Dreamsinger snarled and charged. She held her arms out from her body, an ungainly way to run… till I realized her brain must be so dominated by Hump's, she thought her arms were covered with razor-sharp spikes. When she reached Dee-James, the Spark Lord slammed her forearm toward the man's face-a vicious attack, even if you didn't have bone-spurs jutting from your body-but Dee-James, still chuckling, didn't flinch.

The instant Dreamsinger's blow made crunching contact, both the Lord and Dee-James were engulfed in gold light so searing I felt as if I'd been stabbed in the eyes. I snapped my head away, trying not to cry out. Eyes shut, I could still see an image scorched into my retinas-the Sorcery-Lord bringing down her arm, Dee-James smiling as he got his face clubbed, the burst of unbearable radiance.

Twenty seconds passed before the ache in my eye-sockets subsided. When I opened my eyes again, I could barely see through my blur of tears… and what I saw didn't make sense: Dee-James was back sprawled on the table, and Dreamsinger had pressed down on top of him, gasping through another fierce kiss.

I blinked. My vision cleared a bit, but the sight didn't change. A Spark Lord kissing a nobody. The nobody kissing back. The two of them almost convulsed with passion. I had time to blink once more; then Dreamsinger pushed away slightly, her face still close to Dee-James. "Your breath reeks."

"Awful me." The man's words were slurred; Dreamsinger's blow half a minute before had split his lip. It might also have broken some teeth-blood dribbled from Dee-James's mouth. He lifted himself on one elbow and spit red onto the floor. "If my breath is so foul, perhaps I should kill myself."

"I could do it for you," Dreamsinger said.

"And rob me of my fun? Fuck you."

"If only there were time."

They both laughed and Dreamsinger stepped away, leaving Dee-James on the table. The man reached down toward his foot and drew out a bone-handled knife from an ankle sheath. Not a big blade, but practical. He rubbed his thumb on the blade to test it: not lightly across the metal edge, but hard down the length, slicing his skin clean open. "Sharp enough," he said, extending the bloody thumb for Dreamsinger to see.

"I envy you," Dreamsinger said.

"Of course," Dee-James answered. "Here's what 'expendable' means."

He lay back comfortably on the table and planted the knife-tip just below his ribcage. With a strong upward jerk, he plunged the knife into his own heart.

Dreamsinger put one palm on the butt of the knife, then slapped hard with her other hand, driving the blood-drenched blade even farther into Dee-James's vitals. The gesture was unnecessary-the man had done an expert job of skewering himself, a quick and certain kill. Dreamsinger obviously didn't care; she wrapped her hands around the knife handle and tried to twist, as if the man still weren't satisfactorily dead. "Dear sister," she whispered. "Dearest, dearest sister."

She bent to give the dead man a last soft kiss… and finally I understood what she'd done.

Before Dreamsinger stole the enforcer's brain, she'd copied her own mind into Dee-James. A forced Twinning; it explained why Dee-James had been surrounded by golden light. The man's mind had been expunged, totally replaced by the Sorcery-Lord's. In effect, Dee-James became Dreamsinger… with all the sorcerous knowledge that entailed. Then Dreamsinger had proceeded to Twin with Hump, safe in the knowledge that her original personality was preserved elsewhere-"on backup," as OldTech computer programmers might say. Once the desired information had been obtained ("Warwick Xavier, Nanticook house…"), the Dee-James copy of Dreamsinger used another forced Twinning to restore the original Dreamsinger's brain.

The kiss between Dee-James and the Spark Lord had been Dreamsinger kissing herself.

Then Dee-James had rammed a knife into his own heart. Dreamsinger committing suicide. Why? Because she could die happy, leaving the horrors of existence to her other self?

As the duplicate died, the real Dreamsinger had said, "I envy you."

So much for the myth that Spark Lords revere life. And let's not forget Dreamsinger had wiped Dee-James's original mind as casually as borrowing a piece of paper to write down a note. The Sorcery-Lord needed a mental receptacle, and the man was close to hand.

Poor Dee-James. Martyred because he happened to be convenient.

And if he hadn't been there, would Dreamsinger have used someone else? Impervia? The Caryatid? Me?

I shivered.

"Dear friends," said the Spark Lord. "Shall we go to Nanticook House?"

Impervia, the Caryatid, and I nodded in cowed silence.

On our way out the door, Dreamsinger stopped with a dimpled smile. "Almost forgot." She turned back toward Hump, still frozen above the bar. "Boom," she said.

Hump went boom.

For weeks afterward, they'd be finding pieces of him caught in cracks of the walls.

Nanticook House sat atop the bluffs east of town: the same pricey neighborhood as my on-again/off-again Gretchen. But "neighborhood" was the wrong word-people there didn't know what "neighborly" meant. The estates were big enough that you could see the house next door only with a telescope, assuming your telescope could pierce the high brick walls around each property. Nobody cared to view or visit the folks nearby. The only sense of community came from the packs of guard dogs who patrolled these grounds; some nights, the dogs on all the estates howled at the moon in unison.

The humans, however, avoided contact with each other. That's the difference between the small-town rich and their city counterparts. The urban upper crust enjoy getting together: they hold masquerades, go to the opera, and try to outdo each other with big weddings as they marry off their children in strategic alliances. There's always a whiff of arrogance (and often jaded decadence), but the aristocrats in cities are sociable. They have fun with each other; they talk.

The wealthy in Dover-on-Sea were different. They'd chosen privacy over personal contact; they had secrets to hide. My Gretchen, for example, entertained many a gentleman visitor from out of town, but never left her own property. Nursing her secrets. And Warwick Xavier of Nanticook House apparently had secrets too… most notably, his position as Dover's Smuggler Supreme.

I'd passed his place often on my way to Gretchen's: his mansion was a two-story sprawl built around a big inner courtyard. From above it would look like a picture frame surrounding gardened greenery-a pleasant design for Mediterranean climates, but not very practical in Feliss winters. Every room was exposed to the elements on two walls, the outer and the courtyard side, so it must have been hell to keep the house heated. Most likely, Xavier walked around all winter in three layers of long-johns, looking like a wool-swaddled teddy bear. Then again, if he was Smuggler King, he could afford fireplaces in every room, plus warm-bodied companions who'd cuddle close whenever he felt a chill.

As we approached the estate, multiple chimneys were pouring out smoke. The wind blew toward us; soot had accumulated on the few piles of snow untouched by thaw. Though the wall blocked our view of the house, we could see lights shining up into the night. Warwick Xavier seemed to be awake, despite the late hour.

"Dear friends," Dreamsinger whispered, "leave your horses here. And please, please be quiet."

As I tied Ibn to a sapling outside the walls, I reflected how unnecessary it had been to ask us to shut up-we'd barely spoken a word since The Buxom Bull. I was the only one who knew where Nanticook House was, so I'd taken the lead; apart from the occasional "This way," we'd walked in complete silence. It would have been nice to speak to Impervia or the Caryatid, if only to ask what Dreamsinger looked like under the Hafsah illusion… but the most I could do was meet my friends' eyes and exchange plaintive looks.