That impressed me, but not the mob.

So he snapped off the timber from which the tavern's sign hung. He stripped the sign off and flailed the timber around like a switch.

That got the message across. The mob began to evaporate.

Morley asked, "Could a mule do that?"

"No."

We were more circumspect in selecting a place to spend the night.

19

"So where the hell is he?" I demanded. There wasn't a shadow of Dojango.

Morley looked bleak. He had been looking bleak for a while. I thought maybe I should buy him a bunch of carrots or something. He muttered, "Guess we'll have to scout the alleys and taverns."

"I'm going to take a gander at that ship. Catch me on the pier when you find him."

Morley said something to the two remaining triplets. They grunted and moved out. I marched on down to where I could get a look at that striped-sail ship.

There wasn't much to see, a few men lugging things off, then lugging other things on. It wasn't hard to understand why Dojango bugged out. Watching is boring work. It takes a patient guy to lurk for a living.

A man came out on the rear deck, leaned on the rail, hawked, spat into the harbor.

"Interesting." He was Big One from Morley's place and the pier.

He began scanning the waterfront almost as if he had heard me. Then he shrugged and went into a cabin.

Curious.

Maybe Dojango would have stayed on the job if he had seen that guy before.

I lazed in the shade, wishing I had a keg to nurse and wondering what was taking Morley so long. Nothing else happened except that the stevedores finished loading and unloading.

I heard a soft scuff behind me. Maybe at last...

But when I looked I saw Big One. He was not in a friendly mood.

I dropped off the bale where I'd been loafing. Did this call for lethal instruments?

He walked right up and wacked the bale with a short club. No accusations. No questions. Nothing but business. I leaned out of the way and let him have one in the gut.

It did as much good as gut-punching a barrel of salt pork.

That club was meant to scramble my brains, I feared. I hauled out a knife.

I did not get to use it. The cavalry arrived in the guise of Doris or Marsha. The groll picked Big One up by one arm and held him out like a doll. A slow grin spread over his green face. Then he casually heaved him over the bales into the harbor.

Big One never made a sound.

They would have heard me cussing fifty miles away.

Doris—or Marsha, as the case may have been—beckoned me to follow. I did, grumbling. "I could have handled him." Probably about like I had handled Saucerhead, by pounding my body off his club till it broke.

This case was doing wonders for my self-esteem.

Dojango was not falling-down-drunk. He was climb-ing-the-walls-and-howling-at-the-moon-drunk. Marsha kept him under control while Doris explained what happened on the waterfront. Or Doris did while Marsha did. I passed my thoughts afterward.

"Bad business," Morley said. His sense of humor had deserted him.

Bad business indeed. But I had gone up against wizards before. You can handle them if your footwork is deft. They have more handles than your ordinary street tbug. The big thing is, they're all as crooked as a hen's hind leg. They are in the middle of every stew of corruption. But they go for a squeaky-clean public image. It's smart to keep some tarnish in your trick bag and be ready to spread it around.

"We'll be out of here tomorrow. Our worries will be over."

"Our worries will be over about the time I learn to handicap the D'Gumi races."

"Meaning never?"

"Or maybe a little longer."

"I'm beginning to wonder if we ought not to reexamine your diet, Morley. Such unrelenting pessimism must have some deficiency at its base."

"The only deficiencies bothering me are of good luck, financial wherewithal, and female companionship."

"I thought you and Rose—

"As you said, she wants something for nothing. She had a chance at a once-in-a-lifetime experience and she tried to sell herself to me! As if she had something special. As if a woman with her attitudes could ever develop whatever talent she did have. I'll never understand you people. What you do to your women... "

"What I do to them isn't any different than what you do to yours. Rose's problems are hers. I do get tired of hearing folks blame their faults on everybody else."

"Whoa, Garrett. Come on down off your stump."

"Sorry. I was just thinking how I was going to spend tomorrow."

"Say what?"

"Listening to Dojango groan and moan and heave his guts over the side while he blames his drinking problem on his mother or somebody."

Morley grinned.

20

Dojango gripped the rail and made an awful noise as he sacrificed to the gods of the sea. A soft whimper followed.

"What did I say?" I asked.

We were twenty feet from the quayside.

Morley was a little green himself. His trouble was all anticipation. The ship wasn't even noticeably rolling.

The ship's master approached. He had time for us now that the vessel was turning toward the channel. He said, "I spoke to the harbor master this morning. The war situation is quiet. We're clear all the way to Full Harbor if you want to stay with the ship that far."

"Of course we do."

Morley groaned. Dojango whimpered something about throwing himself overboard and ending it all. I grinned and set to dickering for the extra passage.

Halfway out of the channel the groll portion of the triplets began gabbling at Morley. When we went to see what they wanted, we found we were overhauling Binkey's Sequin. The Tate girls were out on deck. They spotted us as we slid past on the starboard side.

"I get the feeling they're upset about something," Morley said. He smiled and waved.

"Women have no sense of proportion," I said. I grinned and waved, too. "Wag a little tail at you and you're supposed to eat out of their hands." I looked at Tinnie and wondered if it might be worth it.

They blistered the air. I wondered if my personal sacrifices could be parlayed into a bonus from old man Tate.

We swooped past Sequin and dashed for the mouth of the channel. Master Arbanos' vessel was a dark lump in the distance as we began our turn to the south.

"I'll be damned!"

It was a morning for meeting old friends. A river scow entering the Leifmold channel carried Vasco and his buddies. "That damned Dead Man," I muttered. "He could have banged them around a little, at least."

They hadn't spotted us. I got everybody out of sight so it would stay that way.

I had counted on the Dead Man to stall them longer than he had. Now I worried. Had they done something I would regret?

"Keep an eye on these pirates," Morley grumped. "They might murder us while we're laying in the scuppers puking our guts out." The ship had completed her turn. She was rolling in the offshore swell.

Morley had no call to worry. The ship's crew treated us perfectly. The journey was almost without event. Once, the Stormlord's striped sail passed us, wallowing and struggling through seas she was not designed to face. She did not seem interested in us, and was not to be seen in the harbor at our first port of call.

Once we saw a royal man-of-war farther out, and another time a masterhead lookout yelled down that he had a Venageti sail in sight. Nothing came of either sighting. We entered Full Harbor eight days after departing Leifmold. No striped sail was to be seen there, either.

For once I felt a little optimistic.