Water Sleeps (2 page)

It was the waiting time, the stillness, the doing nothing that there is so much
of before any serious action. I was out of practice. I could not lean back and
play tonk or just watch while One-Eye and Goblin tried to cheat each other. And
I had writer’s cramp, so could not work on my Annals.

“Tobo!” I called. “You want to go see it happen?”

Tobo was fourteen. He was the youngest of us. He grew up in the Black Company.

He had a full measure of youth’s exuberance and impatience and overconfidence in
his own immortality and divine exemption from retribution. He enjoyed his
assignments on behalf of the Company. He was not quite sure he believed in his
father. He never knew the man. We tried hard to keep him from becoming anyone’s
spoiled baby. But Goblin insisted on treating him like a favorite son. He was
trying to tutor the boy.

Goblin’s command of written Taglian was more limited than he would admit. There
are a hundred characters in the everyday vulgate and forty more reserved to the
priests, who write in the High Mode, which is almost a second unspoken, formal
language. I use a mixture recording these Annals.

Once Tobo could read, “Uncle” Goblin made him do all his reading for him, aloud.

“Could I do some more buttons, Sleepy? Mom thinks more would get more attention
in the Palace.”

I was surprised he talked to her that long. Boys his age are surly at best. He
was rude to his mother all the time. He would have been ruder and more defiant
still if he had not been blessed with so many “uncles” who would not tolerate
that stuff. Naturally, Tobo saw all that as a grand conspiracy of adults.

Publicly. In private, he was amenable to reason. Occasionally. When approached
delicately by someone who was not his mother.

“Maybe a few. But it’s going to get dark soon. And then the show will start.”

“What’ll we go as? I don’t like it when you’re a whore.”

“We’ll be street orphans.” Though that had its risks, too. We could get caught
by a press gang and forced into Mogaba’s army. His soldiers, these days, are
little better than slaves, subject to a savage discipline. Many are petty
criminals given an option of rough justice or enlistment. The rest are children
of poverty with nowhere else to go. Which was the standard of professional
armies men like Murgen saw in the far north, long before my time.

“Why do you worry so much about disguises?”

“If we never show the same face twice, our enemies can’t possibly know who
they’re looking for. Don’t ever underestimate them. Especially not the
Protector. She’s outwitted death itself more than once.”

Tobo was not prepared to believe that or much else of our exotic history. Though
not as bad as most, he was going through that stage where he knew everything
worth knowing and nothing his elders said—particularly if it bore any vaguely
educational hue—was worth hearing. He could not help that. It went with the age.

And I was my age and could not help saying things I knew would do no good. “It’s
in the Annals. Your father and the Captain didn’t make up stories.”

He did not want to believe that, either. I did not pursue it. Each of us must
learn to respect the Annals in our own way, in our own time. The Company’s
diminished circumstance makes it difficult for anyone to grasp tradition. Only
two Old Crew brothers both survived Soulcatcher’s trap on the stone plain and
the Kiaulune wars afterward. Goblin and One-Eye are haplessly inept at
transmitting the Company mystique. One-Eye is too lazy and Goblin too
inarticulate. And I was still practically an apprentice when the Old Crew
ventured onto the plain in the Captain’s quest for Khatovar. Which he did not
find. Not the Khatovar he was looking for, anyway.

I am amazed. Before long I will be a twenty-year veteran. I was barely fourteen
when Bucket took me under his wing . . . But I was never like Tobo. At fourteen
I was already ancient in pain. For years after Bucket rescued me, I grew younger
. . . “What?”

“I asked why you look so angry all of a sudden.”

“I was remembering when I was fourteen.”

“Girls have it so easy—” He shut up. His face drained. His northern ancestry
became apparent. He was an arrogant and spoiled little puke but he did have
brains enough to recognize it when he stepped into a nest of poisonous snakes.

I told him what he knew, not what he did not. “When I was fourteen, the Company
and Nyueng Bao were trapped in Jaicur. Dejagore, they call it here.” The rest
does not matter anymore. The rest is safely in the past. “I almost never have
nightmares now.”

Tobo had heard more than he ever wanted to about Jaicur already. His mother and
grandmother and Uncle Doj had been there, too.

“Goblin says we’ll be impressed by these buttons,” Tobo whispered. “They won’t
just make spooky lights, they’ll prick somebody’s conscience.”

“That’ll be unusual.” Conscience was a rare commodity on either side of our
dispute.

“You really knew my dad?” Tobo had heard stories all his life but lately wanted
to know more. Murgen had begun to matter in a more than lip-service fashion.

I told him what I had told him before. “He was my boss. He taught me to read and
write. He was a good man.” I laughed weakly. “As good a man as belonging to the
Black Company let him be.”

Tobo stopped. He took a deep breath. He stared at a point in the dusk somewhere
above my left shoulder. “Were you lovers?”

“No, Tobo. No. Friends. Almost. But definitely not that. He didn’t know I was a
woman till just before he left for the glittering plain. And I didn’t know he
knew till I read his Annals. Nobody knew. They thought I was a cute runt who
just never got any bigger. I let them think that. I felt safer as one of the
guys.”

“Oh.”

His tone was so neutral I had to wonder. “Why did you even ask?” Surely he had
no reason to believe I had behaved differently before he knew me.

He shrugged. “I just wondered.”

Something must have set him off. Possibly an “I wonder if . . . ” from Goblin or
One-Eye, say, while they were sampling some of their homemade elephant poison.

“I didn’t ask. Did you put the buttons behind the shadow show?”

“That’s what I was told to do.”

A shadow show uses cutout puppets mounted on sticks. Some of their limbs are
manipulated mechanically. A candle behind the puppets casts their shadows on a
screen of white cloth. The puppeteer uses a variety of voices to tell his story
as he maneuvers his puppets. If he is sufficiently entertaining, his audience
will toss him a few coins.

This particular puppeteer had performed in the same place for more than a
generation. He slept inside his stage setup. In so doing, he lived better than
most of Taglios’ floating population.

He was an informer. He was not beloved of the Black Company.

The story he told, as most were, was drawn from the myths. It sprang from the
Khadi cycle. It involved a goddess with too many arms who kept devouring demons.

Of course it was the same demon puppet over and over. Kind of like real life,

where the same demon comes back again and again.

Just a hint of color hung above the western rooftops.

There was an earsplitting squeal. People stopped to stare at a bright orange
light. Glowing orange smoke wobbled up from behind the puppeteer’s stand. Its
strands wove the well-known emblem of the Black Company, a fanged skull with no
lower jaw, exhaling flames. The scarlet fire in its left eye socket seemed to be
a pupil that stared right down inside you, searching for the thing that you
feared the most.

The smoke thing persisted only a few seconds. It rose about ten feet before it
dispersed. It left a frightened silence. The air itself seemed to whisper,

“Water sleeps.”

Whine and flash. A second skull arose. This one was silver with a slightly
bluish tint. It lasted longer and rose a dozen feet higher before it perished.

It whispered, “My brother unforgiven.”

“Here come the Greys!” exclaimed someone tall enough to see over the crowd.

Being short makes it easy for me to disappear in groups but also makes it tough
for me to see what is happening outside them.

The Greys are never far away. But they are helpless against this sort of thing.

It can happen anywhere, any time, and has to happen before they can react. Our
supposed ironclad rule is that perpetrators should never be nearby when the
buttons speak. The Greys understand that. They just go through the motions. The
Protector must be appeased. The little Shadar have to be fed.

“Now!” Tobo murmured as four Greys arrived. A shriek erupted from behind the
puppeteer’s stage. The puppeteer himself ran out, spun and leaned toward his
stage, mouth wide open. There was a flash less bright but more persistent than
its predecessors. The subsequent smoke image was more complex and lasted longer.

It appeared to be a monster. The monster focused on the Shadar. One of the Greys
mouthed the name “Niassi.”

Niassi would be a major demon from Shadar mythology. A similar demon under
another form of the name exists in Gunni belief.

Niassi was a chieftain of the inner circle of the most powerful demons. Shadar
beliefs, being heretical Vehdna, include a posthumous, punitive Hell but also
definitely include the possibility of a Gunni-like Hell on earth, in life,

managed by demons in Niassi’s employ, laid on for the particularly wicked.

Despite understanding that they were being taunted, the Greys were rocked. This
was something new. This was an attack from an unanticipated and sensitive
direction. And it came on top of ever more potent rumors associating the Greys
with vile rites supposedly practiced by the Protector.

Children disappear. Reason suggests this is inevitable and unavoidable in a city
so vast and overcrowded, even if there is not one evil man out there. Babies
vanish by wandering off and getting lost. And horrible things do happen to good
people. A clever, sick rumor can reassign the numb evil of chance to the
premeditated malice of people no one ever trusted anyway.

Memory becomes selective.

We do not mind a bit lying about our enemies.

Tobo yelled something insulting. I started to pull him away, dragging him toward
our den. Others began to curse and mock the Greys. Tobo threw a stone that hit a
Grey’s turban.

It was too dark for them to make out faces. They began to unlimber bamboo wands.

The mood of the crowd turned ugly. I could not help but suspect that there was
more to the devil display than had met the eye. I knew our tame wizards. And I
knew that Taglians do not lose control easily. It takes a great deal of patience
and self-control for so many people to live in such unnaturally tight proximity.

I looked around for crows, fluttering bats, or anything else that might be spies
for the Protector. After nightfall all our risks soar. We cannot see what might
be watching. I held onto Tobo’s arm. “You shouldn’t have done that. It’s dark
enough for shadows to be out.”

He was not impressed. “Goblin will be happy. He spent a long time on that. And
it worked perfectly.”

The Greys blew whistles, summoning reinforcements.

A fourth button released its smoke ghost. We missed the show. I dragged Tobo
through all the shadow traps between the excitement and our headquarters. He
would be explaining to some uncles soon. Those for whom paranoia remains a way
of life will be those who will be around to savor the Company’s many revenges.

Tobo needed more instruction. His behavior could have been exploited by a clever
adversary.

Sahra summoned me as soon as we arrived, not to chastise me for letting Tobo
take stupid risks but to observe as she launched her next move. It might be time
Tobo walked into something that would scare some sense into him. Life
underground is unforgiving. It seldom gives you more than one chance. Tobo had
to understand that in his heart.

After Sahra grilled me about events outside, she made sure Goblin and One-Eye
were acquainted with her displeasure, too. Tobo was not there to defend himself.

Goblin and One-Eye were not cowed. No forty-something slip of a lass could
overawe those two antiques. Besides, they put Tobo up to half his mischief.

Sahra said, “I’ll raise Murgen now.” She seemed unsure about that. She had not
consulted Murgen much recently. We all wondered why. She and Murgen were a
genuine romantic love match straight out of legend, with all the appurtenances
seen in the timeless stories, including gods defied, parents disappointed,

desperate separations and reunions, intrigues by enemies and so forth. It
remained only for one of them to go down into the realm of the dead to rescue
the other. And Murgen was tucked away in a nice cold underground hell right now,

courtesy of the mad sorceress Soulcatcher. He and all the Captured lived on, in
stasis, beneath the plain of glittering stone, in a place and situation known to
us only because Sahra could conjure Murgen’s spirit.

Could the problem be the stasis? Sahra got a day older every day. Murgen did
not. Had she begun to fear she would be older than his mother before we freed
the Captured?

Sadly, after years of study, I realize that most history may really pivot on
personal considerations like that, not on the pursuit of ideals dark or shining.

Long ago Murgen learned to leave his flesh while he slept. He retained some of
that ability but, sadly, it was diminished by the supernatural constraints of
his captivity. He could do nothing outside the cavern of the ancients without
being summoned forth by Sahra—or, conceivably, chillingly, by any other
necromancer who knew how to reach him.

Murgen’s ghost was the ultimate spy. Outside our circle none but Soulcatcher
could detect his presence. Murgen informed us of our enemies’ every plot—those
that we suspected strongly enough to ask Sahra to investigate. The process was
cumbersome and limited but still, Murgen constituted our most potent weapon. We
could not survive without him.

And Sahra was ever more reluctant to call him up.

God knows, it is hard to keep believing. Many of our brothers have lost their
faith and have drifted away, vanishing into the chaos of the empire. Some may be
rejuvenated once we have had a flashy success or two.

The years have been painful for Sahra. They cost her three children, an agony no
loving parent should have to bear. She lost their father as well but suffered
little by that deprivation. No one who remembered the man spoke well of him. She
suffered with the rest of us during the siege of Jaicur.

Maybe Sahra—and the entire Nyueng Bao people—had angered Ghanghesha. Or maybe
the god with the several elephant heads just enjoyed a cruel prank at the
expense of his worshipers. Certainly Kina got a chuckle out of pulling lethal
practical jokes on her devotees.

Goblin and One-Eye were not usually present when Sahra raised Murgen. She did
not need their help. Her powers were narrow but strong, and those two could be a
distraction even when they tried to behave.

Those antiques being there told me something unusual was afoot. And old they
are, almost beyond reckoning. Their skills sustain them. One-Eye, if the Annals
do not lie, is on the downhill side of two hundred. His youthful sidekick lags
less than a century behind.

Neither is a big man. Which is being generous. Both are shorter than me. And
never were taller, even long before they became dried-up old relics. Which was
probably when they were about fifteen. I cannot imagine One-Eye ever having been
anything but old. He must have been born old. And wearing the ugliest, filthiest
black hat that ever existed.

Maybe One-Eye goes on forever because of the curse of that hat. Maybe the hat
uses him as its steed and depends on him for its survival.

That crusty, stinking glob of felt rag will hit the nearest fire before
One-Eye’s corpse finishes bouncing. Everyone hates it.

Goblin, in particular, loathes that hat. He mentions it whenever he and One-Eye
get into a squabble, which is about as often as they see one another.

One-Eye is small and black and wrinkled. Goblin is small and white and wrinkled.

He has a face like a dried toad’s.

One-Eye mentions that whenever they get into a squabble, which is about as often
as there is an audience but nobody to get between them.

They strain to be on their best behavior around Sahra, though. The woman has a
gift. She brings out the best in people. Except her mother. Though the Troll is
much worse away from her daughter.

Lucky us, we do not see Ky Gota much. Her joints hurt her too bad. Tobo helps
care for her, our cynical exploitation of his special immunity from her vitriol.

She dotes on the boy—even if his father was foreign slime.

Sahra told me, “These two claim they’ve found a more effective way to
materialize Murgen. So you can communicate directly.” Usually Sahra had to talk
for Murgen after she raised him up. I do not have a psychic ear.

I said, “If you bring him across strong enough so the rest of us can see and
hear him, then Tobo ought to be here, too. He’s suddenly got a lot of questions
about his father.”

Sahra peered at me oddly. I was saying something but she did not get what I
meant.

“Boy ought to know his old man,” One-Eye rasped. He stared at Goblin, waiting to
be contradicted by a man who did not know his. That was their custom. Pick a
fight and never mind trivia like facts or common sense. The debate about whether
or not they were worth the trouble they caused went back for generations.

This time Goblin abstained. He would make his rebuttal when Sahra was not around
to embarrass him with an appeal to reason.

Sahra nodded to One-Eye. “But first we have to see if your scheme really works.”

One-Eye began to puff up. Somebody dared suggest that his sorcery needed
field-testing? Come on! Forget the record! This time—

I told him, “Don’t start.”

Time had caught up with One-Eye. His memory was no longer reliable. And lately
he tended to nod off in the middle of things. Or to forget what had gotten him
exercised when he roared off on a rant. Sometimes he ended up contradicting
himself.

He was a shadow of the dried-up old relic he was when first I met him, though he
got around under his own power still. But halfway through any journey, he was
likely to forget where he was bound. Occasionally that was good, him being
One-Eye, but mostly it was a pain. Tobo usually got the job of keeping him
headed in the right direction when it mattered. One-Eye doted on the kid, too.

The little wizard’s increasing fragility did make it easier to keep him inside,

away from the temptations of the city. One moment of indiscretion could kill us
all. And One-Eye never quite caught on to what it meant to be discreet.

Goblin chuckled as One-Eye subsided. I suggested, “Could you two concentrate on
what you’re supposed to be doing?” I was haunted by the dread that one day
One-Eye would doze off in the midst of a deadly spell and leave us all up to our
ears in demons or bloodsucking insects distraught about having been plucked from
some swamp a thousand miles away. “This is important.”

“It’s always important,” Goblin grumbled. “Even when it’s just ‘Goblin, give me
a hand here, I’m too lazy to polish the silver myself,’ they make it sound like
the world’s about to end. Always important? Hmmph!”

“I see you’re in a good mood tonight.”

“Gralk!”

One-Eye heaved himself out of his chair. Leaning on his cane, muttering
unflattering remarks about me, he shuffled over to Sahra. He had forgotten I was
female. He was less unpleasant when he remembered, though I expect no special
treatment because of that unhappy chance of birth. One-Eye became dangerous in a
whole new way the day he adopted that cane. He used it to swat people. Or to
trip them. He was always falling asleep between here and there but you never
knew for sure if his nap was the real thing. That cane might dart out to tangle
your legs if he was pretending.

The dread we all shared was that One-Eye would not last much longer. Without
him, our chances to continue avoiding detection would plummet. Goblin would try
hard but he was just one small-time wizard. Our situation offered work for more
than two in their prime.

“Start, woman,” One-Eye rasped. “Goblin, you worthless sack of beetle snot,

would you get that stuff over here? I don’t want to hang around here all night.”

Sahra had had a table set up for them. She used no props herself. At a fixed
time she would concentrate on Murgen. She usually made contact quickly. At her
time of the month, when her sensitivity went down, she would sing in Nyueng Bao.

Unlike some of my Company brothers, I have a poor ear for languages. Nyueng Bao
mostly eludes me. Her songs seem to be lullabies. Unless the words have double
meanings. Which is entirely possible. Uncle Doj talks in riddles all the time
but insists he makes perfect sense if we would just listen.

Uncle Doj is not around much. Thank God. He has his own agenda—though even he
does not seem clear on what that is anymore. The world keeps changing on him,

not in ways he likes.

Goblin brought a sack of objects without challenging One-Eye’s foul manners. He
deferred to One-Eye more lately, if only for efficiency’s sake. He wasted no
time making his opinions known if work was not involved, though.

Even though they were cooperating, laying out their tools, they began bickering
about the placement of every instrument. I wanted to paddle them like they were
four-year-olds.

Sahra began singing. She had a beautiful voice. It should not have been buried
this way. Strictly speaking, she was not employing necromancy. She was not
laying an absolute compulsion on Murgen, nor was she conjuring his shade—Murgen
was still alive out there. But his spirit could escape his tomb when summoned.

I wished the other Captured could be called up, too. Especially the Captain. We
needed inspiration.

A cloud of dust formed slowly between Goblin and One-Eye, who stood on opposite
sides of the table. No, it was not dust. Nor was it smoke. I stuck a finger in,

tasted. That was a fine, cool, water mist. Goblin told Sahra, “We’re ready.”

She changed tone. She began to sound almost wheedling. I could pick out even
fewer words.

Murgen’s head materialized between the wizards, wavering like a reflection on a
rippling pond. I was startled, not by the sorcery but by Murgen’s appearance. He
looked just like I remembered him, without one new line in his face. None of the
rest of us looked the same.

Sahra had begun to look something like her mother had back in Jaicur. Not as
heavy. Not with the strange, rolling waddle caused by problems of the joints.

But her beauty was going fast. In her, that had been a wonder, stretching on way
past the usual early, swift-fading characteristic of Nyueng Bao women. She did
not talk about it but it preyed upon her. She had her vanity. And she deserved
it.

Time is the most wicked of all villains.

Murgen was not happy about being called up. I feared he suffered the malaise
afflicting Sahra. He spoke. And I had no trouble hearing him, though his words
were an ethereal whisper.

“I was dreaming. There is a place . . . ” His irritation faded. Pale horror
replaced it. And I knew he had been dreaming in the place of bones he described
in his own Annals. “A white crow . . . ” We had a problem indeed if he preferred
a drift through Kina’s dreamscapes to a glimpse of life.

Sahra told him, “We’re ready to strike. The Radisha ordered the Privy Council
convened just a little while ago. See what they’re doing. Make sure Swan is
there.” Murgen faded from the mist. Sahra looked sad. Goblin and One-Eye began
excoriating the Standardbearer for running away.

“I saw him,” I told them. “Perfectly. I heard him, too. Exactly like I always
imagined a ghost would talk.”

Grinning, Goblin told me, “That’s because you hear what you expect to hear. You
weren’t really listening with your ears, you know.”

One-Eye sneered. He never explained anything to anybody. Unless maybe to Gota if
she caught him sneaking back in in the middle of the night. Then he would have a
story as convoluted as the history of the Company itself.

Sounding like a woman pretending not to be bitter, Sahra said, “You can bring
Tobo in. We know there won’t be any explosions or fires, and you melted only two
holes through the tabletop.”

“A base canard!” One-Eye proclaimed. “That happened only because Frogface here—”

Sahra ignored him. “Tobo can record what Murgen has to say. So Sleepy can use it
later. It’s time for us to turn into other people. Send a messenger if Murgen
finds out anything dangerous.”

That was the plan. I was even less enthusiastic about it now. I wanted to stay
and talk to my old friend. But this thing was bigger than a bull session. Bigger
than finding out if Bucket was keeping well.