On the Razor’s Edge

XI. The Play of the Coral Snake

It is in the geometry of spheres that the spanned area outruns the diameter, and even so sparse a world as Terra has more sky to it than can reasonably be patrolled. It wants wealth to maintain a 360 Space Traffic Control net, and wealth was no longer Terra’s to have. Whole regions were unscanned. Why would anyone want to land on the Ice? Why indeed would anyone want to land on Terra? And so Ravn, by clever piloting through holes in the coverage, arrived on the meadowlands north of Kojj Hill without appearing on anyone’s monitors.

Gidula, of course, maintained a stricter watch around his own compound and, since she could not depend on Eglay Portion’s neglect, Ravn remained in the detection-shadow and put Sèan Beta down well north of the picket line and close to the low blue ridge that marked the northern edge of the great valley. There Domino Tight jumped from the hovering vessel wearing his shenmat and carrying on his back a rucksack containing a number of useful devices. Méarana watched him set off at a run and marveled that the sedge and the clover barely rustled at his passing. He was not yet out of sight when Ravn raised the ship on its gravitics and banked away to the north-northwest. She circled out and up over the Ablation Mounts and came in on the Forks on the standard southwestward approach, picking up the air corridor at Jasding STC and requesting advance clearance from Gidula’s own control tower.

“I understand,” Méarana said as they came in to the autoguidance slot and Ravn relinquished control. “You circled all the way around to give Domino time to get to Gidula’s stronghold on foot.”

Ravn removed her comm. harness and turned in her pilot’s seat. “You are mistaken. My sweet Domino awaits the infiltration team in San Jösing on Dao Chetty.”

Méarana understood again.

After Ravn had landed at the Mount Lefn pad and the tugs had drawn the monoship into the Cliffside hangars, she dressed in her best finery to stroke Gidula’s vanity for spectacle. But instead of Gidula’s comet or a noncommittal black, she dressed cap-a-pie in her own colors: coral, a black snake twisted. She donned a coral shenmat and, in place of a brassard, a steel armband in the form of a snake circling her biceps. She unrolled the serpent banner and co-opted a planetfallman to carry it. Her boots were thick and steel shod, and she crowned herself with a black “fisherman’s” cap, pinned to the peak of which was a copper ring-badge repeating the snake motif. In the cap’s band she inserted a single eagle’s feather.

“One must look pretty for Gidula,” she told the harper. “Eglay Portion will likely hold the bridge and dare me to pass him. I will draw the fight out as long as I can, then let him think he won.”

“Draw it out to give time for—”

“For the physical exercise.” Ravn turned and put a finger to Méarana’s lips. “The world was fortunate when you followed not your mother’s art. Your thoughts too often tumble from your brainpan directly onto your lips.”

“Should I wait on board?”

The Shadow clapped her hands together. “Ooh, noo, noo, sweet. Dress to your nines, or even your tens, for you moost make splendid entrance with me. I am a Shadow of the Names and moost have a retinue. One poor planetfallman to carry my banner, and you to sing my praises. How silly I would look doing all three myself!”

“But won’t that be dangerous?”

“For you to be in the Confederation at all is dangerous. You will be, as we say, ‘in my gift.’ No one may act against you without my permitting. Play me a suitable introit on your harp. They do not know the instrument well here, so you may entrance them with my entrance. Soomething booth oominous and playfool.”

Méarana gave a half smile. “I suppose I can manage that.”

Ravn patted her on the cheek. “Of course you can. I have heard you practicing your saga of Donovan and Ravn. Remember, though, the snake strikes for the heel.”

Domino Tight had assumed the guise of a pack peddler. By a combination of suasion, threat, and credit balance, he had acquired wares in a general store. Here, at the mountain’s foot, Gidula was only a rumor; the Forks, only a place to avoid. Yet there was some desultory traffic thither.

As Jack-a-Mount Peddler, an identity he had crafted during the hop from Dao Chetty, he secured a courtesy ride from an intercity coaster that dropped him off at a farming village just before turning east onto the Ketchell Guide-rail and shifting off manual. This furnished his pocket with a genuine coaster ticket. He had already altered his face through clever art and, by a small stone in his shoe, had instituted a minor limp.

The limp was the excuse for the exoskeleton, which he had altered to resemble an ordinary prosthesis. He set off at a walk along the foot-road, a broad swath so anciently trod that at times pieces of old asphalt had been revealed by erosion. When he was certain he was unobserved, he kicked into overdrive and proceeded at a blur.

Now that the Shadow War had escalated, Gidula’s people might be more wary of who they allowed into the Forks. He had heard that Ekadrina was back on Dao Chetty, and that meant that by now every Shadow in the Triangles must know about the fight on Yuts’ga.

Publicly, the Old One had maintained a façade of neutrality. Some of the loyalists must know, or at least suspect, otherwise, but Gidula had kept clear of overt action. True, he had rescued Geshler Padaborn from Ekadrina, and had the Sèanmazy’s testimony for it, but a wise man might say that he had also rescued Ekadrina from Gesh, and had the Sèanmazy’s testimony for that, as well. And so, while the Forks was not exactly undefended, its best defense was Gidula’s deceit.

This was also Domino Tight’s best offense. There would be no expectation of attack, at least not of the sort of attack he proposed to mount. Pack peddlers were a common thing among the farming villages surrounding the Forks, and such a peddler would need a license from the Forks Adminstrative Center. Domino Tight had a series of such licenses in his scrip, as genuine as artful forgery could make them, documenting a journey along the northern tier of settlements. There were no roads up that way. No wonder he limped.

He slowed down as he came to a turn in the foot-road and was surprised to see two men ahead of him. They had stepped off the road into a clearing and were heating some water for tea with an irradiator. They were dressed in brown robes with hoods thrown over their heads. As Domino Tight drew abreast at a normal pace, he saw that the man standing was solidly built, with a square jaw. He had a walking staff but did not lean upon it. Dusty-red hair straggled from beneath his brown cowl. A whitened scar graced his left cheek.

“Bless you, my son,” the man said, though he was no older than Domino Tight. “May the grace of Existence Himself be upon you. Is this truly the foot-road to Old Flea?”

Domino Tight recollected the map of the eastern coast of the Northern Mark. “Why, sorely it be, and a sore journey you are having afore yourself, your destiny being some twenty leagues distant.”

The man in the cowl shrugged. “What is, is.”

“You will find it needful to transit the Forks,” Domino Tight told him, as any honest pack peddler might.

“If a village welcome us, someone will open his house and we will be fed, and so will they. But if a village do not, then we shake the dust of her streets from our sandals and proceed.”

Domino Tight did not know what to make of that, so he said, “It is the holdfast of a Shadow of the Names.”

“Ah! Who then more needful of being fed?”

“You speak in riddles, snor. I be but a poor peddler of useful but inexpensive wares, benamed Jack-a-Mount.” He held out his right hand, dusted it on his traveler’s cloak, and held it out again.

The stranger took it briefly. It seemed a limp grip, though the hand had calluses. “They call me Brother Aum. I am a philosopher by trade.”

“A curious trade. Be there much profit in it?”

“A great deal, but the investment is hard. Would you share a cup with us? It is the hour for prayer.”

The philosopher’s assistant held forth a ceramic cup with steaming tea. A delightful aroma, but … Domino checked the sun’s position. He had to hurry if he was to reach the Kojj Hill line while the pasdarm was in progress. Ravn had planned to ground an hour before local sunset. “No, snor. I be honored for the offer, ah, Brother, but I must be in the Forks before the License Bureau closes or I lose a full day’s sales.”

“Let your road then be your prayer, and your feet its recitation. Remember, son,” and he made a sign over Domino’s head, “Existence exists, and cannot not exist. He exists as the whole wide world, of all the stars and all the galaxies and all the flowers and animals. He exists in the history of men from the oldest days, when we first knew the difference between good and evil to the present day, when we pretend that we do not. And He exists here,” and he touched Domino lightly on the breast.

The day was cool, but the sun shone with peculiar intensity. It was possible the philosopher was sunstruck. Domino Tight laughed and gathered his backpack to a more comfortable position. “That be a knife cut on your cheek, Brother Aum. You were in the world before you went out of it.”

The philosopher smiled and touched the scar. “All wisdom begins with sense experience, Jack-a-Mount, and I learned a great deal from it. It is the custom among some native Terrans to fight with sabers purely for the purpose of exchanging scars.”

He had not exactly admitted acquiring the scar in that manner, and he had avoided the claim of being Terran. Domino Tight was an expert on wounds, having both sustained and administered a fair number of them. That was not a saber cut on the cheek of Brother Aum.

But whatever shameful past the philosopher was covering up—a life as a brigand? A cutpurse?—it was none of Domino Tight’s concern; nor would it have been of Jack-a-Mount. So he bid the man a cordial adieu and set off ahead of them while they finished their cup of tea. Once out of sight, he quickened his pace once more.

The delay at the picket line was nominal. The watchman was not even a magpie, all those being gathered at the Iron Bridge for the welcoming pasdarm. Domino Tight inserted his identification stick into the reader’s orifice, watched it display green with no sign of inner doubt, chatted with the watchman who inspected the pots, pans, and paraphernalia in his backpack, and made no complaint about repacking everything. He offered up his belt knife, but the watchman waved him off. “A li’l sticker like that won’t take you far ’mong the gentry of the Forks,” he said. And Jack-a-Mount replied that so long as he could reach the License Bureau in time to start his rounds of the villages in the morning he did not care even to meet any of the gentry.

“There’s a hostel at the foot of the Enramdon Cut,” the watchman said. “Caters to you folk. Got easy access to Summary Hill and Huonshrid Hill, and you can rent goo-goos there, too.”

The Shadow thanked him and stepped through the gate, only to hear the alarum sound. This, he had not counted on, and he wondered what substances he might have on him that would set the system off. He stepped back, but the watchman only asked him to try again.

The second time triggered no alarm, and with a wave back to the watchman Jack-a-Mount Peddler continued down the southern face of the hill, humming a popular walking song. When he turned the corner and passed through a wooded section he was brought up short by a sharp knife. In this he took a keen interest.

Not a Shadow, he thought, for had it been, the distance between the edge and the throat would have been considerably narrower. A cutpurse of the sort the philosopher warned against? If so, the man had made a grave tactical error.

“Silence becomes us both,” a voice whispered in Domino Tight’s ear. The knife vanished from his throat and he turned to see who had held it. “Well met, Deadly One,” the short, bristly man said, “for when last we met, you were not so well.” He wore a baggy jacket and shorts with many pockets.

The Shadow recalled the boon this man had done him in Cambertown, when an ambush by the Pendragon’s mums had blown away his magpies and shattered his body. Asking no price, this man has given quietus to the informer who had set Domino up and a medical regeneration packet to ease his pain. Apparently, the price was now to be mentioned. “Well met, Hound. Do you have a name?”

The bristly man grinned, and Domino saw that his teeth had been sharpened. “You don’t know me? Pity. I am called Gwillgi. And you are called Domino Tight.”

“You crossed the picket line when I passed through the gate,” said Domino Tight. “So the watchman thought I had triggered the alarm by some malfunction.”

“It was a long, lonely time waiting for a traveler to cross through, and I had just about decided to chance a bolder move when fortune presented me with your presence. You are remarkably hale for a man that detonation had reduced to bony rubble.”

“I had … excellent nursing.”

“It is about that which we might talk one day.”

“You are bold, to step into Gidula’s stronghold, Gwillgi Hound. Why should I not turn you over to Gidula’s people? You would not like Number Two, I assure you.”

“Why not? Three reasons. Because I gave you aid when you were injured. Because I held a knife to your throat and forbore to slice. Because you no more wish to be noticed here than I.” He waved off Domino’s answer. “You resort to disguise to enter this place. Yet in the Shadow War, you and Gidula are allies.”

“What do you know of—”

“I am the League’s unofficial observer. Just now I have an interest in a League citizen who has been co-opted into your squabble.”

That surprised Domino Tight and he said, “The harper? But…”

Gwillgi hesitated. “Yes, the harper.”

But the hesitation had told Domino Tight all that was needful. Gwillgi had not known of the harper, and the list of Peripherals in the affair was rather short. Gwillgi had been following Donovan.

Before Domino could speak, Gwillgi held a palm up to his lips and guided him into the brush behind the trees. “Someone follows.”

Up near the crest of the hill, Domino Tight made out the figures of two men in robes. “Oh, an itinerant philosopher. We met earlier on the trail.”

“Deadly One, you know I am here and I know I am here. That is already too many for my comfort.”

Domino Tight understood and remained concealed while the philosopher passed. He was discussing some point of metaphysics with his acolyte and the Shadow caught only portions of it.

“… and for that reason we see the towardness of nature. Consider the blossoming of the flowers which attract the insects.” The philosopher pointed with his staff. “Or the bristling wild boar that lurks in the brush. Or the birds that eat the seeds and drop them on fertile ground. Therefore, since there is no intellect in nature…”

The philosopher passed around the bend in the road and so from sight and sound. Domino Tight shook his head. “I suppose all philosophers are a little mad.”

Gwillgi’s smile was grim. “Mad perhaps, but not boring. Now tell me that this is not just any harper, but the harper, and that you are here to rescue her and not to assassinate her. It may be that you and I can work together for a short time and so prosper both our happinesses.”

Domino Tight knew he was not at the top of his game. His experiences with the Gayshot Bo had unnerved him to some small degree, and if he could not have a Shadow at his back a Hound would do. Especially if the Hound believed there was a debt of gratitude between them.

“Agreed, then, Gwillgi Hound.” And Domino clasped hands with his sworn enemy.

Méarana was no Hound, not even a Pup, but her mother had taught her a few things. So while she played during the pasdarm she could see that Ravn and Eglay Portion were each pulling their punches. It was not a fight “to the bone,” as the Shadow had told her, but only an exhibition intended to display their prowess. Nonetheless, she maintained in her music the fiction of strenuous combat, the harp strings singing of triumph and tragedy and close calls.

Only once did she strike a false note, and that was when she noticed her father among the spectators at the far end of the Iron Bridge. He was dressed in a blue-and-green shenmat and stared at her with a face of stone.

After the mock combat there was a buffet and Méarana moved uneasily among Gidula’s staff. She herself wore a coral brassard with the Black Snake on it, and theoretically that meant she was on Ravn’s staff. Méarana kept trying to find Donovan in the press, but every time she moved in his direction someone would engage her in conversation or inadvertently block her progress while they plucked food or drink from the tables. Several lesser magpies asked her about the strange instrument she had played and she admitted that it was a Peripheral clairseach. They confessed it souded exotic but not unpleasant. But others, with lower numbers on their brassards, stared at her with curious and mocking expressions on their faces.

One large magpie wearing blue and green and a bold numeral 1 on his brassard approached and whispered while they selected fruits from the buffet. “He says to tell you that you are a fool.” Then the man was gone.

She knew Donovan had sent the man. No one else called her a fool with quite that nonchalance. But her father now wore the shenmat of a Shadow, and had at least one magpie of his own. What sort of prisoner was he? Had she indeed come on a fool’s errand?

Only near the end of the buffet did Donovan manage to reach her side. He spoke without preamble. “How did Ravn snatch you?”

Méarana smiled ruefully. “It was my idea to come rescue you.”

Donovan shook his head, as if his hearing had gone awry. “Then you are a bigger fool than I thought.” He took her arm. “What made you think you could rescue me?”

“Because I thought she would follow.”

Donovan stared at her. His lips quirked a little. Then he turned his head and said, “I hope the recording of the pasdarm was satisfactory.” His finger moved in a certain sign that he had taught her years before on Jehovah. Be careful what you say aloud.

Méarana looked around, saw the recorders and the parabolic microphones by which Gidula would eavesdrop. Donovan made the hand-sign for first-and-last, and indicated Ravn. “She going to set up a concert for you here? Do you think anyone will come?”

She. Come? Meaning, was her mother in fact following?

“Two concerts, maybe. Here I don’t have a following. I’ve a song series about the Shadow War. And the clairseach is an instrument they’ve not seen.” Two. Following. I’ve. Seen.

“Ah,” said Donovan buigh, nodding. “Close quarters I suppose, on your trip. I wish Ravn had left you behind.”

The harper shrugged. She had neither seen nor heard the voice that spoke in the night since the brawl on Tungshen Habitat. “One never knows how things will turn out.”

Unobtrusively, Donovan made a blade of his left hand and ran it across the index finger of his right, much as if he were rubbing an itch. Méarana nodded fractionally. Yes, one of the two Hounds was out.

(Will be here soon?)

(Not known. Ravn protect.)

(Trust no one here.)

“Only you, Father,” she said in clear Gaelactic.

“Especially not me,” he answered.

After the buffet, Méarana and Ravn were escorted into Gidula’s office, and there she saw her father again, standing beside Gidula’s chair. Two other Shadows—one wearing a rose on buff, the other wearing a daffodil on blue—flanked them both. Roses and daffodils? Méarana thought Ravn’s viper far more candid.

Gidula sat room-center in an egg-chair, looking like a corpse propped in his coffin and ready for his ground sweat. He wore a billowing black robe with the comet on his front, and his cap was of the sort Peripherals called a Tudor bonnet. If there had ever been a desk before him, it was nowhere now in evidence. There was not another chair in the room, and magpies stood scattered about in a pattern Méarana recognized from shaHmat as one of mutual support. They might be pawns or rooks or counselors, poised for either attack or defense.

She wondered if Ravn felt vulnerable with no magpies of her own. Méarana touched her sleeve and the knife scabbard strapped underneath it. Poor support she could render in company like this.

The walls were hung with what she called “the art of impressions.” Shapes that suggested without depicting. One hung directly behind Gidula’s chair: a blackish-brown massif occupied the left side of the frame, while the right was open to a sky in which floated a yellow orb of indistinct border. It suggested a hill overlooking a river valley. A black twisting shape in midair seemed at first a human silhouette but on closer inspection proved to be a bird flying off into the distance.

Ravn bowed before Gidula, sweeping her right arm out. Méarana half-expected her to come out of the bow with a pantherlike leap upon the Old One. Her desire for vengeance might run deep enough to hold her own life disposable in the bargain. And where would that leave Méarana Harper and her father?

Donovan looked on without expression, but his eyes were everywhere at once and full of pain. Had he been tortured and broken?

Ravn rose from her obeisance. “Puissant Gidula,” she said, “let the rift between us heal. Let this unworthy one abase herself and salve the wound of her earlier words with the balm of a gift. Behold! I bring you Méarana Swiftfingers, the daughter of Donovan buigh and of Bridget ban and perhaps—though this I cannot guarantee—her mother following desperately and close behind. Prepare then your nets, my sir, for a large fish swims toward them.”

Donovan stiffened and took half a step forward before checking himself. Méarana herself managed little more than a hoarse, “Ravn!” But Olafsdottr did not so much as turn to face her. Two of Gidula’s magpies—one of them weirdly goggled and engulfed by a headset—took her firmly by the arms and led her beside the egg-chair on the side opposite Donovan. The Shadow who stood there—the daffodil-on-blue one—turned his head fractionally, and gave her a surreptitious wink.

Gidula spoke. “We thank you with great kindness, Ravn Olafsdottr, for the generosity of your gift. Accept these tokens of our appreciation.” He gestured and a young afflicted man stepped forward with a silver tray. “First, the balm for those stripes you carried.” The servant proffered a cruet of gold and glass. “Secondly, a signet with the comet upon it.” The servant placed the ring on the Shadow’s finger. “And thirdly, a mere trifle of credits to your accounts, the sum total of which need not concern us.”

Ravn bowed again, thanked Gidula, and stepped back. Tears blazed the cheeks of many of the magpies, astonishing Méarana.

The Old One turned smiling to Donovan buigh. “There. You see, Gesh? There was never any need to torture you.”

Donovan faced him, though the rose-on-buff Shadow laid a hand on his arm as if to restrain him. Donovan shook him off. “You turtle’s egg,” he told Gidula, and the accusation carried all the more weight for the lack of volume in Donovan’s voice. “There was no need for this.”

“Will you now,” said Gidula blandly, “tell us what we need to know?”

“Don’t tell him, Father!” Méarana blurted.

The magpie in the goggles tsked and the harper felt a sharp pain in her side. When she glanced at her, the magpie said, “Shh.”

Gidula sighed. “So untrusting, the youth these days. Harper, I have as many reasons for keeping your father alive as there are stars in the heavens. Well, Gesh?”

“I never had intention of holding back. But a certain caution informs me. After twenty years and more, topography may have changed and the image in my memory may not match the reality on the ground. I could describe the scene, but you might not recognize it on sight.”

“But you would.”

“More likely than any other. I will lead you where you need to go. You may trust the word of Geshler Padaborn.”

“Into the Lion’s Mouth?” Gidula framed his chin in one hand, the elbow for which rested on the arm of the chair.

“Even so. I will need close reconnaissance to specify it precisely. You need not detain the harper, but send her on her way home.”

“Ah, Gesh, ever the romantic! You and I are more alike than you would allow. We cannot take her with us whither we fare. The Fates hazard the dice, and collect all bets. She would stand in endless peril. No, best that she remain here, well looked after, until we return—or until her mother arrives to fetch her.” He looked about the room. “And which of my Shadows would remain here to welcome Bridget ban Hound?”

The Shadow beside Méarana stepped forward. “I, my lord.”

Gidula raised his eyebrows. “You, Khembold Darling? How often has Eglay Portion laid you in the dust?”

Khembold’s cheeks flushed and he stood more stiffly. “To fall to Eglay Portion is no man’s shame. Many are those who may conn a slider, but you set forth against the Names and their Protectors. If Eglay is the more puissant of us, he is more needed in the streets of the Secret City than here.”

Gidula laughed. “Adroitly put. Very well; the boon is yours. Two, stay with him and see to administration of the keep. Khembold, you will take care of the harper?”

Khembold bowed. “Of course. As a rose in a summer garden.”

Ravn Olafsdottr laughed. “Take care, Khembold Darling, that you not prick your thumb upon a thorn. She carries a knife or two up her sleeve.”

“A hammer does not make a carpenter,” he said, “or a pile of stone a house.”

Méarana contemplated flinging the dagger into Gidula’s right eye, and had unconsciously flexed her elbow when she felt the press of a muzzle in the small of her back. It was the small, insectile magpie with the flickering data goggles and the numeral 2 on her brassard. “Please,” the magpie whispered. “Try.” And it was a measure of Méarana’s anger that she very nearly did, despite the promise of death.

But prudence—and a small scissoring of Donovan’s finger—forestalled her. There would be other opportunities perhaps in this nest of adders. She had come to rescue Donovan, but it now appeared that he must rescue her, for it was clear that Gidula had exacted her father’s submission by an implied threat to torture her. She was thus leverage over a man Gidula both needed and feared, and he was not inclined to give up such a lever.

As Khembold led her away, past the bleak eyes of her father, Méarana said to Ravn Olafsdottr, “Ravn, how could you?”

But of course it was obvious how she could. Later, it became more obvious still.

Gidula climbed to the crest of the Nose as he did most every Fifthday when he was at the Forks, but this time he went with only the Ravn for company. He had changed his bonnet for a beret and his billowing robe for a more travel-friendly singleton. Ravn drove the quadwheeler and when she had parked it off the road went to stand near the elder Shadow.

The wind through the pinch of the hills that flanked the river tousled the trees and the struggling wildflowers. Gidula removed his headgear and contemplated the river, white flecked and tumbling as it rolled below the Nose. The sound of the waters seemed muted and distant. Quietly Ravn pulled her teaser from its holster and held it loosely by her side. The setting and the solitude were perfect, and artistically satisfying. She rehearsed her moves once more in her mind.

“It almost sounds like voices,” Gidula said without turning. “The river, I mean. I wonder if anyone could decipher them.”

“That would depend on the language, I should think,” Ravn said. She raised the teaser and aimed it at the small of Gidula’s back. Paralyze, then push him over. It was important that he know that he was dead, and why. But it surprised her how heavy the teaser seemed.

Gidula tossed a handful of gravel over the side of the Nose. “My wife went off here,” he said. “But that was before your time. Before anyone’s time, I think.”

It would take only the smallest pressure on the firing stud to set up the neural pulse. Ravn tensed. A command went from the motor neurons down the arm to the finger. She could actually feel it, like a line of fire. But the finger remained frozen. She reminded herself that he deserved to die for torturing her. And perhaps for betraying the Traditions he claimed to love.

But she lowered her arm slowly until the teaser dangled by her side.

Gidula sighed and raised his eyes to the sky. “To die,” he said, “might almost be a blessing.” Then he turned about. “Why did you not tease me?”

Ravn did not ask how he knew. There were a dozen ways he might have discerned her actions. And yet he had stood there waiting for her to act.

“I don’t know,” she answered him. “I have every reason to.”

“Do you? Every reason?”

“Why would death be a blessing?”

Gidula faced the cliff’s edge once more. “You never knew Ielnor. She was a woman to match a man: strong where I was weak; needy where I was strong. Her eyes were coal-black, her mind as clear as diamond. She was not in the Life, but she could have been. She held the Forks for me, and that during a time when the holding wanted wit and fortitude.”

“She fell off the cliff here?”

Gidula nodded. “And the baby.”

Ravn returned her teaser to its holster and secured it. “You must have cared for her very much.”

Gidula said nothing for a moment, then stepped to the edge. “Since that time, I have never loved anything.”

“Surely—”

“No, it is not good for a Shadow to love. Duty is the higher calling, and duty may one day call upon us to traduce our love. You saw how love led the harper into our trap, as by a nose-ring, and how love gives us now a handle on Geshler Padaborn himself. What was love to them but a hobble! And yet, I have grown passing fond of you during these years of struggle.”

“Of me!”

“As you seem to have grown fond of the harper.”

“She sings well.”

“And yet you turned her over to me.”

“I was oath bound to do so. I could not lure Bridget ban herself. But I think Donovan would have told you what you wanted even without the added spur. His memories were genuinely locked away.”

“Perhaps. We leave shortly for Dao Chetty. They are waiting for me at Mount Lefn.”

Ravn nodded. “Then we had better move.”

Gidula smiled briefly. “They won’t leave without me.” He glanced down the side of the Nose. “It does not look so far, but then it is the speed, not the distance, that matters.”

Ravn stepped beside him and looked down at the rushing waters below. It was far enough, she thought.

For an old man, Gidula was remarkably strong. He seized her and tossed her in a hip roll over the edge of the cliff.

She found herself suddenly a bird, though without a bird’s authority for flight. She spun, and sky, waters, and Gidula’s weeping face passed rapidly before her.

Endless training had taught her body what to do. Her right arm snatched a piton gun from her belt and fired a spike into the cliff face. The cable ran out and she swung at the end of it, striking the rocks with such brutal force that she nearly lost her grip on the gun. She grunted and pulled herself up, found a foothold, and shoved her left fist into a crack in the rock face.

Gidula looked down at her, judged where the piton had struck—well below the lip of the cliff. “It is much harder that way,” he said. “You will grow tired and lose your grip and only then complete what has begun. Better far to have concluded the business in one fell swoop.”

“Why? Because I thought to kill you?”

Gidula appeared to consider that. “Some might count that a reason, but mine is more serious. As I said: I had begun to grow fond of you.”

A horrible cold seized Ravn’s heart. “And Ielnor?”

Gidula’s head bobbed. “It was faster for her. She had no place to seize hold.”

“You pushed your wife off the Nose?”

“No! Oh no. She leapt. Trying to grab the baby. It was the baby I threw off.”

Ravn refused to let the image focus. “You threw your baby off the cliff?”

“Of course not. It wasn’t my baby. That was the whole point.”

“Ah.” Ravn had always thought of duty as a noble beast. But it had fangs. It had fangs.

“In each Shadow’s path,” said Gidula, “there is some fell deed that empties him out and after which there is no returning. Have you ever…?”

“I killed my gozhiinyaw when we moved the governor of Stratfondle.” Once more, she saw that farewell feast, tasted the wine they had toasted with. No one knew which side the others had chosen until one day she found the path to the governor’s life running through the body of Anwar Cheston.

“There, you see?” Gidula said in tones of sweet reason. “After that what other deed can be so dire? One may trod the Shadowed Path with a lighter heart.” He pointed to the rocky knob that crowned the cliff. “Best if you simply let go, Ravn. The upper face is unclimbable. Many others have tried. Why do you suppose Number One has not returned? You see what affection does to one’s instincts. Next time, Ravn, once the gun is aimed, don’t hesitate.”

“I will keep that in mind. For the next time.”

“Well…” He stood and dusted himself off. “I’m off to take down the Committee. Wish me luck.”

“Ooh, my sweet Gidula. I fear I can spare you none. For I need all of it for myself.”