Water Sleeps Read Free

conspiracy of adults.
    Publicly. In private, he was amenable to reason. Occasionally. When approached
     delicately by someone who was not his mother.
    “Maybe a few. But it’s going to get dark soon. And then the show will start.”
    “What’ll we go as? I don’t like it when you’re a whore.”
    “We’ll be street orphans.” Though that had its risks, too. We 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.