked it loose from his grasp. Epri backed away swiftly, scrabbling at his belt for another weapon, but Manlius whirled a back-camel kick into the side of Epri’s head.

  The loyalist dropped, stunned, and Manlius seized a rusted steel bar from the machine beside him and brought it down sharply to impale his enemy to the floor.

  And Epri wasn’t there.

  The steel bar struck the floor with a clang, and Manlius released it and spun defensively, expecting a riposte. But there was no sign of his opponent. The spectators began to murmur from their perches.

  Ravn scanned the kill space, but Epri was simply … gone. “I saw him,” said a Shadow on her right. “And then I didn’t.” Ravn’s goggles picked out a taiji on her brassard. Ekadrina’s section.

  Casting her mind back, it seemed to Ravn that, at the very instant when Manlius was poised to impale Epri, the world had hesitated, as if time had been spliced and a moment snipped out. But in that lost and extra moment, Ravn remembered a ghost of movement, like the swirl of a cloak in the darkness. And then Epri had been gone.