Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

“It wants shwee to keep these things up,” Ravn commented when Méarana mentioned the matter.

Méarana’s earwig told her that shwee meant “liquid, water, juice,” which seemed less than informative, but Ravn explained it was slang for chin-chin, or money.

“Money like tourist,” she said while they waited in queue to check into the hotel. “Come to Dao Chetty. But unlike tourist, money never leave Dao Chetty. Names build new palace, not maintain old habitat. Tungshen always muddle through—Commonwealth tech down in the bone—so each cycle, squeeze budget more. Someday … Who knows. Maybe, squirt shwee where needed , not where wanted. ”

That was dangerous talk. Méarana looked around the lobby, where hundreds were lined up in front of the kiosks. “Should you be talking like this?”

Ravn laughed. “Too much talk-talk in lobby. No one overhears anything. But do not talk so when we stand near kiosk.” She glanced at her identity card. Méarana had learned that Shadows kept caches of documents, credits, equipment—called “spookers”—secreted about the Confederation. When she had worried about being detected here at the capital system, Ravn had laughed at her fears. It was the boast of the Deadly Ones that their false documents were finer even than the official ones.

“We move like leaves bloowing through autumn forest. We are coolorful, yays, but there are too many leaves. Even with clayver machines, the Names and their minions cannoot sieve every datastream for the whisper of us. Even when I coontact my sweet Dominoo, what is one more call-worm amoong all the rayst?” Then, dropping the accent, “Merchants with secrets, families with secrets, agents with secrets … All messages sent in code. How they find pea under so many mattresses? Hush, now, while I speak with this infernal device.” She glanced again at her identification card to remind herself of which regional accent to affect and began to jabber with the kiosk in a patois too fast for Méarana to follow.

They were ahead of the standard clock and wide awake in early sector morn. Not that it mattered. The spectrum lamps might brighten and dim to the spin of the capital far below, but the habitat never really slept. Ships arrived at all hours, and there must always be someone ready to welcome them, service them, kiss up to the powerful among them, and separate the rest from their wages. Ravn went to find the nearest message center.

“There is only slight risk,” she told Méarana. “Poor Ravn must use code known to both Domino and me, and what is known to two is known to too many. But even if intercepted, decoding yield only allegory. Sweet Domino kens the sooth of the allegory. We are high up here, and even light wants seven hours to creep down to capital and another seven to haul sorry-ass answer back up. Slow conversation, yes? Much nicer have Ourobouros Circuit like you have in League. Oh, well. Someday we have. Not to worry, sweetling. Ravn returns soon.”

And with that, the harper was abandoned in a semisumptuous suite in the middle of a strange and hostile realm. She wandered through rooms whose tatterdemalion furnishings even when new would have seemed spare. Holopictures on the wall displayed alien people and scenes: a hard-faced woman striking an absurdly formal pose, Shadows riotously caparisoned facing off in a pasdarm. Even the landscapes appeared subtly foreign, as if there were nationalities of flowers and races of trees.

She tried some audiobooks. (The earwig was no help in reading text.) But the style of the recitations struck her as bombastic and strident. Statements sounded like questions. Tonal cadences gave narrative the stridency of argument.

The music was not much better. She had left her harp concealed aboard Sèan Beta lest it mark her as alien. But the modalities of the Confederation seemed wanting in subtlety and listening to them soon palled. Like their clocks and their rods, they divided their scales into twelve increments, and the ratios of their tones sounded irrational.

And so, after an impatient time, she took herself to the café restaurant on the primary mezzanine. There she ordered a green tea and sat on the open patio to watch the passing stream of humanity on the concourse outside the hotel.

She saw foxes and sharpies and feys; skin tones from coal-black to pasty-white; eyes and noses of sundry shapes and in virtually all combinations. She even saw a few like herself: golden skinned and red of hair. She couldn’t tell if their eyes were green. Absurdly, the sight made her feel less alone, even though such folk were found on a great many worlds. The mix was different: more foxes, fewer sharpies, no Jugurthans at all—and once she saw a close-clustered group in veiled, ankle-length gowns who clacked as they scurried by.

But the bustling masses seemed somehow different from a similar crowd of Leaguesmen. At first, she could not say why and thought it was the styles of clothing—drabber and more uniform than that to which she was accustomed—but it eventually came to her that they had the gait of a beaten people. They shuffled more than strode. They walked with heads more nearly bowed. These were a people thoroughly domesticated. The sheep, Méarana remembered.

Exceptions stood out. Men and women in baggy suits, moving with purpose and puffed with importance. She guessed them functionaries coming to or going from the capital. A plumpish, pale woman with head erect and searching eyes, who locked gazes for a moment with Méarana. A squad of boots tramping across the public square in cadence. A tall, black woman in resplendent red and black robes adorned with the yin and yang. This one strode with a thick quarterstaff in her hand, and was accompanied by several younger men and women wearing her livery on black body stockings. Others quickly stepped aside to clear her path. Many bowed, though she deigned no notice.

A Shadow of the old school.

Méarana was suddenly thankful that Ravn Olafsdottr was not sitting with her on the patio café, for Ravn was at least overtly with the rebellious Shadows and this one, to all appearances, was not. The harper ducked her head to her tea. The tall woman was just passing through Tungshen like everyone else. She was not searching for Ravn, nor would she recognize the harper as an outlander. But even so, it was best not to catch her eye.

When Méarana raised her head to peek, the Shadow was gone. But there was a man sitting at the table with her.

Méarana started, but he only smiled and raised a glass. “Hard night? You should drink something stronger to get your juices flowing.” He spoke Manjrin with an odd accent: vowels clipped and final consonants bitten off as if by his large, even teeth. His t ’s seemed to come from the middle of his mouth.

“This serves well enough,” the harper told him, and sipped again at her tea. Was this an intrusion, or did strangers share breakfast tables here?

“I’m outward bound,” he said, “toward Habberstap. I have a Confederal legacy for the tax farm at Bowling Brook. I’m to be the Shearer of the Postdown Flock.”

Méarana did not understand what that meant, only that it meant that he was trying to impress her with his minor importance.

“How nice for you.”

“Where are you heading to?”

The harper searched for an answer, wondered at the intent of the question. Was he really a minor official heading to his posting? Or was he a secret policeman grilling a suspicious stranger? “Henrietta,” she said on impulse.

The man nodded. “I thought I heard a frontier accent in your voice,” he said, to show how clever he was. “First time to the capital?”

“Ah, yes.”