Maybe I had more of a problem than I wanted to admit.

I did not show it enough to be noticed, though.

One-Eye never slowed down a bit.

There had been some changes since my days of hell in Dejagore or Jaicur, as its natives called it, or Stormgard, as it was named while it was the seat of the deceased Shadowmaster Stormshadow. Poor witch, she had been totally unable to guard the Shadowlands against the storm of the Black Company.

The plain outside the city had been drained of all water and cleared of wreckage and corpses, though I thought I could still smell death in the air. Prisoners of war from the Shadowlands still labored on the city walls and inside the city itself. Why seemed problematic. There were almost no Jaicuri left alive.

“Interesting notion, planting the plain in grain,” I said, seeing what looked like winter wheat peeping through last year’s stubble.

“One of Lady’s ideas,” Croaker replied. He still watched me as though he expected me to start foaming at the mouth any minute. “Anywhere there is a permanent garrison one of the responsibilities of the soldiers is to raise their own food.”

When it came to the logistics of war Lady was more the expert than Croaker. Till we came to Taglios he was never part of anything bigger than the Company. Lady had managed the warmaking instruments of a vast empire for decades.

The Old Man simply left most of that stuff to Lady. He would rather lie back scheming his schemes and piling up the tools Lady could use.

The crop notion was not new. Lady had done the same around most of her permanent installations in the north.

You got to go with what works.

Helps keep the neighbors more tractable, too, if you are not stealing their daughters and seed grain.

“You sure you’re all right?” Croaker demanded.

We were nearly at the foot of the ramp to the north barbican. One-Eye was no more than a hundred feet ahead now, perfectly aware of our presence, but not slowing down a bit. I guess I was starting to push ahead.

“I’ve got it under control, Captain. I don’t fall off into the past anymore and I hardly ever wake up screaming. I hold it down to a little shaking and sweating.”

“Anything starts getting to you, I want to know. I expect to be here a while. You’re going to need to be able to take it.”

“I won’t screw up,” I promised.

I did not wait long after Thai Dei and I took up quarters in one of the same buildings we had occupied during the siege. Reconstruction had not reached that part of town yet. Some of the old litter still lay around. “At least they got rid of all the bones,” I told Thai Dei.

He grunted, looked around like he expected to see ghosts.

“You be all right here?” I asked. Nyueng Bao do believe in ghosts and spirits and ancestors who follow you around nagging if you have not gotten them buried properly. A lot of Nyueng Bao pilgrims passed over here without benefit of the appropriate ceremonies.

“I must be. I must have everything ready when Doj comes.”

That was a major speech for Thai Dei.

Uncle Doj was a priest of some sort. Presumably he would take this opportunity to complete what he had not had time to do four years ago.

“You go ahead. I have things to do.” Far places to see. Pain to be given the slip, though I did not admit that directly even to myself.

Thai Dei started to put his few possessions aside.

“No. It’s more of that secret Company stuff that I’m expected to do alone.”

Thai Dei grunted, almost pleased to have his time be his own.

It always was his but he would not listen when I insisted he did not owe me. If it were not for me he would not have lost his sister and son.

Arguing with a Nyueng Bao is like arguing with water buffalo. You cannot get through and after a while the Nyueng Bao loses interest in listening. Might as well save your energy.

“Wondered how long it would be,” One-Eye said when I tracked him down. He had brought the wagon into our old part of town but had not taken Smoke out. He had it backed into a tight alleyway where, I presumed, the wagon would vanish inside camouflaging spells as soon as he dealt with his team.

“Unhitch them animals, Kid, and get them over to the transient stable while I straighten up here.”

Arguing with One-Eye gets to be a little like arguing with Nyueng Bao. He goes completely deaf. He did so in this instance. He went about his business exactly as though I was not there. In the interest of efficiency I took care of the animals.

I believe I did a little grumbling about wishing Goblin was back.

That little toad of a wizard Goblin is One-Eye’s best friend and worst enemy. He was so hard to find I thought, at first, that I was having trouble getting Smoke to understand what I wanted to do. Then I tried going back to where I had seen him last, in the river delta on the edge of Nyueng Bao country. My plan was to follow him forward in time to where he was now. And that worked just fine till Goblin’s ship entered a fog bank and never came out again.

Smoke could not find him.

It took me a while to comprehend that Smoke might have been primed to shy away from what Goblin was doing. Maybe to keep One-Eye from finding out and interfering. It would be just like the little shit to blow a whole operation because he did not think before pulling some nasty practical joke on his friend.

I did some experimenting. Sure enough, Smoke had been given some special instructions. The Old Man had not given up visiting him completely.

Once I knew that, I had little difficulty getting past Croaker’s safeguards. I fear One-Eye would have had little more trouble.

I found Goblin standing on a sandy beach far down the uncharted coast of the Shindai Kus, a terrible desert that fills a vast chunk of land between the northern and southern regions of the Shadowlands. The impassable mountains called the Dandha Presh only get shorter out there before they finally wade into the ocean.

Goblin was looking out to sea. A ship rode her anchor inshore. Boats were plunging in the surf. Goblin was yammering a litany of complaints. From the faces of his companions it was safe to guess that they had heard it all before.

What the hell was Goblin doing out there on that bleak coast?

I dropped back in time to listen in from the beginning.

Goblin was tormented by hatreds. So what does the Captain do? He sends nobody else but Goblin himself off to chart the unknown coast. Goblin hated swamps. So naturally the first leg of the journey took him downriver through the delta, which was one huge swamp two hundred miles across, without one decent channel, obviously totally unfit for human habitation because only Nyueng Bao lived there.

Goblin hated sea travel almost as much as One-Eye did. So what did he get after cutting through the swamp, damned near building a canal to manage that? A goddamn ocean with waves taller than any self respecting tree. He hated deserts. So what did he find after he finally got his little fleet past the end of the swampy coast? Country so barren scorpions and sand fleas could not make a living there. You baked during the day and froze at night and you never got away from the sand. The wind blew it into everything. He had sand in his boots right now... 

“I wasn’t born for this,” Goblin complained. “Nobody deserves this. Me less than most. What did I ever do to the Old Man? All right, so maybe me and One-Eye drink a little and get rowdy sometimes, but so what? It’s just youthful high spirits if Sleepy does it.”

Naturally he overlooked the fact that when he and One-Eye get drunk they always start squabbling and tend to begin throwing sloppily woven spells around, busting things up far worse than Sleepy ever could.

“A man has to cut loose sometimes, you know what I mean? Nobody ever gets hurt, do they?” That was not an exaggeration, that was an outright fabrication. “Hell, in a world where there was any shred of justice I’d be retired somewhere where the wine is sweet and the girls appreciate a man with experience. I gave the Company the best centuries of my life.”