Michael Flynn - In the Lion’s Mouth

Big Jacques nudged him with a forefinger. “There. Y’see? ‘A bigger challenge.’ But you may as well fold the play. If Pendragon’s mother-henning your target, he’s probably figured why he was in the cross-hairs in the first place. Whole point of moving our man into the Comm Center is that they don’t know we done it.”

“Oh, half a dozen cadre move up the ladder if the top dog’s capped. Might not be obvious which we wanted moved. Tell me, Jacques. We chance-met here, or have you looked me up ’cause we’re cobber?”

“Bone homey, we call it where I come from,” said Big Jacques. The tavern-keeper brought him a large stein of uncertain content. The big man grumbled about something he called a demitasse and tossed it off in a single gulp. “Nah, just a call of the courtesy,” he continued when the tavern-keeper had gone off to draw five more steins. “I’ll be sending magpies out and your guys might cross paths with mine. Don’t want no misunderstandings.” He handed the smaller man a bubble case. “That’s got the dance card for our FOFs. The identifier changes randomly, but that’ll keep your guys in sync so they can know Friend or Foe. I’d appreciate the same info from you, ’cause while my main interest is that your boys don’t pot my boys, I don’t really want mine potting yours, either.”

“Bad for morale,” said Domino Tight.

Both Shadows took a moment to download the codes through their own intranets. “Who’s your date, Big Guy, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Ekadrina Sèanmazy.”

Domino Tight’s magpies had been whispering the latest intel in his left earwig. He touched pause. “Ekadrina? She’s on-world?”

“Not yet. She went to Ashbanal for the pasdarm. But she’ll be stopping here to check with Pendragon on her way to Dao Chetty. She may have sent some of her magpies on ahead. You ain’t seen any taijis drifting around have you?”

Domino Tight shook his head. “That … could send things up a gum tree. Ekadrina is a big bite to chew on. You have the teeth for it?”

Jacques grinned wide. “Who else you think could take her?”

“Oschous.”

“Might could be. But we don’t put our brains on the block. Gidula too, in his prime; which you might have noticed, he ain’t. Maybe Dawshoo; and notice the ‘maybe’.”

“Manlius?”

“Not even a maybe. Only one who thinks he could is Manlius.”

“There was Geshler Padaborn once,” mused Domino Tight, “but she took him down in the end.”

Jacques finished another stein. He smiled, as if to himself. “Sure, after he was already a prisoner, and had escaped her cordon.”

Domino Tight nodded. “Speaking of the pasdarm, how did that play out? Which one retired, Epri or Manlius?”

“You have a way of asking things … Don’t know. Message packets ain’t caught up yet. I come here direct from Henrietta, but Oschous, Dawshoo, and them went to Ashbanal to collect Manlius. Which reminds me. They’ll be looking you up soon. Big play coming, and you’re the man for it. Or one of them. Seven Shadows in the play.”

“Seven!”

“And our flocks too, I guess.”

“What’s the play? I suppose you already know, being in the Inner Circle and all.”

“Yeah, I got it writ down somewhere. I’ll let you know.”

Domino Tight grimaced. “Well, I always did like surprises. Who else is in? Can you tell me that?”

“Oh, beside you and me, there’s, lessee…” He counted on his fingers. “My copain, Little Jacques—I hit ’em high, he hits ’em low—Oschous himself, Ravn, Manlius … Oh, and Padaborn.”

“Padaborn!”

“Yeah. Padaborn’s back. Showed up on Henrietta just after most of us left, courtesy of your old friend, Ravn Olafsdottr. She tracked him down over in the League, bagged him up, and brought him back.”

The curly-haired Shadow finished his schooner. “How … interesting. Ekadrina know?”

Jacques grinned. “That’s the problem with the Long Tall One. You never know what she knows.”

“Padaborn…” said Domino Tight. “The greatest of the Shadows … He’ll give the Cause a new life.”

“If you believe in the Cause.”

“Well, if Ravn could bag Padaborn and haul his sorry ass back over this side of the Rift, he isn’t half the man he used to be.”

“Way I hear it, he’s four or five times the man he used to be. But they tell me he knows the way in.”

“In where?”

Big Jacques gazed at the ceiling with pursed lips. Domino Tight made a sour face.

“Oh. By the way,” Jacques added, “you know someone in the Secret City, doncha?”

Domino Tight nodded. “Tina Zhi. She works in the Gayshot Bo.”

“Yeah, those smoochin’ good looks of yours draws ’em in like a landing grid, especially the geeka girls in the Tech Ministry. She knows her way around there, don’t she? The Secret City? Maybe has maps and floor plans and crap. Knows where each of the Names lives. Staff sizes.”

Domino Tight smiled crookedly. “Maybe. But of course you can’t actually tell me what the play is.”

Big Jacques spread his arms. “I didn’t tell you, did I? See what you can get from her.” He pushed himself to his feet and whistled, and five of the patrons in the bar stood, too. “Well, see ya ’round, Curly.”

“Or not.”

The Big Shadow left by the front, preceded and followed by his magpies. “Never leave by the way you came” was a maxim of the Abattoir. Domino Tight’s Number Two magpie had been sitting at the bar. Now she came by the booth. “I don’t even have to guess who that was,” she said. “How’s the analysis going?”

“I’m running a time series now.” His instrument pinged and, without missing a beat, he said, “I’ve just finished running a time series.” He glanced at the plot superimposed on a map of Cambertown. “Root! No wonder it took so long. The barycenter is nonstationary. Our bird is on the wing. He must have twigged, because it looks like he’s probing for us . Tell the flock to fall back on refuge…” He struck a random number generator. “… three.”

The magpie chirped. “Just like a pasdarm,” she said. “With a planet-sized arbor.”

A toss of the head gathered the other two magpies in the tavern. The banty man turned and for a moment locked eyes with Domino Tight before he professed interest in the engravings on the walls. “Out the back,” Tight told the magpies. “Standard formation. Taverner, what does your surveillance say?”

It was not a nice neighborhood. The man behind the bar checked his screens. “Alley-the rear empty be-presently…”

They each pulled dazers from their belts and tugged their hoods up over their heads. The tavern-keeper pretended not to notice. Just another day in the Seventh District.

Standard formation meant Number Five and Number Fourteen would go out first—one breaking to the left, one to the right—and Number Two would go out last as a rear-guard. But at the last moment, Number Two tugged Domino Tight by the shoulder and pushed out past him.

And that meant that when the Shadow came out last, he had a perfect view of his Number Two magpie as she was shot down from ambush. Dispersal armor could dissipate the pulse, attenuate the load density; but not if the shot was in the face. Two fell backward, her face blackened, her eyes melted, her lips and tongues blistered and congealed. Domino Tight used her toppling body for a momentary shield and broke left, away from the main boulevard. He tumbled into a protective doorway.