Ravn studied the banners hanging in the dead air of the ruin. She thought about raising her own, but as she was presently attached to Gidula’s section, that would be unseemly.
On her way into the rafters, she caught up with Gidula. “He grew angry,” the Old One said, “because he knew you spoke truth.”
She did not ask him how he had overheard her conversation. “Truth has oft that effect.” Ravn reached up and hauled herself onto an angle brace, where she nestled. Around her, others found perches and vantage points. Some deployed recorders of various sorts. Both combatants were highly rated, and the contest promised to be instructive as well as entertaining.
Directly forward, across the kill space, the one-time management offices had been broken open into a sort of balcony and decorated as the Isle of Tears. From it deployed the banner of Shadow Prime, the only banner in the Lion’s Mouth that was plain black, without icon or adornment. Prime stood above it, pretending a sort of neutrality, Father of the Lion’s Mouth, Judge of the Abattoir, benign mentor to all here present—but whose sentiments were subtly known: a loyalist by long indoctrination and by special affection for both Epri and Ekadrina. His hair was grayer and his face more drawn than when last Ravn had seen him.
And what if his two favored students had chosen the other path? Ravn wondered. What if they had gone into rebellion? Would Prime, from love of them, have rallied the whole of the Lion’s Mouth to the overthrow of the Names? Did his loyalty lie with the Names or with his “children”?
And there, a flash of white in the darkness beside him, the “pale princess” Kelly Stapellaufer, whose all too plastic affections had started the whole chain of events. The only one present garbed in white, her banner alone was not flown. Deprived in this venue of her own identity, she was simply “the Lady of the Secret Island” for whose affections the two Shadows would contest.
Of the three Deadly Ones caught up in the wretched affair, Ravn Olafsdottr found no sympathy for any of them, least of all for Kelly. Manlius had let his rod rule his mind. One day it would kill him; for a man cannot be a Shadow and harbor affections. Epri had at least been following orders when he broke them up, though in following those orders he had committed the same crime. But it seemed to Ravn that Kelly Stapellaufer had seduced first one, then the other, and so, whatever other motives had since accumulated, had brought the Lion’s Mouth down into this quiet, desperate civil war.
“What say you?” asked Gidula, who had come silently to Ravn’s side. He had followed her gaze and found the object of it. “Which does she truly prefer? Did she resent Manlius’s attentions from the beginning and use Epri to exact a vengeance on him? Or, once Epri’s captive, did she find her cupid in convenience?”
Ravn affected disinterest. “She no longer matters. All of their grievances have been tumbled under a milliard others. She was the spark, not the explosion. This fight will settle nothing.”
“You think Prime will not honor the chapters?”
“Does the dynamite care if the match that lit its fuse has been extinguished?” Her teeth showed briefly in the night. But then Ravn realized that she was talking to empty space. Absently, she fingered his sigil on her brassard and waited. The Old One had strange humors. In the watching crowd she saw taijis, doves, lilies, and other mons and arms and logos.
Poder Stoop, the Riff of Ashbanal, stepped forward into the open space on the floor below. Poder wore a white surcoat with a red sash to mark him as the Judge of the Kill. So far as Olafsdottr knew, he was neutral in the war. Whoever won would need order maintained on Ashbanal, and that meant a riff and his deputies.
Beside him stood Epri Gunjinshow and Manlius Metataxis and two of the Riff’s magpies. All but Epri bore grim countenances. Epri smiled and waved to supporters in the audience. He did not turn to look at Kelly. Both combatants wore ceremonial golden shackles around their ankles as a sign that they were bound to fight each other. Manlius, it was said, had pledged not to eat sitting down until he had slain his foe. Ravn did not know what pledges Epri had made, but she was certain they were every bit as extravagant.
It would not be fair to say that silence fell, for the gathered Shadows had made little in the way of sound. But the silence deepened when the Riff raised his staff horizontally above his head.
“Honored Father.” He bowed low toward Shadow Prime. Then, over the network that encompassed the arbor he said to the assembly, “Deadly Ones, hear me. These are the chapters of the Pasdarm of the Isle of Tears. It has been agreed, each and several, that the matter of Manlius Metataxis and Epri Gunjinshow will be settled after the ancient traditions of our Guild. Despite the rulin’ of the Courts d’Umbrae that both Manlius and Epri have equally transgressed our Laws and that the slate was therefore wiped clean between them, our two brothers have persisted in their feud, and in doin’ so have sown dissension in our ranks. An’ this dissension bein’ the greater evil,” the Riff continued, “our Father and our senior brothers—Dawshoo Yishohrann and Ekadrina Sèanmazy—have sponsored this-here pasdarm.” He allowed his gaze to travel around the impromptu gallery while a light patter of applause and tapping of roof beams rattled the old building.
“Heh,” whispered Gidula. “He wishes no doubt as to where the blame lies, does he?”
A plague on both your houses. “He straddles the fence,” Ravn told her section leader. “Matters always seem different from the gallery than they do in the blood and the sand.”
Gidula smiled. “A neutral, yes, but is he a loyalist neutral or a rebel neutral? I wonder if he realizes that the time for safe neutrality is passing…”
On the floor, Poder had finished the by-laws and intoned the ritual preface. “Brothers! À outrance! To the blood an’ to the bone!” Then he struck the floor of the automill sharply with his staff of office and the boom reechoed through the empty caverns of the building. The Lady of the Isle of Tears threw a single black rose from the catwalk. The Riff’s magpies struck the golden shackles from the fighters’ ankles and led their charges to their randomly-chosen starting points on the factory floor.
“Best we illuminate ourselves,” Gidula whispered as, “lest one combatant or the other mistake us for his opponent.”
Ravn flipped her night goggles into place and, as she did so, noticed others throughout the building flickering into the pale green glow that marked them as spectators. Golden beams of light sprang up, resembling ropes or fences and marking the bounds of the kill space. She glanced once more at the roost where Prime had stood and noticed that the Lady had vanished, unable perhaps to watch her lover slain. Whichever of the two that might be.
On the old manufacturing floor, neither Epri nor Manlius was such a fool as to step forward. No one emerged victor from a joust of Shadows by offering himself as a target. From her perch high above, however, Ravn was able to pick out both men as they moved cautiously behind cover of the rusting hulks of machinery probing for each other’s location. Their starting positions had by chance been set in the same quadrant of the space, and not terribly far from each other. Ravn wondered if the Riff, hoping for a quick end, had rigged the draw. If so, the play had failed, for the two were unknowingly moving away from each other. Suppressed amusement rippled through the gallery.
Manlius was the larger of the two, supple and well muscled. He moved like a panther. If it came to close combat, the advantage would be his. Epri was more slender, more graceful—a dancer—and owned the clearer eye. At longer distance, where aim outweighed strength, he would hold the edge. The Riff had chosen the venue well. The combination of obstacles and lines of sight gave both men a play to their advantage.