Book 3 - Water Sleeps by Glen Cook Page B

unkind boss. He told Subredil it was time
to leave. Subredil bestirred Sawa. As I got to my feet, I made some
sounds of distress.
    “What is that?” Barundandi asked.
    “She’s hungry. We haven’t eaten all
day.” Usually the management did provide a few scraps. That
was one of the perks. Subredil and Sawa sometimes husbanded some of
their share and took it home. That established and sustained the
women’s habit of carrying things out of the Palace.
    The Protector leaned forward. She stared intently. What had we
done to tickle her suspicion? Was she just so ancient in her
paranoia that she needed no clue stronger than intuition? Or was it
possible that she really
could
read minds, just a touch?
    Barundandi said, “We’ll go to the kitchen, then. The
cooks overprepared badly today.”
    We shuffled out behind him, each step like leaping another
league out of winter toward spring, out of darkness into light.
Four or five paces outside the meeting chamber, Barundandi startled
us by running a hand through his hair and gasping. He told
Subredil, “Oh, it feels good to get out of there. That woman
gives me the green willies.”
    She gave me the green willies, too. And only the fact that I had
gone deep into character to deal with them saved me giving myself
away. Who would suspect that much humanity in Jaul Barundandi? I
got a grip on Subredil’s arm and shook.
    Subredil responded to Barundandi softly, submissively agreeing
that the Protector might be a great horror.
    The kitchens, normally off limits to casual labor, was a
dragon’s hoard of edible treasures. With the dragon evicted.
Subredil and Sawa ate till they could barely waddle. They loaded
themselves with all the plunder they thought they would be allowed
to carry off. They collected their few coppers and headed for the
servants’ postern before anyone could think of something else
for them to do, before any of Barundandi’s cronies realized
that the customary kickbacks had been overlooked.
    There were armed guards outside the postern. That was new. They
were Greys rather than soldiers. They did not seem particularly
interested in people going out. They did not bother with the usual
cursory search casuals had to endure so nobody carried off the
royal cutlery.
    I wish our characters had more curiosity in them. I could have
used a closer look at the damage we had done. They were putting up
scaffolding and erecting a wooden curtain-wall already. The
glimpses I did catch awed me. I had only read about what the later
versions of those fireball throwers could do. The face of the
Palace looked like a model of dark wax that someone had stuck
repeatedly with a white-hot iron rod. Not only had stone melted and
run, some had been vaporized. We had been released much earlier
than usual. It was only mid-afternoon. I tried to walk too fast,
eager to get away. Subredil refused to be rushed. Ahead of us stood
quiet crowds who had come to stare at the Palace. Subredil murmured
something about “ . . . ten thousand
eyes.”
     
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9
    I erred. That mass
of people had not come just to examine our night’s work and
marvel that the Protector’s dead men could be so frisky. They
were interested in four Bhodi disciples at the memorial posts that
stood a dozen yards in front of the battered entrance, outside the
growing curtain-wall. One disciple was mounting a prayer wheel onto
one of the posts. Another two were spreading an elaborately
embroidered dark red-orange cloth on the cobblestones. The fourth,
shaved balder and shinier than a polished apple, stood before a
Grey who was sixteen at the oldest. The Bhodi disciple had his arms
folded. He looked through the youngster, who seemed to be having
trouble getting across the message that these men had to stop doing
what they were doing. The Protector forbade it.
    This was something that would interest even Minh Subredil. She
stopped walking. Sawa clung to her arm with one hand and cocked her
head so she could watch,