A whippet-thin woman in powder-blue undress uniform and black choke-collar had entered with a pocket brain, which she handed over. A glance captured the room and all that was in it. “Ochone, sèan-Cu,” she said in a deferential voice. “This room has no armillary”
De la Susa shook as he chuckled. “Yes, that was Cerberus’s little joke. He will receive a riposte in the ripeness of time. He is jealous, I think. ‘Old Three-Head’ doesn’t care for me hanging around the Kennel. I’m some sort of relic, a ghost at the banquet. He and I once… Ah, but those are times long gone.”
“Cu,” said Graceful Bintsaif, “you are a treasure.”
“Yes. A buried one. Ha-hah! Cerberus thinks I should be off on Peacock Junction shooting inoffensive ducks and drinking abominably flavored teas on some tropical verandah.”
“I don’t like it here,” said Graceful Bintsaif. “There’s a meanness to this infighting. I wish I were back at the Rift.”
The Old Hound grinned. “Not all duties are so easy as that one, eh? I suppose you have prepared an armillary for me.”
The younger Hound bowed from the shoulder. “Aye, Cu. Games are not in me.”
De la Susa grunted. “They should be. Your time here would pass more quickly.” He rose and gestured to Méarana with a sweep of the arm. “If you would follow Ban-Cu Bintsaif…? You, too, Donovan.”
In the hallway, the harper leaned close to the Fudir and whispered, “This is the famous Kennel?”
Donovan answered, “Don’t be deceived, harper. They show us a feckless face; but look in their eyes. The eyes are as hard as stones.”
“But why the façade?”
“A man’s greatest weapon is his opponent’s underestimation.”
“But we’re come for their help. We have the same objective. How are we opponents?”
“They like to keep in practice.” But if Donovan had understood the old man aright, there were those in the Kennel who were more interested in finding what Bridget ban had been up to than in finding the woman herself.
The armillary was in a conference room. Graceful Bintsaif had activated it earlier and it now displayed a three-dimensional projection of the Spiral Arm, centered by ancient convention on Old ‘Saken. The projection would have been impossible to read had all the stars of the Arm been displayed; but only those connected by Electric Avenue were shown, and even so it was a dazzling display of diamonds and golden threads. The young Hound-instructor took the brain from de la Susa and inserted it into the armillary.
De la Susa spoke into a phone. “From insert>Files>Sent from>Display”
Immediately, several nodes on the network brightened, while others dimmed.
“Add>Subordinate coordinates.” He turned to the harper. “These are worlds she mentioned having visited in her reports.” He leaned over the phone again. “By ‘Send Date’>Sequence.”
Light ran through the display like a river, flowing from star to star. It rose from Dangchao Waypoint, through Die Bold and out the Peacock Shortway to the Junction. From Peacock Junction, Bridget ban had traveled the Silk Road through the great interchange at Jehovah and all the way to Harpaloon. After that, she had zigzagged across the Lafrontera District: down the Spiral Staircase to Dancing Vrouw and Bangtop-Burgenland; along the Grand Concourse to Siggy O’Hara and Boldly Go; out Gorky Prospect to Sumday and Wiedermeier’s Chit.
“And the Chit is where she was last heard from?” asked the Fudir, in spite of himself. He gave the Sleuth a mental elbow in the ribs. The Sleuth did not have control of the tongue, but sometimes Donovan or the Fudir accidentally verbalized his thoughts.
De la Susa sighed. “No, she returned to Siggy O’Hara. After that, we never heard from her. Most of Lafrontera is outside the Circuit, so at first we thought she had come back to Siggy O’Hara to use the Ourobouros station there, and we awaited the late arrival of drones or messages entrusted to passing ships; but… None came. It’s possible she sent a message by a ship that was lost through mishap.”
That would be two mishaps at roughly the same time, the Sleuth pointed out. A Hound gone missing and her last message lost. The probability of that is…
“Quiet,” said Donovan. “No one cares what the probability is.”
The other three in the room turned to look at him, and Méarana said, “Don’t worry. He talks to himself sometimes.” Why this might be a reason not to worry, she did not say.
The Fudir was sorry the witch was missing. After all these years, the anger no longer flamed. But the ashes were bitter and he was not about to spend his life looking for her.
It’s obvious where we have to start, said the Sleuth.
“Where the harper has to start,” Donovan muttered sotto voce. “It’s Jehovah for us.”
You can’t be thinking of sending Méarana out there alone?
“And why not?” he whispered.
You know why not.
It suddenly seemed very cold to him, and he shuddered like a drunk caught thin-shirted under a Harvest-month sky.
“Are you all right, Fudir?” the harper asked.
“Just old and decrepit,” he said. “Zorba, can you give her the reports of the Hounds who followed up on her mother’s disappearance?”
“Ah, child,” the old man said to the harper. “How can you hope to find her where we have failed—even with this wreck of a man to help you.”
“I’m not helping her,” Donovan protested once again.
“‘Tis not so much ‘this wreck of a man’ but ‘the wreck of this man.’”
The Tall Hound nodded. “Ah… I can see where that might matter.”
“And I thought that—if we followed Mother’s itinerary—we may see things the others missed,” said Méarana. “I am her daughter, after all.”
Zorba looked at her with sadder eyes. “A slim hope.”
“When hope is all there is, it is enough.”
The Aged Hound nodded, as if to himself. Then he said, “Graceful Bintsaif”
“Yes, Cu?”
“Give them the redacted reports that Greystroke and the others filed.”
“Is that wise, Cu?”
“Ask, ‘Is it useful?’” He turned to Donovan and the harper and extended the pocket brain. “Do not suppose we have neglected to visit these places.”
“Yes…” Donovan accepted the brain and gave it to Méarana. “…but your reports can at least tell her which trails not to follow. And maybe they can convince her by the thoroughness of your harvest that there is little point to her gleaning.”
The Old Hound rubbed his cheeks again with his hand. He glanced at Graceful Bintsaif. “You’ll tell Himself everything, of course.”
“Of course.” The junior Hound bowed slightly from the shoulders.
“Ochone! She’s the Little One’s spy, you know,” he added aside to the harper. “Oh, the old man is garrulous. He talks too much. So she is my second shadow. Well, I will tell you this much. Bridget ban had picked up rumors. She never said where. But she was hunting something big. She said it could shield the League against the Confederation for aye. Or it could destroy us.”
“In the wrong hands…,” said Donovan slowly.
“Oh, aye. But consider it a warning. If such a power exists, it proved too much for a Hound. It would make short work of a harper and a drunk.”
“You’re a blunt one,” said the Fudir.
“Is it wise, Sèan-Cu,” said Graceful Bintsaif, “to lay such temptations before… layfolk?”