by Glen Cook
Soulcatcher remained uncharacteristically quiet. She had known the Company longer than anyone but the Captain, Goblin and One-Eye, though from the outside. She would accept nothing at face value. Not yet.
I hoped she broke a mental sprocket trying to figure it out, though I feared she had already done so, because she kept wondering about the burned bodies and Willow Swan. Could I have planned so obviously that she was confused only because she kept looking for something beyond the kidnapping?
I finished the last candlestick. I did not look around, did not say anything, just sat there. It was difficult to focus my thinking away from the danger seated across the room when my fingers were not busy. I gave praise to God, silently, as I had learned was proper for a woman when I was little. Equal praise was due Sahra’s insistence on staying in character.
Both served me well.
At some point Jaul Barundandi came back. Under the eyes of the Great Ones, he was not an unkind boss. He told Subredil it was time to leave. Subredil bestirred Sawa. As I got to my feet, I made some sounds of distress.
“What is that?” Barundandi asked.
“She’s hungry. We haven’t eaten all day.” Usually the management did provide a few scraps. That was one of the perks. Subredil and Sawa sometimes husbanded some of their share and took it home. That established and sustained the women’s habit of carrying things out of the Palace.
The Protector leaned forward. She stared intently. What had we done to tickle her suspicion? Was she just so ancient in her paranoia that she needed no clue stronger than intuition? Or was it possible that she really could read minds, just a touch?
Barundandi said, “We’ll go to the kitchen, then. The cooks overprepared badly today.”
We shuffled out behind him, each step like leaping another league out of winter toward spring, out of darkness into light. Four or five paces outside the meeting chamber, Barundandi startled us by running a hand through his hair and gasping. He told Subredil, “Oh, it feels good to get out of there. That woman gives me the green willies.”
She gave me the green willies, too. And only the fact that I had gone deep into character to deal with them saved me giving myself away. Who would suspect that much humanity in Jaul Barundandi? I got a grip on Subredil’s arm and shook.
Subredil responded to Barundandi softly, submissively agreeing that the Protector might be a great horror.
The kitchens, normally off limits to casual labor, was a dragon’s hoard of edible treasures. With the dragon evicted. Subredil and Sawa ate till they could barely waddle. They loaded themselves with all the plunder they thought they would be allowed to carry off. They collected their few coppers and headed for the servants’ postern before anyone could think of something else for them to do, before any of Barundandi’s cronies realized that the customary kickbacks had been overlooked.
There were armed guards outside the postern. That was new. They were Greys rather than soldiers. They did not seem particularly interested in people going out. They did not bother with the usual cursory search casuals had to endure so nobody carried off the royal cutlery.
I wish our characters had more curiosity in them. I could have used a closer look at the damage we had done. They were putting up scaffolding and erecting a wooden curtain-wall already. The glimpses I did catch awed me. I had only read about what the later versions of those fireball throwers could do. The face of the Palace looked like a model of dark wax that someone had stuck repeatedly with a white-hot iron rod. Not only had stone melted and run, some had been vaporized.
We had been released much earlier than usual. It was only mid-afternoon. I tried to walk too fast, eager to get away. Subredil refused to be rushed. Ahead of us stood quiet crowds who had come to stare at the Palace. Subredil murmured something about “… ten thousand eyes.”
9
I erred. That mass of people had not come just to examine our night’s work and marvel that the Protector’s dead men could be so frisky. They were interested in four Bhodi disciples at the memorial posts that stood a dozen yards in front of the battered entrance, outside the growing curtain-wall. One disciple was mounting a prayer wheel onto one of the posts. Another two were spreading an elaborately embroidered dark red-orange cloth on the cobblestones. The fourth, shaved balder and shinier than a polished apple, stood before a Grey who was sixteen at the oldest. The Bhodi disciple had his arms folded. He looked through the youngster, who seemed to be having trouble getting across the message that these men had to stop doing what they were doing. The Protector forbade it.
This was something that would interest even Minh Subredil. She stopped walking. Sawa clung to her arm with one hand and cocked her head so she could watch, too.
I felt terribly exposed standing out there, a dozen yards from the silent gawkers.
Reinforcements for the young Grey arrived in the person of a grisled Shadar sergeant who seemed to think the Bhodi’s problem was deafness. “Clear off!” he shouted. “Or you’ll be cleared.”
The Bhodi with folded arms said, “The Protector sent for me.”
Not having gotten Murgen’s report yet, Sahra and I had no idea what this was about.
“Huh?”
The disciple preparing the prayer wheel announced its readiness. The Sergeant growled, swatted it off the post with the back of his hand. The responsible disciple bent, picked it up, began remounting it. They were not violent people, the Bhodi disciples, nor did they resist anything, but they were stubborn.
The two spreading the prayer rug were satisfied with their work. They spoke to the man with folded arms. He bowed his head slightly, then raised his eyes to meet those of the elder Shadar. In a voice loud but so calm it was disturbing, he proclaimed, “Rajadharma. The Duty of Kings. Know you: Kingship is a trust. The King is the most exalted and conscientious servant of the people.”
Not one witness had any trouble hearing and understanding those words.
The speaker settled himself on the prayer rug. His robes were an almost identical shade. He seemed to fade into a greater whole.
One of the secondary disciples passed him a large jar. He raised that as though in offering to the sky, then dumped its contents over himself. The Shadar sergeant looked as rattled as the youngster. He peered around for help.
The prayer wheel was back in place. The disciple responsible set it spinning, then backed off with the two who had spread the prayer rug.
The disciple on the rug struck flint to steel and vanished in a blast of flame just as I recognized the odor of naphtha. Heat hit me like a blow. I was in character strongly enough to whimper and grab Subredil with both hands. She resumed moving, eyes wide, stunned.
The man inside the flames never cried out, never moved till all life was gone and the charred husk left behind toppled over.
Crows circled above, cursing in their own tongue. So Soulcatcher knew. Or soon would.
We continued moving, into the now-animated crowd and through, heading home. The Bhodi disciples who had helped prepare the ritual suicide had disappeared already, while all eyes were fixed on the burning man.
10
“I can’t believe he did that!” I said, still climbing out of Sawa’s smelly rags and crippled personality. Word had beaten us home. The suicide was all anyone wanted to discuss. Our own nighttime effort had become secondary. That was over and they had survived.
Tobo definitely did not believe it. He mentioned that in passing and insisted on telling us everything his father had seen inside the Palace last night. He referred to notes he had made with Goblin’s help. He was thoroughly proud of the job he had done and wanted to rub our noses in it. “But I couldn’t really get him to talk to me, Mom. Anything I asked seemed to be just an irritation. It was like he just wanted to get it over with so he could go away.”
“I know, dear,” Sahra said. “I know. He’s that way with me, too. Here’s some nice bread they let us bring home. Eat something. Goblin. What did they do with Swan? Is he healthy?”
&nb
sp; One-Eye cackled. He said, “Healthy as a man with cracked ribs can be. Scared shitless, though.” He cackled again.
“Cracked ribs? Explain.”
Goblin told her, “Somebody with a grudge against the Greys got overexcited. But don’t worry about it. The guy is going to have plenty of opportunity to be sorry he let his feelings get the best of him.”
“I’m exhausted,” Sahra said. “We spent the whole day in the same room as Soulcatcher. I thought I would burst.”
“You did? It was all I could do not to run out of there screaming. I concentrated so hard on being Sawa that I missed half of what they said.”
“What didn’t get said might be more important. Soulcatcher was really suspicious about the attack.”
“I told you, go for the throat!” One-Eye barked. “While they still didn’t believe in us. Kill them all and you wouldn’t have to sneak around trying to figure out how to get the Old Man out. You could make those guys at the library do your research for you.”
“We’d’ve just gotten killed,” Sahra said. “Soulcatcher was already looking for trouble. The news about the Daughter of Night did that. Speaking of whom, I want you two looking for her, and Narayan, too.”
“Too?” Goblin asked.
“Soulcatcher will hunt them with a great deal of enthusiasm, I expect.”
I observed, “Kina must be stirring again. Narayan and the girl wouldn’t come to Taglios unless they were confident of her protection. Which means the girl will start copying the Books of the Dead again, too. Sahra, tell Murgen to keep an eye on them.” Those terrible, ancient volumes were buried in the same cavern as the Captured. “I had a thought while we were up there—after I ran out of candlesticks and didn’t have anything else to do. It’s been a long time since I read Murgen’s Annals. It didn’t seem like they had much bearing on what we’re trying to do. Being so modern. But when I was sitting there, just a few feet from Soulcatcher, I got a really creepy feeling that I had missed something. And it’s been so long since I studied those things, I can’t guess what.”
“You should have time. We’ll need to lie pretty low for a few days.”
“You’ll be going to work, won’t you?”
“It would be suspicious if I didn’t.”
“I’m going to the library. I located some histories that go back to the earliest days of Taglios.”
“Yeah?” One-Eye croaked, jerked himself out of a half-sleep. “Then find out for me why the hell the ruling gang are only princes. The territories they rule are bigger than most kingdoms around here.”
“A question that never would have occurred to me,” I said politely. “Or to any native of this end of the world, probably. I’ll ask.” If I remembered.
Nervous laughter came from the shadows in the back of the warehouse. Willow Swan. Goblin said, “He’s playing tonk with some guys he knew in the old days.”
Sahra said, “We should get him out of the city. Where can we keep him?”
“I need him here,” I said. “I need to ask him about the plain. That’s why we grabbed him first. And I’m not going off to some place in the country when I’ve finally started getting somewhere at the library.”
“Soulcatcher might have him marked somehow.”
“We’ve got two half-ass wizards of our own. Have them check him over. They add up to one competent—”
“You watch your mouth, Little Girl.”
“I forget myself, One-Eye. You two together add up to half as much as either one alone.”
“Sleepy has a point. If Soulcatcher marked him, you two ought to be able to find out.”
One-Eye snapped, “Use your head! If she’d marked him, she’d already be here. She wouldn’t be up there asking her lackeys if they’d found his bones yet.” The little man climbed out of his chair, creaking and groaning. He headed for the shadows at the rear of the warehouse but not toward Swan’s voice.
I said, “He’s right.” I headed to the back myself. I had not seen Swan up close for fifteen years. Behind me, Tobo started grilling his mother about Murgen. He was upset because his father had been indifferent.
Seemed to me there was a good chance Murgen did not understand who Tobo was. He had trouble with time. He had had that problem since the siege of Jaicur. He might think it was still fifteen years ago and he was stumbling away into a possible future.
* * *
Swan stared at me for a few seconds after I stepped into the light of the lamp illuminating the table where he was playing cards with the Gupta brothers and a corporal we called Slink. “Sleepy, right? You haven’t changed. Goblin or One-Eye put some kind of hex on you?”
“God is good to the pure of heart. How are your ribs?”
Swan ran fingers through the remnants of his hair. “So that’s the story.” He touched his side. “I’ll live.”
“You’re taking it well.”
“I needed a vacation. Nothing’s in my hands now. I can relax until she finds me again.”
“Can she do that?”
“You the Captain now?”
“The Captain is the Captain. I design ambushes. Can she find you?”
“Well, son, this looks like the fabled collision between the unstoppable whatsis and the immovable thingee. I don’t know where to lay my bets. Over here we got the Black Company with four hundred years of bad and tricky. Over there you got Soulcatcher with four centuries of mean and crazy. It’s a toss-up, I guess.”
“She doesn’t have you marked somehow?”
“Only with scars.”
The way he said that made me feel I knew exactly what he meant. “You want to come over to our side?”
“You’re kidding. You pulled all that stuff this morning just to ask me to join the Black Company?”
“We pulled all that stuff this morning to show the world that we’re still here and that we could do what we want, whenever we want, Protector or no Protector. And to take you so I can question you about the plain of glittering stone.”
He looked at me for several seconds, then checked his cards. “There’s a subject that hasn’t come up in a while.”
“You going to be stubborn about it?”
“You kidding? I’ll talk your ear off. But I’ll bet you don’t learn a damned thing you didn’t already know.” He discarded a black knave.
Slink jumped on the card, laid down a nine-queen spread, discarded a red queen and grinned. He needed to see One-Eye about those teeth.
“Shit!” Swan grumbled. “I missed this game. How did you people learn? It’s the simplest damn game in the world but I never met a Taglian who could figure it out.”
I observed, “You learn fast when you play with One-Eye. Scoot over, Sin. Let me play while I pick this guy’s brain.” I pulled up a stool, studying Swan every second. The man knew how to get into a character. This was not the Willow Swan that Murgen wrote about or the Swan that Sahra saw when she visited the Palace. I picked up my five cards from the next deal. “This ain’t a hand, it’s a foot. How come you’re so relaxed, Swan?”
“No stress. You can’t have a worse hand than mine. I don’t got no two cards of the same suit.”
“No stress?”
“As of today I got nothing to do but lean back and take it easy. Just play tonk till my honey comes and takes me home.”
“You’re not afraid? Reports I’ve had said you’re shakier than Smoke used to be.”
His features hardened. That was not a comparison he liked. “The worst has happened, hasn’t it? I’m in the hands of my enemies. But I’m still healthy.”
“There’s no guarantee you’ll stay that way. Unless you cooperate. Darn! I’m going to have to rob a poor box if this keeps on.” Play had not gotten all the way back to me before the hand ended. I did not win.
“I’ll sing like a trained crow,” Swan said. “Like a chorus. But I can’t do you much good. I was never as close to the center as you may think.”
“Possibly.” I watched his hands closely as he dealt. It see
med like a moment when a skilled manipulator’s ego might compel him to show himself how good he was at pulling fast moves. If he had any moves, he would not get them by me. I learned the game from One-Eye, too. “Prove it. Tell me how Soulcatcher kept you two alive long enough to get off the plain.”
“That’s an easy one.” He completed a straight deal. “We ran away faster than the ghosts chasing us could run. We were riding those black horses the Company brought down from the north.”
I had ridden those enchanted beasts a few times myself. That could be the answer. They could outdistance any normal horse and could run almost forever without tiring. “Maybe. Maybe. She didn’t have any special talisman?”
“Not that she mentioned to me.”
I looked down at another terrible hand. Grilling Swan could get expensive. I am not one of the better tonk players in the gang. “What happened to the horses?”
“Far as I know, they’re all dead. Time or magic or wounds got them. And the queen bitch wasn’t happy about that, either. She don’t like walking and she ain’t fond of flying.”
“Flying?” Startled, I discarded a card I should have kept. That allowed one of the Guptas to go down and take me for another couple of coppers.
Swan said, “I think I’m going to like playing with you. Yeah. Flying. She’s got a couple of them carpets that was made by the Howler. And she just ain’t real good with them. I can tell you that from personal experience. Your deal. Ain’t nothing like falling off of one of them suckers while it’s hauling ass, even if you’re only five feet high.”
One-Eye materialized. He looked about as bright and alert as he ever did these days. “Room for one more?” His breath smelled of alcohol.
Swan grumbled, “I know that voice. No. I figured you out twenty-five years ago. I thought we got your ass at Khadighat. Or maybe it was Bhoroda or Nalanda.”
“I’m quick on my feet.”
Slink said, “You’re in only if you show some money up front and you agree not to deal.”
“And you keep your hands on top of the table all the time,” I added.
