Jaul Barundandi's voice gentled further. He beckoned his assistants. "Help these two inside. Be gentle. The high and the mighty may want to talk to them."
I hoped my start did not give us away. I had counted on getting inside early but it had not occurred to me that anyone might be interested in what two near-untouchables might have seen.
8
I need not have worried. We were interviewed by a seriously distracted Guard sergeant who seemed to be going through the motions mainly as a sop to Jaul Barundandi. The subassistant had evidently suffered an overinspiration of ambition in thinking he could win favor by providing eyewitnesses to the tragedy.
His solicitude began to fade once he had little to gain. A few hours after we were taken inside, while excitement still gripped the Palace and a thousand outrageous rumors circulated, while leading Guardsmen and Greys kept bringing in more and more trusted armed men and sending out more and more spies to watch the regular soldiers in their barracks, just in case they were in on the attack somehow, Minh Subredil and her idiot sister-in-law were already hard at work. Barundandi had them cleaning the chamber where the Privy Council met. A huge mess had been left there. Somebody had lost her temper and had worked out her anger by tearing the place up.
Barundandi told us, "Expect to work very hard today, Minh Subredil. Few workers showed up this morning." He sounded bitter. He would not garner much kickback because of the raid. It did not occur to him to be thankful he was still alive. "Is she all right?" He meant me. Sawa. I was still doing a credible job of shaking.
"She will manage as long as I stay close. It would not be good to put her anyplace where she cannot see me today."
Barundandi grunted. "So be it. There's work enough here. Just don't get in anybody's way."
Minh Subredil bowed slightly. She was good at being unobtrusive. She seated me at a wide table about a dozen feet long, piled up lamps and candlesticks and whatnot that had gotten thrown around. I invoked Sawa's narrow focus and went to work cleaning them. Subredil began cleaning floors and furniture.
People came and went, many of them important. None of them noticed us except the Inspector-General of the Records, Chandra Gokhale, who kicked Subredil irritably because she was scrubbing the floor where he wanted to walk.
Subredil got back onto her knees, bowing and begging pardon. Gokhale ignored her. She began cleaning up spilled water, showing no emotion whatsoever. Minh Subredil took that sort of thing. But I suspect Ky Sahra had just formed a definite opinion about which of our enemies should follow Willow Swan into captivity.
The Radisha appeared. The Protector was with her. They settled into their places. Jaul Barundandi appeared soon afterward, meaning to get us out of there. Sawa seemed to notice nothing. Her focus on a candlestick was too narrow. A tall Shadar captain bustled in. He announced, "Your Highness, the preliminary tally shows ninety-eight dead and one hundred twenty-six injured. Some of those will die from their wounds. Minister Swan hasn't been found but many of the bodies are burned too badly to identify. Many that were hit by fireballs caught fire and burned like greasy torches." The captain had trouble remaining calm. He was young. Chances were good he had not seen the consequences of battle before.
I kept working hard to shove myself way down deep into character. I had not been this close to Soulcatcher since she held me prisoner outside Kiaulune fifteen years ago. Those were not happy memories. I prayed she did not remember me.
I went all the way down into my safe place. I had not been there since my captivity. The hinges on the door were rusty. But I got inside and got comfortable while remaining Sawa. I had just enough attention left to catch most of what was happening around me. The Protector suddenly asked, "Who are these women?"
Barundandi fawned. "Pardon, Great Ones. Pardon. My fault. I did not know the chamber was to be used."
"Answer the question, Housekeeper," the Radisha ordered.
"Certainly, Great One." Barundandi kowtowed halfway to the floor. "The woman scrubbing is Minh Subredil, a widow. The other is her idiot sister-in-law, Sawa. They are outside staff employed as part of the Protector's charity program."
Soulcatcher said, "I feel I have seen one or both of them before."
Barundandi bowed deeply again. The attention frightened him. "Minh Subredil has worked here for many years, Protector. Sawa accompanies her when her mind is clear enough for her to accomplish repetitive tasks."
I felt him trying to decide whether or not to volunteer the news that we had witnessed the morning's attack from up close. I clung to my safe place so hard that I did not catch what happened during the next few minutes.
Barundandi chose not to volunteer us for questioning. Perhaps he reasoned that too intensive an attention paid to us might expose the fact that he was charging us half our feeble salaries for the right to work our hands into raw, aching crabs.
The Radisha finally told him, "Go away, Housekeeper. Let them work. The fate of the empire will not be decided here today."
And Soulcatcher waved a gloved hand, shooing Barundandi out, but then halted him to demand, "What is that the woman has on the floor beside her?" Meaning Subredil, of course, since I was seated at the table.
"Uh? Oh. A Ghanghesha, Great One. The woman never goes anywhere without it. It's an obsession with her. It—"
"Go away now."
So it was that Sahra, at least, sat in on almost two hours of the innermost powers' responses to our assault.
After a while I came forward again, enough to follow most of it. Couriers came and went. A picture of generally upright behavior by the army and people took shape. Which was to be expected. Neither had any real reason to rise up right now. Which was nothing but good news to the Radisha.
Positive intelligence just made the Protector more suspicious, though. The old cynic.
"No prisoners taken," she said. "No corpses left behind. Quite possibly no serious casualties suffered. Nor any great risks endured, if you examine it closely. They fled as soon as there was a chance someone would hit back. What were they up to? What was their real purpose?"
Reasonably, Chandra Gokhale pointed out, "The attack appears to have been sustained with exceptional ferocity till you yourself appeared on the battlements. Only then did they run."
The Shadar captain volunteered, "Several survivors and witnesses report that the bandits argued amongst themselves about your presence, Protector. It seems they expected you to be away from the Palace. Evidently the attack would not have been undertaken had they known you were here."
One of my touches of misdirection. I hoped it did some good.
"That makes no sense. Where would they get that idea?" She did not expect an answer and did not wait for one. "Have you identified any of the burned bodies?"
"Only three, Protector. Most are barely recognizable as human."
The Radisha asked, "Chandra, how bad was the physical damage? Do you have an assessment yet?"
"Yes, Radisha. It was bad. Extremely bad. The wall appears to have suffered some structural damage. The full extent is being determined right now. It's certain to be a weak point for a while. You might consider putting up a wooden curtain-wall in front of what is going to become a construction area. And think hard about bringing in troops."
"Troops?" the Protector demanded. "Why troops?" Her voice, long neutral, became suspicious. When you have no friends at all, paranoia is an even more natural outlook than it is for brothers of the Black Company.