Uncle pulled me back, headed another direction. Obviously he knew the citadel quite well. And I had no difficulty imgaining him roaming around in there all the time, just for the hell of it. He seemed like that kind of guy.
66
“You look like somebody ate your favorite puppy,” Goblin told me. Cracks like that could be heard all the time now that there were no more dogs. There were just two sources of meat left. The Nar exploited both. We restricted ourselves to stupid crows.
I told Goblin and One-Eye what I had seen. Uncle Doj stood behind me, quietly disgruntled because I wanted to see my own people before I visited the Speaker. I was barely halfway through it when One-Eye interrupted. “You got to tell the whole Company this one, Kid.” For once he was as serious as a spear through the gut.
And for once Goblin agreed with One-Eye without any big groan and moan about the unfairness of it all. “You need to get this word out exactly the way you want it known to everybody. There’s going to be a lot of talk. You don’t want anybody building it up worse than it is when they pass it along.”
“Get them together, then. While I’m waiting I’m going to skim those Jaicuri books. There may be something else I need to tell them.”
“May I join you?” Uncle Doj asked.
“No. Go tell the old man that I’ll be there as soon as I can.
This is family.”
“As you will.” He said something to Thai Dei, stalked away.
Bucket interrupted my reading. “Got them together, Murgen. All but Clete. He’s off somewhere whoring and even his brothers don’t know where to find him.”
“All right.”
“It something bad? You got that look.”
“Yeah.”
“It can get worse than it already is?”
“You’re going to hear all about it in just a little bit.”
In five minutes I got up in front of sixty men and told my tale, marvelling as I did that a band so frail and few could be so feared. More, I marvelled that there were so many of us when, hardly more than two years ago, there were just seven of us pretending to be the Black Company.
“You guys want to keep it down until I’m done?” The news had them excited in a grim way. “Listen up. That is the word. They’re making human sacrifices and eating the corpses. But that ain’t the whole story. Ever since they joined us at Gea-Xle they’ve been hinting and even saying right out that us northern guys are heretics. That means they think the whole Company used to do things their way.”
That started everybody talking and yelling.
I pounded a mason’s hammer on a block of wood. “Shut up, you morons! It ain’t the way the Company ever was. The Nar never kept any Annals. They would know that if they had. But they can’t even read.”
I could not be absolutely sure that human sacrifice was never a Company rite. We were missing several early volumes of the Annals and I now suspected strongly that our earliest forebrethren did follow a dark and hungry god with breath so foul and cruel that even oral histories were enough to keep the native people terrified.
Most of the guys did not care about the implications. They were just angry because the Nar were going to make life harder for them.
I told them, “This is one more thing to make trouble between us and them. I want you all to realize that we might have to fight them before we get out of here.”
“Tonight I’m bringing back some traditional business that we have let slide since Croaker got to be Captain. We are going to have regular readings from the Annals so you all know what you have become part of. This first reading is from the Book of Kette, this part probably set down by the Annalist Agrip when the Company was in service to the Paingod of Cho’n Delor.” Our forebrethren endured a long and bitter siege then, though there had been a lot more of them to suffer. Additionally, I planned readings from books Croaker recorded on the Plain of Fear, when the Company lived underground for so long.
I dismissed the men to supper. “One-Eye. No more groaning when I announce a reading. All right? These guys didn’t live through that stuff.”
“Cho’n Delor was way before my time, too.” “Then you need to hear about it.”
“Kid, I been hearing about it for two hundred years. Every damned Annalist that ever was wallowed in the horrors of Cho’n Delor. I wish I could get my hands on those guys who did the Book of Kette. You know Kette wasn’t even the Annalist?
He was the...”
“Goblin. Grab Otto and Hagop. I want a little confab with the oldest Old Crew.”
We five put our heads together, conjured a little something for the meanness. Once we had a scheme I said, “I’ll see what the Speaker thinks.”
67
Ky Dam listened patiently, as an adult will to a bright child with an ingenious but impractical idea. He told me, “You are aware this could spark fighting?”
“Sure. But that’s inevitable. Doj says Mogaba decided that at our meeting. Goblin and One-Eye agree.” So did Hagop and Otto. None of us favored a get along effort. “There are more of us than there are Nar.” But their Taglians way outnumbered OUR and there was no way to guess how the Taglians with either group would jump.
The old man turned to Hong Tray. A quizzical expression accentuated the lines at the corners of his eyes.
Ky Sahra knelt beside me, presenting tea. This was a step beyond anything previous. She met my wondering gaze. I don’t think I slobbered.
Hong Tray observed without reaction. That made her far calmer than I was. She focused on her husband, nodded. He said, “There will be fighting. Soon. The Jaicuri will revolt.”
That was not what I wanted to hear. I asked, “Will they bother your people or mine?” I should not have shoved in. I apologized immediately.
Ky Sahra poured more tea for me, before even she served her grandparents.
Ky Gota manifested like a demon conjured for its serrated tongue. She barked at her daughter in a harsh, lilting gale.
The old man looked up, said one word sharply. Hong Tray supported him with a complete sentence in what I would have to call a sharp whisper. It seemed she could speak no other way.
Ky Gota withdrew. There were well-defined limits and absolute hierarchy inside the Ky family.
I glanced at the beautiful woman. She met my eye again, rocked back and rose. Flushing.
Was something going on? They would not try to manipulate me, would they?
It would not work. No woman, not even this woman, was that special. And Ky Dam had seen enough of me to guess that about me.
If he wanted to manipulate me he would have better luck trading me the straight poop on why the hell everybody pissed blue when the Company got mentioned.
He and the old woman batted whispers back and forth in flurries. Suddenly, he told me, “We will join you in this enterprise, Standardbearer. Provisionally. Hong believes that fighting between the Jaicuri and the soldiers of the black men is imminent. It will be fierce but might not touch the rest of us. That would provide sufficient distraction. But I must insist that Doj has the option to end it if it risks calling unfriendly attention to our people.”
“Excellent. Of course. Done. Though I would have tried it without you.”
Ky Dam permitted himself a small smile, either at my enthusiasm or at the prospect of adding a little more misery to Mogaba’s life.
After dark, assuming the riots got started, we were going to steal Mogaba’s food stores.
68
It started like a well-rehearsed play where Mogaba’s characters were desperate to please their audience. The rioting, that is. Uncle Doj and I formed work parties to take advantage. We got into the storage chambers without challenge, ten Old Crew and ten Nyueng Bao. We started dragging off sacks of rice and flour, sugar and beans. The riots were nasty from the start. They swamped the whole southern half of Dejagore. Every man Mogaba controlled was out there helping crush the rebellion. And every Jaicuri man and boy seemed to want to get at the Nar, even if they had to exterminate the whole First Legion to reach them.