who didn't do much but hide in the cemetery. I've already shamed some of them
into picking up the battlefield."
"It won't matter if they run away as long as they run toward us."
"Uhm."
"Willow? He never did... Never found his dream."
"I always pictured him as your basic everyman. Just drifting wherever the
tides of life took him. Showing a flash sometimes but never really getting up
and grabbing the reins. He might have been a hopeless romantic, too. According
to the Annals. He had a case on Lady once. And a case on the Protector, where
he was much more lucky but lived to regret it. He even had it for you for a
while, I think."
"We were friends. Just good friends."
Suvrin did not argue. But there was a quaver in Sleepy's voice that made him
wonder if, possibly only once or twice, there had not been something to lend
substance to rumor.
It was none of his business.
"I should've avoided this mess until Tobo and the others got back."
Suvrin observed, "Mogaba wouldn't have let you. So don't beat yourself up. He
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would've chased you hard, trying to take advantage of the fact that they were
gone."
Sleepy knew that was true but truth did not alter her emotional state. A lot
of people were dead. Many of them had been comrades of long standing. It was
her mission to preserve them, not to waste them. She had failed.
And the full, grim scope of the tragedy remained to be revealed.
Chapter 95
Fortress with No Name: Down Below
She looks so peaceful," Lady intoned. We stood over her sister, in the cavern
of the ancients. Soulcatcher now filled the identical spot that Lady had
occupied during the Captivity.
I needed a moment to realize that she was being sarcastic, repeating the
inanities you hear at funerals. She was sure Soulcatcher was partially aware
of what was happening. And she could not interact with her sister in any more
intimate way.
I said, "We've done what we came to do. We need to think about getting back to
the Company." Though I remained tempted to hazard a recon run through the
Khatovar gate before it healed completely.
And I had a notion to take a gander at the dark thing that had been toying
with our lives and destinies since before we ever heard any of her names.
"Yes," Lady said. "There's no telling what mischief Booboo and the Khadidas
and Mogaba have gotten into without Tobo and Howler there to baby-sit."
I said, "If Mogaba realizes that Sleepy's got no wizards, he'll be all over
her like a snake on shit."
"That was colorful, if nonsensical." I noted that she did not include herself
with Tobo and Howler. Yet I suspected strongly that she was capable of sucking
Kina's power like a queen vampire nowadays. Sometimes I wondered what that
augured for the day it came time to pay up to Shivetya. She really hated
turning into something old and dumpy and grey that looked way too much like
the mother she barely remembered.
"I just remembered a Company sergeant from before your time. A man named Elmo.
He had an unusual turn of phrase."
"You are getting old."
"I spend my whole life living in the past, darling. Let's saddle up." We had
come down the long stair to the cavern aboard Voroshk flying posts. What a
marvellous way to deal with stairways when you are no longer twenty years old.
Lady started to pat her sister on the shoulder, an ordinary little action.
"Don't!" I barked, with enough urgency to cause a couple of small ice
stalactites to fall somewhere back in the depths of the cave.
"Oh. I wasn't thinking."
There were frost-encrusted old men all along the sides of the cave. No one
knew who they were. Except, possibly, Baladitya. Most of them were still
alive. They were, like Soulcatcher, exiles from some unsympathetic power. But
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a few, including way too many Company brothers from the time of the Captivity,
were dead meat. And all it had taken to kill them was a thoughtless, gentle or
friendly touch.
Lady pushed past me. I surveyed the local population. As ever, it seemed the
open eyes all stared right at me. I met Soulcatcher's dull gaze. For no reason
I understood, I winked. We were old conspirators. We went way back. I knew her
before I knew her sister, in olden times of terror.
It may have been a trick of the light or of my imagination but it seemed there
was a flicker of response.
When we returned up top we found the others involved in the initial stages of
getting ready to leave. Howler was exulting, loudly, to all and sundry, in his
new ability to remain silent. He seemed almost grateful. Being an old cynic [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]