“And then the War ended.”

“It did. All over. Orders came down. You’re discharged. Thank you for your service.” He spat on his good clean floor. “Bastards.”

“So you and Colonel Lethway-you just split the take and parted ways?”

“That’s what we did, finder. I didn’t lay eyes on the man until Tamar-until my daughter started walking out with that fool son of his.”

“And the money?”

He lifted his hands, gestured to the coffee shop. “All gone, years ago. I built my business with it. Lost most of it the first five years. But it kept us afloat, long enough to get established.” He sighed and gripped his untouched coffee again. “I’m not proud of what I did during the War, finder. But I’ve never done anything like that since. I’ve worked hard and made a living for myself and my family. I want nothing to do with the Colonel or the past.”

“Those two men who just left. Were they part of this, somehow?”

He spoke quietly. “They know. I don’t know how they know, finder. Or who they are. But they know Lethway and I stole a fortune during the War, and they want something from him, and they want me to try and pry it out of him.”

“By blackmailing him.”

He nodded. “I told them to go to Hell.”

“They didn’t seem to be heeding your travel advice.”

“I meant to kill them, finder. I had a knife.”

“Brave. But dumb. Two of them, one of you? Maybe those are good odds when you’re dealing with rogue pastries, but not hired muscle.”

He mulled that over while his coffee steamed.

“You didn’t really kill that man in my house, did you, finder?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Tamar keeps crying. Talking in her sleep too. Telling someone she’s sorry.” He looked up at me. “I wish I’d told that son of a bitch to get stuffed the first night he walked into my mess tent.”

“You were just a kid with a potato peeler. He was a Colonel. Don’t beat yourself up too much. After all, you’ve got other people trying to do that for you.”

That got a ghost of a grin.

“Whatever it is they want out of Lethway, he isn’t budging.” I finished off my cup. “They cut off his kid’s ear, Mr. Fields. Sent it to him. He dropped it in the fireplace. I think the Colonel will let Carris die before he’ll cooperate.”

“I’m afraid you’re right about that.”

“That means they’re going to keep coming after you, Mr. Fields. Because if there’s one thing the Colonel is afraid of, it’s being exposed as a War profiteer.”

“So you’re saying I should blackmail Lethway?”

I smiled, big and wide. “No, Mr. Fields. I’m saying I should.”

Chapter Fourteen

Convincing Mr. Fields to hand over everything I needed to pry open Lethway’s lips took another pot of coffee.

But when that was drunk, he stopped shaking. His face wasn’t the color of hot coals. And the hate was gone from his eyes.

The worst had happened, and instead of tearing his world apart, I had emerged as the very man who might be able to put it safely back together.

All I had to do, of course, was live through my little talk with Lethway.

When I left the coffee house, I had a parcel under my arm. It was a pair of ledgers, wrapped in aged brown paper. He’d been keeping it close to him, all these years, moving it from secret drawer to safe to hidey-holes far and near.

When the pair of toughs had been threatening to cut off small but valuable bits of his person earlier, the very thing they sought was lying two steps from them, covered only by a baking tin.

But now it was mine. Two ledger books-one a copy of the book the Army had received-the other the real book, showing who got what, and when. Accompanied by receipts and signed orders and even a series of handwritten letters the Colonel had, in some moment of daft bravado, signed with his name and seal.

What lay between those covers was a hanging, even for a man of Lethway’s post-War stature.

I had to admire Fields' ingenuity. The ledgers proved Lethway made himself rich during the war, at the expense of the taxpayer. They only showed that Fields had carried out the orders given him.

If things came to a Court, Fields would likely claim he had no choice. And a jury might just buy that.

Clever little move, for an honest little baker.

The first thing I meant to do was stash the bulk of the evidence somewhere safe. I planned to take a single signed letter with me when confronting Lethway. That would be enough to establish the existence of the rest without risking the whole batch to a grab. I figured stashing the ledgers at Avalante would put them well beyond the reach of even a Lethway, so that word was on my lips when I stepped into the street to hail a cab.

I was in such a hurry to get to Avalante I didn’t pay nearly enough attention to the people on the street. Oh, I had eyes for the pair who’d fled the bakery, all right, but no one nearby fit the requirements of a pair of murderous musclemen. No, it was nannies out walking with kids and bankers out for a bit of air and ladies in hats out walking to be seen.

But at the moment, they weren’t walking. Instead, they were clustering around a barker, who was in turn passing out handfuls of handbills. People were taking them and then walking into each other as they backed away, their eyes on the paper they held.

A lady walked past, her skirts whipping, such was her hurry. I planted myself in her path and gave her my warmest, most winning smile.

She frowned and tried to dart around me. I sidestepped, still smiling, and she thrust a handbill at me.

“Take it, I have two.”

And then she was away.

WAR, the handbill read. WAR COMES TO RANNIT.

I cussed and stuffed the awful thing deep in a pocket and stopped the next cab I saw.

No one, not even the Regent and the Corpsemaster and the Army, can keep a secret forever.

Especially not when half of the secret is heading south toward you with mayhem on its mind and the other half is being built at night all around the city walls. The handbill had lots of it wrong, but it had enough right to convince me the proverbial cat was out of the metaphorical bag.

The Watch would go after the barker and the handbill printer, of course. I doubted they’d catch either. But even if they did, the word was spreading, and I figured by tomorrow even the weedheads would know the peace was broken.

NINE CITIES ALLY AGAINST RANNIT, cried the handbill. ARMY OF A HUNDRED THOUSANDS ON THE MARCH AGAINST US NOW!

Wrong on both counts. But the numbers weren’t going to matter. Not with the cannons in the mix.

I hope Evis and his-well, our, I suppose-plan to render the Brown impassable to barge traffic hadn’t been tossed aside by his superiors in the House. I had little faith the scheme would actually accomplish more than making a lot of noise and ruining some good timber, but already I was not only grasping at straws but throwing the weight of my hope upon them.

That’s what war does to people. Makes them cling to any hope, no matter how empty it may be in the harsh bright light of day.

I slept most of the way to Avalante, despite having gulped down coffee all afternoon. My dreams were troubled and brief. I didn’t even awake, claimed the cabbie, when a bridge clown reached inside and tweaked by nose.

Jerle, the day man, let me in and took my coat. The old boy insisted on peeking inside the cover at the ledgers, just to make sure I wasn’t trying to smuggle in a trio of Troll assassins, but he was quick and professional about it and he even offered me a seat while he looked.

I didn’t think I’d catch Evis awake at such an unvampirish hour, but Jerle told me he’d been left word to show me right in if I happened to stop by. So I made my way to Evis with barely a yawn or stumble.

The first thing I heard when I drew near to Evis’s door was female laughter. I stopped dead in my tracks, wishing for the first time that a suave halfdead was gliding silently at my side, so he could knock at the door and make sure Evis wasn’t occupied before I barged in.