hide.
A renewed racket arose outside. The little darknesses stirred
excitedly, then scattered, somehow disappearing without ever
revealing what they were. Tobo said, “The dreamwalkers must
be hanging around on the other side of the shadowgate
again.”
I did not think so. This evening’s racket was
different.
An articulate cry came from the room where we had left One-Eye.
So the old man had been faking his snooze after all.
“I’d better see what he wants. You get Doj.”
“You don’t believe it.” The old man was
agitated now. He was angry enough to speak clearly, without much
huffing and puffing. He threw up a hand. One wrinkled, twisted
ebony digit pointed at something only he could see. “The doom
is coming, Croaker. Soon. Maybe even tonight.” Something
outside howled as if to strengthen his argument but he did not hear
it.
The hand fell. It rested for several seconds. Then it rose
again, one digit indicating an ornate black spear resting on pegs
above the doorway. “It’s done.” He had been
crafting that death tool for a generation. Its magical power was
strong enough for me to sense whenever I considered it directly.
Normally I am deaf, dumb and blind in that area. I married my own
personal consultant. “You run into. Goblin. Give him. The
spear.”
“I should just hand it over?”
“My hat, too.” One-Eye showed me a toothless grin.
For the entirety of my time with the Company he had worn the
biggest, ugliest, dirtiest, most disreputable black felt hat
imaginable. “But you got. To do it. Right.” So. He
still had one practical joke to pull even though it would be on a
dead man and he would be dead himself long before it could
happen.
There was a scratch at the door. Someone entered without
awaiting invitation. I looked up. Doj, the old swordmaster and
priest of the Nyueng Bao Community. Associated with the Company but
not of it for twenty-five years now. I do not entirely trust him
even after so long. I seem to be the only doubter left, though.
Doj
said, “The boy said Gota . . . ”
I
gestured. “Back there.”
He nodded understanding. I would focus on One-Eye because I
could do nothing for the dead. Nor all that much for One-Eye, I
feared. Doj asked, “Where is Thai Dei?”
“At Khang Phi, I assume. With Murgen and Sahra.”
He
grunted. “I’ll send someone.”
“Let Tobo send some of his pets.” That would get
some of them out from under foot—and have the additional
consequence of reminding the File of Nine, the master council of
warlords, that the Stone Soldiers enjoy unusual resources. If they
could detect those entities at all.
Doj paused at the doorway to the back. “There’s
something wrong with those things tonight. They’re like
monkeys when there’s a leopard on the prowl.”
Monkeys we know well. The rock apes haunting the ruins lying
where Kiaulune stands in our own world are as pesky and numerous as
a plague of locusts. They are smart enough and deft enough to get
into anything not locked up magically. And they are fearless. And
Tobo is too soft of heart to employ his supernatural friends in a
swift educational strike.
Doj vanished through the doorway. He
remained spry although he was older than Gota. He still ran through
his fencing rituals every morning. I knew by direct observation
that he could defeat all but a handful of his disciples using
practice swords. I suspect the handful would be surprised
unpleasantly if the duel ever involved real steel.
Tobo is the only one as talented as Doj. But Tobo can do
anything, always with grace and usually with ridiculous ease. Tobo
is the child we all think we deserve.
I chuckled.
One-Eye murmured, “What?”
“Just thinking how my baby grew up.”
“That’s funny?”
“Like a broken broom handle pounded up the shit
chute.”
“You should. Learn to appreciate. Cosmic. Practical
jokes.”
“I . . . ”
The cosmos was spared my rancor. The street door opened to
someone even less formal