She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company Read Online Free PDF Page A

brothers infiltrated the
     Palace. Could have been her.” A shriek twice as long and piercing as normal
     ripped itself from the little sorcerer. He began to shake and shudder and spit.
    Even the child took a step back.
    Nobody offered to help.

Black Company GS 7 - She is Darkness
    6
    Four days passed before Croaker was ready to leave Taglios. He spent most of
     that time arguing with the Radisha. Their sessions were private. I was not
     allowed to sit in. The little I heard from Cordy Mather later suggested they had
     butted heads vigorously. And Cordy had not gotten to hear a tenth of what was
     said.
    I do not think Cordy is real pleased with his role around here anymore. More and
     more the Radisha treats him the way some powerful men treat their mistresses. He
     is supposed to be the commander of the Royal Guards and he has done a damned
     good 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