I was tired but figured I could study Murgen's Annals for a few hours before I passed out.
As I walked away, Swan whispered, "How the hell does she know all that? And is she really a she?"
"Never checked personally," Slink said. "I have a wife. But she's definitely got some female habits on her."
What the devil did that mean? I am just one of the guys.
11
These were exciting times. I found myself eager to be up and outside, where things were happening. The impact of our boldness would have reached every cranny of the city by now. I gobbled cold rice and listened to Tobo complain, again, that his father had paid him no attention.
"Is there something I can do about that, Tobo?"
"Huh?"
"Unless you think I can go back there and tell him to shape up and talk to his kid, you're wasting your time and mine bitching about it. Where's your mother?"
"She left for work. A long time ago. She said they'd be suspicious if she didn't show up today."
"Probably would be. They'll be real edgy about everything for a while. How about instead of fussing about what's happened already, you spend some time thinking about what you'll do next time you see your father? And in the meantime, you can stay out of trouble by keeping notes for me whenever anybody questions the prisoner."
His glower told me he was no more excited about being offered work than any boy his age would be. "You're going out, too?"
"I have to go to work." It would be a good day to get to the library early. The scholars were supposed to be gone most of the day. There was supposed to be a big meeting of the bhadrhalok, which was a loosely associated group of educated men who did not like the Protector and who found the institution of the Protectorate objectionable. Jokingly, they referred to themselves as a band of intellectual terrorists. Bhadrhalok means, more or less, "the respectable people" and that was exactly what they thought they were. They were all educated, high-caste Gunni, which meant, right away, that a vast majority of the Taglian population regarded them with no sympathy at all. Their biggest problem with the Protector was that she held their self-confident, arrogant assumption of superiority in complete contempt. As revolutionaries and terrorists, they were less incandescent than any of the low-caste social clubs that existed on every residential block in the city. I doubt that Soulcatcher wasted two spies watching them. But they had great fun, fulminating and crying on one another's shoulders about the world going to hell in a goat cart driven by the demon in black. And every week or so it got most of the library crew out of my way.
I did what I could to encourage their seditious fervor.
I got off to a slow start. Not thirty yards from the warehouse exit I ran into two of our brothers doing donkey work for Do Trang while standing lookout. One made gestures indicating that they had something to report. Sighing, I strolled over. "What's the story, River?" The men called him Riverwalker. I did not know him by any other name.
"We got shadowtraps that's been sprung. We got ourselves some new pets."
"Oh, no. Darn." I shook my head.
"That's not good?"
"Not good. Run, report it to Goblin. I'll stick with Ran till you get back. Don't dawdle. I'm late for work." Not true, but Taglians have little sense of urgency, and the concept of punctuality is alien to most.
Shadows in the shadowtraps. Not a good eventuation, for sure. Near as we could determine, Soulcatcher had no more than two dozen manageable shadows left under control. As many more had gone feral in the remote south and were developing reputations as rakshasas, which were demons or devils but not quite like those my northern forebrethren knew. Northern demons seemed to be solitary beings of considerable power. Rakshasas are communal and pretty weak individually. But deadly. Very deadly.
In ancient myth, of course, they are much more powerful. They swat each other over the head with mountaintops, grow two heads for every one chopped off by a hero, and collect the beautiful wives of kings who are really gods incarnate but do not remember that fact. Things must have been much more exciting in olden times—even if they did not make a lot of sense from day to day.
Catcher would keep a close eye on her shadows. They were her most valuable resource. Which meant that if they had been sent out to spy, she should know exactly where each was supposed to have gone. At least that is the way I would have done it if I were committing irreplaceable resources. I did that for every single man we committed to Willow Swan's capture. I knew how they were going to get to their places and how they were going to get home and everything they were supposed to do in between. And just like I figured Soulcatcher might, I would have gone looking for them personally if they had failed to return home.
Goblin came hobbling into the early morning light, cursing all the way. He wore the all-covering brown wool of a veyedeen dervish. He hated the outfit, however necessary it was to disguise himself when he was outside. I did not blame him. The wool was hot. It was supposed to remind the holy men of the hell they were escaping by devoting themselves to chastity, asceticism and good works. "What the hell is this shit?" he growled. "It's hot enough to boil eggs out here already."
"The boys say we've caught something in our shadow-traps. I thought you might want to do something about that before Mama comes looking for her babies."
"Shit. More work—"
"Old man, you just had something in your mouth I wouldn't even want in my hand."
"Vehdna priss. Get the flock out of here before I give you a real language lesson. And bring home something decent to eat when you come back. Like maybe a cow."
More than once he and One-Eye had conspired to kidnap one of the sacred cattle that wander the city. To date, their efforts have come to naught because none of the men will go along. The majority have Gunni backgounds.
It took no time at all to learn that our shadow captives were not the only shadows that had run wild just before dawn. Rumor was rife. The stories of the murders the shadows committed banished news of the attack on the Palace and the self-immolation of the Bhodi disciple. The killings were closer to home and closer in time. And they were grotesque. The corpse of a man whose life has been devoured by a shadow is a twisted husk of the creature that was.
I insinuated myself into the crowd surrounding the doorway of a family where there had been multiple deaths. You can do that when you are little and limber and know how to use your elbows. I arrived just in time to watch them bring the bodies out. I was hoping they would be exposed to the public eye. Not that I wanted to see them myself. I saw plenty of those kinds of bodies during the Shadowmaster wars. I just thought the people ought to see what Soulcatcher could do. She needed all the enemies she could get.
The bodies were enshrouded already. But there was talk.
I traveled on, learning that most of the dead had been people who lived on the streets. And there had been a lot of those, taken in no obvious pattern whatsoever. It looked like Soulcatcher had sent the shadows out just to demonstrate that she had the power and the will to kill.
The deaths had evoked no great fear. People thought it was over. Most of them did not know any of the dead so were not angry, either. Curiosity and revulsion were the common emotions.