Hayzoos had warned his brothers and sisters on both sides of the Discontentment to take no hand in the Shadow War, and he himself had worked carefully to maintain neutrality, awkening too late to the awful truth that the entire affair had been instigated by the Old Guard. It is the habit of power that the fist clenches tighter in rigor mortis. “Matters do have a way of getting out of hand.” If Ngaumin Heer, the Second Name, was behind this, there would be hell to pay. It had been a wojök, a peace gesture, to allow her the second office, a sign that the Committee of Names Renewed was merely furthering the will of an Old Guard now honorably retired. Everyone had agreed to believe that.
Though evidentally not everyone. Acceptance-now had been traded for resistance-later. And “later” was “now.”
But the initial targets had been Old Guard—and that made no sense.
Hayzoos was fully dressed and armed now, and he pulled his cordon in from the perimeter of the bedchamber. “Quickly now to Central Office,” he said. And the söng’aa told the other Protectors, “Exit in formation seven.”
They opened the door to find one of the door wardens on the floor, his ceremonial uniform chopped to rags by flechettes, and the second warden in a crouch aiming his gun at the official party. Behind him were five magpies in black-and-white diagonal stripes. All of them poured withering fire into the party of the Powerful Name. The söng’aa died first, throwing himself in front of his master, and the other Protectors, caught like a cork in a bottle, lacking room for maneuver, were cut down, one by one. The Office minions fell like wheat before a scythe.
Three of the attacking magpies died in the counterfire, for surprise was no longer theirs, and Dawshoo Yishohrann was himself badly wounded. The traitorous door-warden left no more memory than a greasy spot on the marble floor.
Afterward, Dawshoo spoke through clenched jaw over his link. “Four. Collateral only. Target-Six prepared, escaped. Three magpies moved. Awareness spreading; resistance stiffening.” The link encoded and squirted the message. Good work, indeed. Dawshoo himself had moved five targets already. Three in their sleep, two in flight. This had been the first return-fire. He hoped that Oschous had not run into similar resistance. The link vibrated and he looked at the query. It was from Oschous. “No,” he answered. “I don’t know how he escaped. He was in my sights, then he was just … gone.”
Like at the warehouse, Oschous messaged; but Dawshoo had not been at the warehouse.
The one regret of Paul Feeley, the Radiant Name, was that his aim had not been better when he had intervened on Yuts’ga. But Jimjim Shot had been hurt, her beauty disfigured, and how could anyone so disfigured head up the Ministry of Arts? His sister’s mutilation had wrenched him for a moment, and had thrown his game off just a bit, or the whole nonsense might have been ended right there. And if only that oaf, Ari Zin, had not intervened so bombastically, only to discover that in war people got hurt! Boo-hoo. Paul had heard later that Padaborn had intervened on the reactionaries’ side. Padaborn! Had they not settled his case a score of years ago? Or had he truly been in hiding these last twenty-odd years? Hiding where? But if Padaborn fought at all, he ought to have raised arms in support of the Committee! If even Padaborn has turned against us …
The view from the rooftop of his Residence provided Paul with a panorama of the Secret City. Seventeen Residences were, by his count, already burning and one had collapsed already into glowing ruins. Commotion roiled the streets. Milling sheep, servants and merchants, cadenced Protectors at the double-quick, cries of anguish, shouts of confused ignorance. Silver ribbons cast by the two-moon night shimmered in pools and ponds. Shadows and magpies glided sylphlike through the turmoil. The Red Gate groaned open and a squadron of bolt tanks rolled into the Secret City from the cantonment, and the Radiant Name could see that the disorder had spread on the wings of rumor into San Jösing itself. Or at least, into the Old Town. The sheep pens on the east side of the Pearl were showing lights but no evidence yet of disorder.
By his estimate, the first Residences attacked had been Old Guard, but the assassinations had spread to the Committee now. The Powerful Name had barely escaped, and had named the malcontent Dawshoo Yishohrann as leading his attackers. Word was that Sèanmazy’s loyalists had attacked the Old Names for some mad reason—though Sèanmazy was denying this—and now the reactionaries’ dogs had responded by attacking the Committee. In either case, dogs must learn not to bite the feeding hand. Both Shadow-factions must be supressed.
“It might be one faction,” suggested his captain-Protector when the Radiant Name had voiced his thoughts, “sowing dragons’ teeth on both sides of the furrow.” Protectors lined the rooftop, guarded the drop-wells, watched the skies, the Residence walls. Who knew from which direction attack would come? Their mouths set in grim, worried lines. What, wondered Paul Feeley, did they suppose they were paid for?
The first attacks had been stealthy, and word had not spread until dozens had already lain in their own gore. Now the attacks were more open, the targets better prepared. He wondered if the spectacular firebombs were not themselves a form of distraction. Who was clever enough to pull off the Play of the Dragon’s Teeth? Gidula? But the Old One was neutral so far as anyone knew, dreaming his mad dreams of a past that would never come again.
“Slinger!” cried the Protector at the monitor station.
Everyone dropped prone except the Radiant Name, who stood gloriously erect in his sparkle armor. It was important to put on a proud show. The slinger, a rigid wire missile, slid off the armor’s field and pierced the side of the nearest drop-well.
“Sir,” said the captain-Protector. “We should evacuate the rooftop. We are too exposed.”
“Nonsense.” He did not consider his Protectors’ lack of sparkle armor, nor the fact that they could not winkle out at a moment’s notice with a quondam leap. Perhaps he should have, for they surely did.
The captain-Protector clicked over the company link to evacuate the rooftop. Then he pulled an incendiary pack from his belt and punched it active. And then, because to turn on his Protected was the most wretched violation of a Protector’s oath imaginable, he embraced the Radiant Name.
Paul Feeley knew instantly what the man had done and winkled out; but the captain and—more crucially—the incendiary pack held between them winkled with him. The packet ignited as the pair reemerged from uncertainty into the Residence’s Safe Room. The captain-Protector dissipated in a plasma burst. The sparkle armor protected the Radiant Name from the blast, although the compression wave mashed him severely; but the heat, confined within the Safe Room, melted him inside the twinkling energy field. He retained human shape for a time, but only until the field collapsed.
Ari Zin was prepared, and he dispatched with his own dazer the first Shadow to slip into the command center in the Residence. He did not ask how the man had entered. That was for his Protectors to ascertain. He had meanwhile to direct the counterattack. The screen pricked off on a map the Residences and other locations where Names had been attacked. The processors sifted the mode of assassination, the faction of the victim, the location, and the time sequence in hope of conjuring a pattern that made sense of it all, and from which to plan the counterstroke.