Michael Flynn: On the Razor’s Edge

“I was the hackie,” Little Hugh volunteered helpfully, “who drove you to your hotel.”

“Well,” said Matilda of the Night, looking from one to the other, “aren’t you the dynamic duo.”

“Greystroke and I hung about Kitchener a few days,” Hugh said. “We wanted to see who was coming. Met most of the Hounds at Inbound Processing. ‘Och, aye, m’laird,’” he said in a broad Dangchao accent. “‘Mought I help ye wi’ yon wee baggie.’ Except Black Shuck, who would have recognized me from that business on Uobigon, and Cŵn Annwn, who somehow eluded us. Oh, and the Gytrash, who arrived before we did.”

“It was just to keep in practice,” Greystroke added. “Rinty here has a talent for disguise—they used to call him the Ghost of Ardow—and I have a talent for going unnoticed. Who looks twice at a baggage handler or an unremarkable doughface in a crowd?”

They broke up and moved off to greet other colleagues. Greystroke lingered. “We’re with you, Frannie,” he murmured to Bridget ban.

“Greystroke, darling. Ye’ve not yet heard my proposal.”

“Does that matter?”

Graceful Bintsaif sidled up after he had gone. “I don’t like it,” she said. “The way they all try to get one up on one another. I don’t like it when I get drawn into it.”

“Oh, they may bicker and play games—and strut before the Little One if it means moving up the pyramid. But when what matters matters, you can depend on each and every one of them to the very limits of his skill.”

“Though first,” said Graceful Bintsaif, raising her drink to her lips, “you have to get to what matters.”

It was a hard winnowing that the Red Hound made of her guests. She must harvest the volunteers she wanted without insulting the others. In the end, she was successful enough, though she endured a disappointment or two.

“I need your help to find my daughter,” she told the assembled Hounds when once the buffet had been cleared and the musician dismissed and they had adjourned with sherry and port to the long table in the banquet hall.

“Ah,” Greystroke murmured to Hugh. “I had wondered why it was not Méarana who played for us.”

“I wonder what she’s gotten into now,” Hugh sighed.

“What is this, Red Hound?” cried Garm. “A Call to Hounds for a mere family contretemps?”

“And is she not of age?” added Barghest. “She may go and come as she wist.”

Black Shuck stood. “Hold your gobs!” he said; and, he being who he was, they held them. “Our colleague would not have summoned us for no better cause than a runaway daughter. Daughters have run away since the dawn of time, and for the same reasons. There is something darker yet to come.” He turned and bowed to his hostess and resumed his seat.

“Points off for Barghest and Garm,” Hugh whispered to Greystroke. “Too quick with the quip.”

“A case of days ago,” Bridget ban announced when silence had been restored, “my daughter was kidnapped by a Shadow of the Names.”

Would the Red Hound ever speak more than one sentence without a hubbub of interruption? This was just as well, for the memory of it closed her throat and filled her heart with ice.

“A Shadow!” “How?” they wanted to know. “Why?” “Where?” “We’ll scour the Periphery!” “Is she taken across the Rift?” A Shadow was not so easily laughed off as a runaway daughter. If there were aught in the Spiral Arm undaunted by pursuing Hounds—who might even welcome them for the sport—it was a Shadow of the Names, their opposite numbers in the Long Game between the League and the Confederation.

“Why did you not tell us so straight off?” demanded Garm, retrospectively embarrassed by his earlier jape.

Hugh spoke behind his hand. “Easily answered,” he told Greystroke. “She wanted to know who would go for the sake of the daughter, and only then who would go for the sake of the Shadow.”

“Where is the Fudir in all this?” Greystroke complained. “The harper is his daughter, too. Why is he not here?” That had always been a stumbling block between Greystroke and the scarred man: that the harper was the daughter of the one and not of the other.

“Syne twa metric weeks an’ more,” Bridget ban said, lapsing momentarily into the local dialect, “Ravn Shadow Olafsdottr plucked her from within these very halls.”

Black Shuck grew serious. “A grave breach of security.” The rebuke was sharper given the sweet, judicious tone in which it was couched.

“The de’il wi’ yer fashin’, all of ye,” she said. “We tracked her coming in. Not even a Shadow can cross yon heath and escape my eyes. And the Bintsaif and I held her fast the while as she spun her tale and laid out her petition. She desired that I cross the Rift with her on a quest of her own, and failing in that she—”

“—took your daughter,” guessed Black Shuck.

“Why snatch the daughter,” said Kirkonväki, “if the task wants the mother?”

“The Ravn did nae trade my skills for harp-speil,” the Red Hound told him. “My daughter’s the drag to lure the hound.”

“Drag success,” Anubis noted. “You go. Red Hound pride pricked. Shadow enter your very stronghold, you hold close watch, yet allow her slip away—with your daughter—as easily as eel slip through fingers.”

“Too much Schadenfreude,” Greystroke whispered to Hugh. “Cross Anubis off. What is it?”

“Sure, and I’m waiting to hear what the Ravn’s proposal was.”

“Even if all of us here were free to go with you,” said Garm, “we would be few enough to scour an empire.”

The Gytrash stood. “Your daughter’s fate sorrows me, Red Hound,” he said. “And my heart is yours to weep into, but there be no hope to this quest. The Confederation be big and broad, and a slip of a girl a hard finding in all those bright stars. ’Tis a just quest, a worthy quest, and a cause must be just before its undertaking is just; but it must also have a chance of success, and alas ’tis ill-starred to succeed. She is more vanished than a grain of sand on a beach. Meanwhile, a massacre pends on Harpaloon that I must see to.” He bowed, and after courteous farewells and expressions of good fortune he strode to the door. A few others stood with him, but only Garm, Barghest, and Anubis followed him out. The others lingered, and one—Black Shuck—sat back down and something of a smile crossed his face.

“First cut,” said Greystroke.

“You’ll notice who have held peace till now,” Hugh answered. “Grimpen, Matilda, Cŵn … Mark young Bintsaif, how grim she looks. She is frightened sick, but she will go.”

Grimpen rumbled, and it took the others a moment to recognize the sound as laughter.

“What is it, Large Hound?” Cafall asked.

“Our departed colleagues do not grasp the meaning of ‘hopeless.’ If success is sure, what need is there for hope? A quest like this cannot be hopeless, for there is nothing to it but hope.”

“All right, Frannie,” Black Shuck said. “The pessimists have gone, and don’t hold it too hard against them. There is another war brewing between Ramage and Valency, which Garm and Barghest must attend to; and there is Harpaloon for the Gytrash to handle. Your daughter’s taking is a tragedy; but it’s a big Spiral Arm, and not the only tragedy in it. Now, where has Ravn taken your daughter?”

Matilda of the Night spoke up. “Don’t look so surprised, Kirkonväki. The Ravn wanted our Bridget ban to aid her in a quest, and took the daughter to lure her to it. What point the drag if the hound cannot follow?”

“Aye,” said Bridget ban. “And ’tis Terra.”

“Deep in the Triangles,” Cafall observed. “Hard by Dao Chetty.”