The Silver Spike

IX

It was another of those damned days. Oar was a troubled city. There were scattered disturbances, conflict between Rebel and imperial partisans, and a lot of private crimes were getting committed under the guise of politics. My boss was talking about shutting up his city house and moving out to a place he owned near Deal. If he did that I'd have to decide whether or not to go along. I wanted to talk it over with Raven, but…

He was passed out when I got there.

"Over a goddamned woman you never even had," I grumbled, and kicked a tin plate across the room. The son of a bitch hadn't bothered to clean up after himself again. I thought about kicking him around the room. But I wasn't mad enough to try that yet.

Even drunk and wasted away, he was still Raven, the baddest man I'd ever met. I didn't need to get into it with him.

He woke up so sudden I jumped. He used the wall to pull himself up. He was pale and shaking and I never for a second took it for the effect of the wine. That old boy was scared shitless.

He couldn't hardly stand up without that wall to help, and he was probably seeing three of me and little blue men besides, but he gobbled out, "Case, get your stuff together."

"What?"

He was working his way along the wall toward his heap of stuff. "Something just broke out of the Barrowland… Oh, god!" He went down on his knees, holding his stomach. He started puking. I handed him water to cleanse his mouth and a rag to wipe up with. He didn't argue. "Something got out. Something as dark as…" Up came another load.

I asked, "You sure it wasn't just a nightmare? Or maybe the grape boogies?"

"It was real. It wasn't the wine. I don't know how I know. I know. I saw it as clear as if I was there. There was that beast everybody called Toadkiller Dog." He talked slow, trying not to slur. He slurred anyway. "Something was with it. Something greater. Something of the true darkness."

I didn't know what to say. He believed it even if I didn't. He had his mess cleaned and was starting to stuff his things into a bag. He asked, "Where did you stable the horses?"

He was serious. Unable to navigate and brain-pickled, but he was by-damned going to do something right now. "Thulda's. Why? Where you going?" "We got to get help."

"Help? We? You forgetting I got me a job here? I got responsibilities. I can't just mount up and ride off chasing lights you seen in the swamp because you got aholt of some doctored wine."

He got mad. I got mad right back. We yelled and screamed some. He threw things because he wasn't in good enough shape to run me down. I stomped his wineskin to death and watched its blood trickle across the floor. The landlady kicked the door in. She weighed two hundred pounds and was as mean as a snake. "I told you bastards I wasn't going to put up with no more of this.…" We rushed her. She was a liar and a cheat and a bully and she probably stole things from the rooms when she thought she wouldn't get caught. We threw her down the stairs and stood around laughing like a couple of kid vandals. She started screeching again down below. She wasn't hurt.

I stopped laughing. She wasn't hurt, but she might have been. And I didn't have the excuse of being drunk. "I take it you're headed out of town?"

"Yeah." The humor had fled him, too. His color was ghastly.

"How you going to get out of town? It's the middle of the night."

"Cash considerations. The magical key." He shouldered his bag. "You about ready?"

"Yeah." He knew I would come all the time.

"Hey, Loo!" the gateman called into the gatehouse while Raven clinked coins. "Get your ass up. We got us another customer." He grinned apologetically. "Loo, he's got a day job plucking chickens. Got too damned many kids. You would think a guy would learn how to stop after the first dozen. Not Loo." He kept on grinning.

"You'd figure," I admitted. "This that good a job? I don't see so many guys happy with their work like you."

"Pretty boring on the night watch, mostly. Been a profitable night tonight, though."

"Others have gone before us?" Raven asked.

"Only one guy. This old man about an hour ago. In such a big damned hurry he just scattered coins all over the place."

That was what you call your basic broad hint. Raven ignored it. I made small talk till Loo turned out with the keys and opened the small port through the big gate. Raven just stared straight ahead. When Loo opened up he tossed some silver.

"Why, thank you, yer grace. Come around anytime. Any time. You got a friend down here to South Gate."

Raven didn't say anything. He just grimaced and led his horse through the gateway onto the moon-washed road.

"Thanks," I told the gatemen. "See you guys around."

"Anytime, yer grace. Anytime. I'm yer man."

Raven must have paid them off good.

The grimace was familiar, though I hadn't seen it for a while. "Your hip bothering you again?"

"It'll be all right. I've traveled with worse."

Sour bastard. He'd shaken the wine, pretty well, but the hangover was hanging over. "Taking a long time to heal."

"What the hell you expect? I'm not so young anymore. And it was one of her arrows Croaker got me with." Raven didn't seem to hold no grudge. He just couldn't figure it out.

He probably didn't want to figure it out. His idea of Raven was that Raven was a doer, not a thinker.

Sometimes I wondered how he could feed himself so much crap.