The door signaled and the warden checked the monitor. “It’s a Shadow,” he announced. “Black, a taiji.”
“Sèanmazy,” muttered the Martial Name. Her faction supposedly supported the Committee. “Admit her, but stay wary.”
The Long Tall One strode in with her cape and singular walking stick. She glanced at the War Board and took it in, considered the body of the Shadow in the corner. “Ah. Egg Mennerhem,” she said. “He has for several weeks been in Nengin City lurking. We were curious for what purpose. We tink dere are reserves following after da initial infiltration. This one was not of da first water.”
Or you would not have slain him was the unspoken subtext. “How did they…”
“Dere are abandoned tunnels under dis city, from da old days. Da rebels have been using dem to scurry under our feet. You search your subbasements, Martial Name, and you find da loose vent or floor tiles dat da rats wriggle up.” The Shadow gripped her stick with both hands and leaned her cheek against it. “But tell me dis what I have heard from lips dat were soon deceased. Was dis war but a shadow cast upon da wall of da cave by da fires of your enmities? To what exactly have we been loyal all dese long years?”
“To the Confederation,” said Ari Zin without hesitation.
A toothy smile split the Shadow’s face. “Now dis is a strange ting,” she said. “I have dis question asked tonight of several Names, and your answer, I judge, is da first honestly given.” She nodded to the body of Egg Mennerhem. “You plug dose holes in your basement, Ari Zin, for I tink the Confederation will have need of you when dawn breaks.” Then she turned and strode to the door. Ari Zin called after her.
“Sèanmazy!”
The Long Tall One cocked her head in question but did not speak.
“If the Old Guard had stayed in power, you would be fighting for them, wouldn’t you?”
A grin split her black face. “Of course!” Then she swept out of the command room, her cloak billowing behind her. Her long staff rapped twice on the floor and a dozen magpies seemed to appear from nowhere and followed her out.
The captain-Protector closed and sealed the door once more. “She scares me,” he admitted to the Martial Name. “I’m glad she’s on our side.”
Or that we’re on hers, Ari Zin thought.
The Abattoir was dark and empty, its recesses barely visible even in night vision. A red glow from the fires outside eased through the slit windows, casting uneven and capering shadows on the Cöng Sung, the great long wall with memorials to Shadows past. Manlius Metataxis slipped though the darkness, becoming one with it. He was down to a single magpie now, and he had left her in the Rose Garden to ward the entrance.
There was fell work this evening, but Manlius did not think that many of those involved would be mounted on the Wall. He came to the end of the Wall and passed through the portal to the proving ground, the place of blood and sand. For a moment he could hear the roar of the candidates in the surrounding grandstands, see the examinees struggling with the obstacles that emerged from floor, ceiling, sidelines, while Prime—or perhaps Dawshoo or Ekadrina—sat in the Judgment Seat and passed or failed the candidates. And afterward, for those who passed, the parties, the laughter, the numbing liquors and smokes. We were all one, then, he thought.
He glanced above, where a thousand banners hung listless in the unstirred air. Even in the dark, he could make out some of them, and sought out his own: sky-blue, a dove. But it was too dim and the light of the burning city played strange games with the colors.
Some, he saw, had fallen. The sight took him aback. A banner was cut down only when its Shadow died. He picked one up and saw that it was Egg Mennerhem. Another, it shocked him to notice, was the red swallowtail pennant of Little Jacques. There were a dozen or so, some loyalist, some rebel, rumpled on the ground. Someone, it seemed, was keeping score.
The black silk banner of Prime lay beneath the Judgment Seat, and when he looked up Manlius saw Prime himself sitting in the Seat, as if ruling on all that transpired this night. He flinched under that stern disapproval.
But Prime’s gaze was too far and too fixed and looked now upon another world. Perhaps he had grown too melancholy as he cut down banner after banner, as word came to him that his children slaughtered his children. Perhaps he had willed his heart to stop.
The building shook slightly as somewhere outside a bolt tank fired. Just like boots, he thought with contempt, to use an ax when a scalpel was wanted. He did not think Dawshoo had counted on this, or at least not this soon. The click-link had gone down, and he knew not the current status of the struggle. Who is winning? Big Jacques had clicked just before. It was hard to imagine the Large One as frantic, or to read that into a series of click codes. Who is winning? Manlius looked around the floor, at the crumpled banners. No one, he thought.
Time to withdraw, maybe. He heard the rush of a ground-support craft outside. A window rattled. Yes, time to withdraw. Find a nice quiet planet somewhere. Just one last errand.
“You old fool,” he scolded the corpse of Shadow Prime. It was the duty of the Lion’s Mouth to stay loyal, the old man had said. But loyal to whom? To the self-appointed Committee of Names Renewed? Or to the truly anointed Names? “Old fool,” he said again, and he heard the whisper of his own words and knew the world had come to an end. He had called his father a fool. He paused one moment more to savor the pang of sorrow at memories forever lost, at brotherhood irreparably broken; then he cantered on cat’s feet up the maintenance ladder of the drop-well into the transient apartments.
He found Epri Gunjinshow in the apartment of Kelly Stapellaufer, as he had known all along he would. An hour’s wait in a closet was the only cost to his revenge. He watched them through the crack in the door. Somehow, all the fire had gone out of the hate and it had become just another wearisome task to finish before he could quit for the day. He was simply tired of eating erect. Seeing her drawn and haggard face, he wondered that he had ever found Stapellaufer attractive and thought that he had clung to her only because the skalds would expect him to.
He knew that in a sense this woman and he and Epri had been the proximate cause of the conflagration now raging outside. He was not so foolish as to believe they had been the real cause, and he was not so foolish as to suppose this would somehow set everything right.
That both Epri and Kelly bore burns and scars pleased him in some indefinable fashion. He would have detested the thought that they had ridden out the turmoil here in her bower, the one thrusting repeatedly between the thighs of the other. But they had retreated here, perhaps to rest and clean up before returning to their fates.
But their proper fate was not to die anonymously in the confusion of the Secret City. The troubadours would not like that. The Beautiful Life demanded that Epri Gunjinshow die in singular combat with Manlius Metataxis while Kelly Stapellaufer looked on with coupled sorrow and love. Life must be corralled and tamed to the strictures of drama. And so he waited in the darkened closet until they had disarmed and were half-undressed, when they were at the awkward state in which swift action is difficult. Perhaps they did have some thrusting in mind. Then he stepped forward and shoved the door closed.
“Prime!” shouted Epri, then saw his mistake, though he did not yet realize that it was the penultimate mistake of his life. “Ah.” And his eyes instantly inventoried the weaponry within his reach.