Free Book 3 - Water Sleeps by Glen Cook Page B

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 were less incandescent than
any of the low-caste social clubs that existed on every residential
block in the city. I doubt that Soulcatcher wasted two spies
watching them. But they had great fun, fulminating and crying on
one another’s shoulders about the world going to hell in a
goat cart driven by the demon in black. And every week or so it got
most of the library crew out of my way.
    I did what I could to encourage their seditious fervor.
    I got off to a slow start. Not thirty yards from the warehouse
exit I ran into two of our brothers doing donkey work for Do Trang
while standing lookout. One made gestures indicating that they had
something to report. Sighing, I strolled over. “What’s
the story, River?” The men called him Riverwalker. I did not
know him by any other name.
    “We got shadowtraps that’s been sprung. We got
ourselves some new pets.”
    “Oh, no. Darn.” I shook my head.
    “That’s not good?”
    “Not good. Run, report it to Goblin. I’ll stick with
Ran till you get back. Don’t dawdle. I’m late
for work.” Not true, but Taglians have little sense of
urgency, and the concept of punctuality is alien to most.
    Shadows in the shadowtraps. Not a good eventuation, for sure.
Near as we could determine, Soulcatcher had no more than two dozen
manageable shadows left under control. As many more had gone feral
in the remote south and were developing reputations as rakshasas,
which were demons or devils but not quite like those my northern
forebrethren knew. Northern demons seemed to be solitary beings of
considerable power. Rakshasas are communal and pretty weak
individually. But deadly. Very deadly.
    In ancient myth, of course, they are much more powerful. They
swat each other over the head with mountaintops, grow two heads for
every one chopped off by a hero, and collect the beautiful wives of
kings who are really gods incarnate but do not remember that fact.
Things must have been much more exciting in olden times—even if
they did not make a lot of sense from day to day.
    Catcher would keep a close eye on her shadows. They were her
most valuable resource. Which meant that if they had been sent out
to spy, she should know exactly where each was supposed to have
gone. At least that is the way I would have done it if I were
committing irreplaceable resources. I did that for every single man
we committed to Willow Swan’s capture. I knew how they were
going to get to their places and how they were going to get home
and everything they were supposed to do in between. And just like I
figured Soulcatcher might, I would have gone looking for them
personally if they had failed to return home.
    Goblin came hobbling into the early morning light, cursing all
the way. He wore the all-covering brown wool of a veyedeen dervish.
He hated the outfit, however necessary it was to disguise himself
when he was outside. I did not blame him. The wool was hot. It was
supposed to remind the holy men of the hell they were escaping by
devoting themselves to chastity, asceticism and good works.
“What the hell is this shit?” he growled.
“It’s hot enough to boil eggs out here
already.”
    “The boys say we’ve caught something in our
shadow-traps. I thought you might want to do something about that
before Mama comes looking for her babies.”
    “Shit. More
work—”
    “Old man, you just had something in your mouth I
wouldn’t even want in my hand.”
    “Vehdna priss. Get the flock out of here before I give you
a real language lesson. And bring home something decent to eat when
you come back. Like maybe a cow.”
    More than once he and One-Eye had conspired to kidnap one of the
sacred cattle that wander the city. To date, their efforts have
come to naught because none of the men will go along. The majority
have