Water Sleeps

39

T obo woke me. "How can you sleep, Sleepy?"

"I guess I must be tired. What do you want?"

"The Protector has finally started to grumble about the Radisha. Dad wants you to come keep track yourself. So you don't have to record anything third-hand."

At the moment, my name felt entirely appropriate. I just wanted to lie down on my pallet and dream about finding another kind of life.

Trouble was, I had been doing this since I was fourteen. I did not know anything else. Unless Master Santaraksita was willing to let bygones by bygones and take me back at the library. Right after we buried Soulcatcher in a fifty-foot-deep hole we filled in with boiling lead.

I dragged a stool in between Sahra and One-Eye, leaned forward with my elbows on the table and stared into the mist where Murgen appeared to report when it suited him. One-Eye was fussing at Murgen even though Murgen was away. I said, "Anybody would think you were worried about Goblin, the way you're carrying on."

"Of course I'm worried about Goblin, Little Girl. The runt borrowed my transeidetic locuter before he went up there this morning. Not to mention he still owes me several thousands pais for... well, he owes me a bunch of money."

My recollection had it the other way around. One-Eye always owed everyone, even when he was doing well. And several thousand pais is not exactly a fortune, a pai being a tiny seed of such uniform weight that it is used as a measure for gems and precious metals. It takes almost two thousand of them to equal a northern ounce. Since One-Eye had not specified gold or silver, the standard assumption would be that he had meant coin-grade copper. In other words, not very much.

In other words still, he was worried about his best friend but he could not say so because he had a century-long history of reviling the man in public.

If there was any such magical instrument as a transeidetic locuter, One-Eye invented it an hour before he loaned it to Goblin.

He muttered, "That ugly little turd gets himself killed, I'm gonna strangle him. He can't leave me holding the bag on—" He realized he was thinking out loud.

Sahra and I both made mental notes to investigate the bag metaphor. It sounded like there were business plans afoot. Secret plans. Surprise, surprise.

Murgen materialized practically nose to nose with me. He murmured, "Soulcatcher is out of patience. A flock of crows just brought the news from Semchi. She's in a complete black mood. She says she's going into the Radisha's Anger Chamber after her if she doesn't come out in the next two minutes."

"How's Goblin?" One-Eye barked.

"Hiding," Murgen replied. "Waiting for sunrise." He was not going to try leaving during the night, the way we had planned originally. Soulcatcher had loosed her shadows, just to punish Taglios for irritating her. We had a few traps out, randomly distributed through likely neighborhoods, but I did not expect to catch anything. I figured our luck along those lines was about used up.

Goblin was armed with a shadow-repellent amulet left over from the Shadowmaster wars but did not know if it was any good anymore. Being bright and full of forethought, it had not occurred to any of us to test it on real shadows while we had some in stock.

You cannot think of everything.

But you should make the effort.

One of the Royal Guards actually tried to stop the Protector when her patience failed and she went to dig the Radisha out of her hideaway. He went down without a sound, stricken by a casual touch. He would recover eventually. The Protector was not feeling particularly vindictive. For the moment.

She crashed through the door of the Anger Chamber. And howled in frustration before the pieces finished falling. "Where is she?" The power of her rage wilted the onlookers.

A subassistant chamberlain, bowing almost double, continuing to bob and get lower, whined, "She was in there, O Great One!"

Someone else insisted, "We never saw her leave. She has to be in there."

From somewhere, echoing, almost as if coming from some distance in time as well as place, there was the sound of brief laughter.

Soulcatcher turned slowly, her stare a cruel spear. "Come closer. Tell me again." Her voice was compelling, chilling, terrible. She stared into one pair of eyes after another, making full use of the fear so many had that she could read the deepest secrets in their minds.

None of the Radisha's people changed their stories.

"Out of here. Out of this whole apartment. Something happened here. I want no distractions. I want nothing disturbed." She turned again, slowly, extending a sorceress's senses to feel the shape of the past. It was more difficult than she anticipated. She had been loafing for too long, falling out of practice and getting out of shape.

The remote laughter sounded again for an instant, seeming just a touch closer.

"You!" Soulcatcher snapped at a fat woman, one of the housekeepers. "What are you doing?"

"Ma'am?" Narita was barely able to croak her response. In a moment, she would lose control of her bladder.

"You just pushed something into your left sleeve. Something off the altar." A single white candle, almost consumed, still burned in the tiny shrine to ancestors. "Come here." Soulcatcher extended her gloved right hand.

Narita could not resist. She stepped toward the dark woman, so trim and evilly feminine in her leather. Idly, Narita hated her for maintaining that sleek body.

"Give it to me."

Reluctantly, Narita removed the Ghanghesha from her sleeve. She began to babble about not wanting her friend to get into trouble, making no sense at all, failing to realize that if she had not tried to conceal the Ghanghesha, the Protector would have overlooked it entirely.

Soulcatcher stared at the little clay figurine. "The cleaning woman. It belongs to the cleaning woman. Where is she?"

Far, mocking laughter.

"She's a day employee, ma'am. She comes in from outside."

"Where does she live?"

"I don't know, ma'am. I don't think anybody does. Nobody ever asked. It never mattered."

One of the other staffers offered, "She was a good worker."

Soulcatcher continued to examine the Ghanghesha. "Something's odd here... Now it does matter. To me. Find out."

"How?"

"I don't care! Be creative! But do it." Soulcatcher hurled the clay figurine to the floor. Shards flew in every direction.

A wisp of a ghost of darkness curled up and stood like a rampant cobra a foot high for an instant. Then it struck. At the Protector.

The staffers squealed and began trampling one another, trying to get away. They had not seen a shadow before but they knew what a shadow could do.

The laughter was closer now, louder and lasting longer.

Soulcatcher offered a convincing squeal of surprise and fright, like a young woman who has just stepped on a snake. Her apparel and the handful of generalized protective spells that always surrounded her saved her from becoming a victim of her own crudest weapon.

Even so, for a minute she was like a child swatting mosquitoes as the shadow enthusiastically strove to terminate their relationship. Failing to reclaim control of the shadow, Soulcatcher destroyed it. The necessity told her that a pretty clever mind had prepared it, probably hoping that she would be too angry to pay close attention for just that instant needed...

"Woman! Come back here!" The Protector extended a hand in the direction Narita had fled. Somehow, a single strand of the woman's hair had become entwined through Soulcatcher's fingers. Those fingers shimmered momentarily. The air became charged. The other staffers whimpered and wished they had even had the nerve to try to run.

Narita reappeared slowly, taking short zombie steps. "Here!" Soulcatcher said. She pointed at a spot on the Anger Chamber floor. "The rest of you. Go away. Quickly." She did not have to add any encouragement. "Fat woman. Tell me everything about the creature who always carried the Ghanghesha."

"I've told you everything I know," Narita whined.

"No. You have not. Start talking. She may have kidnapped the Radisha."

Soulcatcher regretted mentioning that the instant the words left her helmet.

The laughter sounded like it was coming from just out in the hallway, a diabolic snickering. The Protector's head twitched toward that direction. She sensed no threat. It could wait a minute.

"Her name is Minh Subredil." It took Narita only another thirty seconds to relate everything she knew about Minh Subredil, her daughter Shikhandini and her sister-in-law Sawa.

"Thank you," Soulcatcher snarled. "You've been most unhelpful. And for that, I shall provide an appropriate reward." She gripped the fat woman's throat in her right hand, squeezed.

As Narita went limp, that laughter sounded once more. There might have been a word there, too. Ardath? Or perhaps Silath? Or might it have been... ? No matter. Soulcatcher would not listen to that, just to the mockery. She hurled herself toward the sound but when she burst into the hallway, there was nothing to see.

She started to call for Guards, for Greys, but recalled that she had just slain the one person other than herself who knew for sure that the Radisha had disappeared.

The Radisha had shut herself away from the world. That was all anybody really needed to know. The Princess could live forever right there in her Anger Chamber. She did not need to venture forth ever again. She had her good friend the Protector to handle the boring chores of managing her empire for her.

More laughter, apparently from nowhere and everywhere. Soulcatcher stamped away. This was not over yet.

A white crow dropped out of the murk near the ceiling of the hallway, flapped heavily, landed beside the fat woman. It held its beak poised beneath her nostrils momentarily, as though checking for breath. Then it flapped away suddenly, sharp ears having caught the sound of a stealthy footfall.

A shivering Jaul Barundandi eased into the chamber. He knelt beside the woman. He took her hand. He remained there, tears streaking his cheeks, until he heard the Protector returning, arguing with herself in a variety of voices.