It was weird that nobody else thought of it right away. But maybe that was because people were more taken with what had happened between the Lady and the White Rose and were wondering what that would mean to the empire and the rebellion. For a while it looked like half the world was up for grabs. Everybody who was the sort to do some grabbing was eyeballing his or her chances and scouting around to see if they might get turned into eunuchs if they tried.

So it was up to some second-rate hustlers from Oar’s north side to take first whack at stealing the silver spike.

The news from the Barrowland was still in the shithouse rumor stage when Tully Stahl came pounding on the door of the room where his cousin Smeds Stahl stayed.

The room Smeds lived in had no furnishings except roaches and dirt, half a dozen mildewed, stolen blankets, and half a gross of empty clay wine jugs that he never got around to taking back. They made him pay deposit at the Thorn and Crown. Smeds called the jugs his life savings^ If times got really tough he could trade eight empties for a full.

Tully said that was a dumb way to do things. Whenever Smeds got ripped and pissed he started throwing things around. He wasted his savings.

The shards never got picked up, either, just kicked against one wall, where they formed a dusty badland.

When Tully got on him Smeds figured he was just putting on airs because he was flush. Tully had two married women giving him presents for helping out around the house when the old man was gone. And he was living with a widow he was going to clean out as soon as tie found some other woman to take him in. He thought being a success gave him the right to dish out advice.

Tully pounded on the door. Smeds ignored him. The Kinbro girls from upstairs, Marti and Sheena, eleven and twelve, were there for their “music lessons.” The three of them were naked and tumbling around on the ratty blankets. The only instrument in sight was a skin flute.

Smeds made the girls stop bouncing and giggling. There was people who wouldn’t appreciate how he was preparing them for later life.

Pound. Pound. Pound. “Come on, Smeds. Open up.

It’s me. Tully.” “I’m busy.”

“Open up. I got a deal I got to talk about.” Signing, Smeds untangled himself from skinny young limbs and trudged to the door. “It’s my cousin. He’s all right.”

The girls had been into the wine. They didn’t care. They didn’t cover themselves. They just sat there grinning when Smeds let Tully in.

“Some friends,” Smeds explained. “You want in? They don’t mind.”

“Some other time. Get them out.”

Smeds glared at his cousin. Getting too damned pushy. “Come on, girls. Get your clothes on. Papa has to talk business.”

Tully and Smeds watched while they got into ragged clothing. It didn’t occur to Smeds to dress. Sheena gave old Hank the Shank a playful slap as she went by. “See you later.” The door closed. “You’re going to get your ass in a sling,” Tully said.

“No more than you. You ought to meet their mother.”

“She got any money?”

“No. But she blows a mean horn. Got a thing about it. She gets going she just can’t quit.”

“When you going to clean this pigsty?”

“Soon as the maid gets back from holiday. So what’s so important you have to break in on my party?”

“You heard about what happened up in the Barrowland?”

“I heard some stories. I didn’t pay no attention. What do I care? Won’t make no difference to me.”

“It might. You hear the part about the silver spike?”

Smeds thought. “Yeah. They stuck it in a tree. I thought that would be handy to glom on to. Then I thought some more and figured there wouldn’t be enough silver in it to make it worth the trip.”

“It isn’t the silver, cousin. It’s what’s in the silver.”

Smeds turned it around in his mind some. He couldn’t find Tully’s angle. “You better lay it out by the numbers.” Smeds Stahl was not known for his keen mind.

“That big nail has the soul of the Dominator trapped in it. That means it’s one bad hunk of metal. You take some big wazoo of a sorcerer, I bet he could pound it into some kind of all-time mean amulet. You know, like in stories.”

Smeds frowned. “We aren’t sorcerers.”

Tully got impatient. “We’d be the middlemen. We go up there and dig it out of that tree and hide it out till word gets around that it’s gone. Then we let it out that it’s for sale. To the highest bidder.”

Smeds frowned some more and put his whole brain to work. He was no genius but he had plenty of low, mean cunning and he had learned how to stay alive. “Sounds damned dangerous to me. Something we’d need help on if we wanted to come out of it in one piece.”

“Right. Even the easy part, going up there and liberating the damned thing, would be more than a two-man job. The Great Forest might be a pretty rough place for guys who don’t know anything about the woods. I figured we’d need two more guys, one of them who knows about the woods.”

“Already we’re talking a four-way split here, Tully. On how much?”

“I don’t know. Give them time to bid it up, I think we’d be set for life. And I ain’t talking no four-way split, neither, Smeds. Two ways. All in the family.”

They looked at each other. Smeds said, “You got the plan. Tell me.”

“You know Timmy Locan? Was in the army for a while?”

“About long enough to figure out how to go over the hill. Yeah. He’s all right.”

“He was in long enough to learn how it works. We might run into soldiers up there. Would your heart be broken if they found him in an alley with his head bashed in?”

That was an easy one. “No.” His heart would be fine as long as it wasn’t Smeds Stahl they found.

“How about Old Man Fish? He used to trap in the Great Forest.”

“Couple of straight arrows.”

“That’s what we need. Honest crooks. Not some guys who might try to do us out of our share. What do you say? Want to go for it?”

“Tell me how much is in it again.”

“Enough to live like princes. We going to go talk to those guys?”

Smeds shrugged. “Why not? What have I got better to do?” He looked at the ceiling. “You better get some clothes on.”

Heading down the stairs, Smeds said, “You’d better do the talking.” “Good idea.”

Heading up the street, Smeds asked, “You ever killed anybody?”

“No. I never needed to. I don’t see where I’d have any problem.”

“I had to once. Cut a guy’s throat. It ain’t like you think. They spray blood all over the place and make weird noises. And they take a long time to croak. And they keep trying to come after you. I still get nightmares about that guy trying to take me with him.”

Tully looked at him and made a face. “Then do it some other way next time.”

Each night there was moonlight enough, a thing came down out of the northern Great Forest, quiet as a limping shadow, into the lorn and trammeled place of death called the Barrowland. That place was heavy with the fetor of corruption. A great many corpses lay rotting in shallow graves.

Limping on three legs, the thing cautiously circled the uncorrupted carcass of a dragon, settled on its haunches in the hole it was digging so patiently, night after night, with a single paw. While it worked it cast frequent glances toward the ruins of a town and military compound several hundred yards to the west.

The garrison had existed to shield the Barrowland from trespassers with evil intentions and to watch for signs that the old darkness in the ground was stirring. Those reasons no longer existed. The battle in which the digging beast had been crippled, in which the dragon had perished, in which the town and compound had been devastated, had put an end to the need for a military stewardship.