What do you know
about that?” I said to Sahra. “Narita tried to cover
for you. And then Barundandi got all broken up about what happened
to her.”
Sahra waggled a finger. She was thinking. “Murgen. What do
you know about that white crow?”
Murgen hesitated before responding. “Nothing.” Which
meant he was telling an approximate truth but he had some definite
ideas. Sahra and I both knew him that well.
Sahra said, “Suppose you tell me what you think is going
on, then.”
Murgen faded away.
“What the heck is that?” I snapped at One-Eye.
“You were supposed to rig this thing so he has to do what
he’s told.”
“He does. Most of the time. He could be carrying out a
previous instruction.”
But the old fool sounded to me like he had no idea what Murgen
was doing.
Soulcatcher worked quickly, then summoned the staff members who
had been present when she had broken into the Anger Chamber.
“The continuing excitement was too much for this poor woman.
I’ve tried to resurrect her but her soul refuses to respond.
She must be happy where she is now.” There were no witnesses
to contradict her, though remote laughter mocked her. “I did
find the Radisha. She’d fallen asleep. She has retreated into
the Anger Chamber and does not wish to be disturbed again. Not for
a long time. I should have honored her wishes before. We would have
avoided this disaster.” She indicated the fat woman.
Even the staffers who had looked into the Anger Chamber earlier
and had seen nothing had to admit that someone was inside now,
moving around angrily, muttering the way the Radisha did and
looking very much like the Radisha in glimpses caught through
cracks in the poorly restored door.
The Protector suggested, “Let’s all turn in for the
night. Tomorrow we’ll begin repairing the mess I made.”
She watched her audience intently, feeling for anyone who could
cause trouble.
The staff departed. They were relieved just to be away from
Soulcatcher.
Soulcatcher sat down and thought. There was no way to tell what
was going through her mind till she began muttering in a committee
of voices. Then it was clear that she was trying to work out the
mechanics of the abduction. She seemed willing to give considerable
weight to the possibility that the Radisha had stage-managed the
whole thing herself.
A very suspicious woman, the Protector.
One by one she found and questioned each of the people who had
dealt with Minh Subredil, Sawa and Shikhandini, beginning with Jaul
Barundandi and finishing with Del Mukharjee, the man Barundandi
usually trusted to collect the kickbacks from the outside workers.
“You will cease that,” the Protector informed
Mukharjee. “You and anyone else involved. If it happens
again, I will put you into a glass ball and hang you above the
service postern with your whole body turned inside out. I’ll
add a couple of imps to feed on your entrails for the six months it
will take you to die. Do you understand?”
Del Mukharjee understood the threat just fine. But he had no
idea whatsoever why the Protector would want to interfere with his
livelihood.
The Protector had a passion about corruption.
In time the Protector reasoned that three women had come into
the Palace and three women had gone away again. It seemed very
likely that the three who had departed were not the three who had
entered. And no one the Radisha’s size had gone out
since.
Which meant that someone with some answers might still be
inside.
Chuckling wickedly, Soulcatcher began to look for evidence that
someone had slipped off into the untenanted wilds of the
Palace.
Goblin was asleep on a dusty old bed. Occasionally his snores
would turn to sneezes and snorts when too much dust got into his
nostrils.
A squawk had him bouncing up so suddenly he almost collapsed
from light-headedness. He spun around. He saw nothing. He heard
soft laughter, then a bizarre, squawking voice that sounded almost
familiar. “Wake up. Wake up. She is coming.”
“Who’s coming? Who’s talking?”
There was no response. He did not feel any strong sorcerous
presence. It was a puzzle.
Goblin had a good idea who might be coming, though. Not many
women were likely to be hunting him here in the middle of the
night.
He was ready. His little pack was carrying the two books Sleepy
most wanted to save. Taking all three was physically impossible.
His traps were set. All he had to do was move on into the now-empty
part of the Palace that had been occupied by the Black Company back
when its staff and leadership had been quartered there. There were
ways to get out unnoticed. He and One-Eye had found them in olden
times. The trouble was, he had no desire to be on the streets after
dark, amulet or no.
Soulcatcher gave up most of her sense of touch when she chose to
wrap every inch of her body in leather and helmet. She never noted
the touch of or resistance of the strand of spider silk stretched
across the corridor. But she did have a marvelously well-developed
sense for personal danger. Before the Ghanghesha hit the floor, she
was moving to defend herself. It was such reflexes that made it
possible for creatures like her, her sister Lady, and the Howler,
to have survived for so long. This time she had the proper
controlling spells ready, hung about her, sparkling like
spanking-new tools.
The shadow trapped inside the figurine barely got its bearings
before it was attacked itself, seized and constrained, then twisted
and crushed down into a whining, seething ball completely enclosed
inside one of the Protector’s gloved hands. A merry young
voice called, “You’ll have to do better than
that.”
Soulcatcher continued to move forward, amused by the idea of
tossing the shadow back into someone’s face. The trail began
to grow indistinct, then disorienting. Experimentation showed her
the cause was external. The corridor had been strewn with cobwebs
of spells so subtle that even she might not have noticed had she
just been hurrying along. “Oh, you clever devils. How long
has this been here? Ah. A very long time indeed, I see. You were
still in favor when you started this. Have you been hiding here all
along? I certainly couldn’t find you in the city if you never
were out there.”
In another voice entirely, she asked, “What have we here?
It smells like somebody very frightened is hiding behind this door.
And he didn’t even bother to lock it. How stupid does he
think I am?”
She shoved the door with her toe.
A clay Ghanghesha plummeted from its place atop the door.
Soulcatcher giggled. She was even quicker to recapture this shadow,
which she squeezed down inside her other hand. Then she pushed into
the room.
There was no one there anymore. That was easy to sense. But
there was a curious feel to the place. It demanded an
investigation.
She generated a small light, stood in place, turned slowly while
she read the history of the room for subtle clues. A great deal had
happened there. Much of the recent history of the Black Company had
been shaped in that room. It retained a strong smell of old fear
she identified eventually with the long-dead Taglian court wizard,
Smoke.
All this she debated with herself in a committee of
argumentative voices. In the end, she seemed entertained. Most of
the time life was a great entertainment for Soulcatcher.
“And what do we have here?” Something with inked
characters on it peeped from beneath a dusty old bed where someone
had been lying until minutes ago. Thoughtlessly, she reached for
the object, opening her hand to grasp it. “Damn! That was
stupid!” She wasted several minutes regaining control of the
shadow. It was very agile this time. She stuffed it into the hand
restraining the other. The two were extremely unhappy in there. One
thing shadows seemed to hate more than the living was other
shadows.
What Soulcatcher had found was a book with half the pages torn
out. It was alone. “So this is what became of those. I was
never quite sure who took them. I wonder if they got any use out of
them?”
As she was about to depart, the Protector glanced at the damaged
book once more. “Been taking these pages a few at a time.
That would take a long time. Which means they’ve been coming
in and out of the Palace for a long time. Which therefore suggests
that the Radisha didn’t engineer her own disappearance. Oh,
well. She’s gone. It amounts to the same thing. Let’s
catch our little rat and let him play with our little
friends.”
Unlike Soulcatcher, Goblin could not see in the dark. But he had
the advantage of knowing where he was going. He did manage to stay
ahead and did slide out of one of the old hidden exits. There was a
little light outside from a fragment of moon peeking through
scurrying young clouds trying to catch up with Mother Storm. Goblin
laid the last Ghanghesha on the cobblestones in plain sight, then
ran. The books on his back beat against him, pounding the breath
out of him. He muttered something about the good news being that it
was all downhill from here. The bad news was that it was dark out,
there were shadows on the prowl, and he was not so sure about the
quality of his fifteen-year-old amulet. He had to hope that in a
city this vast, none of the handful of nightstalkers would cross
his path while he was huffing and puffing and concentrating on
staying ahead of Soulcatcher.
It did not occur to him that she might have recovered the
shadows he had left in ambush, that they might be after him,
too.
Soulcatcher stepped into the night close enough behind to
glimpse a flicker of her quarry vanishing into the shadows between
structures across the open area outside the Palace. She spied the
abandoned Ghanghesha and several other small items that looked like
they had been dropped in the rush to get away. She tossed her two
shadows into the air and stomped her heel down on the clay figurine
at the same time. This would set a pack of small deaths on the
little man’s heels.
By now, she was reasonably certain that she was chasing the
wizard called Goblin.
She screamed. The pain in her heel was beyond anything she had
ever experienced. As she collapsed, trying to will her throat to
seal itself, she watched three ferociously bright balls of light
streak into the night in pursuit of the shadows she had sent to
claim Goblin. Still fighting the incredible pain, she produced a
dagger and used its tip to dip another fireball out of her heel.
Already it had eaten all the way to the bone and in, and had done
some damage as high as her ankle—despite her normal protection.
“I’ll be crippled,” she snarled. “He
lulled me. He set me up so I’d think this would be another
easy shadow trap.” None of her voices were amused now.
“Clever little bastard will pay for this.”
The fallen fireball burned its way into the cobblestones. Still
ignoring her pain, Soulcatcher tried to stand. She discovered that
she was not going to be able to walk. She was, however, not losing
any blood. The fireball had cauterized her wound. “My beloved
sister, if you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you for
inventing those damned things.”
Laughter echoed down off the ramparts of the Palace.
A flicker of white glided after Goblin.
“I think I’ll kill somebody anyway.”
Soulcatcher made her way toward the Palace entrance on hands and
knees, muttering continuously. She had isolated her pain in a
remote corner of her mind and was now concentrating on being angry
about what this odyssey was doing to her beautiful leather pants
and gloves.
What do you know
about that?” I said to Sahra. “Narita tried to cover
for you. And then Barundandi got all broken up about what happened
to her.”
Sahra waggled a finger. She was thinking. “Murgen. What do
you know about that white crow?”
Murgen hesitated before responding. “Nothing.” Which
meant he was telling an approximate truth but he had some definite
ideas. Sahra and I both knew him that well.
Sahra said, “Suppose you tell me what you think is going
on, then.”
Murgen faded away.
“What the heck is that?” I snapped at One-Eye.
“You were supposed to rig this thing so he has to do what
he’s told.”
“He does. Most of the time. He could be carrying out a
previous instruction.”
But the old fool sounded to me like he had no idea what Murgen
was doing.
Soulcatcher worked quickly, then summoned the staff members who
had been present when she had broken into the Anger Chamber.
“The continuing excitement was too much for this poor woman.
I’ve tried to resurrect her but her soul refuses to respond.
She must be happy where she is now.” There were no witnesses
to contradict her, though remote laughter mocked her. “I did
find the Radisha. She’d fallen asleep. She has retreated into
the Anger Chamber and does not wish to be disturbed again. Not for
a long time. I should have honored her wishes before. We would have
avoided this disaster.” She indicated the fat woman.
Even the staffers who had looked into the Anger Chamber earlier
and had seen nothing had to admit that someone was inside now,
moving around angrily, muttering the way the Radisha did and
looking very much like the Radisha in glimpses caught through
cracks in the poorly restored door.
The Protector suggested, “Let’s all turn in for the
night. Tomorrow we’ll begin repairing the mess I made.”
She watched her audience intently, feeling for anyone who could
cause trouble.
The staff departed. They were relieved just to be away from
Soulcatcher.
Soulcatcher sat down and thought. There was no way to tell what
was going through her mind till she began muttering in a committee
of voices. Then it was clear that she was trying to work out the
mechanics of the abduction. She seemed willing to give considerable
weight to the possibility that the Radisha had stage-managed the
whole thing herself.
A very suspicious woman, the Protector.
One by one she found and questioned each of the people who had
dealt with Minh Subredil, Sawa and Shikhandini, beginning with Jaul
Barundandi and finishing with Del Mukharjee, the man Barundandi
usually trusted to collect the kickbacks from the outside workers.
“You will cease that,” the Protector informed
Mukharjee. “You and anyone else involved. If it happens
again, I will put you into a glass ball and hang you above the
service postern with your whole body turned inside out. I’ll
add a couple of imps to feed on your entrails for the six months it
will take you to die. Do you understand?”
Del Mukharjee understood the threat just fine. But he had no
idea whatsoever why the Protector would want to interfere with his
livelihood.
The Protector had a passion about corruption.
In time the Protector reasoned that three women had come into
the Palace and three women had gone away again. It seemed very
likely that the three who had departed were not the three who had
entered. And no one the Radisha’s size had gone out
since.
Which meant that someone with some answers might still be
inside.
Chuckling wickedly, Soulcatcher began to look for evidence that
someone had slipped off into the untenanted wilds of the
Palace.
Goblin was asleep on a dusty old bed. Occasionally his snores
would turn to sneezes and snorts when too much dust got into his
nostrils.
A squawk had him bouncing up so suddenly he almost collapsed
from light-headedness. He spun around. He saw nothing. He heard
soft laughter, then a bizarre, squawking voice that sounded almost
familiar. “Wake up. Wake up. She is coming.”
“Who’s coming? Who’s talking?”
There was no response. He did not feel any strong sorcerous
presence. It was a puzzle.
Goblin had a good idea who might be coming, though. Not many
women were likely to be hunting him here in the middle of the
night.
He was ready. His little pack was carrying the two books Sleepy
most wanted to save. Taking all three was physically impossible.
His traps were set. All he had to do was move on into the now-empty
part of the Palace that had been occupied by the Black Company back
when its staff and leadership had been quartered there. There were
ways to get out unnoticed. He and One-Eye had found them in olden
times. The trouble was, he had no desire to be on the streets after
dark, amulet or no.
Soulcatcher gave up most of her sense of touch when she chose to
wrap every inch of her body in leather and helmet. She never noted
the touch of or resistance of the strand of spider silk stretched
across the corridor. But she did have a marvelously well-developed
sense for personal danger. Before the Ghanghesha hit the floor, she
was moving to defend herself. It was such reflexes that made it
possible for creatures like her, her sister Lady, and the Howler,
to have survived for so long. This time she had the proper
controlling spells ready, hung about her, sparkling like
spanking-new tools.
The shadow trapped inside the figurine barely got its bearings
before it was attacked itself, seized and constrained, then twisted
and crushed down into a whining, seething ball completely enclosed
inside one of the Protector’s gloved hands. A merry young
voice called, “You’ll have to do better than
that.”
Soulcatcher continued to move forward, amused by the idea of
tossing the shadow back into someone’s face. The trail began
to grow indistinct, then disorienting. Experimentation showed her
the cause was external. The corridor had been strewn with cobwebs
of spells so subtle that even she might not have noticed had she
just been hurrying along. “Oh, you clever devils. How long
has this been here? Ah. A very long time indeed, I see. You were
still in favor when you started this. Have you been hiding here all
along? I certainly couldn’t find you in the city if you never
were out there.”
In another voice entirely, she asked, “What have we here?
It smells like somebody very frightened is hiding behind this door.
And he didn’t even bother to lock it. How stupid does he
think I am?”
She shoved the door with her toe.
A clay Ghanghesha plummeted from its place atop the door.
Soulcatcher giggled. She was even quicker to recapture this shadow,
which she squeezed down inside her other hand. Then she pushed into
the room.
There was no one there anymore. That was easy to sense. But
there was a curious feel to the place. It demanded an
investigation.
She generated a small light, stood in place, turned slowly while
she read the history of the room for subtle clues. A great deal had
happened there. Much of the recent history of the Black Company had
been shaped in that room. It retained a strong smell of old fear
she identified eventually with the long-dead Taglian court wizard,
Smoke.
All this she debated with herself in a committee of
argumentative voices. In the end, she seemed entertained. Most of
the time life was a great entertainment for Soulcatcher.
“And what do we have here?” Something with inked
characters on it peeped from beneath a dusty old bed where someone
had been lying until minutes ago. Thoughtlessly, she reached for
the object, opening her hand to grasp it. “Damn! That was
stupid!” She wasted several minutes regaining control of the
shadow. It was very agile this time. She stuffed it into the hand
restraining the other. The two were extremely unhappy in there. One
thing shadows seemed to hate more than the living was other
shadows.
What Soulcatcher had found was a book with half the pages torn
out. It was alone. “So this is what became of those. I was
never quite sure who took them. I wonder if they got any use out of
them?”
As she was about to depart, the Protector glanced at the damaged
book once more. “Been taking these pages a few at a time.
That would take a long time. Which means they’ve been coming
in and out of the Palace for a long time. Which therefore suggests
that the Radisha didn’t engineer her own disappearance. Oh,
well. She’s gone. It amounts to the same thing. Let’s
catch our little rat and let him play with our little
friends.”
Unlike Soulcatcher, Goblin could not see in the dark. But he had
the advantage of knowing where he was going. He did manage to stay
ahead and did slide out of one of the old hidden exits. There was a
little light outside from a fragment of moon peeking through
scurrying young clouds trying to catch up with Mother Storm. Goblin
laid the last Ghanghesha on the cobblestones in plain sight, then
ran. The books on his back beat against him, pounding the breath
out of him. He muttered something about the good news being that it
was all downhill from here. The bad news was that it was dark out,
there were shadows on the prowl, and he was not so sure about the
quality of his fifteen-year-old amulet. He had to hope that in a
city this vast, none of the handful of nightstalkers would cross
his path while he was huffing and puffing and concentrating on
staying ahead of Soulcatcher.
It did not occur to him that she might have recovered the
shadows he had left in ambush, that they might be after him,
too.
Soulcatcher stepped into the night close enough behind to
glimpse a flicker of her quarry vanishing into the shadows between
structures across the open area outside the Palace. She spied the
abandoned Ghanghesha and several other small items that looked like
they had been dropped in the rush to get away. She tossed her two
shadows into the air and stomped her heel down on the clay figurine
at the same time. This would set a pack of small deaths on the
little man’s heels.
By now, she was reasonably certain that she was chasing the
wizard called Goblin.
She screamed. The pain in her heel was beyond anything she had
ever experienced. As she collapsed, trying to will her throat to
seal itself, she watched three ferociously bright balls of light
streak into the night in pursuit of the shadows she had sent to
claim Goblin. Still fighting the incredible pain, she produced a
dagger and used its tip to dip another fireball out of her heel.
Already it had eaten all the way to the bone and in, and had done
some damage as high as her ankle—despite her normal protection.
“I’ll be crippled,” she snarled. “He
lulled me. He set me up so I’d think this would be another
easy shadow trap.” None of her voices were amused now.
“Clever little bastard will pay for this.”
The fallen fireball burned its way into the cobblestones. Still
ignoring her pain, Soulcatcher tried to stand. She discovered that
she was not going to be able to walk. She was, however, not losing
any blood. The fireball had cauterized her wound. “My beloved
sister, if you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you for
inventing those damned things.”
Laughter echoed down off the ramparts of the Palace.
A flicker of white glided after Goblin.
“I think I’ll kill somebody anyway.”
Soulcatcher made her way toward the Palace entrance on hands and
knees, muttering continuously. She had isolated her pain in a
remote corner of her mind and was now concentrating on being angry
about what this odyssey was doing to her beautiful leather pants
and gloves.