In the Lion’s Mouth

Cengjam Gaafe: The Seventh Interrogatory

It cannot be said that a woman of deep golden skin can flush, but Bridget ban has turned brass as Olafsdottr chants her seduction of Donovan buigh. Méarana has watched her mother tighten as the Shadow described each loose caress; and she smiles to watch, a little from alarm, but not entirely so. Graceful Bintsaif shows clear signs of distress and her tickler is half out from her holster. There are ways to stop this taunting torrent.

But Bridget ban cuts the narration short. She stands and trembles, fists clenched by her side. “Faithless dog!” she snarls.

“Cu,” says Graceful Bintsaif, hoping to assuage her anger. “Did you not hear? He was disengaged. His mind was elsewhere.”

Bridget ban turns on her underling, waves an arm at the now-silent Shadow who watches, face composed in turn to the three women who interrogate her. “How would she know where his minds were?” the Hound snarls. “He has plenty enough to spare.”

She holds that pose for a moment of silence which no one dares break. But at the juncture at which the accusatory arm has begun to lower, Ravn Olafsdottr speaks.

“To whom was he unfaithful?” she asks with a liar’s innocence. “Was there someone perhaps with whom he had once exchanged a troth?”

Bridget ban makes no answer to this and her golden skin turns almost tin.

“If I foond soomthing discarded by the wayside,” the Shadow continues in Alabastrine, “am I blamewoorthy if I clean it oop and care for it? Beside,” she adds in Gaelactic, “I’m after promising him help in some small matter, and I have every intention o’ doin’ so. He is a despicable old scoundrel, but he is not without his charms.”

Méarana wonders if she is the only one who has noticed the precise words of accusation her mother had flung out. Faithless dog? Of the three so entangled, which was the Hound? She bends over her harp to hide her smile, and begins to pluck out the melody of an old Die Bold courtship song. The Fudir had told her once that it was derived from a much older song of Terra, sung to a different purpose. She does not intone the words, but she knows that her mother recognizes them.

She notes from the posture of her mother’s body that she has turned to glare at her, but she does not raise her head to meet that gaze, lest she herself burst out in laughter. She plays on, half-mocking, half-somber, for such matters are too serious for anything but jest. With the grace and intricacies of her finger work, she demands silence from the others, and receives it until she comes at last to the final unsung lines:

Only when she has stilled her strings does Méarana Swiftfingers look her mother in the eye. “Really, Mother, what did you want them to do? Ravn had to tell him something Oschous could not hear, but without making it obvious that she was doing so. Tell me you have never used similar ploys yourself.”

This last, she adds with a touch of heat that surprises mother and daughter alike, for Bridget ban had once been notorious for such wiles. The silence between them is broken finally by Graceful Bintsaif, who says self-consciously, “There is another mystery here.”

“Again,” laughs the Shadow, “oonly one.”

“What was Gw…” She stops at Bridget ban’s gesture.

But Ravn completes her sentence. “What was Gwillgi Hound doing on Yuts’ga? Ooh, my sweet Doominoo may not knoow him, but thoose toopaz eyes I have seen before, to my great displeasure. It was sweet, what he did, and I can only pray the Fates keep the two of them from facing off in the pasdarm of life. Meanwhile, I cannot suppose that the Kennel has had no hint of our struggle, or that they have not sent observers to sniff around its edges.”

“He was only observing, then,” says Graceful Bintsaif. It is the dream of every young Hound that she will be sent one day on that most dangerous of quests. Few indeed have made that crossing; fewer still have returned.

“Ooh, what family engrossed in quarrel welcomes a neighbor’s peep at window?”

“There’s a deeper mystery,” says Méarana—and she wonders momentarily if Olafsdottr had described her intimacies with such detail in order to distract Bridget ban from it. “That Hounds may spy within the Confederation is no great secret, but that your saga should brook bad art is.”

“Yes,” says Ravn Olafsdottr with a congratulating smile to the harper, “it is very troubling.”

“What is?” asks Bridget ban, irritated beyond measure by her guest-prisoner, her daughter, and even her protégé. She has been diverted by her own thoughts, but now reviews what has been said and nods. “Oh. Of course.”

Olafsdottr’s smile is grim. “Aye. Domino Tight has a lover in the Gayshot Bo on Dao Chetty, and this lover just happens to be in a back alley in Cambertown when he is wounded? Ah, my sweets, that begs too much of chance. The Fates are ne’er inclined to aid romance.”