Deceiver hex signs. He had just started running while the getting was good, as soon as somebody realized that he might be responsible for Narayan’s murder.
Uncle Doj rejoined us at Nijha. So did some stragglers who had accumulated there. Sleepy would not have much trouble with desertions. These men knew no one outside the Company and spoke not a word of Taglian or any other local language.
With the stragglers added we would number more than a hundred when we resumed traveling. Of the original group we lacked only Spook and Panda Man, who had been awarded the dubious honor of staying behind to watch the shadowgate.
Once she finished looking for other evidence, Lady cornered Doj. “Where’s the body?”
“Huh?” The old swordmaster was baffled.
“Narayan Singh. What did you do with his corpse?”
Tobo and I exchanged looks. That question had not occurred to either of us. It might be a good idea to make doubly certain just who had died. Narayan Singh had been a veritable Prince of Deceivers, beloved of Kina.
One of the injured men left to garrison Nijha volunteered, “They threw him in the old cesspit, then filled it with dirt and rock from the new latrine, ma’am. Which was built according to your specifications, sir.”
I have had a reputation as a martinet along those lines ever since I joined the Company. And when health, hygiene and waste disposal are handled my way the Company tends to experience significantly fewer disease problems than do people who do not do things my way. It remains impossible to reason with some men, though, so I just give orders and make sure they are carried out.
“Dig him up,” Lady directed. And when nobody rushed to grab up picks and shovels she began to glow darkly and swell up and even to develop fangs.
Then people started looking for tools.
“That was interesting,” I told her.
“Been working on it since I ambushed myself and that tree. It doesn’t take much effort or power but it ought to be visually impressive.”
“It definitely was that.”
The exhumation satisfied Lady. There was a body. It resembled Narayan Singh, even including his bad leg. And it was unnaturally well preserved considering where it had been buried.
“Well?” I asked after she had gone so far as to open the body up. I do not know what she expected to find.
“It does seem to be him. Considering who he served, who seemed to love him, I was almost certain there wouldn’t be a body. Or it wouldn’t be Narayan’s if there was.”
The truth was, she had not wanted it to be Narayan. She did not want Singh evading her vengeance this easily.
“There’s no dramatic unity in real life,” I told her. “Save it up and take it out on Goblin.”
She offered me a wicked look.
“I mean on the thing that’s taken possession of Goblin.” The real Goblin would be my oldest surviving friend.
She carved Narayan’s corpse into little pieces. She left a trail of those for the bugs and buzzards over the next several days. But the man’s head, heart and hands she kept in a jar of pickling brine.
I did not ask why or if she had a plan. Narayan’s escape had left her in much too black a mood for small talk.
A couple of times I did overhear her cursing the fact that there were no great necromancers left in the world.
She would call Narayan back from paradise or hell to make him pay for taking our daughter.
The smaller Voroshk girl, the captive, came out to see us. In not bad Taglian she told us, “Sedvod just died.” She stared at Tobo the whole time.
I went to check. The sick boy had, indeed, passed on. And I still had no idea why.
I figured the Goblin thing probably deserved the blame.
55
The Nether Taglian Territories:
Along the Viliwash
Sleepy surprised us all. She was irked about us dealing with Soulcatcher but she made no great fuss. “This situation isn’t the one I prepared for. Tobo. I trust you’re taking steps to prevent the Protector from observing what we’re doing.”
“She sees what we want her to see. Which means she doesn’t see what we’re doing, only what our mutual enemies are doing.”
Which was not much on Booboo’s part. Despite her best effort to vanish during the night after her captors first encountered Soulcatcher’s pickets, she remained a captive. She would be turned over to Soulcatcher herself within a few days.
Goblin, moving faster than the girl’s captors were, had been gaining ground fast and Tobo now placed him only about thirty miles behind. I suggested that he would be more trouble to Soulcatcher than Booboo ever could.
Thinking out loud, I said, “I wonder if this is how myths get started.”
People looked at me like they were not sure they wanted to know what that was all about.
I explained. “Here we’ve got a bunch of people visiting strange places most people couldn’t get to even if they wanted. We’ve got close relatives squabbling and even trying to murder each other.”
“That’s reaching,” Murgen said.
“I like it,” Tobo said. “A thousand years from now they’ll remember me as the god of storms. Or something.”
“Or something?” his father asked. “How about the small god who makes littler rocks out of runty stones?”
Earlier Tobo had gotten caught making stones explode. He had been doing it for the sheer joy of watching them shatter and hearing the fragments ricochet. He was embarrassed. But you have got to have fun once in a while. Today’s Company is not nearly as much fun as it was when I was young.
I snickered. “We marched forty miles every day. Uphill all the way. In the snow. When we weren’t in the swamp.”
“What?”
“Thought I’d start practicing for when I get really old. How do you make rocks explode?”
“Oh. That’s easy. You just kind of feel what they’re like inside. You find the water. You make it hot enough and the rock goes boom.”
Find the water. Inside a rock. And the rock goes boom. Right. I had to ask. I changed the subject. “How are those Voroshk kids doing?” Despite everything he had to do, Tobo found time to spend with our captives.
It was amazing how much the kid could handle in a day.
I could recall when life worked that way for me. Back when we were marching up all those hills. With cold, wet feet.
“Uncle Doj has them speaking Taglian like they were born in the delta, in the shadow of the temple of Ghanghesha.”
“Excellent.” He was poking fun, of course.
“They’re picking up the language. Shukrat and Magadan could get by now. Arkana is having trouble but she’s catching on. None of them are mourning Sedvod. Gromovol, the brother, is being stubborn. He doesn’t like not being the only conduit. He likes to be in control. Of something. But even he is making progress.”
“Gromovol is the pain in the ass, then? Which’re which with the other names? I haven’t heard any names
