“He was fighting on our side.”
“Don’t remind me,” said Domino Tight.
Tina Zhi turned the curious U-shaped weapon in her hand. “The Secret Name is wearing sparkle armor. This will deactivate it and leave him vulnerable.”
Domino Tight nodded. He remembered that from the Battle of the Warehouse. It also meant that, unlike the jump tokens, the sparkle armor was not controlled by a central field. What other secrets had the Technical Name been withholding from the Confederation, even from most of the other Names? Youth, perhaps.
And why was she now so willing to help ambush one of the leaders of the Old Guard, given that she had been supporting them through the Revolution? Because these intended to violate the sanctity of the Gayshot Bo? He did not believe it was for love of himself. Given how long Tina Zhi must have lived, what novelty could one more mayfly lover provide?
The Shadows believed the war had started because Shadow Prime had dispatched Epri Gunjinshow to rectify matters after Manlius Metataxis had incestuously coupled with his comrade-in-arms, Kelly Stappelaufer, and which task Epri had accomplished by seducing Kelly himself. It was the sort of story Shadows liked to tell themselves. But when they had wiped the tear away, they also knew that they were fighting to overthrow Names grown overbold. So what they believed and what they knew were at odds, and all that was left was laughter.
He focused on the darkness of the stairwell. Most of the tridents had escaped the trap. Big Jacques had been too keenly observant. The main stairwell opened on a function space. There was a reception desk, waiting chairs, and several small tables with inquiry portals. Large pots bore broad leafy plants. There were any number of hiding places, all of them far too obvious. “When they sortie from the stairwell,” he told Three and Tina Zhi, “they will scatter in all directions, accepting casualties. They will almost certainly direct fire on the receptionist’s desk, since that is the obvious place for defenders to cover the stairwell.”
Three had strewn crispies on the steps. He listened now to the sounds from the stairwell. “Time to take our places,” he said. He shot a climbing grapple to the decorative, painted ceiling. Once there, he removed a panel that he had previously prepared, and insinuated himself into the duct space. Shortly, small gunports appeared in the moulding.
Tina Zhi placed a hand on Domino Tight’s wrist. “It’s too dangerous,” she said.
Domino Tight finished snapping the titanium exoskeleton into place. He shook out the gossamer cloak that would make him invisible. “What better place to hide than the one place they will not expect—in plain sight?”
“They are no fools. Someone will realize.”
“If anyone is left. At short range, I can use my dazer. And Rinty will be coming up behind them. We have them trapped! Hurry, cloak yourself.”
The reception area became apparently vacant. This might lull Big Jacques—or raise his suspicions.
The tridents emerged in a fan, shielding both Big Jacques and the Secret Name. Domino counted eight and began to drop magpies with his dazer. Three fired flechettes from above. The Secret Name’s sparkle armor died and he spun about looking for the weapon that had done it. Domino Tight numbed him in the thigh, and he nearly toppled. But Big Jacques maintained his calm.
“Is that you, old friend? What price this treachery?”
Domino Tight did not answer. The best way to locate an invisible man is from the sounds he makes.
“Never did think you jumped in the river. I guess that means Padaborn is here, too.” Big Jacques fired pellets into various quarters of the lobby, on the likely assumption that Domino was in at least one of them. He wasn’t.
“If the Name was your target, too late. He’s crawled off down the hall until his leg heals.”
A shower of flechettes rained on the tridents from the ceiling and Big Jacques and the remaining tridents returned fire, bracketing the likely source. A thud in the ductwork signaled success or a ruse. “Boys,” said Jacques, “let’s shift. Pattern G.”
Only two magpies rose with Big Jacques and they scattered in three directions. One drew a shot from the apparently still-active Three, another, a dazzle from Domino Tight. But Big Jacques learned the power of chance in the affairs of men, for he had taken a serpentine run toward the farther hallway that intersected with Domino Tight.
The two of them toppled to the floor with the bigger man on top. Dazers flew higgledy-piggledy. Hands punched and poked; knees pistoned. The cloak was ripped aside. Domino Tight wrapped arms around his foe as tight as iron bands.
But iron bands were nothing to Big Jacques, and he broke free and rolled to his feet. Padaborn Three abandoned silence as he scrambled along the ductwork and punched a hole in the plaster to fire a wire gun at Big Jacques. In his anxiety not to strike Domino Tight, he shot wide; but Jacques took it as an invitation to leave. He kicked Domino in the head and, as he ran into the main hallway, pulled a throwing knife from a scabbard and in a single fluid pirouette pinned Domino Tight through the chest.
Méarana Harper listened to the dim sounds of battle from the floors below, wondering whether she had lured her mother to her death. But Bridget ban was a fixture of the universe, like the mountains and the rivers, like the Rift of Stars that separated the Perseus Arm from its Orion spur. Her mother was very like that Rift, too; her very absence was a sort of presence. And how could an absence ever be lost?
“This is all my fault,” Méarana said.
Neither Graceful Bintsaif, who watched and listened to the front hallway, nor Padaborn Five, who sat before the console of view screens and detectors that occupied the middle of the Security Center, turned to answer her.
“I would say it is the Ravn’s fault,” said the junior Hound. “It was she who maneuvered you into going with her into the Triangles. Your mother followed, and the rest of us followed her.”
“I could not leave my father without succor.”
Graceful Bintsaif shook her head. “There is a niggling in the back of my mind that our arrival rather upset the plans of Donovan buigh. The scarred man is like Mary’s lambs. Leave him be and he’ll return.”
“Listen to the two of you,” said Five. “None of this involved the Periphery at all. What is happening out there grew in our own gardens, not your fayzukeq personal lives. I see now that Padaborn did his best to delay this day of wrath, and only Gidula’s threat to torture you…” He paused.
“There,” said the harper. “It is my fault, after all.” But she wasted no time wishing it had all never happened. The time for that wish was a long time ago.
“Fates!” said Five, rapping a monitor with his knuckle. “We’ve lost Domino Tight as well as the Hound Rinty.”
Méarana brushed a cheek with her sleeve. As long ago as she could remember, Little Hugh had been a friend of the family. A lover once of her mother, which made him a relative of some sort. And Méarana had lured him here to his wyrd. It was supposed to be simple. She and Ravn and her mother would pluck Donovan as neatly from Gidula’s fortress as a pickpocket removes a purse from an unwary tourista. How they would do this Méarana had had no idea, but she had owned the fantasy so long she had come to believe it.
It is the young who catch the gliding snake. A Terran proverb her father had once told her. The young do dangerous things from innocence. Well, she was young no longer. Although she might never become any older than she was this night.
Gidula’s force would not come through the doorway she guarded: the hallway led deeper into the building. If Gidula did assault the control center his Shadows would come through the junior Hound and the Padaborn magpie and so give her a chance to escape. That was why Graceful Bintsaif had posted her here. She already had the escape route marked out in her mind. Down this hall, down a back stairway, across, and … she’d be at the fane. With her father and mother. All of them together at last, if only at the last.