“You crossed the picket line when I passed through the gate,” said Domino Tight. “So the watchman thought I had triggered the alarm by some malfunction.”
“It was a long, lonely time waiting for a traveler to cross through, and I had just about decided to chance a bolder move when fortune presented me with your presence. You are remarkably hale for a man that detonation had reduced to bony rubble.”
“I had … excellent nursing.”
“It is about that which we might talk one day.”
“You are bold, to step into Gidula’s stronghold, Gwillgi Hound. Why should I not turn you over to Gidula’s people? You would not like Number Two, I assure you.”
“Why not? Three reasons. Because I gave you aid when you were injured. Because I held a knife to your throat and forbore to slice. Because you no more wish to be noticed here than I.” He waved off Domino’s answer. “You resort to disguise to enter this place. Yet in the Shadow War, you and Gidula are allies.”
“What do you know of—”
“I am the League’s unofficial observer. Just now I have an interest in a League citizen who has been co-opted into your squabble.”
That surprised Domino Tight and he said, “The harper? But…”
Gwillgi hesitated. “Yes, the harper.”
But the hesitation had told Domino Tight all that was needful. Gwillgi had not known of the harper, and the list of Peripherals in the affair was rather short. Gwillgi had been following Donovan.
Before Domino could speak, Gwillgi held a palm up to his lips and guided him into the brush behind the trees. “Someone follows.”
Up near the crest of the hill, Domino Tight made out the figures of two men in robes. “Oh, an itinerant philosopher. We met earlier on the trail.”
“Deadly One, you know I am here and I know I am here. That is already too many for my comfort.”
Domino Tight understood and remained concealed while the philosopher passed. He was discussing some point of metaphysics with his acolyte and the Shadow caught only portions of it.
“… and for that reason we see the towardness of nature. Consider the blossoming of the flowers which attract the insects.” The philosopher pointed with his staff. “Or the bristling wild boar that lurks in the brush. Or the birds that eat the seeds and drop them on fertile ground. Therefore, since there is no intellect in nature…”
The philosopher passed around the bend in the road and so from sight and sound. Domino Tight shook his head. “I suppose all philosophers are a little mad.”
Gwillgi’s smile was grim. “Mad perhaps, but not boring. Now tell me that this is not just any harper, but the harper, and that you are here to rescue her and not to assassinate her. It may be that you and I can work together for a short time and so prosper both our happinesses.”
Domino Tight knew he was not at the top of his game. His experiences with the Gayshot Bo had unnerved him to some small degree, and if he could not have a Shadow at his back a Hound would do. Especially if the Hound believed there was a debt of gratitude between them.
“Agreed, then, Gwillgi Hound.” And Domino clasped hands with his sworn enemy.
Méarana was no Hound, not even a Pup, but her mother had taught her a few things. So while she played during the pasdarm she could see that Ravn and Eglay Portion were each pulling their punches. It was not a fight “to the bone,” as the Shadow had told her, but only an exhibition intended to display their prowess. Nonetheless, she maintained in her music the fiction of strenuous combat, the harp strings singing of triumph and tragedy and close calls.
Only once did she strike a false note, and that was when she noticed her father among the spectators at the far end of the Iron Bridge. He was dressed in a blue-and-green shenmat and stared at her with a face of stone.
After the mock combat there was a buffet and Méarana moved uneasily among Gidula’s staff. She herself wore a coral brassard with the Black Snake on it, and theoretically that meant she was on Ravn’s staff. Méarana kept trying to find Donovan in the press, but every time she moved in his direction someone would engage her in conversation or inadvertently block her progress while they plucked food or drink from the tables. Several lesser magpies asked her about the strange instrument she had played and she admitted that it was a Peripheral clairseach. They confessed it souded exotic but not unpleasant. But others, with lower numbers on their brassards, stared at her with curious and mocking expressions on their faces.
One large magpie wearing blue and green and a bold numeral 1 on his brassard approached and whispered while they selected fruits from the buffet. “He says to tell you that you are a fool.” Then the man was gone.
She knew Donovan had sent the man. No one else called her a fool with quite that nonchalance. But her father now wore the shenmat of a Shadow, and had at least one magpie of his own. What sort of prisoner was he? Had she indeed come on a fool’s errand?
Only near the end of the buffet did Donovan manage to reach her side. He spoke without preamble. “How did Ravn snatch you?”
Méarana smiled ruefully. “It was my idea to come rescue you.”
Donovan shook his head, as if his hearing had gone awry. “Then you are a bigger fool than I thought.” He took her arm. “What made you think you could rescue me?”
“Because I thought she would follow.”
Donovan stared at her. His lips quirked a little. Then he turned his head and said, “I hope the recording of the pasdarm was satisfactory.” His finger moved in a certain sign that he had taught her years before on Jehovah. Be careful what you say aloud.
Méarana looked around, saw the recorders and the parabolic microphones by which Gidula would eavesdrop. Donovan made the hand-sign for first-and-last, and indicated Ravn. “She going to set up a concert for you here? Do you think anyone will come?”
She. Come? Meaning, was her mother in fact following?
“Two concerts, maybe. Here I don’t have a following. I’ve a song series about the Shadow War. And the clairseach is an instrument they’ve not seen.” Two. Following. I’ve. Seen.
“Ah,” said Donovan buigh, nodding. “Close quarters I suppose, on your trip. I wish Ravn had left you behind.”
The harper shrugged. She had neither seen nor heard the voice that spoke in the night since the brawl on Tungshen Habitat. “One never knows how things will turn out.”
Unobtrusively, Donovan made a blade of his left hand and ran it across the index finger of his right, much as if he were rubbing an itch. Méarana nodded fractionally. Yes, one of the two Hounds was out.
(Will be here soon?)
(Not known. Ravn protect.)
(Trust no one here.)
“Only you, Father,” she said in clear Gaelactic.
“Especially not me,” he answered.
After the buffet, Méarana and Ravn were escorted into Gidula’s office, and there she saw her father again, standing beside Gidula’s chair. Two other Shadows—one wearing a rose on buff, the other wearing a daffodil on blue—flanked them both. Roses and daffodils? Méarana thought Ravn’s viper far more candid.
Gidula sat room-center in an egg-chair, looking like a corpse propped in his coffin and ready for his ground sweat. He wore a billowing black robe with the comet on his front, and his cap was of the sort Peripherals called a Tudor bonnet. If there had ever been a desk before him, it was nowhere now in evidence. There was not another chair in the room, and magpies stood scattered about in a pattern Méarana recognized from shaHmat as one of mutual support. They might be pawns or rooks or counselors, poised for either attack or defense.