She thought now that the sweet smell she had perceived in the hotel room had been a gas vented into the air system. She herself knew two ways to accomplish this, which her mother in a fit of whimsy had once taught her. But knowing how the hallucination might have been induced gave her no desire to experience a second time the voice that spoke in the night.
“What are you looking for?” Ravn asked her when once they had installed themselves in the restaurant.
“Oh, I like to study faces. Sometimes I see a song in them.”
The Shadow leaned across the table. “Well, stop doing it. No one stares directly at another person here, unless they have superior rank. Eyes downcast, please. Draw no attention to self.”
Ordinary citizens here were called “the sheep,” Méarana remembered. But she had also seen in covert glances that sheep might harbor bitter resentments. “I saw another Shadow the other day,” she commented while inspecting the menu, “the first day we were here.”
“What!” Ravn seized the harper’s wrist and the menu fell to the floor. “Who? Why did you say nothing!”
Méarana tried to pull back, failed. “How would I know who? She was tall, dark skinned—darker than I, but not quite so dark as you—and she carried a thick staff.”
“A staff. What mon did she wear?”
“Mon?”
“Her logo, her sign. What was it?”
“Umm … Oh! The yin-yang. The taiji.”
Ravn hissed. “Ekadrina Sèanmazy! Did she notice you?”
“Why would she notice me? She wouldn’t…” Then, under Ravn’s insistent gaze, “No. She didn’t even turn in my direction.”
Ravn shook her head. “That is what you must expect should Ekadrina notice you. She knows what Bridget ban looks like, and you resemble your mother passing well.”
“She was heading toward the Dao Chetty drop-ports. Probably returning to the Lion’s Mouth from some mission.”
“I’m sure she was. How many magpies accompanied her?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t count them.” But Ravn squeezed her wrist tighter, and Méarana closed her eyes and tried to conjure the scene in her mind. “One. Two … Seven. I think.”
Ravn released her. “She should have had eight.”
“Maybe I just didn’t notice. Or she lost one on her mission, or…”
“Or she left one here to watch us. Kumbe! I thought I sensed a nearby presence.”
Méarana almost said, Don’t worry; it’s only a pair of Hounds. But to a Shadow that would hardly be a comfort. “I’m sure she didn’t notice me, let alone mistake me for my mother, or she would have…” She fell silent as she considered all the things a Shadow “would have” done if she thought a Hound sat alone on a hotel patio.
“An such a wan sees me wi’ ye—”
Ravn’s finger touched Méarana’s lips. “Hoosh, hoosh, my sweet. Coome with me to the women’s comfort station…” They rose from the table and wound calmly through the potted shrubbery to the back of the restaurant. “Let no dialect of Gaelactic twist your tongue,” Ravn cautioned her. “Search earwig. Become one with it. Empty mind and let Confederal dialect fill it, lest moment of stress betray you. Try dialects of Heller Connat. There is one that resembles Gaelactic—no, out side door—but your kind, the golden-skinned gingers, are found on … on Miniforster, Bhaitry, and Wing Bahlo, not on Heller Connat.” She looked both ways up the service corridor, then allowed Méarana to follow. “Never do,” she whispered, “what you say you will do when your speech may be overheard.”
“But Ravn,” the harper said in realistic tones. “The likelihood that a detached magpie has been watching us and overheard—”
“Is not zero, and few are the Shadows who have died from an excess of caution.” Ravn reached into her shoulder pouch and pulled out something about the size and shape of a dinner napkin. This she pounded several times with her fist and then pressed against her face. It hissed, and steam rose.
“Ravn!” Méarana exclaimed—but in a whisper.
Ravn gasped and pulled the towel from her face, and the harper was shocked to see the Shadow’s features sagging like a wax candle. Quick massages raised cheekbones, shortened nose, shaped ears. A close examination in a pocket mirror led to some last-moment touch-ups before her face had once more hardened.
“Ayiyi,” she said in a voice Méarana had never heard her use before, “dat hoits like da beaches.” She pulled a knife from her sleeve and said to the harper, “Yer mop’s too long.” A few swipes of the blade sufficed to correct it. “Ah, I missed my vocation, me. Shoulda been a beautician.” Then she reached once more into her pouch and from a tube squeezed a dollop of gel, which she rubbed vigorously between her palms. She worked it first into her own bright yellow hair, turning it a dull brown, then into Méarana’s now-shortened red hair, turning it dark auburn.
“Now the piece of resistance. A few fasteners pulled loose an’ refastened carelessly. A rumplin’ o’ da clothin’. Wait—while I smear yer lip dye.” Before the harper could react, Ravn took Méarana’s face in her two hands and kissed her hard on the lips. “Dere,” she said, stepping back with satisfaction, “jus’ two friends, is all, who stepped up a service corridor fer a quickie.”
Ravn put her arm around Méarana’s waist and led her out to the plaza. Ravn became another person. She slouched, her eyes searched the walkway, she made way for anyone more colorfully dressed. Méarana perforce did likewise.
The harper thought their dishevelment would attract everyone’s attention, but only a few heads turned. A business traveler grinned at them. Beneath one of the boulevard-lamps, a black-clad night-walker in a girdle-skirt and lacquered hair that fit her head like a helmet scowled as if at potential competition. A short man stirring his drink idly at a café table barely glanced at them. Méarana wanted to see whether anyone was watching the restaurant, but Ravn, by body pressure, steered her away onto Corridor 1716-M-2, which led to the Sixteenth Sector.
“I don’t know,” Méarana said when they were out of the public square and in a narrow walkway lined with anonymous doors. “This may be a lot of trouble for nothing.” She pulled away from the Shadow. “How did you do that with your face?” She studied her companion’s features closely. “It wouldn’t long fool those who know you.”
The Ravn took quick glances over her shoulder. “Don’t hafta. Jus’ enough to get through a tight spot. Wouldn’ta fooled Ekadrina herself for a Bhaitry minute. Kumbe, does my face hurt! Subcutaneous implants,” she added in a more normal tone. “The hot pad softens them up so I can mold them, but there’s a limit to how far I can push and pinch, and after a while it reverts to normal.”
An escalator led to the Upper Deck, Level Four, and they backtracked through Seventeen Upper to Sector Eighteen, where they found a seedy residence hotel called Mamma Kitten’s. “Mamma,” as it developed, was a bewhiskered man who massed at least twenty-one accelerated stones, and his name really was Kitten. He ran everything by word and hand and nothing of his crossed the threshold of Tungshen’s information net. His was, in a sense, a hole in the habitat.
Ravn departed for a time, returning later with some fresh clothing and other items that she had secured from an autovendor.
“You leavin’ anythin’ at th’ Kings?” she asked.
Méarana’s harp was aboard Sèan Beta. “No.”
“Good, ’cause I ain’t goin’ back there.”
What Méarana very much feared she had left behind—along with Sèanmazy’s hypothetical magpie—were Gwen and the voice that spoke in the night. For a moment, Méarana wondered if Ravn’s maneuver had been intended to throw the two Hounds off the scent. But Ravn couldn’t know about them. She was not that clever. Was she?