Once I saw some flash and fury from the corner of my eye and, without thinking, ran that way, thinking it was Goblin and One-Eye squabbling. But a direct look revealed the distant rage of a change storm.
I stopped immediately, belatedly remembering that only death hurries on the Plain by night.
I was lucky. Just steps onward the sand became spongy, loose. I squatted, sniffed a handful. It held the smell of old death. I backed away carefully. Who knows what lay in waiting beneath that sand?
“Better plant somewhere and wait for the sun,” I muttered. I was no longer certain of my position.
I found some rocks that would break the wind, some brush for firewood, and pitched camp. The fire was more to declare myself to beasts than to keep warm. The night was not cold.
Firemaking was a symbolic statement out there.
Once the flames rose I found that the place had been used before. Smoke had blackened the rocks. Native humans, probably. They wander in small bands. We have little intercourse with them. They have no interest in the world struggle.
Will failed me sometime after the second hour. I fell asleep.
The nightmare found me. And found me unshielded by amulets or null.
She came.
It had been years. Last time it was to report the final defeat of her husband in the affair at Juniper.
A golden cloud, like dust motes dancing in a sunbeam. An all-over feeling of being awake while sleeping. Calmness and fear together. An inability to move. All the old symptoms.
A beautiful woman formed in the cloud, a woman out of daydream. The sort you hope to meet someday, knowing there is no chance. I cannot say what she wore, if she wore anything. My universe consisted of her face and the terror its presence inspired.
Her smile was not at all cold. Long ago, for some reason, she took an interest in me. I supposed she retained some residue of the old affection, as one does for a pet long dead.
“Physician.” Breeze in the reeds beside the waters of eternity. The whisper of angels. But never could she make me forget the reality whence the voice sprang.
Nor was she ever so gauche as to tempt me, either with promises or herself. That, perhaps, is one reason I think she felt a certain fondness. When she used me, she gave it to me straight going in.
I could not respond.
“You are safe. Long ago, by your standard of time, I said I would remain in touch. I have been unable. You cut me off. I have been trying for weeks.”
The nightmares explained.
“What?” I squeaked like Goblin.
“Join me at Charm. Be my historian.”
As always when she touched me, I was baffled. She seemed to consider me outside the struggle while yet a part of it. On the Stair of Tear, on the eve of the most savage sorcerous struggle ever I witnessed, she came to promise me I would come to no harm. She seemed intrigued with my lesser role as Company historian. Back when, she insisted I record events as they happened. Without regard to pleasing anyone. I had done so within the limits of my prejudices.
“The heat in the crucible is rising, physician. Your White Rose is crafty. Her attack behind the Limper was a grand stroke. But insignificant on the broader canvas. Don’t you agree?”
How could I argue? I did agree.
“As your spies have no doubt reported, five armies stand poised to cleanse the Plain of Fear. It is a strange and unpredictable land. But it will not withstand what is being marshaled.”
Again I could not argue, for I believed her. I could but do what Darling so often spoke of: Buy time. “You may be surprised.”
“Perhaps. Surprises have been calculated into my plans. Come out of that cold waste, Croaker. Come to the Tower. Become my historian.”
This was as near temptation as ever she had come. She spoke to a part of me I do not understand, a part almost willing to betray comrades of decades. If I went, there was so much I would know. So many answers illuminated. So many curiosities satisfied.
“You escaped us at Queen’s Bridge.”
Heat climbed my neck. During our years on the run the Lady’s forces had overtaken us several times. Queen’s Bridge was the worst. A hundred brothers had fallen there. And to my shame, I left the Annals behind, buried in the river bank. Four hundred years worth of Company history, abandoned.
There was just so much that could be carried away. The papers down in the Hole were critical to our future. I took them instead of the Annals. But I suffer frequent bouts of guilt. I must answer the shades of brethren who have gone before. Those Annals are the Black Company. While they exist, the Company lives.
“We escaped and escaped, and will continue to escape. It is fated.”
She smiled, amused. “I have read your Annals, Croaker. New and old.”
I began throwing wood onto the embers of my fire. I was not dreaming. “You have them?” Till that moment I had silenced guilt with promises to recover them.
“They were found after the battle. They came to me. I was pleased. You are honest, as historians go.”
“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.