“That we do, Mama. I’m glad to see you.”

“Somebody knock you one in the head?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure they’ve got plans in that regard.” Evis and the Regent were surrounded by twenty or more of Avalante’s most lethal waiters. I figured another forty or so were hiding in the shadows, ready to pounce.

“Let’s find a quiet corner somewhere.”

We did. It just happened to be a table right next to the restroom where Rainy was probably still scrubbing blood off the floor. I got everyone seated, put my back to the wall, and raised my voice as much as I dared.

“Mama,” I said. “I’ve got a hunch. So tell me-if I handed you a bag and in it I had a man’s two eyes and a woman’s tongue, what could you make out of it?”

Mama pondered for a moment.

“That ain’t no kind of magic for the likes of you or me,” she said. “Don’t reckon I could do nothin’. But…”

“Dammit, Mama, but what?”

Mama leaned toward me. “Was the woman what they call sharp-tongued?”

“Hell if I know.” I thought back to her face. “Probably. Say she was. What then?”

“It’s what you’d call an old wives’ tale. ‘Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung.’“

“Ghastly,” said Darla. She pulled her gun, not even bothering to hide it anymore.

“It ain’t nothin’ but an old song now,” said Mama. “But it’s a song about Elves. How they could make their selves invisible. Move about, murderin’ and stealin’. Damn, boy.” She made some complicated gesture with her hands. “Ain’t been a Elf seen on this side of the Sea for ten hundred years. You sayin’ there’s one running around loose on this here boat?”

“I’m not saying that, Mama. But someone took a man’s eyes, and a woman’s tongue. I’m just wondering why, and what they might want next.”

Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung.

“Ain’t a baby on this tub,” announced Mama. “I’d know, and there ain’t.”

“Buttercup,” said Darla in a whisper. “Some might consider her a child. A babe. Words change with time.” Her eyes went bright and hard. “Shall I go sit with Gertriss?”

“You’re not leaving my sight. Buttercup probably ate the last Elf this side of the Sea a thousand years ago. Relax. She’s the safest soul aboard.”

“If’n this is a Elf,” said Mama, scratching at her hairy chin, “then we got troubles, boy. A Elf can use that Elf magic-what they calls a glamour-to make you see things that ain’t there, or not see things what is.”

“Is that true, Mama, or just an old wives’ tale?”

“Well, it ain’t like I got an Elf in my closet to study on. But I reckon them stories is better’n half true. Elves was mean and cruel and tricky, and they’d as soon gut ye as say hello. And since they can make out to be people they ain’t, they’re damn good at the guttin’ part.”

A dread inspiration hit. Elves. Summer-born, as Stitches put it. What if a summer-born Elf and its unnaturally powerful glamour stepped undetected through her magical testing dingus?

What if the Elf had been with us all along, blithely sidestepping Stitches and her sophisticated arcane tools since we’d left Rannit?

And what if they were gathering ingredients for a grisly spellwork that would make them truly invisible?

“Eyes, tongues, ears, lungs,” I said aloud. Ears would be easy to find. Lungs not so much, especially from an infant.

Unless they brought them aboard in the first place.

What the devil are you talking about?

Stitches stood beside me. In one hand she held a glowing glass rod, wrapped in copper wires, with complicated spinning vanes whirling away at each end. A floating crystal ball hung above her other hand. The crystal was lit blood-red from within.

“Found another body. This one missing her tongue. Mama remembers an old song about Elves.”

“Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung,” said Mama, giving Stitches a good hard country glare. “That’s how the Elves of olden days took to sneakin’ about, doin’ their killin’.”

The glow from the crystal ball changed from red to a sudden brilliant white, bright enough to light Stitches’s ruined face. She passed the glass rod over her crystal ball and the noise around us vanished.

If a living Elf is among us, we are undone.

“Thanks for the pep talk.”

Silence. She hummed to her crystal. It muttered back, flashing on each dissonant word. The vanes at the end of her staff began to spit sparks and tiny bolts of crackling lightning.

“We kilt the last full-blood Elf before my great-great granddaddy’s time,” said Mama. “You reckon somebody was fool enough to lock one down somewhere deep and turn it loose on us?”

Stitches shrugged, and her crystal ball vanished.

I cannot say. There is either no unsanctioned magic within the shield, or there is magic beyond the ken of my means to detect it. Markhat. These murders. Could they have been committed by purely mundane means?

“Somebody cut a woman’s tongue right out of her head, half a dozen steps from fifty people.” I shrugged. “Go ahead. Say an ordinary man with a good sharp knife managed that. We’re still left with the question why. Why not cut her throat, throw the body into the crowd? You want a panic, that’s a good way to start one.”

“You knows about Elves, don’t ye?” Mama was trying her best not to be insulting. That alone sent shivers down my spine. “Am I right about that old tale, or not?”

You are correct. Elves were known to collect body parts as components of purely Elvish spell dynamics. The one you reference was reputed to allow easy movement among mankind.

“Easy movement. As in invisible,” I said.

I do not know the specifics of the spell. I suppose it is possible.

The ghost of an idea presented itself.

“So we’re seeing it now. The Elf or whatever it is. Seeing it-just not recognizing it.”

Despite my best efforts, that appears to be the case.

Mama leaned forward, peering at me from behind ragged locks of wild grey hair.

“Well, tell it, boy. ‘Fore somebody loses ears and such.”

“Old wives’ tales. You know a lot of them, do you? Mama? Stitches?”

“I knows ‘em all.”

I am familiar with Old Kingdom folklore.

“Then start making a list. Ash-wood and iron against Elves. Salt and milk against ghosts. Butter and corn husks against goblins.”

“It ain’t butter, it’s buttermilk,” said Mama. “What are ye gettin’ at?”

“We’ll need a pot. The biggest pot you can find. I want it right here, out where everybody can see it. On the boil, right now.”

Stitches turned. I didn’t hear what she said, but half a dozen well-muscled waiters gathered quickly around, listened for a moment, and then nodded before hurrying away.

A portable stove and a stew-pot are on the way. I assume it is to be filled with the contents of our lists?

“Exactly.”

“What the hell good will that do, boy? We ain’t likely to find half of what you want, and even if we did, you know damned well most of them old charms is nothin’ but nonsense.”

“Stitches, can you rig up some kind of magical Elf-hunting dingus? Something to stir the pot with?”

If I could detect this creature, finder, I assure you I would already have done so.

“That’s not the point. Listen. If this thing is as old as you think it is, and if it’s been imprisoned or asleep for the last thousand years, it may be as unfamiliar with your new magic and you are with its old.”

“So you just aims to fool it into thinkin’ we knows a way to hex it?”

“I want to make it nervous. I want it to think we’re onto it. I want to give it something to be puzzled about for a change.”

Stitches was silent for a long moment.

I can offer no superior alternative. She rattled off another round of nonsense words, and the chatter and tinkle and laughter of the casino floor returned. Missus Hog. Shall we begin compiling our list?