“What do you think, Goblin? You going to help us help you hang on?”

Goblin was getting some muscle control back. He managed a weak, “Yeah,” as he nodded his head, too.

“I’m going to leave everything in the hands of you two gentlemen,” Suvrin said. He nodded politely to Goblin. “I scarcely knew this man. And then mainly from the perspective of being the butt of practical jokes he and One-Eye played. Meaning I might not be disinterested even if I tried. What is that stuff around the bottom of that thing on his head?”

“Glue. That thing is a hat. You must’ve seen One-Eye wearing it. The old fart rigged it up with some spells, planning for something like what did happen.”

“You told me.”

“All right. The glue is because we don’t want the hat to come off. Ever. If we could come up with a way that would leave him free to feed himself and scratch his butt we’d glue his hands to One-Eye’s spear, too.”

There is something about becoming Captain that takes the humor out of a man. It had gotten to Suvrin already. He never cracked a smile. He asked, “You gotten any useful information out of him? Not yet? When?”

“I don’t know. He’s coming around. Really. Remember, in practical terms he’s been dead for six years. He’s having trouble figuring out how to use his body again. Especially his tongue. Meanwhile, the Khadidas is still inside of him trying to take over again.”

“And Lady?”

I was more concerned about my wife than I was about Goblin. She was acting strange. It did not seem like I knew her anymore. I had resurrected all my earlier worries about her connection with Kina. Kina was the master manipulator and planner. Kina schemed schemes ages long and many layers deep.

But Kina was slow. Very slow. Which was why she favored plots that required years to ripen. She could not handle swiftly changing fortunes.

“Lady is a puzzle right now,” I confessed. “But a benign one.”

Goblin made a gurgling sound. The Khadidas was working hard to keep him from talking.

Suvrin asked, “Do you know anything about the leading men of Taglios?”

“Not the current crop. Except for types. My advice would just be, don’t ever turn your back on any of them. You could talk to Runmust Singh. If he survived the latest fighting.” I had a feeling he might have been with Sleepy in that ambush. “Or you could just ask Aridatha to loan you a couple of advisors.”

Suvrin seemed unusually amenable to consulting for a Captain of the Company.

He told me, “We need to resume our lessons. So I can study the Annals.”

I responded, “We need some peace for that. Maybe a few years. We could build a new Company while we’re at it.”

Goblin gurgled again and nodded.

The little creature was like a puppy in some ways.

I told Suvrin, “I need to talk to Goblin a while.” Once our hesitant new commander stepped out, I said, “We need to work out ways around the Khadidas’s interference.”

Nod.

“And that’s how we’ll do it, I guess. Unless it can control more than your speech.” I peered at the little man. He did not respond. I realized that I had not posed a yes or no question. “Can it do that?”

No.

“All right, then. The most critical question of all. Is the Khadidas in direct contact with Kina?”

No. And yes. And a shrug. So we proceeded to play a game of a thousand questions during which I seemed to go the wrong direction, no matter where I went, making him gurgle in frustration. His best efforts to speak seldom produced more than one recognizable syllable.

Eventually, despite my density, I got it. The Khadidas could communicate with the Goddess only when it was in control of the Goblin flesh. It could not do so when it was not in control.

That made sense. Some. Though I had been cautioned to remember that the Goblin I was interviewing was actually a ghost that had not been able to leave when its body died and had been reanimated by the breath of the Goddess.

“That is exciting news, Goblin. Look, I have a plan.” Difficult as it was, I dredged a form of it up from its hidden place deep down inside me, hoping the Goddess had no way of listening in. My plan depended entirely on my understanding of the Goblin I had known for so long, hoping he had not altered drastically during the past two decades. A man might change a lot in that much time—if he had to spend part of it dead and enslaved by the Mother of Deceivers.

On the surface Goblin seemed to like my plan, as I presented it. Seemed willing to participate. Even seemed enthusiastic about plunging One-Eye’s spear into the blackest of hearts.

I told him, “I don’t want to waste one minute I don’t have to. You understand?”

Nod. Even a gurgled, “Yes!” With enthusiasm. With outright eagerness.

“I’ll be back soon.” I felt almost bad, not telling a dead man all of the truth.

I found Arkana and asked if she wanted to go flying, nodding to indicate that she really did want to make a tour of the upper air. For the benefit of the curious I mentioned wanting to check rumors that troops loyal to the Protectorate were headed toward the city. One force had crossed the Main at Vehdna-Bota. Another was gathering out east, near Mukhra in Ajitsthan, where Mogaba had enjoyed considerable popularity among the tribes. Since those rumors were beginning to make a lot of people nervous nobody would be surprised that I would want to take a look.

And that is what we did while we were aloft, because it was work that had to be done. Doing the work, though, gave me time to talk to Arkana.

She replied, “I can see one big problem with your plan. Maybe. What happens to the plain and the shadowgates? You asked me if I wanted to go home. The answer is yes. I don’t think to stay, though. Just to see what happened there. To bury my dead, I guess you could say. But I don’t see how that could keep from complicating everything else if I had to do it first because there wouldn’t be any way later.”

“You’re right. And I need to do what I’ve got to do as soon as I can. Before Kina catches on.” If she had not foreseen the possibilities already. Or learned of them from Goblin. Or Shivetya. Or from Lady, who was smart enough to guess what I was thinking. Sometimes. “Particularly before my wife catches on. Or starts thinking I’m chasing around.”

We were approaching the River Main, heading for Vehdna-Bota. There were pillars of smoke north of the ford, away from the small settlement. But not many.

Arkana told me, “That’s not much of an army.”

“Not in any hurry to get into harm’s way, either, looks like. There’s plenty of daylight left they could use for traveling.”

Not in any hurry. When we went down for a closer look we found men scattering like startled roaches.

“Somebody covering his ass,” I said. “Making a show of honoring his obligations. That bunch will never actually get to Taglios.”

We went back up. We talked, not just about what had to be accomplished. Arkana seemed able to relax, now. Seemed to have made peace with the bad times. Some manage that with comparative ease. Others remain crippled for life. Those are not the sort who remain soldiers. They become ex-soldiers and get intimate with wine or poppies.

I asked about her leg.

She laughed. “I can be one of the old folks now. I can use it to predict the weather.”

“It’s all right otherwise?”

“Yes.”

“I do good work.”

“Lots of practice.”

“You get that in this racket.”

We flew back toward Taglios, chatting in a relaxed way, me thinking that this was what it would have been like had Booboo grown up with her parents. Me fooling myself. Lying to myself. No child would grow up even as normal as Arkana if they had Lady for a mother and me for a father.