“I have an abiding suspicion that people are firing up their fireplaces.”

“It isn’t winter yet.” The sharp, softly bitter smell of woodsmoke is a sure sign of winter. More than snow is. People fire up their fireplaces only when they’re sure that the cold has arrived for real.

Fuel is dear. Most of it is barged in from way upriver.

I noted the presence of several kittens. One had homesteaded Saucerhead’s chest. Another had set up housekeeping in Merry Sculdyte’s lap. The Dead Man didn’t intimidate them anymore. They avoided BB, though. Despite his snoring. Morley observed, “It won’t be Sarge and Puddle who do me in. Neither one of them is smart enough to start a fire. The ones who worry me are the ones who think they’re smart enough.”

The Dead Man didn’t acknowledge my arrival until then. How is your hand this morning? Are you ready to resume?

I noted that I was favoring my left. “It’s stiff. I won’t be able to do much.”

Find a trustworthy professional letter writer.

“Have you paid any attention to me and Morley?”

I try not to indulge in frivolity.

“The weather situation isn’t frivolous.”

Oh, my.

He did seem surprised. The season sneaked up on me.

I felt him recalculating how long he’d been asleep. “It’s unseasonable. But severe.”

It is snowing heavily now. Once several inches accumulate, the footing will become less of a problem.

“Hell, there’s an old pair of skates down in the basement somewhere. I could dig them out. I could fix them up, sharpen them up, refurbish them up, put them on Morley…”

Morley said, “Morley don’t skate.”

“Oh?”

“I tried it once. See this scar? In my eyebrow? That’s what hit the ice first. Split me right open. Why are you grinning?”

“Nothing, really.” I was just delighted to discover that I could do something he couldn’t, well and with style.

We will make do until the footing improves.

I noted a twinkle from under BB’s brows. He was awake but pretending not to be.

Old Bones noticed, too. Our friend from Ymber is producing some interesting information.

“So give me all the gory details. Unless all that needs to be written down, too.”

Some will have to be, eventually. The man is a charlatan. A successful charlatan, to be sure, but a charlatan nonetheless. He was not born in Ymber. He migrated there before the religious squabbles turned bloody. One of his recent ancestors was not human. He has a touch of what he sells as psychic power. His religion he cobbled together himself. It went over well in Ymber because many people were tired of the feud between A-Lat and A-Laf.

“I thought open warfare was something recent.”

Yes. It would be instructive to compare Penny Dreadful’s recollections with those of Mr. Brittigarn. His are entirely self-serving.

Old Bones fed me the tale of a con man whose scam had worked well until it caught the attention of A-Laf’s deacons and sextons after a fundamentalist, activist faction seized control of A-Laf’s cult. They sharpened their teeth on BB’s followers. The survivors fled to TunFaire, where they failed to support their pastor in the style to which he wanted to be accustomed. The sin pots of the big city picked them off.

Now that the battle between A-Lat and A-Laf had immigrated, it didn’t seem likely that Brother Brittigarn would enjoy the Dream Quarter much longer.

“How about my roc’s egg?”

He did not bring that with him. Mr. Tharpe received no instructions concerning it. So the stone is still in the temple of Eis and Igory.

“But he did switch it out and then not fling it in the river?”

The stone is much too precious to be thrown away.

“No!”

Sarcasm does not become you.

“No. But I do tend to get sarcastic when you say something that obvious.”

He is reconsidering making a run for it.

“Then stop him. How hard is that to figure?”

It may not be that simple if he realizes what natural tools he possesses.

“Use your standard tactic. Baffle him with bullshit. Why does he want the stone?”

Proof that Old Bones hadn’t lavished much attention on BB then surfaced. He didn’t yet know why. He had to go pearl diving in a mind naturally indisposed to surrender its treasures.

This will take a while. He appears to have been of several minds concerning the stone. Though each of those focused on wringing the biggest profit possible from the windfall.

Classic crook-think. Calling a theft a windfall. “Why?”

I felt a little prickle in my mind. He was checking to see what I meant. Instead of asking.

“You’re awfully impatient this time, Old Bones.”

There is so much going on. And I am so excited.

“You’ve become sarcasm incarnate. How is the egg important? Why is it valuable?”

Because he may have told the truth about how dangerous the rock is. Even though it might not have been stolen from the nest of a fabulous bird. He wants to auction the egg on the Hill for enough to get out of the priest racket. The stone does rate description as “rare as rocs’ eggs.”

“I’m confused.”

I am surprised that you would notice.

He has a bite like a saber-toothed toad.

“Have Singe do your transcription. She needs the practice. And it’ll keep her out of the beer.”

He offered the mental equivalent of a harrumph.

“So. About the stone?”

It can be used to start fires.

“Is that so?” I sensed that he didn’t know anything else, in any concrete way, but was chock-full of speculation.

I have Miss Winger working an angle that may tell us something useful.

Which he wouldn’t share right now, of course, because he doesn’t like to speculate or brainstorm- except among his own minds. He doesn’t like being wrong. But I could guess what he was thinking. I’d considered it myself and decided the idea was too farfetched. You should have mentioned the stone to Mr. Thorpe.

Saucerhead groaned. He sat up, clapped his hands to his temples, swore, and lied, “I’ll never do that again.”

“What is that?”

He realized he hadn’t taken on his career as a cat mattress by indulging in too many adult beverages. “What happened?”

Morley told him, “It was too nasty for you to go home last night.”

“What time is it? Oh, gods! I shoulda been over to… she’s gonna kill me!” He tugged at his clothes, retied his shoes, hoisted himself to his feet, and headed for the front door. I tagged along so his misery would have company once he looked outside.

Saucerhead took his look. “Holy shit! What did you do?”

“Man, you can’t blame the weather on me.”

“Sure, I can. No law says I got to be logical.” He showed me his biggest shit-eating grin. He stuck his head back outside, retreated again. “I blame it on the peace.”

“What? You blame what on the peace?”

“The weather, man. When we had us a war going we never had no weather like this. Not this early.”

“What the hell are you babbling about?”

He grinned again. “Just yanking your chain, brother. I keep hearing that kind of crap out there in the taverns.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t get out there no more. You don’t know the latest lunatic theories.”

Saucerhead Tharpe lecturing me about lunacy. It’s a strange old world. “You going to jump on out there or not?”

“I think I’ll hang out here. That’s just plain too ugly.”

It was a good thing Dean got a chance to lay in supplies.

I did what I could to loosen my writing hand, went back to work transcribing Merry Sculdyte’s memoirs. Singe and Morley spelled me. There wasn’t much else to do but try to play chess.

I found one more area where I could feel superior to my favorite pretty-boy dark-elf breed buddy. Though he insisted I was getting secret help from my sidekick.