My knees wobbled a little in relief. Good. If Butters was still all right, I had to keep Grevane talking. Barely five minutes had passed since the attack began. Even if the bad guys had cut the phone lines to the whole boardinghouse, the neighbors would have heard the racket and watched the light show from my wards. Someone was sure to call the authorities. If I could keep Grevane busy long enough, they would arrive, and I was willing to bet money that Grevane would rabbit rather than take chances this close to his goal. "You've got him. I want him."

"As do I," Grevane said. "I presume he found the information in the smuggler's corpse."

"Yes," I said.

"And I take it you also know."

"Yes."

He made a thoughtful sound. He was very near the broken window, though I couldn't see him. "That presents a problem for me," Grevane said. "I have no intention of sharing the Word with anyone. I'm afraid it will be necessary for me to silence you."

"I'm the least of your worries," I called back. "Corpsetaker and Li Xian took the information from me this afternoon."

There was a silence, broken only by the slow, steady pounding on my door.

"If that had happened," Grevane said, "you would not be alive to speak of it."

"I got lucky and got away," I said. "Corpsetaker sounded all hot and bothered about this Darkhallow thing you guys have planned."

I heard the angry sound of someone spitting. "If you are telling the truth," Grevane said, "then it profits me nothing to allow you and the mortician to live."

"That's one way to look at it," I said. "But you could just as easily say that it costs you nothing to do it, either. Last night you wanted to make me a deal. You still willing to talk?"

"To what purpose?" he said.

There was the shrieking sound of steel beginning to bend under stress. One corner of the door, up at the top, bent in, letting in cold evening air.

"Hurry," Thomas urged me. "We have to do something fast."

"Give me Butters," I said to Grevane. "I'll give you the information I found."

"You offer me nothing. I have him already," Grevane said. "I can extract the information from him myself."

"You could," I said, "if he knew it. He doesn't."

Grevane snarled something in a language I didn't understand. I heard scuffing shoes, then the sound of a slap and a dazed exclamation from Butters. "Is that true?" Grevane asked him. "Do you have the information about the Word?"

"Dunno what it is," Butters mumbled. "There was a jump drive. Numbers. It was a whole bunch of numbers."

"What numbers?" Grevane snarled.

"Don't know. Whole bunch. Can't remember them all. Harry has them."

"Liar," Grevane said. There was the sound of another blow, and Butters cried out.