Asa looked puzzled. He shook his head.
“He have a trunk or something that he wouldn't let anybody near?”
Asa seemed baffled by the direction my questions had taken. The others did too.
Only Silent knew about those papers. Silent, and maybe Whisper, who had
possessed them once herself.
“Asa? Anything he treated unusually?”
A light dawned in the little man's mind. “There was a crate. About the size of a
coffin. I remember making a joke about it. He said something cryptic about it
being somebody's ticket to the grave.”
I grinned. The papers still existed. “What did he do with that crate down
there?”
“I don't know.”
“Asa…”
“Honest. I only saw it a couple times on the ship. I never thought anything
about it.”
“What are you getting at, Croaker?” the Captain asked.
“I have a theory. Just based on what I know about Raven and Asa.”
Everyone frowned.
“Generally, what we know about Asa suggests he's a character Raven wouldn't take
up with on a bet. He's chicken. Unreliable. Too talkative. But Raven did take up
with him. Took him south and made him part of the team. Why? Maybe that don't
bother you guys, but it does me.”
“I don't follow you,” the Captain said. “Suppose Raven wanted to disappear so
people wouldn't even bother looking for him? He tried to vanish once, by coming
to Juniper. But we turned up. Looking for him, he thought. So what next? How
about he dies? In front of a witness. People don't hunt for dead men.”
Elmo interrupted. “You saying he staged his death and used Asa to report it so
nobody would come looking?“ ”I'm saying we ought to consider the possibility.”
The Captain's sole response was a thoughtful, “Uhm.” Goblin said, “But Asa did
see him die.“ ”Maybe. And maybe he only thinks he did.” We all looked at Asa. He
cowered. The Captain said, "Take him through his story again, One-Eye.
Step-by-step." For two hours One-Eye dragged the little man through again and
again. And we could not spot one flaw. Asa insisted he had seen Raven die,
devoured from within by something snake-like. And the more my theory sprung
leaks, the more I was sure it was valid.
“My case depends on Raven's character,” I insisted, when everybody ganged up on
me. “There's the crate, and there's Darling. Her and a damned expensive ship
that he, for godsakes, had built. He left a trail going out of here, and he knew
it. Why sail a few hundred miles and tie up to a dock when somebody is going to
come looking? Why leave Shed alive behind you, to tell about you being in on the
raid on the Catacombs? And there's no way in hell he'd leave Darling twisting in
the wind. Not for a minute. He would have had arrangements made for her. You
know that.” My arguments were beginning to sound a little strained to me, too. I
was in the position of a priest trying to sell religion. “But Asa says they just
left her hanging around some inn. I tell you, Raven had a plan. I bet, if you
went down there now, you'd find Darling gone without a trace. And if the ship is
still there, that crate wouldn't be aboard.”
“What is this with the crate?” One-Eye demanded. I ignored him.
“I think you have too much imagination, Croaker,” the Captain said. “But, on the
other hand, Raven is crafty enough to pull something like that. Soon as I can
spring you, figure on going down to check.”
“If Raven's crafty enough, how about the Taken being villainous enough to try
something against us?”
“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He faced One-Eye. “I want you and
Goblin to save the games. Understand? Too much clowning around and the Taken
will get curious. Croaker. Hang on to this Asa character. You'll want him to
show you where Raven died. I'm heading back to the outfit. Elmo. Come ride with
me part way.”
So. A little private business. Bet it had to do with my suspicions about the
Taken. After a while you get so used to some people you can almost read their
minds.
JUNIPER: THE ENCOUNTER
Things changed after the Captain's visit. The men became more alert. Elmo's
influence waxed while mine waned. A less wishy-washy, more inflexible tone
characterized the Company deputation. Every man became ready to move at an
instant's notice.
Communications improved dramatically while time available for sleep declined
painfully. None of us were ever out of touch more than two hours. And Elmo found
excuses to get everyone but himself out of Duretile, into places where the Taken
would have trouble finding them. Asa became my ward out on the black castle
slope.
Tension mounted. I felt like one of a flock of chickens poised to scatter the
moment a fox landed among us. I tried to bleed off my shakiness by updating the
Annals. I had let them slide sadly, seldom having done more than keep notes.
When the tension became too much for me, I walked uphill to stare at the black
castle.
It was an intentional risk-taking, like that of a child who crawls out a tree
branch overhanging a deadly fall. The closer I approached the castle, the more
narrow my concentration. At two hundred yards all other cares vanished. I felt
the dread of that place down to my ankle bones and the shallows of my soul. At
two hundred yards I felt what it meant to have the shadow of the Dominator
overhanging the world. I felt what the Lady felt when she considered her
husband's potential resurrection. Every emotion be- came edged with a hint of
despair. In a way, the black castle was more than a gateway "through which the
world's great old evil might reappear. It was a concretization of metaphorical
concepts, and a living symbol. It did things a great cathedral does. Like a
cathedral,it was far more than an edifice.
I could stare at its obsidian walls and grotesque decoration, recall Shed's
stories, and never avoid dipping into the cesspool of my own soul, never avoid
searching myself for the essential decency shelved through most of my adult
life. That castle was, if you like, a moral landmark. If you had a brain. If you
had any sensitivity at all.
There were times when One-Eye, Goblin, Elmo or another of the men accompanied
me. Not one of them went away untouched. They could stand there with me, talking
trivialities about its construction or, weightily, about its significance in the
Company's future, and all the while something would be happening inside.
I do not believe in evil absolute. I have recounted that philosophy in specific
elsewhere in the Annals, and it affects my every observation throughout my
tenure as Annalist. I believe in our side and theirs, with the good and evil
decided after the fact, by those who survive. Among men you seldom find the good
with one standard and the shadow with another. In our war with the Rebel, eight
and nine years ago, we served the side perceived as the shadow. Yet we saw far
more wickedness practiced by the adherents of the White Rose than by those of
the Lady. The villains of the piece were at least straightforward.
The world knows where it stands with the Lady. It is the Rebel whose ideals and
morals conflict with fact, becoming as changeable as the weather and as flexible
as a snake.
But I digress. The black castle has that effect. Makes you amble off into all
the byways and cul-de-sacs and false trails you have laid down during your life.
It makes you reassess. Makes you want to take a stand somewhere, even if on the
black side. Leaves you impatient with your own malleable morality.
I suspect that is why Juniper decided to pretend the place did not exist. It is
an absolute demanding absolutes in a world with a preference for relatives.
Darling was in my thoughts often while I stood below those black, glossy walls,
for she was the castle's antipode when I was up there. The white pole, and
absolute in opposition to what the black castle symbolized. I had not been much
in her presence since realizing what she was, but I could recall being morally
unnerved by her, too. I wondered how she would affect me now, after having had
years to grow.
From what Shed said, she did not reek the way the castle did. His main interest
in her had been hustling her upstairs. And Raven had not been driven into
puritanical channels. If anything, he had slipped farther into the
darkness-though for the highest of motives.
Possibly there was a message there. An observation upon means to ends. Here was
Raven who had acted with the pragmatic amorality of a prince of Hell, all so he
could save the child who represented the best hope of the world against the Lady
and the Dominator.
Oh, 'twould be marvelous if the world and its moral questions were like some
game board, with plain black players and white, and fixed rules, and nary a
shade of grey.
Even Asa and Shed could be made to feel the aura of the castle if you took them
up during the daytime and made them stand there looking at those fell walls.
Shed especially.
Shed had achieved a position where he could afford conscience and uncertainty. I
mean, he had none of the financial troubles that had plagued him earlier, and no
prospect of digging himself a hole with us watching him, so he could reflect
upon his place in things and become disgusted with himself. More than once I
took him up and watched as that deep spark of hidden decency flared, twisted him
upon a rack of inner torment.
I do not know how Elmo did it. Maybe he went without sleep for a few weeks. But
when the Company came down out of the Wolanders, he had an occupation plan
prepared. It was crude, to be sure, but better than any of us expected.
I was in the Buskin, at Shed's Iron Lily, when the first rumors raged down the
waterfront and stirred one of the most massive states of confusion I've ever
seen. Shed's wood-seller neighbor swept into the Lily, announced, “There's an
army coming down out of the pass! Foreigners! Thousands of them! They say. ...”
During the following hour a dozen patrons brought the news. Each time the army
was larger and its purpose more obscure. Nobody knew what the Company wanted.
Various witnesses assigned motives according to their own fears. Few came
anywhere near the mark.
Though the men were weary after so long a march, they spread through the city
quickly, the larger units guided by Elmo's men. Candy brought a reinforced
company into the Buskin. The worst slums are always the first site of rebellion,
we've found. There were few violent confrontations. Juniper's citizens were
taken by surprise and had no idea what to fight about anyway. Most just turned
out to watch.
I got myself back up to my squad. This was the time the Taken would do their
deed. If they planned anything.
Nothing happened. As I might have guessed, knowing that men from our forerunner
party were guiding the new arrivals. Indeed, nobody got in touch with me, up
there, for another two days. By then the city was pacified. Every key point was
in our hands. Every state building, every arsenal, every strong point, even the
Custodians' headquarters in the Enclosure. And life went on as usual. What
little trouble there was came when Rebel refugees tried to start an uprising,
accurately accusing the Duke of having brought the Lady to Juniper.
The people of Juniper didn't much care.
There were problems in the Buskin, though. Elmo wanted to straighten the slum
out. Some of the slum dwellers
didn't want to be straightened. He used Candy's company forcefully, cracking the
organizations of the crime bosses. I did not see the necessity, but wiser heads
feared the gangs could become the focus of future resistance. Anything with that
potential had to be squashed immediately. I think there was a hope the move
would win popular favor, too.
Elmo brought the Lieutenant to my hillside shack the third day after the
Company's arrival. “How goes it?” I asked. The Lieutenant had aged terribly
since I had seen him last. The passage westward had been grim.
“City's secure,” he said. “Stinking dump, isn't it?”
“Better believe. It's all snake's belly. What's up?”
Elmo said, “He needs a look at the target.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
The Lieutenant said, “The Limper says we're going to take this place. I don't
know how soon. Captain wants me to look it over.”
“Fun times tomorrow,” I muttered. “Ain't going to grab it on the sneak.” I
donned my coat. It was chilly up on the slopes. Elmo and One-Eye tagged along
when I took the Lieutenant up. He eyeballed the castle, deep in thought.
Finally, he said, “I don't like it. Not even a little bit.” He felt the cold
dread of the place.
“I got a man who's been inside,” I said. “But don't let the Taken know. He's
supposed to be dead.”
“What can he tell me?”
“Not much. He's only been there at night, in a court behind the gate.”
“Uhm. The Taken have a girl up at Duretile, too. I talked to her. She couldn't
tell me nothing. Only in there once, and was too scared to look around.”
“She's still alive?”
"Yeah. That's the one you caught? Yeah. She's alive. Lady's orders, apparently.
Nasty little witch. Let's hike around it."
We got onto the far slope, where the going was rough, to the accompaniment of
constant crabbing by One-Eye. The Lieutenant stated the obvious. “No getting at
it from here. Not without help from the Taken.”
“Going to take a big lot of help to get at it from any direction.”
He looked me a question.
I told him about Feather's troubles the night we took Shed and his barmaid.
“Anything since?”
“Nope. Not before, either. My man who's been inside never saw anything
extraordinary, either. But, dammit, the thing connects with the Barrowland. It's
got the Dominator behind it. You know it's not going to be a pushover. They know
there's trouble out here.”
One-Eye made a squeaking sound. “What?” the Lieutenant snapped.