“I doubt it.” Had to keep up the show. “Mama won’t like you messing with her prisoner.”

“She is not here, physician.” He began to drift backward. “We will begin soon. After time for reflection.” A snatch of insane chuckle drifted in behind him. I am not sure if he or Whisper was the source. She was in the hallway, watching.

A voice said, “But she is here.”

They froze. Whisper went pallid. Limper sort of folded in upon himself.

The Lady materialized out of nowhere, appearing first as golden sparkles. She said nothing more. The Taken did not speak either, for there was nothing they could say.

I wanted to interject one of my remarks, but the better part of valor prevailed. Instead, I tried to make myself small. A roach. Beneath notice.

But roaches get squished beneath the uncaring foot...

The Lady finally spoke. “Limper, you were given an assignment. Nowhere in your brief is there an allowance for you to leave your command. Yet you have done so. Again. And the results are the same as when you slipped off to Roses to sabotage Soulcatcher.” Limper wilted even more.

That was one damned long time ago. One of our sneaky tricks on the Rebel of the day. What happened was, the Rebel attacked Limper’s headquarters while he was away from his demense trying to undermine Soulcatcher. So Darling was whooping it up on the Plain. My spirits rose. It was the confirmation I’d had that the movement had not collapsed.

“Go,” the Lady said. “And know this. There will be no more understanding. Henceforth we live by the iron rules as my husband made them. Next time will be the last time. For you or anyone else who serves me. Do you understand? Whisper? Limper?”

They understood. They were careful to say so in so many words.

There was communication there beneath the level of mere words, not accessible to me, for they went away absolutely convinced their continued existence depended upon unquestioning and unswerving obedience not only to the letter but the spirit of their orders. They went with a crushed air. The Lady faded the moment my cell door closed. She appeared in the flesh shortly before nightfall. Her anger still simmered. I gathered, from hearing guards gossip, that Whisper had been ordered back to the Plain, too. Things had turned bad out there. The Taken on the scene could not cope.

“Give them hell, Darling,” I murmured. “Give them hell.” I was working hard on resigning myself to whatever fate’s horror shop stocked for me.

Guards brought me out of the cell soon after nightfall. They brought Raven, too. I asked no questions. They would not have answered.

The Lady’s carpet rested in the fortress’ main court. The soldiers placed Raven upon it, tied him down. A glum sergeant gestured for me to board. I did so, surprising him by knowing what to do. My heart was in my heels. I knew my destination. The Tower.

I waited half an hour. Finally she came. She looked thoughtful. Even a little disturbed and uncertain. She took her place at the leading edge of the carpet. We rose.

Riding a windwhale is more comfortable and much less trying to the nerves. A windwhale has substance, has scale.

We rose perhaps a thousand feet and began running south. I doubt we were making more than thirty miles per hour. It would be a long flight, then, unless she chose to break it.

After an hour she faced me. I could barely discern her features. She said, “I visited the Barrowland, Croaker.”

I did not respond, not knowing what was expected.

“What have you done? What have you people set free?”

“Nothing.”

She looked at Raven. “Perhaps there is a way.” After a time: “I know the thing that is loose... Sleep, physician. We’ll talk another time.” And I went to sleep. And when I wakened I was in another cell. And knew, by the uniforms, that my new prison was the Tower at Charm.

Thirty-Nine

A guest at Charm

A colonel of the Lady’s household force came for me. He was almost polite. Even back when, her troops never were sure of my status. Poor babies. I had no niche in their ordered and hierarchical universe.

The Colonel said, “She wants you now.” He had a dozen men with him. They did not look like an honor guard. Neither did they act like executioners.

Not that it mattered. I would go if they had to carry me.

I left with a backward glance. Raven was holding his own.

The Colonel left me at a doorway into the inner Tower, the Tower inside the Tower, into which few men pass, and from which fewer return. “March,” he said. “I hear you’ve done this before. You know the drill.”

I stepped through the doorway. When I looked back I saw only stone wall. For a moment I became disoriented. That passed and I was in another place. And she was there, framed by what appeared to be a window, though her parts of the Tower are completely ensheathed within the rest. “Come here.”

I went. She pointed. I looked out that non-window on a burning city. Taken soared above it, hurling magicks that died. Their target was a phalanx of windwhales that were devastating the city.

Darling was riding one of the whales. They were staying within her null, where they were invulnerable.

“They are not, though,” the Lady said, reading my thoughts. “Mortal weapons will reach them. And your bandit girl. But it does not matter. I’ve decided to suspend operations.” I laughed. “Then we’ve won.”

I do believe that was the first time I ever saw her piqued with me. A mistake, mocking her. It could make her reassess emotionally a decision made strategically.

“You have won nothing. If that is the perception a shift of focus will generate, then I will not break off. I will adjust the campaign’s focus instead.”

Damn you, Croaker. Leam to keep your big goddamn mouth shut around people like this. You will jack-jaw your way right into a meat grinder.

After regaining her self-control, she faced me. The Lady, from just two feet away. “Be sarcastic in your writing if you like. But when you speak, be prepared to pay a price.” “I understand.”

“I thought you would.” She faced the scene again. In that far city-it looked like Frost-a flaming windwhale fell after being caught in a storm of shafts hurled by ballistae bigger than any I’d ever seen. Two could play the suck-in game. “How well did your translations go?” “What?”

“The documents you found in the Forest of Cloud, gave to my late sister Soulcatcher, took from her again, gave to your friend Raven, and took from him in turn. The papers you thought would give you the tool of victory.” “Those documents. Ha. Not well at all.”

“You couldn’t have. What you sought isn’t there.”

“But...”

“You were misled. Yes. I know. Bomanz put them together, so they must hold my true name. Yes? But that has been eradicated-except, perhaps, in the mind of my husband.” She became remote suddenly. “The victory at Juniper cost.”

“He learned the lesson Bomanz did too late.”

“So. You noticed. He has information enough to pry an answer from what happened... No. My name isn’t there. His is. That was why they so excited my sister. She saw an opportunity to supplant us both. She knew me. We were children together, after all. And protected from one another only by the most tangled web that could be woven. When she enlisted you in Beryl she had no greater ambition than to undermine me. But when you delivered those documents...”

She was thinking aloud as much as explaining.

I was stricken by a sudden insight. “You don’t know his name!”

“It was never a love match, physician. It was the shakiest of alliances. Tell me. How do I get those papers?”

“You don’t.”

“Then we all lose. This is true, Croaker. While we argue and while our respective allies strive to slash one another’s throats, the enemy of us all is shedding his chains. All this dying will be for naught if the Dominator wins free.”