“I know. I’m thinking, what would I be doing right now, if I were him.”
“And?”
“He’ll wait to ambush us,” Donovan said, “from a direction we’d not expect.”
From below.
When Billy had ducked around the corner, he had also ducked up or down. Donovan was as certain of this as if he had seen him do it.
Yes. The human instinct is to look up for snipers. But the way the gravity grids are set, he can stand on the bottom of a catwalk, and shoot up from underneath.
“I agree,” said the Fudir, “but he’ll be on one of the pod banks, like we are now.”
Sleuth did some elementary calculations. Unless he can move like the wind and climb like an Awzetchan grass monkey, Billy Chins cannot be any farther than…
“There,” agreed Donovan. “Brute? Fudir? This is your show.”
He stood. The pod block possessed walkways, probably for maintenance automata, that wrapped around the block like ribbons framing a gift. Gravity grids ensured that the pod block was “down,” regardless which face one stood on. Commonwealth magic. Peripheral technology couldn’t manage it. The gravity fields would overlap, create resonances, blow the generators.
He loped across the walkway to the other end of the block and, when he reached the end intending to leap to the next block over, the walkway stretched across the gap like Peacharoo’s riding platform. He nearly stumbled in surprise.
Unless Billy has discovered this, he will expect any approach to be by the catwalks. That was some encouragement, anyway.
He crossed the next block the same way. Then he walked down the side for two levels, found the walkway running across the underside of the pod blocks, and hurried back the way he had come. Silky played gyroscope and maintained the original up/down orientation. To her, he was loping antipodally along the “bottom” of a block, whereas to the Brute, he was doing so across the “top.”
He came at last to the block where he expected Billy to be waiting in ambush and spied him sitting cross-legged at the far end, looking down at the catwalk where he expected his quarry. From the point of view of anyone fleeing down the catwalk from Bridget ban’s cocoon, he would be firing up from underneath.
When Donovan had crept closer, Billy spoke. “One direction, I could not constantly watch; and so from that direction you have come. Yet you did not slay me.”
“I’m not a back shooter.”
“One of your few weaknesses. Come sit beside me, brother.”
Donovan crouched on Billy’s left. “Brother? You and I are nothing alike.”
Billy did not turn his head. “I did not mean bio-brother.”
“Nor did I.”
“No. We are sons of the same trainer—years apart, but the semen of his mind has generated us. You are the prodigal son, and I the faithful. You have gone off and lived among the pigs.”
“It wasn’t that bad. Really.” After a moment, he said, “You killed the jawharry.”
Billy tilted his head in thought; then resumed his watch of the catwalk. “After I overheard you and the harper in the restaurant on Harpaloon, curiosity sent me to question the woman. But she knew nothing. The effort was wasted.”
Donovan heard a distant clatter, like a wheel rolling along jointed rails. It seemed louder than before. “Yes,” he said. “Such a waste.”
“Not so much of a such. In the eternity of the universe, what is a life but an eye-blink. What matter, then, a few years more or less?”
“Yet you saved Méarana on the endarooa.”
“Am I a sociopath? Do I kill for no reason? The harper drove our quest, and I wished to see what lay at its end. And saving her caused you to trust me a little bit more. My duty is to report to Those what they need to know, not to slaughter unsuspecting Leaguesmen.”
“Although you do that, too.”
Billy shrugged. “Sometimes. When needful.”
“When Bridget ban recognized you.”
The Confederate nodded. “Yes. That was one of the times.”
“You could have bluffed it out. Méarana would have vouched for you. You panicked. Listen.”
Above them, from the depths of the ship, came the sounds of shingling metal, like a wind chime in a blustery gale.
“Something is coming,” Donovan said. “You might make it out of here if we all work together. You’ll never make it alone.”
Billy Chins sighed. “Brother Donovan, from the moment I saw this ship and learned of the secret road, was there ever a chance that I would return to my masters?”
“We could have arranged…”
“A comfortable prison? No, thank you. There are simpler ways to silence tongues. If you are too squeamish, others are not. I judged the moment my best opportunity, and seized it.”
“And yet you fought by my side at Roaring Gorge and in the Pit atop Oorah Mesa.”
The Confederate shrugged. “I thought then that I might yet warn the Lion’s Mouth. Now, if I cannot inform my masters, at the very least I can prevent you from informing yours. If you and the Hound die, I count my life cheap.”
“And the trade ship?”
“She must not take word back.”
“And the harper?”
Billy hesitated. “It cannot be helped.”
Donovan sighed. “I will not let that happen.”
“I know. If only you had remained a loyal man.”
“If only you had become a better one.”
One does not chat with Naga the Cobra without a vigilant eye on his motion, for the words are but a screen to lull the attention. Inner Child had been keeping watch through the scarred man’s right eye and saw Billy’s hand move perhaps before Billy knew he had moved it. The Brute seized the gun arm and deflected the aim, although the umbra grazed him; and that gave Billy the opening to deflect Donovan’s own return blast.
Locked in embrace like eager lovers, the two men toppled to the decking, and a swift sequence of moves and countermoves passed between them. Hands, knees, feet, a head butt. Then Billy smacked Donovan’s hand on the maintenance walkway, and the scarred man’s dazer skittered out of reach.
They fought in silence, only grunts and gasps escaping their lips, for only fools waste breath in taunts. They rolled, still embraced, over the edge of the pod block.
And they were “atop” the side of the tanks. Donovan glanced at the catwalk and barked, “Hurry!”
Billy turned his head, realized the trick immediately, but immediately was too late. Instead of holding off Billy’s gun, Dononan yanked and tucked it between their two bodies, pressing the muzzle against the Confederate.
This close, the neural blast was overpowering. Billy spasmed. His legs splayed like two logs and his head threw back. Blood oozed from between his clenched teeth.
Donovan, caught in the umbra, went numb. He rolled to the side; but it was the gravity grid and not volition that moved him. Inner Child cried out soundlessly. Sleuth could not form a coherent thought. Random memories and imaginings flickered through his consciousness.
A young girl in a chiton squatted above him on her heels and with her arms wrapped around her knees. The others, she said, will now have a chance.
He saw the face of Bridget ban, and she smiled as she used to smile years ago. He blinked and it was Méarana, not Bridget. Then even the tingling in his limbs faded, and there was no sensation at all, and darkness had him.
Lucia Thompson, d.b.a. Méarana of Dangchao, mistress of the harp, turned to her mother, feeling once more a child, but also impossibly old, and buried her face in Bridget ban’s hair and shoulders. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this,” she said. At her feet, Donovan and Billy lay like lovers.