by Glen Cook
“Me, too. I’m out of debt. I can refurbish the Lily, set my mother up in her own place, and have plenty to make it next winter, no matter what business is like. I’m going to forget that castle exists.”
“I don’t think so, Shed. You want to get away from it, better come with me. It’ll always be calling when you want some fast money.”
“I couldn’t leave. I have to look out for my mother.”
“AH right. I warned you.” Then Raven asked, “What about Asa? He’s going to be a problem. The Custodians are going to keep looking till they find the people who raided the Catacombs. He’s the weak link.”
“I can handle Asa.”
“I hope so, Shed. I hope so.”
Krage’s disappearance was the talk of the Buskin. Shed played a baffled role, claiming he knew nothing, despite rumors to the contrary. His story held up. He was Shed the coward. The one man who knew differently did not contradict him.
The hard part was facing his mother. Old June said nothing, but her blind stare was accusing. She made him feel evil, an infidel, and disowned in the secret reaches of her mind. The gap had become unbridgable.
Chapter Sixteen: JUNIPER: NASTY SURPRISE
Bullock looked me up next time he wanted to go downhill. Maybe he just wanted company. He had no local friends.
“What’s up?” I asked when he barged into my tiny office cum dispensary.
“Get your coat. Buskin time again.”
His eagerness excited me for no reason other than that I was bored with Duretile. I pitied my comrades. They hadn’t yet had a chance to get out. The place was a drudge.
So away we went, and going down the hill, past the Enclosure, I asked, “Why all the excitement?”
He replied, “Not really excitement. Not even anything to do with us, probably. Remember that sweetheart of a moneylender?”
“In the bandages?”
“Yeah. Krage. He’s vanished. Him and half of his boys. Seems he took a crack at the guy who cut him. And hasn’t been seen since.”
I frowned. That did not seem remarkable. Gangsters are always disappearing, then popping up again.
“Over there.” Bullock pointed to some brush along the Enclosure wall. “That’s where our men got inside.” He indicated a stand of trees across the way. “Parked their wagons there. We’ve got a witness who saw those. Filled with wood, he says. Come on.
I’ll show you.” He pushed into the brush, dropped to hands and knees. I followed, grumbling because I was getting wet. The north wind did nothing to improve matters.
The interior of the Enclosure was seedier than its exterior. Bullock showed me several dozen bundles of wood found in the brush near the breach.
“Looks like they were moving a lot.”
“I figure they needed a lot to cover the bodies. Cut it up there.” He indicated trees above us, back toward Duretile. The castle stood limned against streamers of cloud, a grey stone rockpile one earth tremor short of collapse.
I examined the bundles. Bullock’s associates had dragged them out and stacked them, which may not have been smart detective work. Looked to me like they had been cut and bundled over a period of weeks. Some ends were more weathered than others. I mentioned that to Bullock.
“I noticed. Way I figure, somebody was getting wood regular. They found the Catacombs by accident. That’s when they got greedy.”
“Uhm.” I considered the woodpile. “Figure they were selling it?”
“No. That we know. Nobody has been selling Enclosure wood. Probably a family or a group of neighbors using the wood themselves.”
“You check on wagon rentals?”
“How stupid do you think people are? Rent a wagon for a raid on the Catacombs?’’
I shrugged. “We’re counting on one of them being stupid, aren’t we?”
He admitted, “You’re right. It should be checked. But it’s hard when I’m the only one who has guts enough to do legwork in the Buskin. I’m hoping we get lucky somewhere else. If I have to, I’ll cover it. When there’s nothing more pressing.”
“I see the place where they got in?” I asked.
He wanted to tell me no. Instead, he said, “It’s a fair hike. Use up an hour. I’d rather go sniff around this Krage thing while it’s hot.”
I shrugged. “Some other time, then.”
We got down into Krage’s territory and started rambling.
Bullock still had a few contacts left from his boyhood. Coaxed properly, with a few gersh, they would talk. I was not allowed to sit in. I spent the time sipping beer in a tavern where they alternately fawned over my money and acted like I had the plague. When asked, I did not deny being an Inquisitor.
Bullock joined me. “Maybe we don’t have anything after all. There’s all kinds of rumors. One says his own men did him in. One says it was his competition. He’s a little pushy with his neighbors.” He accepted a mug of wine on the house, something I hadn’t seen him do before. I put it down to preoccupation.
“There’s one angle we can check. He was obsessed about getting some foreigner who made a fool of him in public. There’s some say the same foreigner was the man who cut him up.” He took out a list and began to peruse it. “Not going to be a lot there for us, I expect. The night Krage disappeared there was a lot of whoop and holler. Not a single eyewitness, of course.” He grinned. “Ear-witnesses say it was a running battle. That makes me favor the palace revolution theory.”
“What have you got there?”
“A list of people who were maybe getting wood out of the Enclosure. Some might have seen each other. I was thinking I might find something interesting if I compared their stories.” He waved for more wine. This time he paid, and covered the first mug, too, though the house would have forgiven him payment. I got the impression Juniper’s people were used to giving Custodians anything they wanted. Bullock simply had a sense of ethics, at least where the people of the Buskin were concerned. He would not make their lives harder than they already were.
I could not help liking him on some levels.
“You’re not going to pursue the Krage thing, then?”
“Oh, yeah. Of course. The bodies are missing. But that’s not unusual. Probably turn up across the river in a couple days, if they’re dead. Or screaming for blood if they’re not.” He tapped a name on his list. “This guy hangs around the same place.
Maybe I’ll talk to this guy
Raven while I’m there.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “Who?”
He looked at me strangely. I forced myself to relax, to look casual. His eyebrows dropped. “Guy named Raven.
The foreigner who was supposed to be feuding with Krage.
Hangs out the same place as this one guy on my wood-gatherer’s list. Maybe I’ll ask him a few questions.” “Raven. Unusual name. What do you know about him?” “Just that he’s a foreigner and supposed to be bad news.
Been around a couple years. Typical drifter. Hangs out with the Crater crowd.”
The Crater crowd were the Rebel refugees who had established themselves in Juniper.
“Do me a favor? It’s a long shot, but this guy could be the ghost I was talking about the other day. Stand off a ways. Pretend you never heard the name. But get me a physical description. And find out if he’s got anybody with him.”
Bullock frowned. He didn’t like it. “Is it important?”
“I don’t know. It could be.”
“All right.”
“Keep the whole thing under your hat if you can.”
“This guy means something to you, eh?”
“If he’s the guy I knew, that I thought was dead, yeah. Him and me got business.”
He smiled. “Personal?”
I nodded. I was feeling my way now. This was touchy. If this was my Raven, I had to go careful. I didn’t dare let him get caught in the coils of our operation. He knew too damned much. He could get half the Company officers and noncoms put to the question. And made dead.
/>
I decided Bullock would respond best if I kept it mysterious, with Raven an old enemy by implication. Somebody I would do most anything to jump in the dark, but not somebody important in any other way.
“I got you,” he said. He looked at me somewhat differently, as though glad to discover I wasn’t different after all.
Hell, I’m not. But I like to pretend I am, most of the time. I told him, “I’m going back to Duretile. Got to talk to a couple buddies.”
“Can you find your way?”
“I can. Let me know what you find out.”
“Will do.”
We separated. I went up the hill as fast as forty-year-old legs would carry me.
I got Elmo and Goblin off where nobody could overhear us. “We maybe got a problem, friends.”
“Like what?” Goblin wanted to know. He had been aching for me to talk from the minute I rounded him up. I guess I looked a little ragged around the fringes.
“There’s a guy named Raven operating down in the Buskin. The other day, when I was down there with Bullock, I thought I saw a guy who looked like our Raven from a distance, but I shrugged it off then.”
They quick got as nervous as me. “You sure it’s him?” Elmo asked.
“No. Not yet. I got the hell out of there the minute I heard the name Raven. Let Bullock think he’s an old enemy I want to stick a knife in. He’s going to ask around for me while he’s doing his own business. Get me a description. See if Darling is with him. I’m probably off in the wild blue yonder, but I wanted you guys to know. In case.”
“What if it is him?” Elmo said. “What do we do then?”
“I don’t know. It could be big trouble. If Whisper had some reason to get interested, like because he hangs around with the Rebel refugees here.... Well, you know.”
Goblin mused, “Seems Silent said Raven was going to run so far nobody would ever find him again.”
“So maybe he thought he’d run far enough. This is damned near the end of the world.” Which, in part, was why I was so nervous. This was the kind of place I could picture Raven having gone to ground. As far from the Lady as you could get without learning to walk on water.
“Seems to me,” Elmo said, “we ought to make sure before we panic. Then decide what to do. This might be the time to put our guys into the Buskin.”
“That’s what I was thinking. I already got a plan in front of Whisper, for something else. Let’s tell her we’re going with that, and have the guys watch for Raven.”
“Who?” Elmo asked. “Raven would recognize anybody who knows him.”
“Not true. Use guys who joined up at Charm. Send Pawnbroker just to make sure. He’s not likely to remember the new guys. There were so many of them. If you want somebody reliable to run the thing, and back them up, use Goblin. Park him where he can stay out of sight but keep his hands on the reins.”
“What do you think, Goblin?” he asked. Goblin smiled nervously. “Give me something to do, anyway. I’m going out of my skull up here. These people are weird.”
Elmo chuckled. “Missing One-Eye?”
“Almost.”
“All right,” I said. “You’ll need a guide. That’ll have to be me. I don’t want Bullock getting his nose any deeper into this. But they think I’m one of his men down there. You’ll have to follow me from a distance. And try not to look like what you are. Don’t make it hard on yourselves.”
Elmo stretched. “I’ll get Kingpin and Pawnbroker now. You take them down and show them a place. One can come back for the others. Go ahead and scope it out with Goblin.” He left.
And so it went. Goblin and the six soldiers took rooms not far from the moneylender Krage’s headquarters. Up on the hill I pretended it was all for the cause. I waited.
Chapter Seventeen: JUNIPER: TRAVEL PLANS
Shed caught Asa trying to sneak out. “What the hell is this?”
“I need to get out, Shed. I’m going crazy up there.”
“Yeah? You want to know something, Asa? The Inquisitors are looking for you. Bullock himself was in here the other day, and he asked for you by name.” Shed was stretching the facts slightly. Bullock’s interest had not been intense. But it had to have something to do with the Catacombs. Bullock and his sidekick were in the Buskin almost every day, asking, asking, asking questions. He didn’t need Asa meeting Bullock face-to-face. Asa would either panic or crumble under questioning. Either way, Marron Shed would get into the heat damned fast. “Asa, if they catch you, we’re all dead.”
“Why?”
“You were spending those old coins. They’re looking for somebody with a lot of old money.”
“Damn that Raven!”
“What?”
“He gave me the passage money. As my share. I’m rich. And now you tell me I can’t spend it without getting grabbed.”
“He probably figured you’d hold off till the excitement died down. He’d be gone by then.”
“Gone?”
“He’s leaving as soon as the harbor opens.”
“Where’s he headed?”
“South somewhere. He won’t talk about it.”
“So what do I do? Keep scrambling for a living? Damn it, Shed, that’s not fair.”
“Look on the bright side, Asa. Nobody wants to kill you anymore.”
“So? Now Bullock is after me. Maybe I could have made a deal with Krage. Bullock don’t deal. It ain’t fair! All my life....”
Shed did not listen. He sang the same song all too often.
“What can I do, Shed?”
“I don’t know. Stay holed up, I guess.” He had a glimmer of a notion. “How about you get out of Juniper for a while?”
“Yeah. You might have something. That money would spend just fine somewhere else, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never traveled.”
“Get Raven up here when he shows up.”
“Asa....”
“Hey, Shed, come on. It won’t hurt to ask. All he can do is say no.”
“Whatever you want, Asa. I hate to see you go.”
“Sure you do, Shed. Sure you do.” As Shed ducked out the doorway, Asa called, “Wait a second.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh.... It’s kind of hard. I never did thank you.”
“Thank me for what?”
“You saved my life. You brought me back, didn’t you?”
Shed shrugged, nodded. “No big thing, Asa.”
“Sure it is, Shed. And I’ll remember it. I owe you the big one.”
Shed went downstairs before he could be embarrassed further. He discovered that Raven had returned. The man was in one of his animated discussions with Darling. Arguing again. They had to be lovers. Damn it all. He waited till Raven noticed him watching. “Asa wants to see you. I think he wants to go with you when you leave.” Raven chuckled. “That would solve your problem, wouldn’t it?”
Shed did not deny that he would be more comfortable with Asa out of Juniper. “What do you think?”
“Not a bad idea, actually. Asa isn’t much, but I need men. I have a hold on him. And him being gone would help cover my backtrail.”
“Take him with my blessing.”
Raven started upstairs. Shed said, “Wait.” He didn’t know how to approach this, because he didn’t know if it was important. But he’d better tell Raven. “Bullock’s been hanging around the Buskin a lot lately. Him and a sidekick.”
“So?”
“So maybe he’s closer than we think. For one thing, he was in here looking for Asa. For another, he’s been asking about you.”
Raven’s face went empty. “About me? How so?”
“On the quiet. My cousin Wally’s wife Sal? Her brother is married to one of Bullock’s cousins. Anyway, Bullock still knows people down here, from when before he got on the Custodians. He helps them out sometimes, so some of them tell him things he wants to know....”
“I get the picture. Get to the point.”
“Bullock was asking abou
t you. Who you are, where you come from, who your friends are-things like that.”
“Why?”
Shed could only shrug.
“All right. Thanks. I’ll check it out.”
Chapter Eighteen: JUNIPER: BLOWING SMOKE
Goblin stood across the street, leaning against a building, staring intently. I frowned angrily. What the hell was he doing on the street? Bullock might recognize him and realize we were playing games.
Obviously, he wanted to tell me something.
Bullock was about to enter another of countless dives. I told him, “Got to see a man about a horse in the alley.”
“Yeah.” He went inside. I slipped into the alley and made water. Goblin joined me there. “What is it?” I asked.
“What it is, Croaker, is it’s him. Raven. Our Raven. Not only him, but Darling. She’s a barmaid in a place called the Iron Lily.”
“Holy shit,” I murmured.
“Raven lives there. They’re doing a show like they don’t know each other that well. But Raven looks out for her.”
“Damnit! It had to be, didn’t it? What do we do now?”
“Maybe bend over and kiss our asses good-bye. The bastard could be smack in the middle of the body-selling racket. Everything we found could add up that way.”
“How come you could find that when Bullock couldn’t?”
“I got resources Bullock doesn’t.”
I nodded. He did. Sometimes it’s handy, having a wizard around. Sometimes it’s not, if it’s one of those bitches up in Duretile. “Hurry it up,” I said. “He’ll wonder where I am.”
“Raven has his own wagon and team. Keeps it way across town. Usually only takes it out late at night.” I nodded. We’d already determined that body-runners worked the night shift. “But....” he said, “and you’re going to love this but, Croaker. He took it out in the daytime, once, a while back. Coincidentally, the day somebody hit the Catacombs.”
“Oh boy.”
“I looked that wagon over, Croaker. There was blood in it. Fairly fresh. I date it about when that moneylender and his pals disappeared.”
“Oh boy. Shit. We’re in for it now. Better get. Going to have to think of a story for Bullock now.”