“Absolutely.” Mogaba stood a hair straighter. The concession was not much but it was something. The terrain north of Charandaprash was not suited to cavalry maneuvers, though, so he would have to use his horsemen as mounted infantry. Still, it was an opportunity. “Thank you, sir.”

Longshadow glanced sideways at the child, who almost never spoke. He surprised a look of complete disdain that vanished even as his gaze shifted, disappearing so quickly it seemed nothing more than a flicker of imagination.

The Shadowmaster let his gaze travel on to the plain of glittering stone. Once he had been driven by an obsessive need to learn about that place. Now he just hated it and wished it would go away, but he needed it, too. Without it he would be feeble, no match for the likes of Howler or the woman Soulcatcher, whose madness and enmity were entirely unpredictable. She seemed a complete child of chaos.

“Where is the one called Soulcatcher?” he asked. “Has there been no sign?”

Howler, who had had a report from a skrinsa shadowweaver whose circle directed a colony of spy bats, lied, “Nothing. Though there was something strange that happened in Taglios about the time Jamadar Singh’s brothers infiltrated the Palace. Could have been her.” A shriek twice as long and piercing as normal ripped itself from the little sorcerer. He began to shake and shudder and spit.

Even the child took a step back.

Nobody offered to help.

Four days passed before Croaker was ready to leave Taglios. He spent most of that time arguing with the Radisha. Their sessions were private. I was not allowed to sit in. The little I heard from Cordy Mather later suggested they had butted heads vigorously. And Cordy had not gotten to hear a tenth of what was said.

I do not think Cordy is real pleased with his role around here anymore. More and more the Radisha treats him the way some powerful men treat their mistresses. He is supposed to be the commander of the Royal Guards and he has done a damned good job there but the more he plooks the Woman the more she seems to think he is just a toy, not to be trusted with anything substantive.

If he had not been feeling irritable about it he would not have mentioned the conflict.

“Same old same old?” I asked. “Expenses?” Over the years Croaker got the Radisha to buy millions of arrows, hundreds of thousands of spears and javelins, tens of thousands of lances and saddles and sabers. He filled warehouses with swords and shields. He acquired mobile artillery accompanied by ammunition caissons. He accumulated dray horses, mule and ox teams by the dozens of hundreds. He had war elephants and work elephants. Lumber enough to raise new cities. A thousand unassembled box kites big enough to lift a man... 

“Same old,” Mather admitted. He tugged angrily at his tangled brown hair. “He apparently expects this to go bad.”

“This?”

“The winter offensive. That’s what the squabbling was about. Starting to accumulate replacement stuff now in case this goes bad.”

“Hmm.” That sounded like the Old Man. He could never make enough preparations. Which was probably why, as the passion of his response to the Strangler raid waned, he seemed ever less eager to throw everything into the fray.

But knowing Croaker the arguments could be a diversion, too. He might just be trying to scare the Radisha into being reluctant to pull any political stunts while he was away.

“He was close to the line.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a point where the Woman just won’t argue anymore.”

“Oh.” Enough said. I understood. If the Old Man went any further he would have to exercise his warlord’s powers and place the Princess under arrest. And would that ever stir up a nest of vipers.

“He’d do it,” I told Mather. I assumed word would get back to the Woman. “But not over war materiel. I don’t think. If the Prahbrindrah Drah and Radisha don’t live up to their promises to help the Company get back to Khatovar, though... The Captain could turn unpleasant.”

Taking us back to the Company’s origins in fabled Khatovar had been Croaker’s main passion for nearly a decade now. If you pressed him a little, sometimes an almost fanatical determination shimmered behind the usual coterie of masks he presents to the world.

I hoped Cordy would take that message to his bedmate. Also, I was kind of poking an anthill with a stick to see if, in his funk, he would reveal the royal thinking about our quest.

It was not something the Prince and his sister discussed, mostly because the Prahbrindrah Drah had taken a liking to life in the field and just did not see his sister anymore. Walking with the ghost told me nothing.

But Smoke was evidence in his own way. It was his terrified determination to keep the Company away from Khatovar that had led him to defect to the Shadowmaster and thereby put himself into a position where he might be stricken. As Lady noted in her contribution to these Annals, the rulers of Taglios, both religious and lay, have no more love for us than they do for the Shadowmasters. But we have been gentler. And if we vanish from the stage prematurely they will have only a short time to regret our passing.

Longshadow has no use whatsoever for priests. He exterminates them wherever he finds them. Which may be one more reason why Blade deserted to his cause. Mather’s old friend has the most pernicious case of priest hatred I have ever encountered.

“How do you feel about Blade?” I asked. The question would divert Mather from wondering about my agenda.

“I still don’t understand. It just doesn’t make any sense. Did he catch them doing it?”

“I don’t think so.” I knew. I had walked with the ghost. Smoke can take me almost anywhere. Even the past, back almost to the very moment when the demon burst in upon him and drove him into hiding in the farthest shadows of his mind. But even after having used Smoke to go observe the actual furious encounter between Blade and the Old Man, alcoholically enhanced, and indeed over Blade’s too obvious interest in Lady, I still did not understand. “But I’ll tell you, with the Prince and Blade and Willow Swan and about every other guy in town drooling all over themselves every time Lady walks by, I don’t know as I blame him for finally blowing up.”

“Just about as many guys looked at your wife the same way. She was probably the most beautiful woman any of them ever saw. You didn’t blow.”

“I think that’s a compliment, Cordy. Thanks. For me and Sarie both. You want me to be honest, I think it was more than Lady. I think the Old Man thinks Blade was planted on us somehow.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. But you got to know his background.” Cordy was born in my end of the world. He knew the way things were. “He spent years dealing with the Ten Who Were Taken. Those monsters laid out schemes that took decades to unfold.”

“And some are still around. Why Blade in particular?”

“Because we don’t know anything about him. Except that you dragged him out of an alligator pit. Or something.”

“And you do know about me and Willow?”

“Yes.” I did not explain that my Company brothers Otto and Hagop had gone all the way back to the empire and, in passing, had rooted around in the pasts of army deserters Cordwood Mather and Willow Swan.

That did not leave Mather feeling comfortable.

Too bad.

It never hurt to have our paranoia worry somebody else so much they behaved themselves.

I glanced at Thai Dei. He was always there. But I never forgot that. He might be my bodyguard and brother-in-law and might owe me for saving the lives of some of his family and I might even like him fairly well but I never talked about anything substantial in front of him using Taglian or Nyueng Bao unless there was no other choice.