Michael Flynn - In the Lion’s Mouth

“I am to walk into the enemy’s lair on such a lark? You ask much of me, Donovan buigh.”

Indeed, he was. He could see down the length of the corridor the blank wall where the secret panel must be. The expression “fish in a barrel” came to mind. Rigardo-ji would have a clear shot down the entire length of the corridor, all the way to the cargo lock at the end. No one in the corridor could escape, unless they made it to the ward room, or into the closet where he had first been kept.

And that included him. A steady eye might pick off the Confederal without also hitting her prisoner, but Donovan knew in that moment of clarity that the smuggler meant to kill them both.

“Let’s go,” Donovan said, turning to resume their trek.

Perversely, it was now Olafsdottr who held him back. “What is the hurry, Doonoovan? You ask me to venture into the heart of the Oold Planets to accost a Hound ? From sooch a joorney even I may not return.”

“Fair is fair, then. Isn’t that what you’re asking of me?”

“Ah, but I am not asking. Your condition is not a conditional.”

Donovan could not take his eyes off the wall at the far end. He waited for the panel to open and death to emerge. “We can discuss this in my room,” he said.

And still, like an ancient hero, ankle tied to a stake in the ground, Olafsdottr remained in the line of fire. “Ooh. Soo anxious! Do you have a trap led for me in your room? What cleverness have you been oop to?”

But then she noticed that his attention was fixed not upon her, but upon the far wall. She spun and aimed her teaser down the hallway. “What is it, sweet? What wickedness have you wrought?”

In turning away, she had turned her back on Donovan buigh. The Brute took charge of the scarred man’s body and leapt for her. She buckled under his sudden weight and went to her belly and the breath woofed out of her. A moment, she lay still; and then she twitched and Donovan felt a burning tingle in his side.

And came to lying on the cramped bunk in the ward room. Olafsdottr sat, chin cupped in one hand, in one of the two soft chairs that gave the room its center. “Clever move, O best one. How you lulled me these past days! And had I lost my grip either on my teaser or my wits, success might have been yours. That would have been no good thing, either for me or for you.”

She leaned forward and patted Donovan’s cheek, and when he struggled to grab her arm he learned that he was strapped into the bunk. “You stay here some few day, I think. Review error of ways. Soon we enter Abyalon-Megranome Road. You no jog elbow.”

After the Shadow had left, Donovan engaged in some experimental struggles, but Olafsdottr was a professional. He did not expect much to come of it, and was not disappointed when not much did.

“You did not want to see her killed,” Donovan told himselves. “Why?”

The captive comes to love his captor, said the Silky Voice.

I don’t love that stick,said the Brute.

Edelwasser promised he would not go for a kill,said the Pedant. Did you not trust him?

“And our lack of trust was justified,” said the Fudir. “He didn’t show.”

“Yes, why did he not show?” asked Donovan.

A) He lost his nerve, suggested the Sleuth. B) We had the time or place mixed up. C) We were early. D) We were late. E) He couldn’t find the weapon he planned on using. F) He found it, but it wasn’t loaded. G) He …

Shaddap,suggested the Brute.

It doesn’t matter. Brute didn’t want to see her killed. Why?

Who sez? Was me that jumped her.

No, you shoved her to the floor to knock her out of the line of fire.

“It wouldn’t have worked,” the Fudir told them. “Rigardo-ji would have kept on shooting. He would have shot us too, I think. I think he was planning to all along.”

You never trust anyone, Child.

The young man in the chlamys said, I didn’t trust him, either. Something in his carriage, something in his expression.

“What do you say, Pollyanna?” Donovan asked. “You always see the silver lining in every dark cloud.”

The girl in the chiton was sitting on the floor next to the bunk. And you see the dark cloud around every silver lining, she said. This will all work out. Wait and see.

Donovan expected that the smuggler would return that night, using the secret panel through which he had originally entered, so Inner Child and the Brute kept watch through the scarred man’s half-slit eyes and listened through his ears. Some explanation would be forthcoming for the failure to act as promised, but Donovan was no longer sure he was unhappy with that failure. Some instinct had urged the Brute to protect their captor. The Brute was not a keen thinker, but his instincts were sound.

He heard a clatter behind the wall and pressed his ear against the bulkhead to make it out more keenly. It came at intervals, distant at first, toward the rear of the ship; but it seemed to draw closer, come adjacent to him, and then pause. There was no sound for a time and the impression slowly grew within the heart of Donovan buigh that something lurked on the other side of the panel; and that this something sensed his presence.

Suddenly uneasy, Donovan pulled away from the panel as far as the straps would allow. He exhaled as softly as he could, made no move, no sound.

Moments dripped by.

Then there was a clattering by his head and a moment later intermittent impacts receding down the hidden passageway. The scarred man began to breathe normally. The sounds reminded the Silky Voice of a bouncing ball—if the ball were metallic and could hesitate from one bounce to the next.

A little later that evening, Inner Child heard the same sounds returning. He passed the sensations on to the Sleuth to puzzle over and continued to wait for the smuggler to appear.

But no one came to them that night, nor all the next day, nor the night after that.

He wondered if the smuggler had acted on his own after all. Maybe he had ambushed Ravn and taken control of the ship, and was content now to keep Donovan strapped into his bunk for the foreseeable future.

But on the third day, after the ship had entered Megranomic space and had begun the Newtonian crawl toward the Palisades Parkway, it was Ravn Olafsdottr who came to release him from his bonds. “Coome now, sweet,” she said, “you moost be hoongry.” She unlocked one hand, gave him the key, and stepped back.

“It’s a psychological trick,” the Fudir told her as he worked the key into the locks that held the remaining straps together. “That Alabaster accent is a comic’s affectation. Most of us in the League have been conditioned to regard hooters as flighty. That’s not exactly fair to the Alabastrines, but it helps if your adversary underestimates your wit.”

“You very clever, friend. How transparent this unworthy one, that you see through her so!”

“And the Manjrin makes you seem sinister.” Donovan, now loosened from his straps, stood up and rubbed his arms. Olafsdottr held out her hand and, after a moment, Donovan laid the key in it. “You didn’t have to pull them so tight, you know.”

“Yes,” she said gravely. “I did.”

“Anything interesting happen while I was tied up?”

Olafsdottr cocked her head nearly sideways. “Should something have?”

“Never mind.” He stepped past her. “I’m hungry. Let’s do lunch.” He didn’t wait to see if she followed, or if she held her teaser aimed at the small of his back.