Water Sleeps (31 page)

T he surface of the river was not friendly when Soulcatcher hit it but neither
was the impact like hitting stone from the same altitude. Her fall had been long
enough to allow her time to prepare for the landing.

Even so, the collision was brutal enough to extract her consciousness
temporarily. But she had prepared for that, too, between curses. When
consciousness returned she was drifting downriver with the flood, head above the
surface. It being the rainy season, the river was high and the current brisk. It
took a great effort to complete the swim to the south bank. By the time she
crawled out of the flood and collapsed, she was a half-dozen miles downstream
from where she had gone in, which was outside the city proper, in a domain best
known for its jackals, of both the two- and four-legged varieties. It was said
that leopards still hunted there at night, the occasional crocodile could be
found along the shore, and it was not that many years since a tiger had come
visiting from down the river.

The Protector experienced no difficulties with any mad or hungry thing. A
hundred crows perched around her, standing guard. Others flapped about in the
darkness until squadrons of bats had gathered. Birds and bats together
discouraged the scavengers and predators till Soulcatcher awakened and in a fit
of pique, sent an entire band of jackals racing away with their pelts aflame.

She stumbled toward home, regaining strength slowly, muttering about growing old
and less resilient. A tremor entered the voice she chose to inveigh against the
predations of time.

Eventually she reached the home of a moneylender, where she commandeered
transportation back to the Palace. She arrived there somewhat after the
breakfast hour in a temper so foul that the entire staff made a point of
becoming invisible. Only the Great General came to inquire after her well-being.

And he went away when she started snarling and snapping.

Though she reveled in her paranoia, Soulcatcher did not suspect that her
accident had been anything else until she examined her remaining carpet
preparatory to another effort to fly off to entertain the Nyueng Bao. Then she
discovered that the light wooden-frame members on which the carpet was stretched
had been weakened by strategic saw cuts.

The who and probable why became clear within seconds. She sent out a summons to
Jaul Barundandi and his associates.

Surprise. Barundandi was nowhere to be found. He had been called out of the
Palace for a family emergency, he had said, just moments after her return. So
the Greys reported when told to investigate.

“What an amazing coincidence. Find him. Find the men he worked with regularly.

We have a great deal to discuss.”

Greys scattered. One bold captain, however, remained behind to report, “Rumor in
the city says the Bhodi intend to resume their self-immolations. They want the
Radisha to come out and address their concerns personally.”

The news did not improve Soulcatcher’s temper. “Ask them if they would like me
to donate the naphtha they need. I’m feeling particularly charitable today. Also
ask them if they can hold off starting long enough for the carpenters to put up
grandstands so more of the Radisha’s good subjects can enjoy the entertainment.

I don’t care what those lunatics do. Get out of here! Find that Barundandi
slug!” The voice she used was informed with a potent lunacy.

Jaul Barundandi’s luck was mixed. He managed to avoid the attentions of the bats
and crows and shadows the Protector released when the Greys had no immediate
success in locating him, but an informer eventually betrayed him when the reward
for his capture grew large enough. The lie was that he had attacked and severely
wounded the Radisha, that only the Protector’s swift intercession with her most
powerful sorcery had saved the Princess’s life. The Radisha’s situation remained
grave.

The Taglian people loved their Radisha. Jaul Barundandi discovered that he had
no friends but his accomplices and it was one of those who betrayed him in
exchange for a partial reward (the Grey officers pocketing the bulk) and a
running start.

Jaul Barundandi suffered terrible torments and tried hard to cooperate so the
pain would stop but he could tell the Protector nothing that she wanted to know.

So she had him put into a cage and hung fifteen feet above the place where the
Bhodi disciples generally chose to give up their lives and issued a rescript
encouraging passersby to throw stones. It was her intent that he hang there
indefinitely, his suffering neverending, but sometime during the first night,

somehow, someone managed to toss him a piece of poisoned fruit while leaving his
betrayer and a murdered Grey below, each with a piece of paper in his mouth
bearing the characters for “Water Sleeps.” Crows savaged both corpses before
they were discovered.

It was the last time Black Company tokens would be seen but their appearance was
sufficient to provoke the Protector almost beyond reason. For days the
still-loyal remnants of the Greys remained extremely busy making arrests, most
of them of people unable to guess what they had done to irk Soulcatcher.

She never did get to the Nyueng Bao swamp despite having made necessary repairs
to her remaining carpet. Taglios became more fractious by the hour. She had to
devote her entire attention to keeping the city tamed.

Then came the faithful and tattered little shadow that had made its way through
mountains and forests, over lakes and rivers and plains, in order to bring her
news of what was happening in the nethermost south.

Soulcatcher screamed a scream of rage so potent that the entire city became
informed of it instantly. Immigrants began to rehearse the wisdom of a return to
the provinces.

The Great General and two of his staff officers broke through the door to the
Protector’s apartment, certain she needed rescuing. Instead, they found her
pacing furiously and debating herself in half a dozen voices. “They have the
Key. They must have the Key. They must have murdered the Deceiver. Maybe they
made an alliance with Kina. Why would they go down there? Why would they go onto
the plain after what happened to the last group? What keeps pulling them out
there? I’ve read their Annals. There’s nothing in those. What do they know? The
Land of Unknown Shadows? They cannot have developed an entirely new and
independent oral tradition since they served me in the north. If it’s important
one of them will record it. Why? Why? What do they know that I don’t?”

Soulcatcher became aware of Mogaba and his men. The latter looked around
nervously, trying to figure out where the voices were coming from. When
Soulcatcher became excited, those seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“You. Have you caught me any terrorists yet?”

“No. Nor shall I unless an angry family member comes forward because he thinks
it would be a good way to get even. There won’t be more than a handful left here
and those probably don’t know each other. I gather, from what I overheard, that
they’ve gone back to Shadowcatch.” He had worked for the Shadowmaster
Longshadow. He could not get out of the habit of calling Kiaulune by the name
given it by his previous employer.

“Exactly. We’re back where we were fifteen years ago. Only now they have the
Radisha and the Key.” Her tone left no doubt she placed the blame entirely on
him.

Mogaba was not bothered. Not immediately. He was accustomed to being blamed for
the shortcomings of others and he did not believe the remnants of the Black
Company could offer any real threat any time soon. They had been beaten down too
thoroughly and had been away from it too long. They were more military than the
Deceivers only inside their own fantasies. Even the comic-opera functionaries
down there ought to be able to wear them down and bury them eventually. They
would find no aid or sympathy in the Shadowlands. The people down there really
did remember the Black Company’s last visit. “The Key? What is that?”

“A means of passing through the Shadowgate unharmed. A talisman that makes it
possible to travel on the plain.” Her voice had become pedantic. Now it became
angry. “I possessed that talisman at one time. Long ago I used it to go up there
and explore. Longshadow would have been unmanned had he known. More unmanned
than the eunuch he already was. But it disappeared in the early excitement
around Kiaulune. I suspect that Kina clouded my mind while the Deceiver Singh
stole both it and my sister’s darling daughter. I can’t imagine why that rabble
would want to go onto the plain after the previous disaster but if it’s
something they want to do, it’s something I want to prevent. Prepare for a
journey.”

“We can’t leave Taglios unsupervised for as long as it would take us to travel
all the way to Shadowcatch. We don’t have the stallion anymore, even if it could
carry double.”

Soulcatcher was baffled. “What?”

“The black stallion from the north. The one I’ve been using all these years.

It’s vanished. It broke down its stall and ran off. I told you that last month.”

She did not recall that, obviously.

“We’ll fly.”

“But—” Mogaba hated flying. In the days when he had been Longshadow’s general he
had had to fly with the Howler almost daily. He still loathed those times. “I
thought the larger carpet was the one that was destroyed.”

“The small one will carry both of us. It’ll be hard work. I’ll have to rest a
lot. But we’ll still be able to get down there and back before these people know
we’re gone and try to take advantage. A week for the round trip. Ten days at the
outside.”

The Great General had a few dozen reservations but kept them behind his teeth.

The Protector was worse than Longshadow had been about suffering opinions she
did not want to hear.

Soulcatcher said, “We’ll adopt disguises once we get there and go among them. I
want you to keep an eye out for a hammer, so by so, made of cast iron but far
heavier than it ought to be.”

Mogaba bowed slightly. He said nothing about how difficult it would be for
either of them to blend in with the crowd they would be chasing.

Soulcatcher told him, “Prepare your men. They’ll have to keep Taglios under
control for a cquple of weeks.”

Mogaba withdrew, saying nothing about the proposed time changing already. In his
position it was necessary to do a lot of saying nothing.

The Protector watched him go, amused. He did not conceal his thinking nearly as
well as he believed. But she was ancient in her wickedness and had studied the
dark side of humanity so thoroughly that she could almost read minds.

T he little fortress settled in upon itself slowly, as though made of wax only
slightly overheated. As soon as I fell asleep and could not interfere, Goblin
handed the magical siege work over to Tobo, who did a creditable job of rooting
the enemy survivors out of their shelter. The wicked little thing had been
taking lessons a lot longer than he and his teachers would admit.

The garrison was bringing out its dead and wounded when a shout awakened me. I
sat up. Morning had begun to arrive. And the world had changed.

“What’s Spiff’s problem?” I asked.

One of my veterans had recognized one of theirs.

The devil himself arrived to explain. “The guy in charge. That’s Khusavir Pete,

Sleepy. You remember, we thought he was killed when the Bahrata Battalion got
wiped out in the ambush at Kushkhoshi.”

“I remember.” And I recalled something that Spiff did not know, a fact I shared
only with Murgen, who had been the ghost in the rushes while the slaughter was
taking place. Khusavir Pete, at that time a sworn brother of the Company, had
led our largest surviving force of allies into a trap that efficiently took us
out of the Kiaulune wars. Khusavir Pete had cut a deal. Khusavir Pete had
betrayed his own brothers. Khusavir Pete was high on my list of people I wanted
to meet again, though until just now I had been the only one who knew that he
had survived and that his treachery had been rewarded with a high post, money
and a new name. But just seeing him had some of the men figuring it out fast.

“You should’ve asked her to change your face, too,” I told him when they flung
him down bleeding in front of me. “Though you’ve had a better run than you
probably expected when she turned you.” I held his eyes with mine. What he saw
convinced him it would not be worth his trouble to deny anything. Vajra the Naga
had come out to play.

More and more of the men gathered around, most of them not getting it until I
explained how Khusavir Pete had been seduced by Soulcatcher into betraying and
helping destroy more than five hundred of our brothers and allies. Would-be
greetings quickly became imaginative suggestions of ways whereby we might reduce
the traitor’s life expectancy. I let the man listen until some of the troops
tried to lay hands on. Then I told Goblin, “Hide him somewhere. We may have a
use for him yet.”

The excitement was over. I had indulged in a decent meal. My attitude much
improved, I took the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with Master
Surendranath Santaraksita. “This life seems to agree with you,” I told him as I
arrived. “You look better now than you did when we left the city.” And that was
true.

“Dorabee? Lad, I thought you were dead. Despite their endless assurances.” He
leaned closer and confided, “They aren’t all honest men, your comrades.”

“By some chance did Goblin and One-Eye offer to teach you to play tonk?”

The librarian managed to look a little sheepish.

“Not to play with them is a lesson everyone has to learn.”

Sheepishness transformed into impishness. “I think I taught them a little
something, too. Card tricks were one of my hobbies when I was younger.”

I had to laugh at the idea of those two villains getting taken themselves. “Have
you discovered anything that would be useful to me?”

“I’ve read every word in every book we brought along, including all of your
company’s modern chronicles written in languages known to me. I found nothing
remarkable. I have been amusing myself by trying to work backward into the
chronicles I can’t read by comparing materials repeated in more than one
language.”

Murgen had done a lot of that. He had had a thing about copying stuff over, in
cleaner drafts, and one of his great projects had been to revise Lady’s and the
Captain’s Annals for accuracy, based on evidence provided by other witnesses,

while rendering them into modern Taglian. We have all done that to our
predecessors, some, so that every recent volume of the Annals is really an
unwilling collaboration.

I said, “We drag a lot of books around, don’t we?”

“Like snails, carrying your history on your back.”

“It’s who we are. Cute image, though. Doesn’t all that study get dull after a
while?”

“The boy keeps me sharp.”

“Boy?”

“Tobo. He’s a brilliant student. Even more amazing than you were.”

“Tobo?”

“I know. Who would expect it of a Nyueng Bao? You’re destroying all my
preconceptions, Dorabee.”

“Mine are taking a beating, too.” Tobo? Either Santaraksita had an unsuspected
talent for inspiring students or Tobo had suffered an epiphany and had become
miraculously motivated. “You sure it’s Tobo and not a changeling?”

The demon himself popped in. “Sleepy. Runmust and Riverwalker and them are on
their way over. Good morning, Master Santaraksita.” Tobo actually seemed excited
to be there. “I don’t have any other duties right now. Oh, Sleepy, Dad wants to
talk to you.”

“Where?” Things had been happening too fast. There had been no chance to catch
up with Murgen.

“Goblin’s tent. Everybody but Mom thought that would be the safest place to keep
him.”

I had no trouble picturing Sahra being irritated about not being able to share
the occasional private moment with her husband.

When I ducked out, the young man and the old were already settling with a book.

I glared a warning at Santaraksita which, it developed, was both wasted and
unnecessary.

Goblin was not home. Of course not. He was working his way through a long list
of jobs bestowed upon him by me. Chuckle.

I found it hard to credit the possibility that one human being could make so
huge a mess in a space so constricted. The inside of Goblin’s tent was barely
wider than either of us was tall and twice as deep. At its peak it was tall
enough for me to stand up with two inches to spare. What looked like a
milkmaid’s stool, undoubtedly stolen, constituted the wizard’s entire suite of
furniture. A ragged burrow of blankets betrayed where he slept. The rest of the
space was occupied by a random jumble, mostly stuff that looked like it had been
discarded by a procession of previous owners. There was no obvious theme to the
collection.

It had to be stuff he had acquired since his arrival here. Sahra would never
have allowed him space on a barge for such junk.

The mist projector stood at the head of Goblin’s smelly bedding, tilted
precariously, leaking water. “If this is the safest place to keep that darned
thing, then the whole Company is mad with delusions of adequacy.”

A whisper came from the mist projector. I got down close to it, which offered me
an opportunity to become intimately aware of the aroma permanently associated
with Goblin’s bedding, some pieces of which must have been with him since he was
in diapers. “What?”

Murgen’s strongest effort was barely audible. “More water. You need to add more
water or there won’t be any mist much longer.”

I started to drag the evidence out of the tent.

Anger gave Murgen a little more voice. “No, dammit! Bring the water to me, don’t
take me to the water. If you suffer from a compulsion to drag me around, at
least wait until after you water me. And don’t waste time. I’m going to lose my
anchor here in a few minutes.”

Finding a gallon of water turned out to be a challenging experience.

“What took you so damned long?”

“Bit of an adventure coming up with the water. Seems it never occurred to any of
these morons that we need to have some handy somewhere. Just in case the royal
army decides to camp between us and the creek where we’ve been getting it, which
is almost a mile away. I just unleashed several geniuses on the problem. How am
I supposed to put this in here?”

“There’s a cork in the rear. It might be of some use to you to start doing
readings from the Annals. Like they do in temples. The way I used to do
sometimes. Pick something situationally appropriate. ‘In those days the Company
was in service’ and so on, so they have examples of why it might be useful to
haul water up the hill before you have to use it, and such like. These are grown
men. You can’t just bully them into doing the right things. But if you start
reading to them, they’ll have heard tell of other times when the Annalist did
that and they’ll recall it was always right before the big shitstorm moved in.

You’ll get their attention.”

“Tobo said you want to talk to me.”

“I need to catch you up on what’s going on elsewhere. And I want to make
suggestions about your preparations for the plain, one of which is to listen to
Willow Swan but the most critical of which is, you’re going to have to upgrade
discipline. The plain is deadly. Even worse than the Plain of Fear, which you
don’t remember. You can’t ignore the rules and stay alive there. One idea would
be for you not to burn or bury the man who was killed by the shadow last night.

Make every survivor look at him and think about what will happen to all of you
if even one of you screws up up there. Read them the passages chronicling our
adventures. Have Swan bear witness.”

“I could just bring a handful of reliables in to get you.”

“You could. But the rest of the world wouldn’t be very nice to the men you leave
behind. Right now there’s a shadow heading north to tell Soulcatcher where you
are. She may know enough already to figure out what you’re trying to do. She
definitely doesn’t want her sister and Croaker on the loose and nursing a
grudge. She’ll get here as fast as she can. And aside from Soulcatcher, there’s
Narayan Singh. He retains Kina’s countenance, so he’s extremely hard to trace
but I do catch glimpses occasionally. He’s on this side of the Dandha Presh and
he’s probably not far away. He wants to recapture the Daughter of Night and
reunite her with the book you traded for the Key. Which, by the way, you should
take away from Uncle Doj before he becomes overly tempted to try something on
his own. And so Goblin can study it.”

“Uhm?” He was a gush of information this morning, all of it carefully rehearsed.

“There’s more to the Key than you see right away. I have a feeling the Deceiver
overlooked something. Doj keeps picking at it, trying to find out what’s inside
the iron. We should find out more about it before we trust it. And we need to
find out fast. It won’t be all that long before that shadow gets to Taglios.”

“River and Runmust are coming in. They’re halfway responsible people. I’ll turn
some of the work over to them as soon as they’re rested up. Then I can worry
about—”

“Worry about it now. Let Swan sergeant for you. He’s experienced and he’s got no
choice but to throw in with us now. Catcher will never believe that he didn’t
betray her.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You don’t have to do everything yourself, Sleepy. If you’re going to take
charge, you need to learn to tell people what needs doing, then get out of the
way and let them do it. You keep hanging over their shoulders nagging like
somebody’s mother, you aren’t going to get much cooperation. You seduced that
fat boy yet?”

“What?”

“That local-yokel captain. The one who couldn’t keep in step if you painted his
feet different colors. You got him wrapped up yet?”

“You’re zigging when I’m zagging. You lost me completely.”

“Let me draw you a picture. You forget to tell him Catcher is going to stop by.

You get him to make a deal. He keeps his job. He helps us out so he can get us
out of his hair. When he isn’t looking, you fix him up so when the shitstorm
starts, he don’t have no choice but to take his chances with us.”

“I have him wrapped up, then. Seventy percent.”

“Hey. Blow in his ear. Throw a liplock on his love muscle. Do whatever you have
to. If Catcher loses him, she won’t ever trust anybody else down here, either.”

Goblin used almost the same language as Murgen had when I stopped to visit
again. He found Murgen’s advice fully excellent. “Grab fat boy by his prong and
never let go. Give him a little squeeze once in a while to keep him smiling.”

“I’ve probably said it before. You’re one cynical mud-sucker.”

“It’s all those years of watching out for One-Eye that done it to me. I was a
sweet, innocent young thing when I joined this outfit. Not unlike yourself.”

“You were born wicked and cynical.”

Goblin chuckled. “How much stuff do you think you need to collect before we go
up the hill? How long do you think it’ll take?”

“It won’t take forever if Suvrin cooperates.”

“Never, ever, forget that you don’t have long. I can’t emphasize that enough.

Soulcatcher is coming. You’ve never seen her when she’s all worked up.”

“The Kiaulune wars don’t count?” He must have seen something extreme. He was
determined to pound the point home.

“The Kiaulune wars don’t count. She was just entertaining herself with those.”

I forced myself to make the visit I had been avoiding.

The Daughter of Night wore ankle shackles. She resided inside an iron cage
heavily impregnated with spells that caused ever-increasing agony as their
victim moved farther away. She could escape but that would hurt. If she pushed
it hard enough, she would die.

It appeared that every possible step had been taken to keep her under control.

Except the lethal step reason urged me to take. I had no more motive for keeping
her alive—except that I had given my word.

The men all took turns being exposed to her, in pairs, at mealtimes and such.

Sahra had not been lax. She appreciated the danger the girl represented.

My first glimpse left me stricken with envy. Despite her disadvantages, she had
kept herself beautiful, looking much like her mother in a fresher body. But
something infinitely older and darker looked out through her pretty blue eyes.

For a moment she struck me not as the Daughter of Night, but as the darkness
itself.