Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

The view from the rooftop of his Residence provided Paul with a panorama of the Secret City. Seventeen Residences were, by his count, already burning and one had collapsed already into glowing ruins. Commotion roiled the streets. Milling sheep, servants and merchants, cadenced Protectors at the double-quick, cries of anguish, shouts of confused ignorance. Silver ribbons cast by the two-moon night shimmered in pools and ponds. Shadows and magpies glided sylphlike through the turmoil. The Red Gate groaned open and a squadron of bolt tanks rolled into the Secret City from the cantonment, and the Radiant Name could see that the disorder had spread on the wings of rumor into San Jösing itself. Or at least, into the Old Town. The sheep pens on the east side of the Pearl were showing lights but no evidence yet of disorder.

By his estimate, the first Residences attacked had been Old Guard, but the assassinations had spread to the Committee now. The Powerful Name had barely escaped, and had named the malcontent Dawshoo Yishohrann as leading his attackers. Word was that Sèanmazy’s loyalists had attacked the Old Names for some mad reason—though Sèanmazy was denying this—and now the reactionaries’ dogs had responded by attacking the Committee. In either case, dogs must learn not to bite the feeding hand. Both Shadow-factions must be supressed.

“It might be one faction,” suggested his captain-Protector when the Radiant Name had voiced his thoughts, “sowing dragons’ teeth on both sides of the furrow.” Protectors lined the rooftop, guarded the drop-wells, watched the skies, the Residence walls. Who knew from which direction attack would come? Their mouths set in grim, worried lines. What, wondered Paul Feeley, did they suppose they were paid for?

The first attacks had been stealthy, and word had not spread until dozens had already lain in their own gore. Now the attacks were more open, the targets better prepared. He wondered if the spectacular firebombs were not themselves a form of distraction. Who was clever enough to pull off the Play of the Dragon’s Teeth? Gidula? But the Old One was neutral so far as anyone knew, dreaming his mad dreams of a past that would never come again.

“Slinger!” cried the Protector at the monitor station.

Everyone dropped prone except the Radiant Name, who stood gloriously erect in his sparkle armor. It was important to put on a proud show. The slinger, a rigid wire missile, slid off the armor’s field and pierced the side of the nearest drop-well.

“Sir,” said the captain-Protector. “We should evacuate the rooftop. We are too exposed.”

“Nonsense.” He did not consider his Protectors’ lack of sparkle armor, nor the fact that they could not winkle out at a moment’s notice with a quondam leap. Perhaps he should have, for they surely did.

The captain-Protector clicked over the company link to evacuate the rooftop. Then he pulled an incendiary pack from his belt and punched it active. And then, because to turn on his Protected was the most wretched violation of a Protector’s oath imaginable, he embraced the Radiant Name.

Paul Feeley knew instantly what the man had done and winkled out; but the captain and—more crucially—the incendiary pack held between them winkled with him. The packet ignited as the pair reemerged from uncertainty into the Residence’s Safe Room. The captain-Protector dissipated in a plasma burst. The sparkle armor protected the Radiant Name from the blast, although the compression wave mashed him severely; but the heat, confined within the Safe Room, melted him inside the twinkling energy field. He retained human shape for a time, but only until the field collapsed.

Ari Zin was prepared, and he dispatched with his own dazer the first Shadow to slip into the command center in the Residence. He did not ask how the man had entered. That was for his Protectors to ascertain. He had meanwhile to direct the counterattack. The screen pricked off on a map the Residences and other locations where Names had been attacked. The processors sifted the mode of assassination, the faction of the victim, the location, and the time sequence in hope of conjuring a pattern that made sense of it all, and from which to plan the counterstroke.

The door signaled and the warden checked the monitor. “It’s a Shadow,” he announced. “Black, a taiji.”

“Sèanmazy,” muttered the Martial Name. Her faction supposedly supported the Committee. “Admit her, but stay wary.”

The Long Tall One strode in with her cape and singular walking stick. She glanced at the War Board and took it in, considered the body of the Shadow in the corner. “Ah. Egg Mennerhem,” she said. “He has for several weeks been in Nengin City lurking. We were curious for what purpose. We tink dere are reserves following after da initial infiltration. This one was not of da first water.”

Or you would not have slain him was the unspoken subtext. “How did they…”

“Dere are abandoned tunnels under dis city, from da old days. Da rebels have been using dem to scurry under our feet. You search your subbasements, Martial Name, and you find da loose vent or floor tiles dat da rats wriggle up.” The Shadow gripped her stick with both hands and leaned her cheek against it. “But tell me dis what I have heard from lips dat were soon deceased. Was dis war but a shadow cast upon da wall of da cave by da fires of your enmities? To what exactly have we been loyal all dese long years?”

“To the Confederation,” said Ari Zin without hesitation.

A toothy smile split the Shadow’s face. “Now dis is a strange ting,” she said. “I have dis question asked tonight of several Names, and your answer, I judge, is da first honestly given.” She nodded to the body of Egg Mennerhem. “You plug dose holes in your basement, Ari Zin, for I tink the Confederation will have need of you when dawn breaks.” Then she turned and strode to the door. Ari Zin called after her.

“Sèanmazy!”

The Long Tall One cocked her head in question but did not speak.

“If the Old Guard had stayed in power, you would be fighting for them, wouldn’t you?”

A grin split her black face. “Of course!” Then she swept out of the command room, her cloak billowing behind her. Her long staff rapped twice on the floor and a dozen magpies seemed to appear from nowhere and followed her out.

The captain-Protector closed and sealed the door once more. “She scares me,” he admitted to the Martial Name. “I’m glad she’s on our side.”

Or that we’re on hers, Ari Zin thought.

The Abattoir was dark and empty, its recesses barely visible even in night vision. A red glow from the fires outside eased through the slit windows, casting uneven and capering shadows on the Cöng Sung, the great long wall with memorials to Shadows past. Manlius Metataxis slipped though the darkness, becoming one with it. He was down to a single magpie now, and he had left her in the Rose Garden to ward the entrance.

There was fell work this evening, but Manlius did not think that many of those involved would be mounted on the Wall. He came to the end of the Wall and passed through the portal to the proving ground, the place of blood and sand. For a moment he could hear the roar of the candidates in the surrounding grandstands, see the examinees struggling with the obstacles that emerged from floor, ceiling, sidelines, while Prime—or perhaps Dawshoo or Ekadrina—sat in the Judgment Seat and passed or failed the candidates. And afterward, for those who passed, the parties, the laughter, the numbing liquors and smokes. We were all one, then, he thought.

He glanced above, where a thousand banners hung listless in the unstirred air. Even in the dark, he could make out some of them, and sought out his own: sky-blue, a dove. But it was too dim and the light of the burning city played strange games with the colors.