She Is The Darkness

41

One-Eye just kept slapping me till I came out of it. "Goddamn, you little shit, quit it!" My face was sore. How long had he been pounding me? "I'm here! What the fuck's your problem?"

"You're doing a lot of yelling, Kid. And if you was talking any language your in-laws could understand you'd be up shit creek. Come on. Get it under control."

I got it under control. You have to learn to manage emotion if you are going to survive in our racket. But my heart continued to pound and my mind to race. I shook like I had a bad ague. One-Eye offered me a large cup of water. I drained it.

He said, "It's partly my fault. I wandered off. I didn't think you'd stay out that long. Thought you'd figure it out and get your ass back to see what we plan to do about it."

I croaked, "What you plan to do about it?"

"Don't got no plans. I think the Old Man was just gonna let it slide and keep his eyes open till he decided you needed to know."

"He wasn't going to tell me?"

One-Eye shrugged. Which meant probably not.

Croaker was no more enthralled by my marriage than were Sahra's people.

The bastard.

"I need to see him."

"He'll want to see you. When you've got yourself under control."

I grunted.

"You let me know when you can get by without a lot of screaming and carrying on."

"I can do that right now, you little shit! What did you guys mean, not telling me?"

"You let me know when you can get by without a lot of screaming and carrying on."

"You little shit." I was running out of venom. I had been out there a long time. I needed to eat. I had a feeling I would not be allowed a snack till after my interview with Croaker.

"You ready to talk?" Croaker asked. "Done with screaming and carrying on?"

"You guys spend the whole time I was ghostwalking rehearsing your act?"

"So what are your in-laws up to, Murgen?"

"I don't have the faintest fucking idea. But I'm thinking maybe I want to put Uncle Doj's feet in the fire and ask."

Croaker was drinking tea. Taglians are big tea drinkers. The Shadowlanders of these parts were bigger tea people. He took a sip. "You want some?"

"Yeah." I needed liquids.

"Think about this. We put him to the question on account of you suddenly know they fucked you over. You think anybody, Nyueng Bao or otherwise, might wonder how you suddenly knew when you're only like eight hundred miles from the evidence?"

"I don't care—"

"Exactly. You're not thinking about anything but you. But anything you do is going to touch every member of the Company. It might touch every man who came over those mountains with us. It might change the course of this war."

I wanted to belittle his claims because I was hurting bad and very much wanted to do some hurting of my own. I could not. Time enough had passed for reason to begin rearing its reasonable head. I bit down on the words that rose in my throat. I drank my tea. I thought. I said, "You're right. So what do we do?"

Croaker poured me some more tea. "I don't think we do anything. I think we go right on the way we have been. I think we do the trap-door spider thing. I think only three guys know what an incredible tool we've got and nobody else needs to know."

I grunted. I drank some tea. I said, "She thinks I'm dead. She's living her whole life based on that lie."

Croaker fiddled with his fire. He looked into his bag of liberated tea. One-Eye finally caught on. "Oh. Yeah. I figured you was familiar with that book of the Annals that was written by the Captain's woman." He showed me a sneer with a couple of teeth missing.

"Right. You just keep on being reasonable. See if I care. Shithead."

"I got a great idea, Kid. Come on back to the wagon with me. Something I found the other day you might be interested in."

Croaker said, "You guys don't wander too far. We're getting enough people in here now, it's time to start harassing Longshadow."

"Of course," One-Eye said. He ducked out the doorflap grumbling, "Just can't leave shit alone." I ducked out behind him. He did not stop. "We could sit out here for the next hundred years and not hurt nobody. Set up our own damned kingdom. Starve the son of a bitch out. But no! We got to do some kind of... " One-Eye glanced back. We were out of earshot of the Old Man. "Enough of that shit. You dickhead. You never told me about Goblin."

"What's to tell?"

"You knew where he was all along, didn't you? He wasn't dead or nothing. You got around the commands Croaker laid on Smoke and found the worthless little shit."

I did not say anything. Goblin was still out there on his own somewhere, presumably continuing his mission. Presumably still needing secrecy.

"Ha! I was right. You never could lie for shit. Where is he, Kid? I got a right to know."

I started to back away. It might be time to take my act elsewhere. "You're wrong. I don't know where he is. I don't know if he's even still alive." Which was true.

"What you mean, you don't know?"

"I got a speech impediment? You've had Smoke all month, remember? You. The short shit who was loafing around up there in those hills while I was down here dodging shadows and Shadowlander ambushes."

"Now I know you're shitting me. There ain't been one shadow seen since the night we broke them at... Bullshit! You're feeding me bullshit."

"Yeah. I guess I forgot the first rule."

"Huh? What's that?"

"Never confuse you with facts."

"You smartass. I hung on in this world two hundred years so I could put up with this shit." He jumped up on the tongue of his wagon and leaned inside. I began to put a little more distance between us. He dug around in some rags behind his driver's seat. He glanced over his shoulder, saw me moving. "You just hang on right there, you peckerhead."

He jumped down, started waving his arms around while he went to squeaking and squealing in one of those languages wizards use so the rest of us will think there is something terribly strange and mystical about what they do, kind of like lawyers. One-Eye sometimes flew off into unprovoked fits of lawyer-ism, too.

Blue sparks began to crackle between the tips of his fingers. His lips stretched into an evil grin. I would not give him Goblin so I would have to take Goblin's place.

Damn, I wished Goblin would come back.

"What's this?"

I whirled. The Captain had followed us. One-Eye gulped air. I scooted a few fast steps, which brought the Old Man into the field of fire, too.

One-Eye shoved his hands into his pockets to hide them.

"Ouch!" he said with sudden, quiet fervor. The sparks had not stopped.

Croaker asked me, "He been drinking again?"

"I don't know when. Unless it was before he got me up. But he's acting like it."

"Who? Me?" One-Eye squeaked. "Not me. No way. I don't touch the stuff anymore."

I observed, "He hasn't had time to get set up."

"That means jack shit. There's any to be stolen, he'll find that. You know anyone else who'd suddenly start a fight for no good reason?"

"Ain't nobody in this outfit like that," One-Eye insisted. "Unless you count Goblin. Sometimes he... He in this outfit anymore, Captain?"

Croaker ignored him. He asked me, "You planning to take Smoke back out now?"

"No." That had not occurred to me. Food had.

Croaker grunted. "I need to talk to my staff wizard, here. One-Eye?"

I moved out. What now?

That food.

I ate till the cooks began to grumble about some folks thinking they were special.

After I finished I strolled across the snowy slopes trying to calm the storm inside me. The sky promised more snow. We had been lucky so far, I suspected. None of the snows had been heavy and none had stuck long. I spied Thai Dei and his mother, the latter offering a piece of her mind. Still.

It kept them at a distance.

I glimpsed Swan and Blade, far off, trotting somewhere in a big hurry. That meant Lady had come in, or at least would arrive soon. Her advance force had a camp under construction.

South, beyond Kiaulune, a spear of sunlight broke through the overcast, struck Overlook. The whole vast fortress gleamed like some religions' notion of heaven. I needed to take Smoke over there and get caught up. But not right away. One-Eye and the Old Man still had their heads together. Maybe talking about me.

I strolled downhill toward where Lady's soldiers were building their camp.

I wondered how Lady and Blade were getting along. He had been her main helper before his defection. He had not let her know what was happening when he did that. I could not see her forgiving him the deceit, however successful its end result.

Crows fluttered over the camp. Maybe Lady was there.

Croaker was right. We had to be paranoid. All the time. If it was not the Shadowmaster spying it would be Soulcatcher or the Deceivers or the Howler. Or Kina herself. Or the Nyueng Bao. Or the Radisha's agents. Or spies for the priests, or...