Singh? Hardly. His persistence nudged my paranoia level whenever I thought about him.
Croaker, of course, was more enduringly suspicious than I was.
We descended into the Old Man’s dugout.
He told the men carrying Sleepy, “That’s good. The Standardbearer and I will take care of him now. Hold on, Sparkle. I want you to double-check on those men I told to deal with the prisoners. We haven’t given enough consideration to the possibility of treachery amongst our own people.”
Sparkle asked, “You want I should look for anything in particular?”
“Just keep your eyes open.” Croaker turned to me. “I agree with you. We need to drown the whole bunch of them.”
“But Lady has a use for them.”
“Waste not, want not. She says. I keep reminding myself that she’s supposed to be smarter and more experienced than me. Let’s get him undressed. You start at that end.”
Sleepy was awake but showed no interest in conversation. Or in anything else. I asked, “Where’s my horse, Sleepy?”
Croaker chuckled. “Good question, Murgen. You might want to pursue it. Unless you prefer to walk to Khatovar.”
I asked Sleepy several questions. He answered none of them. His eyes would track me and the Old Man but I could not tell if he understood anything.
Croaker said, “We could use Smoke to backtrack him and find out where he’s been and how he lost the beast.”
I grunted. We could have Lady sock the little shit with a knockout spell and make him useful for a while. The hard part would be getting her to agree not to hog him all for herself. “He was wide awake today. Smoke was. You might better make sure she knows.”
Croaker began poking and prodding Sleepy. “Lot of bruises. Must’ve gotten pounded around good.” Sleepy took it silently, without flinching.
“If he was in Catcher’s cave... I saw it happen from ten miles away. It was—”
“I saw enough.” Something was bothering him. He had that air people get when they have something difficult to say and are not morally convinced of their right to say it. Which troubled me. Croaker had no trouble barking at anybody but his old lady. “Been catching up on your Annals, Murgen.”
Oh-oh.
“And I hate to say this, but I don’t like them very much.”
“As I recall, you weren’t going to dictate what I write.”
“That’s right. I’m not going to now. You got the job. You do it. I’m just saying I don’t like what I’ve been reading. Though you have gotten a lot better in some ways. You seen this man naked before?”
“No. Why? Should I have?” I had a feeling he was harboring a big beef with my Annals. Since he was one of probably no more than three people who would read them during my lifetime I supposed I could get into closer touch with the needs of my audience. Or at least pretend to. He could not fire me. Unless he wanted the job back himself. The only candidate lay before us, still untrained, unpolished, unclothed and quite probably unsane. “So what am I doing wrong?”
“You could start by not being so being polite. Look at your pal. What’s missing?”
Sleepy was not a boy.
I forgot about the Annals. “I’ll be damned.”
“You didn’t know?”
“Never suspected. I thought he was kind of short and skinny... But he always was. He was barely out of diapers when he latched on to us in Dejagore. I figured him for maybe thirteen. He wasn’t as sane as he is now. I remember Bucket throwing one of his uncles off the wall for raping him.” I kept right on saying “him” because it was hard to think of Sleepy as anything else despite the lack of evidence right there in front of me.
“Good soldier?”
He knew. “The best. Always makes up for his smallness and lack of strength by using his head.” Which was something Croaker particularly appreciated.
“Then let’s just forget we didn’t see something here. Don’t even let Sleepy know you know.” He resumed his examination.
It would not be the first time a woman had been with the Company disguised as a man. The Annals recalled several instances where amazing discoveries had been made about one of our forebrethren, usually after they got themselves killed somehow.
Still... It would be uncomfortable, knowing.
“What I don’t like about your Annals is that they’re more about you than they are about the Company.”
“What?” I did not understand.
“I mean you focus everything on yourself. Except for a few chapters you adapted from Lady’s dispatches or Bucket or One-Eye or somebody, you never report anything that doesn’t involve you or that you didn’t see yourself. You’re too self-absorbed. Why should we give a rat’s ass about your recurring nightmares? And, except for Dejagore, your sense of place is usually pretty weak. If I weren’t here myself I’d have a lot of trouble picturing this whole end of the world.”
My first reaction, of course, was to defend my babies from the butcher. But I kept my mouth shut. You gain nothing by arguing with your critics. You get more satisfying results teaching pigs to sing. With fewer ulcers.
You have to trust your own muse. Even if she has a clubfoot and is subject to unpredictable seizures.
I think the Old Man said something like that himself a time or two over the years.
I did not mention it.
“You could work on writing a little more sparely, too.”
“Sparely?”
“You tend to go on a lot longer than you need to. At times.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind. You think we ought to put something on her?”
It was plain he had plenty more to say about my Annals but was uncomfortable about it. He was willing to accept a change of subject. “Yes. There’s no permanent physical damage. Lady’s got some old things stored in that black chest. They’ll be a little big, probably, but—”
“Thought we weren’t going to know anything about Sleepy being a girl.”
“When’s the last time you saw Lady in a dress?”
“Good point.” I opened the chest. “Though there’s still never any doubt.”
Croaker grunted. He was studying Sleepy intently, frowning.
“New wearing off?” I asked.
He smiled weakly. “Sort of. You’ll understand someday.”
I picked some things. “Not what I want to hear, boss.” Always way back there, however much I loved my wife, was a niggle when I recalled that she was the daughter of Ky Gota.
He chuckled. “Get some pants on her before my dearly beloved walks in.”
We finished just in time, too. Lady arrived in a foul humor. “I found nothing useful. Nothing. How is he?”
“Beat up, starved and suffering from extended exposure. Otherwise, he’s fine. Physically.”
“But absent mentally?” Lady stared at the kid. There was nothing in Sleepy’s eyes.
Croaker grunted. “In a coma with his eyes open.”
“Speaking of sleepers,” I said, “our favorite fireman was wide awake today. And the way he looked at me, he’s all home in here.”
I swear Sleepy’s cheek twitched. But maybe it was just a trick of the lamp.
“Not good,” Lady said. “And I was looking forward to a quiet evening at home.”
“What’re we going to do with Sleepy?”
The Captain had an answer all set. “You’re going to take him with you. And get to work teaching him your trade.” For an instant a shadow crossed his face, as though all thoughts of the future brought despair.
“I can’t—” Move a girl into my bunker?
“Yes you can.” Because Sleepy was just one of the guys. Wasn’t he? “And keep me posted on his progress.”
Lady comes home and he starts to give me the rush. How do you figure that? “Get your ass up,” I told Sleepy.
