Shadows Linger Read online

  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.

  Chapter Six: TALLY MIX-UP

  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. T
hey 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.

  Chapter Seven: JUNIPER: KRAGE

  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 k
nees, 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.”