"Thank you. I try."
"Come to Charm. There is a place for you in the Tower. You can see the grand canvas from here."
"I can't."
"I cannot shield you there. If you stay, you must face what befalls your Rebel friends. The Limper commands that campaign. I will not interfere. He is not what he was. You hurt him. And he had to be hurt more to be saved. He has not forgiven you that, Croaker."
"I know." How many times had she used my name? In all our contacts previously, over years, she had used it but once.
"Don't let him take you."
A slight, twisted bit of humor rose from somewhere inside me. "You are a failure. Lady."
She was taken aback.
"Fool that I am, I recorded my romances in the Annals. You read them. You know I never characterized you as black. Not. I think, as I would characterize your husband. I suspect an unconsciously sensed truth lies beneath the silliness of those romances."
"Indeed?"
"I don't think you are black. I think you're just trying. I think that, for all the wickedness you've done, part of the child that was remains untainted. A spark remains, and you can't extinguish it."
Unchallenged, I became more daring. "I think you've selected me as a symbolic sop to that spark. I am a reclamation project meant to satisfy a hidden streak of decency, the way my friend Raven reclaimed a child who became the White Rose. You read the Annals. You know to what depths Raven sank once he concentrated all decency in one cup. Better, perhaps, that he had had none at all. Juniper might still exist. So might he."
"Juniper was a boil overdue for lancing. I am not come to be mocked, physician. I will not be made to look weak even before an audience of one."
I started to protest.
"For I know that this, too, will end up in your Annals."
She knew me. But then, she had had me before the Eye.
"Come to the Tower, Croaker. I demand no oath."
"Lady…"
"Even the Taken bind themselves with deadly oaths. You may remain free. Just do what you do. Heal, and record the truth. What you would do anywhere. You have value not to be wasted out there."
Now there was a sentiment with which I could agree wholeheartedly. I would take it back and rub some people's noses in it. "Say what?"
She started to speak. I raised a warning hand. I had spoken to myself, not to her. Was that a footfall? Yes. Something big coming. Something moving slowly, wearily.
She sensed it, too. An eye blink and she was gone, her departure sucking something from my mind, so that once more I was not certain I had not dreamed everything, for all that every word remained immutably inscribed on the stone of my mind.
I shuffled brush onto my fire, backed into a crack behind the dagger that was the only weapon I'd had sense enough to bring.
It came closer. Then paused. Then came on. My heartbeat increased. Something thrust into the firelight.
"Toadkiller Dog! What the hell, hey? What're you doing? Come on in out of the cold, boy." The words tumbled out, bearing fear away. "Boy, will Tracker be glad to see you. What happened to you?"
He came forward cautiously, looking twice as mangy as ever. He dropped onto his belly, rested his chin on forepaws, closed one eye.
"I don't have any food. I'm sort of lost myself. You're damned lucky, know that? Making it this far. The plain is a bad place to be on your own."
Right then that old mongrel looked like he agreed. Body language, if you will. He had survived, but it had not been easy.
I told him, "Sun comes up, we'll head back. Goblin and One-Eye got lost; it's their own tough luck."
After Toadkiller Dog's arrival I rested better. I guess the old alliance is imprinted on people, too. I was confident he would warn me if trouble beckoned.
Come morning we found the creek and headed for the Hole. I stopped, as I often do, to approach Old Father Tree for a little one-sided conversation about what he had seen during his long sentinelship. The dog would not come anywhere near. Weird. But so what? Weird is the order of the day on the Plain.
I found One-Eye and Goblin snoring, sleeping in. They had returned to the Hole only minutes after my departure in search of them. Bastards. I would redress the balance when the chance came.
I drove them crazy by not mentioning my night out.
"Did it work?" I demanded. Down the tunnel Tracker was having a noisy reunion with his mutt.
"Sort of," Goblin said. He was not enthusiastic.
"Sort of? What's sort of! Does it work or doesn't it?"
"Well, what we got is a problem. Mainly, we can keep the Taken from locating you. From getting a fix on you, so to speak."
Obfuscation is a sure sign of trouble with this guy. "But? Butt me the but, Goblin."
"If you go outside the null, there's no hiding the fact that you are out."
"Great. Real great. What good are you guys, anyway?"
"It's not that bad," One-Eye said. "You wouldn't attract any attention unless they find out you're out from some other source. I mean, they wouldn't be watching for you, would they? No reason to. So it's just as good as if we got it to do everything we wanted."
"Crap! You better start praying that next letter comes through. Because if I go out and get my ass killed, guess who's going to haunt whom forever?"
"Darling wouldn't send you out."
"Bet? She'll go through three or four days of soul-searching. But she'll send me. Because that last letter will give us the key."
Sudden fear. Had the Lady probed my mind?
"What's the matter, Croaker?"
I was saved a lie by Tracker's advent. He bounced in and pumped my hand like a mad fool. "Thank you, Croaker. Thanks for bringing him home." Out he went.
"What the hell was that?" Goblin asked.
"I brought his dog home."
"Weird."
One-Eye chortled. "The pot calling the kettle black."
"Yeah? Lizard snot. Want me to tell you about weird?"
"Stow it," I said. "If I get sent out of here I want this stuff in perfect order. I just wish we had people who could read this junk."
"Maybe I can help." Tracker was back. The big dumb lout. A devil with a sword, but probably unable to write his own name.
"How?"
"I could read some of that stuff. I know some old language. My father taught me." He grinned as if at a huge joke. He selected a piece written in TelleKurre. He read it aloud. The ancient language rolled off his tongue naturally, as I had heard it spoken among the old Taken. Then he translated. It was a memo to a castle kitchen about a meal to be prepared for visiting notables. I went over it painstakingly. His translation was faultless. Better than I could do. A third of the words evaded me.
"Well. Welcome to the team. I'll tell Darling." I slipped out, exchanging a puzzled glance with One-Eye behind Tracker's back.
Stranger and stranger. What was this man? Besides weird. At first encounter he reminded me of Raven, and fit the role. When I came to think of him as big, slow, and clumsy, he fit that role. Was he a reflection of the image in his beholder?
A good fighter, though, bless him. Worth ten of anyone else we have.
Chapter Twenty-Three: THE PLAIN OF FEAR
It was the time of the Monthly Meeting. The big confab during which nothing gets done. During which all heads yammer of pet projects on which action cannot be taken. After six or eight hours of which Darling closes debate by telling us what to do.
The usual charts were up. One showed where our agents believed the Taken to be. Another showed incursions reported by the menhirs. Both showed a lot of white, areas of Plain unknown to us. A third chart showed the month's change storms, a pet project of the Lieutenant's. He was looking for something. As always, most were along the periphery. But there was an unusually large number, and higher than normal percentage, in this chart's interior. Seasonal? A genuine shift? Who knew? We had not been watching long enough. The menhirs will not bother explaining such trivia.