I found the
Radisha lost inside herself. Not asleep, not meditating, just
wandering around inside, probably feeling immensely guilty about
having been relieved by her recent lack of stress. I felt a moment
of compassion. She and her brother might be our foes but they were
sound people at heart. Rajadharma had been bred into them.
“Ma’am?” She was due respect but I could not
use princely titles. “I need to speak to you.”
She raised her eyes slowly. They seemed to be knowing, caring
eyes even in despair. “Were all of my household staff my
enemies?”
“We didn’t choose to become your enemies. And even
today we honor and respect the royal office.”
“You would, of course. To remind me of my folly. Like the
Bhodi and their self-immolations.”
“Our quarrel with you won’t ever be as great as our
quarrel with the Protector. We could never find a path to peace
with her. You’d never unleash the skildirsha on the city. She
would. And the depth of her evil is such that she doesn’t see
the wickedness in what she’s doing.”
“You’re right. Do you have a name? If she was safely
a few hundred years in the past, we might consider her a goddess. A
power capable of smashing kingdoms out of whimsy, the way a child
might kick over an anthill just to see the bugs
scramble.”
“I’m called Sleepy. I’m the Annalist of the
Black Company. I’m also the villain who plans most of your
misfortunes. This situation wasn’t an intentional part of the
master plan but the opportunity presented itself. Now it looks like
we might’ve outmaneuvered ourselves.”
The Radisha had become focused. “Go on.”
“The Protector has chosen to cover up your disappearance.
Officially you’re in your Anger Chamber purifying yourself
and asking the gods and your ancestors to calm your heart and give
you wisdom in the coming troubled times. You have taken breaks to
issue some fairly bewildering rescripts, though. My brothers
brought back these two. My brothers are illiterate, so they
couldn’t select for content. But these are probably
representative. I’ll have more brought in if you
like.”
The Radisha read the announcement of rewards first. It was
straightforward and sensible. “This must make you
uncomfortable.”
“It does.”
“She doesn’t have the money. What is this? A
ten-percent reduction in the rice allowance? We don’t have a
rice ration. We don’t need to ration rice.”
“No, you don’t. Though everybody who wants rice
can’t afford it. And some of us who would be happy to see the
last of the stuff don’t get to eat anything else.”
“You know what this is?” The Radisha pounded her
right forefinger against the rescript like she was trying to peck a
hole through. “I’ll bet. All those strange
personalities. They don’t just come out as voices. Or she was
in an especially strange humor when she dictated these. She has
those spells. When the voices seem to take over completely. They
never last long.”
Ah, I said to myself. This is an interesting tidbit, worth
pursuing later. “Would you care to counter with something
more sound? I don’t have the manpower to cover the entire
city but I can see that new rescripts are posted in the more
important places.”
“How do you prove they’re genuine? Anyone can take a
piece of treated naada and write something on it.”
“I’m working on that. We have a guest, a highly
respected soldier from one of the City Battalions. We brought him
in to visit another prisoner. I thought he might pass the word that
you’re our prisoner, too.”
“Interesting. You know what she’ll do, don’t
you? Call your bluff. Produce an imitation or illusory version of
me and challenge you to produce your Radisha. Which you won’t
do because you’re not really interested in getting killed.
Correct?”
“We can deal with that. The Protector has a serious
handicap. Nobody believes anything she says. They’ve started
thinking that way about you, too, because you’re beginning to
come across as her stooge. Why did you always have such a hateful
and treacherous attitude toward the Company?”
“I’m not her stooge. You have no idea how many of
her mad schemes I’ve managed to stifle.”
I did not tell her that we did. I had her angry enough to talk,
but prodded just a little more. “Why did you hate my brothers
before they ever came down the river?”
“I didn’t hate—”
“Maybe I chose the wrong word. There was something. The
Annalists before me all sensed it and knew you’d turn on the
Company as soon as you felt safe from the Shadowmasters. You
weren’t as obsessed as Smoke was but you shared his
disease.”
“I don’t know. I’ve wondered about that a lot
the last decade. It went away after I gave the order to turn on
you. But Smoke and I weren’t the only ones. The whole
principality felt the same. There was a memory of a time before,
when the Company—”
“There was no such time. Not that anybody bothered to
record in the histories and documents of those days. The little
I’ve been able to decipher of our own Annals from back then
is dully routine. The only terrible battle I found came when the
Company was three generations old. It took place not far from here
and the Company lost. It was almost wiped out. Its three volumes of
Annals fell into enemy hands. They’ve been in Taglian
libraries ever since. From the moment the Company returned to
Taglios, access to those has been denied us. All kinds of crazy
things were done to keep us from getting to those books. People
died because of those books. And from all I can see, the real
secret that’s hidden there, that had to be kept at all cost,
was that nothing extraordinary happened during those early years.
It was not an age of rapine and endless bloodshed.”
“How could all the people of a dozen states remember
something that never happened and become terrified that it was
going to happen again?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ll ask Kina how
she did it. Right before we kill her.”
The Radisha’s expression told me she was thinking she was
not alone in her ability to believe the impossible.
I said, “You want to shake loose from your lunatic friend?
You want to get off the hook with us? You want to get your brother
back?” Presumably the possibility that the Prahbrindrah Drah
still lived had grown significant in her recent thoughts.
The Radisha opened and closed her mouth several times.
Never an attractive woman, age and present circumstances
conspired to make her almost repulsive.
I should condemn? Time was doing no favors for me, either.
I said, “It can be managed. All of it.”
“My brother is dead.”
“No, he’s not. No one outside the Company knows. Not
even Soulcatcher. But the people she trapped out there under the
plain are frozen in time. Sort of. I don’t understand the
mystic science involved. The point is, they’re there,
they’re healthy, and they can be brought back out. I’ve
just made a deal that will give us the Key we need to open the
way.”
“You can bring my brother back?”
“Cordy
Mather, too.”
The light was not good but I detected the rush of color to her
neck. “There are no secrets from you people, are
there?”
“Not many.”
“What do you want from me?”
I never expected to be at this point with the Woman. Despite her
down-to-earth, sensible, businesslike reputation. So I didn’t
have a ready answer. But I did manage to come up with a wish list
quickly. “You could step out in public someplace where a
whole lot of people would see you and recognize you and repudiate
the Protector. You could exculpate the Black Company. You could
fire the Great General. You could announce that you’ve been
under Soulcatcher’s evil spell for fifteen years but now
you’ve finally made your escape. You could make us the good
guys again.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. I’ve been
afraid of the Black Company for too long. I’m still
afraid.”
“Water sleeps,” I said. “What’s the
Protector done for you?”
The Radisha had no answer for that.
“We can bring back your brother. Think of the pressure
that would take off you. Rajadharma.”
In a tightly controlled voice, the Radisha snapped,
“Don’t say that! That tears my entrails out and
strangles me with them.”
Exactly what I had wished on her a time or two when I was in a
less forgiving mood.
Aridatha Singh looked at me oddly. “He wasn’t
anything like I thought Narayan Singh would be.” Seeing his
sovereign had not impressed him nearly so much as seeing his father
had.
“Not many people are once you get to know them. River, you
want to take this man back where you found him?” It was
night, yes, but we still had those two protective amulets left over
from the Shadowmaster wars. They definitely looked like they were
still good. I wished we had another hundred but Goblin and One-Eye
could not make them anymore. I am not sure why. They shared no
trade secrets with me. I suppose they were just too old.
I worry a lot when I consider a future without them in it. And a
future without One-Eye cannot be far away.
O Lord of Hosts, preserve him until the Captured are delivered
and all our quarrels are resolved.
I found the
Radisha lost inside herself. Not asleep, not meditating, just
wandering around inside, probably feeling immensely guilty about
having been relieved by her recent lack of stress. I felt a moment
of compassion. She and her brother might be our foes but they were
sound people at heart. Rajadharma had been bred into them.
“Ma’am?” She was due respect but I could not
use princely titles. “I need to speak to you.”
She raised her eyes slowly. They seemed to be knowing, caring
eyes even in despair. “Were all of my household staff my
enemies?”
“We didn’t choose to become your enemies. And even
today we honor and respect the royal office.”
“You would, of course. To remind me of my folly. Like the
Bhodi and their self-immolations.”
“Our quarrel with you won’t ever be as great as our
quarrel with the Protector. We could never find a path to peace
with her. You’d never unleash the skildirsha on the city. She
would. And the depth of her evil is such that she doesn’t see
the wickedness in what she’s doing.”
“You’re right. Do you have a name? If she was safely
a few hundred years in the past, we might consider her a goddess. A
power capable of smashing kingdoms out of whimsy, the way a child
might kick over an anthill just to see the bugs
scramble.”
“I’m called Sleepy. I’m the Annalist of the
Black Company. I’m also the villain who plans most of your
misfortunes. This situation wasn’t an intentional part of the
master plan but the opportunity presented itself. Now it looks like
we might’ve outmaneuvered ourselves.”
The Radisha had become focused. “Go on.”
“The Protector has chosen to cover up your disappearance.
Officially you’re in your Anger Chamber purifying yourself
and asking the gods and your ancestors to calm your heart and give
you wisdom in the coming troubled times. You have taken breaks to
issue some fairly bewildering rescripts, though. My brothers
brought back these two. My brothers are illiterate, so they
couldn’t select for content. But these are probably
representative. I’ll have more brought in if you
like.”
The Radisha read the announcement of rewards first. It was
straightforward and sensible. “This must make you
uncomfortable.”
“It does.”
“She doesn’t have the money. What is this? A
ten-percent reduction in the rice allowance? We don’t have a
rice ration. We don’t need to ration rice.”
“No, you don’t. Though everybody who wants rice
can’t afford it. And some of us who would be happy to see the
last of the stuff don’t get to eat anything else.”
“You know what this is?” The Radisha pounded her
right forefinger against the rescript like she was trying to peck a
hole through. “I’ll bet. All those strange
personalities. They don’t just come out as voices. Or she was
in an especially strange humor when she dictated these. She has
those spells. When the voices seem to take over completely. They
never last long.”
Ah, I said to myself. This is an interesting tidbit, worth
pursuing later. “Would you care to counter with something
more sound? I don’t have the manpower to cover the entire
city but I can see that new rescripts are posted in the more
important places.”
“How do you prove they’re genuine? Anyone can take a
piece of treated naada and write something on it.”
“I’m working on that. We have a guest, a highly
respected soldier from one of the City Battalions. We brought him
in to visit another prisoner. I thought he might pass the word that
you’re our prisoner, too.”
“Interesting. You know what she’ll do, don’t
you? Call your bluff. Produce an imitation or illusory version of
me and challenge you to produce your Radisha. Which you won’t
do because you’re not really interested in getting killed.
Correct?”
“We can deal with that. The Protector has a serious
handicap. Nobody believes anything she says. They’ve started
thinking that way about you, too, because you’re beginning to
come across as her stooge. Why did you always have such a hateful
and treacherous attitude toward the Company?”
“I’m not her stooge. You have no idea how many of
her mad schemes I’ve managed to stifle.”
I did not tell her that we did. I had her angry enough to talk,
but prodded just a little more. “Why did you hate my brothers
before they ever came down the river?”
“I didn’t hate—”
“Maybe I chose the wrong word. There was something. The
Annalists before me all sensed it and knew you’d turn on the
Company as soon as you felt safe from the Shadowmasters. You
weren’t as obsessed as Smoke was but you shared his
disease.”
“I don’t know. I’ve wondered about that a lot
the last decade. It went away after I gave the order to turn on
you. But Smoke and I weren’t the only ones. The whole
principality felt the same. There was a memory of a time before,
when the Company—”
“There was no such time. Not that anybody bothered to
record in the histories and documents of those days. The little
I’ve been able to decipher of our own Annals from back then
is dully routine. The only terrible battle I found came when the
Company was three generations old. It took place not far from here
and the Company lost. It was almost wiped out. Its three volumes of
Annals fell into enemy hands. They’ve been in Taglian
libraries ever since. From the moment the Company returned to
Taglios, access to those has been denied us. All kinds of crazy
things were done to keep us from getting to those books. People
died because of those books. And from all I can see, the real
secret that’s hidden there, that had to be kept at all cost,
was that nothing extraordinary happened during those early years.
It was not an age of rapine and endless bloodshed.”
“How could all the people of a dozen states remember
something that never happened and become terrified that it was
going to happen again?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ll ask Kina how
she did it. Right before we kill her.”
The Radisha’s expression told me she was thinking she was
not alone in her ability to believe the impossible.
I said, “You want to shake loose from your lunatic friend?
You want to get off the hook with us? You want to get your brother
back?” Presumably the possibility that the Prahbrindrah Drah
still lived had grown significant in her recent thoughts.
The Radisha opened and closed her mouth several times.
Never an attractive woman, age and present circumstances
conspired to make her almost repulsive.
I should condemn? Time was doing no favors for me, either.
I said, “It can be managed. All of it.”
“My brother is dead.”
“No, he’s not. No one outside the Company knows. Not
even Soulcatcher. But the people she trapped out there under the
plain are frozen in time. Sort of. I don’t understand the
mystic science involved. The point is, they’re there,
they’re healthy, and they can be brought back out. I’ve
just made a deal that will give us the Key we need to open the
way.”
“You can bring my brother back?”
“Cordy
Mather, too.”
The light was not good but I detected the rush of color to her
neck. “There are no secrets from you people, are
there?”
“Not many.”
“What do you want from me?”
I never expected to be at this point with the Woman. Despite her
down-to-earth, sensible, businesslike reputation. So I didn’t
have a ready answer. But I did manage to come up with a wish list
quickly. “You could step out in public someplace where a
whole lot of people would see you and recognize you and repudiate
the Protector. You could exculpate the Black Company. You could
fire the Great General. You could announce that you’ve been
under Soulcatcher’s evil spell for fifteen years but now
you’ve finally made your escape. You could make us the good
guys again.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. I’ve been
afraid of the Black Company for too long. I’m still
afraid.”
“Water sleeps,” I said. “What’s the
Protector done for you?”
The Radisha had no answer for that.
“We can bring back your brother. Think of the pressure
that would take off you. Rajadharma.”
In a tightly controlled voice, the Radisha snapped,
“Don’t say that! That tears my entrails out and
strangles me with them.”
Exactly what I had wished on her a time or two when I was in a
less forgiving mood.
Aridatha Singh looked at me oddly. “He wasn’t
anything like I thought Narayan Singh would be.” Seeing his
sovereign had not impressed him nearly so much as seeing his father
had.
“Not many people are once you get to know them. River, you
want to take this man back where you found him?” It was
night, yes, but we still had those two protective amulets left over
from the Shadowmaster wars. They definitely looked like they were
still good. I wished we had another hundred but Goblin and One-Eye
could not make them anymore. I am not sure why. They shared no
trade secrets with me. I suppose they were just too old.
I worry a lot when I consider a future without them in it. And a
future without One-Eye cannot be far away.
O Lord of Hosts, preserve him until the Captured are delivered
and all our quarrels are resolved.