"Some other time. Get them out."

Smeds glared at his cousin. Getting too damned pushy. "Come on, girls. Get your clothes on. Papa has to talk business."

Tully and Smeds watched while they got into ragged clothing. It didn't occur to Smeds to dress. Sheena gave old Hank the Shank a playful slap as she went by. "See you later." The door closed. "You're going to get your ass in a sling," Tully said.

"No more than you. You ought to meet their mother."

"She got any money?"

"No. But she blows a mean horn. Got a thing about it. She gets going she just can't quit."

"When you going to clean this pigsty?"

"Soon as the maid gets back from holiday. So what's so important you have to break in on my party?"

"You heard about what happened up in the Barrowland?"

"I heard some stories. I didn't pay no attention. What do I care? Won't make no difference to me."

"It might. You hear the part about the silver spike?"

Smeds thought. "Yeah. They stuck it in a tree. I thought that would be handy to glom on to. Then I thought some more and figured there wouldn't be enough silver in it to make it worth the trip."

"It isn't the silver, cousin. It's what's in the silver."

Smeds turned it around in his mind some. He couldn't find Tully's angle. "You better lay it out by the numbers." Smeds Stahl was not known for his keen mind.

"That big nail has the soul of the Dominator trapped in it. That means it's one bad hunk of metal. You take some big wazoo of a sorcerer, I bet he could pound it into some kind of all-time mean amulet. You know, like in stories."

Smeds frowned. "We aren't sorcerers."

Tully got impatient. "We'd be the middlemen. We go up there and dig it out of that tree and hide it out till word gets around that it's gone. Then we let it out that it's for sale. To the highest bidder."