Then, to Will again. "Good luck, kid. I still think you're a fool to be doing whatever it is you're doing. But I hope you come through it okay."

"Thanks, Salem. You're a mensch."

"I'll hammer a nail in the nkisi nkonde for you."

There were throngs of gawkers standing around the front steps of Old City Hall and almost as many around the back, so Will slipped out a side door. But he was spotted anyway.

Somebody he didn't remember said, "It's the white boy."

Embarrassed, Will shook the haint's hand. "Hi, good to see you." He clapped another on the shoulder. "How are you doing?" More and more haints appeared, murmuring in wonder, reaching out to touch him, ghost-soft whispers of fingers stroking his arms, his shoulders. He shook hands and slapped backs like a younger version of Salem Toussaint. "I'm with you," he said, and "Thank you for your support." and "Don't think you're forgotten, because you're not."

Ghostface pulled up in the alderman's Cadillac. He leaned over to unlock a door and Will, Jimi Begood, and the vixen squeezed into the back. Then, slowly, they pushed their way through the gathering crowds. Hands hammered against the hood and roof and young haints climbed up on the trunk. They pulled far enough ahead for Ghostface to stop briefly and pull off the riders, and then they were free.

Sitting in the back seat alongside Will, the vixen abruptly bent over double.

"Are you all right?" Will asked. He saw her ears lengthen and sprout hair. "Oh."

Nat straightened and, reaching into his shirt, pulled out a brassiere which, with a wink to Jimi Begood, he stuffed into a pocket. Then he buttoned up the shirt, threw away the orchid, and donned a tie that he removed from inside his jacket. "Drive as fast as you like," he said. "They've got the license number. They'll find us."

Ghostface turned around, startled. "Where's the fox?"

Nat touched his heart. "In here." Then he rubbed his palms together. "Okay, we've got one ethnic bloc of voters behind you. Let's line up another." He checked his pocket planner. "The Cluricauns! Perfect."

"Nat," Will said. "I'm not sure I can do this."

"It's too late to stop it now. You're in the saddle, son, and it's either ride or be trampled underfoot." Nat flipped open his cell. "Get the big guy in place," he said. "It's showtime. What do you mean when?

When do you think? Right now. Yeah. Yeah. You know where the Society of Cluricauns has their hall? Good. They're having their annual awards banquet tonight. We'll meet you outside."

A graffito on a pedestrian overpass declared he is coming in letters of fire and then drifted behind them and out of sight. Another blazed on the side of a bank. He Is Coming burned across an entire block in letters a story high and HE IS COMING! snapped and sizzled in blue flames on kiosks and redbrick walls and elevator stations. "Look at them," Will said wonderingly. "They're everywhere. Where did they come from?"

"Kind of gives you the shivers, doesn't it? I've had twenty taggers working their humps off for the past three nights. Cost a bundle. They really got the message out, though. It's the talk of Little Thule." The Society of Cluricauns was a social and cultural organization providing tor the welfare of those descended from the original population of the Blessed Isles. Which was to say, it was a drinking club. But over the years, through the success of its component members, it had acquired significant political clout. Which meant that Salem Toussaint was a familiar visitor there, and that consequently Ghostface had no trouble finding it.

They pulled up in front of a former opera house, onetime movie palace, temporary burlesque parlor, and occasional catering concern, union hall, and furniture warehouse, which the Cluricauns had restored to something like its original splendor and made their own. There was a construction giant slouched in the street outside, cradling a rusty heating-oil tank in his arms. Nat went to speak to the troll who stood, smoking a cigar, in his shadow. When he came back, he showed Will his empty wallet. "That's it," he said. "We are now officially penniless. If this scam doesn't work out, we are royally skunked."

But he smiled as he said it, in a way that told Will he was sure the night would go their way.

There was a sprig of fennel over the door. Nat took it down so that the two haints could enter. Jimi Begood led them straight to the banquet hall and they waited outside its double doors. "Patience is a virtue," Nat said when Will glanced at his watch. "And timing is everything."

Boom!

Out on the street, the giant had picked up a length of steel girder and slammed it into the oil-tank drum. The sound crashed through the building and stilled the babble of voices inside the banquet hall. Boom!

The drum sounded louder than thunder. "We three are the entourage," Nat told Jimi and Ghostface. "We hold ourselves proudly, stay a pace behind Will and to the side, and no matter what happens we show no emotion whatsoever. Can you do that?"

"Man, I work for Salem Toussaint!"

"What he said."

"That's good enough for me, lads." Boom!

Then, as Nat had arranged, the giant lifted his hands to his mouth and shouted in a voice that rattled the floors, "HE... IS... HERE!"

As one, Nat and Ghostface slammed open the doors to the banquet hall.

Will strode in. All heads turned to look at him.

To absolute silence, Will walked up the center aisle between the banquet tables, with Jimi Begood flanking him to the right rear and Ghostface to the left with Nat behind him. He climbed the stairs to the dais at the head of the room, and went to the podium. Then he put down his hood, so that everyone could see his face. Nat lifted the gray cloak from his shoulders as unobtrusively as a butler, and Will stood revealed. He was wearing white slacks and a loose white shirt. The light dazzled from him as he stepped to the microphone.

"Hello," he said. "Before I introduce myself, I'd like to say a few words.

"I'm going to talk about a young dragon pilot — I'll mention no names — who, like so many others, volunteered to serve in the military in order to defend his country and his tower from foreign aggression. He served well and proudly in the War, and great was the mourning among his comrades when his beloved war machine was shot down over the jungles of an obscure rural province known to its inhabitants as the Debatable Hills. But though he was grievously injured, he did not die. The local folk found him, tangled in his chute, and brought him back to their village, where the healing-women labored long and hard to bring him back to life.

"As you probably know, dragon pilots are half-mortal, because only those of the red blood can withstand the proximity of so much cold iron. The blood of kings flows in the veins of every one of them. So perhaps it was this that the villagers responded to, or perhaps they recognized a certain innate nobility in him. But their own lady-mayor had recently died and so they had need of a leader. "They made him their liege lord.

"It was a fine thing for a young pilot to rule over a small and peaceful folk. His work was far from onerous. Perhaps once a fortnight, he would be called upon to mediate a dispute, and his decisions were always praised by all, for he dispensed wisdom and mercy in equal measures. Village life was simple but wholesome. Perhaps, too, there was a lass who... well, let's not speak of that.

"But, pleasant though his life might be, the pilot was still an officer in His Absent Majesty's Air force, and loyalty required that he return to duty. The day came at last when he was strong enough to leave, and so though his subjects wept to see him go — he did.

"Across the ravaged lands of war he made his way toward the border. In stealth and fear and hunger, he slipped through the enemy's territory. Once he had an encounter with a small troop of centaurs. Great hairy, black-bearded brutes were they, who would have slain him in total disregard of the laws of civilized combat. It was a close thing, yet somehow he managed to outwit and kill them all.