Midway Between:
The Rescuers

We had a standoff of sorts. We could not get at Goblin and the Daughter of Night when they were most vulnerable. Their thugs did not know that we had lost our most potent weapons, at least for a time. My ravens, who had returned conveniently only when it was time for them to become Tobo’s mouthpieces, informed me that Howler and Tobo had survived but were hurt. They were hidden in the woods a few dozen yards from where the Daughter of Night and Goblin, barely recovered enough to keep breathing, were hunkered down.

I tried to let Sleepy know quietly but Sahra was too alert. In moments she worked herself into a state that even Murgen could not soften. “You’ve got to do something!” she shrieked.

“The Daughter of Night will hear you,” Murgen growled.

“You’ve got to get him out of there!”

“Be quiet!”

I agreed. Somebody had to do something. That somebody might be me. But the only useful help I had was my two raven assistants. They alternately reported Tobo unconscious or quietly delirious. They could not get reliable orders from him. They refused to let me use them to transmit orders to the other Unknown Shadows. Those were gathering in numbers such that it was impossible not to catch glimpses of them when you turned or moved suddenly.

“We can’t get close to him,” Murgen told Sahra. He shook her. She was not listening. If she listened she would have to hear uncomfortable truths.

Shukrat stepped forward. She told us, “I can bring him out.”

Sahra shut up. Even Sleepy stopped pulling the remains of our army back together and offered her attention for a moment.

“I’ll need my own clothing back,” Shukrat told us. Her accent was slight. “The enchantment won’t touch me if I’m protected by my own clothing.” Her use of Taglian had become conversational.

Sahra’s hysteria faded immediately. I will never understand that woman. I would have bet on it getting worse.

The rest of us exchanged glances. We could not survive without Tobo. Not in this world. Not with our enemies. We had to get him out of there before the Daughter of Night discovered the opportunity that fortune had thrown down at her feet.

Shukrat said, “You’ve got to trust me sometime. This might be a good time to take a chance.”

Maybe she was not as dumb as she put on.

Tobo trusted her.

I looked over her head to where Sleepy had resumed expostulating angrily with Iqbal Singh and an officer in badly dented Hsien style armor. She had heard. She waved a hand and nodded to indicate that the decision was up to me. I knew the Voroshk kids better than she did.

“All right,” I told Shukrat. “But I go with you.”

“How?”

“I’ll put on Gromovol’s . . . ”

She was more amused than alarmed, though she was troubled. She was very worried about Tobo.

Because I have this obsessional thing about loyalties and brotherhood and keeping faith with the past I sometimes have trouble believing that other people respond as flexibly to their situation as they do. I could not have made my peace with such a dramatic shift in circumstances as easily as Shukrat had.

I said, “That won’t work, eh?”

“No. The clothing is created specially for each of us. Individually.” She had only that slight accent, no greater than my own, but she did not yet possess a large vocabulary. Her speech was simpler than it might have been. “Though it can be adjusted by a tailor of sufficient skill. The skill takes twenty years to learn, though.”

“All right. Where’s that stuff stashed? In Tobo’s wagon?” The kid had so much junk he needed his own wagon and teamsters to haul it around. The wagon contained things as diverse as marbles and miracles. He had been indulged all his life and would not leave anything behind. “Let’s go.”

I hoped he had not left any protective spells where they would keep us from getting at the tools we needed to save his scruffy young butt.