Water Sleeps (7 page)

Swan swallowed, said, “You people ever eat? I ain’t had nothing since
yesterday.”

“We eat,” I said. “But not like you’re used to. It’s true what they say about
Nyueng Bao. They don’t eat anything but fish heads and rice. Eight days a week.”

“Fish will do right now. I’ll save the bitching till my belly’s full.”

“Slink,” I said. “We need to send a kill team down to Semchi to watch the Bhodi
Tree. The Protector’s probably going to try to smash it. We could make some
friends if we save it.” I explained about the Bhodi disciple who burned himself
and Soulcatcher’s threat to turn the Bhodi Tree into kindling. “I’d like to go
myself, just to see if the Bhodi non-violent ethic is strong enough to make them
stand around while somebody destroys their most holy shrine. But I have too much
work to do here.” I tossed my cards in. “In fact, I have work to do now.”

I was tired but figured I could study Murgen’s Annals for a few hours before I
passed out.

As I walked away, Swan whispered, “How the hell does she know all that? And is
she really a she?”

“Never checked personally,” Slink said. “I have a wife. But she’s definitely got
some female habits on her.”

What the devil did that mean? I am just one of the guys.

These were exciting times. I found myself eager to be up and outside, where
things were happening. The impact of our boldness would have reached every
cranny of the city by now. I gobbled cold rice and listened to Tobo complain,

again, that his father had paid him no attention.

“Is there something I can do about that, Tobo?”

“Huh?”

“Unless you think I can go back there and tell him to shape up and talk to his
kid, you’re wasting your time and mine bitching about it. Where’s your mother?”

“She left for work. A long time ago. She said they’d be suspicious if she didn’t
show up today.”

“Probably would be. They’ll be real edgy about everything for a while. How about
instead of fussing about what’s happened already, you spend some time thinking
about what you’ll do next time you see your father? And in the meantime, you can
stay out of trouble by keeping notes for me whenever anybody questions the
prisoner.”

His glower told me he was no more excited about being offered work than any boy
his age would be. “You’re going out, too?”

“I have to go to work.” It would be a good day to get to the library early. The
scholars were supposed to be gone most of the day. There was supposed to be a
big meeting of the bhadrhalok, which was a loosely associated group of educated
men who did not like the Protector and who found the institution of the
Protectorate objectionable. Jokingly, they referred to themselves as a band of
intellectual terrorists. Bhadrhalok means, more or less, “the respectable
people” and that was exactly what they thought they were. They were all
educated, high-caste Gunni, which meant, right away, that a vast majority of the
Taglian population regarded them with no sympathy at all. Their biggest problem
with the Protector was that she held their self-confident, arrogant assumption
of superiority in complete contempt. As revolutionaries and terrorists, they
were less incandescent than any of the low-caste social clubs that existed on
every residential block in the city. I doubt that Soulcatcher wasted two spies
watching them. But they had great fun, fulminating and crying on one another’s
shoulders about the world going to hell in a goat cart driven by the demon in
black. And every week or so it got most of the library crew out of my way.

I did what I could to encourage their seditious fervor.

I got off to a slow start. Not thirty yards from the warehouse exit I ran into
two of our brothers doing donkey work for Do Trang while standing lookout. One
made gestures indicating that they had something to report. Sighing, I strolled
over. “What’s the story, River?” The men called him Riverwalker. I did not know
him by any other name.

“We got shadowtraps that’s been sprung. We got ourselves some new pets.”

“Oh, no. Darn.” I shook my head.

“That’s not good?”

“Not good. Run, report it to Goblin. I’ll stick with Ran till you get back.

Don’t dawdle. I’m late for work.” Not true, but Taglians have little sense of
urgency, and the concept of punctuality is alien to most.

Shadows in the shadowtraps. Not a good eventuation, for sure. Near as we could
determine, Soulcatcher had no more than two dozen manageable shadows left under
control. As many more had gone feral in the remote south and were developing
reputations as rakshasas, which were demons or devils but not quite like those
my northern forebrethren knew. Northern demons seemed to be solitary beings of
considerable power. Rakshasas are communal and pretty weak individually. But
deadly. Very deadly.

In ancient myth, of course, they are much more powerful. They swat each other
over the head with mountaintops, grow two heads for every one chopped off by a
hero, and collect the beautiful wives of kings who are really gods incarnate but
do not remember that fact. Things must have been much more exciting in olden
times—even if they did not make a lot of sense from day to day.

Catcher would keep a close eye on her shadows. They were her most valuable
resource. Which meant that if they had been sent out to spy, she should know
exactly where each was supposed to have gone. At least that is the way I would
have done it if I were committing irreplaceable resources. I did that for every
single man we committed to Willow Swan’s capture. I knew how they were going to
get to their places and how they were going to get home and everything they were
supposed to do in between. And just like I figured Soulcatcher might, I would
have gone looking for them personally if they had failed to return home.

Goblin came hobbling into the early morning light, cursing all the way. He wore
the all-covering brown wool of a veyedeen dervish. He hated the outfit, however
necessary it was to disguise himself when he was outside. I did not blame him.

The wool was hot. It was supposed to remind the holy men of the hell they were
escaping by devoting themselves to chastity, asceticism and good works. “What
the hell is this shit?” he growled. “It’s hot enough to boil eggs out here
already.”

“The boys say we’ve caught something in our shadow-traps. I thought you might
want to do something about that before Mama comes looking for her babies.”

“Shit. More work—”

“Old man, you just had something in your mouth I wouldn’t even want in my hand.”

“Vehdna priss. Get the flock out of here before I give you a real language
lesson. And bring home something decent to eat when you come back. Like maybe a
cow.”

More than once he and One-Eye had conspired to kidnap one of the sacred cattle
that wander the city. To date, their efforts have come to naught because none of
the men will go along. The majority have Gunni backgounds.

It took no time at all to learn that our shadow captives were not the only
shadows that had run wild just before dawn. Rumor was rife. The stories of the
murders the shadows committed banished news of the attack on the Palace and the
self-immolation of the Bhodi disciple. The killings were closer to home and
closer in time. And they were grotesque. The corpse of a man whose life has been
devoured by a shadow is a twisted husk of the creature that was.

I insinuated myself into the crowd surrounding the doorway of a family where
there had been multiple deaths. You can do that when you are little and limber
and know how to use your elbows. I arrived just in time to watch them bring the
bodies out. I was hoping they would be exposed to the public eye. Not that I
wanted to see them myself. I saw plenty of those kinds of bodies during the
Shadowmaster wars. I just thought the people ought to see what Soulcatcher could
do. She needed all the enemies she could get.

The bodies were enshrouded already. But there was talk.

I traveled on, learning that most of the dead had been people who lived on the
streets. And there had been a lot of those, taken in no obvious pattern
whatsoever. It looked like Soulcatcher had sent the shadows out just to
demonstrate that she had the power and the will to kill.

The deaths had evoked no great fear. People thought it was over. Most of them
did not know any of the dead so were not angry, either. Curiosity and revulsion
were the common emotions.

I considered turning back to tell Goblin to fix the captured shadows so they
would go out killing again tonight and every night thereafter, till Soulcatcher
tracked them down. She would not look for trappers if she thought her pets had
gone rogue. And the shadows would create a lot more enemies for her before their
terror ended.

At first it seemed the Greys had faded from the streets. They were less in
evidence than usual. But as I skirted Chor Bagan, it became evident why. They
had the place under siege, apparently on the assumption that any Black Company
survivers, having been branded bandits by the Protector, would hide themselves
amongst Taglios’ homegrown thieves and villains. Amusing.

Sahra and I insist that we have as little to do with the criminal element as
possible—over One-Eye’s objections. And ignoring Banh Do Trang’s occasional
lapses. That element included folk of dubious morals and discipline who might
serve us up for enough blood money to buy one more jar of illegal wine. I hoped
they and the Greys had fun. I hoped somebody forgot the rules and their day
turned bloody. That would make life easier for me and mine.

Any trip across town exposes you to the cruel truth about Taglios. Beggary
exists there like nowhere else in the world. Were someone to sweep the city
clean and organize the beggars into regiments, they would number more than the
biggest army the Captain put together in the days of the Shadowmaster wars. If
you look the least bit foreign or prosperous, they come at you in waves. Every
attempt is made to exploit your pity. Not far from Do Trang’s warehouse there is
a boy with neither hands nor lower legs. Somehow, blocks of wood have been
affixed in their place. He crawls around with a bowl in his mouth. Every cripple
over the age of fifteen claims to be a wounded hero of the wars. The children
are the worst. Often they have been maimed deliberately, their limbs deformed
evilly. They are sold to men who then feel they own them because they feed them
a handful of toasted grain every few days.

A new mystery of the city is that men of that stripe seem to run the risk of
cruel tortures and their own careers as deformed beggars. If they do not watch
their backs very, very carefully.

My route took me near one such. He had one arm he could use to drag himself
around. The rest of his limbs were twisted ruins. His bones had been crushed to
gravel but he had been kept alive by a dedicated effort. His face and exposed
skin were covered with burn scars. I paused to place one small copper in his
bowl.

He whimpered and tried to crawl away. He could still see out of one eye.

Everywhere you looked, life proceeded in the unique Taglian fashion. Every
vehicle in motion had people hanging off it, sponging a ride. Unless it was the
ricksha of a rich man, perhaps a banker from Kowlhri Street, who could afford
outrunners armed with bamboo canes to keep people off. Shopkeepers often sat on
top of their tiny counters because there was no other space. Workmen jogged
hither and yon with backbreaking loads, violently cursing everyone in their way.

The people argued, laughed, waved their arms wildly, simply stepped to the side
of the street where no one was lying to defecate when the need came upon them.

They bathed in the water in the gutters, indifferent to the fact that a neighbor
was urinating in the same stream fifteen feet away.

Taglios is an all-out, relentless assault upon all the senses but engages none
so much as it does the sense of smell. I hate the rainy season but without its
protracted sluicings-out, Taglios would become untenable even for rats. Without
the rains, the endemic cholera and smallpox would be far worse than they
are—though the rainy times bring outbreaks of malaria and yellow fever. Disease
of every sort is common and accepted stoically.

And then there are the lepers, whose plight gives new depth of meaning to horror
and despair. Never do I find my faith in God so tested as when I consider the
lepers. I am as terrified by them as anyone but I do know enough about some
individuals to realize that very few are being visited by a scourge they
deserve. Unless the Gunni are right and they are paying for evils done in
previous lives.

Up above it all are the kites and crows, the buzzards and vultures. For the
eaters of carrion, life is good. Till the dead wagons come to collect the
fallen.

The people come from everywhere, from five hundred miles, to find their
fortunes. But Fortune is an ugly, two-faced goddess.

When you have lived with her handiwork for half a generation, you hardly notice
anymore. You forget that this is not the way life has to be. You cease to marvel
at just how much evil man can conjure simply by existing.

The library, created by and bequeathed to the city by an earlier mercantile
prince who was much impressed by learning, strikes me as a symbol of knowledge
rearing up to shed its light into the surrounding darkness of ignorance. Some of
the city’s worst slums wash right up against the wall enclosing its ground. The
beggars are bad around its outer gates. Why is a puzzlement. I have never seen
anyone toss them a coin.

There is a gateman but he is not a guard. He lacks even a bamboo cane. But a
cane is unnecessary. The sanctity of the place of knowledge is observed by
everyone. Everyone but me, you might say.

“Good morning, Adoo,” I said as the gateman swung the wrought iron open for me.

Though I was a glorified sweeper and fetch-it man, I had status. I appeared to
enjoy the favor of some of the bhadrhalok.

Status and caste grew more important as Taglios became more crowded and
resources grew less plentiful. Caste has become much more rigidly defined and
observed in just the last ten years. People are desperate to cling to the little
that they have already. Likewise, the trade guilds have grown increasingly
powerful. Several have raised small, private armed forces that they use to make
sure immigrants and other outsiders do not trample on their preserves, or that
they sometimes hire out to temples or others in need of justice. Some of our
brothers have done some work in that vein. It generates revenue and creates
contacts and allows us glimpses inside otherwise closed societies.

Outside, the library resembles the more ornate Gunni temples. Its pillars and
walls are covered with reliefs recalling stories both mythical and historical.

It is not a huge place, being just thirty yards on its long side and sixty feet
the other way. Its main floor is elevated ten feet above the surrounding gardens
and monuments, which themselves cap a small knoll. The building proper is tall
enough that inside there is a full-size hanging gallery all the way around at
the level where a second floor should be, then an attic of sorts above that,

plus a well-drained basement below the main floor. I find that interior much too
open for comfort. Unless I am way down low or way up high, everyone can watch
what I am doing.

The main floor is an expanse of marble, brought from somewhere far away. Upon
it, in neat rows, stand the desks and tables where the scholars work, either
studying or copying decaying manuscripts. The climate is not conducive to the
longevity of books. There is a certain sadness to the library, a developing air
of neglect. Scholars grow fewer each year. The Protector does not care about the
library because it cannot brag that it contains old books full of deadly spells.

There is not one grimoire in the place. Though there is a lot of very
interesting stuff—if she bothered to look. But that sort of curiosity is not
part of her character.

There are more glass windows in the library than anywhere else I have ever seen.

The copyists need a lot of light. Most of them, these days, are old and their
sight is failing. Master Santaraksita often goes on about the library having no
future. No one wants to visit it anymore. He believes that has something to do
with the hysterical fear of the past that began to build soon after the rise of
the Shadowmasters, when he was still a young man. Back when fear of the Black
Company gained circulation, before the Company ever appeared.

I stepped into the library and surveyed it. I loved the place. In another time I
would gladly have become one of Master Santaraksita’s acolytes. If I could have
survived the close scrutiny endured by would-be students.

I was not Gunni. I was not high caste. The former I could fake well enough to
get by. I had been surrounded by Gunni all my life. But I did not know caste
from within. Only the priestly caste and some selected commercial-caste folks
were permitted to be literate. Though familiar with the vulgate and the High
Mode both, I could never pretend to have grown up in a priestly household fallen
on hard times. I had not grown up in much of any kind of household.

I had the place entirely to myself. And there was no obvious cleaning that
needed doing right away.

It ever amazed me that no one actually lived in the library. That it was more
holy or more frightening than a temple. The kangali—the parentless and homeless
and fearless boys of the street, who run in troops of six to eight—see temples
as just another potential resource. But they would not trouble the library.

To the unlettered, the knowledge contained in books was almost as terrible as
the knowledge bound up in the flesh of a creature as wicked as Soulcatcher.

I had one of the best jobs in Taglios. I was the main caretaker at the biggest
depository and replicatory of books within the Taglian empire. It had taken
three and a half years of scheming and several carefully targeted murders to put
me into a position I enjoyed way too much. Always before me was the temptation
to forget the Company. The temptation might have gotten me had I had the social
qualifications to be anything but a janitor who sneaked peeks into books when
nobody was looking.

In quick order I conjured the tools of my purported trade, then hurried to one
of the more remote copying desks. It was out of the way, yet offered a good line
of vision and good acoustics so I would not be surprised doing something both
forbidden and impossible.

I had gotten caught twice already, luckily both times with Tantric books
illuminated with illustrations. They thought I was sneaking peeks at dirty
pictures. Master Santaraksita himself suggested I go study temple walls if that
sort of thing appealed to me. But I could not help feeling that he began to
harbor a deep suspicion after the second incident.

They never threatened me with dismissal or even punishment, but they made it
clear I was out of line, that the gods punish those who exceed caste and
station. They were, of course, unaware of my origins or associations, or of my
disinclination to accept the Gunni religion with all its idolatry and tolerance
for wickedness.

I dug out the book that purported to be a history of Taglios’ earliest days. I
would not have been aware of it had I not noticed it being copied from a
manuscript so old that much of it had appeared to be in a style of calligraphy
resembling that of the old Annals I was having so much trouble deciphering. Old
Baladitya, the copyist, had had no difficulty rendering the text in modern
Taglian. I have salvaged the moldy, crumbling original. I had it hidden. I had a
notion that by comparing versions I could get a handle on the dialect of those
old Annals.

If not, Girish could be offered a chance to translate for the Black Company, an
opportunity he ought to pounce on considering the alternative available at that
point.

I already knew that the books I wanted to translate were copies of even earlier
versions, at least two of which had been transcribed originally in another
language entirely—presumably that spoken by our first brothers when they came
down off the plain of glittering stone.

I started at the beginning.

It was an interesting story.

Taglios began as a collection of mud huts beside the river. Some of the
villagers fished and dodged crocodiles, while others raised a variety of crops.

The city grew for no obvious reason beyond its being the last viable landing
before the river lost itself in the pestilential delta swamps, in those days not
yet inhabited by the Nyueng Bao. Trade from upriver continued overland to “all
the great kingdoms of the south.” Not a one of those was mentioned by name.

Taglios began as a tributary of Baladiltyla, a city great in oral histories and
no longer in existence. It is sometimes associated with some really ancient
ruins outside the village of Videha, which itself is associated with the
intellectual achievements of a “Kuras empire” and is the center of ruins of
another sort entirely. Baladiltyla was the birthplace of Rhaydreynak, the
warrior king who nearly exterminated the Deceivers in antiquity and who harried
the handful of survivors into burying their sacred texts, the Books of the Dead,

in that same cavern where Murgen now lay entombed with all the old men in their
cobwebs of ice.

Not all this was information from the book I was reading. As I went, I made
connections with things I had read or heard elsewhere. This was very exciting
stuff. For me.

Here was an answer for Goblin. The princes of Taglios could not be kings because
they honored as their sovereigns the kings of Nhanda, who raised them up. Of
course Nhanda was no more and Goblin would want to know why, in that case, the
Taglian princes could not just crown themselves. There were plenty of
precedents. From the looks of the history of the centuries before the coming of
the Black Company, that had been the favorite pastime of anybody who could get
three or four men to follow him around.

I overcame a powerful urge to rush ahead and look for the era when the Free
Companies of Khatovar exploded upon the world. What had happened before that
would help explain what had happened when they did.