Water Sleeps (20 page)

T obo woke me. “How can you sleep, Sleepy?”

“I guess I must be tired. What do you want?”

“The Protector has finally started to grumble about the Radisha. Dad wants you
to come keep track yourself. So you don’t have to record anything third-hand.”

At the moment, my name felt entirely appropriate. I just wanted to lie down on
my pallet and dream about finding another kind of life.

Trouble was, I had been doing this since I was fourteen. I did not know anything
else. Unless Master Santaraksita was willing to let bygones by bygones and take
me back at the library. Right after we buried Soulcatcher in a fifty-foot-deep
hole we filled in with boiling lead.

I dragged a stool in between Sahra and One-Eye, leaned forward with my elbows on
the table and stared into the mist where Murgen appeared to report when it
suited him. One-Eye was fussing at Murgen even though Murgen was away. I said,

“Anybody would think you were worried about Goblin, the way you’re carrying on.”

“Of course I’m worried about Goblin, Little Girl. The runt borrowed my
transeidetic locuter before he went up there this morning. Not to mention he
still owes me several thousands pais for . . . well, he owes me a bunch of
money.”

My recollection had it the other way around. One-Eye always owed everyone, even
when he was doing well. And several thousand pais is not exactly a fortune, a
pai being a tiny seed of such uniform weight that it is used as a measure for
gems and precious metals. It takes almost two thousand of them to equal a
northern ounce. Since One-Eye had not specified gold or silver, the standard
assumption would be that he had meant coin-grade copper. In other words, not
very much.

In other words still, he was worried about his best friend but he could not say
so because he had a century-long history of reviling the man in public.

If there was any such magical instrument as a transeidetic locuter, One-Eye
invented it an hour before he loaned it to Goblin.

He muttered, “That ugly little turd gets himself killed, I’m gonna strangle him.

He can’t leave me holding the bag on—” He realized he was thinking out loud.

Sahra and I both made mental notes to investigate the bag metaphor. It sounded
like there were business plans afoot. Secret plans. Surprise, surprise.

Murgen materialized practically nose to nose with me. He murmured, “Soulcatcher
is out of patience. A flock of crows just brought the news from Semchi. She’s in
a complete black mood. She says she’s going into the Radisha’s Anger Chamber
after her if she doesn’t come out in the next two minutes.”

“How’s Goblin?” One-Eye barked.

“Hiding,” Murgen replied. “Waiting for sunrise.” He was not going to try leaving
during the night, the way we had planned originally. Soulcatcher had loosed her
shadows, just to punish Taglios for irritating her. We had a few traps out,

randomly distributed through likely neighborhoods, but I did not expect to catch
anything. I figured our luck along those lines was about used up.

Goblin was armed with a shadow-repellent amulet left over from the Shadowmaster
wars but did not know if it was any good anymore. Being bright and full of
forethought, it had not occurred to any of us to test it on real shadows while
we had some in stock.

You cannot think of everything.

But you should make the effort.

One of the Royal Guards actually tried to stop the Protector when her patience
failed and she went to dig the Radisha out of her hideaway. He went down without
a sound, stricken by a casual touch. He would recover eventually. The Protector
was not feeling particularly vindictive. For the moment.

She crashed through the door of the Anger Chamber. And howled in frustration
before the pieces finished falling. “Where is she?” The power of her rage wilted
the onlookers.

A subassistant chamberlain, bowing almost double, continuing to bob and get
lower, whined, “She was in there, O Great One!”

Someone else insisted, “We never saw her leave. She has to be in there.”

From somewhere, echoing, almost as if coming from some distance in time as well
as place, there was the sound of brief laughter.

Soulcatcher turned slowly, her stare a cruel spear. “Come closer. Tell me
again.” Her voice was compelling, chilling, terrible. She stared into one pair
of eyes after another, making full use of the fear so many had that she could
read the deepest secrets in their minds.

None of the Radisha’s people changed their stories.

“Out of here. Out of this whole apartment. Something happened here. I want no
distractions. I want nothing disturbed.” She turned again, slowly, extending a
sorceress’s senses to feel the shape of the past. It was more difficult than she
anticipated. She had been loafing for too long, falling out of practice and
getting out of shape.

The remote laughter sounded again for an instant, seeming just a touch closer.

“You!” Soulcatcher snapped at a fat woman, one of the housekeepers. “What are
you doing?”

“Ma’am?” Narita was barely able to croak her response. In a moment, she would
lose control of her bladder.

“You just pushed something into your left sleeve. Something off the altar.” A
single white candle, almost consumed, still burned in the tiny shrine to
ancestors. “Come here.” Soulcatcher extended her gloved right hand.

Narita could not resist. She stepped toward the dark woman, so trim and evilly
feminine in her leather. Idly, Narita hated her for maintaining that sleek body.

“Give it to me.”

Reluctantly, Narita removed the Ghanghesha from her sleeve. She began to babble
about not wanting her friend to get into trouble, making no sense at all,

failing to realize that if she had not tried to conceal the Ghanghesha, the
Protector would have overlooked it entirely.

Soulcatcher stared at the little clay figurine. “The cleaning woman. It belongs
to the cleaning woman. Where is she?”

Far, mocking laughter.

“She’s a day employee, ma’am. She comes in from outside.”

“Where does she live?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. I don’t think anybody does. Nobody ever asked. It never
mattered.”

One of the other staffers offered, “She was a good worker.”

Soulcatcher continued to examine the Ghanghesha. “Something’s odd here . . . Now
it does matter. To me. Find out.”

“How?”

“I don’t care! Be creative! But do it.” Soulcatcher hurled the clay figurine to
the floor. Shards flew in every direction.

A wisp of a ghost of darkness curled up and stood like a rampant cobra a foot
high for an instant. Then it struck. At the Protector.

The staffers squealed and began trampling one another, trying to get away. They
had not seen a shadow before but they knew what a shadow could do.

The laughter was closer now, louder and lasting longer.

Soulcatcher offered a convincing squeal of surprise and fright, like a young
woman who has just stepped on a snake. Her apparel and the handful of
generalized protective spells that always surrounded her saved her from becoming
a victim of her own crudest weapon.

Even so, for a minute she was like a child swatting mosquitoes as the shadow
enthusiastically strove to terminate their relationship. Failing to reclaim
control of the shadow, Soulcatcher destroyed it. The necessity told her that a
pretty clever mind had prepared it, probably hoping that she would be too angry
to pay close attention for just that instant needed . . .

“Woman! Come back here!” The Protector extended a hand in the direction Narita
had fled. Somehow, a single strand of the woman’s hair had become entwined
through Soulcatcher’s fingers. Those fingers shimmered momentarily. The air
became charged. The other staffers whimpered and wished they had even had the
nerve to try to run.

Narita reappeared slowly, taking short zombie steps. “Here!” Soulcatcher said.

She pointed at a spot on the Anger Chamber floor. “The rest of you. Go away.

Quickly.” She did not have to add any encouragement. “Fat woman. Tell me
everything about the creature who always carried the Ghanghesha.”

“I’ve told you everything I know,” Narita whined.

“No. You have not. Start talking. She may have kidnapped the Radisha.”

Soulcatcher regretted mentioning that the instant the words left her helmet.

The laughter sounded like it was coming from just out in the hallway, a diabolic
snickering. The Protector’s head twitched toward that direction. She sensed no
threat. It could wait a minute.

“Her name is Minh Subredil.” It took Narita only another thirty seconds to
relate everything she knew about Minh Subredil, her daughter Shikhandini and her
sister-in-law Sawa.

“Thank you,” Soulcatcher snarled. “You’ve been most unhelpful. And for that, I
shall provide an appropriate reward.” She gripped the fat woman’s throat in her
right hand, squeezed.

As Narita went limp, that laughter sounded once more. There might have been a
word there, too. Ardath? Or perhaps Silath? Or might it have been . . . ? No
matter. Soulcatcher would not listen to that, just to the mockery. She hurled
herself toward the sound but when she burst into the hallway, there was nothing
to see.

She started to call for Guards, for Greys, but recalled that she had just slain
the one person other than herself who knew for sure that the Radisha had
disappeared.

The Radisha had shut herself away from the world. That was all anybody really
needed to know. The Princess could live forever right there in her Anger
Chamber. She did not need to venture forth ever again. She had her good friend
the Protector to handle the boring chores of managing her empire for her.

More laughter, apparently from nowhere and everywhere. Soulcatcher stamped away.

This was not over yet.

A white crow dropped out of the murk near the ceiling of the hallway, flapped
heavily, landed beside the fat woman. It held its beak poised beneath her
nostrils momentarily, as though checking for breath. Then it flapped away
suddenly, sharp ears having caught the sound of a stealthy footfall.

A shivering Jaul Barundandi eased into the chamber. He knelt beside the woman.

He took her hand. He remained there, tears streaking his cheeks, until he heard
the Protector returning, arguing with herself in a variety of voices.

W hat do you know about that?” I said to Sahra. “Narita tried to cover for you.

And then Barundandi got all broken up about what happened to her.”

Sahra waggled a finger. She was thinking. “Murgen. What do you know about that
white crow?”

Murgen hesitated before responding. “Nothing.” Which meant he was telling an
approximate truth but he had some definite ideas. Sahra and I both knew him that
well.

Sahra said, “Suppose you tell me what you think is going on, then.”

Murgen faded away.

“What the heck is that?” I snapped at One-Eye. “You were supposed to rig this
thing so he has to do what he’s told.”

“He does. Most of the time. He could be carrying out a previous instruction.”

But the old fool sounded to me like he had no idea what Murgen was doing.

Soulcatcher worked quickly, then summoned the staff members who had been present
when she had broken into the Anger Chamber. “The continuing excitement was too
much for this poor woman. I’ve tried to resurrect her but her soul refuses to
respond. She must be happy where she is now.” There were no witnesses to
contradict her, though remote laughter mocked her. “I did find the Radisha.

She’d fallen asleep. She has retreated into the Anger Chamber and does not wish
to be disturbed again. Not for a long time. I should have honored her wishes
before. We would have avoided this disaster.” She indicated the fat woman.

Even the staffers who had looked into the Anger Chamber earlier and had seen
nothing had to admit that someone was inside now, moving around angrily,

muttering the way the Radisha did and looking very much like the Radisha in
glimpses caught through cracks in the poorly restored door.

The Protector suggested, “Let’s all turn in for the night. Tomorrow we’ll begin
repairing the mess I made.” She watched her audience intently, feeling for
anyone who could cause trouble.

The staff departed. They were relieved just to be away from Soulcatcher.

Soulcatcher sat down and thought. There was no way to tell what was going
through her mind till she began muttering in a committee of voices. Then it was
clear that she was trying to work out the mechanics of the abduction. She seemed
willing to give considerable weight to the possibility that the Radisha had
stage-managed the whole thing herself.

A very suspicious woman, the Protector.

One by one she found and questioned each of the people who had dealt with Minh
Subredil, Sawa and Shikhandini, beginning with Jaul Barundandi and finishing
with Del Mukharjee, the man Barundandi usually trusted to collect the kickbacks
from the outside workers. “You will cease that,” the Protector informed
Mukharjee. “You and anyone else involved. If it happens again, I will put you
into a glass ball and hang you above the service postern with your whole body
turned inside out. I’ll add a couple of imps to feed on your entrails for the
six months it will take you to die. Do you understand?”

Del Mukharjee understood the threat just fine. But he had no idea whatsoever why
the Protector would want to interfere with his livelihood.

The Protector had a passion about corruption.

In time the Protector reasoned that three women had come into the Palace and
three women had gone away again. It seemed very likely that the three who had
departed were not the three who had entered. And no one the Radisha’s size had
gone out since.

Which meant that someone with some answers might still be inside.

Chuckling wickedly, Soulcatcher began to look for evidence that someone had
slipped off into the untenanted wilds of the Palace.

Goblin was asleep on a dusty old bed. Occasionally his snores would turn to
sneezes and snorts when too much dust got into his nostrils.

A squawk had him bouncing up so suddenly he almost collapsed from
light-headedness. He spun around. He saw nothing. He heard soft laughter, then a
bizarre, squawking voice that sounded almost familiar. “Wake up. Wake up. She is
coming.”

“Who’s coming? Who’s talking?”

There was no response. He did not feel any strong sorcerous presence. It was a
puzzle.

Goblin had a good idea who might be coming, though. Not many women were likely
to be hunting him here in the middle of the night.

He was ready. His little pack was carrying the two books Sleepy most wanted to
save. Taking all three was physically impossible. His traps were set. All he had
to do was move on into the now-empty part of the Palace that had been occupied
by the Black Company back when its staff and leadership had been quartered
there. There were ways to get out unnoticed. He and One-Eye had found them in
olden times. The trouble was, he had no desire to be on the streets after dark,

amulet or no.

Soulcatcher gave up most of her sense of touch when she chose to wrap every inch
of her body in leather and helmet. She never noted the touch of or resistance of
the strand of spider silk stretched across the corridor. But she did have a
marvelously well-developed sense for personal danger. Before the Ghanghesha hit
the floor, she was moving to defend herself. It was such reflexes that made it
possible for creatures like her, her sister Lady, and the Howler, to have
survived for so long. This time she had the proper controlling spells ready,

hung about her, sparkling like spanking-new tools.

The shadow trapped inside the figurine barely got its bearings before it was
attacked itself, seized and constrained, then twisted and crushed down into a
whining, seething ball completely enclosed inside one of the Protector’s gloved
hands. A merry young voice called, “You’ll have to do better than that.”

Soulcatcher continued to move forward, amused by the idea of tossing the shadow
back into someone’s face. The trail began to grow indistinct, then disorienting.

Experimentation showed her the cause was external. The corridor had been strewn
with cobwebs of spells so subtle that even she might not have noticed had she
just been hurrying along. “Oh, you clever devils. How long has this been here?

Ah. A very long time indeed, I see. You were still in favor when you started
this. Have you been hiding here all along? I certainly couldn’t find you in the
city if you never were out there.”

In another voice entirely, she asked, “What have we here? It smells like
somebody very frightened is hiding behind this door. And he didn’t even bother
to lock it. How stupid does he think I am?”

She shoved the door with her toe.

A clay Ghanghesha plummeted from its place atop the door. Soulcatcher giggled.

She was even quicker to recapture this shadow, which she squeezed down inside
her other hand. Then she pushed into the room.

There was no one there anymore. That was easy to sense. But there was a curious
feel to the place. It demanded an investigation.

She generated a small light, stood in place, turned slowly while she read the
history of the room for subtle clues. A great deal had happened there. Much of
the recent history of the Black Company had been shaped in that room. It
retained a strong smell of old fear she identified eventually with the long-dead
Taglian court wizard, Smoke.

All this she debated with herself in a committee of argumentative voices. In the
end, she seemed entertained. Most of the time life was a great entertainment for
Soulcatcher.

“And what do we have here?” Something with inked characters on it peeped from
beneath a dusty old bed where someone had been lying until minutes ago.

Thoughtlessly, she reached for the object, opening her hand to grasp it. “Damn!

That was stupid!” She wasted several minutes regaining control of the shadow. It
was very agile this time. She stuffed it into the hand restraining the other.

The two were extremely unhappy in there. One thing shadows seemed to hate more
than the living was other shadows.

What Soulcatcher had found was a book with half the pages torn out. It was
alone. “So this is what became of those. I was never quite sure who took them. I
wonder if they got any use out of them?”

As she was about to depart, the Protector glanced at the damaged book once more.

“Been taking these pages a few at a time. That would take a long time. Which
means they’ve been coming in and out of the Palace for a long time. Which
therefore suggests that the Radisha didn’t engineer her own disappearance. Oh,

well. She’s gone. It amounts to the same thing. Let’s catch our little rat and
let him play with our little friends.”

Unlike Soulcatcher, Goblin could not see in the dark. But he had the advantage
of knowing where he was going. He did manage to stay ahead and did slide out of
one of the old hidden exits. There was a little light outside from a fragment of
moon peeking through scurrying young clouds trying to catch up with Mother
Storm. Goblin laid the last Ghanghesha on the cobblestones in plain sight, then
ran. The books on his back beat against him, pounding the breath out of him. He
muttered something about the good news being that it was all downhill from here.

The bad news was that it was dark out, there were shadows on the prowl, and he
was not so sure about the quality of his fifteen-year-old amulet. He had to hope
that in a city this vast, none of the handful of nightstalkers would cross his
path while he was huffing and puffing and concentrating on staying ahead of
Soulcatcher.

It did not occur to him that she might have recovered the shadows he had left in
ambush, that they might be after him, too.

Soulcatcher stepped into the night close enough behind to glimpse a flicker of
her quarry vanishing into the shadows between structures across the open area
outside the Palace. She spied the abandoned Ghanghesha and several other small
items that looked like they had been dropped in the rush to get away. She tossed
her two shadows into the air and stomped her heel down on the clay figurine at
the same time. This would set a pack of small deaths on the little man’s heels.

By now, she was reasonably certain that she was chasing the wizard called
Goblin.

She screamed. The pain in her heel was beyond anything she had ever experienced.

As she collapsed, trying to will her throat to seal itself, she watched three
ferociously bright balls of light streak into the night in pursuit of the
shadows she had sent to claim Goblin. Still fighting the incredible pain, she
produced a dagger and used its tip to dip another fireball out of her heel.

Already it had eaten all the way to the bone and in, and had done some damage as
high as her ankle—despite her normal protection.

“I’ll be crippled,” she snarled. “He lulled me. He set me up so I’d think this
would be another easy shadow trap.” None of her voices were amused now. “Clever
little bastard will pay for this.”

The fallen fireball burned its way into the cobblestones. Still ignoring her
pain, Soulcatcher tried to stand. She discovered that she was not going to be
able to walk. She was, however, not losing any blood. The fireball had
cauterized her wound. “My beloved sister, if you weren’t already dead, I’d kill
you for inventing those damned things.”

Laughter echoed down off the ramparts of the Palace.

A flicker of white glided after Goblin.

“I think I’ll kill somebody anyway.” Soulcatcher made her way toward the Palace
entrance on hands and knees, muttering continuously. She had isolated her pain
in a remote corner of her mind and was now concentrating on being angry about
what this odyssey was doing to her beautiful leather pants and gloves.