In the Lion’s Mouth

Cengjam Gaafe: The Fifth Interrogatory

With the breaking of the true dawn, Mr. Wladislaw introduces a breakfast cart into the sitting room. There are eggs gently boiled and mounted on thrones, a haggard sausage, sautéed mushrooms, and a porridge of oatmeal. Olafsdottr selects an egg at random and regards the giant sausage with considerable suspicion.

“You will pardon us,” says Bridget ban, “if we restrict the carving of it to Mr. Wladislaw.”

Olafsdottr grins. “No knives too close to poor Ravn. Afraid, perhaps, she cut self? Well, small individual sausages might be used to poison me; but from this monster, we shall each and all safely eat.”

Méarana hands an egg cutter to the Shadow, who looks at it curiously until the harper demonstrates how to use it to snip off the small end of the egg.

“Ooh … You oopen your eggs from the small end,” she says. “No woonder matters pass ill between your League and my Coonfederation.”

There is apparent humor in the remark, but the nature of it eludes her captors. “The eggs at least are sufficient size,” she continues in Gaelactic. “On the Groom’s Britches, we have eggs the size of grapes, which are eaten whole. The hens have been cultured with various foods to impart diverse flavors to the eggs. They are accounted a delicacy.”

“Och,” says Bridget ban with a straight face, “our eggs too are the size of our grapes.”

Ravn blinks, then decides to smile.

“And was Fa—was Donovan still in his hotel room,” Méarana asks, “when you and Oschous returned from the pasdarm?”

“Ooh, surely! He was no man’s fool. Where on the planet could he have gone?”

The Terran Corner, Méarana thinks, but she does not say it aloud. Perhaps there are no such corners in the Confederation.

“One thing bothers me,” says Graceful Bintsaif.

“Ah! One thing oonly! How wise you must be!”

The junior Hound has learned to brush off the jibes. “Epri was there; and then he was not. That offends my sense of seamlessness. The world is not that abrupt.”

Bridget ban nods. “Inattentive blindness,” she suggests.

“Yes,” answers Olafsdottr in Confederal Manjrin. “Ancient wisdom, before even time of Commonwealth. Fix attention on one thing—not see others. Gorilla dance through, you not see.” Then, switching back to the Gaelactic, “Sure, I may have been the only one there who noticed the faltering of time, but I saw nothing else beside.”

“I dinnae hawp it!” Méarana exclaims. “Some gomeral can walk right athwart yer line o’ sight and ye dinnae see them? That’s gae glaikit!”

Bridget ban sweeps her hair back. “Believe me, darling. ’Tis possible. The conditions must be right—the kill space was dark, the spectators fixated on the combatants—but the ancients demonstrated ‘inattentive blindness’ under looser conditions than that. The trick lies in knowing how to induce it in others. To ‘cloud men’s minds,’ as the saying has it.” To the Ravn, she adds, “I take it there are few Shadows who own that ability.”

For the first time since she has entered Clanthompson Hall, the serenity of Ravn Olafsdottr falters. “I would have said ‘none.’ But the Names do. The Names have that power.”

Méarana shudders. “There was a Name on Ashbanal? I thought they never left the Secret City!”

“Not often,” says Olafsdottr, “and never happily when they do. It is said that one once left the Confederation entirely.”

“Then,” says Bridget ban, leaning forward, “one of Them intervened—either to save Epri or to assassinate Manlius. Or both.”

But Olafsdottr shakes her head and, interestingly, Graceful Bintsaif does as well.

“No, Cu,” says the junior Hound. “Had that been the intent, why not ensure that Manlius was killed within the rules of the … the pasdarm? Dawshoo had pledged to end the rebellion if Manlius fell.”

“You grow in wisdom, child,” Ravn tells her. “Pasdarm settle nothing. And why Dawshoo agree? Motive of Prime, I grasp. But why Dawshoo? One thing only I see accomplish.”

Bridget ban snips the end off her egg. “Aye,” she says. “Some of ye were forced to show yourselves openly.”

Méarana plays an intricate and unresolved chord progression on her harp. One hand picks out a lively geantraí fit to sketch a joust of Shadows while the other hand plays in counterpoint a goltraí to suggest the lurking Name and, overall, the tragic nature of the whole affair. She sings a bit too, using sky-voice and ground-voice to simulate two singers at two points in the room. But she does not feel the conflict, she does not feel the story in her heart the way she felt the story of the Dancer. The players are too remote, too strange, too unfamiliar. Only her father, under guard in the hotel room, unaware of the events in the “arbor,” his well-being subject to the whims of his captors, only he wants to live through her strings.

And Olafsdottr. She has begun to resolve, a little, in the music. She has begun to live in the mind of Méarana Swiftfingers.

“Why do you call it an ‘arbor’?” she asks. “An arbor is an artful arrangement of trees.”

“I do not know, young harper. It is only what it has always been called. The arrangement of trees, we call a kjumuq. But,” and she turns to the Hound, “a Name on the wing explains much. The bomb at the Riettiecenter monorail. Now, he swoops Epri to save at the very point of his defeat. Come, attend! To Fair Yuts’ga next, uneased in mind and very much perplexed.”