He said that with a straight face. Then he grimaced.

His toads were getting frisky.

‘‘Could Felhske have been hired to watch for a chance for the twins to get into the clubhouse and swipe secrets?’’

‘‘No. They could come and go. If they wanted. The other kids weren’t down there most of the time. The twins knew the code spells to get past the wards. We gave Kevans a lot of room but she didn’t go out much. Her friends hung out at our house more than anywhere else. Somebody was always underfoot.’’

Was that irritation? ‘‘Then somebody else who wanted to know how to make giant bugs?’’

‘‘Possibly. Though I think you’re feeding your suspicions off your prejudice against our class. Even the sociopaths among us don’t want another disaster like the rat and thunder lizard experiments that blessed us with the ratpeople. That kind of research is banned. No adult with a sound knowledge of that period would plunge into that abyss again. It was a close-run thing. But kids might. Their knowledge of history runs all the way back to breakfast. And then they don’t care.’’

Another peep into the Algarda family dynamic?

I wanted to pursue his remark about thunder lizard experiments. The Dead Man proved he was with us by nudging me away. He passed me his recollections of an era he had witnessed firsthand.

The Hill folk of the time had done an ingenious job covering up something far more horrible than their ratman experiments, despite a rash of nasty deaths. Letting the ratmen survive had been part of the cover-up, somehow.

I said, ‘‘I’ll catch Felhske and ask why he’s lurking. If I need to know. Look. We’ve been kicking something around. About what the kids stirred up.’’

I retailed the dragon hypothesis.

Amazing. During our entire exchange there hadn’t been one interruption. Kip and Kyra, Winger and the Remora, Tinnie and Singe, the Windwalker and Dean when he appeared with fresh supplies, nobody said a word. Nor even moved much, except to scratch.

I had an idea who to blame for that.

Algarda opined, ‘‘I find it plausible. In fact, it ricochets off a theory I proposed in this very room, less than ten hours ago. And got put down.’’

He’d visited earlier? And nobody bothered to tell me?

It was but a rudiment of a notion at the time, unsupported by evidence. It had to be developed. It had to be researched.

Ah. Defensive. After only an oblique challenge.

It did tell me what he had had Penny Dreadful doing today.

‘‘Add this,’’ Algarda said. ‘‘I talked with the family on the way to the theater today. We have a collective memory that goes back several centuries. They recalled two similar occurrences, neither inside the Karentine sphere.’’

Wow! My problem at the World had turned geopolitical. And historical.

‘‘I discovered four incidents,’’ Jon Salvation said, with that snotty tone always adopted by the guy who corrects whatever you’ve just offered.

Winger knocked some of the brass off. ‘‘You and the girl. Penny.’’

‘‘Yes. Well. Everything is in theProceedings . If you can access them.’’ Smugness aimed my way. TheProceedings must be something they kept at the library. ‘‘Though the most dramatic incident may be apocryphal.’’

I asked Winger, ‘‘You going to let him use language like that?’’

Algarda considered a suite of responses. He settled on not letting his ego get in the way. ‘‘The two I know of happened in Oatman Hwy in 1434 and in Florissant about a century before that. Date uncertain. Florissant isn’t a principality blessed with an excess of literacy even today.’’

I couldn’t say. I’m not possessed of an excess familiarity with exotic geography.

The Remora preened. ‘‘The other incidents happened inside Venageta. The Venageti tried to cover them up. Both were huge disasters. The more recent happened on the boundary between their part of the Cantard and ours about two hundred years ago. This is the one that might be apocryphal. Local tribesmen were supposed to have caused it.’’

I grumbled something about Pilsuds Vilchik being worse than the Dead Man at inflating a story in order to focus attention on himself.

I’d later find out that he’d gotten into the library by confessing to be a playwright to Lindalee’s boss. That harpy was addicted to historical dramas. Salvation promised her a complementary first-class seat the night his play opened.

He sneered. ‘‘You heard of the Great Roll-Up, Garrett?’’

‘‘Of course. It brought all that silver to the surface. Where it could be fought over for most of two hundred years.’’

‘‘That was the dragon.’’

I confessed, ‘‘Thatwould explain some things about how the war got started.’’ Better than any of the propaganda. But only marginally.

Algarda agreed. ‘‘That could be true.’’ He joined me in awarding Jon Salvation an abiding look of suspicion, though.

I’m always suspicious when some dimwit shows off knowledge he has no business having. Or demonstrates skills at charming people that don’t fit my prejudices.

What happened to the dragon? Or dragons?

Do not push it, Garrett. The little man is possessed of several illusions that make him more useful deluded than ever he could be if exposed.

That was a private message. An explanation would have to wait. I asked, ‘‘So, what’s really down there?’’ The Venageti had blamed ‘‘the Great Roll-Up’’ on ferocious earthquakes. I’d never doubted them. ‘‘We don’t want something busting out in the middle of the city.’’

‘‘Dragons,’’ Jon Salvation said.

‘‘Dragons,’’ Barate Algarda agreed.

Furious Tide of Light, positioned so neither Tinnie nor her father could see, nodded—then smoked off a violet-eyed promissory wink before snapping back into gray-eyed zombiedom, dully picking at her scalp.

‘‘Come on! Dragons?’’ I glared at the Remora. ‘‘I don’t buy it. It’s a dragon, how has it stayed alive? How come it hasn’t starved?’’

‘‘There are dragons and dragons, Garrett. Stop thinking big green scaly mean things with breath so bad it’s flammable. There’s no evidence that anything like that exists. But there must be a reason for the legends. And we see living proof of other legends every day. Hell, your place here is infested with living legends.’’

You might say, since I have a dead Loghyr, a ratgirl, a murder of pixies (pleasantly unobtrusive of late), and a natural-born redhead in inventory. Not to mention the world’s greatest detective.

‘‘So this thing down under isn’t really a dragon. It just looks like a dragon, smells like a dragon, acts like a dragon, and thinks like a dragon. And might be what made people come up with the idea of the dragon.’’

‘‘Exactly. Right first go. Darling, you haven’t been giving Garrett nearly enough credit.’’

And they wonder why regular folk look askance at intellectuals.

Winger showed him a clenched fist. ‘‘I’ve got something I’m gonna give you. And it’s a long way from what you want.’’

Children!

‘‘Yeah,’’ I chimed in. Despite both beer and exhaustion I was wide awake now. One sneaky wink from the Windwalker. That woman would never need a compliance device. ‘‘So. Not a dragon. But a dragon. One that doesn’t need to eat for ten thousand years. Wow. Mystery solved.’’

Everybody stared. Even Old Bones, in his unique way.

‘‘I’m fishing for suggestions on how to lay the ghosts to rest,’’ I said. ‘‘I’m not the supergenius everybody thinks.’’

Those who had known me more than a week succeeded in restraining an impulse to disagree. So did the other two.

No other response, either. ‘‘All right. It’s a dragon. How do we talk to it?’’

The Windwalker startled us by asking, ‘‘Why make it more aware of us by trying to communicate? If the historical awakenings were all worse than any natural disaster?’’

Did anybody mention that? I never heard that. Except by implication.