Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,25
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.