Bleak Seasons (27 page)

can move.” Doj continued muttering under his breath, which was uncharacteristic.

Sounded like something about wanting to move her a couple thousand miles.

“Though she will not take it well.”

“Don’t tell me you’re less than enchanted with Ky Gota too?”

“No one is enchanted with that ill-tempered lizard.”

“And I once thought that you two were married.”

He stopped cold, stunned. “You’re mad!”

“I changed my mind, didn’t I?”

“Hong Tray, old witch, what hast thou wished upon me?”

“What?”

“Talking to myself, Standardbearer. Engaging in the debate I cannot lose. That
woman, Hong Tray, my mother’s cousin, was a witch. She could see into the future
sometimes and if what she saw failed to please her she wanted it changed. And
she had some strange ideas about that.”

“I trust you know what you’re talking about.”

He did not get it. “Not entirely. The witch toyed with all our destinies but
never explained. Perhaps she was blind to her own fate.”

I let myself be distracted. “What will your people do now?”

“We will survive, Standardbearer. Like you Soldiers of Darkness, that is what we
do.”

“If you really think you owe me for stumbling in there with Thai Dei, tell me
what that means. Soldiers of Darkness. Stone Soldier. Bone Warrior. What do they
mean?”

“One might almost accept your protestations.”

“Look at it this way. If I do know what you’re talking about you have nothing to
lose by telling me what I already know.”

In that light it was hard to tell but I believe Uncle Doj smiled again. For the
second time in one day. “Clever,” he said. And did not explain a thing.

Uncle Doj relieved me of most of my guests. I ended up sharing quarters with
Thai Dei and his son To Tan, plus Sahra. Sahra helped with the baby and
struggled to put together meals, though the Company kitchen could serve everyone
in the warrens. She needed to stay busy. Thai Dei followed me almost everywhere.

Both he and Sahra were lethargic and uncommunicative and added up to about half
a human being between them.

I began to worry. They belonged to a hardy people accustomed to surviving cruel
disasters. They should show some signs of recovery.

I assembled the brains of the outfit: Cletus, Loftus, Longinus, Goblin and
One-Eye, Otto and Hagop. “I got some questions, troops.”

“He got to be here?” Goblin meant Thai Dei.

“He’s all right. Ignore him.”

“What kind of questions?” One-Eye demanded.

“So far we haven’t had any major health problems in the Company. But there’s
cholera and typhoid out there, not to mention plenty of the old fashioned
drizzling shits. We all right?”

Goblin muttered something and passed gas loudly.

“Barbarian,” One-Eye sneered. “We’re all right because we follow Croaker’s
health rules like they was religious laws. Only we can’t make the rules stick
much longer. We’re almost out of fuel. And these Nyueng Bao. They don’t like to
bother boiling water and keeping clean and not shitting where they live. We got
them going along right now but it ain’t going to last.”

“It’s been overcast and nasty for a few days, I hear. Are we collecting any
rainwater?”

“Plenty for us,” Loftus told me. “But not enough for us and them, let alone
getting any put back into the cisterns.”

“I was afraid of that. About the fuel, I mean. You guys know any way to fix rice
or beans so you can digest them without cooking them?”

Nobody knew. Longinus suggested, “Maybe soaking them a long time in water might
help. My mother did that.”

“Damn. I really want us to get through this. But how?”

Goblin seemed to develop a small secret smile at that, like he had a definite
idea. He exchanged glances with One-Eye.

“You guys got something?”

“Not yet,” Goblin told me. “There’s an experiment we still have to try.”

“Get on with it.”

“After the meeting. We need you to help.”

“Wonderful. All right. Can anyone tell me what the rest of the city thinks about
our disappearance?”

Hagop coughed, clearing his throat. He did not say much ordinarily so everybody
paused to listen. “I been doing watches in the lookouts. Sometimes you can hear
talk. I don’t think we done our reputation any good. Also, I don’t think we
fooled anybody. They don’t talk about us much but nobody figures we just cut
out. They think we found some way to dig a hole and fill it up with wine, women
and food and pulled it in after us and we ain’t coming back out again till the
rest of them are good and dead.”

“Guys, I tried to get the wine, women and banquets but all I could come up with
was the hole.”

Out of nowhere, Otto said, “The water’s going down.”

“What?”

“It is, Murgen. It’s down five feet already.”

“Would flooding the city make that much difference? No? Why’s that?”

Goblin and One-Eye exchanged significant looks.

“What?” I demanded.

“After we do our experiment.”

“All right. The rest of you guys. You know the problems. Go see if there’s
anything we can do about them.”

“Talk to me,” I told the runt wizards.

Goblin said, “We think something was done to you when you were out there.” He
jerked his head shoreward.

“What? Get serious! I . . . ”

“We are. You were gone a long time. And you changed. How many disappearing
spells have you had since you got back?”

I gave it an honest think. “Only one. Maybe. When I was kidnapped. I don’t
remember anything about it. I’m sure they drugged me. I was drinking tea with
the Speaker, then I was in that street where you found me. I have no idea how I
got there. I have vague recollections of smelling smoke and going out a door
which put me somewhere that I did not expect to be when I got to the other side.

I vaguely remember thinking something about being in the house of pain.”

“They tortured you.”

“They did.” I still had the nicks and bruises to prove it. I had no idea what I
might have been asked, if anything. I did suspect that Sindhu’s pals were behind
my abduction and the attempt on Mogaba.

If so, their life sure took an unpleasant turn when the Black Company found
them.

“We’ve been watching you,” Goblin said. “And you have been behaving pretty
strange sometimes. What we want to do is put you to sleep and see if we can’t
reach the part of you that was there when things happened.”

“I don’t get you.”

“You don’t have to. You just have to cooperate.”

“You’re sure?”

“We’re sure.”

He did not sound sure.

I awakened on my own pallet. Not refreshed. Someone was wiping my hot face with
a cold, wet cloth. I opened my eyes. In the light of one tiny candle Sahra
looked more lovely than ever. She looked better than imagination. She continued
to wipe my face.

I had another hangover type headache. What had they done? I ought at least to
get the enjoyment that came before the pain.

To Tan began to fuss. He slept in a basket of evil smelling rags beneath my
writing table. I reached over and took his hand. He stopped crying, content to
have human contact. He did not cry for his mother much anymore.

I raised my other hand to take Sahra’s. She pushed it back gently. She never
spoke. I never did hear her speak, not even to her own children.

I looked around. Thai Dei was gone. Anymore it seemed I had a better chance of
shaking my shadow. Thai Dei was there even in the dark.

I started to sit up. Sahra held me down with two fingers. I was too weak to do
anything. And my head felt like it doubled in size just rising that foot.

Sahra offered me a hand-carved wooden cup filled with something that smelled so
foul my eyes watered. Nyueng Bao swamp medicine. I drank. It tasted worse than
it smelled.

She continued to mop my face. I shivered and shook. The pain went away. I began
to relax, to feel both energetic and positive. That was good stuff. Maybe they
made it smell and taste bad so people would not take it all the time.

We stared at one another a long time, saying nothing but reaching a decision our
conscious minds did not entirely recognize at the moment. Hong Tray drifted
across my thoughts with a smile and an admonition.

This time I managed a smile when I sat up. Unchallenged. “I have work to do.”

Sahra shook her head. She fished under the table for To Tan, dug him out of his
basket. He was in desperate need of changing. Sahra tugged my finger.

“I haven’t done this in twenty years.” Not since I was a kid myself and had baby
brothers and sisters and cousins to change. “Stop wiggling, you little turd. You
ought to know the drill by now.” To Tan looked back at me with serious big eyes,

not understanding my words but catching my tone.

We got him cleaned up and clothed again, in rags that would have embarrassed a
beggar. I told Sahra, “I’ll go kill somebody, get him something better to wear.”

She laid a hand lightly on my forearm, restraining me. “That was a joke, hon.

You hang around with me, you’re going to hear some dark stuff. I don’t mean it
literally. I’m going to work now.”

I moved into the passageway slowly, my legs watery. Sahra followed, To Tan
straddling her left hip. We ran into Bucket right away, looking groggy as he
headed for his own pallet. I asked, “You seen Goblin and One-Eye?”

“They went upstairs with their magic junk. To the big lookout.”

“Thanks.”

Before we walked five feet, Bucket called, “Longo tell you the water is coming
up in the catacombs?”

I sighed and shook my head, listened to the half-hearted rumble of my stomach,

wondered if anybody had found a way to get some food cooked, wound my way
through the maze to the ladders that would take me up to Goblin and One-Eye.

The light of day might do me good. If I had the strength to climb that far. I
had not seen the sun for a long time.

I would not see the sun for a while longer. Sahra handed To Tan up through the
trapdoor. He was asleep again. I guess you do sleep a lot when you are a baby
starving to death.

It was daytime but a driving rain was falling. Hagop sat astride a chair turned
backwards, forearms on the chair’s back, staring into the rain morosely. “How
long has this been going on?” I asked.

“Day or three.”

“We getting any fresh water out of it?”

“About as much as we can being as we’re hiding out.”

“What’re those two doing?” Goblin and One-Eye were on the floor in the middle of
the room, crosslegged, farthest from the moisture blowing inside. They did not
look up.

“Wizard stuff. Don’t bother them. They’ll bite your leg off.”

One-Eye grumbled, “And somebody’s gonna lose a set of ears if he don’t stop
yakking.”

Hagop and I each spent one of our diminishing supply of single finger salutes.

One-Eye did not acknowledge the accolade.

The lookout had a window facing each direction. I went to the biggest.

This rain was not what we called a gullywasher back home but it was strong and
steady. I could barely sense the vague loom of the surrounding hills. Nearer at
hand I could make out the surface of the water. It was down despite the rain. It
was a grey that spoke of sickness.

I saw a Jaicuri raft out there, so loaded with people that it was awash. Men
using short boards as paddles labored carefully to drive it toward shore.

I made the rounds of the other windows, studied the city. I was pleased to see
our Taglians at their posts the way they had been taught.

“They’ve been doing it by the numbers,” Hagop agreed. “And that gets them left
alone.”

“By Mogaba?”

“By everybody. The fighting is almost constant.”

The streets and alleys were now canals. I saw bodies floating everywhere. The
stench was overwhelming. The water level, though, was lower than I had expected.

I could see the citadel from the east window. There were Nar up top there,

ignoring the weather. They moved around the parapet, studying our part of town.

Hagop noticed me watching them. “They’re worried about us. They think we might
come sort them out sometime.”

“Sure we will.”

“They’re superstitious about guys like Goblin and One-Eye.”

“Which shows you how dangerous a little ignorance can be.”

“I heard that,” One-Eye grumbled. He and Goblin could have been playing some
obscure dice game for all I could tell. I liked it better when they conjured big
lights that went around smashing things and burning them up. Destruction I can
understand.

Sahra seemed tired of lugging To Tan so I took him. She offered a grateful
smile. It lit up the lookout.

One-Eye and Goblin paused to exchange glances amongst themselves and with Hagop.

“What are you guys doing?” I demanded.

“We found out we were right.”

“Yeah? That might be a first. You were right about what?”

“About your head having been tampered with.”

I shuddered to a sudden chill. That is not something anyone welcomes. “Who did
it? How?”

“How we haven’t been able to figure out for sure. It might have been managed
several ways. Who and what are more interesting, anyway.”

“So give.”

“Who was Lady. And what was knowledge of the fact that she is out there.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a little hard to tell from here, especially when we got tourists and their
girlfriends traipsing through the workplace, but it looks like Lady and the
Taglians are in charge out there. Their camp is on the other side of the hills,

up the north road. The southerners we see patrolling are auxiliaries who report
back to Lady.”

“Run through that again.”

Goblin did so.

I said, “You guys go ahead. I’m just going to sit over here in the corner and
think.”

Uncle Doj and Thai Dei were back from wherever they had gone. They scowled at
Sahra and me when we returned but neither said a word. Hong Tray still had her
hold on the Kys. Thai Dei took his son. The little guy brightened immediately.