Company. But in matters concerning Booboo and the Khadidas he was no expert.
“Stash him. I’ll wait till I’m well-rested to deal with him. Meantime, we need somebody to crawl into that hole and collect up all of Booboo’s scribblings. Somebody from Hsien, preferably. Somebody illiterate. We’ll take no chance anybody will read that stuff. I’ll take care of it. But right now I’m going to go take a nap. I’m totally exhausted.”
128
Taglios:
Another Great General
I was worried. I pranced from foot to foot like a little boy at a wedding who really needed to pee. It was another day and I still had not gotten started with Booboo and the Khadidas. Giving them and their Goddess any time at all was bound to lead to mischief.
But I had more immediate responsibilities. The fighting was over. Our obligation to the dead had to be handled now. And a huge city, with many dead of its own, had to be kept on a tight rein. Recent disasters would encourage plotters and conspirators.
The Children of the Dead knew how to put on a memorial for fallen comrades. Deep-voiced drums muttered and grumbled. Horns conjured forth the mood and gloom of a chilly, rainy morning despite a bright, cloudless winter sky. The soldiers paraded in all their brilliant colors, with all their thousands of banners. The locals were suitably impressed. We sent Sleepy off in more style than she could have hoped for while she lived. We said our good-byes to a great many people.
Then we stood back and rendered appropriate honors as Aridatha Singh directed equally large, if not nearly so dramatic, ceremonies honoring those who had fallen on behalf of the Protectorate. And when that was done we joined the local soldiers and the most important men of the city in honoring the Prahbrindrah Drah.
His funeral was the grandest I ever attended. I developed the distinct impression that all those leading men had gathered, however, to eyeball one another suspiciously rather than to mourn the passing of a ruler none had seen since they were young.
Aridatha Singh was popular with these men. Because Aridatha Singh had gathered to himself the loyalties of the survivors of the Second Territorial Division, the Greys, and the commanders of the rural garrisons nearest the city. Aridatha Singh had become the most powerful man in the Taglian Territories, despite having done little to acquire that power—except to be competent and a nice guy.
They say that when the hour comes, so will the man. Sometimes fate will even conspire to put a competent, honest man in the right place at the right time. Almost overnight the graffiti began giving Aridatha Mogaba’s old title, Great General.
Now, if he could just manage to get by without antagonizing the occupiers.
I tried to keep an eye on Tobo but that was difficult with a kid so talented.
129
Taglios:
Open Tomb, Open Eyes
The hours of ceremony ground me down. I wanted to put myself away for another long nap. But I refused to give the Queen of Darkness any further respite.
“These are them,” Arkana told me in perfectly colloquial bad Taglian, indicating eight bitty wooden kegs. “Eight different men took turns crawling in there and stuffing papers—and everything else they could find—into a keg. Which I had sealed up as soon as the man came out. By an illiterate cooper.”
“You are a treasure indeed, daughter dear. Gentlemen, let’s build us a bonfire.” I had brought a couple of carts loaded with wood purchased from a wood seller whose usual customers were people who needed firewood for funeral ghats. I had been surprised to find he had any stock left, considering recent events.
The gentlemen I spoke to all hailed from Hsien. They knew only that the eight kegs contained the hopes of life of a monster more blackhearted than the legendary Shadowmasters who had tortured the Land of Unknown Shadows. And that was all they needed to know.
The pyre went up quickly, the kegs scattered throughout it. A fraction of me bemoaned the fate of the latest incarnation of the Books of the Dead. I hate seeing any book destroyed. But I did not interfere when the oil splashed and the fireballs zipped in.
My reluctance might be Kina trying to manipulate me. I stayed there until I was confident that my natural daughter’s life’s work had been consumed completely by the flames. In some myths Hagna, god of fire, is Kina’s mortal enemy. In others, when she is in her Destroyer avatar, he is her ally.
The more I am exposed to the Gunni pantheon the more confused I become.
“What task now?” I wondered aloud. Everyone but Arkana and a few curious street kids, the near-feral ones called jengali, had moved along. A ragged, bemused white crow had been hanging around, too, but it had nothing to say. It had been doing a lot of sticking close and keeping its beak shut lately.
“Time to wake somebody up, Pop. Your wife, your daughter or the Khadidas.”
I surveyed the workmen clearing rubble. Most were civilians now, supervised by soldiers there just to keep them from stealing any treasures they unearthed.
The masonry had stopped collapsing. The fires had burned out. The popular consensus was that an all-new palace should be erected, once the old structures had been cleared away.
I could not imagine what treasures and surprises might surface if they did demolish and remove the whole rambling monster. No one ever knew the palace in its entirety. No one but a long-dead wizard named Smoke.
The death pyre of the Books of the Dead attracted more jengali, who wanted to take advantage of the warmth.
Shukrat glowered at Arkana. Seemed Arkana was not doing her share of Booboo watching. And Arkana did not care if Shukrat was pissed off.
I noticed a change in Lady. She did not seem to be in a sort of coma anymore. She seemed to be in a normal but deep sleep. I threw open a window. I am a firm believer in the health benefits of fresh air. The scruffy white crow appeared almost immediately. I asked, “How long has this been going on?” I had my back to Booboo. Cleaned and groomed and dressed in decent clothing she was quite the sleeping beauty. I tried not to look at her long. Seeing her still ripped at my heart.
“What?” Shukrat asked. She stuck her tongue out at Arkana.
“The snoring. Lady didn’t snore before.” I meant since she had fallen under the spell. Before, she had snored for as long as I had been sleeping with her. Though she refused to believe it.
Shukrat said, “She started right after we brought the Daughter of Night in. I didn’t think anything about it.”
“No reason you should.”
Arkana nodded. “I never noticed her not snoring.”
The white crow chuckled from the window sill. I asked, “Did she snore when she was a kid?”
The crow made a noise. The girls looked at me, then at the bird. No dummies, they realized right away that it was not just an albino with bad personal habits. Being sorceresses they soon understood that it was a genuine crow, too, rather than some creature whose usual form was no form, and out of sight.
“Assuming she is sleeping, she’s been there a long time. You’d think she would’ve wakened on her own.” I touched my wife gently. She did not respond. I shook her, much less tenderly. She groaned, muttered, rolled onto her side, pulled her knees up. I said, “Don’t give me that stuff. It’s time to get up.”
The girls smiled. They felt my relief.
She was just sleeping now, even if that had been going on for a long time and might go on for a while
