Sahra changed
faces as easily as an actor swaps masks. Sometimes she was the
cruel, cunning, coldly calculating necromancer who conspired with
the Captured. Sometimes she was just the near-widow of the
Standardbearer and official Annalist of the Company. Sometimes she
was just Tobo’s doting mother. And whenever she went out into
the city, she was Minh Subredil, another being entirely.
Minh Subredil was an outcast, the half-breed by-blow of a priest
of Khusa and a Nyueng Bao whore. Minh Subredil knew more about her
antecedents than did half the people on the streets of Taglios. She
talked to herself about them all the time. She would tell anyone
she could trap into listening.
Minh Subredil was a woman so pathetic, so shunned by fortune,
that she was an old, bent thing decades before her time. Her
signature, which made her recognizable to people who never had
encountered her, was the small statue of Ghanghesha she carried
everywhere. Ghanghesha, who was the god in charge of good luck in
Gunni and some Nyueng Bao belief. Minh Subredil talked to
Ghanghesha when there was nobody else who would listen.
Widowed, Minh Subredil supported her one child by doing
scut-work day labor at the Palace. Each morning well before dawn
she joined the assembly of unfortunates who gathered at the
northern servants’ postern in hopes of gaining work.
Sometimes she was joined by her dead husband’s retarded
sister Sawa. Sometimes she brought her daughter, though seldom
anymore. The girl was getting old enough to be noticed.
Subassistant housekeeper Jaul Barundandi would come out and
announce the number of positions available for the day, then would
select the people to fill them. Barundandi always chose Minh
Subredil because, though she was too ugly to demand sexual favors
of, she could be counted upon to kick back a generous percentage of
her salary. Minh Subredil was a desperate creature.
Barundandi was amused by Subredil’s omnipresent statue. A
devout Gunni of the cult of Khusa, he often included in his prayers
a petition that he be spared Subredil’s sort of luck. He
would never admit it to his henchmen but he did favor Subredil some
because of her poor choice of a father. Like most villains, he was
wicked only most of the time and mainly in small-minded ways.
Subredil, as Ky Sahra, never prayed. Ky Sahra had no use for
gods. Unaware of his tiny soft spot, she did have in mind a destiny
for Jaul Barundandi. When the time came. The subassistant would
have ample opportunity to regret his predations.
There would be many, many regrets, spanning the length and
breadth of the Taglian empire. When the time came.
We went out through the maze of confusion and distraction spells
Goblin and One-Eye have spent so many years weaving throughout the
neighborhood, a thousand layers of gossamer deception so subtle
only the Protector herself might notice them. If she was looking.
But Soulcatcher does not roam the streets looking for enemy
hideouts. She has the Greys and her shadows and bats and crows to
do that work. And those are too dim to notice that they are being
guided away from or subtly ushered through the area in a manner
that left it seeming no more remarkable than any other. The two
little wizards spent most of their time maintaining and expanding
their maze of confusion. People not trusted no longer got within
two hundred yards of our headquarters. Not without being led.
We had no trouble. We wore strands of yarn tied around our left
wrists. These enchanted loops softened the confusion spells. They
let us see the truth.
Thus we often knew what the Palace intended before plans went
into motion. Minh Subredil, or sometimes Sawa, listened in while
the plans were being made.
I muttered, “Isn’t it awfully early for us to be
out?”
“Yes. But there will be others already there when we take
our place.” There are a lot of desperate people in Taglios.
Some will camp as near the Palace as the Greys will allow.
We did reach the Palace area hours earlier than ever before. But
there were rounds of the darkness to make, brothers of the Company
to visit in their hiding places. In each instance the voice of the
witch came out of the wreckage that was Minh Subredil. Sawa tagged
along behind and drooled out of the corner of her twisted
mouth.
Most of the men did not recognize us. They did not expect to do
so. They expected to receive a code word from those in charge that
would expose us as messengers. They got that word. Chances were
good they were in some disguise themselves. Every Company brother
was supposed to create several characters he could assume in
public. Some did better than others. The worst were called upon to
risk the least.
Subredil glanced at the fragment of moon sneaking a peek through
a crack in the clouds. “Minutes to go.”
I grunted, nervous. It had been a while since I had been
involved in anything directly dangerous. Other than wandering
around the Palace or going to the library, of course. But nobody
was likely to stick me with sharp objects there.
“Those clouds look like the kind that come right before
the rainy season.” If they were, that season would be early.
Which was not a pleasant thought. During the rainy season that is
what it does, in torrents, every day. The weather can be truly
ferocious, with dramatic temperature shifts and hailstorms, and
thunder like all the gods of the Gunni pantheon are drunk and
brawling. But mainly I do not like the heat.
Taglians divide their year into six seasons. Only during the one
they call winter is there any sustained relief from the heat.
Subredil asked, “Would Sawa even notice the clouds?”
She was a stickler for staying in character. In a city ruled by
darkness you never knew what eyes watched from the shadows, what
unseen ears were pricked to overhear.
“Uhm.” That was about as intelligent a thing as Sawa
ever said.
“Come.” Subredil took my arm, guiding me, which was
what she always did when we went to work at the Palace. We
approached the main north entrance, which was only two-score yards
from the service postern. A single torch burned there. It was
supposed to show the Guards who might be outside. But it was
situated so poorly it only helped them see the honest people. As we
drew closer, someone who had sneaked in along the foot of the wall
jumped up and enveloped the torch in a sack of wet rawhide.
The crude, startled remark of one of the guards carried clearly.
Now, would he be incautious enough to come see what had
happened?
There was no reason to believe he would not. The Royal Guards
had had no trouble for almost a generation.
The sliver of moon vanished behind a cloud. As it went,
something moved at the Palace entrance.
Now came the tricky part, making it look like we screwed up a
sure thing by going in right at a shift change. A sound of
scuffling. A startled cry. Somebody else demanding what was going
on. A rattle and clatter as people rushed the gate. Clang of metal.
A scream or two. Whistles. Then within fifteen seconds, answering
whistles from several directions. Exactly according to plan. In
moments the whistles from the Palace entrance became shrilly
desperate.
When first the idea was broached, there had been serious debate
about whether or not the attack should be the real thing. It seemed
likely taking the entrance would be easy. A strong faction, made up
of men tired of waiting, just wanted to bust in and kill everybody.
While that might have offered a certain amount of satisfaction,
there was little chance Soulcatcher could be destroyed, and such
wholesale murder would do nothing to liberate the Captured, which
was supposed to be our primary mission. I had convinced everyone
that we needed to launch an old-fashioned, Annals-based game of
misdirection. Make the enemy think we were up to one thing when
actually we wanted to accomplish something else entirely. Get them
running hard to head us off in one direction when we were following
a completely different course.
With Goblin and One-Eye now so old, our deceits have to be
increasingly intellectual. Those two do not have the strength or
stamina to create and maintain massive battlefield illusions. And,
though willing to share their secrets, they had not been able to
arm Sahra for the struggle. Her talent did not extend in that
direction.
The first Greys charged out of the darkness, into the ambushes
waiting to receive them. For a while it was a vicious slaughter.
But, somehow, a few managed to get through to support the Guards
barely hanging on at the Palace entrance.
Subredil and I moved into position against the foot of the wall,
between the big entrance and the servants’ postern. Subredil
hugged her Ghanghesha and whimpered. Sawa clung to Subredil and
drooled and made strange little frightened noises.
Though the attackers piled up heaps of Greys, they never quite
managed to break through the defense of the entry-way. Then help
arrived from inside. Willow Swan and a platoon of Royal Guards
burst through the gateway. The attackers scattered instantly. So
fast, in fact, that Swan screeched, “Hold up! There’s
something wrong!”
The night lit up. The air filled with hurtling fireballs. Their
like had not been seen since the heavy fighting at the end of the
Shadowmaster wars. Lady had created those weapons in vast numbers
and a few had been husbanded carefully since then. The men
employing them had not been involved in the attack on the entrance.
They clung to the fire plan, which counted on everyone being able
to pick Swan out from amongst the Guards and Greys.
His life depended on it.
Fire fell to the side of the group away from Subredil and me.
Willow was afraid. When fire swiftly shifted to fall on the entry
and cut him off, he was supposed to retreat toward the service
entrance. Past us.
Good old Swan. He must have read my script. As his men were
being torn apart by fireballs just yards away, he skittered along,
hand against the wall, staying just steps ahead of destruction.
Molten stone and chunks of burning flesh flew over his head and
ours and I realized that I had underestimated the fury of my
weapons, perhaps fatally. It was definitely a mistake to have
committed so many.
Swan stumbled over Minh Subredil’s ankle. Somehow, when he
hit the cobblestones, he found himself face-to-face with a drooling
idiot. Who had a dagger’s point neatly positioned under his
chin. “Don’t even breathe,” she whispered.
Fireballs hitting the Palace wall melted their way right in. The
wooden gateway was on fire. There was plenty of light by which our
brothers could see us signal that we had gotten our man. Fire
became more accurate. The resistance to the Greys coming to help
became less porous. A second apparent attack came forward. A couple
of those brothers collected Swan. They kicked and cursed us. And
took our weapons with them when they went away, part of a general
retreat as the attack wave fled from no evident resistance.
As they disappeared into the darkness, the thing that we had
feared most occurred.
Soulcatcher came out on the battlements above to see what was
happening. Subredil and I knew because all fighting ceased within
seconds once somebody spotted her. Then a storm of fireballs
flashed her way.
We were lucky. She was sufficiently unprepared that she could do
nothing but duck. Our brothers then did what they were supposed to
do. They got the heck out of there. They got downhill and lost
amongst the population before the Protector could release her bats
and crows.
It was my belief that the activity would have all the nearby
part of the city in an uproar within minutes. The men were supposed
to help that along by launching absurd rumors. If they remained
calm enough.
Subredil and Sawa moved two dozen yards closer to the
servants’ postern. We had just settled down to drool and be
held and whimper while we watched the corpses burn when a
frightened voice demanded, “Minh Subredil. What are you doing
here?”
Jaul Barundandi. Our boss. I did not look up. And Subredil did
not respond until Barundandi stirred her with a toe and asked
again, not unkindly. She told him, “We were going to be here
early. Sawa needs to work bad.” She looked around.
“Where are the others?”
There had been others. Four or five even more eager to be first
in line. They had fled. That might mean trouble. No telling what
they might have seen before they ran. An early stray fireball was
supposed to have panicked and scattered them before Swan got to us
but I could not recall that having happened.
Subredil turned more toward Barundandi. I held on to her tighter
and whimpered. She patted my shoulder and murmured something
indistinct. Barundandi seemed to buy it, particularly when Subredil
discovered that one of her Ghanghesha’s trunks had broken
off, and she began to cry and search our surroundings.
Several of Barundandi’s associates were out as well,
looking around, asking one another what happened. The same thing
was going on at the main entrance, where stunned Guards and
sleep-fuddled functionaries asked one another what had happened and
what they should do and, holy shit! some of those fires burned all
the way through the wall and it was six or eight feet thick! Shadar
from as far as a mile away were arriving, gathering dead and
wounded Greys and also trying to figure out what had happened.
Jaul Barundandi’s voice gentled further. He beckoned his
assistants. “Help these two inside. Be gentle. The high and
the mighty may want to talk to them.”
I hoped my start did not give us away. I had counted on getting
inside early but it had not occurred to me that anyone might be
interested in what two near-untouchables might have seen.
Sahra changed
faces as easily as an actor swaps masks. Sometimes she was the
cruel, cunning, coldly calculating necromancer who conspired with
the Captured. Sometimes she was just the near-widow of the
Standardbearer and official Annalist of the Company. Sometimes she
was just Tobo’s doting mother. And whenever she went out into
the city, she was Minh Subredil, another being entirely.
Minh Subredil was an outcast, the half-breed by-blow of a priest
of Khusa and a Nyueng Bao whore. Minh Subredil knew more about her
antecedents than did half the people on the streets of Taglios. She
talked to herself about them all the time. She would tell anyone
she could trap into listening.
Minh Subredil was a woman so pathetic, so shunned by fortune,
that she was an old, bent thing decades before her time. Her
signature, which made her recognizable to people who never had
encountered her, was the small statue of Ghanghesha she carried
everywhere. Ghanghesha, who was the god in charge of good luck in
Gunni and some Nyueng Bao belief. Minh Subredil talked to
Ghanghesha when there was nobody else who would listen.
Widowed, Minh Subredil supported her one child by doing
scut-work day labor at the Palace. Each morning well before dawn
she joined the assembly of unfortunates who gathered at the
northern servants’ postern in hopes of gaining work.
Sometimes she was joined by her dead husband’s retarded
sister Sawa. Sometimes she brought her daughter, though seldom
anymore. The girl was getting old enough to be noticed.
Subassistant housekeeper Jaul Barundandi would come out and
announce the number of positions available for the day, then would
select the people to fill them. Barundandi always chose Minh
Subredil because, though she was too ugly to demand sexual favors
of, she could be counted upon to kick back a generous percentage of
her salary. Minh Subredil was a desperate creature.
Barundandi was amused by Subredil’s omnipresent statue. A
devout Gunni of the cult of Khusa, he often included in his prayers
a petition that he be spared Subredil’s sort of luck. He
would never admit it to his henchmen but he did favor Subredil some
because of her poor choice of a father. Like most villains, he was
wicked only most of the time and mainly in small-minded ways.
Subredil, as Ky Sahra, never prayed. Ky Sahra had no use for
gods. Unaware of his tiny soft spot, she did have in mind a destiny
for Jaul Barundandi. When the time came. The subassistant would
have ample opportunity to regret his predations.
There would be many, many regrets, spanning the length and
breadth of the Taglian empire. When the time came.
We went out through the maze of confusion and distraction spells
Goblin and One-Eye have spent so many years weaving throughout the
neighborhood, a thousand layers of gossamer deception so subtle
only the Protector herself might notice them. If she was looking.
But Soulcatcher does not roam the streets looking for enemy
hideouts. She has the Greys and her shadows and bats and crows to
do that work. And those are too dim to notice that they are being
guided away from or subtly ushered through the area in a manner
that left it seeming no more remarkable than any other. The two
little wizards spent most of their time maintaining and expanding
their maze of confusion. People not trusted no longer got within
two hundred yards of our headquarters. Not without being led.
We had no trouble. We wore strands of yarn tied around our left
wrists. These enchanted loops softened the confusion spells. They
let us see the truth.
Thus we often knew what the Palace intended before plans went
into motion. Minh Subredil, or sometimes Sawa, listened in while
the plans were being made.
I muttered, “Isn’t it awfully early for us to be
out?”
“Yes. But there will be others already there when we take
our place.” There are a lot of desperate people in Taglios.
Some will camp as near the Palace as the Greys will allow.
We did reach the Palace area hours earlier than ever before. But
there were rounds of the darkness to make, brothers of the Company
to visit in their hiding places. In each instance the voice of the
witch came out of the wreckage that was Minh Subredil. Sawa tagged
along behind and drooled out of the corner of her twisted
mouth.
Most of the men did not recognize us. They did not expect to do
so. They expected to receive a code word from those in charge that
would expose us as messengers. They got that word. Chances were
good they were in some disguise themselves. Every Company brother
was supposed to create several characters he could assume in
public. Some did better than others. The worst were called upon to
risk the least.
Subredil glanced at the fragment of moon sneaking a peek through
a crack in the clouds. “Minutes to go.”
I grunted, nervous. It had been a while since I had been
involved in anything directly dangerous. Other than wandering
around the Palace or going to the library, of course. But nobody
was likely to stick me with sharp objects there.
“Those clouds look like the kind that come right before
the rainy season.” If they were, that season would be early.
Which was not a pleasant thought. During the rainy season that is
what it does, in torrents, every day. The weather can be truly
ferocious, with dramatic temperature shifts and hailstorms, and
thunder like all the gods of the Gunni pantheon are drunk and
brawling. But mainly I do not like the heat.
Taglians divide their year into six seasons. Only during the one
they call winter is there any sustained relief from the heat.
Subredil asked, “Would Sawa even notice the clouds?”
She was a stickler for staying in character. In a city ruled by
darkness you never knew what eyes watched from the shadows, what
unseen ears were pricked to overhear.
“Uhm.” That was about as intelligent a thing as Sawa
ever said.
“Come.” Subredil took my arm, guiding me, which was
what she always did when we went to work at the Palace. We
approached the main north entrance, which was only two-score yards
from the service postern. A single torch burned there. It was
supposed to show the Guards who might be outside. But it was
situated so poorly it only helped them see the honest people. As we
drew closer, someone who had sneaked in along the foot of the wall
jumped up and enveloped the torch in a sack of wet rawhide.
The crude, startled remark of one of the guards carried clearly.
Now, would he be incautious enough to come see what had
happened?
There was no reason to believe he would not. The Royal Guards
had had no trouble for almost a generation.
The sliver of moon vanished behind a cloud. As it went,
something moved at the Palace entrance.
Now came the tricky part, making it look like we screwed up a
sure thing by going in right at a shift change. A sound of
scuffling. A startled cry. Somebody else demanding what was going
on. A rattle and clatter as people rushed the gate. Clang of metal.
A scream or two. Whistles. Then within fifteen seconds, answering
whistles from several directions. Exactly according to plan. In
moments the whistles from the Palace entrance became shrilly
desperate.
When first the idea was broached, there had been serious debate
about whether or not the attack should be the real thing. It seemed
likely taking the entrance would be easy. A strong faction, made up
of men tired of waiting, just wanted to bust in and kill everybody.
While that might have offered a certain amount of satisfaction,
there was little chance Soulcatcher could be destroyed, and such
wholesale murder would do nothing to liberate the Captured, which
was supposed to be our primary mission. I had convinced everyone
that we needed to launch an old-fashioned, Annals-based game of
misdirection. Make the enemy think we were up to one thing when
actually we wanted to accomplish something else entirely. Get them
running hard to head us off in one direction when we were following
a completely different course.
With Goblin and One-Eye now so old, our deceits have to be
increasingly intellectual. Those two do not have the strength or
stamina to create and maintain massive battlefield illusions. And,
though willing to share their secrets, they had not been able to
arm Sahra for the struggle. Her talent did not extend in that
direction.
The first Greys charged out of the darkness, into the ambushes
waiting to receive them. For a while it was a vicious slaughter.
But, somehow, a few managed to get through to support the Guards
barely hanging on at the Palace entrance.
Subredil and I moved into position against the foot of the wall,
between the big entrance and the servants’ postern. Subredil
hugged her Ghanghesha and whimpered. Sawa clung to Subredil and
drooled and made strange little frightened noises.
Though the attackers piled up heaps of Greys, they never quite
managed to break through the defense of the entry-way. Then help
arrived from inside. Willow Swan and a platoon of Royal Guards
burst through the gateway. The attackers scattered instantly. So
fast, in fact, that Swan screeched, “Hold up! There’s
something wrong!”
The night lit up. The air filled with hurtling fireballs. Their
like had not been seen since the heavy fighting at the end of the
Shadowmaster wars. Lady had created those weapons in vast numbers
and a few had been husbanded carefully since then. The men
employing them had not been involved in the attack on the entrance.
They clung to the fire plan, which counted on everyone being able
to pick Swan out from amongst the Guards and Greys.
His life depended on it.
Fire fell to the side of the group away from Subredil and me.
Willow was afraid. When fire swiftly shifted to fall on the entry
and cut him off, he was supposed to retreat toward the service
entrance. Past us.
Good old Swan. He must have read my script. As his men were
being torn apart by fireballs just yards away, he skittered along,
hand against the wall, staying just steps ahead of destruction.
Molten stone and chunks of burning flesh flew over his head and
ours and I realized that I had underestimated the fury of my
weapons, perhaps fatally. It was definitely a mistake to have
committed so many.
Swan stumbled over Minh Subredil’s ankle. Somehow, when he
hit the cobblestones, he found himself face-to-face with a drooling
idiot. Who had a dagger’s point neatly positioned under his
chin. “Don’t even breathe,” she whispered.
Fireballs hitting the Palace wall melted their way right in. The
wooden gateway was on fire. There was plenty of light by which our
brothers could see us signal that we had gotten our man. Fire
became more accurate. The resistance to the Greys coming to help
became less porous. A second apparent attack came forward. A couple
of those brothers collected Swan. They kicked and cursed us. And
took our weapons with them when they went away, part of a general
retreat as the attack wave fled from no evident resistance.
As they disappeared into the darkness, the thing that we had
feared most occurred.
Soulcatcher came out on the battlements above to see what was
happening. Subredil and I knew because all fighting ceased within
seconds once somebody spotted her. Then a storm of fireballs
flashed her way.
We were lucky. She was sufficiently unprepared that she could do
nothing but duck. Our brothers then did what they were supposed to
do. They got the heck out of there. They got downhill and lost
amongst the population before the Protector could release her bats
and crows.
It was my belief that the activity would have all the nearby
part of the city in an uproar within minutes. The men were supposed
to help that along by launching absurd rumors. If they remained
calm enough.
Subredil and Sawa moved two dozen yards closer to the
servants’ postern. We had just settled down to drool and be
held and whimper while we watched the corpses burn when a
frightened voice demanded, “Minh Subredil. What are you doing
here?”
Jaul Barundandi. Our boss. I did not look up. And Subredil did
not respond until Barundandi stirred her with a toe and asked
again, not unkindly. She told him, “We were going to be here
early. Sawa needs to work bad.” She looked around.
“Where are the others?”
There had been others. Four or five even more eager to be first
in line. They had fled. That might mean trouble. No telling what
they might have seen before they ran. An early stray fireball was
supposed to have panicked and scattered them before Swan got to us
but I could not recall that having happened.
Subredil turned more toward Barundandi. I held on to her tighter
and whimpered. She patted my shoulder and murmured something
indistinct. Barundandi seemed to buy it, particularly when Subredil
discovered that one of her Ghanghesha’s trunks had broken
off, and she began to cry and search our surroundings.
Several of Barundandi’s associates were out as well,
looking around, asking one another what happened. The same thing
was going on at the main entrance, where stunned Guards and
sleep-fuddled functionaries asked one another what had happened and
what they should do and, holy shit! some of those fires burned all
the way through the wall and it was six or eight feet thick! Shadar
from as far as a mile away were arriving, gathering dead and
wounded Greys and also trying to figure out what had happened.
Jaul Barundandi’s voice gentled further. He beckoned his
assistants. “Help these two inside. Be gentle. The high and
the mighty may want to talk to them.”
I hoped my start did not give us away. I had counted on getting
inside early but it had not occurred to me that anyone might be
interested in what two near-untouchables might have seen.