We stole into Aloe from the east, with the moon out in front, and took station in the shadow of the dome of the temple of Occupoa. From my belly I peered over the edge, every finger squeezing the juice out of the frame beneath the fabric. I did not see much. Initially I thought that was because there was too much down underneath us but soon I realized that it was because Mischievous Rain had positioned us where we were least likely to be seen ourselves. But that meant that we could not see much. It was the classic problem for the intelligence gatherer. The better the look you want the more you need to expose yourself to get it.
The carpet rocked and tilted. I squeezed harder. The frame whimpered. Or maybe that was me. Mischievous Rain sat down beside me. “Have you worked it out yet?”
“I can’t see anything from here.”
“There isn’t anything to see.”
“You know what’s going on?”
“I think I do. Because I haven’t let preconceptions cloud my thinking. You have the facts that I do. You have more experience than I do. Your tardiness to judgment concerns me. Are you willfully refusing to see the truth? Or are you just too dim to gather the facts into the obvious solution?”
I reflected briefly. “I lean toward the latter option.”
“So you’ll disregard facts that, at first glance, don’t appear pertinent?”
“Possibly. What am I missing?”
“Take this to bed with you tonight. Every possibility has to be examined before you deny its place in the equation.”
Sorcerers, sorceresses, and the Taken in particular, love to mess with you that way, by being vague, opaque, completely ambiguous. Always for your own good, of course, so you will commence to begin to think about considering engaging in critical thinking yourself.
* * *
I was alone. The world around me wobbled. The temple dome drifted up to mask the starscape. My companion told me, “Watch for a lone skulker.”
Right. Easy peasy.
She slid the carpet around the south side of the temple, which seemed unnaturally quiet. Then we cruised along six feet above the surface of a secondary street, heading into a familiar quarter. Light shone ahead, accompanied by noise and what pretended to be music.
That would be the Dark Horse and its environs, home away from home for most of the Company. You could not get laid there but Markeg Zhorab would, otherwise, make you supremely comfortable while he relieved you of those pesky coins threatening to drag your trousers down.
The earth fell away suddenly. I squeaked and grabbed me a more solid grip on the carpet frame.
The carpet bucked, lurched, stopped. “High enough, I think.” Mischievous Rain jumped up and tromped over to me. The carpet sagged and slid sideways sickeningly. “Stand up.”
“I would love to do that but my hands seem to be locked on, here.”
“Did you ever fall when you were flying with the Lady or her sister?”
“Never. Not once. But the times that I didn’t fall aren’t the ones that bother me. I’m fussed about the time when I will fall.”
“Just flap your arms real fast.”
I could not respond.
“All right. Yes. I do find your terror amusing. But I promise, I’ll catch you if you go over the side. Now, I need you to at least get up onto your knees so that I can tie this sheen across your eyes.”
Something almost invisible stretched between her hands. It glistened silvery when the moonlight struck it right. “Hurry up! We can be seen silhouetted against a cloud if somebody looks up.”
I did manage to get up onto my knees. She told me, “Keep your eyes open. This will be a waste of time if you don’t.”
More scary stuff. I am sensitive about my vision. But I felt only a gossamer touch before my view of the world shifted dramatically.
Stars became black pricks in a sooty gray curtain. The moon went black, except that the dark part turned a misty red. The world below shone in reddish shades, as well, varying from almost orange to a cardinal verging on old dried blood. Aloe, except where lights burned, was as plain as if it were daytime once I adjusted.
“What do you see?”
I told her.
“Live animals should appear in shades of brown, though smaller creatures may fade toward the red. People and other large beasts will stand out. Watch for a human shape skulking around alone.”
I was inclined to argue but figured she would not trust me to handle the flying while she did the looking down.
Using the Dark Horse as an origin, she circled, lengthening the radius gradually. I spotted a clump of brown things wobbling in the direction of the Company compound.
The Taken repeated, “The one we want will be alone and sneaking.”
I spotted him soon afterward, making a grand pretense of being drunk and lost, but occasionally he darted aside. When we dropped down to check out what he had done we found a freshly installed talisman.
Mischievous Rain said, “We’ve got him. Now we’ll see if my hypothesis holds water. Keep the sheen on. And come here. I need you to direct me. I want to drop down right on top of him.”
* * *
The Third was just a kid, younger than Mischievous Rain, talented in the extreme but unfortunately apprenticed to Goblin and One-Eye. He needed to find the balls to tell them to fuck off when they tried to drag him into something corrupt. Otherwise, sure as shit, someday he would eat the blame for some crime that he had nothing to do with.
He led us to a rented sleeping room just two hundred yards from the Dark Horse and one block off the direct route between the tavern and the Company compound.
I observed, “The little asshole sure crammed a lot of crap in here.”
This room was where the talismans were produced using homemade paper, homemade ink, and some nicely crafted calligrapher’s brushes. There was magic in the air, thick enough for a no-talent like me to taste.
“Look at this,” the Taken told me, having unrolled a scroll found on a lectern crammed into a corner. It bore column upon column of characters resembling those on the talismans. Beside each, in minuscule notation, was a brief paragraph in Levanev, the ancestral language of Aloen. Though I recognized it I could not read more than a handful of nouns.
I grumbled, “This is a bilingual dictionary that must have been stolen from the city library. These characters are ideographs, not letters in any actual alphabet.”
“I see. Somebody has been real naughty.” She spoke a guttural word accompanied by a swift gesture. The Third squeaked. He had been edging toward the doorway. Now, suddenly, he found his feet glued to the floor.
I could not help myself. I laughed.
“You get it now?”
“I got it as soon as I saw who we’d caught. You were right. I was an idiot not to have gone straight there when this shit started happening. It should have been the default supposition.”
* * *
I entered the Dark Horse first, headed for my favorite corner and table. One-Eye, Goblin, Elmo, and a snarky old cook called Chubs were at the late-night tonk, hammer and tongs. One-Eye was losing, as usual, but he was in a good mood anyway. “Sumbitch! Hey! Look what the cat chased in. We been missing you, Mister Pussy Whipped. Your old lady put you out for some exercise? Or did you finally just make a run for it?”
A more gloomy Goblin cracked wise about what would my Tower wife do if she found out about me cheating with Mischievous Rain? Not that he blamed me. The Taken was about as fine a piece of split-tail as ever came around, and please let him know if I ever decided to pass her on.
Then the little toad choked up, all on his own, with no outside help. The color left his face.
One-Eye discarded, cursed the card he drew, then looked up to see what had turned Goblin all squamous.
One-Eye could not go pale. Nature had not engineered him for it. Instead, he lapsed into a state of living, breathing, solid rigor.
Mischievous Rain had come in behind me, guiding the Third by the scruff. She was not pleased by the ban
ter.
I had warned her. Soldiers are not gentlefolk, even while sitting around, killing time. But cultured folk, meaning anyone operating under the delusion that they are more refined than their contemporaries, have to be dunked in reality before they can smell the shit.
I chuckled. “You screwed the goat this time, One-Eye.”
He agreed. He wasted no time offering excuses.
I had failed to suspect him of trying to create a diversion that he hoped would generate an opportunity to nab the Taken’s war chest, which he would then bury somewhere to cool off while the Rebel took the blame, but I had failed only because the scheme was so absurd.
One-Eye is a hundred and giggity-gog years old. Senile dementia had to be setting in. His dumbass plots got dumber by the week. And he just would not learn.
* * *
The Old Man asked me, “Any ideas?”
Goblin did what he could as One-Eye’s advocate but the defense was hopeless. His best option was to keep reminding the judges that the runt wizard was invaluable when the Company had to fight. He was hell to live with but it could get really ugly, having do without him at crunch time.
The other wizards were there: Silent, Two Dead, and Buzzard Neck. Silent was a judge. The Lieutenant was another judge. Elmo was the third judge, representing the enlisted viewpoint. The Third was present, too, but his only job was to keep his big mouth shut.
Two Dead, sounding especially earnest, said, “Perhaps we could keep him in suspended existence during stretches when his skills are not required. We could keep him in a special coffin aboard a dedicated cart and only bring him out when the situation demands it.”
No way was Two Dead actually serious, though he had shown few prior signs of possessing a sense of humor.
The Captain replied, “A sweetly seductive suggestion, Colonel. But the long-term effect might be counterproductive. If we put him into storage his natural born villainy wouldn’t bleed off. The pressure would build and build. When we did bring him out…”
He made a two-hands explosion gesture with sound added and let the rest hang. Everyone chuckled. But that, likely, was just how it would go.
One-Eye failed to appreciate the humor. He was inclined to squabble about it, too, but did exercise unusual self-control. He did recognize the depth of the hole that he had dug himself.
“Way deeper than usual,” I said, thinking out loud.
“Croaker?”
“Sir. I just realized something. Our colleague’s behavioral problems escalated substantially only this past year, while growing a great deal less subtle.”
“Uhm?”
Many pairs of eyes, and one singleton, turned my way.
“The One-Eye we had underfoot this time last year was a serious pain in the ass part of the time…”
“All of the time.” Goblin pretended a cough into the crook of his arm.
“… but he never tried anything this boneheaded. That One-Eye had a well-tuned sense of self-preservation. He would’ve stuck to things less likely to get him killed.”
An enduring feature of One-Eye’s schemes is that they blow up or burn down. Only … I suspect that that is because we only find out about the ones that do fail.
The Old Man saw where I was headed. “The Limper.”
“Yes. That evil little turd. One more time.” We knew that the Limper had done wicked things to One-Eye’s and Goblin’s minds. One-Eye’s recent heightened dumbassedness could all be Limper-designed.
Mischievous Rain said, “Let me straighten him out.”
One-Eye went from slumped, passive, and resigned to bugfuck berserker in a wink. But Buzzard Neck, three times his size, was behind him and primed. Eye wild, wide, and white, One-Eye froze. Buzz pushed down on his shoulders. Mischievous Rain slapped him before he could complete a spell. His eye rolled up. He toppled onto his ugly old face.
The Captain told Mischievous Rain, “There you go. He’s all yours. Don’t break him. He’s not precious but he can be useful.”
“My sole purpose will be to make him whole. Assuming he hasn’t just gone totally old-man batshit crazy.”
* * *
I was not privy to what happened with One-Eye once the Taken took over. Neither did I get to witness her follow-up work with Goblin. The Third took a turn following those two. Two Dead and Buzz presumably endured less aggressive interviews, but they were not pleased when they emerged, either.
Silent, though, never had a one-on-one with the Taken.
Silent had no agenda. He had no interest in much but his service with the Company. Our supreme mistress and her Taken had no need to be concerned.
It took Mischievous Rain weeks to wring out and tame the demons and afflictions that the Limper had installed in days. Even then she managed only an approximation. One-Eye would always be One-Eye.
Poor, whining the Third suffered the least. The Limper had seen that he was not wicked enough to be used for anything freaky. The kid was, therefore, humiliated because he was considered a lightweight.
Buzzard Neck and Two Dead were another issue. Their loyalty was assured by the refuge the Company provided. They would not survive on their own. Not in this part of the world.
* * *
Winter packed it in and slunk off for an eight-month holiday. Light snows became regular rains. The rains in time relaxed into random light drizzles. Then the mud dried up and agriculture set in.
I treated a lot of foot fungus. I got our cisterns cleaned and refilled with captured rainwater, which was healthier than the water from the creek at the bottom of the hill or from our open on-site well. I agitated for recruiting a veterinarian. The Old Man had convinced himself that us owning big herds would increase our range and mobility. I was skeptical. Having lots of animals meant needing lots of people to take care of the animals. We had accumulated riding and dray horses, donkeys, mules, cattle, oxen, sheep, hogs, goats, and several camels. I do what I can but I am an amateur, just skilled enough to know which end of the critter the chow goes in.
* * *
Gurdlief Speak got over his discomfort with Mischievous Rain’s kids and started taking advantage of her hospitality. He would visit me briefly, bringing some supposed new folktale or fresh gob of gossip, then would announce that he had to get going. He would just pop round to say hello to Firefly and Shin before he headed back to town.
The boy had changed. He was no longer eager to latch onto the Company. He thought Mischievous Rain’s presence guaranteed that we were headed into some serious shit. He was disinclined to join the communal swim.
He based his assessment on snatches of conversation overheard while playing with Firefly and Shin.
I heard nothing that interesting, ever, in the time that I spent with the twins and their mother.
So, who was playing what with whom? Was the Taken feeding select disinformation to the Aloen community?
The ribbing about me being the Lady’s snuggle bunny gained nostalgic appeal considering the crap I suffered now, because I lived in the same building as a real live pretty woman—the most beautiful woman that most of these guys had ever seen. They could not believe that there was nothing going on. Too often I overheard something like, “She’s got to be fucking somebody, yeah, but how come it’s got to be Croaker?” Meaning, “Why couldn’t it be me?”
The Old Man had to know. He was the dick who set it up, undoubtedly on instructions. Candy and the Lieutenant probably knew something, too. And so might any sorcerer perverted enough to join in. None of them were likely to ease my burden.
Croaker’s personal discomfort never signifies.
* * *
The children had been put down in beds that looked like they got used only when witnesses were around. Ankou had gone out to terrorize the night. He might be no real cat but he enjoyed doing tomcat stuff. He had turned up missing half of his right ear a few days gone. Mischievous Rain got rattled, which did not seem appropriate. Tomcats get into fights.
I said, “You’re not wearing th
e midnight yukata today.”
“It has to get washed sometime.” Wistful smile.
“The lamb was good.”
“Sana is a superb cook. For a child. What’s bothering you? Why not just get to it?”
I did like that. Whether she was Tides Elba or Mischievous Rain she did not waste time dancing around things.
“It’s the living arrangements.”
Big smile. “You don’t want people to think we’re knocking boots?”
“Uh … sort of.”
“Take that into town. Half the women there will want to find out what makes you special enough to service one of the Taken.”
I had run into a touch of that already.
Mischievous Rain laughed but did not tinkle, not being in her usual outfit. “You’re blushing. At your age.” Then, “I shouldn’t be cruel. There is a reason for our arrangement.”
“I assumed that. But I don’t get it.”
“It’s so that people do believe we’re attached at the groin. That saves me having to deal with six hundred other horny studs. Somewhat. Because of the stories about you and the Lady … Which have become believable because she checks up on you sometimes. Right?”
I nodded.
“Usually when it’s inconvenient? With witnesses around?”
“Yes.” I recalled several contacts that had come with wind chimes singing in the background.
“So the man who went inside the Tower for a while seems to have become especially favored by the entity that dwells there. Who would risk her wrath by messing with him?”
“But I don’t want…” Oh, why bother? I had caught wind of the bear in the woods.
Croaker’s imaginary special relationship would be used to shield Mischievous Rain from unproductive distractions. The woman had a mission. The Annalist’s steadfast support had been crafted by the playwright in the Tower.
I considered asking who would protect her from me but that seemed both a little lame and a lot sour grapes.