The Lady spoke, then she faded away, leaving us all in a more positive mood. A lot of self-important do-littles turned frenetically active, preparing us for war—while never giving up their whining and complaining. Happy soldiers, happy soldiers, every swinging dick and split-tail getting ready to go on campaign.
Whisper left without a word soon after the Lady faded away. Turned out she went to get the rest of the Eastern Army headed toward the Ghost Country.
All the Taken left us. Firefly said they were off to collect the rest of the empire’s sorcerers and deliver them just outside the Ghost Country. The nearest human habitation was a hamlet called Amos. Amos would matter in no history whatsoever, ever.
I did what I could to prepare. Edmous Black pitched in valiantly, grumbling because he expected to have to do all the hospital setup work at the other end. “You get to ride out there with the Taken.”
“I sure hope so. I might marry her for real just so I don’t have to walk anywhere anymore.”
I heard a noise. I turned, saw nothing but shadows.
Maybe I ought to watch my mouth even where there were no obvious eavesdroppers.
Black shook his head. “You’re getting old, boss, if you can’t think of something better to do with that than mooch a ride.”
Shadow conscious, I eschewed any banter objectifying Mischievous Rain. But I could think it. Had been thinking it plenty, lately. But that was only a warm daydream. I would never find the courage.
I should not mention that even here. Too dangerous.
My fake marriage keeps intruding on real life. I do not go drinking anymore. I have not enjoyed a game of tonk in months. I do not often bullshit with anybody because I am never more than yards from one of my kids, usually Firefly.
The kids remain stubbornly unforthcoming about what is going on now. But I can do the sums. We are going to whack the Ghost Country with the biggest stick that the Lady can conjure. Only, why such a dramatic approach?
The kids insist that they know nothing. Firefly may be telling the truth. Shin, who knows? The boy spends his time pot hopping. He only turns up when it is time for supper.
So here I am, lord of the clueless, prince of the mushroom men.
The hunt for pretty girls, in its institutionally approved phase, has gone on hiatus, but my tribe keeps at it freelance. Those sweet things might still be the gateway through which an all-time asshole can snake his way back into our beautiful world.
What could be more important than stopping that?
* * *
Mischievous Rain came back as the locals were getting ready for the harvest. The Company command staff had become preoccupied with that, despite the continuous stream of imperial troops headed east.
The Taken was not pleased that the Company was engaged with agriculture rather than with getting trained up for magical warfare.
The Old Man was unapologetic. “We have to eat,” he told her. “The soldiers tromping through here are like locusts. Their commanders have no concept of managed logistics. And, as an aside, I would remark that at no time were we advised to prepare for action.” A dark glance my way silently suggested that I never mention that Edmous and I had been ready to roll for weeks. “We like to think that we’re the best of the best but our skills don’t include divining the unspoken intent of our employers. If you want something you have to tell us what it is. Otherwise, we’ll execute our most recent set of instructions, which, in this case, would be to protect the locals and hunt for younger versions of yourself.”
He had him some balls, the Old Man did.
Protection had to do with discouraging foragers, which made us unpopular with some of the guys headed east.
The Captain said, “Your people can’t just steal stuff. That’s how you get Rebels to begin with. We haven’t had an incident here in almost a year. They like us. We brought peace. We’re good for the economy. These people’s big complaint is that we took you away and messed up their religious cycle.”
This conversation happened in Admin with the Old Man forted up behind his big-ass table. The Taken faced Aloe’s direction. “Yes. Sad. How soon forgotten.”
I was there because that day the Taken had me tagging along everywhere like a big, goofy hound. I suspected that she wanted every little twist recorded.
Had she begun to forget, too?
I reread some of the Annals every day, now. If I let it slide the memories begin to fade.
Even so, Firefly is seldom far away. Is she just watching? Or is she under a compulsion? Could it be both? For sure she would understand why I insisted on doing so much reading. Had she reported that?
Gurdlief Speak came back with the Taken. He had had himself a great adventure. He could not stop babbling about it although, really, he had nothing new to report. He had uncovered no secrets. Shin and Baku quickly tired of his relentless enthusiasm for all things Charm. Shin told him, “I lived there! It’s a corner of Hell. I don’t want to hear any more! Go away!”
Gurdlief appealed to Baku. His future wife let him know that she had had a change of heart. “What Shin said, only doubled.”
Gurdlief shrugged, not too bothered because the rest of us were tired of his enthusiasm.
Firefly told Shin, “They did something to him.”
Shin grunted. “Probably.” But he did not care. He had shadow-walking on the brain.
I should keep an eye on Gurdlief. He might be a spy, now, for the woman who rules the world from a prison of her own device.
I told Gurdlief to go back to town.
He looked hurt but he went.
Firefly told me, “That was the right move, Dad. That boy was special before but I don’t have any use for him now that he’s here to spy.”
So. I guessed right even though familial espionage made no sense. But nothing made sense anymore, nor had done for months. Everything kept twisting crazier.
From then on we saw even less of Shin, and I became more concerned each time I did see him. He was exhausted, scared, and wanted to shed the demands being made of him. But, before I challenged his mother for risking his health, I reminded myself that, whatever Shin looked like, he was not human. Even I, his accused but still skeptical father, knew that. That stipulated, though, the boy was not a tool to be used until it broke, and then discarded.
My place within subsequent events was that of a lost boy. A totally lost boy. I never gained any grasp of what was really happening.
The last eastbound battalions passed by. Rich and poor Aloen landowners alike were happy. They had enjoyed a profitable season.
All the Taken but one, and all the empire’s sorcerers but the Company’s, had gone east, leaving us Company folks relieved. The outsiders were out of our hair, out of our quarters, out of our compound at last. But we did not get to celebrate.
Mischievous Rain collected the usual suspects and told the Captain to maintain the empire’s interests everywhere east of the Plain of Fear, be those governance, justice, or military. He was not to be gentle when responding to problems presented by the governed.
My reaction, carefully hidden, was, “No godsdamned way!” There were eight hundred thirty-six of us now, the majority still spring green. The eastern provinces spanned hundreds of miles where we had no presence—and we were expected to be logistical monkeys for the Ghost Country operation, too.
A fierce reputation can carry you only so far.
Mischievous Rain stared me straight in the eye, her beautiful lips showing a ghost of a smirk. She knew what I was thinking. “You won’t have to worry about it, dear. You’ll be with me.” She winked.
She what? She flirted?
She turned to the Captain and the Lieutenant. “The task should be less onerous than you expect. Something Whisper does well is tame a territory once she occupies it, however much she lacks enthusiasm for moving in the first place. You see her only through a veil of prejudice.”
The Old Man grumbled, “Things trend that way once somebody tries to murder you.”
I had n
o idea what she was thinking, really. Only she did. The prejudice remark might have been a joke. The Captain’s response was not.
Me being me, I hatched a brood of questions. The rest of existence being the rest of existence, I got no chance to ask any of them. Important stuff needed discussing, stuff that trumped my curiosity. I went along without a whisper, pretending to be content with things the way they were.
* * *
Mischievous Rain’s carpet lifted off loaded much as it had been for our previous trip to the Ghost Country, with added tents and blankets. The lady’s husband knelt beside her, exercising his grip on the carpet frame. Their children were within touching distance but their cat was absent. Ankou had not been seen since our last venture eastward.
The hunter girls were with us, of course. Kuroneko and Shironeko were always nearby, now. They had become family. They never had much to say. They were sad girls, hard to tell apart when they chose to dress alike. They were only fourteen or fifteen.
The dark-haired girls, Mischievous Rain included, were identical but for their ages. It took a committed eye to discern the subtle differences between the two who were close in age.
Part of me would have loved to round up a dozen girls, in varying stages of ripeness, and hie us off somewhere like the Ghost Country, where I could found me my own special kingdom. Especially if I could do it all about ten years younger than I was now.
I was no conventional husband but I could not help thinking that it might be nice to enjoy some of marriage’s more special blessings.
Firefly told me, “You’re starting to turn creepy, Dad.”
Having the kid point it out quelled the lateral drift.
Mischievous Rain’s sidelong look and enigmatic challenge had an additional purgative effect.
* * *
We reached that same meadow with plenty of daylight left, the Taken having wasted no time this trip. The meadow was an idyll no longer. It had become an operational base. The greensward was gone. The turf had been taken up and carried off to become the base for a wall. Not one wildflower remained to remind us that not all the world was ugly.
Men were felling trees wherever there was room to swing an ax. They were building a palisade, with watchtowers, atop turf ramparts already put in place. They were building barracks to replace the current tents. They had completed a bridge across the creek and had cleared the creek’s banks so sentries had an unobstructed view in that direction. A construction battalion was out there beyond, cutting a road back to the world. Another battalion was building a road toward the granite castle. You could tell where road construction was under way because a Taken circled overhead, ready to provide support.
Whisper was waiting when we touched down. She was accompanied by the special young men always found nearby when she was with her own command. They helped us unload, then led our sorcerers to a log cabin already set up for them. Some folks are special.
I stuck with Mischievous Rain. So did the kids and the hunter girls. Whisper was not pleased but deferred without demur. That surprised me. But, almost immediately, it became clear that Mischievous Rain was senior here. The Taken not on duty all turned up to show their respects.
Curious. My Aloen honey really must have clicked big-time with my Tower at Charm honey. She was Mama’s clear favorite—for the moment.
Several pits had been dug to groundwater level in the middle of the meadow. Massive wooden cages surrounded those. Pits and cages contained captured things. Most were as foul as a monster ought to be.
Mischievous Rain examined each one while listening to the story of its capture.
Whisper said, “They’re only shadows of what they were in their prime, but they’re still a challenge.”
“Have you tried communicating?”
“I have. We have no language in common.”
“I see. Shin. Find Ankou.”
“Yes, Mother.”
I glanced at Firefly. “What was that?” The boy had been a perfect little gentleman.
Baku just smirked.
Mischievous Rain snapped, “Stay back, Shiroko!”
The hunter girl was studying a bearlike thing in a cage.
Whisper said, “You get too close, girl, you’ll be dead. That thing is fast.” She added, “We lost three men to that one. It calls you somehow.”
Shironeko was bright enough to back away.
The bear thing was the biggest of almost fifty supernatural and necromantic double-ugly captives.
Mischievous Rain asked, “Can they be destroyed?”
“We did eliminate those that refused to surrender. They do burn, if slowly. Limper can give you better information about that. He’s been experimenting.”
“Where would he be now?”
“Flying cover for the men building the road to the castle. That’s where we’ve had the most trouble. Come.”
She led us to a pit where a dozen normal humans sat or stood in a foot of muddy water.
“Resurrectionists?”
“To a man.”
“Have they been questioned?”
“They have been. Extensively.”
“Did they have anything interesting to say?”
“No. They all claim to be spear carriers. Most are probably telling the truth.”
“Pick three that may not be. Bring them to me after supper,” said within hearing of the prisoners, in two languages. “The rest can become martyrs to a cause that’s already lost.”
She considered the captive monsters. “The same for those things, but not till after I talk to the Limper.”
There are always survivors. My dearly beloved meant those, here, to be men or monsters flexible enough to shift allegiances.
I whispered to Firefly, “Mom is getting scary, isn’t she?”
The kid showed me a wicked grin. “Come, O Darkness, and make me whole again.”
“What?”
“It’s from a poem that Mom wrote. She writes poems when she’s depressed.”
The kid knew about depression.
What a family I have.
Most of the men in the pits owned consciences flexible enough to let them take service with the Lady of the Tower, for the time being.
Mischievous Rain said, “We’ll need lots of firewood. Have the men working construction save the waste.” She gestured at the bear thing. “That might not die easily but I’m sure that it can be destroyed. We just need to make the special effort. Cut off an arm. Burn it to ash. Cut off a leg and burn that. And once the limbs are gone we can go for the head.”
I flashed back to a harsh winter night when we burned some badgerlike things infested with absurdly aggressive poisonous beetles. “Damn! I wish Two Dead was here.” Why was I remembering this?
Mischievous Rain said, “Yes?”
“We had an incident last winter.” I told the story, remembering it all.
“I see. Your suspicion might be valid. That could have been a test attack.”
“Maybe the people in that castle were pulling Rebel strings all along.”
“Not in any major way. Too many logistical difficulties. But they could’ve influenced the establishing of Rebel priorities.”
My wife, the onetime temple orphan, still only barely twenty-one, sounded like a humorless antique general who was a serious hard-ass. She started talking about us burning our way through the Ghost Country by sheer brute force, leaving nothing unfriendly or even neutral at all able to move.
Hard to love that girl while she was in cannibal mode.
Beloved Shin turned up suddenly, presumably having leapt out of a handy shadow. Ankou accompanied him. Ankou looked the worse for wear. He was missing several patches of fur. He had an ugly purple wound healing on his right haunch. He might have been missing a chunk of tail, too, though I could not be sure. His tail never stopped lashing.
Ankou and Mischievous Rain indulged in eye contact for several minutes, then the cat limped off toward the monster cages.
Shin said, “We need to hi
de the shadow pots better.”
“Meaning what?” his mother asked.
“Two went missing. Six more were smashed.”
How many pots did we leave up here?
Oh. He probably hauled more in during his nighttime adventures.
Ankou approached a cage containing a gryphon thing. It cringed despite being twenty times Ankou’s size.
I said, “Those things have been here for over a thousand years? I can’t get my mind around that kind of time.” I could remember my grandfather telling stories about his grandfather’s youthful adventures. That was as far a reach in time as I could make despite my fixation on old Company lore. I could go no farther than my kids in the other direction.
But old Company lore was my religion. Sort of. Was it not?
Mischievous Rain said, “They go back a lot farther than that. There isn’t much we can do right now. Let’s go get settled in and have supper.” After which she would torture some people.
She slipped an arm around Shin, pulled him in against her left hip, then grabbed my left hand with her right. Firefly ducked in under my right arm. We all headed back toward where we had landed.
The hunter girls followed close behind. Whisper’s men paused to ogle my wife and her little sisters. I might not appreciate their lust but I understood it. The lot were totally lustworthy, even in field apparel.
Whisper’s jaw did drop because of our show of intimacy, though I was too stunned to do anything but go along. Whisper’s soldiers paid me no heed. They did not know who I was and probably did not know Mischievous Rain, either, other than as a delicious alternative to their boss.
My wife said, “I like this. It’s nice to be human once in a while.”
* * *
For the next six days I was chief medical officer for the Ghost Country expedition. Despite spending my nonwork time with Mischievous Rain and despite bunking in the same cabin, I slid back into mushroom man mode, becoming the prince of the profoundly uninformed. I had no idea what was going on, or why it was going.
In some fashion, via Ankou, Mischievous Rain managed to communicate with the captive monsters. A few shifted allegiance to the Lady. Most did not.
Their pyres burned day and night.