In the Lion’s Mouth

V. Ashbanal: A Gathering of Shadows

The Confederation names its Krasnikov tubes after rivers, finding the analogy to flowing streams more apt. From Henrietta, Oschous followed the Gong Halys into New Anatole, and thence by the Mekong past St. Khambong before joining the Great Ganga and the stately voyage into Ashbanal.

On this latter world awaited Manlius Metataxis, who had gone thither to settle an old score. Many were the motives that drove men into our ranks, O harper; and for Manlius those had been the oldest in all the worlds: jealousy over a woman. Kelly Stapellaufer had been a colleague—a “sister” under the rules of the Abattoir, and so forbidden to him. But in the course of several missions, they had become entangled, and Shadow Prime had dispatched Epri Gunjinshow, his second-best student, to separate them. This, he had done in the old-fashioned way: by seducing Kelly to himself. Manlius might have tolerated her kidnapping, her imprisonment, or even her assassination, but not the theft of her heart, and not by Prime’s second-best.

Donovan was granted the liberties of Oschous’s ship, but those liberties were few in any case. It was a large and sprawling vessel. Nestled in a planet’s arms, she might resemble more a castle than a means of flight. There were rooms for exercise, for zazen, for torture, for relaxation, for dining. There were even places where Donovan could enjoy the illusion of solitude. But he was not so foolish as to suppose that any move of his was unobserved, that any word he spoke expired unheard, or that any text or entertainment he consulted passed unremarked. The smuggler’s ship had been retrofitted in haste and there had been inadvertent pockets of privacy, but Black Horse was Oschous’s personal vessel and was permeated with his intentions.

Eight magpies crewed her, standing alternate watches on the old naval pattern. They wore black body stockings—shenmats—that left only their faces bare. After a day on the crawl up Henrietta, Donovan confirmed that there was always one magpie in his line of sight. This caused him some unease, for there was an ancient Terran fable by which a magpie at one’s window was a foreboding of death.

During the transit, Oschous sought by sundry means to quicken Donovan’s memory, calling him habitually by the name Padaborn, or more familiarly as Gesh. He supplied the summary reports on Padaborn’s Rising, both the official and the unredacted versions, and praised him for his deeds therein. There was even a bootleg partisim—a “participative simulation”—produced before the Names had decided that the Rising had never happened, and had obliterated all references to it. But even when he reenacted the role of Padaborn himself, Donovan’s memory came back dry. The simulation was deficient. Most of the rebels had perished and so their deeds were sheer guesswork.

Oschous tried altered states, three times with Donovan’s consent, twice surreptitiously. But Donovan’s fragmented mind frustrated every effort. Whether drugs, hypnosis, or dhyāna, some part of him remained unaffected, so that he was never entirely in flight.

“We could have told you,” the Fudir said in the meditation room after one such session. “We spent twenty years drinking uisce in the Bar on Jehovah, and hardly got a buzz on. We’re like a ship with airtight compartments. Drug or hypnotize one personality, and another remains untouched.” Only once, he remembered, had he ever been affected in his entirety; but this he did not mention. Whatever the Wildman’s potion had been, it was unknown to him.

He and Oschous arose from the mat and bowed to each other. “Small wonder then Those smashed you,” Oschous suggested. “As a broken vessel, you’ve formidable resistance to the Question. Whole, who could say? There is always kaowèn,” he added in a meditative frame. “It has oft reaped unexpected returns.”

Donovan’s scalp prickled. “I’m not holding out deliberately,” he ventured.

Oschous waved a hand. “I know, I know. That’s why I’ve not used it. A man who knows things can be brought to confess them. But a man who knows nothing can also be brought to confess. At some point he would desire more than life itself to tell me what I ask. It need not be the truth; it need only bring him surcease. On such information, we might proceed confidently to our doom.”

“Then why employ kaowèn at all?”

Oschous’s ruddy eyebrows climbed his forehead. “But I told you. If a man does know the truth, the confession would be genuine. Really, Gesh, we don’t pith a man on whim, wondering if he might know something. That would be barbaric. We only employ kaowèn if we already know that he possesses the knowledge we want.”

“Considerate of you.”

“The sort of men we question don’t merit consideration. Well, perhaps you and I will have better luck next time. We’ll try a different school of meditation. Perhaps that of Gundilap. Memories are holograms. They can never be entirely eradicated. It’s simply a matter of finding the right fragment and reflecting upon it from the right angle.”

“There is a third possibility,” said Donovan. “I might not remember how Padaborn escaped because I’m not Padaborn.”

“I hope for your sake that you’re wrong,” the Shadow said gravely. “But I don’t think there’s any mistake. What Those did to Padaborn they didn’t do to many.” He bowed. “Go in peace, Gesh.”

Donovan opened the door to the corridor, and Ravn was suddenly in his face, shouting, “Run!”

Donovan started and cried, “Down!”

Ravn fell to laughing at this splendid joke and after pacifying the somewhat nettled Donovan and sending him off, she and Oschous pondered the involuntary response he had made and wondered at its significance.

“The Question was in his mind,” Oschous said. “When Padaborn ran at the last, he ran down.”

But Ravn was unimpressed. “He was last seen on a rooftop. In what other direction could he have run?”

Donovan, for his part, as he made his way to the suite he had been provided, wondered at Oschous’s own revelation. So, said the Sleuth, there are others like us.

Ashbanal was a fourth-generation world lying in the district called the Karnatika, a cluster of worlds interlocked by a web of short, fast roads known as the Oaks. One of these planets was said to be Oschous’s home world, but he would not say which, nor even whether it was truly said. “When a man enters the Lion’s Mouth,” he told Donovan during the crawl down-system, “his old self dies and with him all old ties. ‘The Abattoir is my home,’ we say, ‘and its Shadows are my family.’”

Ashbanal had been settled at various removes from Elria, Dunlemor, Habberstap, and New Krakas. Her Desolate Ocean had held few of those elementary prokaryotes from which life built itself, and the ancient terraforming arks had known no easy time in her quickening. Now, however, three continents lay verdant with old growth forest, save near the bays and inlets where the skimmer-boats put in and atop the mesas set aside for the ballistic shuttles. The fourth continent had either failed of terraformation or else had been reserved by the ancient Commonwealth world-planners for mining and extraction, for it was pitted worse than the oldest shield-moon, and giant molecular sieves crawled its surface and minced, swallowed, and sorted its native ores.

The port on the moon Neb’Qaysar was known as “the Anemone” for the many umbilicals by which the ships attached themselves. Leaving four magpies to secure the ship, Oschous led them through the tunnels inside the moon to the Inbound Customs gate and the drop ports. .

The boots who inspected their documents seemed amused. “Have fun donn dere,” said the inbound section chief in a guttural Sconsite accent. “Bott doan cut no sheep t’roats, mindja.”

Dee Karnatika cocked his head in interest.

The boots were military, feared enough by the commoners, but the chief grew uncomfortable under that cock of interest. He grimaced, tugged at his collar. “Just a lotta youse guys coming by lately, aina.”

Oschous had not identified himself as a “Deadly One,” but neither was he traveling “under the radar,” and it was neither surprising nor bothersome that the boots had pinged him. There is an aura projected by those whose profession is death. “Just passing through,” he said. “I’ve no official business on Ashbanal.”

The chief glanced at Olafsdottr, who wagged a thumb at Oschous. “I’m with him.”

He looked at Donovan.

The Fudir handed over travel documents no less impressive than the official sort despite being crafted only lately during the slide from Henrietta. “I was heading this way,” he said, “and they gave me a ride.” Which was close enough to the truth to have a nodding acquaintance with it.

That elicited another shrug. “Hey, our swoswai, he ain’t no dumb mutt. Youse make twenty-four come by here so far. Do whatcha gotta do, but try not to spook da sheep.”

As they passed through the gate, the magpies exchanged glances with the boots. There was on the one hand the disdain of a skilled craftsman for a common workman and on the other the resentment of a laborer for the professional.

They filed into a groundside shuttle past the ranks of commoners who had been evicted from it to make way for the Shadow and his entourage. The former passengers stood with eyes downcast, though a few glowered in sidelong glances. Donovan sensed an undercurrent of ill feeling toward the Lion’s Mouth by both the military and the commons. In the League, the Hounds were often glamorized by entertainers and admired by the masses; but in the Confederation, the Deadly Ones were only feared. That might work up to a point, but admiration could inspire men to follow, while by fear they could only be driven.

Oschous and Ravn took two seats in the last row and indicated that Donovan should sit in front of them. The four magpies spaced themselves about the cabin: one by the entry, one by the hatchway to the pilot’s cabin, and two in reserve. Once they had settled in, the copilot walked through the cabin checking that everyone had his safety harness fastened. “We drop hard and we drop fast,” he said by way of explanation.

said Inner Child

Hey, said the Brute, we may end up as cinders; but at least we’ll burn up securely fastened to our seats. This did not comfort Inner Child one whit.

Oschous leaned forward and tapped Donovan on the shoulder. “Stop muttering to yourself and pay attention. Here’s the situation. Manlius tracked Epri to Ashbanal and threw down a pasdarm challenge. Epri cannot leave the planet without fighting Manlius. Everyone has agreed to it.”

Pas d’armes, said the Pedant. From an old Terran tongue, meaning “a passage of arms.” It is a sort of impromptu tournament, or joust. It is a custom far older than the Commonwealth itself.

Oh, shaddap, Pedant.

“You agreed,” said Donovan. “We’re here under duress.”

“Listen, Padaborn! All the Lion’s Mouth would keep this struggle of ours sub rosa. Open battle would catch the attention of the military and draw in the boots. We’ve no desire to see pitched battles, bombardments, planets blistered. The League would seize advantage and nip at our border worlds. That bomb on Henrietta was conspicuous enough. We must contain this quarrel of ours, lest worse befall.”

“It’s not my quarrel, either,” Donovan said. “Don’t expect me to take part.” He turned and faced forward just as the shuttle’s engines kicked in, killing her forward velocity and dropping her toward the planet.

“I wouldn’t want you in it,” Oschous told him. “Not with the state your mind is in. I can’t risk losing you yet. I swear, I don’t know why Gidula had such hopes.”

The shuttle put them down at Shallumsar, the capital; and the high-speed bullet took them to Nimway, a medium-sized city in the province of Willit Small. There, Oschous placed Donovan in a room of the Hotel Axhlã on the rotting edge of the city and in the charge of one of his magpies.

Ravn patted him on the cheek before she left with the others for the Isle of Tears. “The magpie will see to your needs,” she assured him. “Doon’t kill him and he woon’t kill you. You are an honored guest and—when once you remember who you are—a leader in our stroogle.”

“You’re motivating my amnesia,” the Fudir muttered.

Then Ravn and Oschous were out the door and down the drop well, where they exited on Grandmother Street, magpies first, forming a triangular cordon, then Oschous, then the Ravn. It was evening already and the world’s sun, called Avgar, glowered behind the towers of Margash Nimway on the farther side of the Gennel River. They wore black or violet shenmats dotted with silver tears. Saving Ravn, they wore on their arms red brassards with the black horse of Dee Karnatika. Ravn’s black brassard bore the stylized white comet of Gidula. From their belts and webbing depended a variety of useful devices. Oschous consulted one of these and said, “The arbor is north,” and they turned right up Grandmother toward an abandoned automill.

They drifted like shades conjured prematurely by the sunset, moving swiftly and with an economy of motion. Few were the Ashbanalis about—dusk was not a friend in this quarter of the city—and those by chance encountered gave the Deadly Ones a wide and sudden berth. One man alone stood his ground and, from the gathering gloom on the corner of Grandmother and Beryl, he watched them as a jackal does a passing pride of lions.

“Above,” Ravn whispered to Oschous.

“I saw,” he answered. He consulted his locator once more, but did not change direction.

Above them another Shadow swung on a tzan-wire from the balcony of an apartment building to the pylon supporting the Beryl Street Elevated. There, he—or she—paused to reel in the wire and watch like a spider from the web of support struts while Oschous and his party passed below. Rebel? Loyalist? One of the dwindling band of neutrals attracted by the pasdarm? Ravn did not know, but the back of her neck prickled as she passed beneath the Elevated. There was a Truce supposed; but the amity within the Lion’s Mouth was long sacrificed on the altar of Manlius’s lusts, and the Truce of a pasdarm seemed a frail reed on which incautiously to lean.

Oschous made a sign and pointed, and Ravn and the magpies turned their attention to a figure lurking in a doorway, his own magpies arrayed about him in a checkerboard defense: Dawshoo, who had been sucked in half against his will to the rebellion against Those of Name.

Not that it mattered in the end. Willing or not; eager or reluctant; motives venal or noble. If you cast the die, the price of life was victory. Ravn noted how drawn Dawshoo had grown since she had first known him, a lifetime ago on Dungri’s World when she had been a magpie herself. The Life took it out of one, even under the best of circumstances—and circumstances these past twenty years had not been the best.

“The arbor has been set up in there,” whispered Dawshoo, nodding toward the abandoned factory. “It’s agreed. The rest of us keep our distance. Prime said…” He hesitated, licked his lips. “Prime said that this will settle the quarrel. If Manlius wins, Prime will call off his fighters. If Epri wins, I’m to do the same.”

Oschous stiffened. “Was it for Manlius’s pride then that we sold our oaths?”

“Manlius is my brother-in-arms. I could not stand by while Prime crushed him.”

“And one thing led to another,” murmured Ravn. “From mighty acorns feeble oaks do grow.”

Dawshoo shot her a look. “Your lips move, but I hear Gidula’s voice.”

“And if Epri kills your brother?” demanded Oschous through tightened jaws. “Do we throw aside twenty years of struggle and subversion? Our brothers who have died—and those whom we’ve killed?”

There was another presence with them: a tall figure cloaked in dun and like Dawshoo wearing the ceremonial skull cap of a senior Shadow. Ekadrina Sèanmazy leaned upon a walking staff as tall as she. Her grin matched that of the skull that crowned her. “As would we,” she told the rebels. “And ours is da bitter side of da wager, since we fought to protect da Names dat you have fought to tear down.” She spoke in a broad Kotyzarmayan accent that clipped her consonants and hardened the endings of her words. Her final S’s hissed; her initial ones buzzed.

Oschous reared back. “We are the true servants of the Confederation…”

Ekadrina waved dismissal. “Believe your own propaganda, Karnatika, at your own risk. I told Prime diss was a bad play; but de infighting among us tears his heart and diss can make an end of him, de strife. He cares less upon what terms we make de peace den dat we make him.” In the peculiar dialect of Noytáyshlawn, even abstractions demanded sex.

Gidula had come silently among them, and took the opportunity to scoff. “Will Prime join us in our struggle against Those of Name when Manlius prevails? Tell us another story. You are more entertaining than most.”

Ekadrina threw her cloak across her shoulder. She wore, underneath, a fine mesh of spun dispersal armor, and a belt and bandoliers well hung with weaponry. “Da Names can care for demselves,” she said, and added slyly, and not without a certain reserve, “Dere’s word dat some are abroad.”

Dawshoo started visibly. If the commons and the boots walked in fear of the Shadows, even the Shadows feared Those of Name. “They’ve left the Secret City?”

“Some. Maybe. What confines Dem? Remember da rumor years ago dat one once fled to da Periphery?” She grinned once more and turned away. “And now, if you will excuse me, I must see to my idiot brudder.”

When the leader of the loyalist Shadows had gone, Oschous sucked in his breath, expelled it, looked to Dawshoo. “So. There is an agreement. But will they abide by it?”

Ravn asked the better question. “Will we?”

The building complex had once housed an automill and the floorway was gridded by the lumpish bulks of gutted mill frames. The omni-tooling was long gone, of course, along with the robots—sold off when the mill went under—and most of the fittings had been harvested by the departing owners and then gleaned by scavengers. What remained was as a pencil sketch to a fine painting in oils. Large portions of the roof had blown away in this storm or that over the intervening years. Rust had claimed those metals capable of it; corrosion had tarnished the rest; rot had eaten into its timbers. Only the ceramics and plastics remained unmarked by the years, beyond a patina of grime and the assault of optimistic molds.

The exposed skeleton served as perches for the gathering of Shadows, though one might search twice to assure oneself that they were there. They embraced their namesakes cast by the setting sun, seemed indeed to be extensions of them, and their motions appeared no more than the natural elongations of the evening.

The interior had been decorated in gray with touches of gold and silver. A great banner of deep violet hung from the central rafter bearing a single silver tear in its field. Flanking it were two others: a sky-blue banner with a white dove and a forest-green banner with a yellow lily. The mons of the combatants, Manlius and Epri. A third banner hung to the side, one that Ravn did not recognize: bloodred with a white cross of the sort called “Maltese.”

“The Riff of Ashbanal,” Gildula told her as he followed her into the arbor. “He is to be judge of the kill. After all, it’s his planet.”

Among the spawn of the Abattoir, those Shadows assigned to police a single planet were held in some esteem by those who carried roving commissions. A roving commission usually meant singular assignments and particular targets, in and out, been and gone. A single planet might seem insignificant against the sprawl of the Spiral Arm, but it was large enough when a riff and his magpies must see to the apprehension of criminals, the punishment of treasons, the suppression of dissent, and the purging of corrupt officials, day in and day out. Riffs were marathoners among the sprinting Shadows.

A loggia had been cleared and a fountain set up from which a punch spiced with licorice and rum flowed across a bed of cleansing stones. Near the fountain, three of the Riff’s magpies played light music on lute, tambour, and viol. Personally played music on antique instruments! Shadows and their magpies stood about deep in conversation and laughter, enmities in abeyance, old friendships briefly renewed, orders and brotherhoods conferring on their particular concerns. Ravn paused to fill a cup. The cups were of frangible ceramic, purple to match the pasdarm flag, and bore the teardrop pattern.

“I’ve attended pasdarms,” said a magpie at the fountain, “where dozens of banners o’erhung the kill space, and the duels ran all day and through the night.” He wore the taiji of Ekadrina Sèanmazy, yin encircling yang encircling yin, and a numeral that marked him third in her following. He glanced at Ravn’s unnumbered brassard, but made no comment, and sipped his own drink. Yesterday, they might have been sent to kill each other. And tomorrow they might yet be. But for today, there was a Truce, and they were brothers in an ancient rite. “I’ve seen Shadows die in mock-combat,” he confided, “but this is the first I’ve been where the chapters read à outrance.”

“The fight will be no different,” Ravn told him, “only shorter. Dispersal armor is forbidden. And a purposed kill looks much the same as the accidental sort.”

Above them, Gidula’s comet banner unfurled on the sidelines, drawing the eyes of Magpie Three Sèanmazy. “The Old One,” he whispered. “’Tis a grand show, is it not?” His eyes roamed the banners on high, naming them, reciting their own famous passages at arms. “There! Lime, a lion. That’s Aynia Farer, and … yellow, two crows! Phoythaw Bhatvik, Ekadrina’s adviser. Crimson, a black horse. Oschous Dee Karnatika himself! Oh, there are great names here today … Did you witness the pasdarm, O Deadly One,” her chance companion asked, moist-eyed, “where the Hatborden fought Billy Chins? That was on Whitefield, Tobruk’s Sun. Aye! Was there e’er such noble courage shown? E’er such skill shown in gunplay or the knife? At the end of it, they exchanged their personal sidearms and pledged to fight again, when next the Fates allowed, though they never did. The entire set was taken to the Abattoir and displayed for a year and a day in the temple.” A sip from the spiced rum. “I hope he dies well.”

Ravn Olafsdottr did not ask him which combatant he expected to die. “The great game of the beautiful life,” she murmured. She emptied her cup, placed it upended on the sideboard, as was the custom, and prepared to leave for a perch in the rafters. But Magpie Three Sèanmazy held her arm, a gesture in other contexts potentially fatal.

“I didn’t catch that.”

“The great game of the beautiful life,” she said. “Why do you think we wear silver tears on our shenmats when we attend these affairs? Why do you think we decorate the kill space so gaily and discuss so avidly the art with which a stroke or a shot or a move was made? It is because within this space, within the ‘squared circle,’ it all has meaning. There is closure. There are rules, and within those rules the better warrior wins. Outside the arbor, it is not so orderly, not so pretty. Death is never according to the rules, and never the reward only of the less proficient. Much of the time, there is never even a reason; only a moment of carelessness. No one will stop to record our last brave words. Our final enemy will walk away and leave us to bleed out in some back alley. Or some natural disaster will fell us, and no one will ever know. The Hatborden died in an aftershock on Jasmine during the cleanup; and Billy Chins disappeared in the League, and none know where or why.”

The magpie had colored under these words. “Then why do you continue in the service?”

Olafsdottr shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

“When your final enemy leaves you to bleed out,” he said, “pray that it be a Hound and not a brother Shadow.”

Ravn made a sign against Fate. “May it be so, save that the Hound lies bleeding.”

That lightened the other’s countenance. The Shadows might be in civil war among themselves, but they could agree about their enemies across the Rift of stars. “Well said, sister!” And they parted on a more amicable note.

Ravn studied the banners hanging in the dead air of the ruin. She thought about raising her own, but as she was presently attached to Gidula’s section, that would be unseemly.

On her way into the rafters, she caught up with Gidula. “He grew angry,” the Old One said, “because he knew you spoke truth.”

She did not ask him how he had overheard her conversation. “Truth has oft that effect.” Ravn reached up and hauled herself onto an angle brace, where she nestled. Around her, others found perches and vantage points. Some deployed recorders of various sorts. Both combatants were highly rated, and the contest promised to be instructive as well as entertaining.

Directly forward, across the kill space, the one-time management offices had been broken open into a sort of balcony and decorated as the Isle of Tears. From it deployed the banner of Shadow Prime, the only banner in the Lion’s Mouth that was plain black, without icon or adornment. Prime stood above it, pretending a sort of neutrality, Father of the Lion’s Mouth, Judge of the Abattoir, benign mentor to all here present—but whose sentiments were subtly known: a loyalist by long indoctrination and by special affection for both Epri and Ekadrina. His hair was grayer and his face more drawn than when last Ravn had seen him.

And what if his two favored students had chosen the other path? Ravn wondered. What if they had gone into rebellion? Would Prime, from love of them, have rallied the whole of the Lion’s Mouth to the overthrow of the Names? Did his loyalty lie with the Names or with his “children”?

And there, a flash of white in the darkness beside him, the “pale princess” Kelly Stapellaufer, whose all too plastic affections had started the whole chain of events. The only one present garbed in white, her banner alone was not flown. Deprived in this venue of her own identity, she was simply “the Lady of the Secret Island” for whose affections the two Shadows would contest.

Of the three Deadly Ones caught up in the wretched affair, Ravn Olafsdottr found no sympathy for any of them, least of all for Kelly. Manlius had let his rod rule his mind. One day it would kill him; for a man cannot be a Shadow and harbor affections. Epri had at least been following orders when he broke them up, though in following those orders he had committed the same crime. But it seemed to Ravn that Kelly Stapellaufer had seduced first one, then the other, and so, whatever other motives had since accumulated, had brought the Lion’s Mouth down into this quiet, desperate civil war.

“What say you?” asked Gidula, who had come silently to Ravn’s side. He had followed her gaze and found the object of it. “Which does she truly prefer? Did she resent Manlius’s attentions from the beginning and use Epri to exact a vengeance on him? Or, once Epri’s captive, did she find her cupid in convenience?”

Ravn affected disinterest. “She no longer matters. All of their grievances have been tumbled under a milliard others. She was the spark, not the explosion. This fight will settle nothing.”

“You think Prime will not honor the chapters?”

“Does the dynamite care if the match that lit its fuse has been extinguished?” Her teeth showed briefly in the night. But then Ravn realized that she was talking to empty space. Absently, she fingered his sigil on her brassard and waited. The Old One had strange humors. In the watching crowd she saw taijis, doves, lilies, and other mons and arms and logos.

Poder Stoop, the Riff of Ashbanal, stepped forward into the open space on the floor below. Poder wore a white surcoat with a red sash to mark him as the Judge of the Kill. So far as Olafsdottr knew, he was neutral in the war. Whoever won would need order maintained on Ashbanal, and that meant a riff and his deputies.

Beside him stood Epri Gunjinshow and Manlius Metataxis and two of the Riff’s magpies. All but Epri bore grim countenances. Epri smiled and waved to supporters in the audience. He did not turn to look at Kelly. Both combatants wore ceremonial golden shackles around their ankles as a sign that they were bound to fight each other. Manlius, it was said, had pledged not to eat sitting down until he had slain his foe. Ravn did not know what pledges Epri had made, but she was certain they were every bit as extravagant.

It would not be fair to say that silence fell, for the gathered Shadows had made little in the way of sound. But the silence deepened when the Riff raised his staff horizontally above his head.

“Honored Father.” He bowed low toward Shadow Prime. Then, over the network that encompassed the arbor he said to the assembly, “Deadly Ones, hear me. These are the chapters of the Pasdarm of the Isle of Tears. It has been agreed, each and several, that the matter of Manlius Metataxis and Epri Gunjinshow will be settled after the ancient traditions of our Guild. Despite the rulin’ of the Courts d’Umbrae that both Manlius and Epri have equally transgressed our Laws and that the slate was therefore wiped clean between them, our two brothers have persisted in their feud, and in doin’ so have sown dissension in our ranks. An’ this dissension bein’ the greater evil,” the Riff continued, “our Father and our senior brothers—Dawshoo Yishohrann and Ekadrina Sèanmazy—have sponsored this-here pasdarm.” He allowed his gaze to travel around the impromptu gallery while a light patter of applause and tapping of roof beams rattled the old building.

“Heh,” whispered Gidula. “He wishes no doubt as to where the blame lies, does he?”

A plague on both your houses. “He straddles the fence,” Ravn told her section leader. “Matters always seem different from the gallery than they do in the blood and the sand.”

Gidula smiled. “A neutral, yes, but is he a loyalist neutral or a rebel neutral? I wonder if he realizes that the time for safe neutrality is passing…”

On the floor, Poder had finished the by-laws and intoned the ritual preface. “Brothers! À outrance! To the blood an’ to the bone!” Then he struck the floor of the automill sharply with his staff of office and the boom reechoed through the empty caverns of the building. The Lady of the Isle of Tears threw a single black rose from the catwalk. The Riff’s magpies struck the golden shackles from the fighters’ ankles and led their charges to their randomly-chosen starting points on the factory floor.

“Best we illuminate ourselves,” Gidula whispered as, “lest one combatant or the other mistake us for his opponent.”

Ravn flipped her night goggles into place and, as she did so, noticed others throughout the building flickering into the pale green glow that marked them as spectators. Golden beams of light sprang up, resembling ropes or fences and marking the bounds of the kill space. She glanced once more at the roost where Prime had stood and noticed that the Lady had vanished, unable perhaps to watch her lover slain. Whichever of the two that might be.

On the old manufacturing floor, neither Epri nor Manlius was such a fool as to step forward. No one emerged victor from a joust of Shadows by offering himself as a target. From her perch high above, however, Ravn was able to pick out both men as they moved cautiously behind cover of the rusting hulks of machinery probing for each other’s location. Their starting positions had by chance been set in the same quadrant of the space, and not terribly far from each other. Ravn wondered if the Riff, hoping for a quick end, had rigged the draw. If so, the play had failed, for the two were unknowingly moving away from each other. Suppressed amusement rippled through the gallery.

Manlius was the larger of the two, supple and well muscled. He moved like a panther. If it came to close combat, the advantage would be his. Epri was more slender, more graceful—a dancer—and owned the clearer eye. At longer distance, where aim outweighed strength, he would hold the edge. The Riff had chosen the venue well. The combination of obstacles and lines of sight gave both men a play to their advantage.

“I will enjoy your dissection, Epri,” Manlius called out.

And Epri whipped a shot with his tickler in the direction of the voice.

Mentally, Ravn deducted a point from both men’s score. There had been no wagering permitted on this pasdarm, since it had not been joined for sport; but she had made her own bets with herself. Manlius should not have wasted breath taunting his opponent. And Epri’s hasty shot showed him nervous and on edge. The likelihood that Manlius would be anywhere in the vicinity of his voice was small to the point of vanishing.

And to a man wearing the proper night filters, as Manlius certainly was, the small spark of the tickler’s discharge marked Epri’s location as surely as Manlius’s voice had not.

Clever. She notched Manlius up half a point. Dawshoo’s brother did not fire at the spot thus revealed, because it was improbable that Epri had remained in it. But he worked his way closer to where he thought Epri had gone. The best way to track a quarry was to follow his mind, to go to where he would be and not to where he had been.

The combat proceeded as delicately as a ballet, and like a ballet it remained on point. Both Shadows floated silently from cover to cover, seeking always that advantageous position above and behind the opponent. Manlius stalked Epri, moving closer each time to his opponent’s shifting location. Epri evaded, probing with exploratory fire, circling the perimeter of the kill space. The opening gambits, as always, probed for the other’s position and sought out his strategy; but the spectators waited expectantly for the endgame, when Manlius’s greater strength would prevail—and made quiet side bets whether Epri would pot him before that could happen.

Epri threw an I-ball on a high arc and its spinning cameras sent an image of the kill space to him, stabilized and integrated by his suit’s processors. It must have caught Manlius’s location, because Epri hurled a multibomb in that direction. Its explosion jarred, even through the ear filters everyone wore. Secondary munitions seared the five places Manlius might have leapt to—but Manlius had run to a sixth.

“He ought to try the Spider,” said a magpie who perched nearby and wore the two crows of Phoythaw Bhatvik. “Let the slut come to him.”

Ravn made no reply. When Shadow stalked Shadow, setting up a sniper’s nest was suicide. Your opponent would more likely locate your nest before crossing its lines of fire.

Early on, Manlius had strewn “crispies” in one of the intersections. This eventually paid off when Epri passed through the intersection and stepped on them. Passive munitions were forbidden by the chapters, but Manlius had set crispies only for the distinctive crunching sound they made when stepped upon. He had naturally logged the location into one of his hand-bombs and let fly when he heard the signal. But Epri, at the first crunch had fled down an aisle picked at random and leaped to one side, and atop one of the machines.

Ravn deducted points from both: Epri for being so incautious as to tread upon such an obvious alarm; Manlius for placing it at an intersection. Had he placed the crispies in the middle of an aisle, Epri would have had fewer escape routes and he could have more easily bracketed them. Of course, in a pasdarm à outrance, one could win on points and still lie dead at the end.

A splinter of shrapnel had found Epri’s calf as he pulled himself up and over the machine. The assembly roared, “Blood!” Though the blood was minor and once the shrapnel had been pulled out, the shenmat closed up the wound. Ravn deducted further points because at the roar, Manlius had paused to preen, and so lost the initiative.

The second time Epri tried the trick with the I-ball, Manlius shot it from the air on the fly, earning an appreciative murmur from even Epri’s partisans. Then Manlius rolled his own I-balls down the aisles of the factory floor, one after the other, grasping the layout of the kill space from a more pedestrian angle. They were harder to pot on the roll, but also less panoramic in their harvested images. Epri deduced from the several paths of the balls the intersection from which they had been rolled; but before he could home in on it, Manlius had gone.

And so it continued, as patiently as a chess match. Now and then, the combatants caught sight of one another and guns would snap and knives or whistle-trees would fly. More often, indirect fire sought out grid squares where the opponent might lurk. Once, a cry from the sidelines indicated that a spectator had been slow to move from the line of fire. Manlius grinned at the sound, and at first Ravn wondered at his misplaced glee.

But then she saw what Manlius had noticed. The shifting spectators, illuminated as they were, gave him a vector by which to locate his foe! For those directly in the line of fire would drift off to either side, leaving a space devoid of lights. If he drew a line between himself and that bull’s-eye in the gallery, he would find Epri somewhere along it.

Manlius closed the distance on cat’s feet before Epri should notice the similar gap in Manlius’s six and realize its significance. He reached an old gutted machine and swung to its top as if weightless, plucking a throwing star from his belt. The crowd sucked in its breath and Epri, crouching below Manlius, heard the intake and, though not understanding its precise significance, pulled a dazer from its scabbard and peered around the corner of the next machine.

But this was a personal grudge and feelings ran high. Manlius paused a moment to savor his victory and in that savor lost the sauce.

A voice cried out, “Epri! Your seven!”

Manlius let fly—and Epri rolled aside, loosing behind him a hasty dazer bolt. The star skittered along the composite flooring, clattering into the darkness. Sparks danced along the seams of the machine on which Manlius had lately poised.

“Who called out?” demanded Dawshoo in the darkness. “A violation!”

Manlius had launched himself after Epri, unwilling to surrender his advantage at close quarter combat; but Epri avoided his grip and completed a double roll. His dazer came up and Manlius kicked it loose from his grasp. Epri backed away swiftly, scrabbling at his belt for another weapon, but Manlius whirled a back-camel kick into the side of Epri’s head.

The loyalist dropped, stunned, and Manlius seized a rusted steel bar from the machine beside him and brought it down sharply to impale his enemy to the floor.

And Epri wasn’t there.

The steel bar struck the floor with a clang, and Manlius released it and spun defensively, expecting a riposte. But there was no sign of his opponent. The spectators began to murmur from their perches.

Ravn scanned the kill space, but Epri was simply … gone. “I saw him,” said a Shadow on her right. “And then I didn’t.” Ravn’s goggles picked out a taiji on her brassard. Ekadrina’s section.

Casting her mind back, it seemed to Ravn that, at the very instant when Manlius was poised to impale Epri, the world had hesitated, as if time had been spliced and a moment snipped out. But in that lost and extra moment, Ravn remembered a ghost of movement, like the swirl of a cloak in the darkness. And then Epri had been gone.

A confusion of voices roiled the old mill. She heard Dee Karnatika declare that Epri had forfeit. Dawshoo claimed victory for Manlius. Beside her on the rafter, Ekadrina’s courier stroked the butt of her teaser. Perturbed, Ravn backed away into the recesses of the roof struts. This was not right. Something—she knew not what—was seriously awry. A prudent man he might be, and more prone to settle disputes with clever stratagems or distant assassinations, but Epri was no such coward as to desert the field.

Another Shadow crouched to her left on the same beam as she, panting heavily with excitement and peering with bright eyes at the commotion on the shop floor, where Dawshoo and Manlius argued with Ekadrina and Shadow Prime. She heard Dawshoo call on Prime to honor their bargain.

A distraction.

She suddenly knew that the argument on the floor was a distraction, intended to fix everyone’s attention. She looked across, up, down, right, left.

And the Shadow on her left was not panting from excitement, but from exertion. It was Epri. After escaping Manlius’s death-stroke (somehow!) he had hidden himself the only way possible: by making himself more visible. He had turned on his running lights and joined the spectators, trusting to darkness and unexamined assumptions for his concealment.

Down below, Oschous Dee Karnatika scanned the galleries. He seemed to be counting spectators.

Epri specialized in the long shot. At this distance, his marksmanship was deadly and three quick shots would pot Manlius, Dawshoo, and Oschous and virtually decapitate the rebellion.

Peace at last within the Lion’s Mouth, after twenty years of Shadow War.

Epri held a dazer double-handed, crouched to fire from the kneeling position. Ravn’s hand dropped to her belt and came away with a stiletto. She threw it side-wristed and impaled Epri’s right hand just as he fired into the press on the floor.

Cries broke out below. Manlius! Manlius is down! Treachery! No, a legitimate play! Ambush! No, Manlius quit too soon; the pasdarm was still on!

It was not, Ravn knew. The chapters of the pasdarm gave the players wide latitude; but hiding oneself among the spectators was not one of them. Epri had been forfeit the moment he had climbed into the girders, but if Manlius were slain, the technicality would hardly matter.

Epri had meanwhile yanked the stiletto from his hand and backhanded it at Ravn. But she had expected the move and had already ducked aside, snatching the knife from the air as it passed and dousing her running lights with the other hand.

Epri might be second-best, but Ravn knew he was far above her own class. The prudent thing to do was flee and link up with Gidula or Oschous. She was clambering up the strut before the thought was formed and Epri, firing at her left-handed, missed. Someone else in the galleries fired back, perhaps on general principles.

Fighting had broken out on the floor and in the galleries. Oschous and other rebellious Shadows had returned fire to the locus from which the treacherous shot had come. Then some loyalists, perhaps thinking that the rebels were attacking the gallery, had joined in. The rebels were now pinned down near the middle of the kill space, taking fire from all sides, but protected by their own magpies and allied Shadows among the spectators. One was a former neutral, pushed to take sides by the treachery. Ekadrina and Prime had withdrawn to cover, but both were holding fire and Ekadrina was arguing with Prime. Dawshoo crouched over Manlius, shielding him while he fired at loyalists pinned down behind a conveyor head. A magpie fell from the rafters to strike one of the milling machines and then roll bonelessly over its side. Oschous had Dawshoo’s back, snapping orders over his link, and directing a counterattack. Coherent light flashed here and there among the girders, made visible by the dust raised by the tumult. Projectiles whined and snapped off girders.

Ravn fired her tzan-wire at an overhead beam and even as it fastened itself she swung across the cavernous open space to land beside the Riff of Ashbanal, who had taken refuge with his magpies behind a stack of corroded drums. He had his teaser out, but had yet to fire it.

The Riff had not achieved his position through mere politics. A fell fighter in any league, he swung his staff left-handed and nearly knocked Ravn off her footing. But she danced a little away from him, holding both hands to the side weaponless, and blurted, “Appeal the Truce, master! You are neutral and this is your bailiwick. They will listen to you.”

“Will they? Small weight my word has had ’fore now.”

“Habits die hard. Your brassard yet commands respect. Call on Oschous and Ekadrina to act as your deputies. There has been dishonor on our House.” She told him of Epri’s foul.

Stoop studied Ravn for a long moment, during which two more magpies died.

“Quickly,” Ravn urged him, “before there are too many bodies for a Truce to overlook.”

The Riff nodded and opened his link. “Deadly Ones!” And his voice echoed across the ruined factory. “There is a Truce in play! That Truce was violated most foully, and charges will be laid at the Courts d’Umbrae on Dao Chetty. Ekadrina Sèanmazy! Oschous Dee Karnatika! I demand an’ require you to enforce the Peace!” He turned and gave Ravn a twisted smile. “Now let’s see how much respect this ol’ badge still commands,” he said quietly. He stepped from concealment, banging the floor of the kill space three times with his staff.

Silence spread in a pool around him and one by one the combatants stilled. Oschous came to stand beside the Riff and a moment later Ekadrina joined him. Poder holstered his weapon, and took a breath.

“Metataxis?” he said.

“A wound,” Oschous replied. “The shot went wild.”

“Den it was not my brudder who fired,” said Ekadrina. “Epri does not miss.”

“He does if my stiletto impales his hand,” Ravn said. “He hid himself among the spectators, on the beam beside me. I fouled his aim.”

“I don’t believe dat!”

“It was a foul, Sèanmazy,” said the Riff. “The bolt came from the rafters. A violation of the chapters and of the agreement reached beforehand between Dawshoo and our Prime.”

“Compared to foul deeds already done,” the Long Tall One said, “what matters such a peccadillo?”

“Manlius is the winner,” Oschous said. “By our agreement…”

“Da fight was ‘to da blood and to da bone,’” Ekadrina shot back. “I demand habeas corpus. Where is Epri’s body? Widdout it, where is da victory?”

Oschous bristled, but the Riff held up his hand. “I’m the Judge of the Kill.” Then, in a louder voice, over the links, “Deadly Ones! Hear my rulin’. Manlius Metataxis does not win the pasdarm because he took no bone from Epri Gunjinshow. But neither does Epri win, for though he took blood of Manlius, he took no bone; and the blood was taken by foul. I declare this-here pasdarm null an’ void!” He banged the floor with his staff. “I demand an’ require all concerned to leave this place in peace, the Peace to extend from here to the coopers.” That meant no fighting anywhere in the Ashbanal system.

“Brave words, Riff!” shouted a voice from the darkness. “But how will you enforce it?”

The Riff’s own magpies had gathered around him, and exchanged the uneasy glances of neutrals. Then Oschous spoke up. “I will.”

Ekadrina was less than a beat behind. “And I!” And she held up her own staff horizontal above her head.

Poder Stoop cocked an eyebrow at Ravn Olafsdottr, and the Ravn shrugged. “They are enemies,” she said for no other ear, “but honorable.”

The Riff closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. “That’s the worst of it, ain’t it? Right there. That men of honor find honor has driven them to opposin’ sides. If they were corrupt, we could settle all this with a well-cut deal.”

Later, as the friends and enemies of the slain and injured carried out their useful duties, Ravn Olafsdottr and two of Oschous’s magpies turned over a teardrop body that had fallen from the rafters when a “mourning star” had found his throat. The Ravn noted that the cruelty of the Fates had handed her the corpse of Magpie Three Sèanmazy. She paused in her labor and stared at his contorted face. So surprised he seemed. He could not credit what had happened to him even as it happened. She bent and closed his eyes for him.

Oschous stood nearby with Sèanmazy herself, who regarded her magpie without expression. “I hope he died well,” was all she said before turning away.

Oschous leaned to Ravn. “What is it?” he asked.

Ravn Olafsdottr gestured to the limp and empty corpse. “Tell me it meant something,” she said. “Tell me it mattered.”

“It mattered to him.”

“It was supposed to stay in bounds.”

“What was?”

“Death. It’s how we face Him. We convince ourselves with these plays that, when we want to, we can contain Him. Here. Within the squared circle. Did he die well? He died stupidly, as a bystander to another’s quarrel. And as a consequence of his own side’s treachery.”

“All the more reason,” Oschous assured her, “that we overthrow their regime.”

But Ravn turned away and bent over the body. “Sleep well, Deadly One.” She spoke the formula and bestowed the kiss on the cold and torn lips. He would be carried back to the Abattoir along with the others in Prime’s ship, mulched in the Rose Garden, his name plaqued on the Cöng Sung, the Wall of Honor, but the treachery of this day’s actions would taint the magpie’s death, and few would come to honor him. There was no death worse than a forgotten one, but none were very good.

Oschous said nothing until she had turned away. “And now the mystery,” he said.

The Riff’s people were tearing down the arbor, smashing the fountain. The musicians would break their instruments, and Epri’s banner, torn from its hooks would be burned when the building was torched.

Olafsdottr did not ask what the mystery was. Epri had vanished in plain sight of two score onlookers. If there were another, deeper mystery, she did not want to hear it. For Ekadrina Sèanmazy had given them the answer, in their converse before the fight; and Ravn had detected in the Long Tall One’s confident eyes the selfsame horror she felt in herself.

The Names were loose.