Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

Khembold shrugged. “Gidula is not here to break it.” He studied her. “The blouse was a good start, but you’ve promised more than that.”

Méarana unfastened her pants and kicked them off. She wore ankle boots but left them on. Khembold Darling licked his lips.

“Get on with it,” said Number Two. “And watch out for stupid kicks.”

“You heard her,” Méarana murmured.

“Don’t fret, Six-eyes,” the Shadow snapped. “Gidula said to wait until the call had been finished, but he never put an upper bound on it. Go away. I don’t need you for this.”

“Oh, but I was looking forward to the pain,” the magpie said.

“I promise to hurt it for you.” He took Méarana’s arm and shoved her into the bedroom.

“It’s not the same when someone else does it,” Two complained as she followed.

“Then you can have it when I’m done,” the Shadow told the magpie. “There’s no need to destroy the goods right off, is there? We can maximize utility. See how long it lasts.”

Number Two snorted. “That’s what the little whore is counting on.”

“It thinks it wants to delay things, but soon enough it will wish matters had ended more quickly.” Khembold chuckled and turned to Méarana, who had lain out on the bed. His lip curled as he placed his weapons belt beyond Méarana’s reach. “Do you really think your body will buy me off?”

Méarana smiled sadly. “No, but it might buy me two more minutes.”

Number Two could not contain a burst of laughter. Khembold turned red and climbed atop the harper, and smacked her open palmed across the face. He was not wearing a shenmat, and there were useful flaps in his clothing that he could open. He paused and took himself in hand.

“I’m going to enjoy this.”

“Oh. So am I,” the harper assured him. She stretched her arms above her head and caressed the strings of her harp.

The door to the apartment chimed.

Number Two scowled. “I left orders,” she said.

“Then it may be important,” said Khembold. “Go check. Don’t worry. I’ll leave enough for you to hurt.”

The magpie hissed impatiently and returned to the sitting room. She checked the door’s security scanner. “It’s that wandering philosopher!” she said.

In the bedroom, Khembold frowned and turned his head.

Méarana’s mother had taught her a proverb once: She who would lose her life, the same shall save it. And it meant that when all was at hazard, the timid would die. Only by risking everything with a wild disregard can one save anything.

But while the disregard must be wild, it must never be witless, she had warned. And then she would teach little Méarana some trick of the trade.

And so the signal from the door had left her momentarily alone with the Shadow.

And the Shadow had turned his head.

And the Shadow had exhaled.

All these things she sensed as in retarded motion, as if she floated in the room above herself. It was a configuration that would not last.

Méarana Harper pulled the loosened cord from her harp and with a single, cross-handed motion wrapped it around the neck of Khembold Darling, pulling on both ends with all her strength. Khembold gagged and the metal strings bit into his flesh. She had waited for the exhale before acting, and a man deprived of breath thinks of little else but drawing one.

But Khembold was a Shadow and Shadows do not die easily, whereas harpers might perish as swiftly as butterflies. His arms were free and he punched Méarana in the face, but the harper took the blow and hung on. To lose hold of the garotte would mean her immediate death—though she might count even that a victory and be glad.

Her chances were small, but in a stand-up fight she would have none at all. Her strength might fail. Khembold might batter her unconscious. Number Two might rush back at any moment.

But there was always the door-chime to give her hope.

The philosopher rang several times and shook his begging bowl before the Eye. Two sighed in exasperation. The common folk accounted it bad luck to spurn a chit’hoka’s begging bowl. And while she considered it of no matter whatsoever, she had no desire to attract attention. Not all the magpies on staff were trustworthy.

She opened the door, aiming her money-rod at the receptor in the bowl, and had just opened her mouth to chase him away when the sounds of stuggle erupted from the bedroom. Her first thought was that Khembold Darling was having all the fun. “Go away,” she told the philosopher before the second thought struck her. And that was that the robed man held a very unphilosophical dazer.

“Quiet now, a cushla, ” he said in the Gaelactic.

Her paraperception sensed motion in the room behind her, and her third thought was that Khembold was rushing to her assistance. “A Hound,” she cried in warning.

But it was Domino Tight whose hand-spike severed her spine, and she fell to the floor before a fourth thought could even form.

At the same time, Ravn Olafsdottr, in the bedroom, threw off the second cloak and leaped upon Khembold’s back. She pulled his head back and, pressing a gun to his temple, fired a small-caliber pellet into his brain.

The pellet had sufficient force to penetrate the skull but not to exit and so neither endangered anyone else in the room nor created unsightly splatter. Instead, it ricocheted about inside Khembold’s cranium several times. Not that it mattered after the first.

Méarana had acted on the happy intuition that the door signaled Domino Tight, and while her intuition had been wrong, it had been right enough.

At first outraged by Ravn’s betrayal, Méarana had in a cooler moment reasoned that had Olafsdottr meant simply to hand her over to Gidula, she would not have first collected Domino Tight. She chided herself for not realizing that immediately, but Ravn had likely acted deliberately to create the necessary mask of shock and anger in her prisoner.

“Quickly,” the harper warned her. “Number Two—”

“Oh, do not worry. Sweet Doominoo will handle the vixen, thanks to the fortuitous door-chime.” Ravn looked her over. “I might almost envy Khembold Darling his desires, save only to what a poor end he came because of them. Without your distraction, I doubt I could have taken him so by surprise.” She stepped to the doorway, pressed against it, and took a quick blick into the sitting room. “Oho,” she said, pulling back, “you have a gentleman caller. Please make yourself decent—or not, as your spirits move you, lest he regret his celibacy.”

“Celibacy? The philosopher?”

“Yayss. And it pains me to say that he and my sweet Domino are at dazers drawn. How many Hounds did we draw in your wake, my sweet? Too many, I think. Perhaps we should salve things over. For it would be poor form for your rescuers to slay one another in the epilog.”

Little Hugh O Carroll was not so easily salved. He held a hand out to Méarana when she emerged. “To me, a cushla. ” He did not shift his aim from the Shadow. But neither did the harper rush to his side.

“Think, man,” Ravn Olafsdottr told him. “Who slew Méarana’s attackers? Whatever enmities run between your fellowship and ours, on this matter we are as congruent as triangles.”

“And we have a truce,” Domino Tight said in a husky voice, “with Gwillgi.”

“I saw him in the brush with you,” said Little Hugh, “up on the ridge. The bristly boar in the bushes. But where is he now?”

“We could not be certain,” Domino Tight explained, “that they would choose Méarana’s apartment for the kill space. So Gwillgi tracked them outside while we lurked here. I had expected him at the door, not you.”