Book 2 - She Is The Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

job there but the
more he plooks the Woman the more she seems to think he is just a
toy, not to be trusted with anything substantive.
    If he had not been feeling irritable about it he would not have
mentioned the conflict.
    “Same old same old?” I asked.
“Expenses?” Over the years Croaker got the Radisha to
buy millions of arrows, hundreds of thousands of spears and
javelins, tens of thousands of lances and saddles and sabers. He
filled warehouses with swords and shields. He acquired mobile
artillery accompanied by ammunition caissons. He accumulated dray
horses, mule and ox teams by the dozens of hundreds. He had war
elephants and work elephants. Lumber enough to raise new cities. A
thousand unassembled box kites big enough to lift a
man . . . 
    “Same old,” Mather admitted. He tugged angrily at
his tangled brown hair. “He apparently expects this to go
bad.”
    “This?”
    “The winter offensive. That’s what the squabbling
was about. Starting to accumulate replacement stuff now in case
this goes bad.”
    “Hmm.” That sounded like the Old Man. He could never
make enough preparations. Which was probably why, as the passion of
his response to the Strangler raid waned, he seemed ever less eager
to throw everything into the fray.
    But knowing Croaker the arguments could be a diversion, too. He
might just be trying to scare the Radisha into being reluctant to
pull any political stunts while he was away.
    “He was close to the line.”
    “What do you mean?
    “There’s a point where the Woman just won’t
argue anymore.”
    “Oh.” Enough said. I understood. If the Old Man went
any further he would have to exercise his warlord’s powers
and place the Princess under arrest. And would that ever stir up a
nest of vipers.
    “He’d do it,” I told Mather. I assumed word
would get back to the Woman. “But not over war materiel. I
don’t think. If the Prahbrindrah Drah and Radisha don’t
live up to their promises to help the Company get back to Khatovar,
though . . . The Captain could turn
unpleasant.”
    Taking us back to the Company’s origins in fabled Khatovar
had been Croaker’s main passion for nearly a decade now. If
you pressed him a little, sometimes an almost fanatical
determination shimmered behind the usual coterie of masks he
presents to the world.
    I hoped Cordy would take that message to his bedmate. Also, I
was kind of poking an anthill with a stick to see if, in his funk,
he would reveal the royal thinking about our quest.
    It was not something the Prince and his sister discussed, mostly
because the Prahbrindrah Drah had taken a liking to life in the
field and just did not see his sister anymore. Walking with the
ghost told me nothing.
    But Smoke was evidence in his own way. It was his terrified
determination to keep the Company away from Khatovar that had led
him to defect to the Shadowmaster and thereby put himself into a
position where he might be stricken. As Lady noted in her
contribution to these Annals, the rulers of Taglios, both religious
and lay, have no more love for us than they do for the
Shadowmasters. But we have been gentler. And if we vanish from the
stage prematurely they will have only a short time to regret our
passing.
    Longshadow has no use whatsoever for priests. He exterminates
them wherever he finds them. Which may be one more reason why Blade
deserted to his cause. Mather’s old friend has the most
pernicious case of priest hatred I have ever encountered.
    “How do you feel about Blade?” I asked. The question
would divert Mather from wondering about my agenda.
    “I still don’t understand. It just doesn’t
make any sense. Did he catch them doing it?”
    “I don’t think so.” I knew. I had walked with
the ghost. Smoke can take me almost anywhere. Even the past, back
almost to the very moment when the demon burst in upon him and
drove him into hiding in the farthest shadows of his mind. But even
after having used Smoke to go observe the actual