We arrived in the Barrowland by sliding down ropes with our possessions strapped on our backs. A few Plain creatures joined us. More would after we set up a safe camp. The boss menhir wanted a couple of his flint-hearted buddies there to keep an ear on us. The better to maintain quick communication, he said. Right.

The better to make sure things got done the tree god’s way.

“Back where we got started,” Raven said as soon as we had our feet on the ground. He’d been getting more fit to live with since Opal. He was almost back to being the old boy I’d known when I first met him.

“Back in the cold and wet,” I grumped. It had been the tag end of winter when we’d left. It was sneaking up on winter again now. The leaves had fallen. We could get snow anytime. “Let’s don’t fool around, eh? Let’s do what we got to and get out.”

Raven chuckled. “How you going to keep them on the farm after they’ve seen the big city?”

“A little less ruckus, please,” Bomanz said. “We don’t yet know there aren’t any imperials around.”

He was halfway right. We hadn’t yet seen that with our own eyes, but the Plain creatures had scouted and reported nothing bigger than a rabbit within five miles. I could trust them on that.

Bomanz had to do some wizard stuff before he was satisfied. Then he let us set up housekeeping and start a fire.

We dragged out with morning twilight and ate some god-awful cold yuck. Then we split up.

I got the town and military compound because I knew them best. Raven took the woods. Bomanz got the Barrowland itself. Near as I could tell he wasn’t going to do anything but stand in the middle and take a nap.

The Plain creatures were supposed to do anything they wanted and clue us if they found anything.

I needed to do only a rough once-over to see what had happened in town. There wasn’t nothing but bones left. Poking around wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I did everything I could think of to find out something useful, then I went back to camp. Bomanz was just about where I’d left him, eyes still closed, but taking little tippy-toe baby steps.

At least he was moving.

Raven came back. “You done already?”

“Yep.”

“Find anything?”

“A whole lot of bones. Enough to build an army of skeletons.”

“Got you down, eh?”

“I knew all them guys.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t say anything else, just waited. He can be an all-right guy when he isn’t busy feeling sorry for himself.

“I figure the Limper and Toadkiller Dog did the killing. But there was somebody else there after them. Somebody went through like a mother picking a baby’s nits. There ain’t nothing left there that’s even remotely valuable.”

Raven though about that. “Nothing at all?”

“Picked as clean as the bones.”

“That might be an angle to follow up in Oar. Though they would have taken only what they could carry, and that would be the kind of thing that isn’t going to make a splash. Unless they did something gaudy. Which if they had they would be in the hands of the imperials already.”

Bomanz joined us. He puttered around making tea while Raven told us he’d found two campsites probably used by the guys we were after, but nothing that would help us.

“If there ever was anything here the imperials got to it first.”

“And if they had,” Bomanz said, “they would have the spike by now.”

We’d gotten reports from Oar through the stones. The news was not encouraging. It looked like a couple of imperial bigwigs were out to grab the spike and go into the empire business for themselves.

“You learn anything?” Raven asked.

Bomanz said, “Not much. There were four of them. Probably. They got away with what they did because most of the time the sapling was preoccupied with Toadkiller Dog and did not perceive them as a threat. It thought they were throwing sticks at it as a gesture of defiance.”

“Sticks?” I asked.

“They threw sticks at the tree until it was almost buried. Then they set the pile on fire.”

Raven muttered, “You don’t have to be brilliant to be a god.”

I said, “We got them now.”

“What?” That Bomanz never did figure out you could be joking.

“All we got to do is look for four guys with splinters in their fingers.”

Bomanz scowled. Raven chuckled. He asked, “Do we know anything about these men at all?”

Bomanz grumbled, “We don’t even know they were men.”

“Great.”

Raven said, “Since we can’t get anywhere with who, why not work on when? Can we pin down any dates? Even approximately? Then work back from them to whose movements fit?”

That sounded pretty feeble to me and I said so. “Even if Oar hadn’t been attacked and half the people killed and the other half kept crazy ever since...”

“Forget I brought it up. Well, wizard, is it worth us hanging around here? Or should we go down to Oar and try to smoke them out?”

“Tentatively-pending reports from our allies from the Plain-I’d say we’re wasting our time here.”

The weirder side of the outfit didn’t come up with anything either. At sundown we clambered back aboard our smelly airborne steed planning on having breakfast in Oar.

I was looking forward to my first decent meal in months.

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.”