Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

TIDES ELBA A Tale of the Black Company Glen Cook

We were playing tonk. One-Eye was in a foul mood because he was losing. Situation normal, except nobody was trying to kill us.

Elmo dealt. One-Eye squeaked. I peeked at my cards. “Another hand so damned bad it don’t qualify as a foot.”

Otto said, “You’re full of shit, Croaker. You won six out of the last ten hands.”

Elmo said, “And bitched about the deal every time.”

“I was right every time I dealt.” I was right this time, too. I did not have a pair. I had no low cards and only one face card. The two in the same suit were the seven and knave of diamonds. I do not have years enough left to fill that straight. Anyway, we all knew One-Eye had one of his rare good hands.

“Then we need to make you full-time dealer.”

I pushed my ante in. I drew, discarded, and tossed my cards in when it came to me.

One-Eye went down with ten. The biggest card he had was a three. His leathery old black face ripped in a grin lacking an adequate population of teeth. He raked the pot in.

Elmo asked the air, “Was that legitimate?” We had a gallery of half a dozen. We had the Dark Horse to ourselves today. It was the Company watering hole in Aloe. The owner, Markeb Zhorab, had mixed feelings. We were not the kind of guys he wanted hanging around but because we did, his business was out standing.

Nobody indicted One-Eye. Goblin, with his butt on the table next over, reminded Elmo, “You dealt.”

“Yeah, there’s that.”

One-Eye has been known to cheat. Hard to manage in a game as simpleminded as tonk, but there you go. He is One-Eye.

“Lucky at cards, unlucky at love,” he said, which made no sense in context.

Goblin cracked, “You better hire yourself some bodyguards. Women will be tearing down doors trying to get to you.”

A wisecrack from Goblin generally fires One-Eye up. He has a hair trigger. We waited for it. One-Eye just grinned and told Otto, “Deal, loser. And make it a hand like the one Elmo just gave me.”

Goblin said something about Missus Hand being the only lucky lady in One-Eye’s life.

One-Eye went on ignoring the bait.

I began to worry.

Otto’s deal did not help.

One-Eye said, “You know how we run into weird customs wherever we go?”

Elmo glared holes through his cards. He grunted. Otto arranged and rearranged his five, meaning he had a hand so bad he did not know how to play it. One-Eye did not squeak but he kept grinning. We were on the brink of a new age, one in which he could win two hands in a row.

Everybody looked at Goblin. Goblin said, “Otto dealt.”

Somebody in the gallery suggested, “Maybe he spelled the cards.”

That all rolled past One-Eye. “The weirdest custom they got here is, when a girl loses her cherry, from then on she’s got to keep all the hair off her body.”

Otto rumbled, “That’s some grade-two bullshit if I ever heard some. We been here near three months and I ain’t seen a bald-headed woman yet.”

Everything stopped, including One-Eye stacking his winnings.

“What?” Otto asked.

There have always been questions about Otto.

The rest of us occasionally invest a coin in a tumble with a professional comfort lady. Though the subject never came up before, I knew I had yet to see one whisker below the neckline.

“Do tell,” Elmo said. “And I thought it was the luck of the draw that I wasn’t seeing what ought to be there.”

I said, “I figured it was how mine kept from getting the crabs.”

“Nope. All tied into their weird religion.”

Goblin muttered, “There’s an oxymoron.”

One-Eye’s mood faltered.

Goblin’s froglike face split in a vast grin. “I wasn’t talking about you, shrimp. You’re just a regular moron. I was talking about slapping the words weird and religion together.”

“You guys are trying to hex my luck, aren’t you?”

“Sure,” Elmo said. “Talking about pussy works every time. Tell me about these bald snatches.”

One-Eye restacked his winnings. He was turning surly despite his success. He had come up with some great stuff, on a subject guys can kill weeks exploring, and nobody seemed to care.

I shuffled, stacked, and dealt. One-Eye grew more glum as he picked up each card.

The last one got him. “God damn it, Croaker! You asshole! You son of a bitch!”

Elmo and Otto kept straight faces, because they did not know what was happening. Goblin tittered like a horny chickadee.

One-Eye spread his hand. He had a trey of clubs. He had a six of diamonds. He had the nine of hearts and the ace of spades. And that last card was a knave of swords.

I said, “How many times have you claimed you didn’t have no two cards of the same suit? For once you won’t be lying.”

Now Elmo and Otto got it. They laughed harder than me or Goblin. The gallery got a good chuckle, too.

The Lieutenant stuck his head through the front door. “Anybody seen Kingpin?” The Lieutenant did not sound happy. He sounded like an executive officer who had to work on his day off.

“He skating again?” Elmo asked.

“He is. He’s supposed to be on slops. He didn’t show. The cooks want to chop him up for soup bones.”

“I’ll talk to him, sir.” Though Kingpin is not one of his men. Kingpin hides out in Kragler’s platoon.

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Elmo does have a way of communicating with errant infantrymen. “Why are you people in here, in this gloom and stink, when you could be sucking up fresh air and sunshine?”

I said, “This is our natural habitat, sir.” But the truth was, it had not occurred to anybody to take the game outside.

We gathered our cards and beer and shambled out to the street-front tables. One-Eye dealt. Talk dwelt on the hairstyles, or lack thereof, favored by Aloen ladies.

It was a grand day, cloudless, cool, air in motion but not briskly enough to disturb the game. The gallery settled in. Some just liked to watch. Some hoped a seat would open up. They joined the increasingly crude speculation, which slipped into the domain of one-upmanship.

I interjected, “How long have we been playing with these cards?” Some were so ragged you should not need to turn them over to know what they were. But my memory kept tricking me. The face sides never matched up.

Everybody looked at me funny. “Here comes something off the wall,” One-Eye forecast. “Spit it out, Croaker, so we can get back to stuff that matters.”

“I’m wondering if this deck hasn’t been around long enough to take on a life of its own.”

One-Eye opened his mouth to mock me, then his eyes glazed over as he considered the possibility. Likewise, Goblin. The pallid, ugly little man said, “Well, screw me! Croaker, you aren’t half as dumb as you look. The cards have developed a mind of their own. That would explain so much.”

The whole crew eyeballed One-Eye, nodding like somebody was conducting. One-Eye had insisted that the cards hated him for as long as anyone could remember.

He won again.

Three wins at one sitting should have tipped me off. Hell was on the prowl. But my mouth was off on another adventure.

“You know what? It’s been eighty-seven days since somebody tried to kill me.”

Elmo said, “Don’t give up hope.”

“Really. Think about it. Here we are, out in the damned street where anybody could take a crack. But nobody is even eyeballing us. And none of us are looking over our shoulders and whining about our ulcers.”

Play stopped. Seventeen eyes glared at me. Otto said, “Croaker, you jinx it, I’ll personally hold you down while somebody whittles on your favorite toy.”

Goblin said, “He’s right. We’ve been here three months. The only trouble we’ve seen is guys getting drunk and starting fights.”

With 640 men, you know the Company has a few shitheads whose idea of a good time is to drink too much, then get in an ass-kicking contest.

One-Eye opined, “What it is is, the Lady’s still got a boner for Croaker. So she stashed him someplace safe. The rest of us just live in his shadow. Watch the sky. Some night there’ll be a carpet up there, Herself coming out to knock boots with her special guy.”

“What’s her hairstyle like, Croaker?”

Special treatment? Sure. We spent a year following Whisper from one blistering trouble spot to the next, fighting damned near every day.

Special treatment? Yeah. The kind you get for being competent. Whatever your racket, you do a good job, the bosses pile more work on.

“You’ll be the first to know when I get a good look, Otto.” I did not plow on into the kind of crudities the others found entertaining. Which they took as confirming my unabated interest in the wickedest woman in the world.

A kid named Corey said, “Speaking of hairstyles, there’s one I wouldn’t mind checking out.”

Everybody turned to admire the young woman passing on the far side of the street. Pawnbroker congratulated Corey on his excellent taste.

She was sneaking up on twenty. She had pale red hair cut shorter than any I’d yet seen around Aloe. It fell only to her collar in back and not that far angling up the sides. She had bangs in front. I did not notice what she wore. Nothing unusual. She radiated such an intense sensuality that nothing else mattered.

Our sudden attention, heads turning like birds in a wheeling flock, startled her. She stared back for a second, trying for haughty. She failed to stick it. She took off speed-walking.

One-Eye picked up his cards. “That one is bald everywhere that matters.”

Corey asked, “You know her?” Like he had found new meaning to life. He had hope. He had a mission.

“Not specifically. She’s a temple girl.”

The cult of Occupoa engages in holy prostitution. I hear Occupoa has some dedicated and talented daughters.

Goblin wanted to know how One-Eye could tell.

“That’s the official hairstyle over there, runt.” From a guy smaller than Goblin.

“And you know that because?”

“Because I’ve decided to enjoy the best of everything during my last few months.”

We all stared. One-Eye is a notorious skinflint. And never has any money, anyway, because he is such a lousy tonk player. Not to mention that he is the next thing to immortal, having been with the Company well over a hundred years.

“What?” he demanded. “So maybe I poor-mouth more than what’s the actual case. That a crime?”

No. We all do that. It is a preemptive stroke against all those good buddies who are dry and want to mooch instead of dealing with Pawn.

Somebody observed, “A lot of guys were flush when we got here. We never got no chance to get rid of our spare change before.”

True. The Black Company has been good for Aloe’s economy. Maybe that was why nobody was trying to kill us.

Elmo said, “I’d better round up Kingpin before the Lieutenant puts my name on the shit list, too. Silent? You want my seat? Shit! Where the hell did he go?”

I had not noticed our third minor wizard leaving. Silent is spookier than ever, these days. He is practically a ghost.

You are with the Company long enough you develop extra senses. Like for danger. Somehow, you read cues unconsciously and, suddenly, you are alert and ready. We call that smelling danger. Then there is precognition having to do with something stirring at the command level. That one warns you that your ass is about to get dumped into the shit.

Seemed like it took about fourteen electric seconds for all six hundred and some men to sense that something was up. That life was about to change. That I might not make it to a hundred days without somebody trying to kill me.

The cards had stopped moving already when Hagop loped up from the direction of the compound. “Elmo. Croaker. Goblin. One-Eye. The Old Man wants you.”

One-Eye grumbled, “Goblin had to go open his big goddamn mouth.”

Two minutes earlier, Goblin had muttered, “Something’s up. There’s something in the wind.”

I kicked in, “Yeah. This is all his fault. Let’s pound his ass if it turns out we have to go flush some Rebels somewhere again.”

“Weak, Croaker.” Elmo shoved back from the table. “But I second that emotion. I’d almost forgotten how nice it is for garrison troopers.” He went on about clean clothing, ample beer, regular meals, and almost unlimited access to a soldier’s favorite way of wasting time and money.

We headed down the street, leaving the cards to the others, who were already speculating. I said, “Garrison duty is all that. The hardest work I’ve got to do is to weasel One-Eye into using his curative on guys who come in with the clap.”

One-Eye said, “I like garrison because of the financial opportunities.”

He would. Put him down anywhere and give him a week, he’ll be into some kind of black-market scam.

Hagop sidled close, whispered, “I need to talk to you, private.” He slipped me a folded piece of parchment maybe three and a half inches to a side. It was dirty and it smelled bad. One face had a small triangular tear where it had hung up on something. Hagop looked like he might panic when I opened it.

I stopped walking. The others did, too, wondering what was up. I whispered, “Where did you get this?”

The Company maintained a compound outside the city, on a heath blasted barren back when Whisper arrived to negotiate the treaties by which Aloe gained the perquisites of participation in the Lady’s empire. First among those was continued existence for Aloe and its dependent environs. The compound was nothing exciting. There was a curtain wall of dried mud brick. Everything inside was adobe, too, lightly plastered to resist the rain.

The compound was all brown. A man with a discerning eye might identify shades, but us barbarians only saw brown. Even so, I had a discerning enough eye to spot a new brown patch before Hagop pointed it out.

A flying carpet lay tucked into the shade on the eastern side of the headquarters building. My companions had equally discerning eyes but less troubled hearts.

We were part of a stream, now. Every officer and platoon sergeant had been summoned. Sometimes the Captain gets his butt hairs in a twist and pulls everybody in for an impromptu motivational speech. But there was one critical difference this time.

There was a flying carpet in the shade beside the HQ.

There are, at most, six of those in existence, and only six beings capable of using them.

We were blessed with the presence of one of the Taken.

The happy days were over. Hell had taken a nap but now it was wide awake and raring to go.

Nobody overlooked the carpet. No shoulders failed to slump.

I said, “You guys go ahead. I’ll catch up in a minute. Hagop. Show me.”

He headed for the shade. For the carpet. “I saw it here. I never seen a carpet up close before so I decided to check it out.” He walked me through his experience. One glance at the carpet reaffirmed what I already knew. This unkempt, poorly maintained mess belonged to the Limper.

“I found that folded thing right here.”

Right here would be the place where the Taken sat while the carpet was aloft. The carpet there was especially frayed, stretched, and loose.

Hagop’s finger indicated a fold of material torn away from the wooden frame underneath. “It was mostly covered. It was hung up on that brad.”

A small nail had worked loose maybe three-sixteenths of an inch. A wisp of parchment remained stuck to it. I removed that with my knife, careful to make no personal contact.

“I picked it up. Before I could even look at it the Captain came out and told me to go get you guys.”

“All right. Stay out of sight. We’ll talk later.” I was going to be last inside if I did not hustle.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“It could be bad. Scoot on into town. Don’t tell anybody about this.”

The mess hall was the nearest thing to an assembly hall we had. The cooks had been run off. The place reeked of unhappiness. Half the guys lived in town, now, including me. Some had women. A few even had common-law stepchildren they did not mind supporting.

Those guys would pray that carpet meant the Lady had sent somebody out with the payroll. Only, in Aloe, our pay came from gentle taxes on the people we protected. No need to fly it in from a thousand miles away.

The Captain did his trained-bear shuffle up to the half-ass stage. A creepy brown bundle of rags followed. It dragged one leg. The hall filled with a hard silence.

The Limper. The most absurdly nasty of the Taken. A dedicated enemy of the Black Company. We had screwed him over good back when he tried going against the Lady.

He was back in favor now. But so were we. He could not have his revenge just yet. But he was patient.

The Captain rumbled, “The tedium is about to end, gentlemen. We now know why the Lady put us here. We’re supposed to take out a Rebel captain called Tides Elba.”

I checked the spelling later. It was not a name we knew. He pronounced it “Teadace Elba.”

The Captain said that Tides Elba had enjoyed some successes west of us, but none of her victories had been big enough to catch our attention.

An interesting line of bullshit, some of which might be true.

The Limper climbed up with the Captain. That was a struggle. He had that bad leg and he was a runt—in stature. In wickedness and talent for sorcery he was the baddest of the bad. A reek of dread surrounded him. So did a reek of reek. On his best day, he smelled like he had been in a grave for a long time. He considered us from behind a brown leather mask.

Folks with weaker stomachs jostled for space in the back.

The Limper said nothing. He just wanted us to know he was around. Important to remember. And something foretelling interesting times.

The Captain told the Company commanders and platoon leaders to tell their men that we might be making movement soon. Pending investigatory work here in Aloe. They should settle their debts and personal issues. Ideally, they should shut down their Aloe lives and return to the compound.

We might see some desertions.

Elmo jabbed me in the ribs. “Pay attention.”

The Old Man dismissed everybody but me and the magic-users. He invoked me directly. “Croaker, stay with me.” The wizards he told to stick with the Limper.

The Captain herded me over to Admin. In theory, I owned a corner space there where I was supposed to work on these Annals. I did not often take advantage.

“Sit.” A command, not an invitation. I sat in one of two crude chairs facing the ragged table he uses as a bulwark against the world. “Limper is here. He hasn’t said so but we know that means we’re headed into the shit. He hasn’t said much of anything yet, actually. That may mean he doesn’t know anything himself, yet. He’s following orders, too.”

I nodded.

“This isn’t good, Croaker. This is the Limper. There’ll be more going on than what we see.”

There would be. I did my best to look like a bright child awaiting ineluctable wisdom from an honored elder.

“I’d tell you you’re full of shit but you don’t need the special memo. You know that taste in your mouth.”

He was going to come down on me for something?

“You been putting on a show of being as useless as the rest of these dicks. But when you’re supposedly off whoring or getting fucked up you’re usually really somewhere poking into the local history.”

“A man needs to have more than one hobby.”

“It’s not a hobby if you can’t help yourself.”

“I’m a bad man. I need to understand the past. It illuminates the present.”

The Captain nodded. He steepled his fingers in front of a square, strong, dimpled chin. “I got some illuminating for you to do.”

He did know something about what was up.

“You could maybe fix it so the Company don’t wallow in the usual cesspit.”

“You sweet-talker.”

“Shut the fuck up. The Lady wants Tides Elba before she turns into an eastern White Rose. Or maybe she is the Rose. I don’t know. Limper, he wants to go balls to the wall so he can look good to the Lady. Hopefully getting us all killed in the process.”

“You’re losing me, boss.”

“I doubt it. Remember, the Limper has a special hard-on for you.”

He did. “All right. And?”

“Limper thinks smashing things is fun. I don’t want to be remembered for wrecking Aloe on a maybe.”

“Sir, you need to give me a clue. What do you want me to do? I’m not as smart as you think.”

“Nor am I.”

The Captain shambled out from behind his table. He paced. Then, “The Lady thinks Tides Elba was born here, has family here, and visits frequently. She wasn’t born Tides Elba. Her family probably don’t know what she is.”

Of course this Rebel would not have been born Tides Elba. If the Lady got hold of her true name, Tides Elba would be toast before sunset.

“You’ve been snooping already. You know where to look. Help us lay hands on her before the Limper can catch us in a cleft stick.”

“I can dig. But I can tell you now, all I’ll find is holes.”

“Holes tell a story, too.”

They do. “Instead of worrying about this woman, how about we come up with a permanent…”

He made a chopping motion. I needed to shut up. “Look at you. We could put you in charge of the whole eastern campaign, you’re so smart. Go away. Do what you need to do. And stay away from those moronic cards.”

I thought hard. My conclusion was frightening. There was no place to conspire where the Limper could not eavesdrop if he was so inclined. So I scrounged up an extra deck, more venerable than the one usually in play, and headed for the Dark Horse. Along the way, Hagop fell in beside me. “Is it time?”

“It’s time. If everybody is there.” Everybody being a select few like Elmo and the wizards.

“What was the big meeting? We got to move out?”

“They don’t know what they’re going to do. They just want to be ready to do it.”

“Same old shit.”

“Pretty much.”

The usual suspects were there, out front, on the fringe, waiting instead of playing. Only Silent was missing. I asked Goblin with a glance. He shrugged.

Several guys started to drift over, thinking an entertaining game might break out. I handed my deck to Corey. “You guys get a game going inside.”

“Quick on the uptake,” Elmo observed as they cleared off. He scooted sideways so Hagop had room to add a chair. We pretended to play a five-man game.

I asked, “You all sure you want to be here? We’re going to lay our balls on the table and hope nobody hits them with a hammer.”

Nobody volunteered to disappear.

I produced the parchment Hagop had found. Folded, it made a square. Opened, it was a third taller than it was wide. I spread it out. “Pass it around. Don’t act like it’s any big deal.”

“Go teach granny to suck eggs,” One-Eye grumbled. “I can’t tell anything from this. It’s all chicken tracks.”

“Those tracks are TelleKurre.” The language of the Domination. Only two native speakers remained alive. “This is an Imperial rescript, from the Lady to the Limper. The ideograph in the upper left corner tells us that. But this is a copy. The ideograph top middle tells us that, along with the fact that this is copy number two of two. The ideograph in the upper right corner is the chop of the copyist.”

“Accountability,” Elmo said.

“Exactly. She’s big on that since the Battle at Charm.”

“Uhm. So what does it say?”

“Not much, directly. But very formally. The Lady orders the Limper to come east to find and capture a woman named Tides Elba. No why, no suggestion how, just do it, then bring her back alive and undamaged.”

“And there ain’t nothing in there about her being some new phenom rookie Rebel captain?”

“Not a hint.”

“The Limper lied.”

“The Limper lied. And not just to us. He isn’t dedicated to the success of his mission.”

Elmo asked, “How can you tell?”

“Limper had to sign both copies, agreeing that he understood his assignment. On his keeper copy, here, he wrote, ‘Up Yours, Bitch.’”

“Whoa!” Hagop barked, awed rather than surprised.

Elmo asked, “Could that be a plant?”

“You mean, did he leave it so we could find it?”

“Yeah. To let us set ourselves up.”

“I’ve been brooding about that. I don’t think so. There are a thousand ways that could go wrong. He’d have no control. We might never notice it. But, more important, there’s what he wrote instead of signing.”

They thought. Twice One-Eye started to say something but thought better.

We focused on clever tricks the Limper might try. Looking for deep strategies and devilish maneuvers. It took the least among us, a simple line soldier, to point out a critical fact.

Hagop asked, “If he signed it that way won’t he get nervous when he realizes that it’s gone?”

We all considered him with widening eyes and galloping hearts. Elmo growled, “If the little shit goes bugfuck we’ll know for sure that it’s real.”

“Silver lining.” Goblin grinned but there was sweat on his forehead.

I pushed the parchment across to One-Eye. “See if that’s tagged so he can trace it. Then see if there’s a way he could tell who’s been handling it.”

“You going to put it back?”

“Hell, no! I’m going to bury it somewhere. It could come in handy someday. The Lady wouldn’t be pleased if it fell into her hands. Speaking of forgetting. Goblin, fix it so Hagop has no recollection of the parchment. The Captain saw him hanging around the Limper’s carpet. Questions might be asked.”

“I’ll have to work on you, too, then. You were seen hanging around the carpet, too.”

I expect a lot of guys took the opportunity for a close-up look. But fear streaked down my spine, reached my toes, and cramped them. “Yeah. You’d better.”

Both wizards started to get out of their seats. Goblin said, “We’ll need to shove those memories down so far that only the Lady’s Eye could find them.”

I had a thought. “Hang on. Wait a minute. Hagop, go get Zhorab.”

Markeb Zhorab had been something else before he became a tavern-keeper. His face alone recalled several desperate fights. And he was a sizable man, often mistaken for the bouncer. But his past had left his courage a little sketchy.

He asked me, “You wanted me?”

“I have something I need done, not traceable to me. I’m willing to pay.”

“Risky?”

“Possibly. But probably not if you do exactly what I tell you.”

“I’m listening.”

I showed him the rescript. “I need an exact copy calligraphed by a professional letter-writer who has no idea who you are.”

“What is it?”

“A wanted poster. But the less you know the better. Can you do that?”

He could, once we finished talking money. I did not offer enough to make it seem like I was worried. With all the practical jokes that went on around us, I hoped he thought I was putting something together. He asked, “How soon do you need this?”

“Right now would be especially good.”

Zhorab brought my copy. And the original. “Good enough, Croaker? He couldn’t match the parchment.”

“It’s fine. I want it obvious that it’s a copy.” I paid the agreed sum. I handed back the copy. “Hold on to this. Later on Goblin will tell you when to give it back. There’ll be another payment then.”

Elmo grumbled, “If we can ever get the self-righteous asshole into this place.” Playing to the practical-joke angle.

Puzzled, Zhorab folded the copy and went off to bite his coins.

Elmo wondered, “Think he had more than one copy made?”

I said, “I’m counting on it. The more there are the better. Now let’s get to the forgetting.”

I said, “I don’t know. I forget. It must not have been important. Look. I need you guys to help me dig for info on Tides Elba.”

Grumble, grumble. Chairs pushed back grudgingly.

I said, “It has to be done.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

I asked, “Hagop, do you read the local language?”

He shook his head. Once we were a few steps away, Elmo said, “I’m not sure he can read anything.”

I grunted. “One last beer.”

Inside, the Dark Horse was swamped in speculation about what might be afoot. A sizable faction did not believe that Tides Elba existed. Old hands, who had been through the long retreat from Oar to Charm, thought that the Limper had made it all up.

When asked my opinion, I said I never heard of Tides Elba and we had only Limper’s word that she existed.

Aloe was a city-state. It was a republic, a formula common in its end of the world. It was prosperous. It had the time and money to maintain civil records, which are useful for levying taxes, calling men to the colors, or imposing a corvée.

Aloe kept those records in a small, stone-built structure. Our advent spread consternation.

Surprise arrival was of no value. Nothing jumped out. There were records aplenty, stored according to no obvious system, to keep us busy for days.

Elmo said, “I’ll put out a call for men who can read this stuff.” He barely managed himself, sounding out the characters.

Silent walked in. Before I could put him to work, he signed, “Wait!” and did a slow turn to make sure there were no stinky men in brown hiding in the rafters. Then he signed, “I know where to find her.”

Everybody babbled questions, negating Silent’s caution. He signed, “Shut up! Unless you are hungry for a taste of knuckle. Idiots.”

He said the smoldering redhead from the other day was our target.

“How do you know?” I demanded. In sign.

Silent tapped the side of his head, pointed to his eyes, then his nose. Shorthand sign meaning he paid attention and he used his noggin when he smelled something a little off.

He had seen something that was not just prime split tail. So he had stalked her. To the Temple of Occupoa. And had been watching ever since.

“Predictable,” I signed. Rebels everywhere hide stuff under their houses of worship. “Let’s raid the place.” I was unconcerned about the wrath of Occupoa. The gods seldom defend themselves. “Send her off to the Tower.”

Elmo agreed. “Along with our least favorite Taken.”

Elmo and I were the responsible, sensible voices. We got shouted down. Goblin jumped up and down. Every fifth sign he deployed was a vertical middle finger.

One-Eye insisted, “We’ll play a riff on Roses.”

“Why?”

“To gouge the Limper. Maybe frame him for something.”

“Or we can just give him the girl and get him out of town.”

Their enthusiasm faded as they recalled the truth of that bitter winter operation in Roses. Of circumstances that started the Limper on the road to now, notably unhappy with the Company.

Silent signed, “Croaker makes a good point. Wimpy, but solid.”

One-Eye, though, being One-Eye, smelled opportunity. But One-Eye had a hundred-plus-year record of being One-Eye.

That considered, the level of enthusiasm plummeted.

I refused to go to the Captain or Limper with their idiot plan. It relied entirely on the near-immortal, almost demigod Limper being too stupid to see through them. I said, “To even start that going we’d need something magically useful from our target. You guys got some of her hair? Nail clippings? Dirty underwear? Didn’t think so. Let’s go dig her out and turn her over.”

I did, as noted, remain deft enough to avoid being the man asked to sell the scheme. That honor went to Silent.

Silent is no bumbler but he did not close the deal. The Captain’s response was, “Find the girl and bring her in. That’s all. Nothing else.”

Nobody wanted to hear what I thought after Silent came back. One-Eye insisted, “You worry too much, Croaker. You give the little shit too much credit. He ain’t some genius. He’s just an asshole bully whose knack for sorcery is so big he don’t need to think.”

“Lot of that going around.”

Goblin said, “Look at all he’s been through since he got out of the ground. None of it made him any smarter; it only made him more careful about what evidence he leaves behind.”

Why did that make me nervous? “He can smash us like slow roaches without breaking a sweat.”

One-Eye insisted, “He’s as dumb-ass as you can be and survive. He’s the kind of guy you can hit with the same con five times running and he still won’t figure out what happened.”

Idiot.

Limper might be dumb as a bushel of rocks but he was not up against the first string over here. And he had come here with a plan.

I insisted that we keep on rooting through the records. I told the others to tell me about every death of a girl child.

It was past my bedtime but I restrained my resentment when summoned by the Captain and Limper. The Old Man said, “We hear you found something.”

“I did. But I think it’s bogus,” I reported honestly.

The Captain said, “Good work. Keep digging. But you can’t use Goblin or One-Eye anymore. They’re going TDA somewhere else.” His glance at the Limper was so bland I knew he wanted to feed the man to the lions.

“They’re useless, anyway. They can’t stay focused even when they’re not feuding.”

The Captain said, “One more thing before you go.”

My stomach sank. “Sir?”

“You were seen messing around with the lord’s carpet. Why? What were you up to?”

“Messing with it? No, sir. I was talking about it to Hagop. He was all excited. He never saw a carpet up close before. He knew I had to ride carpets a couple times, back when. He wanted to know what it was like. We just talked. We never touched anything.” I was babbling but that was all right. The Limper was used to terrified behavior. “Why? Is it important, sir?”

The Old Man glanced at his companion, inviting questions or comments. The old spook just stared through me.

“Apparently not. Dismissed.”

I tucked my tail and ran. How did the Captain keep cool around that monster?

I fled the dread for the Dark Horse, where the useless pair and Silent waited. I passed the latest, and, in sign, added, “I don’t like it, guys. The Captain thinks we’re up to something. If the Limper catches on…”

One-Eye cursed, said something about my damned defeatist attitude, but then gave up. Even he is only blind in one eye.

Goblin acquiesced, too. Both had, at last, grasped the magnitude of the overreach they yearned to indulge. Well-founded terror settled into their hearts.

Despite all, we did not go get the girl. Goblin and One-Eye disappeared with the Limper. Silent evaded that fate by being impossible to find. I assumed he was eyes on the target.

Neither Elmo, Candy, nor the Lieutenant would let us make the catch without a full complement of supporting wizards.

Silent was supposed to keep hiding in her shadow.

Elmo’s call for men able to read the local language produced three and a half men, the half being a lost-cause half-ass apprentice shared by Goblin and One-Eye who called himself the Third. The Third because his father and grandfather had worn the same name. I never understood how he survived in the murky weirdness between his teachers.

The Third came by my town place. He looked less a sorcerer than did One-Eye or Goblin—and was bigger than those two squished together.

He made me wish they were. “They’re going to raid the Temple of Occupoa tonight. One-Eye wants your help.”

The terror had not taken deep enough root. A sanctioned operation was planned for the next morning.

“One-Eye needs his head examined by incompetent authority. Somebody willing to recommend decapitation therapy.” But I got armed up and put together.

The Third resembled the Captain some, though he was uglier. He talked about as much as the Old Man, too. I asked, “Where were One-Eye and Goblin the last couple days?”

“Doing something with the Limper. Developing new skills for the Tides Elba hunt.”

I was skeptical.

We caught up with the runts and two of the soldiers who could read the local writing, Cornello Crat and Ladora Ans. I started kvetching. “Where’s Silent? Where’s Elmo?”

“Couldn’t find them,” One-Eye grumbled. He pulled his floppy rag of a hat down so the brim concealed his face. “Be quiet. Let’s go.”

“No.”

“What?”

“This isn’t going to happen. You want to play tonk with the Taken because you think you can scam some money. But you’re so damned blind stupid you don’t see that the real stake you’re shoving into the pot is the Company. All six hundred forty lives.”

Goblin looked chagrined. One-Eye, though, just wanted to be pissed off. He started to give me a piece of his mind.

“For the last time, dumb fuck. Listen! With the kind of luck you have playing penny ante tonk you want me to help play against the Limper? I can’t believe that even you are that stupid. We’ll do it the way it’s set. Tomorrow. And you won’t hand the Limper the excuse he wants.”

One-Eye said nothing. His eye did get big. Seldom had he seen me so intense and never so foul of mouth.

He would have dismissed me, even so, if Goblin had not shaken like a dog just in out of the rain. “I’m going to side with Croaker on this. On reflection. Get your greed and ego out of it. Consider it on its merits.”

One-Eye launched a rant about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Goblin shook all over again, looked a little puzzled, then tied into One-Eye. “How the hell do you talk yourself into this shit? How the hell do you stay alive?”

Victory! I had turned Goblin. Crat and Ans came with him. The Third had made his position clear already by vanishing after he delivered me.

I had a horrible acid stomach. A slight but stubborn tremor kept my hands unreliable. Crat and Ans seemed just as rocky.

One-Eye realized that if he wanted to pull this off he would have to do it by himself. That startled and amazed him.

There was some low cunning under that ugly old black hat. He could back off when nobody else was greedy enough or stupid enough to let him bet their hand.

“You asshole, Croaker. You win. I hope you got guts enough to put in the Annals what a huge pussy you were when we had a chance to make the biggest score ever.”

“Oh, it’ll be there. Count on that. Including the fact that the Company survived despite you.” I went on to point out that the Company’s mission was not to make a big score for One-Eye.

It started to get heated. Then Silent and Elmo turned up. They, in essence, took our little black brother into protective custody, to protect him from himself.

I consulted Elmo. Elmo consulted Candy. Candy consulted the Lieutenant. When even the gods were not looking, the Lieutenant may have consulted the Captain.

Word rolled down. Make the move, though Silent’s girl was, likely, not really Tides Elba.

Elmo was in charge. Goblin and Silent would supply sorcery support. One-Eye and the Third were assigned a critically important secondary mission: a census of goats in Utbank parish. The Lady needed to know.

The Captain overlooks a lot. A good officer knows when not to see. But that blindness has limits.

Being me, I found the dark side before the action began. “We took care of One-Eye’s run for the crazy prize but we didn’t get out of the cleft stick.”

Goblin said, “Humor him. It’ll take less time. And we won’t have to listen to him grumble from now till we lay him down with a stone on top to keep him from getting back up. Speak, Wise One.” He went right on getting ready. So did the others. They would hear me out but did not plan to listen.

“The Old Man figures that this probably isn’t Tides Elba. So how will the locals respond when we break into a holy place and drag off a temple girl who hasn’t done anything but catch Silent’s eye?”

Elmo told me, “The same orders said go get her, Croaker. That’s our problem. Not what comes after. We got people who get paid to worry about what comes after. You aren’t one of them. Your job is to come along behind and plug up the holes in any of these dickheads who forget to duck.”

He was right. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately.” And, honestly, I did not.

A platoon on the move scattered the locals, but then they followed at a distance, moved by boneheaded nosiness.

I fell in beside Goblin. “Where did you and One-Eye go those two days with the Limper? What did you do?”

His broad, pallid face slowly collapsed into a deep frown. “With the Limper? We didn’t go anywhere with the Limper.”

“You didn’t? But the Old Man told me you were going TDA with the spook. Who was right there when he said it. You were gone two days. Then you came back all determined to do stuff that we already decided would be suicidal.”

“Two days? You’re sure?”

“Two. Ask Elmo.”

He turned contemplative. After maybe fifty yards he asked, “What does the Captain say?”

“Nothing. He isn’t talking much these days. He has the foulest Taken of them all homesteading in his right front pocket.”

A hundred yards of silence. The big ugly dome of the Temple of Occupoa now loomed over the tenements surrounding it. It had some claim to minor-wonder-of-the-world status because that huge beehive shape, over eighty feet high, was made entirely of concrete. For those interested in engineering, the temple must be fascinating. Building it had taken a generation.

The people of Aloe did not give a bat’s ass.

Goblin said nothing more but did look like a man who had just enjoyed some surprisingly unpleasant revelations.

There are steps up to the entrance of Occupoa’s temple, two tiers, the lower of seven steps and the upper of six. Those numbers are almost certainly significant. They were granite that mixed grays with a bit of white. The columns and walls were a native greenish-gray limestone, easy to work but susceptible to weathering. Scaffolding masked the west face.

It was not a holy day. It was too early for traffic related to Occupoa’s fund-raising efforts. It was quiet.

I climbed the thirteen steps still wondering why we were doing this. Still worrying about the whole Tides Elba puzzle. I had questioned every Aloen I knew. They insisted the name was unknown, that there was no Rebel leader by that name. I believed them. That many people could not all be fine enough actors to appear so honestly baffled.

On the other hand, one did wonder how they could be so sure there was no Rebel named Tides Elba.

We paused at the temple entrance. Silent and Goblin conjured several spectral entities to go in first, to trigger ambushes or booby traps.

They were not needed. Temple defense consisted of one ancient beadle asleep on a chair just inside the entrance. His mission appeared to be to discourage unauthorized withdrawals from a nearby poor box.

Goblin did something to deepen his sleep.

One squad moved in and spread out. The rest stayed outside and surrounded the temple. We ran into a whole lot of nothing happening on the inside. The main place of worship was round, with the altar on a short dais in the middle. That was black stone without a single bloodstain. Occupoa had a more enlightened attitude toward the disposal of virgins. Instead, the altar boasted racks of votive candles, only a handful of which were burning.

The whole place seemed a little shabby.

I had my teeth clamped so tight my jaw began to ache. This was no Rebel stronghold. Had we been scammed after all? Why did I keep recalling the Limper’s evil way of laughing when things were going his way?

I had a powerful urge to turn back. I did not.

Elmo asked, “Which way, Goblin? Silent?” He sounded uneasy. That would be because we had run into no one but the beadle.

I flashed a nervous grin, certain One-Eye would have tried to plunder that poor box had he been along instead of handling critical empire business in Utbank.

“Straight ahead. If you didn’t have a dozen guys clanking and whispering you could hear the people up there.”

I started to worry about One-Eye and Goblin again. What had been done to them while they were out of touch? Maybe Limper brainwashed them. Which could only be for the better in One-Eye’s case.

Could this raid be part of Limper’s grand scheme to discredit the Company?

Elmo prodded me. “Move along. What’s with you, anyway? You’re turning into the worst daydreamer.”

Sounds of surprised excitement broke out ahead.

The excitement was not the run-for-it kind. It was the what-the-hell-is-going-on kind. It took place in a combination kitchen and dining hall where sixteen women, of a vast range of ages, had been sharing a late breakfast. The older women asked the questions. Elmo ignored them. He asked, “Silent? Which one?”

Silent pointed.

The girl from the street shared a table with five others who might have been her sisters. An effort had been made to make them look alike, but our target stood out once you spotted her. She had an aura, a magnetism that marked her as extremely special.

Maybe our employer had taken a gander into the future and had seen what the girl might become.

Elmo said, “Silent, get her. Tuco, Reams, help him. Goblin, cover. No weapons.” All stated in a language not spoken in Aloe.

There was no resistance. The old women stopped protesting and demanding, started asking why we were doing this.

Silent stood the girl up, bound her wrists behind her. I noted that he wore gloves and was careful to make no skin-to-skin contact. She asked what was going on, once, then succumbed to fear. Which made me feel so awful I just wanted to help her. I could imagine the horrors she expected at our hands.

“Wow,” Elmo said, very softly.

“Indeed,” Goblin agreed. “Potent. Maybe she is something special.”

We went back out the way we had come in, Goblin and I doing rearguard duty. Elmo, in the lead and in a hurry, caught a kid in the process of robbing the poor box. Elmo responded harshly.

The would-be thief was unconscious when I settled down to treat his broken arm. Elmo had avoided shedding too much blood.

Goblin stuck with me. Elmo collected the platoon and, with Silent valiantly negating whatever it was the girl gave off under stress, headed for the compound. Scores of baffled Aloens watched. Some tagged along after Elmo.

Goblin studied the locals for signs of belligerence. Preoccupied, he did not hear what I thought I heard from the shadows inside the temple. If it was not my frightened imagination running away with me.

It was a drag-scrape, sudden clop! then another drag-scrape. Like somebody with a bad leg having a hard time keeping quiet while crossing a wide stone floor.

“How come you think I imagined it?” I demanded. Goblin and I were approaching the Dark Horse. Our presence was not necessary at the compound. Elmo could handle all that. And, when the temple girl proved not to be Tides Elba, he could be the man who got in there and did some serious planning on how to track and catch the real thing.

“Because I got a great view of the southern sky.” He pointed.

From out of the distance, unhurried, a flying carpet headed across town, no more than fifty feet above the rooftops. Two people were visible on the side toward us, one wearing a filthy, floppy black hat.

So. The Limper had gone to Utbank parish to find out what One-Eye was up to. And had decided to bring him and the Third back, not entirely convinced that the Old Man had sent them out there because One-Eye’s greed was complicating matters.

“All right. It must have been my guilty conscience. Let’s reward ourselves for work well done with some of Master Zhorab’s fine ale.”

Goblin said, “It’s earlier than is my custom but in honor of our success I will join you, sir.”

We entered. The interior of the Dark Horse exactly reflected its exterior. There were no Company brothers out there, drinking and playing tonk. There were none inside, either.

In fact, there was no one behind the bar.

Goblin rectified that by observing, “Nobody’s home. Let’s get back there and…”

Markeb Zhorab materialized. Goblin said, “Hello, magic man. We’ve done a hard day’s work. Beer is in order.”

Zhorab drew two mugs while eyeing us with unnerving intensity. “Did you catch who you were after?”

The man was incredibly tense. “Yes. Why does that mean so much to you?”

Zhorab raised a finger in a “wait one” gesture. He dug out the hidden cash box he thought was secret but was not to any sharp-eyed regular. He looked around furtively while fumbling it open. He produced a ragged deck.

“My cards.” Last seen in the hands of Corey and his pals. “Where did you get those?”

“Goblin said to hang on to them till you arrested the person the Taken is here to collect.”

The little wizard and I exchanged puzzled looks.

“Oh. It’s not really the cards.” He spread the deck across the bar, hand shaking. He watched the door like he expected doom to thunder through any second.

Goblin asked, “You haven’t sold us out to somebody, have you?”

“Huh? Oh! No! Never!”

“Then how come this place is so empty? How come you’re so nervous?”

I said, “The place is empty because everybody is back at the compound. Hello.” I plucked a piece of parchment from amongst the scattered cards.

I unfolded it.

I stared.

I started shaking. Memories buried monstrously deep gurgled to the surface. “Goblin. Check this out.”

Goblin started shaking, too.

Zhorab asked, “I did it right?”

I pushed a silver piece across. “You did it perfectly.” I had found the copy now, too. “Just one more step. You had the letter writer make an extra copy. We’ll want that one, too.”

Zhorab wanted to lie but desisted after a look into Goblin’s eyes. “It will take a few minutes.”

I put another coin on the bar, with an ugly black knife for a companion. The knife was not special but looked like it ought to be.

Zhorab gulped, nodded, vanished.

Goblin observed, “He gave that up pretty easy.”

“Probably has more than one copy.”

“You want them all?”

“I don’t mind there being a few extras floating around, maybe getting back to the Tower someday.”

“Your honey would run our smelly friend through the reeducation process again.”

I shuddered. I had had my own brush with the Eye. Everything inside me had been exposed had the Lady cared to look. It had been her way of getting to know me. What the Limper would endure would be a hundred times worse, but not fatal. He was much too useful—when he confined himself to being an extension of the Lady’s will.

Zhorab returned. He gave me another folded parchment. I sheathed my knife. “We have to go. Be ready for a big rush later on.”

We encountered Hagop halfway to the compound. “There you are. The Captain sent me to get you guys. He wants Goblin to connect with the Tower so the Lady will know we got the girl, in perfect shape, before the Limper takes her and heads out.”

“Shit.” Goblin looked back, considering making a run for it.

It had been a while since he had made direct contact. He did not want to endure that again. Not voluntarily.

I said, “It must be damned important if he’s willing to put you through that.”

Hagop said, “He really wants to make sure she knows. He doesn’t trust the Limper.”

“Who would?” And, “The temple girl really is Tides Elba?”

“Yes. She doesn’t deny it. She claims she’s no Rebel or Resurrectionist, either. But she’s got some girl magic.”

Goblin asked, “Croaker, it ever feel like everybody knows more than you do?”

“Every damned day since I joined this chicken-shit outfit. Hagop. Take this. First chance you get, plant it right back where you found it.”

He took the folded parchment. “This isn’t the one I gave you.”

The Captain was behind his table. Tides Elba sat on one of his rude chairs, wrists and ankles in light fetters. She looked to have gone numb, emotionally beyond the point where she could not believe this was happening. A torc had been placed around her neck, the sort used to manage captured sorcerers. If she tried to use sorcery, it would deliver terrible pain.

The Lady must have probed far into the future. The child was sitting on the only magic she controlled right now.

The Captain scowled. “You’ve been drinking.”

“One mug, in celebration of a job well done,” Goblin replied.

“It’s not done yet. Contact the Lady. Let her know. Before the Limper finds out we have her.”

Goblin told me, “Welcome to the mushroom club.”

The Captain said, “I don’t need you here, Croaker.”

“Of course you do. How else am I going to get it into the Annals right?”

He shrugged. “Move it, Goblin. You’re wasting valuable time.”

Goblin could make contact on the spur of the moment because he had made the connection so often before. But familiarity did not ease the pain. He shrieked. He fell down, gripped by a seizure. Startled, concerned, the Captain came out from behind his table, dropped to a knee beside Goblin, back to the girl. “Will he be all right?”

“Make sure he doesn’t swallow his tongue.” I took the opportunity to cop a feel of a firm, fresh breast and to slip a square of parchment in with the sweet young jubblies. The girl met my eye but said nothing. “My guess is, he’s having trouble getting through.”

The Lady heard Goblin but chose another means of response. Just as the Limper burst in through an exploding door.

A circle of embers two feet across appeared above Goblin, almost tangled in the Captain’s hair. The Lady’s beautiful face came into focus inside. Her gaze met mine. She smiled. My legs turned to gelatin.

Goblin’s seizure ended. As did the Limper’s charge.

A voice like a whisper from everywhere asked, “Is this her?”

The Captain said, “So we believe, ma’am. She fits all the particulars.”

The Lady winked at me. We were old campaign buddies. We had hunted down and killed her sister during the fighting at Charm.

The whisper from everywhere said, “She’s striking, isn’t she?”

I nodded. Goblin and the Captain nodded. The Limper, oozing closer behind his miasmic stench, dipped his masked face in agreement. Tides Elba was indeed striking, and growing more so by the minute—employing an unconscious sorcery to which her torc did not respond.

“Every bit as much as my sister was. This one’s remote grandmother, to whom she bears an uncanny resemblance.”

Different sister, I presumed. Tides Elba bore only a passing resemblance to the one I helped kill. I started to ask a question. Needlessly. Our employer was in an expansive mood.

“Her male ancestor was my husband. He futtered anything that moved, including all my sisters and all the female Taken. Enough. She was about to mate with another of his descendants. Their child would become a vessel into which the old bastard could project his soul.”

The Limper might have considered all that in whatever he had planned. The rest of us gaped. Excepting the girl. She did not understand a word. The language the Lady spoke was unknown to her.

Her whole being was focused on what hung in the air, there, though.

She voided herself. She knew where she was bound.

Something passed between the Lady and the Limper. The stinky little sorcerer bowed deeply. He moved in on the girl, took hold of her arm, forced her to her feet. He pushed her toward the door he had wrecked.

The rest of us watched, every man wishing he had the power to stop them, every man knowing that, if the Lady had spoken truly, Tides Elba was a threat to the entire world. She could become the port through which the hideous shadow known as the Dominator could make his return. No doubt she was sought by and beloved of every Resurrectionist cult hoping to free the old evil from his grave. No doubt she was a prophesied messiah of darkness.

I glanced back. The Lady was gone. The end, here, was almost an anticlimax. But that was because we were out there on the margins, able to see only the local surface of the story. For the Company, the central fact would be we had survived.

We all went out and watched the Limper get ready to go.

He seemed nervous and unhappy. He shoved the girl into a sack. He sewed that shut, then secured it to his carpet with cording. Tides Elba would not evade her fate by rolling off the carpet while it was in flight. His liftoff into the late-afternoon light seemed erratic. He wobbled as he headed west.

I found Hagop in the shadows near where the Limper’s carpet had lain. He gave me a big grin and a thumbs-up. “He spotted it right away. Took it out, looked at it, and jumped like somebody just hit him with a shovel.”

“He got the message, then.”

Goblin stared westward, eyes still haunted, but said only, “What a waste of delicious girl flesh.” And then, “Let’s round up Elmo and One-Eye and go tip a few at the Dark Horse. Elmo has got the cards, don’t he?”