Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South Read Online Free Page B

the rest of her natural life as the most powerful being in
     the world. Why go riding off with a band of tired old men, who did not know
     where they were going or why, only that they had to keep moving lest
     something—their consciences, maybe—caught them up?
    “There’s nothing here for me anymore,” she said. As if that explained anything.
    “I want . . . I just want to find out what it’s like to be ordinary people.”
    “You wouldn’t like it. Not near as much as you like being the Lady.”
    “But I never liked that very much. Not after I had it and found out what I
     really had. You won’t tell me I can’t go, will you?”
    Was she kidding? No. I would not. It had been the surface understanding, anyway.
    But it was an understanding I expected to perish once she reestablished herself
     in the Tower.
    I was disconcerted by the implications.
    “Can I go?”
    “If that’s what you want.”
    “There’s a problem.”
    Isn’t there always if there’s a woman involved?
    “I can’t leave right now. Things have gotten confused here. I need a few days to
     straighten them out. So I can leave with a clear conscience.”
    We had not encountered any of the troubles I expected. None of her people dared
     scrutinize her closely. All the labors of One-Eye and Goblin were wasted effort
     with that audience. The word was out: the Lady was at the helm again. The Black
     Company was in the fold once more, under her protection. And that was enough for
     her people.
    Wonderful. But Opal was only a few weeks away. From Opal it was a short passage
     over the Sea of Torments to ports outside the empire. I thought. I wanted to get
     out while our luck was holding.
    “You understand, don’t you, Croaker? It’ll only be a few days. Honest. Just long
     enough to shape things up. The empire is a good machine that works smooth as
     long as the proconsuls are sure someone is in charge.”
    “All right. All right. We can last a couple days. As long as you keep people
     away. And you keep out of the way yourself, most of the time. Don’t let them get
     too good a look at you.”
    “I don’t intend to. Croaker?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs.” Startled, I laughed. She kept getting
     more human all the time. And more able to laugh at herself.
    She had good intentions. But he—or she—who would rule an empire becomes slave to
     its administrative detail. A few days came and went. And a few more. And a few
     more still.
    I could entertain myself skulking around the Tower’s libraries, digging into
     rare texts from the Domination or before, unravelling the snarled threads of
     northern history, but for the rest of the guys it was rough. There was nothing
     for them to do but try to keep out of sight and worry. And bait Goblin and
     One-Eye, though they did not have much luck with that. To those of us without
     talent the Tower was just a big dark pile of rock, but to those two it was a
     great throbbing engine of sorcery, still peopled by numerous practitioners of
     the dark arts. They lived every moment in dread.
    One-Eye handled it better than Goblin. He managed to escape occasionally, going
     out to the old battlefield to prowl among his memories. Sometimes I joined him,
    halfway tempted to take up Lady’s invitation to open a few old graves.
    “Still not comfortable about what happened?” One-Eye asked one afternoon, as I
     stood leaning on a bowstave over a marker bearing the name and sigil of the
     Taken who had been called the Faceless Man. One-Eye’s tone was as serious as it
     ever gets.
    “Not entirely,” I admitted. “I can’t pin it down, and it don’t matter much now,
    but when you reflect on what happened here, it don’t add up. I mean, it did at
     the time. It all looked like it was inevitable. A great kill-off that rid the
     world of a skillion Rebels and most of the Taken, leaving the Lady a free hand
     and setting her up for the Dominator at the same time. But in the