My head filled with terrible visions. Those Taken might be second-rate, but they were so many. Their fury would fire the Plain. Whisper and the Limper have campaigned here before. They are not ignorant of the Plain’s perils. In fact, Whisper battled here both as a Rebel and as Taken. She won most of the most famous battles of the eastern war.
Reason reasserted itself but did little to brighten tomorrow. Once I thought, I reached the inescapeable conclusion that Whisper knows the Plain too well. Might even have allies out here.
Darling touched my shoulder. That was more calming than any words from friends. Her confidence is contagious. She signed, “Now we know,” and smiled.
Still, time has become a hanging hammer about to fall. The long wait for the comet has been rendered irrelevant. We have to survive right now. Trying for a bright side, I said, “The Limper’s true name is somewhere in my document collection.”
But that recalled my problem. “Darling, the specific document I want is not there.”
She raised an eyebrow. Unable to speak, she has developed one of the most expressive faces I’ve ever seen.
“We have to have a sit-down. When you have time. To go over exactly what happened to those papers while Raven had them. Some are missing. They were there when I turned them over to Soulcatcher. They were there when I got them back from her. I am sure they were there when Raven took them. What happened to them later?”
“Tonight,” she signed. “I will make time.” She seemed distracted suddenly. Because I mentioned Raven? He meant a lot to her, but you’d think the edge would be off by now. Unless there was more to the story than I knew. And that was plenty possible. I really have no idea what their relationship became in the years after Raven left the Company. His death certainly bothers her still. Because it was so pointless. I mean, after surviving everything the shadow threw his way, he drowned in a public bath.
The Lieutenant says there are nights she cries herself to sleep. He does not know why, but he suspects Raven is at the root.
I have asked her about those years when they were on their own, but she will not tell the tale. The emotional impression I get is one of sorrow and grave disappointment.
She pushed her troubles away now, turned to Tracker and his mutt. Behind them, the men Elmo caught on the bluff squirmed. Their turn was coming. They knew the reputation of the Black Company,
But we did not get to them. Nor even to Tracker and Toadkiller Dog. For the watch above shrieked another alert.
This was getting tiresome.
The rider crossed the stream as I entered the coral. Water splashed. His mount staggered. It was covered with foam. Never again would it run well. It hurt me to see an animal so broken. But its rider had cause.
Two Taken darted about just beyond the bound of the null. One flung a violet bolt. It perished long before it reached us. One-Eye cackled and raised a middle finger. “Always wanted to do that.”
“Oh, wonder of wonders,” Goblin squeaked, looking the other way. A number of manias, big blue-blacks, soared off the rosy bluffs, caught updrafts. Must have been a dozen, though they were hard to count, maneuvering as they did to avoid stealing one another’s wind. These were giants of their kind. Their wings spanned almost a hundred feet. When they were high enough, they dove at the Taken in pairs.
The rider halted, fell. He had an arrow in his back. He remained conscious just long enough to gasp, “Tokens!”
The first manta pair, seeming to move with slow stately grace, though actually they streaked ten times faster than a man can run, ripped past the nearer Taken just inside Darling’s null. Each loosed a brilliant lightning bolt. Lightning could speed where Taken witchery would not survive.
One bolt hit. Taken and carpet reeled, glowed briefly. Smoke appeared. The carpet twisted and spun earthward. We sent up a ragged cheer.
The Taken regained control, rose clumsily, drifted away.
I knelt by the messenger. He was little more than a boy. He was alive. He had a chance if I got to work. “A little help here, One-Eye.”
Manta pairs ripped along the boundary of the null, blasting away at the second Taken. This one evaded effortlessly, did nothing to fight back. “That’s Whisper,” Elmo said.
“Yeah,” I said. She knows her way around.
One-Eye grumbled, “You going to help this kid or not, Croaker?”
“All right. All right.” I hated to miss the show. It was the first I had seen so many mantas, the first I had seen them support us. I wanted to see more.
“Well,” said Elmo, while calming the boy’s horse and going through his saddlebags, “another missive for our esteemed annalist.” He proffered another oilskin packet. Baffled, I tucked it under my arm, then helped One-Eye carry the messenger down into the Hole.
Bomanz’s Story
Croaker: Jasmine’s squeal rattled the windows and doors. “Bomanz! You come down here! Come down right now, you hear me?”
Bomanz sighed. A man couldn’t get five minutes alone. What the hell did he get married for? Why did any man? You spent the rest of your life doing hard time, doing what other people wanted, not what you wanted.
“Bomanz!”
“I’m coming, dammit! Damned woman can’t blow her nose without me there to hold her hand,” he added sotto voce. He did a lot of talking under his breath. He had feelings to vent, and peace to maintain. He compromised. Always, he compromised.
He stamped downstairs, each footfall a declaration of irritation. He mocked himself as he went: You know you’re getting old when everything aggravates you.
“What do you want? Where are you?”
“In the shop.” There was an odd note in her voice. Suppressed excitement, he decided. He entered the shop warily.
“Surprise!”
His world came alive. Grouchiness deserted him. “Stance!” He flung himself at his son. Powerful arms crushed him. “Here already? We didn’t expect you till next week.”
“I got away early. You’re getting pudgy, Pop.” Stancil opened his arms to include Jasmine in a three-way hug.
“That’s your mother’s cooking. Times are good. We’re eating regular. Tokar’s been. …” He glimpsed a faded, ugly shadow. “So how are you? Back up. Let me look at you. You were still a boy when you left.”
And Jasmine: “Doesn’t he look great? So tall and healthy. And such nice clothes.” Mock concern. “You haven’t been up to any funny business, have you?”
“Mother! What could a junior instructor get up to?” He met his father’s eye, smiled a smile that said “Same old Mom.”
Stancil was four inches taller than his father, in his middle twenties, and looked athletic despite his profession. More like an adventurer than a would-be don, Bomanz thought. Of course, times changed. It had been eons since his own university days. Maybe standards had changed.
He recalled the laughter and pranks and all-night, dreadfully serious debates on the meaning of it all, and was bitten by an imp of nostalgia. What had become of that mentally quick, foxy young Bomanz? Some silent, unseen Guardsman of the mind had interred him in a barrow in the back of his brain, and there he lay dreaming, while a bald, jowly, potbellied gnome gradually usurped him.… They steal our yesterdays and leave us no youth but that of our children. …
“Well, come on. Tell us about your studies.” Get out of that self-pitying mindset, Bomanz, you old fool. “Four years and nothing but letters about doing laundry and debates at the Stranded Dolphin. Stranded he would be in Oar. Before I die I want to see the sea. I never have.” Old fool. Dream out loud and that’s the best you can do? Would they really laugh if you told them the youth is still alive in there somewhere?
“His mind wanders,” Jasmine explained.
“Who are you calling senile?” Bomanz snapped.
“Pop. Mom. Give me a break. I just got here.”
Bomanz gobbled air. “He’s right. Peace. Truce. Armistice. You referee, Stance. Two old warhorses like us are set in their ways.”
Jasmine said, “Stanc
e promised me a surprise before you came down.”
“Well?” Bomanz asked.
“I’m engaged. To be married.”
How can this be? This is my son. My baby. I was changing his diapers last week. … Time, thou unspeakable assassin, I feel thy cold breath. I hear thine iron-shod hooves. …
“Hmph. Young fool. Sorry. Tell us about her, since you won’t tell us about anything else.”
“I would if I could get a word in.”
“Bomanz, be quiet. Tell us about her, Stance.”
“You probably know something already. She’s Tokar’s sister, Glory.”
Bomanz’s stomach plunged to the level of his heels. Tokar’s sister. Tokar, who might be a Resurrectionist.
“What’s the matter now, Pop?”
“Tokar’s sister, eh? What do you know about that family?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“I didn’t say anything was. I asked you what you know about them.”
“Enough to know I want to marry Glory. Enough to know Tokar is my best friend.”
“Enough to know if they’re Resurrectionists?”
Silence slammed into the shop. Bomanz stared at his son. Stancil stared back. Twice he started to respond, changed his mind. Tension rasped the air. “Pop. …”
“That’s what Besand thinks. The Guard is watching Tokar. And me, now. It’s the time of the comet, Stance. The tenth passage. Besand smells some big Resurrectionist plot. He’s making life hard. This thing about Tokar will make it worse.”
Stancil sucked spittle between his teeth. He sighed. “Maybe it was a mistake, coming home. I won’t get anything done wasting time ducking Besand and fighting with you.”
“No, Stance,” Jasmine said. “Your father won’t start anything. Bo, you weren’t starting a fight. You’re not going to start one.”
“Uhm.” My son engaged to a Resurrectionist? He turned away, took a deep breath, quietly berated himself. Jumping to conclusions. On word no better than Besand’s. “Son, I’m sorry. He’s been riding me.” He glanced at Jasmine. Besand wasn’t his only persecutor.
“Thanks, Pop. How’s the research coming?”
Jasmine grumbled and muttered. Bomanz said, “This conversation is crazy. We’re all asking questions and nobody is answering.”
“Give me some money, Bo,” Jasmine said.
“What for?”
“You two won’t say hello before you start your plotting. I might as well go marketing.”
Bomanz waited. She eschewed her arsenal of pointed remarks about Woman’s lot. He shrugged, dribbled coins into her palm. “Let’s go upstairs, Stance.”
“She’s mellowed,” Stancil said as they entered the attic room.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“So have you. But the house hasn’t changed.”
Bomanz lighted the lamp. “Cluttered as ever,” he admitted. He grabbed his hiding spear. “Got to make a new one of these. It’s getting worn.” He spread his chart on the little table.
“Not much improvement, Pop.”
“Get rid of Besand.” He tapped the sixth barrow. “Right there. The only thing standing in my way.”
“That route the only option, Pop? Could you get the top two? Or even one. That would leave you a fifty-fifty chance of guessing the other two.”
“I don’t guess. This isn’t a card game. You can’t deal a new hand if you play your first one wrong.”
Stancil took the one chair, stared at the chart. He drummed the tabletop with his fingers. Bomanz fidgeted.
A week passed. The family settled into new rhythms, including living with the Monitor’s intensified surveillance.
Bomanz was cleaning a weapon from the TelleKurre site. A trove, that was. A veritable trove. A mass burial, with weapons and armor almost perfectly preserved. Stancil entered the shop. Bomanz looked up. “Rough night?”
“Not bad. He’s ready to give up. Only came round once.”
“Men fu or Besand?”
“Men fu. Besand was there a half dozen times.”
They were working shifts. Men fu was the public excuse. In reality, Bomanz hoped to wear Besand down before the comet’s return. It was not working.
“Your mother has breakfast ready.” Bomanz began assembling his pack.
“Wait up, Pop. I’ll go too.”
“You need to rest.”
“That’s all right. I feel like digging.”
“Okay.” Something was bothering the boy. Maybe he was ready to talk.
They’d never done much of that. Their pre-university relationship had been one of confrontation, with Stance always on the defensive. … He had grown, these four years, but the boy was still there inside. He was not yet ready to face his father man-to-man. And Bomanz had not grown enough to forget that Stancil was his little boy. Those growths sometimes never come. One day the son is looking back at his own son, wondering what happened.
Bomanz resumed rubbing flakes off a mace. He sneered at himself. Thinking about relationships. This isn’t like you, you old coot.
“Hey, Pop,” Stance called from the kitchen. “Almost forgot. I spotted the comet last night.”
A claw reached in and grabbed a handful of Bomanz’s guts. The comet! Couldn’t be. Not already. He was not ready for it.
Nervy little bastard” Bomanz spat. He and Stancil knelt in the brush, watching Men fu toss artifacts from their diggings. “I ought to break his leg.”
“Wait here a minute. I’ll circle around and cut him off when he runs.”
Bomanz snorted. “Not worth the trouble.”
“It’s worth it to me, Pop. Just to keep the balance.”
“All right,” Bomanz watched Men fu pop up to look around, ugly little head jerking like that of a nervous pigeon. He dropped back into the excavation. Bomanz stalked forward.
He drew close enough to hear the thief talking to himself. “Oh. Lovely. Lovely. A stone fortune. Stone fortune. That fat little ape don’t deserve it. All the time sucking up to Besand. That creep.”
“Fat little ape? You asked for it.” Bomanz shed his pack and tools, got a firm grip on his spade.
Men fu came up out of the pit, his arms filled. His eyes grew huge. His mouth worked soundlessly.
Bomanz wound up.
“Now Bo, don’t be. …”
Bomanz swung. Men fu danced, took the blow on his hip, squawked, dropped his burden, flailed the air, and toppled into the pit. He scrambled out the far side, squealing like a wounded hog. Bomanz wobbled after him, landed a mighty stroke across his behind. Men fu ran. Bomanz charged after him, spade high, yelling, “Stand still, you thieving son-of-a-bitch! Take it like a man.”
He took a last mighty swing. It missed. It flung him around. He fell, bounced back up, continued the chase sans avenging spade.
Stancil threw himself into Men fu’s way. The thief put his head down and bulled through. Bomanz ploughed into Stancil. Father and son rolled in a tangle of limbs.
Bomanz gasped, “What the hell? He’s gone now,” He sprawled on his back, panted. Stancil started laughing. “What’s so damned funny?”
“The look on his face.”
Bomanz sniggered. “You weren’t much help.” They guffawed. Finally, Bomanz gasped, “I’d better find my spade.”
Stancil helped his father stand. “Pop, I wish you could have seen yourself.”
“Glad I didn’t. Lucky I didn’t have a stroke.” He lapsed into a fit of giggles.
“You all right, Pop?”
“Sure. Just can’t laugh and catch my breath at the same time. Oh. Oh, my. I won’t be able to move again if I sit down,”
“Let’s go dig. That’ll keep you loose. You dropped the spade around here, didn’t you?”
“There it is.”
The giggles haunted Bomanz all morning. He would recall Men fu’s flailing retreat and his self-control would go.
“Pop?” Stancil was working the far side of the pit. “Look here. This may be why he didn’t
notice you coming.”
Bomanz limped over, watched Stancil brush loose soil off a perfectly preserved breastplate. It was as black and shiny as rubbed ebony. An ornate ornament in silver bossed its center. “Uhm.” Bomanz popped out of the pit. “Nobody around. That half-man, half-beast design. That’s Shapeshifter.”
“He led the TelleKurre.”
“He wouldn’t be buried here, though.”
“It’s his armor, Pop.”
“I can see that, dammit.” He popped up like a curious groundhog. No one in sight. “Sit up here and keep watch. I’ll dig it out.”
“You sit, Pop.”
“You were up all night.”
“I’m a lot younger than you are.”
“I’m feeling just fine, thank you.”
“What color is the sky, Pop?”
“Blue. What kind of question. …”
“Hallelujah. We agree on something. You’re the most contrary old goat. …”
“Stancil!”
“Sorry, Pop. We’ll take turns. Flip a coin to see who goes first.”
Bomanz lost. He settled down with his pack as a backrest. “Going to have to spread the dig out. Going straight down like this, it’ll cave in first heavy rain.”
“Yeah. Be a lot of mud. Ought to think about a drainage trench. Hey, Pop, there’s nobody in this thing. Looks like the rest of his armor, too.” Stancil had recovered a gauntlet and uncovered part of a greave.
“Yeah? I hate to turn it in.”
“Turn it in? Why? Tokar could get a fortune for it.”
“Maybe so. But what if friend Men fu did spot it? He’ll tell Besand out of spite. We’ve got to stay on his good side. We don’t need this stuff.”
“Not to mention he might have planted it.”
“What?”
“It shouldn’t be here, right? And no body inside the armor. And the soil is loose.”
Bomanz grunted. Besand was capable of a frame. “Leave everything the way it is. I’ll go get him.”
Sour-faced old fart,” Stancil muttered as the Monitor departed. “I bet he did plant it.”
“No sense cussing. We can’t do anything.” Bomanz settled against his pack.
“What’re you doing?”
“Loafing. I don’t feel like digging anymore.” He ached all over. It had been a busy morning.