On the Razor’s Edge

II. And Did She Teach You Three Things?

When resolution follows shortly on resolve, doubt has little time to gnaw at purpose and success is either gratified—or moot. But when the clock drags on, imagination conjures possibilities from the vasty deep, not all of them cheerful. And so a warrior leaping upon a chance-met foe does not pause to consider the possibility of failure, while one advancing at the double quick across an open field might halfway there long for the cozy comforts of his trench.

So, to Méarana Harper, as Ravn bore her into the Confederation, what seemed a good idea on the spur of the moment appeared less grand during the canter the spur induced. She had thought that by going with the Shadow she would draw her mother in her wake, and so secure her father. A clever scheme, she had thought; but perhaps less clever in fact than in thought.

In appearance, Méarana was much as her mother limned at an earlier age, though with sharper corners. There was a hardness to her, but not her mother’s hardness. The latter was annealed from the abuse of her affections, the former from receipt of too few of them. It was fairly said that Bridget ban had used love; while Méarana was unused to it. She knew it only as sentiments left in the wake of her mother’s hasty notes.

There were certain corners of Méarana’s face—her chin was one—that bespoke her father. And if anyone in life had been more absent than her mother, it was Donovan buigh. She was a master harper—an ollamh of the clairseach: a lap harp of the old style, strung with metal cords. Sometimes when she played, they drew blood.

The cloak of invisibility, a wonder of unknown provenance, had slipped them past her mother and her aide, past Mr. Wladislaw and the household staff, past Hang Tenbottles and the security detail on the perimeter. In some fashion no longer known to men, the “metafabric” bent light in all its forms and created “blind spots” in space and time, masking those events enshrouded by it. Secret even in the Confederation, used only by the Names, the cloak and other wonders, collectively styled “the Seven Vestiges,” were closely guarded by an oath-bound college in the Gayshot Bo. But enamored of his charms, the Technical Name herself had given cloaks to Domino Tight, who had in turn given them to Ravn Olafsdottr. Thus does love—or perhaps lust—erode like acid even the oldest of tabus.

But it had not escaped Méarana’s attention that Ravn had brought two cloaks to Clanthompson Hall. So while it had been the harper’s idea to go with the Shadow, it appeared to have been the Shadow’s idea that it should be the harper’s idea.

They had departed Dangchao Waypoint in a monoship that the Shadow had weeks earlier leased on Peacock Junction under the name of Jin-ho Kisanaluva. She had stopped on Die Bold, done the usual touristy things, and managed to get her picture in the En Courant: cowering in the background while two business travelers in a Port Èlfiuji lounge broke each other’s noses in her dubious honor. In the stereograph, “Kisanaluva” did not much resemble Olafsdottr. The skin tone was lighter than its wonted coal-black. The build appeared thicker than her serpentine slenderness. The nose seemed broader, the hair, dark and shoulder length rather than the usual yellow stubble.

“It seems a lot of trouble to go through,” Méarana suggested when she had learned all this, “simply to prepare a false identity.”

“When diligently sought,” the Shadow advised her, “it is best to be someone else.”

A Stop Traffic order was out by the time they had reached Dangchao Roads, but after 2,452 outbound vessels the customs officials no longer checked documentation with the same sprightly verve and enthusiasm as they had the first few hundred. A cursory visual examination confirmed that “Jin-ho” did not match the description of the sought-for Confederal; and a database search unearthed the account in the En Courant and receipts from Port Kitchener and a “dude ranch” near Casa Dio, nowhere near Clanthompson Hall. If the official ever considered that a Shadow would find little difficulty embedding false records into a system, he was not so impolitic as to say so. He may even have considered that the greatest risk in searching for Shadows lay in finding one.

In any case, “Jin-ho Kisanaluva” got the wave-on to continue acceleration behind a departing Hadley liner, maintaining such-and-so separation and, “Have fun on Megranome.”

Méarana was determined to pry her father from Gidula’s stronghold, and if Ravn thought she needed help the harper was disinclined to argue the point. That Bridget ban had been equally disinclined to provide that help distressed Méarana beyond measure, and she had hit on this idea—of sneaking off with Ravn—as a way to force the issue. “The idea,” she told Ravn one day as they crawled through the high coopers of Abyalon, “is that Mother will come after me.”

She said this not because she supposed Ravn had forgotten but because she had grown ever more conscious of the Shadow qua Shadow, and thought the gentle reminder of a vengeful Hound in hot pursuit would calibrate Ravn’s behavior. Not that the Shadow had evidenced any threat—although the mere presence of a Shadow was quite enough threat—but their common goal was to free Donovan buigh from the hands of Gidula. Ravn, however, had a second goal: to murder the man who had tortured her; and the harper could not help but wonder, should it come down to the one or the other, which goal Ravn would score.

A woman betrayed, tortured, and abused by her erstwhile benefactor might be expected to harbor some degree of resentment, but Ravn Olafsdottr was remarkably cheerful as they wound their way through the streams of space. Méarana did not know whether this was fugue, masochism, or simply putting up a face. She had thought hate a prerequisite for murder, and was surprised to learn that her companion rather liked Gidula.

“He dreams the old dreams,” she told Méarana one afternoon in the monoship’s small lounge, “and what dream can endure the daylight? It shrivels at the first touch of sun. Gidula feels the cold kiss of morning.”

“‘The old passes away,’” Méarana quoted, “‘the new is always born.’”

Ravn switched to Confederal Manjrin. “Most profound. Wise thinker, or fool.”

“It was Raisha Lu, a novelist on Friesing’s World about three lifetimes ago. She wrote—”

“Wrote nonsense. What can new ever be but newborn? A heartbeat later—no more new. What your Lu say be said long time, ten thousand lips, ten thousand ages. Sentiment old—but not yet pass away.” She turned and seemed for a time to listen to the music she had chosen for that evening: a composer and a style from some bygone era of the Confederation’s history. The harper did not find it pleasing, and wondered if the nature of the Confederals could be found in their preferences for such stringent measures.

The music resumed the strange a-harmonic plonking and Ravn faced the harper once more. “It was Gidula and his like-minded friends—men who met on old estates, who bore names ancient and bold—who alone stood firm against the Names, when the likes of Dawshoo and Oschous dipped their heads and tugged their locks and did as they were told. Against his treatment of me, throw that in the other balance pan.”

“Is it an account, then? A toting of assets and liabilities? I don’t believe it. A man’s character is seamless. What he does for good or for ill springs from the same soil. If Gidula is a traditionalist … Oh.”

“Yayss. When Power o’ersteps His bounds, He violates traditions first of all. It is those who seek change who excuse power’s extension, and they swear they will put it by when once they have succeeded. But whene’er did a man seize power and walk away after?”

“There are stories,” Méarana said. “Cincinnatus. Washington. Venagar. Apaloram.”

“Four!” exclaimed the Shadow. “Faith in humanity restored!”

“Mock if you like. There were certainly others. Less famous precisely because they let go of power.”

“Oh, be not so truculent, sweet.” Ravn patted her on the cheek. “At least there were four.”

“But if Gidula is on the right side…”

Ravn laughed. “Too many sides. Maybe none of them right.”

Ravn brought the monoship across the bar from the superluminal tube called the Tightrope and arrived once more in Henrietta Roads, broadcasting her fu, her authorization. (The fu was faux, but that was a small matter for a Shadow.) She opened negotiations immediately for the return of Sèan Beta, the smuggler’s ship that she had donated to the Fleet the year before.

“These be ticklish talk,” she warned Méarana in the Alabaster accent she sometimes affected, “boot noo tickle during dicker.”

Discussion escalated slowly, corkscrewing up a level at a time through the hierarchy, while Ravn descended toward the impound orbit, where such vessels were kept. Rather than repeat herself with each new flunky, Ravn played a recording in which she gave the required information and pleaded her case, ready to flip to real time if she achieved breakthrough. They started with interface clerks, worked up to the Gamzöngzhy, the Superintendent of Prize Vessels, who deferred to the Shivegun Vayshun Madlow Gunly, or Commander, Fleet Logistics. Ravn maintained a degree of patience during this peeling of the bureaucratic onion that would have reduced the harper to tears.

“Behoold, fate of peacetime navy,” Ravn announced during one interlude while the comm. unit played insipid music. “With noo enemy to fight, they create oobstacle courses to clamber through.” She sat before an oval screen on which colors flowed and blended in synch with the music. Méarana stood nearby but outside the ambit of the Eye. No point advertising her presence.

“Then perhaps ’tis just as well they have no one to fight,” she suggested.

“Be not deceived, sweet harper,” Ravn answered. “All this miigimoos stop when enemy appear. Well, perhaps not all miigimoos.”

“Do we need this smuggler’s ship that badly?”

“Ooh, yayss. When we rescue your father, we need bigger ship. Accoommodate Doonovan’s egoo. And…,” slipping into the Manjrin, “… he appreciate art.”

“Art?”

“Full circle. Kidnap him in that ship, so rescue him in same. Also: sentimental value. Doonovan and I fight Frog Prince in Sèan Beta. Reminder bring tear to his aged eye.”

“What will you do if the Fleet won’t give permission?”

Ravn flashed a broad smile. “Silly harper. I take it.”

“Take it. From the Fleet.”

Ravn snatched at her own shadow, cast by the running lamps, and made as if to peel it off the wall of the comm. station. “Shadows slip through such thumb-fingers as they.”

“Then why dicker at all?”

A shrug. “So they not shoot at us as we scamper off. Hush now, sweet.” A nod to the screen. “Next act of Kabuki.”

By the time they were connected with the office of Swoswai Mashdasan himself, Ravn and Méarana were deep in the sun’s gravity well, approaching co-orbit with the impound vessels, and the time lag between message and response was minimal.

The garrison commander sat behind a broad desk flanked by the starry black banner of the Confederation and that of the 423rd Fleet (Qien-tuq Borderers, “Ever Vigilant”). He wore undress grays with his badge of office on a chain around his neck and a string of decorations on his breast. Méarana wondered how a military that had not fought an actual war in more than a generation could award so many medals. But she supposed the Fleet no different from other professional organizations, which existed largely to bestow awards upon their members. Perhaps the medals represented rebellions crushed, or exceptionally good table manners.

The swoswai greeted Ravn with no great joy. He appeared ill at ease and his eyes wandered. At times, he fingered his medallion as if to assure himself that it was still there.

Here was a man, Méarana marveled, who commanded ships sufficient to reduce a planet to rubble and troops enough to subdue a continental rebellion—and a solitary Shadow in an unarmed monoship could bring an ooze of sweat to his brow.

“And why should I return the ship to the Lion’s Mouth?” said the swoswai after Ravn had explained her request. “Especially when that mouth now roars with two tongues.”

Ravn blinked, then smiled, and her eyes became razor thin. “Ooh!” she said. “You have learned mooch, swooswai! But is this soomething you ought to have learned?”

The garrison commander scowled and his eyes danced. “We’re not stupid, you know. MILINT received dispatches from Yuts’ga. You Shadows burned down half a city there.”

“It was not soo beeg a city.”

“Yes? Well, I swore an oath to uphold the Confederation. What did you swear?”

Ravn looked on him with pity. “To kill her enemies.” The smile with which she delivered this chilled even Méarana. But then Ravn added with unusual gentleness: “Do not choose sides in the Shadow War, oh master-of-ships-and-men, for all your ships and all your men would not avail you, whichever side you took. In these degenerate times, it is dangerous to have an opinion, any opinion.”

Mashdasan ran a hand across his cheek and chin. “Don’t be too certain, Deadly One. My loyalty is to the Confederation and to the Names.”

“Good. So be mine. Hooray for Confederation! Huzzah for Names! We do secret handshake later. Will you give me back my ship?”

“So you can use it for this illegal rebellion of yours?”

“When is rebellion legal? Love doos not mean you nayver spank the little rascal. No, let us say, swooswai my sweet, that I be on sabbatical from Shadow War and my poorpose for now be harmless, moore or layss.”

Mashdasan shook his head, as if brushing off flies. “I’m a blunt man, a simple soldier, and I grow impatient with the antique wordplay your kind enjoys. Speak plainly.”

Ravn sighed and leaned forward into the comm. screen. “I greatly fear, sweet, I can say nothing that will improve your situation. Life is color of your uniform; but rebels and loyalists not see matters so, and those caught between may find themselves ground to powder. What is monoship Sèan Beta to mighty Four-twenty-third Fleet? A mosquito among eagles. We swap. You give me Sèan Beta and I give you this ship. Very fast; good for courier work. Smaller, true, but what you lose in cubic you gain in delta-V. I give you word of honor our Confederation not suffer.”

“Your word of honor … And what is honor worth?”

“A great deal, for is very rare coommodity these days.”

The swoswai’s lips curled. “And hence that much harder to recognize.” He looked to the side and something flashed briefly in his eye. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll notify Fleet Logistics. They will send you the necessary orbital parameters.” He reached out and blanked the screen.

Ravn sat back in the comm. chair. “The fool!” she said, yanking off the headset.

Méarana arched her brows. “Why do you say that? He gave you what you wanted.”

“But too quickly,” the Shadow answered. “Boots like pack rats. Never give up bauble unless forced.”

“So…”

“So who force him?” Ravn tilted her head back and to the side. “How did he learn of the Shadow War? And why tell me he knew? And why tell us how loyal he be, if he think us rebels?”

“Us?”

“Who was he telling?” Ravn tapped a finger on the console … Then she leaned suddenly forward and called up a recording of the conversation. She stepped it forward to the moment near the end when the swoswai had glanced to the side. “Eyes may not be window to soul,” she murmured, “but sometime make splendid mirror.” She boxed in on Mashdasan’s eyes, expanded, boxed again, enhanced. Then she grunted. “So.”

Méarana leaned across her shoulder to see what the enhancement had revealed: a sleeve of dark but indeterminate color was reflected in the cornea.

“Shenmat,” said Ravn in a flat voice. “Rest follow by deduction. Who, in all the worlds of all the suns, wears the body stocking? Shadows and their magpies. And loyalist, or he not so shy of Ravn’s eye.”

“But you’re a loyalist, too,” the harper pointed out.

The Shadow put a finger to her lips. “Shh. Is secret. Always problem with undercover. Better job you do, more your friends shoot at you.” She stood from the console.

“What now?” said Méarana. “Surely the Shadow in Mashdasan’s office wasn’t there waiting on the chance you might show up!”

“No. Shadow come to Henrietta to question swoswai. Word of last year’s facemeet is leaked. You and I…? Phrase is ‘target of opportunity.’ Problem with tiptoe through minefield is sometime you step on mine.”

They received the orbital parameters from SVMG. There were six, relative to Henrietta’s sun and the plane of her planetary family. “Longitude of ascending node…,” Ravn sang as she worked from the pilot’s saddle. “Argument of perihelion … Inclination to planetary plane … Where are you, my sweet? Ah! Stationary Station, I see you. Mark! Two more now … Hah! Mark, and … mark! Triangulating and locking on.”

“What if the Shadow told him to send phony parameters and put us into the wrong orbit?” Méarana asked when the Shadow emerged.

“Oh, sweet Mashdasan nayver do that to darling Ravn! Boots nayver take orders from Lion’s Mouth. Late swoswai correct. Boots not stupid. Maybe not broad-minded like Shadows, but inside box?—think very deep. Mashdasan knows he is dead man. Cannot be less dead by fooling Ravn, but fine vengeance on his killer to help his killer’s enemy. No, we may rely on parameters. We may also rely on Shadow.”

“How so?”

“He too know our destination but no time to climb up, catch us. So he use smartie or wave cannon … Subvert instructions no very large matter. Imitate swoswai voice; manipulate swoswai ymago in tank. A piffle.” She sanpped fingers. “Give orders destroy us. Boots nayver obey Shadow—likely much vexed when learn he kill commander—but boots obey words on comm. link, no questions; and a little kaowèn harvests all access codes.”

Destroy us … Méarana’s heart went cold, and she wondered what she had gotten herself into. “So this unknown Shadow could pot us at any time?”

Ravn sat at the astrogation tank and began tapping commands. “Likely not any time. Mooch traffic in these orbit, and we be small rental ship. Better if wait until we match with target. Then…” She made frying sounds with her tongue and Méarana flinched.

“Why not wait until we board Sèan Beta? That is more certain still.”

“That is also Fleet property. Fry intruder one thing, but even wave cannonier scratch butt and wonder what the xing jiao is going on if asked to fry impound ship, maybe ask for confirmation back up corkscrew of command. So…” She touched the tank in several places, reaching into the hologram to toggle certain commands. The tank turned gray and dots of various colors blinked their way through it.

Méarana said, “Ravn?”

“Hoosh, sweet. Thinking very hard … Ah. We blend in with traffic here … to … here. Then … Is asteroid going our way. We ride with it to … here. Natural object in free trajectory. STC brain subtract those, so make us invisible. Bad time, here to Sèan Beta. Must leave friendly asteroid and make matching transfer to rendezvous. Curse upon Holy Newton’s hemorrhoids! Longer trip time, but…” She engaged the alfvens and the little rental grabbed the corduroy of space and yanked. Somewhere aft there was a loud and unpleasant sound, and Méarana smelled an electrical odor.

“Second reason we want smooggler ship. Survey class alfvens. Grab strings of space deep in gravity well but not burn out like these poor ship.” She patted the control board fondly.

“Ravn? Why do you think the Shadow will kill the general?”

“Do not think—know. Fool try to warn us. That was very nice, and I kiss his lips, but not very wise. He knows Shadow War, stresses his loyalty for benefit of interrogator, but looks sidewise to warn us. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge. ‘Someone in room with me.’ But sooch body language and sly allusion subtle oonly to man of ‘bloont’ character. Shadow not fooled. So Mashdasan suffer fate of all who place generative organ between hammer and anvil.”

“So the Shadow did not go there intending to assassinate him.”

Ravn swung her seat around. “Likely noot. Oonly to torture him and learn what he could of the facemeet Dawshoo held there last year. Why do you ask this?”

“Mother taught me a thing or two. The Lion’s Mouth sends you out in pairs, don’t they?”

Ravn nodded. “Usually. Second kills first if first falters. Nice system. Encourages job commitment.”

“How sweet. But that suggests that while the first does not know how to contact the second, the second keeps tabs on the first.”

“Yayss…?”

“Then the Shadow in the swoswai’s office…”

Ravn grinned broadly and smacked the console desk with the flat of her hand. “… exceeded his instructions!”

“But the second would not know why. So if ‘Dawshoo’ sent a congratulatory message to the first in care of the swoswai’s office, the second…”

“… would intercept it, find it but moodestly difficult to decrypt, and perhaps woonder if his first is playing a traitor’s game. Young harper, I like the way you think.”

Méarana touched her forefinger to the tip of her nose. “Confusion to the enemy.”

“And perplexity upon our foes.”

“I wonder,” said Méarana, “why Mashdasan tried to warn you. It’s not as though he was on your side.”

“Perhaps he had something to prove to himself. Dawshoo humiliate him last year. Two such affronts he would not accept. Fool. But sometimes fools do brave things.”

“Are we going to make it?” The harper tried to ask with an air of nonchalance.

“All in hands of Fate. Tell me this, harper. Your mother taught you a thing or two. But did she teach you three?”

Space Traffic Control watched the monoship emerge from the detection-shadow of Asteroid Laatmui 27 and make a dash for the ships in the impound orbit. Grabbing space, she moved in quantum jerks, building velocity. STC noted, too, from the shell design that the ship was Peripheral built. This information spread across the surveillance web, downloaded into cognizant systems, was picked up picoseconds later by Midsystem Sector Defense. The field control officer noted the orbit and checked against the fire order sent from Siling Bo Henrietta. Burn the vessel matching orbit with the designated reference. Obvious now, the reason: an attempt by Peripheral agents to hijack a Fleet vessel. An earlier search had flagged the reference vessel as one promised to the Lion’s Mouth, and the officer shuddered to contemplate the consequence if he allowed it to be stolen. After verifying that no other ships were matching orbits with the reference vessel, he sent the release-to-fire message to the wave cannon Stout Defender, which was best positioned to take it out.

The range officer of Stout Defender pinged the target, obtained range and velocity, and computed azimuth and bearings and fed this to the gunner.

“Charging,” the gunner’s mate called from the bowels of the capacitor banks. “Flux nominal.” Then, “Charged ninety-five percent.”

“Locked on,” said the gunner. He studied the data on the monoship, decided it was unarmored, and computed the kill burst. Then he doubled that just for luck, what gunners called the “200% Kill” level. “One-bar-nine,” he ordered.

“One-bar-nine,” the gunner’s mate concurred, having carried out an alternative computation.

“Burn it.”

There was, of course, no bright streak of light of the sort entertainments liked to pretend. Nor was there anything so dramatic as a fireball when the target absorbed the gravity wave. But the monoship began to break up.

“Debris field confirmed,” the range officer announced. “Spreading. Talker, alert Range Safety Office at STC. Parameters follow. The pings show multiple large fragments following the original orbit, a few others tumbling off to the sides on daughter orbits.” Some were approaching the craft promised to the Deadly Ones. She hoped they wouldn’t hole the vessel. Shadows could be quite prickly when it came to their rides.

“Scratch one,” said the gunner.

The range officer continued to monitor the debris field while the gunner’s mate wound down systems and toggled them to safety mode. “I hope,” said the gunner, “this wasn’t just another drill.”