Glen Cook - Water Sleeps

Goblin finally accepted on the basis of superior youth, quickness and alleged intelligence. He launched a couple of luminary floating stars into the pit, where the darkness was blacker than Kina’s heart.

“Here!” Goblin said. “Ha! We’ve got-”

Something like a flaming tiger burst out of nowhere. It leaped at Goblin. A shadow drifted in from the side. It flicked something long and thin that looped around the little wizard’s neck.

One-Eye’s cane came down on Narayan’s wrist hard enough to crack bone. The living saint of the Strangler lost his rumel, which flew across the cellar.

One-Eye’s off hand tossed something over Goblin’s head, toward the source of the tiger. A ghostly light floated up like a wisp of luminescent swamp gas. It moved suddenly, enveloping a young woman. She began to slap at herself, trying to wipe it off.

Goblin did something quick, while she was distracted. She collapsed. “Goddamn! Goddamn! It worked. I’m a genius. Admit it. I’m a fucking genius.”

“Who’s a genius? Who came up with the plan?”

“Plan? What plan? Success is in the details, runt. Who came up with the details? Any damned fool could’ve said let’s go catch them two.”

Both men tied limbs as they nattered.

One-Eye said, “Plan the details on this. We got to get out of here with these people. Through all the Greys in the world.”

“Already covered. They’ve got so much trouble they won’t have time to worry about any damned lepers.” He started trying to get a yellow outfit over the head of the Daughter of Night. “Remind me to warn them back at the shop that this one can put together an illusion or two.”

“I know that’s the way its supposed to go.” One-Eye began dragging Narayan Singh into another yellow outfit. In a moment Goblin would trade his brown for yellow, too. Upstairs, the four Company brothers, all of Shadar origin, were turning themselves into Greys. “I’m saying it ain’t got a prayer of working.”

“That because I planned it?”

“Absolutely. You’re beginning to catch on. Welcome to reality.”

“It goes to shit in our hands, you can blame it on Sleepy, not me. It was her idea.”

“We got to do something about that girl. She thinks too damned much. Will you quit farting around? Them goddamn Greys out there are going to have time to go home for lunch.”

“Don’t hit him so hard. You want him to walk out of here under his own power.”

“You talking to me? What the hell you doing with... get your hand out of there, you old pervert.”

“I’m putting a control amulet over her heart, you dried-up old turd. So she won’t embarrass us before we get her home.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure you are. But why don’t I look on the bright side? At least you’re interested in girls again. She built as nice as her mother?”

“Better.”

“Watch your mouth. The place might be haunted. And I got a suspicion maybe some of those ghosts can talk to each other, no matter what Murgen claims.” One-Eye began to bully the groggy Narayan Singh up the steps.

“I do believe this is going to work,” One-Eye crowed. The combination of Greys and lepers seemed the perfect device for exiting the Thieves’ Garden-particularly now that the real Greys were running around distracted.

“I don’t want to break your heart, old-timer,” Goblin said. “But I think we done been fished.” He was looking over his shoulder. One-Eye looked back. “Shit!”

A small flying carpet dropped toward them, accompanied by crows making no sounds at all. Soulcatcher. And her very stance suggested mischievous glee. She threw something.

“Spread out!” Goblin barked. “Don’t let those two get away.” He faced the descending carpet, heart in this throat. If it came to a direct face-off, he was going to get splattered like a stomped egg. He extended a gloved hand, caught the falling black globule, whipped his arm in a circle and launched the missile back into the sky.

Soulcatcher shrieked, outraged. The people of Taglios did not have that kind of nerve. She drove the carpet to one side, avoiding the black globe. And well she moved when she did.

Her luck had served her yet again. A screaming fireball ripped right through the space she had vacated, the same kind of fireball that had eaten all those holes in the Palace wall and had set the bodies of so many men burning like bad fat candles. She continued to dive. Two more fireballs barely missed her. She put a tenement between herself and the sharpshooters. She was extremely angry but did not let rage cloud her thinking.

Above her, her crows began bursting like soundless fireworks. Blood, flesh and feathers rained down.

In seconds she figured it out, conversing with herself in a committee of voices.

They had not been hiding inside Chor Bagan after all. She could not have caught anyone trying to slip away like this if they had not come in to retrieve something they did not want found. “They’re here in the city. But we haven’t found them. We haven’t seen a trace or heard a rumor that they didn’t want to reach our ears. Until now. That takes wizardry. That bold little one. That was the toad man. Goblin. Though the Great General of the Armies Mogaba assures us that he saw the body himself. Who else is alive? Could the Great General himself be less trustworthy than he would like us to believe?”

That was not possible. Mogaba had no other friends. He was committed in perpetuity.

Soulcatcher brought her carpet to earth, stepped off, folded its light bamboo frame, rolled the carpet around that, surveyed the street. They had come down this way. From up there. What could they have wanted desperately enough to have exposed themselves so thoroughly? Anything they thought that important would be something she was bound to find very interesting herself.

It took just one whispered word of power to illuminate the cellar. The squalor was appalling. Soulcatcher turned slowly. A man and his daughter, apparently. An old man and a young woman, anyway. One lamp. Discarded clothing. A few handfuls of rice. Some fish meal. Why the writing instruments and ink? What was this? A book. Somebody had just begun writing in it in an unfamiliar alphabet. She caught a spot of black movement in the corner of her eye. She whirled, crouching, fearing an attack by a rogue shadow. The skildirsha maintained an especially potent hatred for those who dared command them.

A rat fled, dropping the object of its curiosity. Soul-catcher knelt, picked up a long strip of black silk with an antique silver coin sewn into one corner. “Oh. I see.” She began to laugh like a young girl catching on late to the meaning of an off-color joke. She collected the book, surveyed the scene once more before leaving. “Dedication sure doesn’t pay.”

Once in the street again, she reassembled her carpet, unconcerned about snipers. Those people would be long gone and far away. They knew their business. But crows should be tracking them.

She froze, staring upward but not really seeing the white crow on the peak of the tenement roof. “How did they find out where those two were?”

“What happened?” Sahra demanded as soon as she came in, before she began shedding Minh Subredil’s rags.

I was still Dorabee Dey Banerjae myself. “We lost Murgen somehow. Goblin thought they had him anchored, but he went away while we were all out and I don’t know how to get him back.”

“I meant what happened in the Thieves’ Garden. Soulcatcher was out there. Whatever she tried to pull didn’t work out but she came back a different person. I didn’t get to hear everything she told the Radisha but I do know she found something or figured out something that changed her whole attitude. Like everything suddenly stopped being fun.”