If you’re a finder, you never know who might next knock at your door. People are always losing something-husbands or wives, sisters or sons. Faith or hope. Trust or money.

If you’re a finder named Markhat, well, then you’re me, and you know exactly what I mean.

It was barely sunup, and it was hot. Hot days in Rannit raise a mighty stink from the Regent’s new sewers, and since half the damned ogres this side of the Divide haul their manure carts past my door, I get a double dose of stink ’til sundown.

I resolved to just start walking north and not stop until my boots sank in fresh snow when someone started pounding at my door.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they knock. Women usually don’t do more than tap. A woman with husband troubles tend to dart up and tap twice and then turn and scurry away, as if they weren’t in any way associated with my door and its painted finder’s eye. Heavens no, I was just standing here waiting to cross the street.

But this was a man’s knock. Knock, knock, knock. Good and loud, with a pause to listen, followed by another fusillade of determined thrice-struck knocks.

I swung my feet off my desk, and Three-leg Cat scurried for the back. I got up and opened my door to trouble.

“You hight Markhat,” she said. Her words lay halfway between a question and an accusation.

I ogled.

I’m never at my best before noon.

“Well, ’ere you Markhat or ain’t you?”

“I am indeed,” I replied. I motioned her in, which was wasted because she was already stomping inside, her big blue eyes taking in my office and me and showing every sign of finding us an immediate and sore disappointment.

“Mama said you was a man to be reckoned with.” She spoke the words as if the statement invited spirited debate. “But I reckon she ought to know.”

She was tall. Easily as tall as me. Clad in long skirts and a high-necked, long-sleeved smock made of a coarse plain cloth with all the femininity of old burlap, if less of the comfort. The smock was belted, none too tightly, at the waist with what looked suspiciously like a length of tattered bell-pull rope. The toes of the scuffed country boots that peeped out from beneath her skirts reminded me of Army issue doggers and a second glance revealed that’s exactly what they were.

I decided she was what doting aunts tend to refer to as big-boned. Her hands, which she kept crossed over her bosom, lest, I suppose, I have a look, were large and showed evidence of hard work.

Her hair was a pleasant surprise. I imagined the tight severe bun, if released, would reveal the kind of pale gold tresses even Elves get envious over.

Her jaw was strong, her teeth were good, her nose was-

Oh Hell. Her nose, her eyes-

“Are you by any chance related to-?”

I never finished my sentence.

“I hight Gertriss.” She damned near did a clumsy little curtsy, thought better of it and dipped her head instead. “Missus Hog is my mother’s eldest sister.”

I remembered my manners, made a small bow and motioned Gertriss, daughter of Mama Hog’s eldest sister, to my chair.

“Any niece of Mama’s is welcome here, anytime,” I said. I meant it too. Already, I was thinking, poor kid, first time in the city, must be so lost and alone…

Like I said, I’m just not at my best in the mornings. That little voice wasn’t even awake yet-the one that should have not only raised red flags when Mama’s name came up, but set them afire and waved them under my nose.

So all I did was smile and ask “What brings you to Rannit, Miss Gertriss?”

Gertriss smiled. She had a good smile. I figured her for twenty, maybe a few years older, not much.

“I’m ready to get started, Mister Markhat.”

That little voice inside me woke up then and started screaming bloody murder.

“Started?” My smile froze on my big dumb face. “Started?”

Mama, you scheming, conniving old witch…

Gertriss nodded, eyed my office, sniffed and wrinkled her sun burnt country nose at a lingering odor Three-leg Cat must have left behind.

“Reckon where I’ll sit?”

“Mama!” I said, in a loud, dry whisper. “I know damned well you’re in there. Open this door right now.”

I banged Mama’s door once, just for emphasis.

I heard cussing and rattling inside, and then Mama’s bolt threw and she opened her door, just a crack.

At least she had the courtesy to keep her beady little Hog eyes on the dirty street below.

“Now, calm down, boy, it ain’t like you can’t use the help.”

“Help? Help?” I nodded back toward my place and glared, not wanting to discuss Gertriss where she might hear. “Open up, Mama. We really need to talk. Now.”

Mama grumbled, but unfastened half a dozen useless door-strings and finally ushered me inside.

Mama’s card and potion shop is a bit larger than mine, a hell of a lot more cluttered. Three-leg Cat and fifty of his rat-gobbling pals could break wind for a solid hour in my place and the stench still wouldn’t come anywhere close to matching the odors wafting from Mama’s two bubbling iron cauldrons. Mama can deny it all she wants, but I’m dead certain the lack of rats on our end of Cambrit Street is largely due to Mama’s ever-present concoctions and the pungent vapors thereof.

If Mama’s shop is a hovel, Mama fits right in. She’s every witch-woman cliche ever spoken, stitched together, peppered with warts, covered in a mane of wild white hair, given two teeth, and turned loose with a taxidermist’s cast-offs and a finely-honed cackle.

Right now, she was shuffling and hunched, putting on a doddering old lady act I knew was a lie. Mama had been among those who faced down a halfdead blood cult a few months back. Word was she’d taken down a furious halfdead on her own, with nothing but a meat cleaver and a bloody-minded resolve that impressed even the ogres at her side.

I turned Mama’s single rickety chair around and sat hard.

“Mama,” I said. “You’ve pulled some real stunts, but this-”

Mama raised a hand. “I meant to tell you sooner, boy. I swear I did.”

“Tell me?” I stared up at the ceiling. Soot-covered sigils and signs stared back. “Mama. I am the Finder Markhat, of the firm Finder Markhat. That is my business, my livelihood, my butt on the line-you don’t get to tell me squat.”

“Ask, ask, I meant ask, boy.” Mama shook her head. “When you gets to be my age, boy, sometimes things gets confused, slips your mind…”

I made a rude noise, and I swear some of the dried birds in their dusty jars turned to face me.

“The only thing wrong with your mind, Mama, is that you let it do the thinking for other people,” I said. “Me, mainly. Now Gertriss is a sweetheart, and a rare fine girl, I’m sure, but what makes you think she can just step out into the street and be a finder? What makes you think I can afford to pay her, or watch her, or…”

A sudden awful thought blossomed.

“Mama. You aren’t trying to marry her off, are you?”

Mama’s eyes went cold and bright.

“You listen here, boy,” she said. “I ain’t thinkin’ no such thing, you hear? No such damnfool thing. I sent her to you ’cause she needs to learn city folk and their ways. She needs to know what makes ’em act the ways they do, if she’s goin’ to take over for me one day.”

I frowned. Mama sounded sincere. But…

“If you want her to take over here, what’s that got to do with me? I can’t show her how to shove bats in a pot.”

Mama snuffled. “I can teach anybody to make potions and read the cards, boy. But that ain’t all of it. That there girl needs to know how to look past what people are sayin’, and see what they mean, what they wants, what they needs. And not just any people. These here people.”