Book 3 - Water Sleeps by Glen Cook Page A

though no time had
passed since the last remark, and as though he had not been faking
sleep a moment ago, “right now’s the time you could
play you a really great big ol’ hairy-assed, old-time Company
dirty trick, Little Girl. Send somebody down to the silk
merchants’ exchange. Have them get you some silk, different
colors. Big enough to make up copies of them scarves the Stranglers
use. Them rumels. Then we start picking off the guys we don’t
like anyway. Once in a while we leave one of them scarves behind.
Like with that librarian.”
    I said, “I like that. Except the part about Master
Santaraksita. That’s a closed subject, old man.”
    One-Eye cackled. “Man’s got to stand by what he
believes.”
    “It
would
get a lot of fingers pointing,” Goblin
said.
    One-Eye cackled again. “It would point them in some other
direction, too, Little Girl. And I’m thinking we don’t
want much more attention coming our way right now. I’m
thinking maybe we’re closer to figuring things out than any
of us realizes.”
    “Water sleeps. We have to be taken seriously.”
    “That’s what I’m saying. We use them scarves
to take out informants and guys who know too much. Librarians, for
instance.”
    “Would I be correct in my suspicion that you’ve been
thinking about this for a while and by chance you just happen to
have a little list all ready to go?” Very likely any such
list would include all the people responsible for his several
failed attempts to establish himself in the Taglian black
markets.
    He cackled. He took a swipe at Goblin with his cane. “And
you said she’s got a mind like a flint hatchet.”
    “Bring me the list. I’ll discuss it with Murgen next
time I see him.”
    “With a ghost? They got no sense of perspective, you
know.”
    “You mean maybe he’s seen everything and knows what
you’re really up to? Sounds like a perspective to me. Makes
me wonder how far the Company might’ve gone if our
fore-brethren had had a ghost to keep an eye on you.”
    One-Eye grumbled something about how unfair and unreasonable the
world was. He had been singing that song the whole time I had known
him. He would keep it up after he became a ghost himself.
    I mused, “You think we could get Murgen to winkle out the
source of the stink that keeps coming from the back, there, where
Do Trang hides his crocodile skins? I know it’s not them.
Croc hides have a flavor all their own.”
    One-Eye scowled. He was ready to change the subject now. The
odor in question came from his beer- and liquor-manufacturing
project, hidden in a cellar he and Do Trang thought nobody knew
about. Banh Do Trang, once our benefactor for Sahra’s sake,
now was practically one of the gang because he had a powerful taste
for One-Eye’s product, a huge hunger for illegal and shadowy
income, and he liked having tough guys on the payroll who would
work hard for very little money. He thought his vice was a secret
he shared only with One-Eye and Gota. The three of them got drunk
together twice a week.
    Alcohol is a definite Nyueng Bao weakness.
    “I’m sure it’s not worth the trouble, Little
Girl. It’s probably dead rats. Bad rat problem in this town.
Do Trang puts rat poison out all the time. By the pound. No need to
waste Murgen’s time chasing rodents. You’ve both got
better things to do.”
    I would be talking over a lot of things with Murgen if I could
deal with him directly. If we could catch and keep his attention. I
would like to know firsthand everything that ordinarily came to me
through other people. I imply no malice, particularly from Sahra,
but people do reshape information according to their own
prejudices. Including even me, possibly, though until now, my
objectivity has been peerless. All my predecessors,
though . . . their reports must be read with a
jaundiced eye.
    Of course, most of them made the same observation in regard to
their own predecessors. So we are all in agreement. Everyone is a
liar but us.