and see what was coming to get him. Nor was there a whitewashed army town with neat ranks of fields on the slopes below it. This country was feral. This country was much more damp than the other two. Wild brush and scraggly trees advanced to within yards of the crippled shadowgate. The works around that were the only recognizable human handiwork visible, and they were in ruins.
“Stay low,” Doj advised when I started to rise, which would silhouette me above the skyline. I knew better than that. People who do know better generally get skragged that one time they forget or let something slide. Which is why we pound it in and pound it in and pound it in. “That jungle doesn’t mean that there aren’t eyes watching.”
“You’re right. I almost did a stupid. Anybody want to guess how old that scrub down there is? I’d say between fifteen and twenty with a bet that it’s a lot closer to twenty.”
Murgen wondered, “What difference does it make?”
“The forvalaka broke through this shadowgate about nineteen years ago. She got away. Soulcatcher was too busy burying our asses to chase her, shadows did get after her...”
“Oh. Yeah. She didn’t go out alone when she went.”
“That’s my guess. Shadows got out behind her and wiped out everything we can see from here.”
Murgen grunted. Lady nodded, as did Doj. They saw it the same.
Khatovar. My destination for an age. My obsession. Destroyed because we had not had the good sense to cut a young woman’s throat in a place now long ago and far away.
The quality of mercy has left me a great, sour role in the theater of my own despair.
Though it is true that it had not seemed important at the time, and we were real busy trying to get out of there with our asses still attached.
21
Taglios:
The Great General
Mogaba leaned back, smiling. “I can’t help wishing Narayan Singh continued luck.” Relaxed, content, for the first time in years, he found life good. The Protector was in the provinces indulging her passion for religious persecution. Therefore, she was not around the Palace making life miserable for those who actually hauled on the reins, riding the tiger whilst trying to keep the mundane work of government simmering.
His mention of the living saint made Aridatha Singh flinch. It was subtle but the reaction was there. And it was unique. Other Singhs did not react to the name, other than with an obligatory curse, perhaps. This demanded further examination.
Mogaba asked, “Any trouble out there?”
Aridatha said, “It’s quiet. You have the Protector out of town, making no ridiculous demands, things settle down. People get too busy making a living to act up.”
Ghopal was less upbeat. The Greys were out in the streets and alleys every day. “Graffiti keeps turning up more and more. ‘Water Sleeps’ most often.”
“And?” Murgen asked. His voice was soft but intense, his eyes narrow.
“The other traditional taunts are all there. ‘All Their Days Are Numbered.’ ‘
“And?” Mogaba seemed to have shifted characters the way Soulcatcher did. Perhaps he was aping her style.
“That one, too. ‘My Brother Unforgiven.’”
That harsh indictment again. That accusation which always disturbed the incomplete slumber of the part of him guilty about betraying the Black Company to advance his own ambitions. No good had come of it. His life had become enslaved by it. His punishment was to move from one villain to another, always serving wickedness, like a loose woman passing from man to man down a long decline.
Aridatha Singh, eager to move away from talk about Narayan Singh and the Deceivers, interjected, “One of my officers reported a new one yesterday. ‘Thi Kim is coming.’”
“Thi Kim? What is that? Or who?”
Ghopal observed, “It sounds Nyueng Bao.”
“We don’t see much of those people these days.”
“Since somebody snatched the Radisha right out of the Palace...” Ghopal stopped. Mogaba had begun to darken again, though that failure belonged to the Greys, not to the army. He had been in the territories at the time.
“So. All the old slogans. But the Company all fled through the shadowgate. And perished on the other side because they never came back.”
Ghopal knew little about the world outside his own narrow, filthy streets. “Maybe some of them did survive and we just don’t know about it.”
“No. They didn’t. We would’ve heard. The Protector’s had people down there harvesting shadows since they left.” People who had been lured into her service by cruelly false promises to teach them her ways and make them captains in her great, unrevealed enterprise.
None of those collaborators survived long. Shadows were clever and persistent. Quite a few found ways to escape from novices long enough to destroy their tormenters and be destroyed themselves.
Soulcatcher made sure conditions for disaster remained ripe.
Mogaba closed his eyes, leaned back again, steepled his dark fingers. “I’ve enjoyed not having the Protector around.” Getting those words out casually was difficult. His throat was tight. His chest felt like a huge weight was pressing in on it. He was afraid. Soulcatcher terrified him. And for that he hated her. And for that he loathed himself. He was Mogaba, the Great General, the purest, smartest, strongest of the Nar warriors produced by Gea- Xle. For him fear was supposed to be a tool by which he managed the weak. He was not supposed to know it personally.
Silently, within, Mogaba repeated his warrior’s mantras, knowing habits ingrained since birth would hold the fear at bay.
Ghopal Singh was a functionary. Very good at managing the Greys but not a natural conspirator. That was one attribute that had recommended him to the Protector. He did not apprehend the message lurking on the edges of the Great General’s statement. Aridatha Singh, in some ways, was as naive as he was handsome. But he did understand that Mogaba was sneaking up on something that could be a great watershed in all their lives.
Mogaba had championed Aridatha’s elevation because of his naivete concerning the complex motives of others and because of his enthusiastic idealism.
Aridatha peered around nervously. He had heard the old saying that in the Palace the very walls have ears.
Mogaba leaned forward, lit a cheap tallow candle from a lamp and took the fire to a stoneware bowl filled with a dark liquid. Ghopal held his tongue even though the animal product offended him religiously.
The bowl’s contents proved to be flammable, though they produced more unpleasant black smoke than they did flame or light. The smoke spread out across the ceiling, then crept down the walls and flowed out the doors. Its progress was marked by squeaks and chitterings and an occasional complaint from an unseen crow.
Mogaba said, “We may have to get down on the floor for a few minutes, till the smoke thins Out.”
Aridatha whispered, “Are you really proposing what I think you’re proposing?”
Mogaba murmured, “You may not have the same reasons I do but I think we’d all be better off if the Protector no longer held her position. Particularly the Taglian people. What do you think?”
Mogaba had expected Aridatha to agree easily. The soldier believed in his obligation to the people he served. And he did nod.
Ghopal Singh was his main worry. Ghopal had no obvious reason to want change. The Greys were all members of the Shadar religion, traditionally with little influence in government. Their alliance with the Protector had given them power out of proportion to their numbers. They would be reluctant to lose that power.
