Smeds was amazed. That bastard Fish sure could stir some shit.
There was a rumor got started that this silversmith down on Sedar Row—where all the silversmiths and goldsmiths and such were located—had had a guy bring in a giant silver nail and pay him a hundred obols to turn it into a chalice and keep his mouth shut about it. Only this smith had got to celebrating his good fortune last night and had had too much to drink and had bragged to some of his cronies after swearing them to secrecy.
Today a man's life was worthless if he had anything to do with the metalworking or jewelry trades. Those who were out after the spike were getting desperate. They were stumbling over each other and causing a lot of damage in the process. Mostly to one another.
The grays were late getting into the game but when they did they did not fool around, they came with a vengeance, sweeping through the city confiscating every piece of silver they found on the assumption the spike could have been turned into anything by now. They tried giving claim chits but people were having none of that. They had been robbed by the military before.
There was resistance. There was localized rioting. People and soldiers were hurt and killed. But there were too many soldiers and even now most people were not angry enough to rebel.
"Pretty sneaky, Fish," Smeds told the old man, walking down a street where he felt safe talking. "Mean sneaky."
"It worked. That don't mean I'm proud of it."
"It worked all right. But for how long?"
"I figure three, four days. Maybe five if I feed the rumor a couple of new angles. Plus however long it takes Gossamer and Spidersilk to decided the spike isn't in any of the silver the soldiers are collecting up. So we'll be all right for maybe a week. Unless one of the free-lancers stumbles onto us somehow. But in the long run we're still had. They'll get us one way or another. Unless this backward siege breaks. Let even ten people get out of this city and get away and you've opened the whole world up to the search. Because if there's a successful breakout the man who has the spike is sure to be one of the first people gone."
"He is?"
"Wouldn't you figure that if you were in the place of the twins?"
"I guess."
"Every day they send more men to guard the walls. I don't know, but I think they're maybe working against a deadline. If they are, we might use that against them."
"A deadline? How's that?"
"Those two aren't anywhere near top dogs in the empire. Sooner or later their bosses have got to get suspicious about what they're up to. Or one of them might decide to come up here and grab off the spike for himself."
"We should have left the sucker where it was and settled."
"We should have. But we didn't. We have to live and maybe die with that. And make no mistake, Smeds. We're in a fight for our lives. You, me, Timmy, Tully, we're all dead if they ever get close to us."
"If you're trying to scare the shit out of me, Fish, you're doing a damned good job."
"I'm trying to scare you because I'm petrified myself and you're the only one I think is steady enough to help me. Tully doesn't have any backbone at all and Timmy has been living in kind of a daze ever since he lost his hand."
"I got a feeling I'm not going to like whatever you're going to say. What're you thinking?"
"One of us needs to steal some white paint. Not buy it but steal it, because a seller might remember who he sold it to."
"I can handle that. I know where to get it. If the grays aren't sitting on it. What're we going to do with it?"
"Try to change the focus of this whole mess. Try to politicize it."
There he went getting mysterious again. Smeds did not understand but decided he did not have to as long as Fish knew what he was doing.
That evening was the first time Tully asked to borrow money. It was a trivial amount and he paid it back next morning, so Smeds thought nothing of it.
That night was the first night Smeds fell asleep thinking about Old Man Fish and how he seemed to have no conscience at all once you got to know him. It was like Fish had decided he was going to get through this mess and get his share from the spike even if he had to sacrifice everybody in Oar. That didn't seem like the Fish he'd always known. But the Fish he'd always known hadn't ever had anything at stake.
He could not be sure where he stood himself. He was neither a thinker nor a doer. He had spend his life drifting, doing what he had to do to get by and not much more.
He did know that he did not want to die young or even to answer questions on the imperial rack. He knew he did not want to be poor again. He had done that and having money was better. Having a lot of money, like from selling the spike, would be even better.
He could arrive at no alternative to Fish's methods of achieving salvation, so he would go on going along. But with an abiding disquietude.
XLIV
Toadkiller Dog observed the quickening through tight eyes. He was an ancient thing and had dealt with sorcerers all his days. They were a treacherous breed. And the smell of betrayal hung thick in that monastic cellar.
He had located the necessary help more quickly than he had expected, in a country called Sweeps, a hundred miles west, where a bloody feud between families of wizards had raged unchecked for three generations. He had examined the respective families and he decided the Nacred had skills best suited to his needs. He had made contact and had struck a bargain: his help overcoming their enemies in return for theirs reconstructing his "companion."
He had told them nothing about the Limper.
The Shaded clan had ceased to exist, root and branch, sorcerers, wives, and nits that might have grown to become lice.
The twelve leading Nacred were there in the cellar, crowded around the trough of oil where the head, wedded to its new clay body, awaited a final quickening. They muttered to one another in a language he did not understand. They knew betrayal at this point would be painful and expensive.
They had seen him in action during the scouring of the Shaded. And he had been a cripple then.
He had made sure he got his own new limb first.
He growled, just a soft note of caution, an admonition to get on with it.
They did the thing that had to be done. One of the fool monks who had stayed around to restore the monastery served as the sacrifice.
Color flowed over the surface of the gray clay. It twitched and shivered almost as if it were becoming genuine flesh.
The body sat up suddenly, oil streaming off it. The Nacred sorcerers jumped back, startled. The Limper ran hands that had been clay over a body that had been clay. His smile became an ecstatic grin. "Mirror!" he said. His voice was a thunder. He looked at himself, ran fingers lovingly over a face that far exceeded the original at its best.
A bellow of rage nearly brought the ceiling down.
Toadkiller Dog caught one glimpse of what the Limper saw in the mirror.
The gorgeous new fading to reality. Truth. His face as it existed without the cosmetic overlay.
The Limper flung out of the trough, grabbed it up, hurled its contents around the cellar. The Nacreds retreated, shouted back, hastily prepared their defenses. They did not understand what was happening.
Toadkiller Dog understood. He knew the Limper's rages. This one was almost wholly contrived.
He had been looking in the wrong place when he had been watching the Nacreds for treachery. The Limper was the source of the foul smell.
He attacked. And in midleap recognized his error.
The Limper used the trough to deflect his charge, dashed to the doorway he had been blocking with his bulk. The Limper laughed, pranced up the stairs ahead of Nacred spells. Toadkiller Dog flung after him, but too late.
The stairwell collapsed.