I waited half an hour. Finally she came. She looked thoughtful. Even a little disturbed and uncertain. She took her place at the leading edge of the carpet. We rose.
Riding a windwhale is more comfortable and much less trying to the nerves. A windwhale has substance, has scale.
We rose perhaps a thousand feet and began running south. I doubt we were making more than thirty miles per hour. It would be a long flight, then, unless she chose to break it.
After an hour she faced me. I could barely discern her features. She said, "I visited the Barrowland, Croaker."
I did not respond, not knowing what was expected.
"What have you done? What have you people set free?"
"Nothing."
She looked at Raven. "Perhaps there is a way." After a time: "I know the thing that is loose… Sleep, physician. We'll talk another time." And I went to sleep. And when I wakened I was in another cell. And knew, by the uniforms, that my new prison was the Tower at Charm.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: A GUEST AT CHARM
A colonel of the Lady's household force came for me. He was almost polite. Even back when, her troops never were sure of my status. Poor babies. I had no niche in their ordered and hierarchical universe.
The Colonel said, "She wants you now." He had a dozen men with him. They did not look like an honor guard. Neither did they act like executioners.
Not that it mattered. I would go if they had to carry me.
I left with a backward glance. Raven was holding his own.
The Colonel left me at a doorway into the inner Tower, the Tower inside the Tower, into which few men pass, and from which fewer return. "March," he said. "I hear you've done this before. You know the drill."
I stepped through the doorway. When I looked back I saw only stone wall. For a moment I became disoriented. That passed and I was in another place. And she was there, framed by what appeared to be a window, though her parts of the Tower are completely ensheathed within the rest. "Come here."
I went. She pointed. I looked out that non-window on a burning city. Taken soared above it, hurling magicks that died. Their target was a phalanx of windwhales that were devastating the city.
Darling was riding one of the whales. They were staying within her null, where they were invulnerable.
"They are not, though," the Lady said, reading my thoughts. "Mortal weapons will reach them. And your bandit girl. But it does not matter. I've decided to suspend operations." I laughed. "Then we've won."
I do believe that was the first time I ever saw her piqued with me. A mistake, mocking her. It could make her reassess emotionally a decision made strategically.
"You have won nothing. If that is the perception a shift of focus will generate, then I will not break off. I will adjust the campaign's focus instead."
Damn you, Croaker. Leam to keep your big goddamn mouth shut around people like this. You will jack-jaw your way right into a meat grinder.
After regaining her self-control, she faced me. The Lady, from just two feet away. "Be sarcastic in your writing if you like. But when you speak, be prepared to pay a price." "I understand."
"I thought you would." She faced the scene again. In that far city-it looked like Frost-a flaming windwhale fell after being caught in a storm of shafts hurled by ballistae bigger than any I'd ever seen. Two could play the suck-in game. "How well did your translations go?" "What?"
"The documents you found in the Forest of Cloud, gave to my late sister Soulcatcher, took from her again, gave to your friend Raven, and took from him in turn. The papers you thought would give you the tool of victory." "Those documents. Ha. Not well at all."
"You couldn't have. What you sought isn't there."
"But…"
"You were misled. Yes. I know. Bomanz put them together, so they must hold my true name. Yes? But that has been eradicated-except, perhaps, in the mind of my husband." She became remote suddenly. "The victory at Juniper cost."
"He learned the lesson Bomanz did too late."
"So. You noticed. He has information enough to pry an answer from what happened… No. My name isn't there. His is. That was why they so excited my sister. She saw an opportunity to supplant us both. She knew me. We were children together, after all. And protected from one another only by the most tangled web that could be woven. When she enlisted you in Beryl she had no greater ambition than to undermine me. But when you delivered those documents…"
She was thinking aloud as much as explaining.
I was stricken by a sudden insight. "You don't know his name!"
"It was never a love match, physician. It was the shakiest of alliances. Tell me. How do I get those papers?"
"You don't."
"Then we all lose. This is true, Croaker. While we argue and while our respective allies strive to slash one another's throats, the enemy of us all is shedding his chains. All this dying will be for naught if the Dominator wins free."
"Destroy him."
"That's impossible."
"In the town where I was born there is a folk tale about a man so mighty he dared mock the gods. In the end his might proved sheer hubris, for there is one against whom even the gods are powerless."
"What's the point?"
"To twist an old saw, death conquers all. Not even the Dominator can wrestle death and win every time."
"There are ways," she admitted. "But not without those papers. You will return to your quarters now, and reflect. I will speak to you again."
I was dismissed that suddenly. She faced the dying city. Suddenly, I knew my way out. A powerful impulse drove me toward the door. A moment of dizziness and I was outside.
The Colonel came puffing along the corridor. He returned me to my cell.
I planted myself on my bunk and reflected, as ordered.
There was evidence enough that the Dominator was stirring, but… The business about the documents not holding the lever we had counted on-that was the shocker. That I had to swallow or reject, and my choice might have critical repercussions.
She was leading me for her own ends. Of course. I conceived numerous possibilities, none pleasant, but all making a sort of sense…
She'd said it. If the Dominator broke out, we were all in the soup, good guys and bad.
I fell asleep. There were dreams, but I do not recall them. I awakened to find a hot meal freshly delivered, sitting atop a desk that had not been there before. On that desk was a generous supply of writing materials.
She expected me to resume my Annals.
I devoured half the food before noting Raven's absence. The old nerves began to rattle. Why was he gone? Where to? What use did she have for him? Leverage?
Time is funny inside the Tower.
The usual Colonel arrived as I finished eating. The usual soldiers accompanied him. He announced, "She wants you again."
"Already? I just came back from there."
"Four days ago."
I touched my cheek. I have been affecting only a partial beard of late. My face was brushy. So. One long sleep. "Any chance I could get a razor?"
The Colonel smiled thinly. "What do you think? A barber can come in. Will you come along?"
I got a vote? Of course not. I followed rather than be dragged.
The drill was the same. I found her at a window again. The scene showed some corner of the Plain where one of Whisper's fortifications was besieged. It had no heavy ballistae. A windwhale hovered overhead, keeping the garrison in hiding. Walking trees were dismantling the outer wall by the simple mechanism of growing it to death. The way a jungle destroys an abandoned city, though ten thousand times faster than the unthinking forest.
"The entire desert has risen against me," she said. "Whisper's outposts have suffered an annoying variety of attacks."
"I suspect your intrusions are resented. I thought you were going to disengage."