Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

“No,” said Gidula, “for in the morning we will have a problem.”

“In the morning?” one of the magpies asked.

“Surely. When the Confederation awakes, she will need a government. We do not want to wreck the machinery, only replace the operators. The Names have grown indolent. You will find them at home, wrapped in luxuries, not pulling night shift in the Offices. I’ve marked the Residences on the overmaps.”

“You haven’t marked all of them,” Manlius Metataxis complained. “Where is the Technical Name? Or the Second Name? Where is the Masked One? ”

“Yes,” said Donovan. “I should have thought the Secret Name would head the list.”

“This is the list provided us by Domino Tight’s source within the Secret City. Some Names favor our struggle. Those we may spare—and later control. So, stick to your target lists.”

Donovan did not miss the silent exchanges among the Shadows. In for a fenny, in for a yoon. Why spare any Names?

“We will take two hours to expedite target acquisition,” said Dawshoo. “Leave repeaters at all tunnel intersections. If you cannot find direct access to a Residence, pick a nearby site with reasonable ground access and we will shift the tempo to give you time to enter your kill zones. Remember: you may encounter Protectors. Is that understood?”

“No, Grandmother,” piped Little Jacques. “What was that part about sucking eggs, again?” The others laughed.

“Eglay,” said Gidula, “by me. Pyati, do you go with Manlius. Gesh, wait you here. Too valuable you are to hazard on mere reconnaissance.”

Pyati glanced at Donovan, who brushed his lips and flashed two fingers for an instant where Gidula could not see. Pyati relayed the signal to the other four Padaborn magpies. Eglay Portion came over to him and embraced him. “Don’t kiss me,” Donovan warned. “It’s been done before.”

Gidula, hearing the comment, frowned in incomprehension, but Eglay Portion understood. “Which,” he whispered.

“Watch,” Donovan replied. “Play Two.”

Gidula turned. “Do you, good Domino, sit sentry then with our bold Padaborn. Take care of him, that we shall call on him as needed.”

The man with the lyre brassard was the only senior conspirator Donovan had not met before. He nodded. “Yes, Deadly One.”

After the recon teams had departed, Donovan and the other Shadow squatted in the dark, visible to one another only as ghostly images on night-vision goggles. By all accounts, Tight had done yeoman’s work at the warehouse and was a friend of Ravn Olafsdottr; but right now, Donovan was not feeling especially friendly toward Ravn.

After a long silence, Donovan with his shy-side hand unfastenend the loop on the knife scabbard at the back of his belt. “Do you think you can?” he said.

“Can what?”

“Take care of me?”

“Oh.” Domino Tight made a great show of placing both his hands in plain sight. “Let me put it this way. Gidula gave the same instructions to Khembold Darling to ‘take care of’ your daughter.”

Donovan’s heart froze over, and he half-rose from his squat. “Khembold would not…!”

“Would. Tried. Failed.”

Donovan drew a breath and eased back down. “What … happened?”

“Your daughter strangled him with a harp string and Ravn Olafsdottr shot him in the head, so he is a twice-dead man.”

Donovan smiled as a wolf smiles, but not without a little relief. “That’s my girl…” Ravn had been playing her own game. But … “How can you know what happened on Terra?”

While Domino Tight summarized the events at the Forks, the scarred man consulted the young man in the chlamys, who responded that while body language was difficult to read in night vision, voice-stress analysis showed sincerity. Of course, pathological liars could also sound sincere. Nevertheless, Donovan refastened the knife-loop. “Your inability to describe the philosopher’s assistant convinces me,” Donovan said. “I know the Man That No One Sees. And I knew Gwillgi to be nearby—and that the harper’s mother would come. I had not thought she would bring friends. So, she is safe now, Méarana is?”

“Well,” said Domino Tight, “that is where it begins to grow complicated.”

The two of them left the tunnel for the riverbank. It was fully night now and the Minor Moon was rising steadily in the east. In another day it would overtake the Major Moon. A Dao Chettian countryman could tell time with fair precision by the relative positions of the two moons. The north wind smelled of fish and of methane vapors from the mantle subjection wells northeast of the city.

“Do you really think they are walking into a trap?” said Domino Tight.

“I think they will succeed in assassinating just those Names Gidula wishes dead, at which point their luck will sour.”

“My … special friend … thought the purge could be done without undue bloodshed.”

“Your friend is that most dangerous of creatures: a ruthless naïf. This fight is among the Names; it is others’ blood they meant to shed. Is this the spot where you kill me?”

“Yes, and your body goes into the river over there. The frawtha —the ‘official truth’—will be that you stepped outside for fresh air, a Protector river patrol spotted you, and, rather than lead them to us, you dove into the river to draw them away.”

“Brave and noble to the end.”

“Gidula wants you dead, not your legend.”

The scarred man laughed and tossed his head. “The irony is that Padaborn was not so heroic. He betrayed me.”

Domino Tight looked at him. “You’re not Padaborn? Ah. Now a few things make sense.”

“I am happy for you.”

“No. You see, there were rumors that Padaborn had buckled under threat of torture, and then they tortured him anyway in case he had forgotten to tell them anything, and when they were done there was not enough of him left to bother with. He was with the smoke. But I dismissed those stories as propaganda, because other rumors held that he had escaped and was in clever concealment—‘in the one place no one will look.’ So when Gidula announced he had located you, him in the Periphery … It gave us all heart.”

“But…,” suggested Donovan. A night bird swooped across the face of the river and the moons-light revealed a two-shadowed fish rising in the claws of something large.

“Yes. My ‘special friend’ took your daughter and me to her Residence; and there, for whatever reason of her own, she told us … You see, Padaborn won —by proxy. After his Rising, a faction calling themselves the Committee of Names Renewed declared that the best way to prevent a future Rising was to address the real abuses that the Paderbornians had complained of. Not everything, understand. They thought they could file and trim around the edges, what they called fairezdroga. So there was a…”

“Coup d’état.”

“Yah. They made a sweep of the Old Guard: forced some into retirement, imprisoned others, encouraged the remainder to a life of sloth and indolence, and cut deals with those they thought they could deal with. Of course, what the Committee learned was that if you cut and trim around the edges to save what you can, you will trim too much for the Old Guard and not enough for the Reformers.”

The Fudir knew astonishment. “And no one knew this was happening?”

“Which part of Secret City is unclear? I chose the Revolution to expunge the Names entirely. Now I find that I have been fighting the Committee at the behest of the Old Guard.”

“Wait! The Revolution is supporting the Old Guard?”