Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

Industrial output had actually improved, but what did that matter when it was not seen to improve by his efforts?

Still, he had enjoyed retirement, which he spent in martial exercise and in oil painting. He was enjoying the perfumes of evening in his rose garden and adding tinctures of colored oils to the pattern he had created on the still surface of his water basin when the ground gave way behind and to his left and a Shadow and two magpies emerged from the hole.

There was a moment of surprise on all parts. But though he had been out of office these past years, Gomes-Park sensed immediately that this was no social call, and whipped with his left hand the metal stylus that he used for finely adjusting the oiled shapes. It pierced the throat of the first magpie, severing the left carotid artery. The remaining two broke to either side of the narrow garden.

Gomes-Park never depended solely on his Protectors. He pulled a flechette gun from his purse and fired a pattern into the darkness where one of the shapes had fled. One moment was sufficient to put the dog-whistle to his lips, a second moment to blow it, but he really needed three and was not granted them.

A spinning star ripped into his left temporal lobe, immobilizing him long enough for the mercy blow, which was delivered with professional competence.

Big Jacques clicked “Eleven” on his comm., then added, “Target-Three moved. Less Magpie Four.” The target should not have been up and about at this hour, least of all dallying in the rose garden. A restless night perhaps. The Protectors would be here in a moment, so he hefted the incendiary packet and whicked it high above to land on the roof of the Residence. Then he whispered the wounded Number Seven to him and they retreated to the tunnels. On the way, he paused to admire the colored oils the target had been scribing—because with a squad of Protectors on its way it was a ballsy thing to do. He almost wished the old man had had time to finish it.

He pulled the brassard from Four’s arm in passing, and set an explosive charge in the rubble where they had broken through from the tunnels. Damn bad luck. Now the Protectors would learn of the tunnels, though the pocket-bomb might delay matters for a time.

Hayzoos Peter, the Powerful Name, was on his link. “Yes,” he said as his striker dressed him, “I can see the fires from my window. All are in the Residences. Do you know which…?” He paused, listened, nodded. “All but two are Old Guard…? Wonderful. The Protectors will think we are breaking the Treaty of Comity. It isn’t any of our people who…?” He listened some more. It was because he was good at listening that he had been able to assemble the Names Renewed, remove the decadent Old Guard, and reinvigorate the Confederation. It just takes a while. It takes a while. Steering the CCW was like turning the great pleasure vessel Gung Höng Hoy. For a long time, the reef would continue dead ahead.

A Protector opened the door to admit another Protector, a söng’aa by rank. The latter was clad in battle dress rather than the ceremonials worn by the door wardens. Not exactly a Shadow, not exactly a boot, but partaking somewhat of the nature of both, the Protector’s countenance revealed nothing behind his goggles and comm. mandible. “Sir,” he said without preamble, “Shadows on the rooftops, and in the alleyways. All through the Residences.”

“Ours or theirs? Chestli,” the Powerful Name said to an aide, “warble Prime over at the Abattoir. Find out if Sèanmazy and her people have gone rogue. And let’s move away from the terraces and windows, shall we?”

The civilian group moved toward the suite’s door.

“Shall I order the bolt tanks warmed up, sir?” asked the söng’aa.

“Not yet. I remember the shambles my illustrious and ever-mourned predecessor made of the Official Quarter during Padaborn’s Rising.” The Committee had kept the man as a sop to the Old Guard, but he had never stopped scheming, and Hayzoos had finally tired of the charade. “If these are Shadows run amok, we may still be able to contain it. Söng’aa, are there reports from elsewhere in the city?”

“One stray report, sir, from the Office Quarter, near the Gayshot Bo. Possible Shadows. No confirmation; also no fires or explosions in that quarter. Sir, this was never supposed to touch the boots or the Protectors, let alone the Names.”

Hayzoos had warned his brothers and sisters on both sides of the Discontentment to take no hand in the Shadow War, and he himself had worked carefully to maintain neutrality, awkening too late to the awful truth that the entire affair had been instigated by the Old Guard. It is the habit of power that the fist clenches tighter in rigor mortis. “Matters do have a way of getting out of hand.” If Ngaumin Heer, the Second Name, was behind this, there would be hell to pay. It had been a wojök, a peace gesture, to allow her the second office, a sign that the Committee of Names Renewed was merely furthering the will of an Old Guard now honorably retired. Everyone had agreed to believe that.

Though evidentally not everyone. Acceptance-now had been traded for resistance-later. And “later” was “now.”

But the initial targets had been Old Guard—and that made no sense.

Hayzoos was fully dressed and armed now, and he pulled his cordon in from the perimeter of the bedchamber. “Quickly now to Central Office,” he said. And the söng’aa told the other Protectors, “Exit in formation seven.”

They opened the door to find one of the door wardens on the floor, his ceremonial uniform chopped to rags by flechettes, and the second warden in a crouch aiming his gun at the official party. Behind him were five magpies in black-and-white diagonal stripes. All of them poured withering fire into the party of the Powerful Name. The söng’aa died first, throwing himself in front of his master, and the other Protectors, caught like a cork in a bottle, lacking room for maneuver, were cut down, one by one. The Office minions fell like wheat before a scythe.

Three of the attacking magpies died in the counterfire, for surprise was no longer theirs, and Dawshoo Yishohrann was himself badly wounded. The traitorous door-warden left no more memory than a greasy spot on the marble floor.

Afterward, Dawshoo spoke through clenched jaw over his link. “Four. Collateral only. Target-Six prepared, escaped. Three magpies moved. Awareness spreading; resistance stiffening.” The link encoded and squirted the message. Good work, indeed. Dawshoo himself had moved five targets already. Three in their sleep, two in flight. This had been the first return-fire. He hoped that Oschous had not run into similar resistance. The link vibrated and he looked at the query. It was from Oschous. “No,” he answered. “I don’t know how he escaped. He was in my sights, then he was just … gone.”

Like at the warehouse, Oschous messaged; but Dawshoo had not been at the warehouse.

The one regret of Paul Feeley, the Radiant Name, was that his aim had not been better when he had intervened on Yuts’ga. But Jimjim Shot had been hurt, her beauty disfigured, and how could anyone so disfigured head up the Ministry of Arts? His sister’s mutilation had wrenched him for a moment, and had thrown his game off just a bit, or the whole nonsense might have been ended right there. And if only that oaf, Ari Zin, had not intervened so bombastically, only to discover that in war people got hurt! Boo-hoo. Paul had heard later that Padaborn had intervened on the reactionaries’ side. Padaborn! Had they not settled his case a score of years ago? Or had he truly been in hiding these last twenty-odd years? Hiding where? But if Padaborn fought at all, he ought to have raised arms in support of the Committee! If even Padaborn has turned against us …