"Why're you looking at me?"

"You're the one seems to know what's going on, Croaker."

"Okay. I guess. First we find out about Raven and Darling. Especially Darling. And we ought to catch Shed and Asa again, in case they know something useful. We got to move fast and get out of town before the empire closes in. Without upsetting the locals. We better have a sit-down with the Lieutenant. Get everything on the table for everybody, then decide exactly what we'll do."

Chapter Forty-One:.

MEADENVIL: THE SHIP.

Ours, apparently, was the last ship out of Juniper. We kept waiting for a later vessel to bring news. None came. The crew of our vessel did us no favor, either. They yammered all over town. We were buried by nosy locals, people concerned about relatives in Juniper, and the city government, concerned that a group of tough refugees might cause trouble. Candy and the Lieutenant dealt with all that. The struggle for survival devolved on the rest of us.

The three wizards, Otto, Kingpin and p.a.w.nbroker, and I stole through the shadowed Meadenvil waterfront district after midnight. There were strong police patrols to dodge. We evaded them with help from One-Eye, Goblin and Silent. Goblin was especially useful. He possessed a spell capable of putting men to sleep.

"There she is," Kingpin whispered, indicating Raven's ship. Earlier I'd tried to find out how her docking fees were being paid. I'd had no luck.

She was a fine, big ship with a look of newness the darkness could not conceal. Only the normal lights burned aboard her: bow, stern masthead, port and starboard, and one at the head of the gangway, where a single bored sailor stood watch.

"One-Eye?"

He shook his head. "Can't tell."

I polled the others. Neither Silent nor Goblin detected anything remarkable, either.

"Okay, Goblin. Do your stuff. That'll be the acid test, won't it?"

He nodded. If Darling was aboard, his spell would not affect the watch.

Now that everyone had accepted my suspicions about Raven being alive, I'd begun to question them. I could see no sense in his not having slipped away by now, taking his very expensive ship somewhere far away. Perhaps out to the islands.

Those islands intrigued me. I thought we might grab a ship and head out there. Had to take someone who knew the way, though. The islands were a long way out and there was no regular commerce. No way to get there by guess work.

"Okay," Goblin said. "He's out."

The sailor on the quarterdeck had slumped onto a handy stool. He had his arms folded on the rail and his forehead on his arms.

"No Darling," I said.

"No Darling."

"Anybody else around?"

"No."

"Let's go, then. Keep low, move fast, all that."

We crossed the pier and scampered up the gangway. The sailor stirred. Goblin touched him and he went out like the dead. Goblin hustled forward, then aft, to the men on the rat guards. He returned nodding. "Another eight men below, all asleep. I'll put them under. You go ahead."

We started with the biggest cabin, a.s.suming it would be the owner's. It was. It sat in the stern, where the master's cabin usually is, and was split into sections. I found things in one indicating that it had been occupied by Darling. On Raven's side we found soiled clothing discarded some time ago. There was enough dust to indicate that no one had visited the cabin for weeks.

We did not find the papers I sought.

We did find money. Quite a substantial amount. It was cunningly hidden, but One-Eye's sense for those things is infallible.

Out came a chest br.i.m.m.i.n.g with silver.

"I don't reckon Raven is going to need that if he's dead," One-Eye said. "And if he ain't-well, tough. His old buddies are in need."

The coins were odd. After studying them, I recognized what that oddness was. They were the same as the coins Shed had received at the black castle. "Sniff these things," I told One-Eye. "They're black castle. See if there's anything wrong with them."

"Nope. Good as gold." He chuckled.

"Uhm." I hadn't any scruples about lifting the money. Raven had obtained it by foul means. That put it up for grabs. It had no provenance, as they say in Juniper. "Gather round here. I got an idea." I backed up to the stern lights, where I could watch the dock through the gla.s.s window.

They crowded in on me and the chest. "What?" Goblin demanded.

"Why settle for the money? Why not take the whole d.a.m.ned ship? If Raven's dead, or even faking he's dead, what's he going to say about it? We could make it our headquarters."

Goblin liked the idea. So One-Eye didn't. The more so because ships had to do with water. "What about the crew?" he asked. "What about the harbormaster and his people? They'd get the law down on us."

"Maybe. But I think we can handle it. We move in and lock the crew up, there's n.o.body to complain. n.o.body complains, why should the harbormaster be interested?"

"The whole crew ain't aboard. Some's out on the town."

"We grab them when they come back. h.e.l.l, man, what better way to be ready to move out in a hurry? And what better place to wait for Raven to turn up?"

One-Eye gave up objecting. He is essentially lazy. Too, there was a gleam in his eye which said he was thinking ahead of me. "Better talk to the Lieutenant," he said. "He knows ships."

Goblin knew One-Eye well. "Don't look at me if you're thinking about going pirate. I've had all the adventure I want. I want to go home."

They got into it, and got loud about it, and had to be shut up.

"Let's worry about getting through the next few days," I growled. "What we do later we can worry about later. Look. We got clothes that belonged to Darling and Raven. Can you guys find them now?"

They put their heads together. After some discussion Goblin announced, "Silent thinks he can. Trouble is, he has to do it like a dog. Lock on the trail and follow around everywhere Raven went. Right up till he died. Or didn't. If he didn't, right on to where he is now."

"But that...h.e.l.l. You're spotting him a couple months lead."

"People spend a lot of time not moving around, Croaker. Silent would skip over that."

"Still sounds slow."

"Best you can get. Unless he comes to us. Which maybe he can't."

"All right. All right. What about the ship?"

"Ask the Lieutenant. Let's see if we can find your d.a.m.ned papers."

There were no papers. One-Eye was able to detect nothing hidden anywhere. If I wanted to trace the papers, I'd have to start with the crew. Someone had to help Raven take them off.

We left the ship. Goblin and p.a.w.nbroker found a good spot from which they could watch it. Silent and Otto took off on Raven's trail. The rest of us went back and wakened the Lieutenant. He thought taking the ship was a good idea.

He'd never liked Raven much. I think he was motivated by more than practical considerations.

Chapter Forty-Two:.

MEADENVIL: THE REFUGEE.

The rumors and incredible stories swept through Meadenvil rapidly. Shed heard about the ship from Juniper within hours of her arrival. He was stunned. The Black Company run out? Crushed by their masters? That made no sense. What the h.e.l.l was going on up there?

His mother. Sal. His friends. What had become of them? If half the stories were true, Juniper was a desolation. The battle with the black castle had consumed the city.

He wanted desperately to go find somebody, ask about his people. He fought the urge. He had to forget his homeland. Knowing that Croaker and his bunch, the whole thing could be a trick to smoke him out.

For a day he remained in hiding, in his rented room, debating, till he convinced himself that he should do nothing. If the Company was on the run, it would be leaving again. Soon. Its former masters would be looking for it.

Would the Taken come after him, too? No. They had no quarrel with him. They did not care about his crimes. Only the Custodians wanted him...He wondered about Bullock, rotting in prison, accused of Raven's murder. He did not understand that at all, but was too nervous to investigate. The answer was not significant in the equation of Marron Shed's survival.

After his day in isolation he decided to resume his quest for a place of business. He was looking for a partnership in a tavern, having decided to stick with what he knew.

It had to be a better place. One that would not lead him into financial difficulties the way the Lily had. Each time he recalled the Lily, he suffered moments of homesickness and nostalgia, of bottomless loneliness. He had been a loner all his life, but never alone. This exile was filled with pain.

He was walking a narrow, shadowed street, slogging uphill through mud left by a nighttime rain, when something in the corner of his eye sent chills to the deeps of his soul. He stopped and whirled so swiftly he knocked another pedestrian down. As he helped the man rise, apologizing profusely, he glared into the shadows of an alley.

"Conscience playing tricks on me, I guess," he murmured, after parting with his victim. But he knew better. He had seen it. Had heard his name called softly. He went to the mouth of the gap between buildings. But it had not waited for him.

A block later he laughed nervously, trying to convince himself it had been a trick of imagination after all. What the h.e.l.l would the castle creatures be doing in Meadenvil? They'd been wiped out...But the Company guys who had fled here didn't know that for sure, did they? They had run off before the fight was over. They just hoped their bosses had won, because the other side was even worse than theirs.

He was being silly. How could the creature have gotten here? No ship's master would sell pa.s.sage to a thing like that.

"Shed, you're worrying yourself silly about nothing." He entered a tavern called The Ruby Gla.s.s, operated by a man named Selkirk. Shed's landlord had recommended both.

Their discussions were fruitful. Shed agreed to return the following afternoon.

Shed was sharing a beer with his prospective partner. His proposition seemed beneficial, for Selkirk had satisfied himself as to his character and now was trying to sell him on the Ruby Gla.s.s. "Night business will pick up once the scare is over."

"Scare?"

"Yeah. Some people have disappeared around the neighborhood. Five or six in the last week. After dark. Not the kind usually grabbed by the press gangs. So people have been staying inside. We aren't getting the usual night traffic."

The temperature seemed to drop forty degrees. Shed sat rigid as a board, eyes vacant, the old fear sliding through him like the pa.s.sage of snakes. His fingers rose to the shape of the amulet hidden beneath his shirt.

"Hey, Marron, what's the matter?"

"That's how it started in Juniper," he said, unaware that he was speaking. "Only it was just the dead. But they wanted them living. If they could get them. I have to go."

"Shed? What the h.e.l.l is wrong?"

He came out of it momentarily. "Oh. Sorry, Selkirk. Yeah. We have a deal. But there's something I have to do first. Something I need to check on."

"What?"

"Nothing to do with you. With us. We're ready to go. I'll bring my stuff up tomorrow and we can get together with the people we need to close the deal legally. I just have something else to do right now."

He went out of the place practically running, not sure what he could do or where he could start, not even if he was sane in his a.s.sumption. But he was sure that what had happened in Juniper would reoccur in Meadenvil. And a lot faster if the creatures were doing their own collecting. He touched his amulet again, wondering how much protection it afforded. Was it puissant? Or just a promise? He hurried to his rooming house, where people were patient with his questions, knowing he was from out of town. He asked about Raven. The murder had been the talk of the town, what with a foreign policeman having been charged on the accusation of his own men. But n.o.body knew anything. There was no eyewitness to Raven's death except Asa. And Asa was in Juniper. Probably dead.

The Black Company would not have wanted him turning witness against them.

He shed an impulse to contact the survivors. They might want him out of the way, too.

He was on his own with this.

The place where Raven had died seemed a likely place to start. Who knew where that was? Asa. Asa was not available. Who else? How about Bullock?

His guts knotted. Bullock represented everything he feared back home. In a cage here, but still very much a symbol. Could he face the man? Would the man tell him anything?

Finding Bullock was no problem. The main prison did not move. Finding the courage to face him, even from beyond bars, was another matter. But this entire city lay under a shadow.

Torment racked Shed. Guilt cut him apart. He had done things that left him unable to endure himself. He had committed crimes for which there was no way of making rest.i.tution. Yet here was something...

"You're a fool, Marron Shed," he told himself. "Don't worry about it. Meadenvil can look out for itself. Just move on to another city."

But something deeper than cowardice told him he could not run. And not just from himself. A creature from the black castle had appeared in Meadenvil. Two men who had had dealings with the castle had come here. That could not be coincidence. Suppose he moved on? What was to keep the creatures from turning up again, wherever he went?

He had made a deal with a devil. On a gut level he sensed that the net in which he had been taken had to be unwoven strand by strand.

He moved the every-day, cowardly Shed to a throne far behind his eyes and brought forward the Shed who had hunted with Krage and eventually killed his tormentor.

He did not recall the c.o.c.k-and-bull story he used to get past the wards, but did bulls.h.i.t his way in to see Bullock.

The Inquisitor had lost none of his spirit. He came to the bars spitting and cursing and promising Shed an excruciating death.

Shed countered, "You ain't never going to punish n.o.body but maybe a c.o.c.kroach in there. Shut up and listen. Forget who you were and remember where you are. I'm the only hope you got of getting out." Shed was amazed. Could he have been half as firm without the intervening bars?

Bullock's face went blank. "Go ahead. Talk."

"I don't know how much you hear in here. Probably nothing. I'll run it down. After you left Juniper, the rest of the Black Company showed up. They took over. Their Lady and what-not came to town. They attacked the black castle. I don't know how that turned out. What word there is makes it sound like the city was wiped out. During the fighting some of the Company guys grabbed a ship and got out on account of their masters were going to turn on them. Why I don't know."