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GS 8 - Water Sleeps
    6
    Murgen drifted through the Palace like a ghost. He found that thought vaguely
     amusing, though nothing made him laugh anymore. A decade and a half in the grave
     destroyed a man’s sense of humor.
    The rambling stone pile of the Palace never changed. Well, it got dustier. And
     it needed repairs ever more desperately. Credit that to Soulcatcher, who did not
     like having hordes of people underfoot. Most of the original vast professional
     staff had been dismissed and replaced by occasional casual labor.
    The Palace crowned a sizable hill. Each ruler of Taglios, generation after
     generation, tagged on an addition, not because the room was needed but because
     that was a memorial tradition. Taglians joked that in another thousand years
     there would be no city, just endless square miles of Palace. Mostly in ruin.
    The Radisha Drah, having accepted that her brother, the Prahbrindrah Drah, had
     been lost during the Shadowmaster wars, and galvanized by the threat of the
     Protector’s displeasure, had proclaimed herself head of state. Traditionalists
     in the ecclesiastical community did not want a woman in the role, but the world
     knew this particular woman had been doing the job practically forever anyway.
    Her weaknesses existed mainly in the ambitions of her critics. Depending who did
     the pontificating, she had made one of two great mistakes. Or possibly both. One
     would be betraying the Black Company when it was a well-known fact that nobody
     ever profited from such treachery. And the other error, of particular popularity
     with the senior priests, would be that she had erred in employing the Black
     Company in the first place. The terror of the Shadowmasters being expunged in
     the interim, by agency of the Company, did not present a counterargument of any
     current merit.
    Unhappy people shared the meeting chamber with the Radisha. The eye
     automatically went to the Protector first. Soulcatcher looked exactly as she
     always had, slimly androgynous, yet sensual, in black leather, a black mask, a
     black helmet and black leather gloves. She occupied a seat slightly to the left
     of and behind the Radisha, within a curtain of shadow. She did not put herself
     forward but there was no doubt who made the ultimate decisions. Every hour of
     every day the Radisha found another reason to regret having let this particular
     camel shove her nose into the tent. The cost of having tried to get around
     fulfilling an unhappy promise to the Black Company was insupportable already.
    Surely, keeping her promises could not have been so painful. What possibly could
     have happened that would be worse than what she suffered now had she and her
     brother helped the Captain find the way to Khatovar?
    At desks to either hand, facing one another from fifteen feet, stood scribes who
     struggled valiantly to record anything said. One group served the Radisha. The
     other was in Soulcatcher’s employ. Once upon a time there had been disagreements
     after the fact about decisions made during a Privy Council meeting.
    A table twelve feet long and four wide faced the two women. Four men sat behind
     its inadequate bulwark. Willow Swan was situated at the left end. His
     once-marvelous golden hair had gone grey and stringy. At higher elevations, it
     had grown extremely sparse. Swan was a foreigner. Swan was a bundle of nerves.
    Swan had a job he did not want but could not give up. Swan was riding the tiger.
    Willow Swan headed up the Greys. In the public eye. In reality, he was barely a
     figurehead. If his mouth opened, the words that came out were pure Soulcatcher.
    Popular hatred deservedly belonging to the Protector settled upon Willow Swan
     instead.
    Seated with Swan were three running-dog senior priests who owed their standing
     to the Protector’s favor. They were small men in large jobs. Their presence at
     Council meetings was a matter of form. They would not take part in any actual
     debate, though they