Water Sleeps (11 page)

What happened?” Sahra demanded as soon as she came in, before she began shedding
Minh Subredil’s rags.

I was still Dorabee Dey Banerjae myself. “We lost Murgen somehow. Goblin thought
they had him anchored, but he went away while we were all out and I don’t know
how to get him back.”

“I meant what happened in the Thieves’ Garden. Soulcatcher was out there.

Whatever she tried to pull didn’t work out but she came back a different person.

I didn’t get to hear everything she told the Radisha but I do know she found
something or figured out something that changed her whole attitude. Like
everything suddenly stopped being fun.”

I said, “Oh. I don’t know. Maybe Murgen can tell us. If we can get him back
here.”

Goblin joined us. He was pushing a sleeping One-Eye in Banh Do Trang’s spare
wheelchair. He announced, “They’re resting peacefully. Drugged. Narayan was
distraught. The girl took it pretty calmly. We need to worry about her.”

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked, indicating One-Eye.

“He’s worn out. He’s an old man. I want to see you have half the energy he does
when you get to be half his age.”

Sahra asked, “Why do we need to worry about the girl?”

“Because she’s her mother’s daughter. She doesn’t have much skill with it yet
because she hasn’t had anybody to teach her, but she’s got the natural ability
to become a substantial sorceress. Maybe even as powerful as her mother but
without Lady’s rudimentary sense of ethics. It reeks off her—”

“ ’Tain’t the only thing she reeks of, neither,” One-Eye chirped. “First thing
you do with that little honey, you throw her in a vat of hot water. Then throw
in a couple, four lumps of lye soap and let her soak for a week.”

Sahra and I exchanged glances. If she was bad enough to offend One-Eye, she had
to be ripe indeed.

Goblin grinned from ear to ear but eschewed temptation.

I said, “I hear you ran into the Protector.”

“She was on a roof or somewhere waiting for something to happen. She didn’t get
what she expected. A couple of fireballs and she ducked and stayed ducked.”

“You made it home without being followed?” I knew the answer because I knew they
knew the stakes. They would not have come anywhere near here had they had the
slightest doubt that that was safe.

I had to ask, even knowing that if they had failed, the warehouse would be
buried in Greys already.

“We were ready to deal with the crows.”

“All but one,” One-Eye grumbled.

“What?”

“I saw a white one up there. It didn’t try to follow us, though.”

Once again Sahra and I exchanged glances. Sahra said, “I’m going to change and
relax and get something to eat. Let’s meet in an hour. If you could find it in
your heart, Goblin, you might try to get Murgen back here.”

“You’re the necromancer.”

“You’re the one who claimed he anchored him. One hour.”

Goblin began grumbling to himself. One-Eye chuckled and made no offer to help.

He asked me, “You ready to kill your librarian yet?”

I did not tell him so but I was slightly more open to the suggestion tonight.

Surendranath Santaraksita seemed to suspect that Dorabee Dey Banerjae was
something more than he pretended. Or maybe I was just paranoid enough to hear
things Santaraksita never intended to say. “You don’t worry about Master
Santaraksita. He’s being very good to me. Today he told me I can look at any
book I want. Unless it’s in the restricted stacks.”

“Woo!” One-Eye breathed. “Somebody finally found the way to her heart. Who’d’a
thunk a book would do it? Name the first one after me, Little Girl.”

I waved a fist under his nose. “I’d knock out your last tooth and call you Mushy
but I was brought up to respect my elders—even if they’re rambling, demented and
senile.” For all its One True God focus, my religion contains a strong taint of
ancestor worship. Every Vehdna believes his forefathers can hear his prayers and
can intercede with God and his saints. If he feels he has been properly treated.

“I’m going to follow Sahra’s example.”

“You holler if you want to get in practice for your new boyfriend.” His cackle
ended abruptly as Gota limped around me. When I glanced back, One-Eye appeared
to be sound asleep again. Must have been some other old fool running his mouth.

During the siege of Jaicur, I announced that never again would I be picky about
what I ate. That I would respond to anything offered me with a smile of
gratitude and a spoken “Thank you.” But time has a way of wearing away at such
vows. I was nearly as sick of rice and smoked fish as Goblin and One-Eye were.

Breaking the tedium with the occasional supper of rice and fish meal did not
seem to help. I am confident that it is their diet that makes the Nyueng Bao
such a humorless people.

I ran into Sahra, who had bathed and let her hair down and relaxed, looking a
decade younger, so that it was easy to see how, a decade earlier still, she
could have been every young man’s fantasy. “I still have a little money I took
off somebody who picked the wrong side down south,” I told her, waving a tiny
piece of fish caught between two bamboo chopsticks. Nyueng Bao refuse to adopt
innovative utensils that have been in common use amongst everyone else in this
part of the world for centuries. Those who did the cooking in Do Trang’s complex
were all Nyueng Bao.

“What?” Sahra was completely baffled.

“I’ll give it up. If we can buy a pig with it.” Vehdna are not supposed to eat
pork. But I made the mistake of being born female, so I probably do not have a
seat reserved in Paradise anyway. “Or anything else that doesn’t go through the
water like this.” I made a wiggly motion with one hand.

Sahra did not understand. Food was a matter of indifference to her—so long as
she got some. Fish and rice forever were perfectly fine. And she was probably
right. There are plenty of people out there who have to eat chhatu because they
cannot afford rice. And others cannot afford any food at all. Though Soulcatcher
seemed to be thinning those out now.

Sahra started to tell me something about a rumor that another Bhodi disciple was
going to present himself at the entrance to the Palace and demand an audience
with the Radisha. But we were approaching the lighted area where we worked our
wickednesses of evenings and she saw something there that made her stop.

I started to say, “Then we need to get somebody next to him—”

Sahra growled, “What the hell is he doing here?”

I saw it now. Uncle Doj was back, probably determined to invite himself into our
lives again. His timing seemed interesting and suspect.

I also found it interesting that Sahra spoke Taglian when she was stressed. She
had some definite points of contention with her own people, though around the
warehouse nobody used Nyueng Bao except Mother Gota, who did so only to remain a
pain.

Uncle Doj was a wide little man who, though on the brink of seventy, was mostly
muscle and gristle, and in recent years, bad temper. He carried a long, slightly
curved sword he called Ash Wand. Ash Wand was his soul. He had told me so. He
was some sort of priest but would not bother to explain. His religion involved
martial arts and holy swords, though. He was nobody’s uncle in reality. Uncle
was a title of respect among Nyueng Bao, and they all seemed to consider Doj a
man worthy of the greatest respect.

Uncle Doj has meandered in and out of our lives since the siege of Jaicur,

always more distraction than contribution. He could be underfoot for years at a
stretch, then would disappear for weeks or months or years. This latest time he
had been out of the way for more than a year. When he did turn up, he never
bothered reporting what he had been doing or where he had been, but judging from
Murgen’s observations and my own, he was still searching for his Key diligently.

Curious, him materializing so suddenly after my epiphany. I asked Sahra, “Did
your mother happen to leave the warehouse today?”

“That question occurred to me, too. It might be worth pursuit.”

Very little warmth existed between mother and daughter. Murgen was not the cause
but absolutely had become the symbol.

Uncle Doj was supposed to be a minor wizard. I never saw any evidence to support
that, other than his uncanny skill with Ash Wand. He was old and his joints were
getting stiff. His reflexes were fading. But I could not think of anyone who
would remotely be his match. Nor have I ever heard of anyone else dedicating his
life to a piece of steel the way he has.

Maybe I did have evidence of his being a wizard, I reflected. He never had any
trouble getting through the mazes Goblin and One-Eye had created to save us the
embarrassment of unexpected walk-ins. Those two ought to tie him down till he
explained how he did that.

I asked Sahra, “How do you want to handle this?”

Her voice was edged with flint. “Far as I’m concerned, we can lump him right in
there with Singh and the Daughter of Night.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my enemy, huh?”

“I never liked Doj much. By Nyueng Bao standards he’s a great and honorable man,

a hero due great respect. And he’s the embodiment of everything I find
distasteful about my people.”

“Secretive, huh?”

She betrayed a hint of a smile. In that she was as guilty as any other Nyueng
Bao. “That’s in the blood.”

Tobo noticed us watching and talking. He darted over. He was excited enough to
forget he was a surly young man. “Mom. Uncle Doj is here.”

“So I see. He say what he wants this time?”

I touched her arm gently, cautioning her. No need to start butting heads.

Doj, of course, was aware of our presence. I never saw a man so intensely aware
of his environment. He might have heard every word we whispered, too. I put no
store in the chance that time had weathered his sense of hearing. He gobbled
rice and paid us no heed.

I told Sahra, “Go say hello. I need a second to put my face on.”

“I ought to send for the Greys. Have them raid the place. I’m too tired for
this.” She did not bother to keep her voice down.

“Mom?”

I held Doj’s eye. My face was cold. My voice held no emotion whatsoever as I
asked, “What is the Key?” Bound, gagged, Narayan Singh and Daughter of Night
watched and waited their turn.

The faintest flicker of surprise stirred in Doj’s eyes. I was not the sort he
expected to be a questioner.

I was in character again, a borrowed one based on a gang enforcer who had
offended us a few years ago, Vajra the Naga. The gang was out of business and
Vajra the Naga had gone on to a better world but his legacy occasionally proved
useful.

Doj enjoyed the reasonable expectation that he would not be tortured. I had no
intention of taking it that far. With him. The Company’s fortunes and those of
the Nyueng Bao had become so intermingled that I could not brutalize Doj without
alienating our most useful allies.

Doj volunteered nothing. Nor did I expect him to be any more vocal than a stone.

I told him, “We need to open the way onto the glittering plain. We know you
don’t have the Key. We do know where to start looking for it. We’ll be pleased
to return it to you once we release our brothers.” I paused, giving him time to
surprise me by replying. He did not.

“You are, perhaps, philosophically opposed to opening the way. We’re going to
disappoint you on that. The way will open. Somehow. You have only the option of
participating or not participating.”

Doj’s eyes shifted, just for an instant. He wanted to read Sahra’s stance.

Hers was plain. She had a husband trapped under the glittering plain. The wishes
of the lone priest of some obscure, never-explained cult carried no weight with
her.

Not even Banh Do Trang or Ky Gota offered demonstrative support, though both
would favor him mainly out of decades of inertia.

“If you don’t cooperate, then we won’t return the Key when we’re done with it.

And we will determine what constitutes cooperation. The first step is to put an
end to all of the normal Nyueng Bao equivocation and evasion and selective
deafness.”

Vajra the Naga was not a character I liked to adopt too often. A naga was a
mythical serpent being that lived beneath the earth and had no sympathy whatever
for anything human. The trouble with the character was that I could slip into it
like it had been tailored for me. It would take only a small emotional
distortion to turn me into Vajra the Naga.

“You have something we want. A book.” I was betting a lot on my having reasoned
out or intuited the course of various hidden events based upon what I had gotten
from Murgen and his Annals. “It’s about so-by-so and this thick, bound in tan
vellum. The writing inside is in an untrained hand in a language no one has
spoken for seven centuries. Specifically, it is a nearly complete copy of the
first volume of the Books of the Dead, the lost sacred texts of the Children of
Kina. Chances are you didn’t know that.”

Narayan and even the Daughter of Night reacted to that.

I continued, “The book was stolen from the fortress Overlook by the sorcerer
called the Howler. He concealed it because he didn’t want Soulcatcher to get it,

nor did he want the child to have it. You either saw him hide it or stumbled
onto it soon after he did. You concealed it somewhere you feel is safe. Ignoring
the fact that nothing can remain hidden forever. Some eyes will discover
anything eventually.”

Once again I allowed Doj time for remarks. He chose to pass on the opportunity.

“You have a choice in all this. I remind you, though, that you’re getting old,

that your chosen successor is buried under the plain with my brothers, and that
you have no allies more favorable than Gota, whose enthusiasm has to be suspect
at this late date. You may choose to say nothing, ever, in which case truth will
follow you into the darkness. But the Key will remain here. In other hands. Have
you had enough to eat? Has Do Trang been a good host? Will somebody help our
guest find something to drink? We shouldn’t be scorned for our failures of
hospitality.”

“You didn’t get a word out of him,” One-Eye complained as soon as Doj was out of
earshot.

“I didn’t expect to. I just wanted him to have something to think about. Let’s
talk to these two. Scoot Singh over here, take the gag off and turn him so he
can’t get cues from the girl.” She was spooky. Even bound and gagged, she
radiated a disturbingly potent presence. Put her in the company of people
already prepared to believe that she was touched by the dark divine and it was
easy to understand why the Deceiver cult was making a comeback. Interesting,

though, that that was a recent phenomenon. That for a decade she and Narayan had
been fugitives painstakingly taking control of the few surviving Deceivers and
evading the Protector’s agents, and now, just as we feel we are up to tugging a
few beards, they began making their survival known, too.

I had no trouble seeing where the Gunni imagination would find connections and
portents and wild harbingers of the Year of the Skulls.

“Narayan Singh,” I said in my Vajra the Naga voice. “You’re a stubborn old man.

You should have been dead long ago. Perhaps Kina does favor you. Which would
suggest that here in my hands is where the goddess wants you to be.” We Vehdna
are good at blaming everything on God. Nothing can happen that is not the will
of God. Therefore, He has already measured the depth of the brown stuff and has
decided to toss you in. “And these are bloody hands, make no mistake.”

Singh looked at me. He did not fear much. He did not recognize me. If our paths
had crossed before, I had been too minor an annoyance for him to recall.

The Daughter of Night remembered me, though. She was thinking that I was a
mistake she would not be making again. I was thinking maybe she was a mistake we
ought not to make, however useful a tool she might become. She almost scared
Vajra the Naga, who had been too dense to comprehend fear in personal terms.

“You’re troubled by events but aren’t afraid. You rely upon your goddess. Good.

Let me provide assurances. We won’t harm you. Assuming you cooperate. However
much we owe you.”

He did not believe a word of that and I did not blame him. That was the usual
sort of “hold out a feather of hope” a torturer used to leverage cooperation
from the doomed. “In this case, the pain will all be directed elsewhere.” He
tried to turn to look at the girl. “Not just there, Narayan Singh. Not only
there. Though that’s where we’ll start. Narayan, you have something we want. We
have several things we believe to be of value to you. I’m prepared to make an
exchange, sworn in the names of all our gods.”

Narayan had nothing to say. Yet. But I began to sense that his ears might be
open to the right words.

The Daughter of Night sensed that, too. She squirmed. She tried to make some
kind of noise. She was going to be as stubborn and crazy as her mother and aunt.

Must be the blood.

“Narayan Singh. In another life you were a vegetable seller in the town called
Gondowar. Every other summer you would go off to lead your company of tooga.”

Singh looked uncomfortable and puzzled. This was nothing he expected. “You had a
wife, Yashodara, whom you called Lily in private. You had a daughter, Khaditya,

which was maybe just a little too clever a naming. You had three sons: Valmiki,

Sugriva and Aridatha. Aridatha you’ve never seen because he wasn’t born until
after the Shadowmasters carried the able men of Gondowar off into captivity.”

Narayan looked more uncomfortable and troubled than ever. His life before the
coming of the Shadowmasters was a lost episode. Since his unexpected salvation,

he had dedicated himself solely to his goddess and her Daughter.

“Those times were so unsettled that you have since proceeded on the reasonable
assumption that nothing of your former life survived the coming of the
Shadowmasters. But that assumption is a false one, Narayan Singh. Yashodara bore
you that third son, Aridatha, and lived to see him become a grown man. Though
she endured great poverty and despair, your Lily survived until just two years
ago.” In fact, until just after we located her. I still did not know for certain
if some of my brothers had not grown overly zealous in their eagerness to locate
Narayan. “Of your sons, Aridatha and Sugriva still live, as does your daughter
Khaditya, though she has used the name Amba since she learned, to her horror,

that her very father was the Narayan Singh of such widespread infamy.”

By stealing Lady’s baby, Narayan had ensured that his name would live on amongst
those of the great villains. Everyone over a certain age knew the name and a
score of evil stories burdening it—the majority of them fabrications or
accretions of stories formerly attached to some other human demon whose ignominy
had been nibbled up by time.

I had his attention despite his determination to remain indifferent. Family is
critically important to all but a handful of us.

“Sugriva continues in the produce business, although his desire to escape your
reputation led him first to move to Ayodahk, then to Jaicur when the Protector
decided she wanted the city repopulated. He felt everyone would be strangers
there and he could create a more favorable past for himself.”

Both captives noted my unfortunate use of “Jaicur.” Which did not give them
anything they could use but which did tell them I was not Taglian. No Taglian
would call that city anything but Dejagore.

I continued, “Aridatha grew into a fine young man, well-formed and beautiful.

He’s a soldier now, a senior noncommissioned officer in one of the City
Battalions. His rise has been rapid. He has been noticed. There’s a good chance
he’ll be chosen to become one of the career commissioned officers the Great
General had been imposing on the army.” I fell silent. No one else spoke. Some
were hearing this for the first time, though Sahra and I had started looking for
those people a long time ago.

I got up and went out, got myself a large cup of tea. I cannot abide the Nyueng
Bao tea-making ceremonies. I am, of course, a barbarian in their eyes. I do not
like the tiny little cups they use, either. When I have some tea, I want to get
serious about it. Make it strong and bitter and toss in a glob of honey.

I seated myself in front of Narayan again. No one had spoken in my absence. “So,

living saint of the Stranglers, have you truly put aside all the chains of the
earth? Would you like to see your Khaditya again? She was little when you left.

Would you like to see your grandchildren? There are five of them. I can say the
word and inside a week we can have one of them here.” I sipped tea, looked Singh
in the eye and let his imagination toy with the possibilities. “But you are
going to be all right, Narayan. I’m going to see to that personally.” I showed
him my Vajra the Naga smile. “Will somebody show these two to their guest
rooms?”

“That all you’re going to do?” Goblin asked once they were gone.

“I’m going to let Singh think about the life he never lived. I’ll let him think
about losing what’s left of that. And about losing his messiah. When he can
avoid all those tragedies just by telling us where to find the souvenir he
carried away from Soulcatcher’s hideout down by Kiaulune.”

“He won’t take a deep breath without getting permission from the girl.”

“We’ll see how he handles having to make his own decisions. If he stalls too
long and we get pressed, you can put a glamour on me that’ll make him think I’m
her.”

“What about her?” One-Eye asked. “You going to personally work on her, too?”

“Yes. Starting right now. Put some of those choke spells on her. One on each
wrist and ankle. And double them up around her neck.” We had done some herding,

amongst other things, over the years and One-Eye and Goblin, being incredibly
lazy, had developed choke spells that constricted tighter and tighter as an
animal moved farther away from a selected marker point. “She’s a resourceful
woman with a goddess on her side. I’d prefer to kill her and be done with it but
we won’t get any help from Singh if we do. If she does manage to escape, I want
complete success to be fatal. I want near success to render her unconscious from
lack of air. I don’t want her having regular contact with any of our people.

Remember what her aunt, Soulcatcher, did to Willow Swan. Tobo. Has Swan said
anything that might interest us?”

“He just plays cards, Sleepy. He does talk all the time but he never says
anything. Kind of like Uncle One-Eye.”

Whisper. “You put him up to that, didn’t you, Frogface?”

“Sounds like Swan to me,” I said. I shut my eyes, began massaging my brow
between thumb and forefinger, trying to make Vajra the Naga go away. His
reptilian lack of connection was seductive. “I’m so tired—”

“Then why the hell don’t we all just retire?” One-Eye croaked. “For a whole
goddamned generation it was the Captain and his next year in Khatovar shit that
beat us into the ground. Now it’s you two women and your holy crusade to
resurrect the Captured. Find yourself a guy, Little Girl. Spend a year screwing
his brains out. We’re not going to get those people out of there. Accept that.

Start believing that they’re dead.”

He sounded exactly like the traitor in my soul that whispered in my mind every
night before I fell asleep. The part about accepting that the Captured were
never going to be coming back, anyway. I asked Sahra, “Can we call up our
favorite dead man? One-Eye, ask him what he thinks of our plan.”

“Bah! Frogface, you deal with this. I need a little medicinal pick-me-up.”

Almost smiling despite her aching joints, Gota waddled out behind One-Eye. We
would not see those two for a while. If we were lucky, One-Eye would get drunk
fast and pass out. If we were not, he would come staggering out looking to feud
with Goblin and we would have to restrain him. That could turn into an
adventure.