Glen Cook - Soldiers Live

Then we stood back and rendered appropriate honors as Aridatha Singh directed equally large, if not nearly so dramatic, ceremonies honoring those who had fallen on behalf of the Protectorate. And when that was done we joined the local soldiers and the most important men of the city in honoring the Prahbrindrah Drah.

His funeral was the grandest I ever attended. I developed the distinct impression that all those leading men had gathered, however, to eyeball one another suspiciously rather than to mourn the passing of a ruler none had seen since they were young.

Aridatha Singh was popular with these men. Because Aridatha Singh had gathered to himself the loyalties of the survivors of the Second Territorial Division, the Greys, and the commanders of the rural garrisons nearest the city. Aridatha Singh had become the most powerful man in the Taglian Territories, despite having done little to acquire that power—except to be competent and a nice guy.

They say that when the hour comes, so will the man. Sometimes fate will even conspire to put a competent, honest man in the right place at the right time. Almost overnight the graffiti began giving Aridatha Mogaba’s old title, Great General.

Now, if he could just manage to get by without antagonizing the occupiers.

I tried to keep an eye on Tobo but that was difficult with a kid so talented.

The hours of ceremony ground me down. I wanted to put myself away for another long nap. But I refused to give the Queen of Darkness any further respite.

“These are them,” Arkana told me in perfectly colloquial bad Taglian, indicating eight bitty wooden kegs. “Eight different men took turns crawling in there and stuffing papers—and everything else they could find—into a keg. Which I had sealed up as soon as the man came out. By an illiterate cooper.”

“You are a treasure indeed, daughter dear. Gentlemen, let’s build us a bonfire.” I had brought a couple of carts loaded with wood purchased from a wood seller whose usual customers were people who needed firewood for funeral ghats. I had been surprised to find he had any stock left, considering recent events.

The gentlemen I spoke to all hailed from Hsien. They knew only that the eight kegs contained the hopes of life of a monster more blackhearted than the legendary Shadowmasters who had tortured the Land of Unknown Shadows. And that was all they needed to know.

The pyre went up quickly, the kegs scattered throughout it. A fraction of me bemoaned the fate of the latest incarnation of the Books of the Dead. I hate seeing any book destroyed. But I did not interfere when the oil splashed and the fireballs zipped in.

My reluctance might be Kina trying to manipulate me. I stayed there until I was confident that my natural daughter’s life’s work had been consumed completely by the flames. In some myths Hagna, god of fire, is Kina’s mortal enemy. In others, when she is in her Destroyer avatar, he is her ally.

The more I am exposed to the Gunni pantheon the more confused I become.

“What task now?” I wondered aloud. Everyone but Arkana and a few curious street kids, the near-feral ones called jengali, had moved along. A ragged, bemused white crow had been hanging around, too, but it had nothing to say. It had been doing a lot of sticking close and keeping its beak shut lately.

“Time to wake somebody up, Pop. Your wife, your daughter or the Khadidas.”

I surveyed the workmen clearing rubble. Most were civilians now, supervised by soldiers there just to keep them from stealing any treasures they unearthed.

The masonry had stopped collapsing. The fires had burned out. The popular consensus was that an all-new palace should be erected, once the old structures had been cleared away.

I could not imagine what treasures and surprises might surface if they did demolish and remove the whole rambling monster. No one ever knew the palace in its entirety. No one but a long-dead wizard named Smoke.

The death pyre of the Books of the Dead attracted more jengali, who wanted to take advantage of the warmth.

Shukrat glowered at Arkana. Seemed Arkana was not doing her share of Booboo watching. And Arkana did not care if Shukrat was pissed off.

I noticed a change in Lady. She did not seem to be in a sort of coma anymore. She seemed to be in a normal but deep sleep. I threw open a window. I am a firm believer in the health benefits of fresh air. The scruffy white crow appeared almost immediately. I asked, “How long has this been going on?” I had my back to Booboo. Cleaned and groomed and dressed in decent clothing she was quite the sleeping beauty. I tried not to look at her long. Seeing her still ripped at my heart.

“What?” Shukrat asked. She stuck her tongue out at Arkana.

“The snoring. Lady didn’t snore before.” I meant since she had fallen under the spell. Before, she had snored for as long as I had been sleeping with her. Though she refused to believe it.

Shukrat said, “She started right after we brought the Daughter of Night in. I didn’t think anything about it.”

“No reason you should.”

Arkana nodded. “I never noticed her not snoring.”

The white crow chuckled from the window sill. I asked, “Did she snore when she was a kid?”

The crow made a noise. The girls looked at me, then at the bird. No dummies, they realized right away that it was not just an albino with bad personal habits. Being sorceresses they soon understood that it was a genuine crow, too, rather than some creature whose usual form was no form, and out of sight.

“Assuming she is sleeping, she’s been there a long time. You’d think she would’ve wakened on her own.” I touched my wife gently. She did not respond. I shook her, much less tenderly. She groaned, muttered, rolled onto her side, pulled her knees up. I said, “Don’t give me that stuff. It’s time to get up.”

The girls smiled. They felt my relief.

She was just sleeping now, even if that had been going on for a long time and might go on for a while more.

“Come on, woman! We’ve got work to do. You’ve had enough sleep for ten people.”

“She’s sure been getting my share.”

Lady cracked an eyelid. At the same time she muttered something incoherent that sounded suspiciously like one of her traditional early morning threats.

I said, “All that rest hasn’t improved her disposition any. I’ll remember this next time she claims lack of sleep is why she’s cranky.”

“You want me to dump a bucket of cold water on her?” Arkana asked. She could be a presumptuous little witch.

“She does need a bath.”

Lady growled again, but this time in a lame attempt to be cheerful.

I told her, “Don’t even try to be nice.” The way the human body works, returning from a coma in a good humor is flat impossible.

Her throat was dry and tight. After we dealt with that, she asked, “Where are we? How long was I down this time?”

I had lost track.

“Fifteen days? At least. Probably more,” Shukrat said. “You were sleeping for all of us. We were all too busy.”

Lady examined her surroundings. She knew she had not been here before. She could not see Booboo from where she sat.

I told her, “The war is over. We won. Sort of. Aridatha Singh surrendered. We offered them good terms.”

Lady grunted, mind not working swiftly. “Mogaba let him do that?”

“The Great General isn’t with us anymore.”

“I need to talk to you about that, Pop,” Shukrat said. “I went out to that sandbar.”

I signed her to silence. Something from the hidden realm would be around somewhere. I continued talking to Lady. “A lot of people aren’t with us anymore. Including almost everybody who went to town with us the night you got hit. Sleepy, too, later on. In an ambush. Suvrin took over. He’ll be all right. He’ll grow into it. As long as we help him.”