I told him what I had told him before. "He was my boss. He taught me to read and write. He was a good man." I laughed weakly. "As good a man as belonging to the Black Company let him be."

Tobo stopped. He took a deep breath. He stared at a point in the dusk somewhere above my left shoulder. "Were you lovers?"

"No, Tobo. No. Friends. Almost. But definitely not that. He didn't know I was a woman till just before he left for the glittering plain. And I didn't know he knew till I read his Annals. Nobody knew. They thought I was a cute runt who just never got any bigger. I let them think that. I felt safer as one of the guys."

"Oh."

His tone was so neutral I had to wonder. "Why did you even ask?" Surely he had no reason to believe I had behaved differently before he knew me.

He shrugged. "I just wondered."

Something must have set him off. Possibly an "I wonder if... " from Goblin or One-Eye, say, while they were sampling some of their homemade elephant poison.

"I didn't ask. Did you put the buttons behind the shadow show?"

"That's what I was told to do."

A shadow show uses cutout puppets mounted on sticks. Some of their limbs are manipulated mechanically. A candle behind the puppets casts their shadows on a screen of white cloth. The puppeteer uses a variety of voices to tell his story as he maneuvers his puppets. If he is sufficiently entertaining, his audience will toss him a few coins.

This particular puppeteer had performed in the same place for more than a generation. He slept inside his stage setup. In so doing, he lived better than most of Taglios' floating population.

He was an informer. He was not beloved of the Black Company.

The story he told, as most were, was drawn from the myths. It sprang from the Khadi cycle. It involved a goddess with too many arms who kept devouring demons.