Master
Santaraksita hardly waited till there were no eavesdroppers before
he approached me. “Dorabee, your record is beginning to look
bad. Two days ago you were late. Yesterday you didn’t show up
at all. This morning you don’t look alert and ready for
work.”
I was not. I would have been testy with anyone else. In this
case I barely noticed that his words were not spoken in a tone in
keeping with their content. I sensed relief in him at my return and
a lingering whiff of a fear that I would not. I lied. “I had
a fever. I couldn’t stay on my feet for more than few minutes
at a time. I tried to come in but I was so weak I got lost for a
while and eventually ended up just going home.”
“Should you even be here today, then?” Changing
course, sounding overly worried.
“I have a little more strength today. I have a lot of work
to do. I really want to keep this job, Sri. None other would put me
so close to so much wisdom.”
“Where is home, Dorabee?” I had collected my broom.
He was following me. Eyes were following us, some with a knowing
look that told me Santaraksita may have pursued other young men in
the past.
I was ready for this one because I knew he had tried to follow
me. “I share a small room near the waterfront in the Sirada
neighborhood with several friends from the army.” A common
situation throughout Taglios, where men outnumber women almost two
to one because so many men have come in from the Territories,
hoping to make their fortunes.
“Why didn’t you go home when you came back,
Dorabee?”
Oh-oh. “Sri?”
“Your mother, your brothers, your sisters, and their wives
and husbands and children all still dwell in the same place where
you lived as a child. They believed you were dead.”
Oh, darn!
He had gone to see them? The busybody. “I don’t get
along with those people, Sri.” Which was an outright lie on
behalf of Dorabee Dey Banerjae. The man I had known had been very
close to his family. “When I came back from the Kiaulune
wars, I was so horribly changed that they wouldn’t have
recognized me. Had I gone home, it wouldn’t have been long
before they found out things about me that would’ve caused
them to disown me. I preferred to let them think Dorabee was dead.
The boy they remembered no longer exists anyway.”
I hoped he would interpret that according to his own wishful
thinking.
He bit. “I understand.”
“I’m grateful for your concern, Sri. If you will
excuse me?” I went to work.
I worked briskly, deep in thought. What I needed to do required
me to let myself be seduced. I had no experience along those lines,
from either of the possible viewpoints. But the old men tell me I
am clever, and after a while I thought I saw a way by which events
could proceed as desired without Surendranath Santaraksita putting
himself in a position of emotional or moral risk greater than he
had when he tried to follow me home and I had to send Tobo out to
rescue him. Which, of course, he did not know.
I had a weak spell toward mid-morning, at a point where old
Baladitya could repay his small debt by being solicitous. By the
time Master Santaraksita manufactured a reasonable excuse to put
himself into my proximity, I had collected myself and was back at
work.
A few hours later I contrived to throw up my lunch, then made a
show of cleaning up. I suffered dizzy spells later still. The last
occurred after most of the librarians and copyists had gone home,
despite the threat of further showers. The afternoon storm had not
been as terrible as most. Taglians generally viewed that as a bad
omen.
Santaraksita played his part perfectly. He was beside me before
my spell was over. Nervously, he suggested, “You’d
better quit now, Dorabee. You’ve put in more than your
day’s work. The rest will be here tomorrow. I’ll walk
along with you to make sure you’re all right.”
A relapse threatened as I began to protest that that was not
necessary. So I said, “Thank you, Sri. Your generosity knows
no bounds. What about Baladitya?” The old copyist’s
grandson had failed to show again.
“He’s practically on our way. We’ll just leave
him off first.” I tried to think of some small act or
something I could say that would encourage Santaraksita’s
fantasy, but could not. That proved unnecessary, anyway. The man
was determined to hook himself. All because I knew how to read.
Weird.
Riverwalker just happened to be hanging around outside when
Master Santaraksita, Baladitya and I left the library grounds. I
made a little gesture to let him know we were going to do it. More
signs and gestures along the way let him know that the old man
should be rounded up as soon as Santaraksita and I left him. He was
a witness who could say that the Master Librarian had been seen
last in my company. And he might be useful.
Not far from the warehouse, I suffered another mild spell.
Santaraksita put an arm around me to help. I drifted back into my
safe place some and went on with the game. By now we were
surrounded, at a distance, by Company brothers. “Just
straight ahead,” I told Santaraksita, who was becoming
confused by the outer web of spells. “Just hold my
hand.”
Moments later a gentle tap at the base of the Master
Librarian’s skull let me step away from my uncomfortable
role.
“Here I’m known as Sleepy. I’m the Annalist of
the Black Company. I brought you here to assist in the translation
of material recorded by some of my earliest
predecessors.”
Santaraksita began to fuss. Kendo Cutter placed a hand over his
mouth and nose so he could not breathe. After several such
episodes, even a member of the priestly class recognized the
connection between silence and unimpeded breathing.
I told him, “We have a pretty cruel reputation, Sri. And
it’s rightly deserved. No, I’m not Dorabee Dey
Banerjae. Dorabee did die during the Kiaulune wars. Fighting on our
side.”
“What do you want?” In a shaky voice.
“Like I said, we need to translate some old books. Tobo,
get the books from my worktable.”
The boy went away grumbling about why was it always he who had
to run and fetch.
Master Santaraksita was very put out when he discovered that
some of what I wanted translated had been pilfered from his own
restricted stacks. In fact, when I told him, “I want to start
with this one,” and showed him what I believed to be the
earliest of the Annals, he lost some color.
“I’m doomed,
Dorabee . . . I’m sorry, young man.
Sleepy, was it?”
“Haw!” One-Eye bellowed, having appeared only
moments before. “Did you ever go sniffing up the wrong tree.
My little darling Sleepy, here, is all girl.”
I smirked. “Darn! Here we go again, Sri. Now you have to
get your mind around the fact that a woman can read. Ah.
Here’s Baladitya. You’ll be working with him. Thank
you, River. Did you run into any trouble?”
Santaraksita began to balk again. “I
won’t—”
Kendo silenced him again.
“You’ll translate and you’ll work hard at it,
Sri. Or we won’t feed you. We aren’t the bhadrhalok. We
quit talking about it a long time ago. We’re doing it.
It’s just your misfortune to get caught up in it.”
Sahra arrived. She was soaked. “It’s raining again.
I see you landed your fish.” She collapsed into a chair,
considered Surendranath Santaraksita. “I’m exhausted.
My nerves were on edge all day. The Protector returned from the
swamp at noon. She was in a totally foul mood. She had a huge
argument with the Radisha, right in front of us.”
“The Radisha stood up to her?”
“She did. She’s reached her limit. Another Bhodi
disciple came this morning but the Greys stopped him from burning
himself. Then the Protector announced that she was going to take
the night away from us by letting the shadows run loose from now
on. That’s when the Radisha started screaming.”
Santaraksita looked so completely appalled by the implications
of Sahra’s revelations that I had to laugh. “No,”
he insisted. “It’s not funny.” Then we discovered
that he was not really concerned about the shadows. “The
Protector is going to clip my ears. At the very least. These books
weren’t supposed to be in the library at all. I was supposed
to have destroyed them ages ago, but I couldn’t do that to
any book. Then I forgot about them. I should’ve locked them
up somewhere.”
“Why?” Sahra snapped. She did not get an answer.
I asked her, “Did you make any headway?”
“I didn’t get a chance to pick up any pages. I did
get into the Radisha’s suite. I did eavesdrop on her and
Soulcatcher. And I did pick up a little other
information.”
“For example?”
“For example, the Purohita and all the sacerdotal members
of the Privy Council will be leaving the Palace tomorrow to attend
a convocation of senior priests in preparation for this
year’s Druga Pavi.”
The Druga Pavi is the biggest Gunni holiday of the Taglian year.
Taglios, with all its numerous cults and countless minorities,
boasted some holiday almost every day, but the Druga Pavi beggared
all the rest.
“But that doesn’t come up until after the end of the
rainy season.” I had a funny feeling about this.
“I got a premonition from it myself,” Sahra
admitted.
“River, take the Master and copyist and make sure
they’re as comfortable as we can make them here. Have Goblin
provide them with chokers and make sure they understand how they
work.” I asked Sahra, “Did you happen to hear about
this before or after Soulcatcher got back from terrorizing the
swamp?”
“After, of course.”
“Of course. She suspects something. Kendo. As soon as
it’s light out tomorrow, I want you to head for the Kernmi
What. See what you can find out about this meeting without giving
away how interested you are. If you see a lot of Greys or other
Shadar around, don’t bother. Just get back here with that
word.”
“Suppose this’s a genuine opportunity?” Sahra
asked.
“It’ll stay genuine as long as they’re
outside the Palace. Won’t it?”
“Maybe it would be best to just kill them. Put some flash
buttons on the corpses. That would make Soulcatcher really
mad.”
“Wait. I’m having a thought. It might just be
straight from al-Shiel.” I waved a finger in the air as
though counting musical beats. “Yes. That’s it. We need
to hope the Protector is trying to bait a trap with the
Purohita.” I explained my thinking.
“That’s good,” Sahra said. “But if
we’re going to make it work, you and Tobo will have to go
inside with me.”
“And I can’t. There’s no way I can miss work
the day after Master Santaraksita disappears. Get Murgen. See if he
was around the Palace today. Find out if there’s a trap and
where it’s at. If Soulcateher is going to be away, maybe you
and Tobo can do it on your own.”
“I don’t want to belittle your genius, Sleepy,
but this is something I’ve thought about a lot. Off
and on for years. The possibility is partly why I keep trying to
worm my way closer to the center of things. The truth is, it
can’t be managed by fewer than three people. I need Shiki and
I need Sawa.”
“Let me think.” Sahra got Murgen’s attention
while I thought. Murgen seemed to be more alert and more interested
in the outside world now, particularly where his wife and son were
concerned. He must have begun to understand. “I’ve got
it, Sahra! We can have Goblin be Sawa.”
“Ain’t no fucking way,” Goblin said. He
repeated himself four or five times in as many languages, just in
case somebody missed his point. “What the fuck is the matter
with you, woman?”
“You’re as small as I am. We rub a little betel-nut
juice on your face and hands, dress you up in my Sawa outfit, have
Sahra sew your mouth shut so you can’t shoot it off every
time the urge hits you, nobody will know the difference. As long as
you keep looking down, which is what Sawa mostly does.”
“That may be a solution,” Sahra said, ignoring
Goblin’s continued protests. “In fact, the more I think
about it the better I like it. No disrespect meant but in a major
pinch, Goblin would be a lot more useful than you would.”
“I know. There you go. And I could go ahead and be Dorabee
Dey besides. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Women,” Goblin grumbled. “Can’t live
with them but they won’t go away.”
Sahra said, “You’d better start learning
Sawa’s quirks from Sleepy.” To me she said,
“There’ll be plenty of work for Sawa. I made sure. And
Narita is eager to get her back. Tobo, you need to get some sleep.
Nobody’s connected you with Gokhale but you’ll still
need to be alert.”
“I really don’t like going up
there, Mom.”
“You think I do? We all
have—”
“Yes. I think you do. I think you keep going up there
because you want the danger. I think it might be hard for you when
you do have to stop taking risks. I think when that happens,
we’re all going to have to watch you close so you don’t
do something that might get us all killed along with
you.”
That was a kid who had been doing a lot of thinking. Maybe with
a little help from one or more uncles. Sounded to me like he might
be riding knee to knee with the truth, too.
Master
Santaraksita hardly waited till there were no eavesdroppers before
he approached me. “Dorabee, your record is beginning to look
bad. Two days ago you were late. Yesterday you didn’t show up
at all. This morning you don’t look alert and ready for
work.”
I was not. I would have been testy with anyone else. In this
case I barely noticed that his words were not spoken in a tone in
keeping with their content. I sensed relief in him at my return and
a lingering whiff of a fear that I would not. I lied. “I had
a fever. I couldn’t stay on my feet for more than few minutes
at a time. I tried to come in but I was so weak I got lost for a
while and eventually ended up just going home.”
“Should you even be here today, then?” Changing
course, sounding overly worried.
“I have a little more strength today. I have a lot of work
to do. I really want to keep this job, Sri. None other would put me
so close to so much wisdom.”
“Where is home, Dorabee?” I had collected my broom.
He was following me. Eyes were following us, some with a knowing
look that told me Santaraksita may have pursued other young men in
the past.
I was ready for this one because I knew he had tried to follow
me. “I share a small room near the waterfront in the Sirada
neighborhood with several friends from the army.” A common
situation throughout Taglios, where men outnumber women almost two
to one because so many men have come in from the Territories,
hoping to make their fortunes.
“Why didn’t you go home when you came back,
Dorabee?”
Oh-oh. “Sri?”
“Your mother, your brothers, your sisters, and their wives
and husbands and children all still dwell in the same place where
you lived as a child. They believed you were dead.”
Oh, darn!
He had gone to see them? The busybody. “I don’t get
along with those people, Sri.” Which was an outright lie on
behalf of Dorabee Dey Banerjae. The man I had known had been very
close to his family. “When I came back from the Kiaulune
wars, I was so horribly changed that they wouldn’t have
recognized me. Had I gone home, it wouldn’t have been long
before they found out things about me that would’ve caused
them to disown me. I preferred to let them think Dorabee was dead.
The boy they remembered no longer exists anyway.”
I hoped he would interpret that according to his own wishful
thinking.
He bit. “I understand.”
“I’m grateful for your concern, Sri. If you will
excuse me?” I went to work.
I worked briskly, deep in thought. What I needed to do required
me to let myself be seduced. I had no experience along those lines,
from either of the possible viewpoints. But the old men tell me I
am clever, and after a while I thought I saw a way by which events
could proceed as desired without Surendranath Santaraksita putting
himself in a position of emotional or moral risk greater than he
had when he tried to follow me home and I had to send Tobo out to
rescue him. Which, of course, he did not know.
I had a weak spell toward mid-morning, at a point where old
Baladitya could repay his small debt by being solicitous. By the
time Master Santaraksita manufactured a reasonable excuse to put
himself into my proximity, I had collected myself and was back at
work.
A few hours later I contrived to throw up my lunch, then made a
show of cleaning up. I suffered dizzy spells later still. The last
occurred after most of the librarians and copyists had gone home,
despite the threat of further showers. The afternoon storm had not
been as terrible as most. Taglians generally viewed that as a bad
omen.
Santaraksita played his part perfectly. He was beside me before
my spell was over. Nervously, he suggested, “You’d
better quit now, Dorabee. You’ve put in more than your
day’s work. The rest will be here tomorrow. I’ll walk
along with you to make sure you’re all right.”
A relapse threatened as I began to protest that that was not
necessary. So I said, “Thank you, Sri. Your generosity knows
no bounds. What about Baladitya?” The old copyist’s
grandson had failed to show again.
“He’s practically on our way. We’ll just leave
him off first.” I tried to think of some small act or
something I could say that would encourage Santaraksita’s
fantasy, but could not. That proved unnecessary, anyway. The man
was determined to hook himself. All because I knew how to read.
Weird.
Riverwalker just happened to be hanging around outside when
Master Santaraksita, Baladitya and I left the library grounds. I
made a little gesture to let him know we were going to do it. More
signs and gestures along the way let him know that the old man
should be rounded up as soon as Santaraksita and I left him. He was
a witness who could say that the Master Librarian had been seen
last in my company. And he might be useful.
Not far from the warehouse, I suffered another mild spell.
Santaraksita put an arm around me to help. I drifted back into my
safe place some and went on with the game. By now we were
surrounded, at a distance, by Company brothers. “Just
straight ahead,” I told Santaraksita, who was becoming
confused by the outer web of spells. “Just hold my
hand.”
Moments later a gentle tap at the base of the Master
Librarian’s skull let me step away from my uncomfortable
role.
“Here I’m known as Sleepy. I’m the Annalist of
the Black Company. I brought you here to assist in the translation
of material recorded by some of my earliest
predecessors.”
Santaraksita began to fuss. Kendo Cutter placed a hand over his
mouth and nose so he could not breathe. After several such
episodes, even a member of the priestly class recognized the
connection between silence and unimpeded breathing.
I told him, “We have a pretty cruel reputation, Sri. And
it’s rightly deserved. No, I’m not Dorabee Dey
Banerjae. Dorabee did die during the Kiaulune wars. Fighting on our
side.”
“What do you want?” In a shaky voice.
“Like I said, we need to translate some old books. Tobo,
get the books from my worktable.”
The boy went away grumbling about why was it always he who had
to run and fetch.
Master Santaraksita was very put out when he discovered that
some of what I wanted translated had been pilfered from his own
restricted stacks. In fact, when I told him, “I want to start
with this one,” and showed him what I believed to be the
earliest of the Annals, he lost some color.
“I’m doomed,
Dorabee . . . I’m sorry, young man.
Sleepy, was it?”
“Haw!” One-Eye bellowed, having appeared only
moments before. “Did you ever go sniffing up the wrong tree.
My little darling Sleepy, here, is all girl.”
I smirked. “Darn! Here we go again, Sri. Now you have to
get your mind around the fact that a woman can read. Ah.
Here’s Baladitya. You’ll be working with him. Thank
you, River. Did you run into any trouble?”
Santaraksita began to balk again. “I
won’t—”
Kendo silenced him again.
“You’ll translate and you’ll work hard at it,
Sri. Or we won’t feed you. We aren’t the bhadrhalok. We
quit talking about it a long time ago. We’re doing it.
It’s just your misfortune to get caught up in it.”
Sahra arrived. She was soaked. “It’s raining again.
I see you landed your fish.” She collapsed into a chair,
considered Surendranath Santaraksita. “I’m exhausted.
My nerves were on edge all day. The Protector returned from the
swamp at noon. She was in a totally foul mood. She had a huge
argument with the Radisha, right in front of us.”
“The Radisha stood up to her?”
“She did. She’s reached her limit. Another Bhodi
disciple came this morning but the Greys stopped him from burning
himself. Then the Protector announced that she was going to take
the night away from us by letting the shadows run loose from now
on. That’s when the Radisha started screaming.”
Santaraksita looked so completely appalled by the implications
of Sahra’s revelations that I had to laugh. “No,”
he insisted. “It’s not funny.” Then we discovered
that he was not really concerned about the shadows. “The
Protector is going to clip my ears. At the very least. These books
weren’t supposed to be in the library at all. I was supposed
to have destroyed them ages ago, but I couldn’t do that to
any book. Then I forgot about them. I should’ve locked them
up somewhere.”
“Why?” Sahra snapped. She did not get an answer.
I asked her, “Did you make any headway?”
“I didn’t get a chance to pick up any pages. I did
get into the Radisha’s suite. I did eavesdrop on her and
Soulcatcher. And I did pick up a little other
information.”
“For example?”
“For example, the Purohita and all the sacerdotal members
of the Privy Council will be leaving the Palace tomorrow to attend
a convocation of senior priests in preparation for this
year’s Druga Pavi.”
The Druga Pavi is the biggest Gunni holiday of the Taglian year.
Taglios, with all its numerous cults and countless minorities,
boasted some holiday almost every day, but the Druga Pavi beggared
all the rest.
“But that doesn’t come up until after the end of the
rainy season.” I had a funny feeling about this.
“I got a premonition from it myself,” Sahra
admitted.
“River, take the Master and copyist and make sure
they’re as comfortable as we can make them here. Have Goblin
provide them with chokers and make sure they understand how they
work.” I asked Sahra, “Did you happen to hear about
this before or after Soulcatcher got back from terrorizing the
swamp?”
“After, of course.”
“Of course. She suspects something. Kendo. As soon as
it’s light out tomorrow, I want you to head for the Kernmi
What. See what you can find out about this meeting without giving
away how interested you are. If you see a lot of Greys or other
Shadar around, don’t bother. Just get back here with that
word.”
“Suppose this’s a genuine opportunity?” Sahra
asked.
“It’ll stay genuine as long as they’re
outside the Palace. Won’t it?”
“Maybe it would be best to just kill them. Put some flash
buttons on the corpses. That would make Soulcatcher really
mad.”
“Wait. I’m having a thought. It might just be
straight from al-Shiel.” I waved a finger in the air as
though counting musical beats. “Yes. That’s it. We need
to hope the Protector is trying to bait a trap with the
Purohita.” I explained my thinking.
“That’s good,” Sahra said. “But if
we’re going to make it work, you and Tobo will have to go
inside with me.”
“And I can’t. There’s no way I can miss work
the day after Master Santaraksita disappears. Get Murgen. See if he
was around the Palace today. Find out if there’s a trap and
where it’s at. If Soulcateher is going to be away, maybe you
and Tobo can do it on your own.”
“I don’t want to belittle your genius, Sleepy,
but this is something I’ve thought about a lot. Off
and on for years. The possibility is partly why I keep trying to
worm my way closer to the center of things. The truth is, it
can’t be managed by fewer than three people. I need Shiki and
I need Sawa.”
“Let me think.” Sahra got Murgen’s attention
while I thought. Murgen seemed to be more alert and more interested
in the outside world now, particularly where his wife and son were
concerned. He must have begun to understand. “I’ve got
it, Sahra! We can have Goblin be Sawa.”
“Ain’t no fucking way,” Goblin said. He
repeated himself four or five times in as many languages, just in
case somebody missed his point. “What the fuck is the matter
with you, woman?”
“You’re as small as I am. We rub a little betel-nut
juice on your face and hands, dress you up in my Sawa outfit, have
Sahra sew your mouth shut so you can’t shoot it off every
time the urge hits you, nobody will know the difference. As long as
you keep looking down, which is what Sawa mostly does.”
“That may be a solution,” Sahra said, ignoring
Goblin’s continued protests. “In fact, the more I think
about it the better I like it. No disrespect meant but in a major
pinch, Goblin would be a lot more useful than you would.”
“I know. There you go. And I could go ahead and be Dorabee
Dey besides. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Women,” Goblin grumbled. “Can’t live
with them but they won’t go away.”
Sahra said, “You’d better start learning
Sawa’s quirks from Sleepy.” To me she said,
“There’ll be plenty of work for Sawa. I made sure. And
Narita is eager to get her back. Tobo, you need to get some sleep.
Nobody’s connected you with Gokhale but you’ll still
need to be alert.”
“I really don’t like going up
there, Mom.”
“You think I do? We all
have—”
“Yes. I think you do. I think you keep going up there
because you want the danger. I think it might be hard for you when
you do have to stop taking risks. I think when that happens,
we’re all going to have to watch you close so you don’t
do something that might get us all killed along with
you.”
That was a kid who had been doing a lot of thinking. Maybe with
a little help from one or more uncles. Sounded to me like he might
be riding knee to knee with the truth, too.