The Many Deaths of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  “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.”

  44

  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 lightfooting 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 in 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.”

  45

  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 t
he 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.

  46

  Men were charg
ing 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.”