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.
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. 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?”