Shadows Linger

“Time is up now. Isn’t that what you said?”

“I guess,” I admitted. “All right. I’ll scout the castle. But you find out what went on down there last night. Especially around that placed called the Iron Lily. It keeps turning up, just like that guy Asa.”

All the while we talked, Elmo was changing. Now he looked like a sailor down on his luck, too old to ship, but still tough enough for dirty work. He would fit right in down in the Buskin. I told him so.

“Yeah. Let’s get moving. And don’t plan on getting much sleep till the Captain gets here.”

We looked at one another, not saying what lay in the backs of our minds. If the Taken did not want us in touch with our brethren, what might they do when the Company hove in sight, coming out of the Wolanders?

Up close, the black castle was both intriguing and unsettling. I took a horse over, circled the place several times, even flipped a cheerful wave at the one movement I detected atop its glassy ramparts.

There was some difficult ground behind it-steep, rocky, overgrown with scraggly, thorny brush which had a sagey odor. Nobody lugging a corpse would reach the fortress from that direction. The ground was better along the ridgeline to east and west, but even there an approach was improbable. Men of the sort who sold corpses would do things the easy way. That meant using the road which ran from the Port River waterfront, through the scatter of merchant class houses on the middle slopes, and just kept on to the castle gate. Someone had followed that course often, for wheel ruts ran from the end of the road to the castle.

My problem was, there was no place a squad could lie in wait without being seen from the castle wall. It took me till dusk to finalize my plan.

I found an abandoned house a ways down the slope and a little upriver. I would conceal my squad there and post sentries down the road, in the populated area. They could run a message to the rest of us if they saw anything suspicious. We could hustle up and across the slope to intercept potential body-sellers. Wagons would be slow enough to allow us the time needed.

Old Croaker is a brilliant strategist. Yes, sir. I had my troops in place and everything set by midnight. And had two false alarms before breakfast. I learned the embarrassing way that there was legitimate night traffic past my sentry post.

I sat in the old house with my team, alternately playing tonk and worrying, and on rare occasions napping. And wondering a lot about what was happening down in the Buskin and across the valley in Duretile.

I prayed Elmo could keep his fingers on all the strings.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Juniper

Lisa

Shed spent an entire day lying in his room, staring at the ceiling, hating himself. He had sunk as low as a man could. There was no deed too foul for him anymore, and nothing more he could do to blacken his soul. A million-leva passage fee could not buy him aboard on Passage Day. His name had to be written in the Black Book with those of the greatest villains.

“Mr. Shed?” Lisa said from the doorway next morning, as he was contemplating another day of ceiling study and self-pity. “Mr. Shed?”

“Yeah?”

“Bo and Lana are here.”

Bo and Lana, with a daughter, were his mother’s servants. “What do they want?”

“Their accounts settled for the month, I expect.”

“Oh.” He got up.

Lisa stopped him at the head of the stair. “I was right about Sue, wasn’t I?”

“You were.”

“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have said anything if we could have afforded it.”

“We? What do you mean, we? Oh, hell. Never mind. Forget about it. I don’t want to hear about it anymore.”

“Whatever you say. But I’m going to hold you to your promise.”

“What promise?”

“To let me manage the Lily.”

“Oh. All right.” At that moment he did not care. He collected the monthly accounting from the servants. He had chosen them well. They were not cheating him. He suggested they deserved a small bonus.

He returned upstairs for the money. Lisa watched him go, perplexed. He realized his mistake too late. Now she wondered why he had money today when he’d had none yesterday. He located his dirty clothing, emptied his pockets onto his bed. And gasped.

“Oh, damn! Damn,” he muttered. “What the hell am I going to do with three gold pieces?”

There was silver, too, and even a fistful of copper, but... It was a gyp! A fortune he could not spend. Juniper law made it illegal for commoners to hold minted gold. Even incoming foreigners had to exchange theirs for silver-though foreign silver was as welcome as local. Lucky, too, for the black castle mintage was a decidedly odd coinage, though in the standard weights.

How could he get rid of the gold? Sell it to some ship captain headed south? That was the usual procedure. He slipped it into his most secret hiding place, with the amulet from the black castle. A useless fortune. He assessed the remainder.

Twenty-eight pieces of silver, plus several leva in copper. Enough to take care of his mother and Sal. Way short of enough to pry Gilbert off his back. “Still be in the damned money trap,” he whined.

He recalled Sue’s jewelry, smiled nastily, muttered, “I’ll do it.” He pocketed everything, returned to the ground floor, paid his mother’s servants, told Lisa, “I’m going out for a while.”

First he made sure Wally’s family was cared for, then ambled down toward Gilbert’s place. No one seemed to be around. Gilbert was not like Krage, in that he felt he needed an army on hand, but he did have his bone-breakers. They were all away. But someone was in Gilbert’s office because lamplight illuminated the curtains. He smiled thoughtfully, then hustled back to the Lily. He went to a table back in the shadows, near where Raven used to sit. A couple of foreign sailors were seated there. Tough merchandise if he’d ever seen it. They’d been around for some time.They said they and their friends, who came and went, had missed their ship. They were waiting for another. Shed could not recall having heard the name of their home port.

“You men like to pick up some easy money?” he asked.

“Who doesn’t?” one responded.

And the other, “What you got in mind?”

“I have a little problem. I’ve got to do some business with a man. He’s liable to get vicious.”

“Want some back-up, eh?”

Shed nodded.

The other sailor looked at him narrowly. “Who is he?”

“Name’s Gilbert. A moneylender. You heard of him?”

“Yeah.”

“I was just past his place. Don’t look like there’s anybody there but him.”

The men exchanged glances. The taller said, “Tell you what. Let me go get a friend of ours.”

“I can’t afford a whole army.”

“Hey, no problem. You two work out what you’d pay two of us; he’ll come along free. Just feel more comfortable having him with us.”

“Tough?”

Both men gri

“Then get him.”

One man left. Shed dickered with the other. Lisa watched from across the room, eyes narrow and hard. Shed decided she was getting too much into his business too fast.

The third man was a frog-faced character barely five feet tall. Shed frowned at him. His fetcher reminded, “He’s tough. Remember?”

“Yeah? All right. Let’s go.” He felt a hundred percent better with three men accompanying him, though he had no real assurance they would help if Gilbert started something.

There were a couple of thugs in the front room when Shed arrived. He told them: “I want to see Gilbert.”

“Suppose he don’t want to see you?” It was standard tough-guy game-playing. Shed did not know how to respond. One of his companions saved him the worry.

“He don’t got much choice, does he? Unless that fat’s all muscle in disguise.” He produced a knife, began cleaning his nails. The deed was so reminiscent of Raven that Shed was startled.