Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

Bridget ban skidded to a halt behind Geshler Padaborn. Her eyes danced one to the other, took in the scene, understood it. She held her teaser on the Secret Name. A teaser, thought Donovan, with a tinge of the contempt that Shadows felt. The Hounds would always be one notch less deadly.

“To me, Méarana,” said Bridget ban.

“Father rescued me…”

“That was nice, considering he was the whole reason you needed rescuing.”

Geshler Padaborn cocked an eyebrow. He hadn’t known that part, Donovan saw. He was thinking now how he might use this new fact.

Padaborn smiled. Inner Child started. «Behind us!»

Padaborn spasmed and collapsed where he stood. Donovan swung to the new target.

And saw Gidula with dazer in hand.

“Oh!” said Gidula with sentimental affect. “The whole loving family.” He twisted the aperture to wide sweep, fatal range. The recharger hummed.

Donovan stepped in front of Méarana Harper, but Gidula’s aim was spoiled and the beam went wide.

What spoiled Gidula’s aim was the abrupt drop of Ravn Olafsdottr through the ceiling and onto his back. She rode him for a moment as a man might ride an unbroken horse. But she pulled on the reins and his head reared back and he choked. The Old One threw himself back against the wall to crush Ravn, but she maintained a hard grip.

Gidula began to bleed from the neck and the garotte bit into his flesh. He fell backward to the floor, pinning Ravn beneath him, and still her choke hold did not slacken. His legs began to kick spasmodically, increasing in tempo. Then they were still.

The corridor remained prone for a time; the acrid odors of electrical discharge, hanging in a thin, smoky fume, tinctured the air. The silence grew loud.

Gidula was the first to move.

His chest heaved with the sound of a pellet-gun discharge, and something emerged from the rib cage to embed itself in the corridor wall. He rolled aside.

“Ooh,” said Ravn Olafsdottr. “That was joost to make sure.” Then the perpetual smile faded and she struggled to her knees beside the corpse of the Old One, and she wept uncontrollably into her hands.

The fighting around the fane had started well enough, with death flitting through corridors on the run, emerging from unexpected corners, exploding where least expected; but the attackers had rallied and had driven the defenders back on the fane itself and matters had devolved into a gunfight.

Gwillgi, Eglay, and Three were wounded. Two Padaborn was dead. But the attackers had been pruned very nicely. The last two trident magpies were dead, and Phoythaw had only two crows and one comet remaining in his force. Aynia, wounded to begin with, had withdrawn from the fight, though three of his four magpies continued to fire on the defenders. Pyati and One defended the door of the fane and Matilda and Greystroke were in isolated siege at their two corners unable to reach them.

“Low on pellets,” One reported, “and my recharger is almost dead.”

“Knife never runs dry,” Pyati told him.

“Yes,” the magpie responded, “but it lacks something in range.”

“Here.” Gwillgi tossed his own gun to One Padaborn. “You point the barrel at what you want to hit, and press that button twice in quick succession.”

The magpie’s lips quirked, and Gwillgi said to Pyati, “Ay! I wish I hadn’t used my medipack on Domino Tight that time in Cambertown, because I certainly could use it now.”

Pyati spared him a glance. “Maybe so, but had you not saved him we might not be fighting here together.”

“Was that supposed to convince me I’d done the right thing? Never mind. I would do it again, for the same reasons I gave Domino.”

A flurry of discharges sounded down the hallway. “Bad aim,” said Pyati. “No hits here.”

“Maybe they shifted their strength to Greystroke or Matilda,” Gwillgi suggested. “Keep us pinned down while they overwhelm those two.”

“This fane had better be worth defending,” said Pyati.

“Donovan has not come back,” Gwillgi pointed out. “Nor Bridget ban. And where’s your Ravn? They could double our strength.”

“Then, bigger massacre,” said Pyati. “Nice. Lord Padaborn did not ‘bug out’ on me, so I stand where he told me to stand.”

One, listening, nodded. “We are not like Hounds. We can defend a hopeless position.”

“Braggart,” grunted Gwillgi. He pulled himself up to the barricade they had made of the office furniture. They had built such barricades in several offices on the approaches to the fane, at points that might interdict an attacking party, forcing Phoythaw and Aynia to pause and check each one, lest ambush lurk behind it. What normally lurked was an explosive device, but they had quickly learned to detonate those remotely.

“Someone’s coming!” said One.

They all heard it. A regular thumping from the west hallway, where Phoythaw’s force lurked. The snap of a teaser interrupted the thumping briefly, then it continued. A darker figure loomed in the dark hallway and struck the floor three times with a tall wooden staff. Taijis swarmed in the background.

“Cease and desist!” the Long Tall One said. “This pasdarm is suspended!”

Pyati groaned. “Is Ekadrina Sèanmazy with reinforcements.”

“More coming from the east,” said Gwillgi.

“Black horses,” said One. “And us caught in between.”

Ekadrina stepped aside and Tina Zhi passed through the ranks of taijis, bearing the body of Domino Tight on a gravity cart. “I would enter the fane as high priestess of the Seven Widows,” she said.

“What she means,” said Oschous Dee Karnatika, “is don’t shoot. The Riff of District Twenty-seven has declared a Peace. The Secret City is under martial law, and all are to lay down their arms. Where is Geshler Padaborn?”

A portion of the ceiling fell onto the mezzanine and two dozen guns—taijis, black horses, and Padaborn’s defenders—were instantly leveled at the spot. Ravn Olafsdottr’s face appeared in the gap.

“Peekaboo!” she said.

In the first place, they gathered in the fane on furniture scavenged from the nearby offices. Ekadrina Sèanmazy and Oschous Dee Karnatika sat side by side on float-chairs obviously intended to demonstrate their collegial rule. Their magpies, staged alternately, encircled the room. One of the black horses had proven to be Greystroke, who had used his anycloth to blend in with them up to point when they counted noses. Of Matilda of the Night there was no sign.

Three more chairs, ground propped, had been set facing the two senior Shadows, and in these sat Donovan buigh, Bridget ban, and Méarana Harper, still twitching a little from the penumbra of Gidula’s dazer. Méarana had been shielded from the worst of it by Donovan’s body. He lolled in the seat, but his open left eye showed that some part of him was active.

Gwillgi, Three, and the other wounded lay on pallets with medipacs or their Confederal equivalent, at least until they could be transported to an autoclinic. Two of Ekadrina’s magpies had brought in Little Hugh on a gravity cart. He was white from loss of blood but still clinging to the edge of life. On another pallet lay Graceful Bintsaif. A Riff’s magpie with the death’s-head brassard of a medic attended to them.