"1 will?"

"You will. Trust me. Just give me its name and tell me the place where I can find it."

"Name... and... place."

"That's right. But get to it, lovey, before it's too late!"

Chant took as deep a breath as his collapsing lungs allowed. "It's called Pie 'oh' pah," he said.

Dowd stepped back from the dying man as if slapped. "Pie 'oh' pah? Are you sure?"

"I'm sure...."

"Pie 'oh' pah is alive? And Estabrook hired it?"

"Yes."

Dowd threw off his imitation of a Father Confessor and murmured a fretful question of himself. "What does this mean?" he said.

Chant made a pained little moan, his system racked by further waves of dissolution. Realizing that time was now very short, Dowd pressed the man afresh.

"Where is this mystif? Quickly, now! Quickly!"

Chant's face was decaying, cobs of withered flesh sliding off the slickened bone. When he answered, it was with half a mouth. But answer he did, to be unburdened.

"I thank you," Dowd said to him, when all the information had been supplied. "I thank you." Then, to the voiders, "Let him go."

They dropped Chant without ceremony. When he hit the floor his face broke, pieces spattering Dowd's shoe. He viewed the mess with disgust.

"Clean it off," he said.

The voiders were at his feet in moments, dutifully removing the scraps of matter from Dowd's handmade shoes.

"What does this mean?" Dowd murmured again. There was surely synchronicity in this turn of events. In a little over half a year's time the anniversary of the Reconciliation would be upon the Imajica. Two hundred years would have passed since the Maestro Sartori had attempted, and failed, to perform the greatest act of magic known to this or any other Dominion. The plans for that ceremony had been laid here, at number 28 Gamut Street, and the mystif, among others, had been there to witness the preparations.