On the Razor’s Edge

XIII. The Razor’s Edge

The River Zyu—the River of Pearls—is named for its supposedly milky color, though this far down from the Chalky Mountains the waters are more tea than milk. The Secret City sits upon bluffs high on the right bank, pinkish in the afternoon sun, surrounded by massive walls more intimidating than defensive and by the houses and businesses of those who bask in the proximity of power. On the left bank, massive apartment blocks squat in uniform ranks on lowlands more directly open to the river’s whims. One block, named “Sugar Cane City,” rises on a tract formerly given over to industrial cane processing.

“There it is,” said Little Jacques, the pale pigmy who conned the modest pleasure boat that traveled slowly up the stream. Donovan and Gidula looked where he pointed. The magpies with them looked everywhere else. All were dressed in festive river-garb: broad-brimmed sun-hats, water-singlets, flotation belts. The river was a favored playground for those who could afford to play.

“Seems different,” Donovan said as he studied the manicured esplanade along the waterfront.

“Not too different, I hope,” answered Gidula. Little Jacques smiled without turning around.

“Put in over there,” Donovan suggested. “Take it slow and watch for underwater obstacles. There were piers here once, and the pilings might linger underwater.”

Little Jacques said to no one in particular, “I love it when you remember things.”

“I love it,” said Gidula more privately, “when you remember things.”

“Sometimes memory needs a stimulus.”

“Yes,” said Gidula, sitting back once more. “I know.”

The sign read: NO PLEASURECRAFT DOCKING. Gidula and Donovan jumped ashore while Little Jacques and the magpies stayed in the boat. Donovan shaded his eyes and peered across the river.

“Well?” said Gidula.

“The old sugar plant stood here, and the bank was overgrown with volunteer cane.” He strode north along the esplanade about twenty paces, paused. “Here. I think. When I came ashore, I could still see my point of exit under the bluffs.” He turned his powerglasses across the river and upstream. The bank there was an impenetrable thicket of rhododendron, sassafrass, hazelwood, and Chinese elm. Donovan lowered the glasses. He would have to tell them about the steam tunnels sooner or later, and it looked as if later had come.

“They assumed I used my power-zoot to cross the river as quickly as possible, and so searched along the southern side of the Secret City. They never imagined that a man fleeing for his life would drift lazily with the current for a time. But I knew my destination, and there was no point coming ashore upstream of here. My betrayer knew the destination, too, and guessed where I might come ashore. I don’t know why they never came back to question me further.”

Gidula sighed. “The Names decided that the uprising ‘never happened,’ so it was an embarrassment to have about those who remembered putting it down.”

“Ah. False consciousness.” Donovan placed the glasses in the carry-case. “Most of the city center was in ruins. How did they explain that?”

Gidula stepped back into the boat. “Urban renewal.”

Gidula and Donovan put on a dumb show in case anyone in the sheep pens was gazing in boredom, awe, or envy toward the gleaming towers of Secret City. They disembarked on the right bank to relieve themselves only to have their boat lose power and drift with the current. They scrambled through the brush to catch it. Haha! The discomfiture of the wealthy is ever a source of amusement to the sheep. No need to inform authorities of anything so droll.

Donovan edged inland as he scrambled downstream; and before too long, he found the crumbling exit of a steam tunnel. Gidula, caught in a tangle of rhododendrons, did not notice; so Donovan pressed on—and came upon a second opening! He had tallied six tunnels before he decided he could not plausibly have overlooked them all, and finally informed Gidula. “I don’t know which I came out of,” Donovan said. “They must underrun the entire city of Old New Jösing. If I explore each, I should have a good idea which served the Secret City.”

“We’ll come back later with the others,” Gidula said. “We don’t want the Protectors to wonder about activity along the riverbank.” He was not about to let Donovan roam a warren of tunnels in which he might not be found again. “Steam tunnels … Who would have thought it?”

Donovan ignored him. “The system fell into disuse; MHD plants were redeployed. New construction sealed over the accessways. Once the drainage tunnels were out of sight, they soon passed out of mind.”

Gidula clicked Little Jacques, who was finally able to restart his boat and pick them up.

“And, Old One? ‘Sealed over’ means exactly that. I had to chop through a subbasement wall to gain access. You’ll need drills, poppers, thermastics…”

Gidula patted him gently on the shoulder. “If you could exit, we can enter.”

Shadows and their magpies gathered that evening in shenmats and wearing the tools of their profession. They had tuned the skins to black in honor of the night. At the entrance of each tunnel, they pinged a fix off the satellite, then inside the tunnels where the positioning network was inaccessible they tracked their pathways by dead reckoning off micro-gyros. By superimposing the D/R traces over ground-level maps, they determined that two of the six tunnels led under the Secret City. Donovan and Pyati scouted up each one. Oschous and his own Number One went with him.

The first one was it. But Donovan withheld judgment until checking the second. Then he went back to double-check the first, proceeding uphill until the party came to an ancient flight of stone steps off the tunnel-side, blocked at the top by a deadfall of rubble. Donovan lowered himself on the second step. Pyati went a little farther up-tunnel while Black Horse One kept watch on their backtrail, creating a bracket within which their masters could talk.

Oschous sat beside him on the step, and stroked the fur on his protruding chin. “So. Is this the place?”

“We broke a hole through a subbasement wall. I suppose when they brought the building down the rubble plugged the hole.”

Oschous examined the tumbled avalanche of stone and tile. Then he studied the dead reckoning map. “Officially, there was never a building above here. They leveled the site and infilled with dirt. If we dug through, we’d emerge in a park and frighten some late-night lovers. But now that we have a second fix we can figure out where the tunnel system abuts the Residences.” He clapped Donovan on the shoulder. “Well done, Gesh!”

Donovan shrugged.

“What ho! Why so glum, comrade?”

“Because my usefulness to Gidula is now at an end.”

Oschous made a Brotherhood sign with his left hand. “But not thy usefulness to us.”

Donovan no longer believed Oschous a Brotherhood member, or that the Brotherhood this side of the Rift was not utterly compromised. But neither did Donovan believe that Oschous was ready to dispose of him. The young man in the chlamys thought “the Fox” planned to use him against Gidula—which was fair enough, considering. Donovan leaned toward Oschous. “Be thou not too sanguine that thy battle plan and the Old One’s intentions wend the same path.”

Oschous flicked his hand, as against a fly. “Gidula doth hold but one vote of three. Yea, a wise counselor, but Dawshoo’s voice and mine count for more.”

Was Oschous serious? A dazer could fire twelve pulses between rechargings. Those were votes enough. “Remember that this play did hatch from his egg, and it doth place our leadership in places of Gidula’s desiring.”

Oschous said nothing for a moment, then tapped his positioner and stood. He dropped the Tongue. “Let’s return to the others.”

They calibrated their dead reckoners just inside the tunnel entrance and sent teams out to map the tunnel network. “To maintain surprise,” Oschous told them, “our kill teams must emerge simultaneously at their strike points. Targets must not be given time to spread word. Find exit points closest to—preferably directly into—the Residences.”

“Not the Offices?” asked Domino Tight.

“No,” said Gidula, “for in the morning we will have a problem.”

“In the morning?” one of the magpies asked.

“Surely. When the Confederation awakes, she will need a government. We do not want to wreck the machinery, only replace the operators. The Names have grown indolent. You will find them at home, wrapped in luxuries, not pulling night shift in the Offices. I’ve marked the Residences on the overmaps.”

“You haven’t marked all of them,” Manlius Metataxis complained. “Where is the Technical Name? Or the Second Name? Where is the Masked One?”

“Yes,” said Donovan. “I should have thought the Secret Name would head the list.”

“This is the list provided us by Domino Tight’s source within the Secret City. Some Names favor our struggle. Those we may spare—and later control. So, stick to your target lists.”

Donovan did not miss the silent exchanges among the Shadows. In for a fenny, in for a yoon. Why spare any Names?

“We will take two hours to expedite target acquisition,” said Dawshoo. “Leave repeaters at all tunnel intersections. If you cannot find direct access to a Residence, pick a nearby site with reasonable ground access and we will shift the tempo to give you time to enter your kill zones. Remember: you may encounter Protectors. Is that understood?”

“No, Grandmother,” piped Little Jacques. “What was that part about sucking eggs, again?” The others laughed.

“Eglay,” said Gidula, “by me. Pyati, do you go with Manlius. Gesh, wait you here. Too valuable you are to hazard on mere reconnaissance.”

Pyati glanced at Donovan, who brushed his lips and flashed two fingers for an instant where Gidula could not see. Pyati relayed the signal to the other four Padaborn magpies. Eglay Portion came over to him and embraced him. “Don’t kiss me,” Donovan warned. “It’s been done before.”

Gidula, hearing the comment, frowned in incomprehension, but Eglay Portion understood. “Which,” he whispered.

“Watch,” Donovan replied. “Play Two.”

Gidula turned. “Do you, good Domino, sit sentry then with our bold Padaborn. Take care of him, that we shall call on him as needed.”

The man with the lyre brassard was the only senior conspirator Donovan had not met before. He nodded. “Yes, Deadly One.”

After the recon teams had departed, Donovan and the other Shadow squatted in the dark, visible to one another only as ghostly images on night-vision goggles. By all accounts, Tight had done yeoman’s work at the warehouse and was a friend of Ravn Olafsdottr; but right now, Donovan was not feeling especially friendly toward Ravn.

After a long silence, Donovan with his shy-side hand unfastenend the loop on the knife scabbard at the back of his belt. “Do you think you can?” he said.

“Can what?”

“Take care of me?”

“Oh.” Domino Tight made a great show of placing both his hands in plain sight. “Let me put it this way. Gidula gave the same instructions to Khembold Darling to ‘take care of’ your daughter.”

Donovan’s heart froze over, and he half-rose from his squat. “Khembold would not…!”

“Would. Tried. Failed.”

Donovan drew a breath and eased back down. “What … happened?”

“Your daughter strangled him with a harp string and Ravn Olafsdottr shot him in the head, so he is a twice-dead man.”

Donovan smiled as a wolf smiles, but not without a little relief. “That’s my girl…” Ravn had been playing her own game. But … “How can you know what happened on Terra?”

While Domino Tight summarized the events at the Forks, the scarred man consulted the young man in the chlamys, who responded that while body language was difficult to read in night vision, voice-stress analysis showed sincerity. Of course, pathological liars could also sound sincere. Nevertheless, Donovan refastened the knife-loop. “Your inability to describe the philosopher’s assistant convinces me,” Donovan said. “I know the Man That No One Sees. And I knew Gwillgi to be nearby—and that the harper’s mother would come. I had not thought she would bring friends. So, she is safe now, Méarana is?”

“Well,” said Domino Tight, “that is where it begins to grow complicated.”

The two of them left the tunnel for the riverbank. It was fully night now and the Minor Moon was rising steadily in the east. In another day it would overtake the Major Moon. A Dao Chettian countryman could tell time with fair precision by the relative positions of the two moons. The north wind smelled of fish and of methane vapors from the mantle subjection wells northeast of the city.

“Do you really think they are walking into a trap?” said Domino Tight.

“I think they will succeed in assassinating just those Names Gidula wishes dead, at which point their luck will sour.”

“My … special friend … thought the purge could be done without undue bloodshed.”

“Your friend is that most dangerous of creatures: a ruthless naïf. This fight is among the Names; it is others’ blood they meant to shed. Is this the spot where you kill me?”

“Yes, and your body goes into the river over there. The frawtha—the ‘official truth’—will be that you stepped outside for fresh air, a Protector river patrol spotted you, and, rather than lead them to us, you dove into the river to draw them away.”

“Brave and noble to the end.”

“Gidula wants you dead, not your legend.”

The scarred man laughed and tossed his head. “The irony is that Padaborn was not so heroic. He betrayed me.”

Domino Tight looked at him. “You’re not Padaborn? Ah. Now a few things make sense.”

“I am happy for you.”

“No. You see, there were rumors that Padaborn had buckled under threat of torture, and then they tortured him anyway in case he had forgotten to tell them anything, and when they were done there was not enough of him left to bother with. He was with the smoke. But I dismissed those stories as propaganda, because other rumors held that he had escaped and was in clever concealment—‘in the one place no one will look.’ So when Gidula announced he had located you, him in the Periphery … It gave us all heart.”

“But…,” suggested Donovan. A night bird swooped across the face of the river and the moons-light revealed a two-shadowed fish rising in the claws of something large.

“Yes. My ‘special friend’ took your daughter and me to her Residence; and there, for whatever reason of her own, she told us … You see, Padaborn won—by proxy. After his Rising, a faction calling themselves the Committee of Names Renewed declared that the best way to prevent a future Rising was to address the real abuses that the Paderbornians had complained of. Not everything, understand. They thought they could file and trim around the edges, what they called fairezdroga. So there was a…”

“Coup d’état.”

“Yah. They made a sweep of the Old Guard: forced some into retirement, imprisoned others, encouraged the remainder to a life of sloth and indolence, and cut deals with those they thought they could deal with. Of course, what the Committee learned was that if you cut and trim around the edges to save what you can, you will trim too much for the Old Guard and not enough for the Reformers.”

The Fudir knew astonishment. “And no one knew this was happening?”

“Which part of Secret City is unclear? I chose the Revolution to expunge the Names entirely. Now I find that I have been fighting the Committee at the behest of the Old Guard.”

“Wait! The Revolution is supporting the Old Guard?”

“Why? Is that unprecedented? Gidula has targeted the Committee—and the abdicators among the Old Guard. The abdicators fall first—and this will convince the Protectors that the loyalists have broken the Concord, and may induce them to attack the Committee themselves. Think what a propaganda coup it will be when Gidula reveals that Padaborn himself fought to restore the Old Guard, especially if Padaborn is too dead to deny it.”

“Why is Gidula doing this?” said Donovan. “He told me the tapestry must be repaired, not destroyed.”

Domino Tight shrugged. “Gidula told many different people many different things. Some of them may have been true. Some of them may have been what Gidula wanted to be true. My special friend does not know.”

“Then confusion may be precisely what Gidula is counting on! The Old One has goals of his own and whether the Names fall or rise are small matters to him, so long as there is confusion. This will not stay within bounds; this is not another of your pasdarms. If your special friend has Méarana in her Residence, that puts her in a potential kill space … How long before the Hounds arrive?”

Domino Tight looked away. “As soon as we were in her Residence, Tina Zhi dispatched a thermal bomb to the apartment. She had seen Hounds, and acted reflexively before I could brief her. I do not know if any survived.”

“How long before the Hounds arrive?” the Fudir insisted.

“If they have a fast ship … They would be no more than a day and a half behind Gidula, so … by morning. Do you think they will come for you?”

“No. But they’ll come for Méarana. Now, I’ve left the messages for Pyati to find. You can call your lady friend by name the second time. Yes, I figured that part out. I need to disappear from here and I need to rescue Méarana from there, and what better way than that your friend should take me from here to there. Then we need to reach the Offices, clandestinely. We’ll be safe there. For a while.”

“One thing more.” Domino Tight unfastened his locator from his belt and flung it far out across the river. He followed it with Donovan’s own. “Being the only person to share a secret with Gidula makes my shoulder blades itch.” And then he called upon Tina Zhi.

Pyati wept uncontrollably when he and his team returned to the assembly point. He fell to his knees and beat his chest alternately with each fist while tears streamed down his cheeks. Padaborn’s other magpies keened antiphonally. The others found them in this state when they returned two by two.

“Silence, fools!” Gidula hissed. “Sound may echo from this tube as from a trumpet…”

“Sir,” said Pyati, “our Shadow is perished. Would you the traditional mourning deny us?”

“Perished!” Gidula said. His countenance expressed shock. “How?” The others began to mutter. Manlius said, “Ill omen.” Dawshoo looked stunned, “Are we discovered?” Oschous said nothing but watched Gidula carefully. Big Jacques looked into the dark recesses of the tunnel with his lamp, “Where is Domino Tight?”

Gidula gestured them all to silence. “No, Dawshoo, we are not discovered. Or we won’t be if we keep our voices down. One Padaborn! How do you know your master is perished?”

Pyati wiped his nose on his sleeve and picked up a roll of cloth and a note screen. He thumbed the note screen and handed it over to the Old One. Eglay Portion peered over one shoulder, Oschous Dee peered over the other. “Lord Domino left this,” the magpie said. “He explains how to mislead a Protector patrol Padaborn into the river dove—and drowned. Lord Domino, having failed his charge, committed spookoo. He too into the river consigned himself. Oh, if only we had by our master’s side remained!” He and his companions began to weep again but, acknowledging earlier advice, shed more quiet tears.

Gidula read the apologia that Domino Tight had left and, when he finished, Oschous took it from him, and it gradually made the rounds of the gathered Shadows.

“I don’t like this,” Manlius Metataxis said. “Maybe we should fold the play.”

Gidula’s head whipped round. “No! We have come too far to hesitate now. This chance will not come to us again. We can end this war. We can end it tonight. We can…” And he paused for a moment and worked his throat in sorrow. “… we can avenge Geshler Padaborn.”

“Padaborn!” said Oschous in a hoarse whisper, and a sykes-knife six thumbs long sang from its scabbard.

“Padaborn!” echoed Eglay Portion, matching the gesture. It was well-known that the ancient sykes-knife was never to be used with any thought of mercy in a fight.

Soon enough, a steel forest waved in the air, and whispered cries of, “Padaborn!” lifted from every pair of lips. Gidula smiled and joined them. Not that they expected an old man like him to participate in the personal mayhem the knife implied. But ever the traditionalist, he added, “Deadly Ones! To the blood, and to the bone!”

Eglay Portion, whose own magpies had been left to stand watch aboard Gidula’s slider, volunteered as brevet section leader over Section Padaborn. Then, after the others had dispersed on their assignments, he held a hand out to Pyati. “Let’s see it.”

Pyati, instantly dry eyed, unrolled the cloth on the floor of the tunnel and found wrapped in it: an ankle bangle, the inner mechanism of a comm. link, three smooth river pebbles, fourteen seeds of some plant, and a green ribbon. Pyati studied the array with pursed lips and said, “Good news. But not entirely clear.”

Eglay squatted with them. “What is it?”

“It is what Terrans call ‘ñēymōlai’ or ‘message of objects.’ A code Terrans use. He signaled us beforehand that two messages would be left: one public, one private.”

“I caught that. But … What does it mean?”

Pyati shook his head. “Ñēymōlai are not easily read, but a bangle always means a Terran, and you can see it is whole.”

Eglay nodded. “Yes, and…?”

“Well, sir. How many Terrans are in the play? Only one, and this says he is whole.”

Eglay Portion sank back on his heels, and his breath hissed out. “I … see. Clever. But the objects cannot have fixed meanings. Too much would depend on what objects were available.”

“Right, sir. Terrans always have bangles on them, but context changes meaning.”

Eglay deduced that since the objects had been jumbled together in the cloth their order did not matter. “What means this board?” He picked up the guts of the communicator and turned it around in his fingers. No enlightenment came. “And the pebbles?”

“Repetition of an object,” said Number Two, “strips particular meanings and makes it a mere tally.”

“So. Three stones and fourteen seeds are but three and fourteen?”

Number Three picked up the ribbon. “He told us on a field exercise that the Colors of Old Earth had various meanings. In the Red–Yellow–Green scheme, Red means ‘stand, stop, hold fast,’ or suchlike instruction. Yellow is ‘take care, proceed with caution.’ Green—”

Eglay Portion finished the leap. “Green means ‘go, come, proceed.’”

“You have it, sir.” Pyati examined the green ribbon. “He wishes us go somewhere. Proceed to … where?”

Number Three said, “Why, to three-fourteen, surely! Is that a code for one of our target sites?”

Eglay shook his head. “And neither is fourteen-three. And why stones and seeds?”

Pyati said, “Told you, sir. Repetition—”

Number Five cried, “I know!” He had been pacing while the others debated. Now he stood framed in the entance to the tunnel. “Look out there.”

Eglay Portion and the other magpies joined him and looked out on the moonlit river. The Major Moon was high overhead now, and the Minor Moon was closing the distance. “What?”

Number Five shook the stalk of a plant, and seeds like those Padaborn had used sprinkled the floor of the tunnel. “There is a line of these plants from here to the river. Now look at the river’s edge. The stones run along the edge. So…”

“North-south,” said Eglay Portion, “versus east-west. The map grid.”

They returned to their place and opened the grid on Eglay’s tablet. It was populated now with a nearly complete network of tunnels beneath the surface map. “Third grid from the north.” Eglay turned to Pyati. “Because the river runs north to south. And … fourteen grids from the river. That puts our goal … Right there!”

The blue-and-greens overhung the map like so many boughs. Pyati said, “Many buildings there, sir. Which one? We won’t get but one chance.”

“Office district…,” said Eglay. “Only skeletoned at night. The Mayshot Bo … The Gayshot Bo … That’s one thing we’ll change when we rectify the regime. No more dilettante government … Hai!” He turned and picked up the circuit of the comm. unit. “The Gayshot Bo. The Ministry of Technology. He wants us there tonight.”

They stood and Pyati shook the cloth, scattering the objects; but the bangle he put in his left calf-pocket. “One,” said Eglay Portion. And the man turned to him with an inquiry on his features. “Padaborn placed much trust in you, and it was not mislaid.”

“Thank you, Lord Eglay. I wondered at the time why he drilled us so on these object-messages. He knew. Oh, he thought many layers deep. He put some trust too in you, sir.”

“In me!” That startled Eglay Portion. “I was ready to maim him in what was supposed to be a fair fight at the Iron Bridge.”

“Nishywah. I know only what he told me. May he not have mislaid that trust.”

Eglay looked into the faces that surrounded him and saw that their loyalties were beyond question. How many others teetered on the brink? He suddenly realized that, had he wanted, Gesh could have assumed control of the Revolution itself. “Do you have an extra brassard?”

Pyati nodded to Two, who pulled a blue-and-green armband from his scrip. Eglay Portion removed Gidula’s comet and replaced it with his own rose-on-tan. He fastened the Padaborn colors just below them but wound the one through the other, there being no time for a proper cantoning. When he had finished, he bobbed his head at the others and without another word set off at the trot down the tunnels that led toward the Gayshot Bo. The others followed, their feet falling in silent unison.

Zanzibar Paff had once been an important man. He had been the Bountiful Name. But the burdens of supply and distribution had proven irksome. He had preferred being important to doing anything important. More and more of it he had delegated to assistants and minions, until one day the upstarts—he could never bring himself to call them by their own self-important name—had suggested that he delegate the Name along with the duties.

He preferred to roll with the punch and make the best of the deal. And so the Bountiful Name had become the Contemplative Name, a comfortable fig leaf. (He could not possibly become Nameless!) He had moved into a smaller Residence with a smaller staff, hard by the White Gate, perhaps the better to contemplate matters, and bided his time. He saw how others in his situation bided insufficient time and, like quick-burgeoning weeds, were mown down when they sprouted too soon. When his old colleagues fomented the Shadow War, he was content to watch from the sidelines. Time enough to join the winning side when once that side became clear.

The Contemplative Name resumed his contemplation of his bedmates. Three chubby sheep personally selected from his Estate, cheeks red from repeated usage. The man lay now in exhausted slumber, but the two women were still ready. They had learned early that they had better be. The Contemplative Name took a tablet from the salver by the bedside and swallowed it down with Atwah Spring Water. “Wait for it, darlings,” he told the two women, and they giggled most dutifully.

The bed was spacious; the room, elegantly furnished. The moiré-weave carpet was from Onxylon near the Makrass Marsh; two of the paintings were originals by Bayard from the Old Bhaitry Renaissance.

In the middle of his penetrations, he felt a prod in the back, and he rolled off his sweet cushion to condemn to death whichever minion had dared interrupt him.

But it was a horrid dwarf of a man dressed in a Shadow’s shenmat. Someone’s clown? But Zanzibar Paff’s mind was befuddled by his brain’s ecstasy, and he had no opportunity to speak, for a dart pierced his neck and he lost all feeling.

Little Jacques hushed the two women with a finger to his lips. They crawled aside and huddled together, and he knelt beside Zanzibar Paff and whispered in his ear, “This is the price you pay for neglecting your duties and the traditions of your offices. Blink twice if you understand.”

The eyes stared back at him full of hatred, but they did not blink. So Little Jacques shrugged and with a swipe of his sykes-knife opened the man’s throat from jaw to jaw and let his life drain across the furrows of the satin sheets onto the fabulous Onxylon carpet.

One of the women began to cry, so Little Jacques shot her in the mouth. The pop awakened the man, and he too opened his mouth to cry out in surprise. He was close enough at hand for the sykes-knife. And that left one.

The second woman had raised no alarum. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Please…” Then, open eyed, “Please, what will the Protectors do if they find me alive and him dead?”

Little Jacques understood and made the mercy shot a quick kill. Then he pulled his comm. and used the clicker feature to transmit the code: “Sixteen.” That meant himself. “Target-one moved; three collateral.” He checked his to-do list to see who was next, left an incendiary device on timer, and slipped quietly out of Zanzibar Paff’s pleasure room.

Alexander Gomes-Park had once been called the Industrious Name. Now, he was simply Gomes-Park once more and his once-trusted underling bore the title. I do the work, the man had pointed out the day of the coup, why not bear the Name?

Such impertinence might have earned him the same reward as it had two of his predecessors, whose stains had never been fully expunged from the marble flooring. But he had not come alone to the office to make his observation. A half dozen of the abominable Committee had accompanied him. Outside the door, Protectors held Protectors at gunpoint while the succession was debated.

Gomes-Park had already heard rumor of the disappearances of Names insufficiently attuned to the Tides of History, and he had no desire to float off with that tide. So he had instead removed his medallions and placed them cheerfully around his underling’s neck. The joy in your throat today, he had murmured, will one day choke you.

In any case, managing industrial performance on a thousand worlds was beyond any man’s ken. Quotas would never be met, no matter how many storm-workers were sent, no matter how many medals and awards celebrated achievements, no matter how many managers were disciplined. All that happened was that books were cooked and awards became as meaningful as the output figures they celebrated. He had learned that the best results came from doing nothing and cutting his pattern to match the cloth. Since doing nothing better suited his temperament, it was easier to postdate the plans and secure success post facto.

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 …

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.

Some, he saw, had fallen. The sight took him aback. A banner was cut down only when its Shadow died. He picked one up and saw that it was Egg Mennerhem. Another, it shocked him to notice, was the red swallowtail pennant of Little Jacques. There were a dozen or so, some loyalist, some rebel, rumpled on the ground. Someone, it seemed, was keeping score.

The black silk banner of Prime lay beneath the Judgment Seat, and when he looked up Manlius saw Prime himself sitting in the Seat, as if ruling on all that transpired this night. He flinched under that stern disapproval.

But Prime’s gaze was too far and too fixed and looked now upon another world. Perhaps he had grown too melancholy as he cut down banner after banner, as word came to him that his children slaughtered his children. Perhaps he had willed his heart to stop.

The building shook slightly as somewhere outside a bolt tank fired. Just like boots, he thought with contempt, to use an ax when a scalpel was wanted. He did not think Dawshoo had counted on this, or at least not this soon. The click-link had gone down, and he knew not the current status of the struggle. Who is winning? Big Jacques had clicked just before. It was hard to imagine the Large One as frantic, or to read that into a series of click codes. Who is winning? Manlius looked around the floor, at the crumpled banners. No one, he thought.

Time to withdraw, maybe. He heard the rush of a ground-support craft outside. A window rattled. Yes, time to withdraw. Find a nice quiet planet somewhere. Just one last errand.

“You old fool,” he scolded the corpse of Shadow Prime. It was the duty of the Lion’s Mouth to stay loyal, the old man had said. But loyal to whom? To the self-appointed Committee of Names Renewed? Or to the truly anointed Names? “Old fool,” he said again, and he heard the whisper of his own words and knew the world had come to an end. He had called his father a fool. He paused one moment more to savor the pang of sorrow at memories forever lost, at brotherhood irreparably broken; then he cantered on cat’s feet up the maintenance ladder of the drop-well into the transient apartments.

He found Epri Gunjinshow in the apartment of Kelly Stapellaufer, as he had known all along he would. An hour’s wait in a closet was the only cost to his revenge. He watched them through the crack in the door. Somehow, all the fire had gone out of the hate and it had become just another wearisome task to finish before he could quit for the day. He was simply tired of eating erect. Seeing her drawn and haggard face, he wondered that he had ever found Stapellaufer attractive and thought that he had clung to her only because the skalds would expect him to.

He knew that in a sense this woman and he and Epri had been the proximate cause of the conflagration now raging outside. He was not so foolish as to believe they had been the real cause, and he was not so foolish as to suppose this would somehow set everything right.

That both Epri and Kelly bore burns and scars pleased him in some indefinable fashion. He would have detested the thought that they had ridden out the turmoil here in her bower, the one thrusting repeatedly between the thighs of the other. But they had retreated here, perhaps to rest and clean up before returning to their fates.

But their proper fate was not to die anonymously in the confusion of the Secret City. The troubadours would not like that. The Beautiful Life demanded that Epri Gunjinshow die in singular combat with Manlius Metataxis while Kelly Stapellaufer looked on with coupled sorrow and love. Life must be corralled and tamed to the strictures of drama. And so he waited in the darkened closet until they had disarmed and were half-undressed, when they were at the awkward state in which swift action is difficult. Perhaps they did have some thrusting in mind. Then he stepped forward and shoved the door closed.

“Prime!” shouted Epri, then saw his mistake, though he did not yet realize that it was the penultimate mistake of his life. “Ah.” And his eyes instantly inventoried the weaponry within his reach.

But Kelly Stapellaufer stepped between the two men. She held both hands clenched into fists. “Stop!” she said.

“I mean to end it,” said Manlius. Then, to Epri, he said, “Prime is dead. He killed himself.” He didn’t know why he told Epri that, only that he thought Epri should know.

“And so you have destroyed the Lion’s Mouth rather than submit to the ruling of the Courts d’Umbrae?” Epri demanded.

He made it sound like Manlius was in the wrong. Manlius shook his head. “None of it matters anymore.”

Epri stepped behind Kelly and laid both hands on her shoulders. This would prove the last mistake of his life. Manlius wondered if Epri thought he would not shoot him through Kelly’s body. And then Manlius wondered if he could actually bear to do so.

“Did you ever ask yourself, Epri Gunjinshow,” Kelly asked without turning, “whether I welcomed your attentions?” And with that she thrust backward with her right fist.

In her fist she had held the hilt of a variable knife. The blade snapped out and pierced Epri’s abdomen. The shock froze him and she stepped to the side, ripping horizontally, then down. His body opened up and his bowels dumped forth onto the floor. Epri lived long enough to contemplate this sight before he collapsed atop it.

Manlius Metataxis watched in astonishment and not a little gratification. So, Kelly had loved him all along. She opened her arms and Manlius stepped into her embrace.

“Or yours,” she murmured, and Manlius learned that the hilt had two extensions. Kelly Stapellaufer thrust forward and the second blade launched itself into his body. The pain messages had not even time to reach his brain before his mind shut down.

Kelly Stapellaufer, whose charms had pretexted the Shadow War, stood naked between the two corpses that had once been her lovers. “Oh, the Abattoir!” she cried. “Oh, the Lion’s Mouth!”

There was only one other target left in the room, and so Kelly used her knife one final time.