“Afraid I’d try to jump you?”
“No.”
“Then…?”
“I meant I was not afraid, not that you would not try.”
Donovan grunted and returned his attention to his meal. So far, he had not asked the Confederal her reasons for kidnapping him. He was a past master at the game of waiting. Either Olafsdottr wanted him to know or not. If she did, she would eventually tell him. If not, asking would not win the answer.
“I will be missed, you know,” he told her.
The Ravn’s answer was a flash of teeth. “I think noot. The Bartender, he is already sailing your drinks to oother lips. ’Tis noo skin oof his noose who buys them.”
“I was on my way to Dangchao. The Hound, Bridget ban, is expecting me. When I don’t arrive…” He allowed the consequences of his nonarrival to remain unspecified. A Hound of the League could be many things and anything, as adroit and dangerous as a Confederal Shadow, and Bridget ban not least among them.
But Olafsdottr only smiled and answered in Manjrin. “Red Hound missing many years. Some associates claim credit, though I believe their bragging empty.”
“You were right to doubt them. She has returned and awaits me even now at Clanthompson Hall.”
“Ah. If so, associates much red-faced.” Olafsdottr laughed and switched to the Gaelactic that was the lingua franca of the League. “But she hardly awaits you, darling. Detestable in the ears of Bridget ban falls the name of Donovan buigh. Old grudge?”
The Fudir grimaced. “Old love.”
“Same thing, no?”
Donovan shrugged and smiled, as if to say that even old grudges had expiration dates. Olafsdottr might not believe that Bridget ban would come looking for him. Neither did Donovan; but why not sow doubts?
The Long Game between the Confederation of Central Worlds and the United League of the Periphery might be played on a chessboard of suns, and in it this agent or that might be as a grain of sand on a broad beach; but where the agents stood “in the blood and sand,” matters were more particular, and interstellar politics only the medium in which they swam. Personal loyalties mattered. Personal grudges mattered. In the sudden flash of the barracuda’s teeth, what significance has the vast and swirling ocean?
After Donovan had eaten, Olafsdottr locked him in the ward room. It was decorated to resemble the cabin of an Agadar sloop, a sailing vessel much favored on that watery world. It was longer than it was wide, and paneled in light woods. A holostage with a play deck and swivel chair adorned one end. To its right hung a set of wall-mounted nautical instruments that, the nearest ocean being rather distant, were certainly more decorative than functional. Cabinetry and cushioned benches ran along the walls, including a bunk recessed into the wall. Two comfortable chairs occupied the middle of the room. The overall effect was “taut.”
“Stay poot,” Olafsdottr said, wagging a finger before she closed and locked the door on him. “Plainty in there to amuse you,” she added from the other side.
And so there was. The Fudir’s primary amusement on Jehovah had involved the opening of locked doors. He set to work. “Not very difficult,” he judged.
It’s a monoship, the Sleuth reminded him. Why would a one-man ship have high-end locks?
Why would it have locks at all? wondered Donovan.
What is the second-most frequent usage of monoships? asked the Pedant.
What is the most frequently annoying personality we have to share a head with? the Sleuth answered.
Funny that you should ask, the Brute said.
Private yacht?
Second-most frequent, Silky.
Donovan sighed. Sometimes his head seemed a very crowded place. On occasion, he remembered that he had been the original and the others remained in some sense tenants, and he remembered that he had once been alone.
Perhaps, said the young man in the chlamys. But the “I” that cooks up schemes, and the “I” that remembers everything, and the “I” that is master of every martial art, and … all the rest of us … We are all the same “I,” aren’t we? We’re closer to you than your skin.
Donovan said nothing. He was not especially fond of his skin, which stretched sallow and drumhead tight across his bones. He still owned that gaunt and hollowed-out look that long years in the Bar of Jehovah had given him. He wondered if he might have always looked that way, even in the flush and vigor of his youth. Assuming he had had a youth, or that it had been flushed with vigor.
We’ll remember someday, Pollyanna assured him.
Donovan was less sure. Sometimes matters were lost past all retrieval; and maybe happily so. Some memories might best remain covered than recovered. “I liked it better when you had all fallen silent,” he said, and wondered if the drug that Olafsdottr had given him had also upset the delicate truce he had reached with himself the previous year.
“Smuggling,” snapped the Fudir, distracted from his inspection of the lock. “Smuggling and bonded courier work. All right? Now quiet down and let me work.”
Bonded couriers. Precisely. There is a popular show on Dubonnet’s World called Samples and Secrets, in which the unnamed pilot of a monoship brings each episode some package—a secret, a visitor, a treasure—that changes the recipient’s life for good or ill.
It’s why they’re sometimes called “schlepships,” the Sleuth said.
The Fudir pulled his special tool from the hidden cache in his sandal and set to work on the lock mechanism. The Pedant had been right. These were not high-security locks. The door opened onto the main hallway.
Ravn Olafsdottr was waiting outside. “Really, Donovan, where do you expect to go?”
The Fudir grinned. “Admit it, Ravn. You would have been disappointed if I hadn’t come out. If you wanted me to stay put, you would have had better locks installed.”
“I was in a hurry. But I may do so, if you do not behave yourself. You were not supposed to awake so soon. Annoy me too greatly and I will soospend you once more.”
“And forego the pleasure of our company?” He looked up and down the corridor. “You have Eyes all through the ship, don’t you?”
The Confederal shrugged a little, as if not to belabor the obvious. “And motion sensors for your restlessness. You move about, I hear the ping of your processions.”
“Then what does it matter if I stay in one room or not?”
Olafsdottr scratched the bright yellow stubble of her hair. “Who can say? Perhaps you sneak up behind, garrote me, have your wicked way, and take ship back to Jehovah.” A foolish notion, her smile said. “We will be good friends sometime, you and I; but that time is not yet.”
“Don’t be so sure I would want my way with you,” the scarred man grumbled. “I’ve been with more toothsome wenches than you in my time.”
“Ooh! Boot do they bite so wail with those tooths?” She gnashed the dentition in question and switched to Manjrin. “You stay ward room now. We past Dangchao. Be on Tightrope soon. Not jog pilot’s elbow on such road.”
Inner Child chirped with alarm, but Donovan maintained the scarred man’s composure. “The Tightrope,” he said casually. “No wonder you snatched a monoship. Anything bigger couldn’t take that road.”
“A narrow way, but correspondingly swift,” his kidnapper said in Gaelactic, “as Shree Bernoulli commanded. And speed is of the essence. Urgent matters await us on Henrietta, and the game is worth the candle.”
Donovan cocked his head attentively, but Olafsdottr did not elaborate on the nature of the candle. The Pedant volunteered that Henrietta was the sector capital of Qien-tuq, in the Confederal borderlands. Once in the Confederation, escape would become problematical.