Soldiers Live (48 page)

Taglios:

An Afternoon Off
I took Lady out for a picnic. With a little help from my adopted daughters. In
the vain hope that some sunlight and fresh air would make a difference when even
Tobo’s best effort could not shake the enchantment holding her. According to the
boy wizard I was supposed to consider myself lucky. If she had not been Lady,

had been some ordinary person, she would have been long dead. He assured me this
was not the spell that had claimed Sedvod and still gripped Soulcatcher. I could
not see any obvious difference—except that Lady was getting no worse.

His best advice was to take my questions to the perpetrator once we found him.

The girls left me alone with my honey. I held her hand and rambled on about a
thousand things: recollections, current affairs, hopes. I shared my suspicions
and concerns about Tobo, too, which might have been dangerous since I had no
idea what might be listening.

Nothing I did helped her even a little, nor did it seem to do me any good. I
fought the good fight against despair.

A squeaky clean, thoroughly polished corporal from Hsien trotted up. “Captain’s
compliments, sir, and could you come to the Palace? They think they may have
located the Khadidas and the Daughter of Night.”

“Damn! Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tell them not to mess with anything.

Tell them to be very careful. Those two are extremely dangerous.”

They knew that, of course. And Tobo would be right there to remind them. But
repetition never hurts. Not when it helps get you through the deadly times.

Shukrat and Arkana came running. “What’s up?” Shukrat asked.

As I explained I reflected on how much better the girls were getting along. They
seemed to have shed the conflicts they had brought into Captivity.

As we three got Lady ready to go back to my tent I asked Arkana, “Will you want
to go home someday?”

“What?”

“Home. Where you were born. The world I used to call Khatovar. Do you want to go
back? I think I could make it happen.”

“But it’s all destroyed.”

“Not really. The First Father and Nashun the Researcher said so, but that was
just to excuse their cowardice.”

“I’m not sure I want to believe that.”

“Good. Excellent. That’s the way I want my kids to be. Skeptical. That’s the
truth according to Shivetya. And I’m not a hundred percent sure of our demonic
friend myself.”

“Why didn’t you ask me if I want to go?” Shukrat demanded.

“Because you don’t want to go. You just want to be where Tobo is.”

“That isn’t exactly a secret. It isn’t a crime, either. But I’m not bereft of my
senses. You’ll sure never see me do some die-for-love kind of thing. If you guys
do go, tell me. I’ll decide what I want to do then.”

Taglios:

Royal Return
I did not make it to the Palace. Shukrat beat me there and came right back with
instructions to head for the South Gate. The Prahbrindrah Drah was about to
arrive and Suvrin wanted somebody there to greet the man we had been touting as
the city’s legitimate ruler.

Per instructions I rounded up a few men from the City Battalions, along with a
handful of their officers, and off I went, grumbling all the way. I expected the
Prince’s home-coming would be a huge disappointment for him and his sister.

Taglios did not care.

I told several people to spread the word, to try to get something going.

That did very little good. The route inward from the gate was never more than
sparsely populated with spectators and the rare feeble cheer we did hear came
from really old people.

I hate to waste pomp and pageantry. Not that we did put much on. Aridatha got to
bring out his marching band, a little late. Never would have been better. They
were terrible. And not just because what passes for music here is so alien. I
have spent half my life in this end of the world. I asked Singh, “Those guys
practice much?”

“They’ve been too busy being soldiers.”

Aridatha had an attitude I appreciated. Each one of his men was expected to be a
soldier first, and whatever else secondarily.

Singh said, “I do have to tell you, this Prince doesn’t look very impressive. I
hope he’s a better ruler than he is a showman.”

I was no longer sure bringing the Prince back would be good for Taglios, myself.

There had been big changes in the city and bigger changes in the man. They might
have nothing in common anymore.

I shrugged. “He’s old. If he hasn’t got what Taglios needs Taglios won’t have to
put up with him for long.”

In the old days the Prince and I had gotten along well. Until he had turned on
us. As an officer in my command he had shown a hunger for learning and a lust
for doing the best thing. So I told him straightaway, when we met inside the
South Gate, that his first order of business, now that he was back in business,

had to be the establishment of a generally acceptable line of succession.

Otherwise chaos would follow his demise.

“Rajadharma, old buddy. Let’s get the job done.”

My remarks earned me a tired growl and not much more. The Prince seemed used up
and worn out. His sister showed more spark but had a lot more years on her
because she had not shared the stasis of the Captivity with her brother. Chances
were, nowadays, that she would go first, despite being the younger.

She could not be titular ruler, anyway. When she did exercise the power, during
all those years, there had been a pretense of a regency, in place until the
legitimate ruler could resume control. Because the Prahbrindrah Drah was still
alive somewhere. Neither custom nor law allowed a woman to rule in her own
right.

Arkana came to meet me with the news. “They’ve definitely found the Khadidas and
the Daughter of Night, Pop.” She was a willing participant in that charade now
and, more and more, helping herself to a job as my personal assistant. Now, if I
could just teach her written Taglian . . . I suspect the frequency with which I
crossed the path of Aridatha Singh had something to do with all that. Singh, I
noted, had not failed to recognize what a tasty morsel my little girl was,

either, though Voroshk protective apparel seldom flattered.

Tobo remained patient enough to wait until I reached the Palace. Barely. And
only out of impatient courtesy, because that was my real daughter and my former
friend in there.

My real daughter. A grown woman, whom I had never seen. Arkana, known less than
a year, was more daughter to me in life. And Narayan Singh was more a father to
Booboo.

Aridatha was there and interested. I wondered why. Then I recalled that he had
seen Booboo a few times before and those women have a way of getting under your
skin without ever trying.

It did not occur to me that he might be thinking more about the Khadidas.

At first the Prince was put out by everyone’s sudden loss of interest in him . .

. then he got a good look at what had happened to the Palace.

He moaned aloud, a textbook cry of anguish. He managed some respectable gnashing
of teeth.

Suvrin stepped in. The little pudgeball could be weasel-slick handling people
when he wanted. Which might be the ideal leadership skill for the times. I
turned to Arkana, gave her special instructions. She flew off to my rooms in the
building we had taken for our headquarters. Once upon a time it had been a Greys
barracks.

Most of the Greys have vanished. We all pretended not to notice that there are a
disproportionate number of Shadar in the City Battalions, say compared to when
we were duking it out with them in the streets.

Aridatha was sharing his own good fortune. Though there was less popular
inclination toward vengeance than I had expected. And that little focused
entirely on individuals.

The Radisha Drah also let out a disconsolate wail on discovering the state of
the Palace. She and her brother remained still and silent for minutes. Then she
slew the silence with another cry of pain. I told Suvrin, “I hope they don’t
decide that this is all our fault and they just have to get even.” I did not
think they would be that stupid, after having survived what they had suffered
for having turned on us before, but with royalty you never know. They think
differently than real people. The real world never quite seems to reach them.

Smoke still trickled out of the ruins, here and there. While we watched a small
avalanche of weakened masonry cascaded down.

The Prince observed, “The stonework must have suffered more than we thought
during the earthquake.”

“Hunh?” That had happened so long ago that I had forgotten it. “You’re probably
right. Plus the Protector never wasted a copper on maintenance while she was in
charge.” I approached Tobo, who continued to prance about impatiently. “Where
are my treasures?”

As I asked, Arkana swooped down, black cloth popping and crackling in the wind.

She carried One-Eye’s spear and his ugly old hat. The hat still smelled of the
ugly old man who had worn it.

“Right there where the red flag is.”

Poles with colored streamers indicated points where the Unknown Shadows had
detected something human under the rubble. There were just two red ribbons. The
rest were black. There would be no rush to dig there. The red streamer not
indicated by Tobo was the focus of frenzied activity.

I asked, “What’s over there?”

“Ten to twelve people trapped in one of the treasury strong rooms. We’re sending
water and soup down through bamboo pipes. They’ll be all right.”

“Uhm.” I could imagine the nightmares they would suffer for the rest of their
lives. “Just hang onto that stuff,” I told Arkana. I studied the stone around
the base of the red-streamer pole. “Tobo, are they conscious down there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’d hate to think they’re just waiting to do something obnoxious when we dig
them out.”

He said, “We can just leave them there. Without water they’ll die.”

“It’s a solution.” But not one that interested me. Only Booboo would really
suffer. “Suvrin, may I?” When he nodded I beckoned some men who were standing
around awaiting instructions. If the girl was aware I was sure we would get a
dose of “love me” real quick. Which meant only people in Voroshk clothing should
do the final digging.

The Khadidas and Daughter of Night had crawled into a corner of their hiding
place when the collapse came. The walls had held up just enough. But they had
not had time to collect food and water.

Sadly, my baby did have a lamp and supplies and did make a valiant attempt to
keep right on enscribing the Books of the Dead, perhaps in hope of lending Kina
enough strength to save her. She could not have had much hope otherwise.

I thought a lot about what Booboo had been through in her near quarter century.

About what had been done to her and what she believed she was. The loving part
of me thought it might be a priceless mercy if she was saved the cruelty of
reawakening.

It never got beyond being a notion. No argument I could present would ever
convince Lady that that was appropriate. She wanted a little Lady so badly.

I discovered the Radisha beside me. It was amazing how much she had aged. She
even carried a cane. “It’s true, you know,” she said in a weary voice.

“What’s that?” Though I knew what she was going to say.

“The coming of the Black Company did mean the end of Taglios. Just not the way
we imagined.”

“All we ever wanted was to pass on through.”

She nodded, keeping her bitterness contained.

“You think we were hard on Taglios? Consider how happy the Shadowmasters must
be.”

“But you haven’t finished with Taglios,” the Prahbrindrah Drah observed, joining
us. “I’ve just heard what happened to Lady. How is she?”

“Stable.” He was another of those men who had been infatuated with my wife at
one time. “And you’re right. In a way. As long as people try to push us around
people get hurt. But that shouldn’t last much longer. We’re close to where we
have to go.” I stepped forward, spoke to the men digging, first in the language
of the Children of the Dead, then in Taglian. “We’re getting close. Hold up till
those of us who are protected can help. Tobo! Girls. They’re almost through over
here.”

Not far off more interior brickwork surrendered to the seduction of gravity.

Taglios:

And My Baby
The soldiers created a precarious opening through which someone might wriggle. I
asked for a lantern, meaning to be first inside, but Tobo seized it when it
arrived. I did not argue. He was better equipped than I.

Seconds after the boy began to duckwalk a blast of urine-colored light ripped
through the opening. It glanced off Tobo, hit a block of stone, scattered. It
was a potent blast. Stone melted. And one stray ricochet found the Prahbrindrah
Drah.

The results were ugly. And instantly fatal.

“That was it,” Tobo called back, unaware of the disaster. “That’s all he had.

He’s out of it now. Croaker, help me drag them out.”

The Radisha began to wail.

The boy recognized the scope of the disaster immediately. The Taglian empire
was, as of this moment, without an acceptable helmsman. Was without legitimate
direction. “It’ll have to wait a minute,” I said. “The Prince is hurt. I want to
get him to medical care right now.” Maybe, just one more time, we could pretend
the supreme authority was fine but staying out of sight. Soulcatcher got away
with it. The Great General got away with it. Why not my own band of
opportunists?

I feared there had been too many witnesses, though Suvrin and Aridatha took up
the pretense immediately and the Radisha herself joined me after only a few
heartbeats. She put on a creditable show of threatening me with serious
unpleasantness if her brother happened to die.

Now aware that political disaster threatened, Tobo launched some glitzy
distraction. To which I paid little attention because I was desperate to get the
Prince out of the public eye. There was a lot of flash behind me, and changing
colors playing through the ruins. A big bunch of masonry went down. And Shukrat
began helping Tobo pull the Khadidas out of the ground.

Aridatha’s men hauled the Prince’s litter away. The prince seen to, Arkana and I
began to ease through the rubble toward the hole. I beckoned more
stretcher-bearers. The thing being dragged into the light did not look
dangerous. It looked like an old, worn-out version of a Goblin who was already
dead.

“You want these now?” Arkana asked.

“Hang on just another minute. Get him over here, guys. On the stretcher. Easy.

Easy! Tobo. Can you wake him up? Just for a second? Long enough for him to
recognize me and what I’m doing?”

“Probably. If you want to risk it.” There was a choke in the boy’s voice. He
looked at the spear and the ugly hat and wanted to believe that I had a way to
reach the Goblin trapped inside the Khadidas. The Goblin who was always like an
uncle to him.

“Oh, shit!” I said. “Wait! Wait!”

“What?”

“I just had an ugly thought. About how Kina might react through Lady if we drive
the devil out of Goblin.”

Tobo sucked in a bucket of air, released it. “I don’t see how she could work
that. But why take a chance? She is the Mother of Deception. Shuke, honey, do me
a favor. Get the small carpet from my room. Just fold it up and bring it back.

We’ll use that to haul them away.”

Shukrat jumped onto her post and zipped away. While he waited Tobo had an awning
erected to keep potential rain off Goblin, then snaked back into the hole. He
did not ask for help so I stood back with Aridatha and Arkana, insides turning
over, awaiting my first glimpse of Booboo.

I asked Singh, “The fires under the rubble never go out. What the hell keeps
burning?”

“Five hundred years worth of archives. Everything that belonged to the Inspector
General of the Records. It’ll make for interesting times when we try to put
things back together.”

Shukrat, the little darling, obviously knew her way around Tobo’s quarters. She
was back with a small, folded flying carpet before the kid himself poked his
head back out of the hole. With Arkana’s help she snapped the frame into
position, stretched the fabric taut.

Arkana finally found nerve enough to speak to Aridatha directly, in a
nonbusiness capacity. “You think it’s going to rain?”

You could see she wanted to melt like a slug freshly sprinkled with salt. All
that work to find the nerve to speak and something that feeble was all she could
get out. When fat raindrops had begun plunking down at random intervals nearly a
minute before.

She was just a kid.

They had the Khadidas on the flying carpet now. And a couple of soldiers, one
Taglian and one from Hsien, had hold of a pair of ankles.

“You all right, Pop?” Arkana asked, holding onto my left arm.

“She looks just like Lady did the first time we met.” In a time of terror. There
was terror here, now, but of an entirely different sort.

“Then your wife must have had some filthy hygiene habits in her younger days.”

“Ah, but she was eager to learn. Tobo, can you make sure Booboo doesn’t wake up
until I want her to?” I did not want to have to cope with her witchery. “And
let’s keep these two away from each other from now on. We don’t need them
getting their heads together.”

“We don’t need them, period,” someone muttered. Shukrat, I realized. Shukrat did
not like the way Tobo kept eyeballing the Daughter of Night.

Nor did my other adopted offspring particularly approve of the contemplative
stares of Aridatha Singh.

Tobo called, “Croaker, you want to wake up yourself? Just for a minute? So you
can take a look at her? See if anything’s missing or broken?”

One of the city soldiers told another that everything looked just fine to him. A
little soap and some clean clothes . . .

I never thought I would be a father and have to pretend not to hear such
remarks.

The man was right. She was a beautiful child. Exactly like her mother. And like
Lady’s, most of her beauty lay right on the surface. I had to remind myself not
to be taken in by what I saw or by what I wanted to feel. My emotions would not
be trustworthy. They might not be my own. The Mother of Deceit had not left the
game.

I knelt beside my daughter. My emotions were engaged indeed. I felt a thousand
years old and utterly powerless. It took a major application of will to touch
her.

Her skin felt cold.

In moments I reported, “She’s got lots of bruises and scrapes but there isn’t
any serious damage. Nothing permanent. She is dehydrated.” She shook each time I
touched her, as though I was massaging her with pieces of ice. “She’ll recover,

if we take care of her. Put her in with Lady.”

Tobo said, “You’ll need somebody to stay with her. Somebody who can control
her.”

“I will.”

“I will.”

Shukrat and Arkana both volunteered.

Well. Were they that concerned about competition from a beat-up, unconscious
woman who knew absolutely nothing about men?

I would bet Tobo was grinning when he said, “All right, ladies. Work yourselves
out a schedule. Croaker, what do you plan to do about Goblin?”

Suvrin seemed a little irked. Events were going forward without consulting the
new Captain of the Black Company. But in matters concerning Booboo and the
Khadidas he was no expert.

“Stash him. I’ll wait till I’m well-rested to deal with him. Meantime, we need
somebody to crawl into that hole and collect up all of Booboo’s scribblings.

Somebody from Hsien, preferably. Somebody illiterate. We’ll take no chance
anybody will read that stuff. I’ll take care of it. But right now I’m going to
go take a nap. I’m totally exhausted.”