Water Sleeps (12 page)

“Well. Here’s our prodigal.” Sahra finally had Murgen back in the mist box.

I told him, “Tell me about the white crow.”

Puzzled, “I go there sometimes. It’s not voluntary.”

“We took Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night out of Chor Bagan today. There
was a white crow there. You weren’t here.”

“I wasn’t there.” More puzzled. Even troubled. “I don’t remember being there.”

“I think Soulcatcher noticed it. And she knows her crows.”

Murgen continued, “I wasn’t there but I remember things that happened. This
can’t be happening to me again.”

“Just calm down. Tell us what you know.”

Murgen proceeded to report everything Soulcatcher said and did after she ducked
our snipers. He would not tell us how he knew. I do not think he could.

Sahra said, “She does know that we have Singh and the girl.”

“But did she guess why? The Company has an old grudge with those two.”

“She’ll need to see bodies to be convinced there was nothing more to it than
that. She’s still not completely satisfied that Swan is dead. A very suspicious
woman, the Protector.”

“A Narayan corpse would be easy—if we could make it credible. There’re a million
skinny, filthy little old men with green teeth out there. But we’d sure come up
short on beautiful twenty-year-old women with blue eyes and skin paler than
ivory.”

“The Greys will definitely become more active now,” Sahra said. “Whatever she
suspects or doesn’t, the Protector wants no one going about any tricky business
in her city.”

“A point the Radisha might argue. Which reminds me of something that’s been
knocking around the back of my head. Listen to this and tell me what you think.”

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.

W hen 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.

J aul 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 . . .