“Maybe that’s the point. Be careful.”

“Like One-Eye says, careful is my middle name.”

“Stupid is One-Eye’s middle name.”

“I heard that. I’ll turn you into a toad.” The little wizard was back already.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You’re not even good at turning food into shit. What’s the word?” I asked.

“We may have to wait for a day when we have more time but you and me are going to have to sit down and see what we can figure out about what you’ve been doing.”

“What?”

“It feels to me like a couple of the walls he’s hiding behind have started to fall down.”

Croaker asked, “Is he going to wake up on us tonight, right in the middle of things?”

“I doubt it. He’s still buried way down deep.” He watched me suck down some more water, then follow that with a leg from a roasted chicken. You do not eat badly if you are the Liberator. “You going to suck down everything in sight, Kid?”

“It’s going to be a long night.”

“You stay here and stick to business,” Croaker told me. “Short trips out only. Let me know what’s happening when it happens.”

“Right. Will do, boss.”

“One-Eye. We need more spells around this place. Something that will keep the shadows away but that will let us come and go if we want to.”

One-Eye put on a big, gap-toothed grin and cocked that ugly hat of his at an uglier angle. “I done come up with the perfect amulet, chief. Figuring we were going to need to have messengers moving around during hard times.”

“How many do you have?”

“Right now, an even baker’s dozen.”

“That’s all?”

“Hey. They’re hard to make.”

And, no doubt, fooling with them took time away from his still and black market projects.

We had been in one place long enough for him to have gotten involved in some sort of black marketing, however feeble its prospects were. Which would take time away from less interesting avocations. Like making amulets that might save lives. I was willing to bet that he had more than the thirteen he was willing to turn over to the Old Man. He would have at least one for each of his own wrists and ankles plus a few socked back to retail to the highest bidders once we saw how well they worked and how badly they were needed.

That little shit really is a villain.

But he was on our side, our villain, the best we had. Unless you counted Lady, which I did not even though she was the Lieutenant. I never have been able to count her part of the Company. She came with too much baggage.

“It’s getting late,” Croaker remarked. “You might take a quick run at Overlook, see what they’re doing now. One-Eye. I want to stash my couriers in your dugout.”

“What? No way, chief. I just got the place cleaned up.”

I took another drink, then sat down beside Smoke.

The light in Longshadow’s crystal chamber seemed brilliant enough to hurt fleshly eyes. Magically created, it came from everywhere at once and left no place at all where a wild shadow might lurk. The few furnishings up there were smooth and rounded and left no little pockets or crevasses or corners where even a pinhead of untamed darkness might come to life.

No feral shadow was going to sneak up on him.

Longshadow seemed to have changed clothing and even bathed in preparation for the night’s events. Certainly he wore a new mask, black and silver with inlays of cyan, cardinal, and a particularly intense dark green. The patterns on the mask altered every time I looked. I told myself when I got a minute I ought to go back and have a look at Longshadow making himself over. He had not done anything like this ever before.

Narayan Singh and the girl arrived only moments before I did. I determined that by a quick dip into the past. Longshadow asked, “Where is Howler?”

Singh shrugged. The girl reacted as though Longshadow had not spoken at all. Singh said, “We have not seen him in days.” Which was an outright lie.

“He should be here. I warned him to be here. For his own safety.”

The girl sat down on the floor, cross-legged. She paid the Shadowmaster no mind whatsoever. Singh probably had had to badger her to get her to leave her writing.

Curious, I did a dash back in time. And got surprised. I found the child hurrying Singh. “We must be there in time.”

I went back some more. I found the child in that trancelike state where she claimed to be in touch with Kina. Certainly the odor of Kina was strong. I got out of there before I attracted her attention. She had not paid me much mind lately and I liked that just fine.

I took a couple of quick dips into times nearby and concluded that Narayan and his ward had responded to Longshadow’s summons because Kina had told them to respond. Interesting. But what did it mean?

When I got back to present time I found the Howler puffing his way up the last spiral of stairs to Longshadow’s chamber. The Shadowmaster had sensed his approach and had faced the entrance. The smelly little wizard appeared, let out a shriek before the Shadowmaster could start giving him a hard time. It sounded almost amused.

Longshadow turned away although he had been suffering a bad case of the nags lately. He seemed to be in such a good mood that he was willing to overlook petty transgressions. He said, “Good. We’re all here. Now we go ahead with the game the way I should have played it from the beginning.” He sounded slightly puzzled, as though, suddenly like every man and woman in the army besieging him he wondered why he had done so little for so long. He acted as if a powerful psychic wind had torn away a dense fog that had gripped his mind for ages.

I suspected that was close to the truth. I could not identify the villain but I was sure that one of our nastier female players, most likely Kina, had reached him somehow long ago and had been blunting his sword ever since. If I was right I had to admire the subtlety of it. Longshadow had not worked it out. That might be because the manipulation had been limited to dumbing him down and exaggerating his natural prejudices and bull-headedness.

I recalled that he had had a few sharp spells. Things had not gone well for us during those interludes.

“Close the door, Deceiver.” The Shadowmaster’s voice was strong. “There must be no interruptions.”

Howler seated himself on a tall stool. I gathered that it had been brought in for him specifically, back when he first attached himself to the Shadowmaster. He did not use it often but no one else used it ever. He and Longshadow were not the sort of colleagues who watched over one another’s shoulders, sharing suggestions and expertise.

The Shadowmaster had done some housekeeping. Usually his chamber contained an arsenal of magical gewgaws, all laid out strategically. Most of those were absent tonight. Maybe Longshadow did not want to test the honesty of his guests.

After some nervous shuffling Narayan Singh assumed a protective stance beside the Daughter of Night. I noted a triangle of black silk peeping from the top of his loincloth. He had dressed formally tonight, then. That would be his strangling cloth, his rumel.

“In more normal times,” Longshadow said, “I would go out to the Shadowgate personally and employ the traps there to collect the shadows I want to use. To obtain the best effect they have to be trained. Once they are properly trained they will leave their friends alone. The skrinsa can employ them without troubling me. But these are not normal times.”

No. They were not. And when he mentioned the shadowweavers I began to wonder if he knew just how bad off he was when it came to followers. At no time had he ever had much contact with those who managed the daily business of his fortress. He gave orders. They got executed. Only a handful of his people had survived Lady’s last attack. They continued to care for him. Howler had seen to that.