I told her, “You need to take it out on somebody, put Gromovol’s name at the head of your list.”
Lady said, “She’s the only connection I have left with ninety percent of my life. The only connection with my family.”
The stream takes its wild turns.
“You do anything that saves her, the first thing she’ll do when she gets on her feet is try to cut you off at the knees and make you dance on the stumps.”
Tobo started to say something. I poked him. We had discussed this several times. His opinion was bloody- minded.
“I know. I know. But every time I turn around it seems like someone else is gone and we’re getting to be more and more alien...”
“I understand. I’ve felt completely dislocated in time since One-Eye died. There’s almost nothing left of my past.” The nearest thing was come-lately Murgen. Lady and I had chosen the way—and now we were refugees from our own place and time. Though why should I be surprised at this late date? That was what the Company always was: the gathering of the landless, the hopeless, the fugitive and the outcast.
I sighed. Was I about to start creating another past as an emotional crutch?
I knelt beside Lady. “I don’t think she’ll last more than another week. I’m having trouble getting food down her. And more keeping it there. But I’ve thought of something we can do to stall death. And maybe even get a sound diagnosis.”
Lady turned a gaze on me so intense I shuddered, recalling ancient times, when I was a captive in the Lady’s Tower at Charm and about to face the Eye of Truth. “I’m listening.”
I noted that, even now, she would not touch her sister. There was a strong selfish underpinning to her emotions. She wanted to save this mad devil sister entirely for her own sake.
“We can take her to Shivetya. We know he can cure Howler...”
“He says he can. Telling us what we want to hear.”
What Howler wanted to hear. I had no emotion invested in the runt’s well-being. I thought the world would be improved by his extermination.
Lady’s tone did not support her words. A spark of hope had been struck.
I said, “Let’s have Howler get another carpet put together, then we’ll slip away to the glittering plain, get him fixed up and find out what Shivetya can do for Soulcatcher. Even if he can’t do anything we can stash her in the ice cavern till we have time to research what’s wrong with her. That ought to be a real challenge for Tobo.”
That was the course I preferred. I figured that once we installed Soulcatcher in the cave of the ancients Lady would lose interest eventually. The effect on the world at large would be the same as if we had killed her right away while Lady could sustain her tether to her roots via the pretense that she would jump in and resurrect her sister one day soon.
Lady said, “I like that idea. I’ll see how soon Howler can get a carpet put together.”
“All right.” I peeled back one of Soulcatcher’s eyelids. I saw nothing promising. I got the feeling that her essence might be absent, out wandering, lost. Paybacks, Murgen might say, if that was true.
As soon as she left, Tobo said, “You’re up to something besides what you told her, aren’t you?”
“Me?” I shrugged. “I have some ideas. Some of them I might have to clear with the Captain.”
Shukrat then said something that rained her dumb blonde image for me. “You know the reason that Soulcatcher followed you all down here from the north is the same reason that Lady wants to save her now? I’ll bet that if she really wanted to badly enough she could’ve killed you all just about any time she wanted.”
I stared. I looked at Tobo. I stared some more.
Shukrat reddened. She murmured, “Neither one of them ever learned how to say, ‘I love you.’”
I understood. It was the same thing Goblin and One-Eye had had going for all those years, at a somewhat less lethal level. When they were sober. It was the sort of thing I see all the time amongst my brethren, who cannot, or believe that they dare not, express their real feelings. I added, “Only those two don’t even know they need to say it.”
81
The Shadowlander Military Cemetery:
Laying To Rest
Willow Swan stuck his head into the tent. “Croaker. Murgen. Anybody who’s interested. Sahra’s ready to do her thing with Thai Dei and Uncle Doj.”
About damned time, I thought but did not say. There were moments, lately, when I wanted to have the whole damned Nyueng Bao Community lined up and spanked. They had dragged the two corpses a hundred fifty miles while they argued bitterly about what to do with them. I did manage to keep my mouth shut but kept wanting to scream, “They don’t care anymore! Do
The Nyueng Bao had prepared a pair of ghats in a prominent place near the center of the Shadowlander military cemetery. Though only a few swamp folk remained with us those survivors were gathered in cliques, according to the funeral option they believed best honored the dead.
Who would believe a funeral could become savagely political? But people can find reasons to squabble about almost anything.
Thai Dei’s send-off was less controversial, of course. He had not believed in much of anything but his own honor, himself. A ritualistic passage through the purifying flame for a warrior who would not bend, troubled only a couple of conservative old-timers who thought the ceremonies too foreign. Uncle Doj was the great bone of contention.
With Doj the burning group were in dispute with the exposure group, who wanted to lay the corpse out on a high platform and leave it till its bones were clean.
This was supposed to be the proper send-off for a high priest of the Path of the Sword—though no one could say how, why or when that idea had arisen. None of the men from Hsien, some of whom had grown up in Hsien’s martial arts monasteries, had heard of any such practice there. The people of Hsien buried their dead. Doj’s cronies insisted that his predecessors had been exposed exactly the way they wanted to do him now.
As we filed past the ghats, each tossing on an herb packet and a folded piece of paper carrying a prayer the fire would send along with the dead, Suvrin suggested, “They might have acquired the custom when they first passed through my country. Some of the peoples back home, back then, did expose corpses that they were especially afraid would be seized by skinwalkers.”
Skinwalkers again. One of those monsters no one has ever seen, like vampires and werewolves. With all the real monsters loose in the world, seen and suffered often enough, why did so many people trouble themselves about things no reliable witness ever saw? “Wouldn’t fire work just as well?”
“Burning wasn’t acceptable. It isn’t even in modern times, even though so many northerners have come across the Dandha Presh.”
I grunted. It must have to do with religion and religion seldom makes sense to me.
“The common people, the poor, anyone that wouldn’t attract a skinwalker, gets a normal burial. Just like here.” He indicated the graves around us. “People who might attract a skinwalker will be exposed. So there won’t be a good suit of skin to steal.” He gestured. “The above-ground tombs. They must contain priests and captains who were being stored temporarily, until they could be properly exposed. Their army must have been hard-pressed. They never got back to deal with it.”
Actually, I could see several fallen collections of poles with bits of rag and bone beneath that might have been exposure platforms a long time ago. “Looks like your skinwalkers never got here to take advantage, either.”
That earned me a scowl.
I was not quite sure why Suvrin was Sleepy’s favorite and probable designated successor. But I never
