Glen Cook - Soldiers Live

I did not remind her that she had known this day was coming. Instead, I asked, “How is Booboo? How is she taking it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.”

“What? Before I left we couldn’t get you away from her long enough to eat.”

The dam broke. The tears started. She became a woman I had not seen before, busted open like an overly ripe fruit. “I tried to kill her.”

“What?” She had spoken very softly.

“I tried to kill her, Croaker! I tried to murder my own daughter! I tried, with all my will and strength, to put a dagger in her heart! And I would’ve done it if something hadn’t knocked me out.”

“I know you. So I know there was a reason other than you just thought it might be fun. What was it?”

She babbled. Years of holding everything together gave way. The floods swept all before them.

The timing matched my assault on Kina. Lady’s violent reaction to Booboo could have been caused by fear leaking through from the Goddess. Booboo’s own behavior would have been shaped the same way.

Lady sobbed for a long time. I held her. I feared for her. She had fallen so far. And I had been ballast almost every foot of the way down.

All my fault? Or just the spark and romance of youth’s summer turning to the bleak seasons of despair of old age?

Arkana was a good daughter. She stood by patiently throughout the emotional storm. She remained there for me without intruding on my wife’s black hours. After we left I thanked her profoundly.

“You think she’ll be able to pull herself back together?” Arkana asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to make her want to. If she did, I wouldn’t have any worries. She’s got an iron will when she wants to direct it. Right now I’m just going to try to keep on loving her and hoping something happens to sting her with a spark of hope.”

“I don’t know if I could stand being completely powerless, either. I might kill myself.”

“Nine hundred ninety-nine people out of a thousand live their whole lives without having a millionth of your power. And they get by.”

“Only because they’re completely ignorant of what they’re missing. Nobody mourns losing what they never had in the first place.”

She had me there.

The full meaning of Lady’s melancholy would be denied me forever because I was never able to experience life as she had at the opposite extreme. Whereas she knew my way of life very well indeed.

And that might be contributing to her despair as well.

Booboo was worse than Lady. She was lost inside herself. She had real guards watching her. They told me she had not done anything but stare into infinity since she recovered consciousness. Not once had they felt any urge to serve her or ravish her.

One guard was a Shadar who had followed Sleepy since the Kiaulune wars. He told me, “Suruvhija Singh and her children are taking care of her.”

I felt a slight twinge. Iqbal Singh’s widow. Favored by Sleepy. But I had been unaware that the family had survived the fighting south of Taglios. I had been too centered on my own preoccupations to look after the welfare of Company dependents.

The Daughter of Night was clean and well-groomed and had been dressed carefully. She sat in a rocking chair, which was an unusual piece of furniture in these parts. She was aware of nothing outside the boundaries of her mind. She drooled on her pretty white sari, which was only a shade paler than her near-albino skin. Someone had placed a rag where it would catch the drool.

Speaking of albinos. The white crow had managed to arrive before me. But it was being very careful not to piss me off these days.

It had overheard enough, here and there, to suspect that I might have a great deal of influence on its future.

Shivetya had given us an unbelievable amount of help in return for our promise to end his stewardship of the glittering plain. I meant to keep that promise. I try to keep all of the Company’s promises. Keeping our promises is what separates us from people like the Radisha, who try to screw us rather than keep their word when that seems inconvenient.

I circled Booboo twice. She gave no sign she was aware of me. I knelt in front of her. Her eyes were open. Her pupils were tiny. Her eyes did not track when I moved a finger back and forth in front of them.

I backed off and considered options. Finally, I led Arkana into the hallway, told her what I wanted to try and how she could help.

We rejoined Booboo and the bird. Neither appeared to have moved a muscle.

Arkana and I separated, each moving slowly, as though hoping to drift around behind Booboo without being noticed. Once there we just waited. And waited.

It is hard to be patient when you are Arkana’s age. Eventually she began to fidget. Which caused the occasional faint whisper of motion, after which she would even stop breathing for a while.

After a time so long even I began to get restless I signalled Arkana forward. Doing her absolute best to remain totally silent she dropped to her knees beside Booboo’s right rocker, out of sight behind the girl’s right ear but with her face so close Booboo might be able to feel the warmth of her presence. I did the same on the left. Neither of us moved till my knees were about to kill me. We tried to avoid breathing on the girl.

I nodded.

Arkana whispered, “Sosa, sosa,” so softly that I could not hear her. So softly that even someone who did hear the words whispered directly into her ear would not be able to make them out.

I have no idea why she chose to say that. I leaned closer so the warmth of my presence would be a hint more obvious. I nodded.

“Sosa, sosa.” No louder than before.

The skin on Booboo’s neck twitched.

I smiled at Arkana, winked.

Treachery will out.

“Sosa, sosa.”

Slowly, the girl began to turn her head toward Arkana, the child within unable to restrain her curiosity.

It was not that she had been faking. Just that nothing obvious was going to sneak past her palisade of despair.

I got up and drifted so she would not discover me without making a special effort.

Arkana gave me a look which asked how I had known that Booboo could be reached. I shrugged. Just intuition, I guessed. A conviction that her curiosity could be wakened if it was teased with sufficient subtlety.

But what now? How to hold her attention forcefully enough to keep her from running away again?

Soon the girl was seeing and hearing us perfectly well. But still she did not respond. Still she would not answer questions.

She had no will to live. And I could see why. At no time had there ever been anything in her life but Kina and the struggle to release the Goddess. Never had there been anything but the quest to bring on the Year of the Skulls.

Suruvhija appeared. I had not known her in the days when she and her husband joined the Company. She might have been a beauty, then, but I doubted it. She was not now. And none of her children made you want to jump in and hug them. But they were good people, if sad.

“You got her to wake up!” Suruvhija said. “That’s great.”

“Now we need to keep her that way. Any ideas?”

“Why?”

We all turned to the girl.

I asked, “What?”

“Why do you trouble me? Release me. I have no reason to live. There is no future. There will be no salvation and no resurrection now. There will be no age of wondrous rebirth.”

She was wide awake now, but bleak, depressed. I dropped to my knees in front of her, took her hands in an effort to keep her engaged with the world outside her head.

“What does that mean? What you just said.”

She seemed puzzled by the question. I spent a few minutes demonstrating my ignorance of her faith. I hoped a chance to explain might animate her.