73
When I was sure nobody would notice I pulled all my brothers inside. We bolted up and locked up and left Dejagore to its misery. We took the Nyueng Bao survivors with us. Excepting a few men who kept watch from lookouts accessible only from inside we withdrew into the deepest, most hidden parts of the warrens, behind booby traps and secret doors and a web of confusion spells scattered by Goblin and One-Eye, who left only the occasional flicker of a doppelganger to mark our passing.
I started out sharing my quarters with eight guests. After just a few hours I told Uncle Doj, “Let’s you and me take a walk.”
With all those Nyueng Bao down there the air was stuffy and getting riper fast. Light was provided by candles so scattered you could get lost trekking from one to the next.
Uncle Doj was close to being spooked. “I hate it, too,” I told him. “It keeps me riding the edge of a scream. But we’ll manage. We lived this way for years once.”
“No one can live like this. Not for long.” “The Company did, though. It was a terrible place. It was called the Plain of Fear, with good reason. It was filled with weird creatures and every one of them would kill you in a blink. We were hunted constantly by armies led by wizards way worse than Shadowspinner. But we gutted it out. And we came through it. Right here in these tunnels you have five survivors. who can tell you about it.”
The light was too bad to read him, though that was difficult in broad daylight. I told him, “I’m going to go crazy if all of you stay with me. I need room. Nobody can get around without stepping on somebody right now.”
“I understand. But I do not know how to help.” “We have empty rooms. Thai Dei and his baby can have one. You could. Sahra could share one with her mother.”
He smiled. “You are open and honest but pay too little attention to Nyueng Bao ways. Many things happened the night you helped Thai Dei rescue this family.” I snorted. “Some rescue.” “You saved all who could be saved.” “What a good boy am I.”
“You had neither an obligation nor any cause of honor.” In actuality he used honor and obligation in lieu of Nyueng Bao concepts of similar but not identical meaning which include overtones of free will participation in a divine machination. “I did what seemed like the right thing.” “Indeed. Without any appeal or obligation. Which caused your current predicament.”
“I must be missing something.”
“Because you are not Nyueng Bao. Thai Dei will not leave you now. He is the oldest male. He owes you six lives. His baby will not leave him. Sahra will not leave because she must remain under her brother’s protection until she marries. And, as you can see, she may be a while getting through the horror. In this city, upon this pilgrimage she never wanted to make, she has lost everything that ever meant anything to her. Except her mother.”
“A man might almost think the gods had it in for her,” I said, then hoped that did not sound too much like a wisecrack.
“One might. Standardbearer, the only good thing she recalls about that hellnight is you. She will cling to you the way a desperate swimmer will cling to a rock in a rushing stream.”
It was time to be careful. A big part of me wished her clinging was more than metaphorical. “How about Ky Gota and those other kids?”
“The children can be adopted into the families of their mothers. Gota, surely, can move.” Doj continued muttering under his breath, which was uncharacteristic. Sounded like something about wanting to move her a couple thousand miles. “Though she will not take it well.”
“Don’t tell me you’re less than enchanted with Ky Gota too?”
“No one is enchanted with that illtempered lizard.”
“And I once thought that you two were married.”
He stopped cold, stunned. “You’re mad!”
“I changed my mind, didn’t I?”
“Hong Tray, old witch, what hast thou wished upon me?”
“What?”
“Talking to myself, Standardbearer. Engaging in the debate I cannot lose. That woman, Hong Tray, my mother’s cousin, was a witch. She could see into the future sometimes and if what she saw failed to please her she wanted it changed. And she had some strange ideas about that.”
“I trust you know what you’re talking about.”
He did not get it. “Not entirely. The witch toyed with all our destinies but never explained. Perhaps she was blind to her own fate.”
I let myself be distracted. “What will your people do now?” “We will survive, Standardbearer. Like you Soldiers of Darkness, that is what we do.”
“If you really think you owe me for stumbling in there with Thai Dei, tell me what that means. Soldiers of Darkness. Stone Soldier. Bone Warrior. What do they mean?”
“One might almost accept your protestations.”
“Look at it this way. If I do know what you’re talking about you have nothing to lose by telling me what I already know.”
In that light it was hard to tell but I believe Uncle Doj smiled again. For the second time in one day. “Clever,” he said. And did not explain a thing.
74
Uncle Doj relieved me of most of my guests. I ended up shar j ing quarters with Thai Dei and his son To Tan, plus Sahra. :j Sahra helped with the baby and struggled to put together meals, though the Company kitchen could serve everyone in the warrens. She needed to stay busy. Thai Dei followed me almost everywhere. Both he and Sahra were lethargic and uncommunicative and added up to about half a human being between them.
I began to worry. They belonged to a hardy people accustomed to surviving cruel disasters. They should show some signs of recovery.
I assembled the brains of the outfit: Cletus, Loftus, Longinus, Goblin and One-Eye, Otto and Hagop. “I got some questions, troops.”
“He got to be here?” Goblin meant Thai Dei.
“He’s all right. Ignore him.”
“What kind of questions?” One-Eye demanded.
“So far we haven’t had any major health problems in the Company. But there’s cholera and typhoid out there, not to mention plenty of the old fashioned drizzling shits. We all right?”
Goblin muttered something and passed gas loudly.
“Barbarian,” One-Eye sneered. “We’re all right because we follow Croaker’s health rules like they was religious laws. Only we can’t make the rules stick much longer. We’re almost out of fuel. And these Nyueng Bao. They don’t like to bother boiling water and keeping clean and not shitting where they live. We got them going along right now but it ain’t going to last.”
“It’s been overcast and nasty for a few days, I hear. Are we collecting any rainwater?”
“Plenty for us,” Loftus told me. “But not enough for us and them, let alone getting any put back into the cisterns.”
“I was afraid of that. About the fuel, I mean. You guys know any way to fix rice or beans so you can digest them without cooking them?”
Nobody knew. Longinus suggested, “Maybe soaking them a long time in water might help. My mother did that.”
“Damn. I really want us to get through this. But how?”
Goblin seemed to develop a small secret smile at that, like he had a definite idea. He exchanged glances with
