Kill the Raven: A Thriller (Raven Trilogy Book 3)

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  She said, “You’re not against me.”

  “You got Casey’s number, got his place. That’s good luck for you.”

  “I’m German, and you’re Irish. How come you’re helping me?”

  He paused with the coal axe above his head and said, “There’s work, and there’s bullshit.” Aodh brought down the axe with all his power and sprayed coal in all directions. “See if you can figure which I prefer.”

  SEVEN

  WHEN KAMP REACHED THE WIDE LAWN of the Judge’s property, slowed his breathing and crouched low. He scanned the Judge’s residence, a mansion in the Jigsaw Gothic style. All the windows were dark, save one on the second floor that he knew was the study.

  Kamp couldn’t wait for the hearing the next morning in order to make his case. He thought he remembered a time when he understood his place in the world, remembered the feeling of solid ground beneath his feet. He recalled, too, the moment he lost his footing. He tried to concentrate on casing the house but found himself slipping backward into fragmented memories.

  In his mind’s eye he sighted a grey uniform by a low wall across the field and raised the Sharps. Staring down the barrel, he saw his foe and pinpointed the exact spot where the bullet would enter the man’s forehead.

  In the gap between the flash of the muzzle and when the bullet did its work, Kamp saw his enemy fire as well. He felt the impact at his temple and in that flash wondered why he felt it at the side of his head rather than straight on.

  Before that, he never wondered about his place or purpose in the world, and after that, he couldn’t remember ever having known.

  KAMP CIRCLED THE PROPERTY, searching for guards and seeing no one. He went to the stone patio behind the house and waited at the edge of the lawn, listening. He waited another minute, then went to the door and tried the knob. Unlocked.

  He made his way to the foot of the staircase and listened again. He heard the floorboards creaking above him and then nothing. Kamp ascended the stairs and made it half way before the first shot rang out, splintering the wood panel just above his head.

  He looked up and saw the Judge’s gun.

  “Judge, it’s me.” The Judge fired again and missed. Kamp scrambled down the stairs. “It’s Kamp.”

  The Judge emptied the pistol, and when he did, Kamp went running back up. He tackled him the Judge by the legs and pinned him to the floor.

  “Unhand me, you son of a bitch.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” The Judge’s face went purple.

  “This Nickel Glock story. Why are you going along with it?”

  When the Judge didn’t answer, Kamp pressed his forearm hard into the Judge’s throat, cutting off the flow of blood. As the Judge’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, Kamp felt the tip of a cold gun barrel at the base of his skull, then heard a man’s voice.

  “Ach, I know you and the Judge is well-acquainted, but this here just ain’t, well, it ain’t freindlich.”

  The barrel bit into Kamp’s neck, and he heard the cocking of the pistol. Kamp pressed his forearm even harder until the Judge’s eyelids began to flutter.

  The man behind him said, “Hell, I knew you was a stupid bastard, but who do you think you are anyhow, breaking into this fine adjuticator’s house, middle of the goddamn night?”

  Kamp had heard that voice before but couldn’t place it. The man flicked the tip Kamp’s earlobe with the gun barrel.

  Kamp eased up on the Judge, who clutched his throat, rolled onto his belly and took in great gulps of air. The Judge hauled himself to his feet and sat in a chair.

  He said, “Anton, that’s enough.”

  Anton?

  Kamp swiveled his head around and saw the familiar, unpleasant face of Anton “Duny” Kunkle.

  “This man is a lion, Anton.” The Judge leaned his head back and rubbed his neck.

  “Ach, Judge, that’s the Scotch talking.”

  “Oh, that very well may be.” He produced the tin of Turtle Island Smoking Tobacco, packed the bowl of his pipe and lit it. “But you can’t talk to a lion.”

  Kamp said, “Judge, what was it you called Duny? A flea? A worthless little flea.”

  “Wendell, you’ve caused enough trouble already this evening, don’t you think?”

  “Yah, Wendell, you don’t hafta get all sore-ass, ’specially when I could still put one in your head.”

  With his free hand, Duny tapped Kamp’s left temple.

  “Oh, Duny,” the Judge said, “he’s just confused. Come, Wendell, sit down and have a smoke.” He gestured to an empty chair.

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Doing what?”

  “The hearing tomorrow. This Nickel Glock horseshit.”

  The Judge took a pull from his pipe and let the smoke cascade over his bottom lip. “It’s probably nothing. A piffle.”

  “Then tell them to drop it.”

  “I can’t. And remember, Nickel Glock was your invention.”

  “Invention?”

  The Judge struck a match and re-lit the bowl. “Of course. Wendell Kamp invented Nickel Glock. Or was it the other way around? I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

  “You mean the Order of the Raven invented a story.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “To harass me, to punish me. Drive me insane.”

  The Judge let out a heavy sigh, shook his head and said, “Oh, Wendell, if only it were that simple. And, besides, even if the Fraternal Order of the Raven existed, they wouldn’t care about you. No, this is the U.S. Army’s concern, apparently.” He banged the dead ashes from the pipe and onto the rug. “In any case would you pass along my regards to your dear wife. I’ve always—”

  “She’s not my wife.”

  The Judge pursed his lips and pulled in a breath. “I’ve always admired that woman. So smart, so willful, so strong. And savage, too. Am I right?”

  “Tell them to drop it. I have no interest in explaining myself to the army. I don’t want to—”

  “I, I, I. I am not I if there be such an I." The Judge settled into his chair. “Wendell, this rigmarole is based on actions you took, crimes you committed, and on your vain attempts to escape the truth. It’s finally caught up with you.”

  Duny cleared his throat and said, “Ach, I told you, Judge.”

  “Told me what?”

  “Told you this bastard was crazy an’ stupid an’ difficult.”

  “Alas, he’s had a difficult life, Anton. That’s all. Now, if you’ll show him to the door. He has an appointment in my chambers tomorrow. And I don’t want him to miss it.”

  EIGHT

  ANGUS SWUNG THE DOOR OPEN to let in Nyx. He looked at her filthy boots and rough jacket and at the dented tin hat sitting cockeyed atop her head.

  “When I didn’t hear nothing from you, I started to wonder. Jesus, but you been through the wringer.”

  “Yah.”

  As she walked in the cabin, Angus tried to close the door behind her, but the man following Nyx held up his hand to stop her.

  “Ach, who’s this?”

  “This is Aodh Blackall.” Nyx turned to Aodh and said, “And Aodh, this is Angus Kamp.”

  Aodh extended his hand, but Angus didn’t take it.

  Angus said, “You must be hungry.”

  “That I am. And pleased to meet you as well.”

  “Yah.” Angus turned and went to the kitchen. “Just relax. I’ll have yous some supper. And take your boots off once.”

  Aodh took a seat at the table, unlaced his boots and let out a long sigh. Angus brought steaming bowls to the table and set one in front of Aodh.

  “What’s this?”

  “Karnickeleintopf,”

  “Say again.”

  “Rabbit stew.”

  He handed a spoon to Aodh, who began wolfing down the food. When he’d finished the first bowl, he looked at Angus with raised eyebrows. “May I have another?”

  “Why, sure.”

  Aodh s
canned the room and looked at Angus’s workbench and at the long rack of rifles along the back wall.

  “Gearing up for a war?”

  Angus came back with the second helping and said, “Not exactly.”

  Nyx broke in, “Angus is a gunsmith. The best.”

  Aodh dove into the second bowl. Between bites he said, “Where’re you from?” Angus ignored the question, but Aodh persisted. “I say, where are you from?”

  Without looking at him, Angus said, “Oh, down the line.”

  “And where’d you learn to smith a gun?”

  “Here and there. Nyx, could you pass the pepper?”

  Nyx said, “Are you good with guns, Aodh?”

  He shook his head. “Never had occasion to shoot one.”

  “You should learn,” Angus said.

  WHEN SHE’D HAD HER FILL, Nyx fixed a bedroll on the floor, then heated a pot of water. She doused a washcloth and handed it to Aodh, who held it on his face for a long moment, then wiped the grime from his cheeks and forehead.

  When he took the cloth away, Nyx said, “So that’s what you look like.”

  He turned to Angus. “Thank you for the food and the accommodations.”

  “Gern gschehne.”

  Aodh walked to the bedroll and sank into it. Within seconds, his body became still, apart from deep, regular breaths.

  Nyx cleared the dishes and returned to the table, where Angus had begun assembling a percussion lock for a rifle. He didn’t look up from his work.

  Nyx said, “Is something wrong?” When she didn’t get an answer, she put her hand on his. “What is it?”

  Angus looked in Nyx’s eyes, then at her hand, then back at her eyes. Nyx took her hand away, and Angus resumed working.

  “It’ll be the death of us,” he said.

  “What will?”

  “No one can know we’re here. You know that.”

  “I trust him.” Angus shook his head. “And besides, maybe he can help us. We can’t do everything alone.”

  Angus looked up once more, parted his lips and drew in a breath as if preparing to speak, then went back to his work.

  “We can’t just hide forever,” Nyx said.

  SHAW HEARD KAMP COME BACK as the last solemn notes of the great horned owl faded before dawn. She assumed he wouldn’t come to bed, and he didn’t.

  Shaw checked in on Autumn and saw the girl still sound asleep, then walked down stairs to find Kamp seated at the kitchen table, staring out the front window with a steaming mug of coffee in his hand.

  She went to him and stroked the back of his head.

  “Good morning, love.”

  “Morning.”

  “Long night?”

  “Yah. Judge sends his regards.”

  He turned his head to look up at her, then looked back down at the coffee. She waited to see if an explanation would follow. When it didn’t, she stood up and started cooking breakfast.

  Kamp said, “Don’t you want to know what I’m going to do?”

  “About what?”

  “The hearing, this morning. I’m not going.” She sat back down across the table from him and took his hands in hers. “I won’t go. It’s just a—”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  He squeezed her hands and hardened his gaze. “You know they’re lying.”

  “Of course, but—”

  “You know who I am, don’t you?” He watched Shaw pull in a breath and waited for her to answer. “Don’t you?”

  They both heard the knock at the front door. Kamp stood up and went to the fireplace. He picked up the Sharps, then motioned for Shaw to go upstairs. He stepped to the window and saw no one on the porch, but the knocking continued.

  “Who’s there?”

  Through the door, he heard a girl’s voice.

  “Message for you.”

  Kamp swung the door open and saw a girl, maybe seventeen years old with wide-set pale blue eyes and long, straight hair with the color and texture of corn silk, tied back with a red silk ribbon.

  “What is it?”

  NINE

  NYX TENSED HER BELLY in expectation of punishment. If any rule governed the miners’ motions, if any law held sway above or below ground, there would have to be swift justice meted out and counted in cracked skulls and jailed bodies.

  But when they reached the store in the pre-dawn, all appeared as it had the day before. Same lanterns lit, same Gezähe hanging on the wall, and the same churlish clerk standing behind the counter. The clerk gave Aodh what could have been a knowing glance, but that was all.

  Nyx and Aodh headed up Gravity Road toward the fire glow, alongside the track that Butcher had traveled in the opposite direction the day before. By now Nyx knew better than to ask questions above ground, out in the open.

  They were the first miners to arrive, beaten to the summit only by the wraiths who scoured the spoil heap and the man standing on the spot where the previous agent had stood. He wore a miner’s hat with the candle burning to illuminate the ledger he held.

  When they reached the man, Nyx recognized the greasy red mustache of the fire boss. He checked off their names in the ledger, as his doomed predecessor had.

  Aodh said, “Same number, I take it.”

  “Lucky sevens all the way.”

  “Expecting trouble today, are ya?”

  The fire boss sniffed, “Not as such.” Then he jerked his thumb in the direction of the hole, signaling the end of the conversation.

  Nyx held her tongue until they’d ridden down to the room, past the trapper kid at his post and past the ruin and rubble of explosions past and the ghosts they blasted into the ether.

  She waited until they’d established their working rhythm, hewing, hauling, shouting “Done!” and starting again.

  They were three cars in before Nyx said, “What’s going to happen now?”

  Aodh talked between swings of his coal axe. “With what?”

  “With the man who was killed. What will the company do?”

  “Dunno.”

  “They have to punish someone, don’t they?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  Aodh backed out of his crawl space and stood to his full height.

  “Jaysus, Nef Bahr. Enough.”

  “Well, I want to know.”

  His eyes flared with anger. “Yes, well, your wanting to know is costing us. Wondering anything down here donna get us no closer to the number. And wondering donna change what happens, or will happen, above.”

  “Well if you—”

  “There’s only below.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “Ya, tha’s what I think. Once you get down here, you donna come back up. Not all the way, never.”

  He pulled in a breath through his nostrils, cleared his throat, and spat on the floor.

  Nyx looked straight at him. “What are you afraid of up there?”

  “Leave me be.”

  “What makes you want to hide down here?”

  Aodh stared back at her and cocked his head to the side. “I could ask the same of you.”

  THE AGENT SAID THE TWO WORDS to the trapper kid when the first uniformed man appeared, brass buttons gleaming in the afternoon sun.

  The agent shielded his eyes from the light and strained to see the first man and all those following him, a single file column marching straight for the mouth of the mine.

  The trapper kid ran down the track and said the two words to the first person he saw, a helper-up kid everyone called Little Black. Little Black turned on his heel and did the same.

  In this way the alarm was raised, each miner finding the next and sounding the alarm with the two words.

  Nyx and Aodh heard footfalls behind them and wiggled out of their space. Nyx got to her knees and twisted around and saw the rough clothes and grimy face of a putter girl named Haas.

  “What is it?”

  Without expression the girl said, “They’re coming.”


  NYX AND AODH JOINED the river of miners flowing toward the surface. They fell in line with their comrades, lamps bobbing and dancing like fireflies.

  They imagined the scene above and wondered whether they’d be met with hammer blows, or bullets. None thought that the murder of the agent would go unpunished, and yet any single day’s labor in the mine seemed punishment enough.

  When the mine mouth came into view, Nyx squinted against the sunlight and looked for gun barrels. She saw none and heard nothing either, save the typical clank and grind of the machines. The miners emerged from the mouth in a crouch, bracing themselves.

  But as their eyes adjusted to daylight and the scene came into clear focus, they saw the guards, each in a black wool uniform and peaked hat. Every guard held a Sharps rifle across his chest and wore a patch on the left shoulder bearing the Black Feather insignia. They stood in rows atop the mountain and beside the spoil heap. Nyx counted sixty in all.

  She pulled her hat low and peered out from under the brim. She scanned the group of miners, now numbering in the hundreds, and looked for Dis Padgett. She didn’t see him.

  The guards held their positions, and the miners shifted and swayed, nervous above ground, exposed. One of the men picked up a stone next to his foot, while others took up broken bricks that lay strewn beside the mine mouth. The silence held until the last man ascended the trail. They heard his boots crunching the gravel.

  All eyes focused on the man, who wore a bespoke grey wool suit that included a close-fitting jacket with narrow lapels and a vest and watch chain underneath. The man was clean shaven, and he carried nothing.

  And though the day was hot and the walk from the base of the mountain steep, the man was neither out of breath nor perspiring. When he removed his hat, the miners saw his wavy, flaxen hair, lightly oiled, combed back.

  He made his way purposefully but without hurry past the guards, then took his place in front of them. He surveyed the crowd of restive miners end to end before speaking in a loud, clear voice.

  “MY APOLOGIES FOR INTERRUPTING your work day. An intrusion such as this is always unwanted and unproductive.”