Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

Where do you think they’ll be? asked the Sleuth.

“Shut up,” Donovan explained.

He heard the distant blast of the trumpets from the palace walls, and pole-speakers about the city carried the Voice of the Sheen’s announcement of Domestic Entertainment Hour. Clever timing, thought the Fudir. Most of Jenlùshy would be indoors with their visors active, watching the evening installments of their favorite shows.

Shortly after, he heard the whine of flivvers pulling into the restaurant’s parking lot on the Gayway side of the building, followed by the hiss and chunk of doors rising and closing. “Get ready,” he told Méarana.

He heard the front door slam, rapid footfalls approaching, then the utility door flew open and Jimmy Barcelona rushed out into the alley. The Fudir pushed a large dustbin in front of the door to impede pursuit and took the emperor by the elbow and hurried him toward the car.

At which point, a dozen men dressed in black rose from the surrounding shadows and leveled hand stingers at them.

Yes , said the Sleuth, that’s where I thought they’d be, too .

The Fudir cast about for an escape route, torn between Inner Child’s impulse to run and the Brute’s impulse to fight. Donovan, who had been stung more than once in his career, raised the scarred man’s hands. The Silky Voice wept over their failure. Pulled thus in half a dozen directions, the scarred man remained motionless at their average.

Inside the flivver, the harper sat with her hands clenched on the control yoke. Rage dueled with sudden relief in her features. Her hands moved a fraction and the turbine’s pitch subtly increased. Donovan, who knew the capabilities of man and machine, thought it a desperate ploy, but one with a hairsbreadth chance of success. Cut losses, abandon allies.

It’s what he would have done.

But the flivver’s whine dropped into silence. Méarana turned open-faced to the Fudir and the scarred man read her fears writ there.

Flivvers approached from either end of the alley and came to a rest, neatly boxing them in. The doors of the one facing them arched open and Morgan Cheng-li stepped forth, followed by White Rod bearing the Yellow Cope.

“Ah, Majesty,” said the Grand Secretary. “This worm abases himself for interruption of such clever evening entertainment, but Monthly Tattoo waits August Presence on parade ground.” He showed leg and, with a sweep of the arm, invited Resilient Services to enter the flivver.

Jimmy Barcelona slumped and he looked at Donovan, and then at Méarana. “What I say? This Thistlewaite. All plans fail.”

Two of the Shadows led Resilient Services to the flivver where White Rod waited.

By this time, the harper had come to stand beside the scarred man. “Are you all right?” she asked him in a whisper.

The Fudir did not know what to tell her. That he had frozen when fast and decisive action might have been most necessary? That it was just as well that they had not escaped because he would not be reliable in a pinch? The sum of his parts was less than the whole he had once been. Donovan answered for him. “No worries,” he said. “Hush, here comes Jingly.”

The Grand Secretary bestowed a slight nod and sweep of the arm. “You should not have indulged him,” he said in Gaelactic. “He is needed too much here.”

“He threatened to hold me captive if I didn’t,” the harper said.

A wave of a jeweled hand. “That contrary to Treaty of Amity and Common Purpose. Fourteen States all signatories to League Treaty. You think we want Hounds come here, tear down prison to free you?”

Donovan did not know if The Particular Service would go that far; at least not for his sake. Though they might for Bridget ban’s daughter.

“You spy on your own emperor?” he said.

Jingly looked surprised. “Of course! You know ‘Shadows’? Provincial Surveillance Commissions duplicate Provincial Administrative Commissions. Yang, yin. Each official, each prefect, each dough-rider has shadow. Shadows report piety and harmony to Imperial Censor.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“So. Who need harmony more than emperor? All balance depend on him. I say ‘balance,’ but no word in Gaelactic mean same.”

“I understand.”

“No,” said Jingly. “You not understand. Only Thistles understand. Our star, central star of whole universe. Microwave ‘walls,’ same distance, all direction. Heavy burden, balance whole universe on shoulders. No man have such strength. Often bend, sometimes break. Like today. No one man manage all. But all Morning Dew, all Thistlewaite unite in this. All share burden; all help emperor. Like today.”

Behind him, White Rod placed the Yellow Cope on the emperor’s shoulders and bowed him deferentially toward the waiting car.

“You go now,” said Jingly “You not come back Jenlùshy”

Méarana bowed and Donovan bowed and, rising, she saw behind the yellow-garbed August Presence, the trapped eyes of Jimmy Barcelona, who had wanted of all things only to build bridges.

The throughliner Srini Siddiqi, Megranome for Harpaloon, is by every measure a finer ship than Curling Dawn, but neither the harper nor the scarred man are in a position to appreciate it. Donovan does not want the trip to show on the Kennel’s accounts, so they have paid their own way and have taken quarters in steerage; and from steerage, all liners look the same .

“Just once,” says Méarana when she has stowed her trunk into the locker provided on board, “I’d like to travel in a little luxury.”

“It does seem a shame,” the Fudir admits, “to be on the arm and not squeeze the most out of it.”

The harper slams the locker closed with a little more force than required to latch it. “But a dormitory…”

“Think of it as an opportunity to make new friends. At least you don’t have to share a bed. One time on a transit from Salàmapudra to Nigglesworth, I berthed on a tramp freighter and…”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

The dormitory is a large open area. The beds line the walls in racks of three and the gravity has been dialed down to half-standard to facilitate the luckless travelers in the top bunks. The center of the common area holds dining tables, game tables, and various other means to occupy one’s up-time. The room is already crowded when they enter. Men and women and children occupy bunks and tables or run about the room laughing and causing the harper to dodge their career .

Several men spot the harper and call out to her. Children clap in anticipation. Emigrant families smile. Even those driven to the frontier by the ghosts of their pasts emerge from their introspection and wonder if this might provide the balm their hearts require. There is something about the way she carries herself and carries her harp case that promises uncommon melodies. Troubadours are always welcome. Enemies will suspend their quarrels with knives already pressed to throats to gather like brothers at their feet .

The swarm of men and women and children in the steerage dorms of Srini Siddiqi are a mixed lot from across the Spiral Arm: Sharpies with sagging jowls, squat Jugurthans with wide, out-turned noses and pasty-white skin, ebony blonds from Alabaster, second sons of the High Taran aristocracy, fringe-cloaked Jehovans fingering their prayer beads, bored youngsters spurning the stodgy proprieties of the Old Planets, ‘Cockers disinclined to mount their heads in the Halls of Remonstration. They hail from Abyalon and Megranome, from Ramage and Valency, from the Tesser Hanse and Gladiola, from New Eireann and Hawthorn Rose. More of them, indeed, than there are berths in the dorms, since, for a lesser fee, one may elect to share a berth and sleep on it in shifts .