Water Sleeps

46

Men were charging everywhere around the warehouse. Some were continuing frenetic preparations for the Company’s evacuation. Some were getting ready to accompany Narayan and me to the Grove of Doom to collect the Nyueng Bao Key. The Nyueng Bao, Do Trang’s confederates and the handful still attached to the Company somehow, seemed to be doing a lot of nervous moving around just to be moving. They were scared and worried.

Banh Do Trang had suffered a stroke during the night. One-Eye’s prognosis was not encouraging.

I told Goblin, “I’m not saying she had anything to do with it but Do Trang was the first one to realize that the girl was roaming around outside her flesh.”

“He’s just old, Sleepy. Nobody did it to him. You ask me, he’s really way overdue. He hung on here because he cares about Sahra. She’s all right now. It looks like her husband might actually be freed. And he’s too old to run away. Soul-catcher is going to find this place eventually, once Mogaba arrives and starts searching. I wouldn’t be surprised if Do Trang just decided that dying was the best thing he could do for everyone right now.”

I did not want Do Trang to go, for all the reasons none of us like to see those close to us die, but also because he was, in his quiet way, the best friend the Company had had in generations.

Like everyone else, I tried to lose myself in work. I told Goblin, “Even if she’s totally innocent, I want the girl fixed so she can’t wander. Whatever you have to do short of permanently crippling or killing her.”

Goblin sighed. Lately that was all he did when someone gave him more work. I guess he was too tired to squawk anymore.

“Where is One-Eye?”

“Uh-” Furtive look around. A whisper. “Don’t say I said anything. I think he’s trying to figure out how to take his equipment with us.”

I shook my head and walked away.

Santaraksita and Baladitya called out to me. They had accepted their situation and were applying themselves with a will. The Master Librarian seemed particularly excited about facing a real academic challenge for the first time in years. He said, “Dorabee, in all the excitement I forgot to mention that I did get an answer to your question about a written Nyueng Bao language. There was one. And not only was there one, this oldest book is written in an antique dialect of that language. The others were recorded in an early Taglian dialect, although the original of the third volume does so employing the foreign alphabet instead of native characters.”

“Which argues that the invader alphabet had well-defined phonetic values that at the time must have been more precise than those of the native script. Right?”

Santaraksita gawked. After a moment he said, “Dorabee, you never cease to amaze me. Absolutely correct.”

“So have you discovered anything interesting?”

“The Black Company came off the plain, which was called Glittering Stone even then, and mostly minced around from one small principality to the next, squabbling internally over whether or not they were going to sacrifice themselves to bring on the Year of the Skulls. There was plenty of enthusiasm among the priests attached to the Company but not much among the soldiers. Many of those apparently volunteered as a way to escape something called The Land of Unknown Shadows, not because they wanted to bring on the end of the world.”

“The Land of Unknown Shadows, eh? Anything else?”

“I’ve developed some very good information on the price of horseshoe nails four centuries ago and on the scarcity of several medicinal plants that are now found in every herb garden.”

“Earthshaking stuff. Stay with it, Sir.”

I meant to tell him he had to evacuate with the rest of us but decided not to upset him right away. He was having a good time. No point making him face a choice between abduction and being put to death just yet.

Uncle Doj materialized. “Do Trang wants to see you.”

I followed him to the tiny room the old man had built for himself in a remote corner of the warehouse. On the way, Doj warned me that Do Trang was unable to speak. “He’s already seen Sahra and Tobo. I think he was fond of you, too.”

“We’re going to get married in the next life. If the Gunni are right.”

“I am ready to travel.”

I stopped. “What?”

“I’m going with you to the Grove of Doom.”

“You’d better not have some crazy idea about snatching the Key.”

“I agreed to help. I’ll help. I want to be there to make sure the Deceiver keeps his word. The Deceiver, Miss Sleepy. Deceiver. Also, I agreed to turn over that volume of the Books of the Dead. Its hiding place is on the way.”

“Very well. The presence of Ash Wand will be a comfort to me and a vexation to my enemies.”

Doj chuckled. “It will indeed.”

“We won’t be coming back here.”

“I know. When we leave, I’ll be carrying everything I wish to retain. You won’t need to pretend with Do Trang. He knows his path. Do him the honor of an honest farewell.”

I did more. I became all teary for the first time in my adult life. I rested my head on the old man’s chest for a minute and whispered my thanks for his friendship and renewed my promise to see him in the next life. A small heresy but I do not think God has been monitoring me too closely.

Banh lifted a hand weakly and stroked my hair. And after that I got up and went away somewhere to be alone with my grief for a man who, it seemed, had never been that close, yet who was going to have a major impact on the rest of my life. I understood that after the tears stopped, I would never be quite the same Sleepy again. And that that was one legacy Do Trang wanted to leave behind.