Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

“… and for that reason we see the towardness of nature. Consider the blossoming of the flowers which attract the insects.” The philosopher pointed with his staff. “Or the bristling wild boar that lurks in the brush. Or the birds that eat the seeds and drop them on fertile ground. Therefore, since there is no intellect in nature…”

The philosopher passed around the bend in the road and so from sight and sound. Domino Tight shook his head. “I suppose all philosophers are a little mad.”

Gwillgi’s smile was grim. “Mad perhaps, but not boring. Now tell me that this is not just any harper, but the harper, and that you are here to rescue her and not to assassinate her. It may be that you and I can work together for a short time and so prosper both our happinesses.”

Domino Tight knew he was not at the top of his game. His experiences with the Gayshot Bo had unnerved him to some small degree, and if he could not have a Shadow at his back a Hound would do. Especially if the Hound believed there was a debt of gratitude between them.

“Agreed, then, Gwillgi Hound.” And Domino clasped hands with his sworn enemy.

Méarana was no Hound, not even a Pup, but her mother had taught her a few things. So while she played during the pasdarm she could see that Ravn and Eglay Portion were each pulling their punches. It was not a fight “to the bone,” as the Shadow had told her, but only an exhibition intended to display their prowess. Nonetheless, she maintained in her music the fiction of strenuous combat, the harp strings singing of triumph and tragedy and close calls.

Only once did she strike a false note, and that was when she noticed her father among the spectators at the far end of the Iron Bridge. He was dressed in a blue-and-green shenmat and stared at her with a face of stone.

After the mock combat there was a buffet and Méarana moved uneasily among Gidula’s staff. She herself wore a coral brassard with the Black Snake on it, and theoretically that meant she was on Ravn’s staff. Méarana kept trying to find Donovan in the press, but every time she moved in his direction someone would engage her in conversation or inadvertently block her progress while they plucked food or drink from the tables. Several lesser magpies asked her about the strange instrument she had played and she admitted that it was a Peripheral clairseach . They confessed it souded exotic but not unpleasant. But others, with lower numbers on their brassards, stared at her with curious and mocking expressions on their faces.

One large magpie wearing blue and green and a bold numeral 1 on his brassard approached and whispered while they selected fruits from the buffet. “He says to tell you that you are a fool.” Then the man was gone.

She knew Donovan had sent the man. No one else called her a fool with quite that nonchalance. But her father now wore the shenmat of a Shadow, and had at least one magpie of his own. What sort of prisoner was he? Had she indeed come on a fool’s errand?

Only near the end of the buffet did Donovan manage to reach her side. He spoke without preamble. “How did Ravn snatch you?”

Méarana smiled ruefully. “It was my idea to come rescue you.”

Donovan shook his head, as if his hearing had gone awry. “Then you are a bigger fool than I thought.” He took her arm. “What made you think you could rescue me?”

“Because I thought she would follow.”

Donovan stared at her. His lips quirked a little. Then he turned his head and said, “I hope the recording of the pasdarm was satisfactory.” His finger moved in a certain sign that he had taught her years before on Jehovah. Be careful what you say aloud.

Méarana looked around, saw the recorders and the parabolic microphones by which Gidula would eavesdrop. Donovan made the hand-sign for first-and-last, and indicated Ravn. “She going to set up a concert for you here? Do you think anyone will come?”

She. Come? Meaning, was her mother in fact following?

“Two concerts, maybe. Here I don’t have a following. I’ve a song series about the Shadow War. And the clairseach is an instrument they’ve not seen.” Two. Following. I’ve. Seen.

“Ah,” said Donovan buigh, nodding. “Close quarters I suppose, on your trip. I wish Ravn had left you behind.”

The harper shrugged. She had neither seen nor heard the voice that spoke in the night since the brawl on Tungshen Habitat. “One never knows how things will turn out.”

Unobtrusively, Donovan made a blade of his left hand and ran it across the index finger of his right, much as if he were rubbing an itch. Méarana nodded fractionally. Yes, one of the two Hounds was out.

(Will be here soon?)

(Not known. Ravn protect.)

(Trust no one here.)

“Only you, Father,” she said in clear Gaelactic.

“Especially not me,” he answered.

After the buffet, Méarana and Ravn were escorted into Gidula’s office, and there she saw her father again, standing beside Gidula’s chair. Two other Shadows—one wearing a rose on buff, the other wearing a daffodil on blue—flanked them both. Roses and daffodils? Méarana thought Ravn’s viper far more candid.

Gidula sat room-center in an egg-chair, looking like a corpse propped in his coffin and ready for his ground sweat. He wore a billowing black robe with the comet on his front, and his cap was of the sort Peripherals called a Tudor bonnet. If there had ever been a desk before him, it was nowhere now in evidence. There was not another chair in the room, and magpies stood scattered about in a pattern Méarana recognized from shaHmat as one of mutual support. They might be pawns or rooks or counselors, poised for either attack or defense.

She wondered if Ravn felt vulnerable with no magpies of her own. Méarana touched her sleeve and the knife scabbard strapped underneath it. Poor support she could render in company like this.

The walls were hung with what she called “the art of impressions.” Shapes that suggested without depicting. One hung directly behind Gidula’s chair: a blackish-brown massif occupied the left side of the frame, while the right was open to a sky in which floated a yellow orb of indistinct border. It suggested a hill overlooking a river valley. A black twisting shape in midair seemed at first a human silhouette but on closer inspection proved to be a bird flying off into the distance.

Ravn bowed before Gidula, sweeping her right arm out. Méarana half-expected her to come out of the bow with a pantherlike leap upon the Old One. Her desire for vengeance might run deep enough to hold her own life disposable in the bargain. And where would that leave Méarana Harper and her father?

Donovan looked on without expression, but his eyes were everywhere at once and full of pain. Had he been tortured and broken?

Ravn rose from her obeisance. “Puissant Gidula,” she said, “let the rift between us heal. Let this unworthy one abase herself and salve the wound of her earlier words with the balm of a gift. Behold! I bring you Méarana Swiftfingers, the daughter of Donovan buigh and of Bridget ban and perhaps—though this I cannot guarantee—her mother following desperately and close behind. Prepare then your nets, my sir, for a large fish swims toward them.”

Donovan stiffened and took half a step forward before checking himself. Méarana herself managed little more than a hoarse, “Ravn!” But Olafsdottr did not so much as turn to face her. Two of Gidula’s magpies—one of them weirdly goggled and engulfed by a headset—took her firmly by the arms and led her beside the egg-chair on the side opposite Donovan. The Shadow who stood there—the daffodil-on-blue one—turned his head fractionally, and gave her a surreptitious wink.