She Is The Darkness

36

Men moved to let me through. Things like that happen when you can leave someone as a good taste or foul odor in history's mouth. Croaker really made the importance of the Annals an article of faith with everyone in the Company.

Lady looked around. Her ordinarily impassive expression betrayed an instant of irritation. I said, "Looks like we're going to be stalled here till Bucket's crew convince Mogaba's people they'd really rather go home and get in out of this weather."

That was looking kind of bleak. A wind was building. It was colder than the wind had been for days. Heavy clouds were piling up overhead. Looked as if we were going to get some snow.

"Yeah. Let's hope," Swan said. "We need to get down out of these rocks." He was not talking to me, really. "I hate mountains."

"I'm not too fond of cold and snow, either," I said. Of Lady I asked, "You really need to keep avoiding me?"

"What do you want to know?"

"How can you be getting your powers back? I thought that business in the Barrowland stripped you forever."

"I'm a thief. Otherwise, none of your business."

Her entourage sneered at me, mostly because they thought that would make points with her.

"Have you been dreaming again?"

She thought about that one before admitting, "Yes."

"I thought so. You've been looking a little ragged."

"You want to play you have to pay the price. What about you, Annalist?"

I found I was reluctant to reveal anything. Especially in front of those guys. I forced myself. "Yeah. Something that might have been Kina turned up in my dreams a couple times. Almost like an intrusion from outside. I wondered if that might have been the same time she was bothering you."

That interested her. You could see the thoughts begin moving behind her eyes, the consideration, the calculation. She told me, "If it happens again, note the time. If you can."

"I'll try. How did you manage to go head-to-head with Kina the other night and come out in one piece?"

Without missing a beat Lady shifted to Groghor, a language on its last death rattle. "That was not Kina." I learned it from my grandmother, whose people had all been wiped out in the consolidation wars that had built the Lady's empire. Granny was dead and so was my mother and I had not used the tongue except to cuss people out since I signed on with the Company.

"How do you... ?" I sputtered. "How could you know that I... ?"

"The Captain has been kind enough to have your work copied and forwarded to me. You mentioned Groghor somewhere. I am a little rusty. I have not spoken this language in more than a century. Pardon my lapses."

"You're doing fine. But why bother?"

"My sister never learned the language. Nor did this bunch, half of whom are probably spies for someone."

"What's the deal? You said that wasn't Kina. Sure fooled me if it wasn't. Sure fit the description."

"That was my beloved sister. Pretending to be Kina. I expect she surprised Kina's worshippers as much as she surprised the rest of us."

"But... " The Daughter of Night had seemed happy enough.

"I can touch the real Kina, Murgen. Believe me. It's why I don't sleep well. The real Kina is still in her trance. She can only touch the world in dreams. And I have to stay a part of those dreams."

"So Kina is definitely real, then?"

"There is something that fits the bill of particulars, Murgen. I'm not sure that when it's awake it thinks of itself as Kina or as a goddess. It does want to bring on the Year of the Skulls. It does want to get free of its chains. But these are just emotions I have gained from it over the years. It is far too alien for me to know it well."

"Like Old Father Tree?"

She had to think to remember the tree-god thing that had ruled the Plain of Fear and defied her when she was still the Lady.

"I never touched that mind."

"Why would your sister pretend to be Kina?"

"I have never known why my sister does any of the things she does. She has never been rational. Two does not follow One in her scheme, nor does Three come before Four. She is capable of spending incredible energies and vast fortunes on the execution of a prank. She is capable of destroying cities without ever being able to explain why. You can know what she is doing but not why or you can know why she is doing something but not what. She was that way when she was three years old, before anyone knew she was cursed with the power, too."

"You believe you're cursed?"

She actually smiled. When she did her beauty shone through. "By an insane sister, for sure. I wish I had even the foggiest notion why she's just out there, doing nothing but watching and constantly reminding us that she's there."

"Reminding us?"

"Don't you get a little tired of those damned crows?"

"Yes, I do. I thought revenge was her thing."

"If that was all she wanted she would have squashed me a long time ago."

There was a stir behind me. Scores of eyes were staring at us as everyone in earshot tried to figure out what was going on. It had to be some secret if we were going to talk it over in a language nobody knew.

Willow Swan looked like his feelings were hurt.

"Excuse me, sir," said a voice from behind me. "The Liberator's compliments and would you be so good as to get your ass on about the job he gave you? He said to suggest that he wants the answer before sundown."

That was not in a language no one else understood. It cheered Swan right up. Even Lady chuckled.

I do believe I blushed. "I'll want to pursue this further," I told Lady, who did not seem thrilled by the prospect. To the messenger, who happened to be the nephew of a prominent Taglian general, I said, "Just for that I think I'll go do what the Old Man wants."