Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

Domino Tight recollected the map of the eastern coast of the Northern Mark. “Why, sorely it be, and a sore journey you are having afore yourself, your destiny being some twenty leagues distant.”

The man in the cowl shrugged. “What is, is.”

“You will find it needful to transit the Forks,” Domino Tight told him, as any honest pack peddler might.

“If a village welcome us, someone will open his house and we will be fed, and so will they. But if a village do not, then we shake the dust of her streets from our sandals and proceed.”

Domino Tight did not know what to make of that, so he said, “It is the holdfast of a Shadow of the Names.”

“Ah! Who then more needful of being fed?”

“You speak in riddles, snor. I be but a poor peddler of useful but inexpensive wares, benamed Jack-a-Mount.” He held out his right hand, dusted it on his traveler’s cloak, and held it out again.

The stranger took it briefly. It seemed a limp grip, though the hand had calluses. “They call me Brother Aum. I am a philosopher by trade.”

“A curious trade. Be there much profit in it?”

“A great deal, but the investment is hard. Would you share a cup with us? It is the hour for prayer.”

The philosopher’s assistant held forth a ceramic cup with steaming tea. A delightful aroma, but … Domino checked the sun’s position. He had to hurry if he was to reach the Kojj Hill line while the pasdarm was in progress. Ravn had planned to ground an hour before local sunset. “No, snor. I be honored for the offer, ah, Brother, but I must be in the Forks before the License Bureau closes or I lose a full day’s sales.”

“Let your road then be your prayer, and your feet its recitation. Remember, son,” and he made a sign over Domino’s head, “Existence exists, and cannot not exist. He exists as the whole wide world, of all the stars and all the galaxies and all the flowers and animals. He exists in the history of men from the oldest days, when we first knew the difference between good and evil to the present day, when we pretend that we do not. And He exists here,” and he touched Domino lightly on the breast.

The day was cool, but the sun shone with peculiar intensity. It was possible the philosopher was sunstruck. Domino Tight laughed and gathered his backpack to a more comfortable position. “That be a knife cut on your cheek, Brother Aum. You were in the world before you went out of it.”

The philosopher smiled and touched the scar. “All wisdom begins with sense experience, Jack-a-Mount, and I learned a great deal from it. It is the custom among some native Terrans to fight with sabers purely for the purpose of exchanging scars.”

He had not exactly admitted acquiring the scar in that manner, and he had avoided the claim of being Terran. Domino Tight was an expert on wounds, having both sustained and administered a fair number of them. That was not a saber cut on the cheek of Brother Aum.

But whatever shameful past the philosopher was covering up—a life as a brigand? A cutpurse?—it was none of Domino Tight’s concern; nor would it have been of Jack-a-Mount. So he bid the man a cordial adieu and set off ahead of them while they finished their cup of tea. Once out of sight, he quickened his pace once more.

The delay at the picket line was nominal. The watchman was not even a magpie, all those being gathered at the Iron Bridge for the welcoming pasdarm. Domino Tight inserted his identification stick into the reader’s orifice, watched it display green with no sign of inner doubt, chatted with the watchman who inspected the pots, pans, and paraphernalia in his backpack, and made no complaint about repacking everything. He offered up his belt knife, but the watchman waved him off. “A li’l sticker like that won’t take you far ’mong the gentry of the Forks,” he said. And Jack-a-Mount replied that so long as he could reach the License Bureau in time to start his rounds of the villages in the morning he did not care even to meet any of the gentry.

“There’s a hostel at the foot of the Enramdon Cut,” the watchman said. “Caters to you folk. Got easy access to Summary Hill and Huonshrid Hill, and you can rent goo-goos there, too.”

The Shadow thanked him and stepped through the gate, only to hear the alarum sound. This, he had not counted on, and he wondered what substances he might have on him that would set the system off. He stepped back, but the watchman only asked him to try again.

The second time triggered no alarm, and with a wave back to the watchman Jack-a-Mount Peddler continued down the southern face of the hill, humming a popular walking song. When he turned the corner and passed through a wooded section he was brought up short by a sharp knife. In this he took a keen interest.

Not a Shadow, he thought, for had it been, the distance between the edge and the throat would have been considerably narrower. A cutpurse of the sort the philosopher warned against? If so, the man had made a grave tactical error.

“Silence becomes us both,” a voice whispered in Domino Tight’s ear. The knife vanished from his throat and he turned to see who had held it. “Well met, Deadly One,” the short, bristly man said, “for when last we met, you were not so well.” He wore a baggy jacket and shorts with many pockets.

The Shadow recalled the boon this man had done him in Cambertown, when an ambush by the Pendragon’s mums had blown away his magpies and shattered his body. Asking no price, this man has given quietus to the informer who had set Domino up and a medical regeneration packet to ease his pain. Apparently, the price was now to be mentioned. “Well met, Hound. Do you have a name?”

The bristly man grinned, and Domino saw that his teeth had been sharpened. “You don’t know me? Pity. I am called Gwillgi. And you are called Domino Tight.”

“You crossed the picket line when I passed through the gate,” said Domino Tight. “So the watchman thought I had triggered the alarm by some malfunction.”

“It was a long, lonely time waiting for a traveler to cross through, and I had just about decided to chance a bolder move when fortune presented me with your presence. You are remarkably hale for a man that detonation had reduced to bony rubble.”

“I had … excellent nursing.”

“It is about that which we might talk one day.”

“You are bold, to step into Gidula’s stronghold, Gwillgi Hound. Why should I not turn you over to Gidula’s people? You would not like Number Two, I assure you.”

“Why not? Three reasons. Because I gave you aid when you were injured. Because I held a knife to your throat and forbore to slice. Because you no more wish to be noticed here than I.” He waved off Domino’s answer. “You resort to disguise to enter this place. Yet in the Shadow War, you and Gidula are allies.”

“What do you know of—”

“I am the League’s unofficial observer. Just now I have an interest in a League citizen who has been co-opted into your squabble.”

That surprised Domino Tight and he said, “The harper? But…”

Gwillgi hesitated. “Yes, the harper.”

But the hesitation had told Domino Tight all that was needful. Gwillgi had not known of the harper, and the list of Peripherals in the affair was rather short. Gwillgi had been following Donovan.

Before Domino could speak, Gwillgi held a palm up to his lips and guided him into the brush behind the trees. “Someone follows.”

Up near the crest of the hill, Domino Tight made out the figures of two men in robes. “Oh, an itinerant philosopher. We met earlier on the trail.”

“Deadly One, you know I am here and I know I am here. That is already too many for my comfort.”

Domino Tight understood and remained concealed while the philosopher passed. He was discussing some point of metaphysics with his acolyte and the Shadow caught only portions of it.