Michael Flynn: On the Razor’s Edge

Only two magpies rose with Big Jacques and they scattered in three directions. One drew a shot from the apparently still-active Three, another, a dazzle from Domino Tight. But Big Jacques learned the power of chance in the affairs of men, for he had taken a serpentine run toward the farther hallway that intersected with Domino Tight.

The two of them toppled to the floor with the bigger man on top. Dazers flew higgledy-piggledy. Hands punched and poked; knees pistoned. The cloak was ripped aside. Domino Tight wrapped arms around his foe as tight as iron bands.

But iron bands were nothing to Big Jacques, and he broke free and rolled to his feet. Padaborn Three abandoned silence as he scrambled along the ductwork and punched a hole in the plaster to fire a wire gun at Big Jacques. In his anxiety not to strike Domino Tight, he shot wide; but Jacques took it as an invitation to leave. He kicked Domino in the head and, as he ran into the main hallway, pulled a throwing knife from a scabbard and in a single fluid pirouette pinned Domino Tight through the chest.

Méarana Harper listened to the dim sounds of battle from the floors below, wondering whether she had lured her mother to her death. But Bridget ban was a fixture of the universe, like the mountains and the rivers, like the Rift of Stars that separated the Perseus Arm from its Orion spur. Her mother was very like that Rift, too; her very absence was a sort of presence. And how could an absence ever be lost?

“This is all my fault,” Méarana said.

Neither Graceful Bintsaif, who watched and listened to the front hallway, nor Padaborn Five, who sat before the console of view screens and detectors that occupied the middle of the Security Center, turned to answer her.

“I would say it is the Ravn’s fault,” said the junior Hound. “It was she who maneuvered you into going with her into the Triangles. Your mother followed, and the rest of us followed her.”

“I could not leave my father without succor.”

Graceful Bintsaif shook her head. “There is a niggling in the back of my mind that our arrival rather upset the plans of Donovan buigh. The scarred man is like Mary’s lambs. Leave him be and he’ll return.”

“Listen to the two of you,” said Five. “None of this involved the Periphery at all. What is happening out there grew in our own gardens, not your fayzukeq personal lives. I see now that Padaborn did his best to delay this day of wrath, and only Gidula’s threat to torture you…” He paused.

“There,” said the harper. “It is my fault, after all.” But she wasted no time wishing it had all never happened. The time for that wish was a long time ago.

“Fates!” said Five, rapping a monitor with his knuckle. “We’ve lost Domino Tight as well as the Hound Rinty.”

Méarana brushed a cheek with her sleeve. As long ago as she could remember, Little Hugh had been a friend of the family. A lover once of her mother, which made him a relative of some sort. And Méarana had lured him here to his wyrd. It was supposed to be simple. She and Ravn and her mother would pluck Donovan as neatly from Gidula’s fortress as a pickpocket removes a purse from an unwary tourista. How they would do this Méarana had had no idea, but she had owned the fantasy so long she had come to believe it.

It is the young who catch the gliding snake. A Terran proverb her father had once told her. The young do dangerous things from innocence. Well, she was young no longer. Although she might never become any older than she was this night.

Gidula’s force would not come through the doorway she guarded: the hallway led deeper into the building. If Gidula did assault the control center his Shadows would come through the junior Hound and the Padaborn magpie and so give her a chance to escape. That was why Graceful Bintsaif had posted her here. She already had the escape route marked out in her mind. Down this hall, down a back stairway, across, and … she’d be at the fane. With her father and mother. All of them together at last, if only at the last.

“Well played!” Five exclaimed, and without turning from her vigilance Graceful Bintsaif said, “How now?”

“Big Jacques is down. Pyati ambushed him. Oh, he was the best they had. He was good. And Aynia Farer is wounded. I wonder that Gidula does not back off. Over half his force is down.”

“He can’t back down,” Méarana said. “This isn’t one of your duels. He has bet everything on this one throw. If he backs down, there is no second chance.”

“Wait one. Padaborn!” Five spoke urgently into the comm. “Gidula has hung back from the fighting and has peeled off with two of his comets. Ravn, Eglay, and, uh, Greystroke, you are facing Aynia, five lions, and one comet. But Pyati is falling back from the west wing, followed by Phoythaw and four double-crows. No, I don’t track Matilda Hound. She doesn’t show anywhere on my screens. But there were five double-crows two minutes ago, so I assume she is…” He paused and listened. “Gidula is going up the three-four corridor toward the rear of the building. Yes, he is knocking out as many eyes as he and his two wingmen identify. So are the others. They know we’re watching now.”

There was only one way into the control center from the front side of the building and it was likely booby-trapped, so Gidula did as he often did and created another way. Explosive packs blew holes in the walls on either side of the entrance Graceful Bintsaif guarded, one on the west wall, one on the south. The eyes had been blinded across that whole row of offices and Five had no indication beforehand.

Both he and Graceful Bintsaif had fine reflexes, and it was just bad luck that they both turned to the same breach. That was bad luck for the comet who leapt through the west wall, as he was thus slain twice; but it gave the comet coming through the south wall a clear shot. She cut down Five where he stood behind the console, and Graceful Bintsaif spun about in time to see Méarana’s thrown dagger embed itself in the comet’s throat. Graceful Bintsaif’s grace shot was superfluous and put her back to the west wall, and it was through this crumpled breach that Gidula stepped to stab her in the back.

Graceful Bintsaif collapsed and Méarana hurled her second knife straight toward Gidula, but the Old One merely grabbed it from the air by the handle and would have flung it back on the instant had he not seen that it was Méarana who had thrown it.

“You!” he cried. “How…?” Then his eyes dropped once more to the body at his feet. In the flick of that eye, the harper fled down the back hallway. Gidula pursed his lips, but before pursuing he leaned over Graceful Bintsaif. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

“No,” said the junior Hound through clenched teeth.

Gidula reached down and adjusted the knife. “How about now?”

Satisfied, Gidula set off in a brisk but unhurried pursuit of the harper.

The fane was a wide oval room encircled by seven statues of women in various poses: one in a grand jeté, another holding a caduceus on high, still others holding a sheaf of wheat, wearing stars over her naked body, and so forth. Green and white drapes dressed the walls, and a red-stained altar squatted in the center. The absence of benches or knee pads meant the initiates stood during their ceremonies. There seemed no separate adytum, though an iconostasis inlaid with emeralds and pearls stood folded against the wall. Below the altar was a drain hole for the blood and offal of the sacrifices. Bridget ban decided it was too narrow and too obvious to be the hidden entrance to the floor below. The walls and doors were not blast proof, and there were no firing ports.