Michael Flynn: On the Razor’s Edge

When resolution follows shortly on resolve, doubt has little time to gnaw at purpose and success is either gratified—or moot. But when the clock drags on, imagination conjures possibilities from the vasty deep, not all of them cheerful. And so a warrior leaping upon a chance-met foe does not pause to consider the possibility of failure, while one advancing at the double quick across an open field might halfway there long for the cozy comforts of his trench.

So, to Méarana Harper, as Ravn bore her into the Confederation, what seemed a good idea on the spur of the moment appeared less grand during the canter the spur induced. She had thought that by going with the Shadow she would draw her mother in her wake, and so secure her father. A clever scheme, she had thought; but perhaps less clever in fact than in thought.

In appearance, Méarana was much as her mother limned at an earlier age, though with sharper corners. There was a hardness to her, but not her mother’s hardness. The latter was annealed from the abuse of her affections, the former from receipt of too few of them. It was fairly said that Bridget ban had used love; while Méarana was unused to it. She knew it only as sentiments left in the wake of her mother’s hasty notes.

There were certain corners of Méarana’s face—her chin was one—that bespoke her father. And if anyone in life had been more absent than her mother, it was Donovan buigh. She was a master harper—an ollamh of the clairseach : a lap harp of the old style, strung with metal cords. Sometimes when she played, they drew blood.

The cloak of invisibility, a wonder of unknown provenance, had slipped them past her mother and her aide, past Mr. Wladislaw and the household staff, past Hang Tenbottles and the security detail on the perimeter. In some fashion no longer known to men, the “metafabric” bent light in all its forms and created “blind spots” in space and time, masking those events enshrouded by it. Secret even in the Confederation, used only by the Names, the cloak and other wonders, collectively styled “the Seven Vestiges,” were closely guarded by an oath-bound college in the Gayshot Bo. But enamored of his charms, the Technical Name herself had given cloaks to Domino Tight, who had in turn given them to Ravn Olafsdottr. Thus does love—or perhaps lust—erode like acid even the oldest of tabus.

But it had not escaped Méarana’s attention that Ravn had brought two cloaks to Clanthompson Hall. So while it had been the harper’s idea to go with the Shadow, it appeared to have been the Shadow’s idea that it should be the harper’s idea.

They had departed Dangchao Waypoint in a monoship that the Shadow had weeks earlier leased on Peacock Junction under the name of Jin-ho Kisanaluva. She had stopped on Die Bold, done the usual touristy things, and managed to get her picture in the En Courant: cowering in the background while two business travelers in a Port Èlfiuji lounge broke each other’s noses in her dubious honor. In the stereograph, “Kisanaluva” did not much resemble Olafsdottr. The skin tone was lighter than its wonted coal-black. The build appeared thicker than her serpentine slenderness. The nose seemed broader, the hair, dark and shoulder length rather than the usual yellow stubble.

“It seems a lot of trouble to go through,” Méarana suggested when she had learned all this, “simply to prepare a false identity.”

“When diligently sought,” the Shadow advised her, “it is best to be someone else.”

A Stop Traffic order was out by the time they had reached Dangchao Roads, but after 2,452 outbound vessels the customs officials no longer checked documentation with the same sprightly verve and enthusiasm as they had the first few hundred. A cursory visual examination confirmed that “Jin-ho” did not match the description of the sought-for Confederal; and a database search unearthed the account in the En Courant and receipts from Port Kitchener and a “dude ranch” near Casa Dio, nowhere near Clanthompson Hall. If the official ever considered that a Shadow would find little difficulty embedding false records into a system, he was not so impolitic as to say so. He may even have considered that the greatest risk in searching for Shadows lay in finding one.

In any case, “Jin-ho Kisanaluva” got the wave-on to continue acceleration behind a departing Hadley liner, maintaining such-and-so separation and, “Have fun on Megranome.”

Méarana was determined to pry her father from Gidula’s stronghold, and if Ravn thought she needed help the harper was disinclined to argue the point. That Bridget ban had been equally disinclined to provide that help distressed Méarana beyond measure, and she had hit on this idea—of sneaking off with Ravn—as a way to force the issue. “The idea,” she told Ravn one day as they crawled through the high coopers of Abyalon, “is that Mother will come after me.”

She said this not because she supposed Ravn had forgotten but because she had grown ever more conscious of the Shadow qua Shadow, and thought the gentle reminder of a vengeful Hound in hot pursuit would calibrate Ravn’s behavior. Not that the Shadow had evidenced any threat—although the mere presence of a Shadow was quite enough threat—but their common goal was to free Donovan buigh from the hands of Gidula. Ravn, however, had a second goal: to murder the man who had tortured her; and the harper could not help but wonder, should it come down to the one or the other, which goal Ravn would score.

A woman betrayed, tortured, and abused by her erstwhile benefactor might be expected to harbor some degree of resentment, but Ravn Olafsdottr was remarkably cheerful as they wound their way through the streams of space. Méarana did not know whether this was fugue, masochism, or simply putting up a face. She had thought hate a prerequisite for murder, and was surprised to learn that her companion rather liked Gidula.

“He dreams the old dreams,” she told Méarana one afternoon in the monoship’s small lounge, “and what dream can endure the daylight? It shrivels at the first touch of sun. Gidula feels the cold kiss of morning.”

“‘The old passes away,’” Méarana quoted, “‘the new is always born.’”

Ravn switched to Confederal Manjrin. “Most profound. Wise thinker, or fool.”

“It was Raisha Lu, a novelist on Friesing’s World about three lifetimes ago. She wrote—”

“Wrote nonsense. What can new ever be but newborn? A heartbeat later—no more new. What your Lu say be said long time, ten thousand lips, ten thousand ages. Sentiment old—but not yet pass away.” She turned and seemed for a time to listen to the music she had chosen for that evening: a composer and a style from some bygone era of the Confederation’s history. The harper did not find it pleasing, and wondered if the nature of the Confederals could be found in their preferences for such stringent measures.

The music resumed the strange a-harmonic plonking and Ravn faced the harper once more. “It was Gidula and his like-minded friends—men who met on old estates, who bore names ancient and bold—who alone stood firm against the Names, when the likes of Dawshoo and Oschous dipped their heads and tugged their locks and did as they were told. Against his treatment of me, throw that in the other balance pan.”

“Is it an account, then? A toting of assets and liabilities? I don’t believe it. A man’s character is seamless. What he does for good or for ill springs from the same soil. If Gidula is a traditionalist … Oh.”