"Find them a place, Manvil," Weider said. His tone suggested he'd begun to grow disappointed in me, too. I didn't blame him. I was disappointed in me myself.

Carefully failing to alert the staff to our presence Gilbey installed all three of us in a guest room probably reserved for visiting tradesmen. Belinda he failed to recognize. Morley he knew only by distasteful type. He remained rigorously polite throughout.

Gentlemen that we are, Morley and I let Belinda have the one narrow bed. I took the bedclothes to make a pallet for me. Dotes wasn't in a napping mood. He kept muttering about how trying to do a small favor had become a career. I asked, "You want to make yourself useful while I'm snoring, work this out. What could you do with a brewery? Besides make beer?"

"Why?"

"That's where this mess started. The shapeshifters wanted to replace the Weiders. Which makes sense only if they wanted control of the brewery." I snuggled down and went to sleep. The floor was softer than the most yielding cobblestone.

A toe ground into my ribs. I didn't have to open my eyes to know it belonged to Belinda. Only a woman would use a toe like a forefinger. A man would just kick you.

I grunted.

"That's four hours, Garrett. Dotes and I don't have a life to devote to your snoring, entertaining as it is. If I'm out of touch much longer I'm going to find myself out of touch permanently."

I sat up, groggy and disoriented. But I remembered, "I wanted up sooner than this."

"You needed the sleep," Morley said. "You really ought to go home and stay till you're completely recovered. You look a little ragged."

Maybe I did. People kept mentioning it.

I pulled myself together. Belinda looked ragged, too. I felt a twinge of guilt. She needed rest worse than I did. But here she was chasing wild geese with me. "There something going on that you guys forgot to mention?"

Morley looked at me askance. Belinda ignored me. Mostly.

"I appreciate you ambushing me and getting me loose from whoever was following me." I rubbed the back of my head. "I think. But I don't see why you bothered."

Morley shrugged. Belinda, without looking me in the eye, said, "The ratgirl insisted. She was scared those people might do something bad to you."

I smelled a scheme. Some kind of three-cornered deal between the Outfit, Reliance, and Morley Dotes, that would put me right in the middle. I hoped their little hearts weren't broken when I wouldn't go along.

Morley sneered. "I don't know how you do it, Garrett. That Singe would gleefully follow you into Hell. And be your love slave besides."

Sourly, putting herself together for travel, Belinda said, "And that blond bimbo walked right in here a while ago. She was really put out because you weren't alone."

"Alyx? Alyx is just a spoiled kid."

Morley grinned at me and flashed me his own version of the raised eyebrow trick.

"Maybe," Belinda begrudged. "She did come back with some food."

"And we didn't even eat it all," Morley said. "Your share is in that sack over there."

We saw no one as we left the house. The place was a mausoleum infected by despair. Maybe that spread from Tom's room. I felt a sudden fear that more evil might be headed the family's way. "This would be a good time for the shifters to come back." Unless Block's troops were on the job and alert.

91

The city was darker than usual, the night people fewer than normal. We drew unfriendly looks but never a challenge. I did see evidence that some fainthearts, especially among the refugees, were getting ready to move on. The Call's botched Cleansing had had an impact.

I didn't need to talk to anybody to sense the tension. TunFaire's population is half nonhuman, most of whom operate nocturnally. But numbers won't mean much if we humans gang up. Most of the other races don't get along with each other any better than they do with humans. For some, like dwarves and elves, the enmity goes back millennia.

I said, "The Call didn't splatter a lot of blood around but they won anyway. You can smell the fear."

"That's true. But what you don't see is the people who aren't running."

Morley probably knew something he couldn't share with me. Though he wouldn't be involved directly in anything, of course. Neutrality was a commodity he'd marketed most of his life.

Belinda said, "If Marengo has half the brains I think he's hiding, he won't do anything for a while. Allegruan and Dryzkaksghul Gnarrisson and the others really sucked up their pride to hold it together long enough to face the Cleansing." Allegruan and Gnarrisson were what you might call the urban elven and dwarfish war chieftains. "That'll all fall apart now if The Call gives them time to remember old feuds."

"You're right," Morley said. "There's talk about that already. One of Allegruan's brothers got into a shouting match with Dryzkaksghul's uncle during the rioting because Gnarrisson's great-grandmother was a sister of the Burli Burlisson who ambushed the elves in Zhenda Canyon when they were headed home after attacking the dwarf caves in Wrightwight Mountain."

"Nerve of them, hitting back like that." I didn't know the incident. The history of the Karentine kingdom and its imperial predecessor is more than I can encompass and there's not nearly so many centuries of that. Nor does it carry such a burden of treachery and betrayal. Among fundamentalist, rustic-type elves, treachery and betrayal are high art forms.

"The brother's point exactly. If nothing else Burli and all his get forever are guilty of boorish manners."

I guess history sometimes is one of those you-had-to-be-there things. "I've always treasured your ability to see the absurd, Morley."

"It's only absurd by modern Karentine standards, Garrett. By those of the time, dwarfish and elvish alike, Burli showed very bad form. He didn't even take prisoners. He killed all the raiders and cut off their heads and set those up on stakes outside the entrance to the forest Thromdredril, supposedly all because he spent a few years in old-time TunFaire and contracted human insanity. And this is where we part ways. Enjoy the Al-Khar." He and Belinda scooted, deaf to my questions.

92

"Don't do it!" I barked as somebody wound up to bop me from behind, right after I asked to see Colonel Block. "It's the real me. Rub me all over with silver. Make me walk around with a crown under my tongue. Just don't hit me on the head anymore."

In seconds I was surrounded. Relway's was the only face I recognized till Block wandered in. He took me at my word. His troops held me down while a guy with a silver dagger tested me for a tendency toward morphism.

Nobody apologized. Block said, "You've turned up here once already today. But the first time you weren't you."

"No shit. But how'd you know?"

"We knew you were out at North English's manor. I can picture you being guilty of a lot but not of screwing up in two places at the same time."

Relway demanded, "You learn anything?"

"I had a long, private talk with North English this morning. I could tell you word for word but I don't think you'd learn anything you don't already know. That bunch aren't as secret as they pretend." I told Relway everything anyway, almost, figuring that would save time. Then I asked Block, "What was this other me up to?"

"Tried to get the duty jailer to release Crask and Sadler in his custody. He sold his cockamamie story, too. We'd have lost them if they'd been able to travel. But the jailer came to me to try to arrange transportation. I understood you were out of town. I went down to check it out personally. The shifter knew trouble when he saw it coming. He took off before we could close in on him."