"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.
XXXIV
Toadkiller Dog slipped into the monastery as silent as death. The windwhales were not yet below the horizon, scudding north, inexplicably abandoning their mission when it lacked only a touch of being complete. The monster was puzzled in the extreme but it did not allow that to paralyze him. He had enough distractions in the form of a thousand wounds and pains.
He slipped through the ruins and down into the subbase-ment, where he surprised a monk in the process of sabotaging the claywork. One snap of his jaws ended that, though it was probably too late to salvage anything.
He went over and stared at the head floating in the keg of oil. He was not a fast thinker, but steady, and he got where he wanted to go given time. The debate of the hour was whether or not there was any value in continuing an alliance with a thing so obviously mad and out of control.
The head stared back, awake and aware and completely helpless. The monster was not a subtle or reflective sort and so did not think it ironic that fate kept rendering helpless what was possibly the most powerful and most dangerous being in the world.
The head stared with great intensity, as though there was some critical message it had to get across. But what little unspoken communication had existed between them in the past no longer worked.
Toadkiller Dog whuffed, snapped the head up, and carried it out of the monastery. He concealed it in a place he thought would be safe, then limped away wearily.
It was start-over-from-scratch time and he had no idea, really, where to find the kinds of recruits he would need to do the tasks he needed done. He knew only where not to look. They had left nothing but desolation behind them in the north.
He did not hurry. He did not feel pressed. He would live till he ran into something powerful enough to kill him.
He thought he had all the time in the world.
XXXV
There were lights in the wizard's place. "He live alone?" Fish asked.
"I don't know," Smeds said. The wizard seemed to be the wealthiest man in his neighborhood. He had real windows.
A shadow moved across a paper shade.
"Doesn't matter anyway. There's no guarantee he won't have friends in, or a client." -
Smeds started. He had not thought about the chance of this becoming a massacre. He glanced up the street, the direction the patrol had gone. The gray boys were all over the place. This had to go down quick and quiet. "You able to do your part?"
"Yes. I'm working myself up the same way I did before we attacked at Charm. Big wizard, little wizard, the risks are pretty much the same."
"You were at Charm? I didn't know that."
"I was young and dumb. I don't kick it around. The grays are still fighting that one. They don't want to let anybody who went there die of old age."
"Patrol."
They faded into the shadows between two buildings, got down as low as they dared without sprawling in the garbage and dogshit. At the same moment light spilled from the wizard's doorway. A woman emerged. The clip-clop of the soldiers' boots picked up. They reached the woman as she reached the street.
"Evening, ma'am," one said. "You're out late. Consulting the wizard?"
There was not enough light to see it but Smeds knew she would be looking from one soldier to another, scared, trying to decide if she had good reason to be. She croaked, "Yes."
"May we have your name? We have to keep track of everyone who comes and goes."
"Why?"
"I don't know, ma'am. It's orders. It's the same all over town, wherever there's anybody in his line of business. Me and Luke being naturally lucky, we got this here clown on our beat that don't seem like he's going to get done all night."
"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."