The Silver Spike

XXXIII

It was late afternoon. Smeds looked up from his work on the wall. He grinned. Two more hours and his sentence to the labor battalion—three days for petty vandalism and malicious mischief—would end. And the damned spike would be tucked away safe in a place no one could find. Only he would know that it lay in a pocket in the mortar under a certain merlon stone twenty-seven east of the new east-side tower overlooking the North Gate.

Smeds was smugly proud of himself for having thought of such a nifty hiding place. Who would think of that? Nobody. And if by some remote chance somebody did, who would go tearing down the whole damned wall to find it? They would pay for the information.

He grinned again.

His imperial overseer scowled but did not crack his whip. That whip had taught Smeds quickly to keep up his share of the work even while he was daydreaming.

His grin died not because the overseer disapproved but because the cloud of dust to the north, that had been approaching for several hours, had come within a mile of the wall and had disgorged two hurried black riders. They had to be Gossamer and Spidersilk.

They knew about the spike.

Man, they had come back fast. He did not like what that implied.

At least maybe now Tully would get a convincing glimpse of what these people were really like when they had their gloves off.

Time came without a bite from the whip, despite his having wandered off into reveries about a young woman he had met the day before he had let himself get caught painting an obscene slogan on a pre-imperial monument. It had cost him to get a professional letter writer to teach him to inscribe the slogan. He could not read or write his own name.

That girl was going to be waiting for him tonight, a scant fourteen years of ripening heat.

He came down out of the scaffolding thinking of a bath and fresh clothing and there was Old Man Fish waiting for him to get his release, a simple formality involving snipping a wire from around his neck. "What's up?" Smeds asked.

"I figured somebody ought to come make sure they let you go when they were supposed to. Tully couldn't be bothered. Timmy's still laid up."

Timmy had let the wizard take the hand the morning Smeds had started his sentence. "He all right? Did it work?"

"Looks like. No problem with that kind of pain. Let's go."

They walked a way, not talking much. Smeds looked around through narrowed eyes. They were tearing down three times as fast as they were rebuilding. There were clear areas that covered a dozen acres. The gray boys had been more evident since the bunch from the north had come in, but now they were everywhere. Platoons of the Nightstalkers moved around quickly and purposefully. Soldiers from other outfits seemed to be posted on every corner. Twice they were stopped and asked to state their names and business.

Unprecedented.

"What the hell is going on?" Smeds asked.

"I don't know. They were just getting started when I was coming to get you."

"Gossamer and Spidersilk got back from the Barrowland about two hours ago. I watched them from the wall. They were in a hell of a big hurry."

"Unh. So there it is." Fish glanced over, his bushy white eyebrows two ragged caterpillars arching their backs. "Did you put it into the wall?"

Smeds did not answer.

"Good. I figured that's what it had to be. You couldn't have done better. And I just forgot I even thought you might have been up to something like that."

They walked along listening to the rumors running the streets. One refrain kept coming up. The imperials had sealed the city. Anybody who wanted could get in but they weren't going to let anyone out till they found someone or something they wanted bad. A house-to-house search had begun already and they were being as thorough as imperials always were.

"We got a problem," Smeds said.

"We have more than one."

"I told Tully till I was blue in the face."

"Maybe you should have said let's stay. Contrary as he's been, he might have decided he had to get out."

"I'll remember that. We got to have a sitdown, all four of us. We got to pound some facts into Tully's skull."

"Yes. Or just do what has to be done whether he likes it or not."

"Yeah."

They turned into the street that led past the Skull and Crossbones. The shadows made Smeds jumpy. He expected a Gossamer or Spidersilk to come bounding out of every one. He had forgotten his date entirely. "Nothing to do now but cover our asses and try to ride it out. They don't find anything they'll figure the spike went on down the road."

"Maybe."

"They have to loosen up sometime. You can't keep a city like Oar locked up very long."

"They don't find it easy, Smeds, they'll try looking hard. Maybe offer some rewards. Big ones, considering the trouble they're going to already."

"Yeah."

"I saw the doc Timmy visited. Remember? I'm pretty sure he caught whatever Timmy had. He had that same look."

Smeds stopped walking. "Shit."

"Yeah. And then there's the wizard that did his hand. Two arrows pointing straight at us and too late to dodge them by running away. We have some hard choices to make."

Smeds stood staring into the twilight indigo behind spires rising from the heart of the city. Here it was. What he had been afraid this would come to from the beginning, only it wouldn't be Fish and Timmy he'd have to stick a knife in. "I think I can do it if it has to be done. You?"

"Yes. If that's the decision."

"Let's go get a drink and look at the angles."

"You don't want to drink much. If that's the move we're going to make. That wizard will have to be done quick. He isn't stupid. It won't be long before he figures out that what the grays are looking for might be the same thing that burned Timmy's hand. And not much longer for him to realize he's the cutout between us and them. He won't be easy if he's looking for us to come."

"I'm still going to have to have one long one."

Into the Skull and Crossbones. It was the neighborhood social hour but there were tables available. The landlord did not have the sort of personality that brought in the free-spending hordes. To Smeds's relief his cousin was prominent among the missing.

Neither of them spoke till a pitcher had been delivered and Smeds had downed a long draft. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Been thinking. The way I see it, we got a whatchamacallit, quorum, right here. You and me. Timmy can't do anything even if he wanted. And Tully would just argue and fuss and try to take over and make everybody do things his way. Then he'd screw it up and get us all killed."

"True."

"So what are we going to do?"

Old Man Fish smiled softly. "You telling me to decide?

You want me to tell you what to do? So that way it isn't your fault, you were just doing what you were told?"

Smeds hadn't thought of it that way consciously. But there was a truth there that startled him.

"That's all right," Fish said. "You just needed to have that up where you could look at it and see if you were trying to be a weasel. How do you feel about doing it?"

That was an easy one. "I don't want to. Those guys never done nothing but try to help us when we asked. But better their asses than mine. I ain't going to let them take me down because I know I'm going to feel bad about doing what, as far as I can see, is the only thing that'll keep the grays off."

"So you just talked yourself into it."

Smeds thought about that. His stomach knotted up. "I guess so."

"That's one vote for action."

"You go the other way, we have to get Timmy or Tully to kick in a tiebreaker." Some foolish part of him harkened to a hope that he would be voted down. Another part said it would be nice to be alive to have a guilty conscience.

"I'm with you." Fish managed a weak smile. "No tie. I don't like it either. But I don't see any other way out. You think of one, let me know. I'll be plenty happy to change my mind." Fish poured himself a beer.

Smeds's stomach just kept knotting and sinking.