On the Razor’s Edge

V. The Pasdarm at the Iron Bridge

Terra. The world from which once set forth the great star-captains of old: Yang huang-ti, Chettiwan Mahadevan, and all the rest—to conquer worlds and write their names in glory. Later generations, lacking their vigor, mocked their outsized exuberance. Glory? They could not have been serious! But mockery has always rung false and uncertain from the lips of those to whom no statues would ever rise.

The ships had gone out at first looking for life, confident that they would find it in abundance. They recited a mantra called the Prayer of Drake. But they found no answer to their prayer save the lichens of Dao Chetty or the worms of Yuts’ga, and some torpid seas soupy with eukaryotes. On a few scattered worlds, they discovered the indecipherable evidence that Others had once walked there in times forgotten. Where are they? Where are they?

Nowhere, it seemed. And so, deprived of true aliens, the men of Terra had fashioned their own. The great science-wallahs of old who had touched the genes of plants and of animals touched even those of men themselves, transforming disappointments to joy and shaping each new world to their partiality. New kinds of men arose and dreamed new kinds of dreams. They scattered Arks before them like dandelion seeds to quicken worlds they themselves would never live to tread.

For a time, great fleets of suspension ships sought to relieve population pressures at home by carting off the excess. That did not work. A vigorous age reproduces with vigor; as those whose cradles are barren are also barren in other ways. Elsetime did people search out nooks where they would be free to live as they wished. That did not work, either, for men bring oppression with them wherever they go and those who find their dreams will press them upon their children. At still other times, they had been forced out against their will for reasons economic, political, or judicial.

In the end it was sheer osmosis that populated the Spiral Arm, a complex stew of curiosity, greed, displacement, persecution, and deliberate exploitation. It was a thin gruel. A random sampling of stars would find nothing, not even death, for a thing must live before it can die. Not every star is caressed by the tendrils of Electric Avenue, and so their worlds spin forever beyond reach, no matter how close they might lie as the crow does fly. And even within the network are worlds untouched by the Arks: worlds in eddies and cul-de-sacs and whorls or up blind alleys, worlds so unpromising, so meanly endowed with even the inanimate, that there was little point to sprinkling the animate upon them: superjovians whirling like dervishes about a fire; marsbodies too weak to retain their warming blankets; worlds wrapped so tightly that their very air pressed and crushed and incinerated even the hope of life. But here and there: oases that could be nurtured and cultivated into suitable—sometimes barely suitable—homes. Out into this vast, untouched, and untouchable desert, mankind spread through the creases of space. They went sometimes with heads cocked high, sometimes in shackles. Sometimes because they had everything to gain, sometimes because they had nothing to lose.

But they went.

All his life—to the extent he remembered a life—the scarred man had dreamed of Terra. It was the grail of all those huddled in the Terran Corners of the Periphery; those who had not forgotten the days of old, who preserved the languages and lore in their Terran Schools when everyone else had forgotten, who loved the memory of a world they had never seen. Man was at home on a thousand planets, but only one was the home of man.

Every Terran yearned to make the hajj, and “Next year on Terra” was a common valediction among them. The Brotherhood schemed and plotted to return all Terrans to the home-world. Some few thought to reignite past glories in the face of the Names, but more simply desired to nestle in the mother world’s arms: to see “the Taj and the Wall and the Mount of Many Faces,” to visit the Monument of the Lions in the pass of Jelep La, or the wreckage of the Beanstalks brutally scythed by the conquering Names of Dao Chetty. “Twelve-gated Terra,” she had been called, for a dozen of these massive elevators had girdled the globe and had perceptibly slowed the world’s rotation. Most of all: to visit Iracatanam Antapakirantamthe, the Capital of All the Worlds.

As Gidula’s ship crossed the orbits of High Wonsing and Tin Wonsing and passed within distant sight of the glorious rings of Tousing and the somber-striped king of planets, Muksing, the scarred man found his breath growing shorter and his heart beating stronger. He knew these worlds by older names—Ketu and Raku, Cani and Viyazan—and the Pedant mulled names older still, bestowed by cultures near forgotten. At times, the feelings welled up uncontrollably and he would break into tears.

His companions, far from laughing, often wept with him. He had found them easily moved, as often by others’ emotions as by their own. Just as a play in shaHmat might inspire them to sudden rage, so a homecoming could induce sudden tears. And so a mood at once festive and romantic suffused the staff and crew of White Comet. Five recalled a woman he had known in Ketchell; Twelve spoke longingly of sailboats on Lake Montang. Twenty-four remembered hang gliding in the Angies. Even Gidula grew wistful and from time to time pulled a small box from the recesses of his clothing and inspected within it a lock of hair.

But she was called Zãddigah now, was Terra, a name bestowed long ago by her Dao Chettian masters. It meant something like “dirt-ball renewed.” And, as if world had changed with word, she little resembled those meticulously labeled ancient maps copied and recopied in Terran Corners across the Periphery. She seemed to wear a powdered wig.

“Clouds?” Donovan guessed.

“Ice,” Gidula told him.

Oceans had receded, and freshwater lakes had appeared in unlikely places. Deserts and taiga and scrubland dominated the terrain and the cities huddled against rivers, lakefronts, estuaries. Gidula’s shuttles coasted northeastward high over the Megan desert, across the open waters of a circular, nearly enclosed sea, skirting the edge of the Fladda scrublands, before entering the substratospheric traffic corridors and turning north-northeast along the open boreal woodlands that lined the eastern edge of the north-south landmass.

The city of Ketchell formed a crescent around a large, natural harbor where the land turned east. Towering larches and spruce, interspersed with birch and ash and broken by pale-green meadows, dominated the mainland behind her. Beyond that: a glimpse of taiga and, on the far horizon, a gleaming white rime of glaciers. Then the shuttles swooped in low for their final approaches and the northlands dipped beneath the horizon. Tubeways ran off south and southwest.

None of the roads from Ketchell ran north.

Gidula’s headquarters lay some leagues west of the city, nestled in a bowl dominated on all sides by abrupt heights. A southbound river, the Tware, ran through it along its eastern marge, entering and leaving through gaps in the encircling hills. A second river, called the Lye, ran the gantlet between a pair of sheer limestone cliffs on the southern edge of the bowl before tumbling into the Tware.

“It does not seem very defensible,” Donovan told Gidula as they watched the approach on a screen in the lounge.

The magpies who surrounded the party chuckled and Gidula arched an eyebrow. “That depends on who is playing defense.”

“It’s dominated by high ground on all sides.” Inner Child, of course, had noted that right off.

“Ah, but first an enemy would have to seize that high ground. Those farmlands may not be as open as they appear. Really, Gesh, who is there to attack my compound? There has not been a war on Zãddigah since time unremembered. This is not the Periphery. We keep a tighter rein on anarchy here than they do across the Rift.”

Donovan was unruly enough himself not to relish the thoughts of leashes. But he admitted that things might look different to a man whose home has been smashed and plundered by raiders. Tyrants were often welcomed with open arms.

“Other Shadows,” he suggested. “I’ve heard there is a war on.”

The Old One smiled. “But against a Shadow attack what possible fortress might matter?”

A small, flat area on the eastern bank of the River Tware provided a landing apron for the shuttles. As each one grounded, tugs moved her into hangars excavated under the cliffs of Mount Lefn. The planetfallmen handled things smoothly, and soon Gidula, his servants, his magpies, and his opportune guest had forgathered in a broad lounge within the cliff, where the servants broke open wardrobes and pulled out a variety of festive clothing with which to drape their master and his people.

Gidula wore black, of course, accented with white trim and bearing the comet on breast and back. A round brimless cap sporting feathers of the black swan graced his head. On his hands, elbow-length leather gloves in dark gray; on his feet, matching felt shoes with black ankle stripes.

His magpies were variously accoutered. The most junior wore white, sleeveless surplices atop larch-green hose. Their comet badges were set in black squares on breast and back. Senior magpies wore black shenmats with Gidula’s mark patterned throughout in white. Donovan was surprised to note a full Shadow, who wore a blue shenmat adorned with daffodils and sporting Gidula’s comet on a brassard. Donovan guessed him the captain of Gidula’s ship. He had his own cloud of magpies—likely the bridge and engine crew—and these bore bouquets of daffodils stuck jauntily in wedge-shaped caps.

Donovan found himself outfitted in Geshler Padaborn’s colors by aggressively servile valets. A blouse of sky-blue with puffed and slit sleeves over tubular trousers of forest-green, topped with a white snap-brimmed hat called a fedora, which he was told meant “faith of gold” in the ancient Murkan tongue. A half dozen of Gidula’s magpies had been brevetted in Padaborn’s colors to provide him with an appropriate entourage. The large and dolorous Five looked especially incongruous in such gay garb, but he wore it with genuine pride.

“It is to me honor,” he told Donovan amidst the bustle. A single tear made its way through the bristles of Five’s cheek. Succumbing to an impulse whose origin he did not know, Donovan touched his forefinger to the tear and crossed his heart with it. “I think I will call you ‘Pyati,’” he said. At that, his physical therapist broke down entirely and the other five magpies clamored to touch Pyati as well.

Donovan looked to see if Gidula had noticed the interplay, and of course he had. But the Old One’s face had never revealed very much, and did not do so now.

Servants from across the river joined those from the ship and began to play on panpipes and tambourines, dancing in curious jerky steps as they did, swaying their upper bodies. The music never settled into anything Donovan thought tuneful, though it seemed always on the verge of doing so. The servants wore motley with comets on their sleeves. They hoisted banner poles with flags for Gidula, Geshler Padaborn, and Khembold Darling, the other Shadow.

Then the Shadows mounted peculiar one-man autogyros called siggies that raised them up above head level. These vehicles were controlled by motions of the knees and feet, and by body balance. Some of the senior magpies had similar, though less lofty, vehicles. Everyone else walked.

Or danced.

It was a peculiar assembly that exited the hangars under the cliffs of Mount Lefn: half procession, half parade, half dance, arranged in no particular order, save that the magpies always contrived to place Gidula foremost behind the musicians and Geshler and Khembold right behind him. Pyati pressed some metal tokens into Donovan’s hands before they exited.

Outside, a modest crowd greeted them with cheers and waves. Many wept. Some wagged little hand-flags of the three Shadows, as well as that of a fourth. Donovan heard cries of “Welcome back, Lord Gidula!” Gidula, for his part, smiled, raised his gloved hand in greeting, and tossed tokens to the crowd. These were eagerly snatched in the air, scrabbled for on the ground. None of it seemed orchestrated, all of it seemed sincere; and yet at the same time it all seemed very much routine.

“Silky,” whispered Donovan. “What was that business with Pyati’s tear?”

That was not I, said the Silky Voice.

I did it, said the young man in the chlamys. Our Pedant found some old memories of Shadow culture, and … It seemed the right thing to do. With that one sentimental gesture, we captured his loyalty. And probably that of our other magpies, as well.

“Crap,” said the Fudir.

Yah, said the Sleuth. If we are starting to remember stuff like that …

… then we probably are Geshler Padaborn.

Following Khembold’s lead, the scarred man joined in the token tossing. At first he worried that flinging his arm would throw him off balance, perhaps topple him from his high perch on the siggy he rode. But the gyros easily compensated for his motions and the Brute quickly learned to master its controls.

“Padaborn!” shouted a woman in the crowd, and when Donovan looked her way she opened her blouse for him. The Fudir leered, but the Silky Voice turned it to a polite smile and a wave.

“I could get used to this,” said the Fudir.

“So,” Donovan mused, “this is how Shadows comport themselves at home.”

The other side of the plaza funneled onto an ancient iron bridge across the River Tware. It was a cantilever bridge, the Pedant noted, but fashioned to resemble a suspension bridge for some long-forgotten reason. There was a plaque beside the entrance reading: She still stands! in the ancient Murkanglais and attributed to one Mayor Donna Sanjezz, otherwise unknown to history. As each member of the procession stepped on the bridge, he paused and touched the first right-hand suspender—a steel beam that had been polished smooth by the custom. Parts of the bridge had been quite evidently repaired or replaced over the centuries, and Donovan wondered sardonically whether any part of the original relic really did still stand.

The structure was unimpeachably ancient, and even the newer parts were old. It very likely dated from Commonwealth times, if not earlier. The piers were built of granite blocks, black with age. Plast-seal protected metal and stone from the elements, and the stresses were likely relieved by strategically placed gravity grids.

A juggler came up beside Donovan, entertaining the people lining the bridge. When Donovan tossed a token at the crowd, the juggler nimbly snatched it from the air and added it to the balls he kept cycling, to the applause of everyone, including Donovan himself.

“Nimbly done!” Pyati called up to him.

“I’m glad someone here knows what he’s doing,” Donovan answered.

“Oh ho!” said Pyati with a nod toward the right bank of the river. “A pasdarm!”

From the second pylon a deep-purple banner unrolled above the bridge deck. It bore a single teardrop in its charge. Beyond, on a grassy sward on the western bank, a pavilion had been erected and pennons flapped from its poles. The pennons bore a rose in a tan field with a comet in the canton. A Shadow in a black-and-tan shenmat stood akimbo at the far edge of the bridge.

“Eglay Portion,” Pyati told Donovan. “Who is for Gidula the seneschal. He runs the headquarters, like Khembold runs the ship.”

“And he stands in our way because…?”

Pyati shrugged. “That is depending on ground rules. Our earwigs will catch the narrowcast when closer.”

But another of Geshler’s magpies had trotted ahead and returned now excited. “Eglay will fight man-to-man with each of due rank—Shadows or senior magpies—until someone has defeated him. First fall. No bones or blood. Until then, none may exit the bridge.”

Pyati smiled. “May magpie fight magpie?”

“No side bouts. And Gidula doesn’t fight.”

“What! Is he then the Lady of Secret Isle?” The other magpies guffawed broadly. But Donovan already saw Gidula leading his paraperceptic office manager toward a pair of thrones mounted to the side of the bridge.

“Two is the Queen,” he told the others from his vantage point. “And the whole of her court, beside.”

Pyati looked at him for a moment before sputtering into laughter. Seventeen had a servant run back to the baggage train and dig into the wardrobe, returning with a coat of tears: the purple shenmat. “Here ya go, Geshler,” Seventeen said, holding it out. “Best ya not fight in them puffy sleeves. Too much for an edge to catch on.”

But Donovan waved him off. “It won’t be a long fight.”

Seventeen scowled. “Ya ain’t gonna throw it, are ya?”

Donovan watched from his high-seated siggy. The first challenger was Magpie Four Gidula, who stepped forward confidently and touched Eglay’s banner with a staff. Khembold Darling steered over beside him and extended a hand.

“I had no chance earlier,” he said. “I hight Khembold Darling. It is an honor to meet you at last, Deadly One.” Then, dropping his voice, he murmured, “My father was with you in the Rising.”

Donovan allowed as he was pleased to meet him, but he wondered quietly how, if Khmebold’s father had been a rebel, Khembold himself was still among the quick. But then it was not impossible for some to have escaped notice in the aftermath.

“Eglay is a good ’un,” the ship’s captain went on in a normal tone, and he settled his siggy to face the contestants. “Not much for him to do here but spar and practice. Staff does all the drudge. Two times in three, he’ll knock me down. Don’t underestimate his youth and vigor. You and I are both older men, and just off a long and wearying journey. And you have sparred with Ekadrina.”

“It was more than sparring. We should both be dead.”

“What a man should be and what a man is often depends on the man.”

Donovan grunted. “Well, Eglay may have youth and vigor on his side, but we have old age and treachery.”

Number Four was already down. The crowd cheered and Eglay strode in a circle with his arms stretched upward. Then he reached down and helped the magpie to his feet and they embraced briefly. A medic ran forth to tend to the magpie’s wounds. Number Two, as Queen of the pasdarm, graced Eglay and his opponent with an absent smile. Donovan wondered if the paraperceptic were even capable of giving her full attention to anything.

Gidula’s Number Three magpie had stepped forward. Khembold sighed. “My turn next. After months sitting in the pilothouse of a starslider.” They watched Three spar gracefully with the seneschal. He was fast and agile and landed a few good blows that in context could have been telling, but he was betrayed by the boundaries of the ring and the Judge blew him offsides. Cornered, he ran out of wiggle room and fell as if poleaxed. The medics carried him off on a floater.

Khembold sighed. “Eglay could be taken down a peg. Well, I can put on a decent show.” He siggied to the end of the bridge, touched the banner with his staff, and leapt off his scooter. He and his colleague bowed to each other and Khembold launched a whirling side-kick as they rose from the bow.

But Eglay had been ready for just such a play and danced away from it.

Donovan stopped watching. Silky, he thought, give us plenty of juice. Brute, are we up to this? Our body, I mean.

Ya want we should fight, or take a dive?

Donovan considered the matter. “Fudir?” he muttered.

The Fudir rubbed their hands on their pants. “I don’t think Gidula set this up so we could take a dive.”

Ya think Gidula set it up, then, not this Eglay?

Gidula’s conflicted, the young man said. He wants what he thinks we know, but he doesn’t want Geshler Padaborn hale and whole and idolized. He can’t have us killed. Too many people know we’re in his jurisdiction and some of his own magpies might turn on him. He wants to cripple and humiliate us without obvious assault, so a nice, friendly bout to lull us and an “accidental” rabbit punch that the other rebels can believe.

“Sir?” Pyati tugged his sleeve. “Are you all right?”

Donovan shrugged him off. “Any more senior magpies?”

Five tried to look modest and failed. “Eglay’s good. Last time, he beat Khembold and went through eight top magpies before he went down. He’s not unbeatable. Last year, Khembold and he wrangled for a good quarter clock before Khembold won, and another time Number One got him with a surprise move.”

“I’d wondered if there were a Magpie One Gidula.”

“Detached assignment, I was told,” Pyati said. “He’s about ready for his own name. I could soften Eglay up before you take him.”

“No. I’m hungry.”

Pyati looked at him. “Meaning…?”

“I have to get past Eglay to reach the buffet table.”

His magpie chuckled. “Oh, well said! Oop. You sooner get your chance than later. Khembold twisted a little too much on that right, and left himself open. Fare well, master.”

The last remark was called out as Donovan coasted forward on his siggy to the edge of the bridge, where he dismounted. The festive crowd gathered there cheered his appearance, though the Brute’s keen ear picked out a hubbub of questions about his identity and even more questions on the odds. Gidula sat upon his ebony throne, leaned forward with his arms resting on his knees and a look of curious indifference on his face. As King of the pasdarm, he could show no favoritism. Number Two, on a lesser throne beside him, was as usual preoccupied with a half-dozen different matters, but with one slice of her attention she watched him approach Eglay Portion.

Eglay was slightly the worse for wear. As good as he was in the arts martial, a certain amount of damage was inevitable. What sort of honor was it, Donovan wondered, that drove these people to make such gorgeous spectacles of themselves for no other purpose than to inflict mutual injury? Eglay’s right eye was puffed and he favored his left leg.

Gidula spoke. “You have not dressed to honor the occasion, Geshler Padaborn.”

“What?” Donovan replied. “These are my dining clothes. Is there no banquet following?”

Eglay sucked in his breath. “Bow the honors, then, so the Lady may wave her kerchief.”

“Let the gods wave the kerchief,” the Fudir told him. “When the breeze next snaps the pasdarm banner, that will be our signal.”

The idea was novel, but Donovan saw its immediate appeal in the brightening eye of Eglay Portion, and heard it in the sighs of the magpies gathered round. “Nobly said,” Donovan heard one comment. “Place it in Fate’s hand.”

Eglay nodded and faced the pasdarm banner, but Donovan watched the spruces on the side of Mount Lefn. The wind was from the south this day, and he awaited the ripple in the needles that signaled a breeze coming toward the bridge. With the other eye, he watched the banner.

“Hit the juice, Silky,” the Fudir murmured, and the Silky Voice, back in the hypothalamus, sent adrenaline coursing through him. The chattering crowd, the rippling river, the birds in flight seemed to slow. He caught a motion in the trees to the right, where the river made a slight bend and ancient and vine-grown stone pillars rose from the water. The shiver crawled through the trees and the Sleuth gauged its speed and said, Three, two, one, take it, Brute.

And Donovan lashed out just as the pasdarm banner snapped. When he completed his turn, he found Eglay prostrate on the ground.

The crowd fell momentarily silent, as if they too had been stunned by the move. Then the voices began. “Geshler struck prematurely.” But another said, “No, but it was on the very spur of the moment.” “I hardly saw the kick.” “Did his hand move?” And then a great roar of approval parted their lips. It was not that they enjoyed seeing Eglay brought down, but that he had been brought down so smartly. It had been, in its own way, a work of art.

Donovan stood over Eglay and extended a hand. “At a later time,” he told his opponent quietly, “we will meet when you have not been wearied beforehand by so many others.”

Eglay took the hand and Donovan pulled him to his feet. A very short moment then lasted a very long time as the seneschal evaluated the man who had beaten him.

Perhaps Gidula had told Eglay to break Padaborn, had told him of his terrible injuries and long recovery, and intimated that a victory would be simple. Perhaps, as the Fudir and the Inner Child suspected, he had even been told to land blows beyond the bylaws of the pasdarm. But the fight had been to the first fall and he could not now move against Padaborn without seeming small in the eyes of his colleagues. Finally he said, “Teach me how you did that.”

He reached to embrace Donovan, and Khembold, seeing this, limped forward so that the three of them joined in a fraternal embrace. This brought the crowd to a fever pitch of ecstasy, and Donovan knew he had made another friend on Gidula’s staff.

From the look on Gidula’s face, he knew it, too.