Chapter Eleven

Doc went flat, falling onto the man who'd tried to shoot him; he grabbed the man by the jaw and slammed his head into the floor, an impact audible even over the sound of the autogun fire. The guard went limp, his jaw skewed at an unhealthy angle. Doc glanced back; Rudi was on the ground, elbow-crawling forward, and Doc could see Harris and Gaby emerge from the stairwell, keeping to the left of the doorway, out of direct line of fire.

Ahead, wooden crates on shelves and stacked atop one another shuddered and disintegrated under the assault of the autogun.

Zeb and Noriko heard an impact from within, and then the opening fire from the autogun. They exchanged a glance.

Zeb stepped in front of the door and lashed out with a side kick. The blow smashed in the wood beside the doorjamb, shattering the door open.

Beyond was a small, well-lit office: desk, chairs, floor lamp. Opposite was another doorway, this one with a redheaded gunman in it, turning to see what had become of the exterior door, aiming a large pistol. Zeb, off-balance, struggled to bring his own gun in line—

Noriko's handgun boomed and the redhead spun and dropped to the floor. Zeb, recovering, moved in, saw the blood pooling from the center of the man's chest, and switched his attention to the doorway beyond. He moved up into the doorway and took a quick look beyond.

It was an L-shaped room. Zeb stood in the center of the long back of the L. To his right, the room ended. To his left, it continued several paces, then turned ninety degrees in the direction Zeb faced, toward the building's interior. He could see the doorway to the stairway foyer, and the shelves immediately before it that were being riddled by gunfire.

There was one shelf between him and the wall opposite. The wall itself was odd: newly plastered. Or perhaps newly constructed. But there were no gunmen in sight. He motioned Noriko forward, then crouched and moved in.

He maneuvered around a shelf loaded with buckets of sorted nuts, bolts, and other hardware, then stopped to lean against the new plaster wall. He felt dizzy, realized that it had been some time since he'd breathed, and took several belated breaths.

Over the near coast of Long Island, a sun—miniature, barely forty yards in diameter, but glowing, its surface curling with unimaginable heat—suddenly came into being, shining with supernatural cheer on the twilight coast below. It was already in motion, sailing westward in majestic flight, already arcing down toward its target, a white-and-green-checkered skyscraper across the street from the Monarch Building.

Below, pedestrians and drivers on either side of the river pointed. Some marveled at the sun's beauty. Others, knowing what it represented, felt dread, knowing that its descent meant death.

The autogun fire was coming in a more staccato fashion now, short breaks between bursts. During one of those breaks, Zeb saw Rudi Bergmonk stand up beyond the riddled shelf, fire twice from each of his two handguns, and then drop behind the shelf again. The autogun fire resumed.

Zeb felt Noriko move into position behind him. He moved up along the wall until he reached the corner, and peeked around it.

The gunfire was coming from a heavy wood door—from a chest-high slit in the door, fashioned perhaps for that very purpose. The door was now pocked with splintered craters from Rudi's return fire, but it did not seem to be seriously damaged; it could obviously keep its integrity through much more damage than it had sustained.

Zeb saw Doc rise and fire twice with his own handgun, then drop down.

Don't hit him where he's strongest. That was Zeb's fight-analysis voice. Hit where he's soft. Hit what he's not protecting. And that wasn't the door. Zeb looked up at the wall he was leaning on.

Plaster over brick? Or plaster over wood frame? The odd shape of the room suggested that this wall was added during renovation, not part of the original plan. It could well be light construction.

Zeb rose and backed away from the wall until his spine met the shelf behind him. If it were wood frame construction, where would the wooden braces be? One at the corner, surely; how far over would the next one be?

He hyperventilated for a few moments, during which Rudi popped up for another quick barrage and disappeared just as swiftly. He saw Noriko's eyes go wide as she divined what he was doing. She readied her pistol, drew her sword with her free hand, and moved next to him.

The pain is nothing. Ignore it. Fight through it. Zeb charged, closing his eyes, throwing an arm over his face just as he hit.

He felt the wall's surface give way, barely slowing him. He felt another impact, also trivial, and then a third on his right shoulder, a hard one. Collapsing plaster tripped him; he spun as he fell, opening his eyes, crashing onto his unhurt shoulder.

Ahead of him, a tall, willowy man stood beside the door, an autogun like Alastair's in both hands, eyes widening in surprise as he turned to look and aim at Zeb. Zeb swung his pistol around, squeezed off a shot, saw a bloody divot expelled from the man's leg above his knee. The man jerked, fired, his bullets going into the wall beside the doorway.

A shadow fell over Zeb from behind and he heard Noriko fire. Blood suddenly welled from the throat of the man with the autogun and he fell, looking mildly concerned.

Zeb rolled over to take in the rest of the room.

An upright cabinet that looked like it was made of aluminum, capped with an intricate knotwork of glass apparatus, stood against the wall behind the gunman. Further in were a desk and a table, a very long one. Behind the table stood a robed figure, slight of build, arms raised, high voice keening a chant that set Zeb's teeth on edge.

The table was capped by a framework of glass and metal. He'd seen one just like it, the top of the protective case over the scale model of Neckerdam at the museum.

Within the case, a tiny golden ball flew, dropping from just below the lid toward the barely-seen tips of model skyscrapers.

Over Neckerdam, the miniature sun's speed increased as it dipped toward its target.

The sun itself had no mind, no thoughts. Yet it felt sensations. A thing of temporary life, it felt something like desire as it homed in on the checkered thing of stone. It felt satisfaction. It felt the presence of powers, powers summoned to create it, powers anxious for its mission to be done so they could return to their rest.

It illuminated the stone canyons below and drew the eyes of the doomed.

Noriko leaped clean over Zeb and fired once more at the autogunner, making sure of him. Zeb scrambled to his feet, ignoring her, and charged the table.

He knew what the glowing ball was. The logical side of his mind tried to tell him it was nothing, a toy, but his gut knew differently and screamed at him to move. He swung the pistol at the padlock on one side of the table, smashed it free, heaved the glass-and-metal lid up with his other hand.

The berobed figure came at him around the table, a long knife in hand. Zeb didn't bother to look, just snapped a kick at the figure, felt his blow sink deep into his attacker's midsection. He heard his attacker gasp out breath and crash back into the wall.

The little sun was a handspan from the model of the checkered building. Atop the building was a curled piece of bronze metal, not apparently a part of the model. Zeb switched his gun to his left hand and swatted the sun as though it were a handball.

It burned at his palm. Sudden pain, far out of proportion to the ball's size, made him cry out and stagger back. But the little sun flew up and out of the diorama, hitting the plaster wall, burning its way into it.

Men and women in the streets of Neckerdam saw the sun descend. Those near the Monarch and Montgris buildings fled, some knowing that it was futile, that death had them.

Then the sun reversed direction, took to the sky, flew in an instant beyond the borders of Neckerdam, and disappeared before it reached the horizon.

The figure in the robe rose. Noriko covered it with her gun. As the robe's hood fell back, Zeb saw the figure was Teleri Obeldon. She held her stomach and side, obviously hurt by Zeb's kick, but there was more than hurt on her face. There was blank, mindless fear.

She looked around as though trying to find a path to escape. Zeb thought he heard voices, accusing whispers in a language he could not recognize, coming from thin air around her.

"The gods' due," Noriko said. "She's done for."

Doc crowded through the hole Zeb had made in the wall. He moved forward, wrapped his arms around Teleri, and closed his right eye.

Staring only through his Good Eye, the eye that saw traces of devisement and spirit-sign, Doc winced from the brightness illuminating the room. Everything shone with high-summer sunlight, every square finger-measure of surface, so there were no shadows. It was suddenly hard to gauge distance.

He could see Teleri, Zeb and Noriko, and other things besides: wisps of glowing brightness, jointed like arms, separating out into too-long fingers at the end. They emerged from nothingness, from thin air. There had to be a dozen of them, perhaps more—he couldn't see behind him. They were already present when he opened his Good Eye, but grew stronger, thicker, more numerous as he looked.

The nearest of them grabbed at Teleri. Doc lashed out with his fist, striking it. He felt no physical contact, just a jolt like electricity passing through his arm. But the glowing hand was flung away. It shook itself as a man would shake his hand after it had been shocked or stung.

"Her debt will not be paid today," Doc said. He spoke in High Cretanis, a language whose memory had mostly faded from the peoples of Western Europe, but the language by which devisements were most successfully cast and maintained. "Go away. I reject you. I evict you. I banish you."

All the arms shook and the whispering voices changed from words to laughter. Then the hands reached for Teleri again, three, four, five at once.

Doc lashed out at the nearest, hit it, flung it away. At the same moment, he shoved down on Teleri's shoulder, forcing her to collapse at his feet. That freed up his left arm, gave him room to strike. He swatted the second hand, across Teleri and into the way of the third; as he'd guessed, it rebounded from his chest, unable to harm him.

Unable for the moment. Teleri's spell had failed. Its success was to be the payment, the reward for the powers that had brought the tiny sun into being. With that payment denied, the hands were here to take her life. That being their only purpose, they could harm only her—until the mind behind them readjusted and decided to sweep Doc's life away.

So many hands. There should be only two. Wasn't this a solar deity? No sun-god he knew of chose to manifest so many hands at once.

He spun, kicking at hands reaching at Teleri from behind; his booted foot swept across both of them, knocking them aside. He continued the spin, his arms windmilling in a precise fashion he'd learned from Harris, one of the man's Oriental exercises, and he batted hand after hand away. With each contact Doc felt jolted, his arms growing numb, his legs growing weaker.

The voices changed in pitch, becoming annoyed, fretful. But there were too many of them. The arms moving closer, the hands striking faster. Doc picked up the pace of his own motions, striking, kicking, turning, remembering to compensate for his temporary right-side blindness; if he opened his right eye, full sight would return, but he would no longer see the arms.

There was an explosion of sound, the crackling of an electrical generator, starting up. The arms jerked as though electricity were flowing through them.

Teleri shrieked. Doc looked down, saw one of the hands grabbing her head, its fingers sinking deep into her skull. Teleri collapsed, flat on the floor, and was motionless. Then the generator noise changed pitch and all the arms faded to nothingness.

Doc opened his right eye. Gaby stood at an upright metal cabinet with glass apparatus on top. Gaby's hand was on a large knob. As Doc's attention fell on her, Gaby finished twisting the knob counterclockwise. The generator noise dropped to nothingness.

"Every time you moved," Gaby said, "as though you were reacting to something, the top of this thing was pulsing in time. I had a hunch."

"A good one," Doc said. He bent over Teleri.

She still breathed, but her breathing seemed strained. Doc reached for her left eye to open it, but both her eyes opened before he touched her.

She looked at him. "I can't feel my arms or legs," she said. Her voice, faint, was like that of a little girl.

"Let's see what we can do about that," Doc said. "Someone call for an ambulance. And call Alastair at Thown."

Teleri kept her attention on Doc. Her eyes were open a bit too wide, making her expression seem childlike, uncomprehending. "You shouldn't muddy the waters," she said. "Clean waters for health. You can't drink from muddy waters."

"What do you do with muddy waters?"

"Purify them."

"Purify them how?"

"I love you."

Doc shook his head. "Who taught you to purify the waters?"

"My father."

"Who is he?"

"I didn't want to kill you."

Doc was silent long moments, staring into Teleri's eyes. "I have to take you back to your father now, but I don't recall his address. What is it?"

"He's at—" Then she stopped for a moment and laughed. It was the laugh of a child at play, one who'd just realized she'd been tricked by a playmate and found it amusing. She continued to laugh, but tears welled from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

Then she closed her eyes and her head lolled as though she'd fallen instantly asleep.

Doc pressed fingers against the side of her neck, then checked her wrist for a pulse. He shook his head. He stared at her a moment longer, then rose to rejoin the associates. Harris took off his coat and laid it over Teleri.

"So that's it?" Zeb said. "She's dead, and magic did it, like they tried to do with Ish?"

Harris nodded. "Making bargains with gods is dangerous. I wish we could teach Doc that. Anyway, it's justice."

"It's not right. She ought to have been tried in court. Her sentence should have been decided on by . . . well, by something human."

"Zeb, remember," Harris said, "she's the one who dropped the bomb on the newspaper."

Doc spoke, his tone low, even pained. "Jurisprudence is a little different here. People don't presume that they have a greater right to extend justice than gods do." He sighed. "Very well. Let's get back to business."

The Novimagos Guard had come and sealed off the business, their investigators searching the office and storeroom, dealing with Teleri's hirelings—two slain, one merely unconscious. The guards brought with them the news of how the fireball falling toward the Montgris Building had vanished from the sky.

The searchers presented the associates with interesting items they found.

One was a small stuffed doll. It was dressed in hand-sewn khaki shorts and blouse, topped with a miniature safari hat and black human hair. A long pin protruded from its back. Doc, after studying it for some minutes with his Good Eye, spoke a few words over it and drew the pin from its back. Then he meticulously disassembled the thing.

Another was a set of gold-plated metal cases, some the size of shoeboxes, some the size of decks of cards, all with hinged lids. Doc tapped each a couple of times before opening them. They were gold-plated on the interiors as well. "Preservation boxes," he said. "Used by most devisers to keep substances from spoiling. These are all empty."

"It was the whole movie-voodoo thing that tipped me off," Harris said, ignoring Doc's interruption. He sat on a chair beside the long table in the little room. "We knew they were using some sort of doll-and-toenail-clippings mechanism to hurt Ixyail. Something they'd recreated from what they learned on the grim world. And we assumed that they had a completely different new mechanism for this fireball thing—until it occurred to me that it didn't have to be different."

"The scrapings from the building plaques," Zeb said. He sat with his back to the wall a couple of paces from the body of the man Noriko had killed. His burned right hand throbbed, though Noriko had carefully wrapped it up in a bandage. He ignored the pain and idly picked up Klapper bullet casings with his unhurt hand. Hundreds of casings littered the floor. "That was what was on top of the model of the building."

"Right. That's the hair and toenails stuff. The contagion element. And that's how I figured it out. So if they were doing it that way, they needed the similarity element, a `doll' of the Danaan Heights Building . . . and a `doll' of the other buildings they threatened. So I realized we'd seen that doll. She'd shown it to us."

Doc, studying the aluminum cabinet with the chandelier-like glass cap, said, "But it can't be the same table as the one in the museum."

"Right. I thought they had to be doing this from the museum. I didn't figure out there was a second table until I made a talk-box call to the craftsman who made it, a fellow named Wenzel—Teleri mentioned his name when we met her. Wenzel had two important things to say: that he'd made two such tables, not one, and that Teleri herself was the deviser who created those cool overlays showing ley lines and underground routes."

Zeb said, "Why'd she do it? Blow up buildings?"

"Well, that was what some of my calls were about." Harris looked chagrined. "We were moving so fast on our various investigations we didn't do all the homework we should have. I didn't, I mean. The key was Barrick Stelwright."

"The critic who left all that money to the museum."

"Right, Zeb. I just called some of the Foundation's friends who work at various newspapers and legal agencies and got some details about the disposition of Stelwright's estate. Where do you think the majority of it went?"

Zeb and the others shook their heads—all but Doc, who was studying the glass-topped cabinet with fixed and sober interest. Doc stepped into the device and looked at its ceiling.

"To the Nationalreinigungspartei, or Reinis, the National Purification Party—headquartered out of the city of Bardulfburg in Weseria, headed by King Aevar. Stelwright wrote columns for the Burian-language press, too, all of it very amusing support for the Reinis and their efforts at national purification."

"The Nazis," Zeb said.

"Their equivalent."

Doc leaned out of the cabinet. "Hair," he said.

Harris grinned. "Do you always start conversations that way?"

His employer sighed. "I need samples of everyone's hair. Right now."

"Right hair and now?"

"Harris."

With a pair of small scissors from the hardware shelves, they took small cuttings of each associate's hair. Doc carefully divided each cutting in two, tying it off and labeling it, arranging two complete sets of sample cuttings on two pieces of sandpaper.

Meanwhile, Doc spoke, his tone unusually subdued. "The little sun, and the larger one it summoned, was more than a destructive mechanism. It was symbolic of a sun-god or sun-goddess. I'm certain from the connection that Gaby saw detected between the actions of the arms and this box, and from residual energies remaining here, that this box is also oriented toward a solar god and utilizes his power."

Gaby asked, "What does it do?"

"I have a suspicion. That's what the hair is for."

A Novimagos Guardman appeared in the hole Zeb had made in the wall. He saluted in Doc's direction. "Sir, the hoodlum is awake."

Doc nodded absently. "Stand by with him. I'll have him brought in for questioning in a chime or less."

The guard left, and Doc continued, "It's probably significant that the Nationalreinigungspartei, and a lot of similar organizations scattered through both the Old and New Worlds, look to sun-gods as their patrons and mentors. As does the land of Wo."

Noriko nodded. "The godly ancestress of our royal clans is the sun."

Doc set one piece of sandpaper, with one small clipping of hair from each associate, inside the aluminum cabinet and shut the door. "I wonder how long I should run it . . ." He turned a sharp look on Harris. "The Sonneheim Games are dedicated to two sun-gods. Sonneheim means sun-home."

Harris nodded.

"I think we'll be joining the Novimagos team at the games, after all. Corporal, bring the prisoner in, would you?"

The guardsman brought in the man Doc had laid out. He was a well-muscled fellow, tall for one of the fair folk, dressed in an inexpensive red suit that was baggy in the shoulders, too broad for him. His hands were manacled behind him. He was solemn and eyed Doc and the others warily. He scowled at Rudi, who shrugged.

"Your name?" Doc said.

The prisoner considered the question, then cleared his throat and spat. The spittle landed at Doc's feet.

Doc considered that a long moment, then smiled. It was, in fact, the cruelest and most distant expression Zeb had ever seen someone wear, and he suddenly felt a measure of the fear common people were said to have of the Daoine Sidhe. He shuddered involuntarily and saw Rudi doing the same.

Doc said, "You are guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. At least thirty counts . . . depending on how many dead are pulled from the ruins of the Kingston Guardian. You'll die in the shock-chair . . . and I'll see to it they keep the power flowing until your very soul is burned away, so nothing of you even reaches the land of Avlann. Guard, take him away."

The guardsman tugged at the prisoner's shoulder, but the prisoner resisted him, his expression uneasy. "You can't do that."

"You don't know me."

"I didn't kill anyone. I didn't know. You can't do this."

"Guard, get him out of my sight." Doc negligently turned away.

The guard pulled more insistently. The prisoner was halfway out the door in the wall when he cried, "I know things you don't. I can help you." He resisted the guardsman's pull.

Rudi grimaced. "You're a ruddy coward, Addy."

Doc sighed as if much put upon, then turned and waved the guard away. "We'll see. If I hear one answer I don't like, I put you on the railway to the shock-chair. Name?"

"Adalbert Carter."

Doc frowned. "Were you once with Big Benno's gang?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why did you leave him?"

"One of my uncles in the Old Country recommended me to Goodlady Obeldon's employer. Benno didn't want me to leave him, but he got a talk-box call from the Old Country. Then he was only too happy to see me leave."

Doc considered that in silence. Zeb noticed that Harris's eyes had widened at that last statement. Obviously Big Benno was someone people didn't mess with . . . and yet someone in the Old Country had enough pull to force him to let go of a favored employee. Interesting.

Doc said, "So. Here is the question your afterlife hinges on. What do you think you know that will interest me?"

"She had orders this morning. Over the talk-box. To kill you."

Doc shrugged.

"She didn't want to. She cried. She was sweet on you."

Doc regarded him steadily, unemotionally. But Zeb saw the tightening of his shoulders. "Not relevant," he said.

"She said she already had gotten, and had sent on, what she needed from you, so the loss wasn't total. Her superiors were very pleased with the results."

"What did she mean by that?"

"I don't know. But you were her most important objective, and you had been accomplished—so she said. Killing you was just cleaning up. Her people watching the Monarch Building saw you go in and not come out, so she made her attack tonight."

The Sidhe Foundation members had driven out of the Monarch Building garage through Doc's sally-port, a tactic designed exactly to foil the sort of observers the man described. Doc said, "Who issued orders to her?"

"I don't know. They were always by talk-box. Voice only, no picture. I know that some of them were from overseas, because there was an overseas operator before the voice came on."

"Describe the voice."

"Cultured. Spoke Lower Cretanis as though he were very well-educated, but he had an accent. Burian."

"What kind of Burian?"

Carter shrugged. "Burian is Burian to me."

Doc dropped his gaze to consider that for a moment. Then he turned to the aluminum cabinet. "What does this do?"

"I don't know. She never used it when I was in the room."

"But you heard her use it?"

"Oh, yes. Daily. It made a terrible humming. It hurt her, too. Sometimes she'd come out of the room stooped, hardly able to walk, crying like she'd lost her only love. Took her a chime or more to recover."

"How long did she run it each day?"

The man stopped for a moment, calculating. "Fifteen or twenty ticks."

Doc heaved a sigh. "Very well. The Guards will take you away and you'll complete your confession to them. If I hear that you've cooperated fully—up to and beyond testifying against your fellows, when we find them—I'll take no steps to decide your fate. Find a good enough advocate and you might even come out of this alive."

At Doc's nod, the guardsman pulled the hoodlum out of the room and led him away.

They were silent a long moment. Then Zeb, his voice low, asked, "Could you do that, Doc?"

"Do what?"

"Destroy his soul. Keep him from going to heaven, or hell, or whatever it is you have around here."

Doc gave him a faint smile. "No. I wouldn't know a soul if it bit me, as Harris says. No art of the deviser has ever revealed one. But he doesn't know that. Let him think that I'm the cruel Daoine Sidhe with powers over life and death. I don't owe him the truth." He sobered. "But I need to find it myself. Let's see if my guess is correct."

He placed one of the pieces of sandpaper with hair samples on the floor of the aluminum cabinet, then closed and latched the door. There were a bare minimum of controls on the side of the machine—a knob that looked like it belonged on an egg-timer and a needle gauge under glass. Doc twisted the dial to the number 15.

As soon as he released it, pulsating light as bright as daylight shot through the glass apparatus atop the cabinet, and an ominous hum filled the room. Zeb felt his teeth vibrate, and the uncomfortable looks on the faces of the others suggested that they felt it as much as he did. His hand also began to throb with greater pain. Doc watched the proceedings with his own hand over his right eye.

A quarter of a minute later, the dial reached 0 and the humming ceased. Doc removed the sandpaper from the cabinet floor and compared it to the sandpaper with the second set of hair samples. The others closed around him.

Zeb whistled. The hair samples tagged with Doc's and Rudi's names were unaffected. Harris's and Gaby's were a noticeable shade lighter than their hair that had not gone through the process. Zeb's and Noriko's hair had not changed color . . . but little trails of smoke rose from them and the tips had gone to ash, crumbling away.

Harris asked, "What the hell is it, Doc?"

Doc pursed his lips. "Energy, power from a solar deity, was drawn to the device by that glass apparatus and focussed into the cabinet itself. In a sense, it bleached the hair."

"Just bleached it?" Harris shook his head. "Why wasn't the color of Noriko's and Zeb's hair changed?"

"Because it wasn't bleaching color. It was bleaching race, Harris. Suppressing racial elements that were at odds with light ancestry."

"Instant Aryan," Zeb said. "Just add water. I take it Noriko and I are just too far from the ideal."

Doc nodded. "Fifteen beats in that device would probably ignite either of you."

Harris asked, "Which solar deity?"

Doc rubbed tiredness from his eyes, then shook his head. "I couldn't tell. That's what is difficult. I could not recognize the characteristics of the deity, its signature. I couldn't even tell whether it was a persona or an archetype."

Zeb sighed. "Suppose you could clue in an outsider, Doc? Persona and archetype?"

"Well, it's a rather esoteric consideration," Doc said. "We don't know what the gods are, but we know some things about them. Such as the fact that gods that share similar traits seem to have odd ties to one another. Such as Astarte of the Middle East and Aphrodite of Panhellas. Both goddesses devoted to fertility and love.

"When you have a god with a name, who is associated with a people or a country," he continued, "devisers call that a persona. But you can also pray to a sort of amalgam god, the one who personifies the common traits but doesn't belong to a specific people, doesn't have a name or any stories associated with him. That's called the archetype. When you successfully structure devisements invoking the archetype, you tend to get a more profound effect. You also place yourself in greater danger if you make mistakes, when payment comes due.

"And that's what leaves me very confused. The devisement manifestations I saw a couple of chimes ago matched no solar persona I'm familiar with, nor either of the solar archetypes I've studied. It demonstrated many grasping arms, which is more characteristic of earth-gods and earth-monsters. I could feel neither a masculine nor feminine presence predominate, which is perhaps the oddest characteristic. Does this sound familiar to any of you?"

But the associates offered him only blank looks or head-shakes. Doc shrugged. "Harris, time?"

Harris looked at his wrist; he was one of the few people Zeb had seen who actually wore wristwatches, rather than carrying pocket watches, on the fair world. "Coming up on three bells. That's about nine o'clock, Zeb."

Doc raised his arms in a long stretch; Zeb heard the man pop and crack in several places. "Let's leave this hardware shoppe to the guardsmen," Doc said. "We'll sleep tonight and take to the air tomorrow. For Weseria and the Sonneheim Games."

Harris looked expectant. "On the Frog Prince?"

"No, one of the Valks, I think. Less distinctive, harder to track." Doc looked up at Zeb. "This will take us far from Neckerdam and could keep us there for weeks or more. I can't ask you to abandon your true life for that long."

"I think I need to come with you, Doc."

"I'm glad." Doc turned to Rudi. "Your part of this is done. You've earned the pittance I paid you."

Rudi shook his head. "Whoever it was led Albin astray from good, simple crime, whoever it was made me kill him, is where you're going. That's where I'm going. I'll go whether you take me or not."

"What about your brothers?"

"I don't know. I'll try to reach them tonight, but I've got no confidence I will—Albin was the details man, details like safe houses. I hope they'll just hole up so I won't have to worry about them through the rest of this." He shrugged. "That's why I have to be with you. If you run into 'em again, I'm out there in front to keep 'em out of trouble."