Archiwum
- Index
- Cook Robin (1997) Inwazja
- Conrad_Linda_ _Dynastia_Danforthow_09_ _Prawo_milosci
- Cook Robin Sfinks
- Anderson, Poul Flandry 09 A Circus of Hells
- Scarlet Hyacinth Little Red and the Big Black Panther
- Foster, Alan Dean The Black Hole
- Black Falcon 3 Rock the Beat
- 09 Okruchy śmierci
- Glen Cook Garrett 08 Petty Pewter Gods
- Glen Cook Darkwar 01 Doomstalker
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"What's Spiff's problem?" I asked.
One of my veterans had recognized one of theirs.
The devil himself arrived to explain. "The guy in charge. That's Khusavir
Pete, Sleepy. You remember, we thought he was killed when the Bahrata
Battalion got wiped out in the ambush at Kushkhoshi."
"I remember." And I recalled something that Spiff did not know, a fact I
shared only with Murgen, who had been the ghost in the rushes while the
slaughter was taking place. Khusavir Pete, at that time a sworn brother of the
Company, had led our largest surviving force of allies into a trap that
efficiently took us out of the Kiaulune wars. Khusavir Pete had cut a deal.
Khusavir Pete had betrayed his own brothers. Khusavir Pete was high on my list
of people I wanted to meet again, though until just now I had been the only
one who knew that he had survived and that his treachery had been rewarded
with a high post, money and a new name. But just seeing him had some of the
men figuring it out fast.
"You should've asked her to change your face, too," I told him when they flung
him down bleeding in front of me. "Though you've had a better run than you
probably expected when she turned you." I held his eyes with mine. What he saw
convinced him it would not be worth his trouble to deny anything. Vajra the
Naga had come out to play.
More and more of the men gathered around, most of them not getting it until I
explained how Khusavir Pete had been seduced by Soulcatcher into betraying and
helping destroy more than five hundred of our brothers and allies. Would-be
greetings quickly became imaginative suggestions of ways whereby we might
reduce the traitor's life expectancy. I let the man listen until some of the
troops tried to lay hands on. Then I told Goblin, "Hide him somewhere. We may
have a use for him yet."
The excitement was over. I had indulged in a decent meal. My attitude much
improved, I took the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with Master
Surendranath Santaraksita. "This life seems to agree with you," I told him as
I arrived. "You look better now than you did when we left the city." And that
was true.
"Dorabee? Lad, I thought you were dead. Despite their endless assurances." He
leaned closer and confided, "They aren't all honest men, your comrades."
"By some chance did Goblin and One-Eye offer to teach you to play tonk?"
The librarian managed to look a little sheepish.
"Not to play with them is a lesson everyone has to learn."
Sheepishness transformed into impishness. "I think I taught them a little
something, too. Card tricks were one of my hobbies when I was younger."
I had to laugh at the idea of those two villains getting taken themselves.
"Have you discovered anything that would be useful to me?"
"I've read every word in every book we brought along, including all of your
company's modern chronicles written in languages known to me. I found nothing
remarkable. I have been amusing myself by trying to work backward into the
chronicles I can't read by comparing materials repeated in more than one
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language."
Murgen had done a lot of that. He had had a thing about copying stuff over, in
cleaner drafts, and one of his great projects had been to revise Lady's and
the Captain's Annals for accuracy, based on evidence provided by other
witnesses, while rendering them into modern Taglian. We have all done that to
our predecessors, some, so that every recent volume of the Annals is really an
unwilling collaboration.
I said, "We drag a lot of books around, don't we?"
"Like snails, carrying your history on your back."
"It's who we are. Cute image, though. Doesn't all that study get dull after a
while?"
"The boy keeps me sharp."
"Boy?"
"Tobo. He's a brilliant student. Even more amazing than you were."
"Tobo?"
"I know. Who would expect it of a Nyueng Bao? You're destroying all my
preconceptions, Dorabee."
"Mine are taking a beating, too." Tobo? Either Santaraksita had an unsuspected
talent for inspiring students or Tobo had suffered an epiphany and had become
miraculously motivated. "You sure it's Tobo and not a changeling?"
The demon himself popped in. "Sleepy. Runmust and Riverwalker and them are on
their way over. Good morning, Master Santaraksita." Tobo actually seemed
excited to be there. "I don't have any other duties right now. Oh, Sleepy, Dad
wants to talk to you."
"Where?" Things had been happening too fast. There had been no chance to catch
up with Murgen.
"Goblin's tent. Everybody but Mom thought that would be the safest place to
keep him."
I had no trouble picturing Sahra being irritated about not being able to share
the occasional private moment with her husband.
When I ducked out, the young man and the old were already settling with a
book. I glared a warning at Santaraksita which, it developed, was both wasted
and unnecessary.
Goblin was not home. Of course not. He was working his way through a long list
of jobs bestowed upon him by me. Chuckle.
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