She asked, "What happened to you? You look like you were in a fight."

"First prize to the lady. You should see the other guys." She seemed excited by the idea of my getting into a fight. Point taken away from Amiranda Crest. I tried the story on her just to see how she would react. She appeared befuddled and frightened, but got con­trol quickly. "Why would the kidnappers do that?"

"I don't know. It doesn't make sense." Then I turned to more interesting subjects, notably Amiranda Crest. "How did you get hooked up with the Stormwarden?"

"I was born to it."

"What?"

"My father was a friend of her father. They worked together sometimes."

The brain had to run some numbers before I could say anything more. The Stormwarden's father had died be­fore I was born. Fairy folk lived a long time and aged slowly. Could this morsel be old enough to be my mother?

"I'm twenty-one, Garrett."

I gave her the famous Garrett raised eyebrow.

"I've gotten too damned many of those glassy-eyed stares when human men suddenly realize there's a chance I might be older, more knowledgeable, and more experi­enced than they are. Sometimes it turns into panic or terror."

I apologized where I was guilty, then told her, "You jump to too many conclusions. I suspect the reactions you get don't have anything to do with how old you might be. You're Molahlu Crest's daughter. Even though he's gone, his reputation lingers. And its got to hang on you like a shroud. People have to wonder if the wicked­ness is in the blood."

"Most people have never heard of Molahlu Crest."

I didn't answer that. If she wanted to believe it—which she did not for a moment—let her. It could be her way of coping with a difficult ancestry.

The Stormwarden's father (who had taken the name Styx Sabbat), and Molahlu Crest had clawed their ways up from the bottom of the Hill, the former riding a talent for sorcery, the latter an absence of conscience or com­passion. A corduroy road of bodies was their route to the heart of the circles of power. They had been takers and breakers and killers, and the only good thing anyone ever said about either was that they had remained true friends from beginning to end. Neither greed nor hunger for power had come between them.