Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

This time, the head did turn to look at him, but the blank, flickering goggles revealed nothing.

When he boarded the coaster with Gidula and Khembold, after a secret wink, had taken the pilot’s saddle, Donovan said, “Have you ever come here, Old One?”

The aged Shadow grimaced. “To these old ruins? Of course not. What interest do they hold for me?” He frowned over the grass-grown remnants. “Ancient history, Gesh. What does it matter anymore?” He turned his back on the Capital of All the Worlds and repeated more quietly, “What does it matter anymore?” Then, brusquely, “She must have been lush and verdant once, this world, to support the population she did. But that was a long time ago, and it will not be again.”

It is in the geometry of spheres that the spanned area outruns the diameter, and even so sparse a world as Terra has more sky to it than can reasonably be patrolled. It wants wealth to maintain a 360 Space Traffic Control net, and wealth was no longer Terra’s to have. Whole regions were unscanned. Why would anyone want to land on the Ice? Why indeed would anyone want to land on Terra? And so Ravn, by clever piloting through holes in the coverage, arrived on the meadowlands north of Kojj Hill without appearing on anyone’s monitors.

Gidula, of course, maintained a stricter watch around his own compound and, since she could not depend on Eglay Portion’s neglect, Ravn remained in the detection-shadow and put Sèan Beta down well north of the picket line and close to the low blue ridge that marked the northern edge of the great valley. There Domino Tight jumped from the hovering vessel wearing his shenmat and carrying on his back a rucksack containing a number of useful devices. Méarana watched him set off at a run and marveled that the sedge and the clover barely rustled at his passing. He was not yet out of sight when Ravn raised the ship on its gravitics and banked away to the north-northwest. She circled out and up over the Ablation Mounts and came in on the Forks on the standard southwestward approach, picking up the air corridor at Jasding STC and requesting advance clearance from Gidula’s own control tower.

“I understand,” Méarana said as they came in to the autoguidance slot and Ravn relinquished control. “You circled all the way around to give Domino time to get to Gidula’s stronghold on foot.”

Ravn removed her comm. harness and turned in her pilot’s seat. “You are mistaken. My sweet Domino awaits the infiltration team in San Jösing on Dao Chetty.”

Méarana understood again.

After Ravn had landed at the Mount Lefn pad and the tugs had drawn the monoship into the Cliffside hangars, she dressed in her best finery to stroke Gidula’s vanity for spectacle. But instead of Gidula’s comet or a noncommittal black, she dressed cap-a-pie in her own colors: coral, a black snake twisted. She donned a coral shenmat and, in place of a brassard, a steel armband in the form of a snake circling her biceps. She unrolled the serpent banner and co-opted a planetfallman to carry it. Her boots were thick and steel shod, and she crowned herself with a black “fisherman’s” cap, pinned to the peak of which was a copper ring-badge repeating the snake motif. In the cap’s band she inserted a single eagle’s feather.

“One must look pretty for Gidula,” she told the harper. “Eglay Portion will likely hold the bridge and dare me to pass him. I will draw the fight out as long as I can, then let him think he won.”

“Draw it out to give time for—”

“For the physical exercise.” Ravn turned and put a finger to Méarana’s lips. “The world was fortunate when you followed not your mother’s art. Your thoughts too often tumble from your brainpan directly onto your lips.”

“Should I wait on board?”

The Shadow clapped her hands together. “Ooh, noo, noo, sweet. Dress to your nines, or even your tens, for you moost make splendid entrance with me. I am a Shadow of the Names and moost have a retinue. One poor planetfallman to carry my banner, and you to sing my praises. How silly I would look doing all three myself!”

“But won’t that be dangerous?”

“For you to be in the Confederation at all is dangerous. You will be, as we say, ‘in my gift.’ No one may act against you without my permitting. Play me a suitable introit on your harp. They do not know the instrument well here, so you may entrance them with my entrance. Soomething booth oominous and playfool.”

Méarana gave a half smile. “I suppose I can manage that.”

Ravn patted her on the cheek. “Of course you can. I have heard you practicing your saga of Donovan and Ravn. Remember, though, the snake strikes for the heel.”

Domino Tight had assumed the guise of a pack peddler. By a combination of suasion, threat, and credit balance, he had acquired wares in a general store. Here, at the mountain’s foot, Gidula was only a rumor; the Forks, only a place to avoid. Yet there was some desultory traffic thither.

As Jack-a-Mount Peddler, an identity he had crafted during the hop from Dao Chetty, he secured a courtesy ride from an intercity coaster that dropped him off at a farming village just before turning east onto the Ketchell Guide-rail and shifting off manual. This furnished his pocket with a genuine coaster ticket. He had already altered his face through clever art and, by a small stone in his shoe, had instituted a minor limp.

The limp was the excuse for the exoskeleton, which he had altered to resemble an ordinary prosthesis. He set off at a walk along the foot-road, a broad swath so anciently trod that at times pieces of old asphalt had been revealed by erosion. When he was certain he was unobserved, he kicked into overdrive and proceeded at a blur.

Now that the Shadow War had escalated, Gidula’s people might be more wary of who they allowed into the Forks. He had heard that Ekadrina was back on Dao Chetty, and that meant that by now every Shadow in the Triangles must know about the fight on Yuts’ga.

Publicly, the Old One had maintained a façade of neutrality. Some of the loyalists must know, or at least suspect, otherwise, but Gidula had kept clear of overt action. True, he had rescued Geshler Padaborn from Ekadrina, and had the Sèanmazy’s testimony for it, but a wise man might say that he had also rescued Ekadrina from Gesh, and had the Sèanmazy’s testimony for that, as well. And so, while the Forks was not exactly undefended, its best defense was Gidula’s deceit.

This was also Domino Tight’s best offense. There would be no expectation of attack, at least not of the sort of attack he proposed to mount. Pack peddlers were a common thing among the farming villages surrounding the Forks, and such a peddler would need a license from the Forks Adminstrative Center. Domino Tight had a series of such licenses in his scrip, as genuine as artful forgery could make them, documenting a journey along the northern tier of settlements. There were no roads up that way. No wonder he limped.

He slowed down as he came to a turn in the foot-road and was surprised to see two men ahead of him. They had stepped off the road into a clearing and were heating some water for tea with an irradiator. They were dressed in brown robes with hoods thrown over their heads. As Domino Tight drew abreast at a normal pace, he saw that the man standing was solidly built, with a square jaw. He had a walking staff but did not lean upon it. Dusty-red hair straggled from beneath his brown cowl. A whitened scar graced his left cheek.

“Bless you, my son,” the man said, though he was no older than Domino Tight. “May the grace of Existence Himself be upon you. Is this truly the foot-road to Old Flea?”