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A human waiter had brought their meals and the two fell silent while they were presented and suitable solicitations and compliments were exchanged.

“He does not really wish my opinion on this travesty,” Dawshoo said when the waiter was out of earshot. “These provincials ought not attempt the cuisine of the Triangle worlds unless they have some skill at pulling it off.” He took a bite of his perch.

Gidula smiled and cut into his lamb. “It is the taste of your youth you recall, Beak. Should Fate take you once more home, I dare say you would find the cuisine there as disappointing.”

Dawshoo snorted, and the two ate in silence for a time. “All right, Gidula,” First Speaker said after a number of chews. “You intend to make me ask and, while the night is pleasant enough to be worth extending, there is too much yet awaiting my attention. How do you recommend dealing with the loss of heart?”

“Say rather ‘impatience,’” the other reminded him. “Their enthusiasm wanes because they are eager. A paradox. But the answer is not to deal with the symptom, the ennui; but with the cause, the impatience. Strike now. An all-out assault on the Secret City. Hold nothing back.”

Dawshoo placed his fork carefully on the table. “We would be crushed,” he said flatly.

“Would we? We have been gnawing at the extremities for twice-ten years. Surely that has impaired their capabilities. Key men have been assassinated or suborned; key intelligence and communication posts lie secretly in our hands. And is it not better that our efforts be crushed than that they sputter out ignominiously?”

“Padaborn’s Rising was crushed,” First Speaker observed. “Are you so eager to end as he did?”

“Padaborn was betrayed. And in some ways he did not fare too terribly. You told us yourself: The game is worth the candle.”

Dawshoo squinted at the sky against the glare of the torches. “We shall see.” When he lowered his gaze once more, Gidula was gone and the lamb barely touched. Dawshoo Yishohrann sighed and, reaching across the table, gathered the lamb unto himself and chewed upon it thoughtfully.

* * *

They congregated the next morning in a large meeting space provided by the hotel. There were thirty of them, many known to one another only by reputation. Some had met. A few had worked together in pairings. Perhaps, Dawshoo thought, some were surprised to see who else had shown up; or perhaps they were surprised at who had not.

It was a well-lit room, with a dais on which Dawshoo sat with Gidula on his right and Oschous Dee Karnatika on his left. The Triumvirate, some had called them during the anonymous phase of the conspiracy, when it had not been safe to use names; when no man knew more than two others. Through kaowèn, any man might be brought to betray another, and the rebellion had been built in water-tight compartments, lest loose lips sink it.

Down the center of the room ran a table around which sat the Ten, or at least most of them. Domino Tight was not present. The others leaned against the walls or perched upon sideboards in various attitudes, perhaps understanding only now their place in the scheme of things. Conversation filled the room like a swarm of bees.

Little Jacques the Dwarf completed his circuit of the room and nodded to Dawshoo, holding up four fingers. He had found and neutralized four devices. First Speaker had expected MILINTEL to bug the room, but the thoroughness surprised him. Swoswai Mashdasan must be uneasy at this unwonted gathering in his jurisdiction—for by now he had surely realized the cut of men involved.

Dawshoo leaned toward Gidula and whispered, “I think I will test their mettle before I press your notion.” Then he stood, stilling the idle conversations. “Deadly Ones,” he said formally. They pressed forward to hear him better, sensing a cusp in their affairs: the physical nature of the meeting, the grave demeanor on the faces of the Triumvirate.

“Comrades,” he added more gently. “For twenty years we have struggled against greater numbers and greater guile, and Those who held the Secret City hold it still. Brave friends have died; and strangers you knew only by their deeds. And still no end heaves in sight. What lives, what honors we had before we took up the cause lie ruined and neglected. We have come so far into the woods, comrades, that but two paths lie before us. The first…” And here he paused artfully to enhance the tension. “The first is to fold our tents, dissolve our oaths, and salvage what we can from the debacle.”

A small smile played across his lips. Gidula and Oschous stared at him openmouthed. In the rear of the room, a man shrugged. Another threw his stylus to the table and closed his note screen with a snap. One of the couriers sitting perched along the windowsill slid to the floor, clapped a comrade on the shoulder in farewell, and strode to the door. A second followed her. Someone said, “Well, we had a good run of it,” loud enough for everyone to hear.

With glances both furtive and calculating, they made their way to the doors. More followed. Then two of the Ten stood. Appalled, Dawshoo counted half the room on its feet.

Then Dee Karnatika stood. “Cowards!” he bellowed.

Heads turned at the cry. Hands flew to scabbards. Those at the door paused. Egg Mennerhem called back. “No cowards have come this far,” he said. “No coward would ever have started.”

Oschous tossed his head. “What man fears the past? Its hazards are dead and gone. What matter if it’s two years or twenty? We know what they looked like, those old familiar years. What you hazarded then has no more power to harm. It’s the new years, the stranger years, that inspire dread.”

“There’s a proverb,” said Egg, “about straws and camel backs.”

“Aye. Any man who’s shouldered twenty years has a right to be proud of his burden—and is right to wonder if the twenty-first might break him. But he’s less right, having twenty and facing one, than that same man earlier having one and facing twenty. You’ve come this far. Why not farther?” He suddenly grinned and rubbed his ear. “By the Fates, we’re all dead men anyway. Quitting now would hardly make us lively.”

“Dee Karnatika’s right,” said Big Jacques Delamond, one of the Ten. Some said he was two of the Ten, so large was he. He rose now, like a mountain uplifted by colliding continents. “We’ve come through too much to balk at going through a little more.”

“I never said I balked,” Egg replied. “The Beak did.” He looked about, uncertain. Some of those who had stood to go had returned to their seats. “I’ll see it through—if I see a chance.”

“Happy, I am,” said Dawshoo in a voice that commanded everyone’s attention. “Happy, I am to see Egg Mennerhem of two minds about our enterprise. It would be wrong if all our Egg were in one basket.”

The room broke into laughter, and Mennerhem flushed. A Shadow nearby slapped him on the back. Dawshoo gestured for silence and when he had it, he filled it with his words.

“Happy, I said, and happy, I am. Egg, you and I see the same two paths. You want to see a chance of success if we press on. But do you see a chance of success if we give up? Don’t suppose that we can call an armistice with the Secret City and everything will be as it was before. We are all dead men walking, as brother Oschous said.” He threw an arm around Dee Karnatika’s shoulders. “And any man defying death with me is my brother. You too, Egg. All of you here. Not a one of you has been backward in our cause. So do not think that the Names will forgive everything, and kiss us on the cheeks. More likely, they would ram ‘the gay barb’ up between those cheeks. Those they know of, they will kill. Those they know not, they will track down and then they will kill. In the end, it is all the same.”