“We’ve been watching you,” Goblin said. “And you have been behaving pretty strange sometimes. What we want to do is put you to sleep and see if we can’t reach the part of you that was there when things happened.”
“I don’t get you.”
“You don’t have to. You just have to cooperate.”
“You’re sure?”
“We’re sure.”
He did not sound sure.
I awakened on my own pallet. Not refreshed. Someone was wiping my hot face with a cold, wet cloth. I opened my eyes. In the light of one tiny candle Sahra looked more lovely than ever. She looked better than imagination. She continued to wipe my face.
I had another hangover type headache. What had they done? I ought at least to get the enjoyment that came before the pain.
To Tan began to fuss. He slept in a basket of evil smelling rags beneath my writing table. I reached over and took his hand. He stopped crying, content to have human contact. He did not cry for his mother much anymore.
I raised my other hand to take Sahra’s. She pushed it back gently. She never spoke. I never did hear her speak, not even to her own children.
I looked around. Thai Dei was gone. Anymore it seemed I had a better chance of shaking my shadow. Thai Dei was there even in the dark.
I started to sit up. Sahra held me down with two fingers. I was too weak to do anything. And my head felt like it doubled in size just rising that foot.
Sahra offered me a hand-carved wooden cup filled with something that smelled so foul my eyes watered. Nyueng Bao swamp medicine. I drank. It tasted worse than it smelled.
She continued to mop my face. I shivered and shook. The pain went away. I began to relax, to feel both energetic and positive. That was good stuff. Maybe they made it smell and taste bad so people would not take it all the time.
We stared at one another a long time, saying nothing but reaching a decision our conscious minds did not entirely recognize at the moment. Hong Tray drifted across my thoughts with a smile and an admonition.
This time I managed a smile when I sat up. Unchallenged. “I have work to do.”
Sahra shook her head. She fished under the table for To Tan, dug him out of his basket. He was in desperate need of changing. Sahra tugged my finger.
“I haven’t done this in twenty years.” Not since I was a kid myself and had baby brothers and sisters and cousins to change. “Stop wiggling, you little turd. You ought to know the drill by now.” To Tan looked back at me with serious big eyes, not understanding my words but catching my tone.
We got him cleaned up and clothed again, in rags that would have embarrassed a beggar. I told Sahra, “I’ll go kill somebody, get him something better to wear.”
She laid a hand lightly on my forearm, restraining me. “That was a joke, hon. You hang around with me, you’re going to hear some dark stuff. I don’t mean it literally. I’m going to work now.”
I moved into the passageway slowly, my legs watery. Sahra followed, To Tan straddling her left hip. We ran into Bucket right away, looking groggy as he headed for his own pallet. I asked, “You seen Goblin and One-Eye?”
“They went upstairs with their magic junk. To the big lookout.”
“Thanks.”
Before we walked five feet, Bucket called, “Longo tell you the water is coming up in the catacombs?”
I sighed and shook my head, listened to the half-hearted rumble of my stomach, wondered if anybody had found a way to get some food cooked, wound my way through the maze to the ladders that would take me up to Goblin and One-Eye.
The light of day might do me good. If I had the strength to climb that far. I had not seen the sun for a long time.
76
I would not see the sun for a while longer. Sahra handed To Tan up through the trapdoor. He was asleep again. I guess you do sleep a lot when you are a baby starving to death.
It was daytime but a driving rain was falling. Hagop sat astride a chair turned backwards, forearms on the chair’s back, staring into the rain morosely. “How long has this been going on?” I asked.
“Day or three.”
“We getting any fresh water out of it?”
“About as much as we can being as we’re hiding out.”
“What’re those two doing?” Goblin and One-Eye were on the floor in the middle of the room, crosslegged, farthest from the moisture blowing inside. They did not look up.
“Wizard stuff. Don’t bother them. They’ll bite your leg off.”
One-Eye grumbled, “And somebody’s gonna lose a set of ears if he don’t stop yakking.”
Hagop and I each spent one of our diminishing supply of single finger salutes. One-Eye did not acknowledge the accolade.
The lookout had a window facing each direction. I went to the biggest.
This rain was not what we called a gullywasher back home but it was strong and steady. I could barely sense the vague loom of the surrounding hills. Nearer at hand I could make out the surface of the water. It was down despite the rain. It was a grey that spoke of sickness.
I saw a Jaicuri raft out there, so loaded with people that it was awash. Men using short boards as paddles labored carefully to drive it toward shore.
I made the rounds of the other windows, studied the city. I was pleased to see our Taglians at their posts the way they had been taught.
“They’ve been doing it by the numbers,” Hagop agreed. “And that gets them left alone.”
“By Mogaba?”
“By everybody. The fighting is almost constant.”
The streets and alleys were now canals. I saw bodies floating everywhere. The stench was overwhelming. The water level, though, was lower than I had expected. I could see the citadel from the east window. There were Nar up top there, ignoring the weather. They moved around the parapet, studying our part of town.
Hagop noticed me watching them. “They’re worried about us. They think we might come sort them out sometime.”
“Sure we will.”
“They’re superstitious about guys like Goblin and One-Eye.”
“Which shows you how dangerous a little ignorance can be.”
“I heard that,” One-Eye grumbled. He and Goblin could have been playing some obscure dice game for all I could tell. I liked it better when they conjured big lights that went around smashing things and burning them up. Destruction I can understand.
Sahra seemed tired of lugging To Tan so I took him. She offered a grateful smile. It lit up the lookout.
One-Eye and Goblin paused to exchange glances amongst themselves and with Hagop.
“What are you guys doing?” I demanded.
“We found out we were right.”
“Yeah? That might be a first. You were right about what?”
“About your head having been tampered with.”
I shuddered to a sudden chill. That is not something anyone welcomes. “Who did it? How?”
“How we haven’t been able to figure out for sure. It might have been managed several ways. Who and what are more interesting, anyway.”
“So give.”
“Who was Lady. And what was knowledge of the fact that she is out there.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a little hard to tell from here, especially when we got tourists and their girlfriends traipsing through the workplace, but it looks like Lady and the Taglians are in charge out there. Their camp is on the other side of the hills, up the north road. The southerners we see patrolling are auxiliaries who report back to Lady.”
“Run through that again.”
Goblin did so.
I said, “You guys go ahead. I’m just going to sit over here in the corner and think.”
77
Uncle Doj and Thai Dei were back from wherever they had gone. They scowled at Sahra and me when we returned but neither said a word. Hong Tray still had her hold on the Kys. Thai Dei took his son. The little guy brightened immediately.
Uncle Doj told me, “My people are not mushrooms, Standardbearer. They cannot endure this much longer. You Stone Soldiers have been generous to a fault and have given no provocation but even so there will be trouble eventually. A wounded animal will strike out at even the most loving master.”