Soulcatcher shrieked, outraged. The people of Taglios did not have that kind of nerve. She drove the carpet to one side, avoiding the black globe. And well she moved when she did.
Her luck had served her yet again. A screaming fireball ripped right through the space she had vacated, the same kind of fireball that had eaten all those holes in the Palace wall and had set the bodies of so many men burning like bad fat candles. She continued to dive. Two more fireballs barely missed her. She put a tenement between herself and the sharpshooters. She was extremely angry but did not let rage cloud her thinking.
Above her, her crows began bursting like soundless fireworks. Blood, flesh and feathers rained down.
In seconds she figured it out, conversing with herself in a committee of voices.
They had not been hiding inside Chor Bagan after all. She could not have caught anyone trying to slip away like this if they had not come in to retrieve something they did not want found. “They’re here in the city. But we haven’t found them. We haven’t seen a trace or heard a rumor that they didn’t want to reach our ears. Until now. That takes wizardry. That bold little one. That was the toad man. Goblin. Though the Great General of the Armies Mogaba assures us that he saw the body himself. Who else is alive? Could the Great General himself be less trustworthy than he would like us to believe?”
That was not possible. Mogaba had no other friends. He was committed in perpetuity.
Soulcatcher brought her carpet to earth, stepped off, folded its light bamboo frame, rolled the carpet around that, surveyed the street. They had come down this way. From up there. What could they have wanted desperately enough to have exposed themselves so thoroughly? Anything they thought that important would be something she was bound to find very interesting herself.
It took just one whispered word of power to illuminate the cellar. The squalor was appalling. Soulcatcher turned slowly. A man and his daughter, apparently. An old man and a young woman, anyway. One lamp. Discarded clothing. A few handfuls of rice. Some fish meal. Why the writing instruments and ink? What was this? A book. Somebody had just begun writing in it in an unfamiliar alphabet. She caught a spot of black movement in the corner of her eye. She whirled, crouching, fearing an attack by a rogue shadow. The skildirsha maintained an especially potent hatred for those who dared command them.
A rat fled, dropping the object of its curiosity. Soulcatcher knelt, picked up a long strip of black silk with an antique silver coin sewn into one corner. “Oh. I see.” She began to laugh like a young girl catching on late to the meaning of an off-color joke. She collected the book, surveyed the scene once more before leaving. “Dedication sure doesn’t pay.”
Once in the street again, she reassembled her carpet, unconcerned about snipers. Those people would be long gone and far away. They knew their business. But crows should be tracking them.
She froze, staring upward but not really seeing the white crow on the peak of the tenement roof. “How did they find out where those two were?”
19
What happened?” Sahra demanded as soon as she came in, before she began shedding Minh Subredil’s rags.
I was still Dorabee Dey Banerjae myself. “We lost Murgen somehow. Goblin thought they had him anchored, but he went away while we were all out and I don’t know how to get him back.”
“I meant what happened in the Thieves’ Garden. Soulcatcher was out there. Whatever she tried to pull didn’t work out but she came back a different person. I didn’t get to hear everything she told the Radisha but I do know she found something or figured out something that changed her whole attitude. Like everything suddenly stopped being fun.”
I said, “Oh. I don’t know. Maybe Murgen can tell us. If we can get him back here.”
Goblin joined us. He was pushing a sleeping One-Eye in Banh Do Trang’s spare wheelchair. He announced, “They’re resting peacefully. Drugged. Narayan was distraught. The girl took it pretty calmly. We need to worry about her.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked, indicating One-Eye.
“He’s worn out. He’s an old man. I want to see you have half the energy he does when you get to be half his age.”
Sahra asked, “Why do we need to worry about the girl?”
“Because she’s her mother’s daughter. She doesn’t have much skill with it yet because she hasn’t had anybody to teach her, but she’s got the natural ability to become a substantial sorceress. Maybe even as powerful as her mother but without Lady’s rudimentary sense of ethics. It reeks off her —”
“’Tain’t the only thing she reeks of, neither,” One-Eye chirped. “First thing you do with that little honey, you throw her in a vat of hot water. Then throw in a couple, four lumps of lye soap and let her soak for a week.”
Sahra and I exchanged glances. If she was bad enough to offend One-Eye, she had to be ripe indeed.
Goblin grinned from ear to ear but eschewed temptation.
I said, “I hear you ran into the Protector.”
“She was on a roof or somewhere waiting for something to happen. She didn’t get what she expected. A couple of fireballs and she ducked and stayed ducked.”
“You made it home without being followed?” I knew the answer because I knew they knew the stakes. They would not have come anywhere near here had they had the slightest doubt that that was safe.
I had to ask, even knowing that if they had failed, the warehouse would be buried in Greys already.
“We were ready to deal with the crows.”
“All but one,” One-Eye grumbled.
“What?”
“I saw a white one up there. It didn’t try to follow us, though.”
Once again Sahra and I exchanged glances. Sahra said, “I’m going to change and relax and get something to eat. Let’s meet in an hour. If you could find it in your heart, Goblin, you might try to get Murgen back here.”
“You’re the necromancer.”
“You’re the one who claimed he anchored him. One hour.”
Goblin began grumbling to himself. One-Eye chuckled and made no offer to help. He asked me, “You ready to kill your librarian yet?”
I did not tell him so but I was slightly more open to the suggestion tonight. Surendranath Santaraksita seemed to suspect that Dorabee Dey Banerjae was something more than he pretended. Or maybe I was just paranoid enough to hear things Santaraksita never intended to say. “You don’t worry about Master Santaraksita. He’s being very good to me. Today he told me I can look at any book I want. Unless it’s in the restricted stacks.”
“Woo!” One-Eye breathed. “Somebody finally found the way to her heart. Who’d’a thunk a book would do it? Name the first one after me, Little Girl.”
I waved a fist under his nose. “I’d knock out your last tooth and call you Mushy but I was brought up to respect my elders — even if they’re rambling, demented and senile.” For all its One True God focus, my religion contains a strong taint of ancestor worship. Every Vehdna believes his forefathers can hear his prayers and can intercede with God and his saints. If he feels he has been properly treated. “I’m going to follow Sahra’s example.”
“You holler if you want to get in practice for your new boyfriend.” His cackle ended abruptly as Gota limped around me. When I glanced back, One-Eye appeared to be sound asleep again. Must have been some other old fool running his mouth.
During the siege of Jaicur, I announced that never again would I be picky about what I ate. That I would respond to anything offered me with a smile of gratitude and a spoken “Thank you.” But time has a way of wearing away at such vows. I was nearly as sick of rice and smoked fish as Goblin and One-Eye were. Breaking the tedium with the occasional supper of rice and fish meal did not seem to help. I am confident that it is their diet that makes the Nyueng Bao such a humorless people.
I ran into Sahra, who had bathed and let her hair down and relaxed, looking a decade younger, so that it was easy to see how, a decade earlier still, she could have been every
young man’s fantasy. “I still have a little money I took off somebody who picked the wrong side down south,” I told her, waving a tiny piece of fish caught between two bamboo chopsticks. Nyueng Bao refuse to adopt innovative utensils that have been in common use amongst everyone else in this part of the world for centuries. Those who did the cooking in Do Trang’s complex were all Nyueng Bao.
“What?” Sahra was completely baffled.
“I’ll give it up. If we can buy a pig with it.” Vehdna are not supposed to eat pork. But I made the mistake of being born female, so I probably do not have a seat reserved in Paradise anyway. “Or anything else that doesn’t go through the water like this.” I made a wiggly motion with one hand.
Sahra did not understand. Food was a matter of indifference to her — so long as she got some. Fish and rice forever were perfectly fine. And she was probably right. There are plenty of people out there who have to eat chhatu because they cannot afford rice. And others cannot afford any food at all. Though Soulcatcher seemed to be thinning those out now.
Sahra started to tell me something about a rumor that another Bhodi disciple was going to present himself at the entrance to the Palace and demand an audience with the Radisha. But we were approaching the lighted area where we worked our wickednesses of evenings and she saw something there that made her stop.
I started to say, “Then we need to get somebody next to him —”
Sahra growled, “What the hell is he doing here?”
I saw it now. Uncle Doj was back, probably determined to invite himself into our lives again. His timing seemed interesting and suspect.
I also found it interesting that Sahra spoke Taglian when she was stressed. She had some definite points of contention with her own people, though around the warehouse nobody used Nyueng Bao except Mother Gota, who did so only to remain a pain.
Uncle Doj was a wide little man who, though on the brink of seventy, was mostly muscle and gristle, and in recent years, bad temper. He carried a long, slightly curved sword he called Ash Wand. Ash Wand was his soul. He had told me so. He was some sort of priest but would not bother to explain. His religion involved martial arts and holy swords, though. He was nobody’s uncle in reality. Uncle was a title of respect among Nyueng Bao, and they all seemed to consider Doj a man worthy of the greatest respect.
Uncle Doj has meandered in and out of our lives since the siege of Jaicur, always more distraction than contribution. He could be underfoot for years at a stretch, then would disappear for weeks or months or years. This latest time he had been out of the way for more than a year. When he did turn up, he never bothered reporting what he had been doing or where he had been, but judging from Murgen’s observations and my own, he was still searching for his Key diligently.
Curious, him materializing so suddenly after my epiphany. I asked Sahra, “Did your mother happen to leave the warehouse today?”
“That question occurred to me, too. It might be worth pursuit.”
Very little warmth existed between mother and daughter. Murgen was not the cause but absolutely had become the symbol.
Uncle Doj was supposed to be a minor wizard. I never saw any evidence to support that, other than his uncanny skill with Ash Wand. He was old and his joints were getting stiff. His reflexes were fading. But I could not think of anyone who would remotely be his match. Nor have I ever heard of anyone else dedicating his life to a piece of steel the way he has.
Maybe I did have evidence of his being a wizard, I reflected. He never had any trouble getting through the mazes Goblin and One-Eye had created to save us the embarrassment of unexpected walk-ins. Those two ought to tie him down till he explained how he did that.
I asked Sahra, “How do you want to handle this?”
Her voice was edged with flint. “Far as I’m concerned, we can lump him right in there with Singh and the Daughter of Night.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my enemy, huh?”
“I never liked Doj much. By Nyueng Bao standards he’s a great and honorable man, a hero due great respect. And he’s the embodiment of everything I find distasteful about my people.”
“Secretive, huh?”
She betrayed a hint of a smile. In that she was as guilty as any other Nyueng Bao. “That’s in the blood.”
Tobo noticed us watching and talking. He darted over. He was excited enough to forget he was a surly young man. “Mom. Uncle Doj is here.”
“So I see. He say what he wants this time?”
I touched her arm gently, cautioning her. No need to start butting heads.
Doj, of course, was aware of our presence. I never saw a man so intensely aware of his environment. He might have heard every word we whispered, too. I put no store in the chance that time had weathered his sense of hearing. He gobbled rice and paid us no heed.
I told Sahra, “Go say hello. I need a second to put my face on.”
“I ought to send for the Greys. Have them raid the place. I’m too tired for this.” She did not bother to keep her voice down.
“Mom?”
20
I held Doj’s eye. My face was cold. My voice held no emotion whatsoever as I asked, “What is the Key?” Bound, gagged, Narayan Singh and Daughter of Night watched and waited their turn.
The faintest flicker of surprise stirred in Doj’s eyes. I was not the sort he expected to be a questioner.
I was in character again, a borrowed one based on a gang enforcer who had offended us a few years ago, Vajra the Naga. The gang was out of business and Vajra the Naga had gone on to a better world but his legacy occasionally proved useful.
Doj enjoyed the reasonable expectation that he would not be tortured. I had no intention of taking it that far. With him. The Company’s fortunes and those of the Nyueng Bao had become so intermingled that I could not brutalize Doj without alienating our most useful allies.
Doj volunteered nothing. Nor did I expect him to be any more vocal than a stone. I told him, “We need to open the way onto the glittering plain. We know you don’t have the Key. We do know where to start looking for it. We’ll be pleased to return it to you once we release our brothers.” I paused, giving him time to surprise me by replying. He did not.
“You are, perhaps, philosophically opposed to opening the way. We’re going to disappoint you on that. The way will open. Somehow. You have only the option of participating or not participating.”
Doj’s eyes shifted, just for an instant. He wanted to read Sahra’s stance.
Hers was plain. She had a husband trapped under the glittering plain. The wishes of the lone priest of some obscure, never-explained cult carried no weight with her.
Not even Banh Do Trang or Ky Gota offered demonstrative support, though both would favor him mainly out of decades of inertia.
“If you don’t cooperate, then we won’t return the Key when we’re done with it. And we will determine what constitutes cooperation. The first step is to put an end to all of the normal Nyueng Bao equivocation and evasion and selective deafness.”
Vajra the Naga was not a character I liked to adopt too often. A naga was a mythical serpent being that lived beneath the earth and had no sympathy whatever for anything human. The trouble with the character was that I could slip into it like it had been tailored for me. It would take only a small emotional distortion to turn me into Vajra the Naga.
“You have something we want. A book.” I was betting a lot on my having reasoned out or intuited the course of various hidden events based upon what I had gotten from Murgen and his Annals. “It’s about so-by-so and this thick, bound in tan vellum. The writing inside is in an untrained hand in a language no one has spoken for seven centuries. Specifically, it is a nearly complete copy of the first volume of the Books of the Dead, the lost sacred texts of the Children of Kina. Chances are you didn’t know that.”
Narayan and even the Daughter of Night reacted to that.
I continued, “The book was stolen from the fortress Overlook by the sorcerer called the How
ler. He concealed it because he didn’t want Soulcatcher to get it, nor did he want the child to have it. You either saw him hide it or stumbled onto it soon after he did. You concealed it somewhere you feel is safe. Ignoring the fact that nothing can remain hidden forever. Some eyes will discover anything eventually.”
Once again I allowed Doj time for remarks. He chose to pass on the opportunity.
“You have a choice in all this. I remind you, though, that you’re getting old, that your chosen successor is buried under the plain with my brothers, and that you have no allies more favorable than Gota, whose enthusiasm has to be suspect at this late date. You may choose to say nothing, ever, in which case truth will follow you into the darkness. But the Key will remain here. In other hands. Have you had enough to eat? Has Do Trang been a good host? Will somebody help our guest find something to drink? We shouldn’t be scorned for our failures of hospitality.”
“You didn’t get a word out of him,” One-Eye complained as soon as Doj was out of earshot.
“I didn’t expect to. I just wanted him to have something to think about. Let’s talk to these two. Scoot Singh over here, take the gag off and turn him so he can’t get cues from the girl.” She was spooky. Even bound and gagged, she radiated a disturbingly potent presence. Put her in the company of people already prepared to believe that she was touched by the dark divine and it was easy to understand why the Deceiver cult was making a comeback. Interesting, though, that that was a recent phenomenon. That for a decade she and Narayan had been fugitives painstakingly taking control of the few surviving Deceivers and evading the Protector’s agents, and now, just as we feel we are up to tugging a few beards, they began making their survival known, too.
I had no trouble seeing where the Gunni imagination would find connections and portents and wild harbingers of the Year of the Skulls.