make it more difficult for the Deceivers to hide. And in areas they felt confident were clear they had masons sealing doorways and walling off entire hallways. Additionally, several self-anointed psychics and ghost hunters had joined the hunt.
Mogaba said, “You’re probably right.” He gestured to one of several young men who had been trailing them. That fellow snapped a slight bow and disappeared. Before long every domestic in the palace was involved in a massive housekeeping campaign. Mogaba observed, “We can’t have this place looking a mess when our enemies get here.”
A messenger huffed and puffed into the presence. The search had stumbled onto some corpses. From long ago. Three men wearing nothing but loincloths. They appeared to have gotten lost in the maze of the Palace, but had perished of wounds suffered earlier. The searchers were troubled because the corpses had not suffered much from vermin or normal putrefaction.
“Don’t do anything with them,” Mogaba said. “Don’t even touch them. Just seal them up where they are.” He told Ghopal, “Those would be some of the Deceivers who tried to assassinate the Liberator and the Radisha when you were still wearing diapers.” He sighed. “No matter what we do to hurry this it’s going to take an age.”
“They do have to eat.”
“Eventually, yes. We’ll guard the kitchens at all times.” And, he said aloud to no one, because these days it was more secure to communicate by passing notes, any food easily reached during quiet hours would be poisoned.
“Keep at it here, Ghopal. Day and night. Use as many people as we can spare.” The Great General expected his enemies to come for him and he was making preparations to welcome them.
Mogaba withdrew to his own quarters. There he invested an hour in one of his hobbies before he moved on to the Protector’s quarters to nap. He used her apartment now because no one ever went there. No one but the Great General dared. No one but the Great General could pass through the warding spells the Protector had left in place.
It had become his sanctuary.
Mogaba’s scouts and spies had reported that Croaker and all his mob had rejoined the Company, back from wherever they had gone, with even more tools of deviltry.
The crisis could come any time now.
103
Beside the Cemetery:
Search for a Lost Soul
I had been in the neighborhood of necromantic activities before, and other high-order divining, but never any closer than I got that night. I do not plan to get that close again. If my honey wants somebody handy to save her sweet butt when she gets in trouble, I will tie a long rope to her ankle and attach the other end to a horse. If something goes sour I will swat the horse’s butt.
This séance did not go well. And before it was over I got a much uglier vision of that place of bones that had claimed so many of the dreams of Murgen and my beloved.
The smell was bad but the cold was worse. I have never felt such cold. I roasted myself beside a bonfire for hours after the summoning was over but mortal flames did little to defeat that bitter chill. It was so bad we did not undertake the Captain’s raid that night or even the next and when we did we went only because Her Highness began wondering publicly if us slackers were waiting for summer weather.
Murgen, Sleepy and I were present at the summoning. No one else was invited, not even Shukrat or Suvrin or any of Sahra’s friends. And it started going bad right away. Right after starting Lady raised a hand to massage her right temple. Soon afterward I began to catch fleeting, random impressions of things that were not there. The cold came first, then the smell. Before I saw anything there were several moments when my balance became very iffy.
Lady grew more and more excited as things continued to refuse to go the way she wanted. She started over twice. And when she finally did storm ahead she did not get where she wanted to go. Eventually she gave up. But not before the rest of us had gotten a good strong whiff of Kina’s charnel dreams.
“I’m sorry,” Lady told Tobo. “Kina keeps trying to get at me through our connection. The more power I siphon from her the more easily she can touch me.”
Not good. We could have Lady turn kickass powerful—and be in thrall to the Goddess when she did.
She seemed to read my mind. She gave me a dirty look. “The bitch isn’t going to get a hold on me.”
I considered reminding her of whom we were speaking. The Mother of Deceit. Kina did not need control where she could manipulate. And she could manipulate whole populations. In her sleep. Instead, I asked, “Did we find out anything about Sahra?”
Lady’s temper was not improving. “Certainly not what we would’ve if that old devil-sow hadn’t decided to wreck our game.” Her mind had been affected somehow. She seemed almost drunk. “We couldn’t raise Sahra. Couldn’t even touch her. Which leaves the matter’s resolution ambiguous.” Her speech continued slurred, she was aware of it, yet she persisted in trying to use difficult words. “I think she’s dead. If she was alive Tobo and the hidden folk would’ve found her. Nothing hides from the Black Hounds for long.”
“Soldiers live,” I whispered. “It ain’t right, something like that happening.” But Fortune does not care. Unless Fortune gets a laugh out of human pain. “There has to be more meaning...”
“You going mystical on us at this late date, Croaker?” Sleepy snapped. “You’re the one who always says nothing has any meaning we don’t put into it ourselves.”
“Sure as shit sounds like me, don’t it? Let’s go work out our frustrations by kicking Mogaba’s antique ass.”
Sleepy gave us the once-over, unwilling to send us out while we were in so bleak a mood. We might be dangerous to ourselves.
She was no happier with us later. We did not improve, any of us. Finally, she swallowed her reservations and told us to go.
Howler had completed a large carpet capable of moving twenty passengers. Tonight it carried sixteen of those, plus freight. Amongst the sixteen were both elder Voroshk, a number of commando-trained soldiers from Hsien and Murgen. Murgen had been zombielike since Lady’s failed ritual. He had overheard her saying she thought Sahra was dead.
I had urged him to stay behind but he insisted on joining us.
I should have stood fast. He could not help but be a liability.
Tobo was less distracted. He was too involved with Shukrat to be obsessed about his mother being missing. Still, he would bear watching.
Lady and I dressed up in full costume, with Voroshk apparel over the black Widowmaker and Lifetaker armor. My two ravens tagged along. Arkana flew with us, being tested. Which she understood fully.
Down below, dark things were on the move. They had been since nightfall.
Taglios never sleeps. Tonight those with reasons to be out after dark would have cause to worry about what might be lurking in the shadows. Hey, Mogaba. Look out. Darkness always comes.
We were still climbing away from camp when I eased over next to Lady. We flew knee to knee, our Voroshk apparel whipping in the breeze for twenty yards behind us. First we discussed which of our companions needed watching the closest, then we revisited the failed attempt to contact Sahra’s spirit. For the twentieth time. Lady insisted, “I do believe she’s out there, just as desperate to make contact with us as we were to make contact with her. But the ugly Goddess wants to keep us apart.”
“Is Kina awake?”
“More than she has been for a long, long time. At least since Goblin went down there. Maybe since the days when she sensed her doom afoot and commenced her war on us ere ever we entered this country.”
Ere ever? Wow. “I have a question on another subject. It’s been bothering me for a long time but I’ve never quite been able to put the words together right.”
