Juniper: Blowing Smoke

Goblin stood across the street, leaning against a building, staring intently. I frowned angrily. What the hell was he doing on the street? Bullock might recognize him and realize we were playing games.

Obviously, he wanted to tell me something.

Bullock was about to enter another of countless dives. I told him, “Got to see a man about a horse in the alley.”

“Yeah.” He went inside. I slipped into the alley and made water. Goblin joined me there. “What is it?” I asked.

“What it is, Croaker, is it’s him. Raven. Our Raven. Not only him, but Darling. She’s a barmaid in a place called the Iron Lily.”

“Holy shit,” I murmured.

“Raven lives there. They’re doing a show like they don’t know each other that well. But Raven looks out for her.”

“Damnit! It had to be, didn’t it? What do we do now?”

“Maybe bend over and kiss our asses good-bye. The bastard could be smack in the middle of the body-selling racket. Everything we found could add up that way.”

“How come you could find that when Bullock couldn’t?”

“I got resources Bullock doesn’t.”

I nodded. He did. Sometimes it’s handy, having a wizard around. Sometimes it’s not, if it’s one of those bitches up in Duretile. “Hurry it up,” I said. “He’ll wonder where I am.”

“Raven has his own wagon and team. Keeps it way across town. Usually only takes it out late at night.” I nodded. We’d already determined that body-runners worked the night shift. “But. …” he said, “and you’re going to love this but, Croaker. He took it out in the daytime, once, a while back. Coincidentally, the day somebody hit the Catacombs.”

“Oh boy.”

“I looked that wagon over, Croaker. There was blood in it. Fairly fresh. I date it about when that moneylender and his pals disappeared.”

“Oh boy. Shit. We’re in for it now. Better get. Going to have to think of a story for Bullock now.”

“Later.”

“Yeah.”

At that moment I was ready to give up. Despair overwhelmed me. That damned fool Raven—I knew exactly what he was doing. Getting together a fat bunch of running money by selling bodies and plundering graves. His conscience wouldn’t bother him. In his part of the world, such things were of much less consequence. And he had a cause: Darling.

I couldn’t get away from Bullock. I wanted desperately to run to Elmo, but I had to trudge hither and yon asking questions.

I looked up the northern slope, at the black castle, and thought of it as the fortress Raven had built.

I was going off the deep end. I told myself that. The evidence wasn’t yet conclusive … but it was. Enough. My employers did not wait on legal niceties or absolute evidence.

Elmo was rattled, too. “We could kill him. No risk him giving anything away then.”

“Really, Elmo!”

“I didn’t mean it. But you know I’d do it if the choice got narrow enough.”

“Yeah.” We all would. Or we’d try. Raven might not let us. He was the toughest son-of-a-bitch I’d ever known. “If you ask me, we ought to find him and just tell him to get the hell out of luniper.”

Elmo gave me a disgusted look. “Haven’t you been paying attention? Right now the only way in or out is the one we took. The harbor is frozen. The passes are snowed in. You think we could get Whisper to fly some civilian out for us?”

“Civilians. Goblin says Darling is still with him.”

Elmo looked thoughtful. I started to say something else. He waved a hand for silence. I waited. He finally asked, “What would he do if he saw you? If he’s been hanging around with the Crater bunch?”

I clicked my tongue. “Yeah. I didn’t think of that. Let me go check something.”

I hunted Bullock up. “You or the Duke got somebody inside the Crater bunch?”

He looked puzzled. “Maybe? Why?”

“Let’s have a sit-down with them. An idea. It might help us break our thing here.”

He looked at me a long moment. Maybe he was sharper than he pretended. “All right. Not that they would’ve learned much. The only reason they haven’t run our guys off is we don’t bother them. They just get together and talk about the old days. They don’t have any fight left.”

“Let’s give it a look anyway. Maybe they’re less innocent than they look.”

“Give me a half-hour.”

I did. And when that time was up, he and I sat down with two secret policemen. He and I took turns asking questions, each coming from his own private slant.

Neither knew Raven, at least not by that name. That was a relief. But there was something there, and Bullock sensed it immediately. He hung on till he had something to chew.

“I’m going to my boss,” I told him. “She’ll want to know about this.” I had come up with a diversion. It seemed it would suit Bullock.

He said, “I’ll take it up with Hargadon. Didn’t occur to me this might be foreigners. Political. That could be why the money didn’t show up. Maybe they’re selling bodies, too.”

“Rebellions do take money,” I observed.

We moved next evening, at Whisper’s insistence, over the objections of the Duke, but with the support of the chief Custodian. The Duke still did not want us seen. The Custodians didn’t give a damn. They just wanted to salvage their reputation.

Elmo came slinking through the evening shadows. “Ready here?” he whispered.

I glanced at the four men with me. “Ready.” Every Company man in Juniper was there, with the Duke’s secret police and a dozen of Bullock’s men. I’d thought his job silly, but even so had been astonished to discover how few men his office actually employed. All but one were there. The one was legitimately sick.

Elmo made a sound like a cow mooing, repeated three times.

The one-time Rebels were all together for their regular confab. I snickered, thinking of the surprise they were going to get. They thought they were safe from the Lady by fifteen hundred miles and seven years.

It took less than a minute. No one was injured. They just looked at us dumbly, arms hanging slack. Then one even recognized us, and groaned, “The Black Company. In Juniper.”

Then another: “It’s over. It’s the end. She’s really won.”

They didn’t seem to care much. Some, in fact, looked relieved.

We pulled it off so smoothly there was hardly any notice from the neighbors. The slickest raid I’d ever seen. We marched them up to Duretile, and Whisper and Feather went to work.

I just hoped one of them wouldn’t know too much.

I’d made a long bet, hoping Raven would not have told them who Darling was. If he had, I’d pulled the roof down instead of misdirecting attention.

I did not hear from Whisper, so I guessed I’d won.