In the Lion’s Mouth

Cengjam Gaafe: The Fourth Interrogatory

A faint band of red has cut the throat of night and bleeds across the eastern horizon. Bridget ban studies this herald through the bay window. Her hand reaches involuntarily to her right breast, where the Badge of Night is placed, before she remembers that she is not in uniform. Her daughter and her subordinate watch in equal wonder, for to gaze out the window she has turned her back on the Confederal Shadow.

Olafsdottr, for her part, pays this no apparent mind, and selects delicately from a tray of finger sandwiches that Mr. Wladislaw has unobtrusively conducted into the room. Behind her, the Shadow hears the creak of Graceful Bintsaif’s jaws and smiles. The long tense night is poised to yield a daylight no shorter or relaxed.

Méarana plays a melody tangled and unresolved. It is neither geantraí nor goltraí but, like the meeting in the pit of Apothete, it searches for its boundaries, for its resolutions. It hungers for the progressions that will grace it with either triumph or tragedy. Much depends, she tells herself, on whether her father is dead or not. But she tells herself this at such a deep level that she is herself barely conscious of the thought. Donovan had told her once that Confederal Shadows are past masters at the arts of torture, and she has no choice now but to believe him. For Olafsdottr has been torturing her since the story’s inception—by withholding that one particular facet of it, the only one that matters. The entire mode of the song depends upon that one fact; and so the Ravn’s silence on that point can have no other purpose than to keep the harper balanced on the knife’s edge.

Yet Olafsdottr is telling the story and not her father. Absence is also a fact, of sorts. And it may be that it needs no elaboration.

Méarana glances at Bridget ban just at the moment her mother turns away from the window. Does Olafsdottr’s coy silence torture her mother, as well? Does the uncertainty gnaw at her, too? Does she ache—as Méarana aches—to reach down the Confederal’s throat and drag the words forth by main force?

If so, neither her face nor bearing betrays her. Perhaps nothing can break a wall built against twenty-four years’ resentment. Yet Méarana had spent a long, hard journey with Donovan and found him not the man of her mother’s memories. He had been both more and less than the tale told of him, and so, more or less, a man.

The silence breaks when Olafsdottr wipes her hands on her pants and says, “One drawback of the ‘invitashoon for cooffee’—it leads of necessity to anoother invitation; or to at least a request.”

Bridget ban snorts brief amusement. “I will go with you.”

Olafsdottr ducks her head. “Please, is there to be noo privacy for even my moost intimate mooments? In my coolture…”

“You are not in your culture. Here, we think nothing of going together. Graceful Bintsaif, you will stand guard at the door. Alert Mr. Tenbottles that our guest is on the move.”

Méarana chuckles and, when her mother and the other Hound glance her way, she says, strumming an arpeggio on her strings, “Is she such a poor storyteller that she would leave before her climax?”

“Why assume her purpose is storytelling?” says Bridget ban. “She may have come only to gain access to this building; in which case, the less she sees of it, the better. Perhaps, I should have a chamber pot brought in.”

Olafsdottr cringes at this. “With my complexion you cannot see me blush, but I cannot bear the thought of pot-squatting.”

“Ravn,” says Bridget ban, “ye hae nae blushed ower muckle in yer entire life.”

“Oh, how little you know! I was born on the Groom’s Britches—the race you call Alabastrine is common there—and attitudes ingrained in childhood the adult cannot easily ignore.”

“Naetheless,” Bridget ban says with a wave of her teaser.

Her prisoner sighs and leaves the room bracketed between the two Hounds. When they are gone, Méarana laughs out loud and plays a little passage on her harp.

“Miss?” says Mr. Wladislaw with a cock of the head. Ever attentive, he has seized the moment to tidy up the library.

“Oh, nothing, Toby. An’ I bethought me the ainly one who could play anither.”

“I don’t understand, miss.” He picks up the sandwich tray and waits to see if clarification is forthcoming.

“Hae ye e’er seen an instrument try to speil the harper e’en while the harper tries to speil the instrument?”

This is not clarification. He smiles politely, responds, “No, miss, an’ I hae no,” and he beats a hasty retreat.

“Regarding the explosion,” Bridget ban says, when all have been refreshed and have resumed their respective positions, “who knew that Donovan was to be on that pod?”

“The pod starter,” Méarana suggests.

The other three women laugh. “No, darling,” says Bridget ban. “He would have known they missed their pod and would have passed along the new pod number.”

“The boots, then. Their humiliation festered, so they called a colleague in the city and…”

“Noo, noo, noo, Little Lucy,” says Olafdottr, once more comforted on the sofa. “They not know first pod, only second. But man watching pod platform may note our queue number, and having transmit this, he depart.”

“That was a mistake,” Graceful Bintsaif comments. “He should have waited and confirmed that you had in fact entered the pod.”

The Shadow shrugs. “Even enemy make mistakes. May theirs be worse than ours. But best place observe ready-board in queue itself. Break queue draw attention, as we did. Perhaps,” she continues in lilting Gaelactic, “the man was after knowing Padaborn by sight, and feared that Padaborn would recognize him in turn if he lingered or drew attention to himself.”

“I think he waited,” says Graceful Bintsaif. “But he waited at Riettiecenter. He was the bomber.”

Bridget ban tosses her red hair. “Then he could have detonated himself at SkyPort. Why wait, if he were certain of his target then? He was not tender of bystanders.” She considers a moment before murmuring, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Olafsdottr spreads her hands. “Oschous consider play from all angle, and all as he say. But one aspect bother me.”

“You mean,” says Méarana, “aside from narrowly escaping an assassination?”

“Ooh, that boother me less than noot escaping.”

Bridget ban steeples her fingers under her chin. “Style.” The other two professionals nod.

“Shadows usually more subtle with message they deliver,” the Confederal says. “Bomb artistically dissatisfying. Our people minimalist.”

“Aye,” says Bridget ban. “There was no need to shout. And that means…”

“… message meant for someone else.”

Méarana is incredulous. “You mean their pod was targeted randomly?”

Olafsdottr shakes her head. “Ooh, noothing randoom. All is Fates. You know proverb: ‘Two birdies, one stone’? Donovan and I, we first birdie. Big noise for second.”

“So, who was the second birdie?” asks Bridget ban.

Olafsdottr spreads her arms wide. “Maybe swoswai—caution him against choosing sides. Maybe Triumvirs—show their secrets known. Oschous no such fool that this escape him. Of all of us, some say, he is best. So joins he us to fare with our reluctant guest.”