Finally, Suvrin spoke. "Willow Swan is dead. I saw his body a while ago."
Sleepy grunted. "I have a feeling there'll be a lot of old friends to mourn once we collect the dead. I saw Iqbal and Riverwalker go down."
"No. Not Iqbal. Who'll take care of Suruvhija?" Singh's wife was not all that bright.
"The Company, Suvrin. Until she chooses to leave." And Runmust, if he had survived. It was his obligation under Shadar religious law. "She's one of our own. We take care of our own. Do we have anyone capable of handling picket duty?"
Suvrin responded with an interrogatory grunt.
"That's the Great General over there. Iron Man Mogaba. If he's still even a little bit healthy and can pull together some kind of night attack he'll be back. Maybe even if he has to do it all by himself."
Suvrin took several deep, thoughtful breaths. "We have quite a few recruits 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 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.
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 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 myself I have strong notions about the true value of human gratitude. It is a currency whose worth plunges by the hour. Though thoroughly confused, the two old Voroshk sorcerers were collecting themselves for the journey, too. Which meant that they had surrendered to Tobo's blandishments while Lady and I were down below. They had surrendered their flying posts and special clothing rather than be forced to return to their own world.
They must have gotten some really unpleasant news.
"You understand what this means?" I asked Tobo.
"Uh?" The kid was relaxing by flirting with Shukrat. I got the impression that those two might have started sneaking off into dark corners. They had developed that goofy way of looking at each other. And they could not stay away from one another.
That would not instill Sahra with great joy.
"It means we have to stash Gromovol downstairs, too. Or kill him. Which wouldn't be politic. Because there's no way I'm going to give him the opportunity to give us any more grief by letting him come back with us."
"I'll talk to Nashun and the First Father." He turned to Shukrat. "Come on, honey."
Hah. Honey.
A procession of flying posts went down to the cave of the ancients. Oh, that was so much easier than clambering down and up. The elderly Voroshk, in borrowed rags, rode behind Tobo and Shukrat. Gromovol rode behind Arkana. I figured she owed him one. Her cast did not cause her any problems flying. She would be out of that soon.
Gromovol whined and begged until he became an embarrassment to everyone.
I could claim I had no mercy but that would not be true. Had I been appropriately merciless, pieces of Gromovol would have gotten distributed over half a world after I made a few cutting remarks about his character and bad behavior.
I felt like one of the Voroshk now. I looked like one of the Voroshk. So did my beloved. The deal with the old men compelled them to refit their wondrous black costumes for us.
Those would make marvellous complements to our Widowmaker and Lifetaker armor.
Tobo and Shukrat, too, boasted the black and undefined look, Tobo having helped himself to Gromovol's outfit.
It took only minutes to inter Gromovol, not far from the frozen corpses of several men who had been my friends. His final pleas still echoed when I told Lady, "I'm going down to the bottom of this hole. I want a look at that old bitch who's been fucking up our lives for the last fifty years."