he was doing it. I did not think his desertion was part of the Old Man’s master plan. I refused to believe that Croaker could plan that far ahead. The pasty-faced little wizard was out there somewhere, playing out his own scheme.
I did not get many chances to look for him anymore. The dreams did not come as often now. If they did I visited Sarie first. Sarie and my son, that absolutely beautiful drooling lump she nicknamed Tobo because she did not want to pick a real name without me there to talk it over and find out face-to-face what his name would be and why.
She was determined to join me, though by now even the most remote parts of the swamp had heard about the falling-out between the Radisha and the Black Company. That would put Sahra at greater risk if she left the temple. Almost all the Nyueng Bao who had left their swamps in recent times have been associated with the Company somehow.
Sarie’s keepers were alert. They expected her to try something now she was no longer the size of a small house. Clever woman, she was using guerrilla tactics while she regained her strength. Every day in every way she made the priestly population more miserable. That was easy. She just imitated her mother. When the time came they would, probably, lack enthusiasm for the task of her recapture.
Croaker stared at Lady. He was waiting for her to say something else about her sister. The others did the same. Catcher weighed on all our minds. Her luck never stopped running strong. Her grudge list kept getting longer. Though there was no way we could hurt our cause any more. She could not do worse than kill us, could she?
Hell, we all take on a death sentence when we join the Company.
Lady said, “Several soldiers have gone missing the last couple of nights. Some probably deserted. But not all of them.” She waved. Isi and Ochiba, already cued, brought a bundle to the front of the crowd. They dropped it on the dirt floor.
I did not remind the Old Man that we could enjoy real floors and real furniture if he would just move into Overlook.
Lady said, “This may be a little ripe.”
Oh-oh.
Isi and Ochiba spun the dead man out of his wrappings. He did not stink as bad as I expected. He was shriveled like an old mummy. His mouth was open in a scream that would never end. He seemed to have suffered a lot of bruises before he died.
Those would have been self-inflicted during his final struggle. “Shadow got him,” I said. Needlessly.
Croaker eyed me. I shrugged. “No shadows have gotten through since I’ve been on guard.” I was sure. There would have been an uproar.
“They’re under control, then,” he said. “It’s her, using Longshadow’s leftovers.”
Catcher was the new Shadowmaster. Maybe she was honing her skills.
Lady observed, “There’s nothing we can do about this kind of attack except never go anywhere alone and never without bamboo... What’s the matter with him?”
The “him” she referred to was the Company Annalist, who had started making weird noises. He jerked around, apparently trying to swallow his own tongue. So they told me later. At the time I was out of touch with my body entirely. I was a fly who never saw the swatter coming.
I went to the place of all the bones for a moment and for that whole eternity seemed to be smeared all over the grim landscape. A white crow mocked me. Then I was the white crow. Then I was out of there but I did not follow my habitual course. I did not get to see all those grumpy old men glowering from their cocoons of ice. I got to wing my way away through curtains of darkness back to those gaunt and wonderful days when first I met my Sarie, then before that, where I met my own ghost and joined it in a tour of the besieged city. None of the words from my invisible beak were my own but the madwoman who manufactured them did not seem to be paying attention to or really directing what was happening. Poor me. I was like a moth caught in an unexpected squall. The hammer of my desperate wings did nothing to daunt a gale indifferent to my existence.
I saw a lot of death and despair. I learned nothing new and saw nothing I had not had a more intimate relationship with in the past.
Catcher maybe just poked at me in passing, because she was bored, or maybe she was unaware that she had bumped me at all. It did not matter. I could not retaliate. All I could do was flap like a son of a bitch and hope I could survive one more storm.
Darkness came.
90
I wakened in the alcove where Smoke used to be stored. It was dark. I had no idea how long I had been out. The meeting was over, that was certain. I did not hear a sound.
I started to clamber out of there, found I was incredibly weak. My legs betrayed me when I tried to stand. I pitched forward through the curtain masking the alcove.
There was a sudden mouselike scurry. I lifted my head. The little bit of light betrayed the rodent.
Thai Dei was stuffing papers back into piles while trying to appear innocent. Maybe he was. He could not read.
“There you are. I got worried.” He helped me up. “What happened?”
My knees were watery. “I had one of those attacks like I used to have when we were in Dejagore and Taglios.”
“Why did they... ? They all trooped out of here hours ago. Even the guards went away.”
“What time is it?” The meeting had begun early in the morning.
“Be sunset in an hour.”
“Shit. A whole day shot, then.” Thai Dei helped me stay standing. I did not shake him off. I looked for food. Food always helped after a long ghostwalk with Smoke.
This was not the same. At least cold, tough, burnt mutton did not help. And there was nothing else available.
What I wanted was something alcoholic. A few amateurs had arisen to take One-Eye’s place. Best known were Willow Swan and Cordy Mather, who had stayed around despite being free to go back north. Cordy no longer had that fire in his belly where the Radisha was concerned. But their product was no good. And, if I wanted some, I had to acquire it through intermediaries since we all had to pretend to observe the rules.
But I had a suspicion, of late, about where One-Eye could have hidden his manufacturing equipment. There was a small, reinforced cubby in my old dugout where I had kept the Annals and the odd private item. It had survived disasters unscathed. Mother Gota had helped build it.
We climbed up out of Croaker’s dugout, me still wobble-kneed and griping, “I wish the hell he’d move into the fucking fortress.” The experimentation was all over but our crowd was still scattered through the hills, roughing it. An hour of light remained. “Where is everybody?” I did not see a soul closer than the ruins of Kiaulune. That gave me a little shock of fright. Had I returned to the world I left when the seizure took me? Was I caught in another layer of dream?
“They all went away. Even the guards.” Thai Dei repeated the news as though he was talking to someone both deaf and dense. “Else I could not have entered the Liberator’s shelter.”
It had been a while since anybody called the Old Man that. “I take it Uncle Doj went to keep an eye on them.”
Thai Dei did not reply.
I headed for my former home. “Compared to the bunker we moved to over there this dump was a palace.”
Lady and the Old Man had turned my palace into a prison. The downhill side entrance that we put in for Mother Gota and Uncle Doj now opened into an exercise area fenced with captured spears. Lisa Bowalk lay in a cage there, muzzle on paws, exposed to the elements, dully resigned. The Prahbrindrah Drah paced, avoiding glittering spearpoints and the reach of the shapeshifter’s claws. He seemed patient, counting his condition only a temporary setback.
