Read Book 3 - Water Sleeps for Free Online Page B

the
Standardbearer and official Annalist of the Company. Sometimes she
was just Tobo’s doting mother. And whenever she went out into
the city, she was Minh Subredil, another being entirely.
    Minh Subredil was an outcast, the half-breed by-blow of a priest
of Khusa and a Nyueng Bao whore. Minh Subredil knew more about her
antecedents than did half the people on the streets of Taglios. She
talked to herself about them all the time. She would tell anyone
she could trap into listening.
    Minh Subredil was a woman so pathetic, so shunned by fortune,
that she was an old, bent thing decades before her time. Her
signature, which made her recognizable to people who never had
encountered her, was the small statue of Ghanghesha she carried
everywhere. Ghanghesha, who was the god in charge of good luck in
Gunni and some Nyueng Bao belief. Minh Subredil talked to
Ghanghesha when there was nobody else who would listen.
    Widowed, Minh Subredil supported her one child by doing
scut-work day labor at the Palace. Each morning well before dawn
she joined the assembly of unfortunates who gathered at the
northern servants’ postern in hopes of gaining work.
Sometimes she was joined by her dead husband’s retarded
sister Sawa. Sometimes she brought her daughter, though seldom
anymore. The girl was getting old enough to be noticed.
    Subassistant housekeeper Jaul Barundandi would come out and
announce the number of positions available for the day, then would
select the people to fill them. Barundandi always chose Minh
Subredil because, though she was too ugly to demand sexual favors
of, she could be counted upon to kick back a generous percentage of
her salary. Minh Subredil was a desperate creature.
    Barundandi was amused by Subredil’s omnipresent statue. A
devout Gunni of the cult of Khusa, he often included in his prayers
a petition that he be spared Subredil’s sort of luck. He
would never admit it to his henchmen but he did favor Subredil some
because of her poor choice of a father. Like most villains, he was
wicked only most of the time and mainly in small-minded ways.
    Subredil, as Ky Sahra, never prayed. Ky Sahra had no use for
gods. Unaware of his tiny soft spot, she did have in mind a destiny
for Jaul Barundandi. When the time came. The subassistant would
have ample opportunity to regret his predations.
    There would be many, many regrets, spanning the length and
breadth of the Taglian empire. When the time came.
     
    We went out through the maze of confusion and distraction spells
Goblin and One-Eye have spent so many years weaving throughout the
neighborhood, a thousand layers of gossamer deception so subtle
only the Protector herself might notice them. If she was looking.
But Soulcatcher does not roam the streets looking for enemy
hideouts. She has the Greys and her shadows and bats and crows to
do that work. And those are too dim to notice that they are being
guided away from or subtly ushered through the area in a manner
that left it seeming no more remarkable than any other. The two
little wizards spent most of their time maintaining and expanding
their maze of confusion. People not trusted no longer got within
two hundred yards of our headquarters. Not without being led.
    We had no trouble. We wore strands of yarn tied around our left
wrists. These enchanted loops softened the confusion spells. They
let us see the truth.
    Thus we often knew what the Palace intended before plans went
into motion. Minh Subredil, or sometimes Sawa, listened in while
the plans were being made.
    I muttered, “Isn’t it awfully early for us to be
out?”
    “Yes. But there will be others already there when we take
our place.” There are a lot of desperate people in Taglios.
Some will camp as near the Palace as the Greys will allow.
    We did reach the Palace area hours earlier than ever before. But
there were rounds of the darkness to make, brothers of the Company
to visit in their hiding places. In each instance the voice of the
witch came out of