“Is that deliberate?” Bucket asked.

Someone muttered, “Now ask a stupid question.”

“What do you think?” One-Eye snapped. “This is the last straw. If that bigheaded, self-important dick shows his face around here...”

“Save it, One-Eye.” This was hard to accept. But I could see Mogaba being capable of channeling the enemy our way so as to resolve questions of precedence inside the Company. His morality would allow him to picture it as a brilliant solution to several problems. “Instead of standing around bitching about it how about we do some thinking? Best way to fix Mogaba would be to shove his plan up his ass, no grease.”

While the others tried to manage that difficult exercise — thinking — I questioned Sleepy more closely. Unfortunately, he could not add much but the general routes the southerners were using to push deeper into the city.

You couldn’t blame the Shadowlanders. Most soldiers of most times jump at the chance to go where resistance is weakest.

Maybe we could use that to pull some into some sort of killing pocket.

I even got a chuckle out of my predicament. “I bet Croaker would have seen this coming a month ago, as paranoid as he was about supposed friends and allies.”

A nearby crow squawked agreement.

I should have considered the possibility. I really should have. Farfetched is not the same as impossible. I should have had something planned.

One-Eye became as serious as ever he gets. “You know what this means? If the kid is right?”

“The Company is at war with itself?”

The little guy waved that off like it was just another annoying gnat of reality. “Suppose Mogaba is giving them a golden bridge so they can get rid of us for him? They still have to get through the pilgrims to reach us.”

I didn’t need to think long to see what he meant. “That asshole. He going to make them kill Shadowlanders in self-defense. He’s going to use them up killing his enemies for him.”

“Maybe he’s a bigger snake than anybody thought,” Bucket growled. “It’s for sure he’s changed a lot since Gea-Xle.”

“This ain’t right,” I muttered, although swords would enter the fight on our side whether or not they wanted to. Other than a few small skirmishes with lost invaders during past attacks the worst that had happened to the Nyueng Bao was that their pilgrimage had gotten them trapped in the middle of somebody else’s war. From the first clash of steel they had worked hard to maintain their neutrality.

Shadowspinner has his spies in the city. He would know the Nyueng Bao had no interest in antagonizing him.

“What do you think they’ll do?” Goblin asked. “The Nyueng Bao, I mean.” His voice sounded odd. How much beer had he put away?

“How the hell would I know? Depends on how they see things. If they think Mogaba dragged them into it on purpose it might get unhealthy to belong to the Company. Mogaba could see this as a chance to squish us into a crack between a rock and a hard place. I’d better go see their Speaker and let him know what’s happening. Bucket. Make up a twenty man patrol and go looking for southerners. See if Sleepy is right. One-Eye, go with him. Spot for him and cover our guys. Sparkle, you watch things here. Send Sleepy after me if it gets too much to handle.”