Bleak Seasons (34 page)

Otto hustled the Taglians out of the warehouse. They seemed baffled by the
Liberator’s sudden generosity. Me too.

Hagop said, “Now how about you guys telling what’s been happening?”

I said, “A whole lot. But nothing big and dramatic. We keep nibbling them to
death.”

“Is Mogaba really the head honcho of Longshadow’s army?”

“Absolutely. He’s one kickass sonofabitch, too, only Longshadow won’t let him
run loose. He has to mess with us secondhand, mostly, letting Blade do his dirty
work.”

“Huh? Blade? Like in Blade of Blade and Mather and Swan?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I glanced at the Old Man, whose expression had gone stony. “Yeah.

Blade defected while you were gone.”

“Let’s get back to the Palace, Murgen,” Croaker said. “We have work to do.”

Croaker did not say much as we walked, though he did snarl at people who dared
stare at the Shadar and his white-devil companion. We northerners are so few
that even after years few of the commoners have yet seen any of us. And, of
course, we have done very little to dispel our evil reputation.

Some intellectuals inside the priesthoods have argued that the friendship of
today’s Black Company is as deadly to Taglios as was the enmity of its remote
forbears.

Their complaint may have merit.

We were coming up to the Palace. Croaker kept grumbling to himself, mostly
because so little had come of the expedition. That had been his pet and his
expectations had run away with him. He asked, “How long are your in-laws going
to hang around?”

I was not going to make him happy. “For the duration. They want their slice of
Narayan Singh.” The Old Man still distrusted Uncle Doj.

“They know about Smoke?”

“Of course not! Damnit . . . !”

“Keep it that way. You find his library again yet?”

I had mentioned having stumbled onto that. “Not yet.” Fact was, I had made no
more than a token effort. I had too much else on my mind.

“Try a little harder.” He knew. “Don’t spend so much time with Smoke. And I
think it might be useful to look at those old Annals before we head south.”

“How come you never looked for the library yourself? You’ve had years.”

“I heard it got destroyed the night that Smoke got mauled. Now it looks like
that must have happened in some other room. The Radisha wouldn’t mislead me
about something like that. Would she? Nah.”

We paused while a Vehdna cavalry regiment passed in review outside the Palace.

It had come from upcountry somewhere and was just paying its respects before
taking the field. The robes and turbans of the troopers were clean and gaudy.

Their lances were all brightly pennoned. Their spearheads gleamed. Their mounts
were beautiful, admirably trained and perfectly groomed.

“Too bad pretty don’t win wars,” I said. The Black Company is not pretty.

Croaker grunted. I glanced at him. And surprised what might have been a teardrop
in the corner of his eye.

He knew what awaited all those brave young men.

We crossed behind the horsemen, stepping carefully.

One-Eye met us in the hall way outside Croaker’s apartment. “What’s the word?”

Croaker shook his head. “No magic answers.”

“We always get to do it the hard way.”

I told him, “I’m supposed to look for that library room I found the other night.

You got something to help keep me from getting confused?”

He looked at me like that might be a tall order. “I already gave you something.”

He indicated the yarn on my wrist.

“That was for your spells. There’s probably still a bunch of Smoke’s left over,

too.”

The runt thought about that. “Could be. Give me that.” His gaze fell on my
amulet as I removed the yarn. “Jade?” He held my wrist momentarily.

“I think so. It belonged to Sarie’s grandmother, Hong Tray. You never met her.

She was the old Speaker’s wife.”

“You been wearing this all these years and I never noticed?”

“I never wore it till Sarie . . . Until the other night. Sarie wore it
sometimes, though, when she wanted to dress up.”

“Ah, yes. I recall.” He frowned like he was trying to remember something, then
shrugged, went off into a shadow and muttered to the yarn for a while. When he
returned he said, “That ought to get you through anybody’s confusion spells.

Except maybe your own.”

“What?”

“You had any of your attacks lately?”

“No. Not that I remember.” I offered the amendment because I had had them before
without being aware of them. Apparently.

“You had any new ideas about what caused them? Or who you kept running into when
you went back to Dejagore?”

“I was escaping from the pain of losing Sarie.”

One-Eye laid one of his more intense stares upon me, just the way he had
whenever he helped fish me out of the past. Evidently he was not convinced.

I asked, “Is it suddenly important again?”

“It never stopped being important, Murgen. There just hasn’t been time to pursue
it.”

Nor was there now.

He said, “We just have to let you take charge of yourself, to watch out and do
the right thing in a crunch.”

One-Eye being totally serious? That was spooky.

Croaker had lost interest. He was back at his charts and figures. But he did
reiterate, “I want to see those books before we hit the road.”

I can take a hint, sometimes. “I’m on my way, Boss.”

I stopped in to make sure Smoke was still breathing. I fed him while I was
there. Keeping him fed and clean was now my cover for being there should someone
like the Radisha ever penetrate One-Eye’s network of spells, much augmented
since I had begun working with the old wizard. Then I tried to recall the
various twists and turns I had taken the night I found Smoke’s library. My
memories were not clear. That had been a time of stress and a lot had happened
since.

I did know it was on this same level. I had not gone downstairs or up. And it
was in an area apparently undisturbed since Smoke’s own last visit. The dust and
cobwebs were heavy and untouched.

It did not take me long to reach desert territory. It was almost as though the
deep interior of the Palace became a vast and dusty maze, needing no spells of
confusion to protect it.

I found the dead man only minutes after leaving Smoke. I smelled him first, of
course, and heard the flies. That told me what would be coming up before I saw
anything. Only the who was a mystery until the Strangler appeared at the limit
of my lamplight. He had fled here to die of his wounds, trapped by darkness and
confusing spells.

I shuddered. That touched my deepest fears, the wellspring of my nightmares, my
crushing dread of tight, dark places underground.

I wondered if his fickle goddess had taken delight in his unhappy end.

I moved around the corpse carefully, averting my eyes and pinching my nose. In
death he continued to serve Kina’s corruption avatar.

Soon afterward I discovered evidence that at least one more Strangler had become
entangled in the confusion of the Palace. I nearly stepped in it, being alerted
only when my approach startled the attendant flies.

I paused. “Uh-oh.” That looked fairly fresh. Maybe there was still a madman in
here willing to dance for his goddess.

I started moving much slower and more carefully, one hand at my throat. I
started imagining noises. All the ghost stories I ever heard came back to haunt
me. Each few steps I paused, turned around completely, searching for the gleam
of eyes betrayed by my lamp. Why did I decide to do this alone?

I began to see signs of recent traffic. I knelt, discovered what appeared to be
my own previous footprints in the dust. Someone had been through since, armed
with a battery of candles.

Drops of wax had fallen into the disturbed dust. And somebody had been through
after that, possibly crawling, perhaps even eating what wax drops he could find.

I listened to the silence. This deep within the Palace even vermin were scarce.

They could only eat each other.

Still cautious, I followed the trails of those who had come after me. My heart
thumped like it was about to explode.

I started sneezing. And once I did the sneezes just kept coming. I could hold
off for half a minute sometimes, but that only made the next sneeze worse.

Then I started hearing all sorts of sounds. And could not still myself long
enough to reassure me that I was imagining these noises, too, or to get a fix on
their source if they were genuine. Maybe it would be better to do this some
other time. Then the broken door loomed out of the darkness. I stopped and
studied it. I had a notion it was hanging a little differently. Disturbances in
the dust suggested that someone had visited since I had done so myself.

Cautiously, touching nothing, I rounded the door, stepped into the room. “Shit!”

It had been torn apart. Few of the books, bound or scroll, remained on their
shelves or in their cubbies. The undisturbed items, where I could decipher
titles, were prosaic inventories or tax records or irregular city histories of
little interest. I wondered why Smoke would bother with those. Maybe just to
hide the good stuff? Maybe because he was fire marshall as well as court wizard?

Whatever, the good stuff was gone. And by that I mean not only any long missing
volumes of the Annals that might have been lying around but also a number of
what I had suspected to be magical texts when last I looked in.

“Damn it! Damn it!” I wanted to throw things, to break things, to bounce rocks
off villains’ heads, Even before I found the single fallen feather I had a good
idea of what had happened.

I collected that feather.

On the way back I definitely heard sounds that did not spring from my
imagination. I did not bother to investigate. The man tried to follow my light
but could not keep up.

Croaker looked up, puzzled, when I laid the white feather in front of him and
said, “The books are gone. And there are Deceivers lost in there. At least one
dead one and one still alive.”

“Gone?” He plucked the feather off the document he was studying.

“Somebody took them.”

His distress was apparent only because his hand began to shake. “How?”

“They just walked in off the street and carried them away.” I did not for a
moment consider the possibility that someone inside the Palace had visited
Smoke’s books.

He said nothing for a while. “What perfect timing.” Another silence. “What’s
this feather?”

“Maybe a message. Maybe just a lost feather. I found one like it when I
discovered that the Widowmaker armor had disappeared from hiding in Dejagore.”

“A white feather?”

“From an albino crow.” I ran through my catalog of encounters, real and possibly
imagined.

His hand shook again. “You never actually met her. But you recognized her? She
was here the night the Deceivers struck? And you never said anything?”

“I forgot that. That was the worst night of my life, Captain. That night has
twisted everything else around me . . . ”

He gestured for silence. He thought. I stared. He was nothing like the Croaker
who had been Company physician and Annalist when I joined up. After a while, he
muttered, “That must be it.”

“What?”

“The voice you encountered whenever you were pulled back to Dejagore. Think. Was
it inconsistent?”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“Did it seem like it might be different people talking all the time?”

Now I got it. “I don’t think so. It did seem to have different attitudes and
styles sometimes.”

“The bitch. The sneaking bitch. Always playing another game. I won’t swear this
for sure, Murgen, but I think the root mystery behind you tumbling all over time
must have been Soulcatcher playing.”

Not a wholly original theory to me. Soulcatcher rated high on my own suspects
list. Motive was my big stumbling block. I could not figure a “why Murgen?” for
anybody, Soulcatcher included.

“Where is she now?” Croaker asked.

“I don’t have the foggiest.”

“Can you find out?”

“Smoke balks every time I try to head her way.”

Croaker considered that. “Try again.”

“You’re the boss.”

“As long as it suits everybody’s convenience. You sure your in-laws won’t go
home?”

“They’re going wherever I go.”

“Tell them we’ll be on the road before the end of the week.”

“I look forward to that like a case of the piles.” I took my white feather and
stomped off for a session with the fire marshall.

To track Goblin I went back to the last time I saw the runt myself, then
followed him forward in time. Soon after having helped me out of one of my
plunges into yesterday Goblin walked out of his quarters carrying one modest
bag, hiked to the waterfront, boarded a barge manned by trustworthy Taglians who
had become professional soldiers, and drifted down the river. Right
now—approximately today—he was in the heart of the delta, transferring the
barge’s cargo, himself and most of the Taglians, to a deep-sea vessel wearing
flags and pennons entirely unknown to me. Off on the sodden shore flocks of
Nyueng Bao children and a handful of lazy adults watched as though this business
of outsiders was the greatest entertainment they had encountered in years.

Despite my familiarity with the tribe they all looked inscrutably alien in their
native context, more so than they had in Dejagore where we all had been out of
place.

For no reason clear to me I had never visited Sahra’s world. I just welcomed her
into mine and savored the miracle.

Goblin’s behavior was less interesting than his whereabouts, which I had now
established. So why not see what life was like for the Nyueng Bao? Uncle Doj
insisted that the delta was paradise.

Possibly, if you were of the mosquito clan. I swear. The fact that I was a
disembodied point of view was all that kept me from being devoured. Goblin was
candyass enough to protect himself and his crew with potent spells, augmented by
bad smells. But the Nyueng Bao had to deal with bloodsucking buzzards able to
carry off small children. I reminded myself that I had seen all the bugs I
wanted coming south through One-Eye’s home jungle and it was likely that Sarie’s
people could manage excellently without the presence of Sarie’s husband.