The Domino Pattern

“Yes,” he said.

“Good.” I started to go, then turned back. “And she’s to stay put,” I added firmly. “Whatever happens, she’s to stay in her compartment and not open the door. For anyone.”

“Yes,” he said.

I gazed hard into his silvery globe for another moment, the way you might underline the seriousness of an order if you were talking to a real, actual person, then turned and resumed my jog. If Bayta could mobilize enough of the Spiders to monitor the action, we had a chance of bringing this thing to an end right here and now.

The baggage car seemed quiet enough as I slipped through the vestibule doorway into the gloom. Setting my back against the nearest stack of crates, I paused for a moment to take stock of the situation. No shadows seemed to be moving out there, at least none that I could see from my current vantage point, and I could hear nothing above the muted clickity-clack of Quadrail wheels.

Was the killer still here? Or had he been and gone, leaving a fresh corpse where I’d earlier tied up a prisoner?

Only one way to find out. Taking a deep breath, I headed off through the maze of stacked crates.

The attack came without any warning, in spite of all the care I had been taking with corners and crate tops. An arm suddenly appeared from behind me, snaking around my neck and yanking me backward. I tried to twist sideways, to get my throat turned into the crook of his elbow where there was a little extra space, but he was already on it, his other hand snapping up to link into his choking arm and simultaneously push the back of my head forward.

Reflexively, I kicked backward. But my foot hit only air, and before I could bring it back for another try a foot slapped into the back of my other knee, just hard enough to break my balance.

And barely a second after the attack had begun, I found myself kneeling on the floor, the tiny prickly hairs of a Filly snout pressed against my right cheek, his chokehold ready to squeeze the life out of me.

I tried to reach up toward his head, in hopes of reaching his eyes or ears. But the arms wrapped around my throat and head blocked any such path. I switched direction and jabbed backwards with my elbows, landing solid blows against his torso. He grunted with the impact, but his grip didn’t loosen.

So this is how it ends, the thought flitted through my mind as I continued my futile efforts to break my attacker’s grip. I wondered distantly what Bayta would do without me, and what the Chahwyn and Spiders would do after I was dead.

It was only then that it belatedly dawned on me that the arm pressed against my throat, which should have been squeezing ever tighter, cutting off my air and choking the life out of me, was doing no such thing. In fact, it wasn’t all that tight even now, more of a controlling hold than a killing one.

Was he just waiting so that I would sweat some more? Or did he genuinely want to keep me alive, at least until he could get something else out of me?

Bracing myself, painfully aware that if I was wrong, it would be the last gamble I ever made, I brought my pummeling hands and elbows to a halt.

He didn’t press his attack. But he didn’t let go, either. He just stood there, towering silently and motionless behind me.

I cleared my throat, which turned out to be a lot harder in my present condition than I’d expected. “If you’re trying to make a point,” I croaked out, “consider it made.”

“What point is that?” he asked.

I grimaced as I recognized his voice. My assailant was none other than Logra Emikai himself. “That you’re the greatest escape artist since Houdini?” I suggested.

“That I could have killed you,” he corrected. Abruptly, the pressure against my throat disappeared as he let go of me and stepped backward. “And that I did not,” he added.

I turned my head, massaging my throat as I looked up at him. He was just standing there, his arms hanging loosely as his sides, gazing back at me. “Interesting demo,” I commented, getting back to my feet. “Of course, as has already been noted, you’re on a super-express Quadrail with nowhere to run. Killing me would be kind of stupid.”

“Agreed,” he said. “But he who freed me apparently was not concerned with such questions of logic.” He paused. “He who freed me, then ordered me to kill you.”

“Did he, now,” I said as casually as I could. So our killer was starting to sharecrop his business. “Did this helpful passerby have a name or face?”

“I’m certain he had both,” Emikai said grimly. “Unfortunately, I was asleep when he freed me.”

“And when he gave you your marching orders?” I asked, frowning. “What did he do, leave a voice message in your dreams?”

“You are actually not far off,” Emikai said, for the first time seeming a little uncertain. “The words came to me in …it’s hard to describe. It was a distant, whistling sort of voice. I’m afraid I cannot explain it more clearly than that.”

“That’s okay,” I assured him, a prickling sensation running up my back. A distant, eerie whistling sort of sound was the way I’d characterized my own recent wake-up call. “How long ago did all this happen?”

He shrugged. “An hour. Perhaps a bit more.”

Just enough time, in other words, for someone to make his way back up to the front of the train, dose a sleeping Modhran walker with hypnotic so that he could play shill for me, and call me awake so he could send me to my death.

In fact, with this added bit of information, the late-night conversations I’d noticed as I passed through first class suddenly took on an entirely new aspect. Odds were that one of those conversations had been the killer talking to one of the Modhri’s other walkers, getting ready to feed Krel Vevri’s lines to him by remote control. That was a capability of the group mind that had never occurred to me. “So why didn’t you kill me?” I asked.

Emikai snorted. “I do not murder on anyone’s demand,” he growled.

“Glad to hear it,” I said, rubbing my throat again. “So what now? We let bygones be bygones and I let you go back to your nice comfy Quadrail seat?”

He cocked his head. “Do you think that would be wise?”

My estimate of his competence, which had already been pretty high, rose a couple more points. Most citizens would have leaped at the offer. But Emikai was either more thoughtful or more canny than that.

Which led directly to the bigger question of who or what this horse-faced enigma was, and whose side he was on. If anyone’s. “Unfortunately—unfortunately for you, anyway—no, I don’t,” I said. “I’m thinking it could be highly interesting to see what kind of reaction we get when I not only don’t turn up dead, but you turn up back in irons.”

“I expected you would say that.” Emikai looked around us. “I presume this time you will have watchers present in the event that he attempts this again?”

“Absolutely,” I promised, keeping my voice even. “If you’re ready, let’s go ahead and reset the stage.”

He eyed me another moment, then nodded. “Very well,” he said.

Five minutes later, with Emikai once again tied to his perch, I was on my way back to the front of the train. And this time, I was moving with a lighter, quicker step.

Because though Emikai didn’t know it, there had been watchers present during his abortive rescue: the two twitters Bayta had left on guard.

It was going to be highly interesting to find out what exactly they’d seen.

———

What they’d seen, it turned out, was exactly nothing.

“That’s impossible,” I growled, glaring at Bayta from my seat at her computer desk as she sat stiffly on the edge of her bed. “You left them there. You ordered them to watch. How can they not have seen something?”

“I don’t know,” Bayta said. Her voice was as stiff as her posture. “They just froze up, somehow.”

“How does a Spider freeze up?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Bayta repeated tartly. “Something happened to them. Something I’ve never heard of happening before.”

I stared at her …and then my fatigue-numbed brain finally got it. Bayta hadn’t gone all stiff and angry because