I muttered, "Coincidence? Or prearrangement?"

Morley asked the important question. "How could they know where she'd be? She didn't know. She was just running."

"If she thought tonight might be the end of her run, she might've had somebody waiting outside. Who's going to pay any attention to a dwarf making a beer run?"

"There is the smell of fear," Singe said. "Mostly from the driver but also from the woman. I think she did not expect to encounter the evil men."

"She wouldn't want to run into them," Morley said. "After what they've been through they'd have a few bones to crack with her."

"If they got this far, I'll bet it was because they were allowed to," I said. "There'll be somebody else on this trail real soon, Singe. Probably the little man who tries so hard to hide who he is."

Morley tested his cane again. "You carrying anything?"

"I'm not military but I'm fixed." I did wish that I had my head-knocker. I needed to have some more of those made up.

"Notice the streets are empty."

"They're never busy down here. And there were centaurs around. Maybe there still are." It was unusually quiet, though.

Singe squeaked. "Blood. The direction changes. That way."

"I'm blind here," I reminded them. "I'm cursed with human eyes."

"Over there," Singe said.

I went. Morley followed. He confessed, "Her eyes are better than mine, too."

The treasure at the end of this dark rainbow was a broken dwarf. He wasn't dead but that was only because Crask and Sadler hadn't felt any urgent need to kill him. They'd only wanted his wagon. We left him for Master Relway. Singe picked up the trail again. She wasted no time getting on with the hunt.

The cynic in me, or maybe the practical businessman, told me I had to get in good with her now because she was going to be a phenomenon later. All she needed was a little more confidence, a little more experience, and a little more force of personality.

I kept up, puffing. I gasped, "I'm worn-out. These last few days just never made much sense. Everybody I know was mixed up in it, all of them banging off each other and getting in each other's way... "

"Sometimes the world works that way, Garrett," Morley replied. "When everybody heads a different direction nobody gets anywhere."

I understood that but it didn't satisfy my sense of propriety. Everybody jumped into the mud. They all clawed and slashed in squalid pettiness, all the while espousing grand ideals.

I grunted. Morley chuckled, then said, "Here you go launching another clipper of despair because all the humans you know act like human beings."

We really are a tribe of sleazeballs but I don't like being reminded of it. It would be nice to believe that at least some of us are climbing toward the light without pursuing a hidden agenda.

Singe slowed. I took the opportunity to recapture my breath before it got away completely. The ratgirl whispered, "The wagon is just ahead." I knew that. I heard its iron-rimmed wheels banging the cobblestones. "It is a small one drawn by two ponies." Which was no surprise, dwarves not being inclined toward big wagons and plowhorses. "I smell fresh blood."

The coldness that always comes when I think about Crask and Sadler began to engulf me. I was almost superstitious about those guys. I wasn't, strictly speaking, scared of them but I dreaded a confrontation because facing them was like challenging forces of nature.

Morley observed, "They'll still be in bad shape. Their jail time couldn't have been any holiday." In tone more than word he sounded like he wanted to convince himself. So maybe he had his own reservations.

The villians had set a course headed north. Soon they'd leave this quiet neighborhood for one where the night people thronged. Nobody likes to work with strangers looking over their shoulders. We had to do something soon.

"You go along the right side and grab the driver," Morley said. "I'll take the left."

"Me?"

"You're taller and heavier. You'll have more leverage."

No point arguing with the obvious. "Now?"

"Without all that stomping. You don't want them to know you're coming."

Stomping? I wasn't making a sound. All I could hear was the whisper of Singe's nails on the paving stones.

Now there was enough diffuse light that I could make out vague shapes and keep from crashing into walls and watering troughs. Soon I made out the dwarf wagon. Morley loped beside me, in step. I murmured, "I see it."

"Do it."

My heartbeat increased rapidly. This confrontation had haunted me for years.

From somewhere came a loud, "Awk!" in distinct parrotese. It didn't sound like a warning so it must have been only to let me know there was a friendly witness. Which wasn't much comfort since it was hardly possible for reinforcements to arrive in time if I screwed up.

Singe must've been more scared than she let on. She began to fall behind.

Any noise I made got covered by the curses of the man driving. He couldn't get those stubborn ponies to move faster than a walk. Dwarf ponies have one speed. Slow. The only alternative gait is dead stop, inevitably exercised in the event of excessive brutality.

Funny. Dwarf ponies are a whole lot like dwarves.

I grabbed the driver's right arm, used my momentum to pull him down. I couldn't tell which man I'd grabbed but that didn't really matter. Crask and Sadler might as well have been twins. I didn't see the other one. He had to be inside the wagon, probably in worse shape.

I glimpsed a surprised face as my victim hit the cobblestones. Foul air blew out of him. He groaned, then lay still. I moved in warily.

There was no need. The anticlimax was real. Sadler had bashed the stuffing out of the street with the back of his head. Shaking with the letdown I tried to decide how to tie him up so he'd still be there when Relway's crew arrived. "I got mine!" I said.

The Goddamn Parrot offered a pleased squawk from somewhere overhead.

The wagon stopped. Morley said, "Crask's inside. He's unconscious."

"Another anticlimax."

"What're you talking about?"

"For years I've expected this. It was going to be an epic battle. Bodies flying around, knocking down houses, busting holes in the street. Going on for hours. Everybody'd have to bring a lunch. Instead we butt heads with them three times in the last few days and hardly got a scratch for our trouble."

"So we caught them when they were weak. That's the smart way to do it. Hang on. This one's bleeding. Hell. He's got a knife stuck in him! I'm not so sure I want to snuggle up with Tama Montezuma after all."

I used strips torn from Sadler's jail smock to bind his wrists behind him. He made vague gurgling sounds. I asked, "Where is she? She in there?"

"Bad news, Garrett. More bad news. There's nobody in here but me and Crask and ten kegs of Weider's cheapest beer. And the dwarves will come looking for that before long."

"Awk!" Eight pounds of outrage in a three-pound package slammed down onto my shoulder. I lurched toward the wagon.

Morley was right. There was no beautiful woman in there at all, let alone the marvelous Miss Montezuma. "Where did she go? How could we lose her? Singe? Singe, where are you?"

Singe didn't answer me. I scurried around calling her name. Morley started laughing. He gasped, "We've been had, Garrett. You realize that? We've been snookered by a ratgirl."

"Yuck it up, you glorified greengrocer."

He kept laughing. "We can't go anywhere without Pular Singe. Not if we want to get there ahead of Relway or North English or Belinda. Only question left is, did the kid do it on her own or did Reliance put her up to it?"

"You really think it's that hilarious?"

"Well, no, actually. I don't enjoy getting slicked, either. I'd rather it was me doing the slicking. But you and I don't really need the money. We just think it'd be nice to keep North English from getting it back. And you want Montezuma for what she did to the Weiders."