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.
<But the typical result of a malfunction,> said Inner Child <would be atmospheric incineration. Which would make the safety harness a bit irrelevant.>
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.