Water Sleeps (13 page)

M aster Santaraksita paused to tell me, “It was good of you to care for
Baladitya yesterday, Dorabee. I had forgotten him in my eagerness to assemble
the bhadrhalok. But you should be careful or his grandson will begin expecting
you to walk the old man home for him. He tried it with me.”

I did not look into his eyes, though I did want to see what was there. There was
a tightness in his voice that told me he had something on his mind. But I had
taken too many liberties with Dorabee already. He would not stare into the eyes
of the priestly caste. “I but did the right thing, Master. Are we not taught to
respect and aid our elders? If we do not when we are young, who will respect and
aid us when we ourselves become frail?”

“Indeed. Nevertheless, you continue to amaze and intrigue me, Dorabee.”

Uncomfortable, I tried to change the subject by inquiring, “Was the meeting of
the bhadrhalok productive, Master?”

Santaraksita frowned, then smiled. “You’re very subtle, Dorabee. No. Of course
not. We’re the bhadrhalok. We talk. We don’t act.” For a moment he mocked his
own kind. “We’ll still be debating what form our resistance should take when the
Protector perishes of old age.”

“Is it true what they say, Master? That she’s four hundred years old, yet fresh
as a bride?” I did not need to know, I just needed conversation to nurture
Santaraksita’s surprising interest in me.

“That seems to be the common belief, handed down from the northern mercenaries
and those travelers the Radisha adopted.”

“She must be a great sorceress indeed, then.”

“Do I detect a note of jealousy?”

“Would we all not like to live forever?”

He looked at me oddly. “But we shall, Dorabee. This life is only a stage.”

Wrong thing to say, Dorabee Dey. “I meant in this world. I find myself largely
content to remain Dorabee Dey Banerjae.”

Santaraksita frowned slightly but let it go. “How are your studies coming?”

“Wonderfully, Master. I’m especially fond of the historical texts. I’m
discovering so many interesting facts.”

“Excellent. Excellent. If there’s anything I can do to help . . . ”

I asked, “Is there a written Nyueng Bao language? Or was there ever?”

That took him from the blind side. “Nyueng Bao? I don’t know. Why in the world
would you—”

“Something I’ve seen a few times near where I live. Nobody knows what it means.

The Nyueng Bao down there won’t talk. But I never heard of them being literate.”

He rested a hand on my shoulder for a moment. “I’ll find out for you.” His
fingers seemed to be trembling. He murmured something unintelligible and hurried
away.

W ord was in that the Bhodi disciples were not happy with us for stealing their
thunder at the Palace gate. I wondered what they would think when the news
arrived about our behavior at Semchi. That seemed to be coming together
perfectly for us. Unless Soulcatcher was thinking farther ahead than we could
detect.

Murgen had Slink’s party well on the way to the village. And moving faster than
the group the Protector had sent to destroy the Bhodi Tree. That group
outnumbered our brothers but did not expect any resistance. In a few days it
would turn really nasty down there.

As the weather had here. Storm season had arrived. I had been delayed coming
home by a ferocious thunderstorm that flooded some streets and sent down hail an
inch in diameter. The kangali and other children went out and tried to gather up
the ice, barking in pain every time a hailstone found unprotected skin. For a
short while the air was almost tolerably cool. But then the storm moved on and
the heat returned worse than it had been before. The stench of the city welled
up. One storm was not enough to sluice it clean, only to turn everything over.

In a few days the insects would be more miserable than ever before.

I hugged my burden and told myself I would not have to stay in this cesspool
much longer.

“One more to locate and I’ll have everything I need from the library.” My new
acquisition lay open for public viewing. Of course no one could read it. Not
even me. But I was confident that I now possessed another original of the three
missing Annals. Perhaps the very first, since it was so alien. The other seemed
to be inscribed in the same alphabet, much modified and somewhat like that used
in the discarded volume I had rescued. If the language was the same, I would be
able to figure it out eventually.

One-Eye cackled. “Yeah. Everything but somebody to translate that stuff for you.

Everything but your new boyfriend.” He insisted that Master Santaraksita was out
to seduce me. And that Santaraksita would be brokenhearted if he succeeded and
discovered that I was female.

“That’s enough of that, you filthy old thing.”

“Sacrifice for the cause, Little Girl.” He started to offer some graphic advice.

He had been drinking again. Or was drinking still.

Sahra arrived. She tossed a large bundle of pages my way. “Can it, One-Eye. Find
Goblin. There’s work to do.” Of me she demanded, “Why do you put up with that?”

“He’s harmless. And he’s for sure too darned old to change. And if he’s nagging
me, he’s not getting into something that’s going to get us all killed.”

“So you’re sacrificing for the cause.”

“Something like that. That was quick.” Goblin had arrived. “What happened to
One-Eye?”

“Taking a leak. What do I have to do now?”

Sahra said, “I can get into the Anger Chamber The rest is up to you.”

“You do this and you’ll never be able to get back into the Palace. You know
that, don’t you?”

“What’re we talking about?” I asked.

Sahra said, “I think we can kidnap the Radisha. With a little luck and a lot of
help from Goblin and One-Eye.”

“Goblin’s right. You do that, we’d all better be a hundred miles away by the
time the word gets out. I have a better idea. If we have to give away the fact
that we can get inside the Palace, do it by sabotaging Soulcatcher. Get to one
of her carpets, rig it to come apart under her when she’s two hundred feet up
and moving fast.”

“I like the way you think, Sleepy. Put that on the list, Sahra. I want to be
there. It’d be like the time the Howler flew into the side of the Tower at
Charm. Man, he must’ve been going at least three times as fast as a horse could
run when he hit that wall. Blauw! Hair, teeth and eyeballs all over the—”

“He walked away from that, you idiot.” One-Eye was back. “He’s out there under
the plain with our guys right now.” A unique odor suggested that One-Eye had
taken a moment out to award himself some medicinal refreshment.

“Stop it. Now.” Sahra was cranky tonight. “Our next step will be to neutralize
Chandra Gokhale. We’ve already decided that. These other things we can worry
about down the road.”

I observed, “We’ll need to freshen up our evacuation drill in case we need to
get out of Taglios in a hurry. The more active we get, the more likely it
becomes that something will go wrong. If it does, we’ll have Soulcatcher
breathing down our necks.”

Goblin observed, “She isn’t stupid, she’s just lazy.”

I asked Sahra, “Did she call in her shadows yet?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything.”

Goblin grumbled. “What we really need is a formula for doing without sleep. For
about a year. Let me see Minh Subredil’s Ghanghesha.”

Sahra sent Tobo to fetch the statue. The boy could be much less unpleasant when
he was in a group.

Silence struck as Banh Do Trang rolled in, pushed by one of his own people. He
smiled at a private joke. He enjoyed startling us. “One of my men tells me that
we have a couple of outsiders caught in the confusion net. They appear to be
harmless. An old man and a mute. Somebody will have to get them out and send
them on their way without making them suspicious.”

That news gave me a little chill but I did not suspect the truth till poor
overworked Tobo and Goblin—the latter going along but staying out of sight while
the boy led the intruders to safety—returned and Goblin reported, “I think your
boyfriend followed you home, Sleepy.”

“What?”

“There was this terrified old man who tried to impress Tobo with the fact that
he was a librarian.” A lot of Taglians would have been impressed. The ability to
read was almost a sorcery in itself. “He called his sidekick Adoo. You told us—”

One-Eye began to howl. “The Little Girl’s a regular heartbreaker! Damn, I’d give
anything to be there when that oid fool slides his hand into her pants and don’t
find what he’s looking for.’’

I was embarrassed. I do not think I have been embarrassed about anything since
the first time my uncle Rafi slipped his hand under my sari and did find what he
was after. That darned fool Santaraksita! Why did he have to go complicating
things like this?

“That’s enough of that!” Sahra snapped. “There’s supposed to be a meeting of the
Privy Council tomorrow. I think we can use it to get to Gokhale. But I’ll need
to take Sawa and Shikhandini.”

“Why?” I asked. I had no desire to go back inside the Palace ever again.

“That’s great,” One-Eye enthused. “You don’t show at the library tomorrow, that
old goat is gonna pine and whine and wonder what happened, if it’s all his fault
even though he knows there’s no way you could know he tried to follow you home.

You’ll have your hook set, Little Girl. All you have to do is pull him in.”

Sahra snapped, “I said—”

“Wait a minute. He may have a point. Suppose I do play Santaraksita’s game? To
the point where I get him to do my translations for me? We could even add him to
our collection. I don’t think he has much family. Why don’t we take a closer
look, see how long it might be before people wondered why he was missing.”

“Oh, you’re wicked, Little Girl,” One-Eye said. “You’re really wicked.”

“You could find out someday, you keep riding me.”

“About Gokhale?” Sahra asked.

“All right. Why are we taking me and Tobo both?”

“Tobo to put an idea into his head so he gets an itch he’s going to have to go
scratch. You to cover us. Just in case. I’ll have Tobo carry his flute.” Tobo’s
flute was a small version of the fire-projecting bamboo. “He can turn it over to
you once we’re inside.” Tobo had carried that flute every time he had
accompanied his mother into the Palace. We try to think ahead. “Also, I want to
keep you fresh in Jaul Barundandi’s mind. I’ll definitely have to have you along
when I snatch the Radisha. Goblin, what can you do with my Ghanghesha?”

No one else on earth would have dared hand the little wizard a straight line
like that. But Sahra was Sahra. She did not have to pay the price.

I started to leave. I had other things to do. Tobo asked, “Is it all right if I
show your Annals to Murgen? He wants to read them.”

“You two starting to get along now?”

“I think so.”

“Good. You can let him see them. Tell him not to be too critical. If he is, I
won’t come out there and dig him up.”

N arayan seemed thoroughly puzzled by my continued interest. I do not believe he
remembered me at all. But he now knew that I was female and had been the young
man Sleepy that he had encountered, only rarely, ages ago.

“You’ve had time to reflect. Have you decided to help us yet?”

He looked at me with pure venom, yet without obvious personal hatred. I was just
a particularly unpleasant obstacle delaying the inevitable triumph of his
goddess. He had gotten his mind back into a rut.

“All right. I’ll see you again tomorrow night. Your son Aridatha has a leave day
coming up. We’ll bring him around to visit you.”

There was a guard watching the Daughter of Night. “What’re you doing here,

Kendo?”

“Keeping an eye on—”

“Go away. And don’t come back. And spread the word. Nobody guards the Daughter
of Night. She’s too dangerous. Nobody even goes near her unless Sahra or I tell
them to. And then they don’t do it alone.”

“She don’t look—”

“She wouldn’t, would she? Start hiking.” I went to the cage. “How long would it
take for your goddess to create all the right conditions for the birth of
another like you? If I decide to kill you?”

The girl’s gaze rose slowly. I wanted to cringe away from the power in her eyes
but I held on. Maybe she should be getting even more opium than she was already.

“Reflect upon your value. And upon my power to destroy it.” I felt puffed up.

That was the kind of thing the devas, or lesser gods, blathered at one another
on the fringes of the epics spun by the professional storytellers.

She glared. There was so much power in her eyes that I decided Kendo ought to
spend a little time in private with Goblin and One-Eye, making sure he had not
been taken in already.

“I think that without you there never will be a Year of the Skulls. And I know
that you’re still alive only because I want something from Narayan, who loves
you like a father.” Singh was her father, for all practical purposes. Croaker
had been denied the chance by cruel Fortune. Or, more accurately, by the will of
Kina.

“Keep well, dear.” I left. I had a lot of reading to get done. And some writing
if I got the chance. My days were always full and all too often they got
confused. I decided to do things, then forgot. I told others to do things, then
forgot that, too. I was beginning to look forward to the time when our
successes—or sufficiently spectacular failures—forced us out of town. I could
sneak off somewhere where nobody knew me and just loaf for a few months.

Or for the rest of my life if I wanted.

I had no trouble understanding why every year a few more of our brothers gave up
and faded away. I only hoped a little notoriety would bring them back.

I studied the pages Sahra had brought out for me but the translation was
difficult, the subject matter was uninspiring, and I was tired. I kept losing my
concentration. I thought about Master Santaraksita. I thought about going back
up to the Palace, armed. I thought about what Soulcatcher would do now that she
knew she did not have us trapped inside the Thieves’ Garden. I thought about
getting old and being alone and had a suspicion that that fear might have
something to do with why some brothers remained with the Company no matter what.

They had no other family.

I have no other family.

I will not look back. I am not weak. I will not relax my self-control. I will
persevere. I will triumph over myself and will conquer all adversity.

I fell asleep rereading my own recollections of what Murgen had reported about
the Company’s adventure on the glittering plain. I dreamed about the creatures
he had encountered there. Were they the rakshasas and nagas of myth? Did they
have anything to do with the shadows, or with the men who evidently created the
shadows from hapless prisoners of war?