'What offense have you given me? What offense? You have ruined my house and inundated my belongings! You came within a whisker of killing me! What offense have you given me?" Anders howled in rage and struggled to find his feet again, shrugging off hundred-pound timbers like matchsticks. "I am going to tear off your arms and beat you to death with them, O very prince of dung beetles!"

Jack backed away cautiously. "Anders, I should take this opportunity to advise you that I have been illicitly copied. For the last three days, a dark and sinister copy of me has been prowling the city, causing all kinds of mischief. I am afraid that the scoundrel has wrought the destruction of your house. I had nothing to do with it."

"You don't recall taunting me not ten minutes ago? Calling me an unwashed barbarian and promising me a bath? Twisting my nipple and pulling my beard?" With each exclamation the Northman heaved another board out of the way, drawing closer to freedom. "I take great pride in my personal hygiene, Jack. I swim every day. I am hardly unwashed, and I did not need a bath!" Anders staggered to his feet, bruised and bleeding, eyes burning like coals.

"Anders," said Jack, "how am I dressed?"

The Northman kicked a broken step out of his way and closed on Jack. In fact, Jack was dressed handsomely in red and yellow, with a plumed cap and a blue velvet waistcoat. Anders halted, squinting at the rogue.

"Ten minutes ago you wore gray and black. When did you change?"

"As I said, I am plagued by a duplicitous doppelganger who delights in harrying my friends. Two days past he pulled down Ontrodes's tower. Today he visited you. Believe me, the minor inconvenience you have suffered in the loss of your home and the destruction of your personal property is nothing compared to the lasting damage the villain has inflicted on my good name and honorable reputation."

"If this is some kind of trick-" Anders growled.

"Anders, would I stand here before you and tell you a story of such an outlandish nature if it were not strictly true?"

The Northman glowered. "I suppose you are going to tell me that you had nothing to do with the fire started in the Smoke Wyrm yesterday by someone answering to your exact description? Or the shameful fashion in which noble Tharzon's beard was dipped in flammable wax first, so that he ran down the street with his head on fire until he managed to smother the flames by plunging his face into a filthy mud puddle in the middle of Manycoins Way?"

"Tyr's eyes! My deceitful shadow did that?" Jack swallowed nervously. Tharzon would simply kill him on sight; there was no way he could ever stumble across the dwarf again, explanation or no explanation. "The dastard!"

"Not only that, but you-your shadow, I guess-hired seven street mimes to ape poor Tharzon's flight and extinguishment directly afterward, thus shaming the poor fellow seven times over in front of hundreds of passersby on the busiest street in the Market District." Anders raised an admonishing finger. "That was ill done."

"Street mimes?" Jack fought hard, very hard, to keep a straight face, despite a twitching of his lips and a snigger in his voice. He could see them blundering down the street, beating at their heads, only to fling themselves into the nearest pile of ordure- "I tell you, friend Anders, not in a thousand years could I have imagined such a base deed. I am responsible for neither Tharzon's scorching nor your drenching!"

"I believe you-for the moment, but if I should ever learn otherwise…" Anders held Jack's gaze for a long moment, naked anger riveting the rogue to the spot. Then he harrumphed and kicked the wreckage aside. "You'd best find out who is imitating you and bring this to an end, or you won't have a single friend in this entire city!"

Jack glanced skyward, scanning the rooftops. There was no sign of his dark twin, although that did not mean that the villain was not lurking there invisibly.

"I shall henceforward devote my entire existence to the discovery and punishment of this fiend," he promised.

Leaving Anders to the unenviable process of drying what little was left of his material possessions, Jack spent the rest of the evening and all of the following day searching all of his favorite haunts and places, asking people he knew when they'd seen him last.

The barkeep at the Cracked Tankard gave him a strange look and said simply, "Last night. Why do you ask?"

At the Wizard's Guild, the doorman squinted and muttered but admitted he hadn't seen Jack in a week or more. He checked various food stands, alehouses, and taprooms all over the waterfront, to little avail, and he avoided the Smoke Wyrm, because he already knew his shadow had done its work there.

"It would seem," he told himself after hours of wandering the city, "that my shadow twin frequents different establishments than those I favor." Finally he turned his steps toward the Cracked Tankard again, expecting any kind of mischief from the various parties that he'd learned were looking for him. The Knights of the Hawk had apparently been asking after him all over the city, along with a mage who might or might not have been Iphegor, and a pair of thieves who might or might not have been Morgath and Saerk.

"Zandria!" Jack stopped and put his hand to his head. "We are to meet this evening and discuss the division of the loot! I'd forgotten!" And he had no preparations at all for allies to back him up in the event the Red Wizard chose to deal dishonorably. He stepped off the street and onto the covered boardwalk running along Waelstar Way, perching atop a barrel of pickled herring outside a provisioner's shop while he thought. Anders wanted little to do with him, Tharzon he dared not approach, and any other blackguard he could think of was simply much too untrustworthy. Ontrodes was a drunkard, and Illyth a noblewoman-and neither would be much use in dissuading Zandria from treachery if the sorceress were so inclined.

"Elana would be a good accomplice," Jack muttered, "as she is extremely competent and claims to be immune to magic, a handy thing when one is confronting a wizard. It's a shame that she is the Warlord, and her minions are trying to kill me. Otherwise she'd be perfect."

Reluctantly he decided that there was nothing to do but trust in Zandria's honorable nature, so he hopped down from the barrel and continued on his way. She had agreed, after all, to pay him two-elevenths of the treasure plus ten thousand gold crowns of the reward-all told, a sum that must be close to thirty thousand gold pieces. "I could never transport such wealth," Jack thought. "I shall have to arrange for a detail of guards from some reputable counting-house to take custody of the coinage and convert it into more convenient sums later. If I do so, Zandria will see that I mean business and will not easily be cheated. And I can always try to ransom the ring and the knife back from her by offering cash for the articles of interest."

Quickly Jack hurried to the offices of House Albrath and there contracted for the services of six sturdy armsmen and a secure coach to await his negotiations with Zandria that evening. The cost was exorbitant-more than two hundred gold crowns-but Embro Albrath himself assured Jack that discretion was his watchword. For the deposit and a mere five percent of the value of the transaction, the mustachioed Albrath would see to it that Lord Jaer Kell Wildhame's wealth reached a secure location and that Jack was provided with the means to access his gains or convert them into other currencies at his leisure.

By the time Jack concluded his arrangements with the merchant, the sun was setting over the Inner Sea and the shadows ran long in the city streets. The day's warmth faded rapidly before the onslaught of a cold, damp offshore wind, bringing evening fogs to the city streets and a chilly, cloying mist to those workmen and wayfarers who had not found their suppers yet. Jack wrapped his cloak closer to his body and shivered his way across town again, riding inside his rented coach in the company of the garrulous Embro Albrath while his hired soldiers tramped alongside. He and his procession arrived at the Cracked Tankard an hour after sunset, creating quite a commotion.