None looked particularly formidable. But of course if Lady Werewilk’s troubles were coming from Mount Cloud, they’d hire out the dirty work. People who don’t get up past noon are hardly likely to know anything at all about the surveying trade.

But of course plenty of people did. With the slow but steady post-War boom, surveying was a big business. Trying to sift through the thousands of people who might know enough math and have some experience setting marker sticks would be a lot more difficult and time consuming that shaking down every gallery owner in Mount Cloud, and even that was impossible.

I drained my cup and waved the waiter off. I’d be back to Darla’s in exactly two hours, which I figured would be at least an hour early but if anyone was going to gloat it was going to be me.

Finding a cab was easy. I let Mount Cloud roll past, and I kept my gaze out of those windows.

The Big Bell was banging out the appointed hour when I returned to Darla’s. Neither Darla nor Miss Gertriss was available, quoth little Mary the salesgirl, though from the giggling and hushed words coming from the back I didn’t have to guess where they were.

Darla keeps a chair for me in the corner. I’ve always been a little nervous about that chair and its quiet implication that I’ll be spending so much time waiting for her that I might as well have a seat and fossilize. But it’s a nice chair, so I sat and pulled down my hat and was more than halfway to a snooze when someone tapped lightly on my shoulder.

A woman was standing over me, smiling.

My mouth was open to say something-I still don’t know what-when the woman laughed, and it was only then I recognized Gertriss.

Her hair fell down on her shoulders in a smooth blonde wave. Her eyes were luminous, her lashes long and dark, her skin aglow as if from candlelight. She smelled of soap and a hint of Darla’s own perfume.

Gone was her burlap smock. She was dressed smartly, not seductively, in black pants and a dark red blouse and shiny leather lady’s boots. Her waist was belted with a silk sash, and Mama was likely to emit steam when she saw the figure Gertriss was hiding under all that sackcloth.

“Damn,” I said. Gertriss went wide-eyed and jumped back, as though I’d sprouted horns and cursed, and I realized with instant regret she was half right.

“I meant you look amazing, Miss Gertriss,” I said, rising.

“She does, doesn’t she?” said Darla, stepping out from behind her counter. “A little make-up, a few simple street clothes, and I believe she’s ready for life in the big city.”

Gertriss blushed, deeply and suddenly. She kept her hands together, as if hiding them, and Darla grinned and caught them both up in her own.

“We’re going to get you a manicure right now,” said Darla, with a sideways wink to me. “Mary, wrap up her things, will you? And see that Mister Markhat here gets the bill.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Darla took Gertriss by her elbow and led her toward the door. “We’ll be back in a bit, Markhat,” she said. “By the way, I left you a note.”

And then she blew me a kiss, and left with Gertriss in tow.

I shook my head and grinned. Mary darted up to me, curtseyed and handed me an envelope.

“Thank you,” I said, as she busied herself wrapping and hanging what appeared to be the entire shop’s inventory of clothing.

The bill wasn’t as bad as I thought, and since that would be Mama’s burden anyway I managed a smile and put it away. Darla’s note was folded in the far-too-intricate way of hers, so I took again to my chair and unfolded it and read.

Darling, it began. I grinned. She always pronounced the word with a put-on aristocrat’s air, and I could hear it plainly in the letters she’d written. Your new protege mentioned Lady Werewilk, and the case, and it just so happens one of our clients has a brand new Coltin-that would be one of Lady Werewilk’s resident artists-hanging above her mantle. It also happens that our client is to have a gown delivered this very morning-so if you could be persuaded to take a parcel to her, you might strike up a conversation about Lady Werewilk from someone who knows her. I have no idea how well they know each other, or if my client will even speak to such a rogue as yourself, but I know you’d prefer tramping around Rannit to sitting comfortably in my chair. Mary will give you the gown and the address. Mind you don’t let the hem touch the ground. Dinner tonight at seven. Love, D.

And there was Mary, grinning that female-conspiracy grin, address in one hand and gown wrapped in linen on hanger in the other.

“I’ve never worked at a dressmaker’s shop before,” I said. “Do I curtsey before I hand over the gown, or after?”

Mary wordlessly handed me her things and darted away. I tramped out the door, the famous finder Markhat abroad, gown in hand against a sea of troubles.

Mary, at least, had the good grace not to giggle.

The name on the card was Mrs. Adorn Hemp. The address was a complicated mess of turn lefts at the butcher’s and go right three blocks down from the Hanged Man and then look for a half-painted house-half red, half white-that stood next to a cab-stop.

I wondered how many half-red half-white houses I was likely to encounter, next door to cab-stops or not, as I plunged into traffic and headed south and east. I judged the Hemp residence to be about five blocks, total, when I set out. It turned into an easy fifteen by the time I backtracked and wound through the old Spice District and finally gave up and asked a blue-capped Watchman for directions.

Turns out they’d finished painting the house just that morning. All red, this time. I pondered the danger of relying too much on assumption all the way to the Hemp’s sturdy, tall walk-up.

The stairs were freshly swept, and the door was ajar, and there were voices inside. Raised voices, a man and two women, the man choosing to employ bellowing and the women opting for a duet of high-pitched shrieks.

I looked about. There were people nearby a-woman digging in a flowerbed, a man and a boy playing catch on a lawn smaller than my office, another woman staring at the sky while her poodle-dog defiled a rather nice rosebush with fertilizer of its own. I know they had to hear the voices, but none of them so much as glanced in my direction.

I was about to knock when the man bellowed out “I’ll kill you both,” and then a woman screamed.

I dropped the gown and charged through the door.

The door opened into a foyer, and it opened into a great room, and I came stomping through it. There was a man a good four strides from me, his hands clamped around a tiny woman’s throat, while another woman looked on in horror.

The man was wearing a badly fitted black suit and a monocle. The woman being choked was a busty brunette who managed a healthy squeal despite the large hands wrapped around her pale white throat. The other woman, a tiny blonde, stood by the fireplace and screamed, her hands raised to her chin in a useless expression of horror.

The man doing the choking and the woman being choked were far too occupied with the business at hand to even notice me. A fireplace poker was leaning against the wall, and I took it and raised it and would have brought it solidly down on the gentleman’s murderous head had not the tiny blonde woman spoken.

“You’re not Robert,” she said, in a voice far too casual to be used at the scene of a brutal murder. “Don’t tell me he’s claiming sick again.”

She never lowered her hands from her mouth, or lost her expression of dawning horror.

“He’d better not be,” added the woman being choked. Her tone indicated the sort of offhand annoyance one might express as being short-changed a penny by the kindly old apple-seller. “Or I swear I’ll see him replaced, today.”