Book 4 - Soldiers Live Read Online Free PDF

manage a puppet Shadowmaster.” No world
lacks its villains so self-confident that they don’t believe
they can get the best end of a bargain with the darkness. I married
one of those. I am not sure she has learned her lesson yet.
“Has anyone offered to fix our shadowgate?”
    “The Court is actually willing to give us someone. The
trouble with that is that they don’t actually have anyone
equipped with the skills to make the needed fixes. Chances are, no
one has those skills. But the knowledge exists in records stored at
Khang Phi.”
    “So why don’t
we? . . . ”
    “We’re working on it. Meantime, the Court do seem to
believe in us. And they absolutely do want some kind of revenge
before all of Longshadow’s surviving victims have been
claimed by age.”
    “And what about the Howler?”
    “Tobo wants him. Says he can handle him now.”
    “Does anybody else think so?” I meant Lady.
“Or is he overconfident?”
    Sleepy shrugged. “There’s nobody telling me
they’ve got anything more they can teach him.” She
meant Lady, too, and did not mean that Tobo suffered from a teen
attitude. Tobo had no trouble taking advice or instruction when
either of those did not originate with his mother.
    I asked anyway. “Not even Lady?”
    “She, I think, might be holding out on him.”
    “You can bet on it.” I married the woman but I
don’t have many illusions about her. She would be thrilled to
go back to her old wicked ways. Life with me and the Company has
not been anything like happily ever after. Reality has a way of
slow-roasting romance. Though we get along well enough. “She
can’t be any other way. Get her to tell you about her first
husband. You’ll marvel that she came out as sane as she
did.” I marveled every day. Right before I gave in to my
astonishment that the woman really had given up everything to ride
off with me. Well, something. She had not had much at the time and
her prospects had been grim. “What the hell is
that?”
    “Alarm horns.” Sleepy bolted out of her seat. She
was spry for a woman treading hard on the heels of middle age. On
the other hand, of course, she was so short she did not have a lot
of real getting up to do. “I didn’t order any
drills.”
    She had an ugly habit of doing that. Only the traitor Mogaba,
when he had been with us, had had as determined an attitude about
preparedness.
    Sleepy was too serious about everything.
    Tobo’s unknown shadows began raising their biggest uproar
yet.
    “Come on!” Sleepy snapped. “Why aren’t
you armed?” She was. She always was, although I never have
seen her use a weapon more substantial than guile.
    “I’m retired. I’m a paper pusher these
days.”
    “I don’t see you wearing a tombstone for a
hat.”
    “I had an attitude problem once upon a time, myself,
but . . . ”
    “Speaking of which. I want a reading in the
officers’ mess before lights out. Something that tells us all
about the wages of indolence and the neglect of readiness. Or about
the fate of ordinary mercenaries.” She was in brisk motion,
headed for the main exit, overtaking staffers who were not dawdling
themselves. “Make a hole, people. Make a hole. Coming
through.”
    Outside, people were pointing and babbling. The moonlight and a
lot of fire betrayed a pillar of black, oily smoke boiling up from
just below the gate to the glittering plain. I stated the obvious.
“Something’s happened.” Clever me.
    “Suvrin’s up there. He has a level head.”
    Suvrin was a solid young officer with maybe just a tad of
worship for his captain. You could be confident that neither
accidents nor stupid mistakes would happen on Suvrin’s
watch.
    Runners gathered, ready to carry Sleepy’s instructions.
She gave the only order she could till we knew more. Be alert. Even
though to a man we believed that there was no way major trouble
could come at us from off the plain.
    The thing that you know to be true is the lie that will