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

speech was for other consumption even if
it was factual.
    Croaker pushed a folded scrap of paper across. “Take care
of that before we go. Make sure you don’t leave any evidence
to tie it to us.”
    “What?” That did not sound good at all.
    “Be ready to move. If you really have to drag the in-laws
along have them ready to go, too. I’ll send word.”
    “Your pets tell you anything I need to know?” Like I
did not know that they were not his pets at all but spies or
messengers from Soulcatcher.
    “Not lately. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be
the first to know.”
    This was one of those points where the paranoia grabbed me. I
could not be sure of the actual relationship between Croaker,
Soulcatcher and those crows. I had to take him completely on faith
at a time when my faith in everything was being tested severely on
every hand.
    “That’s it?”
    “That’s it. Make sure you’ve got everything
you need. It won’t be long.”
    I opened the scrap of paper by the light of one of the few lamps
illuminating the corridor between Croaker’s apartment and
mine. I made no attempt to keep Thai Dei from seeing it. He is
illiterate. Plus the note was written in the formal language of
Juniper, as though to a bright six-year-old. Which was lucky for me
since I have only a vague familiarity with the language, from
documents dating back to the time the Company spent there, before I
joined.
    Soulcatcher was dead in those days. I suppose that is why
Croaker chose to use that language. It was one he felt she was
unlikely to know.
    The message itself was simple. It instructed me to take the
Annals I had recaptured from Soulcatcher, who had stolen them from
where Smoke had had them hidden from us, and conceal them in the
room where we had kept Smoke hidden.
    I wanted to go back and argue. I wanted to keep them with us.
But I grasped his reasoning. Soulcatcher and everyone else with an
interest in keeping us and those Annals apart would assume that we
would keep them close till we could decipher them. Out there in
the field we would not have time to worry about protecting
them. So we might as well hide them in a place that, right now,
only the Radisha knew existed.
    “Shit,” I said softly, in Taglian. No matter how
many languages I learn I always find that word useful. It has
pretty much the same meaning in every tongue.
    Thai Dei did not ask. Thai Dei almost never does.
    Behind me, more than the next lamp away, Croaker came out of his
cell with a black blob perched on his shoulder. That meant he was
going to see somebody native. He thought the crows intimidated the
Taglians.
    I told Thai Dei, “This is something I have to handle
myself. Go tell Uncle Doj and your mother that we’ll be
leaving sometime during the night. The Captain has
decided.”
    “You must accompany me partway. I cannot find my way in
this great tomb.” He sounded like he meant it, too.
    Nyueng Bao keep their feelings well hidden but I saw no reason
why someone who had grown up in a tropical swamp should feel at
home inside an immense pile of stone. Especially since all his past
experience with cities and big buildings had been negative in the
extreme.
    I hurried to get him back into territory he knew well enough to
walk alone. I had to get into Croaker’s cell fast, before he
and his feathered friend returned. That is where we were keeping
the books right now. We did not want anyone to know we had them
though Soulcatcher surely suspected if she was aware that they had
been stolen from where she had hidden them.
    What a convoluted game.
    I felt my wrist to make sure I still wore the loop of string
that was really an amulet One-Eye had given me so I would be immune
to all the spells of confusion and misdirection around the chamber
where we kept Smoke.
    Even before I collected the books, noting that Croaker had shooed
all crows, closed the window and covered it with a curtain, I was
thinking how best to conceal them once I had them where Croaker
wanted