The Silver spike (18 page)

“You can go loaf in a tavern or whatever it is you’d
rather be doing. I was his last client tonight.”

“Yes ma’am. Right after we get your name and how to
find you if we need to talk to you again.”

The woman sputtered but gave the soldiers what they demanded.
The grays usually got what they wanted.

“Thank you, ma’am. We appreciate your cooperation.
The streets being what they are at night, Luke will walk you over
to make sure you get there safely.”

Smeds grinned. That was one slick gray boy.

The silent partner set off with the woman. The other soldier
resumed his patrol. Smeds rose. “We’re lucky,
he’ll really stop off for a beer.”

“To get any luckier than we’ve just been the bastard
wizard would have to be in there dying of heart failure right now.
You ready?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s get it over with. Quietly.”

Smeds dashed across the street. Quietly. Fish was supposed to
give him time to get around back. Then Fish, whom the wizard had
not met, would knock on the front door. Smeds was supposed to get
in—quietly—and come at the wizard from behind.

The tactic made no sense to Smeds but he was not the general
here.

He stopped, astonished. A side window stood open to let in the
cool night air. He paused to catch his breath, then peeked.

The room was the one where the wizard had seen Timmy the first
time they had come. The wizard was in there, puttering around,
putting things away and mumbling to himself.

This was better than any back door.

Fish’s knock, when it came, was so discreet Smeds almost
missed it. The wizard cocked his head, looked like he was trying to
make up his mind whether or not to answer. Finally, muttering, he
left the room.

Smeds hoisted himself through the window, went after the man. He
did not recall the floor being creaky. He hoped his memory was
playing no tricks because he was taking no precautions against
floor noise. He drew his knife as he moved.

The nerves went away. It seemed almost as though he was a
bystander in his own mind. He noted that he was moving much more
fluidly than was usual, ready for anything in the midst of any
movement.

The wizard growled, “Keep your pants on,” and
started fumbling with the latch as Fish knocked for the third
time.

Smeds peeked carefully.

The wizard was at the door, ten feet away, back to him, just
opening up.

Fish asked, “Professor Dr. Damitz?”

“Yes. What can I do—”

And that was it.

Smeds saw the wizard rise onto his toes and start to raise his
hands as he moved out to get the man from behind. Then Fish was
pushing into the house, supporting the wizard, kicking the door
shut behind him. He saw Smeds, was surprised. He started lowering
the wizard to the floor. “How did you get in so
fast?”

Smeds looked at the dead man. “Open side window. How come
you did it that way?” The handle of a long knife stuck out
under the wizard’s chin. There was not much blood.

“Blade went straight into the brain. No chance for him to
do any witch stuff while he was dying.”

Smeds stared at the body. Now he understood the plan. Fish had
sent him around back just to get him out of the way.

“You all right? How do you feel? A little
shaky?”

“I’m all right. I don’t feel much of anything
at all.”

“Did he keep written accounts or records? Something where
he might have put down something about Timmy?”

“I don’t know. I never saw him do it while we were
here.”

“We’d better look. You
start . . . You feeling something
now?”

“Just feeling sorry for that woman after they find
him.”

“Yeah. Be rough for her for a while. Look around. Try not
to mess things up too much. And don’t take too long. We got
to get out of here.” Fish went into the room where the wizard
had done his interviews.

Smeds rejoined him five minutes later, carrying a large glass
jar and a couple of books.

“What the hell is that?”

“Timmy’s hand. I found it in a room in the back. All
kinds of weird stuff back there.”

“Shit. I’m glad we took time to look.”
He’d picked out a few books himself. “Let’s get
the hell out of here and get rid of this stuff. Out the window. We
pull it shut, it’ll latch itself behind us. I’ll go
first, see if it’s clear.”

Smeds’s hands shook as he poured the first mug of beer.
But it had not been as hairy as he had thought it would be. Still,
there was some reaction. More than Old Man Fish was showing.

The hand and books had been cared for. The most dangerous strand
had been clipped. Only one thing left to do.

Their benefactor the Nightstalker corporal came in with his beer
bucket, beamed around, went for a refill.

“Shit!” Smeds said. “I clean forgot. I had a
date tonight.”

Fish gave him a few seconds of a commiserating look, then said,
“Drink up. Catch a nap. We’ve got half the job still to
do.”

It seemed like I never saw Darling do much to deserve her White
Rose reputation. Maybe that was because she was so unglamorous when
you saw her, just a scruffy, tangle-haired blond broad in her
twenties who would have fit right in with the gang back at the
potato ranch. Except that she would have looked a lot more worn out
now because she would have been dropping kids for ten years.

Besides her being deaf and dumb, which is always hard for the
rest of us to keep separate from stupid, I think it’s hard to
take her serious because she does what she does so easily, so
casually. Take that attack on the monastery. Slicker than greased
owl shit. And no one would have gotten hurt at all if that monster
Toadkiller Dog hadn’t come plopping into the middle of those
centaurs when he was making a run for it. And that was their damned
fault. They got too eager. If they was hanging back like they was
supposed to they would have had time to get out of the way.

She sure had the respect of the tree god and all the pull with
him she wanted. I think he’d indulge her in anything.

She don’t put on no airs, neither.

It was strange for a while. You had Darling in one spot with
Silent always close, trying to stay between her and Bomanz and her
and Raven at the same time, only Raven and the wizard would not get
anywhere near each other because they did not trust each other any
more than Silent trusted either of them.

It was all kind of amusing. Because when you are on the back of
a monster a couple of miles up in the air, sharing that back with a
couple hundred critters that would have you for breakfast if you
don’t behave, you sure as shit ain’t going to get away
with nothing, no matter what you’d like to try.

The Torque boys knew that. I knew it. Darling knew it. But those
other three geniuses, Bomanz, Raven, and Silent, was so busy being
important plugging up the knothole at the center of the universe
that that never occurred to them.

The Torques were a little nervous about me, though. I used to be
Guards and they was Black Company. They thought I might be lugging
a grudge.

But I was saying the White Rose don’t put on no airs. Not
even being the White Rose. She don’t like being called
anything but Darling. She did not mind when I came around trying to
talk to her. Only Raven and Silent minded. I told Raven to stuff it
when he objected and I guess she gave Silent the same message. He
didn’t do nothing but stand around looking like he was making
up his mind where to start carving when I talked to her.

Mind you, these were grown men. Plenty older than me.

It was Raven’s fault I could talk to her at all. He had
only himself to blame. It was him insisted I learn the sign
language so we could communicate in situations where we
couldn’t talk out loud.

Not that we talked much at first, Darling and me. Just
hi-how-you-doing stuff. I wasn’t very good at it. She taught
me more sign as we went along.

She didn’t come right out and say it, but I got the
feeling she was starved for somebody to talk to besides Silent. She
couldn’t say it with him hovering over her like he did all
the time.

When I started out the only thing I was really wanting to find
out was what she really thought about Raven. I wanted to keep him
from making any more of a fool of himself than he already had.
Maybe she figured that. She was sharp. She never gave me a chance
to work it in.

So after a couple days we were talking about what it was like
being country kids growing up with a war going on all around. It
was easy to understand why she had gone the way she had. Everybody
knew the story so she didn’t need to explain.

I told her I joined up to get away from the farm, and from where
I stood back then the Rebels didn’t look no cleaner than the
imperials. Maybe less, because she hadn’t come along to start
cleaning them up yet. And the imperials got paid. Good, and on
time.

She did not seem offended, so I added my secret philosophy of
life: any dork who became a soldier for an idea instead of the
money deserved to die for his country. You’re going to put it
all on the table, six up with some other guy, it damned well better
be for stakes you can carry away.

That did offend her. It got scorching for a few minutes, then
sort of settled down to a sustained low heat, her trying to
convince me that there were abstractions worth fighting and dying
for and me clinging to my position that no matter how admirable the
cause there was no point getting killed for it because even only
twenty years down the road nobody was going to remember you or give
a rat’s ass if they did.

Two days went by that way. I got a feeling that if there
hadn’t been so much ego getting in the way Raven and Silent
would have ganged up on me for hanging around with their
girlfriend.

She was easy to talk to. I let out things I never said before
because I thought they had no value, considering the source. Stuff
about how people and the world worked, like that.

I never realized my outlook was so cynical till I tried to tie
it up and put it across in that unsubtle way you have to use with
sign.

I told her I could not believe in her movement because it did
not promise anything for the future except freedom from the tyranny
of the past. I told her that what little philosophy I’d
detected driving the movement totally ignored human nature. That if
the Rebels ever did manage to topple the empire, whatever replaced
it would be worse.

That was the lesson of history. New regimes, to make sure they
survived, were always nastier than the ones before them.

I kept after the theme of what did the Rebels offer in place of
the empire? In my limited experience the people of the empire were
more secure, prosperous, and industrious than they had been before
its coming—except in areas where there was an active Rebel
presence. I told her that for the great mass of people freedom was
not an issue at all. That it was an alien concept, at least as her
Rebels seemed to define it.

I told her that for a peasant—and peasants probably make
up three-quarters of the population—freedom meant being able
to provide for a family and market any surpluses.

When I left home the potato fields and all the rest of it were
held communally. The work was long and hard and boring, but no one
ever went hungry and even in the lean years there were surpluses
enough to provide for a few little luxuries. In my
grandfather’s time, though, our fields had been just one more
parcel among scores owned by one great landholder. The people who
lived there were part of the furniture, like the trees and water
and game, legally bound to the land. They had any number of
obligations to the lord that had to be fulfilled before they could
work the land. And of the product of the land they had to hand over
fixed amounts to the landholder. First. If it was a bad year the
lord could take everything.

But they had not had to walk in the Lady’s dark shadow. So
they must have been blissfully happy little farm animals.

I told her that the sons of the landholders were all backbones
of the Rebel cause now, determined to liberate their enslaved
homelands.

I told her I had no illusions about the Lady having any love or
concern for the common people. She obliterated existing ruling
classes simply to be rid of potential challenges to her own power.
She had plenty of disgusting minions whose assigned domains were
terrible places to be.

Finally, I argued that the empire was in no danger of falling
apart, despite the fact that she had disarmed the Lady during the
showdown in the Barrowland. The Lady had been obsessed with
expanding her borders and the reach of her power. She had created
an efficient machine to handle the domestic work of the empire.
That machine had not been broken.

We had been in the air four days. Evening was coming on and
ahead brown gave way to the hazy blue of the Sea of Torments. We
had come a long way in a short time. When I thought about all the
shit me and Raven went through to get down there to that monastery,
damn! This was the only way to travel.

I left off arguing with Darling. I felt a little guilty. As that
day had gone on she had argued back less and less. I think I was
throwing a lot of stuff at her that she probably hadn’t ever
thought about. On a smaller scale I’ve always known people
for whom a goal was everything, who never thought nothing about the
consequences of the goal achieved.

Of course, I did what everybody else does. I underestimated the
hell out of her.

Next day I didn’t run into her till around noon. I guess I
was avoiding her. But when I did see her she had bounced back.

About the same time I noticed the dark loom of land on the
northern horizon and right afterward realized we were losing
altitude. The windwhales were sliding into some kind of formation,
a triangle above with us below. Mantas were taking to the air,
gliding toward the coast.