The Third Lynx

We touched down at the main Ghonsilya spaceport outside Portline a little after six in the morning, torchliner time, which had been gradually adjusted during the past few days to match that of the local spaceport. We'd already gone through one set of customs formalities at the transfer station outside the Tube, but the local groundsiders wanted a crack at us, too, and we spent two hours running through their particular collection of bureaucratic hoops. Finally, we were released to make our individual ways to the other end of the terminal where we could catch one of the various planes, trains, or suborbital transports that would take us to our final destinations across the planet.

Morse's count had been correct: there were indeed four Halkas who joined us aboard the Magaraa City transport. I wondered briefly if the Modhri realized how they would stand out of a crowd of the thinner, more delicately featured Tra'ho'seej, then put the question out of my mind. That was the Modhri's problem, not mine.

Morse wasn't speaking to me much, basically limiting his conversation to necessary information exchanges. All of those were short and formal. Bayta wasn't speaking to me at all. Penny, in contrast, was almost chatty, though most of her conversation was of the casual cocktail-party variety. Usually I had little patience with that sort of thing, but I recognized it here as a cover-up for her nervousness about what might await us.

She also was showing a new penchant for hanging on to my arm as we walked. It would probably have made Bayta even quieter if she hadn't been at absolute zero already.

Off we all went for a fun-filled excursion together.

The suborbital transport took three hours to get across the Ghonsilya landscape, which when added to the local time zone change put us on the ground again just after local sunset. At my suggestion we parked our luggage in the depot storage lockers, with the idea that we'd pick it up later after we'd figured out what our long-term plans were going to be. We took the subway to the neighborhood of the art museum that had been burgled, and a few minutes later disembarked into the gathering dusk.

By our own internal biological clocks, of course, it was only lunchtime. Travel could be very wearing on the stomach.

"What's your plan?" Morse asked quietly as he. Penny, Bayta, and I walked along a street lined with small shops and quaint-looking houses, our four silent walkers running a wide screen formation around us a few meters away.

"I thought we'd try something outrageously clever and give the nearby hotels a call," I said, pulling out my comm and keying for a local directory.

Morse snorted under his breath. "And here I thought you'd be looking for a trail of bread crumbs."

Penny half turned toward him, her eyes glowering. But whatever crushing retort she'd been preparing to offer on my behalf, she never got to it. As I lifted the comm the biggest of the four Halkas, whom I'd privately dubbed Gargantua, moved in from his place in the screen formation and plucked it from my grip. "No," he growled.

I was actually perfectly willing to let him have the comm. Stafford hadn't been traveling aboard the Quadrail under either his own name or the Daniel Mice moniker Künstler had gasped at me, and I doubted he would go back to one of them here. That made a hotel survey pretty much useless.

Of course, Modhri already knew the Stafford name was a bust, since he would certainly have done a survey of his own the minute our walker escort got close enough to the planet for their Modhri colonies to meld with the locals and sound the alert. My suggestion had been pure red herring, designed to make Morse and the walkers think I knew something that they didn't.

Which, technically speaking, I did. But that wasn't the point. The point was to keep the Modhri thinking in the wrong direction, and if taking my comm away made him feel safer, he was welcome to it.

Unfortunately, Morse didn't know any of that. He apparently thought I was about to reveal Stafford's traveling identity, and figured it was therefore the right time to try to lose our escort. Slipping his hand inside his jacket, he turned toward Gargantua.

It was a complete waste of effort. The Modhri had easily anticipated the move. Two of the other Halkas moved in even before he completed his turn, and in typically perfect coordination one of them threw his arms around Morse's shoulders to trap his hand inside his jacket while the other reached inside and twisted the gun out of his hand.

Penny gave a little gasp as she jerked back from the sudden fracas. The fourth Halka was ready, catching her shoulders to discourage any thought of flight and relieving her of her own comm. She started to give him a withering over-the-shoulder look, but midway through her eyes seemed to catch on something behind my back. "Frank?" she breathed.

I turned. Somewhere along the line, the four Modhran walkers who'd accompanied us from the Ghonsilya spaceport had picked up reinforcements. Twenty reinforcements, to be precise, all of them Tra'ho'seej. They were arranged in a loose but very deliberate guard ring around us about thirty meters away.

They didn't look like guards, of course. They were grouped in casual-looking twos and threes at corners or loitering silently as individuals in the various shop doorways around us. Most of them were dressed in the expensively embroidered clothing and multiple earrings of upper-class citizens, while the rest had the severe half-shaved heads and contrasting flowing topcuts of oathlings who'd taken the vow of government service.

Apparently, the Modhri had turned out most of his local mind segment in honor of our visit.

"Frank?" Penny repeated, more urgently this time.

"It's all right," I soothed, studying the newcomers. They were making no move to approach, but were merely continuing with their conversations or private meditations. The Modhri would have maneuvered them here through his usual technique of quiet and reasonable suggestions, but was apparently holding off on the more drastic and riskier step of taking direct control of their bodies.

Playing it low-key …and it was going to cost him. Whispering subtle instructions in their ears had gotten the Tra'ho'seej here just fine, but it was highly unlikely that the hosts' rationalizations could have been made to stretch to the extent of bringing weapons along on their innocent evening group stroll. Twenty walkers were bad enough, but twenty armed walkers would have been a hell of a lot worse.

Of course, Gargantua and his buddies did have at least one gun now—Morse's—plus whatever hardware they might have brought with them from the Quadrail lockboxes. Morse and I would just have to deal with that as best we could.

Assuming it was still Morse and I and not just I. Judging from the look he was giving me as the Halkas continued frisking him I wouldn't have bet large sums of money on it. "Lovely move, Compton," he growled acidly. "Lovely non-move, rather."

"Sorry," I apologized. "But I try not to start fights when I'm on the short end of ten-to-one odds. Little rule I have."

His glare slipped a little, his eyes flicking away from me. From the sudden change in his expression, it was clear he hadn't yet noticed our new outrider collection. "Bloody hell," he muttered.

"At the very least," I agreed. "I suggest we not make any sudden moves."

The Halkas finished their search without coming up with anything else and took a step back. "You through?" I asked, addressing Gargantua for convenience.

"For the moment," he said, eyeing me closely. "There will be no more trouble?" His eyes flicked significantly to Penny.

I followed the look. The Halka who'd taken Penny's comm had shifted his grip pointedly from her shoulder to the back of her neck. A squeeze, followed by a good solid twist, and she would die the way her friend Pyotr had. "Understood," I told Gargantua, a shiver running up my back. "Come on. We start at the art museum."

For the first time since I'd walked into the dit rec viewing room at Ian-apof the Modhri seemed genuinely startled. "Why?" Gargantua asked.

"Who's the detective here, you or me?" I countered. "You want the Lynx, or don't you?"

His eyes burned into me, but he nodded. "Lead the way," he said, gesturing me forward.

We set off again. Penny walking close beside me on my right, Bayta a bit farther away on my left, Morse bringing up the rear, the Halkas flanking, and the oblivious Tra'ho walkers wandering along more or less in formation. Half a kilometer directly ahead, I knew from the city maps I'd studied on the flight, our street dead-ended at the grounds of the art museum where the Viper had been stolen. Much closer than that, only a couple of blocks ahead, in fact, I could see the marquee of the Fraklog-Oryo Hotel.

Where Fayr's message had said he would be waiting for us.

I could feel Bayta's tension as we moved closer. She was onto the plan now, and preparing herself for action.

Or rather, she was onto half of it. I had the feeling she wasn't going to like the other half.

We were twenty meters from the hotel entrance when I stopped. "Look, there's no reason we all have to go there," I told Gargantua. "Why don't we leave the others here and you and I can go alone?"

Gargantua eyed me suspiciously. "Is the Human Stafford there?" he asked.

"Possibly," I lied. "If he is, all the more reason for us not to spook him by bringing a crowd. Besides, together we may be able to do the trade right there and then."

"What trade do you mean?"

"The obvious one," I said. "If he has the Lynx with him, you'll let Penny, Bayta, and Morse leave and join us. Once I see they're alone and unharmed, you can have the Lynx, and all of us will walk away. All of us plus Mr. Stafford, of course."

Gargantua flicked a measuring glance at Morse. "I accept," he said.

I had expected nothing less. Suspicious or not, he had more than enough eyes in place to risk lengthening my leash a little. "Then let's get on with it," I said.

"You can't leave us here," Penny said, her voice tight. "What if they—?"

"They won't hurt you," I assured her, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. Morse and Bayta, I noticed peripherally, didn't miss a bit of the byplay. "Just hang in there. I'll be right back."

Gargantua and I started off again, leaving the others standing in the middle of the walkway like abandoned orphans. We walked in silence until we were at the level of the hotel entrance. "Oh, there was just one other thing," I said, stopping suddenly.

Automatically, Gargantua stopped and turned to face me. "What?" he asked.

Smiling sweetly, I buried my fist in his abdomen.

The sheer surprise of it froze him in place. I took advantage of the moment to hit three more of the most painful and incapacitating Halkan nerve centers I could reach, dropping him into a quivering heap on the walkway.

For a moment the shared pain rippling from Gargantua into and through the Modhri mind segment sent the rest of the walkers quivering. But it didn't hold them for long. A glance behind me showed that two of the other Halkas were on the move, charging toward me at full speed. Behind them, ten of the twenty Tra'ho'seej were closing their circle to bolster the fourth remaining Halka guard as the Modhri dropped his earlier subtlety and took direct control of their bodies. The rest of the Tra'ho'seej were spreading out, clearly planning to cut off my escape no matter which direction I decided to run.

And in that same quick glance I saw the fourth Halka draw a gun and press the muzzle into the side of Penny's neck.

Another shiver went through me to see her in danger that way, as it was clearly intended to. But I had no choice. Without Fayr we were all dead, and I had to alert him to the fact we were here. Jumping over Gargantua's twitching body, I sprinted to the hotel door and ducked inside.

The lobby was tastefully dark and quiet, its walls and end tables adorned with a wide variety of small paintings, sculptures, and other art works. A handful of Tra'ho'seej were seated in the various overstuffed chairs and couches, apparently in deep contemplation of the culture arrayed around them. All of them looked up with varying degrees of shock or outrage as I sprinted through their midst to the check-in desk and its self-service computer terminals.

I was still punching keys when Gargantua's two Halkan buddies caught up with me.

I'd fought against walkers enough times to have a fair idea of the sort of tactics the Modhri favored. This mind segment was no exception. The first Halka came at me with arms spread wide, ready to take the brunt of my attack and then immobilize me with a bear hug, leaving his partner free to mete out whatever punishment the Modhri decided I'd earned.

Naturally, I had no intention of playing it that way. Waiting until the last fraction of a second, I dodged to my right toward one of the unoccupied couches. The second Halka had anticipated the move, angling past the first in an attempt to cut me off. I reached the couch ahead of him, and as he jabbed a fist at me I ducked down and rolled over the couch back, landing on the cushions and continuing my roll off the couch and onto the floor.

The Halkas were already onto the change of plan. The first continued with his forward motion, probably aiming to circle around the far side of the couch, while the second braked and reversed to go around the near side. Two more seconds, and they would have me neatly corralled.

Or so they thought. Rolling back up to my feet, I killed my own momentum; and as they came charging around the ends I dived again for the couch, jumping on the cushions and leaping over the back.

At this point most normal opponents would probably have cursed or spat or otherwise shown some annoyance. Not the Modhri. He fought in silence, his Halkan walkers merely reversing direction in response to my move. I took a long step toward one end of the couch, and as the nearest Halka again reached for me I scooped up the delicate metal work sculpture from the end table and threw it into his face.

I was still dodging and sparring when the police finally arrived.

The hotel manager was livid.

[Payment from the criminal,] he kept repeating over and over in Seejlis as the cops cuffed my hands behind me, the normally fluid Tra'ho language sounding a lot less melodious than usual. [Payment in art and in money.]

The cops made the sort of soothing noises cops everywhere in the galaxy make to outraged victims and marched me out into the street.

Where I found myself smack dab in the middle of a jurisdictional dispute.

It was a beaut, too, as near as I could decipher from the rapid-fire argument going on. On the one side was the chief cop on the scene, who had me dead to rights and clearly wasn't interested in handing me off to anyone else. On the other side were two of the government oathlings I'd just run out on, whose Modhran controller was equally adamant that I not be locked up where I couldn't help him find Stafford and the Lynx.

Of course, the oathlings had no idea of why they were fighting so hard to keep me out of jail, and it was weirdly amusing to watch the mental and verbal gymnastics they were throwing themselves into to make their point. Still, words and arguments were their profession, and I gave them five to three odds of winning.

I hoped they would, too, for the cops' sake. From the look on Gargantua's face as he gazed at me from one of the knots of gawkers it seemed likely that if the cops took me away their friends guarding the jailhouse might not survive the night.

Casually, I sent a gaze around the area. From the size of the muttering crowd out there it looked like my little fracas had roused pretty much everyone within a two-block radius. Certainly it should have roused anyone in the Fraklog-Oryo Hotel.

But there was no one in the streets except Tra'ho'seej, no one peering out the windows except more Tra'ho'seej, and no one on the rooftops at all.

Which meant I'd ruined a few perfectly good art objects, not to mention risking my neck, for nothing. Fayr was apparently out for the evening.

If he'd ever been here in the first place.

A light rain began while the argument continued, and everyone in sight proceeded to either pull out a fold-up hood from their coat collars or produce a compact hooded plastic poncho from some pocket. Apparently, sudden rains were a part of the local climate, part of the guidebook I must have missed.

The Halkan walkers didn't seem to notice. They stood there motionlessly, water running down their heads and dripping off their snouts, their eyes focused on me. Morse took off his jacket and offered it to Penny, who draped it hoodlike over her head for protection, while Morse himself held a forearm pressed to his forehead to at least keep the water out of his eyes. Bayta, for her part, seemed as oblivious of the precipitation as the Halkas, her eyes haunted as she gazed at the crowd surrounding us.

As for me, with my hands cuffed behind my back, I had no other option but to simply get wet.

It took a good fifteen minutes, plus at least three comm calls from each side of the argument, but eventually the cops gave up. My cuffs were removed, the hotel manager was soothed some more, and with baleful looks that were evenly distributed between me and the oathlings the cops piled back into their cars and took off.

That was apparently the signal the bystanders had been waiting for as well. A few of them shook the rain from their hoods or ponchos and trooped into the hotel with the manager, presumably to commiserate with him over a drink and survey the crime scene for themselves. The rest melted back away to their homes and gardens and cafés.

A minute later we were standing alone under the dripping sky. Penny, Bayta, Morse, me, and the Modhri's other twenty walkers.

"A waste of time and energy," Gargantua said. He was no longer glaring, but merely studying me expressionlessly. In some ways, his calm was more unnerving than the glare had been. "Did you really think you could escape me?"

Briefly I wondered what his reaction would be if I told him I'd merely been trying to make enough noise to attract the attention of a homicidal chipmunk-faced commando. But I was still hoping we might run into Fayr somewhere else along the way. "I wasn't trying to escape," I said instead, wiping some of the rainwater off my face. "I was curious to see how far you'd go with your walkers."

"And did you learn anything?"

I looked at the rich and powerful Tra'ho'seej still loitering around the area. Their expressions and eyes were back to normal, the brief episode of full Modhri control long since over.

But their attitude had definitely changed for the darker. No longer did they imagine—no longer could they persuade themselves—that they'd all simply stepped out for an evening stroll with friends and acquaintances. They were watching the four of us intently, apparently convinced that potentially dangerous aliens shouldn't be allowed to run free and wild without someone in authority guarding them. "I still wonder how you get away with these personality blackouts," I said, looking back at Gargantua. "You'd think someone would eventually catch on."

For a moment he gazed at me in silence. "I saw an old book on Human stage magic once," he said at last. "One of the illusions it described involved a large wheeled war device for hurling round shot at an enemy. I don't know the proper term."

"A cannon?" I suggested.

"Yes, that was it," the Modhri said. "In this case, it was to be loaded with a Human, who would then supposedly disappear as it was fired. After the Human entered the barrel, the cannon was swiveled completely around on the stage so that the audience could see that there were no tricks involved."

"And the trick was …?"

"The trick was that as the cannon finished its rotation, a set of false spokes slid into the openings between the lower spokes of the wheel facing away from the audience," the Modhri said. "They were so engineered that they appeared to be the spokes of the front wheel, which had just happened to block the observer's view of the rear of the stage."

I nodded as I understood. "And every observer simply thought he was the one in the bad seat," I said, "not realizing that everyone else was seeing the same blockage and was thinking the same thing "

"Exactly," the Modhri said. "With the audience's sight thus completely blocked, the Human was free to slip invisibly through a hidden door in the base of the cannon and lower himself behind the rear wheel to a concealed trapdoor in the floor without being observed." Gargantua's doglike snout curled slightly. "I trust you see the similarities."

I did, of course. As long as each Tra'ho in the group thought he was the only one having strange memory lapses, he wasn't going to think much about it, especially with the Modhri continually whispering soothing theories and rationalizations in his ears. If all of them ever got together and compared notes, they might begin to wonder.

But that would never happen. The Modhri would make sure of that. "We have much better magic tricks now," I said.

"Illusion is still only illusion," he said. "But I grow weary of this stalling. Take me to the Lynx."

"Fine," I said, gesturing down the street. "Like I said, we start at the art museum."

I took a step in that direction. Gargantua didn't budge. "You think me a fool?" he demanded, some of his earlier anger peeking out again.

"Don't worry, this time we can all go together," I said. Looking over his shoulder, I caught Penny's eye and beckoned.

She started to move forward, came up short as the Halka guarding her tightened his grip on her arm. "No," Gargantua said flatly. "You and two of my Arms."

"I need Ms. Auslander," I insisted. "Stafford won't show himself unless she's there."

"The other Human female is similar enough," Gargantua countered. "She will go with you."

I looked at Bayta. Her face was as expressionless as Gargantua's had been a minute ago, but her body language was tied in tension knots. She also didn't look a thing like Penny. "She's not nearly similar enough," I said. "Not to other Humans."

Two of the Halkas took Bayta's arms and walked her over to us. "If she does not go, then she will die," Gargantua said.

Bayta was staring unblinkingly at me. "In that case, I guess she goes," I said.

"And no others," Gargantua said.

"No others," I conceded, trying to avoid Penny's sudden look of stunned panic. Clearly, she'd expected me to fight harder for her freedom.

And I wanted to. Desperately, But there was nothing I could do against odds like these. I would leave to cooperate and hope the Modhri made a slip somewhere along the line.

"But first," Gargantua continued, "you will give me the name."

Bayta's face went suddenly very still. "What name?" I asked carefully.

"The name you were searching for in that hotel," Gargantua said. "The name the Human Daniel Stafford is traveling under." His snout curled back to reveal his teeth. "The name the Human Künstler gave you before he died."

I flicked a glance at Bayta, my back muscles twinging in memory. Apparently, Gargantua hadn't reached the scene in time to hear Künstler's actual last words. But he'd been in time to see the dying man's lips moving. "He didn't give me any name," I said.

From behind me came a sudden gasp. I spun around, my stomach tensing, to see one of the Halkas gripping the nerve center on Penny's forearm. Her face was contorted in surprise and pain. "I can hurt her much worse than that," Gargantua reminded me.

I took a deep breath. Penny was watching me closely. So was Bayta. "Daniel Mice," I said, "Now stop hurting her."

A flash of surprise and disbelief flashed across Bayta's face as Gargantua took a sideways step and gazed at my profile. "Speak the name again," he ordered.

"Daniel Mice." I repeated.

For a moment he was silent. Then, to my relief, the Haiku released Penny's arm. "Yes," he said at last. "Those were indeed the lip movements. Daniel Mice," he repeated, his voice gone thoughtful. "But Mice is a form of Earth vermin."

"It also refers to a famous cartoon figure you may have seen in dit rec animations." I said. "Apparently Stafford has a sense of humor."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw several of the Tra'ho'seej pull out their comms. The Modhri would have certainly already done a planetwide search for the name Daniel Stafford. Now, he was about to do the same for Daniel Mice, plus all the variants he could come up with.

One of the oathlings who hadn't hauled out his comm broke away from the rest of the group and came toward us, pulling off his poncho as he did so. [For the female,] he said, handing the poncho to Gargantua. He gave Bayta a courteous little bow, as befit a culture that held females of all species in high regard. Then, with a brief glower in my direction, he returned to his place in the informal picket line.

"Put it on." Gargantua said, handing the poncho to Bayta. "It will help disguise you."

So the Modhri conceded my point that Bayta and Penny didn't look alike. Interesting. "You might as well," I confirmed to Bayta. "That's the kind of sky that could rain on us all night."

I looked around again as she began to work her way into the garment. Gargantua didn't wait for her to finish, but headed silently back to where the fourth Halka was guarding Penny and Morse. Either the Modhri wanted to keep him back in reserve, or else he'd decided that Gargantua's presence at Penny's side would be more of an incentive for me to behave myself.

Or maybe I'd hurt him badly enough that the Modhri wanted to let him recover a little before throwing him into battle again. I rather hoped that was the case.

I looked around us. Now that the non-Modhran spectators had dispersed, the streets were nearly deserted. Two streets away, I could see a couple of Tra'ho'seej walking arm in arm, young lovers perhaps out for a romantic stroll in the evening rain. Occasional vehicles appeared briefly as they crossed the various intersections in the distance, though none came our direction. Half a block ahead, at the mouth of an alleyway on the far side of the Fraklog-Oryo Hotel, a lone figure in a rain poncho and badly worn clothing had broken into a public trash receptacle and pulled out several of the compressed blocks. Two of the blocks had already been prodded apart into little piles of assorted garbage at the edge of the sidewalk, and he was laboriously poking at a third with a crooked stick, searching for food or buried treasure or God only knew what.

And at the edge of the nearest pile to us, squarely in the middle of the sidewalk, was possibly the last thing I would have expected to see on an alien world: a bright yellow banana peel.

Bring with you that strange but interesting gift of Human humor, Fayr had said in his message. The whole galaxy seemed to be either intrigued or outraged by what we Humans considered funny. And without a doubt one of the strangest and most outrageous forms of Human comedy was classic vaudeville slapstick.

Including the venerable tradition of slipping on a banana peel.

I took another, harder look at the scavenger's back. It could be, I decided. It could very well be.

And suddenly our odds were looking a whole lot better

Bayta finished settling the poncho into place. "I suggest you hang back a little," I told the two Halkas as I stepped to Bayta's side. "Stafford isn't likely to come out if he sees a crowd."

Neither of them replied, but in unison they took a step closer to us. It was about the response I'd expected. "Fine—have it your way" I said. Taking Bayta's arm, which was oddly stiff and unyielding, I started us toward the museum.

We were about ten paces from the hooded scavenger when he gave a startled little yelp, his hands bobbling something in front of him as if he'd suddenly come into possession of a bird that was trying desperately to get away. A second later the unknown object shot out of his grasp, arcing high over our heads.

And as every other eye in the area automatically swung to track its flight, I grabbed the back of Bayta's head and buried her face against my shoulder. Pressing my own face against the side of her head, I squeezed my eyes shut.

The blast was surprisingly quiet, not much louder than a kid popping a paper bag. But the intensity of the flash more than made up for it. Even through closed lids and with my face turned mostly away it was bright enough to make me wince. God alone knew what it was doing to all those unshielded Tra'ho and Halkan eyes.

Though perhaps the strangled gasps from our two watchdogs were a clue. Getting a grip around Bayta's shoulder so I wouldn't lose her, I veered sharply to my right, hoping to get us out of grabbing range before the Modhri recovered from the shock and got his Halkas hunting us by sound and touch.

We'd made it barely three steps when a pair of louder cracks, the sound of large-caliber killrounds, rendered the point moot.

And then a strong hand grabbed my arm at the elbow, urgently pulling me along. Cautiously, hoping he didn't have a second sunburst grenade already on line, I opened my eyes to slits.

It was Fayr, all right. The stripe pattern on his chipmunk face had been radically altered, and there were the first signs of age-graying on his cheek fur. But his eyes were bright and steady as he peered over his shoulder from beneath his hood, and there was no mistaking the professional steadiness with which he held the large handgun pointed warily past my side. Turning my head, I looked at the crowd of walkers behind me.

It was as if Fayr had lobbed a concussion grenade squarely into their midst instead of just setting off a sunburst half a block away. All of the Tra'ho'seej had dropped to the ground and were writhing on their backs in agony. Writhing in perfect unison, actually, with each to and fro and squirm duplicated by all of them. It made the whole thing look like some strange dry-land version of synchronized swimming.

Gargantua and the other Halka weren't in much better shape. They weren't exactly writhing, but they had dropped to their knees and were swaying back and forth, their faces buried in their massive hands. Penny was half collapsed on Morse's shoulder, her body shaking with silent sobs, her face likewise buried in her hands. Morse himself had his back to us, and I couldn't tell what shape he was in.

But it didn't really matter whether he could see or not. With the whole cadre of walkers incapacitated, this was our chance to get them free. "Wait a second," I muttered toward Fayr, leaning against his guiding hand to try to stop us. "We've got friends back there."

We didn't even slow down. Fayr was stronger than his diminutive size suggested. "Leave them." he muttered back. "Too dangerous."

"They aren't walkers," I insisted.

"Are you certain?" Fayr countered.

I grimaced. But he was right. In this shadowy war, you could never tell for sure who the enemy was. "Not a hundred percent," I conceded.

"Then leave them," he repeated. "The Modhri won't hurt them without cause. Besides, there is no time."

He was right on that one, too. The sunburst had lit up the sky over the entire neighborhood, and already I could hear the sounds of sirens as the police headed back to see what the hell had happened now.

Their reaction when they found out the government oathlings had managed to lose their Human prisoner ten minutes after I'd been left in their custody would probably be highly entertaining. But it wasn't a conversation I wanted to hear with my hands cuffed behind me. "You have someplace to go?" I asked Fayr.

"No fears." He gestured with his gun toward the next side street. "There." As he drew back his hand, he slid the gun back into concealment inside his poncho.

I took one last look at the two dead Halkas lying crumpled behind us on the sidewalk. We have much better magic tricks now, I'd told the Modhri earlier. Such as making a pair of walkers disappear forever. "Hey, presto," I murmured.