Book 2 - Shadows Linger by Glen Cook

make it.”
    “They are.” I smiled, mentally assembling a team
including Elmo, Goblin, Pawnbroker, Kingpin, and a few others. Be
great if Raven were still with the Company and could go in with
them. They would be running the Buskin inside six months. Which
gave me an idea to take up with Whisper. If we wanted to know what
was happening, we should take charge of the Buskin. We could bring
in One-Eye. The little wizard was a gangster born. Stand out some,
though. I hadn’t seen another black face since we’d
crossed the Sea of Torments.
    “Had an idea?” Bullock asked, about to enter a place
called the Iron Lily. “You look like your brain is
smoking.”
    “Maybe. On something down the line. If it gets tougher
than we expect.”
    The Iron Lily looked like every other place we’d been,
only more so. The guy who ran it cringed. He didn’t know
nothing, hadn’t heard nothing, and promised to scream for
Bullock if anybody so much as spent a single gersh struck before
the accession of the present Duke. Every word bullshit. I was glad
to get out of there. I was afraid the place would collapse on me
before he finished kissing Bullock’s ass.
    “Got an
idea,” Bullock said. “Moneylenders.”
    Took me a second to catch it and to see where the idea had come
from. The guy in the tavern, whining about his debts. “Good
thinking.” A man in the snares of a moneylender would do
anything to wriggle away.
    “This is Krage’s territory.
He’s one of the nastiest. Let’s drop in.”
    No fear
in the man. His confidence in the power of his office was so strong
he dared walk into a den of cutthroats without blinking an eye. I
faked it good, but I was scared. The villain had his own army, and
it was jumpy.
    We found out why in a moment. Our man had come up on the short
end of somebody in the last couple days. He was down on his back,
mummified in bandages. Bullock chuckled. “Customers getting
frisky, Krage? Or did one of your boys try to promote
himself?”
    Krage eyed us from a face of stone. “I help
you with something, Inquisitor?”
    “Probably not.
You’d lie to me if the truth would save your soul, you
bloodsucker.”
    “Flattery will get you nowhere. What do you want, you
parasite?”
    Tough boy, this Krage. Struck from the same mold as Bullock, but
he had drifted into a socially less honored profession. Not much to
choose between them, I thought. Priest and moneylender. And that
was what Krage was saying.
    “Cute. I’m looking for a
guy.”
    “No shit.”
    “He’s got a lot of old money. Cajian period
coinage.”
    “Am I supposed to know him?”
    Bullock shrugged.
“Maybe he owes somebody.”
    “Money’s got no provenance down here,
Bullock.”
    Bullock told me: “A proverb of the
Buskin.” He faced Krage. “This money does. This money
better, let’s say. This is a big one, Krage. Not a little
let’s-look-around-and-make-a-show. Not some bump-and-run.
We’re going the route. Anybody covers on it, they go down
with this boy. You remember Bullock said it.”
    For a second Bullock made an impression. The message got
through. Then Krage blank-faced us again. “You’re
sniffing up the wrong tree, Inquisitor.”
    “Just telling you so you’d know.”
    “What did this guy do?”
    “Hit somebody who don’t take hitting.”
    Krage’s eyebrows rose. He looked puzzled. He could think of
no one who fit that description. “Who?”
    “Uhn-uh. Just don’t let your boys take any old money
without you checking the source and getting back to me.
Hear?”
    “Said your piece, Inquisitor?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Shouldn’t you better be going, then?”
    We went. I didn’t know the rules of the game, so
didn’t know how the locals would score the exchange. I rated
it too close to call. Outside, I asked, “Would he have told
us if he’d been paid in old coin?”
    “No. Not until he looked into it, at least. But he
hasn’t seen any old money.”
    I wondered why he thought
that. I didn’t ask. These were his