"You didn't get a word out of him," One-Eye complained as soon as Doj was out of earshot.
"I didn't expect to. I just wanted him to have something to think about. Let's talk to these two. Scoot Singh over here, take the gag off and turn him so he can't get cues from the girl." She was spooky. Even bound and gagged, she radiated a disturbingly potent presence. Put her in the company of people already prepared to believe that she was touched by the dark divine and it was easy to understand why the Deceiver cult was making a comeback. Interesting, though, that that was a recent phenomenon. That for a decade she and Narayan had been fugitives painstakingly taking control of the few surviving Deceivers and evading the Protector's agents, and now, just as we feel we are up to tugging a few beards, they began making their survival known, too.
I had no trouble seeing where the Gunni imagination would find connections and portents and wild harbingers of the Year of the Skulls.
"Narayan Singh," I said in my Vajra the Naga voice. "You're a stubborn old man. You should have been dead long ago. Perhaps Kina does favor you. Which would suggest that here in my hands is where the goddess wants you to be." We Vehdna are good at blaming everything on God. Nothing can happen that is not the will of God. Therefore, He has already measured the depth of the brown stuff and has decided to toss you in. "And these are bloody hands, make no mistake."
Singh looked at me. He did not fear much. He did not recognize me. If our paths had crossed before, I had been too minor an annoyance for him to recall.
The Daughter of Night remembered me, though. She was thinking that I was a mistake she would not be making again. I was thinking maybe she was a mistake we ought not to make, however useful a tool she might become. She almost scared Vajra the Naga, who had been too dense to comprehend fear in personal terms.
"You're troubled by events but aren't afraid. You rely upon your goddess. Good. Let me provide assurances. We won't harm you. Assuming you cooperate. However much we owe you."
He did not believe a word of that and I did not blame him. That was the usual sort of "hold out a feather of hope" a torturer used to leverage cooperation from the doomed. "In this case, the pain will all be directed elsewhere." He tried to turn to look at the girl. "Not just there, Narayan Singh. Not only there. Though that's where we'll start. Narayan, you have something we want. We have several things we believe to be of value to you. I'm prepared to make an exchange, sworn in the names of all our gods."
Narayan had nothing to say. Yet. But I began to sense that his ears might be open to the right words.
The Daughter of Night sensed that, too. She squirmed. She tried to make some kind of noise. She was going to be as stubborn and crazy as her mother and aunt. Must be the blood.
"Narayan Singh. In another life you were a vegetable seller in the town called Gondowar. Every other summer you would go off to lead your company of tooga." Singh looked uncomfortable and puzzled. This was nothing he expected. "You had a wife, Yashodara, whom you called Lily in private. You had a daughter, Khaditya, which was maybe just a little too clever a naming. You had three sons: Valmiki, Sugriva and Aridatha. Aridatha you've never seen because he wasn't born until after the Shadowmasters carried the able men of Gondowar off into captivity."
Narayan looked more uncomfortable and troubled than ever. His life before the coming of the Shadowmasters was a lost episode. Since his unexpected salvation, he had dedicated himself solely to his goddess and her Daughter.
"Those times were so unsettled that you have since proceeded on the reasonable assumption that nothing of your former life survived the coming of the Shadowmasters. But that assumption is a false one, Narayan Singh. Yashodara bore you that third son, Aridatha, and lived to see him become a grown man. Though she endured great poverty and despair, your Lily survived until just two years ago." In fact, until just after we located her. I still did not know for certain if some of my brothers had not grown overly zealous in their eagerness to locate Narayan. "Of your sons, Aridatha and Sugriva still live, as does your daughter Khaditya, though she has used the name Amba since she learned, to her horror, that her very father was the Narayan Singh of such widespread infamy."
By stealing Lady's baby, Narayan had ensured that his name would live on amongst those of the great villains. Everyone over a certain age knew the name and a score of evil stories burdening it—the majority of them fabrications or accretions of stories formerly attached to some other human demon whose ignominy had been nibbled up by time.
I had his attention despite his determination to remain indifferent. Family is critically important to all but a handful of us.
"Sugriva continues in the produce business, although his desire to escape your reputation led him first to move to Ayodahk, then to Jaicur when the Protector decided she wanted the city repopulated. He felt everyone would be strangers there and he could create a more favorable past for himself."
Both captives noted my unfortunate use of "Jaicur." Which did not give them anything they could use but which did tell them I was not Taglian. No Taglian would call that city anything but Dejagore.
I continued, "Aridatha grew into a fine young man, well-formed and beautiful. He's a soldier now, a senior noncommissioned officer in one of the City Battalions. His rise has been rapid. He has been noticed. There's a good chance he'll be chosen to become one of the career commissioned officers the Great General had been imposing on the army." I fell silent. No one else spoke. Some were hearing this for the first time, though Sahra and I had started looking for those people a long time ago.
I got up and went out, got myself a large cup of tea. I cannot abide the Nyueng Bao tea-making ceremonies. I am, of course, a barbarian in their eyes. I do not like the tiny little cups they use, either. When I have some tea, I want to get serious about it. Make it strong and bitter and toss in a glob of honey.
I seated myself in front of Narayan again. No one had spoken in my absence. "So, living saint of the Stranglers, have you truly put aside all the chains of the earth? Would you like to see your Khaditya again? She was little when you left. Would you like to see your grandchildren? There are five of them. I can say the word and inside a week we can have one of them here." I sipped tea, looked Singh in the eye and let his imagination toy with the possibilities. "But you are going to be all right, Narayan. I'm going to see to that personally." I showed him my Vajra the Naga smile. "Will somebody show these two to their guest rooms?"
"That all you're going to do?" Goblin asked once they were gone.
"I'm going to let Singh think about the life he never lived. I'll let him think about losing what's left of that. And about losing his messiah. When he can avoid all those tragedies just by telling us where to find the souvenir he carried away from Soulcatcher's hideout down by Kiaulune."
"He won't take a deep breath without getting permission from the girl."
"We'll see how he handles having to make his own decisions. If he stalls too long and we get pressed, you can put a glamour on me that'll make him think I'm her."
"What about her?" One-Eye asked. "You going to personally work on her, too?"
"Yes. Starting right now. Put some of those choke spells on her. One on each wrist and ankle. And double them up around her neck." We had done some herding, amongst other things, over the years and One-Eye and Goblin, being incredibly lazy, had developed choke spells that constricted tighter and tighter as an animal moved farther away from a selected marker point. "She's a resourceful woman with a goddess on her side. I'd prefer to kill her and be done with it but we won't get any help from Singh if we do. If she does manage to escape, I want complete success to be fatal. I want near success to render her unconscious from lack of air. I don't want her having regular contact with any of our people. Remember what her aunt, Soulcatcher, did to Willow Swan. Tobo. Has Swan said anything that might interest us?"