Child and Loghyr, living and dead, I have been in this world more than a dozen centuries, Garrett. Never have I encountered a creature as cynical and selfish and penurious as you. There are great changes stirring. True marvels and wonders are transforming today into history out there. And you insist we all focus completely on a squabble that may work itself out just fine without you or me.

I didn't shriek. I didn't foam at the mouth. I didn't go over there and choke him. For what good would that do me? It would not have any effect on him. And until his guests departed, I could do nothing but fume and paint mental pictures of vast, complex, and exquisite torments to try out on the Dead Man.

Were you to distract me so, I might not be able to maintain the webs of deception I have woven to keep your presence here concealed.

He could deal with me and his guests both because he has more than one mind. Which mainly means he can be a pain in the butt several places at the same time. Not what I count as a big plus talent.

The fact that I could fight back only in the darkness of my heart only made my situation more unbearable.

Perhaps you should spend less bile upon me and invest more thought in the situation you fancy has engulfed you.

Standard fare from the self-declared brains of the outfit. Tell me to figure it out for myself.

Not easy. The situation was unlike any I had faced before. With me identified as the divine key, there was no mystery involved—unless it was why I had gotten trapped in the first place.

I did not like being the key, but I believed the Dead Man was right. Though No-Neck had made nothing of it, I was able to stroll right into a temple that was supposed to be sealed so tight that gods couldn't get inside.

How had I become the key? When had I? How come I hadn't been consulted? The virgins who give birth to the children of gods, the men compelled to beat into those sprats the principles of offering accounting and believer manipulation later, those folks always got an advisory visit from a messenger angel before the fact. Just to smooth the road, you know. Me, I'd gotten diddly. Squat. Zilch plus zip. Hell, I was out of pocket on this thing. And I could be helping people I actually liked to handle problems I actually cared about.

Not that I wanted to dive into the Weider family troubles. That just looked less treacherous than where I was at now.

The Dead Man may have been amused by my quandary, but he was preoccupied with his visitors. He spared me no more attention while he extracted whatever it was he wanted from the crew, then filled them up with new instructions and sent them on their way.

Winger was the last to leave. Of course. Dean shepherded her carefully, stopped her from entering my office, then stayed between her and anything valuable that she might find too tempting.

You do overestimate Miss Winger's cupidity and amorality.

The front door had not yet closed behind the overestimated lady, who had started swapping compliments with the Goddamn Parrot. I had to wait till the door slapped her behind before I could respond.

"I really doubt that."

She has a code of right and wrong. She sticks to it firmly.

"Yeah. Her code is, If it ain't nailed down it's hers to carry away. And if it can be pried loose it ain't nailed down."

You do the woman an injustice. But, then, you feel you have been through trying times and are justified in demonstrating a foul temper.

"It's no feeling, Smiley, it's fact. And my temper is going to turn even more foul if you keep indulging your hobbies while I'm getting batted around by characters who actually make you look attractive."

I stormed across the hall, burst into the Dead Man's room. Dean entered behind me, stood around nervously waiting to find out what was going on. He was scared. However casual or indifferent the Dead Man seemed, Dean's intuition told him we had big trouble. Usually he copes with big trouble by going wild in the kitchen.

Though you want to believe otherwise, I have given your god problem some attention. Your friend Linda Lee brought a cartload of books here last evening. She and your friend Tinnie and her friend Alyx and their friend Nicks spent hours reading for me. I learned very little that you do not already know. Neither the Godoroth nor the Shayir pantheons represent golden examples of the brilliantly absurd natural imaginings of humanity. If some unimaginably great beings were to be connoisseurs of absurdities, these would form the centerpieces of their collections. These pantheons slithered from the bottom depths of lowest-common-denominator minds. Thud and blunder, sex and scandal, and afflict your mortal followers with pestilences and famines, disasters and humiliations, for fun, is what they are all about. And in that, of course, they mirror the souls in their care. All gods are shaped by the hearts of their believers.

What a sight that must have been, the Dead Man surrounded by beautiful women reading aloud, him absorbing the information they provided while smugly ignoring the fact that I was flailing around on the bottom in the deep smelly stuff somewhere else. And he had been aware of my plight—the Goddamn Parrot, having abandoned me to my fate, had flown home to him.

There is one aspect in need of deeper consideration. The girl who brought you out of Shayir captivity does not appear in any recorded account of either pantheon. Nor does your air-mobile infant. Which, by the by, is usually called a cherub.

"Hell, I remember cherubs now." They were part of the mythological hardware of my mother's religion. Mostly they just appeared in religious art.

They are part of the background populations of divine beings common to most religions springing from the same roots as the Church.

So he still had a spying eye inside my head.

For efficiency's sake only, Garrett. About the girl. It is your feeling that she is the by-blow of either Lang or Imar, her mother having been a mortal woman?

"She didn't tell me a whole lot about herself."

No. She did not. And you were too taken by the imaginary possibilities of your circumstances to try to elicit any useful information.

"Hey!... "

I reiterate. She does not figure in either mythology. The cherub springs from another family of religions entirely.

"I heard you. Give me a break. Imar and Lang are both the kinds of guys who grab whatever and whoever wherever and whenever they think they can get away with it. And probably don't much care if they get caught."

Stipulated. That is not in dispute. It is beyond dispute. But it may not be relevant. What troubles me is this anomaly, these players who do not fit the game. This girl, the cherub, even the winged horses. Anomalies always worry me. Your better course may have been to stay with the girl until you learned who she was and what she wanted.

"Maybe." Hindsight makes geniuses of us all. "And maybe if I had done that, right now I would be the meat in somebody's stew."

We really are contrary this morning, are we not?

"Damned straight. The whole crew. Me, myself, and I. Happens every time I find my partner blowing my hard-earned in order to collect political rumors. Wasting it on people like Winger, that we know too well, and on that Agonistes, that we don't know at all."

Both are entirely trustworthy within the limits of the tasks they were asked to perform.

"Yeah? What happens when somebody out there starts wondering why you're asking questions? Political people are born paranoid. If they interrogate Winger, she'll tell them anything she thinks they want to hear to get herself out of it. We could end up with Relway's thugs all over us, or The Call, or somebody out of the Cantard, or the for gods' sake Pan-Tantactuan Fairy Liberation Army... "