"The two Karls, you mean? They're the ones the ru­mor mill loved. I never heard of the daughter till the other day."

"She was blind, the Stormwarden. Those girls were the ones who were deserving. Though Amber had begun to show signs of getting wild, just for the attention."

I nodded as my contribution.

She took a deep breath. "Since she's been gone this time, it's been like I've been under a curse. Father and son were determined to circumvent me at every turn. Then that kidnapping business had to come. I had to deplete the family treasury severely, selling silver at a discount, to get that much gold together. It was a disas ter, but for a cause the Stormwarden could respect once her temper cooled. I might even have survived Amiranda's having taken flight during the confusion. The girl was restless for some time before she took off. The Storm-warden herself had remarked that it was coming. But putting out two hundred thousand marks gold to ran­som Karl, only to have him take his own life, that's insupportable."

Was I supposed to know about Junior or not? Instinct told me to play it cautious. "Did you say that Karl killed himself?"

"This morning. He slashed his wrists and bled to death in a hole of a room in Fishwife's Close."

"Why the hell would he do that?"

"I don't know, Mr. Garrett. And to be perfectly frank, at this point I can't much care. He destroyed me by doing it. Maybe that was his motive. He was a strange boy and he hated me. But Karl isn't the reason I came here. I'm doomed when the Stormwarden returns, which she will very shortly. However, my pride—badly mauled but not yet dead—insists I go on, trying to salvage what I can on her behalf. Amber fled the house this morning. This is where you come in."

I told my face to look interested.

"Amiranda and Amber are at large and therefore at risk. If I can salvage that much for the Stormwarden, I will. I'm going to try. I have gone into my own funds to do so. I want you to find those girls. If you can."

She plomped a sack down in front of me.

"One hundred marks gold, to retain you. I'll pay a fee of one thousand marks gold each if you can return either of those girls before the Stormwarden comes home."

"Your man Slauce can't handle—"

"Courter Slauce is an incompetent imbecile. This morn­ing I sent him after Amber. He turned up just before I left to come here, too drunk to recall where he'd been or what he'd been doing. I console myself with the certainty that he'll starve to death after the Stormwarden chucks the lot of us into the street. Will you look for my missing girls, Mr. Garrett?"

"Give me a few minutes to think." I had to smooth out some dents in my ethics and reach an accommodation with my conscience. I considered myself to be working for three clients already: myself, Saucer head, and Am- her. Though Amber wasn't getting the first-class produc­tion. And nobody was paying me. Willa Dount would be paying, though she wouldn't be getting her money's worth. Still, an experiment had oc­curred to me.

"Suppose I had a notion where I could find one of the girls right now?"

"Do you?"

"Take it as a supposition. How can I be certain I'd get my fee?"

She levered herself out of her chair, straining like a woman decades older. "I came prepared for that possibil­ity." What might have been a smile tickled the corner of her mouth. She started digging sacks out of her clothing. In a minute there was a line of ten before me, each a twin of the one offered me as a retainer. I checked the contents of one at random.

It was good. Eleven hundred marks gold. More than I'd ever had a chance at before. With prospects for another thousand, which I could collect easily. Certainly a temptation to test the dark side of a man's soul. We all look for the big hit—hope for it, talk about it—but I don't believe we think about it. Not seriously. Because when it's suddenly there, a lot of thinking has to be done. Amiranda was dead. And what was Amber to me? Morley always says the supply of women is inexhaustible. And who would I have to explain to or make excuses to?

Just to myself. With maybe the Dead Man smirking over my shoulder. Still, there was the possibility of a useful experiment. I rose and collected the gold in one big bear hug.

"Come with me."

Dean had turned down the lamps in the Dead Man's room. I don't know why he thinks that makes any differ­ence. The Dead Man doesn't care about light one way or the other. When he wants to sleep, he'll sleep through sun, lightning, or earthquake. I hired me down and depos­ited the take beside his chair.

Domina Dount asked, "Are you going to deliver some­thing or not, Mr. Garrett?"

"Turn around."

For a moment she was human. She let out a little squeak and raised her hands to her cheeks. But she asserted control, taking a full minute to get the parts into the desired order. Then she murmured, "Will the disas­ters never end?"

She faced me. "I presume you can explain?"

"Explain what?"

She took ten seconds, eyes closed.

I prodded. "You engaged me to find and deliver to you, if possible, Amber daPena and Amiranda Crest. I've done half the job already."

She stared at me and hated me through narrowed eyelids. Her voice remained neutral, though, as she re­marked, "I had hoped that you would deliver them in better health. She is dead? Not in a trance or ensorcelled?"

"Yes. Amiranda has been in poor health for some time now."

"Your attempts at wit become tiresome, Garrett. I suppose I can assume that you weren't the agent of death. I want to know the who, what, when, where, why, and how."

So did I.

My experiment had flopped. Domina Dount wasn't about to be flustered into giving anything away. If there was anything in her that I didn't already have.

"Well?" she demanded.

Why not? I might still shake something loose. "The day you were supposed to make the ransom payoff, Amiranda hired a friend of mine as her bodyguard. That night he accompanied her into the countryside north of TunFaire. She took several travel cases with her. She went to a crossroad near Lichfield, where she stopped. My friend thought she expected to meet somebody there and that he was supposed to have been dismissed when that somebody showed."

"Who?"

"I don't know. He, she, or it never came. A band of ogre breeds did instead. My friend killed some of them but he couldn't drive them off or keep them from killing Amiranda. He couldn't even save himself, though the ogres thought he was dead enough to throw into the bushes with Amiranda and the other casualties. When they scattered to keep from being seen by travelers, my friend found the strength to pick Amiranda up and carry her three miles to someone he knew who, he hoped, could save her."

"To no avail."

"Of course. My friend isn't very smart. He'd failed. He was outraged and his pride was hurt. Somehow, he got back to Tunfaire, as far as the Bledsoe Infirmary, where I got his story in the deathwatch ward."

Willa Dount frowned, uncertain why I'd told her what I had. "You've left something out, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you don't need to know. Because no one needs to know except my friend's friends—some of them are the kind of guys who eat ogres for breakfast—who figure there's some balancing due for what got done."

You couldn't crack Willa Dount with a hammer. She looked at me straight in the eye and said, "That's why you've been digging around and poking your nose in."

"Yes."

"The Storm warden resents people who pry into her family's affairs."

"I'll bet she resents people killing her kids even more." Me and my big damned mouth! I'd blown a potful for free there. But she didn't seem to notice.