Runmust gestured. The soldiers closed in. They were careful men who made certain they did not get between their captives and the crossbows threatening them. They put the girl's hands into wool-stuffed sacks, then bound her wrists behind her. They gagged her gently, then pulled a loose woolen sack over her head. They were aware that she might work some witchery.
Narayan they placed up on an extra horse, then tied him into the saddle. They were doing him no kindness. They were in a hurry. He would be too slow if they made him walk behind them. They were more gentle with the girl but her immediate fate was identical.
Their captors were not gratuitously cruel but the girl was sure that would change when they found themselves with adequate leisure time. The strange young soldiers in the clacking black armor seemed highly intrigued by what they could see of her pale beauty.
This was not the way she had imagined herself becoming a woman. And her imagination had been extremely active for several years.
38
The Taglian Territories: The Dandha Presh
We were high in the pass through the Dandha Presh when the news arrived. The grinding weariness dragging my ancient bones down slipped my mind. I was at the head of the column. I stopped walking, moved aside, watched all the tired mules and men trudge past. Man and animal, we hoped the main force had not stripped Charandaprash of food and fodder.
The Voroshk had sunk deep into exhaustion and despair. Tobo traveled with them, talking all the time, trying to teach them through their pain and apathy. The kids had not had to walk anywhere ever before.
Their flying logs followed right behind.
Lady finally came up. I joined her. I sensed that rumor had reached her already, even though nobody seemed to have any breath to waste on conversation. Rumor is magical, maybe even supernatural.
I told her anyway. "Runmust and Iqbal have captured Narayan and Booboo. They never stopped heading our way after Soulcatcher left off chasing them."
"I heard."
"You as nervous as I am?"
"Probably more." We trudged along for a while. Then she said, "I never got a chance to be a mother. I never got a chance to learn how. After Narayan kidnapped her I just went back to being me."
"I know. I know. We have to keep reminding ourselves not to get emotionally entangled in this. She isn't going to think of us as Mom and Dad."
"I don't want her to hate us. And I know she will. Being the Daughter of Night is her whole life."
I thought about that. Eventually, I told her, "Being the Lady of Charm was your whole life once upon a time. But here you are."
"Here I am." Her lack of enthusiasm would have disheartened a lesser man than I.
She—and I—were of an age now where we spent too much time wondering how things might have gone had we made a few different choices.
I had plenty of regrets. I am sure she had more. She gave up so much more.
Willow Swan went puffing past with some remark about old folks slowing everybody down. I asked, "You guys keeping an eye on Goblin?"
"He don't fart without we don't know about it."
"That goes without saying. The whole countryside knows."
"He's not getting away with anything, Croaker."
I was not confident about that. Goblin was a slick little bastard. If I had the time I would stay right beside him myself, step for step.
Lady said, "Goblin hasn't done anything suspicious."
"I know. But he will."
"And that attitude is beginning to win him some sympathy. I thought you ought to know."
"I know. But I can't help recalling One-Eye's warning, either."
"You noted yourself that One-Eye would try to get his last lick in from beyond the grave."
"Yeah. Yeah. I'll try to take it easier."
"We need to move a little faster." The rear guard was almost up to us.
"We could lag behind and sneak off into the rocks for a while."
"Maybe you're not as worn out as you thought, then. Get a move on." And after a moment, "We'll talk about that tonight."
Some motivation, then.
39
Taglios: The Great General
Thus far Mogaba had contained the worst reaction to the seething rumor cauldron that Taglios had become. His most useful tool was the carefully placed half-truth. His representatives did not deny that something big and dangerous was going on down south. They did, however, suggest that it was an uprising by the same sort of Shadowlander troublemakers who had supported the Black Company during the Kiaulune wars. They were milking that connection from the past, trying to intimidate opponents and encourage friends. There was no Black Company anymore.
Rumor had not yet discovered the Prahbrindrah Drah and his sister. Mogaba would offer the suggestion that those people were imposters when stories did begin to circulate.
"This is actually going better than I expected," the Great General told Aridatha Singh. "None of the garrison commanders have refused their marching orders. Only a handful of the senior priests and leading men have tried to pretend neutrality."
"I wonder if that state would persist if we lost the Protector."
Mogaba had been trying to find out for some time. The Prahbrindrah Drah had yet to produce an heir. His only living relative was his sister, who had run Taglios and its dependencies for years in fact, if not in name. At one point she had proclaimed herself her brother's successor. Though the culture militated against a female ruler she might be allowed to take over again if her brother preceded her in death. No one knew what would happen if brother and sister were both gone, as most of the population believed them to be.
The question was entirely an intellectual exercise, these days. Power in Taglios belonged to the Protector almost exclusively.
Mogaba never pressed his questions beyond a purely speculative level. None of his respondents suspected a deeper purpose. Nor did anyone volunteer to participate in an effort to get rid of the Protector, though it was no secret that most Taglians would prefer to do without Soulcatcher's protection.
Communications with Soulcatcher had ceased. The crow population had suffered a dramatic decimation, whether from disease or enemy action remaining unclear. Their numbers had been dwindling for decades, until murders in the wild were almost unknown. Bats could not carry significant messages. Owls would not. And there was no one at the Taglian end trained to manage and communicate with shadows. That was a rare talent indeed and the Black Company had exterminated the brotherhood who had shared it back when they were still running things their way.
Soulcatcher had scoured the Shadowlands, whence those people had sprung, length and breadth. She had turned up just a few old women and very young children who had survived all the wars and purges. They seemed to be a people unrelated to any other in the south, had been unknown there before the advent of the Shadowmasters, and among themselves had a oral tradition of having come from an entirely different world. Those old women and babies had lacked any useful knowledge or talent.
When his duties granted the time, Mogaba walked the main route from the Palace to the city's southern entrance. The walls had been under construction for decades and remained unfinished but the southern gate complex, the most important, had been completed and put into use ages ago. By channeling traffic through its bottleneck the state managed to tax all incoming travelers.
He was looking for the perfect place to put an end to the Protectorate. Four explorations had not revealed it yet. The obvious sites were just that: obvious. Soulcatcher would be alert. She was intimate enough with human nature to realize that rumors fed by the crisis in the south would reawaken opposition to her rule.