Michael Flynn - In the Lion’s Mouth

Much became clear when Donovan slipped behind the vats and entered the secret room. It was a small room, but contained a chair and table as well as an open safe. The Fudir thought it might have been used as a sort of stateroom by smuggled personages.

I thought the smell was familiar, said the Silky Voice. The Brute and Inner Child immediately assumed guardian positions, listening at the ears, watching through the corners of the eyes.

Rigardo-ji Edelwasser lay sprawled on his back on the floor, arms splayed, mouth agape and bloody, as if he had been punched in the teeth by an iron fist. The wall behind the chair was spattered with blood, and bone, and bits of brain. On the table before the chair stood open a standard bushel-sized shipping container, and beside it a beautifully carved wooden chest, also open.

The chest was Peacock orangewood, from which skilled knifework had brought out vines and fruits and other figures. The interior was lined with silk over shaped foam dunnage, but it was not clear from the shape what it had once held.

Olafsdottr had crowded into the room behind Donovan and, like him, made no move to cotton her nose against the smell. “How long has he lain here?” she asked.

“By the odor and bloating, the Pedant says, four days.”

Olafsdottr nodded slowly. “And now you know why he did not appear at the ambush. A good thing too, for I think he would have botched it.”

Donovan turned and looked at her. “Why do you say that?”

She pointed to the empty box. “He came to get the weapon and managed to kill himself with it. Such mishandling does not lend confidence.”

Donovan stared at the dead man. “I don’t think it matters anymore.”

“But it does, my sweet; for where is the weapon that once sat in this wonderful box?”

Donovan had not been paying attention to the kill space, but the Sleuth and others had been.

He was sitting in the chair when he picked it up, said the Sleuth. It fired upon his mishandling, and he jerked back, then slid forward, feetfirst. The weapon would have dropped to the floor and perhaps rolled a bit. There is not much room here for it to roll very far; yet there is no sign of it. Conclusion: the weapon is self-mobile. Based on the dunnage in which it nestled, it would be the size of a ruggerball—the ellipsoidal kind used on Hawthorne Rose.

Olafsdottr meanwhile had rolled the body aside, perhaps thinking the weapon underneath. What she found was a gaping wound in the back of the skull, as if that iron fist had punched its way out of the brain. “A bore hole through his head!” she said, bending over and looking through it. “Entry through the soft palate, up through the midbrain and the parietal lobe, and smashing out between the occipital and the parietal bones. What was this weapon that so badly backfired on him?”

“It was called the ‘Frog Prince’ on the shipping manifest.”

Olafsdottr grinned. “Busy buoy! And what be the nature of this ‘Frog Prince’?”

“We’re not sure. But there are Terran legends,” he said. “It was to be a trap for the Molnar.” He looked again at the smuggler’s body and the piercing wound through his head. “If I were you, and I saw it hopping about, I wouldn’t try to kiss it.”

Rigardo-ji was stupid, he decided. Like many petty scramblers, he could think from point A to point B, but not beyond it to point C. He had read between the lines and believed Foreganger’s present to the Molnar was a vengeance for the massacre of the Merry v Starinu , but it had never occurred to the treacherous little beast that the weapon had been meant to kill its user.

“So,” said Olafsdottr. “’Tis loose.” She looked about the room and went to the door to listen. Save for the normal susurrus and hum of the engines, the ship was quiet. The pork vat, out of sight of the doorway, hissed and a valve turned with a heavy clunk. The Confederal, already straining to hear sounds, jerked a little, though only a little, and her teaser moved fractionally. “But so long as we do not kiss this … Frog Prince … we need not fear it?”

Donovan shook his head. “I would not hope so easily. It was designed to trick the Molnar into kissing it, but that trick would not have worked more than the once. It must have been designed, after the initial kiss, to seek out targets of opportunity in his stronghold—which to the People of Foreganger would mean anything on Cynthia that lived, man, woman, or child. It is the sort of boundless vengeance the People are famous for. Abyalon is more gently bred, and if word of this ever comes out, more than one national government there will fall. Meanwhile, we are in a pocket. We best back out and seal off the entry into the main part of the ship.”

In the silence that followed, they heard the distant clang of a leaping object.

“ It must listen for sounds of life, ” the Sleuth whispered through the scarred man’s lips, “ and then home in on them . Quick,” added the Brute. “ And quiet.”

It was a measure of the Confederal’s concern that she turned her back on Donovan to leave the hidden room, and he with his knuckles white around a wrench. It was a measure of his concern that he took no advantage. One swipe, he thought, and I will see my daughter, after all. And Bridget ban.

You might see them, said the young man in the chlamys, but could you look them in their eyes?

He slipped out of the room close behind the Confederal, and they moved cautiously from behind the fish vat, pausing to listen at each step. They heard another spring, closer this time.

It must leap like a frog, the Sleuth deduced, maintaining the metaphor. A certain artist pride informed the death-techs of Foreganger.

“If we can close the door on it, we may breathe easier,” whispered Olafsdottr. “His Highness may bounce around the hidden passageways to his mechanical heart’s delight; but so long as he is confined there, we need not fear him.”

“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.