Read Online Water Sleeps: A Novel of the Black Company (Glittering Stone) by Glen Cook - Free Book Online Page A

didn’t believe in us. Kill them all and you wouldn’t have to sneak around trying to figure out how to get the Old Man out. You could make those guys at the library do your research for you.”
    “We’d’ve just gotten killed,” Sahra said. “Soulcatcher was already looking for trouble. The news about the Daughter of Night did that. Speaking of whom, I want you two looking for her, and Narayan, too.”
    “Too?” Goblin asked.
    “Soulcatcher will hunt them with a great deal of enthusiasm, I expect.”
    I observed, “Kina must be stirring again. Narayan and the girl wouldn’t come to Taglios unless they were confident of her protection. Which means the girl will start copying the Books of the Dead again, too. Sahra, tell Murgen to keep an eye on them.” Those terrible, ancient volumes were buried in the same cavern as the Captured. “I had a thought while we were up there—after I ran out of candlesticks and didn’t have anything else to do. It’s been a long time since I read Murgen’s Annals. It didn’t seem like they had much bearing on what we’re trying to do. Being so modern. But when I was sitting there, just a few feet from Soulcatcher, I got a really creepy feeling that I had missed something. And it’s been so long since I studied those things, I can’t guess what.”
    “You should have time. We’ll need to lie pretty low for a few days.”
    “You’ll be going to work, won’t you?”
    “It would be suspicious if I didn’t.”
    “I’m going to the library. I located some histories that go back to the earliest days of Taglios.”
    “Yeah?” One-Eye croaked, jerked himself out of a halfsleep. “Then find out for me why the hell the ruling gang are only princes. The territories they rule are bigger than most kingdoms around here.”
    “A question that never would have occurred to me,” I said politely. “Or to any native of this end of the world, probably. I’ll ask.” If I remembered.
    Nervous laughter came from the shadows in the back of the warehouse. Willow Swan. Goblin said, “He’s playing tonk with some guys he knew in the old days.”
    Sahra said, “We should get him out of the city. Where can we keep him?”
    “I need him here,” I said. “I need to ask him about the plain. That’s why we grabbed him first. And I’m not going off to some place in the country when I’ve finally started getting somewhere at the library.”
    “Soulcatcher might have him marked somehow.”
    “We’ve got two half-ass wizards of our own. Have them check him over. They add up to one competent—”
    “You watch your mouth, Little Girl.”
    “I forget myself, One-Eye. You two together add up to half as much as either one alone.”
    “Sleepy has a point. If Soulcatcher marked him, you two ought to be able to find out.”
    One-Eye snapped, “Use your head! If she’d marked him, she’d already be here. She wouldn’t be up there asking her lackeys if they’d found his bones yet.” The little man climbed out of his chair, creaking and groaning. He headed for the shadows at the rear of the warehouse but not toward Swan’s voice.
    I said, “He’s right.” I headed to the back myself. I had not seen Swan up close for fifteen years. Behind me, Tobo started grilling his mother about Murgen. He was upset because his father had been indifferent.
    Seemed to me there was a good chance Murgen did not understand who Tobo was. He had trouble with time. He had had that problem since the siege of Jaicur. He might think it was still fifteen years ago and he was stumbling away into a possible future.
    *   *   *
    Swan stared at me for a few seconds after I stepped into the light of the lamp illuminating the table where he was playing cards with the Gupta brothers and a corporal we called Slink. “Sleepy, right? You haven’t changed. Goblin or One-Eye put some kind of hex on you?”
    “God is good to the pure of heart. How are your ribs?”
    Swan ran fingers through the remnants of his