But Kelly Stapellaufer stepped between the two men. She held both hands clenched into fists. “Stop!” she said.
“I mean to end it,” said Manlius. Then, to Epri, he said, “Prime is dead. He killed himself.” He didn’t know why he told Epri that, only that he thought Epri should know.
“And so you have destroyed the Lion’s Mouth rather than submit to the ruling of the Courts d’Umbrae?” Epri demanded.
He made it sound like Manlius was in the wrong. Manlius shook his head. “None of it matters anymore.”
Epri stepped behind Kelly and laid both hands on her shoulders. This would prove the last mistake of his life. Manlius wondered if Epri thought he would not shoot him through Kelly’s body. And then Manlius wondered if he could actually bear to do so.
“Did you ever ask yourself, Epri Gunjinshow,” Kelly asked without turning, “whether I welcomed your attentions?” And with that she thrust backward with her right fist.
In her fist she had held the hilt of a variable knife. The blade snapped out and pierced Epri’s abdomen. The shock froze him and she stepped to the side, ripping horizontally, then down. His body opened up and his bowels dumped forth onto the floor. Epri lived long enough to contemplate this sight before he collapsed atop it.
Manlius Metataxis watched in astonishment and not a little gratification. So, Kelly had loved him all along. She opened her arms and Manlius stepped into her embrace.
“Or yours,” she murmured, and Manlius learned that the hilt had two extensions. Kelly Stapellaufer thrust forward and the second blade launched itself into his body. The pain messages had not even time to reach his brain before his mind shut down.
Kelly Stapellaufer, whose charms had pretexted the Shadow War, stood naked between the two corpses that had once been her lovers. “Oh, the Abattoir!” she cried. “Oh, the Lion’s Mouth!”
There was only one other target left in the room, and so Kelly used her knife one final time.
XIV. Three, with a New Song’s Measure
They kept the lights low lest attention be drawn to the Official Quarter, and through the windows of the Gayshot Bo watched the Secret City burn. The flames rolled across the skyline like the waves of a molten ocean and provided the only light from the now otherwise darkened Residencies. Suppressor drones hovered in the air, bright yellow, blinkers flashing, drenching the hopeless structures with foam and water. By strange and tacit agreement, no one had targeted the fire wardens, whether from residual respect for civic order or because the wardens’ activities were futile in any case.
“We should be out there fighting with the others,” said Magpie Three Padaborn.
“It’s what we trained for,” Four explained.
Domino Tight had been sitting at table with Eglay Portion pursuing a desultory game of Aches and Pains on a play deck. The room was a sort of conference lounge, with tables, chairs, racks of reference media, a holostage. In the corner, well away from the windows, Méarana sat with curled fingers playing imaginary harp strings, conjuring a grand goltraí from the depths of her being. She had always thought the Confederation irremediably evil; but there was ever a yin within the yang, and the tears on magpie cheeks were genuine.
“We never trained for this,” Domino Tight said, by which he meant that, the chaos outside the window.
Eglay Portion pressed a button on his game console. “Aches!” he declared. Then, to Domino Tight, “Of course we did. Treachery and betrayal were our stock-in-trade.”
“No. I don’t mean … on the job. I mean against one another. Guard your Keep.”
Eglay Portion grunted and bent over the holodisplay. Some pieces were immobile once placed; others moved to various rules. The rules could change. He studied his options.
“There goes another one,” said Three.
A heretofore-darkened portion of the skyline lit up from the flash of a bolt tank. Domino Tight sighed. “That was Tina Zhi’s Residence.”
At that, the Technical Name appeared from a bright spark in the center of the room, her milky skin smoke smudged, her arms bundled with small objects that she tumbled onto an empty table, where they clattered and rolled. Méarana imagined a single sharp pluck on the highest string. The Name took short, gasping breaths. “But Gidula assured me…”
“Gidula assured many people of many things,” Donovan said. “But what he assures and what he can actually deliver are two different things. He bridled the tiger; now he must ride it. What did you learn out there?”
Tina Zhi ran a hand through her hair, leaving a streak of soot in its silver. “This is all I saved.” She spoke as if to the scattered bric-a-brac on the table. “This is all.” Then, to Donovan she said, “The boots are in it now. The district swoswai has overruled the Lord Protector and ordered all Protectors into the military cadre. Obdurate Protectors have been fired upon, and some have joined the Shadows.” She shook her head, her whole body. “Rumor claims that Ekadrina and Oschous have combined against Dawshoo and Gidula.”
“I knew the Fox would catch on sooner or later,” Donovan said.
“The fight proceeds at right angles,” Tina Zhi reported. “Loyalist and rebel fight rebel and loyalist.”
“Apparently, neither side much liked being manipulated,” the harper suggested.
The Name turned on her and for a moment the old terror blazed in her eyes, so that they seemed almost violet. But she could not maintain the fury, and sat heavily in a nearby chair.
Eglay Portion shook his head. “What price rebellion? What worth loyalty? It has reached the point of unreason. They fight because they have been fighting.”
“We really ought to do something,” insisted Three.
“What would you suggest?” asked Donovan, ostentatiously counting the room. Himself, a Name, two Shadows, five magpies, and a harper.
“I might play a suantraí and put them all to sleep,” said Méarana when his finger came to her.
Donovan grunted and turned back to the window, “When morning breaks, the world might be glad that there were those who stayed out of it.”
“I don’t know,” said Three. “My knife longs for a throat. What will I say when my apprentices ask what I did in the Great Rising? ‘I sat in a lounge and played Aches and Pains with Domino Tight.’”
“And lost,” said Domino Tight, placing a new Keep on a key locus. “What makes you think there will be apprentices? The Order is finished. The walls of the Lion’s Mouth are breached.”
The Fudir turned to Three. “Whose throat?”
Three waved his arm across the window view. “Whoever was responsible for this!”
“Why, then, that would be Gidula; and there is this one thing you must know about Gidula. If you don’t go to him, then somehow he will come to you. This night’s battle has not yet begun.”
Pyati looked up in surprise. “You can’t mean that—” And he encompassed all that transpired outside the Official Quarter. “—is no more than a diversion!”
Magpie Two was monitoring the building’s security. “Motion on the roof,” he announced. “Wait one. False positive. No further signal.”