Soldiers Live (Glittering Stone) Read Online Free PDF

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 troublewith 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 kill you.

6

An Abode of Ravens:
Suvrin’s News
    S uvrin did not arrive until after midnight. By then even our dullards understood that there was significance to the