"He just plays cards, Sleepy. He does talk all the time but he never says anything. Kind of like Uncle One-Eye."
Whisper. "You put him up to that, didn't you, Frogface?"
"Sounds like Swan to me," I said. I shut my eyes, began massaging my brow between thumb and forefinger, trying to make Vajra the Naga go away. His reptilian lack of connection was seductive. "I'm so tired—"
"Then why the hell don't we all just retire?" One-Eye croaked. "For a whole goddamned generation it was the Captain and his next year in Khatovar shit that beat us into the ground. Now it's you two women and your holy crusade to resurrect the Captured. Find yourself a guy, Little Girl. Spend a year screwing his brains out. We're not going to get those people out of there. Accept that. Start believing that they're dead."
He sounded exactly like the traitor in my soul that whispered in my mind every night before I fell asleep. The part about accepting that the Captured were never going to be coming back, anyway. I asked Sahra, "Can we call up our favorite dead man? One-Eye, ask him what he thinks of our plan."
"Bah! Frogface, you deal with this. I need a little medicinal pick-me-up."
Almost smiling despite her aching joints, Gota waddled out behind One-Eye. We would not see those two for a while. If we were lucky, One-Eye would get drunk fast and pass out. If we were not, he would come staggering out looking to feud with Goblin and we would have to restrain him. That could turn into an adventure.
"Well. Here's our prodigal." Sahra finally had Murgen back in the mist box.
I told him, "Tell me about the white crow."
Puzzled, "I go there sometimes. It's not voluntary."
"We took Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night out of Chor Bagan today. There was a white crow there. You weren't here."
"I wasn't there." More puzzled. Even troubled. "I don't remember being there."
"I think Soulcatcher noticed it. And she knows her crows."
Murgen continued, "I wasn't there but I remember things that happened. This can't be happening to me again."
"Just calm down. Tell us what you know."
Murgen proceeded to report everything Soulcatcher said and did after she ducked our snipers. He would not tell us how he knew. I do not think he could.
Sahra said, "She does know that we have Singh and the girl."
"But did she guess why? The Company has an old grudge with those two."
"She'll need to see bodies to be convinced there was nothing more to it than that. She's still not completely satisfied that Swan is dead. A very suspicious woman, the Protector."
"A Narayan corpse would be easy—if we could make it credible. There're a million skinny, filthy little old men with green teeth out there. But we'd sure come up short on beautiful twenty-year-old women with blue eyes and skin paler than ivory."
"The Greys will definitely become more active now," Sahra said. "Whatever she suspects or doesn't, the Protector wants no one going about any tricky business in her city."
"A point the Radisha might argue. Which reminds me of something that's been knocking around the back of my head. Listen to this and tell me what you think."
21
As the Bhodi disciples made their way through the crowds, more than one onlooker reached out to slap their backs. The disciples took that with poor grace. It told them that many of the witnesses were there to be entertained.
The rite proceeded as before, but more quickly as it was evident that the Greys anticipated trouble and had instructions to head it off.
The kneeling priest in orange burst into flames just as the Greys began manhandling his assistants out of the way.
A gout of smoke leaped upward. A Black Company skull formed inside it, an evil eye seeming to stare deep into the souls of all the witnesses. A voice filled the morning. "All their days are numbered."
And the wooden curtain-wall shielding the reconstruction came to life. Glowing lime characters as tall as a man proclaimed "Water Sleeps," and "My Brother Unforgiven." They crawled slowly back and forth.
Soulcatcher herself materialized on the ramparts overhead. Her rage was palpable.
A second and larger cloud of smoke burst off the burning disciple. A face—the best representation of the Captain's that One-Eye and Goblin could manage—told the awed and silent thousands, "Rajadharma! The Duty of Kings. Know you: Kingship is a Trust. The King is the most exalted and conscientious servant of the people."
I began to slide away from there. This was sure to sting the Protector into some impulsive and self-defeating response.
Or maybe not. She did nothing obvious, though a sudden breeze came along. It blew the smoke away. But it fanned the flames consuming the Bhodi disciple. The smell of burning flesh spread out downwind.
22
W hen Master Santaraksita wanted to know why I was late, I told the truth. "Another Bhodi disciple set himself on fire in front of the Palace. I went to watch. I couldn't help myself. There was sorcery involved." I described what I had seen. As so many of the actual eyewitnesses also had, Santaraksita seemed both repelled and intrigued.
"Why do you suppose those disciples are doing that, Dorabee?"
I knew why they were doing it. It took no genius to fathom their motives. Only their determination remained a puzzle. "They're trying to tell the Radisha that she's not fulfilling her obligations to the Taglian people. They consider the situation so desperate that they've chosen to send their message by a means that can't be ignored."
"I, too, believe that to be the case. The question remains: What can the Radisha do? The Protector won't go away just because some people believe she's bad for Taglios."
"I have a great deal to do today, Sri, and I'm starting late."
"Go. Go. I must assemble the bhadrhalok. It's possible we can present the Radisha with some means of shaking the Protector's grip."
"Good luck, Sri." He would need it. Only the most outrageous good luck since the beginning of time was going to give him and his cronies the tools to undo Soulcatcher. Chances were good the bhadrhalok had no idea how dangerous an opponent they had chosen.
I dusted and mopped and checked the rodent traps and after a while noticed that most everyone had gone away. I asked old Baladitya the copyist where everyone was. He told me that the other copyists had ducked out as soon as the senior librarians had gone off to their bhadrhalok meeting. They knew that the bhadrhalok would do nothing but it would take them hours of grumbling and talking and arguing to get it done, so they made themselves a holiday.
It was not an opportunity to be refused. I began examining books, even going so far as to penetrate the restricted stacks. Baladitya knew nothing. He could not see three feet in front of his face.
23
J aul Barundandi partnered Minh Subredil with a young woman named Rahini and sent them to work in the Radisha's own quarters, under the direction of a woman named Narita, a fat, ugly creature possessed by an inflated conception of her own importance. Narita complained to Barundandi, "I need six more women. I'm supposed to clean the council chamber again after I complete the royal suite."