When Donovan visited with Three, he brought Pyati and One with him, and he told both magpies that he would give them names for their services rendered in the defense of the Gayshot Bo. “Choose your own names, and tell me, and we’ll have the baptism.” This reduced One and Three to tears, which in Three’s case upset the autoclinic until he calmed down. Pyati said, “And our brothers, Two, Four, and Five?”
Donovan agreed to a posthumous naming and thereby unleashed another torrent of weeping and profligate thanks and praise. The easy and extravagant emotions to which the Shadows were subject continued to amaze him. Yet they could hate as easily as love, and torture with the same intensity as caress, all the while believing they could bind such things with rules and rituals.
Despite the crowding on Grimpen’s ship, the scarred man contrived to be alone. There was a bubble he grew around himself, a sealed-off sphere of space and time within which, whatever crowds hubbubbed about outside, loneliness was the sole resident. Patrons of the Bar of Jehovah knew it well. One would not think a mind that was nine could ever be alone, but there was a certain degree of introspection such a condition imposed, and in a certain sense he could and did turn his back on the world.
It was especially so when matters had drawn to a close, when he had accomplished whatever he had accomplished, and it seemed that there was nothing more left to do. He had felt this after he had consigned the Twisting Stone to the subspatial void, after he had watched the sun dawn inside A. K. Prabhakaran, and on a dozen lesser occasions before he and Bridget ban had ever crossed paths.
Grimpen spoke to him briefly and some of the scarred man must have answered, for he went away. Gwillgi sat across the mess table from him, but while most men took keen interest when Gwillgi sat down by them, the scarred man devoted only a portion of his attention to the now-healed Hound. Inner Child, of course, heard the Alfven warning—short-long, short-long—and the Brute braced for the moment of physical discomfort when they leapt the bar; but the rest of the scarred man was astonished to realize later that they were already in the tubes and headed toward Sapphire Point.
The young man in the chlamys was as good at reading himselves as at reading others, and so he knew that he had once admired Geshler Padaborn above all men and it distressed him seven times seven to see what Gesh had become.
Had the Leader seriously believed that he was continuing the Rising by stealth from within the ranks of the Names? Had that been his goal, he would have led the Committee of Names Renewed, not conducted the resistance against it. Unless the last thing a revolutionary wants is another man’s revolution. He drank an imaginary toast to the Padaborn-that-was, and a second to his brothers who had also been multiplexed.
Ravn Olafsdottr sat for a time just outside the scarred man’s bubble and talked at him. If at any time in his life he had wondered what it would be like to have a sociopath for a friend, his hypothetical curiosities had been answered. They had saved each other’s life, which made them closer than any two people could be. She had saved his daughter’s life—twice. But she had also dragged his daughter into a place where the saving became necessary. Méarana could take care of herself in a wide range of circumstances; but the Shadow War had been beyond that range, and even Hounds and Pups had not come out whole. Ravn was the sort who would rid a dog of fleas by throwing it into the fire—on the calmly rational grounds that fleas could not survive elevated temperatures.
It had all been because of him. Méarana’s kidnapping, her near death. The death of Cŵn Annwn, the terrible injuries to Little Hugh, who had been a friend before the scarred man had known he could have friends. He hadn’t asked for them to come; he hadn’t counted on them coming. But they had come nonetheless, and if they had not come precisely for him, they had stayed and fought precisely for him.
She had come for him. The harper, who had urged him out of his niche in the Bar of Jehovah. The mere thought of the kitten braving a fight among tigers brought tears to his eyes. He had never done anything to deserve such loyalty.
As Bridget ban could easily attest.
The people aboard Great Moor had taken to sleeping in shifts, and were calling one another the night hawks and the morning larks. Bridget ban, of course, had contrived to place herself at the opposite time of the day to the scarred man. Perhaps this was a sign that he should not have bought the ticket to Dangchao Waypoint in the first place. But what foiled her of this intention was that the scarred man knew no night or day and he in his own self could split his shifts. A part of him was always awake; and Inner Child, of all of him, never slept.
So it was Inner Child who saw Méarana and Bridget ban enter the refectory and who heard the daughter say to the mother, “He wants only a bowl of uiscebeatha to be as I found him on Jehovah.”
“Perhaps,” said the Red Hound, “you should have left him there.”
“Ah, no, Mother, for then I would have lost you, out in the Wild. Remember that, I pray. He came for you when no one else could.”
“And now I have come for him, so the score is paid. He has lived too long in the Shadows and has learned their lawless ways.”
Inner Child had aroused the rest of the scarred man, and the Silky Voice took the tongue to answer. No, not lawless, my dear. They have their codes and laws, just as you do. Different laws and different codes, it’s true. They are more flamboyant; you are more considered. You both dance with death, but you dance at decorous arm’s length while they dance in passionate embrace.
Bridget ban came to the table and sat across from the scarred man. The harper stood a little behind her. The Fudir could see how closely they resembled each other, but he could see the differences, too. In the chin, and in the ears. Those Méarana had gotten from him.
“Do you admire the Shadows, then?” asked the Hound.
Donovan grinned through the scarred man’s lips. “I admire them—and pity them. I have seen them laugh, and seen them weep. And while they laugh and weep for different reasons than you, the tears themselves are genuine.”
Bridget ban leaned forward. “You killed Padaborn in cold blood. He was helpless; he was our prisoner.”
“Ah. My old Leader. He was far from helpless, and he was not our prisoner. I dared not turn my back on him to fight Gidula. But … It was not I who shot him.”
“No?”
“It was Gidula.”
“But, they were allies. They had entered the Gayshot Bo together.”
“Oh, yes,” said Donovan. “But you underestimate the levels of deception and treachery at work. Gidula would never have shot the Secret Name—until the masque came off and he saw Geshler Padaborn.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t, and we cannot ask Gidula; but that’s how the smart money bets. The Secret Name always wears a masque and is the only Name who is nameless. Poor Gesh. His mind was what mine should have been, working in perfect harmony.”
“Is it so good then,” Méarana asked, “to brook no dissent?”
Ha! said the Sleuth. She got you there!
The Fudir grinned crookedly. “Maybe not, but it is quieter.”
Bridget ban spoke up and her voice was not as harsh as it might have been. “What is it you want, Donovan? Or should I call you Tom?”