Morning in Avalante feels like midnight. The halfdead are bleary-eyed and grumpy, disheveled and weary in their tailored clothes. Even taciturn Jerle was jovial by comparison.

I shared a sparse breakfast with the day folk cleaning staff. Their talk was of the trouble heading Rannit’s way, and was mostly filled with wild speculation concerning the Regency’s plans to defend the city and whether or not they would accept Avalante’s offer to take in the human staff and their families, should war reach Rannit’s gates. Most were only too eager to seek refuge beneath Avalante’s walls. A few planned to ride it out close to the Brown and flee by boat, barge and bathtub should the Regent fail to win the day.

Afterward, I went to see Gertriss and knocked, but after a long while she threw a pillow at her door and told me in rather harsh terms to go away. I heard Buttercup giggle once, but she never did more than that.

Evis was long abed. I stopped by my borrowed room and sat on the feather bed and plotted out the day. I’d need to find Pratt, and set a time and a place to corner Lethway. I needed to swing back by my office and see if it was surrounded by hillbilly thugs. And I hoped I could pay Master Sergeant Burris another visit-I might not have Darla’s keen eye for accounting fraud, but I could certainly take her a fresh box of old records to inspect, if the Sergeant could be persuaded to let his precious files leave the Barracks.

I hauled myself off the feather bed and headed out, availing myself once more of a sleek Avalante carriage. I bade the driver to swing by the docks before we crossed the bridge. I wasn’t sure, but I guessed that Evis’s steamboat was being made ready on the Hill side of the River.

I was right. Finding such an odd craft wasn’t hard, and my carriage was waved on past a makeshift barricade after a scowling dockmaster checked my name against his list.

I can always count on Evis to pay attention to details.

I left the carriage right by one of the three wide gangplanks that spanned the sluggish waters of the Brown and led onto the deck of the steamboat herself.

Being a landlocked Rannite, my familiarity with watercraft is mostly limited to barges and fishing tubs. I’d probably know what a mast was, if I saw one. And I could likely pick out a mainsail from a bed sheet three times out of five.

So when I say Evis’s steamboat looked more like a wedding cake than a ship, please take that statement as the opinion of one wholly unfamiliar with either subject.

But there you have it. Her hull was simply a shallow, flat oblong with a slight bow at the front and an enormous cylinder lined with long rectangular paddles at the rear. Sprouting up from this shallow hull was two stories of white gingerbread festooned with windows and doors. A balcony ran the circumference of the upper decks. Chairs and benches were scattered about it, behind an ornate iron rail.

Amidships, two enormous white cylinders rose above it all. I recognized them from Evis’s description as the smokestacks through which the exhaust of the steam engine was routed. Someone had painted a face on the front of the forward smokestack. It had angry eyes and an open toothy mouth.

The whole craft smelled of wet paint and fresh-sawn pine. A gang of men swarmed over her, furiously painting decks and bulkheads and her other assorted nautical bits with thick white paint. The painting crew exchanged shouts and curses with an equally frantic crew of mechanics with urgent business wherever the painters were working. Through it all lumbered ogres with armloads of split wood, which they hauled into the depths of the steamboat.

Neither painters nor mechanics raised their voices at the ogres.

I decided to keep my landlubber boots firmly on the docks. I did walk the length of the craft, paying special attention to the odd contrivance at the rear. The tarp Evis had mentioned was nowhere in sight. I could see how the paddlewheel might propel the boat forward. What I couldn’t discern was how such a heavy assembly was going to turn at all.

Men shouted. Smoke puffed from the smokestacks. The puffing became a billowing, and from deep within the vessel, a deep thump-thump-thump began to sound.

With a screech and a groan, the paddlewheel turned. The first revolution was slow, so slow I was sure Evis’s mighty boat was destined to remain moored at that dock forever.

But the next turn was faster. The paddles bit into the water with great wet slaps. Spray flew.

The steamboat began to pull against her moorings.

The next turn, and the next, were faster still. The spray of water became a furious downpour. The thumping of the engines became a roar.

The dock began to tilt and groan.

A mighty blast issued from the smokestack, a whistle made loud as thunder. Mechanics and painters alike cheered and waved their tools.

Then the turning of the paddlewheel slowed, the dock settled level and the troubled waters began to calm.

“I’ll be damned.”

An ogre turned and looked at me.

That was the first time I’ve seen an ogre wide-eyed.

“It’s called a steamboat,” I said to him. “Burns wood to make steam. Nothing to it.”

The ogre rushed away.

I stayed a few more moments. Long enough to watch two men paint her name across the bow. Evis hadn’t mentioned a name.

The Regency. Nice touch of political flattery. Suddenly the angry face on the smokestack made perfect sense.

I clambered back in my carriage and headed for my side of the Brown, while a small army of painters and mechanics and oddly subdued ogres made the Regency ready for war.

Much to my relief, the only stranger idling by my door was one of Mama’s street kids, a hard-eyed ten-year-old named Flowers.

He rose and stretched while I bade the driver to wait.

“Got something for you, mister.” He proffered a grubby envelope, along with his empty palm. “Mama said you’d pay two coppers.”

“Mama said nothing of the sort. She’s already paid you or you wouldn’t be doing this.”

“Awww. C’mon, mister. One copper?”

I fished in my pocket. “Done. Now hand it over.”

Copper and envelope changed places. The envelope bore Mama’s familiar scrawl, and I wondered how the devil she’d managed to get a letter back to Rannit so quickly.

I’d have asked Flowers, but he was away, heels and elbows pumping.

I stuck the letter in my jacket pocket and unlocked my door. I stepped aside as I opened it, just in case clever persons inside sent crossbow bolts whizzing toward the sudden sunlight.

They did not. Three-leg yawned atop my desk. The layer of flour I’d left just inside the door was undisturbed.

I closed my door quickly behind me, shook some food out in Three-leg’s pan and then settled into my chair to read.

Boy, began Mama’s letter. I reckon you’re all done being mad. I hope so. What I done is what I had to do, and ain’t nobody can do it but me, so I left. Tell your vampire friend Evis that fancy house of his ain’t locked half as tight as they thinks.

I’m back home. I’ve set a fire in my fireplace and my cook-stove. The Plegg House is lit and lived in, and I tell you, boy, that shook folks up a might, and then some. There was some that thought the Hog name was done hereabouts. There ain’t so many of them now.

I ain’t been here long, boy, but I’ve learnt a few things. First off, that Sprang boy what the ogre threw is going to live. He ain’t right in the head and he’s got a limp, but I reckon he wasn’t right to begin with so that ain’t much of a loss. There was a couple of other dunces that lit out of here swearin’ they was gonna get some vengeance on you and my niece. They ain’t been heard from again. Not that anybody is particular worried. They wasn’t held in much regard, save for being drunks and pig thieves. I reckon it’s a mite easier to hex the weak-minded into charging off to Rannit on some fool’s errand.