Tinnie growled. She was tired. So was I. I said so. But, like everyone who didn't have to be somewhere else, I didn't want to abandon the dining room's relative security. Block had left several men on guard there. For what good their presence might do.

Alyx heard me talking. She decided to come over. "Want me to show you a safe place to nap, Garrett?" The devilment was back, if weakly. The stay-together-in-pairs rule remained in effect.

"No thanks." I winked.

Tinnie shifted to a less uncomfortable position. My reward for saying the right thing. She murmured, "How about I show you my guest room?"

"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."

71

Tinnie followed me to the Weider front door. She was dressed for travel in a peasant frock and sensible shoes. Stupid me, I asked, "Where do you think you're going?" Stupid me should have started discouraging her about an hour ago. Not that I could have gotten anything through all that red hair successfully.

"With you. You need somebody with you. That's the rule."

"I've got my talking feather duster."

"What good is he in a fight?"

"He squawks a lot and—"

"Be careful how you answer this one, Garrett."

Oh-oh. Time to make that extra effort. I had to remember my lines just right. Only I hadn't seen a copy of the playscript yet.

Redheads will do that to you.

So will blonds and brunettes and all the lovely ladies of every other hue.

"All right, then. You're in. That'll cure you of wanting in. Real quick." What could happen? I was just going to visit one of Karenta's most beloved subjects at his big, safe country estate.

I learned quickly that the countryside is still infested with country. It isn't my favorite part of the world. I prefer domesticated bugs, cockroaches and fleas and bedbugs. They don't get greedy if they bite at all. They don't rip off an arm and hang it in a tree to come back to later.

It was well-groomed out there, close to town, but still way too green. "You getting tired?" I asked Tinnie. She didn't look tired. She looked fresh, sexy, full of vitality and likely to be all of those still when I collapsed.

"You trying to get rid of me again?"

"Again? I never... " One foot starting to swing out over the abyss, I shut up.

Maybe I was learning.

"Oh, look!" Tinnie took off running, frisky as a fifteen-year-old. She leaped into a patch of cornflowers.

I told her, "The blue detracts from your eyes."

"I like them anyway. Yikes!" She jumped higher and farther than you would have believed possible for such a trim slip of a gel.

A tiny face peered up out of the flower patch. It belonged to a grinning miniature man. Or boy, actually. He was a pint-sized teen. His grin was humorless. It was a conditioned response to the presence of big people. He was terrified. The grin was supposed to buy time while he figured out what to do.

Flower stalks swayed behind him. I glimpsed brown-and-green homespun in motion, a flicker of golden hair tossing, tiny heels flying. Well. I chuckled. The Goddamn Parrot chuckled. I took Tinnie's hand, pulled. "Let the kids have their privacy."

"What? You mean?... "

"Yeah."

"Oh. Actually, that's not such a bad idea, Garrett. When you think about it."

I do that a lot. "Well, if you really... "

"All this fresh air is getting me giddy. There's a wonderful big patch of cornflowers over there in that pasture."

"Not to mention cows and horses."

"I didn't know any little people still lived outside the wall. Because of the thunder lizards. You're worried about a few cows?"

No. There were horses over there. Eventually they would recognize me.

But the company went to my head. "I didn't want you worrying about the livestock."

"If they bought bullshit by the pound, you'd be the richest man in TunFaire."

"I'll never be anything but a poor second," I replied. "While Morley Dotes is alive."

Tinnie hiked her skirts with one hand. She ducked between the rails of the split log fence. "I'm only giving in because you keep pressuring me." She showed me a couple of hundred taunting pearly whites.

This was my Tinnie. The argumentative evil twin her family doesn't see. Very often.

I leaned on a fence post, the tip of my nose an inch from hers. "I just had a thought." I glanced back toward TunFaire.

We'd passed through a small wood a while ago. The top of the Hill, a few towers, and the general miasma of evil air hanging above everything were all that could be seen of the city.

"A naughty one, I hope."

"Actually, it's more a troublesome one."

"There you go getting serious again."

"Sometimes I don't have any choice."

"All right. What is it?"

"Colonel Block warned me that I'm being followed around, all the time, by some very clever tails. Which would mean that somebody might be following me now."

"Doesn't that just mean somebody takes you serious? Aren't you always complaining because people don't take you serious?"

"Right. It's great for the ego. But it occurs to me that if I yield to temptation and vanish into a flower patch with the most stunning redhead north of the Cantard—and I can't think of anything I'd rather do—I might get trampled by watchers running to find out where I went."

That tree line back there offered the last good cover for someone tracking me.

Tinnie leaned a little closer. Her eyes were only halfway open. Her lips were parted. She breathed, "Most stunning?"

"You witch."

She laughed. "See? You forgot all about—" She stopped, stared to her right.

Somebody had left the wood. Somebody who was in no hurry. Somebody who whistled while he scuffed along the dusty road.

Staying close, Tinnie whispered, "It's still a good idea, Garrett. Maybe on the way home."

"Sooner or later."

A rumble like the stir of remote thunder came from up ahead. We would reach another tree line in half a mile. The rumble came from beyond that. "Now what?" Tinnie asked.

"Horsemen. A whole bunch."

The stroller behind us caught the sound. He vaulted the fence and disappeared into tall pasture grass on the other side of the road. Hmm.

I got myself over on Tinnie's side fast. "Head for those tall weeds."

"Why?"

"Because we don't know who's making that racket. It could be somebody we don't really want to know."

"Oh."

The war taught me to suffer inconveniences and discomfort stoically, so I only grumbled a little about the thistles in the weed patch. Tinnie was more vocal. Poor spoiled city girl. But she did clam up, bug-eyed, when a squadron of centaurs hove into sight. They were all males with the hard look of campaign veterans. They maintained a warlike traveling formation. They were armed and alert. The army wouldn't like this. I didn't count them but there had to be at least sixteen.

They might have been looking for something. They didn't see it in the pastures, though. They moved on quickly.

"What was that about?" Tinnie asked when the coast was clear. "What are they doing all the way up here?"

We had watched centaurs from hiding together before, a while back, in the Cantard, which is where centaurs properly belong.

"I don't know. But those guys weren't your everyday refugees."

"I don't like it."

"It isn't far now. North English's dump is just past the next bunch of trees." I hoped. I'd never been invited out.