All men are born condemned, so the wise say. All suckle the breast of Death.
All bow before that Silent Monarch. That Lord in Shadow lifts a finger. A feather flutters to the earth. There is no reason in His song. The good go young. The wicked prosper. He is king of the Chaos Lords, His breath stills all souls.
We found a city dedicated to His worship, long ago, but so old now it has lost that dedication. The dark majesty of his godhead has frayed, been forgotten by all but those who stand in his shadow. But Juniper faced a more immediate fear, a specter from yesteryear leaking into the present upon a height overlooking the city. And because of that the Black Company went there, to that strange city far beyond the bounds of the Lady's empire. . . . But this is not the beginning. In the beginning we were far away. Only two old friends and a handful of men we would meet later stood nose-to-nose with the shadow.
The children's heads popped from the weeds like groundhog heads. They watched the approaching soldiers. The boy whispered, "Must be a thousand of them." The column stretched back and back. The dust it raised drifted up the face of a far hill. The creak and jangle of harness grew ever louder.
The day was hot. The children were sweating. Their thoughts lingered on a nearby brook and a dip in a pool they had found there. But they had been set to watch the road. Rumor said the Lady meant to break the renascent Rebel movement in Tally province.
And here her soldiers came. Closer now. Grim, hard-looking men. Veterans. Easily old enough to have helped create the disaster which had befallen the Rebel six years ago, claiming, among a quarter million men, their father.
"It's them!" the boy gasped. Fear and awe filled his voice. Grudging admiration edged it. "That's the Black Company."
The girl was no student of the enemy. "How do you know?"
The boy indicated a bear of a man on a big roan. He had silvery hair. His bearing said he was accustomed to command. "That's the one they call the Captain. The little black one beside him would be the wizard called One-Eye. See his hat?
That's how you tell. The ones behind them must be Elmo and the Lieutenant."
"Are any of the Taken with them?" The girl rose higher, for a better look. "Where are the other famous ones?" She was the younger. The boy, at ten, already considered himself a soldier of the White Rose. He yanked his sister down. "Stupid! Want them to see you?" "So what if they do?" The boy sneered. She had believed their uncle Neat when he had said that the enemy would not harm children. The boy hated his uncle. The man had no guts.
Nobody pledged to the White Rose had any guts. They just played at fighting the Lady. The most daring thing they did was ambush the occasional courier. At least the enemy had courage. They had seen what they had been sent to see. He touched the girl's wrist. "Let's go." They scurried through the weeds, toward the wooded creek bank.
A shadow lay upon their path. They looked up and went pale. Three horsemen stared down at them. The boy gaped. Nobody could have slipped up unheard. "Goblin!" The small, frog-faced man in the middle grinned. "At your service, laddy-boy."
The boy was terrified, but his mind remained functional. He shouted, "Run!" If one of them could escape. . . .
Goblin made a circular gesture. Pale pink fire tangled his fingers. He made a throwing motion. The boy fell, fighting invisible bonds like a fly caught in a spider's web. His sister whimpered a dozen feet away.
"Pick them up," Goblin told his companions. "They should tell an interesting tale."
The Lily stands on Floral Lane in the heart of the Buskin, Juniper's worst slum, where the taste of death floats on every tongue and men value life less than they do an hour of warmth or a decent meal. Its front sags against its neighbor to the right, clinging for support like one of its own drunken patrons. Its rear cants in the opposite direction. Its bare wood siding sports leprous patches of grey rot. Its windows are boarded with scraps and chinked with rags. Its roof boasts gaps through which the wind howls and bites when it blows off the Wolander Mountains. There, even on a summer's day, the glaciers twinkle like distant veins of silver.
Sea winds are little better. They bring a chill damp which gnaws the bones and sends ice floes scampering across the harbor.
The shaggy arms of the Wolanders reach seaward, flanking the River Port, forming cupped hands which hold the city and harbor. The city straddles the river, creeping up the heights on both sides.
Wealth rises in Juniper, scrambling up and away from the river. The people of the Buskin, when they lift their eyes from their misery, see the homes of the wealthy above, noses in the air, watching one another across the valley.
Higher still, crowning the ridges, are two castles. On the southern height stands Duretile, hereditary bastion of the Dukes of Juniper. Duretile is in scandalous disrepair. Most every structure in Juniper is.
Below Duretile lies the devotional heart of Juniper, the Enclosure, beneath which lie the Catacombs. There half a hundred generations rest, awaiting the Day of Passage, guarded by the Custodians of the Dead. On the north ridge stands an incomplete fortress called, simply, the black castle. Its architecture is alien. Grotesque monsters leer from its battlements. Serpents writhe in frozen agonies upon its walls. There are no joints in the obsidian-like material. And the place is growing.
The people of Juniper ignore the castle's existence, its growth. They do not want to know what is happening up there. Seldom do they have time to pause in their struggle for survival to lift their eyes that high.
I drew a seven, spread, discarded a trey, and stared at a lone ace. To my left, Pawnbroker muttered, "That did it. He's down to a rock."
I eyed him curiously. "What makes you say that?"
He drew, cursed, discarded. "You get a face like a corpse when you've got it cold, Croaker. Even your eyes."
Candy drew, cursed, discarded a five. "He's right, Croaker. You get so unreadable you're readable. Come on, Otto."
Otto stared at his hand, then at the pile, as though he could conjure victory from the jaws of defeat. He drew. "Shit." He discarded his draw, a royal card. I showed them my ace and raked in my winnings.
Candy stared over my shoulder while Otto gathered the cards. His eyes were hard and cold. "What?" I asked.
"Our host is working up his courage. Looking for a way to get out and warn them."
I turned. So did the others. One by one the tavern-keeper and his customers dropped their gazes and shrank into themselves. All but the tall, dark man seated alone in shadows near the fireplace. He winked and lifted a mug, as if in salute. I scowled. His response was a smile.
Otto dealt.
"One hundred ninety-three," I said.
Candy frowned. "Damn you, Croaker," he said, without emotion. I had been counting hands. They were perfect ticks of the clocks of our lives as brothers of the Black Company. I had played over ten thousand hands since the battle at Charm. Only the gods themselves know how many I played before I started keeping track.
"Think they got wind of us?" Pawnbroker asked. He was edgy. Waiting does that.
"I don't see how." Candy arrayed his hand with exaggerated care. A dead giveaway. He had something hot. I reexamined mine. Twenty-one. Probably get burned, but the best way to stop him. . . . I went down. "Twenty-one."
Otto sputtered. "You son-of-a-bitch." He laid down a hand strong for going low. But it added to twenty-two because of one royal card. Candy had three nines, an ace and a trey. Grinning, I raked it in again.
"You win this one, we're going to check your sleeves," Pawnbroker grumbled. I collected the cards and started shuffling.
The back door hinges squealed. Everyone froze, stared at the kitchen door. Men stirred beyond it.
"Madle! Where the hell are you?"
The tavern-keeper looked at Candy, agonized. Candy cued him. The taverner called, "Out here, Neat."
Candy whispered, "Keep playing." I started dealing.
A man of forty came from the kitchen. Several others followed. All wore dappled green. They had bows across their backs. Neat said, "They must've got the kids. I don't know how, but. . . ."He saw something in Madle's eyes. "What's the matter?"
We had Madle sufficiently intimidated. He did not give us away.
Staring at my cards, I drew my spring tube. My companions did likewise. Pawnbroker discarded the card he had drawn, a deuce. He usually tries to go low. His play betrayed his nervousness.
Candy snagged the discard and spread an ace-deuce-trey run. He discarded an eight.
One of Neat's companions whined, "I told you we shouldn't send kids." It sounded like breathing life into an old argument.
"I don't need any I-told-you-so," Neat growled. "Madle, I spread the word for a meeting. We'll have to scatter the outfit."
"We don't know nothing for sure, Neat," another green man said. "You know kids."
"You're fooling yourself. The Lady's hounds are on our trail."
The whiner said, "I told you we shouldn't hit those. ..." He fell silent, realizing, a moment too late, that strangers were present, that the regulars all looked ghastly.
Neat went for his sword.
There were nine of them, if you counted Madle and some customers who got involved. Candy overturned the card table. We tripped the catches on our spring tubes. Four poisoned darts snapped across the common room. We drew swords.
It lasted only seconds.
"Everybody all right?" Candy asked.
"Got a scratch," Otto said. I checked it. Nothing to worry about.
"Back behind the bar, friend," Candy told Madle, whom he had spared. "The rest of you, get this place straightened up. Pawnbroker, watch them. They even think about getting out of line, kill them."
"What do I do with the bodies?"
"Throw them down the well."
I righted the table again, sat down, unfolded a sheet of paper. Sketched upon it was the chain of command of the insurgents in Tally. I blacked out NEAT. It stood at mid-level. "Madle," I said. "Come here."
The barkeep approached with the eagerness of a dog to a whipping.
"Take it easy. You'll get through this all right. If you cooperate. Tell me who those men were."
He hemmed and hawed. Predictably.
"Just names," I said. He looked at the paper, frowning. He could not read. "Madle? Be a tight place to swim, down a well with a bunch of bodies."
He gulped, surveyed the room. I glanced at the man near the fireplace. He hadn't moved during the encounter. Even now he watched with apparent indifference.
Madle named names.
Some were on my list and some were not. Those that were not I assumed to be spear carriers. Tally had been well and reliably scouted.
The last corpse went out. I gave Madle a small gold piece. He goggled. His customers regarded him with unfriendly eyes. I grinned. "For services rendered."
Madle blanched, stared at the coin. It was a kiss of death. His patrons would think he had helped set the ambush. "Gotcha," I whispered. "Want to get out of this alive?"
He looked at me in fear and hatred. "Who the hell are you guys?" he demanded in a harsh whisper.
"The Black Company, Madle. The Black Company."
I don't know how he managed, but he went even whiter.
The day was cold and grey and damp, still, misty, and sullen. Conversation in the Iron Lily consisted of surly monosyllables uttered before a puny fire.
Then the drizzle came, drawing the curtains of the world in tight. Brown and grey shapes hunched dispiritedly along the grubby, muddy street. It was a day ripped full-grown from the womb of despair. Inside the Lily, Marron Shed looked up from his mug-wiping. Keeping the dust off, he called it. Nobody was using his shoddy stoneware because nobody was buying his cheap, sour wine. Nobody could afford it.
The Lily stood on the south side of Floral Lane. Shed's counter faced the doorway, twenty feet deep into the shadows of the common room. A herd of tiny tables, each with its brood of rickety stools, presented a perilous maze for the customer coming out of sunlight. A half-dozen roughly cut support pillars formed additional obstacles. The ceiling beams were too low for a tall man. The boards of the floor were cracked and warped and creaky, and anything spilled ran downhill.
The walls were decorated with old-time odds and ends and curios left by customers which had no meaning for anyone entering today. Marron Shed was too lazy to dust them or take them down.
The common room Led around the end of his counter, past the fireplace, near which the best tables stood. Beyond the fireplace, in the deepest shadows, a yard from the kitchen door, lay the base of the stair to the rooming floors.
Into that darksome labyrinth came a small, weasely man. He carried a bundle of wood scraps. "Shed? Can I?"
"Hell. Why not, Asa? We'll all benefit." The fire had dwindled to a bank of grey ash.
Asa scuttled to the fireplace. The group there parted surlily. Asa settled beside Shed's mother. Old June was blind. She could not tell who he was. He placed his bundle before him and started stirring the coals.
"Nothing down to the docks today?" Shed asked.
Asa shook his head. "Nothing came in. Nothing going out. They only had five jobs. Unloading wagons. People were fighting over them."
Shed nodded. Asa was no fighter. Asa was not fond of honest labor, either. "Darling, one draft for Asa." Shed gestured as he spoke. His serving girl picked up the battered mug and took it to the fire.
Shed did not like the little man. He was a sneak, a thief, a liar, a mooch, the sort who would sell his sister for a couple of copper gersh. He was a whiner and complainer and coward. But he had become a project for Shed, who could have used a little charity himself. Asa was one of the homeless Shed let sleep on the common room floor whenever they brought wood for the fire. Letting the homeless have the floor did not put money into the coin box, but it did assure some warmth for June's arthritic bones.
Finding free wood in Juniper in winter was harder than finding work. Shed was amused by Asa's determination to avoid honest employment.
The fire's crackle killed the stillness. Shed put his grimy rag aside. He stood behind his mother, hands to the heat. His fingernails began aching. He hadn't realized how cold he was.
It was going to be a long, cold winter. "Asa, do you have a regular wood source?" Shed could not afford fuel. Nowadays firewood was barged down the Port from far upstream. It was expensive. In his youth. . . .
"No." Asa stared into the flames. Piney smells spread through the Lily. Shed worried about his chimney. Another pine scrap winter, and he hadn't had the chimney swept. A chimney fire could destroy him.
Things had to turn around soon. He was over the edge, in debt to his ears. He was desperate.
"Shed."
He looked to his tables, to his only real paying customer.
"Raven?"
"Refill, if you please."
Shed looked for Darling. She had disappeared. He cursed softly. No point yelling. The girl was deaf, needed signs to communicate. An asset, he had thought when Raven had suggested he hire her. Countless secrets were whispered in the Lily. He had thought more whisperers might come if they could speak without fear of being overheard.
Shed bobbed his head, captured Raven's mug. He disliked Raven, partially because Raven was successful at Asa's game. Raven had no visible means of support, yet always had money. Another reason was because Raven was younger, tougher and healthier than the run of the Lily's customers. He was an anomaly. The Lily was on the downhill end of the Buskin, close to the waterfront. It drew all the drunkards, the worn-out whores, the dopers, the derelicts and human flotsam who eddied into that last backwater before the darkness overhauled them. Shed sometimes agonized, fearing his precious Lily was but a final way station.
Raven did not belong. He could afford better. Shed wished he dared throw the man out. Raven made his skin crawl, sitting at his corner table, dead eyes hammering iron spikes of suspicion into anyone who entered the tavern, cleaning his nails endlessly with a knife honed razor-sharp, speaking a few cold, toneless words whenever anyone took a notion to drag Darling upstairs. . . . That baffled Shed. Though there was no obvious connection, Raven protected the girl as though she were his virgin daughter. What the hell was a tavern slut for, anyway? Shed shuddered, pushed it out of mind. He needed Raven. Needed every paying guest he could get. He was surviving on prayers.
He delivered the wine. Raven dropped three coins into his palm. One was a silver leva. "Sir?"
"Get some decent firewood in here, Shed. If I wanted to freeze, I'd stay outside."
"Yes, sir!" Shed went to the door, peeked into the street. Latham's wood yard was just a block away.
The drizzle had become an icy rain. The mucky lane was crusting. "Going to snow before dark," he informed no one in particular.
"In or out," Raven growled. "Don't waste what warmth there is."
Shed slid outside. He hoped he could reach Latham's before the cold began to ache.
Shapes loomed out of the icefall. One was a giant. Both hunched forward, rags around their necks to prevent ice from sliding down their backs.
Shed charged back into the Lily. "I'll go out the back way." He signed, "Darling, I'm going out. You haven't seen me since this morning."
"Krage?" the girl signed.
"Krage," Shed admitted. He dashed into the kitchen, snagged his ragged coat off its hook, wriggled into it. He fumbled the door latch twice before he got it loose. An evil grin with three teeth absent greeted him as he leaned into the cold. Foul breath assaulted his nostrils. A filthy finger gouged his chest. "Going somewhere, Shed?"
"Hi, Red. Just going to see Latham about firewood."
"No, you're not." The finger pushed. Shed fell back till he was in the common room.
Sweating, he asked, "Cup of wine?"
"That's neighborly of you, Shed. Make it three."
"Three?" Shed's voice squeaked.
"Don't tell me you didn't know Krage is on his way."
"I didn't," Shed lied.
Red's snaggle-toothed smirk said he knew Shed was lying.
You try your damnedest, but something always goes wrong. That's life. If you're smart, you plan for it.
Somehow, somebody got away from Madle's, along about the twenty-fifth Rebel who stumbled into our web, when it really looked like Neat had done us a big favor, summoning the local hierarchy to a conference. Looking backward, it is hard to fix blame. We all did our jobs. But there are limits to how alert you stay under extended stress. The man who disappeared probably spent hours plotting his break. We did not notice his absence for a long time.
Candy figured it out. He threw his cards in at the tail of a hand, said, "We're minus a body, troops. One of those pig farmers. The little guy who looked like a pig."
I could see the table from the corner of my eye. I grunted. "You're right. Damn. Should have taken a head count after each trip to the well."
The table was behind Pawnbroker. He did not turn around. He waited a hand, then ambled to Madle's counter and bought a crock of beer. While his rambling distracted the locals, I made rapid signs with my fingers, in deaf-speech. "Better be ready for a raid. They know who we are. I shot my mouth off."
The Rebel would want us bad. The Black Company has earned a widespread reputation as a successful eradicator of the Rebel pestilence, wherever it appears. Though we are not as vicious as reputed, news of our coming strikes terror wherever we go. The Rebel often goes to ground, abandoning his operations, where we appear.
Yet here were four of us, separated from our companions, evidently unaware that we were at risk. They would try. The question at hand was how hard.
We did have cards up our sleeves. We never play fair if we can avoid it. The Company philosophy is to maximize effectiveness while minimizing risk.
The tall, dark man rose, left his shadow, stalked toward the stair to the sleeping rooms. Candy snapped, "Watch him, Otto." Otto hurried after him, looking feeble in the man's wake. The locals watched, wondering.
Pawnbroker used signs to ask, "What now?"
"We wait," Candy said aloud, and with signs added, "Do what we were sent to do."
"Not much fun, being live bait," Pawnbroker signed back. He studied the stair nervously. "Set Otto up with a hand," he suggested.
I looked at Candy. He nodded. "Why not? Give him about seventeen." Otto would go down first time around every time if he had less than twenty. It was a good percentage bet.
I quick figured the cards in my head, and grinned. I could give him seventeen and have enough low cards left to give each of us a hand that would burn him. "Give me those cards."
I hurried through the deck, building hands. "There." Nobody had higher than a five. But Otto's hand had higher cards than the others.
Candy grinned. "Yeah."
Otto did not come back. Pawnbroker said, "I'm going up to check."
"All right," Candy replied. He went and got himself a beer. I eyed the locals. They were getting ideas. I stared at one and shook my head.
Pawnbroker and Otto returned a minute later, preceded by the dark man, who returned to his shadow. Pawnbroker and Otto looked relieved. They settled down to play.
Otto asked, "Who dealt?"
"Candy did," I said. "Your go."
He went down. "Seventeen."
"Heh-heh-heh," I replied. "Burned you. Fifteen."
And Pawnbroker said, "Got you both. Fourteen."
And Candy, "Fourteen. You're hurting, Otto."
He just sat there, numbed, for several seconds. Then he caught on. "You bastards! You stacked it! You don't think I'm going to pay off. ..."
"Settle down. Joke, son," Candy said.
"Joke. It was your deal anyhow."
The cards went around and the darkness came. No more insurgents appeared. The locals grew ever more restless. Some worried about their families, about being late. As everywhere else, most Tallylanders are concerned only with their own lives. They don't care whether the White Rose or the Lady is ascendant.
The minority of Rebel sympathizers worried about when the blow might fall. They were afraid of getting caught in the crossfire.
We pretended ignorance of the situation.
Candy signed, "Which ones are dangerous?"
We conferred, selected three men who might become trouble. Candy had Otto bind them to their chairs. It dawned on the locals that we knew what to expect, that we were prepared. Not looking forward, but prepared. The raiders waited till midnight. They were more cautious than the Rebel we encountered ordinarily. Maybe our reputation was too strong. . . .
They burst in in a rush. We discharged our spring tubes and began swinging swords, retreating to a corner away from the fireplace. The tall man watched indifferently.
There were a lot of Rebels. Far more than we had expected. They kept storming inside, crowding up, getting into one another's ways, climbing over the corpses of their comrades. "Some trap," I gasped. "Must be a hundred of them."
"Yeah," Candy said. "It don't look good." He kicked at a man's groin, cut him when he covered up.
The place was wall-to-wall insurgents, and from the noise there were a hell of a lot more outside. Somebody didn't want us getting away.
Well, that was the plan.
My nostrils flared. There was an odor in the air, just the faintest off-key touch, subtle under the stink of fear and sweat. "Cover up!" I yelled, and whipped a wad of damp wool from my belt pouch. It stunk worse than a squashed skunk. My companions followed suit.
Somewhere a man screamed. Then another. Voices rose in a hellish chorus. Our enemies surged around, baffled, panicky. Faces twisted in agony. Men fell down in writhing heaps, clawing their noses and throats. I was careful to keep my face in the wool.
The tall, thin man came out of his shadows. Calmly, he began despatching guerrillas with a fourteen-inch, silvery blade. He spared those customers we had not bound to their chairs.
He signed, "It's safe to breathe now."
"Watch the door," Candy told me. He knew I had an aversion to this kind of slaughter. "Otto, you take the kitchen. Me and Pawnbroker will help Silent."
The Rebel outside tried to get us by speeding arrows through the doorway. He had no luck. Then he tried firing the place. Madle suffered paroxysms of rage. Silent, one of the three wizards of the Company, who had been sent into Tally weeks earlier, used his powers to squelch the fire. Angrily, the Rebel prepared for a siege.
"Must have brought every man in the province," I said.
Candy shrugged. He and Pawnbroker were piling corpses into defensive barricades. "They must have set up a base camp near here." Our intelligence about the Tally guerrillas was extensive. The Lady prepares well before she sends us in. But we hadn't been told to expect such strength available at short notice.
Despite our successes, I was scared. There was a big mob outside, and it sounded like more were arriving regularly. Silent, as an ace in the hole, hadn't much more value.
"You send your bird?" I demanded, assuming that had been the reason for his trip upstairs. He nodded. That provided some relief. But not much.
The tenor changed. They were quieter outside. More arrows zipped through the doorway. It had been ripped off its hinges in the first rush. The bodies heaped in it would not slow the Rebel long. "They're going to come," I told Candy.
"All right." He joined Otto in the kitchen. Pawnbroker joined me. Silent, looking mean and deadly, stationed himself in the center of the common room. A roar went up outside. "Here they come!"
We held the main rush, with Silent's help, but others began to batter the window shutters. Then Candy and Otto had to concede the kitchen. Candy killed an overzealous attacker and spun away long enough to bellow, "Where the hell are they, Silent?"
Silent shrugged. He seemed almost indifferent to the proximity of death. He hurled a spell at a man being boosted through a window.
Trumpets brayed in the night. "Ha!" I shouted. "They're coming!" The last gate of the trap had closed.
One question remained. Would the Company close in before our attackers finished us?
More windows gave. Silent could not be everywhere. "To the stair!" Candy shouted. "Fall back to the stair." We raced for it. Silent called up a noxious fog. It was not the deadly thing he had used before. He could not do that again, now. He hadn't time to prepare.
The stair was easily held. Two men, with Silent behind them, could hold it forever.
The Rebel saw that. He began setting fires. This time Silent could not extinguish all the flames.
The front door opened. Two men shoved into the Lily, stamped their feet and beat the ice off themselves. Shed scuttled over to help. The bigger man pushed him away. The smaller crossed the room, kicked Asa away from the fire, squatted with his hands extended. Shed's guests stared into the flames, seeing and hearing nothing.
Except Raven, Shed noted. Raven looked interested, and not particularly disturbed.
Shed sweated. Krage finally turned around. "You didn't stop by yesterday, Shed. I missed you."
"I couldn't, Krage. I didn't have anything to bring you. Look in my coin box. You know I'll pay you. I always do. I just need a little time."
"You were late last week, Shed. I was patient. I know you're having problems. But you were late the week before that, too. And the week before that. You're making me look bad. I know you mean it when you say you'll pay me. But what will people think? Eh? Maybe they start thinking it's all right for them to be late, too. Maybe they start thinking they don't have to pay at all."
"Krage, I can't. Look in my box. As soon as business picks up. . . ."
Krage gestured. Red reached behind the counter. "Business is bad everywhere, Shed. I got problems, too. I got expenses. I can't meet mine if you don't meet yours." He ambled around the common room, examining the furnishings. Shed could read his mind. He wanted the Lily. Wanted Shed in a hole so deep he would have to give the place up.
Red handed Shed's box to Krage. Krage made a face. "Business really is bad." He gestured. The big man, Count, seized Shed's elbows from behind. Shed nearly fainted. Krage grinned wickedly. "Pat him down, Red. See if he's holding out." He emptied the coin box. "On account, Shed."
Red found the silver leva Raven had given Shed.
Krage shook his head. "Shed, Shed, you lied to me." Count pressed his elbows together painfully. "That isn't mine," Shed protested. "That belongs to Raven. He wanted me to buy wood. That's why I was headed for Latham's." Krage eyed him. Shed knew Krage knew he was telling the truth. He didn't have the guts to lie. Shed was scared.
Krage might bust him up just so he would give up the Lily to buy his life. What then? He would be without a gersh, and in the street with an old woman to look after.
Shed's mother cursed Krage. Everyone ignored her, including Shed. She was harmless. Darling stood in the kitchen doorway, frozen, one hand fisted before her mouth, eyes full of appeal. She watched Raven more than Krage and Shed.
"What do you want me to break, Krage?" Red asked. Shed cringed. Red enjoyed his work. "You shouldn't hold out on us, Shed. You shouldn't lie to Krage." He unleashed a vicious punch. Shed gagged, tried to fall forward. Count held him upright. Red hit him again.
A soft, cold voice said, "He told the truth. I sent him for wood."
Krage and Red shifted formation. Count did not relax his grip. "Who are you?" Krage demanded.
"Raven. Let him be."
Krage exchanged glances with Red. Red said, "I think maybe you'd better not talk that way to Mister Krage."
Raven's gaze rose. Red's shoulders tightened defensively. Then, aware of his audience, he stepped over and threw an open-palmed punch. Raven plucked his hand out of the air, twisted. Red went to his knees, grinding his teeth on a whimper. Raven said, "That was stupid."
Astonished, Krage replied, "Smart is as smart does, mister. Let him go while you're healthy."
Raven smiled for the first time in Shed's recollection. "That wasn't smart." There was an audible pop. Red screamed.
"Count!" Krage snapped.
Count hurled Shed aside. He was twice Red's size, quick, strong as a mountain, and barely as smart. Nobody survived Count.
A wicked nine-inch dagger appeared in Raven's hand. Count stopped so violently his feet tangled. He fell forward, rolling off the edge of Raven's table.
"Oh, shit," Shed groaned. Somebody was going to get killed. Krage wouldn't put up with this. It would be bad for business.
But as Count rose, Krage said, "Count, help Red." His tone was conversational.
Count obediently turned to Red, who had dragged himself away to nurse his wrist.
"Maybe we had a little misunderstanding here," Krage said. "I'll put it plain, Shed. You've got one week to pay me. The big and the nut both."
"But. . . ."
"No buts, Shed. That's according to terms. Kill somebody. Rob somebody. Sell this dump. But get the money." The or-elses did not have to be explained.
I'll be all right, Shed promised himself. He won't hurt me. I'm too good a customer.
How the hell would he come up with it? He couldn't sell out. Not with winter closing in. The old woman couldn't survive in the street.
Cold air gusted into the Lily as Krage paused at the door. He glared at Raven. Raven did not bother looking back.
"Some wine here, Shed," Raven said. "I seem to have spilled mine."
Shed hustled despite his pain. He could not help fawning. "I thank you, Raven, but you shouldn't have interfered. He'll kill you for that."
Raven shrugged. "Go to the wood-seller before somebody else tries to take my money."
Shed looked at the door. He did not want to go outside. They might be waiting. But then he looked at Raven again. The man was cleaning his nails with that wicked knife. "Right away."
It was snowing now. The street was treacherous. Only a thin white mask covered the mud.
Shed could not help wondering why Raven had intervened. To protect his money? Reasonable. . . . Only, reasonable men stayed quiet around Krage. He would cut your throat if you looked at him wrong.
Raven was new around here. Maybe he did not know about Krage.
He would learn the hard way. His life wasn't worth two gersh anymore.
Raven seemed well-heeled. He wouldn't carry his whole fortune around with him, would he? Maybe he kept part hidden in his room. Maybe enough to pay off Krage. Maybe he could set Raven up. Krage would appreciate that.
"Let's see your money," Latham said when he asked for wood. Shed produced Raven's silver leva. "Ha! Who died this time?"
Shed reddened. An old prostitute had died at the Lily last winter. Shed had rifled her belongings before summoning the Custodians. His mother had lived warm for the rest of the winter. The whole Buskin knew because he had made the mistake of telling Asa.
By custom, the Custodians took the personal possessions of the newly dead. Those and donations supported them and the Catacombs.
"Nobody died. A guest sent me."
"Ha! The day you have a guest who can afford generosity. ..." Latham shrugged. "But what do I care? The coin is good. I don't need its provenance. Grab some wood. You're headed that way."
Shed staggered back to the Lily, face burning, ribs aching. Latham hadn't bothered to hide his contempt.
Back home, with the fire taking hold of the good oak, Shed drew two mugs of wine and sat down opposite Raven. "On the house."
Raven stared momentarily, took a sip, maneuvered the mug to an exact spot upon the tabletop. "What do you want?''
"To thank you again."
"There's nothing to thank me for."
"To warn you, then. You didn't take Krage serious enough."
Latham tramped in with an armload of firewood, grumbling because he couldn't get his wagon out. He would be back and forth for a long time.
"Go away, Shed." And, as Shed rose, face hot, Raven snapped, "Wait. You think you owe me? Then someday I'll ask a favor. You do it. Right?"
"Sure, Raven. Anything. Just name it."
"Go sit by the fire, Shed."
Shed squeezed in between Asa and his mother, joining their surly silence. That Raven really was creepy.
The man in question was engaged in a lively exchange of signs with the deaf serving girl.