Wonderful. But Opal was only a few weeks away. From “Opal it was a short passage over the Sea of Torments to ports outside the empire. I thought. I wanted to get out while our luck was holding.”
“You understand, don’t you, Croaker? It’ll only be a few days. Honest. Just long enough to shape things up. The empire is a good machine that works smooth as long as the proconsuls are sure someone is in charge.”
“All right. All right. We can last a couple days. As long as you keep people away. And you keep out of the way yourself, most of the time. Don’t let them get too good a look at you.”
“I don’t intend to. Croaker?” “Yeah?”
“Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs.” Startled, I laughed. She kept getting more human all the time. And more able to laugh at herself.
She had good intentions. But he-or she-who would rule an empire becomes slave to its administrative detail. A few days came and went. And a few more. And a few more still.
I could entertain myself skulking around the Tower’s libraries, digging into rare texts from the Domination or before, unravelling the snarled threads of northern history, but for the rest of the guys it was rough. There was nothing for them to do but try to keep out of sight and worry. And bait Goblin and One-Eye, though they did not have much luck with that. To those of us without talent the Tower was just a big dark pile of rock, but to those two it was a great throbbing engine of sorcery, still peopled by numerous practitioners of the dark arts. They lived every moment in dread.
One-Eye handled it better than Goblin. He managed to escape occasionally, going out to the old battlefield to prowl among his memories. Sometimes I joined him, halfway tempted to take up Lady’s invitation to open a few old graves.
“Still not comfortable about what happened?” One-Eye asked one afternoon, as I stood leaning on a bowstave over a marker bearing the name and sigil of the Taken who had been called the Faceless Man. One-Eye’s tone was as serious as it ever gets.
“Not entirely,” I admitted. “I can’t pin it down, and it don’t matter much now, but when you reflect on what happened here, it don’t add up. I mean, it did at the time. It all looked like it was inevitable. A great kill-off that rid the world of a skillion Rebels and most of the Taken, leaving the Lady a free hand and setting her up for the Dominator at the same time. But in the context of later events ...”
One-Eye had started to stroll, pulling me along in his wake. He came to a place that was not marked at all, except in his memory. A thing called a forvalaka had perished there. A thing that had slaughtered his brother - maybe-way back in the days when we first became involved with Soulcatcher, the Lady’s legate to Beryl. The forvalaka was a sort of vampirous wereleopard originally native to One-Eye’s own home jungle, somewhere way down south. It had taken One-Eye a year to catch up with and have his revenge upon this one.
“You’re thinking about how hard it was to get rid of the Limper,” he said. His voice was thoughtful. I knew he was recalling something I thought he had put out of mind.
We were never certain that the forvalaka which killed Tom-Tom was the forvalaka that paid the price. Because in those days the Taken Soulcatcher worked closely with another Taken called Shapeshifter and there was evidence to suggest Shifter might have been in Beryl that night. And using the forvalaka shape to assure the destruction of the ruling family so the empire could take over on the cheap.
If One-Eye had not avenged Tom-Tpm on the right creature it was far too late for tears. Shifter was another of the victims of the Battle at Charm.
“I’m thinking about Limper,” I admitted. “I killed him at that inn, One-Eye. I killed him good. And if he hadn’t turned up again, I’d never have doubted that he was gone.”
“And no doubts about these?”
“Some.”
“You want to sneak out after dark and dig one of them up?”
“What’s the point? There’ll be somebody in the grave, and no way to prove it isn’t who it’s supposed to be.”
“They were killed by other Taken and by members of the Circle. That’s a little different than getting worked on by a no-talent like you.”
He meant no talent for sorcery. “I know. That’s what keeps me from getting obsessed with the whole mess. Knowing that those who supposedly killed them really had the power to do them in.”
One-Eye stared at the ground where once a cross stood with the forvalaka nailed upon it. After a while he shivered and came back to now. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. It was long ago, if not very far away. And far away is where we’ll be if we ever get out of here.” He pulled his floppy black hat forward to keep the sun out of his eyes, looked up at the Tower. We were being watched.
“Why does she want to go with us? That’s the one I keep coming back to. What’s in this for her?”
One-Eye looked at me with the oddest expression. He pushed his hat back, put his hands on his hips, cocked his head a moment, then shook it slowly. “Croaker. Sometimes you’re too much to be believed. Why are you hanging around here waiting for her instead of heading out, putting miles behind?”
It was a good question and one I shied off anytime I tried to examine it. “Well, I guess I kind of like her and think she deserves a shot at some kind of regular life. She’s all right. Really.”
I caught a transient smirk as he turned to the unmarked grave. “Life wouldn’t be half fun without you in it, Croaker. Watching you bumble through is an education in itself. How soon can we get moving? I don’t like this place.”
“I don’t know. A few more days. There’re things she has to wrap up first.” “That’s what you said-” I am afraid I got snappish. “I’ll let you know when.”
When seemed never to come. Days passed. Lady remained ensnared in the web of the administrative spider.
Then the messages began pouring in from the provinces, in response to edicts from the Tower. Each one demanded immediate attention.
We had been closed up in that dread place for two weeks.
“Get us the hell out of here, Croaker,” One-Eye demanded. “My nerves can’t take this place anymore.”
“Look, there’s stuff she’s got to do.”
“There’s stuff we’ve got to do, according to you. Who says what we got to do has to wait on what she’s got to do?”
And Goblin jumped on me. With both feet. “We put up with your infatuation for about twenty years, Croaker,” he exaggerated. “Because it was amusing. Something to ride you about when times got boring. But it ain’t nothing I mean to get killed over, I absodamnlutely guarantee. Even if she makes us all field marshals.”
I warded a flash of anger. It was hard, but Goblin was right. I had no business hanging around there, keeping everyone at maximum risk. The longer we waited, the more certain it was that something would go sour. We were having enough trouble getting along with the Tower Guards, who resented our being so close to their mistress after haying fought against her for so many years.
“We ride out in the morning,” I said. “My apologies. I was elected to lead the Company, not just Croaker. Forgive me for losing sight of that.”
Crafty old Croaker. One-Eye and Goblin looked properly abashed. I grinned. “So go get packed. We’re gone with the morning sun.”
She wakened me in the night. For a moment I thought...
I saw her face. She had heard.
She begged me to stay just one more day. Or two, at the most. She did not want to be here any more than we did, surrounded and taunted by all that she had lost. She wanted to go away, to go with us, to remain with me, the only friend she’d ever had-
She broke my heart.
It sounds sappy when you write it down in words, but a man has to do what a man has to do. In a way I was proud of me. I did not give an inch.
“There is no end to it,” I told her. “There’ll always be just one more thing that has to be done. Khatovar gets no closer while I wait. Death does. I value you, too. I don’t want to leave... Death lurks in every shadow in this place. It writhes in the heart of every man who resents my influence.” It was that kind of empire too, and in the past few days a lot of old imperials were given cause to resent me deeply.
“You promised me dinner at the Gardens in Opal.”
