We walked all the way back to my place. I wasn’t in favor of it, but Grist insisted, claiming exercise left him sharp and invigorated.

I’d shrugged, half-hoping the trio of bumpkins might have given up and gone by the time we arrived at my office.

They hadn’t. Maybe it was the hex that brought them to their feet when Grist and I drew near. Maybe they’d sneaked around enough to see me from a distance and recognize me. Maybe they knew trouble was coming.

Too bad they didn’t know what kind of trouble.

Three big strong country boys. It took Grist exactly five blows to lay the trio out cold in the street. He took a single blow to his chin, which had all the apparent effect of a tap from a feather pillow.

“You are as good as they say.”

He grinned and nudged the biggest of the three with the toe of his boot. “What you want done with these?”

A small crowd was gathering. Flowers was among them. I flipped him a copper and bade him fetch the Watch.

“Leave ’em. The Watch can haul them off when they come around. If they get up and try to make tracks before that, put them back to sleep.”

“You’re the boss.”

I nodded. Hell, he’d not even drawn a deep breath. I made a mental note to never cross Mills. My stunt with the bricks wouldn’t work a second time.

I unlocked my door, peeped inside and saw the band of flour across my threshold was undisturbed. The stink of the hex was strong, but I decided it was all from the trio snoozing in the street, so I opened the door and stepped inside.

No one leaped atop me. No ballista threw from the shadows behind my desk. I went into the back and checked my tiny closet and peeked beneath my lonely bed. Aside from an ancient hairball hacked up by Three-leg in the prehistoric mists of time, I was alone.

So I did what all good officers do on the eve of war.

I put my feet on my desk and closed my eyes, and I slept, good and hard.

The Watch came and collected my new friends and left without bothering to wake me. Mills signed the complaint and that was that.

That bought me an extra couple of hours of sleep. I needed it, even though getting it made me miss the chance to head down to the Old Ruth and pester the new batch of hillbillies with questions they probably couldn’t answer anyway.

Judging from the dark and the quiet outside, I figured I had maybe three hours before Curfew. My first thought was to head up to Avalante to see Evis and Gertriss, and my second was to cuss when I remembered they were miles out of Rannit by now, steaming against the Brown with a few tons of temperamental gunpowder in tow.

My appointment with Lethway wasn’t until tomorrow night. Darla was safely tucked away with Mary. Tamar was still in hiding.

That left nobody to pester but Tamar’s parents.

I rummaged around in the back for a clean shirt and some socks that didn’t smell like Three-leg. In a fit of nap-fueled verve, I threw my shaving kit and a comb and some of that fancy hair tonic Darla favors into my bathing kit as well.

I gathered it all up and called Mills inside and laid out the night. He nodded and asked a question or two and was generally the very model of the highly paid employee.

He waited outside the bathhouse while I bathed. He sat across from me in the cab when we left. His eyes never closed, never stopped moving. He reminded me of me-a few years and a dozen centuries ago.

Had I really gotten that soft?

I didn’t bother with the bakery. I knew the law-abiding Fields would have shuttered the windows and locked the doors about the time I left the bathhouse. I had the cabbie take a circuitous route downtown, and make a few extra blocks before heading toward the Fields home. If anyone was following us, they were good enough to avoid being spotted either by myself or my sharp hired eyes.

I had the cabbie drive us past the Fields house a couple of times, confident we’d be lost in the steady flow of traffic. I saw lights in the windows and people moving behind curtains, but not a hint of mayhem.

I wondered just where they’d stashed Tamar after the kidnap attempt. My money was on the very house I was watching. Whether the kidnappers would bother to try and find out was anybody’s guess.

“We going in?” asked Mills.

“Nope. We’re just going to watch, for a while.” I pointed to a stand of shrubs that needed trimming just across the street. “It’s dark enough, I think.”

He nodded once. I called the cab to a halt half a block away and we hoofed it back to the bushes I’d chosen and picked out a couple of patches of deep shadow.

“So this is what finders do for fun,” whispered Mills.

“Most nights I have brandy with the Regent. This is a rare exception.”

Mills pointed with his chin. “I count seven people so far.”

“Should be ten at least. Maybe more, if Fields has any sense.”

“Does he?”

“Not sure.”

“So we’re waiting here just in case someone takes a stab at him?”

“That. Or anything, really. I’m just flipping over rocks, hoping something crawls out.”

“Ah.”

We didn’t speak again for an hour. The man was quiet. He shifted his weight from leg to leg and breathed through his nose and I believe if I’d asked him later how many bats swooped around the gas lamp at the corner he could give me a figure and not be making it up.

The Big Bell rang out Curfew. Cab traffic ground to a near halt. Pedestrian traffic was at home slipping sleeping caps on their weary little heads.

I was fighting off a doze when Mills tensed and lifted his hand to point.

He didn’t speak, but I saw it. A sliver of light grew abruptly to a slab and a man-shaped figure darted through it and then it was gone.

Mills gave me a What the Hell? look.

We’d just watched a door open in a wall that had no doors.

I squinted past the saw-edged leaves of the bush that concealed us. There, in the yard, a man darted toward the street. He was clad in a loose black cloak and his head was covered by a black hood, and he had the sense to keep his hands inside those long sleeves, but he couldn’t hide his girth or the fact that his short fat legs hadn’t been asked to run anywhere since the War.

“That’s Fields,” I whispered.

Mills nodded, watching.

A carriage came rolling down the street. Fields hustled right toward it, all but waving it to a halt. The carriage driver saw him, and slowed, and damned if they didn’t meet right under the street-lamp.

I never saw Fields clearly. I didn’t need too. Someone had removed the brass insignia from the carriage before leaving to pick up Fields-but they hadn’t bothered to wash down the door, which meant the shape of the Lethway Mining crest was plain even at a distance, and even in the dark.

“Amateurs,” whispered Mills.

I nodded. We waited. The carriage rolled past, Fields aboard.

I didn’t race out to stop it. If Lethway had lured Fields out with the intention of slitting his throat, he’d have sent a half dozen unsqueamish men to handle the job. I had a single assistant at my side, who might be willing to bruise a few heads for me, but would wisely draw the line at outright massacre.

“You didn’t expect that,” he said as the carriage vanished in the night.

“No. That’s the problem with kicking over rocks. Never know what’s under them.”

“What now?”

“No way to follow. So we wait. If he comes back breathing, I’ll ask him where he’s been.”

Another nod.

“I could make it over there, if you want. See how he did that door trick.”

I shook my head no. “We know he can do it. That’s enough for now.”

No argument. If only Gertriss were here to take note.

I had no idea where Fields was heading, or how long it would be before he returned, if he ever did. Part of me was sure the little baker had baked his last pie-if Lethway was getting nervous enough to burn down the Barracks, he wouldn’t blink at the prospect of decapitating a former partner in crime.