Free Water Sleeps: A Novel of the Black Company (Glittering Stone) by Glen Cook Page A

glittering plain that want to talk to you about that when they get back.” Might be interesting to watch him talk it over with Murgen.
    “They’re still alive? ” The idea seemed to stun him.
    “Very alive. Just frozen in time. And getting angrier by the minute.”
    “I thought … Great God … shit.”
    “Do not speak so on the name of God!” Slink growled.
    Slink was Jaicuri Vehdna, too. And much less lapsed than I. He managed prayers at least once a day and temple several times a month. The local Vehdna thought he was a Dejagoran refugee employed by Banh Do Trang because he had done the Nyueng Bao favors during the siege there. Most of our brothers endured genuine employment and worked hard to resemble pillars of the local community.
    Swan swallowed, said, “You people ever eat? I ain’t had nothing since yesterday.”
    “We eat,” I said. “But not like you’re used to. It’s true what they say about Nyueng Bao. They don’t eat anything but fish heads and rice. Eight days a week.”
    “Fish will do right now. I’ll save the bitching till my belly’s full.”
    “Slink,” I said. “We need to send a kill team down to Semchi to watch the Bhodi Tree. The Protector’s probably going to try to smash it. We could make some friends if we save it.” I explained about the Bhodi disciple who burned himself and Soulcatcher’s threat to turn the Bhodi Tree into kindling. “I’d like to go myself, just to see if the Bhodi nonviolent ethic is strong enough to make them stand around while somebody destroys their most holy shrine. But I have too much work to do here.” I tossed my cards in. “In fact, I have work to do now.”
    I was tired but figured I could study Murgen’s Annals for a few hours before I passed out.
    As I walked away, Swan whispered, “How the hell does she know all that? And is she really a she?”
    “Never checked personally,” Slink said. “I have a wife. But she’s definitely got some female habits on her.”
    What the devil did that mean? I am just one of the guys.

11
    These were exciting times. I found myself eager to be up and outside, where things were happening. The impact of our boldness would have reached every cranny of the city by now. I gobbled cold rice and listened to Tobo complain, again, that his father had paid him no attention.
    “Is there something I can do about that, Tobo?”
    “Huh?”
    “Unless you think I can go back there and tell him to shape up and talk to his kid, you’re wasting your time and mine bitching about it. Where’s your mother?”
    “She left for work. A long time ago. She said they’d be suspicious if she didn’t show up today.”
    “Probably would be. They’ll be real edgy about everything for a while. How about instead of fussing about what’s happened already, you spend some time thinking about what you’ll do next time you see your father? And in the meantime, you can stay out of trouble by keeping notes for me whenever anybody questions the prisoner.”
    His glower told me he was no more excited about being offered work than any boy his age would be. “You’re going out, too?”
    “I have to go to work.” It would be a good day to get to the library early. The scholars were supposed to be gone most of the day. There was supposed to be a big meeting of the bhadrhalok, which was a loosely associated group of educated men who did not like the Protector and who found the institution of the Protectorate objectionable. Jokingly, they referred to themselves as a band of intellectual terrorists. Bhadrhalok means, more or less, “the respectable people” and that was exactly what they thought they were. They were all educated, high-caste Gunni, which meant, right away, that a vast majority of the Taglian population regarded them with no sympathy at all. Their biggest problem with the Protector was that she held their self-confident, arrogant assumption of superiority in complete contempt. As revolutionaries and terrorists, they