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

hair. “So that’s the story.” He touched his side. “I’ll live.”
    “You’re taking it well.”
    “I needed a vacation. Nothing’s in my hands now. I can relax until she finds me again.”
    “Can she do that?”
    “You the Captain now?”
    “The Captain is the Captain. I design ambushes. Can she find you?”
    “Well, son, this looks like the fabled collision between the unstoppable whatsis and the immovable thingee. I don’t know where to lay my bets. Over here we got the Black Company with four hundred years of bad and tricky. Over there you got Soulcatcher with four centuries of mean and crazy. It’s a toss-up, I guess.”
    “She doesn’t have you marked somehow?”
    “Only with scars.”
    The way he said that made me feel I knew exactly what he meant. “You want to come over to our side?”
    “You’re kidding. You pulled all that stuff this morning just to ask me to join the Black Company?”
    “We pulled all that stuff this morning to show the world that we’re still here and that we could do what we want, whenever we want, Protector or no Protector. And to take you so I can question you about the plain of glittering stone.”
    He looked at me for several seconds, then checked his cards. “There’s a subject that hasn’t come up in a while.”
    “You going to be stubborn about it?”
    “You kidding? I’ll talk your ear off. But I’ll bet you don’t learn a damned thing you didn’t already know.” He discarded a black knave.
    Slink jumped on the card, laid down a nine-queen spread, discarded a red queen and grinned. He needed to see One-Eye about those teeth.
    “Shit!” Swan grumbled. “I missed this game. How did you people learn? It’s the simplest damn game in the world but I never met a Taglian who could figure it out.”
    I observed, “You learn fast when you play with One-Eye. Scoot over, Sin. Let me play while I pick this guy’s brain.” I pulled up a stool, studying Swan every second. The man knew how to get into a character. This was not the Willow Swan that Murgen wrote about or the Swan that Sahra saw when she visited the Palace. I picked up my five cards from the next deal. “This ain’t a hand, it’s a foot. How come you’re so relaxed, Swan?”
    “No stress. You can’t have a worse hand than mine. I don’t got no two cards of the same suit.”
    “No stress?”
    “As of today I got nothing to do but lean back and take it easy. Just play tonk till my honey comes and takes me home.”
    “You’re not afraid? Reports I’ve had said you’re shakier than Smoke used to be.”
    His features hardened. That was not a comparison he liked. “The worst has happened, hasn’t it? I’m in the hands of my enemies. But I’m still healthy.”
    “There’s no guarantee you’ll stay that way. Unless you cooperate. Darn! I’m going to have to rob a poor box if this keeps on.” Play had not gotten all the way back to me before the hand ended. I did not win.
    “I’ll sing like a trained crow,” Swan said. “Like a chorus. But I can’t do you much good. I was never as close to the center as you may think.”
    “Possibly.” I watched his hands closely as he dealt. It seemed like a moment when a skilled manipulator’s ego might compel him to show himself how good he was at pulling fast moves. If he had any moves, he would not get them by me. I learned the game from One-Eye, too. “Prove it. Tell me how Soulcatcher kept you two alive long enough to get off the plain.”
    “That’s an easy one.” He completed a straight deal. “We ran away faster than the ghosts chasing us could run. We were riding those black horses the Company brought down from the north.”
    I had ridden those enchanted beasts a few times myself. That could be the answer. They could outdistance any normal horse and could run almost forever without tiring. “Maybe. Maybe. She didn’t have any special talisman?”
    “Not that she mentioned to me.”
    I looked down at another terrible hand.