Michael Flynn - In the Lion’s Mouth

She patted his cheek with her free hand. “When oonly the best are needed.”

“You know, it’s not like I’m incapable…”

“Hoosh, my darling. Remember my advice.”

“Oschous knows. There are no flies on him.”

“Noo flies? You have the foony way of speaking. Come, in here.”

The ship’s lounge was broad and circular, decorated in silver and black. On the wall were embedded a shifting array of images: places where Oschous had been, magpies that had been in his service. Game consoles, spool racks, desks, and craft stations stood about the room. Save at the beginning and the end, interstellar journeys consisted primarily of doing nothing. Some of that was taken up in training and exercise, but there was such as thing as overtraining, so everyone in the crew had developed a hobby or interest. Magpie Four Karnatika, for example, was preparing an anthropological study of the Regensthorp Sector; Magpie Six engaged herself in clay sculpture.

Two magpies were present when Ravn and Donovan entered, one reading a screen, the other playing battle chess on a projection stage. Olafsdottr waved her arms about. “Go! Go, scat! Doonoovan would make passionate loov to me, and wishes noo audience.”

The magpies laughed and one said, “I’d want no audience either, was I him.” But they gathered up their things and left the lounge, still laughing.

Donovan frowned. “Why did you tell them that…?”

But Ravn scythed him with an ankle sweep and he fell onto the sofa with Ravn atop him. She wrapped arms and legs around him, and it was like being baled up in wire. He could not move. “What the hell…?”

“Hush, my sweet,” she whispered in his ear in the Gaelactic. “Listen, and listen. Oschous was bound to learn that you are hale. That could not be helped. But Gidula is the key. Whatever you do—and as long as we lie here on this couch, sweet, you may do whatever you wish—do not let Gidula know your sundry selves have come together. Billy Chins’ last message told him that you were a broken man. That is what he expected when he had me fetch you, and that is what you must show him.”

Donovan pulled his head back enough to see genuine fear in the eyes of Ravn Olafsdottr. “Why…?” he whispered. But Ravn kissed him to stop the question; then, nuzzling his neck, she whispered again.

“Do not ask questions for which I cannot yet give you answers. The caution is sufficient unto the day. It is worth your life, and mine.”

“Will not Oschous tell him…?”

“Hush. Oschous is clever. Knowledge is power. He does give it away. Mmm, you are good kisser.”

“When I have to, I can play a role.” Once again, he found his words smothered.

“Tell me,” Ravn whispered between kisses. “Whatever. Become. Of Billy. Chins.”

“He retired.”

Ravn fell still for a moment. “How … sad,” she said.

“He wasn’t too happy about it, either; but I wasn’t ready to retire myself.”

“How fortunate for my present pleasures, then,” Olafsdottr said and resumed her caresses. When a time went by with no further warnings, Donovan disengaged.

“Anything else?”

“Ooh, my sweet. We must not be too obvious that this roll was only a role; that this ‘seduce’ was but a ruse. Play the game to completion, darling. I told you before that we would become good friends someday. What better day than today?”

But if no drug could ever completely dull the whole of Donovan buigh, if no rite of meditation could ever completely entrance him, neither could the rush and flow of enzymes entirely engage his mind. The Silky Voice was seduced; but the Fudir stood aside, faithful to the memory of a woman who hated him, and Inner Child, as always, kept watch, and the Sleuth tried to deduce what it all meant.

Who does she want this conversation kept secret from? he asked the Fudir.

Oschous. Who else has eyed and eared this vessel? The question is what did she want kept secret from him. Not the condition of our mind. He already knows.

Oh, that is obvious. What she conceals from our host is that Gidula mustn’t know. And notice what she said.

Do not ask questions for which I cannot yet give you answers,the Pedant helpfully reminded them.

Cannot yet give the answers; not that she does not yet know them.

To a nonnative speaker, the distinction between “cannot’” and “can not” may …

Shut up, Pedant. How are Donovan and the others doing?

Yes, thought the Fudir. There is more than a peck of trouble here, and it’s not all down on Yuts’ga at all.

It cannot be said that a woman of deep golden skin can flush, but Bridget ban has turned brass as Olafsdottr chants her seduction of Donovan buigh. Méarana has watched her mother tighten as the Shadow described each loose caress; and she smiles to watch, a little from alarm, but not entirely so. Graceful Bintsaif shows clear signs of distress and her tickler is half out from her holster. There are ways to stop this taunting torrent.

But Bridget ban cuts the narration short. She stands and trembles, fists clenched by her side. “Faithless dog!” she snarls.

“Cu,” says Graceful Bintsaif, hoping to assuage her anger. “Did you not hear? He was disengaged. His mind was elsewhere.”

Bridget ban turns on her underling, waves an arm at the now-silent Shadow who watches, face composed in turn to the three women who interrogate her. “How would she know where his minds were?” the Hound snarls. “He has plenty enough to spare.”

She holds that pose for a moment of silence which no one dares break. But at the juncture at which the accusatory arm has begun to lower, Ravn Olafsdottr speaks.

“To whom was he unfaithful?” she asks with a liar’s innocence. “Was there someone perhaps with whom he had once exchanged a troth?”

Bridget ban makes no answer to this and her golden skin turns almost tin.

“If I foond soomthing discarded by the wayside,” the Shadow continues in Alabastrine, “am I blamewoorthy if I clean it oop and care for it? Beside,” she adds in Gaelactic, “I’m after promising him help in some small matter, and I have every intention o’ doin’ so. He is a despicable old scoundrel, but he is not without his charms.”

Méarana wonders if she is the only one who has noticed the precise words of accusation her mother had flung out. Faithless dog ? Of the three so entangled, which was the Hound? She bends over her harp to hide her smile, and begins to pluck out the melody of an old Die Bold courtship song. The Fudir had told her once that it was derived from a much older song of Terra, sung to a different purpose. She does not intone the words, but she knows that her mother recognizes them.

She notes from the posture of her mother’s body that she has turned to glare at her, but she does not raise her head to meet that gaze, lest she herself burst out in laughter. She plays on, half-mocking, half-somber, for such matters are too serious for anything but jest. With the grace and intricacies of her finger work, she demands silence from the others, and receives it until she comes at last to the final unsung lines: