But he and Ravn were gozhiinyaw, blood brothers, and once contact was made it required little to induce him to come with her to Zãddigah-Terra.
“I haff good news,” the Ravn announced after returning to Mamma Kitten’s from a comm. center in Sector Two Under, one the far side of the cooper body in and around which Tungshen was built. “And bad news.”
Méarana, who had spent the better part of the day transcribing notes into the particular code that Clanthompson employed, had delighted to hear the former but worried at the latter. “What is the good news?” she asked.
“My darling Dominoo will be here soon!”
Méarana hesitated only fractionally. “And the bad?”
“My darling Dominoo will be here soon!”
The harper blinked and puckered in thought. “Ah,” she said at last. “That isn’t good, is it?”
The Ravn threw herself onto the tatty old couch that disgraced the center of the common room they shared. Springs complained, fabric tore.
“Light wants a languid seven hours to make the trip. Shoottles want days. Yet Dominoo will meet me this very afternoon! What cause has Dominoo Tight to shoow light his heels?”
“There are two possibilities.”
Ravn cocked an eye at Méarana and planted her chin on her fist. “Which two?”
“One, it’s a trap. You’re being led to meet someone already on Tungshen. Sèanmazy’s magpie, maybe.”
“And the timing is unrealistic because…?”
“He doesn’t know how long it took you to contact Domino and thinks your friend left Dao Chetty back when you sent your first call-worm.”
“Very good. I am assigning that medium probability. And second?”
“Domino Tight came by quondam leap.”
“And that means…”
“… one of the Names, likely this Tina Zhi, knows about the rendezvous.”
“Yays, and that is the bad news of it. What might Domino Tight have told her in passion of pillow-bed? Or what might she have extracted from him? Your mother did teach you three things, maybe even four. We make you Shadow someday soon.”
“No, thanks. I’ll stick with harping.”
“This I assign the higher chance. The call-worm I received referenced elliptically in the form of an allegory a bistro in the Fifth Sector that Domino and I know from old. No one but he and I would associate that particular phrase with that particular place. If my enemies know this, they can only have torn it from Domino’s lips; and if they have done so, then all is lost in any case.”
“Any man might be broken,” Méarana agreed. “But if the Technical Name desired to meddle, she would not have so obviously transported her lover here, and so announce her participation.”
Ravn Olafsdottr contemplated that wisdom, and reluctantly nodded.
Ravn led Méarana through an intricacy of tunnels and maintenance ways halfway around the habitat to enter from an unlikely angle a commercial mezzanine overlooking the plaza where the meeting was to be. And yes, down below was her sweet Domino Tight sitting at a café table and but lightly disguised in the drab, baggy clothing of a sheep.
She turned away from the rail and ushered Méarana into a store. “You stay here,” Ravn cautioned the harper. “This shop offers entertainments for transients who must lay over for their connecting flight. There are active and passive sims—mojies, they are called here—musics, and suchlike foo-foo. Browse until I come back for you.” Then, arranging with the shopkeeper to keep rogue males from bothering the harper and cautioning him on the many undesirable things that would befall him if he failed, she took a circuitous route to the plaza below, so as to approach Domino from another direction.
She came up behind him in his “four,” but of course he had positioned a reflective vase to reveal such quadrants and, since they were not at enmity, he rose and turned and held out a weaponless hand in greeting.
The weapon, of course, was in his other hand; but he slipped it into its sheath with an economy of motion. They sat across from each other, and neither said anything for a long moment.
Domino Tight was a changed man from the last time Ravn had seen him. There was a haggard look to him that reminded her of trapped animals. Ravn immediately suspected kaowèn—or, worse, duxing kaoda. Had he been caught and turned by Ekadrina or her people? Could both of Méarana’s scenarios be true? Domino and a trap?
Domino Tight spoke first. “You look like your face had an argument with the duroplast.”
“Yayss. And the duroplast loost.” But her gozhiinyaw did not laugh, and Domino Tight was a man known for his humors. “You do not look well,” she told him. “Is the quondam leap so harrowing?”
He shook his head. “Have you ever coupled with a cobra?”
Ravn thought about that, and finally shook her head. “Not to my certain memory.”
“That is what it likens to,” he said.
“You mean coupling with Ti—”
But Domino hushed her. “If I call her name, she … feels it. Somehow. We’re entangled, whatever that means; and she would be at my side in an instant. I don’t know what might happen if someone else says her name in my presence.”
“I had thought her your pleasure.”
“As a clerk in the Gayshot Bo, she was sweet and pliable. But now … Have you ever seen a cat play with a mouse?”
“Of course. Is part of basic training.”
“Well, I’m the mouse. She is insatiable. The things she desires … It is as if normal pleasures have long since withered for her, and so she must seek out the novel and the … creative. Oh, laugh all you want, Ravn. But it wears. And there is always the thought in the back of my mind: What if I cannot perform to her satisfaction? What if I am of no more use to her?” He paused and took the drink that was before him, and it sloshed a little onto the table. “She seems so young, but she is old, old. Eternal youth? You would think it would pall after the first few lifetimes.”
“Gidula would find the prospect pleasing. Age does not creep upon him; it races toward him on tiger’s feet. He would not mind learning her secret. Ah, but he’ll not have the opportunity. Domino, my sweet. Listen to me. There is something I must do—something I have vowed to do—but I need you to make the play.” And she explained to Domino Tight the nature of her vow.
“Of course I will help. But why move Gidula? He pretends openly to be neutral, but he is one of us.”
Ravn picked up a glass of water that her companion had left untasted. “He pretends openly to be neutral, and pretends covertly to be rebel; but that is of no account. My task is outside the Shadow War. He tortured me to extract a vow I was disinclined to give.”
“And…?”
“The torture should have come afterward.”
“Ah. As when we take the Shadow’s Oath…”
“Exactly so. So that we know, down in the bone, the penalty for breaking it.”
“It seems a delicate point, a matter of mere timing. You would slay Gidula because he missed a beat?”
“If you’ll not help me…” Ravn made as if to push away from the table.
“I’ve already said I would. And—hmm—I suppose that tells me all I need to know about why you must do what you must do. A vow extracted by torture ought not be valid. Come the Revolution, all that oathing goes by the board.”
Ravn sighed. “I suppose it will. Listen. I will give you back your cloaks and drop you onto the tableland north of the Forks. There will be a ceremonial entry—the Old One keeps the ancient troth—then, while everyone is focused on the Iron Bridge, you will slip though the sensors on Kojj Hill and make your way into the stronghold and go to ground until the moment comes. I have maps, with the key locations pricked off. Study them along the way.”