The pellet had sufficient force to penetrate the skull but not to exit and so neither endangered anyone else in the room nor created unsightly splatter. Instead, it ricocheted about inside Khembold’s cranium several times. Not that it mattered after the first.
Méarana had acted on the happy intuition that the door signaled Domino Tight, and while her intuition had been wrong, it had been right enough.
At first outraged by Ravn’s betrayal, Méarana had in a cooler moment reasoned that had Olafsdottr meant simply to hand her over to Gidula, she would not have first collected Domino Tight. She chided herself for not realizing that immediately, but Ravn had likely acted deliberately to create the necessary mask of shock and anger in her prisoner.
“Quickly,” the harper warned her. “Number Two—”
“Oh, do not worry. Sweet Doominoo will handle the vixen, thanks to the fortuitous door-chime.” Ravn looked her over. “I might almost envy Khembold Darling his desires, save only to what a poor end he came because of them. Without your distraction, I doubt I could have taken him so by surprise.” She stepped to the doorway, pressed against it, and took a quick blick into the sitting room. “Oho,” she said, pulling back, “you have a gentleman caller. Please make yourself decent—or not, as your spirits move you, lest he regret his celibacy.”
“Celibacy? The philosopher?”
“Yayss. And it pains me to say that he and my sweet Domino are at dazers drawn. How many Hounds did we draw in your wake, my sweet? Too many, I think. Perhaps we should salve things over. For it would be poor form for your rescuers to slay one another in the epilog.”
Little Hugh O Carroll was not so easily salved. He held a hand out to Méarana when she emerged. “To me, a cushla.” He did not shift his aim from the Shadow. But neither did the harper rush to his side.
“Think, man,” Ravn Olafsdottr told him. “Who slew Méarana’s attackers? Whatever enmities run between your fellowship and ours, on this matter we are as congruent as triangles.”
“And we have a truce,” Domino Tight said in a husky voice, “with Gwillgi.”
“I saw him in the brush with you,” said Little Hugh, “up on the ridge. The bristly boar in the bushes. But where is he now?”
“We could not be certain,” Domino Tight explained, “that they would choose Méarana’s apartment for the kill space. So Gwillgi tracked them outside while we lurked here. I had expected him at the door, not you.”
“We really do have a truce, Rinty,” Gwillgi announced from behind Hugh. “So why not be laying your dazer aside.”
When everyone had put weapons away and a degree of calm had been restored, the Hounds sat on one side of the room and the Shadows on the other. Méarana took a third seat between them. She looked first to the one, then to the other. “There’s a moral in this room, I think.” Her voice came out a little shaky, because she had begun to realize how close to death she had danced. But it is better to be close from this side than from the other. She felt almost giddy, all light-headed and her senses heightened. The air seemed fresher and more invigorated; the light and colors, more intense.
The razor’s edge.
“It was closer than you think, sweet,” Ravn whispered to her. “We had no right to come out of it alive, let alone unscathed.”
Gwillgi said to Little Hugh, “Where is Greystroke? And if you tell me he is sitting beside me, I will rip his face off with these very fingernails.”
“Another Hound!” said Domino Tight. “And the two on Tungshen—”
“Hush, my sweet. I snatched a cub from Mother Bear. A moderate response was unlikely.”
Domino pursed his lips. “I am not sure I like this. The Shadow War is one thing; the Long Game, another.”
Méarana said, “And where is Mama Bear? Was this rescue nae important enough for her tae tag along?”
“Of course it was,” Bridget ban said from the doorway, the Queen from the acting troupe. She strode into the room, took in its contents, the body, the amiably gathered Shadows and Hounds, glanced from the hand-spike in the back of Number Two to the weapons belt of Domino Tight, studied the bruises on her daughter’s face. “But there is gae more to a rescue than simply barging in, dazers flashing. We’re deep in the Triangles, girl, and getting out will be as tricky as getting in.” She turned and slapped Ravn Olafsdottr across the face. “I have waited a good long time to do that,” Bridger ban said, bending close to Ravn’s face. Domino Tight stiffened, but Ravn took the blow in silence.
“I did my dooty,” she said a moment later, “though it took some careful choreography to move all the pieces into place.”
“Pieces,” said Little Hugh. “What pieces?”
“Ooh, Donovan, Méarana, Bridget ban, sweet Domino. Gidula.”
Gwillgi snorted. “Seems to me, was Gidula who almost moved you into place.”
A wave of the hand. “Why play game with no hazard?”
“Hazard? Ye could hae lost my daughter!” Bridget ban took Méarana’s hand and turned it over. “Ye’re bleeding.”
“I cut it on a harp string.”
Bridget ban looked about. “There was another. A man.”
The harper flexed her hand, rubbed the back of it across her cheek. “I played a goltraí for him, a lament, and he choked up.”
Ravn tossed her head to indicate the bedroom, and the Red Hound strode into it. She returned a moment later, face as crimson as her hair. “Did he succeed?” she asked her daughter.
“He died unsatisfied.” And then, more slyly than she had intended, Méarana added, “I used one of your auld tricks.”
Bridget ban said nothing for a moment. “We’ll speak of it later. You need to work on your grip so you don’t cut yourself next time.” She turned to the Banty Hound. “Gwillgi! We have been trying to find you.”
The topaz eyes gleamed and the smile showed teeth. “I was not wishful of being found.”
“Oh,” said Méarana. “That’s what Father meant! The cross-grained Hound! He knew Gwillgi was close by.”
“Yes. He and I met in Prizga, during his ‘hajj.’ We—”
Graceful Bintsaif came to the doorway and interrupted. “Cu,” she said. “Greystroke and I have sabotaged the comm. center. No warnings will reach Gidula’s ship before he has departed Terran space. And Grimpen and Obligado have interdicted the port. The remaining vessels now lack a vital part no longer in stores.”
“Very well.”
“Cu—” The junior Hound glanced at Ravn and Domino and lowered her voice. “There are a great many magpies and lesser militia, and I doubt we can keep the lid on this for very long.”
“Tosh. We will be gone before most of them even know we have come. A theatrical troupe, a wandering philosopher … Such folk come and go. And Gwillgi may slip out as silently as he slipped in. My daughter is the problem. She has had too much visibility, and cannot simply leave the stronghold. Who commands here?”
Ravn grinned. “The dead body on the bed.”
“And who is second?”
“The dead body by your foot. And before you ask who is third in line, I could suggest myself. Along with Khembold and Eglay, I was Gidula’s Shadow-associate. As such, I outrank Four, who is the next magpie in line.”
“He took One and Three with him?”
“Well, Three. One is at the bottom of the very cliff over which he threw me. The Old One disposes,” Ravn added, “with that which he needs no more. Our kenning was that he would have Méarana removed once his ship was out of contact and we laid our plans accordingly.”