The Black Company

“Where?”

“This isn’t my part of the world.” He seemed calm enough now, so I dismounted. He eyed me warily, then relaxed. I said, “I pretty much know what I came to find out. Silent?”

Silent nodded, continued his conversation with Darling.

I took the money bag from my bedroll, tossed it to Raven. “You left your share of the Roses take.” I brought the spare horses up. “You could travel faster if you were riding.”

Raven struggled with himself, trying to say thank you, unable to get through the barriers he had built around the man inside. “Guess we could head toward...”

“I don’t want to know. I’ve met the Eye twice already. She’s got a thing about getting her side set down for posterity. Not that she wants to look good, just that she wants it down true. She knows how history rewrites itself. She doesn’t want that to happen to her. And I’m the boy she’s picked to do the writing.”

“Get out, Croaker. Come with us. You and Silent. Come with us.”

It had been a long, lonely night. I had thought about it a lot. “Can’t, Raven. The Captain has to stay where he’s at, even if he don’t like it. The Company has to stay. I’m Company. I’m too old to run away from home. We’ll fight the same fight, you and me, but I’ll do my share staying with the family.”

“Come on, Croaker. A bunch of mercenary cutthroats...”

“Whoa! Hold it.” My voice hardened more than I wanted. He stopped. I said, “Remember that night in Lords, before we went after Whisper? When I read from the A

He did not respond for several seconds. “Yes. That you’d made me feel what it meant to be a member of the Black Company. All right. Maybe I don’t understand it, but I did feel it.”

“Thanks.” I took another package from my bedroll. This one was for Darling. “You talk to Silent a while, eh? I got a birthday present here.”

He looked at me a moment, then nodded. I turned so my tears would not be so obvious. And after I said my goodbyes to the girl, and cherished her delight in my feeble present, I went to the roadside and had myself a brief, quiet cry. Silent and Raven pretended blindness.

I would miss Darling. And I would spend the rest of my days frightened for her. She was precious, perfect, always happy. The thing in that village was behind her, But ahead lay the most terrible enemy imaginable. None of us wanted that for her.

I rose, erased the evidence of tears, took Raven aside. “I don’t know your plans. I don’t want to know. But just in case. When the Lady and I caught up with Soulcatcher the other day, he had a whole bale of those papers we dug up in Whisper’s camp. He never turned them over to her. She doesn’t know they exist.” I told him where they could be found. “I’ll ride out that way in a couple weeks. If they’re still there, I’ll see what I can find in them myself.”

He looked at me with a cool, expressionless face. He was thinking my death warrant was signed if I came under the Eye again. But he did not say it. “Thanks, Croaker. If I’m ever up that way, I’ll check into it.”

“Yeah. You ready to go, Silent?”

Silent nodded.

“Darling, come here.” I squeezed her in a long, tight hug. “You be good for Raven.” I unfastened the amulet One-Eye had given me, fixed it on her wrist, told Raven, “That’ll let her know if any unfriendly Taken comes around. Don’t ask me how, but it works. Luck.”

“Yeah.” He stood there looking at us as we mounted, still baffled. He raised a hand tentatively, dropped it.

I told Silent, “Let’s go home.” And we rode away.

Neither of us looked back.

It was an incident that never happened. After all, hadn’t Raven and his orphan died at the gates of Charm?

Back to the Company. Back to business. Back to the parade of years. Back to these A

Thirty-seven years before the comet returns. The vision has to be false. I’ll never survive that long. Will I?