I grinned, hearing the obvious blush in her voice.

“Starkers and up a tree. You’d have thought Scatter and Lank would still be rooted to the spot. But they ran, Gertriss. Tell me why.”

Gertriss hesitated. That bothered me. I can’t have my eyes and ears editing their truths. Not at one out of every five crowns.

“Spill it, Gertriss. I’m the boss, remember?”

She sighed. I could hear a brush being drawn through her hair.

“She was wearing spider webs, Mr. Markhat. And not many of them. Just dirty spider webs, wrapped around her-her, um, body.”

“Go on.”

“She was pale. Deadly pale. Her fingers were long-too long. But her eyes-they were big, too big. And dark and …” she trailed off, looking for words.

“Scary?” I suggested. “Eldritch? Foreboding? Inflamed?”

Clothes rustled. Shadows flew beneath her door. Finally, Gertriss herself emerged.

I’d have to start watching my reactions to Gertriss. Darla would not approve of how my jaw tended to go slack and my eyes fixed themselves on places that were not on the approved list of viewing sites for semi-attached males.

“They weren’t normal eyes, Mr. Markhat.” She breezed past me, all soap and fresh linen, and sat in the chair across from me. The thick bathrobe, twin to the one hanging in my closet, left her legs bare well above her knees. I shifted my gaze north and forced my mind heavenward.

“Not normal how, Gertriss?” Inspiration struck. “Look, I know Mama has told you a lot of things about me. One being that I’m pigheaded about accepting advice based on Hog Sight. Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t. But I am asking. And I do want to know.”

Bingo. Gertriss beamed.

Everyone likes to think their opinions are sought after.

“She saw right inside you, when she looked, Mr. Markhat. More than that, when I saw her, she knew it, somehow, and when she looked at me, she…was getting in my head.” She shook her head and shivered, not from any chill in the room. “I know what that sounds like. But it happened. She has something like Sight, but different. Stronger. Older.”

I nodded. “Did you get a sense she wanted to hurt you?”

Gertriss shook her head. “I couldn’t make no sense-I couldn’t make any sense out of what I felt,” she said. “Just…one minute, she was way off up in that tree. The next, her face was right in mine.”

“No wonder Scatter and Lank took off.”

Gertriss nodded. “No wonder.”

“All right. So we’ve got a scary witch-woman watching us from the trees. We’ve got equally scary men with crossbows trying to pin us to the trees. And in a little while we’ll sit down to dinner with forty-six strangers and ask them all kinds of rude questions. Then we’ll spend the night watching the haunted forest for signs of mysterious land surveyors. Still glad you got the job?”

Gertriss managed a laugh. “Beats hog farming. I should finish getting dressed.”

Her robe had slipped. I was having trouble concentrating on all things good and holy.

“Yes. Be quick about it-we’ve got a few things to do before the dinner bells ring.”

She rose, her expression questioning.

“An old finder’s trick, Miss. Everyone heard Lady Werewilk tell us the last bell sounded five minutes before the meal. Everyone will assume we’ll spend the entire time before that relaxing in our baths and pilfering various small household items. So, instead, we’re going to take our very own tour of the grounds.”

Gertriss grinned. “I got Miss Darla to show me some shoes with rubber soles. Perfect for sneakin’ around big old tile-floored houses.”

I grinned back. “You’ve the makings of a finder,” I said, as she scurried off and shut her door behind her. “Or a first-rate thief.”

“I heard that.”

I laughed. I’d have to work very hard to keep any secrets from Gertriss. Very hard indeed.

Sneaking around House Werewilk turned out to be so easy Gertriss need not have bothered with soft-soled shoes.

As I’d hoped, the staff were in or around the kitchen or the dining room preparing a feast fit for a finder. That left only the resident artists underfoot, and the party we’d interrupted when we arrived was back on, musicians and dancers and all, at the very same spot at the foot of the grand old staircase.

I waved off half a dozen offers of beer and two invitations to dance from girls young enough to be my daughters but too good-looking to have ever branched off my family tree. Gertriss even got an offer, which she returned with a look that she probably last used on recalcitrant swine. It certainly sent at least one tipsy young painter backpedaling toward safety.

“I think that lot could use a taste of honest work.” The euphoria left by her first hot bath was quickly fading.

I just nodded. Part of me agreed. Part of me was howling about the injustice of it all-at their age, I’d been slogging it out in the West, fighting Trolls or hunger or the ever-present cold.

But part of me was glad to see kids being kids.

I made a finger to lips motion for silence, and we skirted the hall that led to the dining room, heading the other way.

Mice would’ve made more noise than Gertriss did. Mice wearing mouse-hair slippers. I crunched and squeaked and huffed. Gertriss paid me the courtesy of not commenting upon it.

The hall went straight then hit a room. The doors were open, so we just ambled on in.

Easels. Easels and canvases. And chairs, and couches, and at least a couple of beds, all scattered haphazardly about the room.

Lamps were everywhere, but none were lit. The windows did little more than cast a few weak shadows.

I wandered. Most of the works in progress were covered, but a few were not. I let my eyes adjust, and was still doing so when I heard Gertriss gasp.

She’d lifted the corner of a cloth draped over a canvas. Beneath it, even in the murk, was a work of art.

No swords, upraised or flashing. No banners. No Trolls.

But there was a woman, in flowing robes, clutching a wilted bouquet of roses to her chest. She was on her knees, and she was weeping, and something not in the painting cast a long tall shadow over her.

A wardstone. Her father’s. You could see that plain in her face.

Gertriss let the cloth drop back down.

“That was…”

“Good. Damned good.”

I walked, picked an easel at random, lifted a canvas cloth.

A ring of children at play. Flowers that swayed on a mild summer breeze. In the middle of the ring of children, an old man laughed, his feet caught in mid-jig, his smile wrinkled and weathered, but his eyes caught alight, young again, just for that instant.

Gertriss joined me, wordless.

“I reckon I might have misspoke.”

I let the cloth drop. “No wonder she’s not worried about the galleries. I may buy this one right now.”

Gertriss tore herself away, chose another. More wonders were revealed. I did the same. Another masterwork.

Gertriss gasped. I followed her gaze down to the canvas. A man and a woman danced. They’d left their clothes somewhere but didn’t seem concerned.

The painting was so good you nearly forgot they were naked. The artist had caught them in the midst of a twirl, had caught the fluid motion of their bodies, the look in their eyes. The Regent’s Council of Art would have an apoplexy at the nude bodies, but the painting wasn’t dirty. It just wasn’t.

“Something isn’t right,” I said, quietly. I let the cloth fall back down on the canvas. “They can’t all be prodigies.”

“Prodi-whats?”

“Prodigies. Persons of unusual and rare skill or talent.” I swept my arm across the room. “We ought to find one or two we can’t take our eyes off of. Not every one of them.”

Gertriss frowned. “Maybe this Lady Werewilk has a good eye for painter-folk,” she said.

“Maybe.” I resisted the urge to go methodically about the room, lifting every canvas. “Let’s see what else we can find while we wander lost, looking for the dining room.”