Juniper: More Trouble

Otto rolled in out of the night. “Hey! Croaker! We got a customer.” I folded my hand but did not throw the cards in. “You sure?” I was damned tired of false alarms.

Otto looked sheepish. “Yeah. For sure.”

Something was wrong here. “Where is he? Let’s have all of it.”

“They’re going to make it inside.”

“They?”

“Man and a woman. We didn’t think they were anything to worry about till they were past the last house and still headed uphill. It was too late to stop them then.”

I slapped my hand down. I was pissed. There would be hell to pay in the morning. Whisper had had it up to her chin with me already. This might be her excuse to park me in the Catacombs. Permanently. The Taken are not patient.

“Let’s go,“ I said in as calm a voice as I could manage, while glaring a hole through Otto. He made sure he stayed out of reach. He knew I was not pleased. Knew I was in a tight place with the Taken. He did not want to give me any excuse to wrap my hands around his neck. “I’m going to cut some throats if this gets screwed up again.” We all grabbed weapons and rushed into the night.

We had our place picked, in brush two hundred yards below the castle gate. I got the men into position just as somebody started screaming inside.

“Sounds bad,” one of the men said.

“Keep it down,” I snapped. Cold crept my spine. It did sound bad.

It went on and on and on. Then I heard the muted jangle of harness and the creak of wheels improperly greased. Then the voices of people talking softly.

We jumped out of the brush. One of the men opened the eye of a lantern. “I’ll be damned!” I said. “It’s the innkeeper.”

The man sagged. The woman stared at us, eyes widening. Then she sprang off the wagon and ran.

“Get her, Otto. And heaven help you if you don’t. Crake, drag this bastard down. Walleye, take the wagon around to the house. The rest of us will cut across.”

The man Shed did not struggle, so I detailed another two men to help Otto. He and the woman were crashing through the brush. She was headed toward a small precipice. She should corner herself there.

We led Shed to the old house. Once in the light, he became more deflated, more resigned. He said nothing. Most captives resist detention somehow, if only by denying that there is any reason to detain them. Shed looked like a man who thought he was overdue for the worst.

“Sit,” I said, and indicated a chair at the table where we had played cards. I took another, turned it, parked myself with forearms atop its back and chin upon my forearms. “We’ve got you dead, Shed.”

He just stared at the tabletop, a man without hope.

“Anything to say?”

“There’s nothing to be said, is there?”

“Oh, I think there’s a whole lot. You’ve got your ass in a sling for sure, but you’re not dead yet. You maybe could talk your way out of this.”

His eyes widened slightly, then emptied again. He did not believe me.

“I’m not an Inquisitor, Shed.”

His eyes flickered with momentary life.

“It’s true. I followed Bullock around because he knew the Buskin. My job had very little to do with his. I couldn’t care less about the Catacombs raid. I do care about the black castle, because it’s a disaster in the making, but not as much as I care about you. Because of a man named Raven.”

“One of your men called you Croaker. Raven was scared to death of somebody named Croaker that he saw one night when the Duke’s men grabbed some of his friends.”

So. He’d witnessed our raid. Damn, but I had cut it close to the wind that time.

“I’m that Croaker. And I want to know everything you know about Raven and Darling. And everything about anybody else who knows anything.”

The slightest hint of defiance crossed his face.

“A lot of folks are looking for you, Shed. Bullock isn’t the only one. My boss wants you, too. And she’s worse trouble than he is. You wouldn’t like her at all. And she’ll get you if you don’t do this right.”

I would rather have given him to Bullock. Bullock wasn’t interested in our problems with the Taken. But Bullock was out of town.

“There’s Asa, too. I want to know everything you haven’t told me about him.” I heard the woman cursing in the distance, carrying on like Otto and the guys were trying to rape her. I knew better. They hadn’t the nerve after having screwed up once already tonight. “Who’s the slot?”

“My barmaid. She.…” And his story boiled out. Once he started, there was no stopping him.

I had a notion how to wriggle out of a potentially embarrassing situation. “Shut him up.” One of the men clamped a hand over Shed’s mouth. “Here’s what we’re going to do, Shed. Assuming you want out of this alive.”

He waited.

“The people I work for will know a body was delivered tonight. They’ll expect me to catch whoever did it. I’ll have to give them someone. That could be you, the girl, or both of you. You know some things I don’t want the Taken to find out. One way I can avoid handing you over is having you turn up dead. I can make that real if I have to. Or you can fake it for me. Let the slot see you looking like you’ve been wrecked. You follow?”

Shaking, he replied, “I think so.”

“I want to know everything.”

“The girl.…”

I held up a hand, listened. The uproar was close. “She won’t come back from her meeting with the Taken. There’s no reason we couldn’t turn you loose once we’re done doing what we have to do.”

He did not believe me. He had committed crimes he believed deserved the harshest punishment, and he expected it.

“We’re the Black Company, Shed. Juniper is going to get to know that real well soon. Including the fact that we keep our promises. But that’s not important to you. Right now you want to stay alive long enough to get a break. That means you’d damned well better fake being dead, and do it better than any stiff you ever hauled up the hill.”

“All right.”

“Take him over by the fire and make him look like he’s had it rough.”

The men knew what to do. They sort of scattered Shed around without actually hurting him. I tossed a few things around to make it look like there had been a fight, and finished just in time.

The girl came sailing through the doorway, propelled by Otto’s fist. She looked the worse for wear. So did Otto and the men I’d sent to help. “Wildcat, eh?”

Otto tried to grin. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. “Ain’t the half of it, Croaker.” He kicked the girl’s feet from under her. “What happened to the guy?”

“Got a little feisty. I stuck a knife in him.”

“I see.”

We stared at the girl. She stared back, the fire gone. Each few seconds she glanced at Shed, looked back more subdued.

“Yep. You’re in a heap of trouble, sweetheart.”

She gave us the song-and-dance I’d expected from Shed. We ignored it, knowing it was bullshit. Otto cleaned up, then bound her hands and ankles. He parked her in a chair. I made sure it faced away from Shed. The poor bastard had to breathe.

I sat down opposite the girl and began to question her. Shed said he had told her almost everything. I wanted to know if she knew anything about Raven that could give him or us away.

I got no chance to find out.

There was a great rush of air around the house. A roar like a tornado passing. A crack like thunder.

Otto said it all. “Oh shit! Taken.”

The door blew inward. I rose, stomach twisting, heart hammering. Feather came in looking like she’d just walked through a burning building. Wisps of smoke rose from her smouldering apparel.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“The castle. I got too close. They almost knocked me out of the sky. What have you got?”

I told my story quickly, not omitting the fact that we had allowed a corpse to get past. I indicated Shed. “One dead, trying to fight questioning. But this one is healthy.” I indicated the girl.

Feather moved close to the girl. She had taken a real blast out there. I did not feel the aura of great power rigidly constrained that one usually senses in the presence of the Taken. And she did not sense the life still throbbing in Marron Shed. “So young.” She lifted the girl’s chin. “Oh. What eyes. Fire and steel. The Lady will love this one.”

“We keep the watch?” I asked, assuming she would confiscate the prisoner.

“Of course. There may be others.” She faced me. “No more will get through. The margin is too narrow. Whisper will forgive the latest. But the next is your doom.”

“Yes, ma’am. Only it’s hard to do and not attract the attention of the locals. We can’t just go set up a roadblock.”

“Why not?”

I explained. She had scouted the black castle and knew the lay of the land. “You’re right. For the moment. But your Company will be here soon. There’ll be no need for secrecy then.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Feather took the girl’s hand. “Come,” she said.

I was amazed at how docilely our hellcat followed Feather. I went outside and watched Feather’s battered carpet rise and hurry toward Duretile. One despairing cry floated in its wake.

I found Shed in the doorway when I turned to go inside. I wanted to smack him for that, but controlled myself.

“Who was that?” he asked. “What was that?”

“Feather. One of the Taken. One of my bosses.”

“Sorceress?”

“One of the greatest. Go sit. Let’s talk. I need to know exactly what that girl knows about Raven and Darling.”

Intense questioning convinced me that Lisa did not know enough to arouse Whisper’s suspicions. Unless Whisper connected the name Raven with the man who had helped capture her years ago.

I continued grilling Shed till first light. He practically begged to tell every filthy detail of his story. He had a big need to confess. Over coming days, when I sneaked down to the Buskin, he revealed everything recorded where he appears as the focal character. I do not think I have met many men who disgusted me more. Nastier men, yes. I have encountered scores. Greater villains come by the battalion. Shed’s leavening of self-pity and cowardice reduced him from those categories to an essentially pathetic level.

Poor dolt. He was born to be used.

And yet.… There was one guttering spark in Marron Shed, reflected in his relationships with his mother, Raven, Asa, Lisa, Sal, and Darling, that he noted but did not recognize himself. He had a hidden streak of charity and decency. It was the gradual growth of that spark, with its eventual impact upon the Black Company, which makes me feel obligated to record all the earlier noxious details about that frightened little man.

The morning following his capture, I rode into the city in Shed’s wagon and allowed him to open the Iron Lily as usual. During the morning I got Elmo and Goblin in for a conference. Shed was unsettled when he discovered that we all knew one another. Only through sheer luck had he not been taken earlier.

Poor fellow. The grilling never ceased. Poor us. He could not tell us everything we wanted to know.

“What are we going to do about the girl’s father?” Elmo asked.

“If there is a letter, we’ve got to grab it,” I replied. “We can’t have anybody stirring up more problems. Goblin, you take care of the papa. He’s even a little suspicious, see he has a heart attack.”

Sourly, Goblin nodded. He asked Shed for the father’s whereabouts, departed. And returned within half an hour. “A great tragedy. He didn’t have a letter. She was bluffing. But he did know too much that would come out under questioning. This business is beginning to get to me. Hunting Rebels was cleaner. You knew who was who and where you stood.”

“I’d better get back up the hill. The Taken might not be understanding about me being down here. Elmo, better keep somebody in Shed’s pocket.”

“Right. Pawnbroker lives there from now on. That clown takes a crap, he’s holding his hand.”

Goblin looked remote and thoughtful. “Raven buying a ship. Imagine that. What do you figure he was going to do?”

“I think he wanted to head straight out to sea,” I said. “I hear there’re islands out there, way out. Maybe another continent. A guy could hide pretty good out there.”

I went back up the hill and loafed for two days, except to slip off and get everything I could out of Shed. Not a damned thing happened. Nobody else tried to make a delivery. I guess Shed was the only fool in the body business.

Sometimes I looked at those grim black battlements and wondered. They had taken a crack at Feather. Somebody in there knew the Taken meant trouble. How long before they realized they had been cut off and did something to get the meat supply moving again?