The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) (120 page)

His best advice was to take my questions to the perpetrator once we found him.

The girls left me alone with my honey. I held her hand and rambled on about a thousand things: recollections, current affairs, hopes. I shared my suspicions and concerns about Tobo, too, which might have been dangerous since I had no idea what might be listening.

Nothing I did helped her even a little, nor did it seem to do me any good. I fought the good fight against despair.

A squeaky clean, thoroughly polished corporal from Hsien trotted up. “Captain’s compliments, sir, and could you come to the Palace? They think they may have located the Khadidas and the Daughter of Night.”

“Damn! Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tell them not to mess with anything. Tell them to be
very
careful. Those two are extremely dangerous.”

They knew that, of course. And Tobo would be right there to remind them. But repetition never hurts. Not when it helps get you through the deadly times.

Shukrat and Arkana came running. “What’s up?” Shukrat asked.

As I explained I reflected on how much better the girls were getting along. They seemed to have shed the conflicts they had brought into Captivity.

As we three got Lady ready to go back to my tent I asked Arkana, “Will you want to go home someday?”

“What?”

“Home. Where you were born. The world I used to call Khatovar. Do you want to go back? I think I could make it happen.”

“But it’s all destroyed.”

“Not really. The First Father and Nashun the Researcher said so, but that was just to excuse their cowardice.”

“I’m not sure I want to believe that.”

“Good. Excellent. That’s the way I want my kids to be. Skeptical. That’s the truth according to Shivetya. And I’m not a hundred percent sure of our demonic friend myself.”

“Why didn’t you ask me if I want to go?” Shukrat demanded.

“Because you don’t want to go. You just want to be where Tobo is.”

“That isn’t exactly a secret. It isn’t a crime, either. But I’m not bereft of my senses. You’ll sure never see me do some die-for-love kind of thing. If you guys do go, tell me. I’ll decide what I want to do then.”

126

Taglios: Royal Return

I did not make it to the Palace. Shukrat beat me there and came right back with instructions to head for the South Gate. The Prahbrindrah Drah was about to arrive and Suvrin wanted
somebody
there to greet the man we had been touting as the city’s legitimate ruler.

Per instructions I rounded up a few men from the City Battalions, along with a handful of their officers, and off I went, grumbling all the way. I expected the Prince’s homecoming would be a huge disappointment for him and his sister.

Taglios did not care.

I told several people to spread the word, to try to get something going.

That did very little good. The route inward from the gate was never more than sparsely populated with spectators and the rare feeble cheer we did hear came from really old people.

I hate to waste pomp and pageantry. Not that we did put much on. Aridatha got to bring out his marching band, a little late. Never would have been better. They were terrible. And not just because what passes for music here is so alien. I have spent half my life in this end of the world. I asked Singh, “Those guys practice much?”

“They’ve been too busy being soldiers.”

Aridatha had an attitude I appreciated. Each one of his men was expected to be a soldier first, and whatever else secondarily.

Singh said, “I do have to tell you, this Prince doesn’t look very impressive. I hope he’s a better ruler than he is a showman.”

I was no longer sure bringing the Prince back would be good for Taglios, myself. There had been big changes in the city and bigger changes in the man. They might have nothing in common anymore.

I shrugged. “He’s old. If he hasn’t got what Taglios needs Taglios won’t have to put up with him for long.”

In the old days the Prince and I had gotten along well. Until he had turned on us. As an officer in my command he had shown a hunger for learning and a lust for doing the best thing. So I told him straightaway, when we met inside the South Gate, that his first order of business, now that he was back in business, had to be the establishment of a generally acceptable line of succession. Otherwise chaos would follow his demise.

“
Rajadharma
, old buddy. Let’s get the job done.”

My remarks earned me a tired growl and not much more. The Prince seemed used up and worn out. His sister showed more spark but had a lot more years on her because she had not shared the stasis of the Captivity with her brother. Chances were, nowadays, that she would go first, despite being the younger.

She could not be titular ruler, anyway. When she did exercise the power, during all those years, there had been a pretense of a regency, in place until the legitimate ruler could resume control. Because the Prahbrindrah Drah was still alive somewhere. Neither custom nor law allowed a woman to rule in her own right.

Arkana came to meet me with the news. “They’ve definitely found the Khadidas and the Daughter of Night, Pop.” She was a willing participant in that charade now and, more and more, helping herself to a job as my personal assistant. Now, if I could just teach her written Taglian.… I suspect the frequency with which I crossed the path of Aridatha Singh had something to do with all that. Singh, I noted, had not failed to recognize what a tasty morsel my little girl was, either, though Voroshk protective apparel seldom flattered.

Tobo remained patient enough to wait until I reached the Palace. Barely. And only out of impatient courtesy, because that was my real daughter and my former friend in there.

My real daughter. A grown woman, whom I had never seen. Arkana, known less than a year, was more daughter to me in life. And Narayan Singh was more a father to Booboo.

Aridatha was there and interested. I wondered why. Then I recalled that he had seen Booboo a few times before and those women have a way of getting under your skin without ever trying.

It did not occur to me that he might be thinking more about the Khadidas.

At first the Prince was put out by everyone’s sudden loss of interest in him … then he got a good look at what had happened to the Palace.

He moaned aloud, a textbook cry of anguish. He managed some respectable gnashing of teeth.

Suvrin stepped in. The little pudgeball could be weasel-slick handling people when he wanted. Which might be the ideal leadership skill for the times. I turned to Arkana, gave her special instructions. She flew off to my rooms in the building we had taken for our headquarters. Once upon a time it had been a Greys barracks.

Most of the Greys have vanished. We all pretended not to notice that there are a disproportionate number of Shadar in the City Battalions, say compared to when we were duking it out with them in the streets.

Aridatha was sharing his own good fortune. Though there was less popular inclination toward vengeance than I had expected. And that little focused entirely on individuals.

*   *   *

The Radisha Drah also let out a disconsolate wail on discovering the state of the Palace. She and her brother remained still and silent for minutes. Then she slew the silence with another cry of pain.

I told Suvrin, “I hope they don’t decide that this is all our fault and they just have to get even.” I did not think they would be that stupid, after having survived what they had suffered for having turned on us before, but with royalty you never know. They think differently than real people. The real world never quite seems to reach them.

Smoke still trickled out of the ruins, here and there. While we watched a small avalanche of weakened masonry cascaded down.

The Prince observed, “The stonework must have suffered more than we thought during the earthquake.”

“Hunh?” That had happened so long ago that I had forgotten it. “You’re probably right. Plus the Protector never wasted a copper on maintenance while she was in charge.” I approached Tobo, who continued to prance about impatiently. “Where are my treasures?”

As I asked, Arkana swooped down, black cloth popping and crackling in the wind. She carried One-Eye’s spear and his ugly old hat. The hat still smelled of the ugly old man who had worn it.

“Right there where the red flag is.”

Poles with colored streamers indicated points where the Unknown Shadows had detected something human under the rubble. There were just two red ribbons. The rest were black. There would be no rush to dig there. The red streamer not indicated by Tobo was the focus of frenzied activity.

I asked, “What’s over there?”

“Ten to twelve people trapped in one of the treasury strong rooms. We’re sending water and soup down through bamboo pipes. They’ll be all right.”

“Uhm.” I could imagine the nightmares they would suffer for the rest of their lives. “Just hang onto that stuff,” I told Arkana. I studied the stone around the base of the red-streamer pole. “Tobo, are they conscious down there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’d hate to think they’re just waiting to do something obnoxious when we dig them out.”

He said, “We can just leave them there. Without water they’ll die.”

“It’s a solution.” But not one that interested me. Only Booboo would really suffer. “Suvrin, may I?” When he nodded I beckoned some men who were standing around awaiting instructions. If the girl was aware I was sure we would get a dose of “love me” real quick. Which meant only people in Voroshk clothing should do the final digging.

*   *   *

The Khadidas and Daughter of Night had crawled into a corner of their hiding place when the collapse came. The walls had held up just enough. But they had not had time to collect food and water.

Sadly, my baby did have a lamp and supplies and did make a valiant attempt to keep right on enscribing the Books of the Dead, perhaps in hope of lending Kina enough strength to save her. She could not have had much hope otherwise.

I thought a lot about what Booboo had been through in her near quarter century. About what had been done to her and what she believed she was. The loving part of me thought it might be a priceless mercy if she was saved the cruelty of reawakening.

It never got beyond being a notion. No argument I could present would ever convince Lady that that was appropriate. She wanted a little Lady so badly.

I discovered the Radisha beside me. It was amazing how much she had aged. She even carried a cane. “It’s true, you know,” she said in a weary voice.

“What’s that?” Though I knew what she was going to say.

“The coming of the Black Company did mean the end of Taglios. Just not the way we imagined.”

“All we ever wanted was to pass on through.”

She nodded, keeping her bitterness contained.

“You think we were hard on Taglios? Consider how happy the Shadowmasters must be.”

“But you haven’t finished with Taglios,” the Prahbrindrah Drah observed, joining us. “I’ve just heard what happened to Lady. How is she?”

“Stable.” He was another of those men who had been infatuated with my wife at one time. “And you’re right. In a way. As long as people try to push us around people get hurt. But that shouldn’t last much longer. We’re close to where we have to go.” I stepped forward, spoke to the men digging, first in the language of the Children of the Dead, then in Taglian. “We’re getting close. Hold up till those of us who are protected can help. Tobo! Girls. They’re almost through over here.”

Not far off more interior brickwork surrendered to the seduction of gravity.

127

Taglios: And My Baby

The soldiers created a precarious opening through which someone might wriggle. I asked for a lantern, meaning to be first inside, but Tobo seized it when it arrived. I did not argue. He was better equipped than I.

Seconds after the boy began to duckwalk a blast of urine-colored light ripped through the opening. It glanced off Tobo, hit a block of stone, scattered. It was a potent blast. Stone melted. And one stray ricochet found the Prahbrindrah Drah.

The results were ugly. And instantly fatal.

“That was it,” Tobo called back, unaware of the disaster. “That’s all he had. He’s out of it now. Croaker, help me drag them out.”

The Radisha began to wail.

The boy recognized the scope of the disaster immediately. The Taglian empire was, as of this moment, without an acceptable helmsman. Was without legitimate direction. “It’ll have to wait a minute,” I said. “The Prince is hurt. I want to get him to medical care right now.” Maybe, just one more time, we could pretend the supreme authority was fine but staying out of sight. Soulcatcher got away with it. The Great General got away with it. Why not my own band of opportunists?

I feared there had been too many witnesses, though Suvrin and Aridatha took up the pretense immediately and the Radisha herself joined me after only a few heartbeats. She put on a creditable show of threatening me with serious unpleasantness if her brother happened to die.

Now aware that political disaster threatened, Tobo launched some glitzy distraction. To which I paid little attention because I was desperate to get the Prince out of the public eye. There was a lot of flash behind me, and changing colors playing through the ruins. A big bunch of masonry went down. And Shukrat began helping Tobo pull the Khadidas out of the ground.

Aridatha’s men hauled the Prince’s litter away.

The Prince seen to, Arkana and I began to ease through the rubble toward the hole. I beckoned more stretcher-bearers. The thing being dragged into the light did not look dangerous. It looked like an old, worn-out version of a Goblin who was already dead.

“You want these now?” Arkana asked.

“Hang on just another minute. Get him over here, guys. On the stretcher. Easy. Easy! Tobo. Can you wake him up? Just for a second? Long enough for him to recognize me and what I’m doing?”

“Probably. If you want to risk it.” There was a choke in the boy’s voice. He looked at the spear and the ugly hat and wanted to believe that I had a way to reach the Goblin trapped inside the Khadidas. The Goblin who was always like an uncle to him.