by Glen Cook
“No. Barundandi is the devil we know. An honest man would be harder to manipulate.”
“I loathe the man.”
“That’s because he’s loathsome. Not unlike other men in similar positions of petty power. But we’re not here to reform Taglios, Sleepy. We’re here to find out how to release the Captured. And to torment our enemies when doing that doesn’t jeopardize our primary mission. And we did a great job of that today. The Radisha was crushed by our messages.”
Sahra told me what she had discovered. Then I told her about my own small triumph. “I got into the restricted stacks today. And I found what I think might be the original of one of the Annals we’ve got hidden in the Palace. It’s in terrible shape but it’s all there and it’s still readable. And there may be more volumes. I only got through part of the restricted stack before I had to go help Baladitya find his slippers so his grandson could lead him home.”
I had the book right there on the table. I patted it proudly. Sahra asked, “Won’t it be missed?”
“I hope not. I replaced it with one of the moldy discards I’ve been saving.”
Sahra squeezed my hand. “Good. Good. Things have gone well lately. Tobo, would you find Goblin? I have an idea to run past him.”
I said, “I’ll see how our guests are doing. Somebody might be ready to whisper confidences in my ear.”
But only Swan wanted my ear and he did not have confidences in mind. In his way he was as incorrigible as One-Eye, yet he had a style that did not offend me. I do not think Swan had an evil bone in him. Like so many people, he was a victim of circumstance, struggling to keep his head up in the turbulence of the river of events.
Uncle Doj was displeased with his circumstances even though he was not a prisoner. “We can certainly get along without that book,” I told him. “I doubt that I could read it, anyway. Mostly I want to make sure it doesn’t get back to the Deceivers. What we really need is your knowledge.”
Doj was a stubborn old man. He was not yet ready to make deals or to look for allies.
Before I left I asked, “Will it all die with you? Will you be the last Nyueng Bao to follow the Path? Thai Dei can’t if he’s buried under the glittering plain.” I winked. I understood Doj better than he thought. His problem was not a conflict with his morality, it was a matter of control. He wanted to do everything his way, no strings.
He would come around if I kept reminding him of his mortality and his lack of a son or an apprentice. Nyueng Bao are famous for their stubbornness but even they will not sacrifice all their hopes and dreams rather than adjust.
I visited Narayan just long enough to offer a reminder that our interest did not lie in harming him. But the only reason we had for keeping the Daughter of Night healthy was our hope of his cooperation. “You can be stubborn for a while yet. We have several tasks to wrap up before you become our main interest and we concentrate on murdering your dreams.”
That was my whole focus with each of our prisoners. Make them put their hopes and dreams on the line. Maybe I could weasel my way into history, as famous or infamous as Soulcatcher and Widowmaker, as Stormshadow and Longshadow, remembered forever as the Dreamkiller.
I had a vision of myself drifting through the night like Murgen, disembodied but dragging along a bottomless bag of black night into which I stuffed all the dreams I stole from restless sleepers. I was a real old-time rakshasa, there.
The Daughter of Night did not look up when I went to view her. She was in a cage Banh Do Trang used for keeping large animals of the deadliest sort. Sometimes leopards, but mostly tigers. A fully grown male tiger was worth a fortune in the apothecary market. She was shackled as well. The cats never were. In addition, I believe, a little opium and nightshade were used to season her food. Nobody wanted to underestimate her potential. Her family had a dire history. And she had a goddess on her shoulder.
Reason told me to kill her right now, before Kina wakened as much as she could. That would buy me the rest of my lifetime free of the end of the world. It would take the dark goddess generations to create another Daughter of Night.
Reason also told me that if the girl died, the Captured would spend the rest of time in those caverns under the glittering plain.
Reason told me, after a moment watching her, that she was not just ignoring me. She did not know I was there. Her mind was elsewhere. Which was not a comfortable feeling at all. If Kina could turn her loose, the way Murgen was loose...
25
Master Santaraksita paused to tell me, “It was good of you to care for Baladitya yesterday, Dorabee. I had forgotten him in my eagerness to assemble the bhadrhalok. But you should be careful or his grandson will begin expecting you to walk the old man home for him. He tried it with me.”
I did not look into his eyes, though I did want to see what was there. There was a tightness in his voice that told me he had something on his mind. But I had taken too many liberties with Dorabee already. He would not stare into the eyes of the priestly caste. “I but did the right thing, Master. Are we not taught to respect and aid our elders? If we do not when we are young, who will respect and aid us when we ourselves become frail?”
“Indeed. Nevertheless, you continue to amaze and intrigue me, Dorabee.”
Uncomfortable, I tried to change the subject by inquiring, “Was the meeting of the bhadrhalok productive, Master?”
Santaraksita frowned, then smiled. “You’re very subtle, Dorabee. No. Of course not. We’re the bhadrhalok. We talk. We don’t act.” For a moment he mocked his own kind. “We’ll still be debating what form our resistance should take when the Protector perishes of old age.”
“Is it true what they say, Master? That she’s four hundred years old, yet fresh as a bride?” I did not need to know, I just needed conversation to nurture Santaraksita’s surprising interest in me.
“That seems to be the common belief, handed down from the northern mercenaries and those travelers the Radisha adopted.”
“She must be a great sorceress indeed, then.”
“Do I detect a note of jealousy?”
“Would we all not like to live forever?”
He looked at me oddly. “But we shall, Dorabee. This life is only a stage.”
Wrong thing to say, Dorabee Dey. “I meant in this world. I find myself largely content to remain Dorabee Dey Banerjae.”
Santaraksita frowned slightly but let it go. “How are your studies coming?”
“Wonderfully, Master. I’m especially fond of the historical texts. I’m discovering so many interesting facts.”
“Excellent. Excellent. If there’s anything I can do to help...”
I asked, “Is there a written Nyueng Bao language? Or was there ever?”
That took him from the blind side. “Nyueng Bao? I don’t know. Why in the world would you —”
“Something I’ve seen a few times near where I live. Nobody knows what it means. The Nyueng Bao down there won’t talk. But I never heard of them being literate.”
He rested a hand on my shoulder for a moment. “I’ll find out for you.” His fingers seemed to be trembling. He murmured something unintelligible and hurried away.
26
Word was in that the Bhodi disciples were not happy with us for stealing their thunder at the Palace gate. I wondered what they would think when the news arrived about our behavior at Semchi. That seemed to be coming together perfectly for us. Unless Soulcatcher was thinking farther ahead than we could detect.
Murgen had Slink’s party well on the way to the village. And moving faster than the group the Protector had sent to destroy the Bhodi Tree. That group outnumbered our brothers but did not expect any resistance. In a few days it would turn really nasty down there.
As the weather had here. Storm season had arrived. I had been delayed coming home by a ferocious thunderstorm that flooded some streets and sent down hail an inch in diameter. The kangali and other children went out and tried to gather up the ice, barking in pain every time a hailstone found unprotected sk
in. For a short while the air was almost tolerably cool. But then the storm moved on and the heat returned worse than it had been before. The stench of the city welled up. One storm was not enough to sluice it clean, only to turn everything over. In a few days the insects would be more miserable than ever before.
I hugged my burden and told myself I would not have to stay in this cesspool much longer.
“One more to locate and I’ll have everything I need from the library.” My new acquisition lay open for public viewing. Of course no one could read it. Not even me. But I was confident that I now possessed another original of the three missing Annals. Perhaps the very first, since it was so alien. The other seemed to be inscribed in the same alphabet, much modified and somewhat like that used in the discarded volume I had rescued. If the language was the same, I would be able to figure it out eventually.
One-Eye cackled. “Yeah. Everything but somebody to translate that stuff for you. Everything but your new boyfriend.” He insisted that Master Santaraksita was out to seduce me. And that Santaraksita would be brokenhearted if he succeeded and discovered that I was female.
“That’s enough of that, you filthy old thing.”
“Sacrifice for the cause, Little Girl.” He started to offer some graphic advice. He had been drinking again. Or was drinking still.
Sahra arrived. She tossed a large bundle of pages my way. “Can it, One-Eye. Find Goblin. There’s work to do.” Of me she demanded, “Why do you put up with that?”
“He’s harmless. And he’s for sure too darned old to change. And if he’s nagging me, he’s not getting into something that’s going to get us all killed.”
“So you’re sacrificing for the cause.”
“Something like that. That was quick.” Goblin had arrived. “What happened to One-Eye?”
“Taking a leak. What do I have to do now?”
Sahra said, “I can get into the Anger Chamber The rest is up to you.”
“You do this and you’ll never be able to get back into the Palace. You know that, don’t you?”
“What’re we talking about?” I asked.
Sahra said, “I think we can kidnap the Radisha. With a little luck and a lot of help from Goblin and One-Eye.”
“Goblin’s right. You do that, we’d all better be a hundred miles away by the time the word gets out. I have a better idea. If we have to give away the fact that we can get inside the Palace, do it by sabotaging Soulcatcher. Get to one of her carpets, rig it to come apart under her when she’s two hundred feet up and moving fast.”
“I like the way you think, Sleepy. Put that on the list, Sahra. I want to be there. It’d be like the time the Howler flew into the side of the Tower at Charm. Man, he must’ve been going at least three times as fast as a horse could run when he hit that wall. Blauw! Hair, teeth and eyeballs all over the —”
“He walked away from that, you idiot.” One-Eye was back. “He’s out there under the plain with our guys right now.” A unique odor suggested that One-Eye had taken a moment out to award himself some medicinal refreshment.
“Stop it. Now.” Sahra was cranky tonight. “Our next step will be to neutralize Chandra Gokhale. We’ve already decided that. These other things we can worry about down the road.”
I observed, “We’ll need to freshen up our evacuation drill in case we need to get out of Taglios in a hurry. The more active we get, the more likely it becomes that something will go wrong. If it does, we’ll have Soulcatcher breathing down our necks.”
Goblin observed, “She isn’t stupid, she’s just lazy.”
I asked Sahra, “Did she call in her shadows yet?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything.”
Goblin grumbled. “What we really need is a formula for doing without sleep. For about a year. Let me see Minh Subredil’s Ghanghesha.”
Sahra sent Tobo to fetch the statue. The boy could be much less unpleasant when he was in a group.
Silence struck as Banh Do Trang rolled in, pushed by one of his own people. He smiled at a private joke. He enjoyed startling us. “One of my men tells me that we have a couple of outsiders caught in the confusion net. They appear to be harmless. An old man and a mute. Somebody will have to get them out and send them on their way without making them suspicious.”
That news gave me a little chill but I did not suspect the truth till poor overworked Tobo and Goblin — the latter going along but staying out of sight while the boy led the intruders to safety — returned and Goblin reported, “I think your boyfriend followed you home, Sleepy.”
“What?”
“There was this terrified old man who tried to impress Tobo with the fact that he was a librarian.” A lot of Taglians would have been impressed. The ability to read was almost a sorcery in itself. “He called his sidekick Adoo. You told us —”
One-Eye began to howl. “The Little Girl’s a regular heartbreaker! Damn, I’d give anything to be there when that oid fool slides his hand into her pants and don’t find what he’s looking for.’’
I was embarrassed. I do not think I have been embarrassed about anything since the first time my uncle Rafi slipped his hand under my sari and did find what he was after. That darned fool Santaraksita! Why did he have to go complicating things like this?
“That’s enough of that!” Sahra snapped. “There’s supposed to be a meeting of the Privy Council tomorrow. I think we can use it to get to Gokhale. But I’ll need to take Sawa and Shikhandini.”
“Why?” I asked. I had no desire to go back inside the Palace ever again.
“That’s great,” One-Eye enthused. “You don’t show at the library tomorrow, that old goat is gonna pine and whine and wonder what happened, if it’s all his fault even though he knows there’s no way you could know he tried to follow you home. You’ll have your hook set, Little Girl. All you have to do is pull him in.”
Sahra snapped, “I said —”
“Wait a minute. He may have a point. Suppose I do play Santaraksita’s game? To the point where I get him to do my translations for me? We could even add him to our collection. I don’t think he has much family. Why don’t we take a closer look, see how long it might be before people wondered why he was missing.”
“Oh, you’re wicked, Little Girl,” One-Eye said. “You’re really wicked.”
“You could find out someday, you keep riding me.”
“About Gokhale?” Sahra asked.
“All right. Why are we taking me and Tobo both?”
“Tobo to put an idea into his head so he gets an itch he’s going to have to go scratch. You to cover us. Just in case. I’ll have Tobo carry his flute.” Tobo’s flute was a small version of the fire-projecting bamboo. “He can turn it over to you once we’re inside.” Tobo had carried that flute every time he had accompanied his mother into the Palace. We try to think ahead. “Also, I want to keep you fresh in Jaul Barundandi’s mind. I’ll definitely have to have you along when I snatch the Radisha. Goblin, what can you do with my Ghanghesha?”
No one else on earth would have dared hand the little wizard a straight line like that. But Sahra was Sahra. She did not have to pay the price.
I started to leave. I had other things to do. Tobo asked, “Is it all right if I show your Annals to Murgen? He wants to read them.”
“You two starting to get along now?”
“I think so.”
“Good. You can let him see them. Tell him not to be too critical. If he is, I won’t come out there and dig him up.”
27
Narayan seemed thoroughly puzzled by my continued interest. I do not believe he remembered me at all. But he now knew that I was female and had been the young man Sleepy that he had encountered, only rarely, ages ago.
“You’ve had time to reflect. Have you decided to help us yet?”
He looked at me with pure venom, yet without obvious personal hatred. I was just a particularly unpleasant obstacle delaying the inevitable triumph of his goddess. He had gotten his mind back int
o a rut.
“All right. I’ll see you again tomorrow night. Your son Aridatha has a leave day coming up. We’ll bring him around to visit you.”
There was a guard watching the Daughter of Night. “What’re you doing here, Kendo?”
“Keeping an eye on —”
“Go away. And don’t come back. And spread the word. Nobody guards the Daughter of Night. She’s too dangerous. Nobody even goes near her unless Sahra or I tell them to. And then they don’t do it alone.”
“She don’t look —”
“She wouldn’t, would she? Start hiking.” I went to the cage. “How long would it take for your goddess to create all the right conditions for the birth of another like you? If I decide to kill you?”
The girl’s gaze rose slowly. I wanted to cringe away from the power in her eyes but I held on. Maybe she should be getting even more opium than she was already.
“Reflect upon your value. And upon my power to destroy it.” I felt puffed up. That was the kind of thing the devas, or lesser gods, blathered at one another on the fringes of the epics spun by the professional storytellers.
She glared. There was so much power in her eyes that I decided Kendo ought to spend a little time in private with Goblin and One-Eye, making sure he had not been taken in already.
“I think that without you there never will be a Year of the Skulls. And I know that you’re still alive only because I want something from Narayan, who loves you like a father.” Singh was her father, for all practical purposes. Croaker had been denied the chance by cruel Fortune. Or, more accurately, by the will of Kina.
“Keep well, dear.” I left. I had a lot of reading to get done. And some writing if I got the chance. My days were always full and all too often they got confused. I decided to do things, then forgot. I told others to do things, then forgot that, too. I was beginning to look forward to the time when our successes — or sufficiently spectacular failures — forced us out of town. I could sneak off somewhere where nobody knew me and just loaf for a few months.
Or for the rest of my life if I wanted.