Domino Tight was more charming than wise, but he was wise enough not to voice his thoughts to his lover. By the Fates, he thought, that is the most desirable woman I have ever seen! It would be a sin punishable by the fire to mar that perfect skin. “Why?” he asked, and then asked again with a steadier voice, “Why do you wish her dead?”
“Not dead.” Tina Zhi laughed. “But if she were hurt … If she bore a scar on her face … That would be fit punishment. Jimjim Shot abetted a foul in one of your pasdarms. You will hear of it from Oschous when I return you to Yuts’ga. That act violated … certain rules that had been laid upon her. Her punishment has been willed.”
“Willed. By whom?”
“Are you certain, Domino Tight, that you wish to know the answer to that question?”
There was something in her voice, a loss of flightiness. It no longer soared. And her eyes had grown hard. There was love in them still, but there was something else beside. Looking back, much later, he thought that was the moment when certainty had him.
She looked into his eyes for a long and lingering moment. “Ah,” she said sadly. “You have guessed. Well, fear not, my Deadly One. No harm will come to you. My loins ache for you; my heart longs for you. Together, we will foil this one’s plans.” And she closed her hand into a fist and extinguished the glowing figurine.
When Domino Tight was returned to Yuts’ga, he was half machine. Limbs of titanium enfolded him, multiplied his motions, responded to his thoughts and desires. Wearing this exoskeleton, he could race with the wind; he could strike like a hammer. His eyes could pierce the Cloaks that shrouded Those of Name. He wore such a Cloak himself. “I am become like one of the gods of old,” he told himself as he sprinted unseen through the streets of Cambertown.
“Lyre,” he said over his link, but received no response. The link was dead. High overhead, he knew, his personal satellites had been sanded out of orbit, probably the very night of his ambush. He sampled one of Big Jacques’s channels—and found himself shunted to Oschous’s network.
What he heard was gibberish, but that was because he had not Oschous’s codes. He waited for what he hoped must come. Further gibberish directed to Big Jacques’s network, then instructions directed to the lyre! Those messages he could read, and without breaking stride, he flipped down the goggles on his shenmat and studied the map thus presented. An old warehouse on the edge of town. Pale green dots showed the movements of friendlies. Red dots showed foes. He studied the dance for a time, then asked his belt node to find the best route and set off on it.
As nearly as he could determine, Big Jacques was under siege by Pendragon’s men, who had been taken in the rear by Oschous, who had in turn been surprised by Ekadrina in a classic double envelopment. He flipped over to the frequency used by the city police and with trifling decryption learned that the Riff of Yuts’ga had ordered them to stay clear of the brawl. The Riff was not overtly taking sides.
The heads-up told him that but five of his own magpies lived, Four being senior. Domino Tight thought of pinging him, but decided that if everyone thought him dead in the tavern ambush, he may as well make use of that. So he studied the map, searching out where the pressure was greatest on Oschous and Jacques. He would undermine those attacks; relieve some of the pressure.
He was on the edge of the battle space when he remembered. Tina Zhi had been hidden from his sight, but not from his touch. (Oh, by the gods! Not from his touch.) And that meant that a ramjet round that augured his body by wildest chance would kill him just as dead as one that had been properly aimed.
But in for a minim, he told himself, in for the credit. The Cloak gave him an edge; it did not grant invulnerability.
The first body he encountered was that of a magpie wearing a golden chrysanthemum. One of Pendragon’s boys. Domino Tight analyzed the forensics—the placement of the charring and the angle of the fall—and turned to a nearby building set upon a small elevation, long overgrown with saw grass. Domino climbed this until he stood just below the window. One of Big Jacque Delamond’s boys dangling there. Number Six, he saw on the brassard.
A sniper’s nest to cover the operation center, it provided an excellent field of covering fire, and he gave Magpie Six Delamond kudos for choosing the site. From below came the buzz-snap of teasers, the whine of dazers, and the louder reports of slug throwers. For sheer stopping power, there was nothing like a high velocity slug of metal plowing through the target and transferring its momentum. Now and then, he heard the bang-and-whoosh of ramjet rounds. He saw nothing, of course. Shadows did not act in order to be seen. It may as well have been a pleasant summer’s day, the whines no more than the buzzing of insects.
To the right, on the north side, was a large block of a building: the warehouse proper. A lower extension ran southward, where sealed doorways marked one-time loading docks. Embraced between these two arms, the foreground lay open. It had once been a car park and staging yard, through the plast-seal of which tufts of triumphant grasses had broken. Not even a shadow could cross that expanse unseen and the defenders by the loading docks and inside the main building had it well quartered.
A knot of defenders clustered behind derelict containers and jenny-trucks barring the attackers from reaching the docks. Among them Domino recognized Ravn Olafsdottr. On the farther left, at the south end of the lot, stood a smaller building that had evidently once been a guard shack for security inspections of incoming jenny-trucks. If there had ever been a pad for ballistic shipments, it lay outside the security perimeter.
The besieging shadows had an advantage over Oschous’s boys. The black horses were trying to fall back on the warehouse where Jacques was holed up, and so from time to time they had to show themselves and run; at which point either Ekadrina or Pendragon would try to pot them. Domino Tight studied the pattern, deduced from it whence the shots came, and set himself to observe.
Patience was rewarded. A tuft of grass moved in a way that the wind wound not. The setting sun rolled out a shadow for which there was no evident caster. An incautious shift by a magpie chanced a glimpse of shenmat. Domino Tight marked his targets, grinned fiercely, and after some self-consultation, pulled a mace from his belt.
Then he ran down the little hill—Oh! How he flew! The exoskeleton amplified his motions; the gyros maintained his balance. He swung the mace as he closed behind the first magpie, who crouched on his left knee. Brains spattered, the man fell prone without a word. Simultaneously, and with his other hand, Domino fired an EMP burst across the empty lot, to strike a Sèanmazy magpie lying behind the cover of a composite block. The pulse was weak at the distance, but it would have seemed to the taijis that it had come from Pendragon’s ranks.
In swinging the club and firing his dazer, Domino Tight had shown himself briefly. He closed the Cloak once more, but he knew better than to linger for anyone’s second look. Three more magpies to his left wriggled forward through the tall grass in a triad support formation, infiltrating closer to the warehouse compound. Domino exchanged mace for variable-knife and telescoped the blade to arm’s length. Then he ran across the line of magpies, swinging upstroke-downstroke-up, leaving three throats laughing behind him.
But the grass rippling in the wake of his progress drew fire from black horses pinned down by the old loading docks. It was called “friendly fire,” but Domino Tight saw nothing companionable in it. He changed course to avoid the grass.