Water Sleeps

42

I was playing tonk with Spiff and JoJo and Kendo Cutter, an interesting mix. At least three of us took our religion somewhat seriously. JoJo’s real name was Cho Dai Cho. He was Nyueng Bao and, in theory, One-Eye’s bodyguard. One-Eye did not want a bodyguard. JoJo did not want to be a bodyguard. So they did not see much of one another, and the rest of us saw as little of JoJo as we did of Uncle Doj. JoJo complained, “You’re just ganging up on the dumb swamp boy. I know.”

I said, “Me get in cahoots with a heretic and an unbeliever?”

“You’ll ambush them after you finish picking my bones.”

I had been having an unusual run of luck.

Everybody resents it when their favorite mark gets lucky.

I said, “I can’t get used to this not having to go to work.” JoJo discarded a six I needed to fill to the inside of a five-card straight. “Maybe this is my day.”

“Be a good time to get out and find you a man, then.”

“Goblin. You’re still alive. As mad as Soulcatcher was last night, I figured she would have you for a midnight snack before you got halfway home.”

Goblin gave me his big frog grin. “She’s gonna walk funny for a while. I couldn’t believe she actually stomped on it.” His grin faded. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe nailing her that way was a mistake. I could’ve led her somewhere where we could’ve got her in a crossfire-”

“She would’ve been looking for that. In fact, her suspecting something like that was probably one reason she didn’t keep chasing you. You want to sit in?”

All three of my companions glowered. Goblin was not One-Eye but they did not trust him a bit. They knew with the confidence of ignorance that Goblin was just more clever when he cheated. The fact that his history was one of losing more than he won was just a part of the cover-up.

You might have noticed that the human animal is fond of forming and clinging to prejudices, remaining their steadfast curator in the face of all reason and contradiction.

“Not this time.” Goblin could take a hint. He would also take them some other way sometime and laugh himself silly behind his hand. And it would serve them right. “Got work to do. I’m already getting complaints from everybody about a ghost that was all over the warehouse last night. Got to scope it out.”

I had a losing hand. Or foot. I tossed it in. “He’s making me feel guilty for loafing.” I collected my winnings. “You can’t quit now,” Kendo grumbled. “You proved your point. Women can’t play cards. I stay here much longer, I won’t have a copper left to my name. Then you wouldn’t get a birthday present this year.” “Didn’t get one last year, either.”

“I must’ve played tonk with you then, too. So many of you do it, I have a hard time keeping track of which ones of you guys keep beating up on me.” They all grumbled now.

Goblin said, “Maybe I can sit in, just for a hand or two.” “That’s all right. You better help Sleepy, Or Sleepy can help you.” The grumbling stopped till we were out of earshot.

Goblin chuckled. So did I. He said, “We ought to get married.”

“I’m too old for you. See if Chandra Gokhale can fix you up.”

“Aren’t those two like a couple of starving rats?” Gokhale and Drupada were at one another constantly. Their squabbles had not yet devolved into anything physical only because they had been warned in the strongest of terms that the winner of any fight would be punished terribly.

“Maybe one of them will kill and eat the other one,” I said. “If we’re lucky.”

“You’re a dreamer, for sure.”

“What’s your opinion on this ghost?”

He shrugged.

“You know it’s the girl, don’t you?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“You think she’s going through the same thing Murgen did when he started? Falling through time and everything?”

“I don’t know. There’s a difference. Nobody ever saw anything with Murgen.”

“Can you stop her from doing it?”

“Spooking you out?”

“In the sense that I’m scared she’ll go out and get help, sure.”

“Ooh. I didn’t think about that.”

“Do think about it, Goblin. What about the white crow? Could she be the white crow?”

“I thought Murgen was the white crow.”

He knew better. “Murgen’s here, being Sahra’s recon slave.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time Murgen was in the same place, looking at things from two different times.”

“He tells me he can’t remember being the crow.”

“Maybe that’s because he hasn’t done it yet. Maybe it’s a Murgen from next year or something.”

I did not know what to say to that. That possibility had not occurred to me. And Murgen had done that sort of thing before.

“On the other hand, personally I don’t think it’s Murgen or the brat.” He grinned his big toad grin. He knew I would stub my toe on that.

I did. “What? You little rat. Who is it, then?”

He shrugged. “I got a couple ideas but I’m not ready to talk about them yet. You got the Annals. All you need to follow my reasoning is right in there.” He began giggling, pleased with himself for stumping the Annalist at her own game. So to speak. “Ha-ha.” He spun around, dancing. “Let’s go beat up on Narayan Singh. Whoa. Look who’s here. Swan, you’re too damned old to wear your hair that long. Unless you’re going to comb it all up on top there to kind of cover the thin spot.”

I held a ringer above Goblin’s dome, pointing down. He had not had a crop come in during my lifetime.

Swan said, “Kind of looks like your widow’s peak is sagging back a little, too. Probably comes of banging your head on the bottoms of so many tables.” Swan looked at me, an eyebrow raised. “He been in the ganja or something?”

“No. He just hasn’t gotten over the fact that he went toe to toe with your girlfriend and came out ahead on points.” Swan had suggested a good point indirectly, though. With hemp such a common weed, it was a wonder that Goblin and One-Eye had not gotten in on the entertainment side of that crop.

Goblin understood what I was thinking without me saying a word. He told me, “We don’t have anything to do with it because it screws up your head.”

“And that water-buffalo urine you brew back there doesn’t?”

“That’s pure medicine, Sleepy. You ought to try it. It’s chock-full of stuff that’s good for you.”

“My diet is just fine, Goblin. Except for the fish and the rice.”

“That’s what I’m saying. We take up a collection, buy us a pig... never mind what Sahra says. There ain’t nothing sweeter than some fatback and beans-”

Swan had invited himself to accompany us in our seventy-foot trek to Narayan’s cage. He said, “I’ll kick in on that myself. I haven’t tasted bacon in over twenty years.”

“Shit,” Goblin said. “You’re going to kick in? Man, you don’t even have a name anymore. You’re dead.”

“I could run up to the Palace, dig around under my mattress. Times haven’t been all bad for me.”

“You won’t marry me, Sleepy,” Goblin said, “then you oughta marry Swan. He’s got a hoard put back and he’s too damned old to bother you with any of that man stuff. Narayan Singh. Get your skinny, shit-smelling ass up from there and talk to me.”

Swan whispered, “Survival must be a real powerful drug.”

“I expect it is when you’re Goblin’s age,” I agreed.

“I guess it is at any age.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“Meaning, I guess, I should’ve headed back north a long time ago. I got nothing going for me here. I should’ve started moseying when Blade and Cordy went down. But I couldn’t. And it wasn’t just Soulcatcher twisting my arm.”

“Umm?”

“I’m a loser. We were all losers. All three of us. We couldn’t even make it as soldiers in the old empire. We deserted. Blade got his ass thrown to the crocodiles for smarting off to the priests back in his home country. We never had no real start-up, any of us. Me and Cordy only headed on down here because once we got to running, it took a long time to stop. Now I don’t have my friends anymore, I don’t have anybody to goose me into doing things.”

I did not enlighten him about the health of Blade and Mather, who were among the Captured, but I did point out, “You can’t be entirely inadequate. You’ve had some kind of commission or other from the Taglian throne practically since you got here.”

“I’m an outsider. I make a great fall guy. Everybody knows who I am and everybody can recognize me. So the Protector or the Radisha puts me out front where I can take the heat for all their unpopular decisions.”

“Now they’ll need to find somebody else.”

“Don’t give me that look. I wouldn’t join the Black Company if you promised to marry me and make me Captain, too. You guys got doom written all over you.”

“What do you want?”

“Me? Since I don’t got the stones or the young body to go home anymore-and home wouldn’t be there when I showed up anyway-what I’d like to do is what we tried to do when we first came down here. Set me up a little brewery, spend my last few years making people’s lives a little easier.”

“I’m sure Goblin and One-Eye would be happy to take on a partner.”

“Them two? No way. They’d drink up half the product. They’d get drunk and get in a fight and start throwing the barrels at each other-”

He had a point. “You have a point. Though they’ve shown considerable self-control lately.”

“It helps you pay attention if your fuckup will get you killed. I’m always surprised by this guy.” He meant Narayan Singh. “He looks like such a trivial little wart. There’re ten thousand that look just like him out there on the streets right now and not one will ever do anything more important than starve to death.”

“If I thought it would do any good, I’d starve this one to death, too. Narayan. I’m back. Are you going to talk to me today?”

Singh raised his eyes. He seemed serene, at peace. That could be said for Stranglers. They never had trouble with their consciences. “Good morning, young woman. Yes. We can talk. I took your advice. I went to the goddess. And she approved your petition. Frankly, I was surprised. She set down no special conditions for making a bargain. Other than that the lives and well-being of her chief agents remain unimpaired.”

Swan was more taken aback than I was. “You got the right guy here, Sleepy?”

“I don’t know. I figured they’d still try to weasel a little even after they couldn’t stall anymore.” This required a little thought. Or a lot of thought. And maybe some worry. “I’m definitely pleased, Narayan. Definitely. Where’s the Key?”

Narayan smiled a smile almost as ugly as One-Eye’s. “I’ll take you to it.”

“Aha,” I murmured. “I see. The first shoe drops. Fine. When will you be ready to travel?”

“As soon as the girl recovers. You may have noticed she’s been sick.”

“Yes, I did. I thought it must be her time of the month.” A horrible, horrible thought occurred to me. “She’s not pregnant, is she?”

The look on Singh’s face told me that notion was completely unthinkable to him.

“That’s good. But it doesn’t matter, Narayan. As long as we’re conspiring together, Deceivers and Black Company, you two aren’t going to be a team. It’s a sad truth, Narayan Singh, but I just don’t trust you. And her I wouldn’t trust if she was in her grave.”

He smiled like he knew a secret. “But you expect us to trust you.”

“Based on the well-known fact that once it has sworn a thing, the Company always keeps its word. Yes.” A slight exaggeration, of course.

Narayan glanced at Swan for just a second. He smiled again. “I guess that’s just going to have to be good enough for me.”

I pasted on my most scintillating false smile. “Wonderful. We’re in business together. I’ll get some people ready for an expedition. Do we have far to go?”

Smile. “Not far. Just a few days south of the city.”

“Ha. The Grove of Doom. I should have guessed.”

I led Swan away. I rejoined the fellows at the card table. “I want Singh’s son brought in as soon as we can get him.” It could not hurt to have a little extra ammunition.