“Evidently we don’t have anything to talk about yet. I’ll send you a few fingers for breakfast.”
I went to see if Surendranath Santaraksita was being a good fellow and pursuing the tasks I had suggested he could use to help overcome the tedium of his captivity. To my surprise I found him hard at work, with old Baladitya assisting, translating what I had presumed to be the first volume of the lost Annals. They had a whole stack of sheets already done.
“Dorabee!” Master Santaraksita said. “Excellent. Your friend the foreigner keeps telling us we can’t have any more real vellum when we’re done with these last few sheets. He wants us to use those ridiculous bark books they still employ out in the swamps.”
Before there were modern paper and vellum and parchment, there was bark. I do not know what kind of tree it came from, just that the inner bark was removed carefully, treated and pressed and used to write on. To make a book, you stacked the bark sheets, drilled a hole down through the upper-left-hand corner of the stack, then bound everything together with a cord or ribbon or length of very light chain. Banh Do Trang would favor bark because it was both cheap, traditional and hardier than animal products.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“There’s nothing earthshaking in there, Dorabee.”
“My name is Sleepy.”
“Sleepy isn’t a name. It’s a disease, or a misfortune. I prefer Dorabee. I’ll use Dorabee.”
“Use whatever you like. I’ll know who you’re talking to.” I read a couple of sheets. He was right. “This is tedious stuff. This looks like an account book.”
“That’s what it is, mainly. The things you want to know are just the things the writer assumes any reader of his own time would know already. He wasn’t writing for the ages, or even for another generation. He was keeping track of horseshoe nails, lance shafts and saddles. All he has to say about their battle is that the lower-ranking officers and noncommissioned officers failed to demonstrate an adequate enthusiasm for appropriating weapons lost or abandoned by the defeated enemy, preferring to wait till the next dawn to begin gleaning. As a consequence, stragglers and the local peasantry managed to scavenge all the best.”
“I notice he doesn’t bother to name a single name, person or place.” I had begun reading while the Master talked. I could listen and read at the same time even though I was a woman.
“He does give mileage and dates. The context suggests the appropriate systems of measure. It can be figured out. But what I’ve already started to wonder, Dorabee, is why we’ve all been deathly afraid of these people all our lives. This book gives us no reason to be afraid. This book is about a troop of crabby little men who marched off somewhere they didn’t want to go for reasons they didn’t understand, fully believing that their unstated mission would last only several weeks or, at most, a few months. Then they would be able to go home. But the months piled into years and the years into generations. And still they didn’t really know.”
The material also suggested we needed to revise our old belief that the Free Companies exploded into the world at the same time, in a vast orgy of fire and bloodshed. The only other company mentioned was noted to have returned years before the Black Company marched, and in fact, several senior Company noncoms had served as private soldiers in that earlier, unnamed band.
“I can see it,” I grumbled. “We’re going to translate these things, find out all sorts of things, and not be an inch closer to understanding anything.”
Santaraksita said, “This’s much more exciting than a meeting of the bhadrhalok, Dorabee.”
Then Baladitya spoke for the first time. “Do we have to starve to death here, Dorabee?”
“Nobody’s brought you anything to eat?”
“No.”
“I’ll just see about that. Don’t be startled if you hear me shouting. I hope you enjoy fish and rice.”
I took care of that, then hid in my corner for a while. I was feeling a little depressed after having seen Master Santaraksita’s work. I suppose that sometimes I invest too much in my goals, then suffer a correspondingly huge disappointment when things do not work out.
39
Tobo 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 G
reat 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.
40
What 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 doo
r.
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.”