“Starting from the Underbridge,” Theo added across his tea. I didn’t feel like talking, but they were looking at me. Well, I was the one they knew, not Frances or Mick. Chango — or whoever — it seemed strange that they didn’t all know each other. I knew them, and until a few days ago, I would have described myself as knowing no one and happy about it.

I started from the Underbridge and didn’t get far. As I came up on the image of Mick in the archives, I realized I was in trouble; I should have started earlier and explained Mick. But I couldn’t explain Mick, because that would mean telling about his dead body, and revealing that he was a Horseman, which wasn’t mine to tell. And then there were the archives. I dragged to a hand-waving stop.

“They’re Horsemen,” Sherrea said briskly, nodding. “I knew that. Which one was riding the redheaded woman?”

I stared at her.

“It was the only thing that explained what happened. What did you think, that she was having a religious conversion?”

I gave up on chronology and explained Frances’s vendetta against Tom Worecski and our interception by China Black and Mr. Lyle.

“How did you sandbag Mick?” Frances asked. “It’s a bit of a trick to get one of us unconscious before we think to jump horses.”

Mr. Lyle nodded. “You have to be very slow, or very fast. In this case, it was speed. And one can’t suspect every large, friendly dog one sees.”

Mick half grinned, sheepish, at Frances. “He distracted me.”

“I’ll remember that. Too bad it wouldn’t work on Tom; he hates dogs.”

Sherrea folded her knees up under her chin and wedged her feet on the chair. “So you want to find a guy who could be anywhere and look like anybody, who might not even be in the City. Why not give us a hard one?”

Frances turned her hands palm up. “It was the best I could do at short notice.”

“Ti-so, this has nothing to do with us,” China Black said urgently.

Sher looked up at her. “How can you be sure? It has something to do with Sparrow.”

China Black’s gaze went from Sherrea to me, and narrowed. She tapped a finger against her lower lip. She looked as if she were planning to move furniture, and I was a sofa.

Sherrea began to push empty dishes and the samovar to the far half of the tea table. Mr. Lyle caught the muffin bowl as it was about to heel off the edge, and stacked it and anything else in danger on the tea tray. Then Sher pulled a wad of electric-blue silk out of her sash. It fell open when she put it on the table, in a way I recognized. I wondered if anyone else there knew it was a new cloth, and knew why.

Given my last reading from Sher, I wanted to volunteer to take the dishes to the kitchen. Unfortunately, I didn’t know where it was. I lifted my eyes from the cards to the rest of the audience. China Black was haughty and nervous; Mr. Lyle was calm, as if this was the logical progression of the conversation. Theo was leaning forward and peering. “Groovy cards,” he said. “Where they from?” Mick was looking, and looking blank. But Frances was sitting straight-backed on the edge of the couch, her face frozen.