“Oh. Some kind of snail shell. They’re all over the Palace. Nobody knows where they come from. Nobody’s ever actually seen one crawling around. They’re sort of relaxing when you roll them around in your fingers.”

Both Singhs eyed the Great General as though thinking his behavior was distinctly odd.

Ghopal said, “Regarding the Daughter of Night. We might consider poison. There’re some talented poisoners in Chor Bagan, the thieves’ market.”

The years had changed Mogaba. He did not immediately reject the suggestion as unworthy of men of honor.

I suggested, “How about a standoff weapon we can launch from outside her influence? Hell, if we take the logs and carpets up high enough we can just keep dropping rocks till we get her.” There was some optimism. We did not have even one carpet since Booboo knocked Howler and Tobo down. What we did have was bits and pieces of half a dozen carpets that Howler had been working on when nothing else took up his time.

Lady glared at me so intensely I began to wonder how soon I would start melting.

Killing Booboo was not yet on her list of options. Her emotions were engaged much more deeply than mine, though the problem of the girl was a torment to me, too.

My entanglement was more with the idea of the child than with the specific daughter.

Lady wanted to fool herself into believing there might be some way that Booboo could be redeemed.

“You’re wasting time,” the Prahbrindrah Drah said. The collapse of Soulcatcher’s Middle Army had brought him to life. Suddenly, he believed his restoration was just a matter of marching to Taglios and yelling, “I’m back!” He had leaped into the embrace of self-delusion.

There was a lot of that going around.

Murgen joined the conference as the Prince began to bicker with Sleepy about her plans, a situation guaranteed not to persist for long. Sleepy would let him know who was running the show. Murgen announced, “I just finished reading a really long message from Baladitya. Who is well and loving every minute of his new life, thank you very much, Sleepy. Which he did not fail to point out several times.”

I asked, “What’re you doing getting mail from that old goofball?”

“He wasn’t writing to me. He doesn’t know me. The message was intended for Tobo.”

Sleepy, who was thoroughly cranky because nothing was going the way she wanted, grumped, “I’m sure you’re going to share every exciting detail with us, too, even though what we all need is some sleep.”

“Since you insist.” Murgen grinned. He had no particular job assignment while he was recuperating so he could do just about anything he pleased. “His letter mostly concerned the prisoners Shivetya is holding up there. The First Father and Gromovol’s dad. Who Shivetya took in originally just to protect them from the shadows. Of which there are hardly any left anymore. Them and the Voroshk have almost wiped each other out. Sorry.” He patted Shukrat’s shoulder. Nobody missed that gesture. Murgen approved of Tobo’s girlfriend—if that was what she was.

I wondered what he was doing bringing Shukrat to a staff meeting.

Sahra, of course, bristled like a hedge hog. There were no eligible Nyueng Bao girls anywhere within two hundred miles and she had married a foreigner, Murgen, for love herself, against the will of most of her family, but what did that have to do with today?

Sahra could restrain herself most of the time, these days. In public. If Murgen was around to calm her and remind her that Tobo was not a four-year-old anymore. But she was under tremendous additional strain now, with all her family dead or wounded. She had not yet pulled herself together well enough to make decisions about funeral arrangements for her brother and Uncle Doj.

He restrained her now, with just a gentle touch.

“You got a point to make?” Sleepy said. “Or can I get back to work figuring out how to get us through this on terms that suit our needs?”

Swan muttered something about the little bit needing a good dose of man to relax her. Sleepy snarled. Swan grumbled, “Did I volunteer? I don’t think so. Not recently. So don’t fuck with me.”

Hurriedly, Murgen told us, “Guys, Shivetya came up with another Kina origin cycle. He got this one from the Voroshk. Evidently they don’t mind talking history if they’re bored. In this version Kina’s husband put her to sleep. When she kept acting up after she won the demon plain war for the gods by sucking the blood out of all the demons. This version of the Goddess has ten arms instead of four. Her husband, known as Chevil in the world of the Voroshk, has four arms and is a lot like the Kina we know. Sometimes he’s called the Destroyer, too. But sometimes he can be cajoled or seduced into going easy. Kina can’t.”

His audience rustled. In some stories Khadi, one of the gentler Gunni forms of Kina, had had a husband, Bhima, who also counted the Destroyer among his many names.

All Gunni Gods have bunches of names. They get a little hard for an outsider to keep straight because when they change their names they also change their attributes. It gets particularly confusing when you have two aspects of the same god getting into an ass-kicking contest with each other.

“And this Chevi has what to do with Kina’s origins?” Sleepy demanded.

“Oh, he’s the one who did all the mean things to her, like chopping her up and scattering the pieces all over. But she also kills him. And brings him back to life.”

“Murgen. I’m considering sending you back to the Taglians for some more rework.”

“All right. Chevi has more than one wife. But there used to be only one. That was Camundamari, who has several other names, naturally. Camundamari was very dark-skinned. The other gods mocked her and called her Blackie.”

Interesting. Both Khadi and Kina can mean black in some Taglian usages, though “syam” is the common and conventional word.

Murgen continued, “When Chevi himself started taunting her she flew into a huge rage, tore her skin off, and turned into Ghowrhi, the Milky One. The shed skin became Kalikausiki, which filled itself up on blood sucked from demons, then became Khat-hi, the Black One.”

“Kina is a skinwalker!” Suvrin cried, startling everyone. Skinwalkers were a demonic terror little known outside Suvrin’s homeland. Skinwalkers killed a man, sucked out his flesh and bones, put on his skin and stole his life. The details are pretty gruesome. Skinwalker folklore strikes me as a way for ignorant people to explain radical and bizarre changes in personality. Shifts I believe are due to poorly understood diseases. Or maybe just due to getting old.

Murgen was startled by Suvrin’s outburst. Which seemed excessive to me, too. “Not a skinwalker in the way you mean,” Murgen said.

Was there something in Suvrin’s background?

The concept of a monster able to steal someone else’s identity that way is particularly grotesque. I have seen a lot of strange and ugly things. Tobo’s hidden folk are only the latest on a long list. But Skinwalkers are one horror that just seems too terrible to be true.

Like the gods themselves of late there have been no manifestations before reliable witnesses. We were talking ancient legends tonight. Suvrin had referenced one of the most obscure.

I said, “Believe me, Suvrin, if there were any real skinwalkers down your way you can bet the Shadowmasters would’ve rooted them out and used them up. What a weapon, eh?”

“I guess,” Suvrin admitted. Reluctantly.

“That’s wonderful,” Sleepy grumped. “Ghost-story time is over, boys. Now we let Murgen finish. He is going to finish, isn’t he? Because I want to get back to what this meeting is supposed to be all about.” She swung a deadly finger. “Don’t you even think about puking up another wisecrack, Willow.”