And my record as one of the finest subjects of the Karentine Crown would not tilt the balance away from an arrest for possession of proscribed weaponry.

Singe would not let me go with anything less. And, "Even though this does not look like a situation where we will need the Dead Man, I'll try to wake him up."

"Singe, you are a treasure."

That was a wonderful straight line. I regretted it before I finished saying it. Singe, however, confounded heaven and earth by disdaining her opportunity. "I know. I have trouble imagining how you have survived without me. Get along. No! Wait! What about your other friends?"

Symptomatic of my reduced status, I asked, "What? Who?"

"Saucerhead. Winger. Playmate. Half a dozen others."

"Oh. Them." At the moment Mama Garrett's boy didn't have much of a positive attitude toward her second favorite son. I had done so little to keep in touch. "I guess you could, like quietly, let them know there's a situation. Without mentioning what happened to Morley. But I don't think we'll be asking them to get involved."

Singe just shook her head.

I needed to get out there and make my special ratgirl happy by finding the real, missing Garrett.

10

Fire and Ice wasn't hard to find. It was a well-known establishment on the frontier of Elf Town, serving the needs of the successful working man. Meaning it wasn't quite the upscale hook shop I expected but it wasn't rodent's belly nasty, either. It was a place where shopkeepers and skilled tradesmen could relax of an evening. A throwback kind of place, actually, because it didn't make its money on volume, nor entirely on marketing its keystone service.

I expect the relaxed atmosphere was one way the house competed for scarce disposable income--much of which, these days, ends up in TunFaire's gaudy theaters.