Book 3 - Water Sleeps Read Free Page A

behaved
differently before he knew me.
    He shrugged. “I just wondered.”
    Something must have set him off. Possibly an “I wonder
if . . . ” from Goblin or One-Eye, say,
while they were sampling some of their homemade elephant
poison.
    “I didn’t ask. Did you put the buttons behind the
shadow show?”
    “That’s what I was told to do.”
    A shadow show uses cutout puppets mounted on sticks. Some of
their limbs are manipulated mechanically. A candle behind the
puppets casts their shadows on a screen of white cloth. The
puppeteer uses a variety of voices to tell his story as he
maneuvers his puppets. If he is sufficiently entertaining, his
audience will toss him a few coins.
    This particular puppeteer had performed in the same place for
more than a generation. He slept inside his stage setup. In so
doing, he lived better than most of Taglios’ floating
population.
    He was an informer. He was not beloved of the Black Company.
    The story he told, as most were, was drawn from the myths. It
sprang from the Khadi cycle. It involved a goddess with too many
arms who kept devouring demons.
    Of course it was the same demon puppet over and over. Kind of
like real life, where the same demon comes back again and
again.
    Just a hint of color hung above the western rooftops.
    There was an earsplitting squeal. People stopped to stare at a
bright orange light. Glowing orange smoke wobbled up from behind
the puppeteer’s stand. Its strands wove the well-known emblem
of the Black Company, a fanged skull with no lower jaw, exhaling
flames. The scarlet fire in its left eye socket seemed to be a
pupil that stared right down inside you, searching for the thing
that you feared the most.
    The smoke thing persisted only a few seconds. It rose about ten
feet before it dispersed. It left a frightened silence. The air
itself seemed to whisper, “Water sleeps.”
    Whine and flash. A second skull arose. This one was silver with
a slightly bluish tint. It lasted longer and rose a dozen feet
higher before it perished. It whispered, “My brother
unforgiven.”
    “Here come the Greys!” exclaimed someone tall enough
to see over the crowd. Being short makes it easy for me to
disappear in groups but also makes it tough for me to see what is
happening outside them.
    The Greys are never far away. But they are helpless against this
sort of thing. It can happen anywhere, any time, and has to happen
before they can react. Our supposed ironclad rule is that
perpetrators should never be nearby when the buttons speak. The
Greys understand that. They just go through the motions. The
Protector must be appeased. The little Shadar have to be fed.
    “Now!” Tobo murmured as four Greys arrived. A shriek
erupted from behind the puppeteer’s stage. The puppeteer
himself ran out, spun and leaned toward his stage, mouth wide open.
There was a flash less bright but more persistent than its
predecessors. The subsequent smoke image was more complex and
lasted longer. It appeared to be a monster. The monster focused on
the Shadar. One of the Greys mouthed the name
“Niassi.”
    Niassi would be a major demon from Shadar mythology. A similar
demon under another form of the name exists in Gunni belief.
    Niassi was a chieftain of the inner circle of the most powerful
demons. Shadar beliefs, being heretical Vehdna, include a
posthumous, punitive Hell but also definitely include the
possibility of a Gunni-like Hell on earth, in life, managed by
demons in Niassi’s employ, laid on for the particularly
wicked. Despite understanding that they were being taunted, the
Greys were rocked. This was something new. This was an attack from
an unanticipated and sensitive direction. And it came on top of
ever more potent rumors associating the Greys with vile rites
supposedly practiced by the Protector.
    Children disappear. Reason suggests this is inevitable and
unavoidable in a city so vast and overcrowded, even if there is not
one evil man out there. Babies vanish by wandering