The goblin nodded slowly, his face expressionless. I fought back a shiver. Could I pick my friends, or what?

Ocnus’s worst fear about the Mal’Salin family centered squarely on what they did to servants who had displeased them. They ate them. Of course this wasn’t true. Well, at least not anymore. But when it came to maintaining prejudice, or a reputation, a little rumor went a long way. Especially if the rumor involved rotisserie cooking. The rumored antics of the Mal’Salin family multiplied those fears a hundred fold.

“Wait!” Ocnus’s voice was thin, shrill, and appropriately terrified.

Now we were getting somewhere.

Once Ocnus started talking, there was no shutting him up. His double-dealings had multiplied into a veritable web of intrigue. I knew greed could make you stupid, and I thought I’d seen and heard it all, but Ocnus’s antics appalled even me.

Sarad Nukpana wanted the beacon, and an expendable human thief to get it for him. Ocnus had never liked Quentin, so he topped Ocnus’s list of expendables. Once Chigaru got wind of what his brother and Nukpana were after, he wanted in, too. At this point, things got sticky for Ocnus. He couldn’t refuse Sarad Nukpana’s order without exposing his dealings with Chigaru Mal’Salin. Ocnus knew the double fee he stood to collect wouldn’t do him much good if he were dead, and he was desperate to shift the blame. He told Sarad Nukpana that Quentin was going to double-cross him and fence the beacon through Simon Stocken. It sounded like Stocken hadn’t died quietly, naming Ocnus as the main source of Nukpana’s inconvenience. Then there was last night. Ocnus had been watching Piaras and told Chigaru’s retainers exactly where to find him. Then he sent the letter to me at Sirens. So the entire evening in which Piaras and I were nearly killed on numerous occasions had been orchestrated by the quivering mass of goblin seated not five feet from my clenched and eager fists. I heard a growl. I think it was me.

“Raine.” Tam’s voice was low and warning. “Even Sarad Nukpana would be challenged to extract information from a corpse.”

I unclenched my fists and my jaw. “That’s fascinating, Ocnus. And I can put all that information to good use, but it still doesn’t tell me where the Saghred is.”

“I can’t tell you!” he wailed. “He’ll kill me!”

“Who?”

Ocnus’s lips quivered with muffled sobs. I found it increasingly difficult to keep my rage at a respectable level. It would be a lot easier if Ocnus weren’t so pathetic.

“Nukpana,” he snuffled. “The king, the prince. It doesn’t matter, I’m just as dead.”

Even if I could put my decency on a shelf, I didn’t have the stomach for torture, or the patience for a long interrogation. Good thing I didn’t have to make a living as an inquisitor. I’d starve. Tam sensed my frustration and stepped in, bless him.

“Very well, if you refuse to be useful to my elven friend, you can still be useful to me. You are from Mipor, are you not?”

Ocnus paused, then nodded cautiously, seeing no harm in the question.

“Good. I don’t know if you are aware, but Miporian flesh is a delicacy in our family.” Tam popped the button off of Ocnus’s shirt cuff with a sharp snap, and slid the dirty linen above his elbow. He glanced distastefully at the grime. “Naturally, you’ll have to be washed first,” he muttered under his breath.

Ocnus looked to me in wide-eyed panic.

I made no move to stop Tam. “Where’s the Saghred?”

When Ocnus didn’t answer, Tam lifted one of the little sorcerer’s arms speculatively. “Probably a bit stringy beneath the fat, but an overnight marinade should take care of that.” His dark eyes became dreamy as he ran a fingertip smoothly down the pasty underside of Ocnus’s arm. “Grandmother had the most delectable recipe,” he breathed. “The meat all but fell off the bone.”

“The goblin embassy,” Ocnus squeaked. “The mausoleum.”

“How do you know this?” Tam half pulled Ocnus from his chair, the sorcerer’s arm clutched tightly in his fist.

“A year ago there was an elf who wanted to get onto the embassy grounds.”

“Describe him,” came Mychael’s steady voice from the now open doorway.

Ocnus swallowed and looked from me to Tam.

“Do it,” I growled.

The goblin sorcerer licked his lips. “Gray eyes, gray hair, but he wasn’t old. He had more than enough gold, so I didn’t ask questions.”

Ocnus was panting. Just my luck he’d hyperventilate and pass out.

He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I brought him onto the grounds through The Ruins. He went into the mausoleum. He never came back out. I went in to look. He wasn’t there. There’s only one way in and I was watching it the whole time.”

I looked at Tam. “Mausoleum?”

“There’s a mausoleum on the property from the previous owners.”

“How do you know he carried the Saghred?” Mychael asked.

I felt the pull of a spellsinger in his words, compelling Ocnus to tell the truth. He need not have bothered. Ocnus was telling the truth, or at least what he thought was the truth. I think the beacon was helping things along. Once again, I was grateful.

“He had a small box made of white stone,” Ocnus said. “Like the box Nukpana had me hire Quentin to steal. Only this one was larger and square.” He held his hands about four inches apart, no easy task considering Tam still had one of those hands.

“How do you know there was anything inside?”

“Something was glowing, like a big firefly. Red, flickering.”

Mychael put a box of translucent white stone on the table in front of Ocnus. “Anything like this?”

Ocnus licked his lips again. “Exactly.”

“And Nukpana doesn’t know?”

Ocnus swallowed and shook his head.

Tam released Ocnus, but didn’t move away, instead looming ominously over the goblin snitch.

“I find it difficult to believe that you found a way to get even more gold out of Sarad Nukpana and yet you passed up the opportunity.”

Ocnus seemed to shrink in his chair. “Not at first. I overheard why he needed the beacon. You know, what he hoped to find with it. That’s when I remembered the elf and the stone box.” A twitching had taken up residence in Ocnus’s left eyelid. “So I set up another meeting with him. To make him an offer. That’s when I heard he knew about my deals with the prince. I didn’t go to the meeting.”

“Smart move,” I muttered.

“I was leaving town.”

“Even smarter.”

“My ship wasn’t leaving until the morning tide, so I went to the Sleeping Giant.” Ocnus tried his trademark oily grin on for size, but it just came off looking sick. “I’ve told you what you wanted to know. How about just letting me go? My ship leaves within the hour. I’ll be on it, I swear.” He looked from me to Tam, then to Mychael in growing desperation. “If I stay here, he’ll kill me.”

“If you’re lucky,” Tam told him.

Mychael looked into Ocnus’s eyes. The goblin snitch couldn’t look away. Mychael held the gaze for nearly a minute, until beads of sweat formed on Ocnus’s forehead. “I think he tells the truth. Raine?”

The beacon vibrated beneath my shirt, if I hadn’t known better I’d say someone was excited. I nodded and put my hand over the beacon. “It seems we agree.”

“You could go to the mausoleum now,” Ocnus told me eagerly. “Nukpana’s not in the embassy tonight.”

“Where is he?”

Ocnus’s eagerness changed to confusion. “I heard he was going nightingale hunting.”