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

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 furious encounter
     between Blade and the Old Man, alcoholically enhanced, and indeed over Blade’s
     too obvious interest in Lady, I still did not understand. “But I’ll tell you,
    with the Prince and Blade and Willow Swan and about every other guy in town
     drooling all over themselves every time Lady walks by, I don’t know as I blame
     him for finally blowing up.”
    “Just about as many guys looked at your wife the same way. She was probably the
     most beautiful woman any of them ever saw. You didn’t blow.”
    “I think that’s a compliment, Cordy. Thanks. For me and Sarie both. You want me
     to be honest, I think it was more than Lady. I think the Old Man thinks Blade
     was planted on us somehow.”
    “Huh?”
    “Yeah. But you got to know his background.” Cordy was born in my end of the
     world. He knew the way things were. “He spent years dealing with the Ten Who
     Were Taken. Those monsters laid out schemes that took decades to unfold.”
    “And some are still around. Why Blade in particular?”
    “Because we don’t know anything about him. Except that you dragged him out of an
     alligator pit. Or something.”
    “And you do know about me and Willow?”
    “Yes.” I did not explain that my Company brothers Otto and Hagop had gone all
     the way back to the empire and, in passing, had rooted around in the pasts of
     army deserters Cordwood Mather and Willow Swan.
    That did not leave Mather feeling comfortable.
    Too bad.
    It never hurt to have our paranoia worry somebody else so much they behaved
     themselves.
    I glanced at Thai Dei. He was always there. But I never forgot that. He might be
     my bodyguard and brother-in-law and might owe me for saving the lives of some of
     his family and I might even like him fairly well but I never talked about
     anything substantial in front of him using Taglian or Nyueng Bao unless there
     was no other choice.
    Maybe the Old Man’s paranoia was rubbing off on me. Maybe it came from how Thai
     Dei and Uncle Doj and Mother Gota sometimes seemed almost indifferent to Sahra’s
     murder. They acted as though the death of Thai Dei’s son To Tan was ten times
     more important . . . They had chosen to stay with me, to take part in the
     journey south to extract revenge, then seemed to give the matter little more
     thought. For me Sarie’s memory is a holy thing, due its moments every day.
    Me thinking about Sarie is not a good thing, though. Every time I do I want to
     run to Smoke. But Smoke is not there for me now. One-Eye did get him out of town
     and even with the little wizard unlikely to be in a hurry the ghostwalker was
     getting farther and farther away.

Black Company GS 7 - She is Darkness
    7
    Croaker sent word that he wanted to see me. I went to his hole in the wall,
    started to knock but heard voices inside. I paused, glanced at Thai Dei. He was
     not big and not handsome and was always so impassive you could not begin to
     guess what he was thinking. At the moment, though, he did not appear to have
     heard anything he should not. He just stood