Shadows Linger

“Of those papers. Of the girl.”

“Girl? What girl?”

“Don’t come the i

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  Amusement again, but a hard sort. A malignant sort. “Keep your A

We went down into Chimney, tired men three-quarters dead. We found the Lieutenant and the ship and-Lo! -Darling, who was living aboard with the Company. The Lieutenant had taken employment with the private constabulary of a mercantile factor. He added our names to the roll as soon as we recuperated. We did not find Raven. Raven had evaded reconciliation or confrontation with his old comrades by cheating his way out. Fate is a fickle bitch who dotes on irony. After all he had been through, all he had done, all he had survived, the very morning the Lieutenant arrived he slipped on a wet marble diving platform in a public bath, split his head open, fell into the pool, and drowned.

I refused to believe it. It could not be true, after what he had pulled up north. I dug around. I poked. I pried. But there were scores of people who had seen the body. The most reliable witness of all, Darling, was absolutely convinced. In the end, I had to give in. This time no one would hear my doubts. The Lieutenant himself claimed to have seen and recognized the corpse as the flames of a pyre had risen about it the morning of his arrival. It was there he had encountered Darling and had brought her back into the keeping of the Black Company.

What could I say? If Darling believed, it must be true. Raven could never lie to her. Nineteen days after our arrival in Chimney, there was another arrival, which explained the Lady’s nebulous remark about interviewing only those she could find when she returned to Juniper. Elmo rode into town with seventy men, many brethren from the old days, whom he had spirited out of Juniper while all the Taken were absent but Journey, and Journey was in such a  state of confusion due to conflicting orders from the Lady that he let slip the true state of affairs in Meadenvil. He  followed me down the coast.

So, in two years, the Black Company had crossed the breadth of the world, from the nethermost east to the farthest west, close to four thousand miles, and in the process had come near destruction, and had found a new purpose, a new life. We were now the champions of the White Rose, a bedraggled joke of a nucleus for the force legend destined to bring the Lady down.

I did not believe a word of that. But Raven had told Darling what she was, and she, at least, was ready to play her part.

We could but try.

I hoisted a glass of wine in the master’s cabin. Elmo, Silent, One-Eye, Goblin, the Lieutenant and Darling raised theirs. Above, men prepared to cast off. Elmo had brought the Company treasure chest. We had no need to work. I proposed my toast. “To the twenty-nine years.”  Twenty-nine years. According to legend it would be that long before the Great Comet returned and fortune would smile upon the White Rose.

They responded, “The twenty-nine years.”

I thought I detected the faintest hint of gold in the comer of my eye, felt the faintest hint of amusement.