Book 3 - Water Sleeps Read Free

could get caught by a press gang and forced into
Mogaba’s army. His soldiers, these days, are little better
than slaves, subject to a savage discipline. Many are petty
criminals given an option of rough justice or enlistment. The rest
are children of poverty with nowhere else to go. Which was the
standard of professional armies men like Murgen saw in the far
north, long before my time.
    “Why do you worry so much about disguises?”
    “If we never show the same face twice, our enemies
can’t possibly know who they’re looking for.
Don’t ever underestimate them. Especially not the Protector.
She’s outwitted death itself more than once.”
    Tobo was not prepared to believe that or much else of our exotic
history. Though not as bad as most, he was going through that stage
where he knew everything worth knowing and nothing his elders
said—particularly if it bore any vaguely educational hue—was worth
hearing. He could not help that. It went with the age.
    And I was my age and could not help saying things I knew would
do no good. “It’s in the Annals. Your father and the
Captain didn’t make up stories.”
    He did not want to believe that, either. I did not pursue it.
Each of us must learn to respect the Annals in our own way, in our
own time. The Company’s diminished circumstance makes it
difficult for anyone to grasp tradition. Only two Old Crew brothers
both survived Soulcatcher’s trap on the stone plain and the
Kiaulune wars afterward. Goblin and One-Eye are haplessly inept at
transmitting the Company mystique. One-Eye is too lazy and Goblin
too inarticulate. And I was still practically an apprentice when
the Old Crew ventured onto the plain in the Captain’s quest
for Khatovar. Which he did not find. Not the Khatovar he was
looking for, anyway.
    I am amazed. Before long I will be a twenty-year veteran. I was
barely fourteen when Bucket took me under his
wing . . . But I was never like Tobo. At
fourteen I was already ancient in pain. For years after Bucket
rescued me, I grew
younger . . . “What?”
    “I asked why you look so angry all of a sudden.”
    “I was remembering when I was fourteen.”
    “Girls have it so easy—” He shut up. His face
drained. His northern ancestry became apparent. He was an arrogant
and spoiled little puke but he did have brains enough to recognize
it when he stepped into a nest of poisonous snakes.
    I told him what he knew, not what he did not. “When I was
fourteen, the Company and Nyueng Bao were trapped in Jaicur.
Dejagore, they call it here.” The rest does not matter
anymore. The rest is safely in the past. “I almost never have
nightmares now.”
    Tobo had heard more than he ever wanted to about Jaicur already.
His mother and grandmother and Uncle Doj had been there, too.
     
    “Goblin says we’ll be impressed by these
buttons,” Tobo whispered. “They won’t just make
spooky lights, they’ll prick somebody’s
conscience.”
    “That’ll be unusual.” Conscience was a rare
commodity on either side of our dispute.
    “You really knew my dad?” Tobo had heard stories all
his life but lately wanted to know more. Murgen had begun to matter
in a more than lip-service fashion.
    I told him what I had told him before. “He was my boss. He
taught me to read and write. He was a good man.” I laughed
weakly. “As good a man as belonging to the Black Company let
him be.”
    Tobo stopped. He took a deep breath. He stared at a point in the
dusk somewhere above my left shoulder. “Were you
lovers?”
    “No, Tobo. No. Friends. Almost. But definitely not that.
He didn’t know I was a woman till just before he left for the
glittering plain. And I didn’t know he knew till I read his
Annals. Nobody knew. They thought I was a cute runt who just never
got any bigger. I let them think that. I felt safer as one of the
guys.”
    “Oh.”
    His tone was so neutral I had to wonder. “Why did you even
ask?” Surely he had no reason to believe I had