Tinnie wondered, "Why don't you go back to the ballroom, Alyx? Ty can't handle it all forever. And Nicks is in no mood to carry him."

Alyx didn't want to entertain. Alyx didn't want to do anything that Alyx didn't want to do. Alyx had to do some growing up yet. But that was something else she wouldn't want to do.

I stepped into the yard while the ladies chatted.

There were five wagons. I dismissed two right away. They couldn't carry anybody away. I considered the others. Maybe one would tell me it was more than it pretended.

They were all seedy. That don't mean much today. You don't see anything new anymore. I can't recall the last time I saw a building under construction. Before I went to war. Maybe when I was a kid.

People fix what they can and make do with the rest.

I checked the dray animals. The great villains of this world, horses, have most humans fooled. The bad guys' animal might be as blackhearted as its masters and give itself away.

One was sound asleep. A second was trying to get there. The beast between those two, though, watched me sidelong from under lowered lashes with way too much malevolent interest. A gelding, it had a notion to get even by avenging its disappointment on me. And, cautious though I am around those monsters, I got a step too close. It snapped at me. I dodged nimbly, suffering only the loss of a few decorative buttons from my left sleeve.

"You're the one," I grumped. "Got to be the one." The beast wore hobbles. That said plenty. Dray animals don't usually need hobbling. Not in the city.

It watched as I moved to check its wagon, showing me big, ugly horse teeth in a huge equine sneer.

"Why not just snooze in the traces like your pals?"

Another horsey sneer, filled with contempt for all old-timers and their slave mentalities.

The wagon's side was made to fold out and lift up. It was secured by a wooden pin on a leather thong. I pulled the pin, grabbed a pair of thoughtfully placed handles, and lifted.

Somebody whacked my bean with a gunnysack full of horseshoes. I fluttered down into the darkness like a spinning maple seed. I don't recall hitting bottom. Or the cobblestones, whichever came first.

I groaned and cracked an eyelid. Couldn't be morning already, could it? Damn! Not another hangover. There'd been too many of those lately.

An angel drifted into view. She whispered. I didn't understand but I had some good ideas about what I wanted her to say. I'd take her up on it just as soon as I learned how to breathe again.

I mumbled, "I must've died and gone to heaven." That's the way things went in my mother's religion.

The angel continued talking. I began to catch her words. "Don't feed me any of your mouth manure, Garrett. I've known you too long."

"Oh. It's the other place. I always suspected you demons were gorgeous redheaded wenches. Or maybe the other way around."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, Garrett."

"Promises, promises. What hit me?" I patted the top of my bean. I found no unusual number of soft spots. "Couldn't have been a bird taking target practice." Unless maybe it was my bird.

"I don't know. When I finally talked Alyx into letting up on you I came out and found you right there. A man was getting set to hit you again. I yelled. The kitchen help came out so he ran away."

"What about the wagon?"

"Which wagon?"

"The one that was sitting here. I was just going to check it out when that chunk of sky bounced off my noggin." There was no reason she should have noticed that particular wagon. "I think we've got a problem." A big problem, if my fears were on the mark.

I managed a feeble, shuffling jog to the tradesman's gate. I recognized the sleepy guard only by subspecies. Very big, very strong, very stupid. Gate-crashers wouldn't get past him, no sir. "Did a wagon just leave?"

He checked me from beneath brows like overhanging cliffs. I was startled by the fact that they were hairless. "Who're you?" he growled, disgruntled because his nap had been interrupted.

"Name's Garrett. Chief of Security for the Weider breweries." So I exaggerated a little. Couldn't hurt.

It didn't. "Oh. Yeah. I heard about you. Yeah. The Simon the Pieman wagon went out. That's cute, ain't it?"

"What's cute?"

"The name. Like how it rhymes. Kind of cute and catchy, ain't it?"

"Sure. I get you. Nifty. Keen. Next question. How come you let it go? Didn't you hear we had bad guys in the house and we didn't want them to leave?"

"No." The man looked baffled. "I ain't seen nobody but that driver since I come on. The bakers and stuff was already here."

"Oh, hell," I said, without much volume or any real feeling. "All right. But don't let anyone else leave till you hear from me. All right? How many bad guys went out with that wagon?"

"I told you. Just the guy driving." He was beginning to resent my attention.

I grunted. I hadn't thought that all my bad boys would clear off that easily. They had a mission.

I turned to stomp away.

Tinnie caught my arm. She looked up with big fake moon eyes. "You're so forceful, Mr. Garrett." Her pearly whites looked particularly wicked in the torchlight.

"What I am is irritated. I had stitches on my head the other day. I ought to wear an iron hat. Maybe one of those ugly-officer things with the big spike on top. I bet I could get one of those cheap these days."

"They'd just hit you somewhere else. Then you might get hurt."

"You always see the bright side, darling."

"I try. You could find some other way to waste your life. I bet there're all kinds of careers where you don't have to deal with people who try to break your bones."

Oh-oh. "I'd better see the old man again. Tom might've been on that wagon."

Oh, did she give me a scary look. What a lowlife, subject-changing sewer rat that Garrett is!

Some things we'll never resolve.

I didn't think before I burst into Weider's study. I'd never encountered any reason to excuse myself around the Weider place before, little time though I spent there.

I plunged into a silence so sudden it was like the stillness after a thunderclap. Numerous pairs of eyes measured me. Marengo North English appeared to be conducting a summit of the chiefs of every nut group in TunFaire. Every rightsist nut group. I didn't see any democrats or round-earthers.

Belinda sat slightly behind North English and to his right, partially shadowed. The flicker of the fire in the fireplace lent her face a diabolic cast. Even that freecorps psycho thug Bondurant Altoona appeared to be intimidated.

Until you experienced it you wouldn't believe that a woman this young and attractive could come across so threatening. But no one in that room doubted her capacity for launching major mayhem.

I glanced around. "Where's Max?" Cool. Like I butted in on these things all the time. "It's critical."

I could manage without him. But his son was in deep sludge. He ought to know. He needed a say.

After a startled moment North English pasted on his paternalistic smile, told me, "Max just stepped out to confer with Manvil. Gentlemen. This is the Garrett fellow Miss Contague recommended. Mr. Garrett, won't you join us now that you're here? I'm sure Max will return directly."

I engaged in a brief internal debate, decided I ought to find out what gave. It was too late to run that wagon down now, anyway. It could be anywhere in any direction.

I moved a couple of steps into the room, studied the men studying me. A prime lot of political blackguards. Not one was in any danger from the nonhuman side of the community. Those who weren't wealthy, like Arnes Mingle and Bondurant Altoona, had large bands of armed rowdies at their beck. Cynical me, I wondered if The Call wasn't just a device meant to separate my nonhuman countrymen from their wealth and community standing.