As the Bhodi disciples made their way through the crowds, more than one onlooker reached out to slap their backs. The disciples took that with poor grace. It told them that many of the witnesses were there to be entertained.
The rite proceeded as before, but more quickly as it was evident that the Greys anticipated trouble and had instructions to head it off.
The kneeling priest in orange burst into flames just as the Greys began manhandling his assistants out of the way.
A gout of smoke leaped upward. A Black Company skull formed inside it, an evil eye seeming to stare deep into the souls of all the witnesses. A voice filled the morning. “All their days are numbered.”
And the wooden curtain-wall shielding the reconstruction came to life. Glowing lime characters as tall as a man proclaimed “Water Sleeps,” and “My Brother Unforgiven.” They crawled slowly back and forth.
Soulcatcher herself materialized on the ramparts overhead. Her rage was palpable.
A second and larger cloud of smoke burst off the burning disciple. A face—the best representation of the Captain’s that One-Eye and Goblin could manage—told the awed and silent thousands, “Rajadharma! The Duty of Kings. Know you: Kingship is a Trust. The King is the most exalted and conscientious servant of the people.”
I began to slide away from there. This was sure to sting the Protector into some impulsive and self-defeating response.
Or maybe not. She did nothing obvious, though a sudden breeze came along. It blew the smoke away. But it fanned the flames consuming the Bhodi disciple. The smell of burning flesh spread out downwind.
When Master Santaraksita wanted to know why I was late, I told the truth. “Another Bhodi disciple set himself on fire in front of the Palace. I went to watch. I couldn’t help myself. There was sorcery involved.” I described what I had seen. As so many of the actual eyewitnesses also had, Santaraksita seemed both repelled and intrigued.
“Why do you suppose those disciples are doing that, Dorabee?”
I knew why they were doing it. It took no genius to fathom their motives. Only their determination remained a puzzle. “They’re trying to tell the Radisha that she’s not fulfilling her obligations to the Taglian people. They consider the situation so desperate that they’ve chosen to send their message by a means that can’t be ignored.”
“I, too, believe that to be the case. The question remains: What can the Radisha do? The Protector won’t go away just because some people believe she’s bad for Taglios.”
“I have a great deal to do today, Sri, and I’m starting late.”
“Go. Go. I must assemble the bhadrhalok. It’s possible we can present the Radisha with some means of shaking the Protector’s grip.”
“Good luck, Sri.” He would need it. Only the most outrageous good luck since the beginning of time was going to give him and his cronies the tools to undo Soulcatcher. Chances were good the bhadrhalok had no idea how dangerous an opponent they had chosen.
I dusted and mopped and checked the rodent traps and after a while noticed that most everyone had gone away. I asked old Baladitya the copyist where everyone was. He told me that the other copyists had ducked out as soon as the senior librarians had gone off to their bhadrhalok meeting. They knew that the bhadrhalok would do nothing but it would take them hours of grumbling and talking and arguing to get it done, so they made themselves a holiday.
It was not an opportunity to be refused. I began examining books, even going so far as to penetrate the restricted stacks. Baladitya knew nothing. He could not see three feet in front of his face.
Jaul Barundandi partnered Minh Subredil with a young woman named Rahini and sent them to work in the Radisha’s own quarters, under the direction of a woman named Narita, a fat, ugly creature possessed by an inflated conception of her own importance. Narita complained to Barundandi, “I need six more women. I’m supposed to clean the council chamber again after I complete the royal suite.”
“Then I suggest you pick up a broom yourself. I’ll be back in a few hours. I expect to see progress. I’ve given you the best workers available.” Barundandi went elsewhere to be unpleasant to someone else.
The fat woman took it out on Subredil and Rahini. Subredil did not know who Narita was. The woman had not worked in the royal chambers before. As Subredil steered a mop around, she whispered, “Who is this woman who is so bitter?” She stroked her Ghanghesha.
Rahini glanced right and left but did not raise her eyes. “You must understand her. She is Barundandi’s wife.”
“You two! You aren’t being paid to gossip.”
“Pardon, ma’am,” Sahra said. “I didn’t understand what to do and didn’t want to trouble you.”
The fat woman scowled for a moment but then turned her displeasure in another direction. Rahini smiled softly, whispered, “She’s in a good mood today.”
As the hours passed and her knees and hands and muscles began to ache, Sahra realized that she and Rahini had been delivered to Barundandi’s wife more for who they were than for the work they could do. They were not bright and they were not among the more attractive workers. Barundandi wanted Narita to believe that these were the kind of women he always employed. Elsewhere, no doubt, he and his chief assistants would take full advantage of their bit of power over the unfortunate and the desperate.
It was not a good day for exploring. There was more work than three women could possibly complete. Sahra got no chance to collect additional pages from the hidden Annals. Then, not many hours after the day started, conditions within the Palace became much less relaxed. The high and the mighty began to show themselves, moving rapidly here and there. Rumor came, apparently passing right through stone walls. Another Bhodi disciple had burned himself to death outside and the Radisha was completely distraught. Narita herself confided, “She’s very frightened. Many things are happening over which she has no control. She has gone to the Anger Chamber. She does so almost every day now.”
“The Anger Chamber?” Sahra murmured. She had not heard of this before, but till recently she never worked this close to the heart of the Palace. “What is that, ma’am?”
“A room set aside where she can tear her hair and clothing and rage and weep without having her emotions poison surroundings used for other purposes. She won’t come out until she can face the world in complete calm.”
Subredil understood: It was a Gunni thing. Only Gunni would come up with an idea like that. Gunni religion personified everything. It had a god or goddess or demon, a deva or rakshasa or yaksha or whatever for everything, usually with several aspects and avatars and differing names, none of whom were seen much nowadays but who had been very busy way back when.
Only an extremely wealthy Gunni would come up with a conceit like an Anger Chamber—a Gunni cursed with a thousand rooms she did not know how to use.
Later in the day Subredil contrived to be allowed to service the freshly evacuated Anger Chamber. It was small and contained nothing but a mat on a polished wooden floor and a small shrine to ancestors. The smoke was thick and the smell of incense was overpowering.
A good thing I didn’t have any pages on me, too,” Sahra told me. “The Greys started searching us going out. That woman Vancha tried to steal a little silver oil lamp. She’ll spend all morning tomorrow being ‘punished’ by Jaul Barundandi.”
“Does Barundandi’s boss know what he does?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“We could trick him into betraying himself. Get him tossed out.”
“No. Barundandi is the devil we know. An honest man would be harder to manipulate.”
“I loathe the man.”
“That’s because he’s loathsome. Not unlike other men in similar positions of petty power. But we’re not here to reform Taglios, Sleepy. We’re here to find out how to release the Captured. And to torment our enemies when doing that doesn’t jeopardize our primary mission. And we did a great job of that today. The Radisha was crushed by our messages.”
Sahra told me what she had discovered. Then I told her about my own small triumph. “I got into the restricted stacks today. And I found what I think might be the original of one of the Annals we’ve got hidden in the Palace. It’s in terrible shape but it’s all there and it’s still readable. And there may be more volumes. I only got through part of the restricted stack before I had to go help Baladitya find his slippers so his grandson could lead him home.”
I had the book right there on the table. I patted it proudly. Sahra asked, “Won’t it be missed?”
“I hope not. I replaced it with one of the moldy discards I’ve been saving.”
Sahra squeezed my hand. “Good. Good. Things have gone well lately. Tobo, would you find Goblin? I have an idea to run past him.”
I said, “I’ll see how our guests are doing. Somebody might be ready to whisper confidences in my ear.”
But only Swan wanted my ear and he did not have confidences in mind. In his way he was as incorrigible as One-Eye, yet he had a style that did not offend me. I do not think Swan had an evil bone in him. Like so many people, he was a victim of circumstance, struggling to keep his head up in the turbulence of the river of events.
Uncle Doj was displeased with his circumstances even though he was not a prisoner. “We can certainly get along without that book,” I told him. “I doubt that I could read it, anyway. Mostly I want to make sure it doesn’t get back to the Deceivers. What we really need is your knowledge.”
Doj was a stubborn old man. He was not yet ready to make deals or to look for allies.
Before I left I asked, “Will it all die with you? Will you be the last Nyueng Bao to follow the Path? Thai Dei can’t if he’s buried under the glittering plain.” I winked. I understood Doj better than he thought. His problem was not a conflict with his morality, it was a matter of control. He wanted to do everything his way, no strings.
He would come around if I kept reminding him of his mortality and his lack of a son or an apprentice. Nyueng Bao are famous for their stubbornness but even they will not sacrifice all their hopes and dreams rather than adjust.
I visited Narayan just long enough to offer a reminder that our interest did not lie in harming him. But the only reason we had for keeping the Daughter of Night healthy was our hope of his cooperation. “You can be stubborn for a while yet. We have several tasks to wrap up before you become our main interest and we concentrate on murdering your dreams.”
That was my whole focus with each of our prisoners. Make them put their hopes and dreams on the line. Maybe I could weasel my way into history, as famous or infamous as Soulcatcher and Widowmaker, as Stormshadow and Longshadow, remembered forever as the Dreamkiller.
I had a vision of myself drifting through the night like Murgen, disembodied but dragging along a bottomless bag of black night into which I stuffed all the dreams I stole from restless sleepers. I was a real old-time rakshasa, there.
The Daughter of Night did not look up when I went to view her. She was in a cage Banh Do Trang used for keeping large animals of the deadliest sort. Sometimes leopards, but mostly tigers. A fully grown male tiger was worth a fortune in the apothecary market. She was shackled as well. The cats never were. In addition, I believe, a little opium and nightshade were used to season her food. Nobody wanted to underestimate her potential. Her family had a dire history. And she had a goddess on her shoulder.
Reason told me to kill her right now, before Kina wakened as much as she could. That would buy me the rest of my lifetime free of the end of the world. It would take the dark goddess generations to create another Daughter of Night.
Reason also told me that if the girl died, the Captured would spend the rest of time in those caverns under the glittering plain.
Reason told me, after a moment watching her, that she was not just ignoring me. She did not know I was there. Her mind was elsewhere. Which was not a comfortable feeling at all. If Kina could turn her loose, the way Murgen was loose . . .
Master Santaraksita paused to tell me, “It was good of you to care for Baladitya yesterday, Dorabee. I had forgotten him in my eagerness to assemble the bhadrhalok. But you should be careful or his grandson will begin expecting you to walk the old man home for him. He tried it with me.”
I did not look into his eyes, though I did want to see what was there. There was a tightness in his voice that told me he had something on his mind. But I had taken too many liberties with Dorabee already. He would not stare into the eyes of the priestly caste. “I but did the right thing, Master. Are we not taught to respect and aid our elders? If we do not when we are young, who will respect and aid us when we ourselves become frail?”
“Indeed. Nevertheless, you continue to amaze and intrigue me, Dorabee.”
Uncomfortable, I tried to change the subject by inquiring, “Was the meeting of the bhadrhalok productive, Master?”
Santaraksita frowned, then smiled. “You’re very subtle, Dorabee. No. Of course not. We’re the bhadrhalok. We talk. We don’t act.” For a moment he mocked his own kind. “We’ll still be debating what form our resistance should take when the Protector perishes of old age.”
“Is it true what they say, Master? That she’s four hundred years old, yet fresh as a bride?” I did not need to know, I just needed conversation to nurture Santaraksita’s surprising interest in me.
“That seems to be the common belief, handed down from the northern mercenaries and those travelers the Radisha adopted.”
“She must be a great sorceress indeed, then.”
“Do I detect a note of jealousy?”
“Would we all not like to live forever?”
He looked at me oddly. “But we shall, Dorabee. This life is only a stage.”
Wrong thing to say, Dorabee Dey. “I meant in this world. I find myself largely content to remain Dorabee Dey Banerjae.”
Santaraksita frowned slightly but let it go. “How are your studies coming?”
“Wonderfully, Master. I’m especially fond of the historical texts. I’m discovering so many interesting facts.”
“Excellent. Excellent. If there’s anything I can do to help . . . ”
I asked, “Is there a written Nyueng Bao language? Or was there ever?”
That took him from the blind side. “Nyueng Bao? I don’t know. Why in the world would you—”
“Something I’ve seen a few times near where I live. Nobody knows what it means. The Nyueng Bao down there won’t talk. But I never heard of them being literate.”
He rested a hand on my shoulder for a moment. “I’ll find out for you.” His fingers seemed to be trembling. He murmured something unintelligible and hurried away.
Word was in that the Bhodi disciples were not happy with us for stealing their thunder at the Palace gate. I wondered what they would think when the news arrived about our behavior at Semchi. That seemed to be coming together perfectly for us. Unless Soulcatcher was thinking farther ahead than we could detect.
Murgen had Slink’s party well on the way to the village. And moving faster than the group the Protector had sent to destroy the Bhodi Tree. That group outnumbered our brothers but did not expect any resistance. In a few days it would turn really nasty down there.
As the weather had here. Storm season had arrived. I had been delayed coming home by a ferocious thunderstorm that flooded some streets and sent down hail an inch in diameter. The kangali and other children went out and tried to gather up the ice, barking in pain every time a hailstone found unprotected skin. For a short while the air was almost tolerably cool. But then the storm moved on and the heat returned worse than it had been before. The stench of the city welled up. One storm was not enough to sluice it clean, only to turn everything over. In a few days the insects would be more miserable than ever before.
I hugged my burden and told myself I would not have to stay in this cesspool much longer.
“One more to locate and I’ll have everything I need from the library.” My new acquisition lay open for public viewing. Of course no one could read it. Not even me. But I was confident that I now possessed another original of the three missing Annals. Perhaps the very first, since it was so alien. The other seemed to be inscribed in the same alphabet, much modified and somewhat like that used in the discarded volume I had rescued. If the language was the same, I would be able to figure it out eventually.
One-Eye cackled. “Yeah. Everything but somebody to translate that stuff for you. Everything but your new boyfriend.” He insisted that Master Santaraksita was out to seduce me. And that Santaraksita would be brokenhearted if he succeeded and discovered that I was female.
“That’s enough of that, you filthy old thing.”
“Sacrifice for the cause, Little Girl.” He started to offer some graphic advice. He had been drinking again. Or was drinking still.
Sahra arrived. She tossed a large bundle of pages my way. “Can it, One-Eye. Find Goblin. There’s work to do.” Of me she demanded, “Why do you put up with that?”
“He’s harmless. And he’s for sure too darned old to change. And if he’s nagging me, he’s not getting into something that’s going to get us all killed.”
“So you’re sacrificing for the cause.”
“Something like that. That was quick.” Goblin had arrived. “What happened to One-Eye?”
“Taking a leak. What do I have to do now?”
Sahra said, “I can get into the Anger Chamber The rest is up to you.”
“You do this and you’ll never be able to get back into the Palace. You know that, don’t you?”
“What’re we talking about?” I asked.
Sahra said, “I think we can kidnap the Radisha. With a little luck and a lot of help from Goblin and One-Eye.”
“Goblin’s right. You do that, we’d all better be a hundred miles away by the time the word gets out. I have a better idea. If we have to give away the fact that we can get inside the Palace, do it by sabotaging Soulcatcher. Get to one of her carpets, rig it to come apart under her when she’s two hundred feet up and moving fast.”
“I like the way you think, Sleepy. Put that on the list, Sahra. I want to be there. It’d be like the time the Howler flew into the side of the Tower at Charm. Man, he must’ve been going at least three times as fast as a horse could run when he hit that wall. Blauw! Hair, teeth and eyeballs all over the—”
“He walked away from that, you idiot.” One-Eye was back. “He’s out there under the plain with our guys right now.” A unique odor suggested that One-Eye had taken a moment out to award himself some medicinal refreshment.
“Stop it. Now.” Sahra was cranky tonight. “Our next step will be to neutralize Chandra Gokhale. We’ve already decided that. These other things we can worry about down the road.”
I observed, “We’ll need to freshen up our evacuation drill in case we need to get out of Taglios in a hurry. The more active we get, the more likely it becomes that something will go wrong. If it does, we’ll have Soulcatcher breathing down our necks.”
Goblin observed, “She isn’t stupid, she’s just lazy.”
I asked Sahra, “Did she call in her shadows yet?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything.”
Goblin grumbled. “What we really need is a formula for doing without sleep. For about a year. Let me see Minh Subredil’s Ghanghesha.”
Sahra sent Tobo to fetch the statue. The boy could be much less unpleasant when he was in a group.
Silence struck as Banh Do Trang rolled in, pushed by one of his own people. He smiled at a private joke. He enjoyed startling us. “One of my men tells me that we have a couple of outsiders caught in the confusion net. They appear to be harmless. An old man and a mute. Somebody will have to get them out and send them on their way without making them suspicious.”
That news gave me a little chill but I did not suspect the truth till poor overworked Tobo and Goblin—the latter going along but staying out of sight while the boy led the intruders to safety—returned and Goblin reported, “I think your boyfriend followed you home, Sleepy.”
“What?”
“There was this terrified old man who tried to impress Tobo with the fact that he was a librarian.” A lot of Taglians would have been impressed. The ability to read was almost a sorcery in itself. “He called his sidekick Adoo. You told us—”
One-Eye began to howl. “The Little Girl’s a regular heartbreaker! Damn, I’d give anything to be there when that oid fool slides his hand into her pants and don’t find what he’s looking for.’’
I was embarrassed. I do not think I have been embarrassed about anything since the first time my uncle Rafi slipped his hand under my sari and did find what he was after. That darned fool Santaraksita! Why did he have to go complicating things like this?
“That’s enough of that!” Sahra snapped. “There’s supposed to be a meeting of the Privy Council tomorrow. I think we can use it to get to Gokhale. But I’ll need to take Sawa and Shikhandini.”
“Why?” I asked. I had no desire to go back inside the Palace ever again.
“That’s great,” One-Eye enthused. “You don’t show at the library tomorrow, that old goat is gonna pine and whine and wonder what happened, if it’s all his fault even though he knows there’s no way you could know he tried to follow you home. You’ll have your hook set, Little Girl. All you have to do is pull him in.”
Sahra snapped, “I said—”
“Wait a minute. He may have a point. Suppose I do play Santaraksita’s game? To the point where I get him to do my translations for me? We could even add him to our collection. I don’t think he has much family. Why don’t we take a closer look, see how long it might be before people wondered why he was missing.”
“Oh, you’re wicked, Little Girl,” One-Eye said. “You’re really wicked.”
“You could find out someday, you keep riding me.”
“About Gokhale?” Sahra asked.
“All right. Why are we taking me and Tobo both?”
“Tobo to put an idea into his head so he gets an itch he’s going to have to go scratch. You to cover us. Just in case. I’ll have Tobo carry his flute.” Tobo’s flute was a small version of the fire-projecting bamboo. “He can turn it over to you once we’re inside.” Tobo had carried that flute every time he had accompanied his mother into the Palace. We try to think ahead. “Also, I want to keep you fresh in Jaul Barundandi’s mind. I’ll definitely have to have you along when I snatch the Radisha. Goblin, what can you do with my Ghanghesha?”
No one else on earth would have dared hand the little wizard a straight line like that. But Sahra was Sahra. She did not have to pay the price.
I started to leave. I had other things to do. Tobo asked, “Is it all right if I show your Annals to Murgen? He wants to read them.”
“You two starting to get along now?”
“I think so.”
“Good. You can let him see them. Tell him not to be too critical. If he is, I won’t come out there and dig him up.”
Narayan seemed thoroughly puzzled by my continued interest. I do not believe he remembered me at all. But he now knew that I was female and had been the young man Sleepy that he had encountered, only rarely, ages ago.
“You’ve had time to reflect. Have you decided to help us yet?”
He looked at me with pure venom, yet without obvious personal hatred. I was just a particularly unpleasant obstacle delaying the inevitable triumph of his goddess. He had gotten his mind back into a rut.
“All right. I’ll see you again tomorrow night. Your son Aridatha has a leave day coming up. We’ll bring him around to visit you.”
There was a guard watching the Daughter of Night. “What’re you doing here, Kendo?”
“Keeping an eye on—”
“Go away. And don’t come back. And spread the word. Nobody guards the Daughter of Night. She’s too dangerous. Nobody even goes near her unless Sahra or I tell them to. And then they don’t do it alone.”
“She don’t look—”
“She wouldn’t, would she? Start hiking.” I went to the cage. “How long would it take for your goddess to create all the right conditions for the birth of another like you? If I decide to kill you?”
The girl’s gaze rose slowly. I wanted to cringe away from the power in her eyes but I held on. Maybe she should be getting even more opium than she was already.
“Reflect upon your value. And upon my power to destroy it.” I felt puffed up. That was the kind of thing the devas, or lesser gods, blathered at one another on the fringes of the epics spun by the professional storytellers.
She glared. There was so much power in her eyes that I decided Kendo ought to spend a little time in private with Goblin and One-Eye, making sure he had not been taken in already.
“I think that without you there never will be a Year of the Skulls. And I know that you’re still alive only because I want something from Narayan, who loves you like a father.” Singh was her father, for all practical purposes. Croaker had been denied the chance by cruel Fortune. Or, more accurately, by the will of Kina.
“Keep well, dear.” I left. I had a lot of reading to get done. And some writing if I got the chance. My days were always full and all too often they got confused. I decided to do things, then forgot. I told others to do things, then forgot that, too. I was beginning to look forward to the time when our successes—or sufficiently spectacular failures—forced us out of town. I could sneak off somewhere where nobody knew me and just loaf for a few months.
Or for the rest of my life if I wanted.
I had no trouble understanding why every year a few more of our brothers gave up and faded away. I only hoped a little notoriety would bring them back.
I studied the pages Sahra had brought out for me but the translation was difficult, the subject matter was uninspiring, and I was tired. I kept losing my concentration. I thought about Master Santaraksita. I thought about going back up to the Palace, armed. I thought about what Soulcatcher would do now that she knew she did not have us trapped inside the Thieves’ Garden. I thought about getting old and being alone and had a suspicion that that fear might have something to do with why some brothers remained with the Company no matter what. They had no other family.
I have no other family.
I will not look back. I am not weak. I will not relax my self-control. I will persevere. I will triumph over myself and will conquer all adversity.
I fell asleep rereading my own recollections of what Murgen had reported about the Company’s adventure on the glittering plain. I dreamed about the creatures he had encountered there. Were they the rakshasas and nagas of myth? Did they have anything to do with the shadows, or with the men who evidently created the shadows from hapless prisoners of war?
I have a bad feeling about this,” I told Sahra as she and Tobo and I started the long walk. “You’re sure the shadows are all off the streets?”
“Quit fussing, Sleepy. You’re turning into an old woman. The streets are safe. The only monsters out here are human. We can handle those. You’ll be safe in the Palace if you just stick to your character. Tobo will be safe as long as he remembers that he’s not really Shikhandini and desperate for his mother to keep her job. It’s in the nature of men like Jaul Barundandi that they do their bullying inside your head, not physically. They’ll take ‘no’ for an answer. And I won’t lose my job over it. My work is being noticed by others. Especially by Barundandi’s wife. Now, get yourself into character. Tobo, you too. You particularly. I know Sleepy can do this when she concentrates on it.”
Tobo was clad as a budding young woman, Minh Subredil’s daughter, and I hoped we could get him back inside the warehouse unnoticed by Goblin and One-Eye, because they would ride him mercilessly. With the investment of a little artifice on his mother’s part, Tobo made a very attractive young woman.
Jaul Barundandi thought so, too. Minh Subredil was the first worker called forward and Barundandi never bothered with his customary grumble about taking Sawa as part of the package.
Sawa had trouble keeping a straight face later when we found Barundandi’s wife Narita waiting to pick women to work for her. One glance at Shiki was enough. Minh Subredil’s family definitely belonged under her direct supervision.
Minh Subredil had done a good job of ingratiating herself with Narita. For the very good reason that Narita was in charge of cleaning those parts of the Palace of most immediate interest to us.
Sawa had not worked for Narita in the past. Subredil explained Sawa to Narita, who seemed more patient than she had the few times I had seen her before. Narita said, “I understand. There’re plenty of simple things that need doing. The Radisha was particularly restless last night. These days when she has trouble sleeping, she breaks things and makes messes.”
The woman actually sounded sympathetic. But the Taglian people loved their ruling family and seemed to feel that they deserved more room than the man on the street. Perhaps because of the burdens they bore, always in the past with maximum respect for Rajadharma.
Subredil maneuvered me into a spot whence I could observe well without being noticed. She and Narita brought me several brass treasures that needed cleaning. The ruling family had to be very fond of brass. Sawa cleaned tons of it. But Sawa could be trusted not to damage anything.
Shiki came to me and asked, “Will you take care of my flute for me, Aunt Sawa?” I took the instrument, studied it briefly, pasted on an idiot grin and tooted on the thing a few times. Just so everybody would know it was a real flute and not imagine that it might be a small fireball thrower, capable of making life both brief and painful for the first half-dozen people who got too close to a flautist in a bad temper.
Barundandi’s wife asked Shiki, “You play the flute?”
“Yes, ma’am. But not very well.”
“I was quite a skilled player when I was a girl . . . ” She noticed her husband peeking in for the second time this morning and began to suspect he was interested in more than just the progress of the day’s work. “Subredil, I don’t think it’s wise for you to bring your daughter here.” And a moment later, she growled, “I’ll be back in a minute. I have to talk to that man. I have to straighten him out.”
The moment she stepped out, Minh Subredil moved with startling rapidity. She vanished into the Radisha’s Anger Chamber. I had to admire her. Her mind never seemed clearer than when she was in a dangerous position. I suspected she actually enjoyed her role as a Palace menial. And the more dangerous the times, the more effective she seemed.
Despite a massive workload and Narita’s frequent trips away to sabotage her husband’s efforts to weasel in close to Shikhandini, or to draft Shiki into a different working group, in mid-afternoon we left the Radisha’s personal suite for the gloomy chambers where the Privy Council assembled. There was a rumor that the Bhodi disciples were about to send another suicidal goof to the gateway. The Radisha wanted to forestall that somehow.
We were supposed to get the place ready for a Council session.
The Bhodi rumor had had its birth in the mind of Ky Sahra. It was supposed to be the device by which we could bring Shikhandini face-to-face with Chandra Gokhale.
We had almost two hours before the staffers appeared, the quiet little men who wrote everything down. Then the Purohita arrived, accompanied by the ecclesiastical members of the Privy Council. The Purohita did not deign to note our existence even though Shiki mistook him for Gokhale and batted her eyes till Subredil signed her off. I could hear the excuse that would come later: All old men looked alike.
Neither Arjuna Drupada nor Chandra Gokhale considered themselves old.
We continued our work, ignored. The folk of the Palace, particularly the inner circle, were lucky we had other things we wanted to do with our lives. Had we not cared about our own survival, we could have slaughtered scores of them. But getting rid of the Purohita would not mean much in the grand scheme. The senior priests would replace him with another old man just as nasty and narrow of mind before Drupada’s bones got cold.
Chandra Gokhale came in and he did not overlook the help. Sahra must have gleaned a few suggestions from Willow Swan about what the old pervert liked, because he stopped dead, staring at Shikhandini like somebody had clubbed him between the eyes. Shiki had the role down perfectly. She was a shy virgin and a flirt at the same time, as though her maidenly heart had been smitten instantly. God apparently fashioned men so that they would swallow that sort of bait ninety-nine times out of ten.
Barundandi’s timing was good. He came to move us out of the meeting chamber just as the Protector swooped in like some dark, angry eagle. Gokhale watched our departure with moon eyes. Before we completed our evacuation, he was whispering to one of his scribes.
Jaul Barundandi, unfortunately, had a sharp eye for some things. “Minh Subredil, I believe your daughter has charmed the Inspector-General of the Records.”
Subredil appeared surprised. “Sir? No. That can’t be. I won’t let my child stumble into the trap that destroyed my mother and condemned me to this cruel life.”
Sawa caught Subredil’s arm. Apparently she had become frightened by that intense outburst, but in reality she squeezed, warning Subredil not to say anything that Barundandi might remember if Chandra Gokhale disappeared.
We might want to consider a change of plan. We did not want anyone to have any reason to connect anything outside with any of us.
Subredil’s outburst faded. She became embarrassed and anxious to be elsewhere. “Shiki. Come on.”
I was ready to kick Shikhandini’s bottom myself. She was being a positive slut. But she did respond to her mother’s command.
Sawa sort of settled down out of the way with the last of her dirty brass, in hopes of being overlooked while the Privy Council convened, but Jaul Barundandi was alert. “Minh Subredil. Bring your sister-in-law.” He tried to flirt with Shikhandini. He got a look of disgust for his trouble.
Minh Subredil got me going, then went after her daughter. “What did you think you were doing in there?”
“I was just having fun. The man is a disgusting old pervert.”
Softly, as though not meant for Barundandi’s ears while the words really were, Subredil said. “Don’t ever have fun like that again. Men like that will do whatever they like with you and there isn’t anything anybody can do about it.”
That warning was not all acting. The last thing we needed was one of the mighty dragging Shikhandini into a dark corner to do a little groping.
That was not supposed to happen. It was unthinkable, supposedly. And for ordinary people that was mostly true. But not so at a level where men began to believe that they existed outside the usual rules.
“Narita!” Barundandi called. “Where have you gotten to? That damned woman. She’s slipped off to the kitchen again. Or she’s gone somewhere to sneak a nap.”
I heard the Radisha behind us, in the meeting chamber, but could not make out individual words. An angry voice responded. That had to be Soulcatcher. I wanted to be somewhere a little farther away. I started moving.
Sawa, of course, did things others did not always understand. Subredil grabbed hold and started to fuss. Barundandi told her, “Take this bunch to the kitchen, get something to eat. If Narita is there, tell her I want her.”
The moment he was out of sight, I announced, “Sawa is going to wander off.” Sawa was not completely happy with the pages Subredil kept bringing Sleepy. Subredil could not read them, worked in a rush and seemed incapable of collecting anything interesting.
I hoped I remembered the way. Even when you wear the yarn bracelet, the Palace is a confusing place and I had not roamed it since the days when the Captain was the Liberator and a great hero of the Taglian people. And even then, I had been only an occasional visitor.
As soon as I began to feel unsure, I got out a small piece of chalk and began to leave tiny marks in the Sangel alphabet. I had managed to learn a little of that language during our years in the far south but it had been a struggle. I hoped anyone who discovered the marks would not recognize what they were.
I did find the room where the old books were hidden. It was obvious that someone came there often. The dust was disturbed badly, which in itself would raise questions if discovered. I tried to drag out the book that looked the oldest. Darn, that thing was heavy. Once I got it open, I found that the pages were real stubborn about tearing. They were not paper at all, which never has been very common. I could tear them only one at a time. Which maybe explained why Subredil just grabbed whatever came easiest. She would not have time to pick and choose.
I worried that I had been away too long myself, convinced that Barundandi or his wife must have noticed that I was missing. I hoped it did not occur to them to wonder why Subredil was not making a scene because she had lost track of me.
Even so, I continued to tear pages until I had all I thought the three of us could carry away.
I hid everything in an unused room not far from the service postern, uncertain how we would recover it heading out, then took myself way down inside Sawa, almost to the point of incapacitating confusion.
They found me dirty and tearstained and still trying to find the way back to the meeting chamber, “they” being some of the other day workers. In moments I was reunited with Subredil and Shikhandini. I clung to my sister-in-law like a wood chip desperate to shed the embrace of a rushing flood.
Jaul Barundandi was not happy. “Minh Subredil, I accepted this woman here for your sake, out of kindness and charity. But lapses of this sort are not acceptable. No work got done while we were searching . . . ” His voice trailed off. The Radisha and the Protector were headed our way, following a most unusual route. This was backstairs country. Which meant nothing whatsoever to Soulcatcher, of course. That woman had no sense of class or caste. There was the Protector and beneath the Protector there was everyone else.
Sawa just sort of folded up and squatted with her face in her lap. Subredil and Shikhandini and Jaul Barundandi partially tried to get out of the way, partially gawked. Shiki had not seen either woman before.
Sawa crossed her fingers out of sight in her lap. Subredil whispered prayers to Ghanghesha. Jaul Barundandi shivered in terror. Shikhandini stared with a teen’s inability to feel appropriate fear.
The Radisha paid us no heed. She stamped past talking about ripping the guts out of Bhodi disciples. Her voice contained almost no emotional conviction. The Protector, though, slowed down and considered us all intently. For an instant I found myself almost overcome by the dread that she really could read minds. Then she went on and Jaul Barundandi ran along behind, forgetting us and Narita both because the Radisha barked some command back his way.
Sawa rose and whimpered, “I want to go home.”
Subredil agreed that it was enough of a day.
Neither the Greys nor the Royal Guards were searching anyone. A good thing, too. I carried so much paper in my small clothes I could fake a normal walk for only a few dozen yards.
I got through my part of the evening meeting quickly and ran off to my own little corner so I could compare my newly acquired pages with those of the book I had stolen from the library that I thought was an exact copy—if not the genuine original—of the true first volume of the Annals of the Black Company. I was so cheerful I am sure One-Eye must have had great fun talking about me behind my back.
It did not occur to me to stick around to see how our temptation of Chandra Gokhale played out.
The story I got later was, Gokhale had a man try to follow Shiki home. When that man did not report back within a reasonable time—on account of he ran into Runmust and Iqbal Singh someplace he should not have been and ended up taking the long swim downriver—Gokhale headed for the joy house that specialized in serving him, his associates and those who shared their select but hardly rare tastes in pleasure. Riverwalker and several other brothers picked him up when he left the Palace. He was accompanied by two companions who would regret their wishes to ingratiate themselves with the Inspector-General by joining him in an evening of indulgence.
Murgen followed events closely, too. Knowing that he would do so, I felt at ease snuggling up with my new acquisitions.
It took me over an hour to conclude that what I had brought out today was indeed a later version of the first ever Annal and most of another hour to realize that I would not be able to winkle out the book’s secrets without skilled help. Or a lot more time than I had.
Chandra Gokhale apparently died in that joy house. Likewise, his two companions. There were witnesses. People saw them strangled. Then a red rumel got left behind in the killers’ haste to get away.
The Greys arrived almost immediately. They loaded the corpses into a cart, saying the Protector wanted Gokhale’s back in the Palace instantly. But the Greys stopped being Greys moments after they left the pleasure house. Their course led them toward the river rather than toward the Palace. The extra bodies vanished into the flood.
A white crow dozing on a rooftop wakened when they started downhill. It stretched and followed them.
Murgen was there when Soulcatcher received the news. The report reached the Palace in a remarkably short time and was unusually complete. The Greys worked hard to please their mistress.
The party bringing Gokhale to the warehouse had not yet arrived.
Murgen had been asked to look around the Protector’s quarters while he was there. We knew nothing about them. Nobody ever went into her suite. Not since Willow Swan had gone to his reward.
Murgen would have to be questioned about how she lived in private.
Soulcatcher did not retreat there, however. She went out looking for the Radisha right away.
The Radisha knew something had happened to Gokhale but she had not had detailed reports. The women settled in the receiving chamber of the Radisha’s austere suite. Soulcatcher told what she knew. She used a very businesslike voice. It was said sometimes that the Protector was her most dangerous and least stable when she stopped being capricious and seemed calmest and most serious.
“It seems the Inspector-General shared some habits with Perhule Khoji. In fact, I’m now assured that his particular weakness was common amongst the senior men of his ministry.”
“There were rumors.”
“And you did nothing?”
“Chandra Gokhale’s private amusements, loathsome as I found them personally, did not prevent his performing perfectly as Inspector-General of the Records. He was particularly adept at generating revenue.”
“Indeed.” Soulcatcher’s businesslike manner wavered momentarily. Murgen would report his amusement at the thought she might actually have a moral opinion. “He was attacked in the same manner as Khoji was.”
“Suggesting somebody might have a grudge against the ministry as a whole? Or that the Deceivers pick men of his particular weakness as ceremonial targets?”
“Deceivers didn’t kill Gokhale. Of that I’m sure. This was done by the people who lured Swan out and killed him. If they killed him.”
“If?” The Radisha was startled by the implication.
“We saw no corpse. Note that we have no body this time, either. Men disguised as our men were right there to haul the body away. That’s two members of the Privy Council lost in less than a week. Organizationally, they were the most important. They made the machinery work. If the Great General was anywhere nearby, I’d predict that he would be their next target. That gaggle of priests means nothing. They do nothing. They control nothing. My sister proved that if they’re killed, they can be replaced by other do-nothings within minutes. Nobody can replace Swan or Gokhale. The Greys are beginning to unravel already.”
Murgen made a mental note to mention that Willow Swan might have been less a puppet than he led the world to believe.
“Why couldn’t it be the Stranglers?” the Radisha asked.
“Because those people cut the head off that particular serpent the other day.” She described events in the Thieves’ Garden. Obviously, she had not bothered to share the news before. It was clear that the Protector considered the Princess a necessary but junior partner in her enterprise. “In a matter of days these people, whom we thought ruined forever, have cut the head off one enemy and have crippled the other seriously. There is a dangerous mind behind this.”
Not dangerous at all. Not even that lucky. But a sufficiently paranoid mind will discern patterns and threats where only fortune has conspired. Soulcatcher was ever alert for evils as great as her own.
“We knew they couldn’t remain in the darkness forever,” the Radisha said. She corrected herself hastily, “I knew. The Captain reminded me often enough.” She did not need to bring up the past and her belief in mistakes she had made. That devil was buried deep, hundreds of miles away. A much more immediate danger was right there in the room with her.
The Protector was a mistake she had abandoned hope of living long enough to correct. Blind to the consequences at the time, she had chosen to mount the tiger. Now her sole choice was to hang on for the rest of the ride.
Soulcatcher said, “We have to recall the Great General. If we can get his troops into the city before our enemies make their next move, we’ll have the manpower to hunt them down. You should send the orders immediately. And once the courier is safely off, we should announce that the Great General is returning. Their special dislike for Mogaba should cause them to delay their other plans till they can gather him in as well.”
“You think you know what they’ll do?”
“I know what I’d do if I came down with the kind of sudden, burning ambition that seems to have taken them over. I wonder if there hasn’t been some kind of coup or something?”
Exasperated, the Radisha demanded, “What will they do next?”
“I’ll keep that to myself for now. Not that I don’t trust you.” Soulcatcher probably had abiding suspicions about herself. “I just want to make sure I’ve identified enough of a pattern to begin tapping into the workings of this new mind. I’m quite talented at that, you know.”
The Radisha knew, to her own despair. She said nothing. Soulcatcher sat silently herself, as though waiting for the Princess to speak. But the Radisha had nothing to say.
The Protector mused, “I wonder who it could be? I knew the wizards of old. Neither one has the ambition or imagination or drive, even though both do have the hardness.”
The Radisha made a squeak of sound. “The wizards?”
“The two little men. The day-and-night pair. They aren’t much of anything but lucky.”
“They survived?”
“I said they’re lucky. Do you recall anyone who didn’t go onto the plain who looked like a potential leader? I don’t.”
“I thought all those people were dead.”
“As did I, in most cases. Our Great General claims to have seen most of their bodies personally. But the Great General identified them assuming that the two wizards had been killed first. Hmm. Here I had begun to be suspicious of him. Perhaps his only crime is that he’s a fool. Can you think of anyone?”
“Not inside the Company I knew. But there was a Nyueng Bao who had something to do with the Standardbearer’s wife. A priest of some sort. He seemed to be totally obsessed with weapons and the martial arts. I ran into him only a few times. And he’s never been accounted for in any reports.”
“A Master of the Path of the Sword? That would explain a lot. But I killed them all when I—Have you noticed how people keep turning up alive when there’s every reason to believe that they’re dead?”
An actual smile tried to gnaw its way out of the Radisha’s mouth. The woman talking could be considered the mother of all those whose deaths had been celebrated prematurely. “There’s sorcery afoot. Nothing should be any great surprise.”
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. And that’s a blade that can have more than one edge.” Soulcatcher rose to leave. Her voice changed, became cruel. “More than one edge. A Master of the Path of the Sword. It’s been a long time since I visited those people. They may be able to tell me something useful.” She stalked out of the room.
The Radisha remained motionless for several minutes, clearly troubled. Then she got up and went to her Anger Chamber. She settled herself there. The unseen spy went after the Protector. She, he discovered, had gone directly to the ramparts. She assembled her small, single-rider carpet, all the while arguing with herself in a dozen querulous voices.
He barely listened. He was too surprised and shocked. There was a white crow up there. It was watching the Protector, who remained unaware of Murgen’s presence although, historically, she had been more sensitive to him than to any of the living except her sister. But the bird had no trouble seeing Murgen. It examined him with first one eye, then with the other. Then it winked deliberately. And then it launched itself into the night when the Protector’s rookery took flight to accompany her on her travels.
But I am the white crow!
The disorientation was brief but as frightening as it had been years ago, when first Murgen had started stumbling around outside his flesh.
I said, “Better get Uncle Doj before we go any farther with this, Tobo.” I spotted Kendo Cutter and Runmust. “You guys finally back? How did it go?”
“Perfect. Just like you planned it.”
Sahra asked, “You have my present?”
“They’re lugging him in now. He’s still out cold.”
“Drop him right here where I can chat with him when he comes around.” Sahra had a wicked gleam in her eye.
I chuckled. “Soulcatcher thinks we’re following some grand, carefully orchestrated master plan exquisitely fashioned by a great strategic mastermind. If she knew we were just stumbling around in the dark hoping we stay lucky until we can open the way for the Captured—”
One-Eye barked, “You telling me you masterminds don’t got a next step ready to go, Little Girl?”
“We have several.” I did. “And I’m sure the next one hasn’t ever occurred to Soulcatcher as being within the realm of possibility. I’m going to bring Master Santaraksita home for supper and give him a chance to sign up for the adventure of a lifetime.”
“Heh-heh! I knew it.”
Uncle Doj joined us. He was seriously peeved about the way he had been treated lately.
I told him, “One of our friends just reported a conversation between The Thousand Voices and the Radisha. The process of reasoning is beyond my imagination but The Thousand Voices has decided that all her troubles recently are the fault of a Master of the Path of the Sword who should’ve been killed a long time ago. When last seen, she was off to visit the folks at the Vinh Gao Ghang temple to ask about the man. You may be familiar with that temple.”
Doj lost color. His sword hand trembled for an instant. His right eyelid twitched. He turned toward Sahra.
Sahra told him, “It’s true. What can she learn there?”
“Speak the tongue of The People.”
“No.”
The Master of the Path of the Sword accepted what he could not control. You would have to say he was somewhat less than gracious about it, though, if you wanted to report the whole truth.
I said, “You still have a book we want. And you could tell us a great deal that we could use, I think.”
He was a stubborn old man. He was determined not to let me stampede him into anything.
I said, “The Thousand Voices has sent for Mogaba. She means to have the army come dig us out. If I could, I’d like to get out of Taglios before she starts. But we have a lot to do and a lot to find out before we can go. Your help would be invaluable. As I keep reminding you, you have people under that plain, too . . . Huh?”
“What? Sleepy?” Sahra said. “Goblin! See what’s the matter with her!”
“I’m all right. I’m fine. I just had what you call an epiphany, I think. Listen. All the evidence indicates that Soulcatcher thinks the Captured are dead. Which would mean that she believes Longshadow is dead. We know he’s not, which is why we’re not worried right now. But if she doesn’t know, why isn’t she amazed that the world hasn’t been overrun by shadows?”
I got a lot of blank looks for my trouble, even from the wizards.
I said, “Look, what it means is, it doesn’t matter if Longshadow is dead or alive after all. As long as he stays inside the Shadowgate. There isn’t a doomsday sword hanging over the world, certain to fall when the madman croaks. Somebody besides the cleverest wizards will survive.”
The less clever wizards caught on then. They brightened up dramatically. Not that either had ever cared much what became of the world after they staggered out of it.
What to do about the Shadowmaster had never been a significant issue to us because there were always more immediate obstacles to overcome before he could become a major concern.
Sahra said as much. “If we can’t open the way, there’s no point in worrying about how we can keep it closed to those not in our favor.”
“I wonder how the Shadowmasters did it? Brute force? The Black Company was still in the far north and the Lance of Passion was up there with them.” I stared at Uncle Doj. Others began to do so, too. I wondered aloud, “Could it be that the great shame of the Nyueng Bao isn’t nearly as ancient as I thought? Could it be that it just goes back a couple of generations? To about the time that the Shadowmasters appeared, practically manifesting themselves overnight?”
Uncle Doj closed his eyes. They stayed that way for a while. When the old priest opened them again, he glared at me. “Come walking with me, Stone Soldier.”
Chandra Gokhale, Inspector-General of the Records and favorer of very young girls, chose that moment to groan. I told Doj, “Indulge me for a few minutes, Uncle. I have a guest to entertain. I promise not to take too long.”
Goblin knelt beside the minister, patted his face gently, helped Gokhale to a sitting position. The Inspector-General began to puff up for a bluster storm. As his mouth opened, I leaned down to whisper, “Water sleeps.”
Gokhale’s head jerked around. In a moment he recalled where he had seen me before. Goblin told him, “All their days are numbered, buddy. And it looks like some of you got a few less days than some others do.” Gokhale recognized him, too, though he was supposed to be dead. And when he remembered where he had seen Sahra before, he began to tremble.
Sahra asked, “Would you recall abusing Minh Subredil on several occasions? Subredil certainly remembers. What I think we’ll do to requite that is to return it fivefold. The brothers will install you in a tiger cage in a moment. You’ll be well treated otherwise. And in a few days maybe we’ll bring in the Purohita to keep you company.” She chuckled so wickedly I felt a chill. “For all the rest of their days, calling the Heaven and the Earth and the Day and the Night, like brothers, Chandra Gokhale and Arjuna Drupada.”
Part of that was some Nyueng Bao formula I didn’t understand. But I got the point. And so did Gokhale. He would be caged all the rest of his days with the man he most loathed.
Sahra chuckled again.
She made me nervous when she got like that.
I watched the old priest closely as we eased through the spell net surrounding the warehouse. He did not have a yarn amulet. His head twitched and jerked. His feet kept wanting to change direction but his will hacked a way through the illusions. Possibly that was a result of his training on the Path of the Sword. I recalled, though, that Lady had insisted he was a minor wizard.
“Where are we going, Uncle? And why are we going there?”
“We go where no Nyueng Bao ear will hear what I tell you. Old Nyueng Bao would label me a traitor. Young Nyueng Bao would call me a lying fool. Or worse.”
And I? I was generally a proponent of the latter view whenever I heard him preaching about his path to inner peace through obsessively continuous preparation for combat. His philosophy had appealed only to a very few of Banh Do Trang’s employees, all Nyueng Bao, all too young to have witnessed actual warfare. I understood that the Path of the Sword was not militaristic, but others had trouble grasping that fact.
“You want to maintain your image as an old stiff-neck who wouldn’t be caught dead helping a subhuman jengali fall and break her skull.”
It was too dark to tell but I thought he smiled. “That’s an extreme way of stating it but it approximates the facts.” His Taglian, never poor, improved now that he had no other audience.
“Are you overlooking the fact that every bit of darkness out here might harbor a bat or crow or rat, or even one of the Protector’s shadows?”
“I have nothing to fear from those things. The Thousand Voices already knows everything I’m going to tell you.”
But she might not want me to know, too.
We walked in silence for a long time.
Taglios seldom fails to amaze me. Doj cut across a wealthy section, where whole families fort up in estates surrounded by guarded walls. Their youths were out on Salara Road, which grew up ages ago to provide them with their diversions. Reason insisted that beggars ought to be plentiful where the wealth was concentrated, but that was not the case. The extremely poor were not allowed to offend the sight of the mighty with their presence.
There, as everywhere, odors assailed the nostrils but these scents were sandalwood, cloves and perfumes.
After that, Doj led me into the dark, crowded streets of a temple district. We stepped aside to let a band of Gunni acolytes pass. The boys were bullying the people living in the streets. I thought we might have trouble with them, too, which would have ended with them suffering a lot of pain, but a brake on their misbehavior saved them from its consequences. That arrived in the form of three Greys.
The Shadar do not disdain the caste system entirely but they do hold to the notion that the highest caste must include not just the priests and men qualified by birth to become priests, but also, certainly, any men of the Shadar faith. And that faith, which is an extremely heretical and Gunni-infected bastard offshoot of my own One True Faith, contains a strong strain of charity toward the weak and the unfortunate.
The Greys methodically applied their bamboo canes and invited the youths to take up any complaints with the Protector. The acolytes were smarter than they pretended. They got the hell out of there before the Greys used their whistles to invite all their friends to the caning.
All part of night in the city. Doj and I drifted onward.
Eventually he led me to a place called the Deer Park, which is an expanse of wilderness near the center of the city. It had been created by some despot of centuries past.
I told Doj, “I really don’t need all this exercise.” I wondered if he had some goofball plan to murder me and leave the body under the trees. But what would be the point?
Doj was Doj. With him, you never knew.
“I feel more comfortable here,” he said. “But I never stay long. There is a company of rangers charged with keeping squatters out. They consider anyone not Taglian and high caste a squatter. This is good. This log has shaped itself to my posterior.”
The log in question tripped me. I got back onto my feet and said, “I’m listening.”
“Sit. This will take a while.”
“Leave out the begats.” Which was a Jaicuri Vehdna colloquialism having to do with difficulties memorizing scripture, which you have to do as a child. I meant, “Don’t bother telling me whose fault it was and why they’re such bloody villains for it. Just tell me what happened.”
“Asking a storyteller not to embellish is like asking a fish to give up water.”
“I do have to go to work tomorrow.”
“As you will. You are aware, are you not, that the Free Companies of Khatovar and the roving bands of Stranglers who murder for the glory of Kina share a common ancestry?”
“There’s enough suggestion in our recent Annals to allow for that interpretation,” I admitted. Caution seemed indicated.
“My place amongst the Nyueng Bao would correspond roughly with yours as Annalist of the Black Company. It includes, as well, the role of the priest in the Strangler band—whose secondary obligation is to maintain a sound oral history of the band. Over the centuries the toog have lost their respect for education.”
My own studies suggested that a great deal of evolution had taken place in my Company during those same centuries. Probably a lot more than had been the case with the Deceiver bands. They had stayed inside one culture that had not changed a lot. Meanwhile, the Black Company kept moving into stranger and stranger lands, old soldiers being replaced by young foreigners who had no connection with the past and no idea that Khatovar even existed.
Doj seemed to echo my thoughts. “The Strangler bands are pale imitations of the original Free Companies. The Black Company retains the name and some of the memories, but you’re philosophically much farther from the original than the Deceivers are. Your band is ignorant of its true antecedents and has been kept that way willfully, mainly through the manipulations of the goddess Kina, but also, to a lesser extent, by others who didn’t want your Company to become what it had been in another time.”
I waited. He did not volunteer to explain. Doj was difficult that way.
He did, I suppose, do something that was even harder for him. He told the truth about his own people. “Nyueng Bao are the almost pure-blooded descendants of the people of one of the Free Companies. One that chose not to go back.”
“But the Black Company is supposed to be the only one that didn’t go back. The Annals say—”
“They tell you only what those who recorded them knew. My ancestors arrived here after the Black Company finished laying the land to waste and moved on north, already having lost sight of its divine mission. Deserting in its own way, through ignorance of what it was supposed to be. By then it was already three generations old and had made no effort to maintain the purity of its blood. It had just fought the war which is the first that your Annalists remember and was almost completely destroyed. That seems to be the fate of the Black Company. To be reduced to a handful, then to reconstitute itself. Again and again. Losing something of its previous self each time.”
“And the fate of your Company?” I noted that he did not mention a name. No matter, really. No name would mean anything to me.
“To sink ever deeper into ignorance itself. I know the truth. I know the secrets and the old ways. But I’m the last. Unlike other Companies, we brought our families with us. We were a late experiment. We had too much to lose. We deserted. We went and hid in the swamps. But we’ve kept our lineage pure. Almost.”
“And the pilgrimages? The old people who died in Jaicur? Hong Tray? And the great, dark, terrible secret of the Nyueng Bao that Sahra worries about so much?”
“The Nyueng Bao have many dark secrets. All the Free Companies had dark secrets. We were instruments of the darkness. The Soldiers of Darkness. The Bone Warriors charged with opening the way for Kina. Stone Soldiers warring for the honor of being remembered for all eternity, by having our names written in golden letters in glittering stone. We failed because our ancestors were imperfect in their devotion. In every company there were those who were too weak to bring on the Year of the Skulls.”
“The old people?”
“Ky Dam and Hong Tray. Ky Dam was the last elected Nyueng Bao captain. There was no one to take his place. Hong Tray was a witch with the curse of foresight. She was the last true priest. Priestess.”
“Curse of foresight?”
“She never foresaw anything good.”
I sensed that he did not want to get into that subject. I recalled that Hong Tray’s final prophecy involved Murgen and Sahra, which certainly was an offense to all right-thinking Nyueng Bao—and was not yet a prophecy completely fulfilled, probably.
“The great sin of the Nyueng Bao?”
“You had that idea from Sahra, of course. And she, like all those born after the coming of the Shadowmasters, believes that ‘sin’ is what caused the Nyueng Bao to flee into the swamps. She believes wrongly. That flight involved no sin, but survival. The true black sin occurred within my own lifetime.” His voice tightened up. He had strong feelings about this.
I waited.
“I was a small boy just taking my first small steps on the Path of the Sword when the stranger came. He was a personable man of middle years. His name was Ashutosh Yaksha. In the oldest form of the language Ashutosh meant something like Despair of the Wicked. Yaksha meant much the same as it does in Taglian today.” Which was “good spirit.” “People were prepared to believe he was a supernatural being because he had a white skin. A very pale, white skin, lighter than Goblin or Willow Swan, who sometimes get some sunlight. He wasn’t an albino, though. He had normal eyes. His hair wasn’t quite as blond as Swan’s is. In sum, he was a magical creature to most Nyueng Bao. He spoke the language oddly but he did speak it. He said he wanted to study at the Vinh Gao Ghang temple, the fame of which had reached him far away.
“When pressed about his origins, he insisted that he hailed from ‘The Land of Unknown Shadows, beneath the stars of the Noose.’ ”
“He claimed to have come off the glittering stone?”
“Not quite. That was never clear. There or beyond. No one pressed him hard. Not even Ky Dam or Hong Tray, though he troubled them. Very early we learned that Ashutosh was a powerful sorcerer. And in those days many of the older people still knew about the origins of the Nyueng Bao. It was feared that he might have been sent to summon us home. That proved to be untrue. For a long time Ashutosh seemed to be nothing but what he claimed, a student who wanted to absorb whatever wisdom had accumulated at the temple of Ghanghesha. Which had been a holy place since the Nyueng Bao first entered the swamp.”
“But there’s a but. Right? The man was a villain after all?”
“He was indeed. In fact, Ashutosh was the man you knew later as Shadowspinner. He was there to find our Key, sent by his teacher and mentor, whom you came to know as Longshadow. At a young age this man had stumbled across rumors that not all the Free Companies had returned to Khatovar. What he understood from that, that nobody else realized, was that each Company still outside must possess a talisman capable of opening and closing the Shadowgate. An ambitious man could use that talisman to recruit rakshasas he could send out to do evil for him. The power to kill becomes the ultimate power in the hands of a man who has no reservations about employing it.”
“So this Ashutosh Yaksha found the Key?”
“He only assured himself that it existed. He wormed his way into the confidence of the senior priests. One day someone let something drop. Soon afterward, Ashutosh announced that he had received word that his teacher, mentor and spiritual father, Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha, impressed by his reports on the temple, had chosen to come visit. Dhumraksha turned out to be a tall, incredibly skinny man who always wore a mask, apparently because his face was deformed.”
“You heard a name like Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha and you didn’t suspect something?”
I could not see Doj in the darkness but I could feel his unhappy frown. He said, “I was a small child.”
“And the Nyueng Bao aren’t interested in anything not their own. Yes. I’m Vehdna, Uncle, but I recognize the names Manthara and Dhumraksha as those of legendary Gunni demons. Even though you walk amongst lesser beings, you might keep your ears open. That way, when a nasty jengali sorcerer pulls your leg, you’ll at least have a clue.”
Doj grunted. “He had a golden tongue, Dhumraksha did. When he discovered that each decade, as the custom was then, a band of the leading men undertook a pilgrimage south—”
“He invited himself along and tricked somebody into letting him examine the Key.”
“Close. But not quite. Yes. You did guess correctly. The pilgrimage went to the very Shadowgate. The pilgrims would spend ten days there waiting for a sign. I don’t believe anyone knew what that might be anymore. But the traditions had to be observed. The pilgrims, however, never took the actual Key with them. They carried a replica charged with a few simple spells meant to fool an inattentive thief. The real Key stayed home. The old men didn’t really want a sign from the other side.”
“Longshadow got in a hurry.”
“He did. When the pilgrims arrived at the Shadowgate, they found Ashutosh Yaksha and a half-dozen other sorcerers waiting. Several were fugitives from that northern realm of darkness where the Black Company was then in service. When Dhumraksha used the false key, his band found themselves under attack from the other side of the Shadowgate. Before the gateway could be stopped up, using the power of Longshadow’s true name, three of the would-be Shadowmasters had perished. The one called the Howler, cruelly injured, had fled. The survivors quickly became the feuding, conquering monsters your brothers found in place when they arrived. And the same disaster caused the Mother of Night to reawaken and begin scheming toward a Year of the Skulls once more.”
“And that’s the great sin of the Nyueng Bao? Letting themselves be hoodwinked by sorcerers?”
“In those days there was little contact with the world outside the swamp. Banh Do Trang’s family managed all outside trade. Once a decade a handful of the older men traveled to the Shadowgate. About as frequently, Gunni ascetics would enter the swamp hoping to purify their souls. These Gunni hermits were obviously crazy or they wouldn’t have come into the swamps in the first place. They were always tolerated. And Ghanghesha found a home.”
“Where does The Thousand Voices fit?”
“She learned the story from the Howler around the time we were trapped in Dejagore. Or soon afterward. She came to the temple soon after we returned, the best of us exhausted, our old men all dead, including our Captain and Speaker, and witch Hong Tray with them. There was no one but me left who knew everything—though Gota and Thai Dei knew some, and Sahra a little, they being of the family of Ky Dam and Hong Tray. The Thousand Voices went to the temple while I was away. She used her power to intimidate and torture the priests until they surrendered the mysterious object that had been given them for safekeeping ages ago. They didn’t even know what it was anymore. They really can’t be blamed but I can’t help blaming them. And there you have it. All the secrets of the Nyueng Bao.”
I doubted that. “I doubt that seriously. But it’s a basis from which to work. Are you going to cooperate? If we get Narayan Singh to divulge what he did with the Key?”
“If you’ll undertake a promise never to tell anyone what I told you here tonight.”
“I swear it on the Annals.” This was too easy. “I won’t say a word to a soul.” But I did not say anything about not writing it down.
I did not extract an oath from him.
Sometime, eventually, he would face the moral dilemma that had swallowed the Radisha once it seemed that the Company would fulfill its obligation to her and it was coming time for her to deliver on her own commitments. Once Uncle Doj had his own people out from under the glittering stone, his reliability as an ally would turn to smoke.
Easily dealt with when the time came, I thought. I told Doj, “I still have to work tomorrow. And it’s a whole lot later now than it was an hour ago.”
He rose, evidently relieved that I had not asked many questions. I did have a few in mind, such as why the Nyueng Bao had risked more frequent pilgrimages to the Shadowgate once the Shadowmasters were in power, adding women and children and old people to the entourage. So I asked anyway, while we were walking.
He told me, “The Shadowmasters permitted it. It added to their feelings of superiority. And it let us keep them thinking that we didn’t have the real Key, that we were searching for it. Our own people believed that was what we were doing. Only Ky Dam and Hong Tray knew the whole truth. The Shadowmasters were hoping we’d find it for them.”
“The Thousand Voices figured it out.”
“Yes. Her crows went everywhere and heard everything.”
“And in those days she had a very sneaky demon at her beck and call.” I continued to pester him all the way back to the warehouse, cleverly trying to find his remaining secrets by coloring in more map around the blank places.
I did not fool him a bit.
Before I dragged off to bed, I visited Sahra, Murgen and Goblin one more time. “You people get all of that?”
“Most of it,” Murgen said. “This weary old slave has been doing some other chores, too.”
“Think he told the truth?”
“Mostly,” Sahra admitted. “He told no lies that I noticed, but I don’t think he told the whole truth.”
“Well, of course not. He’s Nyueng Bao right down to his twisted toe bones. And a wizard besides.”
Before Sahra got indignant, Goblin told me, “There was a white crow out there with you.”
“I saw it,” I said. “I figured it was Murgen.”
Murgen said, “It wasn’t Murgen. I was there disembodied. Same as now.”
“What was it, then? Who was it?”
“I don’t know,” Murgen replied.
I did not entirely believe him. Maybe it was a false intuition but I was sure he had a strong suspicion.
Master Santaraksita hardly waited till there were no eavesdroppers before he approached me. “Dorabee, your record is beginning to look bad. Two days ago you were late. Yesterday you didn’t show up at all. This morning you don’t look alert and ready for work.”
I was not. I would have been testy with anyone else. In this case I barely noticed that his words were not spoken in a tone in keeping with their content. I sensed relief in him at my return and a lingering whiff of a fear that I would not. I lied. “I had a fever. I couldn’t stay on my feet for more than few minutes at a time. I tried to come in but I was so weak I got lost for a while and eventually ended up just going home.”
“Should you even be here today, then?” Changing course, sounding overly worried.
“I have a little more strength today. I have a lot of work to do. I really want to keep this job, Sri. None other would put me so close to so much wisdom.”
“Where is home, Dorabee?” I had collected my broom. He was following me. Eyes were following us, some with a knowing look that told me Santaraksita may have pursued other young men in the past.
I was ready for this one because I knew he had tried to follow me. “I share a small room near the waterfront in the Sirada neighborhood with several friends from the army.” A common situation throughout Taglios, where men outnumber women almost two to one because so many men have come in from the Territories, hoping to make their fortunes.
“Why didn’t you go home when you came back, Dorabee?”
Oh-oh. “Sri?”
“Your mother, your brothers, your sisters, and their wives and husbands and children all still dwell in the same place where you lived as a child. They believed you were dead.”
Oh, darn! He had gone to see them? The busybody. “I don’t get along with those people, Sri.” Which was an outright lie on behalf of Dorabee Dey Banerjae. The man I had known had been very close to his family. “When I came back from the Kiaulune wars, I was so horribly changed that they wouldn’t have recognized me. Had I gone home, it wouldn’t have been long before they found out things about me that would’ve caused them to disown me. I preferred to let them think Dorabee was dead. The boy they remembered no longer exists anyway.”
I hoped he would interpret that according to his own wishful thinking.
He bit. “I understand.”
“I’m grateful for your concern, Sri. If you will excuse me?” I went to work.
I worked briskly, deep in thought. What I needed to do required me to let myself be seduced. I had no experience along those lines, from either of the possible viewpoints. But the old men tell me I am clever, and after a while I thought I saw a way by which events could proceed as desired without Surendranath Santaraksita putting himself in a position of emotional or moral risk greater than he had when he tried to follow me home and I had to send Tobo out to rescue him. Which, of course, he did not know.
I had a weak spell toward mid-morning, at a point where old Baladitya could repay his small debt by being solicitous. By the time Master Santaraksita manufactured a reasonable excuse to put himself into my proximity, I had collected myself and was back at work.
A few hours later I contrived to throw up my lunch, then made a show of cleaning up. I suffered dizzy spells later still. The last occurred after most of the librarians and copyists had gone home, despite the threat of further showers. The afternoon storm had not been as terrible as most. Taglians generally viewed that as a bad omen.
Santaraksita played his part perfectly. He was beside me before my spell was over. Nervously, he suggested, “You’d better quit now, Dorabee. You’ve put in more than your day’s work. The rest will be here tomorrow. I’ll walk along with you to make sure you’re all right.”
A relapse threatened as I began to protest that that was not necessary. So I said, “Thank you, Sri. Your generosity knows no bounds. What about Baladitya?” The old copyist’s grandson had failed to show again.
“He’s practically on our way. We’ll just leave him off first.” I tried to think of some small act or something I could say that would encourage Santaraksita’s fantasy, but could not. That proved unnecessary, anyway. The man was determined to hook himself. All because I knew how to read.
Weird.
Riverwalker just happened to be hanging around outside when Master Santaraksita, Baladitya and I left the library grounds. I made a little gesture to let him know we were going to do it. More signs and gestures along the way let him know that the old man should be rounded up as soon as Santaraksita and I left him. He was a witness who could say that the Master Librarian had been seen last in my company. And he might be useful.
Not far from the warehouse, I suffered another mild spell. Santaraksita put an arm around me to help. I drifted back into my safe place some and went on with the game. By now we were surrounded, at a distance, by Company brothers. “Just straight ahead,” I told Santaraksita, who was becoming confused by the outer web of spells. “Just hold my hand.”
Moments later a gentle tap at the base of the Master Librarian’s skull let me step away from my uncomfortable role.
“Here I’m known as Sleepy. I’m the Annalist of the Black Company. I brought you here to assist in the translation of material recorded by some of my earliest predecessors.”
Santaraksita began to fuss. Kendo Cutter placed a hand over his mouth and nose so he could not breathe. After several such episodes, even a member of the priestly class recognized the connection between silence and unimpeded breathing.
I told him, “We have a pretty cruel reputation, Sri. And it’s rightly deserved. No, I’m not Dorabee Dey Banerjae. Dorabee did die during the Kiaulune wars. Fighting on our side.”
“What do you want?” In a shaky voice.
“Like I said, we need to translate some old books. Tobo, get the books from my worktable.”
The boy went away grumbling about why was it always he who had to run and fetch.
Master Santaraksita was very put out when he discovered that some of what I wanted translated had been pilfered from his own restricted stacks. In fact, when I told him, “I want to start with this one,” and showed him what I believed to be the earliest of the Annals, he lost some color.
“I’m doomed, Dorabee . . . I’m sorry, young man. Sleepy, was it?”
“Haw!” One-Eye bellowed, having appeared only moments before. “Did you ever go sniffing up the wrong tree. My little darling Sleepy, here, is all girl.”
I smirked. “Darn! Here we go again, Sri. Now you have to get your mind around the fact that a woman can read. Ah. Here’s Baladitya. You’ll be working with him. Thank you, River. Did you run into any trouble?”
Santaraksita began to balk again. “I won’t—”
Kendo silenced him again.
“You’ll translate and you’ll work hard at it, Sri. Or we won’t feed you. We aren’t the bhadrhalok. We quit talking about it a long time ago. We’re doing it. It’s just your misfortune to get caught up in it.”
Sahra arrived. She was soaked. “It’s raining again. I see you landed your fish.” She collapsed into a chair, considered Surendranath Santaraksita. “I’m exhausted. My nerves were on edge all day. The Protector returned from the swamp at noon. She was in a totally foul mood. She had a huge argument with the Radisha, right in front of us.”
“The Radisha stood up to her?”
“She did. She’s reached her limit. Another Bhodi disciple came this morning but the Greys stopped him from burning himself. Then the Protector announced that she was going to take the night away from us by letting the shadows run loose from now on. That’s when the Radisha started screaming.”
Santaraksita looked so completely appalled by the implications of Sahra’s revelations that I had to laugh. “No,” he insisted. “It’s not funny.” Then we discovered that he was not really concerned about the shadows. “The Protector is going to clip my ears. At the very least. These books weren’t supposed to be in the library at all. I was supposed to have destroyed them ages ago, but I couldn’t do that to any book. Then I forgot about them. I should’ve locked them up somewhere.”
“Why?” Sahra snapped. She did not get an answer.
I asked her, “Did you make any headway?”
“I didn’t get a chance to pick up any pages. I did get into the Radisha’s suite. I did eavesdrop on her and Soulcatcher. And I did pick up a little other information.”
“For example?”
“For example, the Purohita and all the sacerdotal members of the Privy Council will be leaving the Palace tomorrow to attend a convocation of senior priests in preparation for this year’s Druga Pavi.”
The Druga Pavi is the biggest Gunni holiday of the Taglian year. Taglios, with all its numerous cults and countless minorities, boasted some holiday almost every day, but the Druga Pavi beggared all the rest.
“But that doesn’t come up until after the end of the rainy season.” I had a funny feeling about this.
“I got a premonition from it myself,” Sahra admitted.
“River, take the Master and copyist and make sure they’re as comfortable as we can make them here. Have Goblin provide them with chokers and make sure they understand how they work.” I asked Sahra, “Did you happen to hear about this before or after Soulcatcher got back from terrorizing the swamp?”
“After, of course.”
“Of course. She suspects something. Kendo. As soon as it’s light out tomorrow, I want you to head for the Kernmi What. See what you can find out about this meeting without giving away how interested you are. If you see a lot of Greys or other Shadar around, don’t bother. Just get back here with that word.”
“Suppose this’s a genuine opportunity?” Sahra asked.
“It’ll stay genuine as long as they’re outside the Palace. Won’t it?”
“Maybe it would be best to just kill them. Put some flash buttons on the corpses. That would make Soulcatcher really mad.”
“Wait. I’m having a thought. It might just be straight from al-Shiel.” I waved a finger in the air as though counting musical beats. “Yes. That’s it. We need to hope the Protector is trying to bait a trap with the Purohita.” I explained my thinking.
“That’s good,” Sahra said. “But if we’re going to make it work, you and Tobo will have to go inside with me.”
“And I can’t. There’s no way I can miss work the day after Master Santaraksita disappears. Get Murgen. See if he was around the Palace today. Find out if there’s a trap and where it’s at. If Soulcateher is going to be away, maybe you and Tobo can do it on your own.”
“I don’t want to belittle your genius, Sleepy, but this is something I’ve thought about a lot. Off and on for years. The possibility is partly why I keep trying to worm my way closer to the center of things. The truth is, it can’t be managed by fewer than three people. I need Shiki and I need Sawa.”
“Let me think.” Sahra got Murgen’s attention while I thought. Murgen seemed to be more alert and more interested in the outside world now, particularly where his wife and son were concerned. He must have begun to understand. “I’ve got it, Sahra! We can have Goblin be Sawa.”
“Ain’t no fucking way,” Goblin said. He repeated himself four or five times in as many languages, just in case somebody missed his point. “What the fuck is the matter with you, woman?”
“You’re as small as I am. We rub a little betel-nut juice on your face and hands, dress you up in my Sawa outfit, have Sahra sew your mouth shut so you can’t shoot it off every time the urge hits you, nobody will know the difference. As long as you keep looking down, which is what Sawa mostly does.”
“That may be a solution,” Sahra said, ignoring Goblin’s continued protests. “In fact, the more I think about it the better I like it. No disrespect meant but in a major pinch, Goblin would be a lot more useful than you would.”
“I know. There you go. And I could go ahead and be Dorabee Dey besides. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Women,” Goblin grumbled. “Can’t live with them but they won’t go away.”
Sahra said, “You’d better start learning Sawa’s quirks from Sleepy.” To me she said, “There’ll be plenty of work for Sawa. I made sure. And Narita is eager to get her back. Tobo, you need to get some sleep. Nobody’s connected you with Gokhale but you’ll still need to be alert.”
“I really don’t like going up there, Mom.”
“You think I do? We all have—”
“Yes. I think you do. I think you keep going up there because you want the danger. I think it might be hard for you when you do have to stop taking risks. I think when that happens, we’re all going to have to watch you close so you don’t do something that might get us all killed along with you.”
That was a kid who had been doing a lot of thinking. Maybe with a little help from one or more uncles. Sounded to me like he might be riding knee to knee with the truth, too.
I settled into a chair outside the cage where Narayan Singh was being kept. He was awake but he ignored me. I said, “The Daughter of Night still lives.”
“I know that.”
“You do? How?”
“I’d know if you’d harmed her.”
“Then you need to know this. She isn’t going to stay unharmed a whole lot longer. The only reason she’s healthy now is that we want your cooperation. If we can’t get it, then there’s not much reason to keep on feeding her. Or you, either. Though I do intend to keep my word about taking care of you. Because I’d want you to see everything you value destroyed before you’re allowed to die yourself. Which reminds me. Aridatha couldn’t be with us tonight. His captain was concerned that there might be some unrest. Another Bhodi disciple planned to burn himself. So we’ll have to wait until tomorrow night.”
Narayan made a sound like a whispered moan. He did not want to have to acknowledge my existence, for existence, and mine in particular, was making him very unhappy. Which made me happy, though I had no personal grudge. My enmity was all very sanitary, very institutional, very much on behalf of my brothers who had been injured. And on behalf of my brothers who were imprisoned beneath the earth.
I suggested, “Maybe you should go to Kina for guidance.”
Such a look he gave me. Narayan Singh had no sense of humor and did not recognize sarcasm when it struck from the grass and sank its fangs in his ankle.
I told him, “Just to recap: I don’t have much patience left. I don’t have much time left. We’ve leaped onto the tiger’s back. The big catfight is coming.”
Catfight. Universal male slang for a squabble amongst women.
Oh, really?
It had just occurred to me. We were all women in this fight. Sahra and I. The Radisha and Soulcatcher. Kina and the Daughter of Night. Uncle Doj was as close to a principal as any man was right now. And Narayan, though he was mainly the Daughter of Night’s shadow.
Strange. Strange.
“Narayan, when the fur starts flying, I won’t be much interested in looking out for your friend. But I’m definitely going to take care of you.”
I started to leave.
“I can’t do this thing.” Singh’s voice was almost inaudible.
“Work on it, Narayan. If you love the girl. If you don’t want your goddess to have to start all over from scratch.” I thought I had that much power. By killing the right people, I could lay Kina down to sleep for another age. And I would if I could not get my own brothers out of the ground.
I found Banh Do Trang awaiting me in the little corner where I worked and slept. He did not look well, which was not surprising. He was not too many years younger than Goblin and did not have Goblin’s wondrous resources. “Can I be of any service, Uncle?”
“I understand Doj told you the story of our people.” The best he could manage was a hoarse whisper.
“He told me a story. There’re always doubts left behind when any Nyueng Bao shares a secret with me.”
“Hen. Heh-heh. You’re a bright young woman, Sleepy. Few illusions and no obvious obsessions. I think Doj was as honest with you as he could compel himself to be. Assuming he was honest with me when he consulted me afterward. He finally heard me when I told him that this’s a new age. That that was what Hong Tray wanted to show us when she chose the jengal to become Sahra’s husband. We’re all lost children. We must join hands. That, too, is what Hong Tray wanted us to understand.”
“She could’ve said so.”
“She was Hong Tray. A seeress. A Nyueng Bao seeress. Would you have her issue blunt rescripts like the Radisha and Protector?”
“Absolutely.”
Do Trang chuckled. Then he seemed to fall asleep.
Was that that? I wondered. “Uncle?”
“Uh? Oh? I’m sorry, young woman. Listen. I don’t think anyone else has mentioned it. Maybe no one else but Gota and I have seen it. But there’s a ghost in this place. We’ve seen it several times the past two nights.”
“A ghost?” Was Murgen getting so strong people were starting to see him?
“It’s a cold and evil thing, Sleepy. Like something that’s happiest skulking around the mouths of graves or slithering through a mountain of bones. Like that vampire child in the tiger cage. You should be very wary of her. And I think I should find my way to bed. Before I fall asleep here and your friends begin to talk.”
“If they’re going to gossip about me, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have them connect me with.”
“Someday when I’m young again. Next time around the Wheel.”
“Good night, Uncle.”
I thought I might read for a while but I fell asleep almost instantly. Sometime during the night I discovered that Do Trang’s ghost did exist. I awakened, instantly alert, and saw a vaguely human shimmer standing nearby, evidently watching me. The old man had done a good job describing it, too. I wondered if it might not be Death Himself.
It went away as soon as it sensed my scrutiny.
I lay there trying to put it together. Murgen? Soulcatcher spying? An unknown? Or what it felt like, the girl in the tiger cage out for an ectoplasmic stroll?
I tried reason but was still too tired to stick with it long.
There was something wrong with the city. In addition to its extraordinarily clean smell. The rain had continued throughout most of the night. And in addition to the stunned looks on the faces of street-dwellers, who had survived their worst night yet. No. It was a sort of bated-breath feeling that got stronger as I approached the library. Maybe it was some sort of psychic phenomenon.
I stopped. The Captain used to say you had to trust your instincts. If it felt like something was wrong, then I should take time to figure out why I felt that way. I turned slowly.
No street poor here. But that was understandable. There were dead people around here. The survivors would be clinging to whatever shelter they could find, afraid the Greys would replace the shadows by day. But the Greys were absent, too. And traffic was lighter than it should be. And most of the tiny one-man stalls that sprawled out into the thoroughfare were not in evidence.
There was fear in the air. People expected something to happen. They had seen something that troubled them deeply. What that might be was not obvious, though. When I asked one of the merchants who was bold enough to be out, he ignored my question completely and tried to convince me that there was no way I could manage another day without a hammered-brass censer.
In a moment I decided he might be right. I paused to speak to another brass merchant whose space lay within eyeshot of the library. “Where is everyone this morning?” I asked, examining a long-spouted teapot sort of thing with no real utility.
A furtive shift of the merchant’s eyes toward the library suggested there was substance to my premonitions. And whatever had spooked him had taken place quite recently.
No Taglian neighborhood remains quiet and empty for long.
I seldom carry money but did have a few coins on me this morning. I bought the useless teapot. “A gift for my wife. For finally producing a son.”
“You’re not from around here, are you?” the brass smith asked.
“No. I’m from . . . Dejagore.”
The man nodded to himself, as if that explained everything. When I started to move on, he murmured, “You don’t want to go that way, Dejagoran.”
“Ah?”
“Be in no hurry. Find a long way around that place.”
I squinted at the library. I saw nothing unusual. The grounds appeared completely normal, though some men were working on the garden. “Ah.” I continued forward only till I could slide into the mouth of an alley.
Why were there gardeners there? Only the Master Librarian ever brought them in.
I caught glimpses of something wheeling above the library. It drifted down to settle on the ironwork of the gate, above Adoo’s head. I took it for a lone pigeon at first but when it folded its wings, I saw that it was a white crow. And a crow with a sharper eye than Adoo had. But Adoo was accustomed to posting himself in the gateway.
That constituted another warning sign.
The white crow looked right at me. And winked. Or maybe just blinked, but I preferred the implication of intelligence and conspiratorial camaraderie.
The crow dropped onto Adoo’s shoulder. The startled gateman nearly jumped out of his sandals. The bird evidently said something. Adoo jumped again and tried to catch it. After he failed, he ran into the library. Moments later Shadar disguised as librarians and copyists rushed out and began trying to bring the crow down with stones. The bird got the heck out of there.
I followed its example, heading in another direction. I was more alert than I had been in years. What was going on? Why were they there? Obviously they were lying in wait. For me? Who else? But why? What had I done to give myself away?
Maybe nothing. Though failing to show up to be questioned would count as damning evidence. But I was not lunatic enough to try to bluff my way through whatever it was the Greys were trying to do.
The milk was spilt. No going back. But I did want to mourn the one volume of ancient Annals I had not yet been able to locate and pilfer.
All the way home I tried to reason out what had brought out the Greys. Surendranath Santaraksita had not been missing long enough to cause any official interest. In fact, some mornings the Master Librarian did not arrive until much later than this. I gave it up before I threw my brain out of joint. Murgen could go poking around down there. He could find the answer by eavesdropping.
Murgen was busy eavesdropping even though it was daytime. He was worried about Sahra and Tobo. And maybe even a little about Goblin. I found One-Eye, hung over but attentive, at the table where the mist engine resided. Mother Gota and Uncle Doj were there as well, tense and attentive themselves. Which told me that Sahra was determined to go ahead with our most daring stroke yet. To my amazement, One-Eye hustled over—in reality, a slow shuffle—and patted me on my back. “We heard you were coming in, Little Girl. We were scared shitless they were going to get you.”
“What?”
“Murgen warned us there was a trap. He heard some of the Grey bosses talking about it when he was scouting to see what Sahra was headed into. The old bitch Soulcatcher herself was out there waiting for you. Well, not exactly you personally, just somebody who goes around stealing books that aren’t supposed to be there in the first place.”
“You’ve lost me good, old man. Start someplace where I can see a couple of landmarks.”
“Somebody followed you and your boyfriend yesterday. Somebody more suspicious of him than of you. Evidently a part-time spy for the Protector.”
We knew there were informants out there getting paid piecework rates. We tried not to be vulnerable to them.
“Also evidently with a boner for your boyfriend.”
“One-Eye!”
“All right. For your boss. More or less literally. He went and told the Greys that this dirty old man was about to force perversions on one of the youths who worked for him. A few Greys went to the library and started poking around and asking questions and quickly discovered that some funds had gone missing, and Santaraksita as well, when they started dragging people out of bed and pulling them in. Then they discovered several books missing also, including some great rarities and even a couple that were supposed to have been removed from the library years ago but had not been. That got back to Catcher. She got her sweet little behind down there in about ten seconds and started threatening to eat people alive and hurting anybody whose looks she didn’t like.”
“And I almost walked into the middle of it.” I mused, “How did they know the books were gone? I replaced them with discards.” But maybe Master Santaraksita, if he was a crook, had been doing that, too.
If he had been corrupt, he had had me fooled.
We would have to talk.
“Near as Murgen could find out, Dorabee Dey Banerjae isn’t suspected of anything worse than naïveté. Surendranath Santaraksita, though, is in deep shit. Soulcatcher is going to kill him one limb at a time and let him watch the crows eat them as they go. And after that she’s going to get nasty.” One-Eye grinned a grin in which just the one lonely tooth loomed. Not exactly a recommendation of his talents as the Company dental specialist.
“Say what you like about Soulcatcher, she doesn’t put up with any corruption.”
Which was just another black mark in her ledger as far as One-Eye was concerned.
“I’m safe,” I said. “Here’s food for thought. A white crow was waiting at the gate, possibly to warn me. It made a definite attempt to communicate. So what’s the story with Sahra?”
“She’s going ahead. That Jaul Barundandi is a real dim-wit. He bought Goblin’s feeble imitation of your Sawa character. Then he tried to get Tobo away from Sahra. Sahra threatened to tell his wife.”
Minh Subredil was going to have trouble staying employed if she kept up the bad attitude.
“The cover team in place?”
“Little Girl, who’s been doing this shit since before your great-grandmother was born?”
“You always check again. And keep on checking. Because sooner or later, you’re going to save someone who overlooked something. Is the evacuation team operational?” Chances were good we were going to have to leave Taglios long before I wanted. Soulcatcher soon would be hunting us hard.
One-Eye said, “Ask Do Trang. He said he’d take care of it. You might find it interesting to note that Catcher dropped the watch on Arjana Drupada when the library jumped to the head of her list and she needed trustworthy people there.”
“She doesn’t have enough to go around?”
“Not that she trusts. Most of those she’s had watching the Bhodi disciples so she can head them off before they pull any more suicide stunts.”
“Then we have to hit Drupada—”
“Go teach your granny to suck eggs, Little Girl. Like I said, who was playing these games when Granny’s mommy was still shitting her nappies?”
“Who’s covering the warehouse, then?” Having so many things in the air meant that every brother had to be occupied somewhere. Soulcatcher was not alone in facing manpower limitations.
“You and me, Little Girl. Pooch and Spiff are around somewhere, being a mixture of sentries and couriers.”
“You’re sure Drupada is clean?”
“Murgen checks every half hour. Much as he’d rather be haunting his honey. Friend Arjana is clean. For now. But how long will it last? And Murgen’s also been keeping an eye on Slink at Semchi. Checking him every couple of hours. Looks like that’s going to happen today, too. Soulcatcher is going to shit. She’s just going to shit rocks. We’re going to do everything but stroll up and bite her on the tit today.”
“Language, old man. Language.”
Uncle Doj murmured something.
One-Eye hastened to the mist projector.
Despite her enthusiasm the night before, Sahra had been worried about having Goblin along, playing Sawa’s role. The little man was not reliable. He was bound to do something . . .
She did not give him enough credit. He had not survived so long by doing stupid things in tight places. He was determined to be more completely Sawa than ever I had played the role. He did nothing on his own. Minh Subredil guided him completely. But over his conservative role-playing he laid a glamour of disinterest. Jaul Barundandi and everyone else merely gave the idiot woman a glance and concentrated on Shiki, who appeared particularly attractive this morning. Who carried her flute hung on a thong around her neck. Anyone who tried to use force would suffer a cruel surprise.
The flute was not new but the Ghanghesha that Shiki carried was. Today even Sawa carried a statue of the god. Jaul Barundandi mocked Subredil. “When will you start carrying a Ghanghesha in each hand?” This was after he had been threatened because of Shiki and he was not feeling kindly.
Subredil bent and whispered to her Ghanghesha, something about pardoning Barundandi because at heart he was a good man who needed help finding his anchor within the light. Barundandi heard some of that. It disarmed him for a while.
He turned the madwoman and her companions over to his wife, who had developed an almost proprietary interest lately. Subredil, in particular, made her look good because she got so much work done.
Narita, too, noted the Ghanghesha. “If religious devotion will win you a better life next time around the Wheel, Subredil, you’re headed for the priestly class for sure.” Then the fat woman frowned. “But didn’t you leave your Ghanghesha here yesterday?”
“Ah? Ah! Ah! I did? I thought I lost that one forever. I didn’t know what had become of it. Where is it? Where is it?” She had prepared for this, though the Ghanghesha had been left behind intentionally.
“Easy. Easy.” Subredil’s love affair with her Ghanghesha amused everyone. “We took good care of it.”
There was a lot of work scheduled for the day, which was good. It helped pass the time. Nothing else could be done till much later, and even then, luck would have to play a big part. Another dozen Ghangheshas would not have been out of place where the need for luck went.
During the noon break, over kitchen scraps, Subredil’s party heard rumors of the Protector’s rage over someone having stolen some books from the royal library. She was out there now, investigating personally.
Subredil shot warning looks at her companions. No questions. No worrying about the people they could not possibly help.
Later in the day there were more rumors. The Purohita and several members of the Privy Council, along with bodyguards and hangers-on, had been treated to a wholesale slaughter on the very steps of the Kernmi What, in what sounded like a full-scale military assault supported by heavy sorcery. Reports were vague and confused because everyone but the attackers had been trying to find somewhere safe to hide.
Subredil tried to take that into account but could not control her anger entirely. Kendo Cutter was too violent a man to have been in charge. And too devout a Vehdna. The Gunni were not going to be pleased about bloodshed happening on the very steps of a major temple.
There was much talk about the signs and portents thrown up as cover and diversion while the attackers faded away. There would be no doubt who had been responsible, nor even who was next on the list of the doomed. Any smoke cloud that did not declare “Water Sleeps” thundered “My Brother Unforgiven.”
It had been rumored only for a day that the Great General had been summoned to Taglios to deal with the dead who refused to lie down. To the people in the street, it looked like the Company would be waiting.
Sahra was worried. Soulcatcher was sure to abandon the library when she heard about the attack. If she returned to the Palace extremely agitated, Sahra’s operation might have to be abandoned because the sorceress would be too alert.
The Radisha stormed through not long after the news began to make the rounds. She was distraught. She headed directly for her Anger Chamber. Sawa looked up from the brasswork she was cleaning, just for an instant, apparently badly troubled. Subredil set her mop aside and went to see what was wrong. No one else paid them any attention.
Not much later, when Jaul Barundandi dropped in to see how the work was going and somehow got into an argument with Narita, Sawa wandered away when no one was looking. No one noticed right away because Sawa almost never did anything to be noticed and today she wore charms reinforcing that.
Shiki drifted closer to her mother. She looked pale and troubled and kept touching her flute. She whispered, “Shouldn’t be we going?”
“It isn’t time. Place your Ghanghesha.” Shiki was supposed to have done that hours ago.
Rumor rushed through, pursued by uglier rumor still. The Protector had returned and she was in a frothing rage. She was visiting her shadows now. It was going to be another night of terror in the streets of Taglios.
The women started talking about the possible wisdom of finishing work before the Protector decided she had to see the Radisha. The Protector would not respect the privacy of the Princess. She made no secret of her contempt for Taglian custom. Even Narita seemed to hold the opinion that it would be best not to be where you could be seen when the Protector was in a mood.
At that point Shiki discovered that her aunt was missing.
“Damn it, Subredil!” Narita fumed. “You promised you’d watch her closer the last time this happened.”
“I’m sorry, mistress. I became so frightened. She probably decided to go to the kitchen. That was what she was trying to do when she got lost last time.”
Shiki was going already. Not more than a minute later, she called, “I found her, Mother.”
When the rest of the women arrived, they found Sawa seated against a wall, brass lamp in her lap, unconscious, with vomit all over her. “Oh, no!” Subredil cried. “Not again.” And in a whirlwind of nonsense and apparently vain efforts to get Sawa’s attention, she got across the hint of a fear that Sawa might be pregnant after having been abused by one of the Palace staff.
Narita was away in seconds, fuming. Subredil and Shiki were right behind her, supporting Sawa between them, heading for the servants’ postern. Nobody noticed that none of the women were carrying their Ghangheshas, not even the one that Subredil had forgotten the day before.
Because of the state Sawa was in, and the state Narita was in, and the imminent explosion of displeasure expected from the Protector, the women managed to draw their pay, then to escape without having to deal with Barundandi’s kickback lieutenant. Again.
They were able to lay Sawa inside a covered ox cart not long after they got into the twisty streets downhill from the Palace. Subredil had to caution Shiki repeatedly against celebration.
Everything we did must have been seen by somebody,” I told the gathered troops. “When word gets out that the Radisha has vanished, all those people are going to remember and try to help. Soulcatcher is supposed to have a knack for separating wheat from chaff.”
“Also a knack for calling up the kind of supernatural assistance that can pick your particular trail out of a thousand,” Willow Swan volunteered. He was present because he had agreed to take care of the Radisha. She was going to be in a state when she awakened and discovered that her demons had caught up with her at last.
Banh Do Trang wanted to know, “Are you going to flee or not?” The old man was at the edge of collapse. He had been working since before dawn.
“Can we?” I asked.
“You could go this instant if the situation became totally desperate. It will be a few hours yet before the barges are completely provisioned, however.”
Nobody wanted to go, though. Not just yet. A lot of the men had developed ties. Everyone had unfinished business. That was life. The same situation had come up time and again over the course of the Company’s history.
Sahra said, “You still haven’t gotten Narayan to give you the Key.”
“I’ll talk to him. Is River back yet? No? What about Kendo? How about Pooch and Spiff?” We had people running all over on special assignments. Good old One-Eye had sent our last two men, the barely competent Pooch and Spiff, to assassinate Adoo the gateman because Murgen had been able to determine that it had been he who had caused all the excitement at the library. More, Adoo knew the general neighborhood where I lived.
One-Eye informed me, “Kendo Cutter is coming through the web right now. Arjana Drupada appears to be reasonably healthy for a man with a dozen knife wounds. Hang on.”
Murgen was whispering something. It was thundering and hailing outside. I could not hear a word.
“It’s started at Semchi, Murgen says. Slink hit them just as they were starting to pitch camp. Cut them off from their weapons.”
“Darn!” I swore. “Darn-darn-darn!”
“What’s the matter with you, Little Girl?”
“He should’ve waited until they tried to do something to the Bhodi Tree. This way, nobody will know why we jumped them.”
“There’s why you don’t have you a man.”
“What?”
“You ask too much. You sent Slink out there to kill some people. Unless you told him it’s got to be a show, all our guys allowed to fight only left-handed or something, he’s going to do it fast and dirty and with as little risk to our own guys as he can.”
“I thought he understood—”
“Did you assume, Little Girl? At this late stage in your career? You, who’s got to run a checklist on lacing your own boots?”
He had me. And he had me good. I tried to change the subject. “If we decide to evacuate, we’re going to have to run somebody out there to warn Slink and tell him where to rendezvous.”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
I turned away. “Kendo. Does he need medical attention?”
“Drupada? He’s not bleeding that much anymore.”
“Then let’s take him back to meet his new roommate.” One-Eye catching me out had me feeling particularly evil. This seemed like a good time to take it out on the enemy. “The rest of you, take real good care of the Radisha. We don’t want her coming up with a hangnail anybody can blame on us.”
Cutter bobbed his head and muttered something under his breath.
“Hey, pervert!” I called to the Inspector-General of the Records. “I don’t want you ever to say that the Black Company don’t cater to its guests, so here’s your very own human play toy. Maybe a little longer in the tooth than you prefer but it’s only until the Protector gets around to rescuing you.”
Kendo planted a boot in Drupada’s behind and shoved. Into the cage the Purohita went. He and Gokhale backed off into opposite corners and glared at one another. Human nature being what it is, each man probably thought the other was responsible for his dismay.
I told Kendo, “Relax now. Get something to eat. Take a nap. But stay away from the girl.”
“Hey, I got it the first time, Sleepy. And more so now she’s started sleepwalking. So ease up.”
“Give me a reason.”
“Why don’t we just skrag her?”
“Because we need Singh to help open the way through the Shadowgate. And he won’t unless he feels confident that we’ll be good to the Daughter of Night.”
“I don’t know any of the Captured that well. Don’t feel like you’ve got to save them on my account.”
“I feel like we have to save them on the Company’s account, Kendo. Just the same as we’d be doing if it was you out there.”
“Sure. Right.” Kendo Cutter was one of those people who tended to look on the dark side no matter what.
“Get some rest.” I went to talk with Narayan while I waited for Murgen to generate some report on what was happening inside the Palace.
I did not want to run away but knew it was very close to time for the Company to go. We had to see what Soulcatcher’s reaction to the kidnapping would be. And we had to get Goblin out of the Palace.
If Soulcatcher did not come after us like a screaming monsoon storm, I was going to get really worried about what she was up to.
“I’ve had a real good day, thank you, Mr. Singh. A whole lot of planning and a little inspired improvisation fell into place all at once. Just one thing more could make the day perfect.” I sniffed the air. It smelled like One-Eye and friends were cooking up a new batch. Probably so they could take a little something along when we had to run.
I kicked a bundle of hides of some kind over beside the bars of Singh’s cage, settled myself. I caught him up on the latest gossip. Including, “None of your people seem to be worried about you two. Maybe you were just a little too secretive. Be kind of pathetic if the whole cult faded away because everyone just sat around waiting to find out what was going on.”
“I’ve been told that I’m free to deal with you.” There was no cringe to the man tonight. He had gotten a little backbone somewhere. “I’m prepared to discuss the object you seek if I receive absolute assurances that the Black Company will never do the Daughter of Night any harm.”
“Never is an awful long time. You’re out of luck.” I got up. “Goblin’s been wanting to work on her just forever. I’m going to let him pull a few fingers off now to show you we have no conscience or remorse where certain old enemies are concerned.”
“I offered you what you asked.”
“You offered me a delayed death warrant. If I agree to that kind of nonsense, ten years from now the blackhearted witch will start poisoning us and we’ll be stuck with the disastrous choice of keeping our word and accepting destruction or breaking our word and seeing our reputation destroyed. I’m certain you don’t know much northern mythology. There’s an old religion up there that tells how a leading god allowed himself to be slain so his family would no longer be bound by a promise he made foolishly to an enemy, who wore it like a turtle’s shell.”
Narayan stared at me, cold as a cobra, waiting for me to crack. And I did, a little, because I bothered to explain. One-Eye has told me a hundred times that I should not explain. “I just don’t want that artifact badly enough to commit my people to the level of vulnerability that you’re asking. In particular, I won’t undertake commitments for those of us who are buried. On the other hand, maybe you’d like to undertake commitments whereby, assuming you get out of this alive, you guarantee never to be a pain in the Company neck ever again. Whereby you agree to go to the Captain and the Lieutenant and beg their forgiveness for stealing their child.”
The very suggestion appalled the living saint of the Deceivers. “She’s the Child of Kina. The Daughter of Night. Those two are irrelevant.”
“Evidently we don’t have anything to talk about yet. I’ll send you a few fingers for breakfast.”
I went to see if Surendranath Santaraksita was being a good fellow and pursuing the tasks I had suggested he could use to help overcome the tedium of his captivity. To my surprise I found him hard at work, with old Baladitya assisting, translating what I had presumed to be the first volume of the lost Annals. They had a whole stack of sheets already done.
“Dorabee!” Master Santaraksita said. “Excellent. Your friend the foreigner keeps telling us we can’t have any more real vellum when we’re done with these last few sheets. He wants us to use those ridiculous bark books they still employ out in the swamps.”
Before there were modern paper and vellum and parchment, there was bark. I do not know what kind of tree it came from, just that the inner bark was removed carefully, treated and pressed and used to write on. To make a book, you stacked the bark sheets, drilled a hole down through the upper-left-hand corner of the stack, then bound everything together with a cord or ribbon or length of very light chain. Banh Do Trang would favor bark because it was both cheap, traditional and hardier than animal products.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“There’s nothing earthshaking in there, Dorabee.”
“My name is Sleepy.”
“Sleepy isn’t a name. It’s a disease, or a misfortune. I prefer Dorabee. I’ll use Dorabee.”
“Use whatever you like. I’ll know who you’re talking to.” I read a couple of sheets. He was right. “This is tedious stuff. This looks like an account book.”
“That’s what it is, mainly. The things you want to know are just the things the writer assumes any reader of his own time would know already. He wasn’t writing for the ages, or even for another generation. He was keeping track of horseshoe nails, lance shafts and saddles. All he has to say about their battle is that the lower-ranking officers and noncommissioned officers failed to demonstrate an adequate enthusiasm for appropriating weapons lost or abandoned by the defeated enemy, preferring to wait till the next dawn to begin gleaning. As a consequence, stragglers and the local peasantry managed to scavenge all the best.”
“I notice he doesn’t bother to name a single name, person or place.” I had begun reading while the Master talked. I could listen and read at the same time even though I was a woman.
“He does give mileage and dates. The context suggests the appropriate systems of measure. It can be figured out. But what I’ve already started to wonder, Dorabee, is why we’ve all been deathly afraid of these people all our lives. This book gives us no reason to be afraid. This book is about a troop of crabby little men who marched off somewhere they didn’t want to go for reasons they didn’t understand, fully believing that their unstated mission would last only several weeks or, at most, a few months. Then they would be able to go home. But the months piled into years and the years into generations. And still they didn’t really know.”
The material also suggested we needed to revise our old belief that the Free Companies exploded into the world at the same time, in a vast orgy of fire and bloodshed. The only other company mentioned was noted to have returned years before the Black Company marched, and in fact, several senior Company noncoms had served as private soldiers in that earlier, unnamed band.
“I can see it,” I grumbled. “We’re going to translate these things, find out all sorts of things, and not be an inch closer to understanding anything.”
Santaraksita said, “This’s much more exciting than a meeting of the bhadrhalok, Dorabee.”
Then Baladitya spoke for the first time. “Do we have to starve to death here, Dorabee?”
“Nobody’s brought you anything to eat?”
“No.”
“I’ll just see about that. Don’t be startled if you hear me shouting. I hope you enjoy fish and rice.”
I took care of that, then hid in my corner for a while. I was feeling a little depressed after having seen Master Santaraksita’s work. I suppose that sometimes I invest too much in my goals, then suffer a correspondingly huge disappointment when things do not work out.
Tobo woke me. “How can you sleep, Sleepy?”
“I guess I must be tired. What do you want?”
“The Protector has finally started to grumble about the Radisha. Dad wants you to come keep track yourself. So you don’t have to record anything third-hand.”
At the moment, my name felt entirely appropriate. I just wanted to lie down on my pallet and dream about finding another kind of life.
Trouble was, I had been doing this since I was fourteen. I did not know anything else. Unless Master Santaraksita was willing to let bygones by bygones and take me back at the library. Right after we buried Soulcatcher in a fifty-foot-deep hole we filled in with boiling lead.
I dragged a stool in between Sahra and One-Eye, leaned forward with my elbows on the table and stared into the mist where Murgen appeared to report when it suited him. One-Eye was fussing at Murgen even though Murgen was away. I said, “Anybody would think you were worried about Goblin, the way you’re carrying on.”
“Of course I’m worried about Goblin, Little Girl. The runt borrowed my transeidetic locuter before he went up there this morning. Not to mention he still owes me several thousands pais for . . . well, he owes me a bunch of money.”
My recollection had it the other way around. One-Eye always owed everyone, even when he was doing well. And several thousand pais is not exactly a fortune, a pai being a tiny seed of such uniform weight that it is used as a measure for gems and precious metals. It takes almost two thousand of them to equal a northern ounce. Since One-Eye had not specified gold or silver, the standard assumption would be that he had meant coin-grade copper. In other words, not very much.
In other words still, he was worried about his best friend but he could not say so because he had a century-long history of reviling the man in public.
If there was any such magical instrument as a transeidetic locuter, One-Eye invented it an hour before he loaned it to Goblin.
He muttered, “That ugly little turd gets himself killed, I’m gonna strangle him. He can’t leave me holding the bag on—” He realized he was thinking out loud.
Sahra and I both made mental notes to investigate the bag metaphor. It sounded like there were business plans afoot. Secret plans. Surprise, surprise.
Murgen materialized practically nose to nose with me. He murmured, “Soulcatcher is out of patience. A flock of crows just brought the news from Semchi. She’s in a complete black mood. She says she’s going into the Radisha’s Anger Chamber after her if she doesn’t come out in the next two minutes.”
“How’s Goblin?” One-Eye barked.
“Hiding,” Murgen replied. “Waiting for sunrise.” He was not going to try leaving during the night, the way we had planned originally. Soulcatcher had loosed her shadows, just to punish Taglios for irritating her. We had a few traps out, randomly distributed through likely neighborhoods, but I did not expect to catch anything. I figured our luck along those lines was about used up.
Goblin was armed with a shadow-repellent amulet left over from the Shadowmaster wars but did not know if it was any good anymore. Being bright and full of forethought, it had not occurred to any of us to test it on real shadows while we had some in stock.
You cannot think of everything.
But you should make the effort.
One of the Royal Guards actually tried to stop the Protector when her patience failed and she went to dig the Radisha out of her hideaway. He went down without a sound, stricken by a casual touch. He would recover eventually. The Protector was not feeling particularly vindictive. For the moment.
She crashed through the door of the Anger Chamber. And howled in frustration before the pieces finished falling. “Where is she?” The power of her rage wilted the onlookers.
A subassistant chamberlain, bowing almost double, continuing to bob and get lower, whined, “She was in there, O Great One!”
Someone else insisted, “We never saw her leave. She has to be in there.”
From somewhere, echoing, almost as if coming from some distance in time as well as place, there was the sound of brief laughter.
Soulcatcher turned slowly, her stare a cruel spear. “Come closer. Tell me again.” Her voice was compelling, chilling, terrible. She stared into one pair of eyes after another, making full use of the fear so many had that she could read the deepest secrets in their minds.
None of the Radisha’s people changed their stories.
“Out of here. Out of this whole apartment. Something happened here. I want no distractions. I want nothing disturbed.” She turned again, slowly, extending a sorceress’s senses to feel the shape of the past. It was more difficult than she anticipated. She had been loafing for too long, falling out of practice and getting out of shape.
The remote laughter sounded again for an instant, seeming just a touch closer.
“You!” Soulcatcher snapped at a fat woman, one of the housekeepers. “What are you doing?”
“Ma’am?” Narita was barely able to croak her response. In a moment, she would lose control of her bladder.
“You just pushed something into your left sleeve. Something off the altar.” A single white candle, almost consumed, still burned in the tiny shrine to ancestors. “Come here.” Soulcatcher extended her gloved right hand.
Narita could not resist. She stepped toward the dark woman, so trim and evilly feminine in her leather. Idly, Narita hated her for maintaining that sleek body.
“Give it to me.”
Reluctantly, Narita removed the Ghanghesha from her sleeve. She began to babble about not wanting her friend to get into trouble, making no sense at all, failing to realize that if she had not tried to conceal the Ghanghesha, the Protector would have overlooked it entirely.
Soulcatcher stared at the little clay figurine. “The cleaning woman. It belongs to the cleaning woman. Where is she?”
Far, mocking laughter.
“She’s a day employee, ma’am. She comes in from outside.”
“Where does she live?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. I don’t think anybody does. Nobody ever asked. It never mattered.”
One of the other staffers offered, “She was a good worker.”
Soulcatcher continued to examine the Ghanghesha. “Something’s odd here . . . Now it does matter. To me. Find out.”
“How?”
“I don’t care! Be creative! But do it.” Soulcatcher hurled the clay figurine to the floor. Shards flew in every direction.
A wisp of a ghost of darkness curled up and stood like a rampant cobra a foot high for an instant. Then it struck. At the Protector.
The staffers squealed and began trampling one another, trying to get away. They had not seen a shadow before but they knew what a shadow could do.
The laughter was closer now, louder and lasting longer.
Soulcatcher offered a convincing squeal of surprise and fright, like a young woman who has just stepped on a snake. Her apparel and the handful of generalized protective spells that always surrounded her saved her from becoming a victim of her own crudest weapon.
Even so, for a minute she was like a child swatting mosquitoes as the shadow enthusiastically strove to terminate their relationship. Failing to reclaim control of the shadow, Soulcatcher destroyed it. The necessity told her that a pretty clever mind had prepared it, probably hoping that she would be too angry to pay close attention for just that instant needed . . .
“Woman! Come back here!” The Protector extended a hand in the direction Narita had fled. Somehow, a single strand of the woman’s hair had become entwined through Soulcatcher’s fingers. Those fingers shimmered momentarily. The air became charged. The other staffers whimpered and wished they had even had the nerve to try to run.
Narita reappeared slowly, taking short zombie steps. “Here!” Soulcatcher said. She pointed at a spot on the Anger Chamber floor. “The rest of you. Go away. Quickly.” She did not have to add any encouragement. “Fat woman. Tell me everything about the creature who always carried the Ghanghesha.”
“I’ve told you everything I know,” Narita whined.
“No. You have not. Start talking. She may have kidnapped the Radisha.”
Soulcatcher regretted mentioning that the instant the words left her helmet.
The laughter sounded like it was coming from just out in the hallway, a diabolic snickering. The Protector’s head twitched toward that direction. She sensed no threat. It could wait a minute.
“Her name is Minh Subredil.” It took Narita only another thirty seconds to relate everything she knew about Minh Subredil, her daughter Shikhandini and her sister-in-law Sawa.
“Thank you,” Soulcatcher snarled. “You’ve been most unhelpful. And for that, I shall provide an appropriate reward.” She gripped the fat woman’s throat in her right hand, squeezed.
As Narita went limp, that laughter sounded once more. There might have been a word there, too. Ardath? Or perhaps Silath? Or might it have been . . . ? No matter. Soulcatcher would not listen to that, just to the mockery. She hurled herself toward the sound but when she burst into the hallway, there was nothing to see.
She started to call for Guards, for Greys, but recalled that she had just slain the one person other than herself who knew for sure that the Radisha had disappeared.
The Radisha had shut herself away from the world. That was all anybody really needed to know. The Princess could live forever right there in her Anger Chamber. She did not need to venture forth ever again. She had her good friend the Protector to handle the boring chores of managing her empire for her.
More laughter, apparently from nowhere and everywhere. Soulcatcher stamped away. This was not over yet.
A white crow dropped out of the murk near the ceiling of the hallway, flapped heavily, landed beside the fat woman. It held its beak poised beneath her nostrils momentarily, as though checking for breath. Then it flapped away suddenly, sharp ears having caught the sound of a stealthy footfall.
A shivering Jaul Barundandi eased into the chamber. He knelt beside the woman. He took her hand. He remained there, tears streaking his cheeks, until he heard the Protector returning, arguing with herself in a variety of voices.
What do you know about that?” I said to Sahra. “Narita tried to cover for you. And then Barundandi got all broken up about what happened to her.”
Sahra waggled a finger. She was thinking. “Murgen. What do you know about that white crow?”
Murgen hesitated before responding. “Nothing.” Which meant he was telling an approximate truth but he had some definite ideas. Sahra and I both knew him that well.
Sahra said, “Suppose you tell me what you think is going on, then.”
Murgen faded away.
“What the heck is that?” I snapped at One-Eye. “You were supposed to rig this thing so he has to do what he’s told.”
“He does. Most of the time. He could be carrying out a previous instruction.”
But the old fool sounded to me like he had no idea what Murgen was doing.
Soulcatcher worked quickly, then summoned the staff members who had been present when she had broken into the Anger Chamber. “The continuing excitement was too much for this poor woman. I’ve tried to resurrect her but her soul refuses to respond. She must be happy where she is now.” There were no witnesses to contradict her, though remote laughter mocked her. “I did find the Radisha. She’d fallen asleep. She has retreated into the Anger Chamber and does not wish to be disturbed again. Not for a long time. I should have honored her wishes before. We would have avoided this disaster.” She indicated the fat woman.
Even the staffers who had looked into the Anger Chamber earlier and had seen nothing had to admit that someone was inside now, moving around angrily, muttering the way the Radisha did and looking very much like the Radisha in glimpses caught through cracks in the poorly restored door.
The Protector suggested, “Let’s all turn in for the night. Tomorrow we’ll begin repairing the mess I made.” She watched her audience intently, feeling for anyone who could cause trouble.
The staff departed. They were relieved just to be away from Soulcatcher.
Soulcatcher sat down and thought. There was no way to tell what was going through her mind till she began muttering in a committee of voices. Then it was clear that she was trying to work out the mechanics of the abduction. She seemed willing to give considerable weight to the possibility that the Radisha had stage-managed the whole thing herself.
A very suspicious woman, the Protector.
One by one she found and questioned each of the people who had dealt with Minh Subredil, Sawa and Shikhandini, beginning with Jaul Barundandi and finishing with Del Mukharjee, the man Barundandi usually trusted to collect the kickbacks from the outside workers. “You will cease that,” the Protector informed Mukharjee. “You and anyone else involved. If it happens again, I will put you into a glass ball and hang you above the service postern with your whole body turned inside out. I’ll add a couple of imps to feed on your entrails for the six months it will take you to die. Do you understand?”
Del Mukharjee understood the threat just fine. But he had no idea whatsoever why the Protector would want to interfere with his livelihood.
The Protector had a passion about corruption.
In time the Protector reasoned that three women had come into the Palace and three women had gone away again. It seemed very likely that the three who had departed were not the three who had entered. And no one the Radisha’s size had gone out since.
Which meant that someone with some answers might still be inside.
Chuckling wickedly, Soulcatcher began to look for evidence that someone had slipped off into the untenanted wilds of the Palace.
Goblin was asleep on a dusty old bed. Occasionally his snores would turn to sneezes and snorts when too much dust got into his nostrils.
A squawk had him bouncing up so suddenly he almost collapsed from light-headedness. He spun around. He saw nothing. He heard soft laughter, then a bizarre, squawking voice that sounded almost familiar. “Wake up. Wake up. She is coming.”
“Who’s coming? Who’s talking?”
There was no response. He did not feel any strong sorcerous presence. It was a puzzle.
Goblin had a good idea who might be coming, though. Not many women were likely to be hunting him here in the middle of the night.
He was ready. His little pack was carrying the two books Sleepy most wanted to save. Taking all three was physically impossible. His traps were set. All he had to do was move on into the now-empty part of the Palace that had been occupied by the Black Company back when its staff and leadership had been quartered there. There were ways to get out unnoticed. He and One-Eye had found them in olden times. The trouble was, he had no desire to be on the streets after dark, amulet or no.
Soulcatcher gave up most of her sense of touch when she chose to wrap every inch of her body in leather and helmet. She never noted the touch of or resistance of the strand of spider silk stretched across the corridor. But she did have a marvelously well-developed sense for personal danger. Before the Ghanghesha hit the floor, she was moving to defend herself. It was such reflexes that made it possible for creatures like her, her sister Lady, and the Howler, to have survived for so long. This time she had the proper controlling spells ready, hung about her, sparkling like spanking-new tools.
The shadow trapped inside the figurine barely got its bearings before it was attacked itself, seized and constrained, then twisted and crushed down into a whining, seething ball completely enclosed inside one of the Protector’s gloved hands. A merry young voice called, “You’ll have to do better than that.”
Soulcatcher continued to move forward, amused by the idea of tossing the shadow back into someone’s face. The trail began to grow indistinct, then disorienting. Experimentation showed her the cause was external. The corridor had been strewn with cobwebs of spells so subtle that even she might not have noticed had she just been hurrying along. “Oh, you clever devils. How long has this been here? Ah. A very long time indeed, I see. You were still in favor when you started this. Have you been hiding here all along? I certainly couldn’t find you in the city if you never were out there.”
In another voice entirely, she asked, “What have we here? It smells like somebody very frightened is hiding behind this door. And he didn’t even bother to lock it. How stupid does he think I am?”
She shoved the door with her toe.
A clay Ghanghesha plummeted from its place atop the door. Soulcatcher giggled. She was even quicker to recapture this shadow, which she squeezed down inside her other hand. Then she pushed into the room.
There was no one there anymore. That was easy to sense. But there was a curious feel to the place. It demanded an investigation.
She generated a small light, stood in place, turned slowly while she read the history of the room for subtle clues. A great deal had happened there. Much of the recent history of the Black Company had been shaped in that room. It retained a strong smell of old fear she identified eventually with the long-dead Taglian court wizard, Smoke.
All this she debated with herself in a committee of argumentative voices. In the end, she seemed entertained. Most of the time life was a great entertainment for Soulcatcher.
“And what do we have here?” Something with inked characters on it peeped from beneath a dusty old bed where someone had been lying until minutes ago. Thoughtlessly, she reached for the object, opening her hand to grasp it. “Damn! That was stupid!” She wasted several minutes regaining control of the shadow. It was very agile this time. She stuffed it into the hand restraining the other. The two were extremely unhappy in there. One thing shadows seemed to hate more than the living was other shadows.
What Soulcatcher had found was a book with half the pages torn out. It was alone. “So this is what became of those. I was never quite sure who took them. I wonder if they got any use out of them?”
As she was about to depart, the Protector glanced at the damaged book once more. “Been taking these pages a few at a time. That would take a long time. Which means they’ve been coming in and out of the Palace for a long time. Which therefore suggests that the Radisha didn’t engineer her own disappearance. Oh, well. She’s gone. It amounts to the same thing. Let’s catch our little rat and let him play with our little friends.”
Unlike Soulcatcher, Goblin could not see in the dark. But he had the advantage of knowing where he was going. He did manage to stay ahead and did slide out of one of the old hidden exits. There was a little light outside from a fragment of moon peeking through scurrying young clouds trying to catch up with Mother Storm. Goblin laid the last Ghanghesha on the cobblestones in plain sight, then ran. The books on his back beat against him, pounding the breath out of him. He muttered something about the good news being that it was all downhill from here. The bad news was that it was dark out, there were shadows on the prowl, and he was not so sure about the quality of his fifteen-year-old amulet. He had to hope that in a city this vast, none of the handful of nightstalkers would cross his path while he was huffing and puffing and concentrating on staying ahead of Soulcatcher.
It did not occur to him that she might have recovered the shadows he had left in ambush, that they might be after him, too.
Soulcatcher stepped into the night close enough behind to glimpse a flicker of her quarry vanishing into the shadows between structures across the open area outside the Palace. She spied the abandoned Ghanghesha and several other small items that looked like they had been dropped in the rush to get away. She tossed her two shadows into the air and stomped her heel down on the clay figurine at the same time. This would set a pack of small deaths on the little man’s heels.
By now, she was reasonably certain that she was chasing the wizard called Goblin.
She screamed. The pain in her heel was beyond anything she had ever experienced. As she collapsed, trying to will her throat to seal itself, she watched three ferociously bright balls of light streak into the night in pursuit of the shadows she had sent to claim Goblin. Still fighting the incredible pain, she produced a dagger and used its tip to dip another fireball out of her heel. Already it had eaten all the way to the bone and in, and had done some damage as high as her ankle—despite her normal protection.
“I’ll be crippled,” she snarled. “He lulled me. He set me up so I’d think this would be another easy shadow trap.” None of her voices were amused now. “Clever little bastard will pay for this.”
The fallen fireball burned its way into the cobblestones. Still ignoring her pain, Soulcatcher tried to stand. She discovered that she was not going to be able to walk. She was, however, not losing any blood. The fireball had cauterized her wound. “My beloved sister, if you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you for inventing those damned things.”
Laughter echoed down off the ramparts of the Palace.
A flicker of white glided after Goblin.
“I think I’ll kill somebody anyway.” Soulcatcher made her way toward the Palace entrance on hands and knees, muttering continuously. She had isolated her pain in a remote corner of her mind and was now concentrating on being angry about what this odyssey was doing to her beautiful leather pants and gloves.
Can you believe that?” I asked. “She was as mad about ruining her outfit as she was about losing Goblin and getting hurt.”
One-Eye chuckled, immensely relieved because Goblin had gotten away. “I believe it.”
“What? You, too?”
“It’s a northern thing. Everything she wears is leather. You people are all goofy about stuff like that. She probably has to fly five thousand miles every time she wants a new pair of pants. Means she’s really got to watch her waist and behind. Unlike some—hey! No punching! We’re all on the same side here.”
“Do you believe this little pervert?” I asked Sahra.
“You go ask Swan.” One-Eye showed me his tooth. The one he was about to lose. “He’ll tell you the woman’s got her good points.”
Sahra remained all business. “What are we going to do if she just pretends the Radisha is all right? How many people normally see the Princess? Not many, I know. And there’s no Privy Council anymore. We’ve seen to them. Except for Mogaba.”
“We’ve got to see about him, too,” One-Eye grumbled.
“Let’s not overreach. The Great General will be harder to take than the others were.”
I mused, “She wouldn’t actually have to keep the Radisha in hiding very long. Maybe two weeks, while she builds a new Council, handpicked to woof ‘Yes, ma’am!’ and ‘How high?’ when she tells them to jump.”
One-Eye blew out a bushel of air. “She’s right. Maybe we should’ve considered that.”
I said, “I did consider it. Having the Radisha under our control looked like the best deal. We can trot her out any time Soulcatcher gets too bizarre. And Soulcatcher will realize that. She won’t let temptation carry her too far. Not until she sorts us out.”
“She will do everything she can to find and recover the Radisha,” Sahra said. “I’m sure of that. Which means we need to hurry up and get out of the city.”
I said, “I have one little thing to do before I go. Don’t anybody wait on me. Murgen. Be a pal and put a little real effort into finding out about this other white crow.”
I did not await his response. Now that Goblin seemed safe, I was eager to interview our newest prisoner.
Someone had taken some effort to make the Radisha comfortable. Nor had she been forced into a cage. Presumably, One-Eye had provided a sampler of choker spells.
I studied her while she remained unaware of my presence. She had had a formidable reputation when first the Company had come to Taglios. She had put up a good struggle, too, but the years had worn her down. She looked old and tired and defeated now.
I stepped forward. “Have they treated you well so far, Radisha?”
She showed me a weak smile. There was a twinkle both of anger and sarcasm in her eye.
“I know. It’s not the Palace. But I’ve enjoyed worse. Including chains and no roof at all.”
“And animal hides?”
“I’ve lived here for the last six years. You get used to it.” It had been longer than that but I was not taking time to be precise.
“Why?”
“Water sleeps, Radisha. Water sleeps. You were expecting us. We had to come.”
At that point it became completely real to her. Her eyes grew big. “I’ve seen you before.”
“Many times. Lately, around the Palace. Once upon a time, long ago, around the Palace also, with the Standardbearer.”
“You’re the idiot.”
“Am I? Perhaps one of us—”
She began to grow angry then.
I told her, “That won’t help. But if you need to rage to feel better, consider this. The Protector is covering up your disappearance already. The one person who knew for sure—not counting us villains, of course—is dead already. There’ll be more deaths. And you’ll begin making the most outrageous pronouncements from the anonymity of your Anger Chamber. And in six months the Protector will be so solidly in control, behind her Greys and those who think they can profit from an alliance with her, that you won’t matter anymore.” As long as Soulcatcher could come to an accommodation with Mogaba. I did not mention that. The Radisha began to speak quite rudely of her ally.
I let her run for a while, then offered another slogan: “All their days are numbered.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Sooner or later we’re going to get everyone who injured us. You’re right. It’s not really sane. But it’s the way we are. You’ve seen it happening lately. Only the Protector and the Great General are still running free. All their days are numbered.”
The reality sank in a little deeper. She was a captive. She did not know where. She did not know what was going to happen. She did know that her captors were willing to pursue their grudges to insane lengths, just as they had promised they would before she made the mistake of letting herself be seduced by Soulcatcher’s deadly promises.
“You have no designated heir, do you?”
The change of direction startled her. “What?”
“There isn’t any clear-cut line of succession.”
Again, “What?”
“At the moment I don’t just hold you hostage, I have the entire future of Taglios and the Taglian Territories firmly under my thumb. You don’t have a child. Your brother has no child.”
“I’m too old for that now.”
“Your brother isn’t. And he is still alive.”
I left her then, to think, her mouth hanging open.
I considered seeing Narayan Singh again, decided I would seem too eager. I was too tired, anyway. You do not treat with a Deceiver without full command of your faculties. Sleep was the lover whose arms I needed to wrap me up.
I was playing tonk with Spiff and JoJo and Kendo Cutter, an interesting mix. At least three of us took our religion somewhat seriously. JoJo’s real name was Cho Dai Cho. He was Nyueng Bao and, in theory, One-Eye’s bodyguard. One-Eye did not want a bodyguard. JoJo did not want to be a bodyguard. So they did not see much of one another, and the rest of us saw as little of JoJo as we did of Uncle Doj. JoJo complained, “You’re just ganging up on the dumb swamp boy. I know.”
I said, “Me get in cahoots with a heretic and an unbeliever?”
“You’ll ambush them after you finish picking my bones.”
I had been having an unusual run of luck.
Everybody resents it when their favorite mark gets lucky.
I said, “I can’t get used to this not having to go to work.” JoJo discarded a six I needed to fill to the inside of a five-card straight. “Maybe this is my day.”
“Be a good time to get out and find you a man, then.”
“Goblin. You’re still alive. As mad as Soulcatcher was last night, I figured she would have you for a midnight snack before you got halfway home.”
Goblin gave me his big frog grin. “She’s gonna walk funny for a while. I couldn’t believe she actually stomped on it.” His grin faded. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe nailing her that way was a mistake. I could’ve led her somewhere where we could’ve got her in a crossfire—”
“She would’ve been looking for that. In fact, her suspecting something like that was probably one reason she didn’t keep chasing you. You want to sit in?”
All three of my companions glowered. Goblin was not One-Eye but they did not trust him a bit. They knew with the confidence of ignorance that Goblin was just more clever when he cheated. The fact that his history was one of losing more than he won was just a part of the cover-up.
You might have noticed that the human animal is fond of forming and clinging to prejudices, remaining their steadfast curator in the face of all reason and contradiction.
“Not this time.” Goblin could take a hint. He would also take them some other way sometime and laugh himself silly behind his hand. And it would serve them right. “Got work to do. I’m already getting complaints from everybody about a ghost that was all over the warehouse last night. Got to scope it out.”
I had a losing hand. Or foot. I tossed it in. “He’s making me feel guilty for loafing.” I collected my winnings.
“You can’t quit now,” Kendo grumbled.
“You proved your point. Women can’t play cards. I stay here much longer, I won’t have a copper left to my name. Then you wouldn’t get a birthday present this year.”
“Didn’t get one last year, either.”
“I must’ve played tonk with you then, too. So many of you do it, I have a hard time keeping track of which ones of you guys keep beating up on me.” They all grumbled now.
Goblin said, “Maybe I can sit in, just for a hand or two.”
“That’s all right. You better help Sleepy. Or Sleepy can help you.” The grumbling stopped till we were out of earshot.
Goblin chuckled. So did I. He said, “We ought to get married.”
“I’m too old for you. See if Chandra Gokhale can fix you up.”
“Aren’t those two like a couple of starving rats?” Gokhale and Drupada were at one another constantly. Their squabbles had not yet devolved into anything physical only because they had been warned in the strongest of terms that the winner of any fight would be punished terribly.
“Maybe one of them will kill and eat the other one,” I said. “If we’re lucky.”
“You’re a dreamer, for sure.”
“What’s your opinion on this ghost?”
He shrugged.
“You know it’s the girl, don’t you?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“You think she’s going through the same thing Murgen did when he started? Falling through time and everything?”
“I don’t know. There’s a difference. Nobody ever saw anything with Murgen.”
“Can you stop her from doing it?”
“Spooking you out?”
“In the sense that I’m scared she’ll go out and get help, sure.”
“Ooh. I didn’t think about that.”
“Do think about it, Goblin. What about the white crow? Could she be the white crow?”
“I thought Murgen was the white crow.”
He knew better. “Murgen’s here, being Sahra’s recon slave.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time Murgen was in the same place, looking at things from two different times.”
“He tells me he can’t remember being the crow.”
“Maybe that’s because he hasn’t done it yet. Maybe it’s a Murgen from next year or something.”
I did not know what to say to that. That possibility had not occurred to me. And Murgen had done that sort of thing before.
“On the other hand, personally I don’t think it’s Murgen or the brat.” He grinned his big toad grin. He knew I would stub my toe on that.
I did. “What? You little rat. Who is it, then?”
He shrugged. “I got a couple ideas but I’m not ready to talk about them yet. You got the Annals. All you need to follow my reasoning is right in there.” He began giggling, pleased with himself for stumping the Annalist at her own game. So to speak. “Ha-ha.” He spun around, dancing. “Let’s go beat up on Narayan Singh. Whoa. Look who’s here. Swan, you’re too damned old to wear your hair that long. Unless you’re going to comb it all up on top there to kind of cover the thin spot.”
I held a finger above Goblin’s dome, pointing down. He had not had a crop come in during my lifetime.
Swan said, “Kind of looks like your widow’s peak is sagging back a little, too. Probably comes of banging your head on the bottoms of so many tables.” Swan looked at me, an eyebrow raised. “He been in the ganja or something?”
“No. He just hasn’t gotten over the fact that he went toe to toe with your girlfriend and came out ahead on points.” Swan had suggested a good point indirectly, though. With hemp such a common weed, it was a wonder that Goblin and One-Eye had not gotten in on the entertainment side of that crop.
Goblin understood what I was thinking without me saying a word. He told me, “We don’t have anything to do with it because it screws up your head.”
“And that water-buffalo urine you brew back there doesn’t?”
“That’s pure medicine, Sleepy. You ought to try it. It’s chock-full of stuff that’s good for you.”
“My diet is just fine, Goblin. Except for the fish and the rice.”
“That’s what I’m saying. We take up a collection, buy us a pig . . . never mind what Sahra says. There ain’t nothing sweeter than some fatback and beans—”
Swan had invited himself to accompany us in our seventy-foot trek to Narayan’s cage. He said, “I’ll kick in on that myself. I haven’t tasted bacon in over twenty years.”
“Shit,” Goblin said. “You’re going to kick in? Man, you don’t even have a name anymore. You’re dead.”
“I could run up to the Palace, dig around under my mattress. Times haven’t been all bad for me.”
“You won’t marry me, Sleepy,” Goblin said, “then you oughta marry Swan. He’s got a hoard put back and he’s too damned old to bother you with any of that man stuff. Narayan Singh. Get your skinny, shit-smelling ass up from there and talk to me.”
Swan whispered, “Survival must be a real powerful drug.”
“I expect it is when you’re Goblin’s age,” I agreed.
“I guess it is at any age.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“Meaning, I guess, I should’ve headed back north a long time ago. I got nothing going for me here. I should’ve started moseying when Blade and Cordy went down. But I couldn’t. And it wasn’t just Soulcatcher twisting my arm.”
“Umm?”
“I’m a loser. We were all losers. All three of us. We couldn’t even make it as soldiers in the old empire. We deserted. Blade got his ass thrown to the crocodiles for smarting off to the priests back in his home country. We never had no real start-up, any of us. Me and Cordy only headed on down here because once we got to running, it took a long time to stop. Now I don’t have my friends anymore, I don’t have anybody to goose me into doing things.”
I did not enlighten him about the health of Blade and Mather, who were among the Captured, but I did point out, “You can’t be entirely inadequate. You’ve had some kind of commission or other from the Taglian throne practically since you got here.”
“I’m an outsider. I make a great fall guy. Everybody knows who I am and everybody can recognize me. So the Protector or the Radisha puts me out front where I can take the heat for all their unpopular decisions.”
“Now they’ll need to find somebody else.”
“Don’t give me that look. I wouldn’t join the Black Company if you promised to marry me and make me Captain, too. You guys got doom written all over you.”
“What do you want?”
“Me? Since I don’t got the stones or the young body to go home anymore—and home wouldn’t be there when I showed up anyway—what I’d like to do is what we tried to do when we first came down here. Set me up a little brewery, spend my last few years making people’s lives a little easier.”
“I’m sure Goblin and One-Eye would be happy to take on a partner.”
“Them two? No way. They’d drink up half the product. They’d get drunk and get in a fight and start throwing the barrels at each other—”
He had a point. “You have a point. Though they’ve shown considerable self-control lately.”
“It helps you pay attention if your fuckup will get you killed. I’m always surprised by this guy.” He meant Narayan Singh. “He looks like such a trivial little wart. There’re ten thousand that look just like him out there on the streets right now and not one will ever do anything more important than starve to death.”
“If I thought it would do any good, I’d starve this one to death, too. Narayan. I’m back. Are you going to talk to me today?”
Singh raised his eyes. He seemed serene, at peace. That could be said for Stranglers. They never had trouble with their consciences. “Good morning, young woman. Yes. We can talk. I took your advice. I went to the goddess. And she approved your petition. Frankly, I was surprised. She set down no special conditions for making a bargain. Other than that the lives and well-being of her chief agents remain unimpaired.”
Swan was more taken aback than I was. “You got the right guy here, Sleepy?”
“I don’t know. I figured they’d still try to weasel a little even after they couldn’t stall anymore.” This required a little thought. Or a lot of thought. And maybe some worry. “I’m definitely pleased, Narayan. Definitely. Where’s the Key?”
Narayan smiled a smile almost as ugly as One-Eye’s. “I’ll take you to it.”
“Aha,” I murmured. “I see. The first shoe drops. Fine. When will you be ready to travel?”
“As soon as the girl recovers. You may have noticed she’s been sick.”
“Yes, I did. I thought it must be her time of the month.” A horrible, horrible thought occurred to me. “She’s not pregnant, is she?”
The look on Singh’s face told me that notion was completely unthinkable to him.
“That’s good. But it doesn’t matter, Narayan. As long as we’re conspiring together, Deceivers and Black Company, you two aren’t going to be a team. It’s a sad truth, Narayan Singh, but I just don’t trust you. And her I wouldn’t trust if she was in her grave.”
He smiled like he knew a secret. “But you expect us to trust you.”
“Based on the well-known fact that once it has sworn a thing, the Company always keeps its word. Yes.” A slight exaggeration, of course.
Narayan glanced at Swan for just a second. He smiled again. “I guess that’s just going to have to be good enough for me.”
I pasted on my most scintillating false smile. “Wonderful. We’re in business together. I’ll get some people ready for an expedition. Do we have far to go?”
Smile. “Not far. Just a few days south of the city.”
“Ha. The Grove of Doom. I should have guessed.”
I led Swan away. I rejoined the fellows at the card table. “I want Singh’s son brought in as soon as we can get him.” It could not hurt to have a little extra ammunition.
I don’t know what to do with myself, not having to work,” Sahra told me. She and Tobo were huddled in front of the mist box, sharing what they could with Murgen. I was pleased to see mother and son getting along.
I suggested, “There’s always work for those who want to put out the buttons that’ll remind everyone about us after we’re gone. There’s always something that needs lugging down to the river.”
“To paraphrase Goblin, I don’t miss work so much I’m actually going to volunteer to do some. Was there something?”
“The guys just brought in Singh’s son. Good-looking fellow. They also brought in a couple of rescripts they found posted on the official announcement pillars. Put up since the Radisha went into seclusion.”
“What do they say?”
“Mainly that she’s willing to pay some pretty big rewards for information leading to the apprehension of any member of the gang of vandals masquerading as members of the long defunct Black Company and causing public disorders.”
“Will anybody believe that?”
“If she says it often enough. I don’t care about her telling tall tales. I care about the reward offers. There’re people out there who’d sell their mothers. She puts a couple of no-goods on the street throwing money around and bragging about how they cashed in, somebody who really knows something might decide to bet the long odds.”
“Then why don’t we just go? There isn’t that much more we can do here anyway, is there?”
“We can get Mogaba.”
“Let the world think that. Start a rumor. Start a bunch of rumors about the Great General and about the Radisha. While we evacuate. When are you leaving to get the Key?”
“I’m not sure. Soon. I’m stalling for time. So a message can get through to Slink.”
Sahra nodded. She smiled. “Good thinking. Singh will have something up his sleeve.”
Willow Swan suddenly invited himself to join us. “The girl is having some kind of a problem.”
I scowled at him. Sahra did the same but was polite enough to ask, “The Daughter of Night? What kind of problem?”
“I think she’s having a fit. A seizure, like.”
“Perfect timing,” I grumbled. At the same time, Sahra yelled for Tobo to get Goblin. I growled, “What were you doing anywhere near her, Swan?”
He showed some color and said, “Uh . . . ”
“Aw, you dumb mudsucker! Lady did you in. You panted after her for years. Then you put the screws to a dozen million people by letting Lady’s baby sister threaten to blow in your ear. Now you’re going to let Lady’s brat put a ring in your nose and make an even bigger idiot out of you? You really are stupid and pathetic, Swan!”
“I was just—”
“Thinking with something that isn’t your brain. As though you’re some dopey fifteen-year-old. This woman isn’t some cute little virgin, Swan! She’s worse than your worst nightmare. Come here.”
He came. I moved suddenly, violently, the way I had wanted to do so many times with my uncles. The tip of my dagger penetrated the skin underneath his chin. “You really want to die a really stupid, humiliating, pointless death? Let me know. I’ll arrange it. Without the rest of us having to pay the price again.”
One-Eye’s cackle filled the air. “Ain’t she a wonder, Swan? You ought to think about her instead of your usual black widows.” He was in Do Trang’s spare wheelchair again but getting around under his own power.
“I could arrange something pointless and humiliating for you, too, old man.”
He just laughed at me. “You invited this soldier Aridatha down here to meet his long-lost daddy, Sleepy. You ought to be dealing with him instead of here flirting with Swan.”
He could be maddening at times. And he loved it. If he could find any kind of lever at all . . . I told Swan, “You explain to One-Eye what you mean about the girl. One-Eye, deal with it. Solve it. Short of killing her. Singh won’t give me the Key if we kill the skinny little . . . witch.”
Darn. Aridatha Singh was almost enough to make me change my mind about swearing off men. He was gorgeous. Tall, well-proportioned, a beautiful smile that showed magnificent teeth even when he was under stress. His manners were perfect. He was a gentleman in every sense but condition of birth.
I told him, “Your mother must have been a marvel.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Around here, I’m called Sleepy. You’re Aridatha. That’s enough of an introduction.”
“Who are you people? Why am I here?” He did not bluster or threaten. Amazing. Few Taglians ever recognized that as a waste of time.
“It isn’t necessary for you to know who we are. You’re here to meet a man who is also our prisoner. Don’t mention the fact that you’ll be released after your interview. He won’t be. Come with me.”
Moments later Aridatha Singh remarked, “You’re a woman, aren’t you?”
“I was the last time I checked. We’re here. This is Narayan. Narayan! Get up! You have a visitor. Narayan, this is Aridatha. As promised.”
Aridatha looked at me, trying to understand. Narayan stared at the son he had never seen and saw something there that made him melt, just for an instant. And I knew that I could reach him if I could keep it from looking like I was asking him to betray Kina.
I stepped back and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. Aridatha kept glancing back at me. Narayan just stared. Out of patience at last, I asked Narayan, “Shall I send people to collect Khaditya and Sugriva as well? And their children, too?”
This threatened Narayan and told Aridatha that he had been abducted because he belonged to a particular family. I recognized the instant the truth occurred to him. There was an entirely different look in his eyes when he glanced back at me again.
I said, “Not much good can be said about this man, from my point of view, but you can’t call him a bad father. Fate never gave him the chance to be good or bad.” Except to the girl, for whom he had done everything possible, to her complete indifference. “He’s very loyal.”
Aridatha realized that this was not about him at all. That he was a lever meant to get some kind of movement out of Narayan Singh. The Narayan Singh, the infamous chief of the Strangler cult.
Aridatha won my heart all over again when he squared up his shoulders, stepped forward and offered his father a formal greeting. There was no warmth in it but it was absolutely proper.
I watched them try to find some common ground, some point at which to start. And they found it quickly enough. We had not found any evidence, ever, to disdain Narayan Singh’s affections for his Lily. Aridatha thought quite highly of his mother.
“The man’s a piece of work, isn’t he?”
I was startled. I had not heard a sound. But Riverwalker was behind me. River did not have much talent for light-footing it. Which left me with the perfectly scary notion that Aridatha Singh really was having an effect on me. “Yes. He is. And I don’t quite know why.”
“Well, I’ll tell you. He reminds me of Willow Swan. A bedrock-decent guy. Only smart. And still young enough to be unspoiled by life.”
“River! You should hear yourself talk. You’re halfway intelligent.”
“Don’t mention it front of the guys. One-Eye will figure out why he can’t cheat me at tonk more’n half the time.” He considered Aridatha again. “Pretty, too. Better keep him away from your librarian. They’ll elope on you.”
Another broken heart. “You think? What kind of clues . . . ”
“I don’t know. I could be wrong.”
“When does he have to be back? Can we keep him all night?”
“You figuring on testing him out?”
River did not usually rag me much, so I knew I had to be asking for it somehow. “No. Not that way. The villain in me came up with an idea. We introduce him to the Radisha before we turn him loose.”
“Now you’re matchmaking?”
“No. Now I’m showing a four-square guy that his ruler isn’t in the Palace. He can make the rumors credible. Because he can tell the truth.”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“You keep an eye on those two here. I’ll go talk to the Woman.”
Riverwalker raised an eyebrow. Nobody but Swan used that term to describe the Radisha anymore. “You’re picking up bad habits.”
“Probably.”
I found the Radisha lost inside herself. Not asleep, not meditating, just wandering around inside, probably feeling immensely guilty about having been relieved by her recent lack of stress. I felt a moment of compassion. She and her brother might be our foes but they were sound people at heart. Rajadharma had been bred into them.
“Ma’am?” She was due respect but I could not use princely titles. “I need to speak to you.”
She raised her eyes slowly. They seemed to be knowing, caring eyes even in despair. “Were all of my household staff my enemies?”
“We didn’t choose to become your enemies. And even today we honor and respect the royal office.”
“You would, of course. To remind me of my folly. Like the Bhodi and their self-immolations.”
“Our quarrel with you won’t ever be as great as our quarrel with the Protector. We could never find a path to peace with her. You’d never unleash the skildirsha on the city. She would. And the depth of her evil is such that she doesn’t see the wickedness in what she’s doing.”
“You’re right. Do you have a name? If she was safely a few hundred years in the past, we might consider her a goddess. A power capable of smashing kingdoms out of whimsy, the way a child might kick over an anthill just to see the bugs scramble.”
“I’m called Sleepy. I’m the Annalist of the Black Company. I’m also the villain who plans most of your misfortunes. This situation wasn’t an intentional part of the master plan but the opportunity presented itself. Now it looks like we might’ve outmaneuvered ourselves.”
The Radisha had become focused. “Go on.”
“The Protector has chosen to cover up your disappearance. Officially you’re in your Anger Chamber purifying yourself and asking the gods and your ancestors to calm your heart and give you wisdom in the coming troubled times. You have taken breaks to issue some fairly bewildering rescripts, though. My brothers brought back these two. My brothers are illiterate, so they couldn’t select for content. But these are probably representative. I’ll have more brought in if you like.”
The Radisha read the announcement of rewards first. It was straightforward and sensible. “This must make you uncomfortable.”
“It does.”
“She doesn’t have the money. What is this? A ten-percent reduction in the rice allowance? We don’t have a rice ration. We don’t need to ration rice.”
“No, you don’t. Though everybody who wants rice can’t afford it. And some of us who would be happy to see the last of the stuff don’t get to eat anything else.”
“You know what this is?” The Radisha pounded her right forefinger against the rescript like she was trying to peck a hole through. “I’ll bet. All those strange personalities. They don’t just come out as voices. Or she was in an especially strange humor when she dictated these. She has those spells. When the voices seem to take over completely. They never last long.”
Ah, I said to myself. This is an interesting tidbit, worth pursuing later. “Would you care to counter with something more sound? I don’t have the manpower to cover the entire city but I can see that new rescripts are posted in the more important places.”
“How do you prove they’re genuine? Anyone can take a piece of treated naada and write something on it.”
“I’m working on that. We have a guest, a highly respected soldier from one of the City Battalions. We brought him in to visit another prisoner. I thought he might pass the word that you’re our prisoner, too.”
“Interesting. You know what she’ll do, don’t you? Call your bluff. Produce an imitation or illusory version of me and challenge you to produce your Radisha. Which you won’t do because you’re not really interested in getting killed. Correct?”
“We can deal with that. The Protector has a serious handicap. Nobody believes anything she says. They’ve started thinking that way about you, too, because you’re beginning to come across as her stooge. Why did you always have such a hateful and treacherous attitude toward the Company?”
“I’m not her stooge. You have no idea how many of her mad schemes I’ve managed to stifle.”
I did not tell her that we did. I had her angry enough to talk, but prodded just a little more. “Why did you hate my brothers before they ever came down the river?”
“I didn’t hate—”
“Maybe I chose the wrong word. There was something. The Annalists before me all sensed it and knew you’d turn on the Company as soon as you felt safe from the Shadowmasters. You weren’t as obsessed as Smoke was but you shared his disease.”
“I don’t know. I’ve wondered about that a lot the last decade. It went away after I gave the order to turn on you. But Smoke and I weren’t the only ones. The whole principality felt the same. There was a memory of a time before, when the Company—”
“There was no such time. Not that anybody bothered to record in the histories and documents of those days. The little I’ve been able to decipher of our own Annals from back then is dully routine. The only terrible battle I found came when the Company was three generations old. It took place not far from here and the Company lost. It was almost wiped out. Its three volumes of Annals fell into enemy hands. They’ve been in Taglian libraries ever since. From the moment the Company returned to Taglios, access to those has been denied us. All kinds of crazy things were done to keep us from getting to those books. People died because of those books. And from all I can see, the real secret that’s hidden there, that had to be kept at all cost, was that nothing extraordinary happened during those early years. It was not an age of rapine and endless bloodshed.”
“How could all the people of a dozen states remember something that never happened and become terrified that it was going to happen again?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ll ask Kina how she did it. Right before we kill her.”
The Radisha’s expression told me she was thinking she was not alone in her ability to believe the impossible.
I said, “You want to shake loose from your lunatic friend? You want to get off the hook with us? You want to get your brother back?” Presumably the possibility that the Prahbrindrah Drah still lived had grown significant in her recent thoughts.
The Radisha opened and closed her mouth several times. Never an attractive woman, age and present circumstances conspired to make her almost repulsive.
I should condemn? Time was doing no favors for me, either.
I said, “It can be managed. All of it.”
“My brother is dead.”
“No, he’s not. No one outside the Company knows. Not even Soulcatcher. But the people she trapped out there under the plain are frozen in time. Sort of. I don’t understand the mystic science involved. The point is, they’re there, they’re healthy, and they can be brought back out. I’ve just made a deal that will give us the Key we need to open the way.”
“You can bring my brother back?”
“Cordy Mather, too.”
The light was not good but I detected the rush of color to her neck. “There are no secrets from you people, are there?”
“Not many.”
“What do you want from me?”
I never expected to be at this point with the Woman. Despite her down-to-earth, sensible, businesslike reputation. So I didn’t have a ready answer. But I did manage to come up with a wish list quickly. “You could step out in public someplace where a whole lot of people would see you and recognize you and repudiate the Protector. You could exculpate the Black Company. You could fire the Great General. You could announce that you’ve been under Soulcatcher’s evil spell for fifteen years but now you’ve finally made your escape. You could make us the good guys again.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. I’ve been afraid of the Black Company for too long. I’m still afraid.”
“Water sleeps,” I said. “What’s the Protector done for you?”
The Radisha had no answer for that.
“We can bring back your brother. Think of the pressure that would take off you. Rajadharma.”
In a tightly controlled voice, the Radisha snapped, “Don’t say that! That tears my entrails out and strangles me with them.”
Exactly what I had wished on her a time or two when I was in a less forgiving mood.
Aridatha Singh looked at me oddly. “He wasn’t anything like I thought Narayan Singh would be.” Seeing his sovereign had not impressed him nearly so much as seeing his father had.
“Not many people are once you get to know them. River, you want to take this man back where you found him?” It was night, yes, but we still had those two protective amulets left over from the Shadowmaster wars. They definitely looked like they were still good. I wished we had another hundred but Goblin and One-Eye could not make them anymore. I am not sure why. They shared no trade secrets with me. I suppose they were just too old.
I worry a lot when I consider a future without them in it. And a future without One-Eye cannot be far away.
O Lord of Hosts, preserve him until the Captured are delivered and all our quarrels are resolved.
Men were charging everywhere around the warehouse. Some were continuing frenetic preparations for the Company’s evacuation. Some were getting ready to accompany Narayan and me to the Grove of Doom to collect the Nyueng Bao Key. The Nyueng Bao, Do Trang’s confederates and the handful still attached to the Company somehow, seemed to be doing a lot of nervous moving around just to be moving. They were scared and worried.
Banh Do Trang had suffered a stroke during the night. One-Eye’s prognosis was not encouraging.
I told Goblin, “I’m not saying she had anything to do with it but Do Trang was the first one to realize that the girl was roaming around outside her flesh.”
“He’s just old, Sleepy. Nobody did it to him. You ask me, he’s really way overdue. He hung on here because he cares about Sahra. She’s all right now. It looks like her husband might actually be freed. And he’s too old to run away. Soulcatcher is going to find this place eventually, once Mogaba arrives and starts searching. I wouldn’t be surprised if Do Trang just decided that dying was the best thing he could do for everyone right now.”
I did not want Do Trang to go, for all the reasons none of us like to see those close to us die, but also because he was, in his quiet way, the best friend the Company had had in generations.
Like everyone else, I tried to lose myself in work. I told Goblin, “Even if she’s totally innocent, I want the girl fixed so she can’t wander. Whatever you have to do short of permanently crippling or killing her.”
Goblin sighed. Lately that was all he did when someone gave him more work. I guess he was too tired to squawk anymore.
“Where is One-Eye?”
“Uh—” Furtive look around. A whisper. “Don’t say I said anything. I think he’s trying to figure out how to take his equipment with us.”
I shook my head and walked away.
Santaraksita and Baladitya called out to me. They had accepted their situation and were applying themselves with a will. The Master Librarian seemed particularly excited about facing a real academic challenge for the first time in years. He said, “Dorabee, in all the excitement I forgot to mention that I did get an answer to your question about a written Nyueng Bao language. There was one. And not only was there one, this oldest book is written in an antique dialect of that language. The others were recorded in an early Taglian dialect, although the original of the third volume does so employing the foreign alphabet instead of native characters.”
“Which argues that the invader alphabet had well-defined phonetic values that at the time must have been more precise than those of the native script. Right?”
Santaraksita gawked. After a moment he said, “Dorabee, you never cease to amaze me. Absolutely correct.”
“So have you discovered anything interesting?”
“The Black Company came off the plain, which was called Glittering Stone even then, and mostly minced around from one small principality to the next, squabbling internally over whether or not they were going to sacrifice themselves to bring on the Year of the Skulls. There was plenty of enthusiasm among the priests attached to the Company but not much among the soldiers. Many of those apparently volunteered as a way to escape something called The Land of Unknown Shadows, not because they wanted to bring on the end of the world.”
“The Land of Unknown Shadows, eh? Anything else?”
“I’ve developed some very good information on the price of horseshoe nails four centuries ago and on the scarcity of several medicinal plants that are now found in every herb garden.”
“Earthshaking stuff. Stay with it, Sri.”
I meant to tell him he had to evacuate with the rest of us but decided not to upset him right away. He was having a good time. No point making him face a choice between abduction and being put to death just yet.
Uncle Doj materialized. “Do Trang wants to see you.”
I followed him to the tiny room the old man had built for himself in a remote corner of the warehouse. On the way, Doj warned me that Do Trang was unable to speak. “He’s already seen Sahra and Tobo. I think he was fond of you, too.”
“We’re going to get married in the next life. If the Gunni are right.”
“I am ready to travel.”
I stopped. “What?”
“I’m going with you to the Grove of Doom.”
“You’d better not have some crazy idea about snatching the Key.”
“I agreed to help. I’ll help. I want to be there to make sure the Deceiver keeps his word. The Deceiver, Miss Sleepy. Deceiver. Also, I agreed to turn over that volume of the Books of the Dead. Its hiding place is on the way.”
“Very well. The presence of Ash Wand will be a comfort to me and a vexation to my enemies.”
Doj chuckled. “It will indeed.”
“We won’t be coming back here.”
“I know. When we leave, I’ll be carrying everything I wish to retain. You won’t need to pretend with Do Trang. He knows his path. Do him the honor of an honest farewell.”
I did more. I became all teary for the first time in my adult life. I rested my head on the old man’s chest for a minute and whispered my thanks for his friendship and renewed my promise to see him in the next life. A small heresy but I do not think God has been monitoring me too closely.
Banh lifted a hand weakly and stroked my hair. And after that I got up and went away somewhere to be alone with my grief for a man who, it seemed, had never been that close, yet who was going to have a major impact on the rest of my life. I understood that after the tears stopped, I would never be quite the same Sleepy again. And that that was one legacy Do Trang wanted to leave behind.