And a robbery could, no doubt, be defined in sectarian cant.

The runt seemed awfully reasonable for a supposed raving fanatic. I guess the first talent a priest develops is acting ability. "So you want to hire me to root out the jokers putting the wood to the Orthodox priesthoods."

"Not exactly. Though I have hopes that their unmasking will be a by-product."

"You just zigged when I zagged."

"Subtlety and credibility, Mr. Garrett. If I hire you to find conspirators and you unearth them, even I couldn"t be completely sure you hadn"t cooked the evidence. On the other hand, if I hire a known skeptic to search for Warden Agire and the Terrell Relics and in the course of the hunt he kicks some villains out of the weeds..."

I took a long drink of his beer. "I admire your thinking."

"You"ll take it on, then?"

"No. I can"t see getting in a mess just for money. But you know how to pique a guy"s curiosity. And you know how to scheme a scheme."

"I"m prepared to pay well. With an outstanding bonus for recovery of the Relics."

"I"ll bet."

The Great Schism between Orthodoxy and its main offshoot happened a thousand years ago. The Ec.u.menical Council of Pyme tried to patch things up. The marriage didn"t last. The Orthodox s.n.a.t.c.hed the Relics in the settlement. The Church has been trying to s.n.a.t.c.h them back ever since.

"I won"t press you, Mr. Garrett. You were the best man for the job, but for that reason the least likely to take it. I have other options. Thank you for your time. Have a nice evening. Should you have a change of heart, contact me at the Chattaree." He and his bucket marched off into the dusk.

I was impressed with the little guy. He could be a gentleman when he wanted. You don"t see that much in people accustomed to power. And he was one of the most feared men in TunFaire, within his sphere. A holy terror.

5.

Dean stepped outside. "I"ve finished up, Mr. Garrett. I"ll be going home if there"s nothing else."

He always talks like that when he wants something. Right now he hoped I"d have that something else. He lives with a platoon of spinster nieces who make him crazy.

One of the legacies of the war in the Cantard is a surplus of women. For decades Karenta"s youth have gone south to capture the silver mines and for decades half of them haven"t come back. It makes it nice for us unattached survivor types, but h.e.l.l on parents with daughters to support.

"I was sitting here thinking it would be a nice evening for a walk."

"That it would be, Mr. Garrett." When the Dead Man is sleeping somebody always stays in to bolt the door and wait for whoever is out. When the Dead Man is awake we have no security problems.

"You think it"s too early to see Tinnie?" Tinnie Tate and I have a tempestuous friendship. She"s the one they had in mind when they set the specs for redhead stereotypes, only they toned them down because n.o.body would believe the truth.

You might call Tinnie changeable. One week I can"t run her off with a stick, the next I"m tops on her hate list. I haven"t figured out the whys and wherefores.

I was listed this week. Past the peak and dropping but still in the top ten.

"It"s too early."

I thought so, too.

Dean is in a bind where Tinnie is concerned. He likes her. She"s beautiful, smart, quick, more square with the world than I"ll ever be. He thinks she"s good for me. (I don"t dare risk his opinion on the flip-flop issue.) But he has all those nieces in desperate need of husbands and half a dozen have standards low enough to covet a prince like me, squeaky armor and all.

"I could go see how the girls are."

He brightened, checked to see if I was teasing, and was set to call my bluff when he realized that would put me there while he was here, unable to defend their supposed virtues. He imagined me in there like a bull shoulder-deep in clover, like they couldn"t possibly have sense enough to look out for themselves. "I wouldn"t recommend that, Mr. Garrett. They"ve been especially troublesome lately."

It was all a matter of perspective. They hadn"t troubled me. When I first took Dean on, they did. They kept me up to my ears in cookery, trying to fatten me up for the kill.

"Perhaps I should just go, Mr. Garrett. Perhaps you should wait another day or two, then go apologize to Miss Tate."

"I got no philosophical problem with apologizing, Dean, but I like to know why I"m doing it."

He chuckled, pulled on the mantle of worldly-wise old warrior pa.s.sing his wisdom along. "Apologize for being a man. That always works."

He had a point. Except I have a flair for getting sarcastic.

"I"ll just stroll over to Morley"s, quaff me a few celery tonics."

Dean pruned up. His opinion of Morley Dotes is so low it has to look up at snakes" bellies.

We all have rogues in our circles, maybe just so we can tell ourselves, "What a good boy am I."

Actually, I like Morley. Despite himself. He takes some getting used to but he"s all right, in his way. I just keep reminding myself that he"s part dark elf and has different values. Sometimes, very different values. Always malleable values. Everything is situational for Morley.

"I won"t be out long," I promised. "I just need to work off some restlessness."

Dean grinned. He figured I was getting bored with loafing and we"d see some excitement pretty soon.

I hoped not.

6.

It isn"t a long walk to Morley"s place, but it is a walk over the border into another world. The neighborhood hasn"t acquired a name like so many others, but it is a distinct region. Maybe call it the Safety Zone. Members of all species mix there without much friction-though humans have to put in overtime to be acceptable.

There was a little light still in the air. The clouds out west hadn"t quite burned out. It wasn"t yet time for the predators to hit the streets. I was no more than normally wary.

But when the kid stepped into my path I knew I had trouble. Big trouble. It was something about the way he moved.

I didn"t think. I reacted.

I gave him a high kick he wasn"t expecting. My toe snapped in under his chin. I felt a bone break. He squealed and ran backwards, arms flapping as he tried to keep his balance. A hitching post jumped in his way and gored him from behind. He spun around and went down, losing his knife as he fell.

I slid toward the nearest building.

Another came at me from what had been behind. He was an odd one, kid-sized but clad in a cast-off army work uniform. He was an albino. He had a nasty big knife. He stopped eight feet away, awaiting reinforcements.

There were at least three more, two across the street and one back up the way, standing lookout.

I took off my belt and snapped it at the albino"s eyes. That didn"t scare him but did give me time to frisk the building.

The buildings around there were a week short of falling down. I had no trouble finding a loose, broken brick. I pulled it out and let fly. I guessed right and he ducked into it. I got him square in the forehead, then jumped him while his knees were watery, took his knife, grabbed him by the hair, and flung him toward the two coming across the street. They dodged. He sprawled.

I screeched like a banshee. That stopped the two. I feinted left, right, came back to fake a cut at the knife hand of the guy with the blade I"d taken, then snapped my belt at his eyes. He saved himself by jumping back.

He fell over the albino. I shrieked again and flung myself through the air. It never hurts to have them think you"re crazy. I landed with both knees on the guy"s chest, heard ribs crack. He squealed. I bounced away as the other came at me.

He stopped when he saw I was ready. I sidestepped and kicked the albino in the head. That"s me, Fairplay Garrett. At least I was going to get out alive. I looked around. Broken Jaw had taken a hike, leaving his knife. The lookout had opted for discretion.

"Just you and me now, Shorty." He was no kid. None of them were, really. I should have seen it sooner. Kids that size aren"t out roaming the streets of TunFaire, they"re in the army. They keep taking them younger and younger.

They were dark-elf breeds, half elf, half human, outcasts from both tribes. The mix is volatile: amoral, asocial, unpredictable, sometimes crazy. Bad.

Like Morley, who"d managed to live long enough to learn to fake it.

My short friend wasn"t impressed by the fact that he was alone against somebody bigger. That"s another problem with darko breeds. Some don"t have sense enough to be scared.

I went back for my brick.

He shifted stance, held his knife like it was a two-handed sword. I teased him with the belt and tried to guess what he"d do when I let the brick fly. He was deciding to come at me when I did.

I went around and head-kicked the others to make sure they stayed down.

That got Shorty p.i.s.sed. He came. I threw the brick. He dodged. But I hadn"t gone for the head or body. I"d gone for the foot I"d hoped he"d push off from. The part of him that would be last to move.

I got his toes. He yelped. I went in after him, belt, knife and feet.

He held me off.

h.e.l.l, we could dance all night. I"d done what I needed to do. How fast could he chase me on a bad foot?

I looked at the two guys down and heard my Marine sergeants: "You don"t leave a live enemy behind you."

No doubt cutting their throats would have been a boon to civilization. But that wasn"t my style.

I collected dropped knives.

Shorty figured I was going to pull out. "Next time you"re dead."

"Better not be a next time, chuko. Because I don"t give second chances."

He laughed.

One of us was crazy.

I went away with a chill between my shoulders. What the h.e.l.l was all that? They hadn"t been out to rob me. They"d been out to bust me up. Or kill me.

Why? I didn"t know them.

There are people who don"t have much use for me, but I couldn"t think of any who would go that far. Not all of a sudden, now. It was lightning out of a clear blue sky.

7.

It never fails. When I step through the doorway into Morley"s place, the joint goes dead and everybody stares. They ought to be used to me by now. But I have this reputation for thinking I"m on the side of the angels and a lot of those guys are anything but.

I saw Saucerhead Tharpe at his usual table, so I headed that way. He was alone and had a spare chair.

Before the noise level rose, a voice said, "I"ll be d.a.m.ned! Garrett!" Whip crack with the name.

What do you know? Morley himself was working the bar, helping dispense the carrot, celery, and turnip juice. I"d never seen that before. I wondered if he watered their drinks after they"d had three or four.

Dotes jerked his head toward the stairs. I said, "How you doing?" to Saucerhead and sailed on by. He grunted and went on ma.s.sacring a salad big enough to founder three ponies. But he was the size of three ponies and their mothers, too.

Morley hit the stairs behind me. "Office?" I asked.

"Yes."

I went up and in. "Things have changed." It looked less like the waiting room in a bordello, maybe because the inevitable lovely was absent. Morley, relaxing at home, always had something handy.

"I"m trying to change myself by changing my environment." That was Morley sounding like Morley the vegetarian crackpot and devotee of obscure gurus. "What the h.e.l.l are you up to, Garrett?" That was Morley the thug.

"Hey! How come the ice? I get antsy and walk down here to maybe tip a rhubarb brew with Saucerhead and I-"

"Right. You just decide to show up looking like the losing mutt at a dogfight." He shoved me in front of a mirror.

The left side of my face was pancaked with blood. "h.e.l.l! I thought I ducked." The short guy had gotten me while we were dancing, somehow. I still didn"t feel the cut. Some sharp knife.

"What happened?"

"Some of your crazy cousins jumped me. Chukos." I showed him the three knives. They were identical, with eight-inch blades and yellowed ivory grips into which small black stylized bats had been inset.

"Custom," he said.

"Custom," I agreed.